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Distinctions to accelerate your personal and professional evolution

Agreements for Healthy Relating | Agreement 1: Truth Over Comfort

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The Agreements

From Chance to Wisdom 

In my experience, there are four agreements that are necessary as foundations for any healthy relationship regardless of the context - meaning it doesn't matter if it's a professional context, if it's friendship, or if it's sexual, intimate, and romantic.

In fact the more intimate it is the more important I think these agreements are, but unfortunately - and paradoxically - the less likely someone is to actually be willing to have the conversation that’s required. That's for many reasons, most of them self-esteem issues are at their source and fear-based.

Let me explain: If we are attached to the hope that someone will like us, to the degree that it becomes a need for their approval and therefore induces fear in ourselves, and/or we have scarcity around whether or not we will actually find somebody who is a fit, or whether or not we can find someone else if a relationship does not work out, we have a tendency to overlook things that we know are important to address because if the person doesn't like us then we may take that personally in the case of a self-esteem issue, or we don't want to set up any barriers to them liking us or connecting with us.

But in doing so, we skip over critical foundational steps - and virtually assure we end up with someone who is not a fit or find ourselves in a conflict without the agreement reality as to how we find our way out of it and get back into connection.

So we ignore wisdom in favor of the immediacy of false connection - so as to not "rock the boat". At its worst, of course, this borders on codependency and external validation and that a path that if you continue down that road leads to frustration, heartache, and worse.

However if we have an abundance mindset - a certainty that there are plenty of people out there who might be a fit for us - and fit is more important than not being alone - we understand that it's easier to find somebody who's a fit that it is to deal with the frustration and challenges and eventual heartbreak of someone who is not a fit, and we are internally validated in terms of our esteem for ourselves, then we choose wisdom over chance.

The reality is we are actually choosing wisdom and communication over something much worse than chance: predictably negative results.

When do I open the conversation for these agreements?  Usually after a successful first date.

Some people may fret at this moment - and they are worried it is too late - they already skipped over these agreements and find themselves in the quagmire of shoulds and implicit agreements and unstated yet clear expectations you never agreed to. That can be an icky and frustrating place.

But don’t fret: you can transform any relationship - or “reboot” or - or start over from scratch and begin to date someone again - you can use the agreements as a way to transform friendships - I have. I have used the agreements and the conversation around them to bring years-long friendships back to life.

We’ll talk about skillful means - how most effectively to do that - after we lay out the agreements and flesh them out fully.


The Agreements

Four Foundational Agreements For Healthy Relating

  1. We tell the truth and we hear the truth and we value truth over comfort
  2. We do not hold anyone accountable to agreements they have not made
  3. If we are upset, we make a request (for a new agreement)
  4. We accept that we are responsible for our own experience and our own emotions.
    1. Make no assumptions
    2. Don’t make anything up

Let’s examine each of these agreements fully.

Agreement 1:  Truth Over Comfort

The first agreement is that we tell the truth and we hear the truth and we value truth over comfort. 

The “comfort” might be our own, or it may be the comfort of others.

Here is an excellent standard: if we are afraid to say it - or afraid that somebody can’t hear it or might take it personally - that’s probably the very thing that should be said. 

And as I am sure you have experienced, the longer we delay the telling of that truth, the bigger it becomes in our mind and the worse it will be when we tell them - for the relating, for our internal anxiousness around sharing it, and for them when they find out how long we delayed; telling the truth brings relief for all without delay. There may be broken agreements to clean up - something we will address later on in this book, but that aside, telling the truth should increase intimacy and connection. 

Hearing the truth - if done openly and spaciously - always will.

Telling the truth is not an excuse to be a jerk.

There is a popular theme in some circles where someone is a jerk (that is a technical term) and they finish it off (or begin it) with “I am just speaking my truth”.

That is not in alignment with the spirit of this rule - because most often “speaking your truth”  is just being self-indulgent. The spirit of this rule is to increase intimacy and to increase connection. Thus, we want to tell the truth with skillful means - meaning in a way that honors both ourselves, yet delivered in a way the other person is best able to receive it.  As well as caring for the relating or the relationship - the 3rd entity that is created by the synergy of the two of you.

