Letters to the Sky
Letters to the Sky
Healing Relationships Through Intention - Postcard #2
In this week's episode of the Letters to the Sky podcast, Stephan opens up about a profound realization regarding his relationship with his wife, which sparked a deep discussion with Adam. They explore how relationships serve as mirrors that reflect our subconscious triggers and the power of sitting with strong emotions for healing.
Through personal anecdotes, Stephan shares the transformative impact of awareness and communication in overcoming emotional challenges, highlighting the significance of intention in navigating relational dynamics.
00:00 Introduction to This Week's Podcast
00:25 Stephan's Realization and Its Impact
02:15 Understanding the Mirror Concept in Relationships
05:51 Practical Example: Teasing Incident
08:25 Healing Through Awareness and Communication
19:48 The Power of Intention in Relationships
24:06 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Copyright 2024 by Letters to the Sky
Welcome to this week's podcast. Uh, I should say this week's postcard at the letters to the sky podcast. Uh, Steven had a realization recently regarding his relationship, his marriage. I thought, or we thought that would be a great topic to, to dive into. I'm sure many of you listeners in relationships and those of you who aren't, this applies to all forms of relationships. I'm sure it does, but I actually don't know what Stephen's realization is. So let's dive into that.
Stephan:Thank you, Adam, for that lovely introduction. It's great to see you again.
Adam:That sounds forced. You, you,
Stephan:Uh, this has been a lot of fun to work on these together with you and see you more often face to face, video to video, I suppose. So I'm really, I'm looking forward to this. Uh, but yeah, you know, I have been a long time ago now, I, it's all started with a moment where I realized in my spiritual path that when I'm unaware, when I'm unaware of things, I can hurt people. And I remember I was sitting in front of my teacher and I was just so by the fact that how many people I've hurt from just being unconscious and unaware and how it's Anyway, that's, that's the realization. And I, I was expressing that to, to my teacher and she said, you know, well, here's a wonderful gift for you and I, something, you know, what does, what does that mean? But anyway, since then, since then, the gift has been, it was very real and very palpable and has been with me ever since. And that is that whenever I feel a strong emotion or go towards a criticism or anything like that, almost always. Like, especially, especially in someone I'm in relationship with, not necessarily my wife, a friend, anything like that. Um, I almost always, I will immediately go to what is the mirror? What is the, so I will like, I will like, there's like a check in my subconscious that checks in and says, what is the mirror? And what I mean by that. Um, for those unfamiliar with the concept is that
Adam:Say
Stephan:relation, every relationship with everything, let alone your wife or your friend or someone you meet on the street, every relationship is a mirror and typically when, for example, like in an intimate relationship or a partner relationship, when you are triggered by something they're doing, it's likely that they get triggered the exact same way. It's the exact same feeling by something you do. I mean, it's not likely it's guaranteed. Uh, but so, so it's this awareness that when I'm triggered, what is the mirror? Like what? What is happening? What is emerging in the consciousness of the relationship that is there to be brought? into awareness and healed. I suppose is how I would say it.
Adam:Mm
Stephan:So I've had that, that was a gift. I, I, you know, it's literally, I'm going to call it a gift that I was given this awareness. Um, and so that has been present in my life for a long time now. And I'm incredibly grateful for it, that it's kind of my go to default mode. Um, and so, you know, I've been with my wife for 11 years now. Um, I'm actually 12. Years. 13 years.
Adam:You're just going to keep adding years to
Stephan:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 13 years. 13 years.
Adam:saying, and I know you have a lot more to say, just to
Stephan:I don't. I'm done.
