The Conscious Heart (14 page)

“An even stronger clue about birth issues was my response to the unexpected, especially when Gay and I were presenting a lecture or workshop together. We would make a plan, but then practically immediately—‘right out of the chute’ springs to mind—he would improvise something and go off in another direction. I would instantly get angry, stop being spontaneous, and feel helpless—all very familiar states.”

In discussing any of these stages, we suggest you complete two sentences: “From the past, this reminds me of …” and “I keep this going by …” Then we suggest you begin to unwind your past patterns by imagining what the most beneficial, friendly outcome of the issue could be.

This worked for Kathlyn: “When I completed the first sentence out loud, I realized almost immediately that the situation
reminded me of birth. I kept it going by withholding my feelings and assuming that Gay’s motives were to control me and the lecture. I imagined the most beneficial outcome would be to acknowledge when I noticed the familiar pattern and to develop my initiating and improvisational skills. When I put my attention into building on whatever Gay presented, the whole pattern disappeared, and I had a lot more fun.”

T
RUE
C
OMMITMENT
I
S THE
U
LTIMATE
S
AFETY

W
e have watched hundreds of people make big commitments to each other. Within a split second after the commitment is made, waves of fear and joy sweep over each of them. Sometimes the fear wins out, sometimes the joy, but both need to be acknowledged. If a couple tries to sweep the fear under the rug, it comes back to haunt them by causing them to sabotage their commitment.

If you say to your partner, “I commit to telling you the truth in our relationship,” you step into the unknown. You enter the third zone, the zone of things you don’t know that you don’t know about yourself. Perhaps your body and mind don’t know what it’s like to tell the truth in a close relationship. You may never have seen it growing up, and you have never practiced it before. Your body knows a lot about lying but little or nothing about telling the truth. Nonetheless you choose plum-blossom courage and forge into the unknown. You risk the commitment because it is something you consciously choose.

What will often happen next is that the fear will come up in your body very quickly.
Expect this, and simply acknowledge it and take a few breaths into it. Talk about your present experience of the fear, and dance around with it if your body wants to move. All it wants is your recognition
.

If you ignore your fear, it has a way of tugging on you. If you persist in turning your back on it, it will act as an undertow, pulling you under and sabotaging your conscious commitments. That’s the way fear works, and it’s best to know about its power as you embrace larger commitments.

The trick is to recognize and acknowledge our responses without letting them take us over. After all, we humans aren’t the only animals who go into contraction under threat. Turtles pull into their shell; snakes coil; we tighten our belly muscles and hunch up. It’s our wired-in way of protecting ourselves when we’re venturing into the unknown. Each of the Four F’s is a way of contracting. But when we surrender to fear and let it make our decisions, we give free rein to our repository of conditioned survival responses.

Commitment is very threatening to conditioned reality. A commitment says, “I’m going to try something brand new.” When you make such a statement, another survival voice inside may well say, “No, you’re not. You’re going to keep things just the same, because even though you’re not happy, at least you’re still here.” It’s hard to argue with this sort of logic, so we don’t recommend getting into an adverse relationship with your inner survivor.

Simply love it to death. Gently bring awareness to your sensations and thoughts. Be with your fear, the way you would sit next to a close friend on a porch swing. Embrace it, the same way you’d hold your frightened child. Think of someone you absolutely know you love, and give that same love to your fear. Your conditioned responses are concerned with your survival and have done a pretty good job so far. It’s just that now you’ve upped the ante. You’ve decided you’re no longer interested in mere survival. You want to experiment with total fulfillment. This is news your conditioned self greets with shock, derision, and spasms of incredulous fear. Its job is to keep you in the zone of the known. Your job is to thank it and honor it and love it but not be held back by it. Your home is now the zone of the unknown, the moment-by-moment invention of yourself as a completely fulfilled person.

FIVE

Moving Through Seven Waves of Intimacy, Navigating with Seven Soul-Choices

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation
.

—RAINER MARIA RILKE

A
s we walk the path of conscious relationship, the challenges we encounter sometimes seem overwhelming. Perhaps the most frequently asked question at our lectures is: “Should I leave the troubled relationship I’m in, or should I stay and continue to learn in spite of the pain?” We have great respect for this question because we’ve asked it ourselves many times. In our early days we often wondered if the learning was worth it. Wouldn’t it be easier to bail out and start afresh somewhere else?

