Two quotes from Kids Beyond Limits, both way at the beginning: Life is Transformation, remember, remember, remember

Anat Baniel doing her gentle "magic", i.e. helping this child's brain rewire to a higher and more advanced level, touch by gentle touch

From Anat's first page:

"Just yesterday I saw, for the first time, a fourteen-year-old boy who had suffered severe brain damage in infancy. The injury had left him blind, with no language abilities and with no voluntary movement. After just a few days of sessions with my colleagues and just one sessions with me, for the first time in his life he began vocalizing and moving his legs; his arms were freer, and it was clear that he was engaged in the process --- he was even able to follow some simple movement instructions I gave him-- and loving it. He was waking up to himself."


From Norman Dodge, MD, author of The Brain that Changes Itself:

"Following in the footsteps of the revolutionary scientist-clinician Moshe Feldenkrais, the greatest thinker about how to improve movement in the twentieth century, [Anat] Baniel show why our mainstream approach to these children is often wrong, and at times damaging, because they train the children to 'ape' developmental milestone they are not developmentally ready to meet. The approach here, far wiser, far more subtle, truly holistic, far more ingenious, far more in accord with how brain development occurs, show ways to access the child's OWN brain plasticity, and yields far greater results, so that the children can spontaneous grow from within."

His intro is longer. Anat has a whole book to take parents through her nine essentials.

Please jump to her webpage, read more about it,
and BUY AND USE THE BOOK.

http://www.anatbanielmethod.com/children/kids-beyond-limits

EVERY DAY USE IT.  ( Your brain will love it, too.)

To feel sad is not bad, it's just...

there is no law against
feeling sad
feeling bad

and then we walk outside
and the sky doesn't feel
bad
how is that

and the sun,
no matter how many clouds behind
which it is hidden
doesn't feel bad
and
why is that?

and the birds seem to sing each
day
without complaint

and still
feeling sad is no crime

it's just time
we are choosing to spend
that way?

there is a message of course,
several
many:

who is the one feeling sad?

is that the really really you?

what is the sad story
and is it true?

and true to whom?
to the real you that is like the bird
and sky
and stars
and rain
and trees

or the ????? one
who is a collection a rag tag conglomerate
of fables and shoulds and shouldn'ts and this is
how others see me
and this is what I've told myself I am

and
meanwhile the
birds sing

and our hearts beat
and our lungs breathe
and the gravity of the situation
holds us from flying off into space

which is what it can feel like
when the story disappears

we float
we rise about "it"
and
the pretend chains
that our words and minds embrace

and then a bit of stillness
and
....
poof

no more sadness

and not because we wished or pushed
(or affirmed) it away

we just stopped the tie
to its fuel

and all that was left
was
now

and now
was so big and bright

is so big and bright

that we shine huge
vast
unknown
and peaceful

like the stars
in the night

Want a great relationship: Tell the truth. All of it.

Another great photo by Michelle, at mischelle@zahavah.com

I am attracted to .....

I get jealous when you...

I forgot to tell you that .......

I have this feeling that.....

Something is bothering me, and I don't know what it is....

My stomach feels weird.....

I've been feeling that something is missing.....

I had a dream about......

This used to turn me on, but something is changing.

I need time to myself.

I want to talk about my life purpose. I need a listener.

I feel like we are forgetting something important.

Who am I really?

Who are you?


And so on...

If you want a fantastic relationship: tell the truth.
All of the truth.

Good.

PS:

Anat Baniel's New Book:

Kids Beyond Limits

is out, published.

If you have a friend with a special needs child,

or a brain

that wouldn't mind getting smarter

or

a body

that wouldn't mind feeling younger, happier, sexier, more comfortable and "smart"

get the book.

I am alive, you are alive, deepening the relationship, day two

Day Two is a deepening of day one.
Here's the exercise.
Go slow. Go slowly. Go slower.

If you are alone. Think of another person. Someone you love. Someone you hate. Someone you want to feel better about. Someone you want to understand better. Someone you want to help. Someone you think has "done you wrong."

