Navigating Relationships as spiritual people or yogi’s.

Today I’m contemplating the teachings of the Sufi mystic G.I .Gurdjieff who’s work you may be familiar with - does The Fourth Way ring any bells?

He talks about Internal and External Considering. I’ll give some definitions a little down the track, but primarily these two phrases apply to navigating our relationships from a spiritual perspective.

Boundaries seems to be a bit of a buzz word at the moment, maybe that’s because I’ve been reflecting on my relationships and how I often avoid relationships which reflects how disempowered I can feel 🥰. So for help I turned to the mystics, poets and sages I adore for some much needed support.

My beloved teacher and Guru asks me regularly, “how are your relationships Rabia?” I fry ( that’s a yogic term for my being, being cooked in a hot pot - its being in the heat) These moments when your teacher, mentor, friend, lover, boss, call you out are times when you “feel the fry” but they are also great moments.

So, back to relationships, we all have someone in our lives, the challenging person at work, our partners and for some of us, this is not number one partner, no issue there, as I for one know that what showed up for me in my early relationships certainly shows up even now. We’ve all come a long way, this is not about guilting you or myself.

But I think it’s important for us as spiritual people as yogi’s to take our yoga off the mat as they say and into the world or to integrate the various parts of ourselves so we become a little more harmonious or balanced, why else are we practising?

To help us, I’ve turned to a book I love, ‘Questions and Answers with Swami Shankaranada, on living with awareness’. Swamiji speaks about Internal and External considering. He says, ‘Internal considering involves worrying about what people will think of you. You might get upset because you’re not receiving enough credit or you believe people don’t like you, you may feel overlooked, you may have thoughts like, ‘what about me?’ or ‘no one listens to me’ This kind of thinking, places your perceived needs at the forefront of your interactions with others.

Then there is External considering, Swamiji writes, ‘externally considering involves understanding the other person and responding to their needs without worrying about yourself. It doesn’t mean you’re always agreeing with the other person. It's about understanding their needs and responding without worrying about yourself. You have to orient yourself spiritually not socially and you have to free yourself from your own agendas, emotions, and needs and truly see the other person. We want to speak to the other person’s understanding and respond to what they need. 

I want to offer an example from my own life, I have plenty, but then I found an insightful story that involved the great meditation teacher, Baba Muktananda of Ganeshpuri India. But before I share that I wanted to talk a little about puja, which I was taught in a relationship counselling session.

The word for worship in Hindi is puja.

In India you worship a deity by putting some items on a tray and waving a light, this is puja. Another way of saying to externally consider someone is that you do puja to them. You hold yourself in a place of devotion where you acknowledge the light in them, the beauty in them, the Shakti, the higher Self in them. For me this has shown up in times when my relationships have been super difficult and I’ve thought to myself, in some way beneath all of this maya, we are the same and at a deeper level we want the same thing. We want love, we want light. And I love when I wave that light to myself, I love when I see ‘my people’ waving that light to themselves, I love when we acknowledge that light in each other, puja is such a powerful profound practice and I do believe as yogi’s we have a divine duty to always keep love flowing to externally consider those in our lives.

In India, you go to a saint, a powerful yogi, for a blessing. It can be for material blessings as well as spiritual blessings. Whatever you want, the saints are considered universally powerful, you can go to a saint or a temple and get as many blessings as you can. 

One day Baba Muktananda was giving darshan when a little old lady came up. One of the great wisdoms of the Indian tradition is the knowledge that every person has to approach the Truth, the Divine, the Goddess or God in their own way. There are many different natures.

What is right for me, won’t be right for you, and what is right for you won’t necessarily be right for me. One of the paths, the path of devotion says that you can approach the Truth, the Divine, the Goddess or God in a variety of different ways, depending on your attitude or nature. You can approach the Truth, the Divine, the Goddess or God, a few well known bhava’s are; as the lover, as the friend or mother.

So the little old lady had the attitude that she was Baba’s mother.

Recounting the scene, Swamiji wrote, ‘Almost everyone else at that time in the ashram community cowered and cringed in front of Baba, I could barely stammer a word when I saw him. But this woman marched right up to him, grabbed his knee and started lecturing him. It was all in Hindi or Marathi and I didn’t understand a word of it, but the body language was clear. She was lecturing him. In a very intimate, loving way, and I thought, I know that attitude - she thinks she is his mother.  And sure enough, I looked at Baba and he was acting like a child. She was pushing him with her hand, spanking his knee and haranguing him about something’. I don’t know what she said but I imagined their dialogue: ‘Did you take your vitamins? Did you drink your juice? You know you are working too hard - you need some rest,  you are not getting enough sleep.’ That is what I thought and then Baba was all, ‘Come on Ma, look at all these people, I am the Guru and you are really embarrassing me!

Swamiji goes on, ‘I watched with great delight and joy. And I saw that because it was so natural to her, to be in that bhava, she was fearless - this was not some conceptual idea. Her bhava was of the mother. So I wondered, what’s going to happen here? Even though she’s his mother, she also saw him as the Guru, she’ll want a blessing. And you can’t ask your kid to give you a blessing. So at the end of their darshan, she grabs Baba’s hand and pats her own head and went away. I looked up at Baba and he was delighted, laughing with pleasure.’

Baba, didn’t think who are you coming to me the Guru, he externally considered her and flowed with her need, he truly saw her devotion and love for the Guru. And after giving him some motherly love she did puja to him, she acknowledged him as her Guru and received her blessing. It was such a beautiful exchange. 

How are you with flowing with another’s need?

Does this teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff erk you in some way or do you feel curious about it?

Maybe ask yourself, how can I bring this teaching into my life and is there someone in my life I could externally consider, more who I could offer puja, who I could understand and consider more deeply?

G.I. Gurdjieff says,

Internal considering never,

External considering always.

OM OM OM

The light in me bows to the light in you.

Rabia

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