How to Begin a Relationship

Several people have asked me to write about spirituality and relationships.  As with all beginnings, let's start with the breath.

Take some slow, deep breaths that go all the way down into your belly, and allow yourself to feel them as fully as possible. . . .  That is your life, right at your core and in your breathing.  Here is where you start a relationship.  It all begins with your relationship with yourself. 

Who is this being you find there in the breath, and what is your relationship with that inner self?  The character of this relationship forms the basis for your relationships with others.  The quality and depth of your intimacy with yourself determines the parameters of the intimacy you can have with someone else.

So notice what you find as you breathe:
What is it like to inhale slowly, to feel the breath in your belly as it resides there for a moment after the inhalation is complete, to exhale slowly, to feel the gap between the exhalation and the next in-breath?
What do you appreciate about your breath as you experience its movement?
What do you notice about yourself when you breathe deeply and slowly?
What holds you back from feeling your breath completely?
What keeps you from breathing further down into yourself than you do?

Experiential curiosity about our very breath leads us to experiential understanding of who we are, about who it is we take into relationship with others.

I'll continue this in my next post.  Meanwhile, breathe and notice.

First-Step Wisdom

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are a set of principles which have been adapted to offer guidance for compulsive people of many stripes.  The first of those steps is the basis for any further work to turn one's life around.  I paraphrase it this way to cover all possible addictions and compulsive patterns:  We admitted we were powerless over our own or someone else's addictive patterns or life chaos, that our lives had become unmanageable.

What is it to admit powerlessness and unmanageability?  Some criticize the 12 Steps because of these very concepts.  But I believe that most who offer such criticism simply misinterpret the words.  Here's what the First Step means from my perspective:

• My ego wants to maintain its standard way of functioning in order to protect me; it wants to protect me from having to look at hard truths, having to distance myself from people who have been important to me, and/or appearing to others in some way that feels unacceptable.  
• Some part of my ego believes I need to use alcohol or drugs or to continue to engage in certain other compulsive behaviors so that I can avoid looking at the hard truths, distancing myself from others, or appearing unacceptable in some manner. 
• No matter how much I say I want to quit drinking, drugging, biting my nails, saying yes to everyone, controlling my spouse, etc., that part of my ego which is engaged in protecting the status quo does its best to maintain my thinking patterns, maintain my behavior patterns, and quell my stated desire to change.
• That "protective" part of my ego is fixated on homeostasis.  It's like a thermostat whose temperature control switch has broken off, so that I ultimately have no control over it; yet it is this part of myself which has to loosen up in order for me to be able to give up the compulsion.
• Because of this "homeostasis meter" which is buried deep inside me, I am powerless over the compulsion itself, and because of the compulsion's undue power in my life, my life is (to a greater or lesser degree, but in all cases to some degree) unmanageable.
• To "admit" powerlessness and unmanageability is frightening to the protective part of my ego; such an admission challenges the status quo and sets off an alarm on my homeostatis meter. 
• So my first step is to work sensitively but firmly with that internal protective part of my ego to let it know that I see it -- just that I have opened my eyes to it and truly see it.  I don't judge it in any way.  It's not bad or good or wrong or right; it just needs to know that I'm aware of it and that I want to stay aware of it.  Or to put it slightly differently, I let myself see that there are hidden aspects to myself which I want to get to know, bring into the light, maybe even befriend so that I can begin to live in a less disjointed manner.

Self-Centeredness

Most spiritual systems -- indeed, most social systems -- teach that self-centeredness is a dead-end path.  Others don't like it when they see it in us, and we ourselves ultimately find that we're turning others off and blocking out opportunities for growth and learning when we adopt this defensive perspective.

Focusing our attention on our own wishes and desires to the exclusion of other things is, after all, a defensive strategy.  It's a way of battling with the world, reinforcing our fortifications against onslaughts from others, lying to ourselves that we're more important that anyone or anything else, and enslaving ourselves to a frightened voice from within which expresses the sense that something inside is missing, so we'd better cover up the vast hole.

But wait....  Isn't it contradictory that most spiritual systems also teach people to spend lots of time in self-reflection in order to "find themselves"?  Is that anything more than a way to normalize or ritualize self-centeredness?

My favorite teaching of Jesus has always been about losing yourself to find yourself.  And now I know that this same teaching is present in many of the great world religions.  The "self" we need to lose is the egoic self -- the self which is so easily fixated on itself.  This is the self that criticizes others spitefully, boasts, is prideful and arrogant, is lustful to fulfill its own desires.  This is the self that is willing to push others' needs away without due consideration or on the other hand that is nice to others while feeling resentment about "having" to act that way.  This is the self that bases so many of its behaviors on unrecognized hurts from the past and wants to protect itself.

