Back to the Garden: Cultivating Love in Our Lives - Chapter 7 - Conscious Partnership

The Path to Partnership

“If love is understood as the meeting of two souls – not just a sexual, biological meeting of male and female hormones – then love can give you great wings, it can give you great insights into life,” says Master Osho. “And lovers can become for the first time true friends. Otherwise they have always been enemies in disguise.”

Of course it’s true! Because the lovers have sought to possess one another, to reshape one another to conform to their ideal images of what love ought to be, they have been secret enemies, not friends. Because they have sought to satisfy their desires by consuming one another, sexually, emotionally, and energetically, they have been enemies. It is extremely sad, but it is true. This is what we discovered in our exploration of narcissistic, romantic love.

Some Find It Difficult, Seat Belts Required, by Jane Sherry

How then shall lovers become friends, even partners? They must choose together to embark on an adventure that will test their wills, their love, their mental powers, and their perseverance. They must resolve to support one another throughout a long quest for mutual self-transformation. This adventure was called the Great Work by the ancient alchemists. Embarking on this difficult journey they will encounter obstacles and opportunities that will purify and perfect their love and eventually allow them to manifest their most positive qualities and their loftiest spiritual and material goals in this life together.

By joining their love with Divine Love and consciously choosing to express that Divine Love in their lives, they will receive the grace and guidance they need to work together, manifesting creative acts of compassion and creativity that will benefit everyone around them. This conscious act of co-creation with the Divine is what separates the Partnership love union from the Narcissistic love union we discussed in the last segment.

The main difference between the two types of love union is that the Partnership love union is a lasting love that lasts a lifetime and continues to live beyond the grave, while Narcissistic love can never last.

Spiritual partnerships create a strong energetic current that can sweep both partners upward on the Ascension Path to Self-realization and turbo-charge the love relationship. Their spiritual practice includes their loving relationship and optimizing their loving relationship is part of their spiritual practice. This creates eternal bonds of love and light between the spiritual partners that can never be broken.

Together the lovers work to enhance their partner's positive qualities and help them diminish their negative impulses. They see one another's souls. Loving what they see, they appreciate their partner's Divine qualities, and they identify their partner with their Divine nature. By identifying each other with Higher Self and with the Divine, they create a self-fulfilling prophecy of spiritual attainment they can share together.

As they see one another's best and most beautiful qualities they begin to help one another develop similar qualities in themselves.

As they see one another's negative emotions and less loving qualities they realize that these less attractive qualities and emotional states are not at all fixed elements of character. They help one another minimize these less attractive, transient states of being.

Alchemy Box, Salt, Sulfur and Mercury by Jane Sherry

This is alchemy of the highest order. They help one another turn the lead of negative personality traits into the gold of noble emotions and compassionate action. Together they begin to consciously manifest their own shared reality, infused with loving wisdom.

Connecting One Another with the Divine Lovers

The lovers in a conscious sexual love union share a common intent to connect one another to the world of spirit, to the universal source of energy and form that sustains creation, to the Father/Mother Source. These conscious lovers also understand that they have a unique and mysterious connection that feeds them, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Together they agree to explore that connection to discover the origins of their love.

According to the ancient law of resonance and attraction, in any sexual union you will always connect with those individuals and energies that are in harmony with your own energies, your own stage of spiritual development, your own mental and emotional state, at any given time.

By your desire, conscious or unconscious, to join in a sexual love relationship, you attract the partner appropriate to you, the partner who can be your perfect mirror, and who is the source and example of qualities and virtues most lacking in your consciousness.

This same law of resonance and attraction states that within your love relationship, you must have a conscious intent to attract the highest and best energies to you for your spiritual growth, and that of your partner, or your sexual union will simply open the doors in your auric field to all energies and spiritual beings, with potentially disastrous results.

The Dance of Lilith, by Jane Sherry

Omraam Aïvanhov says that many beings in spirit realms are unfriendly to humans. When they can enter an unprotected human aura, they feed on the baser emotions of human beings. These spiritual parasites promote lust, jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, envy, greed and fear, because these negative emotions are their food and drink.

When we have sex, without spiritual protection, we run the risk of taking on these spiritual parasites, especially if our sexual activity stems in whole or in part from the baser emotions of lust, jealousy, possessiveness, envy, greed, or fear.