As an answer to this question (and the other profound questions that emerge during the waves of relationship), we can offer
you are a number of moves to make when the waves get treacherous. We call these moves soul-choices. A soul-choice allows you to come back into harmony with the wave so you can consciously choose to ride it out, deal with it directly, and enjoy the expanded energy of the moment.

We have developed our own confidence in soul-choices the hard way. We’ve used each of them in our own relationship and in over twenty years of therapy sessions. Thus, each of them has been tested hundreds of times in the most rigorous of all proving grounds: the real world of close relationships.

A soul-choice can take the form of an attitude or a skill. We will spell out those we’ve found most useful later in this chapter.

The reason we need soul-choices—safe ways to reconnect with who we really are—is that the conscious heart of relationship develops in waves. Developing intimacy often feels like standing on the seashore, deciding whether to jump in the water, without knowing how cold the water is or where rocks or riptides might lurk.

SEVEN WAVES OF INTIMACY

We have identified seven waves of spiritual growth and awareness that occur as relationships deepen. These waves occur in couples of all religious backgrounds—or no religious background—and cut across racial and ethnic lines. They seem to be universal, whether or not we know about them.

We think of them as waves for several reasons. Like waves, they are predictable yet extremely variable. If you go to the ocean, you can count on waves being there, but you cannot count on how close together they’ll be, or how rough. You can also learn how to be with waves: You can learn to surf on them with the right equipment, or you can turn your back on them, hold your breath, and take what you get. This latter move does not affect the wave, but it
greatly affects your experience of it. We recommend that you try the surf option.

The First Wave
Awakening: Essence Is Revealed

The first wave begins in that magic moment when two people experience their initial moment of attraction. Sometimes this moment is charged with a galvanic snap of sexual attraction. Sometimes it begins with a mutual recognition on the mental, emotional, or spiritual level. However it occurs, the two people awaken to new possibilities in themselves and the other. They experience their own essences—who they really are—at a deeper level. They feel more real inside, and they open the field of all possibilities in the other person.

One couple, with a four-year relationship, gave us a magnificent example of the first wave, complete with a water image. She said, “I felt as if Niagara Falls were flowing in my veins right after I met him. The energy rush was so overwhelming, I began sweating and feeling like I wanted to cry. I felt like I was releasing what I called locks—those places in my body where I had been storing a lot of grief about past relationships that hadn’t worked out. Those locks let go and opened a floodgate of energy. Then I began thinking about his possibly being my life partner, and I felt very scared. Everything felt so incredibly right, though, so I knew I had to pursue the possibility no matter how scared I felt. Once I made this decision, everything became easy. Bill’s very essence is gentleness and flowing easiness, so the fear dissipated in very short order.”

From her partner’s viewpoint: “I remember the thrill of being met so completely. Sparks of energy flew between us, and I felt myself becoming what I called disassembled. As we embraced the first time, I found myself saying, ‘I don’t know who you are, but I love you,’ to which she replied, ‘I am your beloved.’ Those words penetrated to the core of my being, to that place where I longed for my true partner. I knew we had a spiritual connection, but I
didn’t have a clue as to whether we were compatible in the world. Over the course of the next week, we got to know each other, and it became evident that we were life partners. Everything said yes! and we followed it.”

We sent out a survey to thirty couples in long-term relationships who are committed to the path of the conscious heart. The following quotes come from their responses about recognizing essence in their partners.

I love her open heart, which is quick to embrace—her openness to everybody and everything. I found that I can express all dimensions of who I am, and that her love will expand to encompass all of these dimensions. Also, she was straightforward, not gamey, and gently undermined my neurotic tendencies. Another big draw is that we have a lot of fun together; we’re happy playmates.

The first time we made eye contact, the moment seemed endless. I experienced waves of fear, excitement, and an instantaneous body-felt “knowing” … a sense that this person was both familiar, magnetic, and oppositional. On the physical level I was drawn to his eyes, his smile, his physique … and somehow, all of that was less compelling than his quiet strength, his masculinity, his brilliance, his leadership, his compassion, his passion, his spirituality, sensuality, and sexuality.

The thing that seemed possible that had not seemed possible before I met my partner was to be loved in spite of my shortcomings. I feel consistently loved and supported in spite of my fears. I also feel safe in expressing my true feelings without fear of retribution. I feel consistently supported.

The thing in our relationship that brings me such joy is the experience of being truly seen, then having that which is
seen cherished and celebrated. This has changed my whole life.