We are very happy to feature the following excerpt from Robert Augustus Masters' new book, Transformation Through Intimacy: The Journey Toward Awakened Monogamy, now available on Amazon.
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So many yearn to be in a genuinely intimate relationship—a relationship that consistently enlivens, deepens, and awakens—and wonder why they continue to find themselves alone or in relationships that don’t really work for them (but which they keep hoping will).
So many are having a relationship not with the other—be that other their partner or their hoped-for beloved—but instead with the other’s potential.
Some think that all that they have to do to attract their beloved is to wish and intend for that one to somehow show up, but wishing and intending is not enough, no matter how ardently we may believe in our power to manifest what we want.
So how to attract our beloved?
Let’s begin by looking at how not to attract our beloved. First of all, let go of thinking that all you have to do is think about attracting that one. You may have heard that this is all you need to do, and that if you don’t get the results you want, it is simply because you’re not putting out the right thoughts in the right way. You may have subscribed to New Age notions about the power of thought to create your reality, notions that both overemphasize and oversimplify the impact that your thoughts can have, as if by just changing the content and direction of your thoughts you can have whatever you want.
At the same time, though, it is important to recognize the power and impact that our thoughts do have, especially when we amplify them, however unwittingly, with our attention. Perhaps what matters most here is not what we are thinking, but what we are doing with what we are thinking: Are we identified with our thoughts? Are we allowing them to recruit emotional energy? Are we trying to change them? Are we listening to them uncritically? Are we letting ourselves be controlled by them? Are we aware of them, and if so, to what degree? Are we relating from them, or to them? And when we are using our thoughts to help manifest something we want, how aware are we of which us—that is, which aspect of us—is wanting that particular something?
Although directed thought is not all let’s-manifest-it wishful thinking, we need to be aware of what is actually motivating it. Drug addicts’ directed thought may be very clear and single-pointed when their craving for a fix reaches a certain intensity; and it’s possible that such a precise and unwavering focus on the desired object could attract whatever (and whomever) helps fulfill their craving.
Similarly, much of what “we” want is animated and directed not by us, but by our conditioning. We may, for example, seek a partner to try to fulfill unmet or badly handled needs from our childhood, and we may romanticize this to such a degree that we block ourselves from seeing what is really going on. At such times, our conditioning—which we are in all likelihood allowing to refer to itself as us—is running the show, not us.
So it’s useful here to shift the focus from where we are going (or wanting to go) to where we are coming from. And we cannot simply think or intend our way through this. Something deeper is needed, namely a journey into and through our conditioning and its roots.
In short, we don’t attract our beloved through thought or intention alone. Nor do we attract our beloved through manipulation, however tastefully dressed or spiritualized that might be.
Presenting ourselves as other than we are means that a companion is going to be having a relationship not with us but with our self-presentation. This may “work” for a bit, but sooner or later it wears thin as the other sees through us or we simply lose the energy to keep up the façade. Putting energy into being other than ourselves is ultimately exhausting; the grief that it covers or obscures—the grief over assuming that we, as we are, are not enough—eventually must surface, usually through the inevitable cracks in our self-presentation.
Of course, presenting ourselves as we are is more than just a matter of being an open book; we need to take into account others’ openness to really seeing us, as well as their capacity to do so. The entire book does not have to revealed right away. If you give too much, others won’t be able to digest and integrate it.
And you cannot seduce your beloved-to-be. If you assume that you’ll have to somehow seduce that one, what is implied is that he or she wouldn’t otherwise be drawn to you. The power expressed through the act of seduction is actually a confession of an underlying sense of powerlessness. Rather than get seductive or otherwise exploitatively inclined regarding what we want from another, we would do better to face, explore, and work through the very powerlessness for which our seductiveness is a “solution.”
Nor will we attract our beloved if we are looking for someone to make us feel whole or better or more secure. What we will then attract or be drawn to is someone who has an investment in making us thus feel, an investment probably rooted in their not being loved (or feeling loved) unless they were busy trying to make someone else, like one of their parents, feel good. Only when we liberate relationship from the task of making us feel better will we truly feel better, as well as be far more ready to enter the kind of relationship that genuinely serves both our well-being and that of our partner.
