Gaia: Conscious Relationships

Re: sex

http://jilmlee05.gaia.com — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:53:19 GMT

I got people who love sex as their lives, and sometimes the idea about sexual relationship even change the way they think about the world.
The relationship between people is delicate. Sometimes, sex might even change people's relationship, like make it better, or sometimes worse. I'm saying, do not make one thing more important than others, the relationship between you and the one you love sometimes even more than just sex.

Re: sex

http://telesterion.gaia.com — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:22:13 GMT

Much more comfortable to leave sex out of it.

It's actually a pretty common phenomenon - leave out the stuff that causes the most pain, or refer to it obliquely, when being 'concious'.

It's still taboo to talk about such things in polite company.

sex

http://shivvy88.gaia.com — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:09:51 GMT

Authenticity in the communication of sexual expression....what does it mean to belong to a group discussing conscious relationships and to leave the boards on sex and money empty. A splendid topic sex, perhaps not reducible to mere words...or something. Hot topic one might say. Real.

Re: Transference and Projection

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:05:57 GMT

Gosh, little me is feeling like I'm lagging behind in the grunt -work department.... bring on the grunt work- but relationship grunt work, I'm very seasoned in the solitary kind. With the right connection I would happily grunt (ha ha double entendre.)

For the record, if there is work to be done..that's the kind of work I want... relationship work.

I'm sure I'll meet him oneday Jane..we said we would.... definitely....

Re: Transference and Projection

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:02:35 GMT

Nicely put, Jane! I really enjoyed reading that. I’m actually starting to feel grounded in all this. You definitely have a way with words. Thank you. Sharon, thank you too, for opening up and being honest with where you’re at. I too can relate to similar situations in my past. I have that Robert Masters book sitting over on my book self unread. I should almost give it a read. Enjoy the day, guys! Seth

Re: Transference and Projection

http://riversong.gaia.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:00:20 GMT

Sharon, I only just noticed you were writing again on this thread.... and here you have been off declaring love to the mysterious Beloved!

I am sure that all of us need to undertake the activity of mopping up our projections and owning them if we are to arrive at the intimate interface able to be present and to participate with the Beloved. I don't know if the journey to that place is about 'diminishing' projections, but rather recognizing them for what they are, and mining them for the information they are holding, not about the 'other', but about YOU.....my projections give me amazing information about ME.....about my deepest longings, about my yearning to connect, about what turns me on and makes me dance.....

I do not believe that we can 'know' a person that we have never met, and not only not met but spent a considerable time with, and not only spent honey-moon time, but also dreadful, stonewalled, "i- have-never-felt -so-alone,-you-shithead-bastard", time. Until we are in the muddiness of the mud of our relationships, do they even begin to have the potential to become crucibles for our awakening.....Robert Masters last book, Transformation through Intimacy is lovely expose of this. In a chapter, 'taking charge of your charge', he is talking about owning projections.....When any of us falls in love with someone we have never met, we are exposing a deep, and everso human longing to be fully met.... This longing is so vulnerable and tender and poignant, and so often has years/centuries of frustration heaped onto it, that to let it simply be there, to feel into it, to feel the pain, and the desire, feels very scary for most of us. It is so scary, that I think we often only admit this deep longing when some 'external' stimulus(the man) comes along and infuses us with a wild hope that 'OMG, could it be, could this be the one?!' And it is way easier to imagine(project) that the 'one' is the never-met man, than it is do the grunt work, and the disillusioning work of actually finding out who I am sitting with my wild longing, and then who they are beyond being some shadowy, embryonic form extending olive branches/ecstatic poems/intimations of intent through the distant fog....

But what I have figured: grunt work it is! there is no escaping it.... and it can be fun if any of us can comes to term with the inevitable issue of rejection... both being rejected when we are not 'the one', and rejecting the other when they are not 'the one'.... Indeed, in this Gaian world, or in the world of internet dating, the Wizzard of OZ lives on in all of us in magnified porportions... through smoke and mirrors, through fabulous intellects and wonderful words, we can spin illusions as deftly as any graduate from Hogwart's.... (and this is fun).... Yet, to love and be loved, to see and be seen, to know another and be known in kind THAT is the deeper journey...and there ain't no such thang as a free lunch...

