Staying Awake through the Highs and the Lows
The highest purpose of intimacy is to call forth the beloved’s soul.
—MARIANNE WILLIAMSON1
The term conscious partnering is bandied about a good deal in couple self-help books, teleseminars, and workshop descriptions, yet we were unable to find a good definition of what it means. Conscious partnering as contrasted with what? Normal partnering? Unconscious partnering? To put “consciousness” into context, only a fraction of your brain is dedicated to conscious thought. In a typical waking moment, in fact, the parts of your brain involved with conscious thought process about forty nerve impulses per second while the brain areas involved with activity outside your consciousness process forty million nerve impulses per second.2 However complicated your life may seem, it would be even worse if you were consciously tracking each instruction your brain generates.
This suggests, with no insult intended, that “unconscious partnering” plays a much larger role in your relationship with your beloved than conscious partnering. Fortunately, much of this works to your advantage. You may have, for instance, eventually learned to automatically leave the TV clicker in the agreed-upon spot. Your subconscious mind is a storehouse of the lessons life has taught you as well as your natural abilities and intuitive wisdom. Along with countless automated actions as mundane as putting on your shoes, your subconscious mind holds innumerable instructions for more complex actions and has access to transcendent sources of inspiration for solving the bewildering problems life presents and for pursuing your most creative aspirations. While your subconscious mind is an enormous source of sound guidance that is available 24/7, it also stores past hurts, self-limiting beliefs, unresolved conflicts, and dysfunctional behavioral strategies. So it doesn’t always work to your advantage. Because a large percentage of our cognitive activity is controlled by outmoded genetic or acquired programs downloaded into the subconscious mind, explains Bruce Lipton, we are compelled, despite our most sincere conscious intentions and desires, “to lunge for the Krispy Kreme donuts in the refrigerator or fall for the biggest jerk at the party—again.”3
In this chapter, we will explore the nature of conscious partnering and describe seven qualities of consciousness that you can cultivate, using energy techniques, to make your journey together a richer one. We will also identify outmoded biological programming and habitual patterns that undermine conscious partnering as well as happiness and suggest ways of overcoming them.
In trying to make the concept of conscious partnering more concrete, we could think of no better way than to interview a couple who illustrate its principles in their living experience. We asked ourselves, of all the couples we know, who do we think really “walk their talk” in terms of what they strive for in a relationship? A couple came immediately to mind. Both are noted musicians. We sent an e-mail asking if we could interview them for our book on love. They were actually leaving the next day for a recording in New York City where the husband, Paul Horn, was going to accompany his old buddy Tony Bennett, who was performing with Lady Gaga! It promised to be an interesting mix. We got to conduct and record our interview with them over Skype just before that trip.
Paul is a jazz hall of fame flautist who, in addition to Tony Bennett and now Lady Gaga, has played with Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, and Paul McCartney, among many other world-class musicians. He was first known to us through his haunting meditative solo flute recordings, done inside the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid, and other sacred sites beginning in the 1960s. Donna first met Paul in 1963 during the successful healing of a grieving, dying killer whale while Paul played to it. Paul is married to Ann Mortifee, a dear friend to both of us since we met her in 1990. Ann is a singer, composer, and playwright. During the first Earth Day festivities in Vancouver, in 1970, she sang her songs to eighty thousand people. David and Ann have worked together. Their first project was an album for people facing death, Serenade at the Doorway, which is still used by many hospices throughout the world. Ann closed the 1994 Commonwealth Games with “Healing Journey” from that album, heard by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Ann and Paul first met when Ann had written a musical score for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in 1971 and Paul was one of the musicians, but they did not become a couple until after they had raised their own families. We asked, “We know that you, like us, have very different temperaments—how do you make that work?” With her wonderful dramatic flair, Ann described an image she once saw in a temple in India:
In the middle of the temple, there stood a sculpture of Shiva [one of the major Hindu deities] and dancing around him were statues of the sixty-four dakinis [forms] of Shakti [the goddess of female creative energy]. On one of the statues she has blood dripping from her mouth. She holds a sword in one hand and the head of Shiva in the other. In another, she’s a beautiful Madonna. In another, she’s the sexy lady. And Shiva, in the middle, remains always the same. It’s like he’s saying: “Whoa, look at her go!” And I remember thinking, “If I am ever with a man who can let me be all the selves that I am, that would be marvelous!” And Paul lets me! He doesn’t hold me to some expectation. Perhaps I have come to a brink where I physiologically need a good cry or I will explode. I burst into tears, weep deeply, and he is right there saying, “Let it go, let it go!” Maybe at some point he’ll say, “I love you,” or “I’m here,” but it doesn’t wrangle him in the slightest. He doesn’t worry about me. He is simply there. [Paul interrupts, “I might say, ‘What a woman! There she goes! Hold on! Let me get my camera.’” We all laugh. Ann continues:] We both simply recognize that one of my dakinis has just gone by! And so I feel a tremendous permission to be as extreme as I am. Being loved like we love each other has changed my physiology. Something has relaxed in me so that now I almost never go to those extreme emotional places anymore. I have become more balanced than I ever thought would be possible for me. The little voice in me that always believed someone was judging me, which they usually were, is completely gone with Paul. So whatever I go through passes very quickly and a new pathway is being created from my subconscious mind and into my consciousness. Old patterns simply fall away.
PAUL: “Both people have to do their own work, walk their own path. The path is about the big questions. ‘What am I here for?’ ‘What’s important?’ Of course common interests are also necessary, but when people have done their own work on these big questions, or at least have made a good start on them, then the relationship is going to be based on their deeper journeys, not on externals.”
