Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

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This week, we wrote about how relationships and community fulfill the same need for connection. Here are some other posts we have written about community and connection.

Why It’s Important to Relate to Community as Well as Individuals ” I’ve been reflecting recently on how cooperation (literally: working together) is a fundamental aspect of society. Take bread, for example; it needs people to plant wheat, harvest it, thresh and mill it, bake it, package it, deliver it and sell it. Now do the same for a thousand other items, from cars to computers. Cooperation is so ubiquitous that it becomes invisible and people only see society in terms of competition, which is the jostling by which we pick the most efficient ways to work together and produce things. This working together is a basic feature of humans, going back forever. We were tribes and groups even before we invented language, and the need for connection, both material and emotional, is built into us. Go and live by yourself for the rest of your life if you don’t believe me. No contact with others, no goods of any kind. Very few people could survive.”

Community in the Year of the Virus “Besides meeting face-to-face, there are lots of things missing from our lives: going to the theater; walking on the bluffs; visiting the local library. But we don’t like to look at our lives in terms of what is missing. It is far more satisfying to see them as simply being different, and there is much changed that we appreciate. Cleaner air. Quieter streets. Birdsong. Springtime. Add to that, a heightened sense of community. Our personal experience has taught us that the most critical element for having this awareness and appreciation is to stay present with whatever is happening; not to spend time wishing things were different or how they used to be, but actually being present with how they are. In the moment of now, we can savor every connection, each meeting with old and new friends, and share our stories in a way that we can all inspire and comfort each other. We are truly becoming aware of our communities and the importance and value they have to us.”

Why Being in Continuous Connection is Vital for Peaceful Relationships “My sense of Maude is of openness, caring, and sharing. It makes it easy to be with her. You may call this grace or luck, but there is also an intentionality about how we are together. We know what to avoid, and that is being rude, being short, being catty, being disconnected, out of reach, snippy. It is (relatively) easy to avoid those attitudes because I know her essential goodness; such criticism would not be justified. And how do I know? To repeat myself, I have a sense of who she is that comes from (or maybe is) our sense of connection. This sense of connection has great power. Firstly, it has this strange property that we are both drawing from the same well; we have always been able to make our own choices and path through life mesh. By now, we understand that this is always the case. Or to be more woo-woo about it, there is an us, neither me nor Maude, that we become aware of by setting our egos aside. After all, what else could the connection between us, the mid-point, be, except that? By both of us tapping into that, we can proceed together through life.”

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This week, we wrote about why stillness and attention are at the core of peaceful relationships. Here are three of our earlier posts on the importance of attention in relationships.

Pay Attention – It’s How to Best Support Each Other “I share these stories to offer a wonderful experience that can be yours in your relationships as well. Pay attention and learn how to best support each other; not through your own projections, but rather by listening and observing what the other person really wants and needs.This is a simple shift to make, and it brings untold intimacy, joy, and peace into any relationship where you practice it. True support is not about you but about the other. And it is something we can all offer if we only listen and are open to each other.”

Make Sure You Pay Attention to Your Relationships “The sense of loving connection between two people is the heart of every relationship. It is important to take the time to feel and recognize the connection, and to develop the sense of what makes each one precious and unique in its own way.These connections are the riches of your life. Appreciate them, savor them, and when you can, keep them current. As precious as your once-every-so-often relationships are, it is those that you interact with in the present that help you work out the problems of everyday living. It is with those that you share decisions, get advice, complain, rejoice, and grow.Strangely, there is a tendency to stop seeing and appreciating that which becomes familiar. With time, you might even stop feeling and valuing the connection within your relationships. To keep those connections in the present, you have to create shared experiences and take time to just be and to relate to one another. There are many ways to do this. To bring a relationship into your current experience, you must bring it into your present life. That sense of loving connection arises because in every close relationship, there are not two, but rather three entities; each of the individuals and the relationship itself. By paying close attention, you can be aware of this, that it is not you and not the other person, but exists as a fusion of what each of you brings. This is a thing to cherish and to nurture. Be active in feeding your relationships. Connections that are steeped in truth and the sharing of your inner spirit bring with them calm, joy, and strength to meet the challenges of everyday life.”

