I know how you feel. I often have to take the advice to never miss an opportunity to keep my mouth shut, particularly when I will be adding heat rather than light. When I read Jennifer Finney-Boylan’s denunciation of JK Rowling, I read the allegedly offensive article in question. As I recall, Ms Rowling’s views were nothing more incendiary than concerns over bathroom safety. In this time when we all feel a deep sense of threat, we all. We’d to dial it down a bit.
Wow! Imagine this old post-Christian, once-conservative-but-now-not-liberal male heterosexual agreeing with you absolutely 100%! You write, "I’ve continued to see how fickle the mind is, and how I can’t really know what my next move will be—how I have to trust the dark." I've come to question everything, to open my mind up to weigh all possibilities, to withhold judgment ... and just love. I love you, Joan!
A former New Yorker, lived 15 years abroad and found myself in southern rural Louisiana. (It don't get more southern than this!) Intellectual humility is my survival strategy. Keeping my mouth shut, being curious, and maybe asking a question or two. Many on the right are tired of being put down and ignored by the university-educated, urban-elite from the two coasts. They have a point. "We" need to listen with openness and curiosity. Just like living abroad, I am here to learn about the local culture and to meet people with different perspectives. My goal is to explore and share ideas, not to try to change others. AND there are plenty of times when I shut down, feel angry, ignore others, and privately plan on escaping! Thank you Joan for your honesty and all that inquiry within that it sounds like you have been doing.
I love your comment. It's so easy to have stereotypes about different groups, and I feel the media, both liberal and conservative, and social media, all feed into this by in so many ways encouraging (and profiting off of) demonization and twisting things people say and taking them out of context in order to stir up rage, etc. Clickbait, as they call it.
Many people think they have left religion behind only to take up the Religion of Politics which has the same characteristics of "salvation" in right (or left) thinking and of course the main reason for all religious beliefs in existence, which is having the political (religious) belief in an ultimate Utopia, better known as Heaven, ultimate perfection. Same thing Politics/religion.
What you describe is certainly a danger and a potential pitfall in both religion and politics, although it is possible to engage in either or both from a very different perspective.
Aung Suu Kyi once said that religion is indivisible from politics. I kind of blanched at that but when I reflected that America has separation of church and state, which certainly implies potentially dangerous link between religion and politics. It should be clear that fading of the religious authority of the Catholic Church and the rise of the Protestant assertion that people could assume authority of their own beliefs led directly to the rise of secular ideology and warfare based in competing belief systems.
Thank you so much Joan! Regardless of what I think about any point of view you have raised, above all, I respect and salute your honesty and open-mindedness. At this juncture my point of view or what I may believe or what my opinion may be is utterly irrelevant. They pale in the face of your compassion for the best in humanity. The spirit expressed in your words are exactly what our polarised culture and politics need more than ever right now. Again, thank you, and may you continue on your path of radical, brave honesty about the behaviour of all of us.
Thx for sharing this Joan. It seems we have similar personalities and I can relate to having taken this stance with people. If I see a "weakness" in someone's logic or feel they haven't done their "homework" or if they're just plain WRONG I will needle and dig and ultimately piss them off! I think this comes from wanting to be right some of the time, but mostly just wanting the "best" for others. It's really sanctimonius I know but I admit it and/but have good intentions..
For me, it is more than a "potential" pitfall, I see it as an exact parallel. Usually, religion is brainwashed into a child as an infant. That is when political beliefs become established as well. And it is argued in the very same way as you described. There is no "de-converting" someone in a political argument, just the same as with a religious argument. I know, I just had a noisy and contentious phone call with my sister regarding religion. It has divided our family. Both have the same deep-seated beliefs (imaginary) and characteristics. Belief is always imaginary and mind-conceived, consisting of vapor and nothing more. If a different perspective is grown, it is a rare occurrence. But yes, it is certainly possible as you said.
When you know what 20% of the bill is, for the tip, before anyone else at the table.
