The Present. Loving Life/ Others/ Yourself

The Present:
Our Only Route to Freedom and Love

Here’s the deal:

One: If you had perfect parents AND

Your partner had perfect parents , THEN

You can have a grand relationship and be mindless

Two: We are either mindful or mindless

Three: If we did NOT both have perfect parents, things are always going to get awful unless we are mindful.

This isn’t to say they will always be awful.

In mindlessness, we can coast through good times, or stay busy enough to be out of each other’s hair, but there will be times when one or the other (or both, as often happens) have stressful/ bad/ shitty days.

When that happens, and we are mindless, guess what?

Not being mindful, we don’t get to chose what our reactions are going to be?

Who does?

Our programming.

Where does most of our heavy duty programming come from: our parents.

So, that’s the formula: stress, plus mindlessness equals we fall back on the rather funky examples and programming of our parents and act them out on our poor mate.

And our poor selves, because we aren’t really home when we are acting out the mindless game.

We are a pawn of our programming.

This would be bad, bad awful news, if we didn’t have an alternative to being mindless.

But we do.

To be mindful.

Remember number two at the start of this chapter: we can be mindful, or we can be mindless..

Mindful, we can notice:

Oh, darn, my buttons are being pushed. Better say something about that.

Or, wow, look at the way my words have caused my loved one to tense their breathing and look hurt in their face.

Maybe those weren’t the words I really wanted to say.

So, that’s that deal: Mindful we have choices. We can notice our own reactiveness.

We can notice the effects of our words and actions.

We aren’t lost in our own little world, but are paying attention to reality.

We notice the birds and our breathing and our skeletons holding us up in gravity and the look on our loved one’s face and the tone of our voice and the feelings that are coming up in us.

The world is new and fresh when we are mindful and if things aren’t “going right,” we can notice this, and say something about it and get curious.

And make suggestions.

Or requests.

All that, the making requests, the diffusing our own reactivity will come later in the book.

For now, we are going to practice pointing our attention to what we like in life.

What we are aware of in the present and what we like in life.

In couples, so much conversation is either planning out the business of what to next or later. And a lot is complaining about what happened in the past.

And the lovely blaming the other for when we feel bad.

So, let’s get our attention on what we like muscles build up and spend three days talking about what turns us on in life, what we like in life, what we are aware of in the present.

Like this…

The Liking Game

In some religions they lay it out like this: Two biggie commandments, Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Check that out closely and it’s three rules for the good life:

Love God

Love others.

Love yourself.

And now, gentle reader, we’re going to take a short cut, a short cut to happiness, contentment and bliss.

A way out of a bunch of conceptual tangling and fussing that has waylaid humanity for way too long.

Instead of God, we are going to say Life.

Capital L Life.

The miracle of the flowers and the creeks and the salmon and smiling children and tuba’s and kissing and square dancing and redwood trees.

Life.

So the Big Three rules become:

Love Life.

Love other people.

Love yourself.

And guess what?

You are your partner are going to practice that for twenty minutes a day for at least three days.

And you are going to start by noticing the big three: yourself, another person, and Life.

Here’s the game, sit as before in two chairs close to each other and look each other in the eyes as one speaks and the other listen.

Be present to your voice as you speak.

Both be present to the voice and the breathing and the body, both your own and the other’s.

And talk in two turns of talking and two turns of listening like this.

For five minutes cycle through these six sentence stems, finishing them as the words come to you.

1.    I notice in the present this about myself…

2.    I notice in the present, this about you…

3.    I notice, in the present, this about Life around us…

4.    I like this about myself…

5.    I like this about you…

6.    I like this about Life…

Pause for a couple of sweet breaths as you look each other in the eye, and then go back through the six sentence stems again.

And again.

And again.

Until the five minutes are up.

Notice the delight in just talking about what you like.

Notice the delight is just listening to your love talk about what they like.

Do this two turns each.

See if it changes how you talk in the rest of your life!!

Waking Up in Relationships

day eleven

This may be your actually day eleven. Or it may be the first day of your second month, and you’ll once again do ten days in three cycles.

Whatever it is, the PART A, mini version, is only going to be given at the end of the talk and the touch section. And it won’t be called Part A, but the minimum daily dosage.

It’s time to settle in and admit how important this relationship is to us. Even if it’s going to come to a shifting apart at the end of six months ( that’s the minimum to really work something through with someone you love.)

We’re going to have longer practices this ten days, and the touching is going to involve kissing and making out. We’re working our way up to the sexual parts, or the genitalia at least, and kissing is far, far underrated as an erotic past time.

I’d say we all should be making out at least fifteen minutes a day. Tongues and touch. Skin.

Ah.

Oh, wait, we have a talking part, and the make out won’t come today, but soon, soon. ( In the book. No law/ rule/ commandment or even recommendation that you don’t start making out before the book suggests. Even now: fling down the book and make out for awhile. See if you die.

