ALLIES in LOVE RELATIONSHIP WORKSHOPS

RELATIONSHIP CONFLICT

We decided to start with conflict. We could have started more gently, eased you in slowly, as in appertisers or foreplay, but we decided to use the just grab it approach and go straight to the main course.

What do we do with conflict?

Everything is going along fine, we’re getting on fantastically, it really couldn’t be better – then we hit a bump in the road, seemingly a small bump, like we can’t agree which movie to go and see or whether to have the windows in the car up or down. The bump turns into a hillock, then a chasm develops and in no time at all we’re both feeling dreadful, stressed and frustrated. There’s a huge chasm we have to dig ourselves out of and everything has changed.

There are many ways to do conflict. Humans are quite inventive in the arts of war. Some people shout, some slam doors, some throw things, some lash out, some drive dangerously, some withdraw, physically, emotionally or sexually, and there’s blame and revenge and guilt.

And there’s resentment, prolonged resentment like battery acid corroding the tenderness. There are also people who prefer to avoid conflict, pretend everything is okay, compromise, rationalize and minimize. The Isely Brothers, we call them. with them, the payback comes later, way later. Generally we each have quite a few of these in our armourment.

What do we do with conflict?

Is there an approach to conflict that could possibly be called creative? Is it possible to transform conflict into creativity and closeness? This is a big claim. This is the $10,000 question that everyone wants to know the answer to. The answer is YES but . . .

It’s not an easy formula, unfortunately. “He says this, he says that and they jump into bed’. sorry, we wish it’s that easy, but in a way it’s better because the allies in Love approach takes more skill and dedication to learn and will ultimately become a way of living that will transform your life open your heart raise your awareness levels and your aliveness levels in all your relationships.

In other words, this is not a band aid and the payoff is huge. We’re talking seismic shift. First of all, we need to understand the backdrop to the conflict scene. And the problems start right here, because it’s easier to ignore the backdrop because you can’t see it. you can’t kick it. It’s wafting through like dark ethereal mist enveloping invisible;. This sounds like a riddle, the answer the unconscious mind ‘of course yeah’ and what do we do with the unconscious mind? What the hell is the unconscious mind?

The unconscious mind takes up over 90 per cent of our brain. It’s our ally, our big brother, our fairy godmother. When we are small children and we experience events that we can’t understand or integrate our unconscious mind take these experiences, wraps them up and stashes them so we can deal with them later, when we’re older. It records and remembers everything and when we are ready it will draw down these memories from the library and bring them to our awareness as experiences for our conscious growth.

Let me give you an example from my own life. abandonment and betrayal have been recurring themes in my life and my relationships. When I was 28 and the Brazilian woman I’d been with for 5 years left me and went off with my best friend, something snapped inside of me and I realized through the blame and grief that somehow I had to figure out how I had caused this. something awakened in me that said playing the victim was disempowering and taking responsibility was empowering but how?

I was living in California so I started going to workshops and in one of the groups called The Shared Heart we were instructed to pair up, men and women, for a mother-father process. I looked around for a partner only to find none available. I was the odd one out in a group of 70-odd people. I felt very left out, so I laid down and breathed into this feeling, which was familiar to me. within a few minutes I was reliving the moment my parents dropped me off at Beaudesert Park Prep School aged 8, an English boarding school. 20 years dropped away and I was there with all the details in a vivid experience. The difference was that I was feeling the feelings that had been frozen at the time. Overwhelming terror, grief, betrayal, abandonment. I couldn’t believe my parents were doing this. I saw them drive away in slow motion, waving through the car window, her red head scarf…;. Gravel of school, building  taking with them my whole life till that point. My home, my security, my support, my matrix. Waves of feeling washed through me. it seemed like a long-held dam had burst violently and when it gradually subsided I felt bathed in an incredible relief. And I realized I was surrounded by loving people touching me. the rest of the participants were sitting around me their hands upon me, gazing at me with loving eyes. It was one of the most intensely strong and healing moments of my life, as I felt a deep sense of belonging and connectedness.

The other remarkable the unconscious mind performs is that it controls all the functions of the body that we don’t control consciously, such as the metabolism. …the running of our bodies, the nourishing of the 50 trillion cells with proteins and amino acids, it moves the lymph the blood, expands the blood vessels at exactly the time needed, for instance, when we sit down

The phenomenon of social conditioning interferes with the natural performance of the unconscious mind. As children we are blessed with an ability to experiment, to take risks, and to learn from our experiences. Curiosity.

We have to experience life fully in order to learn. We have courage, a sense of adventure and we thrill at the unknown. We are fully alive. As we get older we gradually shift to a learning system based on other people’s experiences other than our own.

Adults tell us things based on their experiences, not ours, and then we go to school. The greatest conditioning, or cultural hypnosis, is supplied free of charge by our education system and if you research the origins of our education system the intention is quite clear, mass hypnosis. We gradually lose that sense of wonder, awe and trust.

