Attempting to rise above the gender in which I reside and say something about a "between-ness" I see leaves me a tad uneasy.  While research in the area regularly reports that there are more differences within genders than there are between them and while no pattern holds true for all couples, I believe there are some themes worth noting about the gender-related collisions of everyday relational life.  

Gender Fender Benders

       "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it … am I still wrong?"  Six guys in the boundary waters howled, hearing Steve's quip during one of our regular conversations in the woods about the hazards of relationship.

       "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."  Quoting this bumper-sticker, 30-some years ago, my colleague Michele laughed merrily and assured me that the women she knows consider it to be quite the hoot.

       There's truth in the hoots and howls – and an edge to the stories we carry about relationship.  I recall these jokes and wonder about residue buried within us – not just from our personal histories, but also from centuries of gender-related experience – old stories, old wounds.

       Centuries of oppression have left women with a residue of indignation – rightfully so – and, perhaps with that, a sense of righteousness.  That same history can leave men vulnerable to a shame about being bad or wrong.  I remember an old nursery rhyme declaring that boys are made of "snakes and snails and puppy dog tails", while girls are "sugar and spice and everything nice".

       Centuries of masculine privilege have left a residue in men that we deserve to be advantaged in the rules of engagement – that somehow we matter more and should be catered to.  I wonder about a corresponding vulnerability in women about being expected to serve, about not mattering, not being important.

       Collisions are inevitable as these vulnerabilities encounter each other, as stories of "I'm not important" meet stories of "I'm wrong".  Complaints, defenses, attacks and counter-attacks fly, as each partner fights for legitimacy.  Each fights for the dreaded story not to be true – especially for it not to be true in this most important of relationships.

       Collisions are painfully repeated, but eventually they teach us compassion – for ourselves, for each other, and for the wounds we carry.  Over time, in conscious relationships, collisions become gentler and fewer – humbling reminders, perhaps, of old routines and the stories that fuel them – common stories, uniquely expressed.

       I'm reminded of the somber narration ending each episode of a 1960's TV show about New York:  "There are eight million stories in the naked city.  This has been one of them."

Self Request

I don't ask myself

to be fully present

in every life's moment –

just in this one.

I don't ask

that I love

all the time –

just this time.

The horizon

is huge

when now

is enough.

Vast

self

here

now

.

Self Protection

       As I experience my own love life and witness the love lives of individuals and couples who come to see me, I'm often struck by how counter-productive are our strategies for self-protection, how often these strategies lead to disconnection from ourselves and from those we love.

       We hide our vulnerability, as if we're dealing with an adversary who would take advantage of our weakness.  We attack, defend, withdraw – hoping for emotional safety at the same time we desire closeness – often winding up with something that's neither safe nor close.

       We hide, for example, by focusing on the other – diagnosing, analyzing, projecting, interrogating:  "What's wrong?"  "Why aren't you…?"  "You seem…"  "Why are you so…?"  

       An alternative is to attend more deeply to ourselves, to listen to our bodies' signals, to gently inquire within:  "What am I feeling?"  "What am I feeling under that?"  "What kind of story am I telling myself?"  "What's my vulnerability here?" "What am I looking for?"  "What do I want?"  "What's important to me here?"  This is not self-analysis; it's self-awareness.  It's not mental; it's mindful.

       This level of listening allows us to reveal ourselves.  The inner connection invites relational connection.  I don't start a battle, I start a conversation.  I start by discarding weapons, dropping armor, disrobing. 

      To be safe with an adversary, wear a suit of armor.  To be safe with a lover, get naked.  

Twin Truths

       During a recent week with Richard Moss in Ojai, CA, we learned a practice that I find especially helpful when a personal relationship or my relationship with life has some complexity to it – helpful, especially, since most of my important relationships are complex in some way. 

       Take, for example, my relationship to money and power.  I fear having a lot of money and, at the same time, I buy lottery tickets.  Underneath my longstanding mistrust of power and reluctance to exercise it, I discover in shadow realms a desire for power and control. 

