15. Unstress yourself. Arranging to be stressed is your Box’s strategy for avoiding intimacy, and our culture’s principal distraction from authenticity. Here is how to unstress: Get enough sleep – take naps. Drink enough water – not just coffee, tea, soda, or alcohol. Take a warm bath. Eat well – not too much or too little. Avoid overstimulating yourself – manage your energy. Exercise. Stay healthy – do not catch colds. Renegotiate overwork and overwhelm. Do not have accidents – get nurtured through intentional physical intimacy instead.
16. Move instantaneously without procrastination. There is often no need to think about or discuss things. What if your instinctual intuition was God giving you direct instructions as to exactly what to do now? And then you decide to think about it? Stop looking for triple confirmation. Skip the explanations – they are intellectual superfluosity. Just move.
17. Be yes. When your partner or child says no, be yes for their no, meaning support their no. Say, “I love you and I respect you whatever you choose.” Then honor their choice without further discussion. Carry no emotional baggage about it. “Yes, but…” is negation. Do not say, “Yes, but…” Instead learn to say, “Yes, and…” When someone offers you an idea to try out, accept their offer through being a yes for their offer. “Accepting offers” is an important piece of improvisational theater. (For more on this see Keith Johnstone’s great book Improv.) We so often reject what we are offered because it is not in our original plans. Who do you think made the plans anyway? Are you bending your life around, forcing other people as well as your endless self to fit into your Box’s plans? Try this experiment: Do not reject whatever your partner offers you. Surprise them with your utter lack of resistance. Provide pleasurable accompaniment. Even if you are holding hands at a football game you are still holding hands. Pay attention to what you are yes about. In this case, be yes about the experience of the hand you are holding.
18. Commit to what your partner is committed to. This means developing possibility listening. Listen for what your partner is committed to and then commit to that. Most of us do not really know what our partner, our children, or our boss are committed to. It may be to finish knitting a sweater by Christmas, or to do 500 push-ups, or to open a successful restaurant, or to spend some weekend hours totally relaxing. We all have both conscious and unconscious commitments. Many of the unconscious commitments that we are most fiercely committed to fulfilling are irresponsible. This experiment is not like Bonnie’s commitment to Clyde’s irresponsible habit of bank robbing. This experiment is about listening for and committing to your partner’s responsible commitments.
19. If you ever get sick or hurt yourself in an accident, even in a minor way like bumping your head or cutting your finger while slicing carrots, develop the immediate habit of saying “Thank you” to the universe. You can either trust or distrust the universe; it can be your friend or your enemy. If you establish a trusting relationship to the universe, that trust includes everything, even things that at first seem “bad” or “negative.” Having an accident sends a shock to your attention. Most often, accidents occur in a moment when we are unconscious or “asleep,” not paying attention to our attention. In the moment of the accident we are shocked into the “waking state” and are aware of what we are aware of. If you reject the value of the accident you also reject the waking state. If you do not wake up immediately and fully in response to each little bug bite, intestinal pain, itch or ache, then the universe has to resort to bigger shocks to wake you up, and it will. A headache does not mean a lack of aspirin. Figure it out. The universe wants you awake and evolving. When you are not, the universe will do whatever it can to get through to you. If you have already decided to trust the universe, then if you smash your toe it is “cosmic acupuncture” at work on you. Be grateful. If you are sick in bed there is some use to that, even if you don’t see it at first. Write poetry. Get rested. Grieve the loss of a loved one. Paint. Let the puzzlement of it work you into a new shape. This does not mean that anything “bad” is actually punishment for some past “sin.” It means, “Who are you to judge something as bad?” Life is not pain free. “Life is hard and then you die.” Dying from some horrible disease does not necessarily mean anything at all. The world is so full of toxins and contaminants that your body will eventually succumb to something – it does not mean you did something wrong. When you refuse to be a victim and you trust the universe, even in the midst of pain, illness and accidents, you can stay open to receiving the benefits. Doing so is a huge blessing for your partner, even if your “partner” is the temporary cohabitant of a hospital room.
20. Avoid saying, “Obviously….” As in, “Would you like me to take your coat?” “Obviously.” Or, “Did you enjoy your meal?” “Obviously.” Instead say yes or no. When decoded, what “obviously” really means is, “you idiot!”
And Above All, Never Ignore Your Ignorance
Do not forget that you are truly an expert at creating ordinary human relationship. Do not forget your ignorance. Ignorance and knowledge, darkness and light, scarcity and abundance, all the contrasting opposites come hand in hand. You do not get one without the other. Do not live in the fantasy expectation that you can only be the source of extraordinary human relationship and that ordinary human relationship is a thing of the past. Can a horse outrun its own tail? Can you dine in five-star restaurants without making shit? Even if you do not consciously choose actions that create ordinary human relationship, they are always at hand. The ignorance never leaves you.
Even if you do the experiments from this book and you succeed at entering extraordinary or Archetypal domains of relationship, you can never ignore your well-oiled mechanisms for enlivening Shadow Principles, lest they sneak out and stealthily devour your hard-earned treasures.
