Jake Eagle's Blog, page 7

Be More Peaceful

We can learn to be more peaceful and, in turn, create a more peaceful world.

I, along with 19 others, have just recently returned home from yet another remarkable retreat, or “lab” as we fondly refer to them. For me this retreat was sweeter than any previous—mostly because of the new material that Jake and Hannah introduced.

In all my previous labs, we began the morning with the 4 minute meditation, followed by a sensory awareness experiment designed to help us slow ourselves down and get more in tune with our senses. This year was no different, and in addition to our usual activities to start the day, we also learned a specific meditation to help us learn to navigate our different degrees of consciousness.

Starting each day with a meditation is how I normally begin my days and so this was familiar territory for me, but what made it richer and more powerful was meditating in a group setting and becoming more adept at elevating my consciousness.

 Working with consciousness

In an earlier article Jake described the 3 Degrees of Consciousness and the value and profound effect this model has had on his life. And, after beginning each morning with a meditation and working daily with my own degrees of consciousness, I too have come to appreciate and value this new aspect of the Eagles’ work.

Throughout the retreat we were asked to pay attention to what degree of consciousness we were in and then ask ourselves if we were satisfied operating in that level of consciousness. Often I would find myself in Safety Consciousness, which, if you’ve read Jake’s article, is where most of us spend the majority of our time. There’s nothing wrong with being in Safety Consciousness, but when I feel physically secure and emotionally supported I have more opportunity to operate in and explore Heart and Spacious Consciousness.

The lab environment is conducive to exploration and experimentation with a light hearted atmosphere of play and awe filled wonder at the marvels we so often miss in our every day lives. Because I started each day with a meditation designed to elevate my awareness I found myself more relaxed, more accepting and much more compassionate with myself and others. As a result, I was able to explore and work with parts of myself that I had hidden and repressed, and do so with very little anxiety or resistance.

Letting go of stories

And because I was able to shift easily into higher levels of consciousness I didn’t trap myself with old stories and old emotions. I was able to easily avoid depressing or re-wounding myself because at the heart of the Eagles’ new work is the ability to shift my degree of consciousness when I begin to lose or discomfort myself. I don’t need to return to who I was as a child, or lose myself in my “sad stories.” I simply need to witness the younger parts of me and integrate them in the present. This is part of the reason why I find this work to be so different and effective in contrast to other types of therapeutic models that encourage me to re-tell and re-live my history.

In past labs I’ve done deep work, but because I was often operating from Safety Consciousness, I wasted time and energy resisting myself. In Safety Consciousness I often feel anxious and afraid, and to avoid these feelings—I resist. This year, however, I discovered ways to stop resisting and was able to reveal and embrace parts of myself that I have kept hidden for years.

Like my mates, I have come home to extreme hot temperatures and the “shock” of the normal world. I flew home during a particularly violent and disruptive week across the globe and like many of us dismay myself at the violence expressed by our politicians and demonstrated by the police and others in our daily world. I can easily slip back into fear and anxiety, depression and hopelessness if I forget my ability to elevate my consciousness.

And like my mates, I have come home with new tools and a new awareness that I have within me the ability to elevate my consciousness and I can spend time each day in Spacious Consciousness to remind myself of a different perspective. When I am in Spacious Consciousness I can separate myself for a few moments from the details of my life and remember a higher purpose and a broader perspective.

When I elevate myself to Heart Consciousness I find compassion and sweetness and I ask myself different questions. I stop asking myself, “How I can survive in this crazy world?” and instead I ask, “How can I contribute?” “How can I share my gift and make today a better day for just one person?” “How can I be kinder?”

Creating peace

And because I am able to navigate the degrees of my consciousness, being kind to one person, offering a smile to a complete stranger does make a difference, not just to me and the bus driver but to my fellow passengers as well. We all have an opportunity and a responsibility to make the world a kinder place. Learning to elevate my consciousness is how I not only make my world more peaceful; I also avoid slipping back into depression or cynicism when I am faced with negativity in the world.

I encourage you to read Jake’s article and to contact him and Hannah to learn more about the meditation practices you can learn in order to navigate the higher degrees of your consciousness. I assure you, your life will be more peaceful and easy and in turn you will create a sweeter and more peaceful world—one degree, one moment at a time.

 

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Rumi and Reology

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Rumi

What do Reology and Rumi have in common? The beloved Rumi, actually now one of the most widely read poets in America, was a 13th century Sufi poet. The most enduring symbol of Sufi belief is the veil, or the “Paradox of the Veil.” This veil is a barrier between humans and True Reality, and overcoming it, or seeing past it, is the aim of the Sufi.

Sufism, a philosophy of love, harmony and beauty, aims to expand our souls until the realization of the beauty of all creation enables us to experience and express harmony.

Seeing past the veil—in order to find harmony—is what Reology has in common with this ancient philosophy. The veil, in western terms, is the blind spot in our own lives that keeps us from living as we want to live, loving as we want to love, and from making ourselves happy even though we live in an imperfect world.

Seeing Beyond The Veil

The image above is one we use in our retreats. It shows a rhinoceros that has completed several landscape paintings, each of which has a rhino horn painted in the image. The horn is in all the paintings because this is how the rhino sees “reality.” Everywhere he looks he sees his own horn because that’s the perspective he creates.

We do the same thing with our own filters—beliefs and prejudices—believing that our interpretations of the world are “right” and “true.” Our filters are our barriers—each of us locked into seeing the world in our own way, while thinking we are right.

Others’ interpretations and perceptions are as true for them as ours are for us. When we learn to see through our filters, or realize they are made up, we stop erecting barriers that keep us from connecting with and understanding other people. Then we can experience and express harmony.

It is one thing to intellectually understand what I’m saying. It’s a whole other thing to embody this understanding in the way we live our lives. And this is what Reology offers us—a philosophy and practice that continuously reminds us how to see through our own veils.

Raising Consciousness

This way of living in the world is not a quick fix—it’s not a matter of reading an article and changing your life overnight. As my husband describes it, this is a practice that requires us to choose the level of consciousness we drink from. He refers to it as “sipping.” All day long, sipping from a more conscious perspective, one that allows us to see beyond our own unconscious filters so that we see the ways other people are different from us without making them wrong.

