August 31, 2020
For the SPIRITUAL MASTER SRI PREM BABA, RELATIONSHIPS and MARRIAGE are the school for SELF-KNOWLEDGE
According to a survey done by the Association of Notaries Public of Brazil – which is an association who unities all kinds of formal documentary services and agreements such as real state, divorce, will and all others – there was an increase in the number of divorces during the pandemic in Brazil: 18.7% only between May and June. This information generates a greater concern for people regarding the theme of marriage.
“Relationships are the great learning tool we have in this life. I consider that if life is a school, relationships are its university”, analyzes Prem Baba, a teacher and spiritual master who has experienced and studied a lot about life. Author of several books, including Love and Be Free – The basis for a New Society, Prem Baba teaches that relationships allow us to access a learning that would not be possible to access otherwise. “We learn about humility, acceptance and forgiveness. We learn to deal with frustration and loss, sadness and anger, jealousy and possessiveness. And also how to deal with our fears. ”
Romantic relationships are like the cell of the society. Prem Baba adds that you cannot expect anything from a society in which children are generated in the midst of relations based on wars, jealousy and possessiveness. “The biggest challenge for human beings, regardless of religion, nationality or social class, is how to relate to each other in a constructive way, how to relate affectionately to someone you love without hurting yourself and without hurting the other. We forgot how to make this happen”, believes Prem Baba.
Love, in Prem Baba’s point of view, is the universal solvent for all evil. “It’s the medicine for this critical moment that we are going through. And I speak of love in all its dimensions: compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, etc.”, he points out. The spiritual leader recalls that throughout history much has been said, but little has been experienced about love. “Over the past 10,000 years, I see a sea of blood, a lot of fear, hatred and rare experiences of selflessness love”.
The final test in the university of relationships, teaches Prem Baba, is to let the other completely free, even to not love us if they cannot or don’t want to. “If we understand marriage as an instrument of growth and expansion of potential in every way, including our capability to love, inevitably the final exam is to wish that the other shines, regardless of what is going to happen to us”, explains Prem Baba.
And why is it so difficult to let the loved one be free? The spiritual master claims that this need for exclusive love is developed by the human being still as a child. “The child develops the ego, whose nature is to want exclusive love. But we are here evolving towards the greater awareness. This expansion implies maturing to the point of giving up the need of receiving exclusive love”, pinpoints Prem Baba. “We need to learn to deal with frustration, to feel the sadness of not being loved and not forcing the other to love us,” he adds. “Because that’s where lies the root of the war, the game of accusations. One of the roots of human suffering is to force others to love us when they cannot. ”
To explain this need for exclusive love, the teacher explores the concept of the ego formation in the child. In short, he says that the child arrives in the world, and that this is a natural characteristic of the human being, but that, little by little, the child starts learning to be jealous, possessive and learns to hate. And then ends up forgetting their loving nature.
“They develop the need to want to receive exclusive love, which makes them dependent on the other. They believe that happiness comes from outside, that they need to receive it”, describes Prem Baba. “Their life is dedicated to developing skills to force others to give them what they feel they need. They loose their connection with the source and with this pure love that has been forgotten. ”
In the point of view of the spiritual master, the challenge is how to unlearn to hate. “Love is already there, but how to remove the layers of anger acquired over time? How to overcome emotional need? How to stop being insecure? How to get beyond jealousy? How to overcome possessiveness?”, he asks.
The spiritual leader answers all these questions with one single word: self-knowledge. And Prem Baba proposes a method for this journey. The first step is to become aware of the limitations and existence of the feelings: jealousy and possessiveness. “Gradually, try to make a cause and effect relationship. Where does it come from? Why is it manifesting in this way? Where did it start? And, slowly, you will learn that what happens is an enchantment with a story that you told yourself, or that you were told about”, he reveals.
The scholar invites you to a moment of reflection. “Pay attention to what I’m saying: you told yourself that you are jealous. You’ve told (or have been told) that you have anger, that you’re insecure. And you became enchanted with this story. And what I’m teaching you now is: wake up from that spell.” And he continues: “Make a reflection with me. Who are you really? Are you that person who is jealous? Are you that person who is so afraid of life, who is so insecure? Who said that you need to tie the other to the bedpost in order to feel more confident in your marriage?”
