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[post_content] => Last week I saw a show by a troop of comedians at a tiny theater in Montana. Though they were talented, I didn’t find myself laughing much at the recurring “battle of the sexes” theme. The men accused the women of being frigid and overly emotional. The women complained that the men need to be mothered and only care about sex. And back and forth it went. Sure, there’s comic relief in sharing about our common issues, but as I sat there seeing men and women cast somewhat bitterly in these one-dimensional ways, I couldn’t help thinking, “Are we really still doing this?”
In my previous article, we looked at the role that attitude plays in the health and sustainability of a relationship. Of course, you can’t make your partner change their attitude, but it’s worth fully exploiting the potential of your own attitude before concluding that the relationship isn’t going to work. One way to be responsible for your attitude is by abstaining from relating your partner as a stereotype.
I believe almost everyone does this to an extent. It’s difficult to banish from our minds the ideas we have about men, women, and humans in general. Even if your partner isn’t a typical male or female, your conditioning can cause you to relate to them based on ideas and experiences from the past. And even when you relate to someone simply based on your ideas about that specific person – rather than whoever they are in this very moment – this may still serve as an impediment to authentic connection.
Practice presence with them. It’s good to start with a relatively casual conversation. Let both parties be innocent – try to enter the conversation without judgment, expectations, or lenses. Who knows what might happen and how you might see the other person if you were to enter the exchange with absolute freshness.
See if you can internally choose when to talk and when to listen. When it’s your turn to listen, don’t think about what you’re going to say next. Just listen. Listen with your ears and eyes and heart. Breathe slowly and fully.
What else is involved in “your work”? Here are some examples:
To the extent that you actively work to resolve past experiences (especially traumatic ones) that infringe on your current ability to show up “cleanly” with your partner, you will benefit.
To the extent that you work to deactivate your “buttons” which cause you to make you react disproportionately to relatively benign behaviors by your partner, you will benefit.
To the extent that you choose to show up in your relationship with as much presence and enthusiasm as you can muster, you will benefit.
To the extent that you take responsibility for your baggage, attitude, communication, and interpretations, you will benefit.
To the extent that you choose to remember and honor your commitment (assuming, of course, that neither party is getting hurt by remaining together), you will benefit.
All these benefits are yours whether or not the relationship survives, and the chances of its survival are so much greater when you’re an active and responsible participant in the above ways. Further, if you’re not in a relationship but want to be, doing your work will make for a healthier relationship when the time comes, and it will also support you to make better choices of who to invite into your life. If you’re not in a romantic relationship and don’t care to be, this work will serve you in all your other relationships, including the one with yourself.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Relationship Repair Part Two: Do Your Own Work
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[post_content] => Last week I shared a quote from spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti: “Do you want to know my secret? I don’t mind what happens.” Then we looked at the differences between an absolute spiritual truth and the relative perspective of most humans. When we encounter an absolute view that we haven’t personally realized and experienced, sometimes it doesn’t make sense or it even has the opposite effect of what was intended.
If we imagine “I don’t mind what happens” to mean “nothing bothers me,” this contradicts most people’s daily experience. But it fits right in with a common perception when we’re evolved or enlightened we’ll be imperturbable. So, without having realized the absolute truth, we might apply it to our relative experience in a way that amounts to denying our humanity.
Buddhist psychologist and author, John Welwood, who coined the term “spiritual bypass,” explained that we have a tendency to use absolute truths of spirituality to dismiss “relative human needs, feelings, psychological problems, relational difficulties, and developmental deficits.” He believed we need to recognize “two different tracks of human development— which we might call growing up and waking up, healing and awakening, or becoming a genuine human person and going beyond the person altogether.”1 Thus, it’s possible to resolve all our psychological problems without achieving a spiritual awakening, and it’s possible to wake up spiritually and still have a highly dysfunctional personality.
So, what is the place of such statements of absolute spiritual truth? In my opinion it’s still useful to expose ourselves to them. We shouldn’t confuse the destination with the path, and we shouldn’t expect ourselves to be able to embody them at will. But they can still serve as a messenger to the soul. When we encounter a statement like, “I don’t mind what happens,” perhaps it’s like a key that unlocks something within us. Maybe it stirs a place in us that remembers this, beneath the slumbering mind, and begins to initiate an unraveling of what has caused us to forget. Perhaps it inspires us to understand what this means, to experience it directly for ourselves. Perhaps it makes us ask, “What would my life be like if this were true for me?”