ANN: “Both of us have done an immense amount of work. I was not looking for someone to complete me. I wasn’t hungry for someone to give me something that would make me feel good or fill a void. I was content to live alone for the rest of my life if that was what was meant to be. So was Paul. But I was open for a true partner to continue evolving with me. I already came with a basketful of my own Self, as did Paul. Both of us have gone through the joys and agonies of love with other people, and we’ve both come to a place of having made a clear decision to either live alone or to create something truly splendid.”
PAUL: “Having had other relationships in our lives, we would often say, half kidding, ‘If it’s going to be fun and rich, I’m in. Otherwise, I’m not interested.’”
Paul spent time in India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the Maharishi’s ashram in 1967 and then again in 1968, the year of the Beatles’ famed stay. He returned as one of the first teachers of Transcendental Meditation. The Maharishi had said something to Paul that has become a cornerstone of Paul and Ann’s relationship: “The purpose of marriage is to help each other grow to cosmic consciousness as quickly as possible.” They took that on as their motto—that their real purpose together is to help one another evolve to their fullest potentials.
ANN: “That’s been right at the center of our relationship from the beginning. When we are at the edge of old patterns, of misunderstandings, we pull out. We say, ‘This does not serve us. We are allies. I am never going to look at you as my enemy. You are my ally.’ Anytime that an argument comes up, we immediately stop and say, ‘Okay, I need to learn something here.’ We don’t point fingers at one another. We’re very disciplined in that. Paul never calls me on things in a negative way. He sees when I’m overwhelmed, and he’s very tender with me, very sweet with me, and it dissipates like that [snaps fingers]. Sometimes, when you’ve got so much to do, it’s easy to forget that there are things that are more important than changing the hydrofilter [laughter]. It’s very sweet to be so kind to each other. Speaking the truth with kindness brings out the best.”
PAUL: “Or as Maharishi used to say, ‘Speak the sweet truth.’”
ANN: “We have opposite difficulties and learning edges. Usually for me it’s got to do with discernment. Not being clear enough, not being focused, not using my best judgment. And for Paul, it’s usually about not being as accepting or compassionate as he could be with others. So we know this about each other. I know the little quirks that Paul has. He knows mine. When something comes up that causes me to react in a negative way, I always ask myself: ‘What is it in me that triggers this reaction? Why do I lose my equilibrium when this comes up?’ If you have a higher purpose, it’s not about the other person anymore. It’s about your own evolution.”
PAUL: “Yes, another damned opportunity to evolve!”
ANN: “And your partner usually can see something in you that you cannot. This is a great gift not to be squandered. This is the relationship that can make all the difference in your journey toward self-realization, the most important journey of all. I’ve often thought: If you can stay conscious in a love relationship, you can stay conscious anywhere!”
ANN: “Regarding my challenge with discernment, oh my God, this is the most difficult learning for me. I meet someone who is hurting or in need. I know I shouldn’t get involved. I warn myself not to get involved. But they share their sorrow with me and, suddenly, I am involved. I lose all perspective. My heart goes out to them and I’m off to the races. It’s been tough to learn boundaries and edges. It’s been tough on both of us. But the fact that Paul understands how difficult this is for me, and doesn’t judge me for it, is helping me to move through it and evolve. And I do want to evolve. I want to leave this planet very awake, and that’s what we bring each other. Paul has been my teacher, my mentor, my guru in discernment. He understands my challenges with it. When I’m not being discerning, I can feel that old feeling, the impulse to jump into an unwise decision, but I can’t hide anymore. I can’t get any mileage out of the old excuses.”
PAUL: “And Ann has been my teacher in love and forgiveness. I lived alone for many years and got into the habit of ruminating about what or who might be bothering me at the time. Ann has helped me to see that these conversations with myself were not serving me or anyone else. As Ann said, ‘You can’t hide anymore.’ It’s not always easy living with your guru.”
PAUL: “It’s your partner who can help you the most in growing and knowing about yourself. Rather than being annoyed or defensive when something comes up, we discover together how to use the situation as an opportunity to evolve.”
ANN: “I take a hundred percent responsibility for how we’re doing. Not fifty percent. If we’re not doing well, then I am one hundred percent personally responsible for it, instead of the unproductive need to deflect the blame from myself onto him, that tit-for-tat thing that couples do.”
PAUL [PLAYFULLY]: “It’s an opportunity to grow twenty-four hours a day!”
ANN: “It’s not about him ‘learning’ from me. If there is something for him to learn, that’s his department. If he doesn’t see something I offer as being useful, I have to accept that. Consequently, because I’m always working with myself, if I feel agitated and annoyed, it’s got nothing to do with him. I’m agitated. I’m annoyed. It’s my nervous system going haywire. How do I work with that? Sometimes I might say, ‘I’m losing it here. I’m having an irritation that is really getting to me. I need time to work this out.’ Or I might say, ‘Would you scratch my back?’ And he’s just right there, willing to help.”
PAUL: “We have a basic respect for one another’s intelligence and for what each of us has learned throughout our lives. Because there’s no judgment in the field, we simply work together to help each other. We are not in competition with each other. I can look at Ann as my teacher, which she is in so many ways, and it doesn’t diminish my sense of self at all.”
ANN: “We have an overlaying awareness that through our relationship we are cultivating the Great Virtues. This aspiration helps you to understand why the Great Virtues always take so long to cultivate and bring to flower. Patience is very difficult. It takes a lot of patience to cultivate patience! It’s not easy to allow yourself, or the other person, to grow at the rate you or they need to grow. Acceptance is another great virtue. To accept your partner’s little flaws and the things they wrestle with. To not expect them to do things the way you would like them to be done. Surrender is another. To surrender to whom the person really is. To not be wishing they were a little bit more like this or more like that, but to truly surrender to the person your partner actually is. To love and appreciate them as they are, not as you wish them to be. Forgiveness is another great virtue. Just forgive. Forgive everything. Get to a state where you don’t even need to forgive anything because there was no judgment there in the first place. This is sometimes called ‘witness consciousness.’ Cultivating these Great Virtues is a central motivation for us in our relationship.”
