kitandkat.com

My dear Kat,

I want to make two points about the 100% factor — the principle of allowing each other total freedom, and how liberating that is.

The first is that I suspect people mishear it as 100% commitment.  Yes, that’s important too, but you can be 100% committed and a terrible nag.  We are talking about something very different.

Secondly, we’re not saying people should tolerate anything and everything, acting like a doormat and letting their partner walk all over them.  Instead, it is only possible in a partnership that has core agreements in place.  I think they vary from couple to couple, but examples would be trust, honesty, monogamy and fiscal responsibility.  When these are in place, nothing else is necessary.  You can give your partner the space to do and be whatever they please.

Peculiarly, these agreements were never made explicit between us until we sat down to write our wedding vows.  That must have been because our beliefs were communicated through our actions.

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My Dear Kat,

I live in constant wonder at the ease and comfort between us.  How is this so easy when other relationships were not?  I think those other people would say (assuming they could peer deep into my thoughts) that my commitment to you makes all the difference.  Certainly, that is a source of wonder and joy to me, but I don’t think that is the answer; there was no “Aha” moment when I decided to commit.  Instead, I look to you for being so peaceful, so accepting, so joyous, so sexual, so positive.

In deep appreciation,
Kit

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My Dear Kat,

I think we are on to something important in this discussion of allowing something to happen.  By insisting on a particular movie or director or genre rather than a preference, certain possibilities are ruled out, but by being open to alternatives, anything is possible.  This is a subtle point.  It’s different from suppressing one’s desires, different from taking a position of not caring, and different from freezing into inaction.  It’s about being open to other possibilities, of not being locked into a mindset of how things have to be.

We had a discussion about sex this morning that picked up this idea.

Sex seems to get better and better; again and again we have a never-before experience of union, and yet next time we discover something fresh and new.  This feels very mysterious, and contrary to the way things work in the world.  You pointed out that we act similarly to how we behave outside; we don’t have rules about what must be or expectations about what should or will happen, and this allows a spontaneous flow into states that we cannot imagine beforehand.

One way we came to this was when a medical condition precluded intercourse for some time.  This required us to be sexual in other ways, and showed us that sexual excitement and orgasm is not limited to particular body parts, but can occur anywhere and in many ways; it is a state of arousal that we achieve together, a state in which any or all of the body can partake.  Of course it is facilitated by and strongly connected to genitals, hormones, history and erotica, but it is as if they are only a gateway to bonding, that experience of being part of something over and above our individual selves.

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My Dear Kat,

I am so glad that we are writing again.  The gap has been too long.

We are each of us procrastinators in our own way, and I wonder what we can do about it for ourselves, and for the other.  How to do the latter without pushing or demanding or antagonizing is the trick.  We seem to do it successfully  in other areas like the website or the flight to England, so maybe all it takes is a daily reminder until we regain the habit of posting.

As for subjects, I believe our conversations, exploring and spiralling ever deeper into our intimacy, can still be mined and refined into posts of value and meaning.  So let’s talk!

Kit

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My Dear Kat,

The secret of a peaceful relationship is choosing to be in a peaceful relationship. This is how we are, and I am so grateful for it. We’ve talked much about this, and how it happens.  This is an attempt to pull it all together, or at least provide a starting framework.

No attacking
Each of these bullet points could be (and often has been!)  a complete post; I just wanted to get them all together in one place.

• not attacking the other person
• not blaming the other person
• having no expectations
• making no demands
• not expecting the other person to be or do anything in particular
• celebrating the other person’s differences rather than criticising them

No defending

• not taking the other person’s words as an attack
• not reacting defensively to the other person’s words or state

Speaking the truth

• You have to say what is going on when it reaches your consciousness. Obviously some timing is involved; halfway through the board meeting isn’t an appropriate occasion, but concealment doesn’t work for two reasons: it inhibits you from speaking, and the other picks up on it. As an example, your intuition during the weeks before I proposed.
• Another way to say this is “No secrets”. Many people think that white lies are acceptable, even within a relationship. I am very doubtful that they can exist and have no effect.

Listening with full attention
Even when the truth is being spoken, it has to be heard. There is a technique called active listening that involves paraphrasing the speaker’s words or emotions. I don’t do anything quite so formal, but instead, listen with full attention and treat it as a monologue. If I treat it as a dialogue, I lose attention as I compose a response. This is a distinct and conscious act, and (I think) the same experience as being present.

Trusting the other
For all of this to take place, you have to believe in the essential goodness of the other; you have to trust that there is no monster lurking in there ready to spring out. But if you believe that the majority of people are basically kind-hearted and well-intentioned, then this is your de facto position.  (This gets into my political belief that conservatives believe that evil lives in the heart of man, and liberals believe in the intrinsic goodness of people. So how do conservatives ever have a relationship? Maybe they divide the world into trusted and non-trusted.)

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My Dear Kat,

We had a wonderful weekend together: a delightful blend of togetherness and alone time; working together, and mind-blowing sex, the like of which is so different and transcendent that both of us struggle to find words for it.

I could go on more about the weekend, but instead I’d like to tackle the issue of union.  Take these as preliminary notes on a subject I do not understand.