Why is this so important?  Relationships begin to die in the unsaid.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence; the grass is always greener where it is tended to, cared for, and nurtured.

If there is enough unsaid in the relationship, you are not even relating to the human in front of you anymore - you are relating to all the stuff you have not said, or do not think you can say - and that shows up as being distracted, shut down, simply not present, or simply being silent. So instead of relating to the dynamic and vibrant human in front of you, you are simply in your head about … all the things. 

That build-up - that residue - kills true intimacy.

And yet, telling the truth and hearing the truth are - at the very least - very different sets of capacities. 

That can not be overstated - and as I have said over and over again, communication skills are physical skills that take practice - and these component skills definitely take a lot of practice.

To start with, telling the truth can take a lot of courage. Hearing the truth takes openness and, at times, a willingness to hear feedback and truths that are difficult to hear. 

And the list goes on - on both sides.

But imagine telling the truth about something - something you are scared to share about yourself - and having your partner thank you, express gratitude for trusting them to share it with them, and acknowledge you for the courage that it took and to express that they trust you even more now - and to do it without judgment - with love and acceptance. 

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Guilt, Shame, and Self-Acceptance | How Shame Requires Your Consent

Shame-still-better Jason D McClain on shame

Shame, Guilt, and Shaming

I caused quite a stir a few years ago when shaming and the campaign against shaming was all the rage. And the stir I caused was by simply posting “shame requires your consent” followed by “self-acceptance is the antidote to shame”.

These two concepts are very closely related and let me explain how and why they are both so important - and how much freedom they can provide you if implemented and - through practice - embodied. But first, let’s distinguish a few things. Primarily, what is the difference between guilt and shame - because they are different and the distinction is important and most of us have them collapsed.

Guilt and Shame

“Shame gives guilt a bad name.”  -Mark Michael Lewis

Guilt and Shame. 

For years my good friend Mark Michael Lewis and I debated several concepts. These were spirited yet friendly conversations over the years - sometimes conversations on a single topic would span years. And one of these conversations had centered around guilt and shame and we only came to a resolution on it when we shared the sensations associated with each of them. How did shame feel in the body? How did guilt feel in the body? When we discussed the sensations, we discovered that we actually agreed. It was simply that we had not defined our terms.

For the purposes of our discussion here, guilt is defined as "a realization - an “a-ha” moment if you will - that you violated your own value system - and the feeling you that must make it right". It’s then followed by a bit of an adrenaline rush; you feel more alert and you feel compelled to fix it somehow - through acknowledging the wrong, through making amends somehow, or doing something to restore yourself in your own guidelines. In sum, guilt is the feeling you did a bad thing: a behavior you do not condone for yourself. We have all done something we are not proud of; a wrong we know we must right. Something that keeps bothering us in the back of our minds. Sometimes even years later. It may be something small - something that when we go to the person and attempt to clean it up they may not even remember it happening.

Shame is taking the additional step of thinking you are therefore a bad person. Bad or wrong at your core. It is when we take “I did a bad thing” and then tack on “so I’m a bad person”. Not only is that confusing of logical levels - confusing behavior, or what we do with identity, or who we are - but the heavy, oppressive feelings that can even lead to debilitating feelings where one may not even want to get out of bed - actually slows our progress. We have to move through the shame before we can step into the light and take the actions necessary to right that wrong. It’s an unnecessary step that provides no value.

And, sadly, there are times when people use this sort of self-flagellation for attention and comfort or even love  - and to avoid the shaming that may come from the other who they feel they have wronged. 


And as long as we are on the topic of shaming - let me drop this idea on you that may have a hard landing:  

 

Shame requires your consent

Think about this for a minute.