Something more than positive thinking, manipulation, and hope is needed—namely to face, really face, and work through whatever it is in us that’s in the way of attracting our beloved. This means not only facing our doubts and self-defeating beliefs, but also uncovering, facing, and unhooking ourselves from their originating factors.
So to attract our beloved we cannot just think a certain way or do some affirmations or hold a certain intention (which is not to say that such activities are without value). Rather, we have to do some deeper work on ourselves, work that includes and integrates our physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions, so that we’ll be sufficiently ready for our beloved. Ripe.
It’s necessary to bring ourselves into full alignment with what we long for—a relationship that actually works, not later, but now—and this requires that we not only clearly see our neurotic patterns, but that we also cease allowing them to run us and masquerade as us. And we don’t do this by somehow getting rid of such dysfunction (this eradication being only a fantasy) or rising above it (which is a form of dissociation), but by relating to it instead of from it.
Once we have done enough work to be able to see our less-than-healthy conditioning for what it is and to take full responsibility for it when it arises (waking up in the midst of our reactivity, and so on), we can begin generating potent prayers/invitations for our beloved to come into our life. We are then ready, no matter how far we still have to go, and we know it, right to our core. Here awakening, thought, intentionality, raw feeling, intuition, and faith all come together to produce a fitting prayer that aligns us with our beloved.
Though such prayer may look like wishful thinking it is not. It may look like it’s constructed of hope, but it’s not. It is firmly and unshakably rooted in an embodied now, leaving us not leaning into later, but rather more and more deeply settled into the present moment.
Such prayer is a kind of dynamic contemplation or active meditation, as conscious as it is empowering, a clear statement of opening and trust and patience. It is not at all the sort of prayer that is mere narcissism or greed or desperation in spiritual garb, asking for stuff (as if from a cosmic catalog or shopping channel that requires only our wishes as payment for its goodies). Let’s now take a look at prayer itself before we continue with the type of prayer best suited for attracting our beloved....
Although prayer may include thought, especially spiritually-oriented thought, it is not primarily an act of mind. It is much more an act of heart. A divine personal. Prayer is desire, but it is the final frontier of desire.
The desire highlighted and presented through mature prayer isn’t greedy or desperate for fulfillment, being rooted not in the futurizing of hope but rather in the here-and-now openness of awakened faith.
Prayer is sacred conversation, even when it is absolutely silent.
In its beginning stages, prayer mostly asks. As it ripens, prayer may still ask, but its primary characteristic is deep, devotional receptivity. So prayer initially has a lot to say, but later on it mostly listens.
Ultimately, prayer becomes what it is requesting, through bringing us into such deep intimacy with what really matters that we’re no longer significantly separated from the object of our prayer and are in fact aligned with it even though it hasn’t yet physically manifested.
Much depends on who—or what—we assume is hearing our prayers. Let us call the ear we are trying to reach “God.” If we take God to be a kind of super-parent or cosmic Santa Claus, our prayers will be like those of a child asking for favors. But if we move closer to the other end of the spectrum and stop reducing God to a super version of ourselves, our prayers will mostly be communications between wakefulness and Wakefulness.
What real prayer seeks is recognized, at least to some degree, to be already found. There is actually no real gap between seeking and sought in bare awareness—it is only in time, only in the manifesting of prayer’s requests, that there appears to be such a gap.
Prayer helps bridge the unmanifest and the manifest by creating fertile conditions for bringing potentialities to life. Prayer provides templates, sacred and otherwise, for intentionality. As it matures, prayer’s context shifts from petitioning to gratitude. Then prayer does not end with a thank you but is a thank you. It is in the spirit of this that our prayer for our beloved will be most effective. The more we let go of having to have something happen here, the more likely it is to happen. No desperation, no rush, just making haste slowly....
