THE ART OF SOULFUL ROMANCE

By Bill Plotkin, Ph.D.

Soulfully entered, romance that delightfully alluring, mad dance that transports and destroys us can be a powerful soul-deepening adventure and one of the finest opportunities for carrying the souls gift of love into the world. Through human loving, we become acquainted with spiritual love and the longing for sacred union. And yet romance is also the realm where we unleash our grandest and most delusional projections, where the shadow side of the psyche is sure to emerge in all its dark glory.

Love affairs are propelled by powerful currents desire, fascination, sensuality, sexual ecstasy, attachment, devotion, communion, union. Affairs of the heart evoke the strongest emotions, from ardent passions to poisonous hatreds and jealousies, and can result in the most stunning betrayals. Through its extreme currents and emotions, romance destabilizes the ego and opens a door to soul: our unique individual essence that holds our deepest passions, our particular way of belonging to the world, and the gift that is ours, and ours alone, to bring to life.

Romance: Egocentric or Soulcentric?

Romance can be engaged soulfully and consciously, or it can be engaged egocentrically. When approached egocentrically, we unknowingly project aspects of our selves and our parents onto our beloved and thus have a limited understanding of the real person with whom we are partnered. Most of us go through an egocentric phase, sometimes lasting an entire lifetime, in which we fervently believe an intimate engagement with a lover is the thing that will save us, complete us, or make our world right. We believe, in other words, that a romantic relationship will somehow accomplish for us the task of our soulwork.

In Western society, romance is usually entered with the belief usually unarticulated and often hidden even from ourselves that we are each half persons. The covert agenda is to find our other half, our one and only soul mate. We innocently trust that once we find him or her, we will become whole by simple virtue of being together.

This longing for wholeness is as strong a pull as any in life. Yet we are terrified of the actual journey to wholeness that romance can set in motion. In egocentric romances, we are more likely to subvert the underworld journey than to embark upon it. We act as if the difficulties and uncertainties of soul encounter will be magically avoided simply by meeting him or her. This is the widespread fantasy of the Magical Other, brilliantly described by Jungian analyst James Hollis.

The Magical Other approach to romance, which is adolescent and egocentric, contrasts with an adult and soulcentric approach that opens the door to romance as a soulcraft art.

The easiest way to tell if we are approaching romance egocentrically is to take a radically honest look at our romantic fantasies. In egocentric romance, we have a particular image of the desired relationship even before we fall in love, before we have so much as met our beloved. We enter the love affair as if playing the Dating Game, with a preexisting image of how the other person looks, sounds, what she wears, what his IQ is, what sort of work she does, what his age, race, and religion are perhaps even how many children well have and where well live! After we meet and begin a relationship, our primary agenda, whether we admit it or not, is to mold the other to that preexisting fantasy. Truly and deeply getting to know the other is secondary or, in the most egocentric forms of romance, of no interest at all.

Adolescent love affairs begin with a period of ecstasy in which everything is heavenly. All too soon, however, comes the letdown, the mutual perception that the other is not perfect after all. Then we try to shoehorn our lover into our fantasy of how he or she was "supposed" to be. But that flesh-and-blood person is never entirely moldable to that fantasy.

Yet, as egocentric lovers, we feel entitled to our dream. We attempt, in every creative and desperate way imaginable, to make it real. Naturally, it doesn't work. We become angry, hurt, and disillusioned. Soon enough, we convince ourselves we were terribly mistaken in whom we picked. We reject the other as flawed, not good enough. Sometimes we reject ourselves in those terms. But, alas, we do not reject the project itself, the Magical Other fantasy. We cling firmly to that egocentric dream and steady ourselves to do a better job next time, resolved to cast the right person into the romantic drama living inside our adolescent heart. What Hollis calls the "Eden project" attempting through romance to return to the wholeness and perfection of the womb or the original garden lives on intact.

Egocentric romance is so common and compelling in the initiation-deprived Western world because the uninitiated ego approaches romance from the perspective of its own experience, which is one of deficiency and incompleteness. The ego is in fact a "partial person" within the greater whole of the psyche. Before soul initiation, the ego feels a genuine and inconsolable loneliness and longing. It really does need to be completed by something. The problem is that that completion will never take place through a romantic relationship with another. It is only the soul, the divine lover, that fully completes the ego and allows it to feel fittingly partnered.

