
Many times it seems that even though I seek the company of students I also hold an expectation that these Seekers have the same thirst for knowledge because they will apply what they are learning to their life and experience growth and expansion. They will gain personal gnosis about the topics they learn about and use it to make changes to their life and / or within themselves causing their own expansion and growth as a spiritual being. I become friends with the person that they might be, or the person that they could potentially be, not necessarily the person they are at the time we encounter each other. It isn’t that I do not “see” who they are in that moment of our first meeting; it is that I “see” them in that moment, as well as, who they could be in the future, the “better” version of themselves. Oh, I acknowledge and understand that their growth could take anywhere from mere moments to several years, but I am always willing to invest my time, emotions, and energy in them because I know that as we are in each other’s company we will be growing together through our shared experiences, individual experiences that we reveal to each other, the personal gnosis that we discuss and the exchange of opinions and perspectives. I enjoy the journeys I have with my “friends”.
Unfortunately this personal tendency of befriending an individual based on their potential “better” self has led to many great disappointments for me lately. I have come to realize that not everyone desires to grow spiritually, emotionally, or mentally and are content in staying the same person as they were the moment we met and I just don’t understand it. Sometimes the person will talk as if they are interested in personal or spiritual growth, but when I examine their thoughts, their words, and their actions; there is a great contradiction between what they say they desire and what they live. These individuals will consume the knowledge with great hunger, but will not apply what they have learned. Sometimes it seems as if they are not conscious of the great gap or are unaware of the contradiction, so I will bring it up in conversation, but on some level of their being there is a resistance to making a change. There is a fear too great for them to face and so they remain stagnated, while I continue to work with my own improvement, putting in the time and energy so that I might continue my personal evolution. When this occurs a fissure is created between us and it seems that I am the only one who sees it because I am the only one who works at trying to bridge it. It exhausts me. It exhausts me so much that at some point, that point being undefinable because it depends on the relationship and situation, I stop working on bridging it and recognize that I do not want to be the only one responsible for making the relationship work. For me relationships are partnerships where each individual engaged in it contributes to its success or failure and when that exchange is compromised or absent then the relationship is no longer a partnership, if it ever was, and becomes something I do not want to be a part of.
I realize that my initial approach to relationships needs to be reevaluated. While it is a benefit to “see” an individual’s potential, or the person that they might be some point in the future, it would benefit me to focus on the person that they are at the moment we encounter each other. Perhaps by doing this I might be able to dodge such heavy and heart wrenching disappoints.