POISED FOR BLISS
Saturday, December 12, 2009
I’d like to consider here two possible approaches to getting on with your spouse. One approach doesn’t work but is well-used and exceedingly popular. The other approach does work but is rarely tried.
The first approach is what I began to observe when I was a young Pastor. I had this idea that it would be a very nice thing to invite couples over to our home as a way of reaching out to them. Too often the invited couple would spend the evening jabbing at each other. Snaps, cuts, jabs, little put-downs and insults. Never all- out- war, at least not in public. Instead, when out for a social evening these couples engaged in lots of little pokes and jabs. Perhaps they imagined that the tensions between them were not being noticed! I noticed and was aware during these long, tortuous evenings that the couple had “issues”, lots of unworked out stuff.
Their failing approach to each other was kind of like a boxing match. ‘If I can jab him here or cut him there , or if really lucky, land a solid punch, then, maybe he’ll see that light of day that I’ve been wanting him to see, all these years.‘ If I can just stab him really well with the final, sharp, wounding, word, ie my latest insight into what his problem is, then he will see how wanting and deficient he is and will come around to my way of looking at things.’
I personally couldn’t take these ”couples evenings.” I’d spend days recovering from being with some “nice” couple from the church. I established at the time a way of evaluating whether a social evening had been worth the effort or not. I called it the “residual effect”. My wife and I would ask each other: “What’s the lingering, residual effect of having been with Fred and Mary the other evening? Is there an inspiring after-glow, a sense of inspiration? Is the energy flowing at the thought of the time spent with them? Or are we recovering?” Sadly the effect of being with far too many couples was a sense that our energy had been depleted and exhausted.
Perhaps many of these couples went away feeing just fine about the time. They’d unloaded their stuff and left it with us. How nice for them. But I got tired of being used in that way. So I began to practice the idea, as I used to say to myself: ‘Life is short. My time and energy is limited. I’m going to pray for the gift of discernment as to how best to use my time.’
My wife and I have somehow lived in another zone, another territory, indeed another world! We energize and inspire each other constantly. I have never put my wife down in any social context and she, likewise. We don’t have any “unworked out stuff”. We have had lots of wonderfully royal battles over the years all in the effort to make sure that the relationship continues to go on from “strength to strength.”
We were advised as a young couple never to let the sun go down on our anger which has meant that sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning we’ve had to face this or that difficulty. When someone tells me that in their marriage a cross word has never been shared I know absolutely that he’s either lying or on some very effective medication of some kind. If there’s spirit there will be sparks. I think that a couple who live dynamically and deeply are experts at delivering shock therapy to each other. They do not dim and dull their inter-action but heat-up and intensify it. Surely the effect of a deeply shared love is to electrify each other.
So this first approach to getting on with your spouse, though very popular, does not work. ‘Going after him’ in this way or that doesn’t ever seem to work, no matter how dedicated you are to tearing him limb from limb. But I am not saying that you should give up in despair while he watches football and you get fat, in another room, watching so- called “Reality TV”. There’s another approach entirely to getting on with your spouse.
This other approach has to do with a deeper listening than you’ve ever done before. For example, she says something and, before I respond, I must play back to her what she’s just said. My task is to sum up and to rephrase so well what she’s just said that she will respond: “That is accurate. You’ve understood exactly what I’m trying to say.”
If she cannot say wholeheartedly that my summation is correct then I must try again and try harder to say what she’s said. I have to listen more intently, which means that I have to separate from my ego to hear her. I have to kill the compulsion in me to make my dam point before I’ve understood hers.
I must not give up in trying to “hear” her. I have to be “all ears” and I have to be present to her with great respect and great love and with all my heart.
There is no time limit here. I have to be able to say well what she’s just said or be quiet. For there is no point in going on. If I have not understood her, then I do not have the “green light” to say anything. If I speak now without having heard her, the message I’m sending is that I can’t get past my own agenda and don’t want to. I’m intent on making my point instead of listening for hers. So it’s better to sit there like a dumb ox than to make yet another of my unhelpful points. It’s better to be quiet then to begin to argue.