Adam:you're saying whatever comes up in your relationship with your wife or whomever, especially if it's challenging, and it creates suffering or pain of some sort is a mirror something happening inside of you. Is that roughly what's
Stephan:Happening side of me, but happening side of the relationship. So, not just me. Because let's say that I do something that really I'll talk about it in a moment and you'll see but the basic theory is that relationship is a tool and by relation now and a partner relationship, a marriage, um, a partnership is a supercharged tool because you're so close to one another that you get to know each other so well. That you see everything, and it's a supercharged tool of a mirror. But this is this is true in any type of relationship we have with anything. Um, you know, if you are, if I'm mad at, uh, you know, stub my toe on a table and it's like you stupid, like, God damn it, you stupid table. Like, why are you there? Like, I'm talking to a table. Like, I'm angry at a table. I'm not really angry at a table. I'm angry at myself for smacking my toe into it and my lack of awareness. But but that's the, that's That's like the extreme version where I'm angry at an inanimate object who's literally has my relationship is it's a table and I use it, um, but that's the that's the far end of the spectrum. But so anyway, so I think I'll get into the example and it'll be more clear. Um, so this is, you know, if you're for anybody who's in a relationship, this will be probably very illustrative and recognizable. So, um, We were leaving a message for somebody and like a joint voice message voice memo, and I started teasing my wife to try and make her laugh because I know the person who we were talking to has a great sense of humor, and I wanted to just get laughter on. On the voice memo. So, um, I started teasing my wife what I thought was very lightly, but it really, really brought something up like one of those moments when there's a huge reaction and neither person really knows why and we, um, What we did is we just sat with it, which I really recommend. Um, another one of my, my pro life tips for relationship is a lot of times when there's a really strong disagreement, unless one of you has royally fucked up. A lot of times the disagreement starts, like is, is in how the. Argument how the disagreement started. So what I mean by this is in this, in this instance, although I've been on the receiving, I'm doing the opposite. I had a, my wife had a very strong emotional reaction, feeling very hurt. And instead of doing something like, why did you hurt me? You know, like, why'd you hurt me or anything like that? We both just sat with what is happening right now. Like, Whoa. What's going on?
Adam:yeah, tell me, what does it mean to sit with something?
Stephan:Yeah. So that that just means giving it space to breathe. So in the moment she was very triggered. She felt very hurt. I instead of walking away instead of shutting down instead of like outright like I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You know what you can either move towards it or away from it or just sit with it and sitting and giving it sitting with it is just giving it space to breathe. And so I just sat with her. Yeah. As she felt this emotion, she sat with herself as she felt this emotion, and then we explored it together. And, um, if you can do that, it is amazing what the healing that comes out of it, which we were talking about last week with Diego, uh, fear is the school bell. And when you have those moments, that's the school bell is saying something is here right in front of you to work with your choices to be present with it or not, you cannot be present with it. You can run away from it. You can react to it. The opposite. You can say, like, you know, smash it down. Um, or you can sit with it and let it breathe and let it come and see what it is. Anyway, so that's what we did. Um, and it was really interesting. So, um, You know, she realized that this particular thing that I did had happened a lot of times in the way of teasing had happened a lot of times in her past from people who she thought were her friends that then teased her like this and then betrayed her. Very specific. And she had a whole bunch of memories come up of people in her life who've done this, like six or seven that she pinpointed exactly when it happened, that she'd forgotten about. And it was one of those moments where just like pops. And so we started exploring it. And then she, we started really seeing that this is about her fundamental sense of safety, that like a rug had been pulled from out from under her in these moments. And how that, that lack of a sense of safety has gone through all the major decisions she's made in her life up until now, including in her job, in her, in the relationship that we have in our, you know, our patterns together, because I'm the, you know, I'm a flip side of that, right? So you know me, like I'm, I'm typically feel pretty happy being groundless. Um, like I, I, and, um, You know, Momentum Mori is the, like, my favorite meditation. You remember death? Remember that you take none of it with you. That you don't have it in the first place, you know? And so it's, we're like very opposite in that way. And so it was a really, it was one of those moments where we both just let it breathe and looked at it and This great healing emerged where, where she saw this huge string through her life and all, and so many of the decisions she'd made that came back to those moments of, of being betrayed and not feeling safe. And that's, I, I guess that's the gist of the story. Um, but it was really, it was just, once those moments just happened, I feel like if you, if you just sit with those moments. Instead of trying to fix them, instead of trying to run away from them or conf confronting them, um, you know, push, suppressing them, because I would say, I don't know, you could say that's running away, but,
Adam:Well, did she, how was she able to heal that and, and more importantly, how did you show up to allow her to heal that? What, what did you do or say? Mm-Hmm.
