three marriages

I am so enjoying doing yoga with the couple I am working with. Private yoga lessons are a great way for me to contribute to a couple's relationship and to each of them as an individual. Yoga teaches presence and mindfulness in the body: skills that can help with the balance between engagement with the other and centeredness in the self. David Whyte just wrote a book called The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work,Self and Relationship. In it he talks about marriage as it is traditionally thought of being expanded to include two more marriages. The second one he discusses is the marriage to meaningful work. He talks about the importance of having work that is more than a job. Work can give us a greater sense of our own purpose in much the same way that an authentic relational partnership has the potential to do. The third marriage
is the marriage to our inner self. The self that we have to slow down to listen to. Maybe we even have to be silent to hear its voice. It's the self that when we pay attention to it and live our lives according to it, creates life being so much more than merely existing day to day. It is so easy to fill up my time with work, activities and relationships. At the end of the day, even though I've done yoga and meditated, it is possible to have gone through the motions and neglected to focus on the spiritual core that lives inside me. The third marriage and the quality of it determine the space available within us to participate genuinely in the other two marriages.Whyte posits that the models of our parents influence how we see partnerships and work. He also says that there is an innate drive within all humans to seek out engagement in work and relationships. I believe there is also an inner directing force of self-realization that moves all of us toward the third marriage. We may or may not pay attention to that force. We may or may not focus our attention on it. Yet it is still there calling us home. It asks us to be quiet and listen, it asks us to relax our bodies and our minds and surrender to it. Often when we don't listen, it gets a little more demanding. When I don't listen and don't rest I have often injured myself and I sometimes eat compulsively. What have you typically done? Do you get sick? Do you act out in some kind of addictive or compulsive behavior or other? What else do you do when your energy is firmly rooted away from being present with that still small voice? What are we running away from?
What are we so afraid of? I think our egoes are afraid of connection. When we are engaed and connected with ourselves, work and each other the ego fears its own death and moves us toward separation.
We become defensive, self-destructive and urgently busy.Mindfulness of this fear is the first step toward freedom. If I notice I am acting one-up with Gary and instead of getting lost in my story of what's wrong with him, I soothe myself with my own presence, I am honoring my desire for an equal partnership with him. I can then also reconize my intention to use the desire to criticize him as a signal that I need my own attention.I am experiencing some progress in this area. When i give myself my own attention and center myself in my inner child care center i can cop to my self-righteous criticism. That allows me to be softer and more open and to feel closer to and more trusting with Gary. He feels safe to be closer and more emotionally vulnerable when I am.
In practicing yoga with a couple I can support them with honoring their committment to a healthy partnership. Practicing yoga teaches people to honor themselves and to create healthy boundaries with other people. I want to do more yoga privates with more couples. It is such a rich combination of all the things I came here to do. It supports me in all the three marriages, thus I can support others in reimagining all of them.
Where are you in your three marriages? Where would you like to be?
Is there a way to lovingly accept where you are and open to what the next step might be?