Unique Partnership
Unique Partnership
When partnerships deteriorate into a negotiation of needs, when “I love you” means “You are filling my needs right now, (and not demanding too much in return),” we know we’re missing out. When they are left unattended, or when they’re main focus is the next fun thing, they have a way of falling asleep, and we miss out. We miss out on the best part of being in partnership – a unique shared purpose. But it happens all the time; it’s even natural when we live out of a false view of self, when we live as though we are separate, isolated, “skin encapsulated egos,” as Alan Watts put it. Unique Partnership seeks to wake relationships from sleep and refocus them on what is important.
The work begins by cracking open that false view of yourself, the one that in your darker moments speaks its toxic sentiment saying something like, “I am not enough,” or “I am fatally flawed,” or “I am all alone,” or “I’m just not loveable.” It might take you a bit of time to define it so succinctly, but the reality is we all carry a false sense of self around. Once identified, you can see how it operates, how it keeps you isolated, disempowered, or afraid, and then you can go to work on it. You can begin to dismantle it and when you do that, the truth begins to emerge – a truth you find you’ve always known. You are not separate and isolated, you are in fact interwoven into the fabric of creation. You are sourced in the love intelligence, that “gentle persuasion,” as Whitehead called it, that has animated creation’s story from the Big Bang to Shakespeare. You are not simply woven and sourced in this one dynamic fabric, you are a unique expression of it. You are a unique expression of the love intelligence that drives evolution forward. Oh my God.
Looked at this way, we can see that we’re all like puzzle pieces, no one extra, all of us called to play our role in order for creation to be complete, in order that the next gorgeous evolving moment may emerge. When two come together for however long, each a unique expression of the love that animates creation, together they share a purpose, we might even say they share a unique obligation, to live out their creative acts of love in the world. When a “we” is able to do that, they have a Unique Partnership. Relationships wake up! It’s a long way from, “Is he filling my needs?” “Is she giving me what I want?”
This seminar, will be taught by my wife Barbara and me. Barbara and her business partner, Claire, designed the Unique Self Coaching Process which is founded on Dr. Marc Gafni’s Unique Self teaching. It’s not magic, but when engaged we’ve found it’s an amazingly effective growth process. The idea for a Unique Partnership seminar came out of our experience teaching the Unique Self Coaching Process to a group of students. Each person in the class had to find two “volunteer clients” to coach. It was just natural for a number of our spouses to serve in that role and so it was that many of us went through the process together. Those partnerships came back to life in fresh ways and exciting ways. The work we are doing has greater purpose, and as one of us said, “Now when he’s coming home I just want to wait for him at the door naked.”