What Reduces Suffering In Relationships?
I love hearing from my clients past and present how the understanding Sydney Banks shared is impacting their lives. My client gave me permission to share this part of a text I received last week:
…something I’ve learned from you that I’m counting on in this situation is knowing our moods shift and eventually migrate to well being. This is shitty and not fun but at least it won’t and can’t last forever.
That is music to my ears. Understanding the fluid nature of experience and recognizing we will always come back to our true nature of wellbeing is so reassuring especially when we are suffering. When we remember that suffering is subjective and transitory and it is not who we are, it is just an experience we have, this makes it is so much easier to be in the experience with less fear and attachment to feeling differently. The main source of suffering is resisting what is.
I have had a sore lower back this past week. I moved the dog crate by myself rather than asking Angus for help. It isn’t that heavy, but it was awkward to lift. I tweaked my back in the process. At times I have been suffering from the pain, and at other times it is only in the background of my awareness taking up a minimal amount of my attention. No matter what my experience is, I know it is not a fixed state. My body is doing what it needs to do to heal. It is giving me useful information, and I am listening to my intuition regarding stretching and exercising to keep the blood flowing to that region.
Whether it is physical pain or emotional pain, the understanding shared by Syd Banks is helpful. It points to the subjective nature of our human experience and the truth of who we are beyond our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This helps us to be with the passing human experience more lightly and have our foundational reference point in that which does not change — who we really are. The experiencer, not the experience.
As the experiencer, we open up to a space of infinite possibility where peace, happiness, and love reside.
Syd Banks taught there is no methodology required to get to that space. We don’t need to earn it. There is a direct path that only requires inward reflection. It is much easier to look within when we understand that no thing outside of ourselves can give us happiness. This applies to the forms of people, places, belongings, thoughts, and practices. Happiness does not come from form. It is the inner state that we drop into that is independent of the circumstances we are in and how the world of form looks in the moment.
This is the most freeing understanding I have experienced, and I know I just have a glimpse of it. But that glimpse has made my life so much lighter and more enjoyable. That is available for us all and more if we look in the direction of what is true and unchanging.
The experiences of well-being, peace, contentment, happiness are all qualities of our true nature. When we experience them we are experiencing the deepest part of ourselves. This cannot be broken, changed or limited.
When we lose touch with those experiences it is not because the true self is diminished. We are simply more caught up in the changing world of form and attached to specific outcomes. This is nothing to worry about. We all do it. We all suffer at times. And as my client mentioned, we always bounce back.
The capacity for our true nature to break through the innocent limitations we live in is so hopeful. As Syd Banks said, “We are only ever one thought away.” Knowing this makes holding a position of limitation much less appealing. When righteousness is the source of suffering it is easier to let it go and allow the opening of the spiritual heart to occur.
We all want that. No matter how attached we are to our position and the resulting suffering, we all want the beautiful experience of wellbeing that bubbles up inside of us as the heart and mind opens more fully to the truth of who we are.
Syd Banks is not the only person who pointed in this direction. There are many others who recognize the direct path to experiencing the truth of our being. What matters is are you looking in that direction? Are you recognizing what is available to you as you let go of all attachments to wellbeing residing outside of you?
This is a path of learning and waking up. I forget all the time and think my happiness lies outside of me in something or someone, including myself, being different. And then I remember. It doesn’t work that way. The field of love is infinite. We are all that field.
The feeling of that field is our guide. There is wisdom in the feeling. There is guidance available. It is pointing us home to who we are, and we get the blessing of experiencing being home. We get the gift of consciousness to being awake to being home, and with this blessing and gift comes the full range of experience that includes all kinds of other experiences too.
That is when it is helpful to remember that experience is transitory. It is not who you are. Look to the experiencer and what lies within. And bring that to life in the world of form.
So what reduces suffering in relationships?
Remembering you are love. You are loved. You are loving. That is who you are!
I could say, “Don’t forget it.” But you will and that is okay. You will always remember. You will always migrate back to wellbeing!
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.
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Rohini Ross
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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