Musings by Jovial

Live Relationships - Part I: INTRODUCTION

LIVE RELATIONSHIPS:  INTRODUCTION

    We live in fast times. Our environment changes—sometimes abruptly and significantly. Forms alter. Appearances whirl in and whirl out like mosaics in a kaleidoscope. Facades flash by like billboards. And in the process of all this constant change—technological, social, evolutionary—it seems that half of us are looking for a relationship and half of us are running away from one. 
 
    Little wonder that in this age of transformation—of everything as you know it—the obvious basics of relationships can be easy to overlook. Little wonder that a lot of our relationships turn out the way we had unconsciously envisioned them. It is not surprising that a great many of us in our society have, and co-exist in, relationships that are less alive than a cold hamburger.

    Simply, without your relationships, you would not exist. The qualities found in the relationships that you do have determine the composite quality of your existence and of your life as you know it.

    My sole intention is to teach you how to master those qualities of live relationships which may or may not be present in yours. I challenge you to "test" yourself to see how many of these qualities you possess.  I’m also pointing the way to adding any or all to your repertoire. "Doing" this will affect the manner in which you view your relationships. It will help you master these qualities—that is, make the choice and commitment to acquiring them. A master creates the qualities of aliveness by having control over reality and allowing reality to control him or her, in the same way as a master at tennis hits the ball over the net and then, on the return, the ball creates when and how he must hit it again. This play of creation and re-creation between you and your relationships is the aliveness of mastery:

    Mastery is the same as aliveness. It is the harmonious play which occurs between the Master and whatever, or whomever, he or she creates.  His aliveness comes out of the actual manifestation of the Master's creation and the way in which that manifestation recreates the Master.  The result is continuous play of consciousness between Master and creation. This play is the aliveness essential to any healthy relationship.  Be clear that within the context of this writing, the words "Mastery" and "Aliveness" are synonymous.

    You will find options, not evident before, now available to you. And the odds are good that you'll be a happier person within or without your present relationships.

    The qualities defined in this work are found not only in personal or romantic situations—although those two areas of our lives get a lot of attention. They are also evident or lacking in your relationships with money, religion, sex, health, work, and authority. In fact, they are the indicators of how your relationship is with everything that is part of your life. And it is the overall quality of your life which determines your self-esteem. It also determines your personal power, your integrity, your ethics, and your standards. In all those areas, you have more choices than you now think you do.

    These qualities, of course, may be present in varying degrees in your life now, and this author does not judge how you stack up. Some may not be present at all, and please do not suppose that they all should be.

    This work "Live Relationships" gives you distinct—and succinct— guidelines for gaining access to powerful keys that fit and unlock doors previously unopened to you.

    The more doors you go through, the more positive will be the effect on your life, and the more effective your life will be. Ultimately, in seeking these qualities, you will gain an opportunity for greater awareness of your self—the highest achievement any of us can accomplish at any given moment.

    The relationships that you have may be very much alive, like the walking wounded, or terminal. My suggestion is that you do not dwell on the dead stuff. Dead relationships can and often do occur between children and their parents, lovers and their partners, employees and their employers...and so on. There are reasons for that, but they are not relevant here, nor are their discussion necessary. What is relevant and necessary is to focus on the positive result.

    Thousands of normal Americans, and Europeans have come to my door chanting the same general questions. Generally stated, they asked, "How do I create aliveness in my relationships?" And one of the first things that I taught them was that the way to aliveness or a higher quality of relationship certainly is not to focus on the dead part. That's like going to the morgue to meet someone.

    Focus on the alive part.

    The approach is not to spend all your time examining what's wrong with you. If you want to know what's wrong with you, there are plenty of people around willing to tell you their version. The approach is to pay close attention to what is right with you. Focus, and then re-focus, on that part of you.

    That doesn't mean that you should "avoid" what is unwanted. It is to think "solution" rather than "dissolution."

    It is to choose to take the bridge that will bring you farther across the river, closer to where you are willing to be.

    Concentrate on what is wrong, and you'll be impotent, frigid, and petrified.

