The Truth About Relationship | Amoda Maa

Source: Excerpts from “The Truth About Relationship | Amoda Maa”
Executive Summary:
Maa argues that the primary, often unconscious, impulse driving individuals into relationships is the seeking of fulfillment and wholeness from an external source. This seeking mechanism, she contends, is fundamentally flawed and mirrors the misguided pursuit of enlightenment as a means to escape inner lack. True and lasting love, according to Maa, can only emerge when this seeking ceases and individuals turn inward to discover their own inherent wholeness and love within their “aloneness.” Relationship, therefore, becomes a potent catalyst for transformation, revealing inner divisions and the illusion of needing external validation.
Main Themes and Important Ideas:
    
1. The Erroneous Impulse for Relationship: Seeking External Fulfillment

Maa distinguishes between “conscious relationship” and “enlightened relationship,” suggesting the latter operates on a “whole different dimension” rooted in the inherent love that emanates from within.
   
Conclusion:
Amoda Maa presents a radical perspective on relationships, challenging the conventional understanding of their purpose and the motivations that drive them. She argues that true love and fulfillment are not to be found in another person but are intrinsic to our being. Relationship, when approached without the burden of seeking external validation, can become a powerful catalyst for self-discovery and the embodiment of inherent love, leading to a fundamentally different and more harmonious way of relating. The key lies in turning inward, embracing our aloneness, and surrendering the illusory dream of finding completeness through another.

Maa identifies the core motivation behind most relationships as the desire to find completion and fulfillment through another person: “this primary impulse is the seeking of fulfillment through relationship the seeking of wholeness through relationship the idea that someone someone special a soulmate the one the perfect partner and so on will make you and your life complete and fulfilled.”

She emphasizes that while this desire for intimacy is natural, acting upon it as a means to fill an internal void is a misdirection of attention that prevents true fulfillment.

This “seeking of fulfillment through relationship” is likened to the “seeking of fulfillment through Enlightenment,” sharing the same underlying hope of alleviating pain and achieving completeness, the same delusion of a perfect future, and the same obstacle of unintegrated “Shadow energies.”

Both pursuits can lead to temporary satisfaction followed by disillusionment, perpetuating a cyclical pattern of seeking: “the temporary fulfillment that comes when you found that special relationship or found that special spiritual teacher or teaching then the disillusionment when that doesn’t last And So It Goes Round again the seeking mechanism starts again.”
    
2. The Illusion of “Falling in Love” as a Temporary Cessation of Seeking

Maa offers a unique perspective on the experience of “falling in love,” suggesting it’s not about finding the “special one” but rather a temporary pause in the internal seeking mechanism: “when you fall in love you may call it finding the special one but actually what’s happened is that you’ve stopped seeking and in the stopping of seeking you come to rest.”

This cessation of seeking allows for a glimpse of one’s inherent “beingness” characterized by “Peace of spaciousness of Stillness of vibrancy a sense that everything really is perfect as it is.”

However, this state is transient, and the underlying seeking mechanism inevitably reasserts itself, leading to the “drama of relationship.”

3. The Drama of Relationship: The War Within

Maa argues that what is often mistaken for love within relationships is actually a transactional exchange where individuals seek to have their needs met by the other: “very often what we call love is the feeling of the other giving you what you want in order to make you feel good about yourself.”

When these expectations are not met, the dynamic shifts to conflict, blame, and defense: “when inevitably the other doesn’t give you what you want…then you are likely not to act in such a loving way…you will have thoughts and feelings of anger or judgment or blame of defense and attack you will enter into a battle.”

This internal conflict manifests as “mental and emotional acrobatics” – manipulative behaviors and power games aimed at securing the desired “love”: “there are Maneuvers like that are really games of Power a push and pull you’ll bully or blame or withdraw or attack or seduce or beg or become a doormat and so on and so forth in order to get what you think you want.”

As long as love is perceived as a commodity to be given or withheld, the other will inevitably be seen as either a “savior or your enemy.”
    
4. True Love: Unconditional and Inherent

Maa defines “real love” as something fundamentally different from the transactional and conditional forms prevalent in most relationships. “Real love has no enemy has no opposite cannot be divided has no conditions it’s not dependent on your emotional commands it’s not dependent on conforming to the mental pictures of what love is.”

She asserts that love is not a commodity to be shared or exchanged but rather a whole and indivisible aspect of our being.
    
5. Relationship as a Catalyst for Transformation and the Revelation of Inner Division

Maa posits that intimate relationships serve as a powerful mirror, reflecting our internal conflicts and unmet needs: “the power of relationship intimate relationship to really reveal within us where we are still divided where we are still at War it’s right there right there.”

By observing our attempts to control, demand, grasp, and withdraw within relationship, we gain insight into our underlying patterns of seeking.

Therefore, relationship is presented not as a source of security or comfort but as “a potent medicine for transformation.”
    
6. Surrendering the Dream of Relationship and Embracing Aloneness

True love can only reveal itself when individuals are willing to “let go of all cherished ideas all cherished Notions of what relationship is and what relationship might give you” and “surrender the dream of relationship.”

This doesn’t signify the end of relationships but the end of the illusory basis upon which they are often founded.

A crucial aspect of this transformation is “falling in love with yourself,” not in a superficial sense of self-indulgence, but by embracing one’s inherent “aloneness.”

Maa distinguishes between aloneness and loneliness, defining loneliness as an avoidance of truly meeting one’s “existential core.”

By facing this inner “darkness” or “void,” individuals can realize that it is not separate from them but rather their “true nature,” their “beingness,” an “emptiness that is full.”
    
7. The Emergence of Enlightened Relationship

When the seeking for external fulfillment ceases and one recognizes their inherent love, the nature of relationships transforms.

Even if relationships form, they will be characterized by a lack of need, expectation, and internal conflict: “it is likely that that relationship will have no more war in it no more battle no more need no more expectation no more hope.”