CONSCIOUS RELATIONSHIPS…..whether with your husband, wife, partner, family member or anyone else in your life you can cultivate a more meaningful and intimate relationship through practicing these commitments.  My hope for you is these 10 commitments open a doorway to finding more juicy and authentic love and connection with all your important relationships, including yourself. 

First off, before writing another word, I must confess to breaking every single one of  these commitments.  As I think back to one of my most delightfully dysfunctional roller-coaster relationship in my 30′s, I  could have been the poster boy for breaking each one of these commitments for cultivating conscious relationships; completely clueless at the time!

Yet today, if I break one of these commitments for cultivating conscious relationships, I  feel it in my gut, and correct my ego reactive behavior with a conscious loving response.  As stated above, this has not always been the case. In fact, I never thought I’d be writing anything about conscious relationships. “Who the hell am I to give any relationship advice?”

It all started with my personal awakening (from whole-mess to wholeness) and with it, my commitment to living and teaching about living a life of wholeness… what I’ve come to call Radical Wholeness. This became, and still is, my focus and number one passion! Soon after starting my SOULutions transformational coaching practice, It became glaringly obvious, that one of the fastest paths to healing the fragmented, wounded, disowned parts of ourselves blocking us from our wholeness was with the very relationships that most brought these hurts up to the surface of painful awareness.  So, I begin working with couples, utilizing many of the insights from Imago Therapy and the work of  Kathryn and Gay Hendricks. This gave birth to the  SOULutions Conscious Relationships Program that I feel so privileged to guide couples through today.

Yet, my greatest teacher of conscious relationships is my partner, Leslie Clayton. I witness Leslie practice these commitments for cultivating conscious relationships both in our relationship and in her daily life, particularly as team leader of  Conscious Pilates teachers at the Body Awareness Studio that she founded 18 years ago. (pardon the  obvious plug, but with valentines day just around the corner…..) 

One of my personal discoveries along the journey of  investigating Conscious Relationships is that ego based love is all about avoiding responsibility for our happiness and is characterized by getting and protecting behaviors. 

Essence based love is about creating Conscious Relationships, taking 100% responsibility for our own happiness at all times and is characterized by behaviors aimed at seeing and being seen, in all our vulnerable glory! In-to-me-see…as the play on words aptly goes.

So, here are 10 commitments for cultivating conscious relationships. Following each commitment is a “counter  commitment” that often reflects the way we currently show up in our relationships, either consciously or unconsciously. Aligning our lives around these 10 commitments for cultivating Conscious Relationships will produce love, harmony and real connection, while living by the counter-commitments will produce heartache, conflict and drama—always.10 Commitments for Cultivating Conscious Relationships

10 Commitments for Cultivating Conscious Relationships

1. I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances in my love life (and my life in general) and I commit to supporting others in taking full responsibility for their lives.

I commit to blaming others, or myself, for what is wrong in my love life (or my life in general). I commit to playing the role of victim, villain or hero and taking more or less than 100% responsibility for what’s occurring in my love life.

2. I commit to curiosity, regarding every relationship in my life (past, present or future) as an opportunity to learn and grow in self-awareness.

I commit to being right and defending my “truth”, especially when I’m sure I’m right.

3. I commit to seeing all people, and especially my current and former lovers, as allies that are perfectly suited to help me learn the most important things for my growth.

I commit to seeing all people, and especially my current or former lovers, as obstacles and impediments to getting what I want most.

4. I commit to saying what is true for me and to being a person to whom others can express themselves with candor.

I commit to withholding my truth (i.e. facts, feelings, things I imagine) and speaking in a way that allows me to control or manipulate an outcome.

5. I commit to the masterful practice of integrity, including acknowledging all key feelings, expressing the unarguable truth and keeping my agreements.

I commit to withholding and/or ignoring my feelings, living with incompletions, and being right about my story.

6. I commit to feeling my feelings all the way through to completion. They come and I locate them in my body, then I breathe, move and vocalize them so they release all the way through.

I commit to resisting, judging and apologizing for my feelings, as well as making them someone else’s fault. I withhold, avoid, and repress them, contracting into fear and isolation.

7. I commit to living from the belief that I have enough of everything—including time, money, love, energy, space and resources, etc.

I commit to a scarcity mentality, choosing to see that there is “not enough” for me and others in the world, and therefore, I have to be conscious of making sure I get and preserve what is “mine.”

8. I commit to seeing myself as the source of love, approval, happiness and safety.

I commit to believing that others are responsible for making me feel safe, loved, happy and approved of, and that I will manipulate, control or punish those who don’t give those things to me.

9. I commit to seeing that the opposite of my story is as true or truer than my original story and that any story comes only from my interpretation of events.

I commit to believing that my stories, and the meaning I give to them, are true.

10. I commit to living in appreciation, freely opening to both giving and receiving it lavishly.

I commit to feeling entitled to “what’s mine,” resenting others when I’m not acknowledged in the way I want.

So, there you have it; Your 10 commitments to cultivating more conscious relationships with not only your beloved (or future one) but  friends, associates and  most importantly, yourself.  Stay tuned for my next post as we take the intention of cultivating conscious relationships to even a more intimate level.

Doesn’t Consciousness rock!

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