This week’s question comes from a follower who says, “I have been working on myself for years, and I feel like it’s we women who are constantly going to the personal development workshops – the overwhelming majority of attendants are always women.
Why don’t the men do this kind of work on themselves? How am I supposed to find an enlightened man when they’re not doing the work?!”
I’ve heard it all different ways – you might be involved with a partner who doesn’t support your religious or spiritual views.
You might be a woman seeing that the men are not working on themselves as much as women are.
Or you might be a man dating “spiritual” women and complaining how they’re always trying to “convert” and “enlighten” him.
Let’s ask ourselves what “being spiritual” actually means – it means practicing regularly to keep our connection to whatever we think of as our Higher Power.
So let’s say that you are keeping up your regular practice of intending to stay connected with your Higher Self and your partner is not. What happens as soon as you notice that your partner is not keeping their connection with Source?
You have just broken your connection.
Because the act of judging someone else as “less spiritual” so-to-speak, comes from our personality construct or ego. It certainly is not the voice of our Higher Self.
So the question becomes, how much are you willing to allow someone else to interfere with your own spiritual practice?
Because “practice” does not only refer to our formal sit-down in meditation or time spent in prayer or saying affirmations or doing visualizations or inspirational reading.
Our practice is our embodiment of spiritual principle in all of our behaviors.
And I’m not saying that we EVER get to a point of doing this perfectly all the time! But that is our intention.
So the way to deal with a date or many dates or a partner who are not putting in the level of spiritual practice that you would like to see in them, is simply to focus more on your own spiritual practice.
That means seeing that person or those people with Love – knowing that they have the image and likeness of their Creator within them, whether they know it or not, and treating them in that way.
I have often found that people who are not on any recognizable spiritual path nevertheless have an innate Inner Wisdom that life has shown them. Whether or not they call it “God”, there is an enlightened flow that guides their life.
So let’s just say that they don’t have the same vocabulary about it as you do, and they use different symbols and myths.
I have had the pleasure of talking to confirmed atheists and scientists and agnostics in ways that could have been defined as spiritual if we used different words to describe the concepts we were discussing that reflected the principles of Life.
So is it possible to have a long and happy marriage to someone who does not ascribe to the same point of view as you spiritually?
It depends how important that is to you.
If your partner or potential partner is a loving, giving, kind and considerate person, would it matter if they don’t have a spiritual practice or interest?
I think it is important for the longevity of a relationship that there be a lot of compatibility between partners. But what if you are very compatible in all other areas, just not in the area of spirituality?
That would be a tough decision, because what are you throwing away in search of that one partner who has it all?
As Tom Robbins said, “We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love.”
Let’s have a discussion about this rich topic! Leave a comment below or on my Facebook page here if you have had experience in this area, and how you either resolved it — or NOT! I can’t wait to read the thoughts below!
I have seen this situation, but from a different angle than either one of these. I have been the lone man, or one of two or three men, among a couple of dozen women attending some spiritual group. I have had a woman interested in me who gave me the feeling that she could not see, was not aware of, a whole level of life that is very important to me.
I have also had the problem ever since I was in grade school that most of the people my age are not interested in the sort of things I think about. When I was about 10 years old, my mother read a number of writings by a man named Walter Russell, who spoke of, among other things, the idea of reincarnation.
I didn’t say anything about it to anyone at that point, but what I thought was something like, “That’s it! That makes sense of everything!” I don’t know if I spoke of it to anyone before about the age of 20, whenI remembered things about another lifetime after I met a girl who had been my wife in that lifetime.
I met one friend who was interested in such things, and his girlfriend thought she ought to make an effort to be acquainted with the things she was interested in, even though she wasn’t actually interested in those things. I use to go visit her occasionally, and asked her what a certain book was in her bookshelf. She told me if she had bought it because she intended to become acquainted with things he was interested in, but she had not been able to bring herself to read it. But I read it at her apartment. There is a River, the story of Edgar Cayce. (If you don’t know who that is, I’m sure you can look it up!)
I went to a number of events,such as classes on meditation, and the study of dreams, at the headquarters of the ARE, the association founded on Cayce’s work, and I did my best to practice meditation personally. It appeared to me that if one could succeed at meditation one would be able to make decisions that make sense, which is impossible to do reliably by logic.
I have not really run into the problem that you talk about, because I have never, had the serious possibility of that kind of relationship appear in my life that I had to make a decision on. Very few have taken a serious personal interest in a relationship with me, and most often someone else has stopped the woman. When we were young it might be her father. Or she’d get interested in someone else, or the like. Since I got older all the women who want to be my friend are too young to consider me an eligible man, or else are already married. But most of them would certainly have an interest in spirituality.
Today, in fact, most of the women who take any interest in me take reincarnation for granted. Even some men whom I have known since they were in school, who never showed any interest in subjects like that in it in their lives, are starting to think of it as they can see the end of their lifetime approaching. One asked me where I think we go after this lifetime. I told him that the only thing I know about it for sure is that I have been there before. Another time he commented, “Well, I suppose next time we will be doing things together again.”
One thing I have observed in couples is that it is rare to meet a couple in which one of them isn’t some kind of problem to the other one.
Well, I think I have gone on long enough. That ought to be some kind of contribution to your discussion anyway.
Terron Dodd
Thanks, Terron! By definition in my article, I’ve defined spirituality as a daily practice to connect with your Higher Power. It is a deeper discussion to go into reincarnation and the like, but I would love to hear about your daily practice. Anyone else want to tackle this?