MERGE WITH LOVERS; DISSOLVE SEPARATENESS ILLUSION
by Sasha Lessin, Ph.D., Dean, School of Tantra, www.schooloftantra.com
Sit with a partner. Maintain eye contact. Don't touch.
Tell her or him, "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.) Exhaust your list.
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.
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.
* What, in Keyes' framework, are addictions and preferences?
* What does he mean when he says to upgrade your addictions to preferences?
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 intimate's annoying habit or attitude gave you an opportunity to discard an addiction and feel better as a result. Write you results.
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 love's growth as she or he 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.
Open to the form the relationship takes, which, for couples, may be nonmonogamous.
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."
Dr. Lessin's holistic tantra book, All-Chakra Tantra, co-written with wife Janet Kira Lessin, is available at http://www.schooloftantra.net/Store/Books/AllChakraTantra.htm
www.schooloftantra.com, 808-244-4103, schooloftantra@aol.com
