Re-Orientation

If we operate on a superficial level and try to please others, we will never know who we are. Whenever we are in conflict, we need to be careful not to over-react or take on the perceptions of others at the cost of our own well-being or knowing. Re-Orientation refers to the shift that occurs when we have assimilated a new part of our awareness. Re-Orientations can be stimulated by Transmutation, where balancing our Sensations and Feelings produces new insights; Transformation, where balancing our Emotions and Thoughts produces more inclusive Truth or Wisdom; and Transfiguration, where integrating our Feelings and Emotions increases our ability to be passionate.

In our Owning Our Experience class, we begin to realize how much we close ourselves off to our experience to prevent ourselves from being overwhelmed or hurt. This greatly reduces our ability to respond when we want to. What we advocate is to honor our Sensations, Feelings, Emotions and Thoughts, recognizing that every part of our experience is just as important as other parts. In the United States, we seem to have a bias where we tend to honor our Sensations and Thoughts because they seem more ‘objective’ than our Feelings and Emotions, which appear more ‘subjective.’ We made this all up, not realizing how it limits our ability to see and experience the full range of relationship opportunities. How many times do we want to deal with the problems of others without healing this aspect of ourselves? Of course, if we want more pain, this is the way to go.

Re-Orientation also occurs in great relationships because we are always being stimulated to see greater possibilities. The purpose of relationships is to create opportunities for synergy and alignment. Re-Orientation could be as simple as deciding to learn something new because we are tired of the problems we have been dealing with. When we create a Common Neutral Ground, with a separate relationship space, it allows us to have our own relationship to our self, while simultaneously relating to our partner. This type of Re-Orientation can only occur when we become more conscious and introspective. Otherwise, we do not feel a sense of progress and deepening into a relationship with our self or others.

Just knowing something is possible allows us to contextually frame this possibility in terms of ourselves. By developing a relationship to the new possibility, we re-orient ourselves to it. We call this contextual shift, Transfiguration, where we go beyond the way we previously thought of ourselves. This occurs because we have previously limited our perceptions of possibilities, which contracted us. Recovering this spaciousness means including it in our perceptions. For some individuals this may seem like a lot of overhead if we are not sure we can implement it, but we can assure you that creating the possibility of it and engaging it is what makes it real for us. Otherwise, our self-perceived limitations define how far we are willing to go and we never address the larger possibilities around us.

We re-orient ourselves by taking in new possibilities and seeing how they would work in our lives. This form of open experimentation is necessary to keep us alert and in tune with potential shifts in thinking and ways of being that would expand us rather than contract us. By re-orienting ourselves to contextual thinking, we can always ask the question “What If…?” rather than “Why do we have to change this?” Another way we keep ourselves open to new possibilities is by diversifying and including unusual people in our lives. Sometimes their differences open us up to things we never thought about before. Other individuals who have adopted unusual practices can be examples for the very things that we want to adopt in our own lives. This is why we encourage community participation and exploration.

Sometimes the reason for our contextual limitations is because we do not want to make the effort to change our way of thought. When Beliefs become substitutes for thinking, we become more crystallized and fixed in our ways. We call this process Subjectification, where we fight our own identity. Nowhere is this seen as starkly as in relationship patterns. The more we get used to the idea there is only one right way to deal with some issue, the more likely everything we engage will become about that issue. Becoming locked in pre-conditioned Content Thinking reduces our ingenuity, flexibility and resourcefulness in dealing with new situations that arise. Circular thinking becomes more prominent when we have limited other various options. We become trapped in a previously determined way of operating, where we keep digging ourselves deeper in the hole we find ourselves.

One of the primary benefits of reading this website is being exposed to new ideas and new ways of implementing ideas. Transformation is the re-orientation process that brings together Thoughts and Emotions into self-empowering perspectives that allow us to see our wholeness. For example, one of the most profound things we can do is to find individuals who naturally see us and love us for who we are. These are individuals like ourselves, who we unconsciously avoid because they would see through our Defenses. They recognize our fears because these are also their fears. While we do not typically appreciate these individuals as romantic partners, they could become the best partners for us if we were willing to confront our fears of being loved. Currently, in our society, the common beliefs is that opposites attract which interferes with our potential expansion of possibilities. Challenging these fixed beliefs is a re-orientation where we come to understand that we need to         unlearn certain things in order to grow in new ways.

Being able to choose the most appropriate path of action can only occur when we have the right Context and Content. We call this step “Embodying Our Intent”, where our body wisdom lets us know when and where we should move. While everyone possesses this innate capability, few of us tune into it or use it in any substantial way. Instead, our common socialization process tries to break us from our instinctive knowing to make rational choices. How about tuning into our physical bodies so we can both instinctively and intuitively get into the rhythm of life and respond to opportunities in the right time and place. We call this body integration where we bring the full intelligence of our Sensations and Feelings into play the process of Transmutation. Transmutation supports the integration of our body awareness with our mental and heart systems so everything can work together. We encourage our readers to listen to their heartbeats and find their inner rhythm so their movements are aligned with their mind and heart.

Perceptual shifts occur in our body awareness where we integrate our Sensations and Feelings, or in our minds where we harmonize our Thoughts and Emotions to construct a balanced and complete knowing of ourselves and finally, into our hearts where we integrate our body and mind by tuning into our Feelings and Emotions. When we engage this process, we heal ourselves. When we are disconnected on these levels, it creates more Objectification (lack of body awareness), Subjectification (lack of unity in our self-identification), or Idealization (lack of personality integration, or self-trust). Re-Orientation is the process of taking these problems and bringing them into being a way to resolve these issues through Transmutation (Sensations and Feelings), Transformation (Emotions and Thoughts) and Transfiguration (Feelings and Emotions). 

The purpose of this website is to encourage you to question your current circumstances so that you are willing to commit yourself to a higher possibility. The website itself is one big Re-Orientation process. We are actually creating larger possibilities about how, hopefully, to break through the conditioning and defensiveness of our parental frameworks. Few of us actually recognize how many of our parental lessons we have absorbed and taken on as our own. Until we start to assess what are truly our lessons and act to fulfill them, we will not have the motivation or momentum to break through parental assumptions. About a third of this website will stimulate you to question where you are vs. where you have been. Another third of the website is foundational material that tells you what is possible. The final third is a connective framework that relates one piece of the site to other pieces. On a larger level, Re-Orientation is about accepting the reality that you can have Co-Creative partnerships and an Authentic Life Expression that would be more fulfilling.