Three bases for relationships

Ken: Are we all set? I can say happy Valentine’s Day again. Okay. We’re recording this. They go up on the internet podcasts. I want you to know that so that if you start talking about your girlfriend or boyfriend, they’re going to hear every word you say. People do that sometimes. First names only, that’s all that’s necessary. And if you wanted to ask a question, to talk about something that you don’t want recorded, just please indicate that, Elena who’s very kindly doing the recording, will just hit pause. And modern technology is wonderful.

Today we’re going to talk about relationships. How many of you have questions about relationships? Nobody? There are a few. What I’d like to do is to give some very, very general principles for five or ten minutes and then take up your questions and have a dialogue about this. And in posting this on my website, I said, “Relationships, what makes them work?”

So I’m going to talk very generally about relationships as a whole, the different kinds of relationships, and then focus in on the kind of relationship that is very important to all of this. And that’s the emotional connection, intimate, romantic, committed relationships, whatever we want to call them.

One of the most useful frameworks that I’ve come across around relationships, comes from a friend of mine, John Parmenter, who lives in Washington state right now. And he derived it, or found it, in some Chinese sources. And it views relationships as having three possible bases.

Mutual Benefit

Ken: One is mutual benefit. That is, a mutual benefit relationship is a relationship which consists of a transaction or a series of transactions. And the result of those transactions is that both people benefit or both parties benefit from it. Obviously the buyer/seller thing. But here we are in Hollywood and one of the standard relationships is two actors, and each tells the other how wonderful they are all the time. It’s a mutual benefit relationship. I tell you how wonderful you are, you tell me how wonderful we are. We both feel good. It’s a benefit. And outside of that, there isn’t any other relationship. Does anybody know of that kind of relationship?

Okay. So when we say mutual benefit, it isn’t just about money. It can be a series of emotional transactions. It can be any kind of transaction. But the aspect of this relationship is the relationship consists of just the transactions and it’s not a very deep relationship. It’s important. It shows up in a lot of areas of our lives. Whenever we buy food, it’s a transactional relationship with the store, dry cleaning, all these kinds of things.

Shared aim

Ken: The second kind of relationship is a shared aim relationship. That’s where you engage in an activity with other people to do something that you can’t do by yourself or that you choose not to do by yourself. Maybe you could do it, but you do it with another person or with some other people. And that’s a little stronger relationship, quite a bit stronger really than just transaction. You’re creating something together. And one of the very satisfying experiences in the human condition is that of actually creating something with another person. How many of you have had that kind of experience? Okay, we’ve got a few more there. And it can be a project at work. It can be some nonprofit political action or things like that, or just being able to do something, build a house together is a very good example.

Emotional connection

Ken: And then the third kind of relationship is the emotional connection. Now that applies to friendship, marriage, committed relations. Now, all three may be present in a relationship. In a typical committed relationship, particularly marriage, in our society, there is mutual benefit because there are certain tax benefits and income benefits and so forth that come from that. There’s actually economic benefits that come to both parties when they marry. There’s definitely a shared aim relationship. You’re creating a life together and you may be creating a family together, and hopefully there’s an emotional connection. We may find the same thing at work relationships. We work with people and we work on projects together with them and out of that friendships form. But what’s really important is to be very clear about what the basis of the relationship is. In the work environment, even though we may form friendships, it’s really mutual benefit. I’m being paid for my labor, maybe my labor is my brain power, maybe my physical labor, but I’m being paid for that. And that’s the actual basis of the relationship.

Be clear about the basis for the relationship

Ken: And what happens frequently in the workplace is that people form friendships and then somebody gets promoted or there’s a downsizing in the company and people feel betrayed emotionally because they thought, “Oh, don’t they value me?” Well, yes they do, but not enough because now they’re laying you off or promoting somebody that was a friend. And that gets all confused because that’s what’s of benefit to the business, to the work, and that is the basis of the relationship. And I do a certain amount of business consulting and I have to remind people about this all the time. This is the basis of the relationship. Whereas when we go to the other end of the spectrum, when you’re talking about marriage or a committed relationship, then you expect your partner to sacrifice and you yourself are willing to sacrifice certain economic or [other] things that are to your advantage for the relationship. That’s part of it.

