You know, there's a very peculiar and often painful predicament that spiritually awakened people find themselves in when it comes to romantic relationships. They discover that the very awakening that has brought them so much clarity, so much peace, so much understanding about the nature of existence, has simultaneously made it extraordinarily difficult to find someone to share their life with.
And this isn't because there's something wrong with them.
It's because they've changed in a fundamental way that makes them incompatible with the way most people approach love and relationships. Let me explain what I mean. When you wake up spiritually, when you see through the illusions that most people live by, you stop playing certain games, you stop pretending, you stop performing, You become authentic in a way that most people find unsettling. And nowhere is this more problematic than in the arena
of romantic love. Because romantic love, as it's typically practice in our culture, is almost entirely based on games, performances, and illusions. Think about what passes for courtship, for dating, for the pursuit of romantic connection in the ordinary world. It's an elaborate dance of deception. Isn't it not malicious deception necessarily, but deception nonetheless. People present carefully curated versions
of themselves. They hide their flaws, exaggerate their virtues, play hard to get, pretend to be more confident, or more mysterious, or more successful than they actually are. The whole thing is a performance, a game of strategy and manipulation, even when it's done with the best of intentions. But the awakened person can't play this game anymore. They've lost the ability to be inauthentic. They can't pretend to be something they're not. They can't play COI or mysterious when they're
fundamentally transparent. They can't engage in the push and pull, the advance and retreat, the testing and withholding that characterize as is ordinary romantic pursuit, and so they immediately find themselves at a disadvantage in the conventional dating world. Moreover, the awakened person has seen through one of the fundamental illusions that drives romantic seeking, which is the belief that another person can complete you, can make you whole, can
fill the emptiness inside you. They've discovered that you are already whole, that there is no emptiness that needs filling. That the sense of lack that drives most romantic pursuit is itself an illusion. And once you've realized this, once you've tasted the completeness of your own being, you can't go back to seeking completion in another person. But here's the problem. Most people who are available for romantic relationships
are precisely those who are seeking completion. They're looking for someone to make them happy, to give them a sense of purpose, to validate their existence, to fill their inner void. This is what drives the romantic quest for most Pears people. And when such a person encounters someone who isn't seeking these things, who doesn't need them to feel complete, who is already whole in themselves, there's often a lack of chemistry, a lack of the familiar romantic tension.
You see.
What we call chemistry in romantic relationships is often just the resonance of two incompleteness patterns recognizing each other. Two people who both have avoid meet and their voids fit together in a complimentary way. He needs someone to take care of she needs someone to take care of her. He needs someone to validate his masculinity. She needs someone to make her feel secure. The needs lock together like
puzzle pieces, and we call this falling in love. But the awakened person doesn't have these needs, or at least not in the same desperate way, and so when they meet someone who is driven by these needs, there's no lock, no click, no spark of recognition. The other person feels that something is missing, though they usually can't articulate what it is. They might say the awakened person is too detached,
too independent, too self sufficient. What they're really sensing is the absence of neediness, and neediness is what they are unconsciously looking for because it matches their own There's another aspect to this difficulty, which has to do with the nature of authentic relating. The awakened person has learned to relate from presents, from simply being with another person without a genda, without trying to get something, without performing or manipulating.
This is a very rare and precious kind of relating, but it's not what most people are looking for in romantic connection. Most people want intensity, drama, the highs and lows of passionate attachment. They want to feel swept away, to experience the drug like effect of romantic infatuation.
To lose themselves in another person.
But the awakened person can't provide this because they've seen through it. They know that what's called romantic passion is often just the excitement of too ear ees trying to consume each other, two separate selves trying to merge into one to escape the pain of their imagined separateness. The awakened person offers something different. They offer genuine presents, authentic connection, the meeting of two beings who recognize their essential oneness
while honoring their apparent difference. But this doesn't feel like falling in love to someone who's waiting for that euphoric high of romantic infatuation. It feels too calm, too stable, too grounded. Where's the excitement, where's the obsession? Where's the feeling of being unable to live without the other person? And so the awakened person is often passed over. They're too peaceful for people who are addicted to drama. They're too authentic for people who are comfortable with masks.
They're too whole for.
