Reflections For Those In Abusive Relationships
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| Image Courtesy The News Chronicle |
Quite recently I watched what may well be deemed a controversial video within the Awakening and New Age communities. My beautiful soul sister Hope Jemimah shared it on her Facebook page and it caused some great controversy. The video of contention was Matt Kahn's Soul Contracts, Twin Flames and Soul Mates Redifined. Allow me to preface this blog post by saying up front that I have no desire to attempt to define or redefine these terms - this is not what this blog is about.
Now, I truly did not watch the entire video - I find myself doing that a lot of late: buying a book and not finishing it, starting an interesting article and then just skimming it...it's almost as though I go in - take just what I need and then leave. It's just the way Spirit is working with me these days.
Anyway back to the Matt Kahn video - the one thing that he said that jumped out and grabbed my attention and had it fully for the last few days since watching his video is (and I'm paraphrasing a bit):
"If you stay with someone long enough you will fall in love with them even if you hate them - because your core nature is love."
Now don't we see evidence of this all the time - whether it be the Stockholm syndrome that kidnap victims face or the woman who cries mournfully at the graveside of her abusive husband? Surely the psychologists and psycho-analysts would probably offer a more technical and logical explanation, but I personally believe that our true nature is love and that the Divine is choosing to have a multitude of physical experiences through and in us.
However the moment that you resonate with this truth that we are all love at our core, the reality of life challenges you to see people - not based on this absolute truth but on their relative truth.
So the absolute truth is that co-worker who gives you a hard time is an expression of God and that you should love her....but the relative truth- the truth you experience - is that she is a backstabbing fiend who attempts to undermine you at every opportunity she gets.
Imagine this scenario now: You are working on an ultra-important project but your co-worker envies the fact that you were chosen for this project. She has even presented herself as a better candidate for the project to your boss!
You just sent your final report to the printer but when you go to collect it - it's not there. When you look down the corridor you see your good 'friend' or rather fiend walking away with a stack of papers in her hand. You approach her but she denies having your report but your 'spidey' sense aka intuition is shouting to you that your report is in her hands.
You can't just say "Peace my sister" and walk away. Consider this - God is using this opportunity to challenge you to honour your intuition and speak up for yourself. You have been a doormat for far too long and have stamped down your intuition for far much longer. Yes you can re-print your report but do you really want it in her hands when you know she wants your project?
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| Image courtesy: http://kamisulat.blogspot.com Title: Workplace Backstabbing |
Now I'm not advocating that you accuse her forthwith but maybe you can say
"Oh really, can we just go through the papers you have in your hand because I know that I just sent my report to print and I believe it got mixed up with your print job."
As your report miraculously jumps out of the stack in her hands, she apologizes and calls it a genuine mistake...let's not judge - maybe the mistake was indeed sincere....in any case, this is the place where you can show love!
What is vitally important to the universe though, is that you stood up and honoured your intuition!
Now what does this have to do with the Matt Kahn video or abusive relationships. Well believe it or not - you playing the doormat to your co-worker's overt and covert tactics is an abusive relationship and according to Matt, that co-worker is a twin flame sent to meet you on your path and help you to accelerate your soul's evolution!
Now you see why the video is so contentious - because so many of us are just so attached to the idea of a 'one and only love for me' twin flame romance song! I'm deliberately not getting into that conversation.
However, Matt did make me think about a relationship I walked away from and one of the hardest things for me has been trying to resolve whether I loved enough...or whether there was enough love and then all of a sudden I realised that the question of love is totally irrelevant.
When at the core of our beings, we are all love for we all possess the Divine spark buried deep within us, we realise that we are all capable of loving. The problem is that we are inconsistent or incomplete in the loving as we suffer from unconsciousness - lacking the full awareness of who we really are!
The grieving wife at the husband's graveside telling everybody how she much she loved the dearly departed is not crying - in that moment - for all the times he hit and abused her but rather for all the good that she beheld in him. She is also grieving for what could have been and all the 'if only's' her marriage faced. If only he did not drink so much...If only they had more money.....
Did he abuse her and make her life miserable? Yes
Did she love him? - Most certainly - she stayed and hoped and prayed for the best.