By Prem Baba’s suggested method, the idea is that the person identifies the enchantment, understands that it’s a constructed belief and that it does not correspond to reality. “I start showing, little by little, that in fact this is not you, it’s just a belief that was built and you got identified with that belief. I call it an enchantment, an enchantment with your own history”, explains the spiritual master. “After identifying the spell, it’s necessary to get in touch with the feelings that are somehow keeping your identification with it. And then you start freeing yourself, you start letting go, until little by little you can really stop identifying yourself with it”.
In his experience, the professor says that the greatest fear of all is perhaps the one of exclusion. “The fear of exclusion can include betrayal and rejection, because we were possibly abandoned, rejected and humiliated. And these imprints are still in our system”, says Prem Baba. “We all carry wounds that were generated by lack of love, generated by these shocks of exclusion and abandonment. As a result, we simply continue to reproduce and reproduce”.
Marriage is one of the examples of the feelings described by Prem Baba that is based on this mechanical repetition. For him, this type of relationship is based on the need for dominance. “It’s on this mechanical repetition that what I call the old marriage is based, which is basically an institution built based on a collective thought strengthened by culture, religion and unconscious impulses. In fact, it’s based on the feelings I am describing: the need for dominance, for control. It’s a way to satisfy neediness, to relieve fear and loneliness”, he highlights.
“Marriage is just an instrument. In order to really overcome these feelings of abandonment, it takes a personal work of self-development”, guarantees the spiritual master. In this way, he proposes a new model of marriage. “The idea is for you to comprehend that the other is a mirror that helps you to see yourself,” says Prem Baba.
For this new conformation of marriage to really happen, there are some basic ingredients: partnership, complicity and intimacy. “The two need to be holding hands, looking in the same direction. There is no space for secrets in the new marriage. It takes transparency and honesty. Self-responsibility is also necessary to be able to overcome the difficulties that arise within relationships”, pinpoints Prem Baba. “Only in this way it’s possible to avoid the blaming game that comes out of insecurities: the addiction that our happiness depends on the other.”
As noted earlier, the life scholar bets on relationships as an instrument to awaken potentials and achieve the main thing in life: self-realization. For him, every type of relationship offers an opportunity for growth. “My idea is to try to illuminate the darkest points that comes up in human relationships and offer practical solutions, which include how to deal with the difficulties that arise, how to move from suffering to joy, how to move from this old model of marriage to the new model of marriage”, he clarifies.
Prem Baba believes that it’s only possible to be well with someone if you are well with yourself. “Many times we can’t bear our own selves, but we want the other to put up with us. Sometimes, we can’t stand ourselves, but we believe that the other has the obligation to tolerate us”, he ponders. For the spiritual master, part of the process of unveiling love is being alone. “Sometimes the remedy is to be alone in order to be able to deal with certain feelings, overcome fears and deficiencies until we are in the position to enter the university again (in relationships)”.
The scholar of life distinguishes three principles of human consciousness: sex, Eros and love. And he clarifies how each of these principles operates within the person and in their interaction with other people.
“Sex is an instinctive and biological impulse; it’s the search for fusion through bodily encounter and it belongs to the animal man. Eros is a psychic impulse; it’s what we know as passion, which is independent of sex and independent of love. Eros is a rapture and it’s where we experience the first notes of love”, teaches Prem Baba. “Love itself is a rare phenomenon on this planet. Love is to really want to see the other shine in a selflessness way. ”
The ideal is for the three principles to work together, but as the spiritual master observes, there have been distortions over time. “One of the main reasons for distortion is the repression of sexuality. It has created pornography, which has created promiscuity, which has created exactly the need for domination of the other in order to satisfy sexual impulses that were repressed at some point, ”he adds.
In Prem Baba’s words, the name of this distortion is lust. “It’s when you use your sexual energy to have dominion over the other, to make the other a slave that meets your whims and demands. You don’t see the other, you just want to satisfy your needs”, he highlights. “This distortion has been created over time and I am proposing a cure. To integrate sexuality, eroticism and love, it’s necessary to look directly at the distortions that are within you and that create suffering and unhappiness in your relationships. The goal is to Love and Be Free”.
