Connecting Heart to Heart Part 2
Eclipse, Change, Transformation
A solar eclipse heralds notable births, change, and transformation. We at Path of Light Studies carefully tapped into this energy of the eclipse by beginning the Connecting Heart to Heart on May 20 at the New Moon Solar Eclipse. Let us imagine that each member of this online group will have notable births of sparkling and joyous relationships, that we will change ordinary connections to extraordinary ones, and that we will transform old habits of relating and adopt new ways of bringing joy and peace to the lives of others.
Part 2 of our Connecting Heart to Heart course introduces a few of my favorite ways to build connections with new friends and established relationships, and set them into a harmonious rhythm. The difference is building a bridge of light to your soul and sending the song of your soul with its clear, high notes, to others.
It may not seem likely that this is possible with everyone you know. Yet building harmonious, cooperative, energizing, and joyous connections is very likely to happen once you can imagine it to be so.
For our online course, I have adapted the first eight chapters of a book I have written, first published by Harper Collins. Three of these chapters follow. Read these carefully and select one to focus on this week. Ponder on the ideas and experiment with the steps in one or more relationships in your life. Then let us know next Friday what is happening as you ponder on these ideas, and what shifts you are observing within yourself.
The Way In
All of us are limited in our relationships by boundaries that we drew at some time in the past. In effect, we drew a line that said, "I’ll talk to you about surface things, but I will keep the light and love of my soul, my true self, safely hidden. We set up these boundaries long ago to protect ourselves from being hurt—or misunderstood. But, sooner or later, the limits that seemed to protect us also isolate us from developing deeply satisfying relationships — from really connecting. Fortunately, if we've put up fences, we can learn to cut gates in them; if we have built walls, we can add doors. Through these openings we can find the way in.
The effect of a soul to soul connection is an expanded awareness of yourself, of your life, and its vast potential. We see ourselves and our lives from a different perspective. When we connect as the soul with the soul of another person-or even with ourselves-we are profoundly enriched on every level.
In this course you will learn how to form new connections in which you feel truly loved and understood. You will learn to transform unsatisfying relationships into joyous and enriching ones. This book offers you new, pure colors to choose from, different patters to weave; you will learn how to unravel patterns that are already set, and to reweave them according to a new vision of who you are.
A gifted psychologist once told me that what amazed him the most, after years as a therapist, was how little most people ask for. I have written this book for those of you who want more, who seek to create deeply satisfying connections and to enjoy the vitality they bring to your life.
True connections with others are gifts of giving and receiving. To make real connections with others, and use our full receptive capacity to see the gifts another may seek to bring us, we need to see from the eyes of the soul and become receptive to its illumination, pure love, and will. The connections that energize, even inspire.
At some point in our lives we realize that handling everyday tasks, conflicts, and challenges are using too much of our time. We want great relationships, yet the habit of “longing for” delays the right action.
It always appears that the other person needs to make changes, such as becoming a good listener, a grateful friend, a cooperating partner. That may be true, yet the place to begin is with ourselves.
Our first step is to bring together the separate parts of our personality into one unit with the mind prevailing over our emotions, our body and brain. Next, we build a bridge made of light to connect our personality with the soul or the higher mind. Once the brighter, finer love of the soul streams to us, a beautiful and mutually fulfilling connection can happen. Best friend, father, daughter, partner – virtually every important person to your life responds in some way to this energy, with words or without words. The immediate change is inner peace, a state of pleasant calm serenity. Happiness naturally follows as you bring in the healing love of the soul. This is the place that true connections can happen.
Each relationship is unique; it has a life of its own. Each person we truly care about brings in a new color and a new note that enriches everyone in our connected group. This rainbow of colors and the notes of each soul will create a symphony of power and beauty in our lives. We are profoundly enriched by every true connection we create.
Even when we observe family relationships — mother, father, children, siblings, we can imagine how much strength and harmony could develop with divine understanding woven into them. All it takes is the conscious decision and the clear intention to harmonize the interactive connecting patterns of those who are important in our lives.