We hear from many of you that what we write is helpful. We give these writings freely in an attempt to share with you a way to promote more peace in the world, but I am reaching out now to ask you to take a more substantial step toward living this way.

This will require a more substantial commitment from you. It will take an immersion into this practice. And this will mean taking a week out of your busy schedule in order to alter your life. And if you do this, you will grow, and as a result, others around you will grow. And this is how we all make a larger contribution.

Are you ready?   http://reology.org/retreats/personal-growth-retreat-winter/

Please give us a call.

 

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What Awaits You On The Other Side — Revisited

Imagine you are walking down a dusty road between two tall hedges and carrying a heavy load. There are many others on the road. This is the road of an ordinary life.

You notice that some people get ahead of you and some fall behind.  You have struggled at times along this road to keep up, to get ahead, to connect, to find love.

You tire yourself, stop to rest, and notice a light shining through on the other side of the hedge. You can’t clearly see what lies on the other side but you are peering into a world you never knew was there. You begin to push your way through toward the light. The burden you carry becomes difficult to bring along. You eventually leave your burden behind.

More To Find On The Other Side

Since I originally wrote this article, we’ve done a great deal of work learning how to explore different degrees of consciousness. I will integrate what we’ve learned in the remainder of this writing.

As we’ve begun to explore the 3 Degrees of Consciousness (safety, heart, and spaciousness), we recognize that most of our burdens come from living in safety consciousness—where we are cautious, defensive, and fearful. There is value to being in safety consciousness—times when we need to be there—but we don’t necessarily want to live there all the time.

When we learn to navigate the 3 Degrees of Consciousness, we can let go of many of our safety issues—the old stories and limitations that we burden ourselves with—and push through to the other side. Actually “pushing” is what it feels like when we’re in safety consciousness. But once we’ve moved into heart consciousness, there is very little effort that needs to be made. Eventually you will wear a familiar path toward heart consciousness and the flow between each degree of consciousness will become far easier.

What burden do you carry?

What do you have to give up in order to get to the other side? What is the burden you need to leave behind?

It is the way you’ve been making meaning all of your life and your attachment to the meaning you’ve made.

What will you get if you let go of your old ways of making meaning and push through to the other side?

You’ll begin living a life you love.

After giving up your old ways of making meaning based on living in safety consciousness, you’ll realize that your old stories no longer work for you. You become more present, more accepting of yourself, stop holding yourself back, and be more able to enjoy deeper intimacy with others.

When you learn to navigate all 3 degrees of consciousness, you’ll enjoy more enlightened conversations with yourself (in your head) and other people, and the way you make meaning of the events of your life will be radically different. You’ll stop feeling like a victim. Instead, you’ll choose to live a life you love—a life of love.

Are you trying to get to the other side?

What do you imagine you need to do to get there?

For me, it required a change in direction, taking a different path, committing to something new and working at it. Reology is one such path—not for everybody—but it is the safest, most practical, self-empowered path I’ve discovered.

If you’d like more information please contact me at hannah@reology.org

 

 This writing is inspired by E.M. Forster’s “The Other Side of the Hedge” (1911) 

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Webinar Replay: Three Degrees of Consciousness

This one-hour webinar provides a basic overview of our new model: Three Degrees of Consciousness. Spending time listening to this will give you the basic understanding needed to access and navigate safety,  heart, and spacious consciousness. Please let us know if you have any questions.

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A Letter of Gratitude

We have been sharing this work with people for over fifteen years. From time to time we receive expressions of gratitude from people who have participated in this work—usually after attending one of our retreats . . . or more than one. Recently we received this letter of gratitude from a dear person, who so beautifully describes what’s possible when one chooses to embrace this way of living. We’d like to share it with you.

 

Dear Jake and Hannah,

I want to express my deep gratitude to you both, and the body of work you two have built your lives upon.

As I prepare to attend my 6th Retreat with you in just less than four years I continue to amaze and delight myself with the remarkable evolution in my life.

When I contacted Jake in the fall of 2012 I was deeply unhappy. I had spent years investigating and participating in different forms of therapy, spiritual practices and self help groups but was still struggling with the same issues I’d had for over 40 years. I suffered from depression, anxiety, loneliness, repression and heartache. I had a multitude of “unresolved issues” from my early years and my outlook on life was grim.

On the surface my life looked okay

I had learned how to create the illusion of spirituality in that I had the lingo and I had some basic ideas about how to change my life. I knew about limiting beliefs, I knew that a daily practice was vital to creating peace of mind and I knew in theory that what I believed and focused on in my daily life created my reality. But nothing really ever changed.

Yes, I was sober after having spent years using drugs and alcohol as a way to numb my misery. Yes, I had been to several therapists and spent hours talking about my history and I knew all the reasons why I felt crappy about myself, but I didn’t know how to feel differently. I had no control over my thoughts or feelings and I seemed to be stuck in an endless cycle of asking myself “why do I still feel this way?”

Today, I have a completely different life

I live in the same apartment, and on the surface my life has not changed radically, but the life inside my head, the conversations I have with myself, and the feeling in my heart and in the pit of my stomach are completely different.

Today I have the ability to work with myself in a loving, compassionate and dynamic manner. When I experience something I experience myself fully—whether it is an emotion, a thought, an event or a dream. I embrace and relish my ability to welcome and learn from myself. I am not afraid of myself anymore and I am not anxious about my future or repressing my past. I live fully and gratefully, embracing all my experiences, because they are mine.

I no longer focus on what I don’t have or what happened to me, instead you have taught me to focus on what I am doing with my history and my daily experiences. I have learned that I really do have a choice in how I respond to the world and I have learned how to slow myself down enough to ask myself, “How do I want to respond to this person, event, moment, thought, belief, idea, feeling?”

I have learned that my happiness is completely my own responsibility and I know how to find the love that I have always longed for.

I freed myself

I have learned that by taking responsibility for my life—my response to the world, my conduct, my attitude and my expectations—I free myself. I free myself to live the life I have always dreamed of.

I have these abilities because of the work we have done together and because I have a daily practice. As a result of my daily meditation practice and this work, I have learned how to navigate my consciousness. I feel safe in my life because I create healthy boundaries, engage in loving relationships and don’t limit or repress myself with beliefs that do not serve me.

