Beyond Conventional Wisdom

Have you noticed the power and magical quality we give to worry? For many people, not worrying is equated being uncaring or naïve. Michael, my partner, has told me on many occasions, “Don’t worry; it will all work out.”  I would always reply, “Yes, but how?” He would say, “I don’t know, but I know it will.”

Worry has been the bane of my existence. During a spiritual practice that I recently engaged in with two friends, I realized that worry disconnects me from the happiness and serenity that are in my heart.

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I spent the first half of my life as a strident hater of liberals. Then, upon losing a risky bid for Congress, my marriage, business and political reputation disintegrated. After struggling with and for political power for almost a decade, fueled by an undercurrent of anger and righteousness, I left Republican politics. Exhausted and disillusioned, I retreated to a mountain cabin in rural Virginia.

No longer feeling so sure of myself or my world view, and having been humbled to the point of living well below the poverty line, life delivered an unlikely set of teachers. The small town I had chosen was a haven for 1960’s and 70’s back-to-the-landers. For someone whose nickname in the military had been “starch,” this community of hippies was not my first choice for neighbors.

Slowly, I began to understand that the underlying values motivating their behavior – sharing, interdependence, equality, compassion for the weak, a strong sense of justice, freedom, creative self-expression, and a reverence for nature – were the heart that had been missing from my politics.

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Does your sex life fulfill your need to feel loved? Are you able to have satisfying conversations with your sexual partner about your sexual likes, dislikes, fears, shame and need for both freedom and emotional connection? Are you able to listen compassionately and understand more when your partner talks about his/her sexual feelings, needs, desires and difficulties? If the answer to all of the above questions is “Yes” then don’t bother reading any further.

To those of you still here, join the crowd. Conventional thinking reduces sex to a performance designed to produce better sexual gymnasts. With all the advertisements proclaiming the wonders of pills that produce erection, aids to stimulate orgasm and enhancement surgeries, it’s no wonder that most sexual discussions focus on sex as merely a physical act.

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“Don’t therapize me!,” “I hate it when you psychoanalyze me!”, or “Cut out that psychobabble!” Phrases like these epitomize commonly thought of adverse reactions to psychotherapy. What does your picture of psychotherapy look like?

The face of psychotherapy whether practiced in an office, from a book, or in the media typically looks like a guru giving advice, analyzing and directing people in how they should feel, behave and think.

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Community is typically thought of as a group of people living in the same locality or regularly gathering together such as in a work, social or on-line community. But, for many of us, just being in the same neighborhood, home or in cyberspace is not satisfying. My hunger for community is not met just by being together.

The heart of a community is meaningful connections. That’s what feeds my intellect, emotions, physical body, spirituality and creativity and nourishes my soul. Heart talk involves being emotionally touched with important personal learning, and feeling seen, heard and appreciated. With an intention to make heart connections an important and integral part of the community, any activity is an opportunity to be meaningfully together.

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Conflict!

What was your reaction to that word? If you felt tense, you’re not alone. Conventional thinking teaches us that when upsets occur, conflict or withdrawing to avoid a conflict are the only responses.

My parents never confronted their upsets and my mother and sister constantly argued. But, it was not just from my home that I got my ideas about upsets. In the media, at school and in politics upsets were “do or die” battles. The strong won and the weak either slunk away or lost the fight.

For me, upsets became inextricably entwined with humiliation, loss, pain, yelling, and feeling powerless. No matter how big I grew, the little boy inside with an omnipresent fear of conflict, responded to upsetting situations by either avoiding them or steeling myself into a warrior preparing for battle.

Upsets, stemming from situations such as unmet expectations, broken agreements and clashing styles of behavior, are inevitable. From the ashes of many unhappy relationships, I’ve learned another way of responding to upsetting differences. It is the road less traveled, the way of the heart.

The heart of upsets is learning. Mark Gerzon, a highly respected renaissance thinker approaches conflict in the following way. “By shifting the focus from finding a solution to changing consciousness, conflict resolution becomes a transformational process. A deeper understanding of the situation allows each side to gain respect for the other. From this change in consciousness, new possibilities for solutions that do not compromise the integrity of either party arise that cannot even be conceived of in an adversarial proceeding.”

In an upset there are always very important reasons for beliefs, behavior, thoughts or feelings. When heart-connected we compassionately and respectfully engage in wanting to:

• Understand the other person’s position.
• Learn about our own position and any part we may have in the difficulty.
• Search for resolutions that preserve everyone’s integrity.

Although staying heart-connected in the face of upsets is an ideal that no one is always able to maintain, losing our heart is not the problem. Failing to learn from those experiences is the Achilles heel that festers into serious problems.

Responding to an upset from the heart rather than from fear requires knowing that we have lost our heart connection  (See Feelings and Behaviors) Without that awareness we are stuck. Realizing that we’re disconnected we can:

• Take personal responsibility and acknowledge, without blame, that we have lost our heart connection. For example, “In trying to prove my point and get you to change, I lost my heart and I feel badly about that.”
• Do something to reconnect to our heart (See Ways to Reconnect To Your Heart).
• Learn more about the beliefs and fears that created our disconnection. “There are some important issues for me to confront here and I am committed to working on them. I’d also like to know more about your thoughts and feelings.”
• Express sadness about any wounding that occurred when we were disconnected and clean up the difficulties that resulted. Such as, “I feel badly that I disrespected you and I would like to heal any bad feelings.”
• Begin a compassionate dialogue to resolve the difficulties. “I feel open and caring. Are you ready to begin again?”

You can trace the flow of behavior and consequences from upsets in the chart From Upsets to Harmony.

What were your lessons about differences? What resources have been instrumental in changing your ideas about responding to differences? What questions remain unanswered?

Additional Resources

Have you ever come to the realization that something that was supposed to make you happy, did not? Or, that what you were taught was the “right” way to be or think changed somewhere along the line? The Beyond Conventional Wisdom blog reflects my lifetime of struggling down paths that never fulfilled their promise.

It took years for me to discover the simple truth that all the things for which I truly yearn, such as happiness, peace of mind, joy, abundance, serenity, and meaningful connections with myself and others, happen when I’m connected to my heart.

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