WHAT IS A TRUE CONNECTION?
Great connections do not happen by accident or fate; neither do they take hard work or a long time to develop. To make a soul connection with another person, you imagine the soul of this person shining from his head center. Sometimes you can see the light around or over his head.
Let his physical form fade out and focus upon the light and/or color of the soul overshadowing him. Then realize that the soul is already connected, and only appears to be separate in both of you. Your soul, his soul, others’ souls, are actually one essence substance.
If you feel drained, obligated to, smothered, or possessed by another person, you're missing a true connection. When you really connect, you'll know immediately. Think of someone who recognizes and appreciates your innate value, yet asks nothing from you save to enjoy the pleasure of your company. This feeling of mutual appreciation, of caring and compassion, indicates a true connection.
Recall a moment in your childhood when you experienced an indescribable feeling of joy, your aliveness, or you were overwhelmed with wonder at the power of the ocean or the vastness of the universe. Think of the warmth you received from a special friendship, or a moment in which you were so close to another person that you needed no words to communicate. Perhaps you can even remember a time when you were so quiet that you could hear the voice of your higher intuition. This book will show you how to translate those feelings and experiences into a new approach to your relationships that you can put to use immediately.
It is only through making more profound connections that you discover your innate spiritual qualities and recognize a larger sense of who you are. Two kinds of connections—those with others and with yourself as a soul-can help you to experience more clearly your own beauty, love, and power. In the first, you see your finest qualities reflected in someone else, almost as if the other person were a mirror. You can learn how to see your inner wisdom and love-not only in intimate and enduring relationships, but in the eyes of a child, the smile of the checker at the supermarket, the voice of a waiter, the sound of a companion's laughter, the kindness of a stranger.
The second kind of connection-with your higher self or soul-is the source of joy, love, wisdom, and power. You can link with this finer light within yourself by sitting in utter silence and creating a bridge of light to the soul. It is a master in its own right. As your bridge is strengthened and extended, you become sensitive to the whisper of the soul passing its wisdom, love and power on to you. Gradually, your personality respects the finer light of the soul and willingly surrenders to this light within your being.
We have all experienced the feeling that there is more than one of us running around in our consciousness. If it is a beautiful summer day, our child-self may want to play while our critical self says that we must go back to work. Yet by asking our wise, inner consultant we realize that we can do both—work now and then enjoy a delightful lunch basking in the sun near the pine trees. Your inner consultant always responds to your questions; it beckons you to open the door and set an intention to lift, encourage, and to bring their soul color and note into your aura. This consultant whispers softly in your ear, even when its voice was drowned out by the noise of your busy mind.
In the chapters that follow you will learn to recognize and harmonize all the parts of your personality. Each one is an integral part of your personality; it wants to help you. Think of these sub-personalities as actors inventing their own scripts as they go along, without a sense of the plot or purpose of the play. The first step is to assign each sub-personality a role to play, to befriend it, and show it your life purpose.
To gain a stable connection with the soul, acknowledge that you want to live from the love, the joy, and the wisdom of the soul/self. Set up a regular time and place to be with this self each day. A half hour in the morning and a few minutes to reconnect at noon and in the evening is recommended. Your intention to strengthen this connection, to use its wisdom, love, and guidance, is recognized by the soul. Your requests will be heard, and they will be answered, even if you see or hear nothing unusual.
If you believe it takes tremendous effort, the ease of opening the protective web that has separated these two aspects of your being, may surprise you. The process is so simple that you may think you are making it up. But when your mind is still and receptive, the static of daily life clears out. Then you can tune to the channel that your higher self uses to communicate with you and send this finer light and love to your strongest and weakest connections.
Each chapter title is in two parts. First is the separating personality trait, how we limit relationships (e.g., Beyond Holding a Fixed Position). This is followed by the connecting path when the soul prevails. (e.g., Increasing Flexibility).
Decades of study in the ageless wisdom, years of academic research, and counseling experience lies behind this information. The validity of the ideas in this book exists not in what someone else said, but in testing these principles to your own connections. I invite you to seek the authority of your higher self when a suggestion rings true. Once your inner wisdom has been tapped, listen carefully.
HOW TO DO THE EXERCISES
Each chapter calls upon activating your finest assets-many unused and forgotten. Note the "Beyond" are the personality ways of connecting. (e.g. beyond expectations) and following that is a heart to heart connection (e.g.Accepting Surprises). The steps at the end of each chapter are laid out to be practical and useful. They offer you practice in applying the ideas you have just read. At the same time they assist you to expand your vision of connecting with others. Prepare to receive the full benefit of the exercises by sitting quietly for a few minutes and allowing your mind and body to relax before you begin. Your receptivity to your Higher Self, the soul, opens the door to discovery.
As you go through the steps, you may occasionally feel uncomfortable or resistant. Don't be discouraged. This feeling is temporary and does not imply a lack of awareness on your part. Discomfort is often the step just before success. Remember that you are unraveling automatic patterns of connecting. Have faith in your vision of how much is possible, and you will keep moving forward.
Every now and then an idea or step that seems more difficult will challenge you. The promised apple may seem to be hanging from too high a branch. But as soon as you stretch a little for it, you will be nourished by fruit well worth the effort-and you may be surprised to find how high you can reach.
As you read and practice the exercises at the end of each chapter, you may want to capture additional thoughts and write your insights. Include your new vision of a life with great connections that inspire you and others. Include with your insights, the action that you take, and the results. In this way you can see the new patterns unfolding. What looks like change to others will seem to you like the natural way to be.
This is your way in. Now you are ready to enjoy your connections more than ever. Make an appointment with yourself to be free of distractions. Let this be your time each day to build loving and joyful connections from heart and soul.
Beyond Practicality: Daring to Invent
Doing things the same way every time may save time and energy. Yet if you think of something you'd love to do and share with someone else, yet hear yourself saying, "I would really enjoy that, but it's just not practical," stop and listen within. A new idea may come to you. Once we decide to invent more possibilities, they inevitably appear.
Virtually everything we think and feel can be seen as merely an opinion held together by positive or negative emotions. Most of us prefer to be with an inventive friend who inspires us rather than a practical one who repeats the past and holds us there in conversation. Those who practice inventing new ways to get to work, to prepare breakfast, to use their time creatively, discover joy at their side. From the moment of awakening each morning, say to yourself, “I am free to invent new ways to relate to life today!” Inventive people are creative, and enjoy experimenting with enriching their mind and expanding their hearts as they express themselves with others.
An inquiring spirit can invoke the light that brings dreams into reality. Why not teach your inventive and practical sides to work together? They will facilitate true connections with special people in your life.
If a relationship truly has value to you, dare to experiment with new ways to enrich your time together. Invent special points of contact -a moment to encourage, of offering the warmth of eye-to-eye contact, or playfulness. Inventiveness appears when one is willing to see a situation or person in a finer light — swinging together in the park, lying on the grass, walking barefoot in the sand. Throwing a large ball back and forth can be fun; throwing it while treading water in a pool opens to laughter; the sense of competition disappears completely.
If you think of yourself as a person of amazing ingenuity, occasions will appear that give you the chance to prove it. Why not extend your life visions past the usual desires with an inventive mind and sustain them through practicality.
The more you stretch your imagination in small ways, the more creative you become in major life areas. Think of occasions when you used ingenuity to put together a quick, sumptuous meal out of leftovers. Create a delightful "vacation" for mind and body without leaving home. Everyone has a far greater capacity than he has ever imagined to recognize new ways of being with others.
Want to experience this brighter creative side of yourself? Simply open the door that holds you in past familiar and comfortable (even if uninspired) ways of connecting. This door is locked only from within and it opens to delightful surprises.