I am able to access my heart in a new way and I am living in profound gratitude for the amazing wonder of being alive. As I live more in heart consciousness I recapture a sense of wonder and awe, and my eyes see differently. I see more beauty now. I pay attention to the myriad hues of green because I look up at the trees when I walk instead of down at the grey sidewalk. Each morning upon awakening, I greet the day eager to see what gifts today brings and I ask how can I contribute, how can I express my gratitude and appreciation for the miraculous gift of life?

Because I can now access spaciousness—an elevated state of consciousness—I’m free of anxiety. I used to discomfort myself with thoughts of, “the future, my inevitable death, imminent failures, and the scary world out there.” Today, I can access a level of consciousness where anxiety melts away, because I am not focused on time or urgency. I can access a sense of spaciousness and when I spend a few moments of my day in spaciousness my whole body relaxes, my mind settles down and I’m able to experience deep silence and inner peace. I find deep comfort and ease within myself in those 20 minutes of meditation and I find that I am able to carry that feeling with me regardless of what the day brings.

I am able to choose how I respond

When an event occurs or a conflict appears I am able to choose not only how I want to respond, but from which level of consciousness? Is this a safety issue? Will accessing my heart and compassion be more useful? Or is this a time to elevate myself to spacious consciousness in order to find equanimity, peace of mind and a healthy state of detachment? How can I conduct myself in a loving manner that I will feel good about tomorrow and how can I be most helpful?

Because of this practice, I have mostly great days. Of course, life continues to happen—there are a multitude of possible frustrations and obstacles that come from living in a city with 6 million other people, but most of the time I cruise through my day, peacefully and gracefully.

And of course, I still happen. I continue to find new parts of myself that I have repressed or hidden from myself. And I continue to find beliefs and ideas that I have used to limit or hurt myself. But how I approach myself and my growth has changed radically. I am easier with myself. I don’t roll my eyes and think, “Crap, I’ll never be done working on myself. Why am I still dealing with this issue?” Today I witness myself. I listen to the hurt or limited parts of myself and I greet them as I would a long lost friend. I don’t rush myself or put pressure on myself to “fix” this issue. I have no timetable. If I discover a belief or an idea that is confusing to me, I know that I can reach out and find help if I need it, because I don’t judge myself for having limiting beliefs anymore. I don’t hinder myself with thinking I need to be perfect, because I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid that I will be judged, because I don’t judge.

I am aware that I have a voracious appetite for growth. And I am also aware that this model is accessible and available for anyone who wants to free themselves from limiting beliefs and ideas.

What is different about this practice is that it is easily accessible and when I learn to navigate the levels of consciousness it is a practical tool. My ability to profoundly alter how I live is a direct result of my learning and practicing this very particular meditation. As I continue to work with each level of consciousness my life is becoming more satisfying and peaceful.

I am deeply grateful for your help.

Love,

Katharine

If you want to learn more about the practices that are referred to in this letter, join our free webinar, Saturday, June 11th, 10am (Mountain Time)

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The Secret That Drives Us . . . Limits Us

For the first many years of my life I sought ways to make myself feel safe. I sought out people who were safe and avoided those who were scary. Even before I had words for “safe, safety” and “scary,” my instincts guided me.

This is true for most of us. Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, developed the “hierarchy of needs,” which states that we are motivated first by safety (physical and psychological), and only after that need is satisfied are we then motivated by love and belonging. But what happens if we don’t satisfy our need for safety and it continues to drive our behaviors? We will limit ourselves terribly. We won’t experience living with an open heart, and we will very likely hurt the people we love the most because we’ll react to them as if they are a threat.

Your first reaction might be, “Well, that’s not me. Safety isn’t what drives me in my life.” Maybe not, but I invite you to look deeper within yourself because I’m proposing that just about everyone raised in modern culture is driven by a need for safety—a false need.

Safety is our foundation

Safety is at the foundation of most psychological models. And if you look at the first six to seven years of our lives, safety is a primary concern because if others don’t care for us and protect us we’ll die. We cannot fully care for ourselves until about the age of seven. So safety plays a very large role in our primary years. But do we ever switch gears and focus on something other than safety?

Or, does our emphasis on safety become habituated? That’s what I think happens. And I believe this is why I commonly hear expressions like the following:

Are you sure you’ll be okay?

You never know what could happen.

Be careful out there.

You’re just asking for trouble.

These are scary times.

Trouble comes in threes.

Bad things happen to good people.

Be safe.

Take care of yourself.

These common expressions, and so many more, are driven out of our need for safety. And, yes, we may start out in life vulnerable and dependent, but why are we so focused on safety in our twenties, thirties, forties, and beyond? I think it’s because we’ve created a meme, a massive cultural context that I describe as “safety consciousness.”

Safety glasses color the way we see

When I live in safety consciousness I see the world through a particular set of filters. I see the differences I have with other people as potential threats. I worry, “If he’s right, does that mean I’m wrong?” I often perceive others as competitors. Much of the time I seek to be right more than I seek to connect. I judge others and assume they’re judging me. I feel the need to defend myself when challenged. I blame other people—for embarrassing me, hurting me, abandoning me.

Yet, being social animals we want to connect with other people and form tribes—as small as a family or as large as a nation. Being part of a group increases our sense of safety, but when viewed through safety consciousness we worry that even those close to us may hurt us, or we may experience the loss of loved ones so we feel the need to protect ourselves even from the people we think of as “family.”

And speaking of families, if we truly value safety, why do so many people end up in relationships and family dynamics in which they don’t feel safe? It’s because we mistakenly equate familiarity with safety. If a woman grows up with a father who is emotionally unavailable, when she is older she may go in search of more of the same. It’s familiar, but not safe. If a man grows up with a mother he is emotionally dependent upon, later in life finding such a woman to be his partner will feel familiar, but not necessarily safe.

Safety has its limits

Safety consciousness is pervasive and I’m not suggesting we can live without it. I’m suggesting that as long as we live primarily in safety consciousness we will limit ourselves. Safety consciousness inhibits us from having deeply intimate and loving relationships. Safety consciousness keeps us perpetually anxious. Safety consciousness keeps us from growing and reaching our full potential.

It is possible to transcend our emphasis on safety by learning how to access heart consciousness and spacious consciousness (here is some more information).

