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Integrating Relationships and Spirituality Top
For many of us, having a relationship pulls us out of alignment with our own wholeness and makes it difficult for us to remain peaceful. This is codependency, and many people complain of it: ''Whenever I get into a relationship I become obsessed (or my partner does).''
With or without the elements of codependency, relationship often seems to pull us away from our spiritual path and our work. When it does, this means that at the inner, subconscious level, we actually see a polarity between the two behaviors, expect it, and create it in our lives.
Here is a very powerful NLP (neurolinguistic programming) exercise adapted to harmonize our love life with our spiritual life and work.
- Sit in a comfortable chair with feet flat on the floor. Close your eyes, relax, and spend just a few moments going into your quiet space, breathing rhythmically and letting go of outside thoughts.
- Keeping your eyes closed, hold your hands in front of you, palms upward and cupped.
- See, sense or feel yourself as a ''spiritual'' seeker, and mentally place this image of yourself in the palm of your left hand. As though you are creating a little movie, imagine yourself going about your work, performing your spiritual practice, achieving your spiritual goals. Imagine yourself flowing out Love to all the world, and see it coming back. Place all of these ideas and images into the palm of your left hand. Keep doing this until you are fully engaged in what your spirituality means to you, and have placed all of these ideas, images, and feelings into your hand.
- Now, leaving your left hand holding this complex of images representing the spiritual side of yourself, transfer your attention to your right hand. Here, see, sense or feel yourself in a love relationship. Imagine yourself involved in activities with your partner including lovemaking, living together, and achieving your relationship goals. Place all of these ideas, images, and feelings into the palm of your right hand. Get a very strong and powerful image or feeling of what it's like when human love is totally working for you, and place all of this in the palm of your right hand.
- Become aware of the Totality of Yourself as a very large, glorious, multicolored energy being, stretching way up into the sky, with your physical body at its core. Then, in whatever way you do this, ''move'' your consciousness into this Higher Self.
- Now, allow your hands to turn towards each other, palms facing, and allow them to move together very, very slowly. See, realize, command, or feel that your hands will come together only as fast as your subconscious mind is able to integrate these two parts of yourself. Know that your palms cannot touch until these two parts have been fully integrated.
For some, it will feel that you are moving your hands intentionally. For others, your palms will feel drawn together by an inner force. Whichever happens is unimportant. What is important is to realize your intent: ''My palms cannot touch until these two parts of myself have been fully integrated at the subconscious level.''
- When your palms have come together, bring your hands toward the center of your chest, to the heart chakra. Open your hands and, in whatever way you do this, place this new, integrated self-image into your heart chakra.
- Now, let your hands drop to your sides, and see, sense or feel the newly released energy moving through your being. When it seems right to do so, open your eyes.
The Academy Award Process Top
This exercise is designed to assist you in remaining in a space of love, no matter what your partner is doing. If you tend to feel anger, guilt, or any other emotion you'd rather not experience as a result of your partner's behavior, this exercise will help to overcome that tendency.
We have seen relationships totally and permanently transformed in only a few days just because one of the partners chose to use this process as a substitute for their normal behavior.
Because it is often difficult to remember to do something like this while the battle between two people is raging, it is a good idea to practice first by yourself, but that's not necessary. If you can just remember to do this once in ''real life,'' nothing will ever be the same. Here is the ''practice'' exercise.
- Sit or lie down. Make sure you are comfortable enough so that you can put all of your attention on your imagination. Close your eyes, relax, and spend just a few moments going into your quiet space, breathing rhythmically and letting go of outside thoughts.
- Remember a recent argument or altercation. Picture it, feel it, act it out in your mind, hear the words. What was the weather like that day? Is it light out, or dark? Even try to remember what it smelled like. Perhaps dinner was cooking. In whatever way you do this, make the scene real and place your body into it.
- Now, become aware of the Totality of Yourself as a very large, glorious, multicolored energy being, stretching way up into the sky, with your physical body at its core. Then, in whatever way you do this, ''move'' your consciousness into this Higher Self.
- Become aware of the Totality of your partner's Self in the same way.
- Now, get this idea. Your partner, in his or her physical essence, is rehearsing a role in a play. You wrote the play, and this person before you was sent by God because he or she is the best actor in the world to play this particular role. Their performance is beyond impeccable, it is amazing.
- Watch the whole scene from the point of view that you are appreciating their acting performance. If they are playing the part of the villain, Satan himself is a pale and weak thing beside this character. If they are playing the part of the victim, you realize they will wring the hearts of everyone in the theater. You love this actor!
- As you watch the performance, realize that when this amazing performance is over, the Soul Essences that you really are will be going to a party together, a little mutual admiration society talking about what a great job you are doing in this play.
