ALLIES in LOVE RELATIONSHIP
WORKSHOPS
Are You Willing?
Would you like to be part of a partnership
where two people learned to bring out the best in each
other and reach for – dare
I say it – your highest potential? Where you had a
true Ally, someone who is on your team? Someone with whom
to grow with and expand your creativity and appreciation
for life?
You’ve probably answered ‘yes!’ to
these questions. You might even feel a longing deep within
you for this quality of relationship in your life.
The hard question is: do your actions reflect this longing?
- how much effort do you put in to defending yourself in
your relationships?
- do you withdraw as a way of protecting yourself?
- do you hold on to resentments?
- are there things right now that you are angry about or
bothered by?
- do you compromise rather than rock the boat?
- do you feel a need to defend yourself when you are engaged
in discussions?
- do you ever attempt to pacify someone in order to avoid
their anger or resentment?
These are all defenses. They are your shields. They are
the raw material for your Tools and Weapons of Adversity.
- how often do you use criticism and blame as a means of
attack?
- how many ways do you attempt to gain control?
- how often do you seek retaliation?
We all have territory within ourselves where we feel vulnerable,
places where there is pain, places where we have been hurt
or where we store shame and guilt. We unconsciously seek
to both defend and attack in order to protect theses wounds,
weaknesses that too often we’re not even aware of.
This is the great paradoxical human situation:
- longing to be allies
- becoming trapped in adversity.
Are you willing to:
- try something different to improve your life and well-being?
- take a risk?
- summon the courage to enter the unknown?
The Invitation is to
become a) more alive and b) more relaxed. The deeper you
are willing to feel your feelings in a supported environment,
and tell the greatest amount of truth – to yourself and others, the ore alive
you will become. It’s in the body.
The more you are able to accept yourself the way you are,
and then your partner and the dynamics of your life, the
more easily you will be able to relax.
These two energies, aliveness and relaxation, create transformation
when brought together in a supportive environment. They are,
in short, the essential and simple ingredients of the relationship
alchemist.
Fascinatingly, and often uncomfortably, the portal through
which to access these energies in a living and dynamic way
is conflict.
Conflict is your indicator, your boundary
marker, the point at which you begin to defend your territory
when you perceive yourself to be under threat. This point
is also where we meet our greatest opportunity for healing
pain, opening our hearts to the softness and fragility
of our humanness. The more we avoid conflict, the more
dull and numb we become. Healing conflict is to live on
the edge – our own edge.
Healing conflict is the key to healthy, happy human beings
and healthy happy human beings are the key to contented relationships.
Are you willing to live on your edge?
Understandably, you may not understand
right now what this entails, what the landscape of the
edge looks and feels like. You may have doubts. You may
have a little voice inside or a loud voice inside advising ‘caution’ or ‘no
way I’m going there’ or ‘sounds like an
invitation to chaos to me’ or ‘given those parameters
I’m going to lose control’.
These are reasonable concerns and quite natural, given that
it goes against much of our shared experience and learning
about how to function successfully in this world.
When you discover, however, how much potential you can access
through acceptance, truth and feelings you will develop a
deep trust in the unfoldment of life and you become eager
for more!
Let us return now to your sense of longing
for an Ally in your life . . . allow the longing
to lead you.
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