Today I read MN 26, which traces the Buddha's journey into Enlightenment from the anthology “In the Buddha’s Words”.

I find that many Buddhist suttas, in an intention to stay true to the repetitive nature of ancient Indian verses, attempt to do the same in English, but actually end up deadening the renditions.

Sanskrit and Pali need repetition because they are phonetic. Repeating the sound of the words has an impact on how your body absorbs the wisdom. Mimicked repetition of the same in English doesn’t seem to acknowledge the difference in the nature of the languages.

MN 26 describes the different stages of realization in the Buddha’s life that changed the direction of what he was looking for. At every stage, there was a thoroughness to his exploration of that stage. His expertise at that stage was validated by another acclaimed master who the Buddha first learnt under but then the master invited the Buddha to teach with him. However, the Buddha found the teaching incomplete even though he had mastered it, and so decided to continue his search. What a remarkable capacity to stay true to the original intention of one’s search!

One of his early realizations was the ability to distinguish between noble search and ignoble search.

As a human being, subject to birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow, and defilement, if I seek something that is also subject to the same, my search is ignoble. If I were to instead reorient my seeking towards a supreme security from birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow, and defilement, then my search becomes noble. This supreme security is referred to as Nibbāna. It is unborn, unaging, unhealing, deathless, sorrowless, and undefiled.

In order for such a reorientation to happen, one must first recognize the danger in something that is subject to each of these traits.

As I sit with that, I notice that I myself have come to the awareness of the dangers of relating with embroilment, and I wanted to write some thoughts down on how I aspire to relate authentically without embroilment, with an intention to support mine and another’s journey towards Light and lightness.

The personal relational context here, which feels important to acknowledge, is

that I had a fallout with a friend recently. This is someone who I was cultivating a deep bond with in recent times. I had noticed a relational thread that when I would bring tenderness and hurt to them, they would respond with either a lack of attunement to the tenderness or worse, frustration. This human is fairly involved in Nonviolent Communication practice, and as I reflect on this fallout, it brings to my mind the potential downside of the emphasis on welcoming all emotions in the Nonviolent Communication or Authentic Relating subculture. In that emphasis, there is a subtly assumed equivalence of all emotions.

Anger is welcome. Love is welcome. Grief is welcome. So one might think, oh, these are all equivalent.

However, in the absence of intelligent choice in what to direct towards a relationship vs what to process either individually or by seeking support for processing in relationship, this attempt at authentically bringing everything into a relationship can lead us into relational embroilment. As such, this subtly assumed equivalence of all emotions is categorically false.

Some emotions are more evolved than others. Numbness is easier to access than Anger, than Grief. In my IFS understanding of how trauma lives in a body, Numbness manages Anger which protects Grief.

What are some modes of relational embroilment?

If you are embroiled in an abusive relationship, where you are at the receiving end of the anger, you might find yourself collapsing regularly into sorrow in face of the anger, only to then be comforted by the human bringing the anger. This furthers embroilment.

If you bring tender hurt to me and I don’t have easy access to my own grief, I might react with frustration towards you. If you are provoked into anger by that, we then play with fiery passion, allowing the charge to diffuse momentarily, but then the tender hurt that you had originally brought to me has just subsided or turned into scar tissue, which means you have just numbed away from that hurt and what was an opportunity to release the hurt is lost. Then you'll either stay numbed to it, and that numbing will manifest itself in different addictive, self-abusive ways of being, or it will emerge again and we’ll stay embroiled in this passionate fiery loop till you hold up a boundary around your hurt and don't get provoked into a fight.

When my grief channels are not open, when someone connects to their sorrow in intimate connection with me, my rageful protectors get triggered. They are afraid that in that embodied connection to another person releasing grief, I might get overwhelmed by my own unprocessed grief. In their sharing of their tender sorrow, I will hear blame for my actions. My protectors then will blame them for blaming me. And the embroilment continues.

The way to end relational embroilment is to create spaciousness for hurt. This doesn't mean that I open myself up to folks who seem to be presently enjoying luxuriating in their past hurt. Offering spaciousness for another's hurt can also look like taking full space from relating with them.

Ideally, this opens us up to relating only in ways that allows us to release into lightness.

Rage and grief are the two twins of trauma. In intimate connection, romantic or platonic, our bodies energetically attune in a way that past karma is rising to the surface. My past karma will perfectly match yours if we are exploring intimacy.

In the arisal of the past karma, there could be friction. At that point of friction, we have a choice. Do we allow the fire to blaze horizontally at each other or vertically upwards towards the Light? Being engulfed in the vertical flames of Fire allow us to burn off the karma. Horizontally orienting the fire creates passionate fiery play but keeps us further embroiled.

In the arisal, if there is no friction, we are then at choice to hold each other in our hurt and pain to allow it to release. Here it is important to acknowledge the choice of not holding an intimate partner (friend or lover) in their pain. You can express that choice to me knowing and honoring my choice to not want to explore intimacy with you. Then there is an ending of the relating with gratitude. It gives me freedom to hold myself in my hurt or find friends or paid containers (therapy, grief spaces etc.) to hold me in my release of the hurt. Here again, there is no embroilment between me and you.

In the arisal, if there is no friction and we choose to hold each other in hurt in service of releasing the hurt, then we relate into Lightness. Once the grief is released, Flow emerges fully allowing us to rejoice and celebrate co-creatively. This is authentic relating without embroilment.

I’m curious to hear how this essay lands for you. Does it make sense? How do you relate authentically without embroilment?