I have written this elsewhere, but a friend who is a Sex Addiction counsellor, says in the manual the stages of relationship are 1. acquaintence 2. affection 3. friendship 4. commitment 5. intimacy.... in that order. over on the II pod thread, 'what happened to the interpersonal line' we have been writing about this issue.... to skip stages in relationship is, I think, creating only faux intimacy, a narcissitic projection of my deepest wildest longings....and in the meanwhile, the 'other' remains an uncharted entity, an unknown....

I hope you have lunch or coffee, or decaffienated chai with your lovely man..... I have done this before,learning to witness myself, paying attention to all my bubbling feelings(my charge), feeling the projected distance between two hearts....the chiasm of longing...... brailling into this space. I am suddenly thinking of times when I have been speaking at a conference, of that moment at the podium, looking out in sea of people, acutely aware of the dryness of my throat, the lump in my chest, feeling my diaphragm contracting, and then thankfully, also my feet on the ground, supported by this earth and my place in the whole scheme, then the rhythm of my heart beat and my breath relaxing.... self consciousness dissolving into being....

I"that which you are seeking, is also seeking you".....

Re: Transference and Projection

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:39:17 GMT

! am glad you think it's cute Seth :o)

I see what you mean.... it can be a projection or a thought put out there that can spin a balanced energy system out... very interesting... makes me aware of distant stuff I am yet unable to grasp.... given time I'll get a perspective, a feel, an angle...
thanks
sharon

Re: Transference and Projection

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:33:58 GMT

lol... cute post! I don't know if projections are necessarily dependent on how balanced an energy system is. I would think it's plausible that a projection could trigger an imbalance in a balanced energy system.

What came first the chicken or the egg?

A projection to me is a fairly neutral thing, meaning it's not a negative, therefore they don't equate to being harmful. Having not read back through this thread I think a projection is just putting, you, out there, so to speak. If I claim that a certain tree is beautiful, then that's me projecting me onto a tree. If I claim a tree is solid however, well that's true because it being solid is not dependent on me, where as it being beautiful is.

I would figure that I could be perfectly balanced energetically and still see a certain tree as being beautiful without suffering any ill effect.

These are just my thoughts on this.

Re: Reflections

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:16:52 GMT

Beautiful Jane... reading your last paragraph made me want to be in love!
I really get what you're saying about the difference between head and heart reflection...

really good stuff thankyou

Re: Transference and Projection

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:11:04 GMT

Ok Jane so I am here again!
I love your little stories and appreciate your sharing.
Have been away... I suppose on little growth spurt..... I was spinning around with all these questions I had.... that you and Seth responded to.

Yes I feel I am slightly different to when I was last here...and have become aware of how much time I spend fantasizing.... and emotional.... it came to my attention that my belly chakra...the orange one... relating to family... is well, I was going to say underactive, but I think it's over active!.... The reason I mention this is because i thought I was in love with a man... and I knew this was crazy because I'd never met him in person...but I was consumed with the thought and feel of him day and night..like drugged... I couldn't contain myself and after a few months, told him... and felt better for releasing it, but worse for feeling like a complete a-hole! but I didn't care I wanted to take the risk and he respected what I told him and rightly mentioned that it is difficult to know what is real and unreal... projection, transference etc... I agreed and was just glad he didn't run a mile but stayed quite constant and centred and present--- still, even.

Is it possible that if all our chakras were balanced that the potential for projection would be diminished? or even non-existent?

Re: staying with others in commitment

http://shivvy88.gaia.com — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:22:48 GMT

Thank-you so much Gay. i feel an enormous gratitude for your observation in relation to unconscious commitment. I think I have never considered that unconscious and commitment could be linked together this way. In fact, I can feel compassion growing exponentially in relation to this new understanding about the meaning of commitment. It seems then we might choose on the basis of this kind of commitment to link ourselves with others who are struggling with a similar kind of commitment. Or perhaps our shadow selves choose for us as I know they are wanting to come out and play. Thank-you, this insight is very powerful for me personally and will help me to understand much in my relationships with others.

