In Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés there is a chapter about relationships where Estés talks about the need to invite Lady Death and the Life/Death/Life nature within us into our relationships. She says there is a fear of the death aspect of this process, especially in western cultures. One relationship goes through several cycles of death to be followed by new life, "the necessary deaths and startling births that create true relationship".
Estés writes: "We pretend we can love without our illusions about love dying, pretend we can go on without our superficial expectations dying, pretend we can progress and that our favourite flushes and rushes will never die. But in love, psychically, everything becomes picked apart, everything. The ego does not want it to be so. Yet it is how it is meant to be, and the person of a deep and wildish nature is undeniably drawn to the task."
A Course in Miracles talks about the need to give our special relationships to the Holy Spirit to turn them into holy relationships. This is a process of letting go of our ego illusions about the relationship. The Course likens the special relationship to an ellaborate picture frame, filled with grandiose illusions of what we expect the relationship to be. If we are willing to give these illusions up, the Holy Spirit will transform the relationship to its highest possible potential.
Both books make it clear that many relationships fail or are broken off at the point of it starting to be transformed into a 'true relationship' or 'holy relationship'. The task at hand is simply too much to take on for many people. The Course says that the relationship can seem aimless and disorganized in this process and that the ego at this point tends to want to substiture the seemingly 'failing' relationship for another relationship which fits the former goals that the ego has set out. It takes strength, wisdom and fortitude to continue on and having faith in that the relationship is in fact not failing but has been saved.
In Jay-Z's video 'Footnotes for 4:44' he mentions that Beyoncé and him had built this mansion of a relationship that wasn't built on 100 percent truth. When they realised this they decided to tear the existing relationship structure down and start again. He also says that this is by far the hardest thing he has ever had to do and that most people would give up and walk away instead.
When we realise that the structure of a relationship has illusion in it and that we are focusing on an elaborate frame instead of the picture, the picture being the person, we need to tear the structure down. This means tearing down our ego expectations and let our fancy images die so that a real relationship can take place. This is what Lady Death will do and this is why she scares us. We often don't want to look at the person or ourselves as we really are, in fear of loosing what once was or seemed to be. Nevertheless, it is necessary. Lady Death reminds me of the Hindu goddess Kali who helps us usher in the necessary death of certain things in order to reach the highest good. She not only does this but she also births the new and is the source of all creation. She personifies the Life/Death/Life nature within us.
Lady Death is Kali, and Kali is the Holy Spirit that takes our lives and relationships under her guidance and brings transformation. All she needs is an invite. Without an invitation she cannot do anything for us. The process will not be comfortable and it requires patience, strength, forgiveness and faith. but it is the only way forward towards real love and real connection with ourselves and others, in whatever form it will take.