Pick just one person, and imagine them in front of you while you do this. Imagine looking into each others' eyes.

1. Breathe.
Follow your breathing.
Notice the other person's breath.
Match their breathing.

This will be shorthanded in the following as:
Breathe.
Notice.
Match.

After matching for awhile:
Say: "I am alive."
And then match breathing a bit more.
Say: "You are alive."
Match.

2. Now, in one sentence increments say:
"This is what it's like being alive, right now."
Only report on your immediate experience.

If thoughts of the past come up, say, frustration at work,
do not say,
"To be alive right now is to be frustrated at work."
Say: "To be alive right now is to have memories/ thoughts of work, and when I have those thoughts I feel ....."

Between each reporting of your life in the moment, go back to
Breathe.
Notice.
Match.

Then say the next: "This is what it is to be alive right now."

Do this three or four sentences, but no more.

Then just be quiet and notice you aliveness
AND their aliveness.

3. Say this truth:
"I am going to die someday."
Breathe.
Notice.
Match.
"You are going to die someday."
Breathe.
Notice.
Match.

4. And then one more sentence:
"This is what it is like to be alive right now....."

5. A final
Breathe.
Notice.
Match.

And then trade turns.

Go slow.
Did I say that.
Go slower and be present.

Let this sink in.
This is all you really need to know.
So, in case you missed the hints: go slowly, and
Breathe.
Notice.
Match.

Good.

Divorce and Enlightenment

Many people think of divorce as "failure" and use that as an excuse to feel bad.

Failing means that something didn't work.

That means you tried something.

The trick, and the deep trick, is to get excited about
1. having tried
2. what you set out to do
3. how you undermined, or didn't understand, how to achieve what you set out to do

Notice this doesn't say: figure our how your partner made it impossible for you to achieve what you set out to do.

And notice we are begging the question of most people not really knowing what they are setting out to do when they enter a relationship or a marriage.

So, having a vague idea of "happiness and a family," or "true love," or at best "mutual support," things get ragged at times, and since we have parents who usually didn't have fine and kind and awakened ways of dealing with issues, we fall back on bad models of behavior.

And get bad results.

And still : we tried for something.

Admit it. You tried.
If the aim wasn't clear , let's get excited: what could our aim have been.
( and a negative formulation is often a set up for poor results, a formulation like: not so much fighting, someone who doesn't put me down, someone who isn't ocd, or nagging, or whatever the X was; to look for "not the X" is a shadowy path to future happiness. Admit it, and even smile and your temptation, if you are in the looking for a "new one" mode.)

Here's some gold in divorce: what did we really want and were afraid to say aloud
( and gads, admit this, too, that we were too lazy to search for a non negative formulation of what we wanted).

What did you want?
What did you wish you'd said you'd wanted?

And here's more gold: what were you wanting from the other that you were not yet willing to give to yourself.

Say you don't appreciate yourself. And yet you were waiting around for your partner to appreciate you.

Or, you aren't particularly happy. And you are annoyed with (yes and unhappy about) your partner being unhappy

All this has a quick, straightforward and more or less guaranteed "cure" via the Work of Byron Katie.

Was doing this work a part of how you set about to accomplish the goals of your relationship?

Will it be part of your next relationship?

And what has this got to do with enlightenment?

Enlightenment is being present. To the now.

It is letting go of stories about how reality should be different than it is. And one of the major places that we love to complain about and demand that reality be different is in our relationships.

So we can take divorce, and its accompanying pain,  as a grand opportunity to realize who we could be when we let go of our "story" about this other person,
instead of doing the usual "my X was a jerk/ sociopath/ dope/ abuser/ creep" and discover how our judgments and demands and criticisms and inability to listen and withdrawing and attacking, how we piled fuel on the flames of unhappiness.

We can learn to have unconditional love for this person who we have separated from.

