One of the most challenging situations a human being can face is whether to end an intimate relationship. No sincere person enters into a committed partnership with another person unless there is some hope of fulfilling the commitment, or vow, thus making the subsequent ambivalence deeply painful.
Sitting on the fence is wrought with loss, either way. You step onto one side of the fence, and lose what is on the other side, and the same happens if you make the other choice. You weigh so many things—how it affects children, family, finances, the rest of your life. You can even get lost in the details as a distraction from the pain you feel, and your heart tends to be very contracted.
Ambivalence can be a prison, where your mind relentlessly paces the polarizing halls of reason, when the true answer lies within, often deep within, as a kind of knowing that has no language but love. It is a knowing that embraces nuance and truth. To arrive at this knowing, 3 things are necessary:
- You must slow down and take time to go within. This knowing is a felt sense, and the speed of your mind between here and there, up and down, stay and go, prevents you from slowing down. Feel yourself drop your awareness from your head into your body. Now ask yourself what you truly want to feel, and go about the business of calling that feeling up in your life. If you want to feel more passion, do things to feel more passion, and stop waiting for your partner to provide that. Let everything you do align with that feeling you want.
- You must rest for a while in a spaciousness, a place of uncertainty without the fear. You must rest long enough to trust how you feel in your own body, and let go of what you think the other person wants. You cannot decide based on anyone else. You can access this spaciousness by breathing consciously into the center of your chest toward the back, widening your shoulders as you do. You may do this for days, weeks, or months. The process of coming to clarity is a journey, not an event.
- You must trust your knowing when it comes. Abraham says, in TheVortex,: “We do not recommend taking the physical action of leaving a relationship without deliberately coming into thought alignment with the new desires that have been born out of your current relationship. And then—whether you stay in this relationship or move on to another—you can have have exactly what you desire.” To do this you must return to love, because love doesn’t die.
Sometimes you will know in your body, with a kid of “gut” feeling that is usually in the belly, and also in the heart space, or both. The gut has millions of nerve cells, making it almost a mind of its own! The actual signals come from the brain, but the nerve cells in your gut play a part in your emotion and intuition.
Sometimes the knowing is as if it’s in your soul. You keep asking “what would love do?” instead of “should I leave or should I stay?” When this happens, whether you stay or you go, you uphold your vow to love, no matter how the other person reacts. You step out of the darkness of ambivalence into the clear light of your soul. You move toward your future without regret and doubt, because you listened to that still small voice within.