So being clear about the basis of the relationship is very important in order to have a healthy relationship. And it’s better if both parties agree on the basis of the relationship. My favorite example here is the artist and the gallery owner. How many artists do we have here? Just a few. Okay, so you have the artist who’s producing sculpture or painting or whatever. And if you’re a writer, then it can be producing books and poetry and then it’s the publisher. And let’s take the artist and the gallery owner. From the artist’s point of view, this is a shared aim relationship. This is about getting the artist’s work out into the world. For the gallery owner, primarily, it’s a mutual benefit relationship. I sell your paintings, I get money, you get money, we’re all happy. And the conflict in that relationship is legendary. Whole films and novels are written about it because they differ as to what is the basis of the relationship. And I’ll get to this when we talk more deeply about emotional connection, relationship, but you may find yourself in what feels like an emotional relationship with someone and you are committed to it, but for them it’s a series of transactions.That kind of thing can happen.

What makes a relationship last?

Ken: Now, what are the conditions that make a relationship last? Well, there are a couple, three or four. The first is, you have to be faithful to the basis of the relationship. In a mutual benefit relationship, if you cheat—if I’m buying something from you and I give you counterfeit money—that’s not good for the relationship.

If I’m not willing to take a risk, it’s impossible to have the relationship because I don’t know what you’re selling me or I don’t know whether I can actually make benefit of it. I’m taking a little bit of a risk in giving you something and taking something from you. Giving something that’s of value to me, giving it to you and taking something from you. Is it actually valuable? Well, there’s always a risk in there and you can’t avoid that. So if you’re completely risk averse, you’re not going to have much in terms of relationship.

Shared aim thing, the big thing is control. If you absolutely have to control the relationship, it’s not a shared aim relationship. The other person’s working for you or doing what you say, you aren’t sharing anything. So the desire for control undermines that one.Having a covert agenda [also] undermines that. And we all know that because we’ve experienced betrayal in one form or another.

And in emotional connection, it’s very interesting. What undermines that relationship is the desire for continuous happiness. Now, this came very powerfully to me when I was giving a talk on this at a business school down in Orange County. And I threw out the line that in an emotional connection relationship, you’re not in the relationship because you want to be happy with that person. You’re in that relationship because you want to be with that person, period.

There was a girlfriend I had several years ago and we had a lot of stuff going back and forth, and she just said, “Are you going to be happy with me, Ken?” I said, “I’m not with you because I want to be happy. I’m with you because I want to be with you.” It stopped her cold. Feels good, I think.

Anyway, I got an email from this guy, one of the guys in the class the next day. He said, “That one line in that talk you gave last night changed my marriage.” What had happened is that he’d gone home to his wife and said, “I’ve been killing myself trying to make you happy for the last ten years. I quit. I just want to be with you. And I hope you want to be with me.” That’s what he said. It just opened up a whole conversation which clarified, and all kinds of stuff came out in their relationship, and it moved into a totally different thing. It was a very nice email to get.

I was going back the following week and had to do a follow-up talk. I had a chance to talk with him about it personally, and it really made a difference. So, if you always want to be happy in a committed relationship, you’re going to kill the relationship. It’s one of the reasons why anytime somebody tells me they’re in a spiritual relationship with their partner, I know they’re in trouble. There’s something else going on there. It’s actually a way of avoiding. And the other thing that’s really important in any of these kinds of relationships for them to last is they have to be balanced.

Balance in relationships

Ken: Now, balance, we often think of something just like, that’s a balance. But if you stand up—and I won’t ask you to do this, but you can try it on your own anytime you want—and stand on one leg, you’ll find that you can balance quite easily, but you won’t be still. You’ll be constantly moving and adjusting. So when I say a relationship is in balance, it’s a dynamic balance. It goes back and forth. It’s like a teeter-totter. And so one’s always moving to balance. And you overshoot, it comes back, it goes back and forth. This is what makes the relationship alive and dynamic. It’s not static. It’s static when it’s like this. And when it’s like this, one person is getting more out of the relationship than the other. Now the person who’s getting less out of the relationship, what do they feel? Anybody? Resentment. The person who’s getting more out of the relationship, what do they feel?

Student: Guilty.

Ken: Guilty? Sometimes.

Student: Bored.

Ken: Pardon?

Student: Bored.

Ken: Bored?

Student: Boredom.

