“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really
suit each other. Perhaps they should live next
door, and just visit now and then.”
—Katharine Hepburn
“You like potato and I like potaeto,
You like tomato and I like tomaeto;
Potato, potaeto, tomato, tomaeto!
Let’s call the whole thing off!”
—“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” music and
lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin.
“Love is grand; divorce is a hundred grand.”
—Unknown
Early on in our relationship, we made a pact to celebrate our differences.
After all, opposites attract, right? What originally drew Pala to
Al, aside from his deliberate sexuality, was his articulate intellect with
its focused, methodical thought processes. It’s at a 180-degree angle
from the way she moves through life, and it intrigued her from the outset.
However we have both been through enough relationships to know that
what starts out as intriguing often ends up as annoying, exasperating, or
threatening.
You know, in the first blush of love, John’s slow moving approach
to life is revered as mellow and laid back and taking time to smell the
roses. Sooner or later, he’s just another lazy guy. Or a new lover’s eyes
may see Barbara’s need for order and security as competency, efficiency,
and astounding preparedness. With just a little shift in perception she’s
just another controlling woman.
We do not want to do that with each other. We want to build on
what we have started, not tear it down, thus our bond to celebrate our
differences. This means that whatever drives us nuts about each other,
we attempt to use as a way to learn something about ourselves. This is
one of the most important ways that we consciously use our relationship
as a spiritual practice. It is not always easy. In fact we do occasionally just
lose it and throw a petulant tantrum. Who wants to keep working on
your own stuff all the time? It is easier and more fun to try and fix other
people. For the most part though, we keep to our bargain. Our relationship
gets stronger because we do. And we each learn to look at the
world through bigger eyes.
Higher Logical Level—The Observer/Witness Consciousness
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.”
—Rumi1
In Chapter 1, we suggested that a good place to begin your Tantric
journey would be to make your relationship the most important thing in
your life. In that chapter, we explored some of the things people make
higher priorities than their relationship, for example, children, careers,
and community projects. In addition to these external distractions your
own ego and its baggage can pull you away from a relationship focus.
While disagreements are normal in the healthiest relationship, how you
handle them can continue that health or lead to relationship terminal
illness. Common illness-inducing behaviors in disagreements are:
1. Conditioned responses in which you act as if the current
situation were a different one from your past.
2. Protecting your self-identity through winning and always
being right—even when you are wrong.
Conditioned Response
“All marriages are happy. It’s trying to live together
afterwards that causes all the problems.”
—Shelley Winters
During disagreements, strong feelings may arise that subconsciously
remind you of a previous experience. Without being aware of it, you
begin to react in the present as if you were in that past situation. Perhaps
you have heard of Pavlov’s famous experiments with dogs. Each
time he gave the dogs food, Pavlov rang a bell. When the food appeared,
the dogs salivated. Eventually the dogs salivated when they heard the
bell even though no food was presented. This is a conditioned response—
one thing is associated with another and a certain behavior occurs. Every
time that condition is matched closely enough, the same response happens
automatically without thought or conscious intention.
Sometimes conditioned response is a good and useful thing—for
instance when Pala looks at Al a certain way, he knows she’s thinking
sexy thoughts about him. He becomes turned on and excited about going
on to making love. However, if a current situation reminds you of
some negative past experience and you automatically respond now as if
you were still in the past, it is not useful at all—in fact, it is detrimental.
For instance, Cecile’s first husband, a possessive, jealous man, strenuously
objected any time she went anywhere at all without him. Now
she’s married to Luc, who trusts her implicitly, and she knows it. However,
when she wants to go away for the weekend with her women friends
and he wants her to go with him to his business conference instead, her
conditioned response is triggered and she reverts to Marriage Number
One. Rather than discussing their differences calmly, she immediately
becomes defensive and angry, snarling, “Can’t you ever let me out of
your sight? Don’t you trust me to be on my own without you always
around?”
Always Being Right
“If a man speaks in the woods, and there is no woman to
hear him, is he still wrong?”
—Unknown
Being in relationship can be overwhelming. It can seem difficult to
maintain your individuality. Your sense of self, who you are, and what
you stand for may be threatened when your mate has a decidedly different
opinion or exhibits behavior very different from yours. An unconscious
desire to maintain your self-identity urges you to make the other
person agree with your point of view—conflict results. When you are in
a conflict situation with negative feelings running high, you may want to
win, to be in control, to protect yourself, to punish the other person,
and so on. At that moment, winning can become an all-consuming desire.
You may say or do completely irrational things that cause longterm
damage to your relationship.
Later, when you have cooled down and gained some emotional and
psychological distance, you can see that the little thing (or even the big
thing) you were fighting about was not really that important. At the
time however, you acted as if it were the only thing that mattered. Or
you may realize that your response was just a conditioned reaction that
was completely inappropriate to what was really going on. How can you
remember at these times that your relationship is the most important
thing? We use a process we call jumping to a higher logical level.
Although the higher logical level process is easy to understand, like
many simple things, it is not necessarily easy to do. Jumping to a higher
logical level is a matter of gaining emotional distance from the source
of your internal disturbance so that you can give it a name. Then you
are no longer caught in it because some part of your awareness is witnessing
events as they unfold. Calling on your internal observer is part
of the Tantric path of becoming aware, of learning to use your mind as
a tool for your spirit rather than allowing it to be your master. Once
your witness, or observer, is turned on, you move out of the realm of
powerlessness into the realm of freedom, where you have choices and
options.
When you are feeling powerless, you have no choice—you are stuck.
You carry an emotional weight of fear and inadequacy. It seems as
though events just happen to you and everything is arbitrary. You have
no way to influence outcomes. Behaviors tend to be automatic, conditioned
responses. However, when you jump to a higher logical level,
activating your observer consciousness, you do have choices. You can
choose what to think about and how to think about it. You have the
options of focusing your attention on something other than what you
were caught in, and you can change how you were thinking about what
you were caught in.
For example, if you notice yourself worrying about money, you could
instead stop, listen to the sounds that you hear, the aromas you smell,
the sights you see, and so on. Paying attention to your senses will always
bring you back into the moment, out of the never-ending labyrinth of
your mind. Or you can decide that instead of thinking about money
right now, you will think about the rendezvous later this evening with
your mate. Or you can decide to repeat an affirmation over and over to
yourself, such as, “I can learn to create abundance in all areas of my
life. I can learn to easily attract all the money that I need and want.”
Jumping to a higher logical level is a meta-strategy, a strategy that
enables you to manage other strategies in your life. It is generally useful
in any situation where 1) the contents of the process are less important
than the nature of the thought process itself, and 2) the thought process
exhibits increasingly negative side effects and fewer tangible benefits.
For example, what I worry about is less important than that I am engaged
in the process of worrying. Why I am hyperactive is less important
than that I am hyperactive. What I am procrastinating over is less
important than that I am procrastinating. What I lose my temper over
is less important than that I am losing my temper.
Jumping to a higher logical level does not mean you pretend that
you do not have any problems or ignore your responsibilities of relationship,
parenting, finance, employment, health, and so on. This is not
an avoidance strategy. Rather it helps you handle your difficulties in
appropriate ways at appropriate times…..
No comments:
Post a Comment