Voice Dialogue Tips

Voice Dialogue Tips

September 2009

Email us: jcoroneos@bigpond.com
Web Site: www.bodymindinformation.com
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Dear Viewer,

Welcome again to Hal & Sidra's Voice Dialogue Tips.


1. This month is the final part in our series of articles titled " The Top Ten Challenges to Relationship: Keeping Your Love Alive Amid Life's Routines " Challenge 10: Maintaining a “Perfect” Relationship


2. Good News: The New 90 minute Cinema Film by Michael Rowland and Dr John Coroneos, ‘Being in Heaven' , about Awakening More of the Natural Power of Your Mind and Accessing Higher States of Consciousness

Only one week to release! Come to the launch and party in Byron Bay, Australia!

The launch is at the Dendy Cinema, Byron Bay, Australia at 4.00 pm, Sunday the 27th of September. All Welcome, but first come first served.
Tickets on sale now at The Dendy, Byron Bay Cinema, or phone 02 6680 8555.



The Top Ten Challenges to Relationship:

Keeping Your Love Alive Amid Life's Routines

(an excerpt from Dr Hal & Sidra Stone's book titled "Partnering")

Challenge 10: Maintaining a “Perfect” Relationship



Sometimes we work too hard to keep everything in our relationships perfect. We try to see eye-to-eye with our partners on all matters, we are impeccably empathic and understanding of one another, there are no problems, everything is wonderful, we are always linked energetically, we are indeed blessed, and we do everything together all the time. We put all of our energies into keeping the partnership trouble free and do our best to ignore any feelings of discomfort. The rule we hold in our minds is something like “in a really good relationship, everything runs smoothly, both partners always agree with each other, and they never separate but always do everything together.” Unfortunately, when we try to keep the relationship perfect in this way, we actually break the connection between our partners and ourselves because anything that does not work smoothly is ignored and too much gets left out.

Since relationships naturally ebb and flow and life is not always wonderful, perfection is not exactly an attainable objective. As a matter of fact, if this goal is attained and there is never any friction, we might suspect that something is being overlooked. This does not mean that relationships are always a mass of difficulties. What it does mean is (1) people are different and have different needs, (2) two partners invariably experience some areas of disconnection, disagreement, or misunderstanding, and (3) there is always a need for some separation as well as a need for togetherness.

This is why it is so important to be able to include in the partnering relationship some space for the consideration of what is not working either in the relationship or in your life. If you were running a business and you never looked at what did not work, you might find yourself in deep trouble. For instance, you run a freight service. Everybody knows that you only like good news, so no one tells you that there is a small knocking sound in the refrigerated truck that does your long distance runs. If you knew about it, you could have the problem fixed. But you do not find out about it because nobody wants to bring you the bad news and they tell themselves that since it is only a small knocking sound, it is probably not very important. So the truck breaks down in the middle of the desert with a full load of perishable lettuce.

It is the “small knocking sounds” that tell us what could be improved upon, what could grow into a problem, or what needs fixing. We all need time — and permission — to look at what is not working in our lives and in the relationship. In the partnering model of relationship, it is accepted that each partner can, and will, bring to the conference table “reports” of what is not currently working. This is not a gripe session any more than a business meeting to review the workings of a business is a gripe session.

What might you bring to the table? You would bring your dissatisfactions with your partner or your life. This might include talking about your attractions to others, attractions that pull you away from the relationship. You might include your fantasies, such as opening a new business, or having another baby, or running away to Fiji. You might talk of your fears about money, work, health, or even about the relationship. You might talk about your discomfort with always being together and express your need for time alone, or for a space in the house that is just yours. All these issues keep us from becoming too complacent or stuck in old patterns that no longer suit us, they all open doors into new thoughts and new possibilities.

We feel that it is important to have time set aside to look at these matters. It is not necessary to be formal about this, after all you are not running a business, but it is important to keep current. Keeping current with dissatisfactions or negative feelings (1) helps us to keep the connection with our partners alive, even if the connection is not pleasant at that very moment, (2) prevents a backlog of complaints from building up, and (3) helps us to deal with matters creatively and quickly. We fix the truck before it breaks down. That is what partners are for.