Ken: Sometimes boredom too. But actually they feel disdain because part of them knows they’re getting more than they’re putting in, so they don’t have respect for the other person. And when you have resentment here and a lack of respect here, things are not going to last. There’s a very, very good friend I have back in Toronto and we were engaged in a project together and it blew up horribly. And it was really excruciatingly painful for me. And she screwed it up. [Laughter] But we’ve had a friendship for many, many years and it took me ten days—I was so upset—before I could speak to her. I called her up and we had a conversation. But because I valued the relationship, I #had# to have that conversation. It was very difficult. It was very painful. We got through it. Our relationship, our friendship continues, and that’s very good. So if you’re feeling resentful about something and you value the relationship, you have to speak up, because if you don’t, then the dynamics in the relationship are going to lead to its dissolution, actually quite quickly. So those are the very general frameworks that I wanted to put out there. And there’s a lot more I could say. Oh, there’s one more. That’s right, one more.

Correspondence and connection

Ken: Again, this friend of mine is a very, very perceptive person, and this is more in the context of emotional connection relationships. He makes a distinction between correspondence and connection. Now, how many of you have walked into a room or been introduced to somebody and it’s just like, “This is the one?” Or there’s been some very powerful connection very quickly. Okay, how long does it last?

Student: Long time.

Ken: Sometimes. And other times?

Student: Forget all about it.

Ken: How many of you have fallen completely in love with someone the first time you saw them or something like that? Yeah, we called it having a crush or what have you. Now, when we meet someone, there can be a correspondence in our patterns or whatever, and it’s really like two tuning forks of the same frequency. You hit one and the other one starts to vibrate, and you think you’re really in tune. Well, you are actually in tune, but you think there’s a tremendous connection because you can both hum the same tune. But actually it’s just a lot of resonance going on. And this happens very quickly, there’s huge amount of belief invested in this, and a lot of relationships start that way, but often it’s just two patterns vibrating. And they vibrate the good stuff, and as you eventually learn, they vibrate the bad stuff. And sometimes there’s that very, very strong resonance, but nothing comes of it. The second part is where connection goes. Through interaction, connections, actual connections start to grow. And when that happens, then you have the basis of a stable, committed relationship. But a lot of people—and in the beginning it’s quite difficult—find it very difficult to distinguish between what is actual connection and this magical correspondence that seems to take place. So that’s one other framework that I wanted to throw out.

Family relationships

Ken: Now what are your questions? We can just have a conversation. We’ll start here.

Student: I have a question about the framework [of mututal benefit, shared aim, and emotional connection relationships], because it doesn’t seem to include family relationships.

Ken: Family? Oh, definitely.

Student: Well, for instance, you have committed relationships to your parents, siblings, but they aren’t entered into freely as an adult. They just start up before you’re even aware.

Ken: [Laughs] Well, let’s take a look at family relationships, because there are many. The parent/child relationship is a shared aim relationship—well, ideally it’s a shared aim relationship—and there’s going to be an emotional component, but it’s the parent’s responsibility to provide the child with what they need to grow, and it’s the child’s responsibility to grow. And sometimes children refuse that responsibility and sometimes parents refuse their responsibility, but that is the actual relationship. It’s the child’s welfare and the parents take care of the child’s welfare, and within that container, then the child grows.

Now, as they enter their teenage years, it becomes a little trickier because this is where they start to experiment in all kinds of ways, and the parents have to maintain boundaries and gradually cede more and more responsibility as the child demonstrates that they’re able to assume that responsibility. A lot of parents have difficulty with that because basically in those years they have to experience being a punching bag, because the teenager is always testing the boundaries on the parents. And from the parent’s point of view, that feels like they’re always being pushed around. It’s a difficult period for both.

And then as an adult, yes, you enter into a different kind of relationship. And a person I know had grown up, very supportive parents, left home, ran into some difficulties, came back, and it was very interesting. She was back with her parents for about six months and what that six months was about—she was in her early twenties at this point—was transitioning from a child/parent relationship to an adult-to-adult parent relationship. So she had to do some growing up.

Student: What I have in mind are the many situations in which the parent—and I’ve never had children, so I don’t see it from that point of view—is getting much more from the child than the child should be having to give in the way of emotional support and so forth. And maybe that’s an exception, but it’s a common one.

Ken: You’re absolutely right. And in the early stages—and by the early stages of life I mean the first 20 years—attention goes from the parent to the child, and there is nothing which screws up a child more than having to provide attention to the parent. A great deal of the work that I do with people—and I know a lot of the work that a lot of psychologists and psychotherapists do with people—is undoing that damage. Then you have this period from when child is 20 to 40, 60 or whatever, where you can have an adult-to-adult relationship. Then the parents start to get old. Now things reverse and that’s how things unfold. That’s how things evolve. But if the relationship is to endure in a healthy way, it has to be balanced. And when the child is an adult and the parents demand more and more and more, the child’s just going to stop communicating with the parent. That’s all. “I don’t need this nonsense anymore.” And it happens. It’s not a good thing, but it happens. Okay, other questions? Yes, over here please.

Balance in relationships

Student: That’s a brave subject.

Ken: Pardon?

Student: It’s a brave subject. In community, it’s probably the most contentious issue.

Ken: Yes.

Student: After that, it’s cats and dogs.

Ken: [Laughs] Okay.

Student: When you’re balancing, and you have that kind of wobble, that’s you being alive and trying to stay up, you’re going to sway to either side one way or the other. And so during that swaying, it’s not going to be still—which, to use your analogy—if you’re still, that’s each person contributing 50/50. If you’re swaying one way or the other, as is normal during trying to balance, that’s a pretty normal thing. Because rarely is a relationship ever like 50/50. You often have like someone’s in school, someone’s working, and sometimes that’ll switch later on and such. So could you talk a little bit more about that? I can understand if for long periods of time the disdain could happen, if that’s been the model for a long time where it’s just been 60/40 or 70/30 or something in terms of the balance. But as far as that normal flow and such, especially you can have relationships as you talked about where you can have that real spark and that’s what creates the beginning of the relationship, but you still really liked each other and so you work through the tough ones, which can be really bright as well.

Ken: I’m not quite clear about what you’re asking.

Student: Could you just elaborate a little bit more about when things aren’t 50/50, when are they healthy, when aren’t they?

Ken: Well, as you say, things are rarely 50/50 and if they are 50/50, they aren’t 50/50 for very long, because something’s going on. “Could you take out the garbage dear?” And now it’s different. How is the housework apportioned, the income? And for every couple, every relationship, this is worked out somehow or other, sometimes better, sometimes worse. And it’s an ongoing process. What’s important here isn’t to keep track of, “Oh, are we in balance or not? Are we in balance or not?” That becomes like accounting in the relationship. What is important is to pay attention to the quality of the interaction, and not only the quality of the interaction, but also what is happening in you.

Now, if there is richness in the interaction, then things are going to find a balance, ’cause there’s many, many possibilities. So even if one person is ill, and quite ill for a period of time, which increases significantly the responsibility on the other, with the richness of interaction, there is the feeling of intimacy. So it’s never felt as a burden, it’s just felt that this is the appropriate expression in the relationship. Do you follow? So, it’s the richness of any interaction that’s really important in a relationship, and there are some very subtle things that can happen which can move that out of balance.

Robert Bly in a book called, A Little Book on the Shadow, describes a wonderful incident. A friend of his says, “Robert, I’ve been married for a couple of years, and I find I’m growing nastier and nastier. I’m getting more and more angry. I used to be quite a nice person, but I’m becoming quite an angry person now.” This is what this woman says to Robert. And Robert Bly says to her, “The problem is you’ve been eating for two.” Now what he was talking about is that she, the woman in this case, was getting to express all the anger in the relationship. Not only her anger but her husband’s. This meant that her husband could look like a nice guy. So he got nicer and nicer and she got angrier and angrier. And so the relationship moved out of balance, and this happens very easily. So if you find your personality changing, you’ve got to pay attention to that kind of thing. That’s why I say it’s important to be aware of what’s going on in you.

And it’s very interesting when that kind of imbalance is set up and another person starts to own their own anger and not own the other person’s anger, the dynamics in the relationship change. It gets very, very interesting. I’m just using anger and niceness as one example. It can be any two emotional poles, it doesn’t matter. It comes up with sexual desire. One person gets to be the person who initiates sex all the time, and the other person gets to be on the receiving. So one person has to do more and more of the chasing and the other person could do more and more of the, “Well maybe tonight, maybe not,” and so forth, but that’s another form of imbalance. So the person who’s doing all the chasing just stops. And what happens then is the other person, “You aren’t chasing me anymore,” and they come back. It’s very interesting.

What I—and a lot of [other] people who’ve explored relationships— have found, is the distance in relationships is usually set very, very early in the relationship. And doesn’t matter how long the relationship lasts, they always have about the same distance. So if it’s a long distance relationship, then it stays a long distance relationship over time. They work out their own rituals, it’s like a dance back and forth, but they work out the distance that they’re comfortable relating. Do you follow?

So these are all different aspects of balance, and the thing I think is so important is to pay attention to your own experience. When things feel out of balance, they are out of balance. Now, they may not be out of balance the way you think they are, but they’re out of balance in some way because that’s what’s arising. And that’s important to address in one way or another. Maybe you have to be clear about what’s out of balance. Maybe it’s a story you’ve made up or whatever, but maybe it’s an imbalance in yourself and you have to have a reality check. These are all possibilities, but you have to pay attention to your own experience. How is it in this relationship? Okay, other questions? I’m surprised there are so few.

Shared aims as a context for emotional connection to arise

Rick: Hello, this is Rick. Conventional wisdom talks about shared aims and puts emotional connection second. That’s my impression of what I hear nowadays—that what you don’t want to do is get infatuated with someone and then try to have a relationship. Instead, you’re supposed to start with shared aims and then the rest will follow. That’s what seems to be said.

Ken: Okay, let’s distinguish between emotional connection and infatuation. When I was talking about correspondence, that’s infatuation, or infatuation is one example. Emotional connection is something much deeper. The way a relationship will progress, frequently, is there will be some kind of interest or resonance or something which will spark it, which may take the form of infatuation. And so two people will start to interact, and at first it’s just at a social level and then becomes a little more like an acquaintance, somebody that you know, and at that stage you begin to explore shared interests, and possibly from shared interest into shared aims.

As you do that, and that may be like going for a hike together or going to movies or creating some art together, it could be anything. Out of that, then you’re going to see if connection forms, if an actual emotional connection forms. So the shared aim provides a context in which emotional connection can arise, but the emotional connection is definitely the deepest form. You will not die for someone you have a mutual benefit relationship with. You won’t offer your life for that. You may offer your life sometimes for a very important shared aim like your country or something like that, or to protect the community, or something like that. You will put your life on the line for someone you love.

Rick: Okay.

Ken: All right. Back here please.

Shifts in relationships

Student: You mentioned the shifts, or that there are shifts in relationships. How do you recognize when those happen, especially when you’re in the midst of relationship?

Ken: Which ones are you interested in identifying?

Student: I guess, your pick.

Ken: Okay, so you meet somebody, and you go on a couple of dates, you get to know them a little bit. And either they say to you or you say to them, “Would you like to go on a hike together?” Now it’s something different. Or, I do activity X, maybe it’s dance, maybe it’s music or something like that, and they invite you into that. That’s where the shift has started to happen. Okay? And that’s going from just an acquaintance into shared interests and sharing the interests, and that’s getting to know each other. And then you pay attention. As I said, it’s about the richness of the interaction. When it’s just emotional correspondence, that resonance, basically you’re either paying attention to your own experience, or to the other person’s experience. If you’re a caretaker, a rescuer, how many qualify for that here? Then you’re going to be really focused on what the other person’s feeling and not on what you’re feeling. Alternatively, you’ll be focused on what you’re feeling and really not on the other person. But when you start paying attention to the quality and the nature of the interaction, that’s when things are starting to grow. And how does it feel to be with this person? And just what’s your experience of that interaction? That’s what I’ve found anyway. Does that help?

Student: But as far as noticing which category, if you’re going to use those categories. How does that go?

Ken: Well, here’s the way I use these categories. In the actual relationship, I’m not thinking in these terms at all. When something is going wrong, then I start to use the categories to understand what’s going on, and I find that very helpful. But when I’m actually in the relationship, I’m not paying attention to the categories. I’m paying attention to the relationship. I’m not thinking, “Oh, is that what we’re doing now,” or “Are we doing this now?” “Oh, okay, no, no, we’ve got to move here.” No, because it’s a flow and it grows and it evolves in its own way. About when something’s going wrong, this doesn’t feel right. I go, okay, what’s going on here? “Oh, I’m taking her for granted.” That’s not good. That’s an imbalance. That goes back to the disdain or disrespect that I was talking about. Oh, or maybe she tells me in no uncertain terms, I’m taking her for granted. Then I’ve got to pay attention. Okay, what’s going on? So that’s when I start using categories, is to understand what’s going on so I know which direction to move. But when it’s actually moving and [unclear], forget about the categories, enjoy the relationship. That’s my practical advice.