The uninitiated ego, without knowledge of the souls world, has little choice but to project all of its longing onto an outer human beloved. Its loneliness continuously fuels the desire for love affairs. Until it discovers an alternative, it will keep seeking completion in that way and failing.

In contrast, the soul-oriented person knows that the Other lives inside, or, alternatively, that the Other exists as the divine. Both the candidate for initiation and the initiated adult understand that human romance can deepen the sacred marriage between ego and soul, but it is not a substitute for it. As Rumi reminds us,

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

The Magical Other

Egocentric love is what makes the egocentric world go round. It is one of the central fantasies upon which our egocentric culture is built. The adolescent dream of romance is celebrated in myriad ways in pop music, mainstream cinema, advertising, "true romance" novels, in prince and princess fantasies. This is all good fun as far as it goes. A youthful approach to love is not itself the problem; the problem is the rarity of what comes next developmentally: a more mature way of engaging a lover that has a deeper, more spiritual, sustainable, and, yes, even sexier set of possibilities, an approach to romance that encourages and supports soulful development.

The Magical Other fantasy, so deeply rooted in our Western psyches, does not die easily. Surrendering that fantasy can evoke a grief and experience of cosmic betrayal greater than the loss of any lover.

Like many, I used to suffer great anxiety at the outset of romantic relationships. If she was indeed the one and only Magical Other, then my salvation, I imagined, depended upon her wanting to be with me forever. A single misstep by me was potentially fatal to all future happiness, and so I was debilitated by a painful self-consciousness.

Finally, one summer, during a four-day solo fast at a high alpine lake, Love Lake, I ceremonially sacrificed my attachment to the Magical Other fantasy. Addressing the goddess of love as embodied in that lake, I spoke words of gratitude for each woman I had ever loved egocentrically there were many and then sacrificed to fire a symbol, precious to me, of the Magical Other. I cried as hard and as long as I ever have.

Following that fast and that fire, I have no longer sought a lover as a means to personal salvation. Having grieved the loss of the Magical Other fantasy, I began to experience myself as whole already, fully eligible to be in love with the world either alone or partnered. Having experienced the Feminine as immanent in the world, I was less prone to project Her exclusively on a lover. This is the rearranging power of ceremony. I became more capable of embracing romance as a dance, an engaging way of being in the world in the present moment, an end in its own right, as well as a doorway to a spiritual union with the beloved of the soul.

Part of our longing for a human lover arises from our accurate recognition, at some level, that we can come to know ourselves more deeply through romantic union. In the mystery of love, as we learn to love another truly, we meet the beloved of our own soul through the eyes of the human Other. Our personal destiny is to incarnate that beloved. Ultimately, we become the inner Other we first saw in the outer Other.

Learning to Approach Romance Soulcentrically

Through egocentric loving in adolescence, we all acquired the basic skills of sexual relating and social bonding. This was foundational and necessary. Then, among those who learn to approach romance soulcentrically, the lover knows that when she falls in love, she will project not only the most noble qualities of her own soul but also, eventually, her most negative shadow qualities. She knows it will be a while before she sees her shadow in her lovers face, but, when she does, it will be disheartening, frightening, possibly repulsive. Knowing this is inevitable, shell say yes to love anyway. She understands that unveiling the shadow is as valuable a result of romance as any other.

The soulcentric lover knows her love affair has the potential to reveal mysteries, lessons both joyous and painful. Intense feelings and non-ordinary states of consciousness will threaten to alter forever her understanding of what life is, and who she is. She hopes for this as much as she fears it. If, like all egocentric lovers, she should feel like her true self for the first time in her life, she will know that her partner is only a catalyst and that if she does not learn how to own it, the experience will fade and she will blame her lover for the loss as much as she had once given him or her the credit.