ANN: “I have a lot going on, and I sometimes become overwhelmed. What’s made a difference is Paul’s steadiness. He doesn’t get taken down by my overwhelm. In fact, what I’ve been discovering in our time together, and really, I’ve been stunned by it, is that I don’t lose my temper anymore. At all. Do I? [asking Paul, who confirms, “No.”] No. I didn’t think so. I still get antsy. I get overwhelmed. But I never take it out on Paul. Never, never, never. Every time I feel an emotional upset, I immediately become alert. I know my body is communicating to me that my energetic field has become disturbed, and I look for the truth I’m not getting. Where am I in denial? I just dive into it because there is something I need to understand. This helps me to accept life as it is. To be equanimous no matter what is going on. To be in the moment rather than in the past or the future. What helps us is that we are also mirrors to one another. When we look at each other, what is shining back at us is a full acceptance and love and awareness. We are being seen in our highest while at the same time we are being witnessed in our weakness. This is very liberating. Thank God I have a partner who wants me to succeed, who wants me to evolve, and who helps me.”
ANN: “I have given Paul the power to console me. I welcome his help because we are very mindful of each other. If there is a disturbance in the field, we acknowledge it right away, but we are very considerate in how we do that. We don’t have harsh words with one another. I truly say this with great surprise knowing how I’ve been in other circumstances [laughing].”
PAUL: “Me too.”
ANN: “One of us might get irritable, the other just notices it and says, ‘How about a cup of tea.’ Or ‘Why don’t we sit down for five minutes and meditate.’ If it’s Paul saying that to me, I will probably say, ‘MEDITATE!?!?! At this moment! You gotta be kidding!’ And he’ll say, ‘Come on, I know you’ll feel a lot better.’ And I go . . . [makes protesting sounds]. Then I say, ‘Okay.’ Then I finally sit down, and sure enough, ‘Ahhhhh.’ The anxious, trying-to-get-everything-done fades away.”
PAUL: “We have a lot of respect for one another.”
ANN: “But respect can be tricky. With people out in the world, it’s easy to be respectful, usually. But with a partner, the dark side can come up so quickly. That’s fine, that’s what partners do for each other. This lets you have a good look at what is sometimes invisibly under the surface, running the show. But to respect it! To accept it! To welcome it! That’s not so easy. But you can do it. If you remind yourself, ‘This is an opportunity to see into the darkness, and I have a witness who loves me, who is with me, who is my ally,’ everything shifts.”
PAUL: “Getting older helps. People fear getting older, but you have to see the value in every stage of your life. There are great benefits to getting older. You have more wisdom. You’re not so driven by hormones.”
ANN: “Paul is eighty-three. Our time together now is very limited, and we know that. There is a real blessing in limitation because we don’t take our time together for granted. We realize it is going to be over so soon. It’s made me very cognizant of the preciousness of time and how fleeting it is. I ask myself every day if I am loving Paul to the extent I would if I knew this was our last day on earth together. Am I really here, really present, really taking advantage of this relationship while I have it, of this lifetime while I have it? Everything is finite in this realm, and I’m learning the gift of limitation. We are building the eternal aspects of our relationship. It’s not focused so much on the day-to-day external world but on building a powerful inner spiritual foundation between us as we live moment by moment on this amazing planet.”
PAUL: “It’s important to have a quiet time of day where you are quiet and share appreciation for the gift of life. It’s as simple as that. And your appreciation gets extended to your partner: ‘I’ve found someone I really love who is my best friend and I get to hang out with my best friend every day.’ So we do that. We start the day with focused time with one another. We might read together. We talk together. We meditate together. Meditation is our practice. Meditation soothes the nervous system tremendously. It stills and connects us to a realm of Silence, which is the source of creative potential. Maharishi didn’t give me an answer. He gave me a technique by which I could get answers for myself.”
Conscious Partnership in Action
When a couple is bonded and conscious about the ways they maintain their bond, the energies between them appear solid and highly organized. They look buoyant, healthy, alive, and in a soft, easy flow, with lots of figure-eight patterns connecting the two of them. The energy seems purposeful, grounded, very attuned to the present moment, rather than being caught in the past or oriented toward the future. There are no abrupt stops and starts. You don’t see the tentativeness that is there when judgment is in the field. The energy from each partner radiates out not only to the other, but as if embracing all of life.
Numbed Partnership in Action
People who cannot “see” energy can still register the energy field when a relationship is stagnant, perfunctory, numbed—no longer growing together, no longer staying conscious about one another’s needs or inner experiences. People interacting with the couple often feel vaguely uncomfortable, as if the energy in the room is taking them down. An aura may still surround the couple, but it has often grown gray and become more like a trap than a nurturing environment. In fact, the energies feel trapped, slow and murky in their movement, and with few crossover patterns. When the couple isn’t growing, there is a force that inhibits both partners from being free and vibrant. I (Donna) have often, however, seen how when one partner breaks out of this energy, the whole relationship changes—often for the better if the other partner is able to adapt to the change. If not, the partner who broke free is often faced with some difficult choices.
ANN: “We also every so often will take an evening, dress in our best, light all the candles, and sit together and tell each other in so many ways how much we love and appreciate each other. We give thanks for one another. It’s like a prayer of gratitude. Things like that keep love alive and pure and real. Lord knows, that’s the space I want to be in during our last moments together. So we tell each other we love each other fifty times a day.”
PAUL [LAUGHING]: “Maybe sixty. We were reflecting on that the other day, how many times we just spontaneously say ‘I love you.’ It keeps us connected. We have lived together, under the same roof—morning, noon, and night—for many years now. It could be easy to take one another for granted. We simply don’t.”
