Marriage as Practice

Posted on May 16, 2013 by circleofpractice

Marriage may be the most rewarding and most difficult relationship a person can experience. This makes it an ideal place for transformational practice.

What makes marriage so unique is the nature of the commitment. We go into marriage with the expectation that it is for life. You might argue that is no longer true. But it is true that most people believe they are making a “long term” commitment, at least on the order of buying a house.

Most of us go into marriage expecting to create a family. We want to leave a legacy of ourselves to the world in the way of children, either by blood or by adoption. And by so doing, we take on the mantle of responsibility for those lives. We make an implicit covenant to love them, provide for them, socialize them, and raise them to be independent, productive adults.

My dad says you’re never done being a parent.

Marriage is an everyday practice. Even when our spouse is away, the commitment is present with us. Will we reach out and touch them? Will we think kindly or critically of them? Will we bless as they come through the door from work, or greet them with our own anger and frustration? Will we bring our work home, or give our family our full attention?

But I think the hardest and most rewarding part of the marriage practice is vulnerability. We’ve got so much riding on this one commitment. What happens if I lose face? What happens if I humiliate myself right there in front of my partner?

What’s the alternative? What if you don’t talk about the one thing you think you need but aren’t getting? What if you don’t help your spouse get that one thing she needs? What if you express yourself in a way that is emotionally upsetting to your partner?

We have to find a way to talk with, and reveal ourselves each other. We have to find a way to compromise, so that each person gets some of what they need and want. This isn’t easy. But so much is riding on it. It takes practice. It takes forgiveness, because inevitably you’re going to hurt each other.

But the reward is the web of connectedness, goodwill, and love that come from a successful marriage.

Optimal Conversation and Group Mitosis

Posted on February 15, 2013 by circleofpractice

How can we optimize the conversational experience of a group, and once the group gets too large, divide the group in such a way that the conversational quality of the two groups is maintained?

The quality of a conversation is directly proportional to the number of ideas presented and understood therein.

Ideas increase with both the number and diversity of participants.

Understanding requires dialectical inquiry, which in turn requires bandwidth.

I define bandwidth to be the number of minutes in one hour each person has to communicate her ideas to the others in the group in such a manner that each person has an equal opportunity to speak. For example, a conversation between two people shares one channel of communication and each has thirty minutes of bandwidth. A conversation between eight people shares 28 channels of communication and each person has about one minute of bandwidth.

When the group forms, members are familiarized with the ideas of talk dancing, bandwidth, and with the Occupy Wall Street Hand Signals. The group is responsible for the conversational flow, and those who do not respect the bandwidth of others should expect to be called to order by the “wrap it up” hand signal from others in the group.

My own experience suggests the optimal group size to be about 8 people. Eight people can have a lot of ideas. More than 8 people in a group imply less than a minute of bandwidth for each person. It’s hard to express an interesting idea in less than a minute. By the time you get to twelve in a group there is less than thirty seconds of bandwidth available.

I would suggest that a group divide in two when it reaches about ten people, and certainly no more than twelve. Let the group elect a ballot counter. Then each person write down their own name together with four (if there are 10 in the group) or five (if twelve) others they would like in their group. Then divide the groups so that everyone has at least one person they wanted in their group besides themselves.

If there are persons with less than five votes then there are those with more than five. Pair off the ones with the most votes with those with the least.

Seeking Feedback

Posted on February 14, 2013 by circleofpractice

The feedback we can give ourselves is limited by our perspective. The light of our own knowledge and understanding casts shadows that only the light from another consciousness can see into.

Even something as seemingly objective as “doing 21 pushups” might be seen differently in the eyes of a personal trainer than from our own perspective down on the floor counting them off.

Sometimes just getting a fresh pair of eyes to look at a problem, a process, or an impression of me can provide an immediate epiphany or insight.

So if we really want to improve our practice, we are going to want to seek out others to provide us with feedback on what we’re doing, hopefully from someone who has already mastered what we ourselves are trying to master.

Depending on the degree of technical expertise required this can be fairly hard to do. Do we go to school, hire ourselves a teacher, or seek out a mentor? Sometimes I find it more helpful to talk with another practitioner, some like myself who is on the practice path to mastery.

Particularly in the realm of interpersonal relationships, getting outside feedback is critical to improving our ability to listen, to speak, and to be empathic. In fact, relating to others is a hard thing to practice alone.

When you ask for feedback, expect a bitter draft. Others see our faults more readily than we do. And people speak more readily of things negative than they do the positive. Even so, accept it gratefully knowing you can improve your practice and your relationships thereby.

Don’t try to justify yourself, or take insult at faults found. Remember that you asked for it, and that the critic has blessed with feedback as well as criticism. Only let it reflect on your behavior and not on yourself. If you’ve performed poorly, it is behavior that can be changed and improved; it does not mean you are a bad person.

Dealing with Toxicity in a Group

Posted on February 4, 2013 by circleofpractice

Have you ever been in a group where one person in particular was having a toxic affect on the rest? Maybe that person is dominating the conversational flow, or perhaps radiates some toxic emotion like anger, or is a source of invidious gossip or backbiting.

What do you do? Do you do anything?

If you don’t do anything, then your experience and quite possibly that of everyone else in the group is going to be degraded. If the experience is bad enough, you may find the persons whose company you enjoy most are leaving the group. If you take your concerns to others in the group, then your comments may make their way back to the person in question, but probably not in the way you intended.

A couple of scriptures may help us out here. Proverbs 25:9, Debate your cause with your neighbor himself, and discover not a secret to another, and Matthew 18:15-17, ¹⁵“If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. ¹⁶But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. ¹⁷If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector. (New Living Translation)

This is admittedly a difficult thing to do, to confront the offending person with the things that are bothering you. But in my experience it usually pays big dividends. The trick for me is to write a letter first that tries to describe my issue without giving offense. Then I’ll sleep on it for a night. I may ask someone I trust to read it and give me their impression of the letter and the reaction it might provoke. Then I’ll rewrite it if necessary.

After writing the letter I will share it with the person and ask if we can talk about it afterward. If the person disagrees with me, or thinks I’m the problem, I’ll then ask for a third person in the group to weigh in on the issue. Then lastly if there is still no resolution, I will bring it before the group and ask them to decide. If the group decides against the person, and the person is unwilling to change, then I think you need to resort to ostracism in order to preserve the integrity of the group.

Therapy as Practice

Posted on January 8, 2013 by circleofpractice

Yes I have a therapist; and fortunately so, because therapy has made my life a whole lot better, and made me a whole lot easier to live with.

But therapy is a practice?

What is practice anyway? It’s a means to mastering some skill. The skill I work on in therapy is self-awareness, and relating to others.

Therapy is my practice dojo for learning trust, vulnerability, and honesty. Part of what makes therapy work is that you’re paying this person to keep your secrets, and if they don’t they can lose their license. This enables you to look into the dark places of your soul, admit to yourself and your therapist they’re there, and begin to understand why.

Everything that walks in the light casts a shadow. The only way to avoid casting a shadow is to walk in darkness. Our shadow selves come from trying to find ways to cope with the world. They are the part of ourselves we’d like to hide from the world, the part we are ashamed of, and the part we want to deny exists.

Embracing the shadow is embracing ourselves; it means accepting who we are. Deny our shadow and deny our own self-acceptance. Grace comes from that acceptance, and can lead not only to our own acceptance, but accepting our spouse, our children, our parents, and so on. It’s a profoundly healing experience.

That’s a hard path to walk alone. A good therapist can help us find that path to trust, vulnerability, and to honesty; a path that leads into our own darkness; but there is light and wholeness on the other side.