    Strategically, then, for your own welfare and state of happiness, it makes sense that focusing on the dead part—the part where the pain has become a psychological comfort zone—is an error. Dwelling on the crisis is avoidance of ourselves. It is also what gets us the attention which we most often mistake for love and friendship.

    On the other hand, to accelerate your aliveness is to make the choice to think, and to focus your awareness on what you are willing to have in life. That is the bridge. That is the connection. That is the consciousness which brings you across and moves you on.

    The way you create life is to look at what is right and say, "How do I promote that?"

     "How do I do more of that?"

     "I want to do more of that."

     "I am willing to do whatever is necessary to have that"

     "I am willing to let go of what I have and become that."

    By refusing to give your negative stuff the time of day, whatever is not wanted will begin to disappear. When you do not "water it," support it, or agree to it, its roots will rot and fall away from lack of attention.

    Live relationships are those relationships in which relating continues. To cut off that relating in an attempt to "preserve" a relationship, is literally to kill it.

    Live relationships are those in which the word "love" has been elevated in definition to its proper place. Love is the only constant, the only reality, and when you get that way, you know it. One of the ways to get that love, of course, is through relationships. That's why we chase after someone with whom we think we are in love, someone who pushes the right buttons, who allows us to experience ourselves as love.

    The problems start occurring when we start trying to define and mould our future happiness around that wonderful experience. We want to make sure it "stays around." Remember, though, that love is love; an experience is something that is happening now. When you begin to experience saying "I love you" as a statement about yourself rather than about the one you are addressing, your relationship will transform into a state of "conscious love."

    Few people actually focus on the quality of their relationships. Rather, they seem more concerned with their length. Anniversaries are big deals in relationships. We've all either experienced or known of people who are judged, even condemned, for leaving relationships, breaking up, discontinuing that connection even with a friend, much less a wife or husband. Yet little do we think about condemning them to celebrate their 17th anniversary with a hidden grimace.

    They remain trapped and bound by their own comforting devices in dead, non-productive relationships—which in turn disease all their other relationships.

    Actually, other than to provide recreation, to love, to serve, and/or to take care of one another, there are no long-term reasons for relationships. All other reasons or rationales will change. You can count on it because it's your experience.

    When preserved and analyzed excessively, your relationship loses the quality of relating and becomes stagnant. There is now "a relationship." Verbs become nouns. Action slows down, and in some cases, totally halts.

    You may be able to identify some of your own relationships which have been pressed into a non-relating mould. The exercises in this work will help you take a close look at them. If you too find yourself petrified about a particular relationship with another person, it may mean that you are terrified and resentful of that person—the same one whom you believe you love, respect, or enjoy. You are stuck in a conclusion and can't get out. A live relationship is a direction, not to be mistaken for a conclusion. 

    One of the keys to mastering a live relationship is to re-focus it on a regular basis. To do that, you need to stay in present time. You need to be aware, alert, and open to experience. When you define or allow yourself to be defined, know that you have concluded that you and your relationship are blocked from aliveness. As far as that relationship is concerned, you're dead.

    Remember that you cannot define anything until it is framed in time—stopped. And yet everything is constantly transforming and changing and you cannot communicate an accurate definition of that. A running horse is a changing horse. Every time you try to communicate what it is, it is not anymore. Every time you get into a relationship and define it, it is not anymore. You smugly embrace your assumption, massage your definition, and scratch your head trying to figure out why it does not work.

    "What went wrong?" you ask. What went wrong, and what usually goes wrong, is that you did not consider the fact that relationships continue to exist, continue to transform—much the same as your body does. You can try to capture them and keep them all tidy inside your well-constructed definition, but you are really defining each other into complete boredom, fear, and walking death.

    You can play that game. A lot of people do.  If you don't think so, think of all the catchy "How To Save Your Marriage" magazine headlines you've seen.

    You don't have to play that game, and you can have a lot more fun with your relationships. In the first place, you can simply recognize that all of your relationships are now transforming, and enjoy the show. This work "Live Relationships" tells you how to do that.

    This work is to be used by you in order to take a look at you. Evaluate where you are and where you are genuinely willing to be. This work is designed to help you achieve or strengthen those qualities known to be a part of truly live relationships.