Every couple must find their own ways of supporting one another’s evolution, turning their differences into strengths, and keeping their relationship fresh and vital. Still, Paul and Ann’s reflection on their own development as a couple is worth reviewing from time to time. It contains inspiration and wise instruction about the day-to-day interactions that build intimacy and more conscious ways of relating.
Just as Paul’s and Ann’s open sharing invites you to reflect on the possibilities of conscious partnership, we have done our own reflection—both as a couple and as professionals who work with couples. We have identified seven qualities that characterize our own relationship when we are at our conscious best. In articulating them, we have also reaffirmed our intention to further cultivate these qualities. Energy follows intention. These seven intentions are stated here in a manner that allows you to consider them for your relationship as well. Qualities of consciousness that support a richer relationship can be cultivated through:
. . . an intention to bring the vast resources of our subconscious minds into our relationship. Even in our darkest times, if we have stayed open to the possibility that a new and deeper understanding is going to emerge—rather than becoming locked in stagnation or hopelessness—something fresh and sustaining usually takes bloom. Rather than a mental state you have to work hard to attain, this gradual opening to ever-deeper parts of your being is a natural, though uneven part of personal evolution. Expect it; welcome it; cultivate it; relax into it.
. . . an intention to bring into consciousness unacknowledged impulses, motivations, and beliefs. When we find ourselves caught in self-defeating patterns, our commitment is to look deeper and courageously stare them down at their source. Beneath your personality and defenses dwells a universe of unnamed forces and vulnerabilities that are revealed in your unconscious proclivities and automatic behaviors. Creating with your partner a context where it is safe to share your deeper workings brings them into your awareness. Recognizing and accepting them may sometimes seem overwhelming, but it ultimately makes you and your relationship stronger, not weaker.
. . . an intention to address these internal conflicts and outdated learnings that had been operating beneath our consciousness. Not only are we committed to recognize deep sources of conflict or dysfunction tracing to our personal histories or simply our lack of wisdom, we are determined to utilize that information for our evolution. When internal conflicts and outdated learnings are brought into the light, they become less onerous and can be creatively and actively resolved or transformed. Energy medicine and energy psychology give you particularly powerful tools. Accepting and working with your foibles also builds trust and intimacy with your partner.
. . . an intention to keep focusing on what is beneficial and empowering. We are committed to recognizing the strengths within us and the resources around us even when feeling lost, judgmental, or uncertain. You and your relationship flourish when your personal strengths and the strengths of your partnership are registered and acknowledged—far more than when your shortcomings get the focus. A tendency to scan for what is right rather than what is wrong can, as is discussed later in this chapter, be cultivated.
. . . an intention to process the past and envision the future in ways that bring out the best in each of us and in our relationship. We are committed to viewing our own and our partner’s needs for change and growth as opportunities rather than liabilities. Relationship is a challenge to completely accept and appreciate what is. Relationship is also a challenge to actively transform what is into what can be. The visions you hold about what is possible and desirable become the maps that will lead you into your future.
. . . an intention to bring up tough topics in a loving and constructive way. We are committed to processing our own negative feelings in a manner that allows us to treat one another with kindness. Studies on the characteristics of marital success have shown again and again that it is not the amount of conflict couples have between them—all couples have areas of friction—but rather the way they resolve their differences. Specifically, the quality of the partners’ emotional responsiveness to one another predicts longevity in a marriage. Register the way your actions impact your partner’s feelings and use that understanding to treat your partner like a king or a queen.
. . . an intention to stay receptive to one another’s evolving beauty. We are committed to using the power of our minds and imaginations to see one another anew and with profound appreciation and respect for the other’s journey and challenges. When you deeply witness another’s struggles and the person’s striving to bring forth into the world that which is beautiful and worthy within them, love is ever renewed.
While good intentions have gotten a bad rap—you know which road is paved with them—you can use your understanding of the body’s energies to make these seven affirmations more than just platitudes. Doing a round of energy psychology tapping (chapter 6) while mindfully stating one of the intentions as you tap on each point embeds the words and their meaning into your energy system. An even simpler way for incorporating the meaning of a statement into your nervous system is to say the words out loud, as an affirmation, while you slowly and consciously do a Zip-Up (here). Choose a quality from the above list that you would particularly like to develop, adapt the first or second sentence in the description to your liking, and “tap it in” or “zip it in” every day for a week. You will notice its expanding role in your mental outlook. If an internal objection to incorporating the quality arises (e.g., “I am too angry to want to bring up these tough issues in a loving way”), give the intensity of the internal objection a zero to ten rating and use the energy psychology protocol to bring that intensity down to zero. This may not fully resolve your anger or other emotion, but it will allow the affirmation to begin to take hold. Conscious partnering is within your grasp.
Conscious partnering is not a product but rather a day-to-day process. It requires a willingness to set aside adolescent images of love as a magic elixir and to embrace a much more complex, challenging, and ultimately fulfilling vision. In a wonderful book, Undefended Love, Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons describe a familiar dilemma: “Many people have absorbed something of the cultural belief that if we find the right partner and love each other enough, the outcome will be the passionate yet secure relationship we have always hoped for. When we don’t achieve this, as is so often the case, we believe something is wrong with the relationship, with us, or with our partner.”4
Psaris and Lyons develop a powerful concept: Our yearning for deep love and our yearning to express the most profound and untamed aspects of ourselves are often at odds. The ways you and your partner successfully adjust to the demands of a relationship can, paradoxically, keep you from deeply knowing one another and supporting the raw beauty that lies within each of you. In conscious partnership, on the other hand, the form and rules are never orderly and are forever changing.
