Passionate Engaging — Set Yourself Free Series

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Pas­sion­ate Engag­ing — Learn­ing to engage whole-heart­ed­ly requires a sur­ren­der into pas­sion and relating.

I went in for a chi­ro­prac­tic ses­sion recent­ly — I’ve been get­ting adjust­ments since I was a baby, and my back likes to get worked in every 3 weeks.

As I was lying there, my mind went on a side trip to all of the chi­ro­prac­tors I’ve been to. Back in 2012, when we were in Cos­ta Rica, I hade quite the time find­ing one — until I didn’t.

We were in a grocery store, and Dar mentioned my dilemma to the owner of our condo.

It turned out that 

• a) there was a chi­ro­prac­tor in town, and 
• b) just as she men­tioned him, he walked up and said “hi.”

Odd world, eh? Any­way, the adjust­ment was great. 

We were talk­ing the whole time, about liv­ing in Cos­ta Rica and gen­er­al­ly get­ting to know each oth­er. There was an inter­est­ing moment: giv­en I’ve received adjust­ments for­ev­er, I’m pret­ty easy to work on. 

He had one of my legs in the air, and was slam­ming into my inner thigh (to pop my SI joint) and it was tak­ing a lot of effort. Final­ly, I had a big breath, and it popped. 

He said, “Hard to let go and let someone new in, right?”

This fits right in to what we’ve been on about for this series: find­ing the ways and means to stop hold­ing on to what isn’t work­ing, while shift­ing the only thing we can… our behav­iour… to some­thing that gets pos­i­tive results.

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As I think back, I’m remem­ber­ing what the clients I worked with were able to accom­plish, once they gave them­selves per­mis­sion to slide out of their need to plan, to order and understand. 

Stun­ning insights, waves of feel­ing, all hap­pen­ing with­in the frame­work of “mak­ing con­tact” — with me, and more impor­tant­ly, with themselves.

In the end, it’s nev­er about the con­text - it’s always about the con­tact.

It’s oh so easy to look out­side of our­selves for what’s going on, to default to old behav­iours, to abro­gate respon­si­bil­i­ty for where we are and what we are choos­ing. I don’t buy it.

In every moment, dur­ing every expe­ri­ence, I am choos­ing what I am doing. I there­fore choose to be who I am. I am adult enough to own — to claim — respon­si­bil­i­ty for every sec­ond of my life.

What I’ve noticed is this: we need pas­sion to trans­form our­selves — and the vehi­cle, or the lab­o­ra­to­ry for that trans­for­ma­tion is found in our relat­ing. Trans­for­ma­tion rests in the action of relat­ing, not in the fact of the rela­tion­ship, per se. 

In the relat­ing, the self is transformed. 

Transforming, and relating, are actions, not concepts.

Peo­ple say, “My rela­tion­ship is in trou­ble.” I always respond by ask­ing them to show me their rela­tion­ship. They look puz­zled. I tell them, “There is no rela­tion­ship… there are your actions, and your part­ner’s actions, and those actions either get you the results you want, or don’t.” Talk­ing about “the rela­tion­ship” is a waste of time. Talk­ing about what you are doing… that’s the key.”

Relating like this takes passionate engaging — reaching out, digging deep, being willing to be open and vulnerable. This can be scary or freeing.

Pas­sion­ate engag­ing is both deep and pro­found. This sort of relat­ing is the direct oppo­site of the safe­ty of mere com­mu­ni­ca­tion — it requires end­less­ly mov­ing away from head trips, expla­na­tions, and mus­ings about “why” and “what’s right,” to the shar­ing of the heights and depths of our­selves — the reveal­ing of our pain, our secrets, even our out­right strangeness.

In my own pat­terns of relat­ing, one prob­lem­at­ic pat­tern is want­i­ng to fix things. For exam­ple, when Dar­bel­la is hurt­ing, I have a burn­ing desire to jump in and make it all better. 

This leap­ing in, at its root, is not about Dar — it’s about me try­ing to “fix” my dis­com­fort with her pain. To sim­ply sit with her as she explores her pain, or even more dif­fi­cult, to sit with her as she sim­ply choos­es to be in her pain, seems, to that part of me that wants to “fix,” to be impossible.

Until I take a breath.

In that moment of inner focus, I can see my fear of change, fear of pain, emerg­ing. In my fear I choose to for­get myself and to turn my atten­tion out­ward, try­ing to move the uni­verse so I can be happy. 

In this process, which I loud­ly declare is all about Dar­bel­la, I am actu­al­ly dis­count­ing her and her issues. 

If I see this, I can begin to choose dif­fer­ent­ly. With effort, I can choose to turn my focus back where it belongs. To me and to my curiosity. 

I can choose to be curious about her and her experiences, while being responsible solely for my own.

Often, peo­ple end rela­tion­ships over their fear of inti­ma­cy, while the par­ties involved loud­ly pro­claim that inti­ma­cy is what they are seek­ing. True inti­ma­cy, how­ev­er, is about the open­ing up of the self for exam­i­na­tion and shar­ing, and the own­er­ship of my process. I must reveal all of it, and espe­cial­ly the parts I wish to hide, or wish I could get rid of.

To quote Ben Wong and Jock McK­een, in The NEW Man­u­al for Life,

In our view, change of the basic per­son­al­i­ty is not pos­si­ble. Often, seek­ing for change is a way of anes­thetiz­ing the anx­i­ety of non­be­ing that accom­pa­nies life. To accept one’s deep struc­tures and ten­den­cies often involves embrac­ing this anx­i­ety. To devote one­self to know­ing one’s basic pat­terns (and accept­ing the accom­pa­ny­ing anx­i­ety) rather than try­ing to erad­i­cate them, will allow for more self-accep­tance, more self-respon­si­bil­i­ty, a greater inner strength and height­ened self esteem… The more thor­ough­ly peo­ple know their pat­terns and ten­den­cies, the more var­ied, cre­ative and spon­ta­neous they can be. (p. 245)

This know­ing of the self, and accept­ing of the self, pre­sup­pos­es let­ting oth­ers in on what’s going on. Often, we want to hide the dark stuff we con­sid­er to be too black for pub­lic con­sump­tion. Yet it is only in dia­log — in the shar­ing of self — all of the self — that choice becomes available. 

It is only after I admit to my games and foibles that I cre­ate the intent of doing things in a dif­fer­ent way.

Relat­ing, real­ly relat­ing, is dif­fi­cult. It requires time, focus and com­mit­ment to self-rev­e­la­tion. Most­ly, when the going gets rough, it requires noth­ing more than stay­ing present and con­tin­u­ing to speak with curiosity. 

Plus a deep willingness to share who you are in that moment of conflict.

Life was nev­er meant to be easy. We are com­plex crea­tures, dri­ven by motives and pas­sions that are as old as human­i­ty itself — that link us to gen­er­a­tions that came before us. 

We bring our­selves, all of us, into our relat­ing. The height of sil­ly would then be to pre­tend we can hide the parts we judge to be unac­cept­able. The depth of wis­dom is to reveal all, and be wit­nessed ful­ly, with no cop outs, no pleas of “I don’t know what I’m doing” no excus­es, and no run­ning away.

In the end, I choose to relate ful­ly, and to refuse to walk away when the sled­ding is bumpy. I get it “wrong” as often as I get it “right,” but the chal­lenge, the pas­sion and the joy of see­ing myself more deeply, as well as through anoth­er’s eyes, makes it all worthwhile.

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