Does a Relationship Complete us? | Q&A Eckhart Tolle

How can I free myself from my enormous desire and longing for a spiritual love relationship with a man? Although I do understand my desire for such a relationship after 25 lonely and painful years of marriage during which I could not give myself nor my ex husband the love and acceptance that we were both longing for, I feel at the same time that this desire is the biggest trigger of my pain body. Even during this beautiful retreat, my pain body is sometimes active. For this reason I am aware of that since a long, long time. I feel a huge attraction towards a man. I hardly talked with him. I feel a strong attraction towards a man. I hardly talked with him because this attraction freezes me and makes me feel uncomfortable. Because it feels almost unspiritual to have this earthly longing. Anyhow, these are the moments which keep me away from the now help needed in brackets. Haha. I'm very grateful to be with you. Thank you. That longing is in everyone. And as I mentioned earlier, it's to do with being this incomplete form. And this form wants to unite with the other half to complete itself. So you, as this physical form may never be quite free of that longing. But as you go beyond identification with the physical form and the psychological form of me, that longing becomes an almost peripheral manifestation in your life. No longer makes you unhappy if it is not fulfilled. The psychological me uses that longing as a substitute for surrender. The belief that through some relationship I can complete myself. That the psychological sense of self, which also is not complete, the physical is not complete because the physical is one half of the whole. The psychological is not complete because it can never be in its essence it exists in a state of lack of not enough, of insufficiency, of needing to add more. And the one thing that the self, the psychological self believes often will make me complete is the relationship with the partner, the ideal, the one. And that can keep you going, that search can keep you going for a long time. For the one human being who is going to complete me on the physical, that pull remains on the psychological, that longing for completeness is transcended, is gone beyond. As you no longer identify with a mental image of me, as you step out of identification with the mind made self, which is always incomplete and will project its incompleteness in many cases onto that one thing that says if I only had a partner, I would feel saved totally myself, complete myself through him or through her. And if you should find a partner for a while, that may work. And then you find you cannot complete yourself through any form whatsoever. So what leaves you through surrender to what is. And which in your case might mean the feeling of great lack, the feeling of aloneness, the longing for him. You may not know who. And there's this great lack at the centre of your being. And what do you do with that? That feeling of alone, loneliness. If you're not vigilant, it becomes mind movements. It adds more to the story of the incomplete me who needs. And you can think about it, project, imagine, and that only strengthens that. But if you allow what you feel to be there, let's say it's called loneliness. Feel it, don't resist it. You may not even label it anymore. Simply be attentive, look at it. No analysis, just bringing presence to it. That feeling that you never wanted, that you want to get away from, that otherwise would continuously turn into thinking. Now you're saying, there it is, and it has a certain feeling quality to it. And you can give it so much attention that you're not even labeling it anymore as loneliness. Your tension that you give that feeling is just complete. And your acceptance of that feeling is complete because it is now. It is the form that this moment takes. So you surrender into that, say, all right, embrace it and see if it kills you. It won't. It's not going to kill you, it's not going to consume you. But it might consume the ego if you surrender into it. So. And then suddenly you will see it is turned into something else. You can. I don't want to put any ideas into your head and say, this is what it's going to turn into. You surrender into that. The longing becomes intense aliveness itself. The longing if totally accepted. And that is even the longing for God, which says, I want God so much. On the other side of the longing, God is already hiding. It is already. It's a misinterpretation through the mind. It says, you don't have it. It's not here. And the beloved is on the other side of the loneliness. You then go, you suddenly experience a sense of completeness because you've surrendered totally into that feeling. And then you have gone beyond the need, the psychological need for a relationship to complete you. There may still be a physical need on the level of physical body, on the level of sexuality or emotion, that if you are a man wanting close to you the female energy field, if you are a woman wanting the male energy field, this form may have that, but that is relatively minor. It's a very small movement, but deep down there's already such completion and completeness that. That's a very minor surface movement. Of the form doesn't make you unhappy anymore. And then it is quite possible that you meet someone because you don't need him anymore. And then it is more likely that the relationship may work quite well. Because the need for this person to make you complete, which no human being could ever fulfill, it's an impossible task and an impossible demand. Every human being will fail, will not make you complete. So the need and the demand that this human being should provide that completion for you isn't there anymore. And that is why it is likely that the relationship may work quite well. When the need, the psychological, deep seated psychological need is gone, then if it happens, you welcome the relationship. If it doesn't happen, that's fine too. It's beautiful too. It's not everybody's destiny. And that's beautiful too. To be alone. Solitude is beautiful. Loneliness is not. Solitude is to be alone and to be surrendered into that aloneness, Solitude, beautiful, even sacred loneliness is to be alone and hate it and not wanting this. When you surrender into aloneness, it becomes solitude. And solitude even becomes more than that. It becomes a deep sense of connectedness with being itself. Because you had really been looking for God through somebody else. And it's only through surrender that you can find God. So this is your spiritual practice to work with that, not to find him. That's not your spiritual practice. These are the moments which keep me away from the now. Because that sense of incompleteness and lack still tends to become mind movements. So it keeps you away from now. But it doesn't have to be like that. The very feeling that you experience, let it bring you into the now. Give it attention, embrace it. No need to run away from it. You welcome loneliness and then it turns into something else beautiful. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation. Sa.