“Creating Fulfilling Relationships” by Michael Mirdad

One of my newest projects and books is on relationships, creating fulfilling relationships. Obviously, this is a topic that intrigues a lot of people. iI's a big-selling topic. It's one of those that everybody seems to be challenged with. Every newsstand seems to have another magazine, another article, telling us how to improve upon our relationships, and even from a spiritual standpoint, we would think, well once you're spiritual, once you're getting your life together, you're almost guaranteed to have healthier relationships. But actually,

it's sometimes the opposite is happening. A lot of us that are in the spiritual growth movement as it were still find ourselves to be struggling with relationships. In fact, sometimes the more spiritual you become, the more contrasted your relationships become.

In fact, life your jobs many things become more contrasted because you're sort of waking up your sort of coming to life and you realize how in some sense no disrespect meant but how dead other parts of your life have been so my feedback when I've done and I've done 30-something years of counseling and feedback with individuals and couples on the topic of relationships is as follows first of all how do you expect to have a healthy holistic relationship without first having a relationship with spirit some sort of healthy relationship with the source of all life the source of love so

the first component to healthy relationship has to be the relationship with spirit and that's done really through prayer and meditation if I were to name two key components secondly we have to have a healthy relationship with ourselves and for that to happen I refer to in a word the healthiest relationship with self comes from responsibility but I'll break it into two words like I did the relationship with spirit it would be first of all you have to have some form of healing self-healing some ability to access you you're inside know thyself

some form whether it's counseling or whatever else you use there's a some form of getting to know yourself your frailties your issues whatever it may be if you don't do that that stuff that you have buried inside is going to be taken out on other people therefore you can't expect to call it fulfilling relationships so you have to have some form of self healing and secondly bound Reese healthy boundaries now some people assume boundaries would be a topic that would come under the third relationship relationship with others because there's

three relationships you have one with spirit one with self one with others but it isn't with others that we call that that we place the relationship of boundary issue we place it under the relationship with self because boundaries are established within you you have to determine first who you are in spirit and second therefore now that you know who you are what works for you and what doesn't work for you that's what boundaries are about so we have two components for a relationship with self then finally we have the relationship

with others and when there's so many things we can talk about in terms of building relationships with others but it really comes down to communication how can you have healthy relationship with others without healthy communication and then of course we have to have some form of connection intimacy affection the word would change depending on the type of relationship but connection whether it's in your parenting whether it's in your partnerships whether it's in the workforce connection is so important we

have to have healthy communication responsible communication but also we have to have very deep connection the ability to make eye contact the ability to listen the ability to share in a healthy way a responsible way so communication and intimacy or affection in our intimate partnerships of course random acts of kindness you know shoulder rubs deepening our connection and intimacy like Tantra or sacred sexuality deepening everything we do with spirit with ourselves and with others is really what assures of us of

having healthiest created a fulfilling rather fulfilling relationships now there are a couple of things that happen in the sessions that I do when I do counseling with a lot of people sometimes there are challenging questions people have which is the the ultimate is should I stay or should I go that comes up a lot people say I'm on the spiritual path i wish my partner would work on this or that the other i'm not the type that pulls around with you know just just the casual caught talk about things like a casual conversation

about how long should we stay in relationships is i would like to challenge people instead and say you if you're looking at a relationship and you can't imagine being there for 20 mores 10 more years five more years there's much there must be a problem why do you wince when you think of the job you have there might be a problem here now I'm not the type to say you should leave your relationship or your job certainly not prematurely so let me say it this way when people come to me and ask me whether they should stay or leave

a relationship first of all your relationships will not be complete without those three stages or levels of relationship secondly I'm saying you have to do the work inside yourself first if you know you've done all you can do in a relationship or a workplace or wherever you happen to be then maybe it is time for you to go but I'm definitely not the type to say to people stay forever or leave prematurely instead I ask people to be responsible sometimes and I've certainly had my fair share of conversations with people about

relationships and you can just tell when the lights are going on that if I ask you if you can't imagine being in a relationship or workplace whatever for another 20 years 10 years 5 years there might be a problem that needs to be looked at a problem that's a deeper one that you can't just really get go nauman and get by and expect things to work out so when i'm working with relationships i definitely don't tell folks to exit relationships and again not prematurely but have you done all you can do and when you know you've done your part when

you've gone to your partner and said you know in a very positive way I love this and I love that about our relationship how can we enhance this maybe we can look into couples counseling and so forth and your partner is absolutely disinterested shoots down everything you want to do or your workplace shoots down every one of your ideas everything you'd like to do including getting a raise at times when things aren't working out first remember it doesn't do you any harm to do some inner work around this as to why this might be happening some

soul level healing but I also recommend there is a point where you're allowed to draw the line and say I've tried everything that I really believe in my heart that I needed to do and sometimes there's too much water under the bridge there's a book called a course in miracles it's a book on creating sacred healthy relationships how to create a healthy relationship with self through our relationships with others by healing but even that book this book it's of the highest caliber of spiritual feedback on relationships and it still

has a point in there where it says sometimes there's too much water under the bridge so i'm not encouraging people to be impatient with your relationships but yes there are times when i say you don't need to tolerate going past your level of healthy boundaries god first not others God first then self than others and a lot of people confuse those levels and they go looking for God or self through others and that's reversing the proper order that's why we have unhealthy relationships in this world because people are looking for spirit

God you know or themselves through others it doesn't work that way the only way we have healthy relationships is when we get our somewhat intact a presence of spirit in us a healthy self and bring the gift of that to others others are not a place to act out your stuff that you feel you're missing it's a place to bring the gifts of what you've achieved in your relationship with God and self peace be with you