The Conscious Heart (35 page)

KATHLYN: It sounds as if you’re putting your attention on creativity and generativity—enjoying and passing on what you know.

MARY KENT: We taught a class on creating conscious relationships last year and had a great time. Now we’re doing the work for us, especially learning how to take space, which I always used to think was selfish.

JERRY: Now I really appreciate Mary Kent and our relationship, each day.

Jerry, nearing eighty when he made that last statement, beamed at Mary Kent with his piercing blue eyes and looked like a schoolkid at his birthday party. Mary Kent accepted his love with serenity and returned gratitude. The interview over, we looked at each other with tears in our eyes. Both Gay and I feel that we’ve been touched by grace, that we’ve been given the opportunity to be in the presence of a holy relationship.

18/Removing Projections

O
n the path of the conscious heart, flexibility is both a gift and a tool. Most couples who come to work with us have foundered on the issue of control, which stifles flexibility. In many partnerships the power struggle of who gets to be right—who’s the boss, whose agenda gets priority—consumes the creative energy. Faced with decisions that seem to imply compromise, many partners wonder, “How can I get what I want here?” rather than, “How can we both have what we want?” What are they afraid will happen if they let go a little? Why do they hold to their positions with such life-or-death rigidity? The answer is that most couples are projecting onto each other in those moments: They
are
in the
grip of a life-or-death issue, but it is one from long ago that has nothing to do with the present.

A key element of our work with couples is to remove such projections. We do this in a radical manner: We listen carefully to the central complaints of both partners, then ask each one to take responsibility for having created the specific things they are complaining about. An uproar usually follows. He may say: “But wait! That’s the way she actually
is!
She
is
lazy (or crabby or sexually stingy).” She may say: “But wait! That’s the way he actually
is!
He
is
uncommunicative (or lazy or critical).” We sometimes call this issue the “is-ing” problem. “is-ing” kills flexibility. “This
is
a clothespin.” “This
is
a chair.” “This
is
my husband. He
is
stubborn. He
is
the person who only eats eggs over easy, with two, not one, dollops of ketchup.” When we stop “is-ing” the other person, we are faced with the unknown. The floppy, flabby, spineless monster oozes out to terrify us—the nothing-definite, nothing-to-plan-on-or-count-on, no-structure monster. But from this void springs the possibility of the creative reinvention of the relationship. Many people would rather sacrifice their relationships than bend and stretch, consider another perspective, or confront their fear of loss of control.

We say in reply to these outcries: “The other person may be that way or may not be, but one thing’s for sure. You have a role in it—at the very least you picked this person. So your goal now is to drop your end of it. The point is this:
The very same energy that has gone into complaining or making the other person wrong is the energy that is required to make a personal change within ourselves
.

From an essence perspective, making this move is crucial. Only by opening up to complete responsibility in ourselves can we reconnect with the universe at large. When we are withdrawing into victimhood, we are breaking our connection with the universe. From this position of cosmic aloneness, everything looks bleak. Only when we connect ourselves again with the source of creation do we make a seamless union with the universe again.

That is why when we find ourselves blaming the other person,
we must (often reluctantly) point the finger back at ourselves—in a wondering and not in a blameful way, if possible—and ask ourselves, “What is my contribution to this situation?”

Usually these power struggles spring from fear, especially fear of change, of the form dissolving. We’re afraid a changed relation-ship won’t re-form into anything we’ll like. We’re especially afraid of our partner’s changes. If you married a button-down suited partner and he begins to change, part of your brain immediately equates his changes with Uncle Ed’s transformation from a bank president into a Bermuda-shorts-and-striped-shirt bird watcher. But by resisting change we actually argue with the way life moves. The universe is always forming, dissolving, and re-forming in new patterns. If you consciously embrace change in your relationship, you can surf the waves of change more easily. And you might even have fun.

19/Synchronicity: Making Friends with the Universe

Y
ou may have experienced days where everything seems to go your way. You want something, and it appears; you think of a person, and they call; the picture you’ve been searching for for months turns up in a book you pick up off the shelf. These seemingly magical times appear and disappear without reason, as you know if you’ve ever tried to think your way into grace.

This smooth blend of right place and right time, which we sometimes call synchronicity, sweetens a relationship. Kathlyn says, “I was in Germany teaching a seminar and picked up the phone to call Gay just as he was picking up the phone nine thousand miles away to dial me. The timing was so close, the
phone didn’t even ring on either end.” In our lectures one of us will sometimes think of an example or experience a split second before the other one says it. We’ll both start humming the same song at the same time. We’ll call each other from a trip and say, “I just had the idea that it would be great to …” and the other one will laugh and say, “I just had the same idea.”

