Staying true by facing relational nothingness

On relationship shapes and unspoken dynamics that impact the whole

Is it presumptuous of me to express, that it is within our processing of relationships that we get to touch in with God?

Whether we use God, spirit, creator, goddess, deity, the divine, the great mystery or mama earth, what I’m speaking to here is the incredible experience of touching in with the much larger fabric of the cosmic order in which we are all entangled in, when fumbling and finding our way within our many dynamic relationships.

There are a set of regulations we subconsciously subscribe to when we set afoot onto the stage of dominant cultural norms where we are beholden to relationship hierarchy. We are asked to know what we “mean to each other,” and perform tactical displays of love that announce our commitment, piety, and underlying it all, what we expect in return.

It is the finding of what we are to one another that exposes our relationship angst. I have often heard the phrase, “we are finding our relationship shape,” when relationship unease is imminent, and I have felt curiosity around whether it is even possible to define a shape that helps us make sense of what is an appropriate kind of care to offer one another.

It is in these expressions of finding our relationship form or shape, that I peek into the ways our society has tried to suppress and vilify relational nothingness.

Nothingness, or similarly Emptiness, can be a terrifying reality when there is a preferability towards what is knowable. Its embrace threatening for some, yet expansive for others.

Meister Eckhart, a German Catholic priest, expressed nothingness as akin to God. He was accused of having views that threatened the Catholic order yet garnered many devout followers during his time as well.

God is a being beyond being

And a nothingness beyond being.

God is nothing. No thing.

God is nothingness.

And yet God is something.

–Meister Eckhart

In the Daoist text by Lao Tzu,

The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space (for the axle), that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends.

Having grown up in the Chinese Christian church, finding my way towards Daoism later in life, I am so fascinated by the similarities of nothingness and emptiness, that appear both in Christian mysticism but also in Daoist thought.

In both quotes, I see the ways in which emptiness and nothingness, are shaped by absence, of pointing around these intangible concepts as a way of coming close to sensing truth.

When it comes to relationship, it can feel comforting to define what we are to each other.

When we create shape, name shape, or define the construction of a relationship, we can get the feeling that we are on a path, that we are close to a sort of stability that can assure us of what the future holds. However, our obsession with shape can become a hinderance to our awareness of what isn’t happening, or what is unseen and unspoken.

It is the intangible, the unseeable that nothingness, and emptiness represent.

Relational nothingness is the gap in-between the words. Relational nothingness is the absence that longs for presence. Relational nothingness is the elephant that is cowering in the corner. Relational nothingness encompasses the whole, and it is this nothingness that creates form in a relationship.

So, how do we use relational nothingness to bring to life our relationships? How do we feel the presence of God when being with our relational messes? And, how to we trust the form that is created by making sense of the emptiness rather than chasing the form itself?

When relationships drift, when relationships stagnate, when we feel a block towards connection, when we start to feel things shifting, our discomfort oftentimes arises out of a fear and lack of clarity of “what we are” and “who we are to each other.”

It is in these moments, where we are given an opportunity to welcome relational nothingness. The moment in which our relationships enter a complete and utter question mark of formlessness, is the moment where we are given the opportunity to serve not the ideal form of relationship but rather, to serve the relationship itself.

To name truths that might be scary to name, might not serve the continuation of a certain kind of form, but will feed the relationship in understanding itself.

Relationship Ecology is the practice of seeing communities, and relationships as part of an ecosystem. By seeing communities as an ecosystem, moments of conflict are not personality errors, but rather, signals that communicate a weak point in the community ecosystem asking for support.

I remember one community project where tensions between relationships began to rise, and conflict between me and each person in the project started to emerge.

There was a moment in which one person in the circle left the project, and I too felt the urge to leave. However, I felt that if I left, the relational work that we were really there to do, more so than the work of actualizing the “dream,” would be lost in stepping away.

Sometimes, community systems don’t have the support necessary to hold all the dynamics that arise. Cultures where conflict is seen as a matter of personality between two people, rather than signifiers of distress within the system, seem to feel content with ignoring the relational nothingness that grows and looms in size, suffocating connection.

The dynamic of a surrounding community denying proximity and power to engaging with dyadic conflict, is all too common. Communities that fall apart due to untended to conflict, are like systems that ignore the slow drip of venom that seep into the blood flow, paralyzing our capacity to grow, transform, and change together.

The Western world has an obsession with what can be seen. “What you see is what you get.” Yet, it is in the cosmologies of mystic wisdom traditions, where I can trace our roots to a time where the unseen was not only acknowledged but paid homage to.

Prayer to the spirits of the land, the beings of the waters, the ancestors. They are not seeable, but they influence the forms, and physical plane in which we find our limits in.

When we make space for the unseen dynamics within relationship, we welcome relational nothingness. We acknowledge that we might not need to know what is the “problem” to ask, what is truly present here?

Three years ago, me and a friend explored a romantic relationship with one another. At the time, I kept feeling this strangeness when we would engage in our romantic energy with one another. It was so difficult to name what was there, but all I could sense was a feeling of siblinghood with him. At the time, we didn’t have the support necessary to acknowledge our siblinghood as a possibility. We had no models for siblinghood across non-blood related, male/female relations. The form felt unattainable.

Yet over time, we persevered with naming this discomfort. We went in and out of relationship, uncertain of how to do much but to name what was not lining up. Recently, as our relational system, our community, began to grow in strength and connection, we were given the opportunity to see that through acknowledging what was not present we could weave together what was.

It required a whole community of people to reinforce their commitment to each one of us, our dyadic dynamic, and our mutual courage to name the relational nothingness present that has allowed us to celebrate the form of siblinghood that is now blossoming between us.

The absence of certain forms can be a profound gift if we trust the creative will that Spirit has imbued in the epic diversity of possibilities within the natural world. It is Relationship Ecology’s vision to recognize the deep violence of separation that the nuclear family paradigm relies on to subsidize and exploit the land and its people to fund these realities that perform an “ideal form” of intimacy.

To find our way towards ecologically whole, diverse, and abundant communities, we must find the courage to embrace relational nothingness as a key that unlocks our relational potential.

When we see the value of what is not seen, and we give it our attention, we might find pathways within our relationships that deepen our intimacy. When we see the absence of, as tools that allow us to access truth, we can let go of conceived notions of relationship and embrace what is honestly being offered to us.

If we were to place God as a man in the sky rather than as nothingness, we lose the possibility of feeling God in all beings. When we name the Dao as a road rather than as an unnamable force of all liveness, we relegate ourselves to control over synchronicity.

If we release our relationships from form and welcome what is unspoken to speak, we get to dance with the energies that are here rather than the future confines of what we hope they can be. And it is this practice where we find that surprise makes form a gift, not a mold to prove our worthiness to.