blog005 Keeping Things Ordinary: Technique 38

22 June 2010

Here's a recent email I received from a friend:
Hello Clinton,

A few weeks ago I heard a talk about the drama triangle. That reminded me of your book Radiant Joy Brilliant Love (German: Wahre Liebe im Alltag) and its 122 hints for how to keep living “a normal life”. Since then, D and I read through the 122 techniques every week together.

Last week a question came up. Could you please give us some more details about no. 38?

What do you mean by: go to spaces to talk about “love,beauty and grace"?

And what could we actually talk about?

Thank you and have good day!
C

------------------------------------------------

Here is what I wrote back:

Dear C,
What a nice surprise to hear from you, sir! And how inspiring that you and D are working through the "122 Things" together!!! Examining the ways we avoid intimacy is what Lee Lozowick means when he sings "digging through the mud to get to the sky!" in the song Philosophize, from his L'Ange Brisé ("broken angel") CD album.

Technique 38 says:
Without making it obvious, distract your partner and yourself from entering the spaces where it would be possible to speak together about love or beauty or grace.

Remember, this is a technique for keeping everything ordinary in your relationship. (Ordinary means: low drama, defending your comfort zone, staying numb, or using your relationship for Gremlin feeding frenzies.)

It is indeed a subtle technique, but also powerful, and quite difficult to catch yourself doing it. That is why it is so important to keep lowering your numbness bar (explained in Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings, German: Die Kraft des Bewussten Fühlens).

With a lowered numbness bar you can feel feelings of very low intensity, such as 3% fear (enough to wake up and avoid danger), 6% sadness (enough to reach out and connect), 5% anger (enough to make a boundary), and 2% joy (enough to have a very good time right now).

The feeling behind technique 38 is, of course, fear - fear of intimacy. It can help to remember from the New Map of Feelings (also in the book) that fear is neutral, not bad. In true intimacy there is always at least some fear. This is what makes intimacy intimate - you let a person inside your defense strategy where you are being simply and vulnerably yourself. Your alertness, and care, and tenderness are made more intellingent by feeling your adult fear, which in intimate situations is often experienced as excitement about new possibilities, even with old friends!

If it is not okay for you to be afraid then you will avoid intimacy of any sort: physical, intellectual, emotional, or energetic (spiritual). Intimacy is not possible for you until you rewire fear in your mind. (Specifically explained in Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings).

Technique 38 works like this: In the moment when you could speak about love or beauty or grace, change the subject, destroy the mood, or make a distraction. It is then easy for your Gremlin to switch the topic of the conversation to a low drama or something logistical. (Remember: relationship is not about logistics. Relationship is ongoing actions of nonlinear creating. Handle the logistics in a minimum amount of time so that the rest of the time you can be in love!)

As soon as you change the topic, pretend you do not know that you changed the topic! Cover your tracks, so to speak. Leave the space of love and beauty and grace as soon as you see it coming and pretend like it does not exist to talk about. This is technique 38 for keeping your relationship ordinary.

If you decide to stop doing Technique 38 then here are some ideas for how it could go:
Create an experience in your partner of being appreciated. You do this by generating specific true appreciation for her in ongoing moments. Talking is not only with words. Talking can communicate through gesture, attention, posture, attitude, insinuation, etc.

There are a zillion ways to say "I love you" in forms beyond words. For example, how you hold the chair for your woman to sit in, what pattern you make when you pour coffee into her latte machiatto, or the delicate and sensual ways you hand her the phone when someone calls for her.

There are a zillion ways to appreciate her beauty, for example by spending moments just enjoying how she moves her hands while combing her hair, or the angle of her head, or the way she inspects lettuces at the vegetable market.

There are a zillion ways to appreciate the grace of the moment that you have together, listening not only to what she says with her words but to the tone of her voice, the dreams behind her words, what archetypal lineage she is representing in her actions. So it is not just a discussion of words with the mouth but also words of the heart, the body and the being.

Have fun experimenting with other possibilities! And thanks for the question!

All the best to you two!
love, Clinton