Waking Up In Relationship

My work, at its core, is about helping people wake up.
Wake up to the nature of the mind.
Wake up to how we’re built as human beings.

Wake up to the fact that a lot of the conflict we experience isn’t random… it’s conditioned into us.

We come into the world with a mind primed to protect and promote itself. Not at first, at first, we’re perfect unconditioned little Beings. Eventually, it splits things into right and wrong, good and bad, safe and unsafe. That function is useful, it helps us survive. But if we don’t become aware of it, it quietly starts running everything.
And that’s where conflict lives.

You see it everywhere. On a global level, in communities, in families, and especially in our closest relationships. The mind is constantly scanning, comparing, protecting. It’s asking, “Am I okay here? Am I being valued? Am I being understood?” And when it feels threatened, even in subtle ways, it reacts in efforts to protect and promote It’s safety and protect It’s existence.

Not because something terrible is happening, but because that’s what it’s designed to do.

So if we don’t wake up to that, we end up relating to others through that lens of protection instead of connection.

In relationship this is why it matters. We hear about “being our most authentic selves” but we must wake up to our inauthentic nature. The nature of “looking good, avoiding looking bad, being right, avoiding being wrong”, the list is never ending.

Because no matter how much you love someone, you are still wired to protect and promote yourself. That doesn’t go away just because you’re in partnership. Fantasies that the other is only there to protect and promote you, while so easily we forget that we’re encumbered to do the same thing.
What must develop instead is an awareness… a kind of inner structure… that says: “I am in relationship with another human being, and I want to protect and enhance this connection, not unconsciously damage it.”

And that takes intention. Removal of projection. Removal of making the other responsible for what I’m experiencing.

Because what happens over time, in almost every relationship, is that the person who once felt like an ally… slowly starts to feel like an opponent. Same game, opposing players.
Not all at once. Subtly. It happens through burying our feelings, asserting ourselves ‘more’ only to be further misunderstood. Knowing ‘it’ll get better eventually, so I’ll avoid it until it does’.

Because we’re not feeling heard.

We have differences in opinion of many things; who said what, how it was said, what it meant…and round and round we go…

Through the mind dividing things into “you’re right” or “you’re wrong,” “you get me” or “you don’t.”

And before we know it, we’re no longer relating to our partner as someone we’re with… we’re relating to them as someone we’re against.

This is what I often call the shift from intimate ally to intimate enemy.

And it’s not because either person is bad.

It’s because the mind, left unconscious, defaults to separation. Fear. Then projection.

So the work is to slow down. Slow down and get curious about how you feel. And find the words for that. To name the fear, the frustration, the embarrassment, the intimidation, the sadness, the anxiety.

To become aware of how quickly the mind divides; then invents a story to (unconsciously) support the division.

To notice when protection is showing up where it isn’t needed.

To remember, in real time, “This person is not my enemy.”

They are my ally

And if I can stay connected to that, even when it’s hard, even when I’m triggered, even when I don’t agree, that’s where something different becomes possible.

That’s where we move out of unconscious conflict and into conscious relationship.

Not perfect.

But intentional.