The Conscious Heart (31 page)

“Children want to be honored in their resiliency and in their ability to forge new relationships. They want to be loved from fulfillment rather than emptiness. The more we demonstrate steadfast commitment, the more they flower. When we lower the escape hatch, bolt the exit door to its hinges, and tighten the window sash, they no longer concern themselves with whether or not Blended Mom and Dad are staying together. At that moment, family life can shift from focusing on survival to participating in conscious growth and evolution.

“What does clarity of commitment and intention look like? How does it feel? What is the experience? Although I’ve been clear about keeping my body in this relationship since the very beginning, my spirit has frequently fled. I recognize the pain when my heart is numb or absent and how it distorts all of my relationships and my creative expression. Likewise, I delight in the ecstasy of bringing my essence fully into the moment. Truly the only thing that has been standing in the way of my bliss is my fear of losing myself in complete union. The intentions and actions that support the deepest experience of intimacy and family harmony are simple—not necessarily easy, but simple. I express essence vibrantly when I open to full participation with all of my feelings and tell the truth in a nonblaming way. I tingle with essence-awareness when my attention is on the present moment, and I embrace and accept reality as it presents itself. When my intention is to grow and evolve in the context of blending a family, then, as Deepak Chopra says, ‘the universe will handle the details.’ How does this intention and awareness influence and nurture our blended family? The equations are elementary.

• Happy, fulfilled, creative parents = Happy, fulfilled, creative children.

• Parents who are friendly with their own feelings = Parents who can open to and appreciate their children’s feelings.

• Parents living in the transparency of truth = Children living in the transparency of truth.

• Parents modeling growth and choiceful evolution = Children relaxing their predisposition to survive emotionally through defending and withholding their feelings.

“Blended families offer an incredibly rich opportunity for transformation and opening the conscious heart. Witness a recent quote from one of ‘my’ daughters: ‘It’s a good thing I’ve got older brothers now, otherwise I’d be a wimp!’ Every aspect of combining the splinters of preexisting families lends itself to growth. Decisions about money, housing, rules, diet, possessions, pets—all areas provide potent learning opportunities. Inherent in the intricacies of shared holidays and visitation schedules is the potential for creating unique family traditions and a broader experience of community. If you are a blended parent, take a moment right now to appreciate yourself. Pat yourself on the back for having a great sense of humor and amazing flexibility. Appreciate your children for enduring the quirks of your growth waves and commitment spasms. Set an intention for an experience of family that goes beyond any of your wildest imaginings, and enjoy!”

9/Deepening Your Connection with Essence and Creativity

W
e come to know ourselves mainly through the mirror of relationship. Since we can never see our faces directly or watch ourselves from the back as we move, there are some aspects of ourselves that we can see only by reflection in others. Developmental research and somatic psychology are exploring the function of the witness in the evolution of a mature human being. Stanley Keleman, one of the pioneers in this area, says, “In the beginning children need someone to be there
for
them and this is the meaning of the caring
for
and caring
about
stages.” We come to view ourselves as we are viewed, to value ourselves to the degree that we are valued.

In our adult relationships we have a unique opportunity to be
for
our partners, to lovingly witness their growth, daily rhythms, and discoveries. In order to see from the conscious heart, we need to remove the veils that keep us from transparency. The daily interactions of a close relationship provide endless opportunities to lift the veil and polish the mirror, or to tie down the veil even more firmly. Each of us brings powerfully encoded self-image scripts to current relationships. These scripts tend to distort and cloud the mirror. Control and approval scripts are especially common and may underlie all other scripts, since each of us needs love to survive and autonomy to choose. For example, Kathlyn’s self-image was based largely on being useful, which she developed into an Organizer, a Supercompetence persona: “In the first years of our relationship, I would tend to see and hear Gay through the supercompetent filter. When he would voice a feeling, I would rush in to fix it, to adjust something in the house or my behavior so I could feel valued.”

A major task of the conscious heart is to polish the mirror of our listening and perception so that we can truly reflect our partner’s essence. The most powerful path to essence that we know of is claiming our own creativity. This means owning the qualities and behaviors that we have hooked on to other people. Kathlyn continues: “I grew up seeking the approval of others; this pattern dominated my life. In my thirties I made a conscious choice to source my own value, my own approval. Over the next months and years, I began to see more quickly the times when I responded to Gay from neediness, and when I responded from being at home in my own worth. I needed to take real-life action steps to source my own value, from completing my Ph.D. to learning to speak clearly about my feelings. Most difficult was identifying and requesting what I wanted. As I began to expand to claim the worthiness I had been seeking from Gay, I could see and appreciate his essence more and more easily. The quality of our connection deepened with each step I took to become whole.”

