Archive for category: Relationships

Many believe that the highest expression and experience we can attain in life is to love one another. Yet love is highly misunderstood. There is great confusion about the causation of love and the ways in which we are one and those that separate us.

When we “fall in love” with someone, it is often experienced as an instant affection for them — almost a chemical occurrence. One minute it didn’t exist, and the next it seems to exist more than anything else. It is delicious and we want more, so we focus more and more of our attention on this one person and want them to do more and more of whatever we think caused us to have this experience. What we commonly refer to as “love,” whether as lovers, parent and child, or friends, is really a very spiritual experience that we mistakenly delimit to our relationship with the person with whom we are having this experience. In fact, love is the human experience of the divine. As John-Roger explains it:

As we are looking for ourselves, we often see ourselves in others who are open to reflect. We then love them, not just for who they are, but for that reflection of our love in them. What we’re really saying is, “When I’m with you, that place inside of me that is loving awakens.”

When this kind of love is experienced between two people, four things are happening simultaneously. Each is choosing to give love to the other, and each is choosing to receive love from the other. We are both open to the flow of giving and receiving love. At its best, when none of these four actions is blocked by self-imposed limitations, whether with one’s partner or a total stranger, there is a transcendent experience into a oneness that is beyond earthly concerns. Consider the awe when a parent first looks into the eyes of his or her newborn child, or when in “Avatar” the Na’vi say, “I see you,” meaning, “I see the god in you.”

When we don’t realize that love is a recognition of the divine through another, we falsely attribute the source of love simply to that person. We might fixate on wanting more of that person when in fact what we really want is more experiences of transcendence, of God. Attributing the source of love to the other person is simply a misunderstanding of the causation. When we limit ourselves to looking only for romantic love, we miss the point.

Building upon that misunderstanding of the true nature of love, we zero in on that one person and attempt to stimulate those loving feelings. We develop a conscious and often unconscious agenda of wanting them to behave in ways that we believe are the cause of our transcendent experience. When we take this path, our love often becomes exclusionary and conditioned by our personal preferences and prejudices. Our love flows exclusively with this person but not with others, and we tend to trap each other in a web of expectations. When we look for love on websites, we want our prospective partner to be of a certain age, to have a certain body type and to share our likes and dislikes — all the things that we think will bring us to that transcendent experience. We think that if they are a match, they will be capable of igniting those feelings in us.

Truly loving another person with a capital “L” is a matter of freeing the other person of the responsibility to express his or her love for us only in the ways that we want to receive it. When we truly love, we get out of our own way by dropping all the concerns of our ego and allowing the pure radiance of the divine to shine through us to another. When the other person does that as well, the result is a pure and blissful experience of our own divinity reflected through another into a shared oneness.

I think we should all strive to be ambassadors of love with a capital “L” with as many people as possible, through our willingness to smile at a complete stranger as an offer of momentary transcendence as we pass each other by on the street; by calling to be of service to a friend who is facing a difficult time; and by choosing to sacrifice our petty judgments, expectations and any other ways that we have learned to withhold our loving kindness from others each day. It is a practice of becoming a safe and neutral place in which both our humanity and our divinity can dwell. It is through these actions that the place inside us that is loving awakens.

Perhaps this is truly what is meant in Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” We experience God’s presence in the context of our everyday relationships with others. It is a reflective process. When we delight in another, what is actually happening is we are having a pure experience of oneness that transcends all our judgments and our demands that another person be how we want them to be. We have raised our consciousness up above earthly considerations, and that is indeed a divine experience.

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I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I’ve written there is a thread of this: a man’s seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.
–Rod Serling

When we encounter someone who does not resonate as “just like me” we are facing a moment of profound choice. Our response reflects the deepest instinct of our heart. Unfortunately, far too many of us respond without even thinking about it, with prejudicial thoughts about the person’s race, religion, ethnicity, body, clothing, or differences in social class, sexual orientation, age or disability, or any other variation that gives us the illusion that we are better than someone else. People find all sorts of reasons to pre-judge one another, building walls of separation rather than strengthening our human community.