How do we do this? We begin with 2 simple steps.

First, we must become aware of our state of consciousness. Most of us are so immersed in safety consciousness that we don’t even recognize how it’s driving our behaviors. So start to ask yourself, “What state of consciousness am I in?” I’ve explained safety consciousness enough in this article that I hope you’ll be able to recognize it.

Second, ask yourself, “What state of consciousness will serve me best in this situation?” If you want to access compassion, tenderness, appreciation, and feel your heart opening—those are descriptions of heart consciousness. If you want to access equanimity and a non-verbal state that provides an experience of being, not doing, that would be spacious consciousness (Again, I’ll write more about these in the weeks to come.)

Consciousness shifting

Multiple times every day I practice shifting my consciousness from safety to heart consciousness or spacious consciousness. A simple example—something happens, maybe Hannah makes a comment and I feel myself starting to react. I immediately notice that I’m reacting from safety consciousness—energetically starting to push her away—and then I ask, “What experience do I want to have?” Usually, I realize I want to connect with her—heart consciousness—and I shift to a different set of filters that allows me to see her comment as a statement about her, not me. I realize my reaction was temporary, fleeting. Maybe I experience empathy for her, or curiosity. As a result, I move toward her instead of away. I look in her eyes and remember she is my best friend.

It’s sounds simple because it is simple. The key is to practice enough so that I can immediately identify the state of consciousness I’m in and then consciously choose the state of consciousness I want to be in.

By practicing specific meditation techniques both Hannah and I have learned to quickly identify and move between the three degrees of consciousness. By asking particular questions—different questions stimulate different levels of consciousness—we move seamlessly between the different levels.

We are now teaching these meditation techniques in our retreats and will be adding more information on our website to help you identify and learn to move between the levels of consciousness.

 

And the following articles, including one about the 3 Degrees of Consciousness are available as downloads. Just select what you want from the list below:

Your first and last name:



Your email:

Documents:

3 Degrees Of Consciousness

Am I Depressed

Barriers To Personal Growth

Finding Yourself

How To Become Emotionally Mature

Individuating From Parents And Partners

Lose Your Mind And Come To Your Senses

Magical Thinking

Meditation And Psychotherapy

Personal Empowerment

Reology Japanese

Stages Of Development

Why Wait To Be Happy

 

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Can You Hear Me? — it’s so painful not to be heard

Maybe one of the more painful, or even frightening things, is when we are unable to get another person—especially one we love—to hear and understand us. The person listening doesn’t necessarily even need to agree with us—if only they would listen and understand our experience. Can you hear me? Is that too much to ask?

No, it’s not too much to ask, yet it’s a need we have that too often goes unfulfilled. And our need to be heard is one of our most basic needs. It begins well before we are able to verbalize ourselves, so this need isn’t always about being heard, which is why I prefer to talk about it as a need to be witnessed. Sometimes that may be verbal; sometimes it may not involve words at all.

One of my most powerful memories of being witnessed was after my mother died. I was home alone when I received a call from my sister. The call wasn’t unexpected. We talked for a few minutes and then I called my best friend and when he answered the phone I burst into tears. He didn’t say anything; actually he started crying too. He was present with me, not anxious, not worried, not trying to make the situation better. He said nothing reassuring, but he accompanied me as I felt and expressed my grief.

Why witnessing helps

When we are witnessed our nervous systems calm down. Why? Because when we are witnessed we don’t feel so alone, we feel connected. And as social animals feeling connected is crucial for our sense of well-being. Some people connect in other ways, by arguing and quibbling, but that doesn’t calm their nervous systems.

We have no training in how to witness

As important as it is to know how to witness, we have no training. No one ever taught us how to do this. No one ever taught our parents. So most of us go through life feeling deprived or fighting to be heard—or both.

Here’s the irony

It’s easy. It’s actually easy to witness another person when we realize that we don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to fix them. We don’t even have to make them feel better. What’s required is our presence. To be present with another human being while they show themselves is grounding—and too rare an experience.

We can do this for ourselves

Not only is there great value in learning how to witness other people, there is equal value in learning how to witness ourselves. When we feel conflicted or anxious, it’s often the result of not taking the time to witness some aspect of ourselves, a feeling we have that we deny, or a belief that has gone unacknowledged because we think it’s a ‘bad’ belief.

I have spent many years denying a feeling that was left over from when I was a child. The feeling came up when I saw pictures of myself as a very young child, I didn’t like what I saw. I was cute enough, I guess, but I didn’t like to be reminded of how I felt as a child, because much of the time I felt scared. Not all that long ago I was exploring a therapeutic technique that helps us get in touch with how we feel. It’s a non-verbal breathing technique that involves listening to ourselves and being present. As I practiced this technique I found myself witnessing the young boy from my past and something profound happened. I went past my judgments and for the first time in my life I recognized this part of myself as a sweet boy.

A few months later Hannah and I were conducting one of our retreats, and in our retreats all the participants take on a name other than their real name. This is a very powerful focusing device. So I took on the name “Sweet Boy.” After I had witnessed this part of myself I was ready to allow other people to see this part of me. All week long when people wanted to get my attention they would call out to me, “Hey, sweet boy . . . “ The experience was fun, healing, and transformative—and it all began with me taking a few minutes to witness myself.

So many of us wanted something that we didn’t get from our parents—a healthy emotional connection. We wanted to be witnessed, but they didn’t know how to do that. Well, here’s the thing, as adults, we can give that to ourselves, as I just illustrated. And I recently worked with a client who said, “There is a part of me that has lived my whole life wanting my mother to look at me. ‘Look at me,’ this part says, ’LOOK at ME.’ My mother never looked at this part of me, but now I can do that for this part of myself. I can look at her, love her, sit with her, hold her, comfort her and witness her. That’s all I have to do.”

The first key to witnessing

There are two keys involved in learning how to become a good witness, for ourselves and for others. The first key is learning to use language more consciously. This happens when we learn to use ReSpeak. As we change the way we speak we will also change the way we listen.

Using ReSpeak makes it easier to witness other people, because with ReSpeak we don’t tell people about them, judge them, or even reflect back what we’ve heard. So we’re much better listeners. And when we express ourselves using ReSpeak, it’s easier for other people to witness us because we make it clear that we’re talking about ourselves, our unique experiences. We don’t use generalizations or judgments, which a listener may often react to.