Each partner notices something different and contributes something unique to the partnership. You may become irritated when your partner gets too preoccupied with work and ignores you. Your partner may become irritated with you because you did not follow up on the business opportunity that presented itself last week. You may be great at noticing when the car needs repairing and your partner may be great at noticing when the bank accounts are getting too low. You can see how partnering as a model for relationship brings us the possibilities of using our full human potential as a powerful team.


Meeting the Challenges


The basic theme in all ten challenges is the underlying challenge to maintain the connection in your primary relationship. Most of the time this connection will be pleasant, but there are times, when you are dealing with unpleasant matters, when it will be a bit uncomfortable.

What must you do on a day-to-day basis to maintain the connection to your partner? First, you must make your relationship — and this connection — a priority. All the challenges mentioned in this chapter have a single common element. Each of them threatens to replace your relationship as a priority.

Second, when you feel uncomfortable with your partner or the relationship, or when you sense your connection weakening, don't ignore your feelings. This is a warning, it is like a fire alarm going off. You may be tempted to think that the alarm is faulty and you may wish to turn if off because you can't bear the sound, you don't see any smoke, and you're too busy to go looking for trouble. But pay attention. There is a gift of disowned energy somewhere in this discomfort.

The third, and perhaps the most important, ingredient in the recipe for a healthy, intimate, and loving relationship is time. The best way to meet all the challenges to relationship is to take time for one another and for your partnership. You cannot run a business without giving it proper time and attention, and you cannot expect to have a successful relationship without doing likewise. Take time for meetings, for work, for play, and for passion. Take time to be happy with each other and time to be irritated with each other. Take time to look at what works and makes you feel just great and time to listen to the small knocking sounds in your relationship and your lives that will tell you what doesn't work. Take time to enjoy today and time to plan and to dream about tomorrow. Take time to hang out, just to be and not to do anything at all.

Most of all, take time away from the daily distractions and challenges we've been talking about to establish and to keep the delicious energetic linkage between you and your partner. It's a good idea to make regular plans to break your daily routine and get re-acquainted. These breaks can take any form, so be creative.

If partners can keep their linkage, they will keep their relationship. Anything that breaks this linkage can damage the relationship. No matter how sensible, worthwhile, or absolutely necessary the distraction seems to be, it should be handled with great care and not allowed to break the essential connection between partners. It is very easy to ruin even a good relationship. It is also very easy, once we know about linkage, to preserve a good relationship and to make it even better. So go for the linkage, and good luck!

You can read past tips by clicking here

For more information about Voice Dialogue DVD Series, visit www.bodymindinformation.com

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Send these Voice Dialogue Tips to Friends:
If you would like to send these tips on to any of your friends, please forward them by email. You can also advise your friends at www.bodymindinformation.com/tell-a-friend.php If you are able to help us do this, we would like to thank you by sending you a FREE REPORT titled: Voice Dialogue: A Guide To Great Relationships.

Warmly,
Dr John Coroneos
Medical Doctor
Producer of The Voice Dialogue Series

Copyright Wiseone Edutainment P/L

No part of Hal and Sidra's Voice Dialogue tips may be reproduced, in any form, without the written permission of Drs Hal and Sidra Stone except for forwarding an issue, in its entirety and complete with copyright information, to a friend.

Vacation, Nature, and our human ways of being...

: Today’s Reflection is about a vacation, Nature, and our human ways of being
: in, and with, the world around us.

It is early morning, and I am sitting on the beach of Mussel Beach Campground, which is on the very West Coast of Vancouver Island, hidden behind Ucluelet, yet right on the ocean. While there are a few other people in the campsite, they are all asleep, and so it feels as though the whole place belongs to me. And Tobi. And the crows and seagulls. The clouds and the rain of last night are moving away, and the sun is making its shy - yet persistent - appearance. It is time of low tide, yet the waves make sure I know they are not too far away. Nothing like going to sleep, and waking up, with their sound in the background.

