How I Relate to Another Being is How I’m Living Life Now: The House of My Hearing Has Many Doors

Relationships are, clearly, at the heart of our lives; or maybe I should say that for most of us, they are our heart. Especially a marriage and those longstanding partnerships. They can be so miraculous, exciting, engaging, frightening, painful, and confounding that we lose perspective on the central role they play in our lives. Something comes up, a disagreement or hurt, and we focus exclusively on that. To the degree we feel engaged, we want to disengage. We can lose sight of how the relationship influences not only how we think of ourselves but all other relationships.

 

Despite the many relationships we have, we often think of ourselves as me-alone. Me separate from others, separate even from our world. But we’re never as fully separate as we might imagine. And core relationships have enormous power to reveal that. By recognizing this as a possibility, the relationship itself comes alive. The character of our lives improves.

 

Recently, I noticed that any marriage, or any core relationship, models for us what relationship itself means. It can become a school for learning how to deepen other, important emotional connections. For example, each friendship, in its own, unique way contains the possibility of developing a degree of the openness and emotional intimacy that a core relationship might develop⎼ a similar caring and being cared for, mutual discovery, trust, and exploration. Or if the core is dominated by resistance, pain, dishonesty, and projections, so might other relationships.

 

Such discovery and caring makes us vulnerable. When we’re open, loving, we’re vulnerable. That’s just what caring means. When we care we don’t wear bulletproof vests or build concrete walls around us. When we’re “open” our senses and feelings reach out. When we reach out, others can reach in. And this dynamic helps us grow in character.

 

This, of course, can also be frightening. It can scare us into shutting down. But being frightened can itself be a sign that something we’re feeling is meaningful and worthwhile. That we’re in a state where what we don’t know about the future of the relationship, or anything, might exceed what we do know. And we’re willing to risk that.

 

And this not-knowing is always with us. We might assume that when we’re open or vulnerable we’re less safe. But maybe we’re safer. If we’re more able to perceive what’s there, what’s real⎼ if we’re more cognizant of just how much of the future we don’t know, and more aware of what we’re doing and saying, then we can make better decisions. A relationship can help us recognize what’s real.

 

We can better recognize that right here, in this moment, this person⎼ is my life. I breathe; they breathe. I feel; they feel. Zen teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh called this inter-being⎼ we inter-are with others. Likewise, Australian Zen teacher Susan Murphy borrows an Aboriginal term, us-two, to describe relationships. Our relationship with another person, being, or place is not between separate, disconnected things. Instead, me-and-you and everything are dynamically creating this moment together.

 

As I sit with them, whoever they are, I sit with myself….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

4 Scientific Rules Helpful for Approaching Complex Situations: A Lens Through Which to Get Clarity on Many Problems We Face

Sometimes, we read or listen to something, a book, article, podcast and immediately realize, “Yes, this explains so much.” This happened recently when I started reading Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being, by Neil Thiese. The title first drew my interest; and after reading (so far) the first 3 chapters, my impression has been confirmed.

 

Complexity theory looks at the class of patterns of interactions that are open-ended, evolving, unpredictable, yet adaptive and self-evolving, in other words, life itself. It can predict that new properties or behaviors will emerge in a group or an individual, but not the precise nature of what will emerge. Biology, ecology, climatology, anthropology, the economy, all demonstrate complexity.

 

The theory bridges the gaps between viewing the universe at its most infinitesimal, described by Quantum Mechanics, and at its most vast, described by Relativity. It is a step beyond Chaos Theory, which basically reveals that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but predictably so. It describes the behavior of cumulous clouds, whirlpools, waves, ice, repetitive patterns in nature, and such.

 

This might all seem very intellectual or abstract at first, but with more reading the relevance to daily life became abundantly clear. The theory can be a metaphor or lens through which to get clarity on many problems we face.

 

We might assume that if we understand all the parts in an organization or system, we can predict the behavior of the whole; we likewise treat the universe as a massive, predictable machine, often without realizing we do so. Complexity reveals a different perspective. It shows, for example, we can predict how the water in a glass might act overall, but not the location of any single molecule. We can use the computational agility of computers to model how aspects of a human body will act but can’t do the same with a human being as a whole. We might research and study a question all we can, but still need to be humble and not assume we are in possession of the only right answer.