Ignorance is like a rabid dog. As soon as you stop guarding against a rabid dog it will jump up and bite your ass. Trying to forget your previous and still readily-available incompetences can be a rabid dog biting your ass if you turn arrogant or proud about the new soft skills you have learned. Becoming aware of what you were not aware of before can produce a superiority that the Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana Master Chögyam Trungpa called “spiritual materialism” in his book of the same title. Your hard-earned soft skills can be a justification used by your Box for regarding yourself as someone who really knows something. You take a secretly haughty position, from which you can look down over your nose, disgustedly, at all the poor ignorant peasants around you. Before you know it, you will be mentally competing against others to find who is the better practitioner! Spiritual materialism is a seriously debilitating affliction and should be treated with full strength anti-memes the moment it is detected (like, now).
Another way your ignorance can bite you in the ass is if you judge your previous incompetence as “bad.” Judging the behaviors that produce ordinary human relationship as “bad” and banishing them into forgetfulness is fanaticism. Fanaticism is the fantasy that: “I never do this anymore [forgetting that just a short while ago you did do exactly this]; if you do it then you need to be fixed.” Fanaticism will not protect you from your own ignorance.
The only thing that protects you from your own ignorance is diamond-sharp clarity that behaviors are neither good nor bad, but that each behavior produces a different kind of result. Vigilant consciousness means holding a sword of persistent awakeness about what behaviors you enact and why. The sword is presence of mind, paying relaxed but precise attention to your purpose; staying at the edge, able to move in any direction. Vigilant consciousness is at the core of the term “practice.” The only thing that protects you in each moment from falling back into being a slave to the purposes of ordinary human relationship is your practice.
It is not like you can practice for a number of months or years and then achieve some kind of steady-state safety zone of “mastery.” Such “mastery” is an illusion presented by the Box. The illusion is that the Box can sacrifice to make a flurry of efforts and achieve a certi
ficate of “mastery,” after which you can kick back and relax, assured that you are a responsible Adult and will only create extraordinary human relationship. It does not work that way. Ask any true master. Their answer will be the same: “You will need to practice until your last breath.”
21. Take care of the kids. You have kids. Take care of them. This is an eighteen- or twenty-year commitment of time, energy, money and attention. Such an investment was made in you. Do it for them. It is easy to take care of children because their problems amount to one of five things: They are 1) hungry, 2) tired, 3) physically hurt, 4) sick, 5) unheard. This number “5” is the most problematical for parents, and the most easily resolved by engaging the completion loop (See Section 6-O) with your child. Recall that a communication persists until it is received. Holding unreceived communications is painful for the child. Receiving communications is healing. Listen directly to what your child or partner says. Repeat back what you heard them say until they confirm that you got it by saying yes. The yes signifies that you have received their communication accurately. As soon as you get a yes, the communication drops into the next deeper level of communion and a new communication begins.
22. Make boundaries with the kids instantly and without effort. Being a family is like singing a familiar song together. You already know how the song goes. You already know the melody and the words. When one note or one word is even slightly off, in timing or tone, you recognize it instantly in your whole body. This is the key to making boundaries. You detect when a correction needs to be made the millisecond the mood is off. Act then. Do not even think. Handle it. Move. Take responsibility for being the parent and make the changes during the singing so that the singing can continue in its beautiful harmony. There are two ways to conduct the orchestration of your family: neurotic control or responsible navigating. Neurotic control serves the comfort of your Box. Responsible navigating serves the Principles of family, communication, and extraordinary human love. Do not confuse the two.
23. Whining is manipulation that a person (child or adult) does rather than being in relationship. Tolerate no whining. Period. When there is whining, start a meta-conversation: “I notice that you are whining. Whining is its own payoff. Are you willing to switch to a different kind of conversation? If not I will talk with you later.” Make a boundary: “No whining. I will not participate in a whining conversation.” Create clarity: “That specific behavior is whining. I am not a garbage can for whining.” Create possibility: “Is there some feeling that you want to share? Do you have a need? Do you have a different opinion? Is there something moving in you?” Then listen. But, if whining continues, go somewhere else or have the person whine somewhere else, not into you. This is not about them; it is simple clarity about the quality of communication that you support in your relationship. Whining yourself or permitting your mate, children, employees or boss to whine around you is beneath the dignity of an Adult relationship. Make clear distinctions about exactly what constitutes whining, including tone of voice, mood, and the intention of the message. Whining happening around you is feedback that you are creating ordinary human relationship. When whining stops, then talk together.
24. Feed your soul. It is not your partner’s job to feed your soul. In rare instances both people in a relationship require the same soul food at the same time and can lead projects together, or can live in praise of the same spiritual master. But don’t fool yourself about this! Having projects together does not necessarily solve more problems than it causes. Your partner may need totally different soul food than you do. Respect the different need like you would respect your partner ordering liver and onions even when you want to eat Caesar salad. Encourage them to get their soul fed, and take care to feed yours.