In a way that's easier, since their so called "annoying" traits we don't have to live with day to day.
But if we can't love everything about them, we don't know how to love yet.

And to be enlightened is to love reality. If this person isn't breaking laws and physically hurting people (in which case there are police person about, ready and willing to help them stop), then we should be able to love them from afar.

If we can't, the news is sad: we can't love ourselves.

Which means we aren't ready for a new relationship yet.

Which means we aren't ready for happiness yet.

Happiness is not necessarily the goal of life, but not being happy is always a sign that we are not in the present and not in love with life.

In other words, not enlightened.

Weird to give enlightenment the freight of taking us out of our misery, but guess what? That's what our misery is for: to wake us out of our trance and get us to work on the real work of letting go of our judgments about ourselves and others.

And the first step, according to the work of Byron Katie, is to be honest. To judge.

Judge yourself and your neighbors.
Write it down
Ask four questions.
Turn it around

Good. If you are divorcing or in a troubled relationship, do the work, or keep suffering, or hide from it in jogging or overeating or new sex or lots of movies or overworking.

Life is choices.

I think to wake up one is best, and you get to decide for you.

the game of enlightenment

enlightenment
has a fine reputation
as something kind of cool

and maybe it is

maybe not

light is good

shedding light on the real
is good

shedding our suffering seems
a worthy way to be

shedding our grasping to be better
than others
or to be right
or to not have to shift to see the next thing that
is coming along

shedding
letting go
taking it easy

waking up to the moment

all that seems like a good thing

and is it?

Who knows?

and the who that knows or not knows
is .....?

what if our experience is
a nice indicator of our life
right now

and what else could it be

experiencing this moment
can have all sorts of concepts about
how cool that that is

but just the moment
the experiencing
the whatever us/ not us experiencing the
flow

that works as a life
that is lived
without moorings
but with lots of joy
and juice

and is that true?

who knows?

try living this way
experiencing this way
juicing into all this
chunk by chunk
breath by breath
laugh by laugh

nowwhere to go
no where is better
and now
waits
and is already here

and it's over

good

Relationship Enlightenment, Day Seven : Now vs "the feelings"

This is also published in RelationshipEnlightenment.blogspot.com

In relationship, we get these feelings.

You know the ones: anger, fear, frustration, neediness, jealousy, worry, sad, lonely, overwhelmed, underwhelmed, confused.

A grand thing to do with those and any feelings in the work of Byron Katie, and that will be the last seven days of our 21 day program. Her work is all of therapy wrapped up in a simplicity and elegance that not only "heals" the various emotional wounds we are carrying around, but can carry us to the enlightened state if we just keep asking: "Is it true?" and "Who are I without the story?"

But for now, today,, let's play with understanding our loss when we leave the present.

You can do this with your partner.

You can do this alone.

Give yourself some time, and allow yourself to "go to" the feeling that is most disturbing you right now.

Say aloud that feeling in it's shortest form:
"I feel angry."
"I feel sad."
"I feel afraid."

Skip the "I am..." form. Why? Because who you are is vast, so much more vast than any mere feeling, or thought, or set of words, or concepts.

So, just say the feeling without any of the becauses.
(You know; "I feel angry because you never come home when you say you will." No, stay small, stay direct, stay with yourself: "I feel angry.")

2. Whether alone or with your partner, fill in the "because" part of the feeling, but make it spoken in gibberish.
"I feel angry because ......NFNEIFH JJKIUMO  NNORYQPVAB." Make up sounds and convey the feeling of your big bad sad angry hurt victim story about how much they are "doing it wrong."

But don't actually say the words.

This gets you a step away from taking it so seriously, or maybe several steps.

If you are in front of your partner, it spares them all the blame about why you imagine you are feeling as you are feeling.

3. Pause. Breathe. Look at your partner. Smile.
Feel your breathing.
Watch their breathing.
Say aloud: "I am alive and breathing." Pause and notice your breathing. As you do so watch their breathing at the same time.
Say aloud: "You are alive and breathing." Pause and notice both your breathing.
Notice them in the light.
Say one or two things you notice in the present from the information light is bringing into your eyes.
"I see you looking at me." "Your shirt is blue."
No, no, no interpretations.

