V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 7
7 The ego’s use of relationships is so fragmented that it frequently goes even farther; one part of one aspect suits its purpose, while it prefers different parts of another aspect. Thus does it assemble reality to its own capricious liking, offering for your seeking a picture whose likeness does not exist. For there is nothing in Heaven or earth that it resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you cannot find it because it is not real.
Journal
We began by acknowledging that our use of relationships is fragmented. I choose to love certain parts of the Sonship, and not to love others. One person suits my desires and others don’t. That is very clear to me. I love my child more than another person’s child. I love my sibling’s children perhaps less than I love mine, but more than I love a stranger’s children. I love one man more than I love another, one friend more than I love another friend. None of that is as true as it used to be more me, but still has elements of truth in it.
So, do I fragment my relationships even further? I love one thing about this child than I do other things about him or her. I love one aspect of my friend but really don’t love another thing about her. Maybe I even hate another thing about her. I wonder how we can call that love at all. We even have a name for this weird phenomenon; we call it the love/hate relationship. And we accept it as if it was natural.
Love is love all the time, in every circumstance, under every condition, or it is not love. It is not quantifiable. There is no “more” love or “less” love. There is only love. If I can qualify or quantify my love, then it is not actually love; it is something else. And since there is nothing outside love, then what I am calling love is actually nothing. Love exists and it cannot be altered and still be love.
Gravity is a force which tries to pull two objects toward each other. Anything which has mass also has a gravitational pull. The more massive an object is, the stronger its gravitational pull is. Earth’s gravity is what keeps you on the ground and what causes objects to fall. Suppose I found a way to add something else to this natural force, or to take something away from its true nature. Then it wouldn’t be gravity anymore. It would be something else and I would have to find another name for it. Love is immutable and yet we add and take away and still insist it is love.
What if I agree that gravity is the same all the time but I also decide it will be in operation only on those particular objects of my choosing. When I stand on my scale to see what I weigh, gravity is going to be less than when I walk across my floor. Now I have a special relationship with gravity as it applies to my scale. This is silly, and it doesn’t work that way. But this is what we try to do with relationships, and then we wonder why they don’t work.
What if I absolutely loved my friend? I loved her exactly the same whether she was being kind or hateful, funny or ridiculous, serious or lighthearted. I loved her regardless of how she felt about me. I loved her if she stole from me or gave to me most generously. What if I love your friend in the same way that I love my friend? What if I love the store clerk exactly as much as I love my children, no differently, not more nor less. We would then know what love really is, knowledge we have lost in our quest to redefine it for our own purposes.
Can you imagine what relationships would be like in this case? They would be as dependable as gravity. They would be as sublime as the love of a mother for her newborn child. Every relationship would bring utter joy to us and if we left the presence of one person and came into the presence of another, no matter who they were, we would feel the same transcendent love. If we left everyone and were alone we would still feel that bliss because the love did not leave. It is what we are so we cannot be away from it; we can only deny it. We deny love when we redefine it as our special relationships. We lose the joy of relationship when we make them special.
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