Creating Conscious Relationships

requires you to first bring at least some degree of full-bodied self-awareness and consciousness to yourself. It requires you to be fully present.

Staying present to yourself, with yourself, by yourself, for any length of time, is challenging enough. Throw another person into the mix, particularly one with whom you have a history, and it gets even more challenging.

The best way to start is by learning how to orient yourself to the present moment while you're interacting with others. Begin by grounding yourself. Feel your feet on the ground or on the floor, whichever the case may be. Feel yourself in your body. Notice your breathing. Notice the muscles that you're using when you breathe in and out. See if you can stay connected to yourself and your own felt-experience as you look at and listen to the other person.

Notice any tendency you might have to "leave yourself" by becoming ungrounded and climbing up into your intellect. Notice any slight tension or effort in your speech. Notice any attempt to fill the silence with words. Notice how often you reference the past or the future in your conversation. Notice how often you express a belief or opinion. None of these things are "bad" or wrong, it's just that they tend to be habitual or unconscious.

Another experiment that you might try is this: Get together with a like-minded friend - one who is also interested in exploring this. Agree that the two of you are going to sit and be together, in nature if possible, with the intention to practice being present to yourselves while you're with each other. You want to simply notice, moment by moment, what is happening inside of you.

Allow any communication to simply emerge from the present moment. Feel no obligation to respond or reply when the other speaks. Simply allow any response to well up from the stillness. This isn't meant to be work. You're not trying to reach a goal. It's just an exploration of Presence.

Thich Nhat Hahn says that the greatest gift we can give another is our full compassionate presence. I'd like to add that learning how to do this for ourselves, is the first step.