The Conscious Heart (19 page)

In most relationships power is skewed toward one person or the other. The conscious heart of relationship comes to full flower only when there is absolute equality. There is no relationship—only entanglement—unless it is between complete equals. Many people try to impose equality from the outside, by establishing joint checking accounts, sharing housework, and performing other external tasks equally. These things can be important, but unless they come from an inner intention toward equality, they usually do not produce happiness.

Much energy in close relationships is squandered in power struggles. From early in our lives, many of us battle to dominate others or to avoid domination by them; as one of our clients put it, “I spent my childhood trying to avoid being controlled by my mother and father, and my adulthood trying to avoid being controlled by my wife.” Not until his thirties did he begin to see that this struggle over domination was not something he had chosen consciously. In childhood he found himself already engaged in the struggle, so that is the way he thought life was supposed to be. In fact, his parents were quite high on the control scale (they had him completely toilet trained by his first birthday), so getting married at all was actually a step in the right direction for him. When he and his wife were able to eliminate the control issues from their relationship, their happiness and productivity took a giant leap.

On the soul level balance comes from a genuine recognition
that there is only one reality in the universe and we are all part of it. Since we’re all made of this one reality, we are all, at the most fundamental level, completely equal with each other and with everything else in the universe. It does not matter what you call that one thing, as long as you realize that we are all expressions of it. This equality puts us in balance with all of creation: No expression of creation has any more value, or any less, than any other. We are all it, and it is us. When we know this deeply in our cells, we see everyone and everything differently. Knowing we are all one and the same resolves all metaphysical issues as well as all relationship problems.

Here’s why. Most relationship problems are rooted in a struggle for control: One person struggles to control the thoughts, feelings, or life-direction of another. Remember the couple who were growing in different areas: She wanted to go back to school, while he ruptured a disk to keep her from doing so? The disk-slipper was scared of the anticipated life-change and slipped the disk to control not only this fear but the behavior of the other person. His unconscious thought was: “If I can get her to continue in our old life-direction, my fear will go away.” Such attempts at control never work in the long run, but in the short run such maneuvers give us temporary relief from our pain.

Notice carefully where the fear comes from: It emerges because the person has stepped out of an equal relationship with the universe. It is based on the assumption that the other person has created our fear through his or her actions, and if they would change those actions, our fear would disappear. In other words, we see ourselves as the victim of their actions. We claim inequality and defend ourselves as if we are one-down to them.

When we’re scared, we project onto others that they are “the other”; in fact, we often treat fear itself as if it’s “the other.” We step out of our connection with the source of creation and pretend that other people are the source of our feelings. In that moment of pretended inequality, a host of miseries is born.

In close relationships the most common type of power imbalance
is thinking that we’re the victim of the other person. This way of thinking is a factor in nearly all relationship disputes. In fact, in our experience nearly all relationship problems involve a race to occupy the victim position. We dash for the victim position because of the seductive, addictive glee of casting the other person as the persecutor. It feels so good to feel so wronged. But if we took responsibility for our problems, if we let go of our claim on the victim position, what would we do with all our extra time? And where would all the country-western songs come from?

The soul-choice for balance gives power to your soul-commitment to full responsibility. Here are some powerful ideas that counteract the victim programming that most of us have soaked up in our lives.

• From the victim position, we wonder, “Is it safe in this relationship?” From the position of full responsibility, we know: “I am the source of safety in the world.”

• From the victim position, we look to others to confirm our lovability. From full responsibility, we know that if we fail to experience beauty and love around us, it is because we’re not loving ourselves. The responsible person knows: “As I grow in love toward myself, I automatically attract more love to me.”

• From the victim position, we wait for an invitation to tell the truth. The responsible person knows: “It is my responsibility to initiate speaking the truth.”

• From the victim position, we expect others to read our minds. When we shift into equality, we know: “It is my responsibility to know what I want and to ask for it clearly.”

• The victim hopes to get what’s missing from others. The responsible person knows: “What I judge in others reflects what I have not embraced in myself.”

• The victim expends a great deal of effort trying to get others to change. The responsible person knows: “The
experience I’m having is the one I’m supposed to be having, given my attitudes and programming. My job is to learn from this experience.”

• The victim complains; he or she is always being “done to.” The fully responsible person knows that: “If I am complaining about other people or the world, it is a sign that I am not embracing my full creativity. My job is to claim ownership of my full potential and express it in the world.”

These attitudes are all ways of claiming full responsibility for ourselves and the direction of our lives. They are part of the soul-choice of balance, because only on the level field of full responsibility can people meet as equals. Anything less than 100 percent responsibility results in a power struggle.

The Fourth and Fifth Soul-Choices
Wonder and Play

You might be surprised to see “wonder and play” listed as attitudes or skills essential to the conscious heart. But they are essentials of the path, present in all the people we know who are truly successful in their relationship.