       Darkness allows us to know light.  Only if we're able to say "no" can we really say "yes".

       Imbedded in one truth is its opposite.  In his most recent book, Inside-Out Healing, Richard says:  "Concepts always exist as pairs of opposites: up and down, good and bad, left and right …"  (p. 79).  If one story within us is true, chances are the opposite is true as well.  Richard offers, in his book, an excellent exercise to help us feel our way into these opposing stories, along with some imagery to help us release them. 

       One night in Ojai, I experimented with an abbreviated version of this exercise, using eight permutations of a "me-you" story about a relationship in my life.  Lying in bed, face up, I let each of the eight truths sink into my bones, one pair at a time.

I like Bob.  (pseudonym)

I don't like Bob.

                        Bob likes me.

                        Bob doesn't like me.

                        I like me.

                        I don't like me.

                        Bob likes Bob.

                        Bob doesn't like Bob.

       I stayed with the first pair, alternating back and forth, until I felt embodied in both truths, with no resistance to either.  I fully accepted that both stories were present in me, then moved on to the next pair – and continued in this way with each pair until I'd finished the last one.

       Moments later, I noticed a remarkable stillness inside, a quiet peacefulness.  With no conscious effort on my part to make them go away, all eight stories had simply dissolved. 

       Embracing them all released them all. 

Note:  Check Inside-Out Healing for a more complete description of this practice.

Automatic Niceness

       I'm a nice person.   As I'm mindful of this quality in myself, I see a genuinely kind James, living in love.  I also see a younger James, sunny on the outside, who chose niceness as a way of protecting himself from the unpredictability of early relational life.

       A wise and adaptive choice at the time, niceness became automatic.  Originally intended to protect relationship, it now interferes with authentic, loving connection. 

       Consciousness work offers an opportunity to interrupt the automatic – to slow down and be more fully present with ourselves and each other, to relate from a stance of integration and embodiment.

       Automatic niceness conceals more than it reveals.  Turns out, it's not so nice.

Cosmos and Growth:  A Story

        I have a serious soft spot for cosmological stories.  I don't need them to be totally factual to be true.  Here’s a story I wrote ten years ago about the universe and how we evolve in it. 

Cosmos

        In the beginning, there is no-thing, the silence of God.  The void is fertile.  The emptiness is full.  In an attempt to name this silence that cannot be named, physicists use the term “singularity.”

        From the fertile void, there flares forth a great blossoming, an explosion of love (the energy of God). This ecstatic expansion of love manifests as light and heat.  Creativity and destruction dance passionately together, as love gives birth, gives death, gives birth again.

        Time and space are born.  As the original burst of energy slows and cools (at precisely the right rate), it becomes the universe we see – the stars and planets, the rocks and trees, the animals and humans, like you and me.

        The universe is growing and alive.  It’s intelligent and wise.  Because its essence is love, it is not neutral and, definitely, not malevolent.

        In this story, love and everything in the universe is trinitarian in nature.  Uniqueness, oneness and relatedness are woven into the fabric of all that is.  Every person and every blade of grass is one of a kind (unique and individual), one with the universe (all originating in the singularity of sacred emptiness) and forever connected in a web of relationship with everything else (the ultimate internet). 

        Relationship is a never-ending dance of uniqueness and oneness.  We are one and we are two.  Whether we care to or not, we're all dancing with the paradoxical mystery of oneness in two-ness and two-ness in oneness.  We dance in partnership with everyone and everything. 

        So, in this story, Pure Being (Nameless No-Thing) becomes love, which then becomes the beloved.  All creation, including each of us, is the offspring of love.

Growth

        Human growth mirrors, in reverse image, the path of the universe – with three stages, each wonderful in its own way.  And naturally, since it’s human, our growth path is not particularly tidy or orderly.  We move back and forth among the stages, willy-nilly, true to our nature. 

        The stages are really tasks.  The first task is softening to love – letting ourselves be loved.  When we soften and open to the ever-present energy of love, we are healed and made whole.  Like daisies basking in sunshine, we blossom, each in our own unique way.  For a long time, as a psychotherapist, I thought this was the whole story. 