    Each chapter ends with a self-discovery section which gives you the opportunity to notice things about yourself which you avoid and of which you are unaware. This expanded awareness is the doorway to greater aliveness, satisfaction, and mastery in all your relationships. These self discovery pages provide the opportunity for you to create rather than blame.

    To create or strengthen these alive characteristics demands making choices, being aware of your actions and thoughts, and then transforming them. Take your time with this work, with your choices, and with your transformation, and enjoy the results.

    The introductions to each chapter will give you some idea of my own life experience. The body of the chapter has been purposely kept almost entirely absent of personal experience to avoid considerations which will block your understanding.

    The ideas presented in this work have been shared with me by scientists, psychologists, masters, and enlightened people of many cultures as well as my channeled higher self and the other entities it enables to relate to me.

    Use these ideas; they are yours! Your old beliefs will crumble and your limitations will dissolve. Reach for the highest in yourself in all your relationships and empower others to do the same. Most importantly, enjoy and celebrate the relationships you choose, and master them.

(to be continued)

Live Relationships - Part II: ESSENTIAL

Call Jovial Now! 

LIVE RELATIONSHIPS - Part II: ESSENTIAL

     This chapter is essential because in it I have as best I can—within the context of the written word—described a live relationship, what it means to master a live relationship, and why most people have difficulty keeping their most critical relationships alive. It is helpful if you think of it as a non defining description. That is essential for you to learn if you are to get full benefit from the chapters which follow.

     In this work, is explained the qualities of live relationships. These are indications, qualities, characteristics of a live relationship—not a live relationship itself.

     In fact, only two of the qualities are absolutely essential: effective communication and affinity. The others may or may not be present. All, however, seem to be variously evident in those relationships I have most admired among the many people I have worked with.

     MASTERY: A commitment to acquiring excellence; a master creates his or her relationships while they simultaneously create him or her.
     LIVE: You having life, you having spirit,

• you living,
• you in existence,
• you alert,
• you aware,
• you intelligent,
• you transforming,
• you changing.

     A LIVE RELATIONSHIP: Love without attachment, an environment in which individuals flourish, an awareness of another person's way of being, a related way of being.

     A RELATED WAY OF BEING: Related--not possessed. It is easy to get the impression in loving relationships and in any other relationship that if you are the boss, you possess your wife, your employees, and your children. What is actually going on is that if you are in one of those roles, your wife, your employees, and your children are serving you. In reality, you own no relationship.

     It is important to notice the distinction between a related way of being and a possessed or controlled way of being. And it should be easy to notice, because most people are owned by their relationships. They are owned by their money; they are owned by their careers; they are controlled by their husbands or wives; they are controlled by their parents; they are possessed by their children.

     Most people are not in a related way of being. They do not realize that they are separate. In fact, they unconsciously behave and think as if they are chained inextricably together.

     If a parent-child relationship never grows beyond the parent-child stage, if it remains the same over the years, it dies, caught in the melodrama of control, possession, and often desperate clinging. Unfortunately, this is the case with the majority of such relationships, and the pain doesn't go away.

     On the other hand, when parents and children continue to relate, an aliveness continues to be present within their relationship. This allows them to transform from a parent-child relationship to one of having a Mother and Father who are intimate old friends. These are the kind of friends who can chronicle your life with detail and compassion such as no other friend can. When you begin to experience relationships at that level, you will begin to have extraordinary, wonderful, and joyous relationships.

     Live relationships are about a related way of being, not a controlled way of being, not a possessed way of being. Instead of being forced into a time-and-space definition, they are free and open to experience. Notice the distinction, and by keeping it in mind, it will begin to become habit. Your relationships will begin to become what you create instead of what you have been accepting.

     AN AWARENESS OF ANOTHER PERSON'S WAY OF BEING: Awareness is unfocused thought, not to be confused with the judgment of another's actions. It is not a focused definition, but rather an allowance of how that person is.

     Awareness is what I call the incomprehensible collective mind— intelligence not yet actualized, recognition not necessarily shaped into words.

