Someone recently asked me for my thoughts on relationship.

I said, “I have never seen ‘a relationship’. I have never touched one. I have seen a tree, I have smelled a rose, I have felt this rock. But I have never seen ‘a relationship’.”

So, what is a relationship?

• The sum of the emotions two people have for one another?
• A decision to brave the storms of life together?
• A contract to mutually fulfill one another’s needs?

Why is it we have ‘breakups’ with partners, but we seldom have breakups with friends? We get closer, then further apart, but we see no need to formalize, and end the connection?

A ‘relationship’ is a concept purely of the mind. A concept that means something different to each person.

The most common, unconscious definition of relationship is: “Someone who will have an inordinate desire to fulfill my needs and live in the world I imagine to exist.”

Or, “I agree to spend most of my time with someone who agrees to limit the amount of truth that I have to face and endure so that we can minimize our pain together. I will do the same for him/her.”

Your vision for a relationship is a ‘concept’. These are all ‘out there’. And as long as you are living ‘out there’, you are not experiencing what is ‘here and now’.

No one is happy in conceptual relationship. They can’t be, because it represents a static image of something dynamic—life. Something in the future. Something to be reached for. So, by definition, they are not present in the here and now, so how could they be ‘satisfied’ with it?

If they interpret that they are happy based upon the current dynamic, that will last until the bubble bursts. Until the other does something they don’t like. Such as dies. Or becomes terminally ill. Or has an affair.

Then the ‘peace’ ends and the negative emotion begins.

And while everyone is busy living in a different time and place (the future), they completely miss everything that is happening now. All the opportunities for connection. All the opportunities for growth. All the opportunities for sharing. All the opportunities to extend consciousness. To love. To serve.

Which may not all be ‘fun’ according to the ego’s imagining, but they are all real. Because they are here and now.

If we live in the ‘here and now’ we only have this moment which we experience completely. Energies and dynamics change all the time. What feels true Tuesday may not feel true Wednesday. What is desirable on Monday may be repellent on Thursday.

But we take each moment and live it without putting labels on each other or our connection. We don’t try to ‘understand’ it. We experience it. And that is what life is able to be. An experience. Not a conceptualization.

The defense of the ego and its concepts of relating can be completely abandoned. We learn that the true “I am” remains regardless of anything that happens or does not happen. And the suffering ends.