This type of unconscious sexual union typically is a narcissistic, karmically driven relationship that often results in a variety of catastrophes.

As we have seen, the vast majority of love relationships and marriages on planet Earth are clockwork mechanisms, driven by karma and egoistic desire. Such relationships are textbook examples of conditional love.

But how can we attain an unconditional love, a lasting love, a love that uplifts us and our partner to new spiritual heights?

The great challenge for those who want a love that lasts, a love that uplifts and enlightens them, that frees them from the bonds of the illusory self and leads to conscious connection with the Higher Self, is to surrender the ego. Through that great sacrifice we enter into a more conscious relationship with Higher Mind and are liberated from the karmic patterns that have previously defined our relationships.

Let me briefly summarize some of the basic steps toward achieving that end. To achieve a lasting union with another the lovers must work toward greater and greater Self-love. Through spiritual practices, each must work to establish a link to the Higher Self. This will give each of them access to inner spiritual guidance that will facilitate their spiritual growth and speed them on the path to their spiritual goals. In addition that shared inner spiritual guidance will be the lovers' best compass in life, enabling them to successfully navigate the uncharted terrain of their future together. This is the basis for a beautiful spiritual partnership, an alchemical practice that can transform the lives of the lovers and spread love and light to all those around them.

Understand that your love partner is your perfect mirror, brought to you through the law of resonance and attraction.

Distillatorium ad Aqua vite, from Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Liber de arte Distillandi de Compositis (Strassburg, 1512).

Know that this person reflects to you many of the qualities of your Higher Self which have not been part of your conscious self-awareness.

You will benefit from becoming conscious of these qualities in your lover. Acknowledge the Divinity within you which is the Source of these admirable qualities. Make efforts to learn from your lover, and to incorporate their admirable qualities into your own psyche. This is true alchemy.

In this way men become aware of their feminine nature, and women become aware of their masculine side. As we work to incorporate the positive qualities of the opposite sex we see and admire in our lovers, we balance the male and female within ourselves. This is true alchemy.

Using shared conscious intent to spiritualize your love relationship, create a bond with beings of love and light in higher worlds. Visualize that you and your lover are connected with the Divine Lovers, the Source of Creation.

Intent is the key to successful relationships on the path of love. Focus your intent on the desired outcome, a relationship in which both partners share the goal of experiencing a lasting, spiritual love. And if you are currently in a relationship, focus your intent on bringing the Divine into the center of your loving exchange.

Make it your unwavering intent that your love be a gift to the Divine. Offer up the love and light you share to those who dwell in spiritual worlds, and be assured that this offering will trigger an influx of love and light into your heart, and into your relationship.

Whether or not your lover shares your spiritual path, focus your intent and your prayers on a single goal – that your loving exchange should become a path to spiritual growth and development for both parties, and that all difficulties, quarrels, obstacles and misunderstandings between you become stepping stones on the path toward a Divine love, a love that transcends the narrow concerns of ego and personality. Remember that no one has ever succeeded in improving their love relationship one bit by demanding that their lover improve themselves.

On the other hand, if you work to improve yourself, to end your own bad habits, to transform anger, fear, greed, jealousy, envy, impatience and doubt into compassion, generosity, patience, forgiveness, faith and love, then your love relationship will almost certainly improve.

To improve your self, and to progress on the path of self-love through your loving relationship, make your relationship a spiritual partnership. As you and your partner begin to release your bad habits, and dissolve your karmic bonds through consistent spiritual practices, you will both accelerate your spiritual development.

Connecting with Spiritual Worlds

Meditate for five minutes each day upon the positive attributes of your love relationship, and those of your lover.

Meditate upon those times when you and your lover have exhibited the Divine qualities of patience, compassion, faith, and forgiveness toward one another.

Feel yourself and your partner connecting with the Divine Lovers, the Divine Father and the Divine Mother, when you exhibit these Divine qualities.

Trump VI, The Lovers, Thoth Tarot Deck

Feel in your heart the happiness that comes to you through your lover when you are both at your best, and invite the angels, your spiritual teachers, and your favorite saints to share in your happiness.

Ask them to help you both in overcoming egoistic desires and in centering your love in spiritual realms. In this way, you will turn all your difficulties into tools of spiritual advancement.

In this way you begin to use the great law of spiritual resonance and attraction to your advantage.

