FIDELITY...

Let's be honest - the concept of being "faithful" within a relationship is usually a spillover from the religious tenets of maintaining physical fidelity which in and of itself is surely fundamentally flawed…

If one is lucky enough to partner with another human during our fleeting time on this planet in this material plane of existence and you find yourselves enjoying compatibility across all aspects of your relationship: the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual, then fidelity must encompass all those facets….no?

For me, I came to one of those epiphanic moments through (yes, that's right) reading and the simple yet amazingly profound traditions of the Native American cultures through Medicine Wheel teaching (culminated in Kenneth Meadows' book, The Medicine Way ISBN-10: 1862040222 / ISBN-13: 978-1862040229)

It revealed to me how and why the Westernised approach to life had gone so horribly awry and, in a microcosmic sense, why I too was living a life devoid of fulfillment.

In a nutshell the traditional way of perceiving this shared reality in the Medicine Wheel teachings was through the elements, in turn defined by the cardinal directions in the wheel, each one representative of each facet of our existence.

North represented Air / Intellect and where we "receive" information from the universe

South represented Water / Emotions and where we "give" of ourselves

East represented Fire / Spirit (where the sun rises) and where we "determine" / make decisions that shape our pathway in life

West represented Earth / Body (where the sun falls into the Earth) - material physicality and where we "hold" our strength.

When one approaches life in this way, a balance is created in each facet of our lives and fulfillment is attained as the link between the four cardinal directions is through the centre of the wheel which essentially feeds our soul or pathway to God - call it what you will.

In simplistic terms, the Western way of life effectively ratchets the way we interact with life by one notch out of harmony and thus is created a whole different set of defining guidelines:

East becomes North where we no longer "receive" information from the universe but actually make decisions in our lives without that inner integrity - now based solely on intellect and logic devoid of that innate guiding instinct.

West is now South where we "give" of ourselves - no longer from that base of emotional integrity but purely in the physical sense where what would have been emotional love now becomes physical lustful interaction and loses its deeper meaning. And the physical/material aspects of existence become our defining value system thereby diminishing intrinsic human values.

North is now East where we are receiving input from the universe but don't have the capacity to recognise this any longer

South becomes West where we now "hold" our strengths - not physically but emotionally. We hold onto emotional baggage and drama which is debilitating in every sense and manifests in all sort of physical ailments as we cannot get to the root of our issues and process them. The Western answer to this is therapy which once again intellectualises issues which require to be dealt with in an emotional arena, a concept which is almost impossible to do within the value structures to which we've become confined.

When we realise the simplicity of how we can actually exist and we look for those aspects in a partner (and are lucky enough to find them), fidelity isn't really an issue any longer as our means of defining purpose in our lives takes on a different perspective and fulfillment is more readily attained.

And once a person is fulfilled emotionally, intellectually, physically and spiritually, there is little enticement to seek those aspects outside of that relationship - it simply serves no purpose.

And our relationship with others also attains a more meaningful dynamic.

Well, it certainly works for me.