Why is Attention Important in Your Relationship? “Now apply all of this to your relationships with other people, whether acquaintances or your lover. If you’re not paying attention, you won’t see them. If you’re continually switching attention, you will only see them a little. When you give them your full attention, they become, for that time, your entire world. You see them for who they are, though of course filtered by your beliefs and prejudices. And this other person, whether a checkout clerk or your lover, can feel your gaze, will respond to your attention, because our reactions are very much social in nature. It is only through attention that a relationship exists at all. If you pay no attention, that person does not even exist for you. When you walk with someone, you pay attention to pace and direction, lest you become two separate bodies in the crowd, and so it is in a relationship: it is your true attention to each other that holds it together and makes it real. When that attention becomes mutual full attention, a sacred space is created, that special way of being together that we have recently written about. By not paying attention to past events or future concerns, you can be present to yourself and to your partner. When your mind is not filled up with concerns and your attention is not directed elsewhere, you will experience the magic and fullness of union with another.”

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This week, we wrote about how to stop playing the blame game and actually feel peaceful. Here are some previous posts on different aspects of how to deal with blame in your relationships.

How to Avoid Reacting With Blame and Anger in Your Relationships “Go within and look at your response. Look at the blame and the feelings attached to it. What are they telling you? Are they about you or the other person? This creates a special kind of honesty with yourself and consequently enables you to communicate about your thoughts and feelings more honestly; you can’t communicate what you don’t realize. This can be an act of self-discovery that leads you to a more peaceful way of relating in your close relationships. We recommend practicing with those you are close with before moving out further to less connected relationships. As you get better at the practice, stretch out a little more with that same view toward learning about what your responses to others are about. If you don’t do this, you are likely to be reactive, a victim of your own unexplored emotions. This often leads to anger, recriminations and blame. The result is to be preoccupied with the other person, and the uncomfortable feelings that you think they are responsible for.”

How to Replace Blame With Honesty in Your Relationships “What I have learned is that, when I have strong responses to interactions in our relationship, it is important for me to look inside myself. It is an opportunity for me to understand myself better and to find out what is happening within me. It gives me a chance to process my feelings and see what is moving me. It also makes it very clear that whatever I am feeling and thinking, it is about me and not about Phil. This stops me from focusing on him, his words or actions. This is true for any deep relationship. So often, when people have strong responses, they speak without this action of looking within. The results are fraught with the path to blame, anger, recrimination, and disappointment. The charge of the feelings gets shot at the other person, instead of providing fertile ground for self-inquiry and realization.”

The Secret to a Peaceful Relationship is Realizing You’re on the Same Side “It’s easy for us to say that and expect people to go, “Oh, that makes sense; from now on, we’ll be on the same side,” so I want to describe in as much detail as possible what makes for the feeling that you are on the same side. Firstly, you have to believe that peaceful relationships are possible. Don’t fall for the argument that they are only peaceful because problems are being avoided. This is a common viewpoint in society*. Then you have to want to be in a peaceful relationship, and for that to happen, you both need to understand that you are on the same side. How to do this? The first step is to recognize the moment of separation, the feel of struggle, and not let that happen. There are two parts to this: the first is to recognize that it is happening; that requires awareness of your reaction. Only with awareness do you have the opportunity to choose how you respond. I’m not saying suppress your reaction; I’m saying react differently. Language can help with this. Speak in the first person, say what is happening with you. This is very powerful; it avoids blame, accusations, counter-attacks, and it also exposes you, makes you visible, opens you up. Another language trick is to speak in the present tense. This avoids blame and expectations, and focuses on feelings – what is happening in your body right now.”

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This week, Phil wrote on how the play between words and feelings affects your relationships. Here are some posts that discuss some of the aspects of this topic.

Why Language is the Human Superpower “More than fire, more than the wheel, language has enabled humans to dominate the earth. Earlier life responded to the world with reflexes, then emotions, then thoughts, but it was the human invention of language that turned thinking into a superpower. It started by using words for things we could point at: objects like apples, actions like running, and interior experiences like sadness. These words were reused as metaphors to explain the world, and new words were coined for categories like fruit, color, and time.”

