Failure

FAILURE

The following text has been modified and translated.  Sometimes, even when there exist personal variants, the background of the question or commentary responds to a basic pattern.  Each one will be able to derive their own lesson.

Q:

“Speaking about ‘failure’ (in relationship), I use this word because I invested much in my two previous relationships trying to heal them. I suffered much, particularly with my obsession in having my partners understand my posture or position.  To that is added the fact that their gestures and words affect me too much.  This produces too much pain, to the point where I only focus on the pain, entering into a spiral of sadness and ‘frustration’.  Hence the word failure…  I repress myself… feel a certain fear to come out with the tail between my legs…”

Z:

One of the interesting parts of this comment is that it comes from a man who stands outside the habitual stereotype.

There are two parts here.  One is personal, the need to be heard and be right, to be understood, and in a certain way feel “righteous” with it.  The context or the camouflages do not matter.

For years I have been saying to my students that, in spite of the circumstances: “even if you are right, if you lose yourself in it, you are wrong”.  In other words, it is not worth it to force the issue, and feeling anguish about the other not “understanding” already implies that there is more to it than what you wish to communicate.

Some people go into relationships to save or “heal” the other, and when this is not possible, to “heal the relationship”.  Ask yourself what this means for you.  You would have to see what is behind it, what you are really wanting, and see the real utility or uselessness of it.

Some go into minute explicative details that only attract attention to themselves, to their difference or “importance”.  To some people it is more important to be right than to discover the truth.  Discussion points are often too fine and irrelevant.  The relationship, friendship included, is not the terrain for this type of self-validation, even if it is so prevalent as to be commonplace.

Relationship, particularly if there is a sexual involvement, is a field where we lose energy boundaries and the artifices that we normally hold up in “public”.  This is why it is the perfect means for spiritual and every other type of growth.  We begin by helping the other and end up helping ourselves, and learning what “love” could be.  Normally we project what we want to have and later we guilt the other for not giving it, instead of questioning our own expectations.

In this terrain, that of intimate relationships, we lose the absolute control that we keep in our privacy and isolation.  Everything stands revealed, particularly the patterns of childhood and the defensive psychology (that later turns accusatory).  It requires tremendous patience, commitment, and self-discipline:  things that we hardly find anymore in our society that seems to have lost the sense of values.

Without becoming a doormat, to be in a relationship means to leave the “I” aside, and this doesn’t tend to happen.  Usually a relationship, as I say repeatedly in my blog, responds to physical attraction, or in some way to a “reaction” from the personality.  It is as if we tried to define or work on ourselves by changing the other!  Worse, these relationships are based on the spoken word (in other words on intentionality) and not on a healthy energetic relationship that is realistic.

The second aspect of your comment is an extension of the first and refers to a pattern of feeling “pain” and “failure”.  You know that these experiences are purely subjective, including pain.  I believe you refer to emotional pain, but even if you were to speak of physical pain, it is the same.  We respond to situations through our vehicle that has three ways or styles of avoiding full consciousness:  physically, emotionally, and mentally.  It is not a matter of working on the symptoms.  These are no excuse for suffering, isolation, or revenge as so many would have it.  One has to go deeper, assume responsibility for oneself and his/her God.  With all respect, the other, always, is a mere reference.

I would like you to consider that there is no success without failure. There is no such thing as “failure”, except for you not getting your way.  Life is wise, much wiser than we are.  I always direct my students to be grateful for the painful parts of our experience to find the lessons that life is offering us through them.  To accept or anchor oneself in the idea of failure is counter-productive.  Ask yourself what there is in you and your need, why you attracted the same type of person or something similar.

I hope to have helped you in some way, clearing up concepts.  I know that this normally requires time and much attention, care, and loving self-discipline.  It requires training in the management of energies, not just ideas or concepts.  These energies stem from the body and the emotions, and the purpose is to master them – not just understand them.  “Understanding” is not enough.  One has to change the flow of habitual energy deliberately.  Usually this happens through therapy.

I don’t do this kind of work more any more, but I have students that I am training and who have been with me for years.  Maybe they can help in certain cases with follow-up.  If this is the choice, ask me.

Xxx  Zzz