For someone to shame you effectively - which is them attempting to impose their value system onto you by emotional brute force - meaning for it to actually work, there has to be some part of you that buys into whatever they are judging you for. If you were 100% aligned with your own behavior - if you had 100% self-acceptance of all aspects of your being - it would fall flat. You may even laugh at their attempts to shame you, or at the very least shrug it off.

And it is at this moment that you realize that self-acceptance is the antidote to shame.

Self-acceptance does not mean you are okay with being a horrible person and running rampant over other people. What “self-acceptance” means is two things:

1. Being willing to gaze unflinchingly and without judgment at every aspect of yourself - both positive and negative aspects. To look in the mirror. Or if someone pointed out something you classify a character defect - something you perhaps are currently working with on your own development path that you would simply accept the truth of what they are pointing out. To refuse to be in denial about aspects of yourself.

and

2.“The refusal to be in an adversarial relationship with yourself”, as Dr. Nathaniel Branden put it.

There is tremendous freedom in admitting aspects of yourself and your desires to others as well - tremendous freedom.

It is also where the work begins. Once you acknowledge aspects of yourself that are out of alignment without your own espoused values or principles, then work must begin to bring that part of yourself into alignment or dissolve it altogether. And once you have reclaimed disowned parts of yourself and reintegrated them into the whole, and you lack internal conflict and a fractured self, then you not only can begin to move with greater velocity toward your hopes, desires, dreams, goals, and have the life you secretly long for, but your lack of internal dissent will lead to a glow about you - a true presence and you can be truly present with people.

And this is where we talk about how being shame-free leads to being able to have true presence - which people are naturally drawn to - vs simple charisma, which can be faked.

Some people have questioned “without shame, what would inhibit our behaviors which may harm others? What about having a conscience?” 

Well, that’s what guilt is for.

To be living in shame or using shame as a way to beat up on yourself or on others is to not only miss the point of taking action to right wrongs, but it is to deny the one thing we can all agree on:  universal innocence, and our inherent Divinity. Our oneness with Spirit. Our very connection to the beauty of all that is. Moment to moment.

The Kingdom of heaven is within. Stop obscuring it with the heavy clouds of shame.

--

This is an excerpt from Jason's forthcoming book on Evolutionary Relationships from the #RelationshipContinuum section.

To be Guided by Jason - whether you are currently in a relationship and want to transform it, or you are single and want to “do the next one right” - check out the Evolutionary Relationships offering.

Or just schedule a complimentary initial conversation here to get the process started.



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The Necessary Spiritual Awakening of the Evolutionary Gentleman

There (hopefully) comes a point in every human’s life when they have a post-conventional sexual unfolding. When they long for depth and settle for nothing less than a full body-mind-spirit connection with our lovers. This is, of course, even more true for an Evolutionary Gentleman. It is a necessary aspect of how he relates to himself, women, and intimate sexual connection.
 
What do I mean by a “post-conventional sexual unfolding”?
 
As always, a brief summary of developmental stage conceptions is useful here. As we evolve through stages - unfold more of our depths - we experience ourselves and the world in different ways; we react from and interpret through certain perspectives.
 
From pre-personal to personal to trans-personal. From egocentric to ethno/natio-centric to world-centric. From rigid to flexible to fluid. From being emotionally stuck to having emotional choice to being emotionally free. From vengeance to justice to grace. Stages of increased wholeness, stages of increasing inclusivity, stages of increased facility and personal freedom.
 
How we relate to sex and intimacy is no different.
 
From subject-object sex to transactional sex to deeply spiritual and intimate union. It’s important to note that we all start where we all start and we can not skip over stages. To do so would be the worst kind of bypass. We must explore the stage fully, satisfy our hunger there, navigate it for long enough until we realize its inherent limitations and lack of depth before we embrace the deeper level - transcending yet including the benefits of the stage while shedding the drawbacks.
 
In hetero-normative romantic relationships, it moves from us vs them (men’s “team” and women’s “team”) to man-woman partnership to masculine-feminine divine union.
 