     Children have a better understanding of awareness than most adults. Their spontaneous creativity is reflected in their imaginary playmates, and their ability to step beyond definition in order to see the world as they wish, But they slowly and gradually lose their awareness, magic, and creativity. They do so because these qualities, which are inborn traits, receive insufficient nurturing. As they grow up and begin to learn the ways of adults, they are taught to focus their thought on what is necessary to assure their survival.

     This generally comes through in the form of "parenting," the survival-training job that we have yet to do consciously and effectively, without damaging our children's creativity, self-esteem, and aliveness. Little wonder that generation after generation of kids grows up with less self-esteem than they deserve, leading uncreative lives and getting stuck in dull, boring, and unstable relationships.

     To be in a live relationship requires being conscious and alert. It demands the courage to change and to accept change in all things, including those you love. Because you have been trained to do otherwise, you have to keep reminding yourself. After a while, by paying attention, it becomes habitual. You begin to stop unconsciously defining people. You begin to realize that the person you are looking at is not you, but rather a whole new adventure. And you are very grateful that you are able to hold his hand every once in a while, or that he will share himself with you. Ultimately, with practice at a new awareness, you discover that you know very little about him, which is why he is so exciting.

     AN AWARENESS OF ANOTHER PERSON'S WAY OF BEING is to accept that what you know about this person is minute. You also begin to realize that you are in a relationship in order to discover each other, not to define each other. And when you comprehend that, you start having extraordinary relationships. They are adventurous and childlike. In fact, you may first experience it more with children, because,,, they are "alive." They make the natural choice to live. They have not unconsciously chosen the death process yet. They have not figured out the shortest way to drive to work, and they have not .been driving that route for twenty years. They get lost once in a while, walk down a different street, and experience discovery. They think differently. They are aware. They are available. They are open.

     For you to master live relationships, you must reclaim that.

     You must make the choice to think and to be alive. When you reclaim your aliveness, you will begin to allow the people in your relationships to reclaim theirs. When that happens, you will not need to know what is going to happen all the time. It is a little frightening at first, and then it gets to be a lot of fun. The fear also transforms into something you'll really like. It's called excitement.

     AN ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH INDIVIDUAL'S FLOURISH: We are talking about an environment, not a focused, defined space. Environments are expandable. They are changeable. Environments just surround you and you become a part of them. You become one with them. Your experience is being in them.

     Another characteristic of environments is that no matter how many times you go into them, they are never the same. Just take the time to experience. Every sunrise, every sunset is different—every day of your life. The grass is a little longer. You hear, smell, and feel different things. Your emotional state has much to do with how you perceive and react to your environment.

     In fact, you are a participator, not an observer. You are in a relationship with your environment, the kind of relationship that depends on your awareness of what's going on around you.

     To achieve a live relationship, you must have an environment in which individuals can flourish. It is important for you to recognize that individuals cannot flourish in a defined space. Only in an environment can an individual truly be a lover, a friend, a business consultant, a partner, a competitor, a teacher, a student, and still be an individual.

     Notice that word—"individual." It takes two or more in a relationship to relate. The choice of an individual to attend a particular school, to worship a particular religion, to live in a particular geographic location or to experience a certain lifestyle tends to make us stereotype him. Now he is a preppy, a Moonie, a yuppie, a hillbilly, or an over-the-hill hippie. We obsessively cast a group label on every individual we encounter, but although we are obsessed by such categorizations, these individuals with whom we are relating are always unique within their chosen contexts.

     When you experience people as individuals, your whole experience of relationships changes dramatically. You understand that most people think once they've joined with other people, they become a group. You begin to be careful not to think continually of yourself as a spouse, a parent, a friend, an employer, a teenager—whatever it is you have been categorizing yourself as. These are labels on a can; they are unconscious definitions which limit creativity and pleasure. Remember that no matter how many people surround you, you are still you. When you consciously choose to be yourself in a relationship, you will be alive. You will experience individuality. You will have people being who they are and there will always be an exchange of thoughts, emotions, and growth.

