“The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.” – Thucydides
Understanding Your Key Relationships
If you want to understand yourself, your mind, your thoughts, your life, and the world you live in, you need to examine your relationships.
Understanding your psychological relationships is the key to developing wisdom. You will need to have a calm and quiet mind to see and penetrate the fundamental structure of the relationship.
It has been man’s eternal quest to seek truth, god, happiness, bliss, and deep fulfillment. While we have advanced our material comforts tremendously, that yearning for truth and happiness seems stronger than ever.
In examining our lives I think we can agree that our strongest relationships are to our family, beliefs, and society. I feel that much of our inner conflict arises in trying to find our individuality while maintaining relationships with our family and society.
In searching for individuality we are ultimately searching for freedom, the freedom to be ourselves, but is freedom possible while maintaining a relationship to society? I trust it can but it will require you to have a radically different understanding and relationship to it.
If we examine society and the nature of its relationship to us, we will see that for it to continue to exist in its present form it must do so by creating a relationship of dependency in us.
What does this dependency entail?
- Security
- Certainty
- Social Comforts
- Social norms and behaviors
- Religion, culture, tradition
I would just like you to examine anything that may be causing you inner conflict. To look at it without running away, escaping from it only makes it stronger. If you try and escape from it you will just substitute it with something else, but that will not solve the problem.
What is your relationship to this conflict? What’s the nature of it? Is this conflict caused because you are leaving it up to society to solve for you? Is this conflict arising from conforming and maintaining social norms, which are in direct opposition to your individual desires?
If you are constantly paranoid or anxious, where are these ideas coming from? Were they given to you? Is there any basis of truth to it? Is it coming from your own direct experiences? Or is it just from the constructs of your mind based on beliefs given to you by a society designed to create dependency?
A true relationship is based on being able to relate to one another, remaining independent yet able to cooperate and share with others. Society is not a living thing, it is a dead thing, an entity of old ideas so it can’t relate. Naturally for it to exist it depends on you to compromise to its ideals.
Look at your number one relationship that is causing you conflict, see it in its entirety, how is it keeping you from happiness? How is this dependency causing you anxiety, look at the causes of it, how can you break this relationship, how can you transcend it?
I feel that many of our common dependencies will just fall away when seen with clear penetrating eyes, when you simply see how absurd it is to play along, to maintain an illusion, to live a life of social conditioning.
Remember it, to be free means to be an individual, to accept responsibility for every facet of your life and being.
If you are looking to society to fulfill your sense of security, how good a job is it doing? Life by its very nature is uncertain, this has to be understood, so that you can see that certainty can never be given to you by society. Why waste your energy in mothering that relationship?
We need to become conscious of the mental prison we have constructed, so we can see how our own thoughts are continually trying to avoid coming into conflict with the ideals of our prison. If you are able to see this inner movement with its subtle mechanisms, you will begin to understand it, and will come to an end.
In living and traveling abroad I meet and converse with many people who comment on how is that I am able to do and live the way I am. They ask me how my parents feel about me not settling down, starting a family, having (grown-up) responsibilities, having a professional career, etc.
I just smile and tell them that I quit consulting with society or my family to tell me how to live. I do what I feel is best for me in the moment, I listen to my heart, I develop trust not beliefs, I meditate, and contemplate, I commit mistakes, I try to be cautious but I make the leap into the unknown, and in the process I live in a state of fulfillment and freedom that society could never give me.
It is very important that you become conscious of the relationships you have, to understand them, to know why they exist. If you don’t question them they will continue to grow, but remember that relationship only exists because you have yet to do anything about it.
Sure, society makes life easy and comfortable, and I am not saying you need to renounce it and become a monk, just don’t depend on it to tell you how to live. This is your life to explore; exploring is where the fun and fulfillment are at. It’s not in the destination, but in the ride, the journey, the process of life.
Be a light unto yourself; share your own unique experience, which is the best contribution you can make to society, a real enrichment. There are as many paths to freedom as there are people on this earth, the problem is that society is trying to decide one path for all, and we know that is impossible.
I encourage you to quit depending on anyone or anything, sure others can give you advice and their insight, but it will be coming from their own life experiences, which may be perfect for their life, and their purpose. What about your life, your purpose?
It’s up to you to decide and honestly, why would you want it any other way? Once you discover your power, you will be reborn, no becoming just pure being. In pure being you will cultivate a mind capable of perceiving and appreciating the miracle of our existence, you only need to wake up…god speed my friend 🙂
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Heeeeeey Ivan,
This quote is absolutely money: “This is your life to explore; exploring is where the fun and fulfillment is at. It’s not in the destination, but in the ride, the journey, the process of life. Be a light unto yourself; share your own unique experience, which is the best contribution you can make to society, a real enrichment.”
Too many people live life just to find themselves some security, whether it be from marriage or a nice job or a nice house or anything like that. By choosing the safe route, they actually deny life from themselves, because they lose their freedom.
We need to understand why we feel the way we do towards everything – and in doing so, we find freedom and understanding. After that, it’s allllllll gravy.
.-= Brett – DareToExpress.com´s last blog ..What I Learned From Being Sick =-.