My own awakening came 25 years ago. There was a time in my life where I was very fortunate to have been able to have a long period of extended discerning promiscuity. I had a new lover about every 10 days for about a year - and none of them were one-night stands. They usually lasted at least a weekend or a few weeks. I was doing it openly and ethically even then - I would let the woman know before we had any intimate contact what I was available for and what I was not so I was being responsible with them and making sure no one felt led on or misled. I can tell you that on more than one occasion that conversation - which I considered an emotional consent conversation - was too intense for some and many wondered why we were even talking about it, but none chose to opt-out as a result.
 
Truth, openness, transparency, and giving others choice has always been something that I value, and I will never regret that. BUT … my point is, I had a high volume of lovers through my bed during this period.
 
It took me less than a year to realize the spiritual bankruptcy of this. Feel its emptiness. Its lack of meaning and connection. Its lack of depth and intimacy.
 
And I still remember the exact moment.
 
It was 3 or 4 am, and I was sitting on my bathroom floor with these two lovely brunettes, and for the last few hours I had done everything a man could want to do with two women - and I looked at them both with their heads in my lap - and at that moment ... I was bored.
I felt the ache of the lack of love - even if I deeply appreciated them and was fond of them.
 
That’s when I knew this phase had run its course and I was done with that kind of sexual shenanigans.
 
I encourage every man (and woman for that matter) to have these experiences until they are full - until they are satiated and feel into the emptiness. It is not something you can skip over and still have healthy personal spiritual evolution.
 
For men, this can show up as denying their desires and the pseudo-spirituality that shows up as being cut off from the diaphragm down. Or - say - having an aversion to the words c*ck and/or p*ssy (maybe they don’t call them “dirty” but they still judge them as “bad because they are [supposedly] not spiritual”. PSSST: it is “transcend and include” not transcend and deny or suppress or transcend by bypassing. Transcend and include. You don’t stop having fun, uninhibited sex, you just have more range with the kind of sex you have and you are more discerning with who you have it with.
 
For men, this can even have a positive effect on premature ejaculation and/or erectile dysfunction. At least some of which is psychological, and for the former, the “oh my gosh, I am actually having sex!” excitement can lead to the unpredictable timing of his issue spewing forth.
 
But, having moved through these stages, and with the full integration of your body - mechanical, physical, technique, touch - and your mind - connection, values, cognitive compatibility, communication - to spiritual - bring all the previous forward but adding depth, presence, openness, and unfettered intimacy - he may find that he is not even fully erect the first, second, or even third time they make love. But his turnon and excitement for his love and his lover grow more intensely over time, increase with their connection and emotional intimacy and grow as they engage as spiritual beings on every plane.
 
In my experience, it is important to recognize each step, stage, wave, and ring of depth as important - and to experience each of them fully - not denying or suppressing them or aspects of them (that just leads to a splintered, disowned self and creates shadow along the way) to accept and embrace each one fully, appreciating the process, and loving the very self even while you are in an infinite unfolding.
 
This is the path of any Evolutionary.
 
And in this context, it is - most certainly - part of the path of the Evolutionary Gentleman.

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The Problem With [Most] Male Polarity Coaches [Part 3]

Part 2 of The Problem With Most Male Polarity Coaches is back »HERE«.

Part 3 is below.

Yet another one of the things I have noticed is the male echo chamber in these groups and with polarity coaches: rather than teaching men how to be more effective with women which would require discovering what kind of experience they want to have and then providing that - from a place of an authentic desire and deep appreciation of the feminine - they teach men things - from strategies to mindsets - that simply have them garner approval from other men.
 
And often, there is a thinly veiled resentment or outright misogynistic flavor to it.
 
I understand some of it: they are wounded in a way. And perhaps still not over the last woman or series of women. Or maybe they have yet to evolve beyond the subject-object level of sex and relating. Still others are afraid to lose their center around an extraordinary woman and feel if they open to her and provide the experience she desires he’ll lose himself or become emasculated in some way.
 
I have to wonder if this kind of man ever had his masculine core well-established to begin with.
If you are clear who you are and what your boundaries are, and you honor them, resentment never occurs - the structure of resentment is crossing your own boundaries repetitively - extending yourself beyond your range - or allowing someone to cross them continually without saying anything or expressing those boundaries and then blaming the other person for it.
 
