The beloved is the occasion of something unlimited, a feeling of connection and destiny that dissolves our selfishness and isolation. <source: Norman Fischer: “Falling in Love,” Shambhala Sun, July 1999

In my webpost posted on May 27, 2012 entitled Relationship Series Part Eight: Commitment – You can hold.  You can fold. Or you can just walk away, I raised some questions around the nature of commitment.

The results from my contemplating the nature of commitment are that there are two main types: the conventional type based on ego; and authentic commitment.

(1) There’s conventional committment based on ego. It involves a fixation on self with a corresponding frivolous disregard of  how our behaviour affects others.

…our lover..may be able to offer us some kind of security. He or she may be able to create an accomodating nest for us personally…” <source: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Sadhana of Mahamudra Sourcebook, Talk Two, September 1975>

And

It is very common, of course, for the initial pure impulse toward love to become reduced, to find ourselves domesticating the beloved, as if they were known and predictable, subject to our needs, possessable. Once this happens there is jealousy, selfishness, disappointment, the desire to control and the fear of change. What was once love becomes a mutual conspiracy of smallness, and nothing is more common among long-lasting and seemingly successful relationships than this embattled holding on to the past in a way that is usually quite unhappy. <source: Norman Fischer: “Falling In Love,” Shambhala Sun, July 1999>

And

“Personalities don’t love — they want something. <source: Byron Katie: I Need Your Love — Is That True?>

And finally

We use our beauty, our cleverness, our charm to capture someone for a partnership, as if he were an animal. And then when he wants to get out of the cage, we’re furious. That doesn’t sound very caring to me. It’s not self-love. <source: Byron Katie: I Need Your Love — Is That True?>

(2) Then there’s what I call “authentic committment” — I’m going to suggest that this involves viewing our lover as teacher, not as someone who is possessable, but as someone who teaches us — precisely because we love them — that we have to be willing to surrender to the truth of impermanence, the first of what are called The Three Marks of Existence (Please click here for description of the marks.):

All things are impermanent, created fresh each moment, and then gone. This being so, the miracle of love between two people…is something precious and brief.  We are together for a while and then inevitably we part. To love someone truly is to recognize this every day, to see the preciousness of the beloved and of the time we have together, to renounce any clinging need for or dependency on the other, and to make the effort to open our hands, so that instead of holding on we are nurturing and supporting. <source: Norman Fischer: “Falling In Love,” Shambhala Sun, July 1999>

And, arising from the same perspective of non-ego, but put differently:

I want my husband [partner, significant other] to want what he wants. And I also notice that I don’t have a choice. That’s self-love. He does what he does, and I love that. That’s what I want, because when I’m at war with reality, it hurts. <source: Byron Katie: I Need Your Love — Is That True?>

How then, in the face of impermanence, can we make a commitment to a relationship? (I have added italics for emphasis.)

…it is exactly impermance that inspires commitment. Exactly because things always change, and we cannot prevent that, we give rise to a vow to remain faithful to love, because love is the only thing that is in harmony with change. Love is change.; it is the movement and color of the world. Love is a feeling of constancy, openness, and appreciation for the wonder of the world, a feeling that we can be true to, no matter what circumstances may bring. <source: Norman Fischer: “Falling In Love,” Shambhala Sun, July 1999>

Finally, a mystery has been solved for me, a mystery that was posed in the dream that triggered my identity crisis as a woman.  (Please click here for entire dream):

….Alex asks me “Why aren’t we together?” I reply “because I would never leave you.”

Notwithstanding the fact that I do not know what Alex’s question means, it’s a mystery to me, in the face of the facts that I mentioned in my post of June 03, 2012 — not interested in marriage; not interested in being part of a conventional “cozy couple,” and I do not live with my significant others of-the-romantic kind — how I could possibly reply (and mean it) “because I would never leave you”!

Mystery solved: my reply demonstrates that a lover is the vehicle through which we can truly make such a commitment even — indeed, only — in the face of impermanence. This for me is the meaning of authentic commitment.

Ironically, to Alex’s question “Why aren’t we together?’ I could just as truthfully have answered “because I would always leave you.” That too is authentic commitment.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche made the following statement in 1984:

This world is made out of nothing. Therefore, this world exists. If this world were made out of something, it wouldn’t exist. <source: Please click here.>

I’m going to tweek this statement a bit to say “This world is impermanent. Therefore this world exists. If this world was permanent, it wouldn’t exist.”

The lover also teaches us — just by being a lover — that we have not so much fallen in love with him but that he has triggered the love that is us, that we are love. In that sense, we have fallen in love with ourselves. We always were. It just got covered up, obscured by our ego’s fixation on itself. Recognizing that we have fallen in love with ourselves is the best starting point for extending this love outward to someone else. Indeed, it may be the best way to understand why we fall in love altogether.

You may ask “Isn’t authentic commitment more painful than ego-based commitment?” I find that both types of commitment are painful. Or, in Plain English, they hurt like hell. Ironically, both of them are painful for the same reason, namely, the realization that there is nothing to hang onto, that everything is subject to change.

We cannot escape the pain. But the choice of which pain to experience is ours.

But then, the choice of lover is ours too.

If you found this post helpful, please share it with a friend. Then consider subscribing to the weblog. Just click on the Subscribe button in the navigation bar and follow one of the three, easy-to-follow instructions. Thank you.