Meanwhile, what can you do when you find ourselves minding what happens? You’re in good company. Virtually everyone in the world has times when they mind what’s happening. People in pain, people who are afraid, people who are lonely or grieving, people who can’t fall asleep, people witnessing violence or injustice . . . most of them mind what’s happening. So here are some options.
Option one is to suffer. Highly unpleasant but very popular.
Option two is to change something external. Sometimes this is possible and useful, other times it isn’t. If you mind that you’re getting bitten by mosquitos, you could put on bug spray. If, on the other hand, you mind that your government is corrupt, you may not be in a position to significantly improve it, especially if you have a busy life and don’t plant to change careers.
This is where the famous Serenity Prayer by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is useful – “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” If you can recognize what cannot be changed by you, it may be easier to let go of the belief that they are your business. If you’re not currently engaged with it, don’t mind it. That is, don’t give your mind to it.
Option three is to change something internal. There are several sub-options here. The first is to deny that you mind what you mind. The main way we do this is through willful ignorance. We often employ willful ignorance as a coping mechanism simply because we can’t take care of all the things that concern us in the world.
For instance, I have a 60-year-old truck that I take out occasionally to get bales of hay for our alpacas, and the exhaust stinks. I know I’m putting carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and I haven’t yet found a way to fix it. So I have to put it out of my mind (i.e., willfully become ignorant of how I am contributing to climate change) in order to lessen the amount of guilt I feel about it. It’s a mediocre way of dealing with minding what happens.
Another way to deny that you mind what’s happening is through spiritual bypass. That is, you employ a spiritual ideal you haven’t actually achieved as a way of falsely transcending your issues. Welwood explained it as using “spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”
I think we can agree that denial isn’t the best answer. As a band-aid, it never truly resolves the unsettled feeling that erodes your peace and infringes on your presence.
Another way of changing something internal is to consciously, sincerely explore your relationship with what you mind. Don’t say “I don’t mind” when you do mind. Be honest with yourself. And don’t say, “I shouldn’t mind” when you do mind. Consider this alternative: I do mind, but I am determined not to argue with or depart from reality.
Here we come to what I believe Krishnamurti actually meant by “I don’t mind what happens.” I don’t believe he meant that nothing could bother him. I think he meant that, regardless of what happens, he doesn’t see reality as wrong or feel it should be different. If someone were to come at him with a knife, perhaps he would have found himself knocking the knife out of their hand. This wouldn’t mean that he “minds what happens,” only that he chose to act. Whether he acted or remained entirely passive to an attack, either one would affect the course of events, so neither constitutes “minding” more than the other.
But let’s bring this back to an application for someone who hasn’t yet realized the absolute truth of not minding what happens. First, there is a difference between minding what is currently occurring here and now versus minding something that is neither. The latter is what I mean by “departing from reality.” If it’s not currently happening, see if you can bring yourself back into the present experience.
There is also a difference between minding something but accepting it versus minding something and insisting that it shouldn’t be happening. “Shouldn’t be happening” is an exercise in futility. It’s an argument against reality. Removing your resistance from the equation (to something that cannot be changed by resisting it!) reduces your suffering; and it doesn’t mean you don’t care or that you’re giving up.
Jesuit priest and author Anthony de Mello defined enlightenment as absolute cooperation with the inevitable. This is the opposite of resistance and a necessary first step before diving deeper into your relationship with what you mind.
Diving in is acceptance in action. Generally, you must set aside time and space for this. It entails meeting the inner discord with sincerity, being willing to see, hear, feel, and understand it in its entirety. It also entails a willingness to recognize how the conflict degrades you and limits your freedom. Try to maintain an attitude of openness and innocence throughout the process. This work can unravel long-held beliefs and patterns of constraint. It can enable you to move forward with constructive action, if that’s what you choose. And it can facilitate an expansion from your relativistic thinking about the issue to a more transpersonal perspective. This may not always get you to a place where you can honestly say, “I don’t mind what’s happening,” but it will bring greater clarity and peace to your experience of it.
Be well,
Peter
1Fossella, T., 2011. Human Nature, Buddha Nature: An Interview with John Welwood. [online] Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Available at: <https://tricycle.org/magazine/human-nature-buddha-nature/> [Accessed 27 April 2022]. Welwood cautioned, “When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it.”
[post_title] => It's Okay to Mind What Happens
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[post_content] => June 22nd is my wife Briana’s birthday. She’s the Dragontree’s founder and fearless leader.
