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Dear Kat,

There’s nothing to report – we just continue to get on magnificently.

WAIT!  That’s the weird thing – how does this happen?

Firstly I want to distinguish between disagreements and arguments.  The former is possible, the latter unimaginable.  Why would I want to persuade you to do something against your will?  It may improve my lot in some way, but the cost of your compliance must be deducted from the benefit.

Let’s say that I see my benefit as M and the cost to you as Y.  Then I should go ahead if M > Y.

But you may see the benefit to me as M2 and the cost to you as Y2, so I shouldn’t do it if M2 < Y2.

For this clash not to take place, either

• Our assessment of each others’ states must be accurate.
• If not accurate, our assessment of each others’ states must be generous.
• We believe the reporting of the other.

This may be overly intellectual and abstract, but the point I want to make is that we fully accept the reported reality of the other and do not discount it as less important than ours.  This requires two things: that we accept the other as fully equal to ourselves, not in skills and desires but in rights and consciousness, and that we trust the other to be truthful.

Oh, I see I riffed on this a couple of posts ago. Read the rest of this entry »

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My Dear Kat,

We don’t argue.  Realisation of that was the genesis of our exploration of our relationship.  We’ve said “Oh, we don’t argue because we don’t want to”, and that is part of it, but in addition to that, we are able to come to a mutually agreeable decision every time.

Now that is no doubt made simpler by our having similar opinions on tidiness, money, work, politics and more (though anyone who picks a seriously mismatched partner is either inexperienced, masochistic, or working through issues), but it’s not that we always make the same choices initially.  Instead, we each put out our position and then start looking for something that works for both of us.  We don’t defend our position, and we’re not overly attached to it; instead, we want to find something that works for both of us because we recognise that the other has equal rights to their needs, that their desires have equal validity, reality, importance.

It’s not that we’re equal in our desires, but that we see the other as having as much right to their position as ourselves, and that we are affected by the happiness (or otherwise) of the other.

Another thing is (to steal your term) the celebration of difference – that the other introduces a variety into life that would not otherwise be there, and we welcome change rather than fearing it.  Doing so is easier because of our mutual benevolence – that we don’t want to take any course of action that will harm the other, so in the light of that, it is easy to trust the choices and suggestions of the other.

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My Dear Kat,

I want to write about union. It’s a difficult subject, especially for me, because it flies in the face of everyday experience, but time after time we have this experience of union, of oneness. It occurs most often when we are sexual, but plain physical contact can bring it out, too. I want to be clear on one point: there is no loss of self; instead, the experience is of myself and of us simultaneously. I don’t mean a sense of you and your body. It’s a sense of a third autonomous center that only comes into existence (or is perceived, don’t know which) when my own ego and intentionality are quietened.

Sounds strange, right? But here’s the next strange thing: that when you or I talk about this, the other says “Uh-huh … yes … right” and there is no disagreement on the experience. I cannot imagine that much agreement happening were we having separate hallucinatory experiences.

So what is going on here? Two factors come into play for me. Firstly, I want to point out that experience trumps theory, or as I put it in my youth, “the fact precedes the explanation”.   Any theory has to accommodate the facts; if it doesn’t, it is deficient. Of course, illusions may exist — the car wheels caught on film appear to be spinning backwards — but the entire body of theory exists IN ORDER TO explain our experiences, so they must have a certain validity. Secondly, I like theories that explain the facts of my world; they organise it, make sense of it, and have useful predictive powers.

Bearing these two in mind, I propose that both realities are true: that we are both separate and one. This contradicts Aristotelian logic. Tough. Light is both a wave and a particle, which doesn’t make sense, either, but the evidence for it is overwhelming.

In order to make this more palatable, let me offer a metaphor: we are like pages in a book. Every page appears unique; it has its own number, its own words, its own meaning, yet we more easily see the book as the unit. Is there a similar one-ness to the world that we are failing to see?

Just as we can come up with a list of differences between you and me, so we can come up with a list of equivalences: culture, nationality, race, DNA, and the very atoms of which we are composed. So maybe we are both an individual and a species; an individual and a life-form; an individual and a collection of atoms. Our culture emphasises individuality, especially in America, so our upbringing teaches us to only see that fact.

But what constitutes an individual becomes less clear-cut the more it is examined. For instance, a single person is not just an arrangement of 10 trillion human cells, but also contains ten times as many microbial cells that are essential to well-being, for instance see here “some researchers think of our bodies as superorganisms, rather than one organism teeming with hordes of subordinate invertebrates.”

In the West, our belief system is built on an egocentric framework. To admit the experience of union it is necessary to expand that framework to allow for its possibility, otherwise any experience of union will be overlooked or dismissed. Having made room for it, we also need a non-egoistic situation where it can emerge. Sex is one such, but it can be found in intimate conversations or communing with nature.

