Letting Go To Keep: Letting go of control in the marriage

Go back to the moment in your memory that you can recall falling in love with your beloved.  You may or may not currently be with that beloved at this moment but it makes no difference for this.

Something incredible happens when we first fall in love. When we first fall in love we have this incredible ability to see that person as they really are, our sight cuts through their childhood conditioning, their ego defenses and we can see their divine nature. When we get this glimpse of another’s light or their innocence beneath the conditioning of their form we are reminded of our own innocence and experience this incredible, marvelous lightness that we call love.

This love feeling is always coming from us. Its our own light that we recognize in another but we can be easily tricked into believing that the other person has the good stuff that we crave. This is when that old rascal fear begins to creep in again. This is exactly when we begin to experience the deliciousness of love sifting out of our relationship.

We become so afraid of losing this treasure that we have found that we squeeze on to it, trying to control so much that we crush the life out of it.

Allen Watts, in one of his lectures, talks about a little girl to whom someone gave a bunny rabbit. This little girl was so delighted with the bunny and so afraid of losing it that in the car ride home she crushed the bunny rabbit to death with love.  So often we too do this same thing to the people we love.

One can hang on too hard to someone and so choke the breath of love and wild excitement right out of the relationship.

This is a technique people fall into with the best intentions. “I want my husband to look at me as if he could eat every bit of me.” “Want my wife to desire me in the most hopelessly breath-taking way.” So they begin to monitor and push and give “suggestions”, and threaten or remind the other of potential consequences if they don’t change their behavior.

They will do everything humanly possible to force this response they are looking for not knowing that they are slowly pressing the wildness, freedom, luscious desire and joy out of their connection.

Pleasure in its fullness cannot be experienced when one is grasping it. One must open their hands and give it space to flow in its own accord. By this it does not mean checking out of life and going through it like a robot. Rather, you are fully engaged without trying to control or determine the outcome.

You enjoy the caress of the wind, song of the bird and perfume of grass but never once did you ever have to tell them how to move, sing or smell.  You must be fully engaged to experience wind, bird and grass but at the same time the experience is with an open hand, never grasping. You let go to experience pleasure. You let it go to keep it.