     Such an environment allows you to just be you—an individual with many identities, many relationships. And it allows you to see others in the same way. It's a refreshing way to look at what's going on around you.
     AN ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH INDIVIDUALS FLOURISH: "Flourish" means to grow vigorously. When you are in a relationship in which you are not growing vigorously, it is vital that you re-examine your reasons for being in that relationship. If you are in school and you are not learning, what are you doing there? If you are in a romantic and sexual relationship and you are not experiencing romance and sexual satisfaction, what are you doing there? If you are in a relationship because of fun and recreation and you are not having a good time, what are you doing there? If you experience your career as just a job rather than as meaningful work, what are you doing there? If you are a member of an organized religion and you are not growing spiritually, what are you doing there?

     What is the purpose of each of your relationships? For what purpose are you in them? Parental approval? Group acceptance? The spiritual sanction of your preacher, guru, priest, rabbi, or master?

     If you are not growing in your relationships, they are not fully alive. Growth, in fact, is what relationships are all about. And to grow vigorously is the key to mastering live relationships. This means that you may grow out of a relationship as well as grow within one. Mark Twain left school, he said, when it began to interfere with his education. What Mark Twain was striving for and what I am talking about is flourishing aliveness. It does not mean that you jump and run out of the door of every relationship you are in which is absent of growth, because you have obviously and ignorantly contributed to the lack of aliveness present.  It is not about blaming. It is about dealing with your own inability to flourish—your own lack of aliveness. It's about getting honest with yourself, and being courageous enough to do something about it. It means that you really look and ask yourself important questions:

• "What contribution am I not making to my career?"
• "What contribution am I not making to my marriage?"
• "What contribution am I not making to my education?"
• "How am I withholding?"

    
     With this new level of clarity and intent, you can either choose to contribute and grow in that relationship or you can leave it with dignity.

     RELATIONSHIP IS LOVE WITHOUT ATTACHMENT, This may sound simple, but it is not easy to do. It is definitely not the way, most people enter into and try to maintain, for example, a loving relationship—which is one reason why so many marriages fall apart or stagnate.

     If you are experiencing difficulties within your relationships, the initial barrier may be that you, like most people, do not experience yourself as love. You have created relationships which are tangible or "real," dragging along the negative thoughts you associate with those realities.

     Your relationships are a mirror of who you are, a way for you to experience yourself in a tangible way. If you think something is wrong with your relationships, it is time to stop pointing your finger at your wife, husband, child, or boss. It is time to look inside and say, "They are reflections of me. What am I doing?" Or, "What have I been doing for years that causes them to be that way?" It is an opportunity to see who you are and to grow. It is a chance to experience yourself as love, which is what you are at the intangible level, when you are absent of negative thought.

     RELATIONSHIP IS LOVE WITHOUT ATTACHMENT. To put it simply, love, given definition and unconsciously attached to anything or anyone, ceases to be love. Love is sufficient in itself. It cannot be attached to anything. It is intangible. It is a state of consciousness.

     Your need to make it tangible makes this miraculous movement stumble and be inhibited like a snake if suddenly we put legs on it.

     Start becoming conscious when you attach love to something or someone, and notice the conditions you place on that attached love. When you were born, your mother and father loved you unconditionally. Then it dawned on them that they had this responsibility, or job, called parenting. And as you became aware of this parenting role, from your point of view, love became conditional. It became: "I love you if you make good grades." "I love you if you do your chores." "I love you if you get to bed on time."

     This is what you perceived, whether it was communicated verbally or not. It was at that point that you began to feel that the only love you knew or wanted was being pulled out from under you. Before that, they just loved you unconditionally. You were sufficient unto yourself. You were enough as yourself. Their love was not attached to anything; it was sufficient in itself. To this day, most people go on repeating this destructive pattern with their own children, husbands, wives, and lovers. What mothers and fathers must begin to say is, "We love you. We always will love you, and we have this job which is essential to your survival, and we need your cooperation. It is called parenting. It is our job to teach you to focus and function effectively with the least amount of damage to you, and we want you to participate in this responsibility and together, we will do the best we can."

     This is conscious communication. This is conscious love. It does not attach love to parenting. Love is love. Parenting is parenting. Your children will hear that and, although they may not understand it at first, they will in time be grateful for having been given the opportunity to contribute to their own identity.