When you know the correct pronunciation of an unusual word, and you tell someone who has just mispronounced it.
When your son falls face first into a sandbox and you pick him up by his ankles and spray his face with a hose.
When you point out that a home for people with disabilities has no smoke detector and the staff ask if they can wait until tomorrow to install one.
When someone asks if they can have the last piece of cake and you say “sure.”
When you give snacks to the little bulldog that lives next door and seems to have no one to play with, and you feel like you’re sneaking around behind your neighbor’s back.
When you explain something complicated in a simple way.
Thank you so very much Joan. You put in words and shared something I have been struggling with recently. I refer to it as the flip/flop. In my heart nothing changes but sometimes the mind grabs hold in ways that seem overwhelming, overpowering. Usually there is a shift back to calm, more open all inclusive waters.
So appreciate your honest, open sharing, giving hope/trust that what I have experienced will return. Much love for all you give!!
I felt everything you said. Just this morning I read an email from one of my siblings who has to attacked me because I am not agreeing with him and I can not explain to him where I am coming from.
When that happens to me I feel helpless- my body aches- my heart is broken.
What gave me relief in your writing is the list of questions you courageously pose.
Inquiring and being curious.
I felt like a heavy cloud lifting and the ability to look into the sky. At the same time the heaviness
is persisting. Both are happening at the same time. It feels different from just feeling helpless. Like having both feet on the ground. Stable and hurting at the same time.
Hello Joan, I have been wanting to comment on one of your posts.
You ask a series of marvelous questions. At the end you muse that "Maybe it’s a lifelong work of undoing, I suspect that maybe it is."
However, I think that there are answers to these type of questions, and that the answers can be deeply transformative. Once you have it, you can never really go back. And that doesn't mean that you can't play these records over again. But now they have no hold on you, and they are not a catastrophic conundrum. They become merely a benign play of energy that you can turn off at will. I find the answers are all in your life definitions.
I hope you will explore some of these answers in your upcoming posts. For instance:
Is it possible to experience being misunderstood without that triggering suffering?
What is it that generates the suffering?
How do I identify with my views so much that I sometimes feel as if my very life is being threatened by someone who disagrees?
What is under the intense anger, frustration and depression that can arise?
What leads me to bring something up in a conversation that I know will provoke an argument?
Am I getting something (what's my payback) out of the sense of being isolated, different, misunderstood, and alone?
Is it possible to question the certainty I feel about my views?
Is it possible to forgive the world (and other people) for being imperfect? And is it possible to forgive myself?
Am I taking myself and the world too seriously at times, losing my sense of humor, wanting to control and fix everything?
What turns pain into suffering?
How often on social media or in a discussion do I fall into some version of the kind of demonizing hate speech that I know in my heart is malignant and unhelpful?
And beyond all that, what belief-system(s) or ways of life am I still clinging to, or feeling trapped in, that I’m wanting to leave, and what is holding me back? (Even the ones that I don't consciously want to leave, but that I am still trapped in.)
Thanks for your comment. You are probably way more advanced than I am. Having done spiritual work and exploration of various kinds, inquiry of various types, dialog work of the David Bohm type, somatic work, psychotherapy of various kinds, and so on for many decades now, I cannot say that "Once you have it, you can never really go back." Maybe in some way that's true...I am caught up less often and less completely than I once was, and I can perhaps never be entirely hypnotized anymore in the way I once was, but obviously, as my opening story indicates, I'm not immune from getting caught up. I've been writing books and articles, giving talks and holding meetings since 1996, and in those, I have explored in depth all those questions I posed in this article. Yes, they do have answers, and those realizations can be transformative, but in my view, the questions themselves and the open attentive wondering presence they invite is the real "answer." Or, I'd prefer to say, the real jewel. And that jewel is alive. As I see it, answers quickly become dead relics and turn into certainties and then beliefs. I feel the juice is in the open mind of not knowing, looking freshly, being awake right now, no finish-line. You never know when you might see something new and unexpected.