Student: Okay, thanks.

Ken: Okay. Other questions? Yes. Over here.

Enjoying your own space

Student: I’m realizing through listening to you that I come highly predisposed to imbalance in my relationships.

Ken: To imbalance?

Student: Imbalance.

Ken: Okay.

Student: Because my natural tendencies, and things I learned I think in my childhood are solitude and isolation in which the relationship lives out in my mind more than it lives out in what you’re describing as the richness of the intimacy interaction. I think I’ve been aware of this in other ways, but as it relates to relationships. So I’m looking obviously to grow past that. If you could share anything, put me in the right direction. Thank you.

Ken: Well, I think there are a couple of factors to consider here. What kind of interactions do you enjoy? That would be something to pay attention to. And you also may find that a person that you’re going to have a good relationship with is also a person who enjoys their own space. And so you can meet and enjoy time together, but you don’t have to be connected or doing something together all the time. But other people, they want a very, very rich interaction.

And you remind me a bit of a student I had many, many years ago. He’s a wonderful, wonderful guy. He’s a beautiful thinker. I just loved listening to how he thought. He was looking for relationship, and he ended up going to a conference—he was in computer graphics—and hooking up with an old friend of his from college, and they had a wonderful time together. He’d been going on at me for some months about how he wanted a relationship. And so he came into my office and said, “We had this wonderful time together, Ken, and I really look forward to seeing her again, but she keeps calling.” And I said, “Well, yeah, you wanted a relationship, right?” And he said, “Yeah. “Well, it means you relate.” And he went, “Oh, no!” Be careful what you wish for.

So, some of the stuff that we grow up with we can change, but it’s actually some of it’s quite difficult to change. And that’s why I’m not saying, “Just get over it and enjoy being with people.” You have to look at how does life work for you, and find people for whom that’s also going to work. And you want to have some tension there because the tension is what leads to growth. And growth is what leads makes the relationship dynamic and interesting, things like that, you actually both grow in ways that you didn’t know you could. A couple that I did a bit of counseling for, they’re having a lot of tension. And the guy finally looked at his wife as I was saying, “Why do you want to be together?” And he just looked at her and said, “When I’m with you, I’m the person that I want to be.” And she said, “Oh, that sounds good,” because that’s what she brought out of him. And so, that was very powerful.

Come back to your own experience

Student: When I was growing up, it was told to me that I would have all these relationships and the relationships would make me a whole person and whatnot. And I think that’s true for a lot of people. And I have had long relationships, but I find in the last 20 years for sure, that I’m very happy without a relationship. And part of that happiness is shedding those stories from my past, that in order to be a whole person, I needed to be in a relationship. And I think this is very disturbing to a lot of people that what they want ultimately is a relationship rather than just a wholesome relationship with themselves.

Ken: This is very complex, and there are several different things going on here. So I’m going to put this in kind of a big framework. Life is a mystery, and speaking for myself, the more I learn about it, the less I know. And one of the conclusions that I’ve come to is that each of us has our own individual experience and our own path of evolution in our lives. And that’s one of the reasons—and I said I was going to put this in a big context—I no longer like to prescribe a course of spiritual practice or meditation practice to someone because I don’t know whether it’s the right one for them. And so when I meet a person, as I talk with them, I’ll make some suggestions, they’ll work with that, and then we’ll come back sometime later and I’ll make some other suggestions. And it’s something that grows and evolves. And it may be like that for a year or maybe like that for 20 years, I don’t know. And I never know. So you had a number of relationships. They’ve been fulfilling in various ways. And at this stage of your life, you’re looking at things very differently.

When people say, “A relationship makes you a whole person,” what people are expressing is their experience of relationship. However, it can easily come across as, “This is what you should be doing.” But what they’re really doing is expressing what has worked for them in their lives. And it’s the same way that a meditation teacher says, “What worked for me in my life is going living in a cave for 17 years. And that’s how you become a whole person.” And it’s equally as valid because when people make statements like this, they’re really expressing what works for them, or they may be expressing what they aspire to themselves. And when we hear it from here and here and here and here, yeah, because we’re social animals and we form connections and we think, “Oh, all of these other people are doing this, I should be doing this too,” right? We get that. “Everybody else has got a plasma TV, I should have a plasma TV too.” It’s exactly the same kind of thinking. We want to be part of what is happening. That I find is a very dangerous thing because we slip into group think and we sacrifice our lives, or what is meaningful to ourselves, for the sense of conforming or the feeling of belonging to others. And a lot of people have been betrayed by that. So again, we have to come back to our own experience. What feels right for me, and what feels right for me, as long as it isn’t really harmful to someone else, that’s what we’re going to go with.