Ha)

TALK

TALKING DEEP

LISTENING DEEP

THE SEED SOURCE OF LOVE

Okay. Here’s a five part game we are going to play many, many times.

I’m indebted to the Authentic Games community for this game, and it’s good for business, love and even ( EVEN!) creating an amazingly quick and deep connection with a stranger or new person in your life.

It goes like this:

There are two partners, A and B. ( Alternate days you are A and you are B. Though both get the full turn, A will start the talking always)

A: Talks for 3 minutes.

B: Reflects back, as closely as possible, the exact words they heard A say. No interpretations. No inferences. That’s later. 2 minutes

A: Give additional insight. Where B got it a little wrong. Where B forgot something that was important. Where A realizes they needed to put more emphasis. Where A realizes that the real theme of the sharing was slightly different than they’d thought the first time around. 1 minutes.

B: Tells A, either/ or:

What they “got” about A as a person from both of their shares.

What was the strongest emotional resonance in their sharing. What was the juiciest part of what they where sharing.

2 minutes. Go slowly. Really hone in to what you feel, FEEL, and think and intuit that A is like.

A: Share gratitude for being heard and listened to and “got” by B. Any places that B “got” you that didn’t really connect with who you feel you are, share that there needs to be more learning between to two of you. Not criticism. Just the reality. We’ve all got a long way to go to learn what another person is like.

1 minutes.

Pause. Breathe. Hug or hold hands. Be grateful for this. 1 minute.

So we’ve got

3 minutes A’s initial share

2 minutes: B reflecting back the words

1 minutes: A fine tuning their share

2 minutes: what B “gets” about A

1 minute: A’s gratitude and hints as to areas of future discovery.’

1 minute: hug, touch, pause, Breathe, integrate.

Total : 10 minutes.

I’d prefer a longer version. Which I’ll give on day 20 for the repeating practice. A version that will take 13 minutes each way. But for now, I want to keep within the half hour limit, which will mean ten minutes ( minimum) touch each day.

So, ten minutes each way.

I haven’t given the topic today.

“What you want the relationship to be.”

“What you want the relationship to be.”

Be uncertain, be vulnerable, be outrageous, be tentative, be certain. Share where you are today. We may well do this topic every other day.

The minimum daily dose, and you’ll have to try the full version above to experience how paltry this is in comparison:

2 minutes sharing: What you want the relationship to be. 1 minute feeding back what the listener “got” about you.

TOUCH

We have ten minutes left over.

We have lips.

That like to kiss.

In four minute batches, please have a recipient, in any position they chose, and a giver/ kisser.

The kisser/ giver kisses the recipient in as many places as their intuition calls for. Except the lips.

That’s tomorrow.

The recipient can make requests.

Or just soak it in.

Four minute each way.

Then One minute each sharing how give was for you and how getting.

Minimum daily dose.

Two minutes of kissing as per above. Each person goes each way.

One minute sharing how getting and giving was.

The Blind Deficit Disorder World, Seeing in a Blind World

From the Wayseers,
by Garret John LoPorto

"A Vital Breakthrough for Free-Spirits, Visionaries, Misfits, Rebels and Pioneers"


Seeing in a Blind World

Imagine a world where just about everyone is born blind and you are one of the only ones who can see. Because blindness is pervasive, human culture in this imaginary world has developed a blindness for blindness. People would not even realize they were missing a key sense.

As a child growing up with working vision in this world you would have some peculiar experiences. When you opened your eyes, you would notice everyone else’s were closed. When you described your ability to “see” you would be placated, ignored and told you had an overactive imagination. Eventually, at quite a young age, you would probably become uncomfortable with keeping your eyes open – because your vision would prompt you to say and do things that disturbed and upset your parents and teachers and peers – so you would learn to close your eyes like everyone else just to feel more in harmony with your community.

Your well-meaning, but blind parents and teachers, would insist on teaching you critical life skills for the blind. The academic disciplines of groping, stick tapping and pace counting would be beaten into you “for your own good”. You would try to do things like open your eyes and walk to where you wanted to go, and at first a parent or teacher might have thought you were a very advanced pace counter; but when they discovered that you didn’t know how many paces you’d traveled, you would be reprimanded for being careless, impulsive and foolish. “Just walking freely” without the use of proper blind navigation strategies such as stick tapping or pace counting would be seen as reckless, irresponsible and dangerous to yourself and others.

You found all of these blind navigation strategies very hard to focus on with your eyes open, because they were so unnecessary with working vision. Your teachers may have complained to your parents that there was something very wrong with you; because you were such a sloppy stick tapper and a forgetful, inattentive counter. You simply wouldn’t focus on your blind navigation studies. Maybe they thought you had ADHD or BNDD (Blind Navigation Deficit Disorder).