Awesome comment Brett and awesome post Ivan! I can’t more than agree with the exploration and enjoying the journey. If you live for the destination you are going to be a miserable son of a …
This is why it is so important that we follow our passion and do something we love in the moment and not live for the vacations, as Garyvee puts it.
.-= Henri´s last blog ..121 Ways to Improve Your Life and Be More Awesome =-.
thanks Brett 🙂 really appreciate it 🙂 hope all is well@Brett – DareToExpress.com:
thanks henri 🙂 its my pleasure…thanks for stopping by and contributing to my site…your right nobody wants to be a miserable son of a 🙂 lol…@Henri:
Hey Ivan.
This is true about being able to relate to someone being an important part of an actual relationship. We often leave this part out, and hope things will maintain in a smooth way, when there is not much if there isn’t relation and connection. It starts to drift away.
Like you said here, society provides a negligible amount of security, and we give it more credit than it deserves. Those who guide themselves, and are courageous enough to respond to a few baseless criticisms, get things those who don’t can’t. I view as though it makes sense when someone helps, or when they don’t talk, but makes no sense when one person discourages another. They get no benefit, and the other person loses motivation. It is a 0/- relationship, as it would be labeled in an ecology class.
.-= Armen Shirvanian´s last blog ..Write Your Way Through It =-.
thanks for contributing your perspective to the post Armen…very much appreciated…hope all is well my friend..@Armen Shirvanian:
.-= Ivan Campuzano´s last blog ..Understanding Your Relationships To Find Your Path To Freedom =-.
Hi Ivan 🙂
I agree that “to be free means to be an individual, to accept responsibility for every facet of your life and being” and I also agree it “is very important (to) become conscious of the relationships you have, to understand them, to know why they exist.”
BUT you lost me when you said, “remember that relationship only exists because you have yet to do anything about it.” Isn’t the point to be fluid in a relationship, to enjoy the journey and stop fretting about the destination?
Thank you for your blog 🙂
When your goal is to advanced spiritual the fastest then a relation is not always the best option.
Examples are The Buddha, Jesus etc.
Often you have an relation with someone because there are
karmic reasons that needs to be dealt with.
Your most important relations are carefully setup before you came into existence.
These are your Parents,Sisters,Brothers,Friends and Partner(s).
The relations are set up in such a way that we learn from each other.
Blessings and Marry Christmas to all 🙂
Namaste, Egbert
.-= Egbert Halderman´s last blog ..Now =-.
great read ivan! relative as always.
really appreciate your thoughts on the post Machelle :)…will need to clear up that point..I needed to point out that many of our relationships are in our unconscious awareness therefore we don’t do much to change them… @Machelle Dunlop:
love your perspective…thanks again my friend for contributing 🙂@Egbert Halderman:
its my pleasure 🙂 thanks for stopping by come back soon 🙂 @shaun:
Awesome post Ivan, and it certainly helps me in this period.
.-= Oscar – freestyle mind´s last blog ..Planning For The New Year =-.
It is not about thinking so much about our relationships to everything, but about feeling our connection to all of life and everything around us. You do not have to spend so much time contemplating, but shifting your mode of being in the world. Spend more time feeling about what type of relationships you want to create. Spend time sensing how you want to show up in the world. The relationships will be created without so much effort and contemplation. It is through connecting deep within and to all of life and back to the creator that you will find wholeness. However, this connection will find you with intention. It is not through what you are told that it must be, but through where your true sacred heart leads you. There are so many veils over the eyes that we cannot see clearly. It is through our antenna’s that we begin to know.These are our true intuitive selves and our sense of feeling. Feel and be.
nice blog. i’ve been attempting to resolve that inner conflict of my spiritual growth and at what point does it conflict completely with the relationships that has sustained me well up to this point.
thanks for the insights!
Thanks for the great post Ivan – you’re right in that when we examine our feelings toward certain relationships we can learn so much, it all starts with understanding ourselves and taking that knowledge outward. Brett & Henri are also right on – ) What a great site Ivan. I’m doing motivational speaking and just starting my website, if you are interested in guest blogging, get in touch and let me know.
Best things in 2010, much love!
Beautiful post Ivan – I think the most powerful message you have here is in the value of truly seeing your self in order to form successful relationships with others. This is a powerful message not just for the managers I coach but for everyone who hopes to find value in life. Thanks for putting this out!
.-= Katy´s last blog ..To tweet or not to tweet… =-.
This is a wonderful article that empowers people to find the goal and make their own decisions. society, customs and social values are the inflwencing factors of life sustaining activities, but the most powerful thing is the level of conscious of the individual which lead to them to the destiny of life. This article really covers the heart touching facts and experience of the writer. Thank you very much for life changing article.
Just posted another comment on No Complaining. Man this is some excellent info. Looking at your life you are living. Did you read 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. You seem to be living the life he talks about.
I am about 6 months from starting my own travels. I do have some (grown up) responsibilities I have to take care of first.
Keep writing and inspiring man. Great site
thank you ivan, you showed me the truth, god bless you
my pleasure my friend :)…i wish you the best on your journey…take care…god bless…
This was a life changing article. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
Freedom is yours. You truly are an inspiration and you have helped me see the truth. We are all free to be happy and you have illustrated points. I love it !