     Unfortunately, that is not the norm. Parents traditionally and unconsciously communicate, "Grow up." "Get it yourself" "Stop acting like a child." "You don't appreciate me." "Where did I go wrong?" "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about."

     You need to grow away from this "cliché communication" kind of thinking because it is a time bomb ticking away. It is highly destructive to any relationship, not just to that of the parent and child.

     Be clear that love attached to anything ceases to be conscious love and becomes unconscious love, unconscious manipulation, which eventually becomes aggressive or submissive exploitation. By knowing the difference between conscious love and unconscious love in your relationships, you will begin to create a new aliveness in them and in you.

     In examining the qualities of live relationships in the following chapters, keep in mind that:

• A LIVE RELATIONSHIP:
• IS LOVE WITHOUT ATTACHMENT,
• AN ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH INDIVIDUALS FLOURISH,
• AN AWARENESS OF ANOTHER PERSON'S WAY OF BEING,
• A RELATED WAY OF BEING.
  
  (to be continued)

Live Relationships - Part III: BEING RESPONSIBLE TO AND NOT FOR EACH OTHER

Call Jovial Now! 

LIVE RELATIONSHIPS - Part III: QUALITY ONE

QUALITY ONE

BEING RESPONSIBLE TO AND

NOT FOR EACH OTHER

     Most of us learn to be responsible for people, and though we are well intentioned, this kind of responsibility inevitably leads to resentment. Children eventually respond by blaming their parents for limiting them, or for not giving them a chance to show their capabilities.
     Though I’ve refined this principle as part of my work, I first learned about keeping agreements from my mother.  She had certain agreements, as mothers have and when she made those clear to me, I kept them. If I didn't, I knew I'd have something to deal with. On a deeper level, I learned that this was a way to be responsible to the people who were caring for me. It was also a way to show her that I loved her without surrendering my freedom and dignity.

QUALITY ONE:
BEING RESPONSIBLE TO AND
NOT FOR EACH OTHER

     RESPONSIBLE,: The willingness to respond to each other rather than to be accountable.

     Being responsible to someone is another way of being accurate. And...

• Accuracy is a form of love.
• Accuracy is a function of caring.
• When you care about others,
• You are accurate with them;
• You are precise;
• You don't gossip or 'color' information;
• You don't embellish;
• You are straight.

     Mature, conscious love creates permission to be yourself. When you love others on that level, you are honest with them.

     What you are more apt to see in our society is dependent, unconscious love, which demands dishonesty and self-denial.

     As well-intentioned as we believe ourselves to be, we generally have difficulty keeping our agreements. The breakdown occurs because usually we were required to agree unconsciously to too many. There fore...

• Lighten up your agreements.
  
• Create agreement only on those issues that are essential to the survival of your relationships.
  
• And in any one relationship, never exceed three survival agreements.
  
• When we are responsible to each other in our relationships, we create freedom, support, and fun.
  
• These are the benefits that come naturally from the experience of keeping one's agreements.
  

     Unfortunately, most of us are caught in a more common, inequitable arrangement. Rather than agree to a live and growing relationship, which is absent of "form," we try to "form" it to what we think it should be. We attempt to secure these inherited models for relationships, in time attaching ourselves to them with all the fervor of a leech. Rather than allowing freedom, we are trying to control, or we are compelled to be chained to some form of constant accountability.

     And we end up being forced to be responsible for each other. Agreements crumble into rationales for breaking them, creating slavery, stagnation, guilt, anger and, obviously, no fun.

     The ability to go for the highest in all your relationships while knowing where you are in present time results in consciously created tension, rather than unconscious tunnel vision and anxiety.

     Clarity about:

o       Where you are willing to go in your relationships, while you …

o       Appreciate where you are presently, which is the secret to creating live relationships.

     Most of us, when we really take a close look at our relationships, will eventually conclude that we have simply not learned the skills to create that clarity.

     We therefore do not create agreement. Without clarity, agreement is impossible.

     Instead, we tend to kill off our relationships and the opportunity to let aliveness blossom naturally. We eventually become intolerant of what we have. Confronted with the smallest disagreement or disappointment, we scream, yell and threaten to leave each other.