 

Complexity postulates 4 basic rules to explore the universe, and it is these rules that I found truly applicable to our lives.

 

  1. Numbers matter: A complex system only arises when there are sufficient numbers to do so. For example, if we have just a handful of ants, no self-organizing properties occur, like cooperative tunnel building, or cooperative finding and sharing food. If you get 25 or more individuals, you do. A thousand, and even more cooperation can emerge.

 

  1. Interactions are local, not global: Numbers matter, and so do individuals. We might think interactions happen mostly top-down. For example, we might imagine there’s one boss ant, or that our brain oversees every bodily interaction. We might expect that we can control all that happens in our lives. But it’s more complicated than that. There’s no one part that sees and controls the whole. The mind influences the gut; the gut influences the mind. In nature as well as in our human body, organization arises locally, from one part, cell, or individual meeting others.

 

Authoritarians imagine they are in control, or crave to be, and they do whatever they can to assert this. Clearly, some individuals have more influence than others, or control more higher-order details than others. But no one person stands outside the web of human connection, the web of life. No living being, no earthly one anyway, is ever outside the universe looking in. They, we influence others and are in turn influenced….

 

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.*

A Trip to Paradise: Where Do We Meet Ourselves?

What does paradise mean to us? Heaven? The garden of Eden? A place of perfection, or of beauty and wonder? The end of war? Safety and security? Justice? A political revolution? Or a moment of peace and quiet?

 

Maybe the yearning for paradise has accompanied humans ever since we came to exist? Or, more likely, since we first created art and language, and expanded our ability to think abstractly or to mentally journey into the future and past?

 

To enter some of the paleolithic art caves required crawling through tight passages or tunnels and leaving behind the sun-lit world. They were not dwelling places. In the famous cave at Lascaux, in the Dordogne area of southwestern France, there was evidence of oil lamps, rope, scaffolding, as well as sophisticated paintings. Were the ancient caves not just places to create art but temples meant to take people beyond time and into eternity? A place for performing hunting magic? An expression not only of a drive for artistic creation but for paradise?

 

One of my favorite books of the Bible, and best known generally, is Genesis, which begins, of course, with the beginning, with creation. And soon takes us to the garden of Eden.

 

Gardens have long been associated with, or used as living metaphors for, paradise. Journalist, author, and travel writer Pico Iyer’s book, The Half-Known Life: In Search of Paradise, begins with traveling to Iran, continues to North Korea, Kashmir, Ireland, Jerusalem, Ladakh, India, Japan, etc. and ends with realizing the most important journey is within himself. The New York Times comprehensively reviewed the book and recently listed it as one of the 100 notable of the year.

 

Modern Iran was once Persia, central to the Fertile Crescent where human farming and larger-scale societies might have begun, and where humans might have first left Eden. The word ‘paradise’ itself is from Persia, old Iranian, ‘paradaijah.’ The Farsi word for garden means paradise. Iran is a land of beautiful poetry and traditional architecture, as well as gardens of physical poetry pointing our eyes toward divinity. It is place of reverence for the “unseen life.”

 

Yet, today, Iyer shows us a place where the government tries to watch and record all that its people hide, think, and do, while the people try to find out what the government is hiding. One motif of the architecture is the inclusion of tiny mirrors, hints of an infinity of reflections and creations. But the mirrors, today, also might remind the people to keep a perpetual watch over their shoulders.

 

Maybe all nations have such contradictions. Iyer describes the “People’s Paradise” of North Korea as a place where people “seemed beside the point and perfection was the ruthless elimination of every imperfection.” Or I’m reminded that in the U. S., the “land of the free,” and leader of the democratic world, one of the two probable presidential candidates in the 2024 election promises to end democracy and rule as a dictator.

 

We must be careful with our yearning for paradise….

 

*To read the whole blog, please go to The Good Men Project.