25. Live integrity. Most of us freak out just hearing the word “integrity.” Our nervous system sends lie detectors off the scale just seeing words like “accountable,” “impeccable,” or “responsible” written on a piece of paper. “Integrity” simply means doing what you say you are going to do. “I will put a new light bulb in,” is not an empty phrase. It is a measurable promise. People to whom you say such things, even offhandedly, take note. They cannot help it. Promises go into the soul, and then the soul starts waiting for the promise to be kept through your actions. If you do not do what you say you are going to do, what you say and what you do are not one, they are not integral. With enough incomplete promises, your partner’s being-to-being connection to you will break down in confusion and resentment. This is totally predictable and totally avoidable. Being “integrity in action” builds more and more connection.
26. “Rub her feet.” This is an amazing experiment to be done almost anywhere and any time for no reason. This extraordinary idea comes from Lazarus Long, the character from Robert Heinlein’s novel, Time Enough for Love, who lived 3500 years often in the company of women – obvious proof that he knew what he was talking about!
27. Try again. You have probably tried any number of things with your partner that did not seem to work. Maybe you tried to have them tell you about their fears, or tried to relax yourself more and be happy while visiting with the in-laws, or tried to be more appreciative of the children. When at first our trials do not work, we tend to not try again. The experiment here is to go ahead and try again. In extraordinary human relationship, do-overs are allowed. Try again, even if the first time that you tried was only a few seconds ago. You might be surprised to find how many possibilities are available in each next three seconds.
SECTION 6-Ω
Ending An Extraordinary Human Relationship
Ending or Not
There are three sensible reasons for a relationship to end: violence, drugs, or lack of intimacy. None of these circumstances provides an absolute reason to end a relationship. Nobody can decide for you to end a relationship, just as nobody can decide for you to start one. And besides all that, there is nothing in the rulebook that says you have to make sense.
Violence in a relationship may be physical, psychological or emotional. The drugs in use may be legal or illegal drugs. Using violence or drugs as a reason to end a relationship is completely understandable. But, no matter how understandable a reason is, using a reason to end your relationship gives the reason the responsibility for your decision. If the reason has the responsibility, then the reason has the power, not you. Giving the power of your decision to a reason is an attempt to avoid responsibility for making a choice.
It is quite understandable and acceptable to use violence or drugs as a reason to end a relationship. But when it comes to using “lack of intimacy” as the reason for ending a relationship, the reason itself becomes questionable. Without a complete education and training in extraordinary human relationship, it is quite predictable that the only kind of relationship you can create is ordinary human relationship. Ordinary human relationship is contexted in low drama enacted through blame, resentment, withhold, justification, complaining, being right or making wrong. It just so happens that these are exactly the same behaviors that avoid intimacy! Until you have practiced creating extraordinary human relationship with feedback and coaching for some time, you will most likely continue creating only ordinary human relationship. Having no ability to create intimacy and then using “lack of intimacy” as a reason to end a relationship, as common as this is, approaches the absurd.
But it can get even more complex and absurd. Take for example resentment. Once we have buried a resentment about our partner into our heart, that resentment will stay there and continue causing pain until such time as we consciously and intentionally take that particular resentment out of our heart. The pain of having that resentment provides us with a justifiable, experiential reason for behaving with disrespect toward our partner, and, oh, by the way, fulfilling our Shadow Principles and abundantly feeding our Gremlin at our partner’s expense. We may therefore set up a complex, mostly unconscious ordinary-human-relationship game with our partner, based on reasons that are empowered by resentments about
things that happened between us long ago. Taking away even one resentment would destabilize our game. Without the heart-torturing resentment we might lose motivation for our revengeful behavior, and then our Gremlin would have to go hungry.
Resentment-empowered reasons justifying subtle and overt Gremlin-feeding interactions is how most of us live out our ordinary human relationships. From this perspective it may seem easier to not learn anything about all this stuff and to let things stay how they are. But, if things how they are become too painful to continue, ending our relationship looks easier than the even more painful process of taking the hooks of resentment out of our heart and starting over again with the same person.
Decisions vs. Reasons
Regardless of how good your reason is for making a decision, every conscious or unconscious decision you make is unavoidably your responsibility. Since you already have responsibility for your decisions, you may as well also have the power that naturally accompanies responsibility. If you take back the power for making your decision, then you no longer need to hide your decision behind a reason. This means you are making your decisions for no reason. Taking responsibility for making decisions for no reason is an astonishing change of perspective (a change that you would do best to keep in the privacy of your own mind, heart, soul and body).
In the public’s eye, you are more socially acceptable if you provide understandable reasons for what you decide. The point is, decide first. Make reasons later. If you use reasons, do your reason-making as an act of “conscious theater,” that is, know that the reasons you present are a fabrication and do not actually have any power in your decision. Use reasons like PR to make your decision understandable and acceptable to others, but not as a basis for actually making the decision.
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