Castles in the Sand

~ Written August 21, 2022
(Part One of a Multi-Piece Writing on Delusion, Illusion, & Dysfunction in Modern Romantic Relationships)

A Hopeless Romantic’s Beginnings

As far back as I can remember, as a young boy, I was a devout mystical, hopeless romantic. One whose gifts of limitless imagination were such a welcomed comfort and, at the time, a true survival tool in light of the very challenging environment I found myself born into.

It’s no wonder that children who survive very challenging home environments… characterized by violence, addictive dysfunction, and oftentimes outright abandonment… can later become some of the most powerful lights, healers, and creators as adults.

If, through divine grace, wisdom, and perseverance for truth, one is fortunate and brave enough to transmute one’s own suffering, it can be transformed into the beautiful flowering of consciousness that we call awakening.

No Regrets… Only Awakening

I have no regrets about my childhood. I would not change one iota of it, even if I could. It was the very best sadhana (spiritual practice) for my own spiritual evolution possible for me in this lifetime. It took years to come to know this… but of this truth, I became certain long ago.

It took me years to come into the loving, profound realization that although my parents had made huge parenting mistakes, they too were both deeply wounded beings as children and were simply doing the very best they could… as unprepared and obviously unequipped young parents.

Unhealed and unremedied, our wounds can’t help but wound others around us. Even our own children… whom we may love very deeply… will suffer our wounds if we are not mindful and do not learn to heal ourselves.

The Lessons My Mother Left Me

I would pick wildflowers for my mother as a young teen during the summers I spent with her in Alabama. She had left my sister and me with my dad to raise when I was just five years old. Moving out of state, she would find herself in a decades-long, very dysfunctional, highly addictive relationship with another deeply troubled soul.

When I was just 15, we buried her body on an unusually cool and overcast July day in South Georgia. Thirty-five years young, her own wounds had led her down a path of no return… at least in this lifetime.

Her drunken lover had crashed their car while traveling at speeds in excess of 99+ mph… returning from a midnight beer run to the liquor store on a North Alabama highway on July 4th.

Do not be sorry for me. Although painful and tragic, her life… and that form leaving… also served as one of the deepest, most life-altering catalysts for transformation and subsequent awakening in my own life.

A Deeper Understanding of Love

My mother gave me such a beautiful and perfect lesson. A powerful lesson that I could have never learned from books… nor from a guru, saint, or spiritual teaching. It was a critical piece of my very own sadhana (spiritual practice)… and today, I choose to see it as a beautiful gift.

I could never feel the love from my mother that I knew she had for me. I tried so hard. I picked her flowers. I even wrote her beautiful poems and letters. She would always write back, and she would be in and out of my life… but not frequently and always only at her convenience.

For most of my life, I used to think it was because she didn’t love me… or… perhaps even more damaging of an erroneous thought… that she loved her lover more than me.

In truth, she loved me deeply… but her own unhealed wounds were deeper than her capacity to give and show love to others… even her own children. She was starving for love herself and was too consumed with chasing love outside her own Self… over and over, she was building castles in the sand for a prince who had lost his own crown, too.

The Pattern of Illusions in Love

The ebb and flow of the ocean’s tides won’t allow castles to stand for long on its shores… nor will reality allow relationships to endure and be life-enhancing and supportive if they’re built upon illusion… untruths or unrealistic expectations.

If ignored, you’ll find yourself continually having to rebuild the same castle (relationship) over and over again. Each build becomes more disheartening… knowing in your heart of hearts that this version won’t endure either. It can’t. It has no foundation in reality.

I still have the vasana (behavioral tendency or karmic imprint that influences present behavior) operating in me today when it comes to romantically inclined relationships with females… although it arises much less frequently… and I’m aware of its arising almost immediately.

If I’m not careful, I’ll almost always unconsciously… yet very powerfully… be drawn to the emotionally unavailable female… or just the same, an unavailable, impossible relationship. Both are the same. It was a painful, crippling pattern I had to unlearn and become conscious of. Self-honesty is the antidote.

Breaking the Cycle of Delusion

The true seeing of patterns (vasanas) is the freeing part. You don’t necessarily have to do therapy or shadow work… although it may be helpful depending upon your level of consciousness. The important fact to know is that it takes divine grace to liberate one from such deep-seated vasanas… the package that this grace arrives in is of little to no significance.

A house… or a wholesome relationship (castle)… cannot stand for long when its foundation is built upon the sand.

Christ spoke of this same truth. While fantasy and daydreams of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress to save may be alluring… beautiful reality will never support these castles built upon her shores.