This text is an extract from “The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire”, a wonderfull book by Deepak Chopra.
I could very clearly relate to Deepak’s explaination of the Upanishad, especially when he mentionned that some people feel that they attract “the wrong people”. We attract what we love the most, but also what we fear the most.
I first thought I would summarize it, but Deepak’s writing style is so bright and concise that I rather citate him. I might also rewrite it in an imperfect Frenglish. I hope you will want to read this book and some others books from him about spiritual self-realization.
” Uderstanding how human relationships works is one of the most important keys to synchrodestiny. [...] The mantra “I am that” reflect that principal. It means that we are all extentions of the universal energy field, all a single entity with different point of view. I am that involves looking at everything in the world, everyone else in the world, and realizing that you are looking at another version of yourself. You and I are the same. Everything is the same. I am that, you are that, all is that. We are all mirrors for others, and we need to learn to see ourselves in the reflection of other people. This is called the mirrors of relationship. Through the mirror of relationship I discover my nonlocal self. For this reason, nurturing relationships is the most important activity in my life. When I look around me, everything I see is an expression of myself.
Relationship, then, is a tool for spiritual evolution, with the ultimate goal of reaching unity consciousness. We are all inevitably part of the same universal consciousness, but the real breakthroughs happen when we start to reconize that connection in our daily lives.
Relationship is one of the most effective ways to access unity consciousness because we’re always in relationships. Think of the web of relationships you have at anytime – parents, children, friends, co-workers, romantic relationships. All are, at their heart, spiritual experiences. When you’re in love, for example, romantically and deeply in love, you have a sense of timelessness. You are at that moment, at peace with uncetainty. You feel wonderful but vulnerable, you feelintimate but exposed. You’re transforming, changing, but without trepidation; you feel a sense of wonder. This is a spiritual experience.
Through the mirror of relationships – all relationships – we discover extended states of awareness. Those whom we love and those whom we are repelled by are both mirrors of ourselves. Whom are we attracted to? People who have the same traits as we have, but more so. We want to be in their company because subconsciously we feel that by doing so we, too, might manifest more of those traits as well. By the same token, we are repelled by people who reflect back to us traits that we deny in our own selves. So if you are having a strong negative reaction to someone, you can be sure that they possess some traits in common with you, traits that you are not willing to embrace. If you were willing to accept those qualities, then they wouldn’t upset you.
By reconizing that we can see ourselves in others, every relationship becomes a tool for the evolution of our consciouness. And as consciousness evolves, we experience expanded states of awareness. It isin those expanded states of awareness, when we get to the nonlocal domain, that we experience synchrodestiny.
The next time you’re attracted to someone, ask yourself what attracted you. Is it beauty, or grace, or elegance, or influence, or power, or intelligence? Whatever it is, know that that quality is also blossoming in you. Pay attention to these feelings, and you can begin the process of becoming more fully yourself.
Of course, the same is true of people who repel you. In becoming more fully your true self, you have to understand and embrace the less attractive qualities in yourself. The essential nature of the universe is the coexistence of opposite values. You cannot be brave if you do not have a coward inside you. You cannot be virtuous unless you also contain the capacity for evil.
We spend much of our lives denying that we have this dark side to ourselves, and then end up projecting those dark qualities onto other people in our lives. Have you ever known people who naturally attract the “wrong” people into their lives? Usually they don’t undesrtand why this happens time after time, year after year. The truth is not that they attract that darkness, but that they are not willing to ackowledge it in their own lives. Finding a person you dislike is an opportunity to embrace the paradox of the coexistence of opposites, and to discover a new facet of yourself. It is another step toward developing your spiritual self. The most enlightened people in the world embrace their ull potential of light and dark. When you’re with people who reconize and own their negative qualities, you never feel judged by them. It’s only when people see good and bad, right and wrong, as qualities outside themselves that judgements occur. [...]
We are all multidimentional, omnidimentional. Everything that exists somewhere in the world also exists in us. When we embrace these different aspects of ourselves, we ackowledge our connection to the universal consciousness and expand our personal awareness. [...]
The traits we see most clearly in others exist most strongly in our selves. When we can see into the mirror of relationship, then we can beging to see all of our selves. To do this, we need to be comfortable with our ambiguity, to embrace all aspects of our selves. At a deep level we need to reconize that we are not flawed simply because we have negative traits. No one has only positive traits. Reconizing that we have negative traits simply means that we are complete. And in that completeness we gain greater access to our universal, nonlocal selves.” – Deepak Chopra.