It’s a kind of co-dependent behavior mixed with a victim/blame orientation.
 
There’s no power there.
 
It tells me that these men are still acting from their wounds - around mother or lovers or ex-wives - and/or have distortions around relating in general and perhaps fear true intimacy. There is a certain surrender in true and full intimacy - a letting go - that requires a solid - and simultaneously fluid - core. So one can fully let go into full abandon and love - and still find your way back.
 
So there is a way in which all those fears are bundled together and serve as a kind of false masculinity.
 
Everyone is on their own path and at their own stage of development in every context, and this is no different. But there is a place one can arrive at beyond the fear, free from convention, a place where intimacy is no longer avoided or fear, but is simply a place of authenticity where two souls meet - and if you visit that place often enough you will find that full authenticity and full intimacy in every way - mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual is the place of fulfillment.
 
But first, you have to know who you are, and have full acceptance around who you are, your desires, be fully comfortable being alone … and have a deep appreciation for the other - for the feminine - but also be so solid in yourself that you don’t fear full, wild, abandon.
 
You no longer fear … love.

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The Problem With Most [Male] Polarity Coaches [Part 2]

Part 1 of The Problem With Most Male Polarity Coaches is back »here«.

Part 2 is below.

 

Recently I have peeked into male-oriented polarity groups and I’ve been researching how a lot of men are coaching men around relating to women in all-male containers. 

I am going to make some sweeping generalizations here, and I know not all men’s groups and coaches will fall into this category, but the overwhelming majority I have seen falls into what I will talk about. And I will explain why I think they are making some grave mistakes.

First, they are addressing a real problem. The problem that has women lamenting “where have all the real men gone?” for at least the last decade. The problem of the lack of polarity. The problem of milquetoast intimate relating between men and women. There are many things in our cultural evolution that have led to this problem - one I have been examining and hearing about for over a decade now with some intentionality - but I’ll get into the “why” we find ourselves here at another time. For now, suffice it to say they are addressing a real problem. That, and men who feel isolated or guilty simply for being men. So there are men attempting to regain their masculine core.

Fair enough.

But what I have noticed - by far - are men giving men coaching that has them be liked by other men. Not be more effective with feminine yet empowered women. It’s as if they are more comfortable high-fiving in the locker room than they are gazing into a women’s eyes while you make slow, deep, connected love to them.

The themes I see are these:

  • Women are basically children and behave like children and you have to treat them that way
  • Women “can’t be trusted” because they have feelings that are transient that make agreements or understandings fluid and - the one that finally had me say “enough” and write this:
  • At her worst, she is broken and at her best, she is fractured. No matter how many accolades, successes, or children - a man is what makes her feel complete.

Frankly, it borders on misogyny.

==

My basic reaction to this is: “Wow. How do you say you date young women with low self-esteem to make yourself feel superior without saying you date young women with low self-esteem to make yourself feel superior?”

==

Jesus man.

There is a lot to unpack there, but to men who buy into this sh*t: don’t listen to men who have clearly only dated low-quality, still in trauma, or immature women who have low self-esteem.

These opinions not only reveal more about those men who think these things but also, reveal a lot about the kind of woman he has dated and continues to attract than it does about women in general.

These aren't insights. They just reveal low consciousness. Average mindsets. Mediocre relating and below-average relationships.

But if you say any crap congruently enough, plenty of people will buy it. Especially if they are lost and looking for direction. And in the echo chamber of man-on-man polarity coaching, there is a lot of crap. But are they effective with women? Are they having fulfilling relationships - regardless of how long? Or are they just plowing through one-night stands and getting high-fives from their “bros”.

Humans rise to the expectations we hold for them, communicate to them, and if we are developed enough and aligned enough within ourselves, we become a truing element - we don’t even need to declare a boundary usually because it is woven into the fabric of our being. It is an outgrowth of self-respect.

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