One of my earliest encounters with this was Alan Watts, who wrote of the self being an illusion.  I took that to mean that the self must be destroyed, vanquished, conquered to reveal the cosmic world beyond, but maybe I misunderstood him; perhaps he meant that the self is not the outer limit to our experience; we see it like the walls of a jail cell, limiting where we can go, but these walls are in fact illusory.  I’d have to read him again to see what he actually wrote.

I remember years ago, seeing some graffiti in Brixton¹ saying “Irish Go Home!”  Underneath, someone had written “How about the Scots?  And the Welsh?  Brummies, too.  People from Golders Green.  And those from Herne Hill.²”  A brilliant commentary on where we draw the boundary between friend and foe.  These days I try to expand the range of who counts.  I still struggle with Republicans, though.  Reading Ken Wilber’s ideas about spiritual growth helped here.

Then there are a number of material-world arguments for unity.  I start with the hypothesis that the model of an observer independent of the world is false.

• Firstly, it leads to the mind-body problem.
• Secondly, Heisenberg demonstrated the fallacy at the sub-atomic level: the observer and the phenomenon are inextricably linked.  I’m not claiming that Heisenberg extrapolates to the macro world, but I do say that we of necessity interact with it and hence affect it.

So my model is somewhat like a book with pages; we think we are individual pages, but we are connected together in ways that are not seen by inspecting an individual page.

Let me list some of the ways we are, in fact, connected.

• If you looked at us in 4 dimensions, you would see a single tree.  (I have my doubts about treating time as a 4th dimension, but that’s another topic.)
• We are, by and large, made up of the same DNA.
• We are indisputably made of the same stuff: atoms.

And lastly, there is the direct experience that you and I keep having; of US, independently of the individual sense of self.  It is very strange, because it feels like something is there, and it’s not me, and I’m not perceiving it through my senses (because they give rise to the “me” experience), but something is there.  It’s intensified by touch, and even more so by sex, but even under those circumstances, the sense is of familiarity.  One more thing about it: the sense is not of being fulfilled or completed, but of being added to, like finding a complete wing in a house that you never knew existed before.

[1] An inner-city area of London.
[2] An adjacent area of London about a mile from Brixton.

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Dear Kat,

Love the words that you wrote.

I finished the Deepak Chopra book today.  Two things stand out from it: firstly, how parts of it fitted perfectly with our experience of the world (I use that in Wittgenstein’s “The world is all that is the case” sense), but secondly, there were parts where the language he used did not work for me.

I know it is hard to pick words for transcendent experiences precisely because they are so different from our every-day world.  Pointing and saying “Tree” worked with Man Friday, but we have a subtler message to convey.  One of the things I enjoy about this work with you is that we aren’t developing a private language, but are making a great effort in seeking words that will resonate for others.

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My Dear Kat,

I want to speak about balance.  The way we act together is very puzzling.  We come to agreement on what we do together without apparent effort or decision-making.  Certainly there are times when only one of us feels tired, talkative, sleepy, sexual, but mostly we concur on whether to walk, what movie to watch, when to separate, and all those other joint decisions.  It’s that process of deciding that is obscure; there is no sense of pitting my needs against yours, struggling until a winner emerges.  There is scarcely ever even a sense that we have different agendas at all.  But how can this be?  We’re different people with different clocks; the odds of being in sync become more improbable the more it happens.

It is as if we have moved our consciousness from our individual selves to us, that incorporeal being that has both our interests at heart.  I don’t invoke magical channels here; it’s likely that there are signals of body language, smell, voice, etc. by which we adjust to each other.  But such communication is not conscious, hence the puzzlement above, and more to the point, is irrelevant because the focus is on what we do, our intentionality, and here, my best reply is “nothing”.  We achieve this by being, not by doing, and the more still we are, the more intense the experience becomes.

Kit

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I love what you say about talking because I have had the “we need to talk” speech from so many other people.

So what’s the difference?  Was I mutated by a bombardment of cosmic rays?  No, I think everyone has, somewhere at least, a need to talk, to express themselves, to be seen.  To never do so would be a life of existential loneliness.  People may hold back out of shame, embarrassment or guilt, but we all need that contact at least on occasion to feel connected to others.

One reason the talking is so easy and fluid with us is the complete acceptance that we’ve talked about many times before.  There are no mine-fields, no dangerous areas, no taboo subjects, no demands to talk or be silent or respond or be a particular way, and this is such a liberating thing.  It’s this way for both of us, and leads to great freedom and joy.

Kit

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My Dear Kat,

To illuminate my main point, I first want to examine what it means to be present.  Yes it’s a cool phrase, and yes I can generally say if it is the case, but what exactly are we talking about?  Here’s my stab at it.

Some things are indisputable because their veracity stems from the experience itself.  Even if it’s an illusion, a mirror, a trick of the light, it’s still indisputably my world.  To the extent that our awareness and attention is on such experiences, we are present.  Phrased like that, presence is a continuum, not a binary state.  Nevertheless, the experience is closer to binary, like a seesaw, because of the way our attention focuses.

And so to my main point; I experience something existing that is not me and not you, but is us.  It is clearer when we are physically together, and most so in sexual union, but it is not simply the sense of touch or the pleasures of the flesh, because my sense of its existence is other than my physical senses.

I struggle to write these words because what I am saying is so beyond my objective, scientific view of the world, yet it fits in with Eastern/spiritual views of oneness and unity.  I feel as if I am in the process of turning a corner and perceiving a whole other landscape.

Kit

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