For example, when Hannah used to tell me that my behavior—flirting—caused her to be anxious, I wasn’t very good at witnessing her because I immediately became defensive. After learning to use ReSpeak, she still had the same feelings if she observed me flirting, but when she spoke to me about it she did so without accusing me of being the one who made her feel the way she felt. Therefore, I was able to listen, to understand her experience, to imagine how hard it was for her. She calmed down because she felt witnessed. I ended up changing my behavior because I realized how my behavior was painful for her.

The second key to witnessing

The second key to witnessing is learning how to listen from each one of the three degrees of consciousness. If you aren’t familiar with these, refer to my previous article. A quick reminder—the three degrees of consciousness include: safety consciousness, heart consciousness, and spacious consciousness.

Most of our conflicts and tensions arise when we are in safety consciousness. When two people are both in safety consciousness—which often involves trying to be right, blaming someone for how we feel, or getting someone to make us feel better— it’s just about impossible to witness one another.

Now, let’s say you’re in safety consciousness and you feel a need to be witnessed by me—probably because you don’t feel totally safe. That’s your need, not mine. I don’t need to engage with you at the level of safety consciousness; the best thing I can do is shift to heart consciousness and I’ll be far more available to witness you—or witness some part of myself that is stuck in safety consciousness.

Heart consciousness makes it easy to witness

I can witness you much better when I’m in heart consciousness because I feel myself as a separate person from you. This means that I’m more available to listen without reacting. What you are saying is about you, not me.

I think that many people confuse themselves about heart consciousness and how it works. It’s not about merging and becoming one. It’s about recognizing two things.

I am separate from you.
I have love within me that is mine; I’m not dependent upon another person in order to experience love.

In other words, when I fill myself with love—for life—my heart expands, allowing me to relate with other people from a state of fullness, not a state of neediness.

We all need to be witnessed. And we will dramatically improve the quality and satisfaction in our relationships when we learn to witness other people and they learn to witness us. We will also improve many of the world’s problems if we all learn to witness one another. If you didn’t hear President Obama’s commencement speech at Howard University, he spoke eloquently about this very thing—the need to learn to listen, even to people with whom we disagree.

And one of the most loving things we can do for ourselves is to learn to witness ourselves.

So, the two keys to this are, first, learning to use language in a conscious manner (ReSpeak), and second, learning to access heart consciousness.

For those people who have struggled, either not knowing how to witness yourself or others, and those who have not felt adequately witnessed, the struggle goes away when we shift from safety consciousness to heart consciousness. This is a skill, a practice that serves us in a multitude of ways. I strongly encourage you to learn to access all three degrees of consciousness.

We are teaching these skills in our retreats and we invite you to apply if you want to be witnessed, learn how to witness, and experience more love in your life.

And to learn more about the three degrees of consciousness you can download the article by filling in the form below:

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3 Degrees of Consciousness

Imagine a circle. There are 360 degrees. You are locked inside the circle. The circle is—let’s call it your ego, or identity. The truest “you” is on the outside of the circle. To get out of the circle you must fire your booster rockets and go through an opening that is 3 degrees wide. If you miss, you feel like you have crashed into something . . . another failed relationship . . . another drama . . . feeling trapped . . . hopeless . . . angry . . . or confused. If you make it through the opening, you go beyond your ego/identity and you free yourself to live the life that you are capable of. A life of passion and grace, ease and love—a deeply satisfying life.

How do you find that opening of 3 degrees? That’s crucial. It’s not that hard to navigate if you don’t have a lot of clutter—emotional clutter. But, the more clutter, the more you’ve complicated your life, the stronger the ideas you hold onto—the more difficult it is to navigate your way through the 3 degree opening. And if you’re off by just one degree, you realize what will happen. You’ll bump into the boundaries of your ego/identity and be stuck one more time in your limited sense of who you think you are.

In the last few months, working with my wife Hannah, we’ve built a compass that will allow you to navigate your way out of your circle. Personally, I expect we’ll be remembered for this a hundred years from now. How can I possibly know this? Well, when we escape the gravitational emotional field that is inside our circles, we have greater abilities to see our futures. We see more clearly.

Another prediction

You will die soon—we all will. So, I don’t want to waste any of your time—and I imagine most people reading this article still think in terms of time. I used to, but not so much any more. Once you escape the circle, you won’t either. Time can feel terribly limiting. When I lived inside of what I call the time-orientation, like we all learned to do, I felt a great deal of urgency in my life, because like you, I knew that time was running out. This is why I was anxious, more or less, all the time.

As I was saying, not that you want to hear it again, you will die soon—we all will, so you probably want to know how to find the 3 degrees that will allow you to feel safe, become comfortable with death, and love superbly while you live.

There are three distinctly different degrees of consciousness. I call them safety consciousness, heart consciousness, and spacious consciousness. I had to learn to navigate each consciousness independently of the others, because only by knowing how to access each one of them, and then combining that knowledge, can I easily navigate to the 3-degrees of opening.

What’s wild is that when you go beyond the circle, which we are teaching people how to do in our retreats, you’ll experience how easy it is to do this. Maybe not “easy to do,” but how easy life can be as a result of doing this. It’s a gas. Once you do this you’ll likely walk around with a half smile on your face most of the time. And then a weird thing happens—in airports, gas stations, and grocery store lines—you see that hardly anyone else is smiling. Occasionally you see some “lunatic” who is actually laughing and you think to yourself, “he’s nuts.” Well, maybe, or maybe not. Maybe he’s laughing because he’s outside of the circle. From outside the circle, looking back at the way people live in the circle, it looks pretty funny.

Now, those of you who know me might say, “Hey, you’re a pretty serious guy, you’re not smiling all the time.” Well, two things. 1) Have you seen me lately? Have you seen me since Hannah and I took five weeks off to come to Hawaii and live one of our dreams? Have you seen me since we started talking about semi-retiring, maybe in Hawaii, spending our mornings boogie boarding and afternoons laughing—oh, I meaning “working?” And 2) Even though I no longer feel the anxiety I used to feel when I was in the circle, I do still feel an urgent desire to share what Hannah and I have learned, because we believe this can alleviate much unnecessary suffering in the world.

