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Sacred Relationships: A Guide to Authentic
Loving
By
Daniel Raphael, Ph.D.
This book
represents my work to understand the
dynamics of dysfunctional intimate and
familial relationships —with interpretations
that aid our emotional and spiritual growth.
Reviewers have commented that this book is a
good pastoral and counselor’s aid.
Availability:
Table of Contents:
Part 1 Entering the Spiritual Path
1 Basics of Getting on the Path
2 Will: The Forgotten Well of Personal Power
3 Evolving Our Consciousness: Achieving the
“I AM” State
4 Problems: A source of Soul Growth
Part 2 Healing the Heart
5 Living Consciously in the Moment
6 Overcoming Erroneous Beliefs
7 Getting to Forgiveness
8 Healing Co-Creatively
9 Learning to Love
Part 3 Creating Sacred Relationships
10 Making it Safe: The Ethics of Functional
Relationships
11 Building Sacred Trust
12 Understanding Fain and Disappointment in
Relationships
13 Discovering and Living with Your Ideal
Partner
14 Relationship Paradigms
15 When the Sacred Relationship Ends
16 Qualities, Values, and Skills of
Functional and Sacred Relationships
Afterword: An Educational Continuum for
Functional and Sacred Relationships
Excerpts:
Chapter 1
Basics
of Getting On the Path
The
purpose of this chapter is to uncover
the basic resources that support your
spiritual journey, as well as to point
out factors that can inhibit growth. In
addition, it provides an orientation to
all the lessons that follow. So let us
begin!
Chapter 2
Will:
The Forgotten Well of Personal Power
Will is
as important to the spiritual path as
love and forgiveness, for without the
use of will, neither love nor
forgiveness is even possible. We must
will to love and we must will to forgive
in order to grow spiritually. We must
will to energize our relationships to
create greater personal happiness and
social satisfaction. Without the
conscious use of our will to overcome
everyday difficulties, the growth of our
soul is hampered and restricted.
Chapter 3
Evolving Our Consciousness: Achieving
the “I AM” State
Three
states of existence unfold in the course
of our spiritual evolution: doing,
being, and I AM. Moving through these
stages of our spiritual evolution is
much like being athletes in training.
The early stages are tough, but the
accomplishments are visible. Later
stages require more concentration, but
the rewards are tremendous.
Chapter 4
Problems: A Source of Soul Growth
Why is
the journey on the spiritual path so
difficult? Why do so many problems get
in our way? Why do so many daily hassles
distract our attention from our
spiritual practices? What is the source
of the endless series of problems that
come into our life?
Solving problems allows us to break down
the boulders blocking our spiritual path
into gravel that will support our
journey. In the short run, doing this is
more difficult than simply avoiding our
problems. Yet in the long run,
confronting our problems as they arise
makes our spiritual journey far more
manageable.
Consciousness is needed in order to
accept and then derive lessons from our
problems. When difficult problems
arrive—and they always will—the
conscious spiritual student eagerly
asks, "What am I to learn from this?"
Chapter 5
Living
Consciously in the Moment
The
concept of living consciously in the
moment is one of the bedrock principles
of intentional, spiritual living. Being
conscious in the moment means being
continuously aware of ourselves
experiencing ourselves. It means being
intimately aware of our internal
reactions, feelings, and thoughts about
what is occurring. This awareness is
integral to the intentional use of will,
love, and forgiveness.
Chapter 6
Overcoming Erroneous Beliefs
The
fundamentals of this chapter involve
will, consciousness, and living
consciously in the moment. All three are
critical in the process of removing our
erroneous beliefs and overcoming our
emotional issues. We cannot learn to
accept ourselves—let alone fully love
ourselves—if we have not begun to heal
our emotional wounds and replace faulty
beliefs about ourselves with
constructive, healthy ones.
Before
discussing the practical steps needed to
overcome erroneous beliefs, let's
examine more closely how the mind
creates and harbors its beliefs.
Chapter 7
Getting
to Forgiveness
One of
the simplest but most difficult acts of
love and healing we can do in a
relationship is to forgive. Forgiving
provides us with a transformative
understanding of our tormentors. We come
to see them as not beneath us but as our
teachers, who bring our weaknesses to
our attention. Without them we would
never learn how we need to grow
spiritually.
Chapter 8
Healing
Co-Creatively
This
chapter could be entitled "Self-Healing
with Universal Energy" because cosmic
law allows us to use our own mind to
manipulate universal energy to heal
ourselves. But using only our mind has
an inherent flaw: Our mind will only
outform what we desire based on our
beliefs, which may be in error. Then our
efforts to heal ourselves will be
misguided. Co-creative healing, on the
other hand, involves the conscious and
intentional invitation to spiritual
beings of light—whether deities, angels,
or celestial guides and teachers—to
voluntarily participate with us in the
healing process. Spiritual beings of
light are able to manipulate universe
energy and manifest healing based on
beliefs that are far more consistently
aligned with the laws of God's universe
of light and love than our own. With
their participation, we can
co-creatively heal what we alone cannot.
Chapter 9
Learning to Love
Love is
at the core of spiritual mastery. It is
the most powerful qualitative element of
the spiritual journey. More than just a
quality, it provides the energy for the
journey. As we learn to love more
consistently, we progress faster. Soon,
living the journey and being love(ing)
become synonymous. Learning to be
love(ing) is the ultimate healing
practice.
