Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

Tagged with , ,

This week, we wrote about how to train for better relationships. Here are some posts on how to add fun and adventure to those relationships.

How to Turn Your Relationship Into a Creative Adventure “What I have noticed is that our creativity and playfulness have surged to the forefront with this game. And that has me thinking about creativity and its role in bringing peace to relationships. I think it will help to understand what I am referring to here if I repeat that peace is an actual experience, filled with joy. It is a sensation, as well as a state of being, that reverberates throughout your whole body. It creates a calm, centered, safe place that surrounds the individual and relationships. When we approach things creatively in our connections, it requires being present and open to that which is new and different. We create interactions which are full of an awareness of each other and the play of uniqueness between us. The spontaneity of the plan and the playful aspect of creating a shared adventure cause the kind of inner happiness so characteristic of peace. This is not the peace of the sleeping, or dead (as so many imagine peace), but rather a living, dancing, jump-for-joy reality.”

The Pleasures and Importance of Shared Experience in Your Relationships “This generally happens in two ways. The first is that we do something together, and it creates shared moments. We embark on an activity with each other, and it exists between us and continues in our common memory of our connection. Taking time to be with each other and break out of the usual pattern of relating refreshes and enlivens any relationship. We love being in nature, and the city we live in affords that on every street, with grand old trees everywhere, parks and ponds, woods and creeks, and a profusion of birds. Recently, we went over our local mountains to another town, staying overnight in a hotel. We walked around, talking and going out for lunch. We hiked to a nearby waterfall and soaked in the air and the smells. Phil and I always feel rested and peacefully, deliciously connected after a little trip like that. Going off to another location, with no big interaction with devices, and no scheduled events, brings a different kind of shared experience than our daily life offers.”

Are You Emotionally Present in Your Relationships or Just Not There? “For me, it was the part about being present with, and for, the other person; of being in the present with them and the connection itself. There are many factors that go into being together with someone in this way. When I am with someone who brings this kind of awareness and attention to the interaction, it has a profound effect on me. I want to share myself with them, and I open up more as a result of the interest and caring being shown to me. This is one of those feedback loops in which this way of behaving generates a more open, unguarded communication from each of the parties involved. When someone is interested and taking the time to pay attention to me, and at the same time shares themselves with me on a deeper level, it creates the same response in me.”

Tagged with: , ,

Tagged with ,

This week, we wrote that in your relationships, it’s less what you talk about than how you talk about it. Here are a variety of articles we’ve written about different aspects of communication.

Communication and Individuality in a Relationship “When the relationship is filled with honoring and accepting each other, a special kind of trust and security is present. For this to exist, each partner must be willing to share their thoughts and feelings. It is important to stay in regular contact and for that contact to be intimate and totally open. When partners know their partner’s thoughts and feelings, they don’t have to make them up from their fears or insecurities. In our experiences with couples, we have found over and over that when this regular contact does not occur, the couple slowly becomes estranged, and the projections and misinterpretations that occur just deepen the rift that grows between them.”

Why Communicating Strengthens the Connection in Your Relationships “It was the act of being together and sharing our feelings aloud to each other that helped each of us and created warmth and intimacy. It is so important to talk with one another. What we gained did not come from the content of the exchange, from letting each other know some deep hidden truth, or from the clearing up of some misunderstanding. It came from the very act of communicating itself. Speaking these diffuse sensations out loud to Phil helped me to understand and get a thread on what I was feeling, which I was unaware of until I put it into words to him. I heard myself. Hearing what he shared gave me insight into him, but also into myself, as I could relate to what he said. There is such comfort and peace in an open and honest exchange, one that you can only have in a relationship where trust has been developed and has become the natural way to be with each other. This comes from paying attention, listening, and showing that you are present with the other. It comes from talking not only when there are issues, but just for the pleasure of being with each other and knowing what is happening with the other person. It comes from knowing that truth is spoken, and that there is no withholding of that truth. It comes from the practice of staying in touch with one another and from being interested in each other.”

How Communicating From Your True Self Deepens Your Relationships “Most relationship experts list communication as one of the most important kinds of exchanges between people. Phil and I feel this way as well, but it is the kind of communicating that is important to us. In the early part of our relationship, Phil would look at me with full attention and ask, “What is happening here?” And he was truly asking and clearly desirous of hearing my response and discussing it. I must admit that I had not experienced this kind of direct, deep reaching out in the beginning of other romantic relationships. It got my full and very interested attention. Although we often covered many topics, he wasn’t interested in long conversations filled with chitchat. He wanted to converse on our connection, who each of us was, and what was important to each of us. Don’t misunderstand; we laughed a lot, hiked, went out on the usual dates, and walked around our beautiful city. These all happened, and were crucial to our relationship building. Yet, what made the difference was finding out what was important to each of us, and that came through the emphasis within our communication on sharing ourselves with each other”

Tagged with: ,

Tagged with ,

This week, Phil said that we’ve written about relationships every week for 15 years. Here are some articles about our writing.

What Does it Feel Like to Experience Peace in Your Relationships? “Hi, Phil and Maude here. We sit down each week and talk about how we are, or how our week has been and how we navigated it, and out of that comes a post. We look for a particular angle or a new way to express how we are, but in the end, it’s just us talking about what it is to experience peace.”

