Partners In Life

What does it mean? Where does it take us?What paths will we inevitably cross? What bonds will we inevitably share, or attempt to at least? Do any common factors lie in all relationships?

The phrase, partners in life, has endless implications. Comprised of endless perspectives meshing with other perspectives to make more perspectives.

The problem is many of those implications are put in our minds by the Enemy. Lies fester us, bug us, occasionally become us. Many of these lies, we could never see coming. Put in place by hundreds of years of oppression designed to help use cope with the unnatural state of the post industrial technologically booming, incredibly connected and endlessly red taped Modern Age.

As Modern partners in Modern life, the lies can make things confusing from time to time.

In my personal "Modern Life," I view my relationship, my partnership, as something very strange lately. This being the reason of my posting. The mysteries that love brings couple themselves with many fantastic feelings. Curiosity, wonder, passion....

Excuse me , Lately it has been feeling.... less dreamy. Less.... less childish, but not typical of anything really. Just strangely existent, as if something out of nothing, it pulls in a direction of true growth, yet still holding myself to someone else while they themselves grow in their own way. Unique in my own, yet indivisible in spirit.

Is this the essence of a partner in life? A partner in growth? Alone, yet not alone.

Any thoughts old friends?

"Alone, yet not alone" i just read the tao te ching and that line just jumped off the page, for me personally i cant stand being lied to or deceived in anyway, i usually catch on to it right away but its just the fact that the person can even contemplate lying to me their supposed partner(lover), would make me think twice about our relationship. When you say enemy what do you mean?

Kratos, I'm not meaning to knock you down here bro, but i think you missed his point when it comes to the lies. However, i'm not exactly sure what he DID mean by that particular paragraph. Can you elaborate for us, AW?

I would, also, like to know what you meant by "enemy" Awakened.

Going off of what i understood here, what you are saying is: your relationship has lost it's spark? And you are asking if its is normal?

It's nice that the site is up again.

As the partner in life of this person, I think I can shed some light on what AW is trying to get across.

Notice that Enemy is capitalized. It is not a specific person or group of people that AW is referring to. It is those in society and those who represent this new age who would have us believe all the conventional lies of the age. Lies like "i need to have nice clothes to be happy".

When AW refers to lies, he is not saying a direct lie that a partner is telling to the other, he is talking about lies that a person adopts into their personality from a misconception of reality. Lies can change the way we live and they can separate us from ourselves and our loved ones. They can confuse us and make us depressed. To have a relationship where someone is living under the influence of lies takes the ability share your true self with your partner away.

"Excuse me , Lately it has been feeling.... less dreamy. Less.... less childish, but not typical of anything really. Just strangely existent, as if something out of nothing, it pulls in a direction of true growth, yet still holding myself to someone else while they themselves grow in their own way. Unique in my own, yet indivisible in spirit. "

AW is not saying that his relationship has "lost its spark". When he says less dreamy, he is saying that things are feeling more real for lack of better words. It is as if the process of growing up takes away our feelings of childishness. We become more responsible, more practical, and more in control of our unstable emotions. It seems to take away the feeling that life is an unstable storm of emotion and need. Less dreamy, but not less wonderful. With new understandings come new emotions.

"Is this the essence of a partner in life? A partner in growth? Alone, yet not alone. "

We are all individuals wandering through life and we are each looking for our own truths. In a relationship, it is important to maintain our individual identities so that the relationship remains two people sharing their lives rather than two people who take from each other out of need. Need creates a relationship that takes instead of gives.

Its the concept of need that is throwing me off.

Mathematically, I need my partner to be who I am. When so much of your existence circles around one individual, it is foolish to say that person does not shape you in any way. Its an impossibility. We are our environments and our environment has a lot to do with the people around us.

Yet, spiritually, I strive to remain independent for the sake of keeping myself. And not just for myself to I strive to achieve this. It is also for my partner that I strive to remain independent of her so that she can experience who I am, not who she is in my body.

So essentially, what I'm trying to say is. That if we remain living in our lives only, and can manage to become one spiritually with another person, then we can truly be a partner in life, instead of a partner in a relationship. To live, fully, with someone else, while not losing any of yourself.

The problem I am coming across in this little idea of mine is that how can we truly remain ourselves while involving so much of ourselves in someone else?

It is my belief that the progress and balance of these two concepts has something to do with the meaning behind what a relationship is supposed to achieve.

Would losing "yourself" be such a bad thing?

To be reduced to nothing but a dice roll? To be a face on a body? To give in to the current? To lose the only thing that makes any of my wonderful existence possible?

Yes. It is my freedom and my ability to understand that make me so happy. To lose myself is to lose those two things.

