Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category
LTF Weekly Newsletter – Feb. 27th, 2009
Posted by learning | Filed under Communication, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Relationships
Greetings!
We are wrapping up a month long focus on Spiritual Relationships in this issue by exploring “Responsibility Communication.”
“Responsibility Communication is a communication technique for people who seek to build a consciously, awakened spiritual relationship.”
All of our relationships are truly Spiritual Relationships. When we become conscious of this and use our relationships for this purpose, we begin to infuse more joy and love into them. And then we begin to truly understand the purpose each relationship serves in our lives.
Namaste
Jeff & Pratima Scholl
Learning to Flow
Spiritual Life Coaching
This week’s quote:
“When I ask you to LISTEN TO ME and you start giving me advice, you HAVE NOT done what I asked. When I ask you to LISTEN TO ME and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel the way I am feeling, you are trampling on my feelings.
“When I ask you to LISTEN TO ME, please don’t feel that you have to do something to save me or solve my problems. When you try to MAKE me FEEL better, you have failed me, as strange as this may seem to you. I’m asking you to LISTEN TO ME, not talk or do something, but just LISTEN TO ME!
“When you do something for me that I need to do for myself, you contribute to my FEELINGS of inadequacy. When you accept as a simple fact that I’m feeling what I am feeling, no matter how irrational I sound, I can quit trying to convince you and I can go back to understanding why I’m FEELING what I’m FEELING! Please LISTEN TO ME and just duplicate what I said so that I know that you are LISTENING TO ME!”
Author Unknown
“No Two Things…”
When we talk about someone who has hurt us in some way with a friend, quite often we are complaining. When we complain, we are continuing to put energy into the very thought patterns that created the situation in the first place!
We must understand that we are all connected. We are all “God in drag” and the God in the other person is unconsciously reacting to our belief systems to reflect back to us what we most need to heal.
Despite what we may think, they are not just doing something to upset us. They are doing the best they can with their own set of life challenges and it is not their job to please us.
As long as we focus on “what is” by blaming someone else for our situation, we are denying that we are the Divine beings creating this situation. We continue to affirm we are powerless to change it and reaffirm that only by the other person changing will the situation improve.
A friend can be your Spiritual Partner as well. They can learn to validate your feelings so you can first release this energy from your life.
Validation means to “give value to” and by giving value to your feelings, no matter how irrational they may sound to others, you are able to feel what you are feeling, accept it and let it go.
“No two things can occupy the same space at the same time” so it is only after you release the thoughts and feelings about what you do not want, do you create a space to imagine what you do want!
“Tips for Responsibility Communication”
1. All parties must commit to the process. They must recognize and acknowledge that they are the only ones who can actually feel their own feelings and as such it is their responsibility to heal them.
2. Focus on healing first. This means to share what you are feeling with your partner, why and when your earliest memory is of feeling this way. Your partner’s role is to listen to you, to duplicate what you are saying and to empathize with how you are feeling.
3. Focus on where you feel the emotion in your body. Breathe into it. Visualize breathing in warm, white light into the part of the body where you feel it. See the energy as a fog that you are forcefully exhaling…such as a Pranayamic breath.
4. Allow your partner to share what he/she is feeling and repeat the process with them.
5. Acknowledge the difference in how this worked for you versus your skirmishes in the past and talk about how to make this even better in the future.
6. Celebrate your results!
© Jeffrey L. Scholl, 2009. All rights reserved.
Responsibility Communication
Posted by learning | Filed under Communication, Emotional Healing
“The objective of responsibility communication is to create a safe space with a spiritual partner where you can objectively view what you are feeling. If your intention is to find the source of your pain so that you can heal it, then you’ll need to understand that your pain is being stimulated in the PRESENT but it’s usually manifesting from your PAST. That’s because your present relationship is triggering old emotional wounds that were never healed.” – Self-Mastery: A Journey Home To Your Self
This one was a tough pill to swallow for me. I had to take a step back from what was happening right in front of me and realize that no matter how things appeared to me…deep down I knew more emotion was coming up than the situation warranted far too frequently. My coach explained that it was the difference between someone stepping on my toe and stepping on a toe that was already sore. That hit home for me.
The more I learned about how I was triggered and why, the more I realized that when someone “stepped on my toe” in the present, that my reaction had far more to do with when I felt powerless as a child or adolescent. I realized that these feelings were still locked away within me because no one was able to teach me that it was okay to feel and express these feelings.
As a child, I had learned exactly the opposite. I had learned that it was not acceptable to express these feelings and so I had repressed them. But I have since learned that emotions (energy in motion) cannot be repressed, denied or minimized. They were designed to be felt and released because my feelings were intuitive messages from my very soul!
The more I practice Responsibility Communication in my relationships, the safer I feel in them. Because I am now conscious that my wife is not doing or saying things to intentionally upset me, I am able to put my focus on what I am feeling about what is happening instead of simply focusing on what she is doing. If all I do is focus on what she is doing, then my ego tells me that the only way I can feel safe is to get her to change what she is doing.
But I have found that it does not matter how many things I can get her to change, I will simply get another situation in which I feel the same thing. At some point, I had to reluctantly admit that it was “I” who was creating this situation because “I” am the only one who knows how I feel about what is happening.
My coach taught me how to trace my feelings back to their source, how to feel and release them so that I carry around far less emotional baggage. The less baggage I have, the more my wife seems to magically do less of the things that used to upset me and more of the things that delight me…all without me having to ask her anything at all.
And the more she shares with me about what she feels, when she felt that way as a child and how scared and frustrated that made her feel…the more I understand her reactions.
The interesting thing for me is that when she shares these things this way, I do not feel defensive as when she blamed me and wanted me to change. Instead I feel compassion for her. I feel trusted by her because she is opening her heart to me. She is being vulnerable with me and that helps me to feel even closer and more loving to her.
Practicing Responsibility Communication really only works when both partners commit to using it. But once that happens, the walls start to come down. Real emotional intimacy starts to form and love grows from there.
Namaste
Jeffrey Scholl
© 2009. All rights reserved
www.learningtoflow.com