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The Yoga of Dating

Happiness | Lifestyle

There is a sacred dance that doesn’t often get categorized as such—the dance of finding a life partner. Because it is just another part of life, it is easy to marginalize relationships into the corners of simple obligation, dismissing its value with qualifiers such as “ it’s just something we do,” rather than to let it assume its proper place in our lives.

Connecting with another human being is a timeless, indiscriminate, border-transcending tradition that is truly spectacular—an intimate experience where human beings shed pretensions, call into question egoist tendencies, and commit to partnership.

When we say ‘yes’ to relationship, when we say yes to a person standing across from us in any place where long-term engagement of relationship exists, what are we really engaging in?

What Is a Relationship?

It is love and living, sacrifice and service, and a little bit about survival, but more so, relationship is a spiritual path—a commitment to an unexpected process of deep self-discovery. To stand in relationship is to be laid bare—as if on an island left with nothing save a lone suitcase.

In that suitcase we find the contents of our personality, everything from the elements we choose to own to those we vehemently deny, and it being an island, there is nowhere to go—nowhere to hide. If we can stand in equanimity as the contents of who we are rises to the surface in the face of our partner, if we can own everything about who we are, then we can transcend the story of I to become the book of We.

Relationship exists for a reason. Together, in a partnership where each person commits to looking intently at oneself, commits to awareness, there is born a seed that holds the key to the universe—the unwavering recognition that we are the same; naked, vulnerable with emotion, subject to the same influences as the next person, and ultimately wanting nothing more than to love and be loved.

Saying Yes To The Process

If we can say yes to this process, if we can say yes to our demons as wholeheartedly as we can to our smiles, then the partnership will become more than we could have imagined. It takes humility. It takes responsibility. It takes tenderness and forgiveness and compassion.

There is a romance cliché that illuminates this truth if considered properly: “being in love is losing oneself in another.” Perhaps, that’s just it. When we say ‘yes’, when we stand in love and in relationship, could it be we’re also saying “goodbye.”

Goodbye to everything that is simply a fraction of what’s real and true and great; goodbye to the “me” that I thought was We.

It is becoming more evident that our attention is required in all areas of our lives—nothing about our human existence should be taken for granted. Relationship offers us another opportunity for approaching life in a mindful, aware manner—an opportunity to align our purpose with our actions.

This is the yoga of dating.

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