Respect is the Minimum of Love

Live Respectfully! While you cannot arrange to always feel loving toward your partner, you can make a commitment to never treat anyone, including yourself, with less than respect and to never allow others’ behavior towards you to drop below the level of respect. For instance, consider the difference between saying “That’s not true!” and “I see that differently from you.” The first respects only my point of view. The second recognizes that people who see the world differently are not necessarily right or wrong. They may be only different. Living with respect means respecting both yourself and the other. It means holding a position of valuing each person’s thoughts, feelings, needs, wants and unique experience of the world, even when these are in conflict.

The question arises, “Who defines what is respectful and what is not?” Most of us know intuitively what constitutes respect or disrespect for us. However, it is also important that you and your partner share with each other your own definitions of respectful or disrespectful behavior. To a great extent, respect is in the eye of the beholder. Respecting each other’s sensitivities around what feels disrespectful, even if you do not perceive it the same way, is a powerful move that puts your relationship on a firm foundation of respectful living.

However, you may find that you and your partner have some intense conflicts over what constitutes “disrespect.” For instance, if your partner grew up in a proper New England family where voices and energy are always kept low and calm, they may feel disrespected when you, who grew up in a boisterous Italian family, raises your voice and energy in a “discussion.” On the other hand, you, as the more high energy partner, may feel disrespected because when your partner refuses to engage with you at this level. So now what?

This is an excellent time to practice respect! Both of you can let go of defining your way as “the respectful way” and work to value the merits of the other’s style. You can work together to find a “middle ground” that incorporates both the “peace and quiet” of the “New England” style and the energy and engagement of the “Italian” style. Develop “our” style – one that fits for both of you.

There are a couple of other important points about living respectfully.

Blatantly disrespectful behavior, e.g. lying, cheating, screaming, name-calling, disregarding agreements, poisons your relationship in several ways. First of all, in behaving in these ways, you move to a position of disregard, even contempt, for your partner. From this position, there can be no love or connection. Secondly, when you treat your partner in these ways, they will inevitably build up resentment at being regarded as unworthy of respect. There also can be no love or connection when one is filled with resentment. So, your chance for loving connection takes a double hit.

Lastly, behaving respectfully towards your partner is a critical piece of maintaining your own self-respect. When you allow yourself to be blatantly disrespectful of your partner and/or your relationship, you cannot feel good about yourself. So, refraining from such behaviors is a great way to support your own sense of being a good human being.

An Aging Elder: Choose to Enter Conscious Elderhood

I woke up this morning with more aches than a porcupine has quills! My knee, back and shoulder were all seeing who could scream the loudest for my brain’s distracted attention.

Aging and Elderhood, encroaching personal entropy and joyful evolving consciousness!
What a juxtaposition!

While I am extremely grateful for entering conscious Elderhood, I am very aware that my body is slowly running down. I was talking to a friend about running recently and he said, “the older I get, the faster I was.” So true. I was reading recently that the best hope for the world was that more and more people worldwide were living past 50. However, it has also been noted that civilization often advances one death at a time. Enough already – I’m confusing me!

I think it is no longer enough to just get older, even though it’s true that old age is not for sissies! We also can choose to become Elders, and our journey to Elderhood begins in adulthood. I have written about Signs of Elderhood in an earlier post. If you want to become an elder, you have to begin to wake up, grow up and clean up in adulthood. Briefly, cleaning up, in addition to eating healthier and exercising more, usually involves embracing some form of depth work in psychotherapy to heal wounds from the past. Waking up means realizing you need to move beyond religious dogma and become a seeker of what IS and your true nature. Growing up means a willingness to recognize and move through actual developmental stages that we have become aware of in the last hundred years. This work may be very challenging as you transcend and include the mainstays of your culture. All of this is necessary to be able to show up as an Elder and not just an old person.

Gratefully, when you choose to enter conscious Elderhood, there is more to life than aches and pains.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Prolonging Adulthood – The Prime of Life

It is very understandable and very tempting to want to prolong adulthood as long as possible. After all, adulthood is the “prime of life!”

Who wouldn’t want to remain in the prime of life as long as possible?
Who wants to look forward to growing older and older and then old age and death?

Given our modern sensibilities and enculturation this makes perfect sense. Without a vision and understanding of the meaning and value of Elderhood, and especially our place or home in this evolving space, the future can look bleak indeed.

Adulthood and all that goes with it IS the prime of life. Prime is from the Latin “primus” or first. For many reasons and for most people in the world, there has been no “secundus, no gracious, zestful second, no Elderhood,” a stage of life that for all of its challenges is even better! This, on the surface, is an outrageous statement to many people. Because as it becomes clearer, Elderhood transcends and includes the arguably best of Adulthood (the growing up, waking up, and cleaning up that is the important work of adulthood), and allows us to become wiser, more loving and more compassionate for ourselves and for all others, who in Elderhood by the way, are no longer “others.” They are us, all of us.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Thank You for Everything – Really? Everything?

In these disturbing times, what is most calming to me is to thank You for EVERYTHING.

Who is this You I am thanking? The Divinity, evolution, Spirit- in – Action? You go by many names. And thank You for everything? Really? Everything? The total picture of all there is?

Yes.

Try it. “Thank You for everything.”

All of the good and all of the bad?

Yes.

Thank You for the total picture of all that is. Can I trust You that much? Do I have to thank you for Trump? Thank you for everything. Don’t make me do it! Thank You for everything. For the horrors of war? For the suffering of children? For my ability to reason, will, feel and act? For our ability together to make things better for everyone?

Yes.

Thank you for everything, all of the “good” and all of the “bad.” EVERYTHING.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Spare Me: Paralyzing Fear and Knowledge of Who I Really Am

My mostly unconscious prayer all these years has been spare me.

Spare me from the knowledge of who I really am. Because at some deep level it terrifies me. Who am I? Face the fear, the terror. I am that I am. Why am I afraid? Why am I afraid of unity consciousness? Part of me wants it more than anything. I think Jesus must have been terrified at times. I know Martin Luther King was: “Lord spare me from paralyzing fear” was his prayer. Let that be my new prayer rather than spare me from the knowledge of who I am. He didn’t ask to be spared from fear. He asked to be spared from paralyzing fear. Everyone is afraid at times. I believe he asked to be spared from the fear that would stop him in his tracks from doing what he needed to do.

How is this related to the fear of knowing who I really am?

I think it’s because knowing who I really am is inseparable from doing what I need to do. Is doing the way into being, or is being the way into doing: chicken or egg? No matter. It’s back to doing and being inseparable at unity consciousness. No wonder I am scared in this time of Trump. But spare me from paralyzing fear, that I may embrace what I need to do as that becomes more and more apparent in the fierce, unsparing light of deeper and deeper love.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker