Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Characteristics of Conscious Relationships

As part of my occasional posts on marriage and committed relationships I appreciated the insights contained in a brief online article by Lizzy Ziogas. It’s titled: The 5 Ingredients to Create A Conscious Relationship. “Conscious”, contra “Unconscious” relationships are such important concepts to understand. ‘Characteristics’, as described in this article are helpful both in evaluating the heath of an existing relationship, or in reviewing ones that hadn’t worked out. 

Again, as I’ve said in relationship to pre-marriage counseling, I would use a list of characteristics such as the one I referenced in today’s post as a means of talking through what makes for a marriage that is growing, deepening and thriving – a conscious relationship. 

Other “lists” of characteristics I’ve drawn attention to in the past include this one, this one, and this one.  

Here’s an excerpt: 

“…Creating a thriving conscious relationship requires us to bring our most valuable gifts to the table. When I say “valuable gifts” I’m not talking about a fancy car or a diamond ring; I’m talking about our gifts of responsibility, vulnerability, listening, trust and commitment. These are the key ingredients that create and sustain a deeply fulfilling conscious relationship. 

Responsibility is the willingness to take ownership over any “baggage” that we bring to our relationships—most of our core wounds, fears and traumas develop as a child within our relationship to our primary care givers. 

A relationship works when each participant has the self-awareness to take a deep look within themselves and choose to be real about how their life experiences as a child shape how they respond to life as an adult…” 

Read the rest of this article here.

Emotional Intimacy – Part 2 of 2

Earlier in week I highlighted a conversation between Robert Augustus Masters and interviewer Tami Simon. 

Here’s part 2 of that interview. Simon’s and Masters speak about the importance of mutual transparency in relationships, how we can engage in “connected catharsis,” the telltale signs that reveal when we are using spiritual bypassing to avoid emotional experience, and how we can start to identify and work with our own shadow material. 

Part 1, here. Part 2, here. 

Friends and Their Limitations

“…We need friends.  Friends guide us, care for us, confront us in love, console us in times of pain.  Although we speak of "making friends," friends cannot be made.  Friends are free gifts from God.  But God gives us the friends we need when we need them if we fully trust in God's love.  Friends cannot replace God.  They have limitations and weaknesses like we have.  Their love is never faultless, never complete.  But in their limitations they can be signposts on our journey towards the unlimited and unconditional love of God.  Let's enjoy the friends whom God has sent on our way…” 

~ Henri Nouwen

Emotional literacy, and the Development of Relational Maturity.

Robert Augustus Masters is an Integral psychotherapist, relationship expert, and spiritual teacher whose work blends the psychological and physical with the spiritual, emphasizing embodiment, emotional literacy, and the development of relational maturity. 

In Part 1 of this podcast conversation, Robert and the show’s host Tami Simon, discuss emotional literacy and how it is lacking in our culture today. They consider differences in cultural conditioning between men and women when it comes to expressing emotions and the need to develop a toolkit to identify and work skillfully with anger. (70 minutes).

You will find the podcast conversation here.

Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life

The April 2013 issue of The Way journal (the journal of the British Jesuits) featured an article by Harvey D. Egan titled: The Mystical Theology of Karl Rahner. Egan bases it on a longer treatment in chapter 3 of a book I’m reading at present Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life. 

Here’s an excerpt from the journal article 

“…Rahner offers common human experiences to help us ‘dig ... out from under the rubbish of everyday experience’ real life occurrences of grace, such as accepting with hope the experience of utter loneliness; forgiving with no expectation of the other’s gratitude or even of feeling good about one’s selflessness; being utterly faithful to the depths of one’s conscience, even when taken as a fool; praying, even when it feels useless; maintaining faith, hope and love, even when there are no apparent reasons for so doing; experiencing bitterly the great gulf between what we desire from life and what it actually gives us; and silently hoping in the face of death. God is experienced, in Rahner’s view, most clearly and intensely... where the graspable contours of our everyday realities break and dissolve; where failures of such realities are experienced; when lights which illuminate the tiny islands of our everyday life go out…” 

You can read the complete article (PDF) here. 

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is 


you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment 
like salt in a weakened broth.


What you held in your hand,


what you counted and carefully saved,


all this must go so you know


how desolate the landscape can be


between the regions of kindness.


How you ride and ride


thinking the bus will never stop,


the passengers eating maize and chicken


will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,


you must travel where the


Indian in a white poncho lies dead


by the side of the road.


You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night


with plans and the simple breath


that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness


as the deepest thing inside,


you must know sorrow


as the other deepest thing.


You must wake up with sorrow.


You must speak to it till your voice


catches the thread of all sorrows


and you see the size of the cloth.


Then it is only kindness


that makes sense anymore,


only kindness that ties your shoes


and sends you out into the day


to mail letters and purchase bread,


only kindness that raises its head


from the crowd of the world to say


it is I you have been looking for,


and then goes with you every where


like a shadow or a friend.

 




~Naomi Shihab Nye~

Uncomfortableness, a Necessity for Growth

“…No matter what your type, remember that we must be willing to be uncomfortable for a while if we wish to be released from whatever has bound us…” 

- Understanding the Enneagram, p. 361. 

David Whyte: Exile, Vulnerability and Human Perception

He’s featured a bit on this blog, but one of my favourite poets is David Whyte. Sounds True recently re-broadcasted a conversation between David and his host, Tami Simon. Here’s the “promo” for the conversation: 

“…Tami speaks with David about how each of our lives unfolds as a great conversation with reality, which is the source of originality. David also shares some of his poetry, and explores how our innate sense of exile is actually a core human competency, how vulnerability enhances our perception, and what it might mean to tap into the invisible support that is always available to us. (61 minutes)…” 

You’ll find the conversation here.

Ignatius, Positive Psychology and Gratitude.

Following up yesterday’s post featuring Tim Costello, in which he mentions the need for gratitude, I wanted to post an essay from the latest issue (April 13) of The Way journal. This is the wonderful journal of the British Jesuits. 

The article is by Tom Carson and is titled: Ignatius, Gratitude, and Positive Psychology: Does Ignatian gratitude develop Subjective Well-Being? 

Here’s the abstract:

“The question of whether the practice of spirituality has any measurable effects in the life of the practitioner is a fascinating one. Tom Carson addresses it by focusing upon gratitude as a key attitude promoted within Ignatian spirituality. Can this attitude be shown experimentally to have a positive effect on psychological well-being?” 

You’ll find the PDF online here. There's so much that gratitude unlocks in us. Out of gratitude flows happinness. It turns what we have into enough. 

Friends

I was reflecting on the importance of friendship the other day when I came across this quote by New Zealand poet James K. Baxter. 

“…What you say about me needing friends, not admirers, hits one nail on the head. But friends are much more uncomfortable than admirers: one presents a faced of poems, printed emotion, to the admirers, and then one retires; - they can admire the empty lion-skin. Friends are not taken in, touch the man. And friends are apt to take the side of ones own moral censor…” 

- James K. Baxter, quoted in Poems to a Glass Woman edited, with an essay by John Weir (pub. 2012), pp. 35-36. 

I’m grateful that my closest and longest friendships have taught me much about what it means to be a genuine friend. Contra today, in our “connected” culture, where so many relationships are no more than that of “admirers” or accessories to bolster our image or the persona of the moment; people we use and who use us – easily discardable by “admirers”.Genuine friends are not what Nick Cave insightfully calls "fair-weather friends". Friends really know us down deep. As Baxter says, they’re “not taken in”. They are genuinely for our good, for what is life-giving to us – they “touch the [person]”; they’re “apt to take the side of ones own moral censor”.