Of course, all this concerns the person, that mirage-like character in the dream-like movie of waking life who appears to progress and regress, and that can all be seen through, but this personal dimension doesn’t seem to vanish forever, and I would say that it has its reality. I posted this on my FB pages tonight, and it seems perhaps relevant here:
The other night, for whatever reason, I was thinking of Adam Bucko. I was remembering a very moving talk he gave that was sent to me on DVD some years ago by a dear friend who died not long after. Adam is a remarkable Christian. He said in his talk that someone had asked him what his biggest challenge was in his ministry. The biggest challenge he faces, he said, is showing up at those times when grace doesn't seem to be present, when it seems to him that he has nothing to offer. His greatest challenge is showing up anyway, trusting that somehow God will show up too. He quoted (or paraphrased and maybe added to) Henri Nouwen, the Dutch Catholic priest and author, saying that the spiritual leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in the world with nothing to offer but his or her own broken and vulnerable self. He also talked about contemplative practice as “being in a state of receptivity and listening.”
Hello Joan and thanks for your response. You have gifted me with the opportunity to further clarify my views (to myself). I feel that I can explain it to some extent, but probably not in a comment format. It is not that it is through decades of work, but maybe it could be encapsulated in a couple of articles. I don't look at it as more advanced or not so advanced. We are each adopting what creates and justifies our habitual mode of being. Anyway, "advanced" is a path within the confines of a context, and I am working in another context.
A) I also know that listening to or reciting words is not transformative. Transformation is created in your chain of doing / experiencing. I say chain in that it is an organic process whereby today's doing sets up the possibilities for tomorrow's discovery, and as you said, looking freshly, being awake right now, and so on.
The renowned spiritual work that you recounted, plus the Byron Katie, siting in silence, and Toni Parker (from above), well, I don't know about them. But yet I do know something about it, because all of it is reflected in what you say and do. I don't consider myself "advanced" in any one of those and I don't follow any prolonged path. Life is perfected more by my careful definitions, not by my being arduous.
It is held that spiritual work comes before mental creations, so in that way it "trumps" the mental world. The choice is then to focus entirely on the spiritual, and discount the verbal definitions. Meditation work is on the feeling level. Your anxiety subsides and you're left with the discovery of a "self" that is temporarily healed of dysfunction. But feelings are fleeting, so you have to do it again. Hence it is a path of many decades, that we are all agreeing on. (I am not going to agree.)
Meditation is also used to relieve the build-up of stress. My method is not to create the stress in the fist place, (not 100% for sure). All the same things still happen which we call stressful. The real stress is not created by those circumstances, but by your expectations that it shouldn't be this way. (But it is.) If you have definitions that it is OK to live with "what is", no stress is created, no meditation is needed. So far it works pretty good.
Until you change your verbal definitions (beliefs), which are how you define what's important for running your life, your overall life structure is not gong to change. Many of these are unconscious and with various assumed paybacks. The moment meditation (or your practices) are finished, those old existing verbal forms are going to recreate the same patterns, and you'll be back in the same loop. Maybe you can find some exceptions, but overall, this is how it works. If this sounds like it renounces everything you've done for decades, it is not an either/or. There is plenty of value in spiritual work, but you have to counterbalance it with improving your definitions. In my opinion, this is where spiritual work comes up short, if it discards all words.
It is really quite straight-forward. And it works. But you can't change your present life structure just by saying so. You have to experiment with it in a little corner of your life, and expand it from there. I am not going to say anything more about the fundamentals in this format.
B) This might be shocking, but you can look at it like all personal, and on up until all world conflict is born in the concept of the "truth". If I am a truth seeker, I have it, (more than you), so it is my job to enlighten you (for your own good). The only reason I would argue with any other person, ever, is because I am right and they are wrong, (bluntly said).
