Out beyond ideas

of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down

in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language

– even the phrase “each other” –

do not make any sense.

– Rumi

Each year, I work through my Guidebook Wisdom’s Way to Peaceful Relationships as a way to explore what I learned from the year before – what worked, what didn’t, what I want to do differently in the coming year, where I want to grow in Love and so forth. It helps me to stay aligned with my core principle of creating peace, building peace, returning to peace. It also challenges me to grow and move beyond any internal states of stagnation in my relationships. I end up with me a plan I can ‘walk through’ in the coming year and thereby stay focused.

As a result of what I wanted to improve in my relationships last year, I began to reflect upon how much language makes a difference in the way I/we show up to relating peacefully. I was thinking about peaceful relationships and how we create them. And still, I felt there was something missing. I found myself being guided to tweak this theme to give it more life and make it more dynamic.

I was also invited to practise love and forgiveness with a friend who had behaved in a significantly hurtful way. Through this journey of practising loving-kindness, a Reiki ethic that is core to my spiritual practice, I realized that none of my relationships are static, none remain truly stagnant in Love. Loving-kindness and forgiveness asked me to remain deeply committed to myself and to the heart of who I know I am – because there were times I just wanted to throw in the towel.

So rather than focusing on the relationship, I became intrigued with what peaceful relationships look like in action, how images of such relationships change when we shift our focus to the activity of peaceful relating.

So I have changed my language to peaceful relating, with particular focus on the ongoing activity of relating peacefully. This new language began to re-shape my reality as I began to consider the creative emergence of what could unfold next as I made choices to relate peacefully now.

I am a being – a living, dynamic being in motion, in movement, in activity. My mind is always active, even while sleeping, I dream. Although I experience stillness in meditation or contemplative prayer, it is dynamic, alive and flowing. So too is my potential in relating with all things. If I want to be in the positive flow of life, then there is a call to relate in love and peace. It calls me to be attentive and present to what my experience is and what is alive in me as I interact and engage with life, with my dog Carlie, my family, clients, home, people in my community, and so forth.

Relating peacefully awoke an awareness within me of self doubts, griefs, old hurts that I wanted to release and open myself to more Love in my relationships. This awareness called me to be attentive, flexible and strong in my boundaries that respected my core being.

This coming year, as we start on this journey of relating peacefully, I invite you to observe and become aware of the manner in which you relate in peace with yourself. Where does it already happen? When can you relate in love with your body and the whole of who you are? What happens when you fall out of relating peacefully with yourself? Where are you stuck in a relationship which needs new language to help you make loving movement again?

Wisdom’s Way to Relating Peacefully – Your 2015 Guidebook will lead you through your own personal journey of discovering a new language, new metaphors, stronger strategies and a transformation of old practices. Allow yourself to let go of what doesn’t work anymore and meet me in a new field of consciousness in 2015 – relating peacefully. You can download your copy from my website today. Printed copies also are available at my office.

Namaste,
Shirley Lynn