Intimacy and passion are what most people wish to keep throughout their relationship. However, intimacy and passion are the first things we let slip between our fingertips because it takes a conscious effort to nourish them. Intimacy and passion demand attention and awareness, the same two disciplines required for practising meditation. Spiritual people will often put so much effort into the practice and discipline of daily meditation, so why not have your love relationship practised with the same care? Make your relationship your meditation and your lover the focus of your concentration.

The nature of the mind is to get excited with a new stimulation. Shortly after, it gets used to it. Next, it gets bored with it and as a result it does not give it attention anymore and no longer sees what was so exciting in the first place.

This is how we usually function with our lovers. Our lovers who used to occupy our senses and thoughts with intensity become part of our daily routine, therefore we do not see them anymore, and consequently we stop telling our lovers how much they enhance our moments. When we do acknowledge their presence, it is usually a calendar- acknowledgment. There are five days in the year when lovers, partners and spouses make an extra effort, searching for creative ways to show their beloved one how much they appreciate having them in their life:

Birthdays
Valentine’s Day
Christmas
Anniversary
And when feeling guilty about something ;-)

Unfortunately, the rest of the 365 days of the year are consumed by routine that is nibbling into the passion, the intimacy and the love expressions that were flowing so spontaneously through us when we first engaged with our beloved one. The spontaneity is slowly fading into automatic affection gestures we make while our mind is often somewhere else. (A quick kiss before we leave the house in the morning, while we are wondering where we are going to stop for a quick coffee before work). This is when our moments with our beloved one turn from extraordinary to ordinary.

Ordinaritus is the virus that kills lovers’ passion and intimacy. The natural remedy that keeps the immune system of an intimate relationship strong enough to stop this virus from penetrating is intentional creativity. The idea beyond intentional creativity is to demonstrate to your lover, in a creative way, on a daily basis, that you see them.

It is intentional as it may not always flow with ease when you are dealing with mundane demands. Ask any artist, no matter if they are a writer, a painter or an actor, and you will find out that their creativity is not always available on hand and still they need to get into the studio and spin the wheels of their creative instrument.

See your love relationship as an infinite canvas and your lover as the subject of your creativity.

Make an ongoing list of ideas to express your love and passion for your lover.

Play her/him a special song

Write her/him a few words

Leave her/him a flower on the pillow

Call unexpectedly and say how you feel about her/him

Place a surprise into her/his bag

Prepare your lover a bath

Read her/him something special or interesting

Send a special email

Leave a loving note on the entrance door, in their shoe or on their car’s windshield

Chocolate?

Ask her/him how they feel and be there fully to listen

Go for a walk together

Creativity is the seed for a spiritual love to sprout from on a daily basis. Implementing your creative attention daily is like watering a seed so it grows to become a beautiful flower.

shakti mhi

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(I love who you are as long as you become me)

The common pattern is that we fall in love with people as we get attracted to their energy, personality, physical attributes and their characteristic qualities. But once the relationship “takes off”, we start working on converting the subject of our love to become as identical as possible to who we are, since ourselves is all we know. As a result we expect our lovers to think like us, feel like us, desire like us and perceive reality exactly the way we do.

We can say that what was first attractive later becomes repellent.

Even if we win the battle by imposing our ways on our lovers and change them to be who we need them to be for our own sake, we don’t really gain anything. Forcing people to be who they are not creates resentment, as they feel they lose themselves in the relationship.

And this is how it goes:

Imagine this scenario: Mary is a Virgo, a very organized and efficient woman, who irons her towels and arranges her clean T-shirts in an ascending order from light to dark shades. In her tidy apartment even the air does not move so her organized existence doesn’t get disturbed. Our tidy and uptight Mary is describing the new guy she is dating to her best girlfriend over a cup of coffee. She says while beaming with excitement: “He is adorable, he is a journalist and a writer and very artistic in his personality. His apartment is filled with books and magazines; they are all over the place, on the floor, beside the bed, in the washroom. He is so intelligent and creative that his head is in the clouds most of the time. The sink is always full of dishes, as there is always a deadline for him to meet. I always laugh when we leave his apartment because he never knows where his keys are. Yesterday I arranged his closet so he could find his underwear in the morning. He is so sweet, I am so in love with him!”

A year later Mary and Mr. Creative are living together in her no more tidy flawless apartment (because of him, of course, not because of her).

Scenario: Same best girlfriend over a cup of coffee in the same café a year later. This time, a distressed Mary is complaining to her girlfriend about her relationship with Mr. Creative: “I can’t stand his messiness anymore. Why can’t he keep all his books in one place? How many times have I told him washrooms are not libraries? And why can’t he wash his cup of coffee the same day he drinks it? We are always late when we go out because he never remembers where he put his stupid keys, he drives me crazy. We can’t stop fighting; I ask him to be tidier but it doesn’t seem like he cares about my feelings anymore.” End of Scenario.

When we enter into a relationship, feeling and experiencing self-content, we naturally give space to our loved one to be who they are. If you don’t like who they are or cannot accept them the way they are, don’t be with them; but avoid imposing your ways on your lovers. People should change only if this is their own choice. We often give an ultimatum to our lovers; we threaten them emotionally, we manipulate them to fulfill our expectations, we blackmail them so they change according to our comfort zone. We create an invisible jail around them as we take their freedom to be who they are or who they want to be.

Love comes from an infinite ocean of abundance, but as it flows through us, it gets trapped in our internal net woven with fears, insecurity and limitations. As a result, the flow of love gets stagnant, rigid and firm and starts to shape the bars for the cage we are about to place our beloved in.

To be able to allow your lover to be who he/she is, you need to free yourself from the idea that your internal fulfillment lies in his/her being.

So if you are a spiritual lover, you will avoid demanding from your lover
To become a yogi or a hockey fan
To be a vegetarian or to love bloody rare steaks
To stop smoking and drinking or to love wheatgrass juice
To wear high-heeled shoes or sexy clothes
To make the bed in the morning
To visit your mother every Friday
To love the same type of movies you like
To have the same political views as you do
To go with you to church on Sundays
To love reading or going dancing
To want the same frequency of making love that you do
To like outdoor activities or indoors tranquilities

You also cannot force your lover to give you the freedom to be who you are like you do with him/her. Simply let him/her be.

On the path of spirituality we do not change the world, we change ourselves. The same way if you like any of the above but your partner doesn’t, do it yourself and leave your partner alone or don’t be in this relationship.

Free love is when fulfilled and content people allow each other to be who they are and not who they need them to be.

To discuss this posting or to comment, please visit the forum topic dedicated to this article.