I think that is one of your enlivening questions: "Is it possible to question the certainty I feel about my views?" (Even hold them as certain if you want, but don't try to enforce them on others.)
C) OK, let's finish with some word choices about what we really want in our relationships. What are the verbal technologies that accomplish our objectives? You can share these little by little with the other, or just hold them as your own personal choice points.
1. We make so many judgements about the other person. Which ones should we choose to hold, and which ones to build upon? (The point is don't choose by what you think is the "truth", choose to focus on those judgements which are not counterproductive.)
2. Our objective is to build on mutual dialog and respect, so we will watch for our temptation to scold the other, that they are not "with the program" or in any way deficient. (We can joke around a bit.)
3. Tit for Tat: we may think that every time someone says something, we should respond. I suggest that we can look at it like this, "I have a limited number of allotted statements per week". Use them wisely.
4. We acknowledge that we are all adults, and we do not live in "glass houses", nor force others to tiptoe around our "no-go" zones. We can say what we want, with respect. Or realize that maybe it is not even necessary to say anything?
5. We are not out to crash anyone's belief systems and set those people adrift without their grounding, so we are respecting other people's boundaries. But at the same time, boundaries are the result of holding a certain context, all of which we are examining in the dialogs.
6. We acknowledge that we might come to these discussions to improve how we think and act. Or we might just be entertaining and passing time? In that case it is up to you to participate or to withdraw.
Sorry this is so long. It does take some words. And maybe it will be difficult to get a new perspective in 60 lines of typing?
There's nothing new under the sun (as they say), and indeed none of this sounds like anything I haven't heard many times before...and yet, every moment is new and has never been here before, and thus, you are discovering it freshly and putting it together in a new way, and in that project, I wish you all the best.
Always love your honesty whilst also loving your deep insight (“getting it”) in a “style” that is in a Steinbeck “gut” understanding.
I know how you feel. I often have to take the advice to never miss an opportunity to keep my mouth shut, particularly when I will be adding heat rather than light. When I read Jennifer Finney-Boylan’s denunciation of JK Rowling, I read the allegedly offensive article in question. As I recall, Ms Rowling’s views were nothing more incendiary than concerns over bathroom safety. In this time when we all feel a deep sense of threat, we all. We’d to dial it down a bit.
Wow! Imagine this old post-Christian, once-conservative-but-now-not-liberal male heterosexual agreeing with you absolutely 100%! You write, "I’ve continued to see how fickle the mind is, and how I can’t really know what my next move will be—how I have to trust the dark." I've come to question everything, to open my mind up to weigh all possibilities, to withhold judgment ... and just love. I love you, Joan!
I love you too!
A former New Yorker, lived 15 years abroad and found myself in southern rural Louisiana. (It don't get more southern than this!) Intellectual humility is my survival strategy. Keeping my mouth shut, being curious, and maybe asking a question or two. Many on the right are tired of being put down and ignored by the university-educated, urban-elite from the two coasts. They have a point. "We" need to listen with openness and curiosity. Just like living abroad, I am here to learn about the local culture and to meet people with different perspectives. My goal is to explore and share ideas, not to try to change others. AND there are plenty of times when I shut down, feel angry, ignore others, and privately plan on escaping! Thank you Joan for your honesty and all that inquiry within that it sounds like you have been doing.
I love your comment. It's so easy to have stereotypes about different groups, and I feel the media, both liberal and conservative, and social media, all feed into this by in so many ways encouraging (and profiting off of) demonization and twisting things people say and taking them out of context in order to stir up rage, etc. Clickbait, as they call it.
Many people think they have left religion behind only to take up the Religion of Politics which has the same characteristics of "salvation" in right (or left) thinking and of course the main reason for all religious beliefs in existence, which is having the political (religious) belief in an ultimate Utopia, better known as Heaven, ultimate perfection. Same thing Politics/religion.