Most intriguing of all, when you step into greater light, humor lights up situations that once were annoying, the illusion of being obligated to others fades away, the acceptance of true responsibilities is pleasing, and joy dances over your head. Activating an inventive spirit is exhilarating. Friends may suddenly seem much more interesting, refreshing and revitalizing to be with. Such enlivened relationships feel like stepping into the sunlight after a day of rain.
1. In 3 minutes or less, tell a friend your life story-but tell it from the viewpoint that you have always been amazingly creative and full of ingenuity. Choose events that support this idea, and recount them with delight in the fact that you were and are an inventive person. While you speak, your partner agrees to give you eye contact and remain silent with a straight face, no nodding, frowning, or smiling. All feedback from your partner would manipulate your story while you are speaking. Then let your friend describe his natural creativity and ingenuity in the same way. After this game, share your impressions and thoughts as speaker and as listener. New memories may bubble up for the next few days, validating the fact that you are an unusually inventive person.
2. Choose an area of a relationship (e.g. sharing meals together) that could use revitalizing, and think up unusual, even outrageous new ways to enliven it. Select the best of your ideas, refine them, and put your whole self into carrying them out.
3. When you have achieved success in one area, use your ingenuity in another. Your personal or professional situation, your leisure time-every area if your life can be transformed when you apply inventiveness to it.
Beyond Expectation: Accepting Surprises
When we decide we want something, and then hope someone will give it to us, we create an expectation. We begin with what seems like a pleasant idea. As we play with the idea, we pour more energy into it until it becomes a belief. Soon we may feel we are entitled to what we want-happiness, approval, more appreciation, security-and that a particular person should provide it. Once we begin to feed this belief, it soon seems like a fact rather than merely a hope, expectation, or belief. In the end we feel justified in feeling separate from or resentful, if the other person doesn't meet our expectations.
Look for your expectations in all your connections. Often they are hidden below the surface. After denying any expectations about someone, try this way to bring these to the surface. Say to yourself, "If I did have some expectations concerning this person that I am not aware of, they would be ____________." Surprisingly, a few will often pop right into your mind.
Once you are able to put your expectations into words, they can be clearly spelled out for both of you to see. Unacknowledged expectations confuse and separate people. They also create a powerful resistance in those who we are trying to work with or live with. For example, if I expected a loved one to spend a certain amount of time with me each week, and that didn't happen, I might feel disappointed. Even if I tried to hide my disappointment, my friend would sense it. Either he would spend less time than ever with me, or, if he did meet my expectation just to keep peace between us, I would be even more disappointed that I got the requested time but did not experience the compassionate connection from heart and mind I had anticipated.
No matter how ridiculous our expectations may sound, or how foolish we feel in acknowledging them, it takes only a moment of discomfort to do so. I often start by saying, "I know this may sound ridiculous to you, but I've discovered that I expect ____________ will happen when we are together. You don't have to respond to my expectation; but I feel much better expressing it." This clears the air. I also may acknowledge that my expectation is probably influenced by a movie, my early childhood, or a dream. Who knows where our expectations come from?
In an intimate relationship, be as specific as possible about what you expect. State exactly how you would know you were loved, valued, appreciated, respected, or other hidden hopes. In a relationship with a coworker, share your vision of working together in harmony and with effectiveness.
When you become aware of someone else's expectation of you, ask yourself whether you would enjoy fulfilling that expectation. Half-hearted efforts to meet each other's expectations are worse than no effort. They use up energy and miss the target. It takes much more energy to connect merely to meet someone's expectations. We end up "foot-dragging"- we drag our feet in getting dressed, completing a project, or coming home earlier merely to meet someone else's expectation. If foot-dragging becomes a habit, we start believing it is a normal way to live.
Our expectations of ourselves get us into just as much trouble. They are blinders that limit us to tunnel vision. We can't be spontaneous and creative because we can only see the outcome we expect. Who can think creatively when conflict could be just around the corner? We are at our most creative when we can accept whatever comes. That’s when delightful surprises begin to happen.
