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Robert Augustus Masters: Emotional Intimacy, Part 2

Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Robert Augustus Masters, an Integral psychotherapist, relationship expert, and spiritual teacher whose work emphasizes embodiment, emotional literacy, and the development of relational maturity. He is the author of 13 books including the new Sounds True book Emotional Intimacy, as well as the audio learning course Knowing Your Shadow. In the second part of their discussion, Tami speaks with Robert about the importance of mutual transparency in relationships, how we can engage in “connected catharsis,” the telltale signs that reveal when we are using spiritual bypassing to avoid emotional experience, and how we can start to identify and work with our own shadow material. (57 minutes)

Gratitude… a visual tour

We were honored at last year’s Wake Up Festival to have with us film maker Louie Schwartzberg, to introduce and show us his short piece on gratitude. While this life has so many challenges, uncertainties and, as the Buddha has taught, will inevitably involve suffering and the breaking-open of our hearts, there is an underlying preciousness here. Just by looking up into the sky or into the eyes of someone we love, or listening to the birds, or watching a flower bloom, we enter into timelessness and eternity. Something more than meets the eye is happening here… the miracle that is this life is waiting around every corner, is part of every conversation, and is unfolding throughout every minute of every day.

Enjoy this lovely short film on the power of gratitude and the preciousness of this one sweet life, narrated by our dear friend, Brother David Steindl-Rast:

Holding mother in our heart

Let us keep all mothers in our hearts today, creating for them the most luminous holding environment of love, in which they can rest and be nourished. Through the unknown – and through the most sacred womb – they have offered the gift of life, a rare, blessed opportunity to make this human journey, to allow this precious heart to be polished into eternity. No matter what our relationship with our mother in the physical world presently, we can exchange one moment of love with her – for the bond we have with her is beyond time and beyond space.

As the Tibetans believe, each being we encounter in this world has at one time been our mother, and has shown us the most precious kindness, care, and compassion; and has been willing to give her life so that we may come into being. May all mother-beings everywhere receive an outpouring of blessings on this day, may their hearts and their bodies be bathed in love, and may they come to know directly, even for a moment, the true preciousness of this life.

mother2

A cure through love

It was Freud, in a letter to Carl Jung, who said: “psychoanalysis in essence is a cure through love.”

It hurts us so much when those around us are suffering, when those we care about are struggling. Maybe it’s one of our co-workers, an elderly person who is all alone, a client terrified in the face of a cancer diagnosis, one of our children whose self-esteem has been crushed, our partner who is so sad that our relationship is not flowing, or a close friend who is grieving the loss of her lover. What do we do? How can we help? What are the most effective ways to lessen their grief, their sadness, their anxiety, their shame, their fear? We hear that to truly love another is the most powerful form of healing – but what does this mean? When we’re with someone who is suffering, we can create with them a holding environment which allows their subjective experience to be exactly what it is. We can stay very close to their experience, allowing it to be metabolized in the space between us. They feel us right there with them, that warmth, that space in which all is welcome. They are able to be what they are, right then and right there, and know at the deepest level that they will be received, that they need not hold anything back, that there is a certain safety and ground in which all of the most precious pieces of their psyche, their heart, and their body can dance, can express, can unfold, and can become illuminated within the sacredness of the relational field.

In my experience, most of us, when confused or hurt or anxious or sad, want so deeply for our experience to be seen, to be met, to be touched, to be received into that relational field of space, kindness, presence, and warmth. We can be there for another in this way and really allow them to fall apart, to go crazy, to be confused all the way, to touch all of those thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sensations that have been kept at bay for so long. It sounds so simple, but in practice is in fact a revolution. When they know that we aren’t needing them to be different, when they know we will walk with them into terror, panic, depression, grief, anger, and fear, they soften, the space around us softens, and we are invited into the mystery, guided into the unknown together. We’re never sure what will be revealed there, but we are called nonetheless to move into this new territory together, with some crazy sense of faith that there is an intelligence here, a creativity that is pouring out of the beyond.

We long to somehow receive permission to be what we are, for another to understand how we are organizing our experience, for another to somehow be willing to enter into a burning love-field with us, without needing us to be different, to be “cured,” transformed, or even to heal. When we are truly met, when our subjectivity is deeply touched by another, with no agenda, a very organic process of healing is initiated – one that does not come from us or from our friend who is suffering, or even from what we want or think should happen – but seemingly from some mysterious Other. That Other is a raging field of intelligence and creativity, and has come to touch us, to hold us, and to show us something precious. When we allow ourselves to enter deeply into the subjective experience of another – and when they feel us with them inside of the cracks and crevices of each and every cell of their heart – love takes over, grace begins to whisper its secrets, and we turn toward home, together.

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The Wake Up badger

Not long ago I engaged in a shamanic journey with the intention of meeting my power animal. I was and still consider myself completely new to the practice of journeying. Although I may have a theoretical understanding through my exposure to the teachings of many Sounds True authors, my direct experience in this area is pretty limited. Since direct experience is what it’s purportedly all about in shamanic journeying, I decided to see for myself what it was like.

I was not disappointed. In the journey I voyaged back in time to a tree house my childhood friends and I had built—an impressive if not altogether hazardous tri-level construction of scrap plywood, crates, and anything we could find to nail together. I traveled to a tunnel beneath the tree house and met a squirrel, who beckoned me to follow him down a long path. At the end of the path a large badger awaited me, nodded, and then I simply followed the squirrel back above ground. End of journey.

Fast forward to Sounds True’s first Wake Up Festival, where I took great advantage of the challenging yet beautiful 18-hole disc golf course. During one round, a particularly good drive fell near a dark hole in the middle of the fairway. As we approached to take the next shot, what should block our way but a large and agitated badger—the first I’d seen in the wild despite years of camping throughout the country. The badger was not going to let us retrieve my disc, which sat just six feet away from it (and only 25 feet from the basket—it was a birdie opportunity!). After some coaxing, the badger finally returned to its lair, allowing us to finish play.

I didn’t see the Wake Up Badger as I called him during later frolf rounds throughout the Festival, but I think someone’s trying to tell me something…

Badger

 

Robert Augustus Masters: Emotional Intimacy, Part 1

Robert Augustus Masters is an Integral psychotherapist, relationship expert, and spiritual teacher whose work blends the psychological and physical with the spiritual, emphasizing embodiment, emotional literacy, and the development of relational maturity. Here, Robert and Tami discuss emotional literacy and how it is lacking in our culture today. They consider differences in cultural conditioning between men and women when it comes to expressing emotions and the need to develop a toolkit to identify and work skillfully with anger. (70 minutes)

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