OK, this is going to be a kind of geeky conversation about how to heal from the relational trauma most of us are carrying these days, and it might be provocative -- so, dial up your curiosity meter as you read.  

I've been studying attachment for years now with some brilliant mentors, who view intimate relationships as the most healing path available to us as humans. The theory goes like this: Since our relational wounds originated in human relationship, the only way to heal them is in human relationship.

In this view, the path of Conscious Partnership is a truly advanced spiritual path. It involves consciously working with the many triggers that come up in relationships, and working singly and together to use those as doorways into healing and evolution. 

Some teachers I deeply respect, including Derek Hart, teach this relational healing path as essentially the ONLY healing path. So, when I was in a relationship some years ago with a beautiful soul who had suffered intense childhood abuse, and the attachment triggers started rapidly ping-ponging between us (because of course I carried some trauma too), I tried very hard to convince her that the only way for her to heal was to work through it with me. 

But, she declined, and broke up with me. She didn't feel she had the capacity to do that work. And moreover, she either didn't believe she could develop that capacity, or she didn't want to. 

I struggled for a long time with the sense that she hadn't been willing to "do the work." Of course, I wasn't exactly objective about what "the work" was. I wanted her to heal through our relationship because I wanted us to be together.

Was it her wounds that caused her to say No? Or, was it my wounds that caused me to push so hard for her to say Yes? Probably both. 

Absolutely, I believe that conscious lesbian partnership or conscious queer partnership can be profoundly healing. But what about conscious lesbian solitude? Or conscious queer solitude? Can that, too, be an equally valid path?

Interestingly, Joe Dispenza, whose work I've followed for many years, is these days saying that the most evolutionary step forward is to rewire our brains away from intense dependence on human attachment.

He says that the attachment part of our brains evolved during a more tribal period in human existence, when we faced far more physical threats and literally could not survive without one another. (Many attachment theorists believe it evolved in infancy, when we couldn't survive alone.) Either way, it makes sense that most adults are wired to experience life-threatening terror at the experience of feeling rejected or lonely -- even when, on the physical plane, many of us can live on our own just fine.

We know from extensive research that there is an epidemic of loneliness right now. That loneliness causes terrible suffering, and very negative outcomes to both our physical and mental health.

Yet does being solitary necessarily have to mean being lonely? Dispenza provocatively suggests that the next step in evolution is for us to rewire our brains away from such intense dependence on other humans, and learn to source our sense of safety from our connection with the divine instead. 

This evolutionary path of Conscious Solitude doesn't necessarily mean you have to stay single forever, by the way. Dispenza talks about some of his students who chose Conscious Solitude (which, in his model, involves committed intentional daily practice, not just being single) for a period of months, and then were able to re-enter the realm of partnership from a place that was far more resilient and whole.

So I'm curious: what do you think? And if you're aware you're on a healing path, which resonates more for you as your next right step: conscious partnership, or conscious solitude?

You might be surprised by my take on this. Click the video above.  

And by the way, Conscious Girlfriend is not just about helping you get -- or keep -- a girlfriend. It's about being a conscious lesbian or queer human. Our Roadmap course and all our work supports conscious solitude and conscious connection of all kinds, not just romantic.