4. Go back to the feeling.
Explore when in the past you felt that way.
Talk about when in the past you felt that way.

5. As you talk about the past, which isn't in the present,
notice,
in the present,
IN THE PRESENT NOTICE,
your sensations in your body. Your chest. Your skin. Your neck. Your eyes. Your legs and arms and spine.
Some might feel tense, usually around the torso area. Some areas might be just fine, say your feet and ankles.
Report the physical sensations that go along with talking about and exploring this feeling and it's roots in the past.

6. Pause and go back to #3. Notice what being alive in the present is about.

Go through the breathing and saying the truths of that section.

7. Keep looking at your partner ( if alone, imagine whomever you are having the feeling about).
Switch between them in the present,
them in some past where they were triggering the feeling,
and
the past persons who triggered this feeling first.

Go back and forth.
Notice how calm the present can be.

Notice the agitation of going back to the "story" of their "crime."

Notice the difference between your partner ( or annoyance person, for this can be an X, with whom you need closure) and the person from your more distant past.

Notice the three possibilities:
the way past woundedness ( and how does that feel in your body)

the slightly past woundedness, when you go into the story about your partner or whomever

the present.

8. Come back to awareness of yourself in the present.
Say aloud, sensing yourself and noticing your breathing and theirs:
"I am alive. You are alive. I am breathing. You are breathing.
I am going to die.
You are going to die."

Have some quiet time, to walk, or rest, and then repeat the process the other way around if you have both people in the same room.

Give yourself lots of time.
Do not explain the gibberish, even if they know.
Do not "defend" yourself against the gibberish, even if it's obvious what it is.
Do not "help" the other with their past feelings. Especially do not go into: I told you so, you weren't really angry at me, I knew all along it was your father.

If you want to be grateful for the present, or for the other person, and to express that.
That would be a fine idea.

Good.

Fund Raisining for Special Needs Children Parents: going beyond the comforable

This was published also in my blog:
SpecialNeedsChildren-chriselms.blogspot.com

Children are expensive.

Special needs children are very expensive.

Hillary Clinton's book title helped us all remember what we all kind of knew:

"IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD."

This is even more true with a special needs child.

As anyone reading this blog knows, I consider the Anat Baniel Method one of the finest
methods to get the brains and bodies of these wonderful children catching up with their peers.

The method is based on slow and gentle and variation and turning on the learning switch and more.
You can read about that in Anat's already published book, Move into Life.
And soon you can read about it ( March 27) in her new book: Kids Without Limits.

But for now, I want to encourage all special needs parents to step up their skills and their
courage and reach out to several villages, or the a BIG VILLAGE to fund raise for their child's
expenses.

Not only are the ABM lessons a fair but high price, but there are travel expenses, and medical expenses, and baby sitting expenses and much more. Parents know far better than I.

I have recently, in Dallas, completed my certification for David Neagle's Money Miracle Coaching.

Several of his key concepts seem especially useful to special needs children parents who might be hesitant to fund raise actively for their child's expenses:

1) If there is a need, the money is available, here in your life, right now to meet that need.

2) This money doesn't fall from heaven the way many of the "Law of Attraction" folk seem to imagine, but is available as an Opportunity that exists. Right now.

3) To take advantage of that opportunity always demands we step up to a higher level of who we can be. The old level couldn't see the opportunity, or would be afraid to make moves that a uncomfortable to make our new reality possible. The new level can see the opportunity and create what seem like miracles.

(This is totally in line with the ABM lessons, which always test out and provide new ways to move, trying always something easy, but something beyond the "comfortable" and routine of the established range of possibilities. Notice I did NOT say range of motion. ABM is about brains, and their amazing ability to learn and learn and learn.)