Not to mention, its kind of a boring life. I gotta stay excited lol.

Plus, it does allow for a huge amount of sharing. Never ending growth coupled with unique perspective adds for pretty good sharing material.

But if you lose yourself, aren't you losing yourself to her(y'all)? And if that is the case, couldn't you look at it as, instead of losing yourself, you are gaining her? Glass half full, if you will.

AW, I'm not sure I understand what your saying however, I feel I've felt the same.

I've been in a few relationships as of late, where I have accidentally transformed a "partner of life"'s perspective through a coping mechanism I had picked up earlier in life (early education). Having changed this persons perceptive I find ridden with guilt. Would this be the "Enemy" you refer to?

The concept of a life partner is interesting. I have yet to experience this with romantic love (I am under the impression your not just talking about romantic love) however, I do have a very dear friend who I believe has helped me in the manner you are talking about. Do you think you elaborate on the growth you are talking about?

I feel like I'm being a little misunderstood here. Let me set the tone a little better.

I love my life. And its not because of how easy it is. My room mate and friend of 7 years ditched me with no notice forcing me to spend thousands of dollars to re-establish a financial and residential structure. I got screwed out of a job, twice. My car broke. And I only get to hang out with with my best friend-lover like a couple hours a day because she is crazy busy.

But the life that we have created for us, the place that our growth and partnership has brought us, is an incredibly powerful sturdy structure that houses so many of life's true beauties, that its existence alone is enough to keep me as happy as I have ever been.

It is the nature of this incredible feeling that I am trying to explore. Honestly, and informed. Their are so many facets of my life, of this structure... it feels daunting explaining. The best way I can describe it, is that it is a relationship based off of selfless love, honesty, strength and understanding. As well as two unique yet strong desires to be happy and love life. After we got passed insecurity the doors really started opening up.

These are the ideas that I am trying to focus on in this conversation.

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The phrase, partners in life, has endless implications. Comprised of endless perspectives meshing with other perspectives to make more perspectives.

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The problem is many of those implications are put in our minds by the Enemy. Lies fester us, bug us, occasionally become us. Many of these lies, we could never see coming. Put in place by hundreds of years of oppression designed to help use cope with the unnatural state of the post industrial technologically booming, incredibly connected and endlessly red taped Modern Age.

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Everyone has a concept of what a relationship is between a man and a woman. I'm also pretty sure that most people got the idea wrong. Record divorces and un-happy families everywhere you turn helps put things into perspective.

Its not my doubt that many people have better relationships than I do. Because I am still exploring this Idea, and I am sure that many people have explored this idea and all the doors it unlocks for 70 years.

But it is my knowledge, from my own experience, that in order to have a pure and absolute loving relationship there are A LOT of trials. What these trials are, is your ability to find the lies that society has put in your mind that prevent you from loving and sharring. There are so fucking many of these lies in this world its absurd. Gay people not being aloud to be with each other with out persecution. Women being made to feel like whores if they dont want to strap their chest down because people will find the shape of her natural body disgusting. Litterally forcing people to hide themselves on a national level.

You thought the popular kids had a lot of control in middle school? Americans are made to believe that they MUST feel bad about themselves if they aren't pretty. If they don't have money. If they aren't cool. If they don't have a lot of sex. If their dicks aren't big enough. If their car isn't cool enough.

Those negative influences, those lies about who we are supposed to be, don't stop at ourselves, they engulf our relationships.

And what I am trying to say to you guys is

Oblivion

I am not losing myself to her. I don't need to sacrifice any of myself to have her. If she can accept me for everything I am and if I can except her for everything she is, nothing has to be lost.

The math problem I am coming to is, if I spend all my time with her, which is what I want in life, then I become her, because she becomes my environment, and I am my environment.

In order for us to be with each other, we must be ourselves as much as we can, but we are only ourselves when the other is around.

It is my belief that the careful balance of these two ideas and event in both the individual spirit of each individual and the strength of the connection that makes them what they really are.

Is this unique bond and partnership the essence of all growth? Balance. Peace. Truth. Love. Partnership. Strength. Control. Choice. These you must admit are some of the best qualities that humans possess. And each one of them is being exercised in a very peculiar way.

A struggle in the self to remain the self and share and receive with another individual, perpetually. Is this accomplishment the origin of so much of life's mysteries? Or is the the exploration of only one?

Every religion is strongly based in the spirituality between man and woman.

The goal is to have our cake and eat it too I suppose. And it actually works.

Zach

The enemy I am talking about the structure of lies that we have been brought up to believe is truth. That living sin, that collection of oppression and unnatural expectation cause a huge friction and rift between one individual and another individual. And not winning the fight against those lies. no individual can hope to be with another individual. Theres just too many lies and insecurities.

