Why are we sometimes drawn to a person like a magnet, with no idea why? And why does that pull so often fade, even in relationships that seemed perfect at the start?
In this clip from his 2019 London Real interview, author Gregg Braden offers his answer. Drawing on what he calls the “third mirror” of relationships, an idea he traces to the ancient Essene tradition, he explains how he believes we give away pieces of ourselves over a lifetime, and how we go looking for them in other people.
▶ Watch the full episode: Gregg Braden – Human By Design: Exploring Science And Spirituality
The pieces we lose
Braden’s starting point is that at some point in life we all want to love. But when we reach inside for that love and find it missing, he says, we will stop at nothing to find the parts of ourselves we have lost, given away or had taken from us, sometimes by people who had power over us.
So when someone walks in who seems to have that missing piece intact, in his view “your energy body will know that.” You feel a powerful attraction and assume it is love. Maybe it is, he says, and maybe it is not.
One question to ask yourself
His practical advice is simple and private. When you feel a strong, unexplained pull towards someone, perhaps one that does not feel appropriate, carry on the normal conversation and silently ask yourself what you see in this person that you have lost, given away or had taken away. The answers, he says, arrive before you finish the question.
Often they are qualities you aspire to: self-confidence, or a desire to give something to the world. Sometimes it is how well someone looks after themselves. Once you recognise what the attraction is really about, he argues, you no longer have to throw away a marriage, a job or a career chasing something you do not understand.
The woman with the broken jar
Braden links the idea to the Gospel of Thomas, one of the texts found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. He retells a parable from it: a woman carries a jar of meal home, the jar cracks on the way, and when she arrives to feed her family it is empty.
In his reading, “we are the jar, we are the vessel,” and the meal is our love, lost bit by bit through compromise and hurt. Noticing the empty jar is, for him, the start of a journey to reclaim it. He is open that this came from his own life: repeated relationships, including marriages, that mirrored the hurt of the family he grew up in, until he went looking for a pattern.
When the magnet fades
Brian Rose suggests that relationships built on filling a hole tend to end. Braden adds a twist. Spend long enough with the person who attracted you, he says, and you often rebuild those missing pieces in yourself. Then the attraction wanes and people decide they have fallen out of love, when in his view the relationship has done its job and helped them become more whole.
At that point, he says, it is a choice: continue the journey with that person, or go and chase something else. Neither is right or wrong. The value is in choosing consciously instead of being “pushed around the chessboard of life” by feelings you do not understand.
Who is Gregg Braden?
Gregg Braden is an American author and speaker known for his work bridging science, ancient traditions and spirituality. His books include The God Code, The Divine Matrix, Fractal Time, Human By Design and The Science of Self-Empowerment.
This clip comes from his 2019 London Real episode, Human By Design. His earlier London Real episodes include You Are Wired To Be Extraordinary (2018) and Raising Human Consciousness (2019).
See everything Gregg Braden has done with London Real on his guest page: Gregg Braden on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Gregg Braden – The Third Mirror: Why Attraction Fades In Relationships
0:00 Gregg Braden: Sometimes it’s by people who have power over us. Here’s the deal. At some point in our lives, Brian, we all want to love. And when we reach inside for that love to share with another person and it’s not there, what we will do is we will stop at nothing to find the pieces of ourselves that we’ve lost, given away or had taken away.
0:21 Gregg Braden: When someone comes into your life who has that piece intact within them, your energy body will know that, and you’ll be drawn to them like a magnet and you won’t know why. And you’ll say: maybe I’m in love with this person. And maybe you are and maybe you’re not.
0:38 Gregg Braden: So the thing to do is, silently, when you’re in the presence of someone where you feel this powerful magnetic attraction and you don’t know why, and maybe you feel it’s not appropriate, you don’t have to lose everything you’ve worked for. Ask yourself this question. Engage in conversation: nice day, great weather, great-looking tie. And in your mind say: what is it that I see in this person, or what do I sense in this person, that I’ve lost, given away or had taken away within myself? And before you even finish the question, those answers are coming.
1:10 Gregg Braden: And sometimes they can be qualities that you aspire to. Self-confidence is a big one for a lot of people, or a desire to give to the world. That is a very, very powerful magnet, because we all want to contribute in some way. Sometimes it can be physical attributes: this person has really cared for themselves and I want that for myself.