4) The more we take advantage of new opportunities the more we see the old excuses of
NOT NOW ( later we can get the changes we want)
and TOO EXPENSIVE (the new so often requires us to expand our definitions of what we can desire, what we can bring in, what we can spend).

The underlying attitude is one of amazingly benevolent spirituality: That God would create a need in us that He didn't create a way for us to satisfy.

So, with special needs children: You didn't sign up to be fund raisers, and you didn't sign up to be a special needs child parent, but the people you will meet, the skills you will establish, the hope for your child and humanity that you will engender all will be that famous "blessing in disguise" that so much of times "hard times" bring to us.

I encourage you to think big, two or three times even the amount you think would "just get by."

There are people in your community with a great deal of money, and big hearts. You might not know how to find them yet, but ask, find the connections. Somehow the necessary links will take place.

Keep track of what you are learning, so later you can help and teach other special needs children parents how to do this, too.

God bless you and enjoy the learning, enjoy going beyond your habits, enjoy expanding out into an even more amazing you.

Chris
March 19, 2012

Aging, "Anti-aging," reversing the clock, waking back up to life

Say you took a walk down a narrow path to a river each day, fetched some water and then carried it back up to your village.

Then you picked some fruit from a tree, perhaps climbing up the tree, and if the day got too hot you swam and splash in the river down below, so once again a walk of attention (the path is narrow and you could fall off) and back up: nice exercise.

You hunt or you make baskets or you cook food or you prepare weapons or you take a nap or you talk to the grandchildren or children or adults or grandfathers.

You move, you pick up things from the ground, you harvest roots, you skin any animals you have killed.

It sounds primitive and could have it's own charm and appeal or could be a horrifying life to us "moderns", what with food in grocery stories and cars to carry us to work to make money to drive home via the market and cook our food in convenient ways that require no bending down to light the fire or pick up the firewood.

We don't move much, and some go to a gym and push various machines and barbells and metal around, and that certain helps, but the overall picture is one of a lot of sitting. At desks. In front of computers.

And then, even on the part of the day we used to just walk to the car, we are on the cell phone, and now it's a smart phone, so our eyes are glued to the little one and a quarter by three inch screen.

We hunker around our little electronic communication network, not around the fire, not around the circle of family and friends telling stories.

Movies tell our stories, and less and less people even sit with others watching the mutual dream. We stay home, we get our Netflicks, and probably a big chunk of that time is also spend texting and gazing at the even smaller screen.

People are missing. Movement is missing. Nature is missing.

And so we age.

People in the tribes in the old paradigm aged too, but their bodies stayed relatively mobile and their minds, with real problems to solve, real pathways to negotiate with real sleep, stayed alert. The elders job was to pass on the lore and the skills to the young. The young are figgity and keeping up with their minds and bodies must have kept the elders way more on their toes, literally, than the shoved off in old folks homes, and dimming away to Alzheimers, and decaying into the cancer plague.

And does Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel have something to offer the modern woman and man, the modern desk ridden, car enslaved, smart phone addicted person.

Sure.

It has a plethora of movements, that are slow enough to be engaging on their own.

Movements that vary, and so the brain has to pay attention, and even better new neural pathways are laid down. And this is learning.

We try things in a new way, with attention, and learning, real learning of new connections gets hooked up in our brains.

And the spine lengthens, almost always with either table or group lessons. All the moving this way and moving that reminds the vertebrae: hey, you guys aren't a rod, you are a chain of linked and separate units, and the more you can remember and move in all directions with some separation from how your neighbor is moving, the more the spine can lengthen out.

The hunching over of the old, as the spine gets more and more trapped in the patterns of a life time of slouching, this can begin to "un-do" with the lessons of this work.  In the old days, people picked up things from the ground, reached up to climb and pick fruit, rotated right and left to follow prey and avoid danger and get through various openings. We can create, in gobs of fun and different ways, bends and arches and twists and sidebends in our spine.

We can recapture the joy of having a body that is excited to learn something just a little new each day.

