participation. I began to stand in that gap and to look outside at the stimuli. I
reveled in the inward sense of freedom to choose my response -- even to become
the stimulus, or at least to influence it -- even to reverse it.
Shortly thereafter, and partly as a result of this “revolutionary” idea, Sandra
and I began a practice of deep communication. I would pick her up a little before
noon on an old red Honda 90 trail cycle, and we would take our two preschool
children with us -- one between us and the other on my left knee -- as we rode
out in the canefields by my office. We rode slowly along for about an hour, just
talking.
The children looked forward to the ride and hardly ever made any noise. We
seldom saw another vehicle, and the cycle was so quiet we could easily hear
each other. We usually ended up on an isolated beach where we parked the
Honda and walked about 200 yards to a secluded spot where we ate a picnic
lunch.
The sandy beach and a freshwater river coming off the island totally
absorbed the interest of the children, so Sandra and I were able to continue our
talks uninterrupted. Perhaps it doesn't take too much imagination to envision the
level of understanding and trust we were able to reach by spending at least two
hours a day, every day, for a full year in deep communication.
At the very first of the year, we talked about all kinds of interesting topics --
people, ideas, events, the children, my writing, our family at home, future plans,
and so forth. But little by little, our communication deepened and we began to
talk more and more about our internal worlds -- about our upbringing, our
scripting, our feelings, and self-doubts. As we were deeply immersed in these
communications, we also observed them and observed ourselves in them. We
began to use that space between stimulus and response in some new and
interesting ways which caused us to think about how we were programmed and
how those programs shaped how we saw the world.
We began an exciting adventure into our interior worlds and found it to be
more exciting, more fascinating, more absorbing, more compelling, more filled
with discovery and insight than anything we'd even known in the outside world.
It wasn't all “sweetness and light.” We occasionally hit some raw nerves and
had some painful experiences, embarrassing experiences, self-revealing
experiences -- experiences that made us extremely open and vulnerable to each
other. And yet we found we had been wanting to go into those things for years.
When we did go into the deeper, more tender issues and then came out of them,
we felt in some way healed.
We were so initially supportive and helpful, so encouraging and empathic to
each other, that we nurtured and facilitated these internal discoveries in each
joyce
(Joyce)
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