Painful experiences are more than passing discomforts.

What Are They Feeling?

The Practice: Try to understand others.

Why?

Imagine a world in which people interacted with each other like ants or fish. Imagine a day at work like this, or in your family, aware of the surface behavior of the people around you but oblivious to their inner life while they remain unmoved by your own.

That's a world without empathy.

Empathic breakdowns shake the foundation of a relationship; just recall a time you felt misunderstood – or even worse, a time when the other person couldn’t care less about understanding you. In particular, anyone who is vulnerable (e.g., children, the elderly) has a profound need for empathy, and when it’s a thin soup or missing altogether, that’s very disturbing. In my experience as a therapist, poor empathy is the core problem in most troubled couples or families; without it, nothing good is likely to happen. With it, even the toughest issues can be resolved.

When a person wants to reach the next level in their life, when they want to understand the truths -- the principles that actually produce in them a new kind of freedom -- they have to know where to look for it.

From micro to macro, you can discover that the whole universe is based on cycles and that these cycles run through our lives, determining our relationships with each other. And yet, there is something -- which we will call Love -- that contains these cycles… and it is right inside of us.

Once we recognize Love's existence and understand where it dwells, we can begin to intuit that we are all connected in an incredible living web through which we are meant to experience ourselves and learn from one another.

Relationship is how Love expresses itself in this universe. Relationship serves to express both the conditions under which we learn as well as those conditions that deliver us to the lessons we have to learn.

The truths that free us actually set up the conditions from which we need to be rescued for the purpose of showing us that the Truth goes before us and has always been there. So that rather than this maze of experiences we don’t understand that we try to solve or overcome, the process changes. Instead of being an externally oriented human being, we begin to become internally oriented. We understand that the order of relationship that exists for the purpose of our life itself waits for us to go to it -- waits for us to understand that the relationship we have to have first and foremost isn’t the one that our mind and feelings tell us we have to have, but that pre-exists inside of us.

You can’t change anyone else.

It’s not your job.

The only person that you have control of changing is yourself.

Change yourself first and everything in your life will begin to shift.

Spending your energy trying to change others is a waste of time and only leads to frustration.

Consider this:

Relationships are a mirror.

The other day we were at the home of Maria Menunous where I was taping her Sirius radio show (it will air next month and then be available on her podcast).

We were standing in her garden while two beautiful yellow and black butterflies flew in tandem, circling us for several minutes in a beautiful dance.

I really felt as if those butterflies were friends from the other side saying hello, reminding me they were nearby…. I believe they send us signs and find ways to remind us that they truly are always with us….

The greatest, most abundant resource on planet Earth is also its least understood and utilized. Its unlimited supply is found virtually everywhere, anytime, and under all circumstances, even though few recognize its real value. What is this most precious collective resource? It is our relationships.

Consider these truths: It is within relationships that we grow as individuals in everything valuable, because it is through them that we become stronger and wiser, allowing us to realize a love that transcends our unseen self-limiting self-interests. Yet, even though we may acknowledge the existence of this path to self-perfection, the essential mystery of exactly how to use this endless resource remains obscured.

What do we have to do to change the balance sheet of our lives so that for every measure of impatience and intolerance there may be at least an equivalent sum of compassion and consideration? How do we learn to use our relationships with others to realize a new kind of relationship with ourselves where we are able to discover that who we really are is all we need to be?

Our willingness to work our way through the following twelve special practices -- to strive to use these higher ideals in our relationships with others -- will reward us with the Real Life our hearts longs for.

You know you're squabbling when you find yourself getting irritated.

The Practice:
Don't squabble.

Why?

It's one thing to stick up for yourself and others. But it's a different matter to get caught up in wrangles, contentiousness, squabbles . . . in a word: quarrels.

Similarly, it's one thing to disagree with someone, even to the point of arguing—but it's a different matter to get so caught up in your position that you lose sight of the bigger picture, including your relationship with the other person. Then you're quarreling.

You know you're quarreling when you find yourself getting irritated, especially with that sticky feeling that you're just not gonna quit until you've won.

Quarrels happen both out in the open, between people, and inside the mind, like when you make a case in your head about another person or keep revisiting an argument to make your point more forcefully. We quarrel most with family and friends—imagine that! But also with people on TV, or politicians and groups we don't like. We can even quarrel with conditions in life (such as an illness or tight money) or with physical objects, like a sticky drawer slammed shut in anger.

However, they happen, quarrels are stressful, activating the ancient fight-or-flight machinery in your brain and body: a bit of this won't harm you, but a regular diet of quarreling is not good for your long-term physical and mental health.

Plus, it eats away like acid on a relationship. For example, I was in a serious relationship in my mid-twenties that was headed for marriage, but our regular quarrels finally so scorched the earth in our hearts that no love could grow there for each other.

This week, try not to quarrel with anyone or anything.

I want to share with you the following special story of a dad’s love, in showing that he really is there for his son and family.

Just this week, I gave out two of my books that had ‘sand dollar’ connections. I was out enjoying the day in the beautiful town of Newburyport, MA and came upon an artist who was displaying her creative work using real sand dollars. She had jewelry, night lights, and colorful plaques. With each item there was a story of the sand dollar and how they relate to the five doves that visited the three kings on that special night in Bethlehem. I told her that they also had a special meaning to someone else I know. I told her the following story below and said it was in a book. She said: “Now that's a book I’d read!”