        The next stage is the movement from being loved to being love.  While the first stage heals the wounded ego, the second stage expresses soul.  It’s not about “me” anymore.  It’s about becoming light – shining, radiating, warming.  Naturally and effortlessly, a healed presence becomes a healing presence.  The light of love flickers at first, then grows more steady.

        Surely, I thought, this must be the end of the story.  It can’t get any better than this.  But no, like in the late night commercial, there’s more!

        The third growth movement is toward the experience of pure being, a movement from being love to being no-thing.  Mystical traditions in all religions speak of a silence, a sacred emptiness, where separation from God ceases.  All attachment and ego identity disappear.  Every thing is gone, and all things are possible.  The universe blossomed from this profound peace.  It’s where all miracles originate.

        At first, during times of meditation, I had only glimpses of this quiet place.  At some point, I can’t pinpoint just when, glimpses became visits.  Never boring, visits now are irregular and unpredictable, and usually don’t last long.

        We are the visited, not the visitor.  More than we seek, we are sought.  Sacred silence finds us, and we remember.  We never return from such encounters unchanged.  We may seem the same, but we’re not.

        Some people spend a lot of time in no-time, unself-consciously one with God in the silence of pure being.   It’s become home for them.  Eventually, in this story, it becomes home for all of us.

        Alpha meets Omega.  The end and the beginning are one.

On Journeying

       I'm just back from a week of retreat with Richard Moss and a wonderful group of sojourners.  We adventured toward full embodiment of being:  Inhabiting the body more completely, listening more deeply to ourselves and each other, tending and attending to the field of relationship among us, working with dreams, and inviting what's in the shadow of consciousness into the light of awareness.  It was a powerful and transforming week.

       Here are some quotes about life's journey.  The first was gifted to me just before the retreat.  The next two were shared by members of the group on our last day.  Thanks Dana, Nicky and Bija.

To journey and not be changed is to be a nomad.

To change without journeying is to be a chameleon.

To journey and be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.

Mark Nepo

Deep in the forest there's an unexpected clearing that can be reached only by someone who has lost his way.

Tomas Transtromer

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Andre Gide

Engage!

Jean Luc Picard

A Love Paradox

       Relationship has always seemed mysterious and paradoxical to me – a dance of otherness and oneness.  The paradox invites us to embrace gently these apparently contradictory aspects of the human condition, making space for them as we dance to the music of knowing and being known in the ballroom of love.

       Bija Bennett, a friend of mine and fellow student of Richard Moss, wrote Emotional Yoga, a wonderfully healing book that Wayne Dyer calls: "A brilliant design for emotional and spiritual stability".  In her chapter on love, she speaks to the paradox of relationship in a thought-provoking way.

       "Love is the glue that holds things together as well as the boundary that defines and separates them.  This discernment quality sees the difference between two things and holds them separate so that they may know each other.  One end of love is absolute separation.  The other end is absolute union.  In our relationships, we discern our differences so that we may know both ourselves and one another…

       "This concept of love is obviously different from any idea of romantic love.  But in order to have romantic or even spiritual love, you have to have discernment.  You can't just merge with someone or something.  No matter how close you are to someone, there is always something separating you.  And no matter how distant you are from someone, there is always a connection between you.  Love is a discernment quality, a recognition of the one and the other.  It is the nexus between two dissimilar things, and this connection breeds hope, faith, and the possibility of a future.  Although love acts as a unifying force between things, the strength of love lies in the differences."  (pp. 109-110)   

       Honor otherness.  Remember oneness. 

Following the Exhale

       A Tibetan practice, called the Shambhala Warrior meditation, invites the meditator to follow an exhalation to the edge of the universe.  It's a powerful, expansive practice – one of many relaxation and centering techniques that focus on the exhale.  Here are a couple more I've been using lately in my personal practice and with Thursday night's group.

Chakra Opening and Clearing

       This breath-oriented meditation mixes traditions from China and India.

