Awakening from the Dream of Everyday Life, part 3

Awakening from the dream of everyday life often begins by noticing how things work. For example, how many people feel like failures because they have had a divorce or more than one, or some kind of different living arrangement?

Why would people feel that way? Perhaps because so much popular literature, music and movies promote concepts like finding your perfect partner or soulmate and marrying forever, when the reality has been that half of all marriages end in divorce. So, in reality, being divorced is as normal as being married.

Even some metaphysical people buy into the old hype, promoting the notion that there is a twin flame or soulmate out there for us, setting off some people on a wild goose chase searching for "the one."

Actually, with all the millions and billions of people on the planet, there are any number of people who might be great partners for us. We choose from among the people we meet, and one partner might be just as good as another when we consider the various aspects of compatibility.

There are many different types of relationships that work for people. Varieties from open relationships to long distance relationships to sharing housing with other like minded people work for lots of people in lots of different situations.

You have heard that old expression that politics makes strange bedfellows. Consider that polygamy was outlawed when Utah became a state. It was part of the deal. But Mormons were controversial and not well liked in lots of places. The government named Utah after the Ute Indians just to give the finger to the Mormons, who wanted to name the state The Kingdom of Deseret.

Think for a moment about the issue of gay marriage. Why do states even issue marriage licenses at all? If it is just another way to make money, then they ought to be happy that more people want to buy marriage licenses.

I do not bring these points up because I am a polygamist or gay. I am neither. I am simply pointing out that some of these role models are political inventions.

Awakening from the dream of everyday life involves using your free will to choose an arrangement that works for you. You can feel better about yourself when you quit accepting a definition of yourself as a failure because you have done the same thing that half the other people have done. Oddly though, for a period of that dreamtime, there was more social stigma attached to divorced than to staying married to an alcoholic wife beater. I would go so far as to say that there would have been lots more divorces years ago, had more people been willing to awaken from the dream. Once you awaken and choose what is next, one of the things you might change is instead of referring to yourself as divorced, refer to yourself as single.

Once you awaken, we find ourselves rich with possibilities for creating ways of forming our relationships in ways that work for us that satisfy us.