Conscious Love is a Practice
Whether it’s our significant other, flatmate or barista, conscious relationships help us create the world we want to live in.
As complex global challenges emerge, all of us are called on to sacrifice self-interest in the interest of all of humanity. Can we do it?
One thing is certain: skillful connection with those around us is crucial.
What are the most important things you can do to make your relationships more conscious? As Dharma Teachers living and working in conscious community internationally and at Clear Sky Meditation Centre, we’ve made a study of what it takes. We’d like to share some transformative and important components with you.
Learning to be Alone
According to the Buddhist tradition, our sense of ‘aloneness’ happens when we identify with an illusory sense of self, a.k.a. the ego. This ego started to coalesce when, as toddlers, we began to perceive mother and self as two distinct entities. With resulting feelings of loneliness and vulnerability, the ego formed around strategies for survival.
When we learn to be okay — even great — alone, we start to discover what truly interests us. Now that we can be alone, we can choose to be alone together.
The fastest and easiest way to learn to be okay alone is through a regular meditation practice. When we spend hours alone on a meditation cushion, we realize how tumultuous our thoughts and feelings can be even when we’re by ourselves, and ‘nothing’ is happening. Through this process we realize there’s no point in blaming others for our feelings and perceptions. They come up whether or not someone else is around to trigger them.
Through meditation practice we learn we can choose to move away from our feelings of loneliness towards absorption in the present moment as it is. We rest, pleasantly, in our senses and environment. Whatever is happening around us becomes our friend.
We realize too that the ‘innerverse’ is as vast as the outer universe. As we learn to navigate this new territory, we encounter new, mysterious and sometimes troubling phenomena. And it’s all self-generated. An experienced guide and therapy provide valuable support and connection for this process.
Become a Visionary
Conscious relationships thrive when we have a vision. To enjoy shared vision, we first need a personal vision, the fruit of much reflection, craft, and experimentation. At the end of our life, what would we like our contributions to the planet, society, or our communities to have been?
And to be alone together well, our vision needs to have significant areas of overlap with those of the central people in our lives. This means we need to share our visions with one another, compare notes, and be prepared to either make adjustments or walk away.
Otherwise we may be attracted to someone, or to a community, only to find out years later that we want entirely different things from the life or work we share.
A strong shared vision is what helps us make it through the inevitable turbulence of individual egos working together.
Don’t say it… Till the Appointed Time
Cultivating healthy communication skills to bridge the ego divide is a major element in making relationships work. There are many methods and approaches to help improve communication, and they all hold in common quality listening as well as mindful speaking.
For romantic relationships in particular, we’ve found one particular tool very helpful: scheduled, weekly relationship meetings.
Through regular practice we learn to hold our tempers, grievances and other feelings in check until a predesignated day and time. By then, emotions have a chance to settle, and we have valuable space to reflect and gain perspective.
We also avoid saying or doing things we regret or have difficulty repairing. We may be able to perceive our part in the conflict more clearly. In sum, when we bring an issue up with our partner, we can address it constructively together, with clearer minds and calmer hearts.
When we first adopt the practice of weekly meetings, it’s usually from necessity and the meetings can be stressful. Or we may only want to have weekly meetings when we’re upset about something in our relationship.
One student told us she didn’t want to meet with her partner because she didn’t feel like fighting. It can take some time for each of us to learn the practices to make the meetings feel effective. But our experience has clearly shown that having them regularly — even when we have nothing to say — is most helpful.
No challenging feelings or problems this week? We can simply shower one another with some appreciation. Additionally, we come to recognize how often things are going right.
Mapping Desire
Mutual clarity around the topic of desire also helps us enjoy healthier relationships. What do I want? What do I not want? How about my partner?
Many of our inclinations change over time. Naturally, we have many different desires: those related to career, family, and lifestyle, and others pertaining to sex, sensuality, and ways to enjoy discretionary time.
In our relationship, one of us likes to golf and the other likes horseback riding. Hence we need to craft a working agreement that satisfies us both. If we don’t address this creatively, we may resent a lack of quality time together or the withering of personal interests.
Individual sexuality is like a fingerprint: each one is unique, and part and parcel with the person. Integrity about sexual appetites from the outset can make life and love much easier. One person may lose interest in sex while the other is still keen: can we find a solution we are both willing to try? Perhaps we’d like to be in relationship, as well as explore romance and/or sex with other people … or not.
Sharing these interests as soon as we’re aware of them ourselves can avert heartache and invite personal and relational unfoldment. Having an open mind combined with good communication allows us to transcend our insecurities, allay our fears, and grow deeper connections.
Meet Conflict Gracefully
Have you noticed how reliably conflict arises? Egos are by nature fairly fragile, and sensitive to perceived threats. To grow into more conscious relationships we need to develop skills and strategies for meeting conflict constructively.
Generally we humans have four strategies when we feel we are under attack: we react by fighting, running, hiding, or shutting down. Fortunately, there are other countless other options. We are simply required to overcome the urge to just react, and instead respond creatively.
We also need to meet and recognize our inner conflicts. The ego’s survival fears tend to hide in our psychological shadow. Conscious relationships — including moving beyond loneliness or driving others away — demand we meet these ogres. (Get our free download ‘Money, Sex & Power’ for more on this topic.)
We need to shine a light on the unconscious instinctual drives that family and society have conditioned us to repress. We don’t necessarily need to act them out, but recognizing them allows us to see how the experience of being human is universal in its suffering. Empathy is the natural result.
Change is Certain, So Get Good At It
It’s a curious paradox that healthy relationships depend on what Buddhists call ‘non-clinging’. To have a healthy, truly conscious relationship, we have to be able to do more than love another person when they love us.
We need to love them if they decide to walk out the door, and even support them on their journey. This is love in its truest form: unconditional. This does not mean we don’t care. In fact, it means we do.
We all change throughout our lives and sometimes our journey needs to be different than where and how it is at the moment. Needless to say, this is true of our partner as well.
If there is one constant in the world, it is change. Everything is changing all the time and the general rule is when something has outlived its usefulness it is time to move on. We call this ‘death’, and there is no life without it. So to truly live each moment, we must embrace dying to the previous moment.
Embrace the Challenge and Discover Love
We all share the desire to transcend struggle in order to be happy. In terms of relationship, when we cease to believe the fairy tales that consumerist culture sells us — such as a particular lifestyle, product or image enabling us to live happily ever after together — we can instead craft the lives we’d like to lead, together.
From an ego position, getting more conscious in relationships is a scary process. From an awakening position, it’s vitalizing. We highly recommend that you keep practicing, together with another person and people … you are sure to discover something wonderful, called ‘love’.
Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat are Canadian-based Dharma Teachers and best-selling authors of the book Wasteland to Pureland, a manifesto on spiritual awakening in contemporary life. To explore conscious relationships even more deeply, listen to Doug & Catherine’s free ‘Conscious Love’ audio classes, available on their online platform PlanetDharma.
This article is an adaption of ‘Conscious Relationships’, originally published in Kindred Spirit magazine, May/June 2019 Edition.
