Successful Relationships Reading Corner
This week, we wrote about presence, and that you can’t love if you’re not there. Here are some of our previous posts on the importance of presence in your relationships.
How Do Presence and Acceptance Add to Your Relationships? “To be truly present you must acknowledge what is and accept what is. The moment you move into wanting something to be different, you are no longer experiencing what is. Any pushing or pulling away is stepping out of the present. Instead, you are trying to conjure something other; to defend against what is, to go backwards or forwards in time, to manifest a creation of your mind and your desires. The connection between presence and acceptance is a pivotal one. When you are able to embrace and accept what is, you become a part of the present moment and consequently, can contribute your Self to that moment. Presence is a state without anxiety or fear. When you are actually just being and not evaluating the moment of being, you enter a state where truth, beauty and goodness exist. Being present is a shift away from fear responses toward love responses.”
How to Find a Different Kind of Truth Beyond Words “Before language, we responded to the information from our senses with feelings and emotions. Now we have a verbal model of the world that sometimes contradicts that earlier understanding. We are receiving two suggestions at once; it is like listening to two radio stations. The verbal model of the world has been so successful that we use it almost exclusively, and as senses arise, they are mapped onto words.”
Why the Essence of Connection in Your Relationships is Being Present “One of the elements that permeates our relationship is that when we are together we are present with each other. We are not only there in the physical sense, but also mentally and emotionally. I’ve been thinking about how important it is to practice presence in all relating, and how this gets lost so very often in the way people interact with each other. What does this feel like when it is there and when it is missing? I have a good friend who seems almost to have disappeared from view. When we are together, I do not feel she is actually there. She seems to be on her way somewhere else: mentally, emotionally, and even physically a bit. The flavor of my friend is still there, but the feeling of her essence being present with me, with “us”, is not. I mention “us” because this is an important component of presence in relationship. When I sit here on the couch discussing the blog topic and content with Phil, we are both acutely involved in this moment. We are here with each other and also with the “we”, the “us” as well. As we have been doing this for decades, the mutual self is quite recognizable and is present along with each of our individual selves.”
Why is Being Present in Your Relationships So Powerful? “Being present is an essential aspect of enlightenment, and so it is easy to assume that being present is a similarly rare event that happens by grace. Not so. Usually, our mind chatters endlessly about the events of the past: what we should have said or done; how we were wronged or humiliated; the pleasures and people we loved. We plan for the future, too: what to say at the upcoming meeting; what to watch tonight; how to manage money. When we set these aside, we are left with the inputs of our senses, both external and somatic, and usually, we name these, too. But that diminishes the experience because we discard everything for which we do not have words. You can counter that in two ways. By examining closely what is happening and describing it, you can increase your vocabulary and awareness.”