     When agreements are simple and clear, there is a level of freedom and of trust which nurtures your relationships. It is the same level at which you create humor and lightness.

• For you to be responsible to each other is vital.
  

     Although well worth the effort, it takes a while to learn how to be responsible to another because you have been taught by example to be in control of another person, or to be accountable to another person.

• In a live relationship, you keep your agreements.
  

     If you find you cannot, then that agreement needs to be redefined or dropped entirely.

• Reviewing your agreements regularly and updating them is essential to nurturing your live relationships.
  
  (to be continued)

Live Relationships - Part IV: RESPONSIVENESS AND EXISTENTIAL LIVING

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LIVE RELATIONSHIPS - Part IV: QUALITY TWO

QUALITY TWO

RESPONSIVENESS AND EXISTENTIAL LIVING

     I have always liked living existentially. For me, that is where life is, where the movement is—in the moment. Whenever I focus on the future or past too much, the 'now" escapes and I literally experience the death process. I seldom remember the details of my relationships, which often upsets my friends and lovers. I forget birthdays, things we said, movies we saw, but I always remember the substance, the feeling, the essence of that relationship. I always remember the love and forget the negative stuff.  This often surprises old friends who are still lingering in the guilt, fear, or insecurity and have forgotten that we love each other. I have chosen to be fortunate. I have had many wonderful friends and lovers who have transformed with and without me.

     Responsiveness to me is also the willingness to risk taking that leap into the unknown to do what you are not supposed to do. I like to scare myself.  As a young boy, I jumped across the roofs of buildings, and ran with the wrong people, getting into all kinds of trouble.  Anyone who has never been in trouble has never lived.

     Friends often tell me that I walk around in a filtered state, either deep in thought, at peace, or childlike. It is true that I am in wonder most of the time and am angered when details bring me out of this present-time state. I am always moving, traveling, and meeting new people. I get on a plane, leave one reality, and arrive in another with curious wonder, like a child, living in the excitement and insecurity of new experience. All this keeps me in present time, which is quality time. It is really the only quality there is, which makes for an interesting definition of quality.

     My teachers have all been in the present, incredibly powerful spiritual masters, all innocent and playful, all with childlike energy communicating knowingness.  There are many others in my life who exemplified this quality, and I honestly love them all.

     To be responsive we must he present, and to be present we must let go of what we have. This is not easy and sometimes even painful.  I have let go of material wealth, changed physical location, and healed many diseases within myself.  I have dropped addictions to cigarettes, drugs, sugar... I have let go of loved one's so they and I could grow, and friends have disappeared. 
     Remember, the key to the present is to let go and be honest, brutally honest.

     There is much in life to discourage honesty.  Honesty always meant someone was going to be hurt—if not me, someone I loved.

     All of my teachers were honest and present in the moment.

QUALITY TWO:  RESPONSIVENESS AND EXISTENTIAL LIVING

     RESPONSIVENESS: The ability to respond in present time rather than to react.  
     EXISTENTIAL LIVING: To set your direction rather than be solely goal oriented. To be absent of pretense; hence, to be absent of form.

Existential living is an experiential quality. It requires you to:

• Be open to experience and change,
• Relate in the moment,
• Operate as little as possible from memory,
• Live in present time, and
• Allow your relationships to transform with or without you.

     When you are in a live relationship, you become more and more aware that life is Existential. This relationship is a moment-by-moment experience that is in a continuous state of change.

When you are in a live relationship,

• You do not expect everyone to remain with you,
  
• You will let people go and experience others,
• You know that people always come into your life to make their contribution to you,
• You actively make contributions to each other which are whole and complete at any given moment.

       You cannot move beyond present time. You can only be in it. Interestingly, at that level of experience, present time is the future. The fear you feel is your aliveness.

• Make it your friend and rename it excitement.
  
• Face the fact that life is a risk. It is existential. When it gets dangerous, you can always go back:
  
• To the past,
  
• To the comfort zone,
  
• To the familiar.
  

     Your life experience will always be there. Run to live in the past is to meet death before you die, and to kill everyone and everything you relate to,

• To relate in the past is to be committed to death.
  
• To relate in the present is to he committed to living.
  