By tuning to the positive aspects of your relationship, and by meditating upon the Divine qualities you and your lover have exhibited toward one another, you put yourself, at least for a while, in tune with the Divine qualities so abundant in the spiritual world, and in harmony with the Divine Lovers, the Source of creation.

In addition, you resonate in tune with the many highly evolved spiritual beings inhabiting higher worlds, and they, in turn, will be attracted to you and to your relationship. They will begin to exchange energies with you, and in this way you will grow in love, in light and in other virtues that will accelerate your spiritual progress on the difficult by rewarding path of loving relations.

Offer up your love, your lovemaking, your energy, your light, to the Divine Lovers with whom you are now connecting consciously, and whom you desire to emulate.

This love offering will attract devas, angels, guides and even the Divine Lovers themselves to you from on high.

These highly advanced spiritual beings will shower you with gifts. It is the love of mortals, offered up consciously to spiritual beings of light, that nourishes those elements in these higher beings that most desire to infuse matter with all the riches of spirit.

Archangel Gabriel Magic Lantern Drawing by Jane Sherry

Thus you and your lover will establish a continuous exchange of energies between yourselves and the spiritual world. This exchange is truly the Breath of Life, eternal life, which will infuse your relationship with all the virtues of understanding, patience, kindness, tolerance and faith, and will continuously expand your abilities to love and to be loved on all levels, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

Only in this way can true Unity between lover and Beloved be attained.

Follow these practices and you will each begin to see one other as aspects of the Divine, sparks emanating from the fiery union of the Divine Lovers, the Source of Creation. You will connect with one another in a new way, and see in one another the form of the Divine Father or the Divine Mother.

Together, through shared conscious intent and ongoing spiritual practices, you can both work to incorporate the best qualities found in one another, the Divine qualities that you each need to balance your masculine or feminine polarity. This will awaken and vivify your Higher Self, and give you increased access to inner spiritual guidance.

Know that your faults are not an intrinsic part of your identities; they are merely part of the illusory self. In a ritual way, in prayer, or in meditation, offer up to the Divine your faults, egos, and karma as sacrifices. During meditation or prayer, or ritual visualization, cast them into the cleansing fire of Divine Love.

Following this path of conscious intent and conscious shared spiritual practice, you will obtain increasing help from higher realms and your Higher Self will become increasingly active in the conduct of your daily lives.

Your love for one another will grow, your hearts will open, and your love will become superabundant, spilling out into the world, touching family, friends, even enemies, animals, trees, rivers, rocks and stones.

You will eventually become unified with one another, with your Higher Selves and with all creation, even as your Higher Selves are unified with all other souls and all that is, with God.

This is the path back into the Garden of Eden. This is the path of the Divine Lovers. To have a love that lasts, that enlivens and liberates you, connect one another with the Divine Lovers, and see the Divine Lovers begin to manifest within you as you shed your ego and surrender your mind.

Ending Karma through Awareness

There is one sure and proven way to end one’s karma. That is through awareness. Buddha demonstrated that awareness brings liberation. As we previously explained, this path is the path of jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge. Your best ally on this path is that part of you we have designated “The Watcher”. The Watcher is consciousness, the part of you that practices what the Buddhists call Mindfulness.

But what is mindfulness in plain English? Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist monk Henepola Gunaratana describes it thus: “Mindfulness is present-time awareness. It takes place in the here and now. It is the observance of what is happening right now, in the present moment. It stays forever in the present, perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time. If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you then become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness. If you then conceptualize that process and say to yourself, “Oh, I am remembering,” that is thinking.

Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist Monk Henepola Gunaratana

When you are meditating and you become aware you are thinking, that is mindfulness. Then you may have an emotional reaction to that and feel bad because you don’t think you should be thinking. When you recognize that feeling without any emotional reaction or critical thought, that is mindfulness. If you let go of the thought and the feeling and sink back into a clear mental state, that is the fruit of mindfulness.

If when you are fighting with your lover, you suddenly see yourself being angry, without any emotional or mental reaction to that sight, that is mindfulness. If you can then let go of the anger, within yourself, and say to yourself, this is a karmic script, this is my ego, this is me acting out against my mother, or whatever, that is the fruit of mindful awareness.

