Stephen Levine - Embracing the Beloved: Relationship as a Path of Awakening

Also by Stephen Levine

Grist for the Mill (with Ram Dass)

A Gradual Awakening

Meetings at the Edge

Who Dies?

Healing into Life and Death

Guided Meditations: Explorations and Healings

First Anchor Books Edition, February 1996

Copyright 1995 by Stephen and Ondrea Levine

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday in 1995.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Quatrain 1246 and The Question from Open Secret: Versions of Rumi, copyright 1984 by John Moyne and Coleman Banks, reprinted by permission of Threshold Books, RD4 Box 600, Putney, Vermont 05346.

Excerpts from The Kabir Book by Robert Bly, copyright 1971, 1977 by Robert Bly. Copyright 1977 by The Seventies Press. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levine, Stephen, 1937
Embracing the beloved: relationship as a path of awakening / Stephen and Ondrea Levine.
p. cm.
1. Spiritual life. 2. Interpersonal relationsReligious aspects. 3. Levine, Stephen1937 4. Levine, Ondrea. I. Levine, Ondrea. II. Title.
BL624.L47 1995 94-19871
158.2dc20

Ebook ISBN9780307754905

www.anchorbooks.com

v3.1_r1

F EW RECOGNIZE the enormous power of relationship as a vehicle for mutual healingphysical, emotional and spiritual. Or the power of the true heart to awaken us from the emotional trance that relationships sometimes induce. Or the possibilities of seeing our beloved as the Beloved.

This is not a book about how to make nice in relationship. This is about using relationship as a means for profound inner growth. Indeed, much in this book deals with embracing the pained mind that just wants to make niceto maintain safe territorycowering in the corner, unwilling to engage that which keeps us frightened and absent. This is about cultivating a relationship where the mind turns easy and the heart bursts into flame. This is about the enlightenment of relationship.

This book approaches relationship as spiritual practice. It is a merging of the techniques for clearing the mind and opening the heart. It offers the possibility of a healing relationship. A conjoining on the path toward the heart where the wounds of the past and the confusion of the present are received in mercy and awareness. A relationship that brings one wholly into the present, that allows one to complete their true nature.

This is about how to use relationship as an aid in the exploration of consciousness and the development of a mindfulness and heartfulness that can provide level after level of insight. And perhaps presents a rare possibility of something deeper in each connecting with something greater in both in a mystical union.

We do not mean to imply that relationship is the only way or even a better way than the deeply committed solitary journey of a seeking heart. Indeed, what is being shared here is applicable to a much wider circle of relationship than just our pair bonding. Each walks a solitary path even with another beside them.

What is offered here is survival practice at the edge of the flat world. It challenges us to take one more step. To go beyond safe territory, to go into the vastness. To exceed our fear of falling. To watch the minds fear that if it takes one more step nothing will be there to stay its fall. And to realize that in taking that amazing step into space, we have wholly entered our lifethe exploration of our original naturethat floats in the enormity just beyond our edge. And rather than fall, gently we rise, letting go of our suffering, recognizing that only our fear creates gravity and the heaviness around the heart.

Thus, when we hear the statistics that fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, we are not frightened or depressed. Instead, something deep within is reaffirmed that perhaps half of those who get married today may be there for their beloved on their deathbed. Half of the people who marry may be together the rest of their lives! The glass is half full, and theres enough there for all of us. To small mind, fifty percent of life doesnt work. To big mind, even the half available is grace.

And when we discover that relationship can be a spiritual practice as powerful as any, combining the explorations of the body, mind and heart into a single practice, there may develop, at first for moments and then days or even years, an implacable connectedness and psychic interbeing. This mystical union is the fruit of a conscious, committed relationship.

Such relationships are rare and worth all we can give. They arrive on their own schedule. In the beginning they require all you have. As they ripen, they necessitate all you are.

Although this book is written in the first person, it is only the first person singularity of the record keeper. Most of this book, based on years of experimentation and exploration, is derived from notes taken during investigative exchanges between Ondrea and I as our commitment to the manuscript forced us to put into language the intuitive, sometimes prelinguistic, deep inner workings of our process together. We learned a great deal from formalizing our process for the use and possible benefit of others.

The way Ondrea and I work is to brainstorm on a topic and allow our minds to explore its warp and woof. Then we encourage the heart to echo it on paper. Then we eat and digest it. And see what comes up!

The pronoun I is so often employed because Stephen transcribes, like Ganesha from Vishnu, the mutual experience of their tandem exploration. The I who writes this (on a good day) is only a messenger from the heart of that collaboration.

When we were first searching for a term to describe our collaborative process we explored the term tandem, but rejected it when the dictionary defined it as one individual leading another. But like two climbers on a single rope, one often precedes the other and supports their progress. And since one can never tell on any given morning who will be a bit lighter or clearer that day, tandem has become more acceptable to us.

In truth, on any given days climb, I need only look to the side to see Ondrea navigating the same rough outcropping. Most often the rope hangs slack between us.

I

A HEALING CONVERGENCE

This book is not meant to be read in only a linear manner. It often offers an experiential process. It is as much poetry as prose. Absorbed phrase by phrase, image by image, it allows healing to enter the heart, the mind, the body