What you describe is certainly a danger and a potential pitfall in both religion and politics, although it is possible to engage in either or both from a very different perspective.
Aung Suu Kyi once said that religion is indivisible from politics. I kind of blanched at that but when I reflected that America has separation of church and state, which certainly implies potentially dangerous link between religion and politics. It should be clear that fading of the religious authority of the Catholic Church and the rise of the Protestant assertion that people could assume authority of their own beliefs led directly to the rise of secular ideology and warfare based in competing belief systems.
Wonderful article Joan. Shared it with friends.
Thanks, Rick!
Thank you so much Joan! Regardless of what I think about any point of view you have raised, above all, I respect and salute your honesty and open-mindedness. At this juncture my point of view or what I may believe or what my opinion may be is utterly irrelevant. They pale in the face of your compassion for the best in humanity. The spirit expressed in your words are exactly what our polarised culture and politics need more than ever right now. Again, thank you, and may you continue on your path of radical, brave honesty about the behaviour of all of us.
Thank you!
Thx for sharing this Joan. It seems we have similar personalities and I can relate to having taken this stance with people. If I see a "weakness" in someone's logic or feel they haven't done their "homework" or if they're just plain WRONG I will needle and dig and ultimately piss them off! I think this comes from wanting to be right some of the time, but mostly just wanting the "best" for others. It's really sanctimonius I know but I admit it and/but have good intentions..
For me, it is more than a "potential" pitfall, I see it as an exact parallel. Usually, religion is brainwashed into a child as an infant. That is when political beliefs become established as well. And it is argued in the very same way as you described. There is no "de-converting" someone in a political argument, just the same as with a religious argument. I know, I just had a noisy and contentious phone call with my sister regarding religion. It has divided our family. Both have the same deep-seated beliefs (imaginary) and characteristics. Belief is always imaginary and mind-conceived, consisting of vapor and nothing more. If a different perspective is grown, it is a rare occurrence. But yes, it is certainly possible as you said.
That rings bells.
When you know what 20% of the bill is, for the tip, before anyone else at the table.
When you know the correct pronunciation of an unusual word, and you tell someone who has just mispronounced it.
When your son falls face first into a sandbox and you pick him up by his ankles and spray his face with a hose.
When you point out that a home for people with disabilities has no smoke detector and the staff ask if they can wait until tomorrow to install one.
When someone asks if they can have the last piece of cake and you say “sure.”
When you give snacks to the little bulldog that lives next door and seems to have no one to play with, and you feel like you’re sneaking around behind your neighbor’s back.
When you explain something complicated in a simple way.
You think you are so smart.
And someone else thinks you are a smart ass.
Wow Joan, thank you for your humbling honesty and insight. You always blow my mind (and my heart) wide open.
Thank you so very much Joan. You put in words and shared something I have been struggling with recently. I refer to it as the flip/flop. In my heart nothing changes but sometimes the mind grabs hold in ways that seem overwhelming, overpowering. Usually there is a shift back to calm, more open all inclusive waters.
So appreciate your honest, open sharing, giving hope/trust that what I have experienced will return. Much love for all you give!!
Dear Joan,
I felt everything you said. Just this morning I read an email from one of my siblings who has to attacked me because I am not agreeing with him and I can not explain to him where I am coming from.
When that happens to me I feel helpless- my body aches- my heart is broken.
What gave me relief in your writing is the list of questions you courageously pose.
Inquiring and being curious.
I felt like a heavy cloud lifting and the ability to look into the sky. At the same time the heaviness
is persisting. Both are happening at the same time. It feels different from just feeling helpless. Like having both feet on the ground. Stable and hurting at the same time.
thank you
Darien
Hello Joan, I have been wanting to comment on one of your posts.
You ask a series of marvelous questions. At the end you muse that "Maybe it’s a lifelong work of undoing, I suspect that maybe it is."
