Healing Relationships in the Communion Paradigm

Healing Relationships in the Communion Paradigm

by Bill Ryan

Deep Listening-the Path of Awakening, the Path of Relational Healing
To be on the path of awakening, to be on the path of spirit, is to listen deeply. We listen deeply, not superficially, as we learn to turn our attention from the voices of the culture and the voices of the ego-mind that have penetrated and too often polluted our consciousness. And we listen to the heartbeat of the Universe in our own heart. This deep listening happens as we cultivate an interior silence in our formal meditation practice. We lay our cheek on the breast of the Divine Beloved and there we find our home. There we hear the heartbeat of the One Life in our own life. This is the Higher Power that we can trust beyond any human power. This is home.

Listening to the Song of Our Companions
The deep listening doesn't stop there. It extends into the every moment. We turn our deep listening to Higher Power, to the Divine Beloved in our human beloveds, listening for that same heartbeat in them, in the every-moment of every day. The daily practice of interior quiet and deep listening we have cultivated now is brought into the relational life and interaction with our love companions, our families, our children, our friends, our community and our world. And even more so, the challenge of deep listening is to listen in the interior silence and spaciousness of the Heart, beneath the busy and reactive mind, beneath the wounded psyche and emotional residue that circulates in our consciousness. A Deeper Voice calls to us, saying, "Be still, my love, and listen to the song I sing to you, in your lover, in your children, in your friend. For I am the Life that lives in all, and in Me you can rest your soul."

The Inner Quiet Communion of Listening
To listen this deeply means from the time of early morning when we sit in quiet, we bring our attention and our will, our presence and our offering of self, home to the Heart, the inner sanctuary of the Beloved. We return again and again, anchoring in our breathing, in our meditation word to the interior quiet of the Heart, like a homing pigeon. This becomes our singular orientation in the every moment, the every day. This is the medicine of healing for the soul that has been too much with the toxins of the world, this is how we move from living in the Domination Paradigm to living in the Communion Paradigm. In the Communion Paradigm our connection to our deepest Self, our connection to each other, to our human and non-human beloveds is the singular reality. We can live this reality.

How do we do this? We do it, as Julian says, by seeking rest where there is rest. We will find no rest in our ego-mind. We will find only the division, within and without that comes from seeking refuge and rest in our ideas and ideals, in our agenda for the others in our life, and for the world. That is the world of the Domination Paradigm, the world of competition and conflict. We spend so much time and energy seeking control where there is none, rather than seeking Home where we are truly home, where we can rest our soul.

The Communion Encounter
In the every-moment life happens. We encounter each other. We often encounter each other in the reactive ego-mind and its wounds from the past, and its agenda for the future. And the repetition of the past, the conflict of competing agendas, the wounding of misunderstanding and conflict happens. Or we can encounter each other in the present, resting where there is rest, on the breast of the Beloved, sinking into our inner being as listen, attend, and commune with the heart to the deeper presence of our human beloved. Sometimes harsh words, insistent agendas, the surfacing of unconscious fears and desires will pull us off. When the disturbance arises, recognize it. Bow deeply again in recognition of who you truly are, who the person in front of you is, and make an offering of your deepest Self. Return to the inner quiet and spaciousness of just being there, just being present, listening deeply, and dropping the agenda, the insistence, the emotional reactivity of the ego-mind. It may be that giving yourself a pause to breathe deeply, to anchor in your meditation word and breath, will help you return to deep listening, rest where there is Rest. We can ask for that permission and return when we are ready to listen deeply and abide in the Heart when we encounter our beloved.

Ceaseless Bowing and Ceaseless Offering
This interior movement may be summed up in two simple sacred gestures, bowing with the namaste gesture of hands folded, and offering with the hands open and extended. We bow in the recognition of coming home to deep listening to the Beloved before us in our human beloved, in pure presence. In our open hands extended, we offer the best of ourselves to the one we encounter. We release from our identification as "me" in the thoughts, emotions, and agendas for control that are coursing through our consciousness, and in our open hands we receive the self-offering of the one before us. In this way relational life is simple, not easy, but simple. It is deep listening; it is deep reverence; it is deep love and communion. And our soul finds its rest and healing.