The self we are given the opportunity to find is the essence of our very being.  It is our soul, our spirit, the core of our embodied existence which is a manifestation of God on earth.  Once we find that true self in the here and now, we live authentically, we behave with grace rather than out of defensiveness.  When we are centered IN that true self, we no longer need or want to be centered ON the ramparts of our egos.

Pain, Suffering & Really Good Days

When we're being authentic with ourselves we realize that even on our "good" days we are not free from pain and suffering.  What we typically call our "good" days are the days when we successfully ignore or hide our problems from ourselves.  We distract ourselves from our distress, we bury it, we glaze over it, we lie to ourselves.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have fun or enjoy our successes, either large or small; I'm not calling for negative self-talk; neither am I talking about wallowing in pain.  Here's what I mean:

To focus exclusively on what's going "right" is to deny a large part of reality and limit ourselves, just as the opposite is true:  focusing only on what's "wrong" represents denial and self-limitation.  Reality includes our entire experience, and that experience changes from moment to moment. 

Life happens now -- here and now.  Are we in touch with the here and now?  Are we in touch with reality? 

Right now I feel upbeat and at the same time I'm experiencing a little rumbling in my stomach.  That's the reality.  Taking account of the totality of my experience in the moment -- not judging any part of it but simply acknowledging what is there and being curious about it -- actually frees me to understand what might be going on with me in a variety of ways.  It broadens my perspective and lets me get to know myself in this moment more deeply, more fully. 

So I'm upbeat and my stomach is rumbling slightly.  I'm curious.  How is it that these two things co-exist right now?  On gentle inquiry, I realize that I'm upbeat not because things in my outer life have gone particularly well; in fact, two appointments in a row have been cancelled at the last minute, I've received four phone solicitations within the past hour alone for services I don't need, and I just realized that I left home without the library book I wanted to return this afternoon.  I see that I'm upbeat because I've treated myself with respect and fairness today; I've focused on doing what what I needed to do without pressuring myself. leaving me less vulnerable to frustration with outside forces.  Just seeing that adds to my sense of stability and calmness.

And what about the stomach?  Well, I believe the lunch I selected contained an ingredient that doesn't really work for me.  And very quickly I realize that I knew it contained this ingredient before I ate it, while "hoping for the best."  Now I see that false hope and behaving in a self-harmful manner led to this uncomfortable situation, putting my body in the position of needing to reject something.  Thus the rumbling.  So it becomes clear that I wasn't completely respectful and fair to myself today.  I tripped up when it came to feeding myself.  With this realization, devoid of judgment, I feel a growing sense of calmness throughout my being, even though my stomach isn't completely settled, and I notice a rising conviction to treat my body more respectfully, taking account of its actual needs.

That's reality in the here and now.

Pain, Suffering & Really Bad Days

Sometimes you might ask yourself, "Just how many wounds can one person tolerate?!?!?"  There are times when the pain seems unbearable, the suffering seems interminable, and making it through the day seems like an excrutiating task.  Is there any hope?

Hope lies in being with yourself...  really being with yourself.  Hope lies in allowing yourself to be where you are, which means not rejecting your circumstances or your reactions and at the same time not trying to hold onto your circumstances or reactions, but simply allowing them, putting out a welcome mat for them, offering to witness and honor them for what they are and to witness and honor yourself just as you are.

Maybe you're angry about something that has happened.  Maybe you are overcome with sadness about something.  Perhaps it's frustration you feel, or annoyance, or possibly resentment, or another feeling altogether.  So often we tend to shy away from these painful emotions.  We don't want to experience them, so we push them away.  Or we want someone else to see us feeling this way, so we embellish the feeling and act it out.  In either case, we're not examining the feeling itself, and we're not taking full account of where we are right here and now. 

Whatever feeling is there, you can learn to invite it to come out of the shadows and into the light.  You would do this in order to come to know your personal experience in its various dimensions more deeply and more truthfully than ever before.  When we bring our full attention to what is going on with us, we become present to ourselves, and in doing so, we honor that person who is in pain, is having a bad day, or is feeling whatever we're feeling.

Hope is in the presence we allow ourselves to bring to our lives.  Freedom from compulsions lies in that presence as well.  Presence is where real life exists.