How Relationships are Your Path Toward Growth “In the last few years, I’ve been thinking about how language is a relatively recent invention, and its benefits have been so great that we use it for all our interactions with the world. Before language, we used senses, instincts, feelings, intuitions to survive in the world (and successfully so, or else we wouldn’t be here.) All of those responses still exist, but I (and most other people, I think) only pay attention to the verbal half. Isn’t this fascinating! There is a whole other part of me that influences my life that I don’t pay attention to. Sure, this is not an original insight; Freud, Kahneman, and others have written about this, but I find the verbal/nonverbal divide a useful way to think about it. To understand my other side, I must move my attention away from words, and what I find, I cannot (by definition) even speak about. The best I can do is use words to point.”

Rely on Relationships to Stay Sane in an Insane World “Another way to handle stress is through your relationships. I’d like to talk about this by starting with what may seem a strange subject: language. Humans used to survive quite well without it, thank you (or we wouldn’t be here.) Language gave us a way to capture our thinking and reach conclusions that did not always reflect our senses and emotions. It has been so effective that our consciousness operates almost completely in the verbal arena. Senses and emotions that arise are labeled and incorporated into that arena; if they are not labeled, they are effectively invisible to our normal verbal consciousness. In a relationship, any relationship, we connect through language. In a casual encounter, we hide a part of ourselves by saying what is socially acceptable; in closer relationships, we share ourselves, our ideas and our views. Just think how magical this is: an idea in my head can appear in your head through language. But a relationship is more than words; it is also how you feel about the other person. We are born to be social; there is a natural attraction to other people. And so the nature of relationships is both verbal and nonverbal, and being aware of the nonverbal side will serve you well in these worrying times because a relationship has a reality that the news doesn’t. The news is really just words and images floating out there. But a relationship, if you pay attention to how it feels as well as what you are talking about, is a visceral experience. It can be very calming because our connections with other people are such a basic need.”

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This week, we wrote about the pleasures and importance of shared experience in your relationships. Here are some posts we’ve written in the past on various aspects of this topic.

Do You Give Enough Time and Attention to Your Close Relationships? “Setting aside special time helps to achieve this. We are all so involved in projects and life’s challenges, plus the pressures in today’s fractured world, that if you don’t make a decision to set aside time for the simple pleasure of relating, it will be relegated to those quick moments in passing. Those incidental moments are often filled with hurry, impatience, lack of presence. Placing an emphasis on the value that relationships have in your life helps you shift them from passing encounters to a central position of importance. When you acknowledge the value you place on a particular relationship by your actions and the sharing of your time and attention, it creates a deep ease between you and the other person. It is in this awareness of the meaning of each other in your life that peace becomes a partner in that relationship; defenses come down, openness abides and a sweet pleasure of seeing and being seen warms the heart.”

How to Keep Your Relationships Alive “This has led me to reflect on another aspect of peaceful relationships, and that is maintaining your awareness of the value of those connections. People often fall into habit patterns within their longer and precious relationships. There is an unconscious sense of “I know this person, and I know how we interact and what there is to give and get from this connection.” As being present and aware are vital components of any valued relationship, there is an understanding that, when practiced consciously, ensures success. As is often the case, this is simple to apply once realized. Remain aware that each such connection is a continuing exploration. Life holds nothing but change, and we can constantly grow and open, learning more of ourselves and our dear ones. As we do this, many small and larger miracles occur; conflicts and strife tend to dissolve. They get replaced by the kind of attention and interest in the other person that keeps things alive and in the present, rather than being filled with projections and preconceptions. Your busyness with self gets moderated with an experience of the relationship and the value of the interactions taking place. When you keep in mind that you are exploring together, you focus on very different things.”

Are You Open to the Sacred in Your Relationship? “A true relationship with another evokes feelings of kinship, even love and the exchange of heart energy. The very act of bridging the gap between ourselves and another is a transcendent act. We move past ourselves to the recognition that there is a self that is not us; in fact, a separate and unique individual. This understanding is the path to a relationship with the divine.
In an intimate partnership relationship, the interactions become imbued with love, respect, appreciation and above all, presence. When we are with each other, we are both fully present. As a result, each encounter is filled with the unique, with the possibility of something new; we are co-creating our experience. We approach each other with the honor accorded the sacred, not because we have made it a priority (something on a list made important by our minds), but because it is special, holy, not of the mundane. Each time we set aside time, or just encounter each other in the passing of our lives, it brings the experience of this breathtaking phenomenon – we are not the only one here, we are with another, different, and beloved.”

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