The suffering is not just the wars raging in the middle east, the convoluted political system in the United States, the lack of care in our western health “care” system, but worst of all—to me—because it’s 100% preventable, is the way people behave and treat one other on a day-to-day basis. I sadden myself every time I see a child treated poorly, or the man at the Farmer’s Market who gets annoyed with his dog and jerks back so hard on the leash that the dog starts choking, or the husband who rolls his eyes when his partner explains she needs him to speak in a less angry voice, or the parent who splits her attention between her cell phone and her son.

There is much work to be done—that’s the only reason I have not yet fully given in to laughing all the time. But, it may happen yet . . .

Once we learn to navigate the 3-degrees of consciousness, life will never feel the same. And, you should know that being in the circle isn’t a bad thing, it’s a necessary part of day-to-day life. The point is not to get stuck there, not to limit ourselves.

Actually, working with the three degrees of consciousness begins inside the circle.

Safety consciousness

To learn to navigate safety consciousness requires several things, but primarily it boils down to feeling that we are okay within ourselves, not because of the status we have achieved, but because of how we conduct ourselves.

The way we do this is to take 100% responsibility for ourselves, especially our emotional wellbeing. As soon as we do this, we stop feeling needy, pushed around, bullied, disadvantaged or manipulated—by anyone. Instead, we start to feel in control. We start to feel like we are running our own nervous system and then we feel safe. No matter what happens, here I am, in control of my nervous system.

How we take full responsibility for ourselves involves several things, but primarily it comes down to learning a new way to speak to ourselves and other people. This new way of speaking is more than a communication tool, it’s a way for us to realize—continuously—that our stories are made up, and that the meaning we assign to everything that happens is made up.

At first, this awareness can be unnerving, but after a few months, I came to understand that I—the one who makes meaning— am in control of my nervous system. So much of how I feel is the result of how I make meaning. And the meaning I make is hugely influenced by the way I speak to myself and other people.

We are the meaning makers in our lives and when we get that, well, it’s almost like breaking free of the circle. Actually, when I first got this, I thought I had broken free of the circle. But months later, years later, I was still bumping into myself and I couldn’t figure out why. It was only when I came to understand the other two degrees of consciousness that it all came together for me.

Heart consciousness

Which brings us to heart consciousness. This is essential to our nature, because we are social animals and having meaningful connections with other people is—for most of us—what defines our experience of life. But we can’t work on developing heart consciousness from the level of safety consciousness, because safety consciousness makes us guarded and cautious. In other words, from within safety consciousness, which is where most of us live the majority of our lives, we aren’t really available to connect with other people, because we are worried—unconsciously—about how they will affect our nervous systems, which we haven’t yet learned to control.

The key to developing heart consciousness may surprise you. It’s not about learning how to manage conflict. It’s not about setting appropriate boundaries. It’s not about figuring out what “language of love” you speak and need your partner to speak. Frankly, all that is unhelpful because it reinforces safety consciousness. “I need you to speak to me in a certain way so that I feel seen by you.” You see how that is fear based? I’m afraid you’re going to hurt me or make me feel bad or upset me. As long as I operate on the level of safety consciousness, I will not be able to access and sustain heart consciousness.

We do need to do things like set personal boundaries and learn mature ways to communicate, and manage our differences with other people—especially our partners, but this actually happens at the level of safety consciousness, which is a precursor to heart consciousness.

To access heart consciousness I must become comfortable with my separateness. Maybe you thought I’d be singing the refrain, “We are all one.” No, I actually believe that idea is born out of—take a guess, where do you think that comes from? It comes from safety consciousness. The way we deal with our anxiety of being/feeling separate is by trying to convince ourselves that we are all one.

How do I become comfortable with my separateness? By individuating from all the people to whom I have bound myself. When I realize that my love is not specific to another person, that no one can give it to me or take it from me, that’s when I begin to experience heart consciousness. Love is my birthright. In that sense, and only in that sense, love is unconditional. But many people misunderstand this and think that love between people is unconditional.

No, that’s another myth that comes from—where? Safety consciousness. Yes, the belief that love is unconditional comes from my need to believe you love me even when you treat me like you don’t. And unconditional love is a self-justification people use when they say things like, “If you loved me unconditionally you would accept my . . .”—followed by some inappropriate or immature behavior like—” . . . dishonesty, neglect, temper tantrum, infidelity.”

Love is unconditional when I learn to access love as a state of being— independent of anyone. I can access love when I see the sunrise, feel clean sheets on the bed, hear my favorite song, wake up feeling refreshed, go boogie boarding in the ocean and in many other moments. Love is a chemical cocktail that I can mix and drink anytime I choose to—alone or with other people.

After I learn how to drink in love I am free to open my heart because I no longer fear someone taking it away from me. When Hannah and I were in the early years of our relationship she was nervous that I might not be faithful to her, because I was flirtatious. We talked, and fought about this for too long, but nothing changed. The change came only after I said to her, “If I turn out to be unfaithful then I’m not the man you thought I was. And if that were the case, what would happen?”

In that moment she realized her feeling love was not dependent on me. She knew that with or without me she would still have love in her life. After this realization she stopped holding herself back and that was about twenty years ago. And, I stopped flirting because I wanted to be the man she thought I was. It’s worked out well for both of us.

After we access heart consciousness the world is different. We stop trying to protect ourselves and we are truly free to love. We stop negotiating in petty ways with potential partners, “I’ll love you if you only . . . “ We stop putting energy into trying to be with people who, really, we know are the wrong people for us. Instead, we simply invite people into a space of love and they accept our invitation or they don’t. It’s not complicated. Love can be easy—when accessed from heart consciousness.

Spacious consciousness

The next degree of consciousness we want to access is spacious consciousness. This degree of consciousness is the one that allows us to free ourselves from the constraints of time, and the urgency and angst that is associated with two things. 1) Our overly busy lives. And, even more valuable, 2) Our existential fear of death.

I suspect everyone reading this immediately groks that it would be great to have some means by which we don’t get caught in the busyness of day-to-day life. Spacious consciousness provides that. When we have the ability to access spacious consciousness we step outside of the time-orientation we grew up in. We can still be productive, but we tend to go slower, multi-task less, and do fewer things. Ironically, we may get more done.

