Shifting from the work of “the Work” to the Fruit of the Work.
I remember being at our summer retreat about twenty years ago. A person mentioned to Hameed during Q&C that they appreciated how their relationship with their significant other was a great venue for “working” the Work. They described in some detail how they and their partner made the Work the primary ground of the relationship. They wanted to know what insights Hameed could offer for working the Work within relationships.
I, too, had similar thoughts about the value of bringing the work to my marriage. Hameed’s response shifted my perspective on the relationship between the work and relationships.
Hameed said, “I never thought of it that way. I always considered my relationship as a place to bring the “Fruit of the Work.”
He continued by saying, “Approaching a relationship from the perspective of work can lay a heavy burden on the relationship. Usually, the reason we’re in a relationship is not to work, but to love, play, and delight in our interactions with our partner with authenticity, freedom, and realness.”
This exchange between Hameed and the student triggered a memory of something my first Diamond Approach teacher said to our group – “We can work on individual object relations until we die and beyond. We need to progress to working on more overarching segments of the personality and then to confronting the whole notion of the self.”
Most books on relationships say things like: “Relationships require work. You need to work at/on your relationship to keep it fresh and alive.”
The way I heard and understood Hameed’s response did not negate the idea of relationships may require work as much as it pointed to our orientation toward our relationship – and – our Work.
But, we’re talking about understanding, and of course, everything leads to the unknowable. The process of understanding is what’s important. It is the actual method of the path, it’s the path itself and it’s also the fruit of the path. It is life itself. Human life can be seen as understanding. It can also be seen from other perspectives, such as love or will. But, today we’re looking from the perspective of understanding. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Three, ch. 11
If our partner is a student in the Work it can make a difference in how we interact and engage with each other, but all couples have their ways of working things out – or not. Let’s take essential strength, the red essence as an example to pique our curiosity on this subject.
Qualities/Expressions of the Red Essence
- Expansiveness/initiative/courage – We’ve seen that openness appears as love, as curiosity; with the Red latifa, it appears as courage and daring, an adventurous attitude.
- Strength/can do – Strength gives the individual energy and the initiative capacity.
- Discrimination/discernment/separation/individuation/autonomy – Many individuals resist the Strength aspect because they feel unable or unwilling to feel autonomous and individuated.
- Aliveness/vitality/vigor – When we experience the quality of aliveness we feel a pulsation, a teeming vitality, robustness, and vigor.
- Lustiness/passion – You feel power and lustiness, passion and zest. You feel your whole being is burning like a flame and that flame is full.
- Glamor – You’re not only powerful and expansive, you see and appreciate beauty—a glamorous kind of beauty—a beauty full of vitality and colors.
How does the strength (red) essence show up in our relationship? Does our engagement with the red and our partner usually arise around the psychological/emotional issues associated with strength – irritation, frustration, anger, etc? Or, are we bringing the fruit of the work to our relationship, the courage to support the expansiveness of the “leading edge” of our experience?
Are we nurturing aliveness and vitality by getting off our butts and spontaneously grabbing the one we love? Are we allowing the red into our lives, into the nooks and crannies of our routine?
Is my partner a “known” or a mystery of potential and possibility? Am I seeing the “red” in my partner? Is it calling to me, is mine calling to them? Essence calls to essence.
Working the Work
Integration, actualization, and embodiment of the work involves a great deal of “dancing with the red.” We have to live it to know it. Our path is realization and expression of realization.
Questioning based on observation addresses the quality of knowledge in our experience, so that our participation in basic knowledge becomes open and direct. Direct observations—the fruits of our mindfulness—give our questions the necessary direct data for us to use our intelligence. Observation also functions to guide our inquiry by directing our questions to relevant areas. Even to recognize an unknowingness, we have to be observing our experience. – A. H. Almaas, Spacecruiser Inquiry, ch. 8
Because we, in the Diamond Approach, spend so much time working with object relations to free ourselves from the shackles of the past, we can fall prey to allowing object relations to dominate our work and orientation at the expense of nurturing the essential.
Our primary relationship should be one of the safest, most nurturing spaces for us to stumble and bumble our way toward the Beloved. If it isn’t, how are we contributing to the “covid-lock-down” of our soul?