Re: staying with others in commitment

http://gayhendricks.gaia.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:40:40 GMT

One important thing about commitment, often overlooked, is that unconscious commitments, usually made a long time ago, have an awesome power to affect what's going on right now. Just today I was working with a woman who was trying to figure out why another relationship had fallen apart unexpectedly. As she explored it, she realized she had made an unconscious commitment to NOT being in a close relationship, based on a sexual abuse experience when she was 15. It was quite beautiful to see the look of freedom and relief on her face when she realized that there was nothing "wrong" with her, just that she was being run by an old unconscious commitment she no longer wanted to keep.

Re: What does authenticity look like?

http://wanderingskydesert.gaia.com — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:16:22 GMT

Interesting reading your thoughts on authenticity. I have come to feel aht living authentically is "it," the only way worth living, however difficult and challenging and disorienting it can be to sustain in our society. I strive anyway to come from a heart space of being as present and appreciative as possible, and as accepting and fearless of sharing my own truth and witnessing another's shared truth as equally and totally valid.

I am currently blessed to be living in an intentional community that focuses on the development of spiritual values, so authenticity unfolds spontaneously for me here. That is not to say that it is easy, because actually I have found it to be quite a bit of work sometimes, however, it is also far more rewarding than inauthentic living.

If given a choice to live heart-opened, mind-opened, on the path, or trapped in a fake mask of false personality, I could not choose otherwise. The reward of fully embracing coming from where I am really at in every way far outweighs the challenges and difficulties that come along.

For example, I recently had a series of interactions with a person here that I was developing romantic feelings for, however, when I found through progressive discovery that this person was neither interested nor ready for a relationship, I was able to safely navigate through the labyrinthine layers of desire and anxiety that emerged from trying to start something, and then eventually having to give up, and lay down any attempt. Having been especially open and desiring this was very challenging, however, I accomplished it with more skill and grace than I have ever had before in such situations. I have all the work I have done to be as grounded as possible in my authentic self to thank for this, with the Earth and many friends as witnesses.

As for how you address the topic, I don't know how you'll receive this sharing as a reply. I came onto this thread because of the topic more than as a chance to respond to your particular entry. I am continually curious and open to reading and receiving whatever sort of comments and feedback has about my opinions. I try to talk only about what I have discovered from personal experience, as much as I can, so as to be authentically noncontentious.

Re: staying with others in commitment

http://shivvy88.gaia.com — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:31:22 GMT

Thank-you Amanda for your observations and while it has been partly true of my past that I have felt some great void or lack, I have somehow arrived at another place altogether which does not really now dwell upon losses such as these. It is true for me that I have a "magnificent" capacity to observe others in their relationship to the idea of commitment. I think I was really searching for a broader understanding of the idea of staying in the process of understanding that no matter what is being said what is being sought for in any human relationship is really "understanding" or being "allowed" into the relationship with another regardless of preconceived notions of what you or I might intuit from the person in front of us. I think that is what I mean about the 'whole' story...the discovery and magic and sometimes rather difficult and possibly unpleasant possibility of exploration with sincere intention to the best outcome for all. I think there is a lot of lip service paid to the notion of commitment and I really think that I along with many other people have difficulty with that process when it gets a little messy. Of course there are times to exit and what are those times??? I do not want to hurt others in life...sometimes the best course is to stay committed to the integrity of my own being..I struggle with remaining as true to my own nature as I can while experiencing quite often the indignation and so on of others should I ask a question about what their experience is of the idea of commitment. It is a complicated and drawn out affair really to mention to others that perhaps while they believe they are committed to a person they are really committed to whatever benefit they might glean from the relationship...It is difficult. I am learning not to be afraid to express myself yet I feel very alone sometimes when others jump to conclusions such as the reason I am alone is because someone has abandoned me and I cannot get over it...and so on...I must leave at the moment as I have no more time...I appreciate your response and will think some more on the thoughts you have...bye for now

Re: Reflections

http://riversong.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:23:38 GMT

I think there are two sources of 'reflection'...one is our head, and the other is our heart.

