THE INVISIBLE WEDDING: Exploring the Essence of Spiritual Partnership - Softcover

Fields, David And Faye

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0875167934 ISBN 13: 9780875167930

Publisher: DeVorss Publications, 2004

Synopsis

Reuniting with your heart--on your own as well as with your partner--is the journey you are invited to take in this unique and soulful book. As you begin to live your life with a new awareness, a burden will be lifted from your personal relationships as conflict is resolved at its origin, without breaking the bond between you and your partner.

About this title

About the Author:

DAVID & FAYE FIELDS (MA, MS) have been active in the human potential movement for the last 30 years. Married for 22 years, they have spent most of their time in counseling work with couples and families. Co-founders of an intentional community called Sattwa Farm, they live in beautiful farmland with their three children and a spiritual family ranging from 10 to 85 years of age in the foothills of the Oregon Coastal Range. They have studied various spiritual traditions since their youth in the sixties and have continued a regular meditation practice for over 30 years.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

FROM THE INTRODUCTION:

Romance is deceptive. Like most new lovers, we came together with an unconscious fantasy that we had finally found the one person who truly understood us. We had met the one mate who would never betray our trust or judge us. Little did we know at the time that our sense of certainty about our love for one another had to be shattered before we could experience the bloom of real love.

Just three years after coming together, David became seriously ill. For the next several years we lived on the brink of physical, emotional and financial collapse. I had not only to care for David, but our son Julian as well, who was just turning two years old. Several months into the ordeal, old wounds reemerged like thunderstorms. Buried feelings of anger, resentment, blame and guilt surfaced with great ferocity. As David spent entire days resting and often depressed, I grieved the loss of a once-joyful, creative partner with whom to co-parent, play, and enjoy life. The apparent needs that had brought us together were no longer able to be met, and our egos rioted. During this time we made the painful discovery of how easily human love—based on ego—can turn to hate! But as our predicament unfolded, we turned increasingly from healing the body to a deep concern for the heart. It was here, in the heart, that the real work lay.

After decades of resistance, and with our defenses finally down, we began to face the unhealed scars of the respective emotional battles from our past. It required the ordeal of David’s illness to make us aware that we had brought to our relationship (among other more wholesome aspects) exactly what had not been healed from our pasts. We were delivered to a place that could no longer deny our broken hearts.

Gradually, as the illness refused to let up, David’s past—the hurt and neglect of growing up with alcoholic parents—thawed from around his heart. What began with outbursts of frustrated anger and criticism toward me and him, eventually turned into tears of grief and longing for the care he never experienced when he was a child.

Exhausted by the role of caregiver and healer, my own awareness was forced inward for soul food. What began with intense resentment toward David for his apparent inability to meet my emotional needs gradually turned into a deeper investigation of the heart. I had to face the root causes and feel the pain associated with my endless need for love, approval, and appreciation from others.

Through the ordeal of long-term illness, our attention was pointed inward, and we became aware of core needs that truly had nothing to do with the other person. These needs had to do with deepening our own inner centers, forgiving self and others for past abuses, facing the fear that turns into judgment, finding the healer and nurturer within ourselves and, ultimately, feeling the love of God pulsating in our hearts.

We had never been taught that, as a couple, we would somehow have to journey into the Land of Death together (and this would not be the only time, or the only way). But it was actually there, in the heavy darkness, that love bloomed. It bloomed when we took each other off the cross of expectation and turned within to face the root of our pain. Love bloomed when we stopped looking for it externally or in each other. It was our first death together, and it broke open our tender, once guarded, hearts.

Through the intensity of our experience, and years of counseling couples professionally, it has become clear that we all carry within us the invisible pain of a broken heart. This wound manifests most clearly in our neurotic search for love and approval from others. Rather than turning inward when we feel pain or unloved, we are trained to look outside for our fulfillment. In an attempt to avoid the pain of their broken hearts, many seek special relationships with those who foster in us a false sense of well-being. David and I are no exception.

Our relationship and our healing work have taught us that it is not enough for the heart to heal bad childhoods. Nor is it enough to find an "ideal" partner. As a foundation for every other type of healing, we must reawaken our spiritual core.

About this edition

• Publisher: DeVorss Publications
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0875167934
• ISBN 13: 9780875167930
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 238