By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D., Dean School of Counseling & Tantra
When you open totally yourself to a reciprocally vulnerable person, you receive feedback that lets you grow. From the perspective of a shared consciousness with another person, you can reflect upon your bodymind.
You’ve transcended your level of consciousness from a single bodymind (Centaur-Consciousness) to human couples, pairs, deep friendshisp, parent-child relationships, or two-person partnershps . The two of you together have more good energy than the sum of what each of you had as separate integrated intellect-body organisms.
Relating intimately to another person gives you the chance to uplevel your consciousness to the dyadic level. IF you don’t do this upgrade (which just incorporates you mind and body and that of other individuals, you, alas, will fail to make growthful contact and instead narrow your sense of yourself to the consciousness of an isolated bodymind.
Your growth and actualization in the dyad depend, according to Hamden-Turner, on a cybernetic growth cycle. In a cybernetic growth cycle, you develop your own judgment, competence and individuality and actively show your developing self to your other, who lovingly yet honestly shares her or his reactions. If you maturely use this feedback, you raise your consciousness, making yourself able to perceive with greater clarity, develop your individuality further and make better choices.
The key to growth is committing yourself to someone whom you accept, lovingly challenge and who enhances you. You risk your vulnerability with the person you commit yourself to that person could reject or accept you and your growth. You choose to stop insisting on always seeing things your way and open yourself to your other’s opinions. You let yourself care about her or his development. You learn from each other, cooperate, and make ever-more growthful life choices, based on the loving energy you share. A growthful cybernetic cycle with your other uplevels your sophistication because you learn from her or his experience and feedback.
Your growth simultaneously contributes to your other’s growth. As you become more mature from her or his feedback, you are capable of giving her or him the greater love, acceptance, cooperation and feedback she or he needs for her or his growth. Each time you and your other go through the cycle of choice, commitment, vulnerability, encouragement of each other’s development, synergistic learning and use of each other’s reactions, you both raise your consciousness.
Commit yourself. Get honest with each of your loved ones. Learn from each and keep getting higher.
SYNERGIZE WITH YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER– the Do-It-Yourself or Do-It-With-Partners Teaching Questionaire
The following is a cue sequence for enhancing synergistic communication between you and your significant other. Allow yourselves at least one private, uninterrupted hour to both go through the cycle.
Sit facing each other, holding hands and maintaining eye contact and take turns sharing your answers aloud. I CHOOSE TO RELATE TO YOU AS FOLLOWS (tell her or him) ….
I PERCEIVE THESE PATTERNS IN OUR INTERACTION …(specify).
INSIDE, WHO I THINK I AM WITH YOU IS ….
FIVE OF MY SUCCESSES RELATING TO YOU ARE ….
I CAN BE AUTHENTIC AND CARING WITH YOU WHEN I USE MY FOLLOWING ABILITIES ….
THESE ARE THE WAYS I COMMIT MYSELF TO YOU …(SPECIFY THEM).
I DROP MY ASSUMPTIONS, LETTING YOU INFLUENCE MY ATTITUDES AND BELIEFS WHEN ….
I BRIDGE THE DISTANCE AND MAKE CONTACT YOU FEEL WHEN ….
YOU BRIDGE THE DISTANCE AND MAKE CONTACT I FEEL WHEN I FEEL RECOGNIZED, KNOWN AND ENCOURAGED BY YOU WHEN ….
I RISE ABOVE MY NARROWER PERSONAL CONCERNS AND IDENTIFY WITH YOUR GROWTH WHEN I ….
I FEEL YOU TRANSCENDING YOURSELF TO CARE ABOUT ME WHEN ….
FROM OUR DIALECTICAL CONFRONTATION, I LEARNED ….
FROM IT, I’M NOW LEARNING ….
YOU LEARNED (AND ARE LEARNING) IN OUR ONGOING STRUGGLE OVER THE DIFFERENT WAYS WE PERCEIVE THINGS THAT ….
WE CAN SYNERGIZE THESE ISSUES … (specify).
WE’VE ALREADY SYNERGIZED …(specify).
WE’VE MET EACH OTHER, DIALOGUED AND GROWN THESE WAYS ….
MY EXISTENCE, AS THE DYADIC RELATIONSHIP OF (YOUR NAME) AND (OTHER’S NAME) IS … (DESCRIBE WHAT YOU, AS DYAD, ARE LIKE).
HERE’S WHAT I CONCLUDE OVERALL, WHEN I THINK OF OUR SHARED TWO-PERSON RELATIONSHIP (OUR DYADIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXTENSION OF MY DEFINITION OF ME TO INCLUDE YOU GIVING US BOTH MORE LIFE FORCE (SYNERGY).
“I FEEL SEPARATENESS FROM YOU WHEN I SAY TO MYSELF … (specify all of the rational and irrational, serious and trivial, crazy and stupid and clear and astute things you say to yourself that make you feel separate from her or him.)
Your partner sits calmly and says, “Thank you” after each separation you enumerate.
