The Judge isn’t real, either
When two people are together and they have the conscious idea of using their relationship to wake up, then they need to be generous with each other. They need to be willing to allow each other to have their faults and not continually go into a power struggle over them. Many theorists say that “the power struggle” is one of the normal stages of development for couples, but I have found that being able to have some awareness of your own patterns, so you know when you’re getting triggered, can make it a lot easier to go through the inevitable glitches that occur when you are in an intimate process with someone.
A relationship that is being used for awakening is going to have a lot more intention built into it then a relationship where people are just floating along and reacting to each other. For example, if the couple is married, one of their vows to each other might be that they are in it to wake up together. It’s got to be stated and it’s got to be near the top of the list.
One of the most difficult things that I’ve confronted in relating to my wife, as well as my previous partners, is that I have a very severe “inner New England judge” who criticizes me, and those I’m most intimate with, very harshly. This judge seems to be involved in almost every fight I wind up having with my wife. Through the years, I’ve come to learn that he is attempting to protect me from real or imagined insults, or he’ll show up when I’m feeling that my wife is not present for me in the way that I need her to be. This awareness does not necessarily keep the judge from impacting my mood for, sometimes, days on end. It’s just recently that I’ve come to a deeper understanding that the judge is “just a figment of my imagination”. If I can catch him when he’s just starting to come over me, and give him some love and attention, like a scared little child, then I don’t have to contract in the same way I have in the past. There’s lots more space for me and those I’m close to. Part of what seems to be allowing this insight to serve me now, is that I’ve come to understand that even if there’s some truth in what the judge is pointing out, the way he presents it is just poison for the relationship. These insights seem to be helping me work with the judge so he’s not calling the shots. What a relief! My insights are always challenged under stress, as “under stress, we regress”, so I’ll let you know how it goes.
