Relationship advice is usually focused on trying to cultivate more of a feeling of love that comes and goes rather than on waking up to your essence of love that is always there no matter what. It might seem counter-intuitive to focus on something that can only be found and experienced within when it looks like the issues are without involving two people not just oneself, but ultimately any experience of upset we experience comes from within.

It is the ultimate in empowerment, freedom, and liberation to see that what causes our internal experiences arises from our own thoughts and not what is happening outside of us. I had a question recently about how can this be true in abusive relationships. When someone is screaming at you or hitting you, how can your experience be coming from within?

Where else can it come from? 

We make sense of what is happening to us. Each person has their own experience based on the meaning they make of it. I remember Linda Pransky sharing about working with a client who was hesitant to admit that she was happy to stay in the relationship with her husband even though he hit her occasionally. She did not want to leave him and did not need his behavior to change. She said if he had an affair that would be something different. She would be out of there right away. Linda, on the other hand, felt that she would be able to get over her husband George having an affair much more easily than George hitting her.

I want to be adamantly clear I am not condoning any form of abuse. I am not saying anyone should stay in an abusive situation. I encourage anyone who is experiencing those circumstances to reach out for support and get the help they need to be safe.

Without condoning abuse, I am saying that our experience comes from within. 

We each have a subjective experience that moves through us. It is determined by the thoughts we identify with and the meaning we make. 

If you want to stay in your relationship and you want to have a deeper experience of love within your relationship it is helpful to know that the deeper feeling of love has nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with you experiencing your True Nature more fully. It looks like the other person causes or creates this experience, but it is just the result of the illusion of separation slipping away when we are open-hearted and connected with a state of consciousness that transcends differences.

This is how we all feel when we fall in love. We fall out of our concepts of right and wrong and drop into the present moment and experience who we are more fully. Because we focus our gaze on a person it looks like we have fallen in love with them, but more accurately we have simply fallen into love. Anything we look at from that state of mind we love. Not because we love what we perceive, but because we experience the truth that we are love in that moment. It is not personal. We experience the impersonal state of love that is everything. I remember someone saying to me when they were in this state how much love they felt for the street sign they could see out of the window. They weren’t in love with the sign. They were just experiencing the reality of love and the sign fell into their gaze.

Then we think we have fallen out of love when we reidentify with our personal thinking. We make up separation. We live in an alternate reality that is no longer timeless and eternal, but temporary and transitory. We no longer feel infinite, but limited. We don’t see the perfection in the moment. We remember our ideas of right and wrong. We fall back into our constructed reality and experience the consequences of that. Then think we need to find someone else to fall in love with.

Seeing how we do this is the best relationship remedy out there.

If you need a love potion, know the difference between drinking from the infinite well of your inner being and drinking from the finite resource of the well of your personal ideas.

Knowing the difference allows you to know what direction you are looking in. Are you looking in the direction of your personal experience and justifying it and protecting it, or are you looking in the direction of who you really are, where there is no me and you — just love?

All relationship challenges result from identifying with what is personal as real. 

You hurt my feelings! I am hurt!

You are insensitive! I am wronged!

You are unkind! I am damaged!

You are wrong! I am right!

You are selfish! I am your victim!

You are bad! I am good!

This all happens in the realm of the personal where we decide what is right and wrong and who is good and bad. We suffer from this limited perspective and try to find ways to feel better in this everchanging terrain. How do we experience love in the realm of the personal? Unfortunately, there is no answer to this. That is why communication techniques and strategies will always fall short. You can say very nicely I am right and you are wrong. You can try to understand why someone thinks they are right and you are wrong. You can delve into the content of differences with a good attitude, but you will not find love there.

The love couples want to experience is only ever going to be found within. When the heart opens, as it naturally does, we fall into love. We drop into our innate state of love. Then we look at our partner, and we love them. They are still the same person we thought was an annoying asshole a second ago, but from the experience of love within ourselves, we love, we accept, we drop our judgments, we have compassion and empathy. This is not a skill. This is not a technique. This is who we are.

The only remedy any relationship needs is for just one person in the relationship to remember the truth of who they are. 

How do you do that?

That is like asking, “How do you be you?”

You already are love. Are you looking in the direction of what is true and real rather than in the direction of the ideas that change like the wind? 

If you want to have a deeper experience of love and intimacy in your relationship fall into the love that is your true nature. Look in that direction. Forget about your partner and what you think is wrong with them. Forget about yourself and what you think is wrong with you. Forget about the issues you think exist between the two of you. Let all of that go. Surrender any righteousness you want to hold onto and see what is left. See what that does for your experience in your relationship and let me know.

Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their full potential. She is a transformative coach, leadership consultant, a regular blogger for Thrive Global, and author of the short-read Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1) available on Amazon. 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. She is also the founder of The Soul-Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality, and the Teachings of Sydney Banks. You can 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.