What if you went to bed tonight saying, I wonder what delightful surprises will occur tomorrow! Be curious and imagine several. Then plan a few surprises for other people. Describe to a loved one, a specific noble quality they have that you always enjoy! Humor, open-hearted, knowledge, wisdom, understanding are a few examples. Recall two or three times of seeing this quality expressed.
In the meantime be on the lookout for the next two weeks. They are drawn in by this warming up exercise. Surprises will come. Do not judge them too quickly as good or bad. Learn to enjoy the wisdom offered in every surprise. Accept their gifts cheerfully.
1. List several expectations (spoken or unspoken) that you have for special relationships, such as to be appreciated, listened to, understood.
2. Try seeing these expectations as something you made up in the past. Memories are misleading in that we either remember being wise and loving or else unloving and self-serving. There is a grain of truth in both directions, but the errors we make in relationships usually fall within a 3% margin of error.
3. Imagine delightful surprises are circling overhead, just waiting for a chance to land when you cross off some expectations and make room for another surprise to land.
Beyond Self-Discipline: Savoring Spontaneous Moments
At times we struggle for more self-discipline and resolve to push ourselves harder. Often it is not us, but our situation that needs changing. The less a relationship causes your spirits to rise, the more self-discipline it requires. A connection that is filled with spontaneous moments of delight is always energizing.
Sometimes we may need self-discipline just to get up in the morning, organize her day, and eat breakfast, much less to issue a cheerful greeting for each family member. Even a morning exercise program can be challenging. Excessive self-pushing can become punishing to you and to others. If you find yourself caught in a grind of pressure to keep going, you can call a halt. Rather than wait until you are exhausted and restless, stop and ask your true Self to show you a new path to enjoy exactly what you are doing at each moment. This is the Self that is so easily ignored and forgotten in the Western culture of materialism. It has the wisdom, knowledge, access to universal love and understanding, that this Self is the wisest consultant for every possible situation and relationship. Ask and wait. This Self inevitably responds.
Ask yourself what would happen if you stopped forcing yourself into lifeless relationships. If you are involved in a project or a relationship with a clear, shared goal that you want to accomplish, some special effort is worth the effort. In this case by holding the goal in mind, you can work cheerfully. This is when 20 percent self-discipline will sustain the rhythm when your energy flags.
If you find a project turns out to be 99% drudgery and self-discipline, you might say, "I thought I could contribute to this project, but I have lost interest in it.” This acknowledgment will not be a surprise to anyone; they will be relieved at your honesty, and glad to bring in someone else.
Consider responsibly removing yourself from joyless activities like “I have to do this,” and a stream of energy then can invigorate your life. When the door of a dark room is opened, light inevitably pours in. Creative energy grows brighter. In this atmosphere new ideas appear. You see a higher purpose for your life. Whether you are shoveling snow off your car, teaching your child to spell, or planning a sanctuary for birds, joy fills your heart.
Ask for moments of inspiration, of clear-seeing, of recognizing abilities in yourself you have never acknowledged. Set an ongoing intention to be receptive to lighthearted impulses. Welcome spontaneous ideas. They offer opportunities to recognize the nobility within you, and as a result to be able to recognize it in others.
You may appear to others to be working longer and harder than ever, but to you the work you are doing may seem like play. First, use your imagination and visualize your present work becoming more like play than work. Add color and sound to the scene. Soon, you may find yourself engaged in conversations that engage heart, mind, and spirit.
1. Recall a situation in which you did act with spontaneous inspiration without the least need for self-discipline, in which the result was joyful, far-reaching and satisfying for everyone involved. Remember your sense of deeper purpose as you acted, and how much fun you had.
2. Examine one area in your life in which you are using a hefty amount of self-discipline to keep going. (It could be your fitness program, your sleep, your budget, or certain friendships.) Set an intention to see new ideas that transform duty into cheerfully fulfilling your true responsibilities.
3. Create a scene mentally that fits this picture. Note how this change of attitude might affect you and others. Ask yourself if this change did happen, what might happen next? And if that came to pass, what would be the effect?