But, again, even more valuable than not feeling overwhelmed with the pace of life—and far less talked about—is our need to deal with our deepest existential issues, the biggest of which is our fear of death. Spacious consciousness provides that, too. Our angst about death is because we view life from safety consciousness and death threatens our safety. But when death is viewed from spacious consciousness, it is no longer perceived as something threatening. Instead, death becomes us.

Spacious consciousness—outside the circle—can be accessed without having mastered safety consciousness or heart consciousness, but the results will not be sustainable unless we live alone in a cave, as some great spiritual masters have done. Some of you may have accessed it already, it’s a real high for people, but then followed by a crash when safety consciousness snaps them back to what they think is “reality.” If we want to live in the world, hold a job, be in relationship, deal well with our children, our aging parents, and with our own aging, we must learn to access safety consciousness, heart consciousness and spacious consciousness—all 3-degrees.

By the way, this is why most therapies fail, or fall short of helping us expand beyond the circle of our ego/identity, because they operate within safety consciousness. Mostly what we do in those therapies is go around and around, talking about slightly different versions of the same old story. I don’t deny we may make incremental progress, but I know we can do so much more.

To summarize, mastering the three degrees of consciousness requires that I change the way I speak to myself and other people. Doing so will alter the way my brain functions and result in me being in control of my nervous system. When that happens, I feel safe. Then I need to become comfortable with my separateness as a means to accessing love that is not dependent on any other person. Doing this will alter the ways I relate with people because I will no longer confuse myself—trying to get from someone else what I already have within myself, but haven’t yet learned to access. Finally, by accessing spacious consciousness, through a specific meditation practice, I will move beyond the limitations of time-orientation, which changes my relationship to my daily life—no longer rushing to get things done—but more valuable than that, I will transcend my existential fears, including my fear of death.

In all of our future retreats we will be teaching participants how to access all 3-degrees of consciousness. This summer we’ll be creating a new website offering people a variety of meditations; we call them SpaceMeds. If you want to be notified when the site goes live, and about our upcoming free webinar on this topic, make sure you sign up for our mailing list on this website. An easy way to accomplish this is to fill in the form below. We’ll send you a copy of this article, and your name will be added to our list, if it’s not already there.

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Can We Stop Telling Stories?

Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves. –Rollo May

As a human being, I am a meaning maker. I’m compelled to make sense of the world around me. I do this by telling myself stories. But I have discovered as I become more present I have less of a need to make up stories. And, when I do make up stories, I make up healthier ones.

When I look back at my childhood I realize that my parents defined everything for me, and I rarely questioned the beliefs I was given.

As I grew into adulthood I continued to be influenced by those early beliefs, and at times I used them as excuses to justify why I was unhappy or why I behaved poorly. For example, I remember times when I was reactive to other people and I would say, “Well, that’s because of how I was treated as a kid.”

That may be true, but I acted as if it was forever true, as if I had no choice. That wasn’t true.

After learning Reology, I understood that the way I make meaning—the stories I tell myself—create the life I live today. If my life is satisfactory, it’s probably because I’m making constructive meaning. If I’m anxious, dissatisfied, or living in a contentious relationship, I probably need to change my stories.

Here are examples of some of the stories that can unconsciously direct our lives:

I married the man, so I need to make the best of it.

My family was crazy; that’s why I’m the way I am.

I have a broken heart, I’ll never have love again.

Men can’t be trusted.

Life is hard.

Relationships aren’t easy.

I should be loved unconditionally.

I am unlovable.

I am unhappy because they never do this or always do that.

Questioning our beliefs and stories, judgments, fears, regrets, and remembering that they are all fabricated by us—or given to us by someone else—allows for new possibilities from which we can freely and consciously make choices for how we live today.

Victim to my own stories

If I am not conscious that what I’m telling myself is made up, I can forever be a victim to my beliefs and ideas.

I may have known this intellectually, but not until I went to my first Reology retreat, where I learned ReSpeak, did I learn to recognize—in the moment—how I was constantly making up stories. After steeping myself in this new way of using language I became far more conscious and intentional in the ways I communicated.

A patient once told me about a mentor who she said, “taught me everything I know.” This mentor laid out a foundation of wisdom that guided my patient ever since she heard it. The one piece of wisdom was: “You will tell your story until you don’t need to tell it anymore.”

But what the mentor didn’t tell my patient was that the wisdom she shared—it was made up too. Was it really wise advice? Perhaps we don’t need to keep telling our stories at all. There is another option. Once our stories have been brought to consciousness, we can, actually choose to do two things.

At times we can stop the stories all together. To learn more about this read this article.
We can learn to create healthier stories.

We have a choice to tell ourselves healthier tales and when we do so we change the quality of our lives and relationships.

My new story

Here’s my current story: my stories are not me. The real me, the me behind all my stories—the witness, the observer of those stories, is the me I now focus on and nurture. And that me, I believe is often free to exist without stories.

I also recognize that there are times when I need my stories—I need something to make sense of what’s going on around me—but I can choose what stories I tell myself, I can focus on what is good in my life, and make my life be one that I consciously choose every day, moment by moment.

What I found was that when I stopped telling certain stories, I had to let go of my excuses for behaving in certain ways. But I also empowered myself to behave in other ways and I’ve come to experience myself as more mature, more centered, happier and more at peace.

For fun, in the comment section below, why don’t you write a short sentence or two that captures your story. Maybe share your “old” story and then share your “new” story. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

 

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The Answer To ALL Relationship Issues

Is there such a thing as the answer to ALL relationship issues? Could relating with other people be straightforward and uncomplicated? And, with our partners, can love truly be easy? The answer to all these questions is yes.

Before I tell you the secret formula, let me tell you a bit about the man who created it, Rollo May. He deserves a few minutes of our attention. Truly, 7 minutes to read this article and 8 minutes to reflect on it afterwards, and you can simplify all your relationships.

Rollo May was born in 1909, and lived fully for 85 years, during which time he made some of the greatest contributions to the field of psychology, and he is often referred to as the “father of existential psychotherapy.” This kind of therapy is optimistic about our ability to fulfill our human potential, while realistic about the limitations of being human. It addresses four broad themes of existence: immortality, isolation, personal responsibility, and the meaning—or meaninglessness—of our lives.

