Improving Relationships

In our community in September, we will be exploring our relationships with others. We will base this exploration in the non-dual understanding, but will also use meditation and reflection to explore in a practical way the ease and the challenge within our relationships. This is the key to Practical Non-duality recognising reality and then learning to live in accordance with that reality. 

From the non-dual perspective, we recognise that we share our being with everyone. This is the source of love and why the nature of our being is love. This is why love feels so good and makes us happy. It is what we truly are. 

From the non-dual perspective, my being is your being is everyone’s being. When we love someone this is because we see our being in them. Particularly, we look into their eyes and recognise our common being.

This recognition calls upon us to love everyone. What does this mean? It calls upon us to have a genuine heartfelt wish that others are happy and free from suffering, just as we wish for ourselves to be happy and to be free from suffering. It calls upon us to act on this wish, wherever we can.

However, as Rob Nairn used to say “There is no need for self-sacrifice”. In our daily lifes we must balance our authentic needs with those of others, for us all to maximise our mutual happiness and minimise our mutual suffering. This can be a tricky balance to manage. 

In daily life, our conditioning and the conditioning of those around us has a big impact on our relationships. When we like someone, this is generally based on conditioning that is mutually pleasing. In life we have expectations, assumptions and beliefs about how things should be, how we should behave and about what is right and wrong. Where these expectations are compatible we will generally like a person. We will easily understand and agree with where they are coming from in our conversations with them and we will easily understand and agree with the ways in which they behave. So we come to like this person.

So, what happens when we don’t like someone? This is often because our conditioning is different from their conditioning in a way that causes conflict. They might speak or behave in a way that conflicts with our expectations, assumptions and beliefs about what it is acceptable to say and how it is appropriate to behave. We won’t easily understand why they say things that we might find uncomfortable or offensive. We won’t easily understand why they behave in ways that we find inappropriate. So we come to dislike this person. 

For some people that we don’t like, we can wish them well and walk away. If there is a conflict in conditioning then this might be the wise approach to take to improve mutual happiness and reduce mutual suffering. 

However, some of the people we don’t like we are stuck with. This might be because they are family members, work colleagues, neighbours or friends of someone we know. This is an opportunity to explore and possibly challenge our conditioning and be curious about our expectations, assumptions or beliefs that this person infringes. 

To do this we become curious about the thoughts, stories, emotions and sensations that arise when we bring this person to mind. Then we can remind ourselves that just as we did not choose our conditioning, neither did they. This creates the causes and conditions for insight to arise in relation to the source of our dislike for this person, which can enable us to more clearly understand what is going on in the relationship. 

Then we can remind ourselves of our common humanity. That we all just want to be happy and all just want to be free from suffering. And that from the ultimate perspective we are all one, in that we share our being. On the basis of this we can wish the other well.

Practicing in this way can change our perspective on the relationship. When our perspective changes, then because we are one half of the relationship, the relationship can change. At the very least we can engage in our interactions with this person with more skill and grace. 

Again, this does not mean that we have to be a door mat. It may mean that we can set a healthy boundary in relation to the person, based on our new found understanding. 

To improve your relationships and to be more connected with those around you, why not join us.