Rewilding Your Relationship — Even if You are Feeling Discouraged, Disheartened, or Desperate
Part 1
Start with yourself!
Angus and I work with many couples who are in committed relationships that have lost their spark. It is often described as living like roommates or having a business relationship. Sometimes these couples have very little conflict in their relationship, but they feel like they are coexisting. Other times there is high conflict at times that leads to polarization and periods of distance. Believe it or not, conflict is an attempt to connect and experience intimacy. These couples actually feel more hope than the couples that no longer have conflict in their relationship. They are still willing to go to bat to try and feel better. Unfortunately, these attempts are misguided and usually result in pain and suffering.
We believe that love can be rewilded in relationships. This doesn’t mean that the people in the relationship will or should stay together. It means that each person can be rewilded back to their natural state of love, feel the natural state of love in their relationship and make relationship decisions from that state of mind. Decisions made from a loving state of mind can be trusted. Decisions made from a reactive state of mind usually result in regret and course correction.
When helping an individual or a couple rewild their relationship back to its natural state of love we always start with the individual first. Most relationship counseling focuses on trying to fix the issues in the relationship dynamics. Strategies and techniques are taught to have more effective communication skills to try and ameliorate the painful relationship dynamics. The problem with this is that the state of mind of the individuals in the relationship is not taken into account or addressed. This sets couples up for failure because strategies and techniques require a stable state of mind in order to implement them effectively and when they are needed most usually one or both people in the relationship is anything but stable. When couples are not able to successfully use the strategies and techniques they often see that as meaning there is something wrong with themselves or the relationship or both. This is unfair because it is no one’s fault and it does not mean the relationship is hopeless. It just means that one or both parties weren’t in a clear enough state of mind to implement new skills.
Starting with you, even when the challenge is we, takes care of this. Rewilding your relationship begins with you finding your own wellbeing with things as they are in the relationship. This is profoundly empowering to experience that you have a space of innate peace of mind and wellbeing that cannot be touched or taken away from you no matter what your current circumstances are. Experiencing your “okayness” and authentic empowerment is key. This also means that only one person in the relationship needs to participate. We, of course, love it when couples rewild their relationships together, but it is not required. This is very freeing to not be limited by the state of mind of your partner. Your wellbeing and happiness are not dependent on them. They cannot hold you back from love.
Rewilding yourself back to your natural state of love does not require learning new skills or strategies. Instead, it is allowing yourself to come back to your natural state of love by getting present to yourself and listening deeply to the wisdom of your heart. When the mind gets quiet we can hear what the heart is saying. It might be saying it is time for self-care. It might be saying you need to rest. It might be saying it is time to cry and grieve. Allowing yourself to get present to yourself is key. Allowing yourself to fully feel your emotions is part of the rewilding. There is natural healing available in simply allowing our emotions to move through us without attaching a story to them and holding space for what wants to move to move.
Rewilding yourself means letting go of all of the painful shoulds you have used to tame and control yourself with the hope that is how you will feel good enough and be loved. They need to go. They need to be seen for the lies that they are. Your natural rewilded state is whole, pure, lovable, and good enough. Anyone or any thought that tells you differently is a lie. Your relationship needs you to see beyond these lies and misunderstandings so you can feel the truth in your heart.
The truth of your worthiness. The truth of your loveability. The truth of your value and importance. You need to know this. You need to take this in. We all forget at times, but you can remember. You can remember your wild nature that is beautiful and whole. You can return to the unconditioned state of mind that knows who you are without question. This is the direction to look in for rewilding yourself. It requires no one and no thing. All you need to do is to see the lies that tell you you are not enough and that you need to betray yourself to feel okay and to be loved. That can stop now. Not with a technique. Not with a strategy. Not with a new skill. Not with hard work. Simply with remembering the truth of who you are. You know it. It is there. Get quiet and listen to your heart. It will not lie to you, but you need to be listening. Start there.
Part 2 will be next week
Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their full potential. She is a transformative coach, leadership consultant, regular contributor to Thrive Global, and author of the short-read Marriage. You can get her free eBook Relationships here. Rohini has an international coaching and consulting practice based in Los Angeles helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. Rohini is the co-founder of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also subscribe to Rohini’s weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com. You can also follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and watch her Vlogs with her husband. To learn more about her work go to her website, rohiniross.com.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
Barbara Patterson
Scott Kelly
Barbara Patterson
Clare Dimond
Michael Neill
Rohini Ross
Elsie Spittle – The Soul of the Principles
Spiritual Facts 
Chip Chipman – The Simplicity of Syd’s Teachings
Dicken Bettinger – The Spiritual Nature of the teachings of Sydney Banks
Karen Vrdoljak
17.08.2020 at 12:56Good stuff thanks, Rohini 😊
Rohini
17.08.2020 at 13:14Thanks for writing, Karen! Glad you enjoyed it! Love, Rohini