This is necessitated by one of nature’s more irritating interpersonal paradoxes: The adjustments and agreements we make so our relationship will run more smoothly often require that we suppress our deeper, wild nature. How do you resolve the tension between the requirements of your relationship and the elemental core of your being? This lifelong project involves building a partnership in which your messy, juicy, deepest self is continually informing the relationship. The solutions we come to in order to keep our relationships peaceful and tidy prevent the deep encounters with one another that keep relationships fresh and vital, so “instead of helping us find ways to dismantle the walls between us, making agreements leaves them unchallenged and intact.”5
Compromises and agreements are, of course, necessary for a relationship to operate. They build a context of safety and support within which the relationship can flourish. The challenge is to not hold on too tightly to these arrangements so the journey of the self is not shut down by the practicalities of the relationship. In the process, each is enhanced. One way of supporting both your partnership and the most authentic parts of each of you is to be alert for when an agreement breaks down. Use that as an opportunity to further your personal evolution and take the relationship to a deeper level of engagement. Rather than rush to plug the hole in the relationship with new promises or a revised agreement, or to compulsively try to meet each other’s every emotional need, take the time to discover and honor the impulses in each of you that have led to the breakdown of the existing agreement. Digging below the surface in this way may cause some short-term discomfort and may even temporarily bring you onto shaky ground with one another, but it is a route to more profound engagement that opens you to the vast resources within each of you.
Habits of thought that keep our attention running along fixed pathways even if they limit or harm us are the antithesis of conscious partnering. Ron Siegel, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, describes five “neurobiological mechanisms that make us miserable.”6 These trace to the harsh lives our ancestors survived millions of years ago. Simply becoming aware of evolutionary tendencies that have become self-defeating is a step toward freeing yourself from their grip, so we list them here.
Our ancestors were attuned to danger. Anticipating what could go wrong was an effective survival strategy. Being alert for whether a hungry lion was in the vicinity had more survival value than finding the tastiest berries. We, as the distant offspring of the survivors, are still wired to give more weight and attention to problems than to pleasures. As Siegel quips, “We evolved minds that are like Velcro for bad thoughts and Teflon for good ones.”7 In short, we are programmed to obsessively and painfully focus on what is wrong.
To compound the tendency to focus on what is wrong, our highly developed cerebral cortex makes the fight/flight/freeze response to threat—which is so remarkably effective in the wild for mammals with less complex lives and brains than ours—problematic for us. Other creatures get past the danger when the danger has passed, but we get caught up thinking about it. Our arousal systems get stuck in the “on” position as we obsess about “what went wrong in the past and what might go wrong in the future, experiencing painful emotions each time.”8 We transform even problems we have handled effectively into worry about what will go wrong next.
When a Person Is in a State of Worry
The energy is highly internalized, cut off. There is no positive connection to anything. You might think the energy would go out to the object of the worry, but instead it spirals inward, as if drawn into a black hole in the aura. This blocks intuition and creative solutions.
When a Person Is in a State of Appreciation
The energy becomes buoyant, as if making a strong connection to life. It is the opposite of worry. In fact, and this is hard to explain, the energy looks like it is connected to and in rhythm with the earth and everything natural—the trees and flowers and soil and clouds. This energy also lifts the vibration of whoever is nearby.
Another vestige of our evolution that makes the psychological equipment we have inherited challenging is our predisposition to compare ourselves with others. Higher-ranking ancestors got to mate with healthier partners with better genes, and this history fuels our compulsion to “constantly fill our minds with comparisons to others.”9 We can always find someone to whom we can compare ourselves negatively and are compelled to do so, though it undermines our personal sense of well-being.
Much of our psychological suffering, according to some mental health experts, paradoxically involves our efforts to avoid unpleasant experiences at the expense of taking needed actions. From not confronting difficult tasks or relationship problems to the abuse of drugs and mind-numbing media, the problem, Siegel observes, “is that many things that make us feel better in the short run make us feel much worse in the long run.”10 One of our most instinctive strategies for avoiding suffering tends to backfire. Even physical pain, when met with mindful awareness and acceptance, changes in texture and becomes easier to bear.
We are wired to anticipate famines, wars, and other threats to our well-being and very existence. Making our propensity for worry and self-generated misery even worse, we, unlike other creatures, know we are going to die. We know that no matter how well we live we are headed toward either sickness and decline or a gruesome premature ending.
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These psychological predispositions, whose roots often trace more to the twists and turns of our jagged evolutionary heritage than to our upbringing, not only undermine our capacities for joy and fulfillment, they sabotage our ability to form secure, healthy relationships. An effective approach to interpersonal bliss does not include (1) emphasizing what is wrong rather than what is right about your partner and your relationship, (2) maintaining perceptions and expectations about your partner or your relationship that keep you in a threat alert mode, (3) comparing your partner or your relationship negatively with others, (4) not dealing with difficult issues within your relationship, and (5) expending your energies and good spirit worrying about that which neither of you can control.
The reason for the above cheery discussion about our inborn tendencies for making ourselves and our relationships miserable is that recognizing a predicament is the first step in finding ways to move beyond it, and we can also suggest steps beyond mere recognition. Recall from our discussion in the previous chapter about whether we are destined to act out the sexual proclivities of our ancestors. The answer was, “No, we are not.” And so it is for each of these inborn habits of thought. The keys to our success as a species are our flexibility and ability to learn—based on our logic, memory, and enormous neural network—rather than rigid biological programs that are hardwired into our brains. Brain researchers use the term “self-directed neuroplasticity” to describe your brain’s built-in ability to change itself based on what you do with your mind.11 It is an empowering concept. Even as the parts of our brain that cause us to act like reptiles battle it out with the parts that are “in apprehension how like a god” (Hamlet), evolution gave us the capacity to enter the fray and counteract dysfunctional remnants of our prehistoric past.
