People yearn for relationships they can trust. They want to be able to depend on people. They want relationships characterized by ease, clarity and harmonious cooperation. But, is there any adult who hasn’t felt let down or betrayed by someone who didn’t live up to his or her agreements?
What Is an Agreement?
What is an agreement really? An agreement is a method for coordinating action between two or more people. It is supposed to smooth the way for efficient harmonious interaction. But why do people so frequently not live up to their word? Usually an agreement fails because it does not reflect the true desire and motivation of all the people making the agreement. People who agree to something because they are afraid of what will happen if they don’t agree, will more than likely not follow through, unless they are pressured to do so. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
\\ tags: agreement, communication, Relationships
Top Ten Practices of Enlightened Relationships
Relationships are in many ways like real, seagoing ships. Just like a sailing vessel needs regular, constant care and upkeep, your relationships need regular care and upkeep. The crew of a sailing ship is knowledgeable in the standard practices of seamanship, which is absolutely required to maintain a ship’s seaworthiness. Unfortunately, most people are not knowledgeable in the standard practices of maintaining their relation-ships.
Yet, most people in relationships of any kind are usually focused on the goals of the relationship, whether building a life or a business or a community center. There is very little attention paid to the relation-ship itself. And often, somewhere along the voyage of life, the relation-ship is unable to withstand the inevitable and predictable storms of life that can damage both the individuals in the relationship and the relation-ship itself. Maintaining a strong, stable, satisfying relation-ship requires knowledge and skill – neither of which is commonly taught in our culture. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
\\ tags: bookstore, purpose, Relationships, video
How Do We Reach Intimacy?
Each person seems to understand the intimate experience in his or her own way. In a sense it takes a journey of personal discovery to learn how to share intimacy with another person. Here are some guidelines that may help to define that journey –
Know Your Self: Get in touch with your own private experiences. In our stressed-out world this is often hard to do because our attention is directed outward much of the time. It helps to sit – doing nothing and being distracted by nothing – and spend time in reflection and introspection. Observe your thoughts and feelings. The brain has pleasure centers – close your eyes and imagine yourself experiencing pleasure. Become familiar with those parts of yourself that are strong and that feel whole and integrated. Learn to feel comfortable with the part of yourself that senses calmness, confidence and peace. (Some people like to spend a few minutes every night before bed, perhaps with just a candle burning, reflecting on the events of the day. Others prefer to keep a daily journal of their private thoughts and feelings.) Until you know your own private feelings, it is difficult to share them with someone else.
We cannot expect to be intimate with another when we are out of touch with our own internal experiences. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
\\ tags: communication, health, Relationships, trust
Intimacy in Relationships is One Key to Emotional Health
Some of us search our entire lives for a feeling of oneness with another person. It’s hard to describe, really, what we search for, but we know it when we finally achieve it. Maybe we tire of that dark feeling of being ultimately alone as we struggle through life. If only there were someone else here, we say to ourselves, who could understand and share these burdens. Then it wouldn’t be so lonely. It wouldn’t be so hard.
Or perhaps, in our more positive moments, we want to share not just the burdens but our pleasures too, our strength and beauty. We want the powerful impact of our internal experience to have an impression on someone else, as if to say that we count, we are whole, and we want to impart this feeling to another person. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
\\ tags: intimacy, intimate experiences, Relationships
We call it selfing, neither selfish nor selfless, but the perfect balance between the two. Selfing is the skill of being true to yourself and being in balance with your commitments to others. It can be a special challenge if your world is filled with many wonderful opportunities to say “yes” to and it feels difficult to choose between them. Or, it can be difficult if you have a hard time saying “no” to people. It can be helpful to remember that every time you say “yes” to something, you are also saying “no” to something or someone else, maybe without being aware of it. Many people are over-committed and they haven’t recognized it yet. They are simply feeling the symptoms. The symptoms are recurrently feeling conflicted in what you “should” do as compared to what you “want” to do. Feeling exhausted. Feeling guilty because you are afraid you are letting others down. Not having enough time. Feeling resentful. Feeling like the weight of the world is resting on your shoulders. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
\\ tags: happiness, priorities, Relationships, selfing
Are you noticing a dwindling affinity in your professional and community partnerships? Has the love drained right out of your romantic relationship? Do you feel less connected than you used to? Do you “know” that you love each other, but you just don’t “feel” it in quite the same way any more? Or, are you afraid of involvement because you fear “losing yourself” in a relationship? Do you often feel resentful of family members or friends?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may have a the emotional equivalent of a “cancer” in your relationships – the cancer of resentment. Resentment seethes silently in relationships, slowly destroying intimacy and trust and finally, love. You hardly notice as it quietly eats away at the vitality of your relationships, partly because it is so subtle in the beginning. Yet behind the veil of your conscious mind it mushrooms out of control, fed by unconscious habits. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
What does Conscious Evolution mean? In part, it means that you are evolving. Your experience of yourself is evolving. Who you are now is in the process of becoming something even greater than who you are in this present moment and you can participate knowingly in this process.
There is greatness in you being called forth. Your partnerships are the womb of this greatness. You are like the caterpillar that goes into a chrysalis to become the butterfly. Your partnerships are the place where you evolve into the best you that you can be.
Recognizing that your partnerships provide you with a powerful opportunity for your personal and spiritual growth, you can truly take advantage of the opportunities present in your partnerships if you share a commitment to use your relationship with each other for your mutual growth and evolution. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
\\ tags: communication, partnerships, Relationships, spiritual growth
Assuming radical personal responsibility is like accepting a mantle of spiritual power and wisdom. It elevates you to the understanding that you are not a victim of life, your life and your partnerships don’t happen to you. Your partnerships are a reflection of your own consciousness.
Your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, attitudes and behaviors are creative factors in your life. If you will assume responsibility for the quality of those factors you can also assume responsibility for the results. That means you can have some creative control over the quality of your life and relationships.
You can be the author of your own experience. We call it radical because it is so uncommon in our culture. It represents a paradigm shift, a radical shift in your understanding of how things actually work to create your experience of reality. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
Would you even consider building a house without an architect and a blueprint? You wouldn’t get some wood, nails and a hammer and just start putting something together and hope it turned into a house you would want to live in, would you? People do the equivalent with their partnerships all the time.
They “believe” it will work out because it just “feels” right. Most people leave the success of their most important relationships up to chance and luck, in the hope that it will turn out. Too many times it doesn’t and then they are left wondering, “What did I do wrong?”
It can be a sobering realization when you see that your love and/or good intentions alone are not enough to guarantee success in your partnerships. But it can also be a relief when you discover what does guarantee success and fulfillment. The additional components are education and skill – education about what it takes to have relationships succeed, and skill in standard practices of success. Those are things that anyone can learn if they are sufficiently motivated. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
The second key to powerful partnerships is having a working knowledge of the five stages of relationship.
The five stages are:
1. Attraction
2. Power Struggle
3. Cooperation
4. Synergy
5. Completion
The most problematic stages for most people are Power Struggle and Completion. People often ask us if the Power Struggle stage is necessary. Who wouldn’t want to avoid power struggle? People don’t exactly jump up and down with excitement when they enter that stage, like they might in the attraction stage! Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