       With each inhalation, we focus on drawing energy into what QiGong masters call the lower dan tien – the primary energy center of the body, located just behind and below the navel.  With each exhalation, we send forth this energy to open, clear and balance the seven chakras – the energy collection and distribution centers of the body described in ancient Hindu texts.

       In practice, as we inhale, we visualize light moving into the lower dan tien through the navel.  As we exhale, we send the light to each chakra, inviting the chakra to open like a flower bud blossoming.  I recommend devoting three or four exhalations to each energy center, in the following sequence:

1.      The root chakra at the base of the torso.

2.    The sacral chakra in the lower belly.

3.    The third chakra in the solar plexus.

4.    The heart chakra in the center of the chest.

5.    The throat chakra in the center of the throat.

6.    The third eye behind the center of the forehead.

7.    The crown chakra at the top of the head.

       In my recent practice, the chakra opening meditation served as a warm-up to the following meditation.

Journey to the Center

       Inhale light into the heart (or perhaps into the crown), then exhale down the body into the center of being.  Let your intuition guide you there.  For me, it feels like the center is somewhere in the belly and, at the same time, beyond the belly – as if the belly is a gateway to a larger space.

       This is a place of deep quiet, where the center of each being meets the center of all being – a place of profound rest and re-creation, repair and restoration, renewal and re-orientation.  I believe it's our origin and our destination - a wonderful place to hang out for a while.

       I call it home. 

The A's of Love

       A few weeks ago in this space, I speculated about a couple books written by David Richo.  I bought one:  How to be an Adult in Relationships.  I'm glad I did.  It's a delightful blend of east and west, psychology and spirituality.  In the first chapters, he discusses five keys to mindful loving:  Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection and Allowing.  He calls them "graces of love." (p. 28)

       For any of us to develop a healthy sense of self, we need to receive these five A's.  "Attention from others leads to self-respect.  Acceptance engenders a sense of being inherently a good person.  Appreciation generates a sense of self-worth.  Affection makes us feel lovable.  Allowing gives us the freedom to pursue our own deepest needs, values and wishes…That tender and ever so gingerly ventured bid to be loved is precisely what makes us humans so lovable"  (p. 27)

       For most of us as we develop, we receive the five A's imperfectly from parents.  To the degree that our childhood needs go unmet (and they always go unmet to some degree), we enter romantic relationships from a stance of hunger, looking to our partners for fulfillment.  Here are some quotes I found interesting. 

      "The perfect partner is the mirage we see after crossing the desert of insufficient love."   (p.25)

       "The recurrent fantasy, or search for, the 'perfect partner' is a strong signal from our psyche that we have work to do on ourselves.  For a healthy adult, there is no such thing as a perfect partner … A relationship cannot be expected to fulfill all our needs; it only shows them to us and makes a modest contribution to their fulfillment."  (p. 25)

       "Moderate is the key word for giving and for receiving the five A's.  A nonstop flow of them would be quite annoying, even to an infant.  Our fantasy mindset makes us long for just what we would soon flee.  Hence, what seems like an unsatisfactory compromise is actually the adult's best deal."  (p. 25-26)

       "In healthy intimate relationships we do not seek more than 25 percent of our nurturance from a partner."  (p. 22)

       "In full maturity we do not demand perfection at all, only notice reality.  We access our resources within.  A partner who cooperates in that is a gift but no longer a necessity.  The five A's begin as needs to be fulfilled by our parents, then become needs to be fulfilled by our partners, and someday become gifts we give to others and to the world."  (p.27) 

       Richo strikes a nice balance here.  We can't kiss our own foreheads.  We all need to receive the five A's from outside ourselves in order to internalize a healthy sense of self.  If, however, in our hunger for the A's, we romanticize love and attempt to get all our needs met by a single soul mate, we choke the flow of love we seek.  

       The psychological path to an adult self requires that we find nourishment in a number of different places and that we grow to become reliable sources of sustenance for ourselves and others.  Along the way, we discover that, when we give, we have.

       The spiritual path to full maturity requires that we consciously release ourselves into a larger flow of love – the heartbeat of the universe.  And then we know:  giving and receiving are one.