Look at what you have attracted thus far, and find out what it was in you that was the driving force behind such attraction.
See what childhood programming may still be operative in you; see what you saw in the other; see where your charge or excitation (whether positive or negative) was, and still is, in relationship; see which needs you eroticized, and still eroticize; see through the intoxicating dramatics of romance; and look inside your looking until your habit of allowing your woundedness to attract your beloved fades to nothing.
Allow your prayer to expand, deepen, and awaken you. Let your voice, however soft, emanate from your core as much as possible. Let your whole body participate. Be bare-hearted.
Do not ask for anything that you are not prepared to give.
Open yourself to being with someone who is already capable of meeting you fully. Don’t settle for less. And remember to remember that your beloved is trying to find you. Let yourself open to feeling your beloved’s prayers to find and be with you. Keep making space, plenty of space, amidst your mental clutter and emotional dramatics so that you can readily hear the messages of your intuition.
Let your longing for your beloved be your primary guide. Separate that longing from other longings, like wanting to feel special or needed.
And even if your beloved does not show up, rest in the faith that the very process of opening to being with such a one will immeasurably benefit you.
Don't miss:
Monogamy as a Path to Awakening
In this extraordinary discussion, Robert Augustus Masters and Diane Bardwell Masters speak with Ken Wilber about the next evolution of intimate relationships: monogamy as a spiritual path, a crucible for awakening, and a vessel for enlightenment in the 21st century.
Intimate relationship has long been viewed and lived as a lesser alternative to spiritual life. More recently, the need to integrate our spiritual and intimate lives, rather than maintaining separate spheres and relationships on autopilot, has become increasingly apparent. Given the high rates of infidelity and divorce, it would seem that the possibilities of freedom through intimacy have not been explored in much depth. Too often we pull away when relationships become difficult, missing out on the rewards of connecting more profoundly.
The passage from immature to mature monogamy is not only a journey of ripening intimacy with a partner, but also a journey into and through zones of ourselves that may be very difficult to accept and integrate with the rest of our being. Transformation through Intimacy explores intimate relationships through a four-stage lens: me-centered, we-centered codependent, we-centered coindependent, and being-centered. Bringing his many years of experience as a psychotherapist and spiritual practitioner to the subject, Masters shows readers not only how to navigate the thickets of reactivity, conflict, shame, anger, fear, and doubt, but how to understand them in a new light so that a deeper level of relating to oneself and one's partner becomes possible, opening new levels of trust, commitment, and love.
"This is an important and tremendously useful book, packed with wisdom and insight. Highly recommended!" –Ken Wilber, author of Integral Spirituality
"Transformation Through Intimacy is so comprehensive, so down-to-earth, so vivid and raw, so unflinching and kind, so patient and persistent, it's hard to imagine that a more potent guidebook to healing the multiple dis-eases of today's intimacies could possibly appear. There isn't a couple on earth, nor a single seeking someone to love, nor anyone exploring multiple partnering or other unconventional arrangements, who can't benefit by looking into the numerous mirrors Robert holds up here as he traces our potential growth through four stages of maturity in intimacy.... Robert has distilled into simple, ordinary essences his highly sophisticated awareness of philosophical, developmental, and clinical theory and his vast years of experience in therapeutic and teaching practice. The result is a book that anyone with a feeling heart, a questing mind, and a dedicated willingness to deeply encounter self and other can surely understand and grow from immensely—again and again." –Saniel Bonder, founder, Waking Down in Mutuality, author of Ultimaya 1.0 and Healing the Spirit/Matter Split
"I love this book! There is a depth, a magic, and a sense of ultimate fulfillment that we find through learning to love one other person completely.… This is a hero's and a heroine's journey; it asks everything of us, but also gives us all we have ever longed for. We need a great guide on such a journey, and Masters is such a one, walking by our side as we venture into deeper waters, finding an ever-deeper healing and freedom through awakened monogamy."— –Arjuna Ardagh, author of The Translucent Revolution
Purchase now on Amazon.
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