Perhaps if I am quiet long enough I will begin to experience that inner shift that creates enough space within me to “be able” to hear and understand another human being. If I do not know what it means to create space inside myself it’s a message, perhaps an unwelcome one that, I have a lot of inner work to do before I will be a worthy partner to anyone, let alone by spouse.
If I cannot listen, which is an indication that my inner life is clogged, then I need to practice getting unclogged. Perhaps sitting in silence for 10 minutes a day would be a good start. Is that more than you’re willing to do for the sake of a quality relationship? You’re rather be “up and doing”, would you? You won’t feel that way when she’s lying there dying and you recall that you never really took the time to hear your spouse’s deep heart.
I’ve been reading the philosopher, Jacob Needleman, for more than 30 years now. I’ve read his classic “Lost Christianity” at least 15 to 20 times. Because of Needleman, I became aware of Anthony Bloom. Because of Metropolitan Anthony, I’m an Eastern Orthodox Christian. My debt is very great to Jacob Needleman. So when I read somewhere the other day his recommendation of a book I acted promptly.
Jacob Needleman describes “To Live Within” by Lizelle Reymond as “one of the most profound, hopeful and spiritually authentic books of our time, offering clear evidence that there does in fact exist a science of inner awakening.” (on the cover of “To Live Within”, Lizelle Reymond and Sri Anirvan)
I immediately found the book at a local bookstore and now cannot put it down. Needleman introduces the book by saying: “There exist certain books that quietly appear in the world and quietly live apart from the world, where their inner force moves the hearts and minds of all who chance to find them.” (Ibid)
Lizell Reymond had an unexpected encounter with an East Indian spiritual teacher who changed her life forever. And he changed her life without saying anything to her! That, I’m sure, is how the entire quality of a marriage relationship could change forever if at least one partner begins the practice of learning how not to say anything but instead learns to be something.
When Lizell Reymond, guided by a good friend, met Sri Anirvan she expected conversation. There was none! Instead as they sat together in the early evening on a veranda, as she writes: “a strange silence fell upon us, enveloping us completely. And the silence persisted, soon becoming heavy and oppressive. I no longer knew what I was doing. I yearned to escape. My back and my neck grew numb...” and soon, as Needleman says, “she was wondering if she could bear it much longer.”
“The time seemed without end. But then the atmosphere seemed to lighten and, at the same time, there came a relaxation of mind and muscles, a slackening of tension in the plants and trees, in the very air itself. My breathing became almost imperceptible, my body felt supple, as light as a feather; I thought that it was filled with a new consciousness that came from the heart.”
“Two or three hours passed. Night came with the stars and the sounds of crickets. And at a certain moment, her host ( the friend I mentioned) quietly rose, bowed before Sri Anirvan, as did she, nodding farewell, and both left without breaking the silence.” For many years I have had conversations with a friend about the power of being versus that of doing. Here is a dramatic case in point. What Sri Anirvan was as a human being spoke more deeply and powerfully than words could express. Can we learn from such a one that our quality of being matters far more than ever what we say?
Lizelle Reymond describes the after-effect of the encounter in this way: “There was nothing left of the emotional impulses that I had known in some spiritual disciplines - impulses of devotion, of self-abandonment, of submission, of a sudden understanding of what was beyond me, of gratitude to those on my path who had opened up my heart and mind.”
“This time I felt alone and laid bare in my inner life. And his look held me to the awareness of the moment without any possibility of escape.” (p. xi Ibid.) Her “taste of truth” was so powerful that months later she wrote to Sri Anirvan asking if she could work with him “under any conditions whatsoever and no matter where.”
I find the story of this life changing encounter exceedingly powerful. It reinforces what I am trying to say about how to get on with your spouse or for that matter, with anyone. I need to share with another on a level of a deeply shared space of compassion and understanding that will change the quality of our relationships for ever. Anything we can do, including a deep listening that we perhaps have not tried before, to enter that Divine space together, is worth unending effort. Glory be to God. Amen
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