Stephan:you know, I think on my end, I, you know, the kind of that mirror awareness really helped me because I'm able to sit there and understand that the feelings aren't the feeling, the strong feelings that I'm feeling and the strong feelings that her feelings actually about what just happened. They're about something else and they're just a vehicle for awareness. And so I just, I mean, for me personally, I can't speak to her necessarily, but for me, I can just sit with it and it's very intense. It feels like you're kind of like on edge for me. Like it feels like I'm on edge. Like. Uh, where's this happening? Where's this going to go? Um, but just sitting with it and just, you know, this often happens to me as well. Whenever I get really angry, uh, and we have a disagreement, I often. It looks like I'm shutting down. And by that means is I just don't talk. And, um, I think that's a, that's a big pattern in a lot of men is to just shut down. But what I'm doing is I know that if I express myself before I've really clarified how I feel. And really come back to my heart, which in the moment I'm either in my head or in my strong emotions, I'm definitely not in my heart. Um, if I start, again, what I was talking about earlier, if I start the discussion from there, it's going to be a bad discussion. It's not going to go, because we're going to now start talking about what I said, which isn't really what I feel. It's just emotional vomit. Intellectual vomit. And so I just, I just wait, I just wait. And sometimes I'll even say, so a great thing to do. If you want to try this out, um, if you're listening and you want to try this out is it's okay to be silent and to reflect, but you really need to. Tell your partner what you're doing or else my wife for a long time. It's like you just shutting down. I just, it's so one, it's so hard for me to talk in those moments and everything. I'm so consumed by it that I just said, Hey, like I'm just processing so that I can really get to the heart of the matter for me. Come back to my heart. It'll probably be 45 minutes. I'll come back
Adam:Yeah.
Stephan:and that way she knows that like, hey, he's not actually shutting down. He just needs some time to process. It's okay. And I think this is a really good. That's a really important. Piece of communication is to like communicate what's going on inside of you. Um, especially if you're not a verbal processor, I think, you know, like my wife, for example, she processes verbally. So she talks at me and she's processing. And, um, it's not always important that I know exactly what she's talking about, but, um, but I'm a very internal processor. And so it's really important for me to express. Hey, I'm processing right now. I'll come back. Um, so in those moments, I just sit with it and I just wait because I guess I have enough experience doing this that I know that it will change my relationship to the emotion will change. So in the moment she was going, she was going through her own version of that. And to just wait and see what happens. And I don't really know what's going to happen. I don't know if this is a moment when some have some big breakthrough like we did, or if it's a moment where we just need to come to a new understanding of what the expectations are like, okay, when you are on the phone with somebody. I won't do that. And I, I, regardless of the outcome, I said, like, I, it's clear. I just won't do, I don't need to do that again. Like
Adam:Yeah.
Stephan:find something else. Like it's not that important. Um, but, uh, so there's a lot of layers to that, but in the moment, just being with her going through what she's going through and just being a sounding board. And if she needs to be alone, let her be alone. If she wants to work through it, work through it with her. Um, to just kind of be there present for what's needed. Does that answer your question, Adam?
Adam:Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's two things I want to clarify. One, um, is oftentimes just being aware of something like Madison's case. I'm sorry, in your wife's case, just to be aware of the fact, becoming aware of the fact that been triggered before by people teasing her, but then betraying her, just the awareness, it's almost like the light of awareness is healing in itself. you have a, a buried subconscious pattern. to conscious awareness that there's the healing in my experience. It's been that 90 percent of the healing has been getting it to be to go from subconscious to conscious. And then at that point, when you see the dynamic, you see the underlying belief system, the false beliefs, whatever. It's almost like it dissolves. It evaporates most of the time. And the second point that I wanted to make. Was importance of communication. So a lot of people retaliate by becoming silent. Or, or it's a form of attack.
Stephan:Yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah,
Adam:you know, by your wife that when you become silent, you're giving her the silent treatment. I mean, people use that term to denote some form of attack, like emotional, psychological attack. Like, okay, I'm going to deprive you of my presence because you've hurt me. But the importance of communication is to tell the other person, no, this is just, especially for men. This is, I'm processing right now. I'm not, I'm not attacking you. I'm not, um, uh, you know, retaliating and processing. And that, I think a lot of, I mean, I can't speak for women, but I know some women in my life where the silent treatment, at least when I was younger, um, the silent treatment is a form of attack. And so you saying that to Madison, I think made all the difference.