When I was building the three year retreat—there a group of us who built the three year retreat that I participated in in France— in 1976, I guess, we were building that. And we were building the men’s retreat and the woman’s retreat. And a little over a month before the retreat started, our teacher put names on all of the rooms, and those were the rooms we were actually going to occupy. Now up to that point in building the retreat, everybody worked on everything. But once those names went up on the doors, then it was about 50/50. Fifty percent of the people put their primary effort into fixing up their room, and their spare time into working on everything [else]. And then some of us, and I was in this group, continued to put our effort and working on everything that needed to be done before the retreat started, and didn’t put very much effort on our own room. So one November morning I was walking out to the construction site with this big, big Englishman—and he’s huge, and he’s strong—who was helping us. He was a very good carpenter. His name was Stacy. And I was kvetching about how selfish all of these people were being for putting attention on their rooms. And he put his arm around me. This is one of my great learning experiences. He put his arm around me as we walked out and said, “Ken, everybody is working on their rooms for the same reason that we’re working on everything else.” I said, “What the hell are you talking about?” He said, “It’s easier.” And he was absolutely right.

It was easier for me to work on all of the other projects than figure out what I was actually going to do with my room. For the other people, it was easier for them to take care of their own space than to work on all of the other projects. And these are individual differences. One isn’t right and one isn’t wrong. And that’s why I’m bringing this up. For me, I was coming from a very judgmental point of view: “It’s wrong to take care of yourself, you should take care of everybody else first.” That’s got me into a lot of trouble frankly, over and over again. And this goes back to your point about balance. If you just take care of yourself, then you’re a selfish person. If you just take care of everybody else, you’re also a selfish person, but in a very different way. They’re always the two. There’s ourselves and everybody else. So we have to find our own way through this. So I think you bring up a really important point. We hear all of these things and we get these ideas: I should be this or should be this, or should be that. We have to keep coming back to our own experience because in the end, and this is very important, in the end, it’s our life, and we’re the only one who experiences it. Okay? That help?

Student: Yeah, that’s great. I mean, that’s where I came from. I’m not going to waste my life worrying about a relationship that doesn’t exist, and …

Ken: That’s a good idea.

Student: So I’m not down on relationships, I just have other things to do.

Ken: Okay. And when you run out of those other things to do … Okay, all right. We have time for one more question. Anybody? Please.

Being honest with ourselves

Student: I find what is difficult is to keep saying to myself, “Am I being honest with myself about where I’m at in relationships.” And transactional relationships that get, “Oh, I’m going to make a lot of money off this,” and get blinded to it. Or in emotional relationships, “Am I treating that person well?” And I also find that I have a lot of presupposed ideas that no one’s going to be able to help me. And then I went out and I asked three consecutive people whether they’d help me with my business, and just instantly they’d say, “I’d love to. I’m honored.” It’s just like, wow, that was unexpected. So how I can go through life without having preconceived ideas about things or saying, “Are my ideas honest with who I want to be and who I am?”

Ken: Okay. Well, there are essentially two questions you’re asking there, I think. The first one about being honest with ourselves, this is surprisingly tricky. There’s a good deal of research which shows that being able to deceive yourself is very helpful for getting ahead in life because then you can deceive others, etc. Now, one of the ways I’ve found for myself that is helpful, is to drop the notion that I am an entity, I am one thing. And to embrace the idea that there are many, many parts of me and that they don’t always agree. In fact, they generally don’t agree. And this I find reduces, the extent to which I suppress my material, which is when we start deceiving ourselves, and we ask, “Am I being honest with myself?” If we say, “Well, part of me feels this, and part of me feels this, and part of me feels this, and part of me feels this, and part of me feels this,” and we have all of those different feelings and we just say, “Okay, that’s what’s going on.” Rather than saying, “Well, I feel this,” then we can’t relate to any of those other parts. Or “Part of me thinks, this part of me thinks this, part of me thinks this, part of me thinks this.” I’m saying [this] four or five [times] here—there may only be two or three—but you keep opening to everything that you’re experiencing, then there’s less likelihood that we’ll be dishonest with ourselves because we’re not thinking of ourselves as one entity. You follow?

