I have considered creating another blog that would be all things marriage related but then I realized that the purpose of my life is to grow through bravery and courage. This is still the purpose of my life now that I am married. It becomes a different kind of bravery and courage. I already know that I have the courage to face my own demons and the bravery to let go of poisonous habits. Now, for this marriage to flourish and grow, I need to have the bravery and courage to be patient with myself in connection to another person.
I have been married for two weeks now. The intensified growth that I have been experiencing as a single person has carried over into this partnership. The greatest enemy of any union, marriage/friendship/parent-child, is the "monkey mind". I have seen Shoghi Effendi refer to it as the, "aping of the past". Although he is referring to the cycle of racism, I have seen this same tendency to thoughtlessly mimic past behavior in my life. I became especially aware of it this past year while I was studying for my masters degree.
I know I spent the better part of my life responding and reacting the way I thought I was expected to. Luckily I also have the quality of being an initiator so I still had some role to play in the unfolding of my life. Despite this though, I picked up many survival methods that came from childhood abuse. These survival methods served to protect me. They required walls and a disconnecting of my true self from situations of violation that I observed or was subjected to. As an adult I experienced many hurtful and painful situations that served to confirm in my mind, that I was not good enough...that I was somehow irrevocably flawed in a fundamental way. Yes, everyone has flaws, that comes with the territory of being human, but I am talking about feeling a spiritual stain. I have done a lot of self work over the years but this past year I finally had breakthroughs and felt relief. The stain was lifted, the mechanisms of survival that served me so well at one time were dismantled.
As a single woman I experienced a complete sense of freedom. I could finally breathe freely after taking in only stale air. The one time I experienced a total shift in consciousness was when I went to Eritrea and I was depressed for months after returning.
Now I am married and the weird thing, the thing that has been unexpected, is that like everything else that has happened in my life when it was supposed to, it feels very natural. There was this seamless movement from being single to being coupled. Everything I needed was placed before me and I saw it clearly. I am not sure if I am supposed to feel MORE...like some big change. I feel like this is a testament to how I got to know my husband, that we both brought who we are and openness to communicate and to grow. That was the character of our courtship. What I am finding to be the hard part, after two weeks, is not the person I am married to but the person that married him, me.
The "monkey mind" is sure that this cannot be different. It questions things that I have no power over and tries to maintain the walls that protected me before because I was in unsafe relationships. The fact that it feels so ordinary, natural, right is what is being questioned. I see no BIG PROBLEMS in the foreseeable future and that scares me. I have spent so much of my life preparing for the ax to drop and usually it did. When I shared this with my husband he said to me, with a smile in his voice, "So you are calling problems to yourself." And he was right. I have been surrounded over the past year by people who understand something that is still taking me some time to grasp, we create our reality. Our thoughts can be made real if we give them enough energy.
So, on this next part of my journey towards bravery and courage I will continue to put effort into breaking down the "monkey mind". I will also start looking into ways to celebrate the little things in our relationship. I didn't have a romantic, lovey-dovey courtship. It was very purposeful and pragmatic in many ways. I have come to realize that something neither of us are good at is being romantic. :) I am beginning to see that adding romance to the mix may help things from being ordinary to special. I will say this, I am not knocking ordinary. I love the security and stability of ordinary and when you have something that is solidly ordinary, then making it extraordinary is where the fun comes in. :)
(Yet, in all honesty, I don't think what I have been a part of is particularly ordinary,it is a steady flame that just needs to be stoked now and then.)
Hmmmmmm...isn't this a nice quandary to be in, how do I become more romantic? FUN!!!
