now it's paris outskirts

Shifts in Consciousness happen all the time. They happen to individuals and they happen to cultures. Some shifts are small, and some are huge. The small shifts in us as individuals are routine as we go from conscious to unconscious, awake to asleep, then awake again. Our outlook changes as we go from mood to mood, happy to sad, or worried to relieved. Little facts about how things are let us adjust our ideas about how we thought they were. As cultures, shifts in consciousness are also happening constantly as awareness builds and new ways of seeing things are discovered.

When consciousness shifts, our new awareness makes our old ideas seem absurd. How could anybody have ever thought that the Sun revolved around the Earth? As we grow and learn to live with our own egocentric views of the world, watching the sun rise beyond the horizon of our flat worlds, we piece reality together with our shifting consciousness. We live in worlds of interwoven facts and fictions and we rely on each other to help figure out what is right and wrong, real and made up. Our general idea of what we are often gives us the impression that we are something separate from everybody and everything else. As our consciousness shifts, we realize how intricately connected we actually are. When we learn to see other human beings as ourselves, the violence we do to each other seems self-destructive.

Me Too and Black Lives Matter are shining a light on critically important truths about our world. Those movements, cultures of consciousness, are working to create a  national and global shift in awareness. The truths that they are expressing, which seem self evident, are that, as a culture, we should not rape women and kill black people. The truth is that Americans have been systematically doing that since its inception. For some reason, it is hard to generate enough awareness to shift our cultural consciousness and stop doing these things. It is hard, because those activities are built into our cultural power structures. To large groups of us, those activities are not unconscionable.

Leave that dynamic of the relationship where you argue every other night. Independence is a myth. We are all entirely dependent on each other for everything. As an independent person though, you can thrive in and out of relationships. You can leave this relationship without ending it by changing how you participate in the relationship. Practice compassionate assessment of the argument dynamic and see what you can do to shift it.

To do a compassionate assessment look at your last argument and think about how it began, think about what he did, what you did, and how it could have been handled differently. Think about what could have deescalated the conflict before it grew into an argument. Think about what would have been the absolute best way that both of you could have responded to the situation. Think about what he should have done differently, then, think about what you could have done differently. If you think of something you could have done differently, try that next time.

Compassion is looking into a situation to see what the causes and the cures are for the suffering. You have independent emotions when you are reflecting on your own feelings. You have intertwined emotions when you are interacting with him. When you change your pattern, the intertwined pattern changes.

As you look into what you need and what the relationship needs, don’t think about the all or nothing, stay or go dilemma. If you are in the relationship, work with how you are in the relationship. Getting angry on a regular basis and angry with each other on a regular basis reinforces a strong anger habit. Anger burns the person feeling it most. It clouds the mind and inspires those all or nothing scenarios. As you practice compassion for yourself, notice how anger arises in you, how it feels, and how it passes. The more quickly you learn to let anger pass through you, the less time you spend being angry, and the less you think about ending the relationship.

Observation of People. Physical appearance is a great deceiver. Most people look like adults but are not really adults at all. Emotionally, most people are still children. The emotions and attitudes that prevail in kindergarten and on the playground continue on into adult life but are hidden in more dignified-sounding terminology. Within most people is a child who is merely imitating being an adult. The ‘inner child’ we hear so much about is actually not inner at all; it is actually quite ‘outer’. As people grow up, they take on various identifications and copy what they conceive of as adult behaviors and styles; however, it is not the adult who is doing this but the child. Therefore, what we see in daily life are people acting out the programs and scenarios that they identify with as a child. The young child, as well as most animals, already exhibits curiosity, self-pity, jealousy, envy, competitiveness, temper tantrums, emotional outbursts, resentments, hatreds, rivalries, competition, seeking the limelight and admiration, willfulness, petulance, blaming others, disclaiming responsibility, making others wrong, looking for favor, collecting ‘things’, showing off, and more. These are all attributes of the child.

On The Nature of Peace. The Profound Peace prevails in the Silence, which marks the ending of the experience of time. The illusion of time precludes Peace in that it occasions an expectation of a feeling of loss or anticipation. At ordinary levels of consciousness, this time pressure and its accompanying anxiety are outside awareness and go unnoticed, just as people who live next to elevated trains eventually become oblivious to the noise. But, if the trains stop, they are overwhelmed by the sudden, strong silence. Some people who have become used to tumult and noise feel upset by silence and peace and seek to return to the familiarity of noise and disruption of people. Many people cannot tolerate the quiet of the country or an empty room. The silence of Divinity, by contrast, is profoundly comforting and fulfilling.

If you find yourself in conflict with another person, you can indulge the conflict with your normal, instinctual habits and let it distress you, or you can bring compassion to the conflict, and by so doing, help yourself and possibly the other person. All you have to do is remember to BE NICE.

Breathe. Engage in the present moment. Notice what you are feeling. Imagine what the other person is feeling. Compassionately look for the cause and possible solutions to the problem. Enact what might help.

Breathing allows you to begin the process of taking control of the situation and not getting carried away with the situation.

Engaging in the present moment brings your conscious awareness to help you reassess the situation, with calmness and wisdom,

Noticing what you are feeling allows you to recognize your emotional state so that it can help you instead of interfering with the conflict.

Imagining what the other person is feeling, lets you look at both sides of the conflict and practice your empathy skills. It is important to remember that it is impossible to know exactly what the other person feels, but you can make a good guess with your imagination.

Compassionately looking into the cause and solutions to the problem, allows you recognize the suffering in yourself and the other person or people that the conflict is causing and remembering that you want to skillfully reduce suffering for everybody. As you look deeply with compassion, you don’t blame, but accept what is happening, and may see an available course of action.

Enact what might help. If you see a resolution to the conflict, you do it. It may be as simple as saying sorry, or accepting an apology. It could be learning to live with differences as you continue to look for solutions. With whatever action you choose, enacting it finishes the encounter and allows you to put it behind you, or at least put it away until you are ready to address it again.