At this point your approach to living as a seer in a blind world may have taken one of a couple different directions. The first would have been to acquiesce and become sympathetically blind in some way. You would find that you could tolerate and focus on your blind navigation studies much better with your eyes closed. Plus, you would fit in better and wouldn’t seem so strange to others. There would be no glorious vision to distract you from the pace counting and the stick tapping, which seemed so silly and useless before. Now, it becomes surprisingly essential with your eyes closed. If you had trouble keeping your eyes closed, a family doctor might prescribe you a Blind Navigation Deficit Disorder medication that would chemically blind you for hours at a time, making the discipline to keep your eyes closed and stay focused much easier.

The second course your life could take would be that of a misfit and a rebel. You would say “to hell” with this blind navigation B.S. – you could get where you wanted to go without learning all these “stupid” academics. Maybe instead of dropping out, you still went to class, but you would coast. You would pretend to do the blind navigation, but whenever you got lost you would just open your eyes. You’d lose points for not doing your homework and not “showing your work,” but you could do surprisingly well on tests when you weren’t accused of cheating.

Then as you came of age you might begin to overcome your shame of seeing. You might start to embrace it instead of hiding it. You might muster the inner liberty to throw down your tapping stick and do horrifyingly risky things like running through a forest. You might use your vision to make “impossible” discoveries as far as blind people are concerned. You might solve cases in unexpected ways because you can see things others can’t. You might invent things, change ways of doing things, lead.

You would be heralded as a modern day miracle worker, for

doing what came naturally to you, just because you could see.

“The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.”

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/3186387/350371029/name/The-Wayseers-1st-chapter-v0-3-7-8.pdf

If someone rejects you....la, la... how to love life, then

Bill was rejected by Janice who thought he was too eager and Carol who thought he was too intellectual and Diane who thought he was too earthy. This got to him and he started to feel badly about himself.


The hint about the way out:

Other people's ideas of us, are their juice/ karma and right.
An, "oh, well," goes a long way
Semi poem:

if you can love  your cancer,
says Bryon Katie,
you can love me

if you can't love your cancer,
she says,
then the first time I annoy you,
you'll reject me

people like to reject
if they are uncomfortable

getting comfortable with the uncomfortable
is not their game usually

the uncomfortable scares
and the fear seems more real
that looking in to what set up fear,
and the default mode becomes:
stay away from scary areas

and there is
another possibility,
if we are on the route to freedom:
 go to the scary
and see how it's set up inside

this is good in the money world
the relationship world
the God should have done something different (not brought death to....,
for example) world

And hey, Bill can even start with another thing
Byron Katie says:
when someone leaves or rejects you,
you've been spared

you've been spared
being around someone
who doesn't want to be around you

Yesterday is gone, one more healing game

YESTERDAY IS GONE

[One of the great glories of the past: It is over.]




Think of an argument or a disagreement you have about something your partner, even your imaginary partner, did in the past.
Look at them, or imagine them in the present.
Feel, breathe, sense, aware your world in the present.
Then go back to the “story” about how the past “should have been different.”
Then come back to the present.

Look at them.
Say this: “I can go into the past and make myself….(sad, unhappy, angry, etc, you fill in the blank) with this story {{{ gibberish, gibberish, gibberish}}}. Or I can be present and notice this…..(fill in the blank with the present).”

Go back and forth on this for ten to twenty minutes.
Feel the calming wonderful peace of the now.

Good.

Vows for Relationship Enlightenment

1. I vow to be present and authentic in and apart from our relationship.

Authentic means true to my feelings, wishes, goals and moment by moment inclinations.
It does not demand of you to match, join, or even approve of my authentic self.

And most especially, authentic does not include the cowardly "honesty" of complaining about what's going on in me and blaming that on you.

2. I vow to have zero tolerance for any complaining about you from me. I.e. not to do it.
Ever.

3. I do vow to be honest in my feelings, rather than repressed. To combine this with #2, I vow to state my feelings only in this shortened form:
"I feel angry."  Period. No "because you..."
"I feel sad." Period. No "because you..."

4. I vow to take total responsibility for all the "because-s" after any feelings I have.
These usually include some or all of these:
a. lack of being present
b. a story about how the other is not (and should) match some picture in my mind
c. a trigger from some past "wound," which means an area I haven't "done" the Work on yet.
d. a cowardly attempt/ habit  to blame others outside for what I feel inside.

5. I vow to do the Work ( the Work of Byron Katie, TheWork.com) on any and all of my stories.

6. I vow to commit myself to your happiness, to your achieving your life goals and wishes, to your need for space, time and respect.

7. I vow to listen when you wish to communicate. Fully. In the present. No interrupting. No interpreting.

8. I vow not to interpret any of your behavior, thinking or feeling, unless you are doing some inner work and ASK for this.

9. These are my vows.
You can join them or not. I invite you to, and that's your business.
I you join them, I vow not to nag, scold, or even point out when you "fail" to meet them.

10. On the other hand, I vow to listen to your observations about when and how I have missed the mark on keeping them.

11. I vow to make requests, not demands. Which means I vow to honor and even enjoy any and all "no's" to my requests, as what they are: you exercising your right and joy to be precisely the one whom I love: you being exactly yourself, moment by moment.

Good