When I am present with these magical surroundings around me, it is easy to feel in-tune with myself and with the world; the world which David Abram calls the "more-than human community." Everything feels alive, co-existing, and participating in that mysterious game called life. In what seems to be a very appropriate setting, I am reading an interview with David Abram, author of a gem of a book, "The spell of the sensuous," conducted by Derrick Jensen. Here, on the beach and deeply immersed in Nature, it resonates strongly with me. What follows are a few excerpts, interspersed with some of my thoughts about us, humans.

"But the sleight-of-hand magician is one who can startle the senses out of the slumber induced by such obsolete ways of speaking [where we have been culturally brainwashed to speak of other animals' behaviour as "programmed" in their genes and nothing there is even remotely close to "consciousness"]. By making a coin vanish from one hand and appear under your foot, making a stone float between his hands or a silk scarf change its colours, the magician wakes up that old, animistic awareness of objects as living, animate entities with their own styles and secrets; he coaxes our senses to engage the strangeness of things once again."

After all, for the largest and longest part of our species' existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of our environments, exchanging possibilities with every form, entity, and being around us. All could communicate, though not in language (as we use right now), and we could understand and reply - whether with sounds, movements, thoughts, or minute shifts of mood. And from all of these relationships with our environment, all were collectively nourished.

"So much of research, today, seems motivated less by a sense of wonder than by a great will-to-control. It's a mark of immaturity, I think, a sign that our science is still in its adolescence. A more mature science would be motivated by a wish for a richer relationship, for deeper reciprocity with the world that we study."

"In our culture we speak about nature a great deal. Mature cultures speak to nature. They feel the rest of nature speak to them."

"If we want to actually start noticing where we are, and finding ourselves in a better relation with the rest of the earth around us, the simplest and most elegant way I know of is simply to stop insulting everything around us by speaking of them as passive objects, and instead begin to allow things their own spontaneity, their own life. As soon as you start speaking in such a way, you start noticing things a hell of a lot more. You suddenly find yourself in a dynamic relationship with all the things around you, including the air you breathe, the chair you are sitting on, the house in which you live. You find yourself negotiating relationships all the time. And you realize that ethics is not something to be practiced only with other humans - that all of our actions have ethical consequences."

An interesting point here is to look into our common literature. There, if we look carefully, we will notice a very subtle, yet all-prevalent taboo, preventing us from assigning any consciousness to any being other that human. It shows in the fact that there are very few books where an animal, for example, is a 'he' or a 'she.' For the most part, the animal (even the "man's best friend") is an 'it.' An object, and not a live being, with feelings, thoughts, desires, awareness. When such a perspective is adopted without ever questioning it, David's words ring even stronger.

"Once we reduce our input to everything being mediated by humans, we are essentially in an echo chamber, and we begin to hallucinate. We are sensory deprived, because we are not getting the variety of sensory stimulation we need."

And that becomes a form of solitary confinement, where we find ourselves cut off from a full range of relationships, existing in a world in which none of the other beings are acknowledged as sentient or aware. Which allows us the only possible relationships with other humans; after all, one cannot enter into a dynamic relationship with an object.

Yet, every human community is nested within a more-than-human community of beings.

"The animate earth around us - this land swept by the wind and pounded by rain - is far more lovely than any heaven we can dream up. But to awaken to this awesome beauty we must give up our spectator perspective, and the illusion of control that it gives us, in order to gaze out at the world from within its own depths. This is, alas, a terrifying move for most over-civilized folks today - because to renounce control is to notice that we are vulnerable: to suffering, to loss, to disease, to death. But also that we are vulnerable to purest joy. The wild world to which our senses give us access is an inexhaustibly beautiful realm, but it is hardly safe - it is filled with shifting shadows, and is plenty dangerous. ... We can't master it - never have, never will. What we can do is participate in the life of this breathing world far more deeply and creatively than we have these past few thousand years."

A sunny week to you all, inside and out.


:: Simon’s Reflections newsletter is published on a
:: bi-weekly basis and contains writings that touch
:: the heart, provoke the mind, and inspire action.
:: Your thoughts and comments are always welcome.


Simon