If I reflect on you from my head.... I will tell you what 'I think' about you... this will be a collage of what I observe about you, and the pattern recognitions of other people I know like you. My reflections of you will be painted by my own values, and my own cultural contexts...and so on. And this is where it is very easy to meld reflection and projection......

If I reflect on you from my Heart...I will tell you how I feel when I am around you... "when I am with you my heart races and my knees feel weak. My thoughts begin to spin...I feel the earth move under my feet..." etc.... and again, this is where my own neediness, or longings will begin to try to project onto you the qualities that I desire, spinning a tail of 'what I so desperately want' as simply an accounting of 'what is'.... I love how Don Quixote saw his Beloved in the plain faced peasant girl...... "life not as it is, but as it should be" ....

Sometimes we might lift each other up with our reflections, seeing in people divinity and truth and beauty that is otherwise dormant, and in need of awakening..... so relationships are so important...

I love the ending in Allister MacLean's book No Great Mischief...

"We are all better when we are loved."

It is so true....we are better...even when that love has been twisted and turned, reflected, deviated, projected, riccochetted, muddied, muddled up, filtered, smudged, drained, replaced, diluted, concentrated.....but in spite of it all....I tell ya... It is all good...

and all we can do to facillitate the process of Love coming through is 'to polish the lens of our own perception'. and when we do that perfectly, we can only see love rising up in this splendorous beautific prismatic dance of Being.... this much I know for sure... though, I must admit, I get caught in the story line time and again....It beckons to me like rides at the fall fair. And d'as life!

Jane

Re: Transference and Projection

http://riversong.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:44:56 GMT

Seph, I am presently in North Carolina, having had a glorious drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains yesterday.... and I am just looking at you question "is it possible to project onto yourself?' and pondering it.

In a way the whole story of Narcissus is about projection onto self...mistaking ourselves, or being captivated by our own 'reflection', and assuming it to be the 'real thang'. I think we all build stories up about who we are, what we are worth(or aren't worth), what I deserve, what I don't deserve, and then we live our lives out shackled in the walls of our own self projection......I think this is what Pema Chodron is referring to when she says in one of her books, 'drop the storyline'.... what happens if we drop the story line and simply just 'are'.... It seems to me this is also the very simple Zen message, or the Power of Now message....

As I drive with my mother on this trip, she tells me about her delightful friend Molly, age 80 something, who has lost almost all of her short term memory, and with it 'the recent storyline'. Molly is apparently fearless in this, and aware of her memory problem...and not at all demented. Simply, she continues to find herself in one big wondrous, surprising situation after another! "The Dairy Queen, I wonder how I got there", that sort of thing. How amazing this life would be if we could all hold this awe, fresh and new, in every instant....

I often help delivery babies, and I am alway captivated by their brand newness, often opening their eyes and looking around for the first time while examine them... What an incredible surprise they must be feeling..."What the heck, it was just wet and pink and gurgly! And now what is all this" or whatever thoughts babies think without any words to think them with.

So I guess I am on a bit of a diversion, but all the same, we do project onto ourselves all the time, and we often forget or may never really even have known the real 'me'... the little divine spark that peers out into the world after 13.7 billion years of arriving....and perhaps again, this is why this work of untangling the projections is so utterly important.

Jane

Re: Transference and Projection

Sat, 31 May 2008 10:29:09 GMT

Jane- love knowing you are on the road in contrast to my mum- at- home- stay- still- status. I am understanding about the importance of really grasping the ability to differentiate between self and other. That clarity, I feel, enhances each individual and their effectivness in the world. Am starting to be aware of projections daily between myself and others..... changes everything.
Liking the sound of Alice Miller very much.

I get what you mean about the Oliver Twist thing. When I was growing up (about 7 years old)we got a new dog..that chewed stuff. My dad would threaten it with the lead.... unknown to me the dog would yelp before, or without even being touched....I was in the other room and thought she was being beaten so I shouted from the top of my voice "THAT"S ENOUGH." Then I ran to my room... mum came up about an hour later and said " you know you've done wrong, don't you," yuck... I did right.

Do you think it's possible to project onto yourself? (what about people that self harm, or are bulimic, anorexic, self-crical? or is it that a different thing?)