- Your appropriate response, when the performance is over, is applause. That probably will not ''work'' in real life, but from the space of appreciation you will absolutely know what to say to help your partner move more closely to their own spiritual essence, as you have moved into yours.
- Tell yourself that the next time you are caught in an emotional transaction with your partner, you will remember to appreciate his or her performance as an actor, and let the rest go. Imagine this happening in the future.
- When you are ready, open your eyes.
If you decide not to do this as an eyes-closed process, that's okay. It's easy simply to use this visualization the next time you find yourself at odds with your lover. Don't forget to move into the Totality of Yourself first. Then, instead of mentally or verbally criticizing the role your partner is playing, focus instead on appreciating the performance. You'll be amazed at the effect this can have on your life.
If you do this first as an eyes-closed process, it's important not to forget the last instruction to imagine yourself doing it in the future in ''real life.'' This is called ''future pacing,'' and is an important part of much inner work.
Transmuting Inappropriate Sexual Desires Top
Many of us are in a monogamous, committed relationship, but still feel attractions and desires for others. Perhaps we act out these feelings and create problems with our core relationship. Or perhaps we repress these feelings, and create problems for ourselves.
This exercise, adapted from the Tantric spiritual approach, is designed to transcend acting-out and repression, taking the ''negative'' of thwarted or inappropriate sexuality and turning it into a positive. A variation of this process can be found in the work of David Deida, but he suggests it only for men. In our experience, contrary to centuries of programming, when women are totally open to their own beings, they are just as likely to become sidetracked by sexual desires as their male counterparts.
If you have been practicing Drunvalo's Unity Breath process, and you have a difficult time feeling the love, you might want to try this one first. As with the Academy Award process, you can wait for a ''real life'' event, or you can practice it with eyes closed and a suggestion for ''future pacing.''
- Sit or lie down. Make sure you are comfortable enough so that you can put all of your attention on your imagination. Close your eyes, relax, and spend just a few moments going into your quiet space, breathing rhythmically and letting go of outside thoughts.
- Imagine the person you are attracted to, and fully feel your response to that person. Perhaps you can remember the last time you saw them, and how it felt. If you have been close to them, take in the aroma, the ''aura'' of their physical presence. Enter into this feeling and allow it to be.
- Become aware of this response as energy. It is energy, and it feels really good! Let this wonderful energy circulate throughout your body. Appreciate how wonderful it feels.
- From this space of appreciation, mentally thank the other person for this gift, for helping you to open up to this multisensory feeling of Love, to this incredibly beautiful energy.
- Now, as this energy continues to circulate throughout your body, focus on drawing it into your heart center. Do this until your heart feels full to overflowing.
- Once you can feel your heart overflowing with this energy of Love, sexuality, and gratitude, breathe it out as a gift to all the world. See, sense, or imagine — in whatever way you do this — that every person in the world receives a bit of this beautiful, sparkling energy.
- Now, let this energy return as Love to God/Goddess – All That Is. See it flowing up and out to the Stars, and down into the core of Mother Earth. Feel it returning to you tenfold. Let the energy keep flowing and growing for as long as you like.
- Imagine yourself in the future, encountering someone who triggers a sexual response in your body, and see, sense, or feel that you are using this transmutation process, thanking them for energy and sending it out to the world.
- When you are ready, open your eyes.
In real life, use this process every time you have a sexual response that is inappropriate to your circumstances at that moment. And watch what happens. (There are some results we won't tell you about. Just do it. You'll find out!)
The Communication Process Top
If you ask most people what is wrong with their relationship, if it's not sex, it's communication. Quite a few couples, maybe even the average couple, have been having the same argument for years.
This process must be done ''in real life.'' Doing it as an eyes-closed process doesn't really work. What you can do in your spiritual practice is give yourself the suggestion that the next time communication seems to be breaking down with your partner, you will use this process.
This process works because, as Warner Erhardt pointed out 30 years ago when he started the Erhard Seminars Trainings, the reason we communicate with other people is actually a spiritual one.
Most people believe otherwise. If your spouse has been nagging you for several years to do the dishes, it looks as though his or her purpose is to get you to change your behavior. But nobody with half a brain would keep doing the same thing for decades unless it were working. Nagging doesn't work, so it must have another purpose.
This even applies to trying to change someone else's point of view. Just think about how many people's points of view you have managed to change by talking to them (unless they asked you for help first — when people ask for help they are not asking for communication, they are asking for information). Gratuitous communication almost never changes anyone's mind about anything. If our purpose in talking to people were to change their minds, we would soon stop talking altogether.
