Recently, I explored how our habit of not fully breaking up with one another is holding our energy hostage—energy that we could be directing toward building the New Era. This is Part II of that piece.

Read it here. 

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Humanity is moving toward a place where we no longer connect with one another over our pain and scars, but over our dreams and vision for what we think is possible.

By releasing stagnant energy and closing our relationship cycles, we can apply our thoughts and creations toward new inventions and ideas that can be of benefit to our planet’s flourishing.

First though, we have to unstick ourselves from the song that plays in loops, reminding us of the pain that many of us carry within—the song that says, “Breaking up is hard to do.”

But does it have to be?

The path of a mindful, healthy breakup is comprised of a million tiny moments. In each one we are given the opportunity to transform how we react and eventually reimagine how partnerships, both serious and casual, can part.

I have had both healthy and unhealthy breakups. Looking back at my own behavior as a “bad-ex,” I see now that if I would’ve had mindful steps in place, I would have been able to converse with my innermost self somewhere in the post-breakup haze about how I was making a bed I didn’t actually want to lie in.

The New Era of relationships is reverent. It is honorable. It is not about what is disposable, because it understands that each crossing brings us a lesson to teach one another for growth. The New Era of relationships sees that all possibilities for love, no matter the depth or duration, can be lovely.

We are ready to trust one another again.

Imagine dating with no scores left to settle and no karma to finish. Imagine saying goodbye with sweetness and no question marks punctuating the end of our chapters. Imagine dating someone new without baggage and ghosts hanging around the hallways of our new romance.

The New Era holds feelings we can’t imagine once the stagnant energy is released. Choices are made with greater clarity. We no longer live the same endings over and over. We give ourselves new thoughts to think, new ideas to share, new love to feel.

Here are some practical, emotional, and spiritual steps for creating space for your own rite of passage in order to release the stagnant energies of past relationships:

1. Embrace the Crossing

Crossings are the space where your paths exist together. Partings are where the path splits and each continues onward, alone.

It is said that if two people are following the same energy, they are bound to end up in the same room. This is the essence of the crossing. In the words of Erykah Badu:

“I think people who vibrate at the same frequency vibrate toward each other. They call it, in science, sympathetic vibrations.” 

It is like a divine web that brings us into a dance with one another, bringing what our souls need at that precise moment to further our becoming. The web of crossings isn’t a scale, and it isn’t about a straight path to “the one.” It isn’t all about absolute measurements of “forevers,” “nevers,” and “always”—it is all about how each unique person is a sacred presence.

2. Be Conscious of How You’ll Refer to Them

In addition to new vocabulary like crossing and parting, we should come up with a new way to refer to someone other than our “ex.” Harsh is going out of style.

Calling someone an ex keeps a hold on the energy we are trying to release here. One day, I realized something crazy in me stir with gross pleasure when someone I was dating called his former girlfriend his ex. It was a signal that she was not a threat.

The thing is, whether or not she was a threat is irrelevant. Rather, I had to be aware of that weird ego reaction it caused in me. I believe we can enter relationships that honor and celebrate the past, and that we won’t have to constantly be at odds with it.

This also moves us away from thoughts stuck in ideas of competition. Using descriptions that honor both past and possibility—like “last serious boyfriend”—are a good first step in treating everyone better. 

Simple as that.

3. Update Your Technology Immediately

Sometimes, we need to put certain protocols in place to make us think twice before contacting someone after a parting.

Recently, there was a “big love” I needed total separation from. It was so easy to grab my phone late at night when I couldn’t stop wondering about what went wrong. I needed to build a decision-making mechanism into my habits and automatic behaviors that would check me when my ego was out and scrolling for attention.

I deleted his number, his email, and disconnected from him on social media. I sent his contact info to two confidants, telling them that if I died, to please let him know.

If ever I wanted to text him, the absence of his phone number in my phone offered the briefest of moments for me to pause. In the moments when I began tearing apart my desk drawer to find his old business card, or before I began drafting the text to my entrusted friends asking for his number, I was able to ask myself if I was making this choice in an emotional frenzy or in the deepest of love.

It was almost always the former.

The lack of social media assaults (seeing his face blasted on my screen) also helped. Regularly deleting text conversations if he reached out to me did, too.

Most importantly, it was in these small moments with technology that I strengthened my commitment to myself and my path.

Many of us have automatic relationships with technology—zoning out when logging in. While updating technology is a practical step, I like to imagine it as a strengthening of my forcefield.

It also made me aware of people who weren’t protecting theirs—like if I was dating someone who responded to texts from his most recent past-partner at two in the morning as I lay in the bed next to him, I knew that her residue was stronger than my presence. More importantly, it told me that he was unaware of how to be mindful in that moment.

4. Update Your Listening

Because sound and music are powerful triggers, awareness of what we intake through our ears is another practical step for navigating relationships and break-ups in the New Era.

We can start by trying out a new genre. Pick a foreign land whose music resonates. Pick a topic and find a podcast about it. Search YouTube, Gaia, Netflix, and other places for lectures, documentaries, stories, and issues that are interesting.

Write songs, poems, or articles, or create something that expresses the lessons from the crossing. Many songs and stories of the old library are about love lost, not being enough, and needing another person to bring you wholeness and value.

In the New Era, we can choose to fill the vacuum of a break-up with knowledge and sounds that we want to discover for ourselves. It’s time to start a new library that we can draw upon that sings of new ways to love—and sometimes, to leave.

5. Cut the Cord

There are some people in our lives who we have strong psychic connections with. Communicating telepathically can be a beautiful, powerful experience.

As the engineers of our own channels, taking the time to update our conduits and the flow and direction of our outgoing and incoming energy is a powerful step.

After I deleted “big love’s” phone number, I could still hear his thoughts at random times for months after it had ended. His transmissions would reach me at eerie times and intervals, with an intense clarity and pain.

I had to stop the inflow of these communications. One night, before falling asleep, I found myself in a deep visualization where I was standing in the doorway between my own consciousness and the place where all of the noise from him was entering from. I stood at the door and declared to the chatter, myself, my cells, my thoughts, and our connection: no more. I visualized myself closing the door that led to his. I visualized the silence that came from doing this.

It is like meditation. When we focus on the breath, we watch our thoughts come in so they can be released without attachment. Closing the channel allowed me to see the transmissions come through with space, giving me agency over any possible emotional reactions and responses.

Lastly, I should state that energetic and psychic cord-cutting is an actual ceremony that shamans and healers perform, and it can be a serious matter. What I am describing here is of a somewhat lighter timbre just shy of seeking this type of professional assistance.

6. Be a Badass

Imagine if we could part ways and look back on our crossings with fondness. Imagine, down the road, someone thinking back on what they shared with you and remembering how cool, how free, and how special it was. What a nice reverberation that would have in our lives!

Be someone who is constantly learning. Be someone whose new thoughts and ideas will be of perpetual interest to those around you. By falling in love with our own story, past crossings will always wonder what we’re up to—not because they regret a current marriage or relationship or because you are a superior being, but because deep inside, they always knew you were a badass, and they are curious about the life you’ve created since they were part of it.

In short, leave them better for having known you—for that, ultimately, is the most badass thing that can come from a crossing.

For both of you.

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Relephant:

Romanticitis: How Romantic Love Makes us Unhappy.

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Author: Jill Boyd 
Image: Kim Carpenter/Unsplash
Editor: Callie Rushton
Copy Editor: Nicole Cameron
Social Editor: Leah Sugerman