So it isn't really "anti-aging," we don't have anything against aging. It's "anti letting ourselves stop learning, and anti falling into deeper and deeper immobility, and anti thinking we have reached the know it all stage of existence.

It's anti fear of the new, but excitement, and this can spill over.

What new will life bring today?

It's so exciting. Let's find out!

The importance of forgiving ourselves

It's like this: we aren't perfect.
Or, wait a minute: we are perfect, but according to some rules, we are less than we want to be.

Or, we actually do stupid, or mean, or thoughtless, or selfish things now and then. And then we have the present to live in.

Now is all we really have.
If we "blew it" in the past, we cannot undo that, and an attitude of harshness towards ourselves only makes it more likely we will act poorly in the future.

Because when we lash out at ourselves, we feel bad.
And when we feel bad, we treat other people not as well as they deserve. Not as well as we wish to treat them.

These people around us are miracles. They are alive.

We are miracles. We are alive.

In the present we can realize that, can feel our life right now, even reading or hearing these words.
And if there is another person in our life, and we think of them, we can feel in our hearts the glory of this: they are alive.

So what's this go to do with forgiveness?

Holding onto an image of ourselves that's impossible to match in reality causes stress, at the very least.
And the image is: we should have been different in the past.

Now, we can examine the past and imagine that being different would have created different results.
And we can try different actions in the present to create different results.
But we can't erase the past.

And we can look at the imaginary self of us in the past, and pat ourselves on the head and realize we did the best we could within whatever mindset we were in.

And we can decide to try a different mindset, and a different set of actions next time. But thrashing ourselves for whatever we did, this leads, as I mentioned above, only to an internal misery that cries out for hurting others so they will match our pain.

How are you in this present moment?

Are you happy and content, glad to be in this moment and alive?
Excited by the prospects of actions and rests you are going to take today?
Feeling your body in gravity, breath, light and sound?
Enjoying the moment?
Knowing you are alive in the moment?
Grateful for the miracle of being alive, right now.

I hope so.

Good.

when waiting for an "i love you"

sometimes we are silly
or
maybe we should call it confused
or
even insane
but we can say that insane in the nicest possible way

and that silliness/ confusion/ insanity
goes like this:
"You should send an
'I love you'
my way."

This can be of someone we are "with"
or
someone we haven't met
but we are feeling deprived

can be a wife a husband boy/girlfriend
business chum
high school buddy
all that

we have that
naked and empty feeling
and they
whatever
they

(you know we are single
and waiting for sex to prove we
are okay,
or the smile of liking us,
or anything, anything wanting that
"I love you"
that coming from the best of all real Mom's
would just mean:

it's okay
you're okay

you're more than okay:
you're perfect)

and as we wait,
if we come to the present
and go the the quiet underneath
words
and concepts
and even (in a different way)
underneath "feelings"

if we go quiet
and listen:

the whole universe is
whispering:

I love you

and that whisper is
coming from deepest us
to the rest of us

from deepest us to everyone in the world
plus trees
roses
rocks
cars
gutters
spit slime and gore

the i love you
can't stop
everything is so fine
because we
are the everything
we see hear taste touch know
about
don't know about

it gets kind of blury
in the mystical mess bliss
and
so
f...ing what

life is whole
and the i love you is life whisper shout murmer sing
dancing to us:

I love you

it's everywhere

and if you've read this far,
here's your reward:

anything we are looking for
"out there"
is already "in here"
in the God
that is our heart
when it is a real
heart,
a receiving and transmitting
miracle maker
of
love happiness peace joy abundance bliss creativity

you want it
and
zap
it is you
it is the universe

you are the unirverse is you reverse direction
so many times you don't know
where you are going

and it
doesn't matter
 d
die before you die
you are already home
dead
and gone
to heaven

the kingdom of heaven
is
now
is
in your heart my heart the tree's heart the rock's heart the busy city street's heart
the baby smiling
saying
really
all the people are saying
in the wonderful world song:
they're really saying:
I love you