Cultivating mindful awareness loosens the bonds of karma and gives us the space to use our free will to stop the clockwork mechanisms of karma and failed relationships. When we are mindful during an episode of anger, we may let it play for a minute, but then we will find the will to stop and say to our lover, “Wait, that’s not me. I don’t want to do this. Let’s take a time out.”

Reaching that space of non-reactive observation, of mindful awareness, is connecting to the Watcher within. For more on mindfulness and awakening the Watcher within, read our article Self-Love: The War Between the Ego and the Higher Self.

So when you have fights with your loved ones, shift your awareness to the Watcher. Don’t identify with the emotion or with critical judgmental thoughts about yourself or your loved one. Don’t think to yourself, “I am angry” or “You are stubborn”. “You disappoint me” or “You are disrespectful”.

Remember that these negative qualities are simply transitory states triggered by changes in our astral or emotional bodies. They do not constitute our true nature. Our true nature is loving, wise and positive.

Instead think, “I have anger, anger is washing through me from somewhere at this moment.” Even highly advanced spiritual beings can become angry, but because they are mindful, their anger is like a cloud passing over the sun on a windy day. It comes and it goes quickly.

Instead of defining the lover by their inappropriate behavior or negative emotions or thoughts, think “They are behaving in an unconscious manner at this moment for some reason.”

Because you are not that anger and they are not that inappropriate behavior. You and they are so much more than that. Don’t be fooled into locking yourself and your lover into the prison of the illusory self. Give yourself a way out. The way out leads to forgiveness, and forgiveness leads to increased love between you.

This is mindfulness. Mindfulness prompts us to search for the karmic cause of the negative thoughts and emotions, the negative karmas that impel the clockwork mechanisms of the failed relationship.

If you feel attraction or aversion to the negative feelings and mental judgments passing through you, you have attachments to these negative energy forms. These attachments indicate seeds of karma within you.

Seeds of Karma Live Within by Jane Sherry

Seeds of karma, called samskaras by Hindu and Buddhist teachers, are patterns of habitual behavior. Such seeds of karma come in many varieties. Samskaras can be tendencies formed in childhood when we emulate parents, teachers, or peers, unconscious agreements with cultural conditioning that result in robotic responses, or reactive patterns of behavior created by traumas suffered childhood, in past relationships, or in past lives.

Samskaras are the triggers that through the law of compensating behavior, or karma, pull to us the painful results of our misdeeds, our past negativity.

For lovers these karmic lessons can be very intense. These lessons come to us in the form of habitual behavior patterns, clockwork mechanisms that repeat and repeat in relationships.

That is why if we attract a lover who is flighty and unfaithful, we may leave them, but if we attract a new lover, that person will eventually show us another side of that same pattern. If we have an inclination toward lovers who will challenge our parents’ preconceptions of what our lovers ought to be by being very poor at earning a living, we might leave a lazy deadbeat only to marry a charming, energetic, talented, but impoverished artist.

Karma cannot be ended by leaving a lover, or by changing a lover’s behavior. Karma can only be changed by inner change, as a result of grace, diligence and patience.

Karmic patterns of behavior can be released of course, and that is the goal of spiritual practices taught in both the East and the West.

These karmic patterns dissolve under the lens of mindful awareness, over time. These patterns can be dissolved and released by the grace of God, through a meditation practice, by the work of past life regression and Reiki, by invocations of the Violet Flame of St. Germain, or by the selfless efforts of a Self-Realized teacher, a shaman, or a priestess. Such spiritual teachers and guides can help us to do the difficult work of burning away our samskaras. Over time we can redefine our relationship to our egoistic personality, so that the ego becomes merely a helpful servant to the true center of our psyche, which is the Higher Self and Higher Mind.

Bulgarian spiritual teacher Omraam Aivanhov has said that the alchemists who transformed lead into gold did not really change molecules of lead into gold. Rather they simply vaporized the lead molecules and replaced them with gold molecules. In a similar fashion if we want to progress spiritually, we have to vaporize the ego and replace it with the Higher Self. You cannot change the personality, but you can make it subordinate to the Higher Self.

Omraam tells beautiful stories. I first read about the following little drama in one of Omraam’s many books of lectures.

The Ego and the samskaras or inclinations are like the butler and maidservant in a mansion, the mansioin of the Self. In the typical person, they have locked the master and mistress of the House, the Higher Self, into the attic, and they are at play in the kitchen and den, consuming the resources of the owners of the mansion.