How the Play Between Words and Feelings Affects Your Relationships “Besides writing with Maude, I also write independently on Substack. Maude is away on a trip for a few weeks, so I want to describe some ideas of mine and explain how they apply to relationships. I’ve been thinking about language and how it has captured our attention. Many moons ago, we lived quite successfully without language, but once it was developed, we created ideas about the world far beyond what our senses could tell us. From the Greeks through the scientific revolution, we have come up with ideas about germs, atoms, electromagnetism and much more that we have used to construct society as we know it today. But let us be clear about language. Words are not the world; they are only labels for it, yet they are so powerful that our attention works almost exclusively with them. When we become aware of sensations or feelings, we find words to describe them, and in that way, we incorporate them into our verbal world.”

How Radical Non-Interference Makes Our Relationship Feel So Peaceful ” To write these posts, we hang out at night and jam on how we are and what we’ve been doing, and try to describe our connection in ways that we haven’t used before. It’s difficult because how we are is a sense before it becomes words. When we’re lucky, we come up with a description that goes beyond our common portrayal as peaceful and uses other words. Last night’s conversation went into an area that we don’t find other people writing about, so you might find it esoteric. I’ll put it out here in the hope that you might have a brief glimpse of what is possible. It started with the fact that Maude is going on a 2-week cruise with her brother and sister-in-law, and when she described this to other people, they all assumed I would be going, too. Nothing like that even crossed our minds. That is her trip, and it’s not my style at all. This led to a conversation about the peculiar sense we have of both being completely autonomous and also connected in a very deep way.”

Tagged with: ,

Tagged with ,

This week, we wrote about how your connections expand your world beyond yourself. Here are some previous posts on the topic of connections from different points of view.

How Relationships and Community Fulfill the Same Need for Connection “In this culture, there is a strong focus on the individual. It is your responsibility to take care of yourself, to stay alive, to plan for the future. And yet, we are not a solitary species; we are a social species who need each other to survive. This is an intrinsic part of our nature, and connecting with others fills a deep longing. Personal relationships also fulfill the same need for connection. Of course, you have to be open to sharing yourself and open to accepting the other person as they are, appreciating the shock of difference and enjoying the recognition of similarity. Easy to say, harder to do, as we all have our own ideas about how things should be. Letting go of that need to control is the key to being open and connecting. The more you can do that, the more that itch for connection gets scratched.”

Why Communicating Strengthens the Connection in Your Relationships “Last night Phil and I were sitting together, and we started talking about how each of us was feeling. The conversation wasn’t about anything big or life-changing. It turned out that neither of us was feeling really right, but it was a kind of diffuse, hard to locate and describe sensation. Both of us felt a bit at odds, off-center. These feelings had nothing to do with each other, except that each of us had similar feelings within ourselves. As we talked and shared, something different began to emerge. While each of us strove to put into words the experience we were having, something shifted for both of us. Reaching out and sharing with each other, as well as using words to catch the elusive sensations each of us had, transformed how we felt. It happened slowly, and almost without notice. It emphasized for both of us just how important talking with each other is, even when we are not trying to solve anything or make decisions.”

Why Being in Continuous Connection is Vital for Peaceful Relationships “What we are trying to do in these posts is to describe how we are in as much detail as possible so that you, dear readers, can share our experience of living in peace. We have said before that this happens because we are on the same side, and these words offer a vivid image, but how does that actually happen? It comes from our sense of connection, and this is very much a sense; something that I do not question any more than I question the fact that I am sitting here typing. Let’s talk about the Grand Canyon. Having seen it, you would not later confuse it with Bryce Canyon, and similarly, once you know someone, you do not confuse them with someone else; they are unique, just as the Grand Canyon is. This knowledge of another is a sense of who they are. 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.”

Tagged with: ,

Tagged with ,

This week, we wrote about how to turn your relationship into a creative adventure. Although none of the following posts are written solely about creativity, they all discuss it as part of the topic.

Play is How to Add Peace Within Your Relationships “The society we live in is one that pushes achievement and busyness over everything. The U.S. has the shortest amount of paid vacation time from work, and there are many jobs where there is none. People often feel a sense of guilt if they take time out to play, rest, and relax. Yet, it has been proven that play is vital to your health and well-being and your optimum brain function. Many of you are familiar with Julia Cameron’s work in The Artist’s Way series of books. She describes a path toward optimum creativity, which involves something called morning pages, and taking at least a two-hour play date every week. I have known many individuals and groups who have done this program, and in each of the cases, people have shared how difficult it was for them to find the time to do the play date with themselves. Only two hours a week, and people have difficulty finding the time! As with many things, you need to first apply this to yourself before you can take it into your relationships. Finding ways to have leisure time and to reach out for new experiences will open paths to growth and satisfaction. The more you allow this kind of time into your life and your experiences with yourself, the more you will be able to bring that into your relationships.”

What We Have Learned About Peace And Harmony Through Our Relationship “Interacting with this kind of trust and honesty brings an indescribable pleasure with it; the sense of true peace and harmony. It creates an atmosphere of relaxation and calm that allows clarity to respond lovingly without anything being held back or causing distance between us. It opens a quiet space to all the positive advantages in the differences between us without any need to create sameness. The ease of peace brings forth creativity and laughter. It pulls us into the present with each other rather than living in our thoughts and projections about the future. These experiences have provided me with a road map for all my relationships. The more I am at ease and connect with my own inner world, the more natural it becomes to accept others. Peace is something I carry around inside and it allows me the openness to respond with love toward others without unnecessary defensiveness or protections. (unnecessary is a key word here and this is something that must be assessed in every relationship.)”

Make Sure You Pay Attention to Your Relationships “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.”

Tagged with: ,