Imagine explaining to someone from another planet how Germans become German. Do they slip something in the water? No. it’s a complex combination of social, cultural, religious and political programming that drives a wedge into the healthy functioning of the unconscious mind. All this accumulated stuff that is based on conditioning rather than experience creates a barrier between the conscious and unconscious mind.

And those vital memories from childhood, stashed for later, get buried under the rubble of mass hypnosis.

The unconscious mind still tries to help us. It’s totally in our service. It still wants to integrate these memories into our experience banks. So it tries to get our attention by creating backache or migraine or abandonment or depression, sometimes physical symptoms, sometimes emotional/situational symptoms. Trying to restore balance by triggering feelings. Most of these we try to avoid or ignore by taking drugs, legal or illegal, or distracting ourselves. We have become experts at distraction. Gradually the unconscious mind ups the ante, raises the volume.

This is a brief description of the backdrop to the dramas that we create as conflicts, which are in truth another portal through which the unconscious mind is trying to get our attention.

So …. Imagine a scenario where you enter a crowded party where you don’t know anyone. Remember it’s not just your conscious mind that is part of the attraction game that has clearly defined parameters on what kind of person you’re attracted to. It’s also your unconscious mind that has a whole other agenda. Your unconscious mind is looking for someone who matches your unconscious needs, someone who might eventually push your buttons. In exactly the way that will bring old hurts to the surface and cause healing and integration to happen you are drawn to the one person in the room and that one person is drawn to you as if both are caught inextricably in the web of fate.

seen in the light of this, conflict becomes an opportunity. It’s a signal that something is coming through the unconscious mind. We just have to figure out what it is, this coded message. This is where we have to become very sensitive and develop our skills of feeling and communication. Feelings are the main vehicle through which we can access the memories stored in the unconscious mind. They are often part of the healing as well, because in many situations as children our feelings became frozen because we didn’t feel safe.

This is the origin of conflict.

It starts as inner conflict between who I think I am and who I really am. Each of us is carrying around somewhere in the cellular memories of our bodies the stuff that the unconscious mind stashed. Much of this stuff is associated with pain and the conscious mind is trying desperately to avoid pain, so there’s conflict right there. It’s like two people meeting with backpacks on filled with unresolved stuff that needs to be unloaded.

What do we do with this conflict?

There’s still a little more understanding needed to flesh out this picture before we can answer this question.

The mind in its artful survival mechanisms has developed strategies to prevent this stuff from surfacing to protect itself from the unknown. These strategies are projected out into the world to protect the painful feeling memories stored in the archives of the conscious mind. Some of these strategies or personas (definition) control freak, tyrants, victim, false pride, seduction, flattery, nice girl nice guy, lying, hiding, disconnection, intimidating, perfectionism, helper, superior, inferior, helpless, stubborn, clowning, aloof, over eating, all addictions, being right, nothing is too much trouble, trying to please, acting obedient but having your agenda – these strategies developed to disconnect us from our feelings, our core energy, often because we felt unsafe or because there wasn’t permission for these feelings to be felt or expressed. Sometimes the situations that gave rise to these feelings were just too overwhelming for us as children.

These strategies developed into power trips over the years and it’s these power trips that generally cause the conflicts because they clash with other people’s, as in my tyrant bosses around your victim.

From the other side, in the light of all this, the conflicts can be seen as indicators that discomforting unconscious material is surfacing and if we can shine the torch of our awareness into the murky shadows with acceptance and love we can kick start the healing process that the unconscious mind has been trying to get our attention over for years.

One of the archetypal causes of conflict both in ourselves and in our relationships is the pain of separation. None of us received enough love and attention as babies and young children, how were left when we wanted to be held, we couldn’t understand or communicate our needs, we felt abandoned and betrayed and we lost our innate sense of trust and unity. This is part of being human, the archetypal separation from the divine. The pain of separation is what motivates us into relationship, our longing our ache our loneliness, that incredibly powerful need for love, for closeness, for acceptance, for unity.

Deep down we know Relationship is also the portal through which the pain of this separation can be healed, that is the longing and the ache, (and then we go to war). Conflict is the access point to this portal. It is through conflict that we can access the pain that the mind tries so hard to avoid – heart mind polarity.

Another level of conflict is the internal fragmentation within each person. The unworthy parts of ourselves that are judged by our analyzer who is really the thief masquerading as the judge because it is all a product of the conditioned mind. All of this internal analysis soup is projected out onto the other. Most of our thinking comes from a separated sense of self, which collides with a sense of separateness of the other. It’s amazing that we’re not more overwhelmed by conflict, when you look at all these separate aspects clashing with each other internally and externally.

What do we do with conflict?

First up we acknowledge it, name it. conflict is happening here. Let’s take a moment to accept it, observe it, explore it.