And the concept of a life partner is interesting because it affords a freedom and joy that is hard to come by. You have the freedom of being yourself no matter what, but you have the joy of having someone to share it with. No tied down feeling. No alone feeling.

The specific feeling the growth has is hard to tell you. How long of a relationship have you been in before? How many times have you changed as a person with the other person changing as a person? How many times have you re-gotten to know your partner?

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Mathematically, I need my partner to be who I am. When so much of your existence circles around one individual, it is foolish to say that person does not shape you in any way. Its an impossibility. We are our environments and our environment has a lot to do with the people around us.

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Can you elaborate on this statement, Awakened?

For instance, what exactly do you mean by 'I need my partner to be who I am'? In what ways do you need your partner in order to achieve being yourself?

I disagree that 'we are our environments', because that to me is saying that in whatever environment you are in, and whoever you live around, that's who you become without much choice. Environment can (and does) shape a lot of people because they remain oblivious to it for the most part, whether out of choice or habit. But I think that if you strive to remain self-aware, aware of why you do or think things, aware of how your environment influences you on so many levels, you can separate yourself from your environment and the negativity that exists within it.

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So essentially, what I'm trying to say is. That if we remain living in our lives only, and can manage to become one spiritually with another person, then we can truly be a partner in life, instead of a partner in a relationship. To live, fully, with someone else, while not losing any of yourself.

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What is your understanding of Spirituality? I really think that is such a huge term to put into a conversation without giving it any context. What is Spirituality? What is it to become one spiritually, with another human being?

Well Vigil, I'll give you two examples. A literal one and an abstract one.

Both of which have to do with my assumptions on the power of environment, something else I'm going to talk about.

For the abstract, take an electric guitar. By itself, with out an amplifier, its just a funny looking stick, not an instrument. But when its partnership with the amp is unified, it essentially changes with out actually changing at all.

So what I am saying is that I with out my lover, am completely myself. But when my lover comes around me, I become something else. Our connection changes me with out actually changing me at all. I just start feeling a lot different, better actually.

For instance, I haven't seen her all day. I just got a phone call from her. Before that phone call, this was a good day. After the phone call, I feel fucking great.

... This really just baffles me. The power that she has...

So it boils down to this. I can't deny that when she is around I am much happier, therefor I am different when she is around. I also like to consider "myself" as me at my best.

So it seems that there is this fate where I must be around her to be myself.

You pretty much got my understanding of environment down. I think that you and I have a disagreement on the power of self-awareness.

Do you truly believe that you have the ability to understand all the ways that your environment influences you? Do you truly believe you have the ability to control it?

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What is your understanding of Spirituality? I really think that is such a huge term to put into a conversation without giving it any context. What is Spirituality? What is it to become one spiritually, with another human being?

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Your soul. Your spark of life. Your conscience. Emotions. Perspective. The strange chemicals in your head. Everything mystical or whatever it is, I have realized that it can be given and received. That two people really can know each other. And not just know each other as humans, but know each other as souls.

What my goal in this conversation is, is to explore the nature of growth as an individual, and the nature of growth in a partnership. My partnership focuses around spiritual growth, emotional growth, intellectual growth, and physical growth. We try to grow on our own in all these ways, for the sake of having them ourselves, and sharing them with each other. Yet while sharing so much of ourselves with each other, we tend to assimilate each others qualities, as such, can become less ourselves, and more the other person. I feel that the balance between growing and sharing has a lot to do with personal success in partnerships, as well as individual, spiritual, happiness.

First of all, your posts to me, seem pretty incoherent, as your explanations seem vauge and contradictory.

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For the abstract, take an electric guitar. By itself, with out an amplifier, its just a funny looking stick, not an instrument. But when its partnership with the amp is unified, it essentially changes with out actually changing at all.

So what I am saying is that I with out my lover, am completely myself. But when my lover comes around me, I become something else. Our connection changes me with out actually changing me at all. I just start feeling a lot different, better actually.

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So it boils down to this. I can't deny that when she is around I am much happier, therefor I am different when she is around. I also like to consider "myself" as me at my best.

So it seems that there is this fate where I must be around her to be myself.

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I have bolded the parts that I think are conflicting.

Okay, here is what I think I have understood so far from your words.

You seem to be saying that you are completely yourself without Magen, but that when she is around you become your "better" self.
You then say that it feels like "fate" that you must be around her in order to be yourself. Are you talking about your "better" self, or your complete self?

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You pretty much got my understanding of environment down. I think that you and I have a disagreement on the power of self-awareness.

Do you truly believe that you have the ability to understand all the ways that your environment influences you? Do you truly believe you have the ability to control it?