A recent experience I had with prejudice motivated me to write this article to call for a greater sense of accountability for how we treat one another. I just moved into a beautiful newly-built apartment in the village of my town. It is a building that houses two apartments and is designed to fit into the architectural style of this established quiet neighborhood. While waiting for the construction to be completed before moving in, I learned that 40 neighbors had signed a petition to try and block the construction. Why? They were concerned that people who rent would bring down the neighborhood. They perceived us as people of a lower class and therefore undesirable. Part of the irony here is that a dilapidated old house that was considered an eyesore was removed from this property to build this nice, new two-apartment dwelling. I feel sorry for these people that their worldview is so very small and that their hearts have so many conditions.

No matter if our response to another person is on autopilot or deeply thought out, we are responsible for how we view one another, and consequently, how we treat each other. Sad to say, most of us could use a bit of remedial attention in this area of our consciousness.

It is one thing to have a preference, but quite another to be prejudiced against someone by rejecting him or her for being different. If we could just bring our consciousness present to the moment of our reaction, we might see that instead of stepping into a judgment of another as “less than me” or undesirable because they are different, we have the opportunity instead to step into gratitude for the abundance and grace that we perceive ourselves to have and to be gracious to the other person. Ironically, our choice says everything about us and really nothing at all about the other person. It is a matter of whether the door of our consciousness is open to variations on the theme of what it means to be human or shut because we are threatened by dissimilarity.

I think that when we look below the surface of any prejudice we find insecurity and fear. Prejudice says far more about the one who prejudges than it does about the one who is being judged. It tells us the one who judges is compelled to put someone else down to feel elevated. It tells us that the one who judges is scared of being how the other is perceived to be. It tells us that the one who judges attaches much value to his or her own relative stature and that this stature is an essential ingredient of his or her sense of self worth.

No matter what form it comes in, prejudice boils down to creating a hierarchical separation between yourself and someone else. Whether rejecting the other or preserving your own status, the net result is separation. As Judith Light says, “Bigotry or prejudice in any form is more than a problem; it is a deep-seeded evil within our society.” Not only are we responsible for the consequences of our attitudes, but our children either learn and absorb prejudices from us or become prejudiced against people like their parents, and the cycles of judgment go round and round. Wouldn’t it be smarter for us as individuals and collectively as a society to teach ourselves and our children:

• To develop a healthy curiosity about the differences between people;
• To understand that most of the ways in which we differ are out of our control;
• That being different isn’t right or wrong — it’s just different;
• To enjoy the variations on the theme of being human;
• To be compassionate and charitable toward those who are actually less fortunate than we are;
• To expand rather than to contract when faced with differences;
• To develop the ability to discern the distinction between differences that are simply interesting and those that might merit some careful consideration.

Personally, I don’t think it would be much fun or very interesting to live in a world where everyone looks the same, earns the same amount of money, is culturally and ethnically the same, has the same level of intelligence, sexual orientation and body weight. Boring! I like our differences. But, I don’t like how ubiquitous prejudice is in our society. We seem to accept and tolerate it as though it were a normal way to be. Even for those of us who call ourselves “spiritual” or “a good person” it might be wise to take stock of our own behavior around prejudice. Do you experience prejudicial reactions to any individual or group of people? If so, are you willing to make the effort to change that by choosing a path of kindness that respects the dignity of all people? Einstein said “It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom.” That may be so, but the benefit to us, to those we judge, to our society and future generations is well worth the effort. Let’s learn to be intolerant of our own intolerance.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

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They say opinions are like noses — everyone has one. Whether you like it or not, people have opinions about you. What you do with those opinions is entirely up to you.