Then have your partner tell you, “I FEEL SEPARATENESS FROM YOU WHEN I SAY TO MYSELF….” Encourage your partner to exhaust her or his separatenesses: calmly say “Thank you” for each.
Then join hands. Tell your partner, “I FEEL ONENESS WITH YOU WHEN I TELL MYSELF … (complete with all the things you tell yourself which make you feel close to your partner.)
Reverse roles.
DISCUSS YOUR EXPERIENCE with this exercise.
More Explanation
When you raise your consciousness to the dyadic level you still keep your bodymind awareness, your distinct personality and your inner voices, should you choose to temporarily identify with them.
When you and your significant other expand consciousness of yourselves to internalize each others’ wisdom and concerns, you are on the dyadic level of consciousness. The energy, richness, complexity and awareness the two of you share exceeds the sum of both your individual bodymind energies and aware nesses. Your couple synergy is enhanced when you use your relationship so each of you grows and has more to give to the relationship as well.
Ken Keyes provides an excellent model for such synergistic dyadic consciousness. [Keyes, K., Handbook to Higher Consciousness, 5th Edition,: Living Love, 1979 and A Conscious Person’s Guide to Relationships, Kentucky: Living Love, 1979.]
Keyes says to welcome upsets in your relationship. You can use upsets to raise your consciousness. He suggests you fully share your deepest feelings and process what you say to yourself which make you feel separate from and opposed to one another. You can then experience your oneness.
Relate compassionately, Keyes says, to your lover’s problems as signals for her or him to grow without also getting yourself caught up emotionally. Process your own emotional upsets, feel centered and loving and then act freely. Use your relationship to stimulate internal dialogue at the personality levels of each of you, so you can both raise your individual and mutual consciousness. When you’re upset, disturbed, unhappy or dissatisfied with your mate, explore your own addictions, that is, how you tell yourself your other must be and your relationship must be for you to be happy. Such addictions trigger your upset. You stop suffering and instead grow when you stop being addicted. Change your addictions to preferences. Preferences are desires which, if not fulfilled, do not make you suffer.
MORE DO-IT-WITH PARTNERS EXERCISES
THINK OF AN ADDICTION OF YOURS THAT INVOLVES SOMEONE WITH WHOM YOU ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP. SPECULATE ON THE FORM YOUR ADDICTION WOULD TAKE IF IT WERE RAISED TO A PREFERENCE.
IMAGINE THAT YOU’VE UP LEVELED YOUR ADDICTION TO A PREFERENCE. IMAGINE HOW YOUR LIFE WOULD BE AFFECTED. TELL ME WHAT YOU IMAGINE.
RECALL A TIME WHEN YOUR INTIMATES’ ANNOYING HABIT OR ATTITUDE GAVE YOU AN OPPORTUNITY TO DISCARD AN ADDICTION AND FEEL BETTER AS A RESULT.
Stop blaming each other for not meeting each other’s expectations. Refrain from making addiction-based demands. Turn off addictions; turn on love. Let your intimate express anger, jealousy and other separating emotions aimed at you, while you love her or him more no matter what she or he does. Let her or his addictions be okay with you.
Realize that in disputes, you win some and lose some; that is okay.
Make your growth and self-expression help your partners’ growth as each of them defines it.
Before you enter a deep relationship with another, Keyes invites you to know and accept your own inner voices, personality and bodymind. Enter your relationship so you can cooperate with each other in “the great adventure of life.”
Keyes recommends you avoid using intense love as a basis for involvement, since, at more inclusive levels of consciousness, you’re at living oneness and love with all humanity. You are already deeply in love with everyone. Therefore, he says, choose carefully who you share your time and life games with. Choose someone who contributes to your well-being and vice versa.
“You contribute to your mutual well-being when you enjoy the ‘enoughness’ that you do have in your life, and thus open your heart to happiness by not creating emotion-backed demands for what you don’t have. Learn to emotion- ally accept what is here and now in your life. You will find you always have ‘enough’ in your life.”
Take responsibility, Keyes says, for creating your own happiness in your relationship. You use your relationship to raise your own consciousness only when you work on your own bodymind, personality and subself integration. Keyes suggests such integration allows you to be “in touch with the beautiful, capable and loving” aspects of your own subdyadic consciousness as well as higher consciousness. “I love you,” means “You’re mirroring me and letting me see the beautiful, capable parts of me.”
Make your relationship delightful by being involved and sharing with your intimate, not by being addicted to your intimate for your happiness. To increase your involvement, you must decrease your addictions. Sharing means not hiding anything, so you can build a trusting base.
“Ask for what you want, but don’t be addicted to getting it.”
Keep noticing the beauty and preciousness of the bodymind and higher being your intimate is no matter what subpersonality she or he is affecting.
You function at the dyadic level of consciousness when you “discover the ‘us’ place in terms of surrender, compassionate power and mutual give and take.”
Please share this post; people in this group welcome your comments, especially after you’ve done the exercises with someone.
NAMASTE
 SYNERGY: COMMUNICATION BETWEEN Separated Individual Body-minds Try the Do-It-Yourself or Do-It-With-Partners Teaching Questionaire following exposition "Pin It")