Re: Transference and Projection

http://riversong.gaia.com — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:17:12 GMT

I don't think that projection is just generated from suppressed emotion, though the angrier sloppier manifestations of it can arrive from suppression. Projection comes from not having differentiated self and other..... and then creating a bee's nest of thoughts that depend on the lack of differentiation. This bee's nest perspective gives me the illusion of omnipotent powers to know and judge the world out there....and from this 'I create my version of reality'.

Something like 90% of our information comes from non verbal cues..... so how we 'project' onto another person is basically a kind of 'pattern recognition'. When our pattern recognition involves the patterns of our our own unexamined and unintegrated emotional process, (our own shadowed complexes and conditionings) then when I have a 'feeling' rise up, I will project it out to the world and hold the world up as 'the cause' of that feeling. Get a whole mess of people doing this, and mix in George W. and the rest, and hey, look at the situation that has arisen.

Seph, you write: "The truth is we can never really know how another thinks or feels.."

In an ultimate way, this my be true unless we are 'God", but in a relative way, it is not so true. You can know how I think and feel if you ask me. If you take time to get to know me, really know the pathways and patterns of my life, and if I do the same thing, and you ask me, and I tell you the truth, my best rawest most vulnerable truth, you can know 'what I think or feel'. This is what relationship is....uncovering layers of truth, of sentience in another, of inner essence and of revealing ourselves. I love Sam Keene's book, "To love and be loved"...which is 'to know and be known'.

Projection is a faulty wiring, or maybe just a short circuiting. It will only tell me more about myself if I am the one projecting. It does not allow for indeed, insist upon bypassing the sometimes painstaking, laborious work of brailling forth into the outside world and 'discovering' the other. It is a very serious and very insidious way of doing 'relationship bypass'. It is how, people can be married for 30 years and not really ever 'know' the other. It is an important aspect of co-dependent relationships.

When Gay writes, that he thinks that this might be taught in school, it is that important. I agree. I also don't know if there is a stage in psychological development that this can be gleaned, or if it is something that really healthy parenting and teaching would actually eliminate it, such that we would hyperplane to a new collective level of global consciousness. What is true, our parenting methods have been breeding grounds for teaching all of us to Project. Alice Miller writes about the 'poisonous pedagogy'---basically, an authoritarian, soul-murdering parenting method, that has not encouraged a child to learn to lead from his sensing heart, and that maims the ability to differentiate self and other often at an age when the 'memory of the maiming' is also obliterated. The poisonous pedagogy teaches us as children to go underground in order to stay safe, to NOT reveal our truth at all costs, to become clever enough to out smart the system, to already know what a raging father will do before he does it and to plan around it, including never showing up real and vulnerable..... We are rarely like Oliver Twist with his gumption and courage to recognize our hunger and state: "I want some more." We would have be bonked on the head for this kind of "audacity" when I was growing up. And thusly, we begin our understanding of this world not as a gorgeous world of love and abundance, but of a scary place that will not give us what we NEED, let alone what we want.

This huge task of learning about projections and transference is of major significance in sorting out the horrible ways in which we as individuals and as a collective have gone off balance......

I am in the midst of a road trip, writing early morning from the Caravelle Motel... beautiful day in Quebec....

love Jane

Re: Reflections

Fri, 30 May 2008 08:06:12 GMT

How do we reflect? What are the dynamics of reflecting.... is it an exercise we do whilst interacting? Or is an interaction something we reflect on after the event. Or can we just keep doing it all day long? Are there different forms of reflecting? Can we reflect without deliberately intending too or do we have to be intent on doing it? When we refelct should we focus upon how we have appeared to others of how they have appeared to us? And while we're at it how do you circulate your own blood? (joke)

Re: Transference and Projection

Fri, 30 May 2008 07:58:22 GMT

Is all projection a symptom of supressed emotion? The truth is we can never really know how another thinks or feels.. so I might have a fleeting thought like, "She's saying that because she hasn't dealt with her past issues" or "He must live in that area if he's wearing something like that" or "She doesn't know the answers, why is she trying so hard." Is there a difference between a judgement, a guess, intuiting and projection?