Conscious Connecting

A story, and a framework

I am grateful to R for sharing his feedback of an Authentic Relating session I facilitated a month ago for my housewarming. It is giving rise to this substack post!

My housemates V, S, and I had been waffling whether and when to put on a housewarming. Our moderate sized apartment can reasonably hold 20 people max, and an invitation here is a rejection over there.

V was leaving for the month of March, so it compelled us to put it on before February ended. I was not expecting to invite many people at all. V and S had many people to invite, and I felt like I am burdening my friends by asking for their time and attention on things I want to do.

But on housewarming day, I spent the morning doing three acucircles with reiki at Merlin’s Place and immediately came home to prepare. I invited close friends who showed up to the acucircles, one even coming from Ireland.

We had great treats. I made beef stew the night before so V could make her vegetarian curry. Our friends brought coconut water and kombucha, commodities we give up often on our grocery runs. We ate warming foods and enjoyed reminiscing of our homes before NYC.

V facilitated a sound bath for us after our meal in our third-space living room. Its bedroom-sized, so we all crowded around the edges of the walls with some close friends laying on top of each other.

Then V encouraged me to facilitate a conscious relating session. We sat around the dinner table combined with our worktable and I asked, “What does conscious or authentic relating mean to you?” I hear

• Presence with myself, presence with another

• Speaking with mindfulness

• Feeling safe to open up

Then I ask, “What are some frictions to doing this?”

• The speed of the day and needing to connect quickly

• Needing to just get through the motions

• Not feeling comfortable around a particular person or environment

These are all valid. There are no wrong answers, since it is our own experience we reflect on.
And similarly, conscious relating is a container to speak to our own experience and work with various scaffolding to feel safe to communicate our experience.

We begin with a 10 minute meditation. Usually I start with contacting the mood of care, but this was already in the atmosphere from food, friends and bathing in sound.

The second step is progressively recognizing our experience is inseparable from spacious awareness. Bringing our attention to body sensations, we recognize it is inseparable from spacious awareness. Then we tune into internal sounds and internal sights and recognize they are inseparable from spacious awareness. These three categories make up our inner experience.

Michael Taft in his Vast Sky Mind course adds more steps for a comprehensive progression into recognition of spacious awareness. His content is where I learned how to meditate.

The third step is to bring up the stem phrases of Authentic Relating and sit with what arises. They are

• I am noticing
  Just like with the beginning of the meditation, we may notice body sensations, internal sights, and internal sounds as a starting place.

• I am curious
  Understand another’s world through the open ended question starters: when, where, who, what, how, why which generally move from shoal to deep

• I have a sense/story
  Assumptions and beliefs we may have about others, the space, ourselves, etc.

• Hearing that impacts me

  To be impacted is to be shaped. In other words, how has something shaped your experience?

• What I want for you is
  The newest addition to the group, this one acknowledges and brings into consciousness our desires for others.

These also follow a progression/spectrum. The ones closer to the top have generally more levity than the ones towards the bottom.
If we are in need of structure, we can use this as a way to follow the conversational flow into the depths and back up into more shallow waters.

It is at this point I often am met with frustrations and frictions. People don’t want to follow a script, and I completely understand. I also prefer we just flow. But if we ever find ourselves out of our depths or like a fish out of water, we can use this scaffolding to bring back some ease and recognition of spacious awareness interpersonally.

This meditation was relatively quick, because then we got to implement it in dyads, quads, until the whole party was in one circle. Moving from self to higher numbers of organization affords for greater safety to show up with the experience we are having, not tuning out of any particular aspect of it.

By midnight, we closed the circle. But half of our guests stayed until 0130 to continue consciously connecting.
I remember heading to bed with a subtle beaming inner smile, feeling accomplished and in community.

This framework boils down to

1. Contacting the mood of care and wellbeing

2. Recognizing the inseparability of body sensations, inner sounds, and inner sights with awareness

3. Communicating with stem phrases

Let whatever is helpful be an accessory to your own living practice.
Move along this progression at your own pace, picking it apart to create your own map of what works.
May it be let go once you feel your own flow into present connection.