A friend of ours, Steve, shares his experiences of synchronicity from one twenty-four-hour period: “I formed a new intention one evening and spent time saying it as a whole-body communication, letting my muscles, organs, and bones express the intention as well as my mind. The intention was, ‘I am content in knowing that I have and will continue to have all that I need—easily and flowing.’ I voiced this intention at the beginning of a session with a body worker who was about to give me a deep massage.

“The next day after meditation it was nine-thirty, and I wanted to talk with my accountant. His office opens at nine-thirty. As I was thinking that, the phone rang; it was his assistant saying my accountant wanted to talk to me. Fantastic! I didn’t even have to dial! Then I thought about my new video being reproduced and remembered something I needed to remind the director about. Seconds later he called to tell me my videos were ready to be picked up. Similar events happened all day. I wanted to share a new CD with my son Jesse, and he called, as if having read my mind. I faxed Gay about something, and he called to say he was thinking the same thought when the fax came through. I wondered whether an important business client had left for a trip yet, and he called. Gay and Kathlyn’s office director called me to ask for a phone number to order a new water filter that I have. I wasn’t sure where it was, but I was thinking about it as I went out to check the mail. Among the letters was a card from the filter company with their number reminding me to reorder.

“I wanted and couldn’t find oranges today. When I went to a restaurant with a friend for lunch, we didn’t like the menu. We walked three blocks to a great Thai restaurant and on the way saw the farmers’ market, with ten-pound bags of oranges on every table. That evening as Katie and I were walking into a movie, I was
telling her a new presentation story I had invented and tried out on my assistant. We walked into the theater, and there was my assistant, getting ready to see another movie in the same theater. Later that evening, as a finale, Katie and I were silently sitting side by side on the couch working on our PowerBooks. She looked up and said, ‘I’m working on the synchronicity section and would love to get your notes about today as an example,’ just as I was printing them out!”

File all that in the category called “having a good day.” What had happened to produce such a stream of easy connections? That number of incidents seems too high to be coincidental. We think that one key to synchronicity in daily life is whole-body participation. When life itself is your dance partner, such events are not surprising. Steve didn’t just think about what he wanted; he took his intention into a bodywork session and got the support of another person for his desire. Then he faced, breathed, and moved with his whole body’s response. Sometimes with a big positive intention we flush up big resistance or barriers—what we call the Upper Limits Problem. Essentially Steve let his body get big enough to hold a new direction.

Steve also let go of trying or worrying. He set his intention and then went into his day. We’ve found countless times that the universe is ready to support our expression. But if we don’t catch the wave, we can’t experience support. The more we cultivate an inner experience of space, the more synchronous events occur. Synchronicity seems to come from space, so the more time we spend in the space of meditation, nondoing, or being, the more events flow harmoniously.

Another key seems to be full participation with life as it’s actually happening. When you argue with life, you fall off the wave into the push-pull of a power struggle. It’s a struggle you’re not going to win. As Frank Zappa once said, “In the war between you and the world, back the world.” Our good friend Alex shares an experience that illustrates the relationship between accepting the way things are and synchronicity.

“Recently,” she told us, “I have been exploring the activity of
letting go of worrying and trying to make things happen. My interest was piqued when I noticed that amazing results occurred in my life directly after letting go.

“My partner and I had a conversation one afternoon about meaningful, intimate relationships from our past. I told him about Tom, a passionate, long-distance romance that ended abruptly years ago. One day we just stopped writing and calling, neither of us willing to relocate or to state the obvious. I wondered about him from time to time. He had moved, and the hours I invested in directory research had failed to turn up his current address.

“My bewildered current partner asked if I was still carrying a torch for Tom. Of course, the answer was yes. This fellow was occupying a big space in my heart. I agreed to come to resolution with this old relationship as soon as possible.

“I pondered for quite a while how this resolution was going to happen. I live on the West Coast, but the last connection I’d had with Tom was in New York. Was it back to directories, endless hours of operator assistance, or hiring a detective? I felt frustrated and realized that I was getting paltry results for the amount of time and energy I was investing. Then I decided to let go and be willing to have resolution happen easily, even if I didn’t know how.

“Two days later my partner and I were checking in at the airport. As we left the ticket agent and headed for our departure gate, there was Tom standing just a few feet away. We simultaneously caught sight of each other. Even though twelve years had passed, we chatted easily and briefly. He was just in the airport to change planes. He had moved to the West Coast, married, and was thoroughly enjoying raising his two daughters. I left our encounter with a full sense of resolution and a freed heart.”

20/Healing Old Traumas