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This arti­cle, like many, comes from a con­ver­sa­tion I had with a friend. Some time ago, she read my book, This End­less Moment, and decided to embark on a self-responsibility project, doing this on her own. She’s been pretty suc­cess­ful. Dar­bella and I check with her reg­u­larly on her progress.

She talked about a con­ver­sa­tion she’d recently had with her hus­band. He was injured at work, and is at home, and says he has too much time on his hands. Prior to the “con­ver­sa­tion,” he’d spent the day obsess­ing about her sex life from before they met, 18 years ago. He went on and on, for 2 hours, about what she’d told him (a good idea, by the way – hon­esty rules!) about what she’d done, and with which, and to whom—which was pretty much everything.

My friend man­aged to stay curi­ous and to encour­age him to vent him­self out. She noticed that she occa­sion­ally got defen­sive, and once swung into want­ing to fight back, but man­aged, in the main, to stay one step back from his drama. Even­tu­ally, as he wound down, she asked what was really going on. He sighed and said that he wasn’t hav­ing sex often enough. She won­dered why he hadn’t started there.

She then told us about the dis­com­fort she was feel­ing regard­ing their com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and how often one or the other starts in on the blam­ing and accus­ing and anger thing. She allowed that she’s doing bet­ter in this regard, but still has a way to go.

I agreed, and we talked about com­mu­ni­ca­tion for a bit.

I then said, “So, you say you’re tired all the time, and aren’t enjoy­ing sex much any­more, and I’m won­der­ing if you’re inter­ested in actu­ally deal­ing with that.” She stopped, and then looked sad and rue­ful. “I am mak­ing excuses about that, aren’t I? I feel blocked and tight, and don’t know why.” As she said this, her hands moved from her heart to her lower belly, and formed fists.

Right at the tight spot – or so I inquired. She said, “Yeah, yeah, maybe I do know.”

So, what’s this got to do with the topic?

I’d like to sug­gest that there are gen­eral areas in life that can be used as indi­ca­tors for how our lives are pro­gress­ing. Much like work­ing with chakras, our issues get worked out sequen­tially, while at the same time remain­ing dis­tinct. It’s sort of like this—there is a sub­tle inter­play between all aspects of our lives—how we live in the world. Each impacts on the other, and yet remains distinct.

Here are four gen­eral areas we’ll be dis­cussing over the next few weeks:

1) sex­u­al­ity and sensuality

2) vocation

3) relationships

4) self-responsibility through sim­ple presence

What I want to sug­gest to you is that each of these areas pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for find­ing your cen­tre. Notice that the direc­tion is inward. Now, typ­i­cally, peo­ple look out­side of them­selves for what they feel inter­nally regard­ing issues in these areas. We feel what might be called dis­com­fort (a feel­ing of “I am not com­fort­able” – typ­i­cally felt as anx­i­ety) some­where in our bod­ies. Back when I wrote the chakra series of Into the Cen­tre arti­cles, I did the “loca­tion thing.” You can look here for that, but it’s not as impor­tant to our present dis­cus­sion as it is that you locate your dis­com­fort within you, as you look to your own pat­terns for the rea­sons behind the discomfort.

Again, the norm is to look out­side.

Sex: We blame our part­ners (or lack of part­ners) for sex­ual dis­tress or bore­dom. We blame “abuses in the past” for keep­ing us from heal­ing in the present. We blame aging for lack of inter­est or per­for­mance issues.

Voca­tion: we blame “the com­pany” for “the vibe.” We blame our bore­dom on the work we are given, and our anger on how our boss looks at us.

Rela­tion­ships: Need I say more? It’s so con­ve­nient to blame our near­est and dear­est – they are just not ‘doing it right,’ not coop­er­at­ing, not mak­ing it easy for me. Don’t they know when we got together, they signed on to make me happy by chang­ing any­thing about them­selves I don’t like? And how dare they then expect the same from me?

Self: How can I get any­where when none of the other areas in my life are OK? I can’t be peace­ful until the other ducks are in a line, and all of those ducks are con­trolled com­pletely by oth­ers. And besides, my father was a jerk, my mother was dis­en­gaged, my sib­lings used to tor­ture me, and I’m tired and have no time for all of this navel gaz­ing any­way. The best I can do is to add some “me” time to my “To Do” list.

Dis­com­fort is a sign that I need to stop exter­nal­iz­ing, and focus on my path. I want to look at these four areas, and find a way to bring each area into a state of neu­tral or bet­ter. The anx­ious feel­ings are there only if I’m “below neutral.”

Why neu­tral or bet­ter? Well, what are you doing con­tin­u­ing a sit­u­a­tion you hate? As soon as you no longer are blam­ing oth­ers for your dis­tress, you see, in full, that your choice of how you engage with your life deter­mines your inter­nal com­fort level.

So, what does neu­tral look like? Neu­tral is a com­plete and deep accep­tance of the sit­u­a­tion as it is. In other words, I choose to be con­tent with the sit­u­a­tion I find myself in. Once I deter­mine that I am where I am and am com­fort­able there, the anx­i­ety goes away.

Mov­ing beyond neu­tral requires that I change either my approach to the cir­cum­stance, or exit the sit­u­a­tion, with­out com­plaint. Many of us get into a rut, or a rela­tion­ship, based upon where we were in under­stand­ing decades ago. Inter­nally, we’ve moved well beyond the sit­u­a­tion or cir­cum­stance, but hang around any­way, even though the expe­ri­ence, approach, or rela­tion­ship has, like old cheese, soiled and begun to smell.

Our direc­tion is always toward more depth and meaning.

On the other hand, aban­don­ing this walk is easy. If we choose to stay at neu­tral, we will feel bet­ter, but all progress in per­sonal devel­op­ment slows to a snail’s pace.

Many peo­ple do a Come Alive, or Phase 1 at Haven, and then come home and apply what they have learned, expect­ing that things at home – rela­tion­ships, work, etc. will shift and become more Haven-y. They get quite upset when this does not hap­pen. I wrote about this in my book, This End­less Moment. It doesn’t hap­pen because the exter­nal sit­u­a­tion back home wasn’t the prob­lem, and the peo­ple back home didn’t go to Haven. They didn’t sign on to change.

Often, all a per­son can do is to leave the sit­u­a­tion behind, no mat­ter how harsh that sounds. The sit­u­a­tion has served its pur­pose – after all, it was the dis­com­fort that moti­vated the per­son to learn a new approach in the first place.

Sadly, most of the time, step­ping away from an old sit­u­a­tion is the only answer.

Then what?

You use the learn­ing and the depth to do the thing another way. This will be our focus over the next few articles.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of the page, and click on the arti­cle title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Related posts:

1. Bliss — the movie
2. Find­ing Bliss
3. The Bliss of an Empty Mind

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Tagged with: bliss • Communication • discomfort

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