Siegel advocates mindfulness as a way of overcoming self-defeating psychological predispositions, and we will add an energy psychology approach as an additional way of replacing self-defeating habits with more adaptive patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. Research has demonstrated that mindfulness influences gene expression, providing direct health benefits as specific as the reduction of activity in pro-inflammatory genes.12 Psychologically, it brings about beneficial neurological changes leading to improved regulation of emotions, enhanced perspective, better memory, greater well-being, and a more fluid sense of self.13
While mindfulness is many things, it is also an energy technique, a highly sophisticated approach that establishes new energetic habits in the brain. Focusing your attention leads to shifts in your energies that lead to changes in your neurochemistry. The patterns by which your energies flow are the first process influenced by mindfulness. The practice aligns your energies in ways that correspond with the experience of inner peace, and it establishes energy habits that will be beneficial to you as well as to your relationship. From that energetic shift, stress is less likely to trigger a threat response, your partner’s behaviors are less likely to send you into fight/flight/freeze mode, and the rational part of your brain will have greater influence over your primitive brain centers.
At the core of mindfulness is awareness and acceptance of your inner experiences, moment by moment. Mindfulness is the art of recognizing and accepting what is. With this awareness, our responses to what life presents soften, naturally and organically. By noticing your thoughts and emotions with curiosity and acceptance, rather than clinging to or acting on them, you come to understand how they regularly appear and then fade. In mindfulness practice, Siegel explains, “we begin to see our thoughts as secretions of the mind, arising and passing like clouds moving across a vast sky. We stop believing in them as we once did. That, in turn, lessens their grip and reduces our emotional reactivity to them.”14 The T-shirt slogan “Don’t believe everything you think” nails it. Siegel discusses how mindfulness counters the self-defeating habits of thought that trace back to our ancestors by helping us “see more clearly the habits of our minds that create unnecessary suffering—and offers a way to change them.”15 An introduction to mindfulness, along with free audio instructions for several practices, is generously provided on Siegel’s website, http://www.mindfulness-solution.com.16
Energy psychology also begins by recognizing what is (the SUD rating, here) and accepting it (the Acceptance Statement, here), but then goes on to use acupoint tapping to send signals to the brain that rapidly change our emotional response to difficult thoughts and memories. While changing your consciousness shifts your energies, shifting your energies changes your consciousness. Each of the five self-defeating psychological dispositions discussed above is stated next in terms relevant to both the individual and the relationship. Each is then followed by (1) a sentence summarizing the way that mindfulness might shift the pattern and (2) an energy psychology Acceptance Statement and Reminder Phrase that can be used, along with acupoint stimulation, for shifting deep habits of thought and emotion.
Mindfulness: Deeply recognizing how your psyche automatically produces thoughts that focus on what is wrong powerfully challenges the authority of those thoughts.
Acupoint Stimulation: Massage the points on the Central Meridian (here) while stating, “Even though I keep focusing on [name the thought] . . .” Then place your hands over your Heart Chakra as you say, “I deeply love and accept myself.” Then do a round of tapping (see Figure 6-3), stating the thought as you come to each acupoint. [For this and the four subsequent acupoint stimulation instructions, you can simply do them as written or, to address the issues involved more deeply, do them within the complete energy psychology protocol presented in Chapter 6, starting with a zero-to-ten SUD rating about the distress you feel when you bring the self-defeating thought or habit to mind.]
Mindfulness: Accepting whatever thoughts or emotions your psyche produces without clinging to them defuses their power to endlessly evoke the stress response.
Acupoint Stimulation: Use the physical procedures described in #1 while stating, “Even though I become anxious when I think of [describe the situation], I deeply love and accept myself.” Then do a round of tapping, describing the situation in a few words as you come to each acupoint.
Mindfulness: Noticing our self-judgments without overidentifying with them is a way of offsetting our culturally reinforced preoccupation with our selves, our status, and the market value of our personal qualities.
Acupoint Stimulation: Use the physical procedures described in #1 while stating, “Even though I judge myself [or my partner or my relationship] for [describe], I deeply love and accept myself.” Then do a round of tapping, briefly naming the judgment as you come to each acupoint.
Mindfulness: Being present with and experientially embracing every thought and emotion, whether pleasant or unpleasant, prepares your nervous system to meet whatever life presents with equanimity and to deal with it effectively.
Acupoint Stimulation: Use the physical procedures described in #1 while stating, “Even though I avoid [describe], I deeply love and accept myself.” Then do a round of tapping, briefly naming what you avoid as you come to each acupoint.
Mindfulness: Experiencing your thoughts and feelings as passing events while holding an open, curious attitude about how they, like your breath, rise and fall, is a potent way to prepare for transitions, large and small.17
Acupoint Stimulation: Use the physical procedures described in #1 while stating, “Even though I worry about [describe], I deeply love and accept myself.” Then do a round of tapping, briefly naming the worry as you come to each acupoint.
Both mindfulness and energy psychology techniques can help us break the trance that our reflexive thoughts and emotions are the only valid reality in town. This allows us to engage our lives, moment by moment, at more profound and genuine levels. While the energies in your body are to a large degree governed by habits, you can willfully affect their flow. When you do—in fact, when you do almost anything that is outside your habitual repertoire even once—it will be easier to do it again. That is how quickly your energies and your brain can begin to establish new habits and new neural pathways.
Conscious partnering is both an inside job and a shared creation. Cultivating a relationship that can serve as a creative container for the conflicting and shifting feelings and perspectives that characterize everyone’s inner life is an ongoing adventure. Psychological development is all about one set of worldviews and related preferences and strategies making way for another. How has your vision of marriage changed since you were younger? Your senses of calling, destiny, and purpose and your methods for fulfilling them are in a process of continual evolution as you move from one phase of your life to the next (and as the culture changes around you). This process does not, however, unfold in a neat and orderly fashion, and you and your partner are one another’s closest witnesses in this messy piece of personal evolution. To fully embrace this dimension of conscious partnering requires profound acceptance as well as radical honesty.