In the West, we use words for explanations and answers, but they fail to satisfy in answering the Big Questions because language works best as a divisive tool. Words classify the world into this and not this, which makes them very unsuited to describe union, or one-ness. Additionally, a word is not the thing; we can only use a word like a pointer, so expecting words to guide us to union is optimistic. Instead, the opposite is true: silence, listening, observing, being open to the present, can guide us there. The knowledge of one-ness is experiential, not verbal.

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Dear Kat,

We both awoke this morning from a especially restful sleep, and gave thanks to each other for the joy of each others’ company, then had the following conversation, which I want to capture before it escapes me.

Me: How come this happens?
You: Because we’re open to the present.
Me: So we are not yearning for how it formerly was, or wishing for some future state.  But if that is the correct approach, suppose you’re with an unsuitable partner – complaining, abusive, whatever – doesn’t accepting the present remove all motivation to change?  Isn’t the future ideal a great motivator?
You: But by being fully present, you see the behavior for what it is, and have the choice to change the situation.

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I’ve been thinking about this since meeting with a friend and listening to his complaints about jet lag, local politics, work etc.  Everyone knows the half full, half empty metaphor, but clichéd though it is, I find it very useful.  If you habitually look at the empty half, then you can never be satisfied, because the glass can never be completely filled; there is always room for one more need, one more chocolate, one more affair.  Conversely, if you habitually look at the full half, it can never be emptied; there is always a moment of delight, an anticipation, an unexpected benefit.  (I wrote about this before.  It also reminds me of “Ain’t it terrible”, from “Games People Play” by Eric Berne.)

The point is that our world consists of what we pay attention to; by changing our focus, we can change our experience of reality.  This might be called Pollyannaish, but so what?  As long as it does not lead to ignoring problems, it can only be a benefit.

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Dear Kat,

I’m not ready to claim that our core values are the only ones possible.  An article in today’s NYTimes on the beliefs of Hummer owners concludes they are “American exceptionalism, rugged individualism, love of the frontier, community and freedom”, and “the debate is reframed … as one between defenders and destroyers of personal freedom”.

Certainly this can be debated, and I would start by pointing out that acts have consequences, but it seems to me we don’t all have the same beliefs and core values, and we will look foolish making such a claim.

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In yesterday’s post I puzzled over the prerequisites for our level of agreement.  On reflection, I think it needs a full belief in the golden rule, “Treat others as you wish to be treated”, which describes an equivalence between me and you, that we are both equally important.

To act based on this, you have to put yourself in their place for a moment.  A more succinct term for this is empathy, a skill that develops over the years (though it may stall or fall back in some).  Furthermore, it seems likely to me that to increase in empathy is to approach nearer to God, spirit, union or whatever term works for you.

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Dear Kat,

I have been mystified how we reach agreement on things.  For instance, I wrote here “We come to agreement on what we do together without apparent effort or decision-making” and here “This happens so regularly that it is a statistical impossibility that we should always want the same things.”

The other night you answered this so eloquently; let me see if I can summarise it.

It’s a result of being open and present.  You have an idea of what to do.  I suggest something else that is not in your mind.  Because you are open and undefended you are not stuck on your idea being the best.  More than that, you welcome the variety and difference that another person brings to the table.  Maybe it’s not to your liking, but that’s OK, too, because I am not bound to my suggestion.  And so it goes, and we rapidly reach a conclusion that works for both of us.  This whole process takes place so easily and fluidly that I think we must sometimes not see it happening, only experience the results.

It’s aided by several things.  That we like many of the same things broadens the area for agreement, but more than that is being open to newness and change, and not being attached to specific outcomes.  Lastly, we have no desire to triumph over the other, and want what is best for both of us.  This all takes a certain level of self-knowledge and non-attachment.  Do we make this a prerequisite?  Try to teach it?  Assume it is present?

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My Dear Kat,

Sometimes I don’t post for days, not through forgetfulness, but because no previously unspoken ideas come to me.  You say we should just repeat the ideas, because the rephrasing may illuminate them more.

Tonight I have no new thoughts, but I carry a warm glow from being with you, talking with you, sharing with you.  One of our strengths is that of connectedness – when we come together, there is no adjustment.  After we make love, we remain merged and connected.  And when we are separated and going about our daily work, I still feel a sense of peace and groundedness arising from our connection.  It is as if we have joined on some non-spatial dimension, and remain connected there even though physically apart.

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After watching John Stewart interview Barbara Ehrenreich I was critical of her pessimistic, negative attitude.  Today I found The Whiner’s Guide to Not Complaining, the start of a 3-week project by a habitual kvetcher. It might be a good area for us to cover.  Maybe there are things we do (or don’t do) that come so naturally that we don’t even see them, yet they are significant factors in our whole process.

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