Sadness
Do You Want To Dance?
Ram Dass ( formally Richard Alpert) tells
the Sikh story of the Holy person who gave each of
two of his disciples a chicken and said " Go kill
the chicken where no one can see." One of the
students went behind a fence and killed the chicken.
The other walked around for many days and then came
back to the teacher with his chicken still in hand.
The Holy one said, " You didn't kill the chicken!" To
which the student replied, "Well Master, everywhere
I go, the chicken sees!" The point, for those
of you wondering what chickens have to do with relationships,
is that there are unlimited opportunities for creating
joy in relationships when we are conscious and willing
to see them.
A lack of joy in relationship comes from a lack of aliveness or connectedness
to ourselves or each other. In some sense, one or both people in the relationship
have made either conscious or unconscious contracts to maintain the status
quo or keep things superficial. When you are conscious, there is always another,
deeper level to which you can go, and going there brings back aliveness and
joy.
Most of us really want an authentic and profoundly present relationship in
our life. However, there aren't many of us who have ever experienced that kind
of connection, even from our parents. That means we are charting new territory.
It feels safer to get to familiar levels of intimacy, and then put the process
on cruise control because going deeper may feel unfamiliar and frightening.
Other reasons why we make contracts to avoid going deeper are usually based
in fear. For instance, you may fear that going deeper will result in change,
and change could result in abandonment. Perhaps, you feel ill-equipped to deal
with your intense feelings or those of your partner. You may fear hearing your
partner's real feelings because you are worried that those feelings will reflect
negatively upon you or something you are doing. Or, you may not be sure how
to get out of the painful dynamics of control, manipulation, or shaming that
get triggered when issues become heavy.
The first step in bringing the joy back into your relationship is to open the
communication back up and begin talking to each other about your real feelings.
The following exercise is a great tool to assist you in that process. For mate
relationships, doing this exercise results in greater intimacy, vulnerability
and sharing in addition to deeper bonding and increased sexuality. It will
impact other important relationships by creating greater mutual respect, understanding,
growth and aliveness as well. Here's how you start.
1. At the beginning of your week, schedule and set aside two half-hour periods
of time on different days/nights; one for you and one for your partner. Make
this a top priority. No canceling. Decide in advance who will talk and who
will facilitate on each night. On your night you will be the talker and on
your partner's night he or she will talk.
2. One of you will be the talker the entire
half-hour and one will be the listener the entire time
during each session. If you don't have a specific topic
in mind, just talk about how the process feels to you,
or what you are feeling in your body. This may seem
like a long time but the time will go quickly once
you feel comfortable with the process.
3. If the one who is talking has difficulty
continuing for the entire time, the facilitator may
ask questions or help the talker to focus. Any questions
should be completely free from the facilitator's agenda
or needs. Questions should not reflect value judgments,
facial expressions that reflect the listeners views
or any personal "need to know" that the facilitator
may have. When the talker is talking, the space and
time belongs solely to him or her. Their space is sacred
and should not contain or get contaminated with the
listener's agenda.
4. This is not a fault finding mission.
This is a time to express feelings and thoughts from
an "I" space. No defending, demanding, ultimatums,
no blame i.e. "you make me feel."
5. No matter what is said by the talker,
the listener responds "as if" the content
has nothing to do with him or her Act as if you are
listening to a stranger with compassion but without
personal concern or investment about what is being
said. For instance, if your partner says, " I
feel so lonely I could just die." You would not
respond with, " I don't understand why, I've been
home every night this week!" Instead, you might
ask, "How does it feel to be so lonely you could
just die?" This allows your partner to go on to
explore his or her feelings " Well my best friend
just moved away and when I was a child we moved so
often I never had a best friend I could count on." Nine
times out of ten, your partner's feelings will have
nothing to do with you. However, the majority of the
time, we stop the process by taking everything our
partners says personally, and the result is their real
feelings never get shared.
6. When you are finished ask yourselves
three questions :1. What did you hear me say? 2. Did
we do the process effectively? 3. How can we do it
better?
7. Discuss ways in which the process could
be improved. Do not discuss content unless mutually
agreed it's in the best interest of BOTH of you to
do so.
If you commit to the process, you will find you are able to go more deeply
into feelings each week. The result? More joy, a renewed feeling of closeness
- the real dance of intimacy. One gentle reminder! Be willing to laugh at yourself
and the ways you each take yourselves out of the process. We have all invested
great amounts of time and energy learning to stay safe and protected from our
feelings. Peeling the layers of protection off, if done without blame, can
be amusing and exciting. Go for it. Recovering Together
July 1999
Dr. Dina Evan
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