Neutral Practice
One thing that helps me to relate in the here and now is the understanding of a neutral practice.
I used to get sucked into ruminations about why someone was behaving the way they were.
Then I came to a full and embodied understanding that every single human is doing what I'm doing—the best that they know how, according to a value system programmed into them which was not largely subjected to their own inner inquiry.
This is what girds my understanding of here and now practices of relating.
Good practices of relating are not "good" in a moral sense, they are good in the way a complete circuit is good, and an incomplete circuit is "bad."
How do we use the energy in the system? That's a practice.
"Bad" relating practices burn energy that a system without the "good" practices doesn't know how to use.
Everything is of service! Bad does not mean trash, bad is a flag of opportunity, a .zip file of information, the chance for a new experience.
With dualistic morality asking us to do the right thing and avoid doing the wrong thing because of how it hurts other people, we stay in the land of symptoms, navigating the ocean wave to wave, we look at the finger pointing at the moon.
Nobody worthy of your time wants to hurt you. Yet time and time again, you find yourself hurt by the innocent practices of worthy people.
It can seem like there is nowhere to trust—you think they're worthy and find they weren't after all! You can't even trust yourself! You dare to connect, and encounter the same pain over and over again.
Patterns in relationships are the predictable result of certain practices. We do the practices because they are what we know how to do, until and unless we learn a new way TO DO them.
Because these are the traps ready to burn energy—WHY this has happened, how it should have happened, what I need to stop doing. I can endlessly loop on these things and they arrive nowhere of value. They are of the service of dumping energy I do not know how to use in a generative system.
Generative systems are a result of generative practices, and they produce generative patterns of relating.
Generative patterns of relating result in relational nuance. They allow us to rest in connection exactly as it's showing how it wants to be. They allow connections to organically grow relationships.
Generative patterns fuel a peaceful life which is delightfully and deliciously of service to others without martyrdom or overwhelm.
Ultimately, you are a relational being driven in every way toward connection and interdependence, delighting in serving and being with others. Your desire is not the problem, not being able to not do what you know you shouldn't do is a natural conundrum. You were meant to learn how to love.
You were meant to learn generative practices of love, ways of being with yourself, ways of understanding your experience, ways of reconciling your humanity with the machinations of the cosmos. You were meant to learn them because you cannot know them unless you learn them.
That part in you that craves the experience of Devotional Love is in a dark room knowing that if the circuit was complete, the light would switch on. That part of you might believe in light on faith, at times doubting its own sight, or the existence of light.
The part that has always craved is is correct.
The practices are available to you, right here and now.