On the way to art school at age 18, she was in a car accident and broke her neck. It changed the course of her life. She never made it to art school, instead spending the following six months in a brace at home in Montana. During her rehabilitation period she received massage and this kindled an interest in the healing arts.
She decided to go to massage school in Portland, and later to California College of Ayurveda to learn the traditional medical system of India. When we met, she was a massage therapist at a little spa in Portland and also a professional belly dancer. Less than a year later, she was opening her own spa. She was just 23 then.
I helped with the planning and painting, but she has always been the engine and visionary. I’ve watched her grow tremendously in the 20 years that we’ve been together. Besides her business acumen, she has an incredible knack for making spaces beautiful. She’s an amazing mother and wife. She is generous and kind and funny. She’s a pretty good guitar player, too.
The funny thing is, for probably the first 15 years we were together she had these moments of insecurity when she would ask me with despair in her voice, “What am I doing with my life?!” It was as if she saw herself as floundering and aimless.
It’s interesting how outsiders sometimes see our gifts more clearly than we do. In this case, my response came so easily. “Well,” I would say, “you have built spas where thousands of people have come to feel better. You’ve created programs and courses to educate, uplift, and support people’s healing. You’ve written books. You’ve provided jobs for probably a thousand people over the years. You’re a mother and wife. You beautify the world. You’re a great friend. You’re always trying to be your best self. You’re good at Boggle – though not as good as me. I think that’s a pretty good start.”
I’m not sure if what I said was helpful in a lasting way. But over time, and especially as she began to do more spiritual and coaching work, there was an ever-growing group of people who said to her, “You changed my life for the better.” And I think it started to sink in. She doesn’t ask me what she’s doing with her life anymore.
From all of us whose lives have been made better by our association with you, Briana Borten, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! We love you.
[post_title] => Happy Birthday, Briana!
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[post_content] => Last week I saw a show by a troop of comedians at a tiny theater in Montana. Though they were talented, I didn’t find myself laughing much at the recurring “battle of the sexes” theme. The men accused the women of being frigid and overly emotional. The women complained that the men need to be mothered and only care about sex. And back and forth it went. Sure, there’s comic relief in sharing about our common issues, but as I sat there seeing men and women cast somewhat bitterly in these one-dimensional ways, I couldn’t help thinking, “Are we really still doing this?”
In my previous article, we looked at the role that attitude plays in the health and sustainability of a relationship. Of course, you can’t make your partner change their attitude, but it’s worth fully exploiting the potential of your own attitude before concluding that the relationship isn’t going to work. One way to be responsible for your attitude is by abstaining from relating your partner as a stereotype.
I believe almost everyone does this to an extent. It’s difficult to banish from our minds the ideas we have about men, women, and humans in general. Even if your partner isn’t a typical male or female, your conditioning can cause you to relate to them based on ideas and experiences from the past. And even when you relate to someone simply based on your ideas about that specific person – rather than whoever they are in this very moment – this may still serve as an impediment to authentic connection.
Practice presence with them. It’s good to start with a relatively casual conversation. Let both parties be innocent – try to enter the conversation without judgment, expectations, or lenses. Who knows what might happen and how you might see the other person if you were to enter the exchange with absolute freshness.
See if you can internally choose when to talk and when to listen. When it’s your turn to listen, don’t think about what you’re going to say next. Just listen. Listen with your ears and eyes and heart. Breathe slowly and fully.
What else is involved in “your work”? Here are some examples:
To the extent that you actively work to resolve past experiences (especially traumatic ones) that infringe on your current ability to show up “cleanly” with your partner, you will benefit.
To the extent that you work to deactivate your “buttons” which cause you to make you react disproportionately to relatively benign behaviors by your partner, you will benefit.
To the extent that you choose to show up in your relationship with as much presence and enthusiasm as you can muster, you will benefit.
To the extent that you take responsibility for your baggage, attitude, communication, and interpretations, you will benefit.
To the extent that you choose to remember and honor your commitment (assuming, of course, that neither party is getting hurt by remaining together), you will benefit.
All these benefits are yours whether or not the relationship survives, and the chances of its survival are so much greater when you’re an active and responsible participant in the above ways. Further, if you’re not in a relationship but want to be, doing your work will make for a healthier relationship when the time comes, and it will also support you to make better choices of who to invite into your life. If you’re not in a romantic relationship and don’t care to be, this work will serve you in all your other relationships, including the one with yourself.
Be well,
Peter
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