People who are looking for someone to complete them. They're dismissed as boring or unromantic or emotionally unavailable, when really they're just operating at a different level of consciousness. Let me tell you about another problem. The awakened person tends to see people very clearly. They see through the social masks the personas the carefully constructed self images that people present. They see the insecurity beneath the confidence, the fear beneath
the bravado, the neediness beneath the independence. And while they see all this with compassion, without judgment, this clarity makes it very difficult to participate in the romantic illusion you see. Romantic love as it's typically practiced, requires a certain amount of projection, of fantasy, of seeing the other person not as they are, but as you want them to be. You project your ideals on to them. You see them
through rose colored glasses. You fall in love not with the actual person, but with your idea of the person. This is why people often say after a relationship ends, I didn't really know them at all. But the awakened person can't do this. They see too clearly. They see the actual person with all their conditioning, all their wounds, all their patterns and limitations. And while they can love this person, they can't romanticize them in the way that
ordinary romantic love requires. They can't pretend the person is something they're not. They can't lose themselves in a fantasy. This clarity, this ability to see what is, makes the awakened person a very uncomfortable romantic partner for most people, because most people, when they're being seen clearly feel exposed, vulnerable,
even attacked. They've built their identity on certain illusions about themselves, and they need their romantic partner to support these illusions, to reflect back to them the image they want to believe in.
But the awakened person can't do this.
Their very presence, their very way of seeing, threatens these comfortable illusions. There's also the matter of pace. The awakened person is comfortable with slowness, with taking time, with letting things unfold naturally. They're not in a hurry because they're not trying to fill a void or escape from themselves or prove something. They can be patient can allow a
relationship to develop organically, can let intimacy deepen gradually. But most people in the romantic market place are operating with a sense of urgency. They're getting older, their biological clock is ticking, all their friends are coupled up. They're tired, of being alone. They want things to move quickly. They want to know after three dates whether this is going somewhere. They want commitment, they want certainty, they want to lock
things down. And the awakened person, with their natural slowness, their lack of urgency, their comfort with uncertainty, seems indecisive, uncommitted, unavailable. The other person interprets this patience as lack of interest, when really it's just a different relationship to time, a different way of allowing connection to emerge. Let me speak about another dimension of this problem, which is the matter
of shared reality. When two people come together in relationship, they create a shared world, a mutual reality built on shared beliefs, shared values, shared ways of seeing. But the awakened person's way of seeing is so different from the conventional view that it becomes very difficult to create this shared reality with someone who is still living in the
conventional world. The awakened person doesn't care about many things that most people consider important social status, career advancement, accumulating possessions, keeping up with trends, what other people think. All the usual concerns of social life seem rather trivial to someone
who has awakened to the deeper dimensions of existence. This doesn't mean their irresponsible or can't function in the world, but their priorities are different, their values are different, and when you're in relationship with someone whose priorities are fundamentally different from yours, there's a constant friction, a constant sense
of not being on the same page. The conventional person wants to talk about their career goals, their plans for retirement, what kind of house they want to buy, where they want to go on vacation. The awakened person is interested in the nature of consciousness, the mystery of existence, the present moment, the depth beneath the surface of things. Neither perspective is wrong, but they're operating in different dimensions, and
it's very difficult to meet across that gap. The awakened person feels lonely in the relationship because the other person can't meet them where they actually are. The conventional person feels frustrated because the awakened person doesn't seem to care about the things they think are important. There's also a certain loneliness that comes with awakening that makes romantic connection more difficult. When you wake up, you realize that no matter how close you are to another person, no matter
how intimate the connection, you are ultimately alone. Not alone in a sad sense, but alone in the sense that your experience is uniquely your own, that no one can truly know what it's like to be you, that there's a fundamental mystery to your own existence that can never be fully.
Shared or communicated.
Most people are running from this existential a loneness, trying to escape it through merger with another person. This is one of the unconscious drives behind romantic seeking. If I can merge with you, if we can become one, then I won't have to face my essential loneness. But the awakened person has already faced this aloneness, has already made peace with it, has even found the beauty in it, And so they are not trying to use relationship as an escape from a loneness. But this means they come
to relationship differently. They come not.
From need but from choice.
