If you’re unhappy in your relationships, take a moment and ask yourself:
- Are you unhappy because you’re stuck with someone who doesn’t get you?
- Are you unhappy because you haven’t found the perfect person?
- Have you found the perfect person, but (s)he can’t commit? (Or have you met someone else and want to leave your present relationship?) and;
- Are you wondering when you’ll finally find the “One?”
In other words, are you spending a lot of your time and energy projecting your desires outwardly onto another person?
There’s a secret about relationships that’s found in the teachings of Jyotisha (Vedic Astrology) that if you knew you could really be happy with anyone: There are no two persons. The other person is just your projection.
In your natal chart, the seventh house shows the kind of relationships you tend to have. It’s also called a “killer” house.
Relationships are “killers” because when not properly understood, they can really hold you back from fulfilling your highest purpose in life.
For example, I recently read the chart of a man who was suffering in his career. He just couldn’t make it happen. When I asked him what he was doing he answered plaintively, “sales.”
“But what I see is ‘jazz musician,’” I responded.
“Yes, I used to be a musician and had a really lucrative career ahead of me, but my wife pulled the plug on that. She thinks it’s a pipe dream,” he sighed with a sense of commited resignation.
And then there’s another client of mine who confided that if her husband doesn’t “get it together” financially soon, she’s going to leave him.
(Meanwhile she fails to see the connection between her lack of fulfillment in her own career and her disappointment in her husband. She can’t see how she’s projecting her own frustrated desire for herself onto him.)
Not only is the the seventh house called a killer house, but it’s also called a house of “desire.”
So you could say that the reason your relationships often struggle and fail is because somewhere along the way you lost sight of what you really want. Not what you’re supposed to want. But what you’re born to want.
Losing sight of your inborn desire results in a weakened sense of life purpose. Its symptoms are disillusion, unhappiness, and lack of fulfillment.
It starts in childhood with your brothers and sisters if you have them. (If you don’t, you get this lesson through peer relationships.) Siblings rival with each other. That’s what they do. The reason they do it is to get attention from their parents—to be validated.
In the process, you learn how to direct the power of your desire to be positively validated—because positive reinforcement feels a lot better than punishment or criticism.
So we repress the natural desire we’re born with that’s necessary to accomplish our highest life’s purpose, in favor of what brings us praise instead of blame.
Take me for example.
I’m the youngest of three siblings. My oldest sister is the “good” one who can do no wrong. My middle sister is the “artist,” who possesses amazing creative skills and talents.
When I got to school I had these precedents to live up to. Because they were praised for these qualities, I also wanted to be perceived as both “good” and an “artist.”
But I couldn’t measure up. My art teacher confirmed this when I was eight. “I guess there’s only one real artist in your family,” she concluded as she viewed my lame drawing.
So rather than pursue my desire to be viewed as a competent artist and therefore skilled human being, I redirected it to something I struggled more with and didn’t want as much—writing.
I also could never be as “good” as my eldest sister so I was bad. As a result, I got attention. Even attention for something I didn’t care about like grammar or being in trouble was better than being ignored or criticized.
Because I never felt good enough or skilled enough in creating anything, I married someone who fulfills both desires.
I recognize that a big reason I’m attracted to my husband is because he can do everything, unlike me. He possesses so many skills and talents that even after ten years of marriage, I’m still blown away at what he can do. He’s also extraordinarily good—a product of a nice Catholic family.
But get this.
The only time we ever fight is when I feel he’s failing at fixing something. Or not properly utilizing his many skills and talents. Or when he’s not being as “good” as I like.
As long as he’s fulfilling my deepest desires for myself, then we get along. The moment he stops reflecting back to me what I want to see in order to feel happy with myself, we fight. I question whether I made the right choice.
The reason relationships fall apart is because the person you’re relating to fails to reflect back what you want more than anything for yourself but can’t express in your own life.
In the thousands of clients I’ve counseled about their relationships, this has been true in every case. Every case.
Suppose you want to be a success in business, but on a deep level you don’t really believe that you can. So you attract someone who you think is such a success. As long as he’s succeeding, then you’re happy. The moment he fails, however, you lose your affection.
The secret to successful relationships is to be the person you want the other one to be.
To do this, you have to grab a hold of your deepest desires—the ones that you repressed because you believed at an early age you’d get criticized for instead of praised. You have to uncover your natural instincts and not talk yourself out of them.
I know. It’s hard.
But once you figure out what you really want but haven’t gone for, you can then direct the power of your desires toward fulfilling your life’s highest purpose instead of expecting the other person to fulfill it for you.
And your relationships will improve. I promise.
When you’re self-empowered in your own life’s dharma (highest life’s purpose), it’s easy to attract support. You relate to the “other” as a compliment rather than a repository of your unfulfilled dreams.
Vedic astrology is an amazing tool to not only see yourself and your highest life’s purpose, but to see what’s important for you to want.
There’s a lot of propaganda in spiritual circles that having desires is bad. I would amend that by stating—having wrong desires is bad. What are your right desires? (Meaning those that are most natural for you to have.)
Understanding the natal chart of your partner can also be profoundly insightful.
People don’t change. All of us follow our life’s natural expression indicated at the moment we were born. And it’s profoundly insightful to know who you are relating to on his/her own terms, and not what you project.
But most importantly, there’s nothing that can improve your relationships more than truly knowing what you’re here for in the highest sense.
And by aligning completely with your dharma you’ll stop projecting your supressed desires onto the other that’s kiling your relationships—and your happiness.
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