Permission Granted

I was talking with a friend yesterday about some difficulty she was having with a family member. Seems the other person had made some rather snide remarks on the phone, and my friend was evaluating whether she wanted to continue to invest her energy in keeping that relationship active, or whether it might be best to just sort of let it wither away by attrition. I thought there had to be some middle ground, and so we looked for it together. We came up with something we thought was pretty pithy:

If you give yourself permission to leave the conversation, you may not feel the need to leave the relationship.

Granted, maybe eveyone but me and my friend had this figured out a long time ago. But on the other hand, maybe not. Because there seem to be a lot of conversations that continue far past the point of productivity, or even civility, and trespass into the territory where permanent damage occurs to the relationship.

Here's how we thought it might sound after a snide remark or an outright attack:

"You know, I just realized that I'm feeling sort of defensive right now, and I think I better hang up to take care of that for myself. Let's talk later."

Fill in the blank if defensive is not the right feeling - angry, frustrated, sad, etc. And if you are in person, not on the phone, then take a walk instead of hanging up.

Isnt' that elegant? Rather than defend or justify or even counter attack, you just take a break.

I'm impressed with this for two reasons - one, the other party is forced to take a break too, because you just removed her target. She can't go on to say something she regrets.

Two, the last thing she remembers from the conversation is that something she said triggered you. If she's interested, she can give some thought to what might have happened. If she's not, that's fine too. But at least you have not cluttered up her ears with a bunch of defenses or counter-attacks that divert her attention away from her words and onto yours. I betcha, nine times outta ten, you'll end up hearing an apology when you finally do reconnect. Okay, maybe eight times. But those are still pretty nice odds.

As an added bonus, if you notice yourself spending an awful lot of time hanging up or walking, the relationship is likely dying by attrition anyway, and you will not feel confused about the whole "stay or go" decision.

ps: Hey, I don't think I've mentioned yet that I have a new blog! check it out at www.advice-for-parents.com. that's where you'll find future posts about parenting issues ... well organized by topic and easy to access. I'm posting daily responses to questions from readers right now, so if you have any parenting questions, let me know.

grains of knowledge

check this site out. it expands your vocabulary and donates rice at the same time. what a concept!
http://freerice.com/index.php

ACIM

About ten years ago, I was in a weekly Course in Miracles study group at Unity of Boulder, and I absolutely thrived on the new experience of being able to discuss such radical ideas with other like-minded people. About half way through the year-long course, my interest petered out. Which was fine with me -- I just figured I had gotten what I needed for the moment, and lots of the principles had become part of my inner landscape. I happily moved on to other studies, and thankfully there are now gobs of people in my life with whom I can discuss radical ideas til the cows come home.

Recently, I've felt myself being drawn back to the Course. The same barriers that had prohibited me from embracing it fully back then were still present; the Christian lexicon, a masculine God, etc. But I found myself feeling very determined to figure out a way to access this material that would work for me. And then I came across the transcriptions of Ken Wapnick's lectures at http://www.facim.org/acim/ex-series.htm. Voila! It was much easier for me to understand the meaning without getting hung up on the form.

So here are a few quotes from Ken that I really enjoyed:

My failure to understand what love is does not change love. My attacks on love do not change love. Love simply waits patiently within my mind until I return to it.
~
The example is very helpful to remember as well when we find ourselves tempted to tell people the "truth" and hit them over the head with it. Rather, what we want to do is love them. We do not want to hit them over the head with the "truth," which is always form. Love is never form. Truth is never form -- it is content. It is expressed in form, but the form is not the love. Whether I am teaching you directly what A Course in Miracles is saying or I am going shopping with you, knowing full well what the meaning of the shopping is for you, if love is in my heart, that is the message that you will receive. And that is the message that I will be offering. I can only do that if I first join with love in my own mind.
~
Again, we are not asked to deny what we see. We are simply asked to put everything into one of two categories -- either an expression of love or a call for love.

tips for helping kids who are non-traditional learners

there is some amazing content here. wish I would have seen this years ago, when my kids were in elementary school ...
http://www.diannecraft.org/tutoringinstructions.html

common sense and science

here's what's been fascinating me lately:

Mellen-Thomas Benedict was dead for 90 minutes, and had quite an experience before he came back. Very profound stuff - hopeful and empowering:
http://www.mellen-thomas.com/index.html

German New Medicine: The theory that illness in the body is actually an adaptive response to a stress conflict makes deeply good sense to me, and changes everything in terms of intervention.
http://germannewmedicine.ca/documents/welcome.html

Primary Perception: My life changed dramatically when I read The Secret Life of Plants years ago and learned that scientists had proven that plants and bacteria respond to our intention. Cleve Backster was apparently behind this research, and has his own site:
http://www.primaryperception.com/bio/