Not from lack, but from fullness, not to escape a loneness, but to share their already complete existence with another. And while this is a much healthier foundation for relationship, it's not what most people are looking for. Most people want some one who needs them, someone who can't imagine life without them someone who makes them feel essential. The awakened person can't provide this kind of dependency. Now, let me
address something important. I'm not saying that awakened people can never find love or that they are doomed to be alone. What I am saying is that they can't find love in the ordinary way, through the ordinary channels, based on the ordinary assumptions. The kind of relationship that an awakened person can participate in is very rare because it requires two people who are both relatively awake, or at least one partner who is awake and another who is open
to that depth of relating. When two awakened people meet, something entirely different becomes possible. A relationship based not on need but on celebration, not on completing each other, but on sharing their completeness, not on losing themselves in each other, but on remaining fully themselves while being together. Not on creating a comfortable illusion, but on seeing and loving what actually is. This kind of relationship is not easier than
conventional relationships. In some ways, it's more challenging because there's nowhere to hide, no comfortable illusions to fall back on, no unconscious contracts to keep things stable. But it's deeper, more real, more aligned with truth, and for the awakened person, nothing less will do. The problem is finding such a person. They're rare, very rare. Most people who are available for
relationship are not awakened. They are still playing the conventional game, still seeking completion in another still operating from their wounds and neediness, and the awakened person can't pretend to be at.
That level any more.
They can't go backwards, they can't unknow what they've learned. So what often happens is that the awakened person goes through a period of being alone, not by choice but by circumstance. They're not closed to relationship, but they can't settle for the kind of relationships that are available to them. They can't participate in the games, can't provide the neediness that others are looking for, can't play the roles that conventional romance requires. This period of a loneliness can be
very difficult, especially at first. There's grief in it, the grief of realizing that you've grown beyond the kind of connection that used to be available to you. There's loneliness the recognition that you're operating at a frequency that few others attuned to. There's frustration at the difficulty of explaining to others why you can't just get out there and date, or lower your standards or be more open. But this
period of a loneeness is also necessary. It's a time of deepening, of learning to be truly comfortable with yourself, of discovering that you don't need romantic relationship to be complete. And paradoxically, it's often when someone has fully accepted their al lone, when they've stopped seeking and grasping and trying to make relationship happen, that they become available for the kind of deep connection that's actually possible for them. Because
here's the thing. When you're no longer desperate for connection, when you're genuinely okay with being alone, when you've stopped trying to use relationship to fill a void, you become much more attractive to the rare person who is also operating from this place of wholeness. Like recognizes like fullness, is drawn to fullness. Two people who don't need each other can actually choose each other, and that choice has a completely different quality than the grasping neediness that drives
most romantic connection. So, in a sense, the difficulty that awakened people have in finding love is itself a kind of purification process. It's burning away all the unconscious motivations, all the hidden neediness, all the illusions about what relationship is supposed to provide, and what remains if they're patient, if they don't settle, if they stay true to what they've realized is the possibility of something much deeper than what most people call love.
This is not much comfort.
When you're going through it, when you're spending another evening alone while everyone else seems to be paired up, when you're wondering if something is wrong with you, if you're too picky, too difficult, too different. But I want to assure you that nothing is wrong. You haven't become incapable of love. You've become incapable of settling for less than real love. And that's not a problem. That's an evolution. The loneliness of the awakened person is not the loneliness
of someone who is broken or deficient. It's the loneliness of someone who has seen something that most people haven't seen, who has tasted something that most people haven't tasted. Who has awakened to a depth of being that most people are still asleep to. And yes, this creates distance. Yes, it makes conventional connect difficult. Yes, it means you won't fit into the ordinary world of romance and relationship. But
would you really want to go back? Would you really want to unno what you know, to become unconscious again, to participate in the games and illusions that you've seen through. I don't think so, And so you wait. You remain open. You don't close your heart even though it's been disappointed. You don't settle, even though it would be easier. You trust that when the time is right, when you've learned what this aloneness has to teach you, the right connection
will emerge. And if it doesn't, if you live your whole life without finding that rare person who can meet you where you are, then you learn that you can be complete without romantic partnership. That love is not something you find in another person, but something you are, something you radiate, something you offer to life itself, whether or not it's returned in the specific form you might have
hoped for. This is the paradox way person can't find love in the ordinary way, but they've found something deeper than romantic love. They've found love as their essential nature, as the ground of being, as what they are rather than what they get from someone else. And while they remain open to sharing this with another person in relationship, they're no longer dependent on that happening for their happiness, their wholeness, their sense of being loved.