However, I think that there are answers to these type of questions, and that the answers can be deeply transformative. Once you have it, you can never really go back. And that doesn't mean that you can't play these records over again. But now they have no hold on you, and they are not a catastrophic conundrum. They become merely a benign play of energy that you can turn off at will. I find the answers are all in your life definitions.
I hope you will explore some of these answers in your upcoming posts. For instance:
Is it possible to experience being misunderstood without that triggering suffering?
What is it that generates the suffering?
How do I identify with my views so much that I sometimes feel as if my very life is being threatened by someone who disagrees?
What is under the intense anger, frustration and depression that can arise?
What leads me to bring something up in a conversation that I know will provoke an argument?
Am I getting something (what's my payback) out of the sense of being isolated, different, misunderstood, and alone?
Is it possible to question the certainty I feel about my views?
Is it possible to forgive the world (and other people) for being imperfect? And is it possible to forgive myself?
Am I taking myself and the world too seriously at times, losing my sense of humor, wanting to control and fix everything?
What turns pain into suffering?
How often on social media or in a discussion do I fall into some version of the kind of demonizing hate speech that I know in my heart is malignant and unhelpful?
And beyond all that, what belief-system(s) or ways of life am I still clinging to, or feeling trapped in, that I’m wanting to leave, and what is holding me back? (Even the ones that I don't consciously want to leave, but that I am still trapped in.)
Thanks for your comment. You are probably way more advanced than I am. Having done spiritual work and exploration of various kinds, inquiry of various types, dialog work of the David Bohm type, somatic work, psychotherapy of various kinds, and so on for many decades now, I cannot say that "Once you have it, you can never really go back." Maybe in some way that's true...I am caught up less often and less completely than I once was, and I can perhaps never be entirely hypnotized anymore in the way I once was, but obviously, as my opening story indicates, I'm not immune from getting caught up. I've been writing books and articles, giving talks and holding meetings since 1996, and in those, I have explored in depth all those questions I posed in this article. Yes, they do have answers, and those realizations can be transformative, but in my view, the questions themselves and the open attentive wondering presence they invite is the real "answer." Or, I'd prefer to say, the real jewel. And that jewel is alive. As I see it, answers quickly become dead relics and turn into certainties and then beliefs. I feel the juice is in the open mind of not knowing, looking freshly, being awake right now, no finish-line. You never know when you might see something new and unexpected.
Of course, all this concerns the person, that mirage-like character in the dream-like movie of waking life who appears to progress and regress, and that can all be seen through, but this personal dimension doesn’t seem to vanish forever, and I would say that it has its reality. I posted this on my FB pages tonight, and it seems perhaps relevant here:
The other night, for whatever reason, I was thinking of Adam Bucko. I was remembering a very moving talk he gave that was sent to me on DVD some years ago by a dear friend who died not long after. Adam is a remarkable Christian. He said in his talk that someone had asked him what his biggest challenge was in his ministry. The biggest challenge he faces, he said, is showing up at those times when grace doesn't seem to be present, when it seems to him that he has nothing to offer. His greatest challenge is showing up anyway, trusting that somehow God will show up too. He quoted (or paraphrased and maybe added to) Henri Nouwen, the Dutch Catholic priest and author, saying that the spiritual leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in the world with nothing to offer but his or her own broken and vulnerable self. He also talked about contemplative practice as “being in a state of receptivity and listening.”
Hello Joan and thanks for your response. You have gifted me with the opportunity to further clarify my views (to myself). I feel that I can explain it to some extent, but probably not in a comment format. It is not that it is through decades of work, but maybe it could be encapsulated in a couple of articles. I don't look at it as more advanced or not so advanced. We are each adopting what creates and justifies our habitual mode of being. Anyway, "advanced" is a path within the confines of a context, and I am working in another context.
A) I also know that listening to or reciting words is not transformative. Transformation is created in your chain of doing / experiencing. I say chain in that it is an organic process whereby today's doing sets up the possibilities for tomorrow's discovery, and as you said, looking freshly, being awake right now, and so on.
