Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

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This week, we wrote that the secret to deep, peaceful relationships is quiet but powerful trust. It is an important aspect, and we have written about it a number of times before.

How Honesty Leads to Trust in Your Relationships “At the same time, we’re individuals with our own ideas of how things should be, yet to live together, we need to moderate ourselves to fit in with other people. We have to hide a part of ourselves; we are not fully seen. Close relationships are the forum where we can change this and show ourselves completely. How does that transition occur? It starts with taking a small risk by being honest and expressing something that might be ridiculed or laughed at, used to shame you, or used against you. When your listener does not take advantage of this, but instead hears and sees you, it increases your trust in how open you can be with them, and you can progressively share more of yourself. Trust is measured in actions more than words, and your intuition knows better than your head. Be sure to check that this is a true intuition rather than your inner fears from past experiences.”

How Trust and Peace go Hand in Hand in Your Relationships “We’ve been talking about trust as one of the most basic aspects of a peaceful relationship: what it feels like, how you get there, what behavior engenders it. I wanted to write about my personal experience, so to do that, I looked at 6 close relationships where I feel deep trust in the people and in the relationship, and I know that it is mutual. These were with Phil, 3 women friends, and my two sons. It’s easy to feel trusting with Phil because he shares who he is openly and without defenses. Over time, I have learned from his actions as well as his words that he wishes me well and cares deeply, seeks fairness, and is a compassionate person. He relates from love, not fear. And that is the same for each of these 6 relationships, and all the others I have that bear the fruits of peace and fulfillment.In looking at all of these relationships, I see much the same qualities, all expressed differently by each of the unique personalities. The experience of this trust has built over time. It takes time to slowly open to another and let go of your defenses, bit by bit. All of these are also without certain responses, like suspicion, withholding, distance, or deception. We accept each other for who we are.”

Why Trust is so Important in All Your Relationships “Trust in another person comes from what they do, not what they say. “Trust me, I’ll pay you back” is worth a lot less than a Venmo payment. It takes time and the observation of actions as well as words to ascertain how much you can trust another person. How do they behave in difficult situations like a toothache, a car crash, a delayed flight? Trust builds as you learn more and more how they act and react in the world. The more you know someone and you learn their core values, the more you can develop the knowledge that creates trust. We may all have a different list of what elicits trust in the other person. There are different aspects we translate into trustworthiness. Yet, whatever these are, we all recognize this feeling, when it is there and when it is not. Constancy is a big part of it. Are they always the same person, or does a completely different personality appear at times? For us, an important factor was experiencing that each of us remained the same person every time we encountered each other. That may sound strange to point out, but we had both had the previous experience of being in a relationship where we never knew who we might be interacting with when coming together. The moods, and it seemed the person, were ever changing. This caused a state of insecurity and unease. In our relationship, there is a constancy of personality expression that brings with it a feeling of peace and calm.”

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This week, we asked what’s in the cards for your relationship? Here are some posts about how you can relate without conflict and have a peaceful relationship.

Do You Have Thumbtacks in Your Relationship? “The importance of 100% cannot be underestimated; it is nothing like 99% because anything less involves measurement, division, in and out, good and bad. It enables total freedom from the need to withdraw and to defend, and consequently to separate. The extraordinary freedom to be yourself that comes from this kind of acceptance can only be achieved by 100%. The freedom is liberating. Just as with the dancing, there is no comparison; 99% acceptance and 100% acceptance are not different by 1%. They differ in quality in the way that two parallel lines differ from two non-parallel lines. If there is some small corner within your partner that is still holding back acceptance, you never know when it might rear its head and bite you, so you must still always be guarded to some degree or another. The more thumbtacks you encounter, the less open and sharing you will become. But when each partner is assured of complete acceptance, it is transforming and wonderfully liberating; by being completely ourselves, we are that much more real, authentic and trustworthy to the other.”

How To Nurture Intimacy In Your Relationship“I was in a relationship that was almost the opposite. My partner had issues which caused him to retreat completely into himself. He would literally disappear without any explanation, becoming impossible to contact for varying periods of time, sometimes quite lengthy. I felt extreme distress and a strong sense of abandonment. Since I didn’t know when or why this would happen, I never felt safe, and as a consequence, that feeling of sublime peace that Phil and I experience could never be fully present in this other relationship. If, in order to have personal space, you need to withdraw or block off the connection, this will almost invariably cause a rift, a tear in the fabric of your relationship. No matter how small, these rips remain and they set up a potential thumbtack on the dance floor of your relationship. Even one can keep you from prancing about freely. Phil and I always feel like we are connected, no matter where we are physically in relation to each other, and we always know we are on the same side. When functioning in our day separately, or when one of us is traveling (in days gone by), we do not have an experience of withdrawal. Neither one of us disconnects, but then we don’t have any reason to do so. If your separateness is not a threat to your partner, if your individuality is honored, acknowledged, respected, then there is no need to pull back from your connection.”

Choose Total Acceptance: It’s a Radical Way to Peace and Harmony “When your relationships are not based on getting what you want in the way you want it; when you do not have to control what another thinks or how they say or do things, it is remarkably freeing. When you are not busy with reshaping the other person, you can relax and appreciate who they are and how they are. You can be enriched and enlarged by another’s approach. Most of all, you can be peaceful within, and bring that peace to others.So offer total acceptance in your close relationships. Your loved ones’ rights and desires are just as valid as yours. You will see yourself grow out of habits and patterns that do not serve you in your interactions. You will find a change in your interest in others and in your ability to listen, hear and see them. You will naturally find yourself less wrapped up in your own ideas of how things should be and more able to be open to the unique perspective of those you intimately relate to. This radical form of acceptance is very powerful and will transform the nature of all your deep relationships. Strive to offer total acceptance, the best gift you can give.”

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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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