A long-term relationship that can contain two people’s passions, beliefs, and desires freely expressed and fully respected is an evolutionary landmark. In their classic book, Conscious Loving, Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks describe an essential skill for a conscious relationship as the ability and commitment to tell one another the “microscopic truth.”18 They explain that most people learn to conceal or distort the truth of their inner experience during childhood. The job of a parent and a culture is to mold a child’s motivations and behavior toward certain preconceived ideals, and the job of a child is to pretend that it is working. Some feelings (and the behaviors that grow out of those feelings) are acceptable in the family, the school, and the society and can be freely expressed; other feelings lead to ridicule, shame, or punishment and are concealed. Was that the case for you? It is for most people, and it carries into our adult relationships. Donna got the message that she was not to cause trouble, and she learned to quickly dismiss or not even recognize feelings within herself that might cause problems for others. David learned to define himself by his achievements and to convert every impulse for play into this drive to achieve before it might divert him into actually having fun. These messages become so firmly embedded that many people, the Hendrickses explain, “simply do not know themselves deeply enough to tell the truth at a meaningful level.”19
While telling the truth would seem an obvious part of conscious partnering, telling the “microscopic truth” is a skill that requires practice not only in stating what your partner might not want to hear, but also in recognizing just what is your deeper truth. Rather than a broad philosophical position, this is a moment-by-moment endeavor. The Hendrickses define truth, in the sense of the microscopic truth, as “that which absolutely cannot be argued about.”20 And the only thing that absolutely cannot be argued about is your experience. David might notice that his beloved has become the center of extreme chaos when packing for a trip and helpfully observe, “Donna, after all these years, you are still totally disorganized.” This, however, is not the microscopic truth.
If he could see inside her head how many considerations she is balancing in trying to figure out what she needs for another month-long teaching tour with two dozen stage appearances, he might realize that even one as obsessively organized as himself might be challenged by the task. So his statement not only isn’t a truth that is informed by compassion, it isn’t even the truth at the surface level. The microscopic truth, on the other hand, reports only your experience, not your judgments or interpretations. So David might have said, “I get uncomfortable when I see your clothes and accessories and papers covering the bed and the kitchen table and every chair in the house.” Or, looking deeper, he might say, “When I see you struggling to get packed, the part of me that likes to keep everything neat and organized gets nervous.” Telling her that she is totally disorganized does not provide information Donna can use other than to feel bad about herself. On the other hand, the microscopic truth that David’s organized part is threatened amid the disorganization opens the way for Donna to say, “Well, don’t just sit there wallowing in your digital sense of superiority, you bastard! Help me pack!”
The microscopic truth, the description of your inner experience, might be a straightforward report of something that occurred. For example, as a husband, you might say to your wife, regarding your son: “I heard Billy swearing at you.” It might describe your sensations: “My neck tightened when I heard Billy swearing at you, and my heart started to race.” It might name your feelings: “I’m angry with Billy and feeling protective of you.” It might describe an image or thought or desire: “I want to ground Billy for the rest of the week.” It might portray an anticipation or internal conflict: “I’m afraid that you are going to disagree about grounding Billy.” As you develop your ability to tell the microscopic truth with your partner, you may find it amazing how much can be communicated by limiting yourself to the truth of your immediate experience and how that discipline can make your communications so much more pristine and effective.
In developing this discipline, keep in mind also what microscopic communication is not. It does not include slipping in a disguised judgment, justification, explanation of cause-and-effect relationships, or a bit of self-righteousness, as in: “I want to ground Billy for the rest of the week because you haven’t managed to teach him an ounce of respect.” It is not even about the outside world. It is, rather, about “the deepest and most subtle truth you can see and feel inside yourself.”21 You are telling the truth for one purpose and one purpose only: to communicate your internal experience. Telling the truth for its own sake rather than to justify or manipulate is what conscious partners do. At the energetic level, the Hendrickses explain, “hiding the truth blocks energy at a very fundamental, cellular level.” Telling the microscopic truth “liberates energy that has been trapped [leading to] the clear, high feeling that is the payoff” for telling the truth at the deepest levels of which you are capable.22
One of the great things about telling the microscopic truth is that conveying your inner experience instead of indulging in judgment produces empathy rather than defensiveness in your partner. However, there are some topics where extra sensitivity is required.
• THE ENERGY DIMENSION •
Telling the Microscopic Truth
When tension emerges, energies become blocked within each partner and in the flow between the partners. Triple Warmer (here) is activated. When you begin to tell the microscopic truth, the blocks are still there and Triple Warmer may even become more active. But as the process brings you into deeper touch with your own truth and your partner receives you, those blocks begin to melt away, the energy becomes transparent, and Triple Warmer backs off. Safety is in the air, and a deep connection becomes possible, which allows the original source of difficulty to be addressed effectively.
These four words can infuse terror into the heart of the strongest of men, and replies like “Do I look stupid?” do not tend to set the conversation onto a positive course. If the microscopic truth for these men be told, however, it might begin with something as transparent as, “I feel nervous hearing that question.” So far, you’ve told your inner truth and she’s interested but wary and perhaps expecting the worst. While you are certainly not off the hook, you are paving the way for an interchange that brings you closer to one another rather than to where it might have been headed. The next step involves where you direct your consciousness. Your first statement came, honestly and openly, out of your negative anticipation and sense that there is no right answer here. If you continue down that path, however, your knee-jerk negative anticipations are likely to become self-fulfilling.
