Girl gets ring. That’s the title, apparently, of a new book. And hearing this Girl Gets Ring title, it’s a good time to reflect: So what do you really want from a relationship? Have you questioned the cultural conditioning that drives the diamond ring industry?
We read lots of articles about what men want in a relationship, what women want in a relationship … and we tend to nod our heads in agreement as we listen to the authors of these articles spout one cliche after another. How often do we question any of it?
I’ll be honest. I used to be the girl who wanted to get the ring. I used to see big diamond engagement rings as something I wanted, and as a symbol of “how much he loves me.” Yeah, I’ll be even more honest. I would see women who had these huge diamond rings, and I would feel BAD. It felt like those women were loved, and I was not. That there was something lacking in me because I didn’t have a big huge diamond ring on my fingers.
Some very deep shifts have happened for me in the past couple of years. This past week, when I saw a woman wearing them at the gym this week, I became conscious for the first time of a different sentiment. Her big diamond rings looked like an encumbrance. A burden. I use my hands so much for the tapping, and I don’t wear any jewelry on my hands. I like my hands to be free. It felt good to become conscious of something I’ve probably been thinking unconsciously for a very long time.
I don’t think it’s much different for men. It just takes a slightly different form. If a man sees other men who have more sexual abundance than he does, or more “beautiful” woman than he does, the man may feel BAD. Like there is something wrong with him.
Or this could be about toothpaste, or deodorant, or cars. For the most part, our consumption economy is DRIVEN by these feelings of unworthiness.
Let’s say you read an article about the “perfect relationship,” and you feel that you don’t have it. You feel unworthy and BAD inside, and what do you do? What are the marketers of all this baloney hoping you will do.
That’s right. You get on the hamster wheel.
And yes, apparently even a book now called Girl Gets Ring. I picture a girl on a hamster wheel. Now she is buying clothes, buying books, buying all kinds of crap that is just going to clutter up her space, so she can try to fit into some kind of cookie cutter mold to get the ring. Run, run, run, on that hamster wheel.
For many years, I felt bewildered by my journey. It seems so unconventional. Oh, I had my share of conventional relationships, and found them totally unsatisfying. Then a point came in my life where it seemed impossible to get into those relationships anymore. The relationships would implode before they ever got started. It felt so strange. It felt like I was a failure. Especially compared to all my friends who got married and started having kids.
These days, I have a new perspective on it. I look back at who I was when I wanted to “get the ring,” and I see that the person I was could not possibly have had a fulfilling relationship. Because conventional relationships are not fulfilling. Sorry, folks, I’ve seen enough to know, the Emperor has no clothes.
Well, the book A Course in Miracles actually explains it all quite clearly. ACIM explains in great detail how the “special relationship” is the cornerstone of ego consciousness, and how it must be relinquished in order for us to have true peace and happiness. For years though, I refused to listen. Now I am listening.
How have things shifted?
1. Idols are recognized as worthless. In ego consciousness, women are conditioned their whole lives to measure their worth by the size of their engagement ring and the size of their wedding. Every day, these things seem more and more absurd to me.
Here’s what A Course in Miracles has to say about these rituals:
Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is content, and not form of any kind. The special relationship is a ritual of form, aimed at raising the form to take the place of God at the expense of content. There is no meaning in the form, and there will never be. The special relationship must be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in His killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content, and love has lost its meaning. Would you want this to be possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? If it were possible, you would have made yourself helpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You cannot change His Mind. No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you can bring death to the eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute for the Wholeness of God have any influence at all upon it.
See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him, and by worshipping them to obscure their tininess and His greatness. In the name of your completion you do not want this. For every idol that you raise to place before Him stands before you, in place of what you are.
2. I am no longer seeking outside myself for completion.
It used to be that I was always looking for a relationship to make my life “better.” My Shadow Self was not integrated, so I was attracted to men I perceived as having qualities that were “weak” in me. The most hilarious one is that I pretty much always dated entrepreneurs. Yet I believed that I was no good at business.
Hahaha. It turns out that being an entrepreneur is one of my most amazing talents :) Yes, God has a great sense of humor. How could I have hidden the truth from myself for so long? Now that I realize how good I am at business, I no longer feel the need to “complete” myself by finding a man who is good at business.
I used to look to men for “permission” to stay at a nice hotel or order a nice bottle of wine. Now I embrace my own abundance and give myself permission. No more co-dependency. Ahhh, feels much better.
3. No more addiction to drama and conflict.
I used to be attracted to men who seemed “larger than life” to me. This often led to drama and conflict. Now I have no interest in drama and conflict. All I want is peace.
4. I am no longer seeking something different from what I already have.
And I don’t need a man to give me anything that I don’t already have. In fact, the only way I could see myself getting into a relationship at this point is if the relationship pretty much exactly matches my life right now. Because I like my life. It’s simple, abundant, satisfying, and peaceful. I have a huge amount of freedom.
A Course in Miracles (ACIM) talks about this too, such as these passages:
“There is no gift the Father asks of you but that you see in all creation but the shining glory of His gift to you. Behold His Son, His perfect gift, in whom his Father shines forever, and to whom is all creation given as his own. Because he has it is it given you, and where it lies in him behold your peace. The quiet that surrounds you dwells in him, and from this quiet come the happy dreams in which your hands are joined in innocence. These are not hands that grasp in dreams of pain. They hold no sword, for they have left their hold on every vain illusion of the world. And being empty they receive, instead, a brother’s hand in which completion lies.”
Here’s another excerpt from A Course in Miracles (ACIM):
“The sudden expansion of awareness that takes place with your desire for it is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted for you, to welcome you to openness of mind and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. Not through destruction, not through a breaking out, but merely by a quiet melting in. For peace will join you there, simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you have placed upon love, and joined it where it is and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace.”
5. There’s no rush for anything to happen.
There used to be such a feeling of urgency about everything. Oh yeah, I bought into all the baloney about a woman’s biological clock and all the marketing crap about “if you don’t act fast, he might find someone else.” Blah blah blah. And by the way, you can get on that same hamster wheel with money. Anyone who is barely getting by with their bills each month has to run to keep up. How many of you are still running on those hamster wheels?
Now I understand that I rule time. Time and space are illusions, they have no power over me. My task is ever more to find the place of peace within myself where time stands totally still. And more and more, that is exactly where I live.
6. I don’t need to go “out there” and find a partner.
How many hamster wheels keep you running and seeking? Girl gets ring books, online dating sites, matchmaking clubs, the club scene … the lists go on and one. Yet what does A Course in Miracles teach us?
It’s so very simple:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false. Every illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another must fail. If you seek love outside yourself you can be certain that you perceive hatred within, and are afraid of it. Yet peace will never come from the illusion of love, but only from its reality.”
My task is not to seek for love. So I don’t seek for it anymore. Instead, I have been recording 30-Day Challenges to remove my fears and limiting beliefs, because those are the barriers I have built against love. And I’ve been systematically removing the barriers and limitations from my mind and my heart. With each Challenge I have recorded, my sense of inner peace and having “all the time in the world” has increased accordingly.
So Girl Gets Ring? No thank you. No more hamster wheels for me. I’ve stopped buying books. The answers are within. And from this understanding comes a perfect peace so priceless that nobody would ever consent to put their foot on another hamster wheel ever again.
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Speaking of which, I have now finished recording more than half of the 30-Day Crown Chakra Challenge, bringing us ever closer to union with God (closely related to the holy relationship, which is a reflection on Earth of our relationship with God).
Love,
Erika Awakening, High Priestess of Miracles at TAPsmarter