That day in Newburyport was also a day I decided to do what I've often done in the past, which was to leave my latest book : Bridging Two Realms – Learn to Communicate With Our Loved Ones On The Other-Side in a random place for someone to find. I trust that the right person will find it and it could be just when they need it. I didn't even have to leave it somewhere, as I felt the urge to give it away right then and there! I reached into my bag and gave this woman a book. She offered to pay me, but of course I refused the money. The book was meant for her!

Your body is beautiful just because you have a body.

No other reason needed.

It is a living work of art. A masterpiece and magical expression of the Divine.

But how often do we really appreciate and love our bodies?

We have been conditioned and brainwashed by the media to believe that “You are not enough as you are”.

This is a lie.

This creates so much shame, judgment, non-acceptance of our naturalness. We end up hating our bodies, disconnecting from it’s innate intelligence, and comparing ourselves to others.

We base our self-worth on being the perfect shape, weight, or size.

There is one essential ingredient missing in most of our relationships -- one that is definitely required if we wish to continue in our own development and help others to do the same. What is this powerful catalyst that only we can provide for each other? Room in which to grow.

We can help others reach higher by simply agreeing, consciously, to give them space to go through their changes even when these changes may challenge our sense of self and its well-being. As just one simple example of how to help in this way, we must each learn to keep ourselves quiet when the actions of someone close to us start to disturb us. Why is this new kind of self-silence so important for the growth of both parties involved?

To begin with, the disturbance that we feel in these moments is caused by a tremor in us. This is to say that our shaky sense of self is an effect of some picture we have held of this person as it hits the ground and shatters. Apart from our children, whom we must guide through their developing years, we need to learn to leave people alone with their decisions and corresponding actions. There is already a truth, a wisdom that supports this conscious course of action.

“Are you one of those people who would rather be right than loved? Here’s the chance to choose differently.” –Jan Desai

I’m a statistic: twice divorced and almost ten years into my third marriage. If you’re a numbers person, the statistics are stacked against me.

In the U.S., fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce with 67 percent of second and 73 percent of third marriages ending in divorce.

It appears that happily ever after really doesn’t exist.

But this time around I’m committed to something different. I’ve learned a thing or two about navigating the bumpy roads of relationships and I wish to share my greatest discovery in ensuring that the statistics don’t get the best of me… or you!

It’s called conscious partnering.

I have this memory from 1990 of feeling like my little baby and I were all alone in the universe. The love that I felt for him was heartbreaking. I could sit and watch him sleep for hours, waiting for his little cherub lip to quiver in his slumber. Everything else in my life felt too bright, too loud, too something… too raw. My body was a disaster, and my mind wasn’t too far behind. The only bright spot was the baby.

I had flashbacks of giving birth for months. It was terrifying and excruciating. They call it a precipitous delivery, when your cervix dilates from 4 to 10 centimeters in less than 10 minutes. His head was stuck behind my tailbone and they were pushing so hard on my back that it felt like it broke. The anesthesiologist wouldn’t give me an epidural because they didn’t have an IV running. She responded to my screams for drugs: “You’re not getting any drugs, honey; your baby is coming out now.” It felt like someone was cutting my body open with an axe and pulling out my organs — and that was a vaginal delivery!

The most important thing is to remember the most important thing.

The Practice: Don't Give Up.

Why?

Have you heard this saying?

The most important thing is to remember the most important thing.

What are the most important things to you? In your life as a whole? During a particular interaction with someone? Right this minute?

The most important things often get pushed to the sidelines. Urgent crowds out important. Modern life is full of distracting clamor, from text messages and emails to window displays in the mall. Other people tug at you with their priorities - which may not be your own. And it can feel scary to admit what really matters to you, tell others, and go after it for real: the fearful voices whisper in the back of the mind: What if you fail?

But if you don't make a sanctuary for what is important, it will get overrun by the bermuda grass of B and C priorities.

How?

Compassion for others starts with the understanding that every human being on the planet looks different from us – because physically we are different – but inwardly we all live in the same pool.

We all have pain and pleasure, we all share emotions that move in waves through that pool. People may live on the east bank of the pool so that the waves they know are different from the waves we know on the west bank, but if we look close enough, we can see that we share east bank waves in us as well.

Have you ever looked at someone and thought, "How could that person be like that?" and then by the grace of God, discovered that you had done the same thing before, only called it something different? This is a beautiful realization because it proves to you that it is intended for those of us who would have a higher life to use everyone's life for our own development.

We Help Others When We Don’t Take Part in Negativity

“He/she never listens to me.”

“No matter what I do, it’s never good enough!”

“I can’t trust him/her to follow through.”

“What about my needs?”

On a daily basis, I hear stories from people about their relationships.

They are somewhere on the scale of feeling frustrated - fed-up - frozen - finished.

They are not sure if the relationship will make it or not and whether they truly want it to or not.

They question what is best for themselves, their partner, and their kids.

They have tried talking, therapy, and yelling, as well as silence and separate bedrooms.

As they share their stories about all of the things their partner is doing that causes them pain or drives them crazy, I let them get it out for a while before I jump in and ask,