Did he love her? I would like to suggest that yes he did! In his sober moments when he held her and sobbed and promised to never abuse her again - his agony was birthed from a place of momentary remorse and dare I even say - love as well!
Now we can argue that this is not a good representation of love and that abusive love is not true love and I would agree with you!
However I will add that the higher perspective, that you are in position to have, is because you know better! The woman who stays - does not know better. This love - that buys her flowers one week and bandages the next - is the only love she knows, which is why you cannot use love to get her to leave!
Should she have stayed with him to live a life of pain and misery? You may say that we cannot go back in the past especially as our imaginary guy is already dead!
However allow me to superimpose another image into our story - that of their daughter - a child who grew up watching this abuse and has now hand picked a guy who is 'just like daddy'.
This daughter, based on her home environment, associates love with abuse and has consequently chosen a lover who abuses her.
Let's say you are a friend of this daughter and you try to explain to her that she is repeating a cycle of abuse and that she should walk away from her guy. She looks at you and says "But I love him....and he loves me."
Can you truly deny their love? Can you call her stupid and thereby subject her to verbal and emotional abuse? Especially when you know how her father treated her mother and that she loved both her father and mother?
Do you now see why Matt Kahn's statement was such an epiphany?
If we could all understand that we love - whether in part or in full - because that is what we truly are, then a better question to ask is not - Is there love? But
Can there be growth?
Real Questions on Growth:
- Can you truly grow into the full capacity of your God given potential with someone who disrespects you and does not value you?
- Do you even have any idea of how much potential you have?
- Can your abusive partner grow into all that God has designed for him or her if you stay and facilitate their need to hurt other people by presenting yourself as a willing and submissive target?
- Can you truthfully grow together and have a loving and healthy relationship where boundaries are set and respected?
- Based on your real experience (as opposed to your fantasized desires) - are you being honest with yourself?
- Can your partner support and encourage you to pursue your passions - even if those passions are less about making money and more about fulfilling your soul's purpose?
- Does your partner nurture and support your vision for yourself or your business?
- Is your partner comfortable with you flourishing even as they don't?
Special Note for Victims of Physical Abuse:
If you experience physical abuse, you cannot effect change and help your partner grow if you stay! Your life is in danger and your life is precious. Please contact the relevant authorities.
It is okay to love your abusive spouse or partner - it is not okay to live with them.
You guys need separation and external help via counselling etc. if you have to make it work.
To the victims of verbal and emotional abuse - your situation is actually pretty dire because of how sinister and undercover emotional abuse can be. If you truly believe that the two of you can grow together and you are both willing to conscientiously seek therapy and get the help needed...then you guys have a chance of making it.
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| Image courtesy Examiner |
You cannot make it if:
- Only one of you sees a problem
- Only one of you is committed to seeking help
- Only one of you is committed to changing
- Your partner is treating your therapy as a charade
- Your partner is narcissistic and does not see his/her narcissism
Let's face it - the only way you could be content in an abusive relationship is if you lower your expectations and kill all the dreams you had for yourself - especially the dream of how you wanted to be loved and treated.
And everyone has dreams on love. You just may have forgotten yours if you think you don't have them. Revisit your inner child...
You may think that you are simply not growing and that you are comfortable with being stagnated and you may even tell yourself that it's a sacrifice you are making...maybe for your children perhaps.
Here's the problem with that:
Nothing remains the same - not even stagnation. Eventually, slowly but surely and possibly imperceptibly at first, stagnation gives way to death.
First you kill your long-term dreams, then you kill your day to day expectations, eventually you kill your opinions and by the time you have killed your hope, you have long lost the battle for you.
If you have to take away only two things from this blog post, take this:
A constantly diminished you cannot truly serve another person - not even your abuser.
The more you grow, the more your understanding of love grows and this places you in a position to love better and be a better YOU!
So you may love and you are free to love, but can you grow? - that is the better question!
In love, light and blessings
EE
Leaving you with this heart stirring song from Chrisette Michele which may help some of you...:)
"Yes I love you but I really got to lose you
Freedom is where I want to be
Yes I'll probably always love you
But I'm moving
I got to do this for me!"
~ Blame It On Me by Chrisette Michele
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