Chapter 10
Making
It Safe: The Ethics of Functional
Relationships
This
chapter was originally designed for
workplace settings, but it also
describes the fundamentals for any
functional relationship. The use of the
ethical rules discussed here will help
any relationship become functional,
productive, and even enjoyable.
ELEMENTS OF A SAFE RELATIONSHIP
ENVIRONMENT
To lay
a firm foundation for building trust,
creating a safe relationship environment
is a must. There are several minimal
qualifications to support and maintain a
safe relationship, whether at work or in
a sacred relationship at home. Each of
these qualifications helps build
consistency and congruence so each
individual feels safe in the
relationship. These qualifications work
for both the receiver and the giver
because each person in the relationship
is always both.
Chapter 11
Building Sacred Trust
Trust
is fundamental to co-creating
productive, positive, constructive,
functional relationships, and is the
sacred ground of enduring partnerships.
It is obviously critical to know who to
trust and who not to trust, and how to
discern the difference. This ability to
discern can be developed consciously and
deliberately.
Trust
is one of the earliest
social-relationship ingredients that
develops in infants, and is central to
the emotional and social well-being of
people of all ages. The development of
trust in functional and sacred
relationships moves the participants
away from the innocent, naive trust of
infants to sacred trust that exists
through conscious awareness in a mature
relationship.
TRUST
EQUALS BEING SAFE
Let us
not mistake what trust is. Trust is the
assurance that we are safe. When our
safety is threatened, we should not
trust. When we consider our degree of
safety, we are actually evaluating our
situation in the moment; when we trust,
we extend the evaluation of our safety
into the future. The following story
illustrates the differences and
similarities between safety and trust.
Chapter 12
Understanding Pain and Disappointment in
Relationships
It may
seem odd that this chapter appears so
late in this manual since,
unfortunately, most people focus on the
misery in their relationship before
trying to discover and heal its
underlying problems. Pain, anguish, and
disappointment are only symptoms of
problems in a relationship. When we are
living consciously in each moment, the
appearance of pain and disappointment
should act like a ship's horn in the
fog, warning us to ask, "Why is this
unhappiness, pain, and disappointment in
my life?"
Chapter 13
Discovering and Living with Your Ideal
Partner
This
lesson incorporates many elements from
prior lessons, refrained in terms of
sacred relationships. Finding our
ideal—or what I call right and
perfect—partner takes in all parameters
of the previous chapters. A conscious
and intentional, functional and sacred
relationship embraces the totality of
this awareness and the skills taught in
this manual.
The title of this lesson may seem to
point to an impossible goal, but that
goal can be reached. It is much like the
placement of the last massive stone
block on top of Cheops pyramid: A lot of
work and the accomplishment of many
small goals had to occur before it was
possible. Finding your right and perfect
partner is in many ways like putting a
capstone on your spiritual journey.
Chapter 14
Relationship Paradigms
The
purpose of this chapter is to help you
examine different paradigms of
relationship so you can make more
conscious choices about the kind of
relationship you want and how you would
like it to evolve. You can then work
toward co-creating your partnership by
learning the beliefs, expectations,
values, and role interactions
appropriate to the paradigms you have
chosen. These then become part of your
developing expertise for living in the
partnership you have intentionally
designed.
Chapter 15
When
the Sacred Relationship Ends
This
chapter explains why and how sacred
relationships end. It will help prepare
you for this possibility, offer
suggestions on how to deal with it, and
help you to be aware of the signs that a
sacred relationship is over. It explains
that once you become a competent partner
in a sacred relationship, you may be
able to experience continued spiritual
growth only through another sacred
relationship or series of partners. This
is true for both partners, so there are
no victims and no perpetrators, only
beneficiaries and ambassadors of
spiritual evolution.
Chapter 16
Qualities, Values,. and Skills of
Functional and Sacred Relationships
The
foundation of functional and sacred
relationships is the set of qualities
and values the partners choose for their
partnership, plus the skills to fulfill
them. A successful relationship requires
the joint decision and commitment of
each partner to begin, plus the will,
courage, and perseverance to continue.
Learning to be in a sacred relationship
is like becoming an accomplished athlete
or musician. For every hour spent in
front of an audience, hundreds of hours
must be spent rehearsing and preparing.
Likewise, before meeting our right and
perfect partner, we must spend a great
deal of time and energy in preparation.
Fortunately, we can practice our
partnering skills in our other
relationships!
Afterword
An
Educational Continuum for Functional and
Sacred Relationships
This
manual would not be complete without a
discussion of children in the lives of
functional and sacred relationship
partners. As we have stated many times
throughout these lessons, our commitment
to be in sacred relationship is first
with ourselves. The integrity of that
commitment, however, directly extends to
our intention to nurture a conscious and
intentional sacred relationship with our
children, whether they are in our home
or with a former spouse. That commitment
includes the responsibility to
consciously teach our children sacred
relationship skills, values, and
qualities.
As a
final word, let's briefly examine the
need for relationship-skill training in
our children's lives, and suggest ways
that this can be incorporated as part of
a continuum of educational development
in our homes and in our schools.
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