The very first step to take in trying to work your way out of struggle and suffering requires awareness, attention, consciousness or whatever word you choose to use. The strategies stated in the previous article, "The Truth of Fundamental Need & Fear" are useful only to the degree that they can be in the service of more significant awareness: awareness of self as well as of others. Techniques and even willpower are relatively useless in the vast wilderness that arises the moment a me and a you grow to be intimately involved - unless they play a role in greater awareness.
Of course, our needs and fears do generate suffering and struggle, but the denial of our needs and fears play a significantly bigger role. My wife always says she has little difficulty being with family and friends who are a little nuts, as long as they know they are; but people who have no awareness that they're a little crazy are impossible, if not completely dangerous.
One of the most traditional paths toward greater consciousness is meditation. Creating a tranquil, still period of time every day, even five minutes' worth, can help develop our capacity for attention. As the system of the mind starts to quiet, there is a lot more room for consciousness of both the world inside of us and the world around us. We can begin to pay attention to the relentlessness of the me-focus and of many of the me's needs and fears. Even so, formal mediation is not essential. Merely directing your thoughts toward recognizing the sensations of the body, the tensions, tightening and constraints of the breath, as well as to the ideas in the brain, is a suitable start to consciousness.
The particular aspect of awareness most related to relationships, is emotional literacy. In Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece, "Scenes from a Marriage", the central character, an extremely educated professor in a failing marriage, laments to his wife: We're emotional illiterates. And not only you and I... practically everybody. We've been taught all sorts of things about agriculture in Madagascar and about the square root of pi, but not a word about the soul.
The primary step in establishing emotional literacy is literally knowing or recognizing what we're feeling. It is genuinely amazing how often we don't. Commonly we may not be aware that we're even feeling something at all. So many feelings are frightening to have, so we simply go unconscious at their first appearance.
Are we feeling fear? Hurt? Anger? Shame? I once worked with a very bright, mature female who had been frequently raped by both her brothers when she was a little girl. With very good reason, she was feeling shame. However, it was so known to her, like her heartbeat, that she failed to recognize it as something out of the ordinary. And without acknowledging it that way it inhabited her like a demon she didn't even know existed.
To support her on her journey, she was encouraged to name and accept the shame. No matter how advanced we are, no matter the quantity of college degrees we have, the first steps to emotional literacy and awareness are: recognizing, naming and acknowledging. The following step is to notice the triggers of our emotional behavior and thoughts. What about our significant other's behavior actually affects us? Do we get restless when our partner becomes anxious? Terrified when he is too intimate? Do you really feel angry when she is distant?
One day, in fact three days in a row, I found myself short-tempered and annoyed with my wife when there appeared to be no reason at all for it: her conduct was fine and every little thing in my life was sailing along without problems. When I genuinely took a step back, still, I saw I was actually upset about her for departing on an impending trip. Even though she and I occasionally travel on our own and like it, her departing tapped into child-feelings of abandonment.
The moment this came into the focus of awareness the irritability dissolved, as did a good deal of the neediness. Pascal wisely wrote in Pensees: If men knew themselves, God would heal them. Inevitably we can only be dependent on the power and method of self-awareness and self-knowledge to retain our footing in relationships.
It's critical to realize, all human beings are outfitted with dysfunctional ideas, feelings and behaviors. That is settled. But the willingness and capability to be aware is like owning a machete in the jungle. It cuts directly through the brush and generates clearings. Though it is a sluggish process, merely by slowing down and paying attention, by shining awareness on our millennia-old fears, needs, wounds and behavior, they begin to clear up. Only if we have been conscious at least a part of the time do we have the possibility to survive and thrive in a long-term relationship.
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