Stephan:yeah, absolutely. I, it's true with um, with, with men. I, I think it's really, it's my experience. I can't, I have a harder time, obviously, speaking for women's experience, but yeah, it's true. Um, it's so easy to just shut down and be silent. And I think, um, you know, this is this, uh, feeling of, tell me, tell me if you relate this, this feeling of hurting people. is so painful. Um, and I feel like as, uh, as a guy, sometimes it's really easy to hurt people unintentionally from just a careless moment, um, emotionally, mentally, um, physically even, um, that I think, I think I'm not alone in just. A lot of pain, like emotional pain and why I feel like it's so hard for guys to process stuff. One, maybe you never really dealt with it before, never asked those questions. But two, I think that men, it's not just men, but you know, I just speak, I suppose, in the systems that men care so much about the people that they love and the thought that they're hurting them. Just makes them feel like they've failed as a man. That's definitely true for me. Um, you know, my, my, I want, um, I know a lot of guys have like a strong protector, you know, attitude. And I have, I definitely have some of that, but not even about that. Cause that's, that's, you know, not, not, not everybody needs protecting, but, um, just the, it's just the aspect of. My heart is sometimes feels so deep in there that it's hard to get to and um, and I, when I do get to it, it's so powerful. It's so powerful. Um, you know, it's like, it's like a, it's like a bodybuilder or someone who's really strong, who's also a poet. You know, they've got that, that strength, but also the incredible sensitivity to that it takes to it. Be a poet or a writer or a musician, anything like that. It's like, that's the heart being shown through the strength. And, um, I, that I think it's just so hard. I really need to get deep because I don't want, I don't want to hurt. I don't want to lash out in a moment and cause pain, especially to my wife, who I love, you know, more than anyone.
Adam:yeah, this is where the power well first of all Thank you, because I can hear it in your voice. think the power of intention is worth talking about we intend You know to give people a benefit of the doubt we intend to be helpful. I know that's one of the For me, it makes me feel most satisfied to know that I've been of, of help and of use to someone, especially my wife and, and my family. And if in the, in the context of trying to be helpful, is done, um, or someone feels hurt. It wasn't my intention. And obviously we can't control how other people respond and react. They have their own issues that they're filtering all of life through. Their whole life experience is being filtered through, through their past. and their belief systems. You can't control that, but you can control your intent. And that, that makes a very big difference. Is that the case for you?
Stephan:Yeah, you know, you have actually been really central in me working more with intention because you for as long as we've known each other have really brought up intention and have made and when we're talking, you talk about intention a lot and I have really come to be a like believers, not the right word because it's not belief, but it completely completely transforms. Experience and it completely transforms like, yeah, experience the moment, you know, like in that moment of, of trigger with a partner, with a partner coming back, like, what's the intention for this moment? Like, we're going through a lot. It's incredibly hard right now. What is the intention? And if you can agree on an intention, whether it is to come out of this stronger than before, or to let this moment be, um. Yeah. A path for our mutual awakening, something like, you know, there's something like that if you this is what I'm it's so funny because you come back to I was coming back to if the disagreement starts wrong, it's going to continue to go wrong, but the intention, I think, is how you start it right, which I never I never put that together before that. That's what I was doing
Adam:Yeah.
Stephan:back to mutual awareness of what this is. What's happening is is intention. I just never called it that. That's so funny.
Adam:Yeah. That's interesting. Thanks. Yeah. I think we're all, we're both arriving at the same realization. It's sort of like in many ways. Like you're, you're assigning a purpose to what, happening. You're saying, okay, the purpose of this is for healing. Right. And that's, I think that's actually in, in the Buddhist tradition, right. Bodhichitta or, um, dedicating merit. Dedicating merit at the very beginning of something. You could do the practice. You could meditate and just have it be a meditation, but then starting the meditation and then dedicating the merit to the awakening of all sentient beings. I don't know about you, but just saying that transforms, it shifts the energy.
Stephan:Mm hmm.
Adam:a wedding, uh, ceremonial occasions, or even just. Basic moments of our life. You hold an intention for something. It totally transforms it. I was running with my wife recently at the Orange Theory Fitness OTF. and on the wall was written, remember why you came here.
Stephan:Mm. Oh, I love that.
Adam:I loved it because I could have just gone to gym and go to the treadmill and it would have just been another hour on the treadmill. But then I read that and I was like, why am I here? because I'm dedicating my time to my health. And, and that then translates to being present for, for my family and, and for myself. And that makes all the difference. And the rest of that exercise. Shifted for me.
Stephan:Mm.
Adam:I feel like intention is a really powerful tool.
Stephan:Mm. I mean, so true. I mean, Memento Mori is intention like every all. Yeah, it's that contextualization of the moment. Oh, wow, that's beautiful.
Adam:That's great. Thank you for sharing what, um, you went through with your wife. I think that makes a big difference.
Stephan:Yeah, yeah,
Adam:Well, sir, um, for a postcard, I think that was, pretty fantastic.
Stephan:yeah, me too. I call that a success.
Adam:Success.
Stephan:see you next time, Adam.
Adam:All right. Take it easy, Steven.
Stephan:Bye.
Adam:Bye.