Everyone is connected energetically. How awake are you in your relationships so that you are not responding out of habit, wounds, or pre-judgment? What is the nature of the connection and nourishment in your relationships?
Hold someone too tight (attachment) and you loose connection. Hold someone too lightly and you lose connection. Hold someone with negative qualities (ill will) you lose connection. Hold someone with positive qualities (good will) and the experience of connection expands. The connection is very different if you hold someone with the qualities of good will, grace, appreciation, respect, wholeness, service. The experience of connection changes dramatically if someone is held with qualities such as judgment, criticism, disdain, less-than, exclusion.
Another energetic field of holding is Nourishment. Ask yourself do you hold this person in a way that nourishes them. Now of course you would need to know what they experience. Certainly if you hold them with negative qualities or in judgment this is not nourishing. Connection and Nourishment ponder them well in your relationships.
Everyone should ask each other regularly — How can I nourish you? This wonderful question will open up new insights. People often ask the large question: Why am I here? What is my purpose?” Here is a bold answer to consider – you are here to nourish one another. Is that all you may ask – response – Isn’t that enough – isn’t there enough challenge in that alone? Will not nourishing one another lead you to many doorways of discovery? And yes there are other answers to why am I here? What is my purpose?
To hold someone well – nourish them. How far will you extend your reach? Will you go beyond your family? Many are challenged to hold their family members well in nourishing ways. Will you hold with light and nourishment — coworkers, community members, forgotten community members who have no voice?
Will you consider invisible community members who are not seen, touched, or smiled at. They receive no hugs. How will you hold them?
Next consider the isolated in your community. Towns will have various “sections” named as good and bad neighborhoods; or there may be different religious groups, or nationalities, different political groups some conservative others more liberal. People isolate themselves from the rest of the community either by thoughts, actions, feelings, and beliefs.
Explore the nature of your connection by asking the question: How do I greet the world? How do I greet – people, new experiences, failures, conflict, differences?
There are three fundamental ways to greet the world – in-knowing, in-wanting and in-learning. A fourth way often emerges in-fear. The experience of connection is expanded by being in-learning. in-Wanting, in-knowing and in-fear all act as filters and limiters to your experience of the world or dull the experience of how connected you are to the world and how everything interconnects. These three postures lock “you” inside yourself.
Seduction and selling are the most common form of in-wanting.
Being right and telling are the most common form of in-knowing.
Hiding and pretending are the most common form of in-fear.
Listening and curiosity are the most common form of in-learning.
in-Learning is a profound way of holding a person, place, situation, relationship or community. Energetically in-learning means to actively greet the world with openness of mind, heart and spirit in all that you do.
in-Learning is a natural state of being. It does not need to be taught. All that is needed is for you to remember. This is not the learning of your schools, full of memorizing and testing. This is the learning of your early childhood, when you were the full expression of learning – learning words, learning expressions, learning to walk. You experience a world of constant discovery, exploration, and curiosity – a world of few judgments, negation, evaluating, ranking or rating – a world rich in the joyfulness of discovery. One recognizes in-learning through the presence of these qualities– curiosity, appreciation, wonder, connection, engagement, discovery, openness, and flow.
Determine your relationship with walking side by side. Walking side by side can be something you try to do at times; or it can be a serious practice with a few people; or a way of being in the world with all your relationships. If you wish to have healthy, vibrant relationships, walk side by side with one another.
When you walk side by side you are breathing, there is flow and symmetry a gentle rhythm emerges, no rushing, just walking. Listening is natural.
Walking — see it, touch it, feel it in your relationships – How are you walking? Are you in front maybe pulling? Are your behind maybe pushing? Are you resisting? See yourself walking side by side. Walking side by side is not always easy, even if it is natural. It requires attention to self and attention to others. You cannot expect to keep balance if you are asleep.
Now, in the course of walking together, you may find yourself at times out of sorts or out of rhythm with your walking partner. Also, habits may take over, and you find yourself pushing or pulling them to go faster, do more, or move in a specific direction. If you fall out of in-learning and are in-wanting or in-knowing, you might find yourself (rather than walking side by side) telling, selling, seducing, demanding, offering guilt, hiding, or pretending.
Walking side by side means to: 1) be in-learning, 2) listen, 3) share your experiences, 4) invite your partners to give you feedback, 5) reflect on your journey regularly, 6) seek to do no harm, and 7) laugh together, and 8) smile to one another. If you wish to understand how to begin to heal your relationships, choose this.
Having a regular practice of walking side by side is so important. It provides relief from habits and getting stuck.
Greeting, Holding and Walking — These three are more than enough to create a deep practice field for growth, healing and nourishment. These are the doors into the Nine Jewels of Human of Relationships they can transform your relationships through sensing, noticing, and listening into the questions: ~How you are greeting? (in-Learning, in-Wanting or in-Knowing) ~ How you are holding? ~ How are you walking? Are you walking side-by- side?