The butler and maid are not inclined to rush to the attic and release the master and mistress of the house. They need a little nudge. Our will and conscious intent, coupled with ongoing Mindfulness, act as the Watchkeepers on the block, who see the light on in the wee hours of the morning, knock on the door, and ask to see the master and mistress of the house.

Through the combined efforts of the will and the Watcher we can free ourselves from the predations of the hired help and attune ourselves to our true Divine nature. If the hired help refuse to release the master and mistress of the house, then it is time to call the police.

Ask your spiritual Guides and teachers, angels, and any divinity you adore to help you. Find a qualified expert who has the authority and the tools necessary to force the servants to release the master and mistress of your house. In this way you will find freedom. Once you attain freedom you will attract great love in your life.

Spiritualizing Sexuality

For those of you who have not chosen a path of celibacy or sexual sublimation, let me now briefly discuss a technique for spiritualizing human sexuality.

When human beings engage in loving physical exchanges, they open their auras and stream forth a ray of loving energy that is very tangible in spiritual realms.

As we have discussed previously, many beings in spirit realms are unfriendly to humans. They feed on the baser emotions of human beings, promoting lust, jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, envy greed and fear. These unfriendly spiritual beings, often lower astral beings, also feed on the unconscious love energies poured forth by unwitting love partners. They send the lovers a stream of base emotions they have previously gathered in return.

Another fact of spiritual life, documented by mystics and teachers such as Rudolf Steiner and Omraam Aïvanhov, is that higher spiritual beings, such as angels, devas, nature spirits, spiritual Guides and teachers, are very receptive to consciously directed energies of human love exchanged by two partners who share the intent to offer their love and their sexual partnership to the Divine. This type of love offering attracts beings of light to the lovers, and sets up an exchange of energy that is very beneficial to human and higher beings alike.

A successful marriage requires spiritual sacrifice. By consciously offering their loving exchange of energies each day to higher spiritual beings, by surrounding themselves with love and light before they engage in sexual exchanges, the lovers offer a beautiful sacrifice that will call in higher light beings to help the lovers in their quest to sacrifice their egos, surrender their personalities, and connect with their Higher Selves. They will help you on your path back to the Garden.

Such a love offering also protects the lovers from the unwanted intrusion of lower astral beings who would like to feed off the energies of their loving exchange.

Based upon the insights of Omraam and Drunvalo Melchizedek, a New Age teacher who has researched Egyptian mystery school teachings extensively, I offer the following advice.

Horned Lovers, Rainbow, Dolphin, by Jane Sherry

Spiritualize the sexual act by remaining conscious throughout. Dedicate the energy being released to the Divinity within yourself and your partner. Make the goal of your loving sexual exchange Unity with the Divine Father/Mother Source, the Divine Lovers. Offer your combined love and light up to the Divine Lovers, to your spiritual teacher, if you have one, to your spirit guides and angels.

Create a spiritual ambiance in your bedroom before engaging in sexual activities. Light a candle, burn some incense, clear the energy of the room, and take a moment to center and ground yourself. Call upon your Guides and teachers, the Deities with whom you have an affinity, and make it your conscious intent to share your Love with the big beings of light inhabiting spiritual worlds.

When you are engaged in sexual activity remain mindful as long as you can. As you feel the energy rising up your spine, remain conscious. As the energy reaches the nape of the neck, see the energy exiting the back of the neck through the chakra at the base of the skull, passing in a circuit over the crown of your head, and flowing down into your heart through the heart chakra, then reverberating outward to connect with your partner’s heart. You will feel the energy feeding back from your partner into your heart as you do this. Continue to remain conscious.

Visualize the energy vibrating between you as a rainbow of light, and visualize that rainbow surrounding you both like an egg. See the rainbow egg of light expanding out into the space, and direct the energy through your intent toward the Divine.

Afterwards, give thanks to the Divine Lovers for blessing your love relationship.

This exercise will help you to let go of your egoistic personalities and connect with the Higher Self. You will also find this exercise will bring you additional help from angels, Guides and spiritual teachers in higher worlds, who will begin to guide you on a path that will help you end your karma and transform your partnership into a Divine affair based upon unconditional love.

READ NEXT CHAPTER: Chapter 8: The New Age of the Divine Lovers