In soulcentric romance, rather than attempting to make the other fit their preexisting fantasies, the lovers revel in endlessly exploring the mysterious nature of the Other in the here and now. The only relationship the lovers presume is the one they have earned through their unfolding conversation. They anticipate no potential relationship result (e.g. monogamy, polygamy, cohabitation, marriage, children, economic or professional advancement) as being preferable to any other. Any such intent would interfere with the deepening experience of true contact. Neither tries to unilaterally make the relationship more comfortable for himself or herself, because doing so would interfere with their being present to the magic of true conversation.

Soulful romance is held like a fragile flame in the unflinching gaze and steady embrace of the lover as he is revealed to himself and to his beloved in each moment of the dance. As in the unfolding of any sacred mystery, there is no telling what might happen next but there is a faith that, whatever it is, it will unfold with authenticity and integrity, and whatever happens will deepen the journey of both parties.

Radical Conversation

James Hollis suggests that both the value and process of soulful romance rest in what he calls radical conversation, in which one intends, continuously, to discover more and ever more about oneself and the other. Through such an exchange between two mysteries, one draws nearer to the central mystery of life. Hollis lists three components to such a soul-to-soul encounter:

1) The partners must assume responsibility for their own psychological well-being.

2) They must commit to sharing the world of their own experience without reproaching the Other for past wounds or future expectations. Similarly, they are to endeavor to hear, without feeling defensive, the experience of the Other.

3) They must commit to sustaining such a dialogue over time.

... Only radical conversation, the full sharing of what it is like to be me while hearing what it is really like to be you, can fulfill the promise of an intimate relationship. One can only engage in radical conversation if one has taken responsibility for oneself, has some self-awareness, and has the tensile strength to withstand a genuine encounter with the truly Other.

Loving the otherness of the partner is a transcendent event, for one enters the true mystery of relationship in which one is taken to the third place not you plus me, but we who are more than ourselves with each other.

Radical conversation has emotional, imaginal, sexual, and spiritual dimensions as well as verbal ones. And the conversation is approached not only with skill and intent but also with innocence and wonder. Neither the other nor the self is a fixed thing. The bottom is never reached. One hopes to be forever surprised.

But of course its not all delight and ease. Far from it. We are constantly discovering how we project our shadow both its light and dark aspects onto the other. The dance of soulful romance always includes owning back those projections and transferences. Our relationship will expose all the places we are emotionally blocked, blinded, wounded, caged, protected, or otherwise limited.

Invariably, upon first bumping or crashing! into those constricted places, well feel fear, anger, hurt, shame, or guilt. Eventually, we learn to recognize these emotions as opportunities to learn about ourselves and sometimes the other. Rather than avoiding these emotions, we dive into them, thereby discovering the holes in our personalities, the places that need attention if we are going to move toward wholeness.

These holes are the wounds we refused to feel earlier and that we avoided by means of our childhood-era survival strategies. In our romantic relationships, we keep running into these holes because they are the relationships growing edge. We have the choice either to write off our partner or ourselves or to examine our holes. Healing another layer of our wounds reclaims the promise of our lives.

The candidate for soul initiation learns that soulful romance keeps her in direct communication with the unknown, that it uncovers her deepest wound, that it reveals her shadow, and that it opens the door to ecstasy and union with the beloved of the soul. She learns that sexual love is a spiritual experience as well as a carnal one. She learns to look into her lovers eyes and see not just her friend and sexual partner but also a reflection of her own animus (i.e. the inner man who serves as her guide to soul) and also, perhaps, a reflection of the divine lover.

Bill Plotkin has been a psychotherapist, research psychologist (studying non-ordinary states of consciousness), rock musician, river runner, professor of psychology, and mountain-bike racer. He is the founder of Animas Valley Institute (www.animas.org), which, since 1980, has guided thousands of people through initiatory passages in nature. Currently an ecotherapist, depth psychologist, and wilderness guide, he leads a variety of experiential, nature-based, individuation programs. He is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche and the forthcoming (in January 2008) Nature and the Human Soul: A Renaissance for Self and Earth. His doctorate in psychology is from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Excerpted from SOULCRAFT: Crossing Into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche by Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., New World Library, $16.95, Trade Paperback, September 2003, www.newworldlibrary.com, Toll-free-Ordering: 1-800-972-6657 Ext. 52

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email — soulcraft@animas.org

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