What are the stages of building a relationship that will last? When does love fill the heart? What makes two people become as one?
At the initial stage of getting acquainted, it is worthwhile to check whether there is basic compatibility and the potential to build a relationship. It is similar to looking at two pieces of a puzzle and examining whether they can complement each other.
Then comes a stage of deeper examination, in which we discuss essential questions such as: What is human nature, the nature of a man, and the nature of a woman? What do they have in common, and what is opposite between them? Why is the family unit collapsing in our time? What needs to be added to it so that it can endure?
According to the integral approach to education, such examinations take place within a group setting, under the guidance of experts. The main tool used is called a “connection workshop.” It is a discussion conducted according to special rules that enable a deep connection to form among participants. Alongside the group work, a connection workshop can also be conducted in a couples format.
Other important topics to explore are: What kind of inner connection can develop between partners? What are mutual understanding and mutual feeling, and how deep should they reach? What is love? What is a positive, harmonious, and mutually complementary connection? What are people lacking in order to build such a connection?
Later, we can try to picture a state in which two partners have become like one body, on the emotional level, of course. It is as though they have one common mind and heart. How do we think such partners would feel, think, and conduct themselves?
Gradually, the picture we aspire to will become clearer before our eyes, and we will begin to discern the process of development we need to undergo in order to build a genuine connection.
An important stage in building the relationship is creating a common space. At this stage, each partner becomes included in the other and builds an image of the other within themselves. Such mutual inclusion means that when we turn to our partner, we do so through that inner image of them that already exists within us. Also, when each person has a clear image of the other within them, a common space of mutual understanding is created between us.
One of the exercises used to build this common space is to listen to an experience our partner has gone through and try to reflect it back to them in our own words. In practice, we ask them to share an event that happened to them in the past, or something that is happening now and how they relate to it. As they speak, we try to truly drink in their words and, through them, absorb their way of looking at life. We try to make a clean space for them within our heart, without criticism or judgment. Afterward, we try to reflect back what we heard from them, repeat the course of events they described, and explain what we understood them to have felt and thought.
As we continue, we try to expand this common space and add more and more discernments to these inner images. What is pleasant for our partner and what is not? What will be good for them and what will be bad? What do they want from us and what do we want from them? What will make them happy? What are their hopes? What expectations do they have that we can fulfill? This is how a kind of inner line of communication will form between us, through which we will be able to convey feelings, desires, and thoughts to one another, even without words.
In this process, we will certainly encounter all kinds of obstacles. Each person’s ego will awaken again and again, cool the relationship, and distance us from one another. We will need to learn how to rise above it together, to turn it into “help against him,” a lever for building an even more advanced and stronger connection. “Love covers all transgressions,” the sages said, and contained within this is an entire method of connection that must be learned and practiced.
Gradually, we will feel that the love between us opens up a higher life for us, something not of this world. Everything that happens to us at home, at work, and with the children, we will relate to it as a means of deepening our inner connection. In such a state, sexual relations will come as an addition to the inner connection. Each person will think not about themselves and their own pleasure, but about how much they want to give pleasure to the other, while physical contact will simply accompany the desire to do good to one another. Incidentally, when a person feels that the emotional connection with the other fills their deepest inner empty spaces, the thought of an intimate relationship with someone else does not even cross their mind. It is clear to them that such a thought disconnects them from the common space, and they actually lose the spirit of life itself.
Love means that each person feels what the other lacks and acts with all their strength to fulfill it. Such a mutual connection can raise us to a level of spiritual existence and bring us back to being one.
Based on “New Life 202 – Building Common Ground” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.