'Relationships'

Relationships are completely different to me now than what I grew up believing them to be...what any of us grew up thinking about them.  Movies, fairy tales and examples of others implanted False Evidence Appearing Real (FEAR) about them...and this fear has pretty much ruled that scene for me - I am realizing...until now.
It wasn't until very recently - a year or more ago - that I began to realize, to WAKE-UP to the fact that all relationship was SELF-Relationship...that every person who I seemed to have a continuing 'romance' with, whether platonically based, or other-wise...was in fact ME being reflected back to me...from the outside...or what appears to be the outside of my own form.
See, before I used to 'get involved' with someone, friendship or more intimately, and when things started to come up that were seemingly less than harmonious, I would 'bale ship' ...recognizing that something was not right, and that somehow this relationship must be 'bad' for me...including the circumstances surrounding the relationship...and I need to 'get out' and find something/someONE 'better'.  Wow - what a mind trick that was.
Now the frustration really began to inflate...for all the while I kept 'attracting' to myself someone new who seemed to push similar buttons as another previously had (perhaps from a different angle, at a different speed, or now harder)...what was going on?!  It took a great amount of maturation and spiritual enlightenment to realize that everyone with whom was drawn into my life was ME ...and I was being afforded - with each relationship - a deeper look, an opportunity to heal, a chance to 'advance' if you will...and every time I bailed ship - well, it was - - in a very BIG way - - back to square ONE.
Now YES, it is true that you can 'advance' on your own...you can make great leaps in awareness, or deepen your inner peace effectively...sure - - and fairly easily actually.  Maybe that is why many prefer to be alone.  However, (and I am sorry to those who are sworn to singularity - not really)...you cannot goto the depths, I am truly convinced - of your own beingness...and remove deep childhood and other life-time clutter, surmount obstacles of your mind (to the same extent) without the perceived 'other'.  You know, the one who is right there in your face - reflecting back to you what is on the surface.?!  It is true.  So, now...when I am confronted with the 'same' issues in "relationship" as I have been in the past - - I am aware that it is ME rising to the surface....and this time I am NOT running away, but right INTO the fire...INTO the flames of self-discovery...through the perceived disagreement to find the self that is really wishing to surface and be seen...the me that is the ONE LIFE moving through, my God-self...the source of who I really AM...this can BE...but not without some un-covering.
The crazy thing is...this is happening to the ONE, but in both directions simultaneously.  It cannot be only happening to one side...and yet that is all there is...if it is coming up - it is within - -me, you, the One Life - to be cleared, cleansed, healed and transmuted...IF and only IF (yes there's that word) IF you allow it to be...because if you run away...it will only find you again in another face...yes, you can keep running...and decide the solitary life is for you...and run home and repeat your youth...but ultimately you will need to face yourself - the ONENESS that is staring back to you from the 'other' REALNESS that you are...face it - see the beauty, see the love, the grace, the perfection, the kindness, the wonder, the awe...and want WANT to be there - with yourself - with the most CLEAR and clarified version of yourself you have ever seen...the one that speaks the name of GOD from the outside as well as the in...this is the way you know that you are home.  And I am convinced that if we can persist anywhere...anywhere...anywhere...(the best place being the one that you are)...then we will succeed...the discomfort and unsurity and feelings of 'disconnection' will NOT go on forever...for they are only there now to serve the cleansing..to serve the elevation that is happening now that you have said YES to the greater you...the divine shining through.  And because you have said yes, all that was deep down and harbored about yourself, including beliefs your families gave you, society delt you, anything along the way - from ALL of your incarnations....ALL that is not serving the greatest expression of you - - must now be cleansed...and this is perceived 'through the relationship' that is before you...like a lens.
So here I sit...within the arms of self-relationship, close-up, deep inside the place where my 'stuff' can surface and does, and IS.  And here I experience the perspective now that seems to be opposite to the one I had always before embodied...where before I, within the framework of perceived relationship, would be the voice that spoke to the leaving...that would enliven the possibility of how it might be more beneficial to be outside of this 'place'...and would mention this often, unknowingly creating an unstable environment for the purification...one that was not completely able to clear the muck - - for I did not see the 'relationship' for what it could be.  NOW I find myself in the 'other shoes' so to speak, for maybe the first time ever...this time I fully acknowledge the power and potential of this opportunity...and yet I am also realizing that I cannot make that awareness understood and embraced by both aspects of me. . . I can only hold the perspective I hold...
Even while I am writing this I am realizing that for me to even be experiencing 'the other' in a space of un-recognition of the power and potential of this thing we are in...there must be a very real and large part of myself unwilling to completely see it as well.  That he is in fact representing that very part of myself...and yet much of the reflection feels like the past - - the way I used to 'act and believe'.
Looking at this more closely I can see that I do not have the full resolve within because this is such a new state of consciousness for me to feel full commitment and surrender to my evolution even to the point of looking through every square inch of the much that comes up so as to clear it...that I know that I have a small voice within, that is maybe larger than I think...that does not believe that I can do it...that does not believe that I could truly 'advance' beyond where I have...because I have never before been willing to look at my own 'stuff' to such a degree...and had come to terms with myself as a singular entity...knowing that I am awesome, great, beautiful, that I can do it on my own, that I am 'spiritual' and open in so many ways...all of these thoughts have been as armor to 'protect' myself from the possibility of 'failing' to get through this relationship process of deep inner work and alignment.  these thoughts of self-confidence and self-love are actually, in this context self-defeating, for they are a 'back up plan' to this 'self-relationship' manifested as and through 'the other'....just in case it 'doesn't work out' and I am back 'on my own'.  Sh*#!  I had never thought of my own self-love and spiritual solidity, as I have felt, being self-defeating...for what is being asked of me daily through 'this other'...is to surrender more deeply, to look at more, to tear down the old even further, to let-go of how I thought it was ...to experience MORE LOVE< MORE LIGHT, myself in a MORE expanded state....it seems paradoxical, contradictory even...and yet I can feel the resonance.  If I can but release that part of me that is the back up plan, and embrace fully this expanded version of myself embodied in two forms as being all there is...even to my own destruction...then something will shift again. . . something IS shifting as I say this....