Working with conditioning

Ken: Now, second question. How do we work with our—and this was implicit in your question as well—how do we work with the conditioning with which we’ve grown up with? And in your case, there’s some conditioning about not trusting others, right?

Student: Well, not really not trusting. Just, I can do everything myself. I have to do everything myself.

Ken: I have to do everything myself. Okay, so same thing in different words. Yeah. Okay. Would you agree? [Laughs] Yes. Now, the way that I work with those, there are three places here.

What we don’t notice

Ken: Whatever we don’t notice is an area where our conditioning operates very strongly, because it’s stopping us from seeing things. Now that’s a very difficult one to identify. And basically we need somebody else to point that out to us. Life will point it out to us, but it usually doesn’t do it very gently. And again, going back to my retreat experience, I got very, very ill in retreat. And basically it boiled down to my body saying, “Ken, you can go and get enlightened if you want, I’m not coming.” And that’s why I say it’s not very gentle about that.

So it’s much better if we actually listen to other people say, “I think you should put more attention on your body.” What the hell does that mean? And my old office partner, who had all kinds of flaws, but he had a really, really good heart, and was quite successful in his business. And one day he just came into my office and said, “Ken, I’ve just been watching you. You have a time management problem.” I said, “I do?” “Yeah.” And he just went, “Ch, ch, ch, ch,” and I went, “Oh gee, I guess you may be right.” I hadn’t noticed how much I was being pulled in 15 million different directions.” And so I started to pay attention to that, but that he was pointing out something I wasn’t noticing, and I was old enough that I actually listened to him. So what we don’t notice.

What we don’t question

Ken: Next one is, what we don’t question. If there’s an area of your life that you never question, that’s almost certainly an area where your conditioning is running quite strongly. “You know, well, I’ve never thought about that.” “Well, that’s just how it is.” That’s the language of patterns. That’s the language of fixed ideas. That’s the language of conditioning. “I’d never do something like that.” Whenever you have those absolute statements coming in, that indicates that a pattern is talking.

What we can’t laugh at

Ken: The third one is what you can’t laugh at. And, you know Queen Victoria, “We are not amused.”

Several years ago I went on a canoe trip with my two brothers and their kids and it was great fun. But we came to this transition between two lakes in which one lake was probably six inches higher than the other. So there’s a couple of hundred yards of really strong water. It wasn’t rapids, it was just really strong water flowing out. And we came into it late in the day and my younger brother and his wife paddling in their canoe had not realized where they were, and they started paddling up this and their canoe flipped. So that’s where we camped that night, dried everything out, no problems. Next day we had to line the canoes up, haul them up by a rope. It was just too strong to paddle. So we got up into the upper lake, and then I said to my two brothers, “Just for fun, why don’t we take one of the canoes, get all the stuff out of it and just see if we can paddle up this thing?”

So, we got our life jackets, empty canoes, three strong guys paddling away. And so the first time we go up, my older brother, who doesn’t have a good sense of humor, he’s in the stern calling out directions, and my younger brother and I are just [sound effects], and we get up and get up, and there we are, paddling as hard as we can and we’re going nowhere because the current’s so strong. And then we just turn slightly and bang, we’re under the water. I rolled over, and came up, and there’s a canoe upside down. Well, neither of my brothers are around. And then my younger brother pops up and he’s laughing, so where’s our older brother? Eh? One minute, two minutes. Where is he? And eventually he pops up and he looks at the two of us and we’re just laughing. He said, “I thought we were trying to do something serious here!” [Laughter] There’s a little bit of conditioning in that.

So what you don’t notice, what you don’t question, what you don’t laugh at. Those are the areas to put attention. Because if you can’t laugh about it, [life is] much too short. Okay, we should close here. Thank you very much for your attention. I hope you found this a little bit helpful and if not helpful, at least slightly entertaining. Have a wonderful day. We’ve got a beautiful day here. And if you are taking someone close to you out this evening, then I hope you have a wonderful time with that.

By way of closing, let’s just take a moment or two, sit together.

Whatever goodness comes out of our interaction today, don’t think of holding it just in you. Let it to spread to everything in your world so that it can awaken good throughout the whole world.

Goodness comes from this practice we’ve done.
Let me not hold it just in me.
Let it spread to all that is known,
and awaken good throughout the world.