One of the most profound joys that deepens our own relationship
is sharing discoveries with each other. These discoveries balance the tendency, especially in long-term relationships or during childrearing years, to communicate primarily about the business of running the household and the relationship enterprise itself. In our own relationship we save anecdotes, questions we’re pondering, and amusing incidents to share with each other. In the space of soul-commitment, you can plumb the well of each other’s becoming. We have found that there are no limits to deepening in ourselves and in our knowing of each other. As long as we stay true to our commitments to transparency, equality, and appreciation, we can relax into constant renewal, weathering periods of transition to new aspects and strengths, as well as the lax times of seeming stagnation.

To know one person deeply and to have the privilege of hearing their reception of the world and seeing through their eyes over time is a thrilling and sometimes frightening honor. There is great comfort in the particular fit of your partner’s body, in the resonance of their voice and laughter. One danger of deepening, though, is sinking into stagnation. Many long-term couples use familiarity as an excuse to sleep through their relationships. They can predict each other’s reactions and gestures, repeat their stories, finish their sentences from time to time. Familiarity is not the same as deepening. You can transform familiarity into growth by diving into the subtle and great waves of your partner’s changes and your own. What a sophisticated dance: to know your partner’s steps and how they blend with yours, in order to be able to improvise.

Kathlyn says: “I’ve begun taking piano lessons again after learning the mechanics of playing as a child. I quit playing in my teens in rebellion against the rote learning of it. Now I’ve come back to it with a different perspective. Now I practice the same scales, learning them by heart, because I see that familiarity creates the springboard for improvisation. Only when I absolutely know the triads and the structure of scales can I make my own music. Mastery in any discipline follows years of practice. Glenn Gould, a
great pianist, practiced his scales more slowly than most students could tolerate. Going deeply into each note, feeling the relationship of each note to the whole—that joy comes after years of carefully polishing, listening, being with yourself and those close to you.”

Instead of thinking, “Oh, I heard that already,” you sense, “Oh, I’ve opened a new aspect of that story and found a larger meaning.” The poet Marianne Moore said, “The world’s an orphan’s home.” All of us are looking for a place to come home to. You and your essence partner can make a new home together by engaging in daily gestures of trust.

10/Respect

R
espect sounds like an abstract concept, but it is really made up of tiny moments, of many actions we take. For example, we demonstrate respect by focusing on what our partner is saying and waiting until the communication is complete before we interject our response. This action only takes a moment, but it communicates a world of respect. Respect extends beyond courtesy, beyond knowing that your partner is a good and worthwhile person. Respect involves right action. You both expect actions that demonstrate responsibility and integrity.

Respect begins with meeting your own standards. Kathlyn was attracted to this kind of self-respect in Gay when she first met him:
“I saw immediately that he was using himself fully. His talents and qualities were blooming, not hidden or shriveled. I saw that he thought well of himself, not from delusion or arrogance, but because he had expanded to the edges of himself and met his own high criteria for being human.” Years later she added this passage to her journal: “Gay continues to be consistent. He does what he says he is going to do. If he forgets something he’s agreed to, he tells the truth about it and clears up whatever needs to be done. That is another cornerstone of my respect for him.”

If you respect yourself and others, someone probably saw your essence and told you you were worthwhile. They might have said or subtly communicated that you have a contribution to make to life and to the community. You began to believe that assessment and to set your standards to match their regard. Respect begins in those moments of recognition, and it grows as you personally experience that you can make good on your values and agreements. Each time you choose responsibility, you grow in self-respect and in respect for your relationships.

Respect has a powerful healing value. As therapists, we have the great privilege of seeing people develop respect for themselves and their partners right before our eyes. We would like to share an example where we witnessed the power of respect: a person’s choice to face her shadows and to heal despite what happened in the past. Elaine told us how angry she still was about her sexual abuse and how obsessed with revenge she still could get. She sobbed as she said she really saw how ultimately unsatisfying anger is. She spat out that she’d really “like to beat the shit out of someone,” but when she physically beat up a pillow or fantasized beating up someone, she found that she just stayed angry. The anger never transformed, nor did her frustration.

We asked her what was the hardest thing to accept about all the past abuse, and she said with passion, “No one listened to me!” Clearly in Elaine’s past her essence had not been celebrated but rather had been abused. We asked her to pause a moment to love and accept that no one had listened to her. After just a moment of
loving herself, she took a deep breath and saw that she often complains now that her husband doesn’t listen. With a little more exploration, she recognized that she was choosing to rehash the past rather than have the relationship she wanted right now.

She also realized that she was requiring her husband to turn deaf from time to time. If he didn’t listen, she could continue to be angry, to feel like a victim, and then to treat him with contempt. Respect is based on considering your partner as your equal. You give as much consideration to your partner as you do to yourself. Contempt is based on considering someone as less than equal, treating them with scorn. You can heal your own contempt by feeling your feelings, telling the truth, and reclaiming your support for your partner’s essence.