The Holy Purpose of Relationships

When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself. - A Course In Miracles

As I've written before, I am fond of the paradox found in spiritual teachings. Paradox is like a self generating machine that produces the fuel it requires to function. Paradox in spiritual conundrums reveals the answer within the question, usually as a simple reversal of logic. We find that we receive in the act of giving. We find our search for happiness in the world eventually spins us around to find the treasure buried within ourselves. Perhaps the most difficult paradoxical teaching to accept and practice is in the area of relationships - for spiritual insight suggests that other people are the key to knowing and accepting ourselves.

Why is it that we cannot find our self in ourselves alone? The answer lies in who we truly are - not a small isolated self set apart from the billions of others selves on this planet. This is a purely egoist perspective, which is a dead end that will only deepen a sense of separation and keep me from knowing the greater I am that includes others. As spiritual teacher and author, Robert Perry writes, "Your true Self is a shared Self. It is something you share with everyone and everything. You cannot see that if you are looking only at yourself. You cannot see the ocean by examining a drop of water with a microscope."

Here is the sublime paradox of self knowledge: it arises with awareness beyond self, to the Self that includes everyone. Oneness becomes real to us when the distinction between I and thou, dissolves. Every encounter with another can become a "holy encounter" because it offers us an opportunity to see through the appearance of separateness and behold the essential Self that we both share. This is a foundational premise of Unity philosophy which declares that we are all children of God, individualized expressions of the Life and Intelligence that is our true parent. Just as a sunbeam cannot be separate from the sun nor a wave be apart from the ocean neither can we be apart from the One Life that is our source.

This way of seeing others is transformative knowledge that can rock our world, as it saves us from the deeper suffering of separation. It is a new way of seeing my brother or sister that removes the scales of judgment from my eyes so that in them I am able to behold their inherent goodness (true nature). It is such holy perception that allowed Jesus to exonerate the adulterous woman about to be stoned by the condemning crowd, exalt the prostitute who washed his feet with her hair, and finally to forgive those who betrayed, abandoned and killed him.

To know ourselves as we truly are, we must see others as they truly are. It is perhaps the most arduous and challenging of spiritual practice and yet, paradoxically, what it asks of us is precisely what it offers us. It is in seeing the inherent goodness in others that we help them find their way home in God, and then, in one of the most beautiful compensations of life, we discover that it is our way as well.