The act of consciousness that is required at this moment is to call up your empathy and your love and speak from that “sweet truth” (here). This is not your enemy poised to create havoc in your life after you give the wrong answer. This is your life partner in a vulnerable moment. This is where David might use the brief, practical, heart-centering meditation, “notice breath; soften belly; open heart” (here). The microscopic truth emerging from this awareness might be, “I care that you are concerned about how you look right now.” You are not passing a judgment, you are affirming your collaborative alliance. Suppose the situation is that she is getting ready for an important meeting, has just put on an outfit she is thinking of wearing, and you feel it really isn’t very flattering. Your next statement might continue to confirm your collaborative alliance (“You know I wouldn’t hurt you for anything”) and could at the same time respond to the original question (“but I don’t think this is the outfit for you”). This is also an opportunity to stay constructively engaged in the tenderness of having just moved through a possible rupture: “I’d like you to feel you are looking your best for this meeting. How about if we go back to your closet and pick out something that makes you look great?”
Weight is a particularly delicate topic.23 Research on couples where one partner is obese and the other is not (“mixed-weight” couples) has found that these marriages have greater conflict than “matched-weight” couples.24 This conflict was mediated, however, when the “healthy-weight” partner provided support rather than judgment, nagging, or teasing. With your collaborative alliance as the bedrock, your partner can feel and deeply know that you are on the same team, rooting for your partner’s well-being in all ways. Beyond weight, another touchy area involves permanent flaws. Learning to love your partner’s physical imperfections or character foibles is part of learning to love your partner, and it may be as challenging as learning to accept your own flaws. You can accomplish both. While energy psychology tapping can push you through some of the challenges in accepting your partner’s flaws as well as your own, telling the microscopic truth can build your collaborative alliance to give you a stronger foundation for addressing even the most delicate areas of your partnership.
A few caveats beyond weight and permanent flaws are also in order. As powerful and constructive as you may find it to tell the microscopic truth, it does not mean that you should volunteer every thought that occurs to you, particularly if it might be hurtful to your partner. The seven qualities of conscious partnering (here) offer guidelines for processing your inner experiences in a manner that is supportive of your relationship. Each individual and each couple must find their own way of addressing issues that are particularly tender.
When David was in high school, he began to drive and to date at about the same time. One of his nightmares was taking the hourlong drive into Los Angeles to see a play and discovering that the radio wouldn’t work after he had run out of conversation. He has since learned that it is not that hard to cross the silence barrier by cultivating his curiosity about what is going on in Donna. “What were your favorite parts of the conference?” “What did you feel when Joan told you she was resigning?” “It’s your dad’s birthday—what are you remembering about him?” “Are you missing Tiernan?” These openers can lead to discussions that reach deeper and deeper levels. If your partner is appreciating the invitations, keep asking questions: “I’m surprised you feel that way. Tell me more about it.” “I’m wondering how that feels.”
It is easy to begin to take for granted that you know your partner well enough. Successful couples, however, take an active, ongoing interest in learning more about one another’s history, preferences, friends, stresses, aspirations, activities, injuries, triumphs, and dreams. This may seem like an obvious feature of conscious partnering, but having someone express genuine curiosity about you is a gift from the soul. In an ongoing partnership, it keeps the relationship fresh when you are continually adding greater detail to the knowledge you have about one another. With each new discovery, your bond deepens. Conscious partnership is a moment-to-moment adventure, but it is far more than that. You each become a wellspring of information about the other, deepening your connection. Be curious about your partner and pursue that curiosity.
“Let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you,” advises Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet: “make not a bond of love.”25 We, Donna and David, are both strongly conditioned for independence. Since independence is the easier part for each of us in the dependence/independence/interdependence dance of relationships, we have placed less emphasis on it than perhaps we should have. Retaining your autonomy and freedom no matter how close you grow to another is critical if both partners and the relationship are to stay vital over the years.
Energetically, this means that in addition to the words and hugs and intimate contact that allow the energies to build over time and become a palpable, lasting force between you, there is also space for your own sense of connection with others, with the universe, and with the path of your soul. Gibran’s passage on marriage ends, “the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
Psychologically, retaining your freedom and individuality within the most intimate relationship of which you are capable means many things, from pursuing the callings of your heart to taking time for personal reflection and renewal. It can begin with fairly mundane considerations. In cross-cultural interviews with couples from more than twenty different countries, Esther Perel asked people what was occurring when they felt the most drawn to their partner. The answers were uniform in that it was not when they were eyeball-to-eyeball close to one another but when there was some degree of distance. For instance, people felt strong desire when the partner was away or when they were observing their partner with other people or in a setting where the partner was radiant and confident, such as when giving a performance. People were also more drawn to their partner when there was novelty, such as when a dormant part of the partner would emerge or when both would go to an edge, which was often reflected in laughter.26 Again, integrating the parts of yourself you have developed independently back into your relationship makes your relationship richer.
At its core, healthy autonomy within an intimate relationship emerges from developing a well-grounded sense of self that gradually replaces one that is based on reflections from others. The reflected sense of self is defined by others beginning in infancy, and it continues to be defined by your partner. David Schnarch explains that a solid sense of self “develops from confronting yourself, challenging yourself to do what’s right, and earning your own self-respect. It develops from inside you, rather than from internalizing what’s around you.”27 Living from a wholesome identity requires self-reflection and a level of maturity that is hard-won. It is not just granted with age, and without a healthy sense of self in both partners, marriages tend to become stagnant and rigid. For a marriage to stay passionate—sexually and otherwise—an essential ingredient is that each partner takes a journey from a reflected sense of self into one that retains its own psychological “shape” no matter how physically and emotionally close to one another the two of you become.
Conscious partnering involves using your mental and emotional capacities to keep your relationship fresh and vital, day by day. Spiritual partnering brings your awareness into the eternal realms of soul and spirit. Chapter 10 explores what that might be about.