Big Life Changes.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Dear Deepak, I want to start to thank you. This year has been very different for me because I`ve dedicated my life to be enlightened and feel I have finally found myself, my purpose and the joy that life is. I haven`t read a single book for many years, and the last 8 months I have finished 7-8 books, so I have made changes in my career, my relationship with my family, changed myself to be a better person, love to be positive, I believe in God again, also respect myself and give love to everyone I meet.
But now I feel myself in a difficult situation. I have been engaged to the man I love and want to marry for over 7 years. We both agree we think we have found our soul mate. I hardly can say anything negative about him but still I have to find answers. I still feel thankful and the love everywhere but my fiancé has become distant to me the past weeks. We used to go once a week for 2 month to a meditation course, and both felt what a difference it is to our life to meditate every day. But now when I talk about spiritual things, all the books I have read and love, and try to “lift him up” he gets more and more angry for some reason. I don`t know what to do anymore. I try everyday to pray that we can be friends again and feel the love and peace together. I meditate beside him in bed and try fill everything with love and good thoughts but it just doesn`t make any difference. I also have tried to accept him, just as he is right now, and that he may be going through something, but when I focus on accepting him as he is and just love him, he asks me if I don`t care about him anymore and says he feels like I don`t like him and avoid him..?
Because of my change in career I have let go a (stressful) job that gave me a bank account filled with the money we needed every month, and now, because I want to fulfill my dream I have to settle with much less money every month to begin with, and we both agreed on that and I have all the support behind me. So going to couples-therapy, or “doing” something is hardly an option at the moment, that is; finding some kind of help where it costs us. He doesn`t want to talk about his feelings, and when I try to tell him we probably need to talk so we can move forward, he gets slowly angry again.. I don`t feel hopeless or down, I just want so much to do something or help him and I`ve run out of ideas. If you have any ideas on this “problem” of mine, ours, I would be so incredibly thankful to hear anything, any idea, because I also have to admit that my love to life surely does not feel the same the last days and I have caught myself struggling for the first time in a long time and after trying even more to love and be patient and feel compassion, without any changes, I now feel like I might need some help and I hope to find it maybe here.
Response:
I think you were on the right track when you thought of accepting and loving him just as he is right now. You got discouraged when he voiced his doubt about whether you still care for him. But being able to love and accept someone in those circumstances is exactly the lesson for you.
Your own spiritual unfoldment has been so rewarding and wonderful that it seems like the most natural and selfless thing in the world to want to encourage those same experiences in the life of your life partner. I suspect that he would actually like to have his own spiritual awakenings similar to yours, but he knows that it just isn’t happening for him right now for whatever reason. Even through your encouragement to meditate with him, he probably silently judges himself for not being “as spiritual” as you, because he is not experiencing all these great changes in his life. I think this is why he feels distant, resentful and angry.
The truth of enlightenment is that there are no absolute standards in one’s outer life to measure how spiritually awakened on is. Your new job, your new joy and purpose in life are no doubt very positive indicators that good things are happening, but the lack of those things in his life do not indicate that he is any further or closer to enlightenment than you are. Ultimately enlightenment is about the identity beyond the ego becoming permanently established in itself. Too often spiritual aspirants judge their progress by comparing themselves to standards they imagine in others, and that can bring up all kinds of feelings: jealousy, resentment, discouragement and anger.
Let your fiancé know that as grateful as you are for all the good things that have been happening lately in your life, this just happens to be how life is for you right now, it doesn’t imply anything about his spiritual growth. Tell him that you know that his own inner development is unfolding exactly as it needs to and that you are happy to support him in that process whether that means meditation or not.
Love,
Deepak