Experience a deeper level of comfort

The idea behind an existential approach to therapy is that when we address the deepest issues of our existence, we can experience a much deeper level of comfort in our lives. Many therapists, even existential therapists, believe there are no ultimate answers to these issues, and that instead of finding answers, the therapist’s job is to accompany their clients on the journey. (Keep reading and you’ll see that I don’t agree—I think there are answers.)

May suggested that psychotherapists must “participate in the world of the client,” without doing violence to the client, and such violence can occur when clients are required to buy into preconceived ideas or when therapists rely on using “techniques as a defense against fully engaging with the clients in psychotherapy.” Instead, existential psychotherapy, according to May, seeks to, “analyze the structure of human existence—an enterprise which, if successful, should yield an understanding of the reality underlying all situations of human beings in crises.”

Reology is the ultimate form of existential psychotherapy because not only do we show people how to analyze the structure of human existence, but with our unique use of language—ReSpeak—we help people understand that there is no singular reality; there is simply their interpretation of reality. I’m confident that Rollo May would have loved this additional step taken by his colleague, and our mentor, John Weir.

Furthermore, the Reologic approach to therapy, and life, is more optimistic than most existential approaches. For we believe that there are satisfactory answers to the questions of immortality, isolation, personal responsibility, and the meaning we make of our lives. Really, this is what Reology is about—providing a means to answer these deep questions for ourselves. And when we do so, many of our more superficial problems either disappear or become easier to resolve.

Free to be present and fully alive

Said simply, when we answer for ourselves the deepest questions of our existence, we free ourselves to be present and fully alive. For one thing we are no longer trying to deny our immortality. For another, we no longer resist our isolation; we use it to access higher states of consciousness. And personal responsibility is not experienced as a burden, but as the source of our power. And determining the meaning of our lives is a question we can finally answer when we stop looking outside of ourselves.

Taken in total, this existential journey—traveled Reologically—allows us to make sense of our own existence in a way that is deeply reverent and rewarding.

With that background about Rollo May, existential psychotherapy, and where Reology fits into this story, I will now share with you the secret formula that answers ALL relationship issues, makes relating uncomplicated, and makes love easy.

Here is the secret formula:

Does not the uncertainty of our time teach us the most important lesson of all—that the ultimate criteria are the honesty, integrity, courage and love of a given moment of relatedness? If we do not have that, we are not building for the future anyway; if we do have it, we can trust the future to itself. –Rollo May

So simple, really. Yet, so many people—even those who nod their heads in agreement when they read this—don’t abide by this wisdom. I hear many excuses why people don’t, and the most popular seems to be some version of protecting the person with whom they are not being honest: “I’m doing it for their good.” “I have decided (for them) that now is not the right time to be honest.”

I was recently working with a fifty-five year old woman, divorced for ten years, living with her daughter. The daughter was dating a man, but after six months she broke it off. The mother then started talking to me about her interest in dating the same man, the one her daughter had been dating. He was halfway between the age of the daughter and the mother—it wasn’t really a crazy thing to do, but she didn’t tell her daughter she was thinking about this. That was the crazy part.

What it sounds like in real life

“Why not tell her?”—I asked. She said, “Well, I’m just thinking about it.”

I said, “I know. That’s why this is the perfect time. If she upsets herself with this information then you can take her feelings into consideration before you make your decision. That way, hopefully, she’ll feel respected that you included her.”

“No, I can’t bear to hurt her.”

I pointed out the obvious. “You don’t think she’ll feel hurt if she finds out after the fact?”

“Well, it is sort of after the fact already.”

I asked, “Meaning what, you’re already dating him?”

“Yes, I am. A little.”

I inquired, “How do you date ‘a little’? What does that mean, you’re not having sex? And that’s not really the point; the point is you’re not being honest with me, either. How do we build our relationship if you aren’t honest with me?”

It was at this point I shared with my client the Rollo May quote. She said, “Yes, I agree with that.”

I said, “You agree with it intellectually, but you didn’t have the courage to be honest with me, and I imagine you’re concerned that your behavior lacks integrity, which is why you’re hiding it. Is that true?”

“Yes, I don’t feel good about any of this.”

“And what about love. Can you be loving when you lack honesty, integrity, and courage?”

“I didn’t want to ruin our relationship. I didn’t want you to think poorly of me.”

I explained, “That’s precisely what the quote is talking about. When you lack honesty, integrity, courage and love, our relationship has no future, or at best it’s very unpredictable. But if you relate to me with honesty, integrity, courage and love, then you and I will naturally take the next step in our relating, without drama or confusion. You being honest with me offers me a chance to see you, to understand you. You withholding honesty prevents me from having that chance and prevents us from building our future.”

I went on. “The same is true in relating with your daughter. Only when you tell her who you are, how you feel, what your values are—only then can you two know how to proceed, and as Rollo May said, ‘ . . . then you can trust your future to itself.’”

I finished our session that day by telling my client that I appreciated her for being honest with me at the end of our conversation, but that I also felt slightly less trusting of her because of the ways she self-justified having been dishonest with me earlier. I said it would take a little time for me to regain that trust in her, and that I cared about her enough that I wanted to try. I hoped that my modeling of honesty, integrity, courage and love would allow her to feel what it’s like to be on the receiving end.

Two final comments

Some people tell me that they are too confused to be honest. If I am confused, I believe it is my responsibility to do what I need to do to become clear and only then am I able to relate to another person as Rollo May suggests. I do not think using “confusion” is an acceptable reason not to be honest with another person.

And, finally, although I understand why Rollo May includes “courage” in his criteria, personally, I substitute kindness for courage. If you have been reading my articles about consciousness, you probably understand why I’ve made this substitution. Courage is a quality that’s required when I live at a certain level of consciousness, because I’m concerned about keeping myself safe. When I don’t feel safe then I think I need to be courageous. But, when I live this way I hinder my growth.

As I learn to live at a higher level of consciousness, the question of safety goes away and I become more interested in personal and spiritual growth. I encourage you to play with the criteria, see if courage or kindness works better for you. I’m convinced that kindness will help all of us shift to a higher level of consciousness.

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