Wonder and play can be lifesavers on the path, especially in the third wave of primal drama and in the fourth-wave cultivation of essence. Thinking you already know the way things are is often the problem; wonder—being genuinely, playfully curious about them—is the solution. Many times you will be stuck, and you and a panel of your closest friends are absolutely sure you know why: It’s your partner’s fault. Wonder will get you out of this.

People in troubled relationships essentially point their finger at their partner and say “Ha!” as in “Gotcha!”, gloating in the glee of self-righteous victimhood.

But let’s point the finger back at ourselves, albeit with a loving
spirit of curiosity and wonder: “Hmm, I wonder how I am creating this situation?” you might ask. When you do this move in the spirit of wonder, miracles can occur. Wondering takes us out of the state of consciousness in which problems occur and puts us in the state where they can be resolved.

Play is another essential part of the conscious heart. Deep learnings do not have to be done with a heavy heart. Play uncovers essence. Anything you can’t or won’t play with imprisons you in a programmed version of yourself and bars you from essence. If you’re imprisoned in an attitude or judgment, you can’t play. Anything that is NOT FUNNY deepens the gulf between breath and essence. Around our house we have probably solved more of our problems by turning on music and dancing than through talking. In fact, getting stuck talking is a cue for us to do something playful rather than grind away at something that isn’t working. By the time we come back from a bike ride or skipping stones down at the pond, we are often in a different state of consciousness and can solve the problem much more quickly.

If you are grounded in wonder and play, rather than in routine, then you can flow with change easily. It may be more familiar to seek safety in projections and routine, but these soul-choices breathe safety into the deepest experiences. They are buoys in the waves of change. When I discover, when you discover, it’s a brand-new connection in the universe, no matter how many thousands of people have walked into the same river.

In therapy we have found that wonder and play are very powerful healers. One couple transformed their relationship before our eyes with a moment of play. The partners were extreme opposites in personality: He was a happy-go-lucky chap whose passions were bicycling, Rollerblading, going to hockey games, wearing wild ties, and late nights watching Jay Leno. She was a sober soul who wore thick glasses, sensible dresses, and a pinched mouth. When they came in, they had not slept together in several months. Each spent much of their first session trying to get us to agree that the other was wrong.

When we could get a word in edgewise, we pointed out something they had never considered: Partners often mate with an opposite to balance themselves out. A serious person will often mate with the class clown to learn a key life-lesson: Lighten up. The class clown will choose the sober partner to gain focus and groundedness. We asked these two: “What if your selection of each other was not some colossal mistake but a magnificently tailored learning opportunity?” They were stunned to momentary stillness, which in our opinion was a great improvement over where they had been a few minutes before.

They asked, “You mean we could be learning from each other’s gifts, rather than criticizing them all the time?” “Yes,” we said, “that’s exactly it.” So great was their state of wonder at this new notion that their eyes actually rolled back in their heads. We suggested that they try it on the spot. We asked our light-hearted fellow, “What would demonstrate to you that she was lightening up a little?” “Telling a joke she found funny,” he said. To her, we asked, “What would indicate to you that he was taking life a little more seriously?” Her answer: “Having an uninterrupted, thirty-minute conversation about the pros and cons of having a baby,” she replied.

It took work, but we finally got them to do both things. After considerable resistance she told a truly awful joke about the love life of Bill Clinton. Then we umpired a discussion of the baby question. By the end of the session, they both had visibly melted. She had lost her stiff disapproval, and he had chucked his tendency to use humor as a defense. Both felt that a miracle had happened, but we congratulated them on engineering their own miracle. What brought them back together was their willingness to use the power of wonder and play to heal blame and criticism. They had put into practice the master commitment—to learn from every interaction—with stunning results.

Some couples can keep discovering new qualities and stories about their partners, even after many years or decades. For others, sadly, the constriction of predictability descends quickly. The eyes
of wonder allow you to see new facets of even the most familiar face. Each day, each interaction, each choice to see things as they are, to develop attention without an agenda, peels away the layers of familiarity. If you know that this moment is unique, that your partner is always changing, you’re more likely to really notice the particular shade of violet in her eyelids this morning. Re-creation blooms in the hothouse of wonder.

When we look at childhood pictures, we notice a great deal of wonder on those young faces, but it is missing in those same faces in high school yearbooks. What happens? Where do the wonder and sense of play go? The answer is that it disappears under masks that help us get recognition and that protect us from pain and loss. In the same family one person becomes Class Clown, another becomes Sullen Delinquent, and yet another Mom’s Helper. Even useful, positive masks become a layer that we have to shed in order to embrace our own essence.

Wonder and play are intrinsically enjoyable states of consciousness, and at the same time they are problem-solvers of the highest order.

The Sixth Soul-Choice
Gratitude