The answer, as you will find if you do this process, is that people communicate out of the pain of duality. If Person A has a point of view and experiences that Person B's point of view is totally opposite, then these two people are experiencing duality. If Person A can manage to communicate his or her point of view to Person B, in that moment the duality disappears, and it actually becomes possible for both people to rise to a new level of understanding.
Usually, however, Person B thinks that we are trying to get them to agree with us. So instead of hearing the other person's point of view, what they are hearing is, ''I want you to give up your point of view and agree with mine.'' Naturally, if we believe that this is the other person's purpose, rather than giving up, we will resist.
But it is not necessary to agree with another person in order to understand their point of view. Taking a point of view is like picking up a pencil. You can pick it up, and if you don't want to keep holding it, you can put it down again.
But here's the crucial part: If you are unwilling to take a point of view, you can never know what it's like to hold it. And until you know that, you are not in a position to agree or disagree with it. All you can say is, ''I don't know.''
You know yourself that, wherever there seems to be a disagreement, there is something about your point of view that your partner does not understand! If you will take the next step and realize that for every disagreement there also is something you yourself do not understand, then you are ready to practice this exercise. Start out with someone easy, someone you don't care about. Just try the process once a day for a while until you get the hang of it. Then you are ready to use it to transform communication with the one you love.
The Communication Process is simply this. While another person is complaining or discussing something you believe that you do not agree with, set aside what you normally do when this is going on. Normal behavior falls into four categories: (1) Agreement; (2) Disagreement; (3) Advice; and (4) Attitude.
Whether you do it verbally or internally, the idea is, for this one interaction that you have chosen for practice, don't agree, disagree, offer advice (again, not even mentally), or ''cop an attitude.'' If you sit there while they are rambling on, mentally saying to yourself, ''They told me if I just sit here and listen to this drivel, eventually it will stop and never be repeated''? That's an attitude!
Here's something you can do instead, so that you will not be engaging in one of the four dysfunctional responses: Pretend, as the person is talking, that there is going to be a quiz! In order to make sure you can get a perfect score on the quiz, you may have to ask the other person, ''It seems to me that you are saying [whatever]?'' If they say no, that's not it, keep trying until they agree that you've got it right.
Sometimes it is difficult to know how to do this when the other person is asking you argumentative questions. Most questions that feel unpleasant to us are of this type: ''Why don't you ever knock before you come barging in?''
The way to handle this, since it seems you must say something, is to realize that the other person is communicating how they feel with this question. Again, make sure you've got it right. ''It seems to me that you are angry about this.'' Keep going until you've got it right. Then what? Then nothing. That's all. It's not your responsibility to change who you are so that someone else can feel better.
Another difficult situation is when it seems that the other person wants advice about something. One spouse says, ''My boss is driving me nuts,'' and the other hears, ''What shall I do about the fact that my boss is driving me nuts?'' and responds to that question. ''I feel fat,'' elicits, ''Why don't you go on a diet.'' The other person has communicated a feeling, and if you say something in return, it would have to be something like, ''How does that feel?'' or even, ''I see. What are you going to do about it?''
So that's the exercise. Don't agree. Don't disagree. Don't offer advice. Don't cop an attitude.
In workshops done over a period of a decade, this process was taught to a new group every six weeks. In every single case where the workshop participant actually did the process, the results seemed miraculous. Again, there are wonderful results of doing this process that we haven't mentioned. Try it, and you'll see!
Eliminating Codependency Top
Doing daily spiritual practice is the only path we know of to eradicate codependency from your life. And meditation alone is not enough. We must work to dredge up and release the decisions we have made, in this life or past lives, for these decisions will keep on attracting the same experiences until we learn to stop seeing patterns and treat each event as a unique and sacred experience. Only when we are coming at life from ''the here and now'' can we act with appropriate grace in all situations.
Spiritual counseling is often useful in this regard. Someone who can ''mirror'' us and help us to access our own inner knowing is an invaluable adjunct to growth. The highest beings on this planet are still working daily on pinpointing and releasing their own inappropriate responses to life situations. We all have a ways to go before we become Light.
Instead, many of us employ spiritual practice as a fixer-upper when things have gotten to the desperate stage. And it works! We know that it does. Yet most of us wait until we are having these massive traumas in our lives before we decide to turn it all over to God. If we keep on doing spiritual practice even when things are going well — every morning and every evening of our lives, and as often as we think of it during the day — then this yo-yo syndrome will flatten out and we will be able to live each day with happiness and grace.
As Edgar Cayce said, ''Why worry when you can pray?'' Why nag, why suffer, why argue, why spend money on all the various nostrums, when you can pray? Let everything else become an adjunct to your ongoing, daily relationship to Mother/Father God — All That Is, and codependency will become a thing of the past.
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