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I think it is unlikely that one will be aware of every single thing in their environment that influences them, but I believe in striving to be aware of as much of it as you can.

For example, the kinds of people who surround you, who they are, how and why they communicate - I think we all have a big influence over one other, and that it's prudent to be aware of how other people influence you and how you may influence them. When you are aware of how other people can influence you postively or negatively, you can start to choose what you do and do not absorb from them. Sometimes choosing to not absorb negativity from someone means having to remove them from your life.

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Your soul. Your spark of life. Your conscience. Emotions. Perspective. The strange chemicals in your head. Everything mystical or whatever it is, I have realized that it can be given and received. That two people really can know each other. And not just know each other as humans, but know each other as souls.

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So I interpret that your answer to the question "what is Spirituality?" is that Spirituality is:

*Emotions
*Perspective (or thoughts/ideals)

Which is what I would agree with. And it seems you are saying that our Spirituality can be shared, which I also agree with. But I don't understand what you are saying about knowing one another as humans and as souls. To me a human is a soul, but you seem to seperate them as different things. What is the difference?

Cats have souls. Dogs have souls. Humans have souls.

If soul equals human and dogs have souls, then soul equals dog.

Its a mathematical impossibility.

I am vague and seemingly contradictory because this is a complicated idea that I an trying to learn the words for by telling it to people. This thread is kinda like me testing how I feel about it all. Your challenges are welcome because they force me to make the idea more clear to you and myself.

I guess I can just give you examples.

I will be waiting in my home for 8 hours while she is working. Though I will be lonely and bored, I am still happy in her absence, when she comes home, I am filled with something new, Something that is definitely me, but was not there with out her.

It is my belief that understanding this and nurturing it is a key to a happy life.

Imagine two kites in the sky. Flowing in the wind. Tie the two ends of the kites together. Now, its something different, but both parts are still the same as they were before they were joined. Yet, now they are definitely something that is not the same as when they were untied.

Is the negativity that I am sensing constructed in my own mind, or am I getting it from you?

The comment on fate was... of little importance.

What I am saying, is that I am always myself. But when my environment changes, I change. The change that I under go when my lover changes my perspective, has been more and more extreme lately. Mind you, it is a perspective that her and I share. It is as if we jointly have built a reality, and that reality currently only exists when we are around each other. The reality is made up of our own unique perspectives and our empathy for the other person.

With either person absent from either's perspective, the environment dies. But that doesn't mean that we stop being ourselves, we just change. When the environment is revived by one of our presences, we change again.

It is this partnership that I am trying to explore.

And "better: is a bad word for it. Lets say you like peanut butter ice cream. I like mint Ice cream. They are different. One of them must be better, but it isn't because of some factual bases.

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Cats have souls. Dogs have souls. Humans have souls.

If soul equals human and dogs have souls, then soul equals dog.

Its a mathematical impossibility.

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I disagree. I'd say that if every emotionally aware animal has a soul, then a soul can equal any emotionally aware animal.

So to clarify, I think that 'soul' is synonymous with any emotionally aware animal.

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I will be waiting in my home for 8 hours while she is working. Though I will be lonely and bored, I am still happy in her absence

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I want to point out that though you claim you are happy alone, I feel you contradict this when you say that you are "waitiing" for Magen to come home and that you are "lonely and bored" in her absence. That in my eyes, doesn't seem like real happiness.

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when she comes home, I am filled with something new, Something that is definitely me, but was not there with out her.

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Could it be a sense of purpose?

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Is the negativity that I am sensing constructed in my own mind, or am I getting it from you?

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If you feel you are taking in negativity from my words, I think you should be able to pinpoint what it is I've said that is negative.

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The comment on fate was... of little importance.

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So are you backing out of this claim?

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So it seems that there is this fate where I must be around her to be myself.

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This next paragraph is particularly confusing to me.

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What I am saying, is that I am always myself. But when my environment changes, I change.

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Are you able to explain this more in depth?

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The change that I under go when my lover changes my perspective

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Mind you, it is a perspective that her and I share.

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The reality is made up of our own unique perspectives

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It feels to me like the following quotes contradict one another. Are you able to clarify what you are saying in this paragraph?

What is your definition of perspective?
Is the meaning of perspective consistent throughout?
Are you able to explain the perspective that you share?
What do you mean by shared perspective and unique perspective? Are you able to give me an example of the two?

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And "better: is a bad word for it. Lets say you like peanut butter ice cream. I like mint Ice cream. They are different. One of them must be better, but it isn't because of some factual bases.

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Yes, such a scenario is subjective. There isn't such a thing as a "better" flavour, just personal taste.

If better is a bad word, what word is more suited to what you are trying to say?