1:32 Gregg Braden: But you’d be amazed, because once we begin to understand what those attributes are, we don’t have to lose a lifetime of a marriage or a job or a career to chase something we don’t understand. We become conscious of what it is about that person, and that opens the door once we recognise that. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Sometimes that opens the door then to the path to re-engage these things with ourselves, with your own life, with your own self.
2:04 Gregg Braden: So I just want to say: the Essenes. Jesus was of the Essene lineage. So not as a religious figure, but as a very learned man, I have a lot of respect for what he left for us. And in the texts that were discovered in the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt, 1945-ish, the oldest records of the Old Testament before the church edited those records, there was a book called the Gospel of Thomas. And many people have never heard of the Gospel of Thomas because it was edited out of the biblical canon in the fourth century. But it was found in the Nag Hammadi Library.
2:39 Gregg Braden: And in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus talks about this third mirror, and he does it with a parable. I’ll just share it, it’s a beautiful parable, really quickly, because this is the way people learned in that time. He said: there was a woman walking down the road carrying a jar full of meal, still some distance from her home. He said the jar broke and the meal began to fall onto the road behind her, but she didn’t notice that the jar had broken. And when she got home, she reached in the jar for the meal to feed her family, and the jar was empty.
3:13 Gregg Braden: OK, that’s the parable, the third mirror. You and me, all of our viewers: we are the jar, we are the vessel. And the meal inside the jar is our love. And through our lives we will lose bits and pieces of our love as we compromise, give it away, or it’s taken away by those who have power over us. And we reach a point in our lives where we truly choose to love. Maybe it’s loving ourselves, or maybe it’s loving another person. And we reach inside and we realise that we cannot love to the capacity that we would like to, because we’ve given so much of ourselves away.
3:52 Gregg Braden: And that is the beginning of a journey to reclaim that love. And if you’re in the right relationship, it’s a journey you can share with another person. If you don’t know what’s happening to you as a self-referencing being, then you will become a victim of your circumstances, and all kinds of ways of dealing with that, through drugs and alcohol and dysfunctional relationships and things like that.
4:14 Gregg Braden: So for me personally, I had to understand my life, because I found myself reeling in relationships, including marriages, I won’t tell you how many, that mirrored the dysfunctionality and the hurt of the family that I’d come from. And after I did that a few times, took me a few times, I said: maybe there’s a pattern here. What is that pattern? And as a scholar of ancient texts, I began saying: this can’t be happening just to me. There have to be people in the past that have had these experiences. What did they learn that I’m only beginning to understand? And that led me to the Essene traditions.
5:00 Gregg Braden: So what we’ve just shared is only one of those mirrors, and it happens to be the third mirror, and that’s a very powerful mirror, because I think it plays out in all of our lives. And even after you have the mirror show up and you know what it means, it doesn’t mean it stops happening. What it means is, when you feel that feeling, you say: I know what this is. What is it that I see in this person that I’ve lost, given away or had taken away? What is it that I see in this person that can help me be a better version of myself?
5:33 Gregg Braden: And as you begin approaching from that perspective, you can keep the relationships that you have without feeling the need to chase after, if it’s an intimate or romantic relationship, or changing jobs or careers, because really it’s all with us right here. It’s what you began the conversation with. You said: different people, same experiences; different jobs, same experiences.
5:59 Brian Rose: And I’m guessing if you go with that person that seems to fill that hole, that doesn’t necessarily work out, because you’re just a person with a hole and you’re trying to get it from the other person. And the other person sooner or later realises that you’re not whole without them, and that probably ends.
6:11 Gregg Braden: Well, here’s where it gets very interesting. Two people can come together and they can agree. So now we’re going to talk about intimate relationships, partners, any way it works: male, female, female, female, whatever. It’s all the same. It’s just energy. It’s energy coming together.
6:30 Gregg Braden: Once the person that has lost, given away or had taken away from them, once they are with the other person long enough, they typically will regain and rebuild those pieces within themselves. Then the magnetic attraction begins to wane. And if you don’t know what is happening, you’ll say: ah, I’m no longer in love with this person. When the truth is that your love has been so deep that it’s helped you become a more whole and complete version of yourself.
7:03 Gregg Braden: And then it’s a choice. Do I continue my journey with the person that helped me find my wholeness? Or do I go chase something else? Not right, wrong, good or bad. But once we know this, we can consciously make the choice, rather than unconsciously being pushed around the chessboard of life, following these feelings that we don’t understand.