just soften
slow
listen to the whisper inside the silence

is that
"I love you?" gurgling into
your heart
or
out of it

or into every cell of your body
or out through them

keep turning
keep returning

the dance is sweet
the whirl is complete

and is so fine
to keep turning returning praise laughing loving tears


love is an inside joy
love is an inside job
live is love is like is life is...
words fall
the heart soars

life
lives and loves
itself

and we are just along
for the ride/ dance/ lovemaking love making
song symphony garden forest meadow
ocean
of
it all

of thanks
thanks
thanks

good

Day Four: This is now, this is important, for this I'm grateful

(All the days in the upcoming book
of 21 Days to Relationship Enlightenment won't be posted here.
The book will soon be for sale.
A three hour intensive retreat for couples who want to double their happiness,
or cut in half their unhappiness,
will be based on some of the exercises,
plus for the in person work, movement/ brain/ upgrade and happiness "games" will be enjoyed between each
"emotional/ heart upgrade" activity. )

Day four:
As per each day, sit in two chairs facing each other, or
across a table,
or out on the grass sitting facing each other.

Come into the present.

Take turns.

The first person reports on

1) Their present experience at three levels:
Body and shape and gravity: ("I notice my feet pressing the floor and my arms shaped like...)
Torso and breathing ("I notice the air coming in and out of my chest area, and a bit into my belly")
And sound: " I hear...."
2) Their present observing the other with no interpretations:
"I see you eyes. " " I see your white shirt."
If the other is smiling, " I see your smile,"  But not even, "You look happy." Just pure fcts

3) The a statement of what is important,
"It is important to me that ......."

4) A statement of gratitude,
"I am grateful for....."

5) Once more saying present based observations:
body, torso and hearing about our experience; light and image about what we see of the other in the present

Changing around:
The second person feeds back what they heard in #3 and #4:
"I heard you say, This was important to you.
I heard you say, You are grateful for ...."

Then the second person speaks the above 5 steps to the first person.

..........
Going back and forth so each person has at least 3 turns seems a minimum grand action for today.
Or any day.

Day One: Relationship Enlightenment 108

This is day one of a twenty one day book:
Twenty One Days to Relationship Heaven.

It will be, as much as anything else, a manual of how to use
relationship "issues"
as a springboard for Enlightenment.

Sometimes it will be written in straight go-ahead sentences.

And sometimes,
not.

Here's the exercise/ game/ action/ meditation/ contemplation for the first day.

Sit down with a person with whom you wish to create greater love.

If you are divorced or have had a rocky separation, or even an "easy" separation, do this an imaginary other person, unless they will come join you on one or all of the twenty one days.

But do each day's game.

Here's today's:

Either sit across from each other, or sit across from an imaginary X.

Take turns saying this while looking into each others' eyes, or imagining looking into the eyes of the X.

"I am alive.

You are alive.

I am going to die someday.

You are going to die someday.

I love, honor and cherish you."

Pause between each phrase.

And if you have a complaint, or are angry at the one you are doing this with, so be it: say the words, "I love, honor and cherish you."

Even if you are going to get a divorce tomorrow, say the words.

Even if you got a divorce and they treated you horribly and you are bitter and wounded (which you won't be at the end of the 21 days), say the words. Whisper the words, but say them out loud, while looking into the other person's eyes, whether real eyes, or imaginary ones.

And, if you want to have a good relationship, and you are in a new one, after doing this "in the real world" with your present partner, do this in imaginary back and forth with your X. Even if the X was years ago.

And, if you are doing with with an imaginary X, have them say the words to you too:

"I am alive.

You are alive.

I am going to die someday.

You are going to die someday.

I love, honor and cherish you."

Imagine them looking into your eyes and saying this.

And for everyone, real person or imaginary:
go back and forth with this at least three times.

And it's fair, fine and maybe even recommended to do it one more time today,
just before you go to bed, or while in bed, before you go to sleep.

Or something else.

Good.