Unfortunately, we are not told about this when we are children or teenagers, or at all, but the fact that our soul chose to come to earth does not mean that our mind agrees with it right away. When we came from the infinite love of unity, and it’s not so easy to give it up, even if we’re not conscious of all this.
As little children, most of us were (hopefully) enveloped in gentleness and patience and compassion. But it was inevitable that we also encountered all kinds of hardships, such as moments when the parents lost their patience. In these moments we felt in danger, an existential danger that we didn’t know until that moment and didn’t know that it was a part of living on earth.
One of the defense mechanisms we developed (and were encouraged to develop) is to surrender to being completely dependent on adults. They demanded our obedience – and in return for it we hoped to receive their love and protection and to not experience that feeling of existential danger again. It didn’t always work, but it was the best we knew, given our situation as small children who really depended on adults to a large extent.
As adults we still continue to obey and surrender to authority figures, at least those of us who did not get to stop and see how this mechanism of authority activates us. As adults we still surround ourselves as much as possible with the sweet and comforting fragrance of “home” – the dimension of unity. We indulge in forgetting our individuality and the responsibility that comes with living on earth. This is pleasant and even healing for a short while, but ultimately there is no escaping the physical reality we’re living in. Then we refrain from acting in our own interest, because we still remember how in our childhood this kind of independence deprived us of love and seemingly threatened our existence. As a result of holding ourselves back, we accumulate debts – financial debt, health debt, debt in interpersonal relationships.
As long as we haven’t cured the fear of our parents’ anger, which is now projected on a variety of characters and situations that remind us of what we experienced as children – we remain stuck in a loop. When we meet this inner conflict we feel pain and helplessness that are too hard to bear, so we run away from it to something that can calm our pain, such as the screen, ice-cream, sex, alcohol, etc. When the debts we have accumulated begin to swell, then we try to be brave and take responsibility, and give a sprint of intense work that should solve all our problems, which inevitably ends after a week or two when we meet that same fear we ran away from in the first place.
This loop leaves us in the experience of survival and away from the experience of unity that we so long for.
To get out of this loop we dedicate ourselves to a relationship, romantic or otherwise, and bond with a person in a way that combines a lot of emotion and a great fear of abandonment. If the other person got into this relationship in order to get out of the same kind of loop (which is usually the case) – then we get close and intimate at a fast pace that does not correspond with the degree of our acquaintance. It feels like a mix of sweet passionate intimate unity on the one hand, and fear of losing ourselves in the relationship on the other. This dynamic results with unconsciously finding a reason for taking distance from each other, through creating a conflict or finding an interest outside the relationship, in order to regain our own individuality.
What happened there is that we found a savior to save us from our tragic loop. Of course, the role of savior came with great dependence and expectations, and since it was mutual, we both did not want to become aware of it so we remained in another painful loop – of getting close and then gaining distance in our relationship.
The loop that we created in our relationship, on top of the other loop that keeps us away from the point of “Independence = Existential Danger” – distances us farther away from the true unity that we’re seeking.
True unity will always be based on freedom. Dependency is a sign that we have motives that we have not yet consciously recognized.
Yes, experiencing true unity while being in the physical world of separation doesn’t come easy for most of us these days, but those who have tasted unity (true love, family, friendship, community…) know that it is worth the effort.
And that’s what we’re here for… isn’t it?