Consider a coaching client of mine who had a really tough time dealing with her family’s opinion of her over the holidays. On the surface everything looked fine, but she was living in her own personal hell, reliving the drama of her childhood. It seems that her brother’s life has been filled with one notable mainstream success after another — the stuff of which parents are very proud. As his younger sister, my client has lived in his shadow, feeling as though she could never measure up or elicit the level of enthusiastic approval her brother generated from their parents. Now as a grown young woman whose life path is ambiguous compared to her brother’s, she is still thrown for a loop when asked “What’s new?” or “What are you up to these days?” These seemingly harmless questions evoke a cold sweat and terror for her, and the otherwise confident and delightful person she is becomes flooded with self-rejection, unable to stand in support of herself. The truth is she has a great vision, passion and plans that will take years to develop. She is doing a wonderful job of finding her way off the beaten track of the mainstream to create a new kind of school that will provide a wonderful education, caring community and magnificent opportunities for a largely marginalized segment of our population. But, that is tough to talk about enthusiastically in an elevator speech to people who measure success in terms of concrete recognizable achievements — or worse yet — don’t even care.

When a situation that is this emotionally juicy comes up in your life, it is a wonderful opportunity to gain some life wisdom. In this particular case, there is much to be learned about dealing with life in a social context where everybody is having opinions about themselves and each other all the time.

Here are the tips I gave my client. Perhaps they will help you or someone you know as well.

Tip #1: Form your own honest opinion about yourself.
If you fall apart for fear of what others will think of you, then your sense of self-worth is contingent on the opinions of others. While your truth may not be very popular, to abandon yourself is the worst possible response you could have. No matter what anyone else thinks of you, no one’s opinion of you has more power than your own. If you abandon your own ship at the least suggestion of a negative response from others, you need to be doing some deep inner work to identify your point of vulnerability so you can heal your relationship with yourself. Your attitude toward yourself has the power to define the quality of your inner and outer experiences. So if you are not thinking highly of yourself, get to work on that.

Tip #2: Check out your expectations about other people’s opinions of you.
The difference between expectations and reality is a good measurement of the amount of suffering we cause ourselves by holding unrealistic expectations. Do you expect everyone to like you and have a positive opinion of you? If so, you are going to have a lot of unpleasant experiences. It is important to develop tolerance for a variety of reactions to you and what you are doing in your life. If you are walking a mainstream path of success like my client’s brother, you are likely to get lots of positive reactions and not have too much trouble in this area. If you know yourself to be a good person, value that knowledge more than the vicissitudes of the opinions of others.

Tip #3: Develop a great elevator speech.
The fact is, polite conversation is not typically all that deep. When someone asks you how or what you are doing, consider the source of the question. Is this someone who really wants to know the depths of your growing edges or are they simply being polite? A good place to start your response is with a terrific elevator speech. In 30 seconds to two minutes, you want to get your point across with confidence and enthusiasm. If your message is “I’m at Harvard Medical School and I love it,” you are likely to get a wonderful response from just about anyone. However, if your path, like that of my client, is more of an exploration without having reached a notable destination yet, it might take a bit more effort to develop an effective elevator speech. Play with this and learn to by your own best public relations person.

Tip #4: Remember that most of communication is nonverbal.
If you are falling apart trying to answer the simple question of “How are you doing?” then most likely a major nonverbal communication has already taken place before you even open your mouth to respond. Consider your nonverbal communication in terms of your body posture and gestures, voice tone, eye contact or lack thereof, etc., as well as what feeling you are getting from this other person. Let these clues guide you in your verbal response. If necessary, find a way to make a quick exit and go to the bathroom or somewhere else where you can pull yourself together.

Tip #5: Pay more attention to your inner dialogue and what button in you the other person pushes.
Learn from your own behavior. Play detective within yourself to figure out what your point of vulnerability is and get to work on it. Remember these emotional buttons we have that other people push are simply pointing out to us where we need to do some inner work.

Tip #6: Smile and change the subject when you have said what you want to say.
A nice smile goes a very long way. Learn to be a clever conversationalist so you can steer the conversation away from areas that are difficult for you. Celebrate who you are and don’t let others rain on your parade.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.