The renowned spiritual work that you recounted, plus the Byron Katie, siting in silence, and Toni Parker (from above), well, I don't know about them. But yet I do know something about it, because all of it is reflected in what you say and do. I don't consider myself "advanced" in any one of those and I don't follow any prolonged path. Life is perfected more by my careful definitions, not by my being arduous.
It is held that spiritual work comes before mental creations, so in that way it "trumps" the mental world. The choice is then to focus entirely on the spiritual, and discount the verbal definitions. Meditation work is on the feeling level. Your anxiety subsides and you're left with the discovery of a "self" that is temporarily healed of dysfunction. But feelings are fleeting, so you have to do it again. Hence it is a path of many decades, that we are all agreeing on. (I am not going to agree.)
Meditation is also used to relieve the build-up of stress. My method is not to create the stress in the fist place, (not 100% for sure). All the same things still happen which we call stressful. The real stress is not created by those circumstances, but by your expectations that it shouldn't be this way. (But it is.) If you have definitions that it is OK to live with "what is", no stress is created, no meditation is needed. So far it works pretty good.
Until you change your verbal definitions (beliefs), which are how you define what's important for running your life, your overall life structure is not gong to change. Many of these are unconscious and with various assumed paybacks. The moment meditation (or your practices) are finished, those old existing verbal forms are going to recreate the same patterns, and you'll be back in the same loop. Maybe you can find some exceptions, but overall, this is how it works. If this sounds like it renounces everything you've done for decades, it is not an either/or. There is plenty of value in spiritual work, but you have to counterbalance it with improving your definitions. In my opinion, this is where spiritual work comes up short, if it discards all words.
It is really quite straight-forward. And it works. But you can't change your present life structure just by saying so. You have to experiment with it in a little corner of your life, and expand it from there. I am not going to say anything more about the fundamentals in this format.
B) This might be shocking, but you can look at it like all personal, and on up until all world conflict is born in the concept of the "truth". If I am a truth seeker, I have it, (more than you), so it is my job to enlighten you (for your own good). The only reason I would argue with any other person, ever, is because I am right and they are wrong, (bluntly said).
I think that is one of your enlivening questions: "Is it possible to question the certainty I feel about my views?" (Even hold them as certain if you want, but don't try to enforce them on others.)
C) OK, let's finish with some word choices about what we really want in our relationships. What are the verbal technologies that accomplish our objectives? You can share these little by little with the other, or just hold them as your own personal choice points.
1. We make so many judgements about the other person. Which ones should we choose to hold, and which ones to build upon? (The point is don't choose by what you think is the "truth", choose to focus on those judgements which are not counterproductive.)
2. Our objective is to build on mutual dialog and respect, so we will watch for our temptation to scold the other, that they are not "with the program" or in any way deficient. (We can joke around a bit.)
3. Tit for Tat: we may think that every time someone says something, we should respond. I suggest that we can look at it like this, "I have a limited number of allotted statements per week". Use them wisely.
4. We acknowledge that we are all adults, and we do not live in "glass houses", nor force others to tiptoe around our "no-go" zones. We can say what we want, with respect. Or realize that maybe it is not even necessary to say anything?
5. We are not out to crash anyone's belief systems and set those people adrift without their grounding, so we are respecting other people's boundaries. But at the same time, boundaries are the result of holding a certain context, all of which we are examining in the dialogs.
6. We acknowledge that we might come to these discussions to improve how we think and act. Or we might just be entertaining and passing time? In that case it is up to you to participate or to withdraw.
Sorry this is so long. It does take some words. And maybe it will be difficult to get a new perspective in 60 lines of typing?
.
There's nothing new under the sun (as they say), and indeed none of this sounds like anything I haven't heard many times before...and yet, every moment is new and has never been here before, and thus, you are discovering it freshly and putting it together in a new way, and in that project, I wish you all the best.