• It is your choice.
  
• The secret is to stay in the fear,
  

     Many of us do not want to do that. We want to stay in the comfort zone, even though the comfort zone that we accept is painful.

• Existential living frightens us because it does have the potential for danger.
• Stay in the discomfort, and after a while it is not fear anymore.
  
• It is excitement.
  

     You must keep reminding yourself to stay in present time, because nearly everyone around you dwells in the past.  Not that nostalgia can't be fun. It is OK to retreat to the past as long as you have retreated by choice, as long as you don't confuse that occasional choice for life, and as long as it's not an avoidance of now. The past is a rest. It is a "time out"—an opportunity to realize that life is never over; it only transforms to new levels.

• Trust your aliveness, and allow each moment of your life to move gracefully to the past.

     The ability to respond, rather than to react, requires considerable awareness and practice before it is internalized. It is a conscious skill.I practiced and practiced for years, and finally just let go. Letting go allowed me to realize that being responsive involves being in the moment.
     It involves forgetting in present time.
     Responsiveness involves you operating more and more from present time and less and less from memory.  Don't worry. You don't forget your skills or your experience. You only drop the conditions that surround them.

• Responsiveness is accepting that you are never upset for the reason you think.

     You cannot be upset in present time because when you are in present time, you are alert to the irrefutable fact that life is a new experience, a wonder.

• Emotional upsets are always a reaction to something left incomplete with something or someone in the past.

     Your upset in the moment may be directed toward the person who has been aggravating you for years and at whom you finally scream. But it is you who has been withholding that upset and therefore approving of that person's behavior.

• When you become aware of yourself reacting, stop. Be aware.
  
• Focus on what is going on.
  

     It is never what it appears to be. It may be from a week ago, or twenty-five years ago, but it is not simply because of what is happening now.  In fact, there is no upset in present time, only pleasure and aliveness.

     There has long been a recognition in both psychology and religion that truth is the only way to get to present time.

• Truth aligns you immediately with your environment.

     Most religions and therapies don't tell you that. They prefer you to figure it out for yourself, on the premise that you are not intelligent enough to value or to use the information.
     This approach, in which you may subject yourself to years of often expensive discipleship, does not do your quest for live relationships any favors.

     Truth will always put you in present time and will eliminate any upsets in that moment. All you have to do is to learn how to tell the truth, which is not as easy as it sounds.
      There are two secrets to truth:

• ONE: The cliché that "To always tell the truth is to your advantage" is not true. The truth is, it is always to your advantage to tell yourself the truth,
  
• TWO: The skill of truth is to tell yourself the truth faster—faster than whomever or whatever you, are relating to; then you are responding, not reacting.
  
• When you respond, you have the advantage in life.
  
• Responsiveness is the key to mastery of life.

     When you respond, you don't experience other people's reactions to you as your responsibility.  Equally as important, when someone responds to you, you know it and you appreciate the person.

• The difficulty in learning how to respond is that the mind does not think in present time.
  
• The mind is absent of thought in present time.
  
• Thoughts are always about the past and future.
  

       Thinking in terms of past and future is how we have been trained to use our minds so that we can master our environment.

     As time goes on, we forget how to be absent of thought, as we often were as children. Children live more in present time than we do. They just move from one experience to another, one moment to another. For this reason, children accept their immediate environment more readily.

     You have been conditioned to operate from your future and your past, neither of which has anything to do with your reality right now.

     In fact, the future is based on the past. This means that you re-create the past in new forms, which is why most of us grow old in boredom. Eventually your relationships slow down to a screeching halt, totally absent of aliveness.

     And they die.

• Being out of present time is the death process.
  
• Present time is synonymous with aliveness.

It is your choice. 

(to be continued)

Penetration - The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy

What's True? Your Thoughts... Or You?

Who's Thoughts Are You Thinking Anyway?

Meditation on The Twin Hearts

The Illumination Technique - Meditation on The Twin Hearts

The most powerful transformative meditation I've ever found in print.  Click
each page to view, save and print for easier viewing.  This is a spiritual banquet!

From the book Pranic Healing by Choa Kok Sui

Free Love