Course Title:  Enlightened Dating

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Enlightened Dating

An Unconscious Dating Encounter

The following example reflects how we can lose ourselves in relationships. For an example of Enlightened Dating, see the article on the web site at www.higheralignment.com. This example of unconscious dating is a way we get entangled in relationships where we can’t tell our truth, choose partners who reflect our opposite gender parents, and seek to fulfill our personal desires at the cost of our transpersonal desires. The Enlightened Dating course helps us learn how to avoid this process by recognizing and transcending different Dating Styles and recognizing the Nine Warning Signs that are illustrated in this example by numbered footnotes. See the end of the document for a description of the Nine Warning Signs of Unconscious Dating.

Once upon a time…

John and Jennifer meet at a party in the home of mutual friends. They are instantly attracted to each other as each partner feels that the other fits their picture of an attractive person.1 Jennifer’s dating approach is to try to make sure that a person has all of the elements she is looking for before getting too involved.8 As John approaches and engages her, she is already going through a mental checklist to determine if he represents the kind of relationship she really wants. John, on the other hand, recognizes that his dating style focuses him on getting identified too quickly with a partner.8 He tries to play it cool and casual, fighting the attraction, but losing the battle. Jennifer notices his attraction to her and the way he is affirming his interest, which reassures her that he really cares. On the other hand, she realizes that if things do not continue to go well, he will disappear in an instant.

Both of them enjoy the titillation and stimulation that come from seeing how interested the other person is in them.2 What they notice is that each time a person pulls back a little bit, they eventually come forward even more.3 What occurs for John is that he feels drawn to prove himself in his masculine side and to be as direct as he can with her.3 While this is not what he usually does, in this situation he senses that she wants this. Jennifer on the other hand, is getting more interested because John seems to meet all of her outward requirements. Since she feels that men that she would date are scarce, she hopes that he is the one while preparing herself for the possibility that he is not, so that she will not be hurt if he turns out to be different than she imagines.8

Before the evening is over, they have already made an agreement to see each other again. They arrive at this decision after much coaxing by John.3 Jennifer gets to see how much he wants to date her.4 By the end of the evening she feels confident that he is going to follow through. His willingness to sacrifice for her reassures her that he cares.3,4  He accomplishes this by being  consistently attentive, focusing exclusively on her, and avoids being intimidated by her power.2,3,8 He passes the first of her tests with flying colors by acting confident in his dancing so that she mistakenly feels she can really relax with him.4 What she is really attracted to is his “persona of taking charge” so that she doesn’t have to be responsible for anything.7 He is mesmerized by her expression of outer beauty7; it brings out his masculine side. He is able to control the situation to a degree that surprises him.

He passes his second test by calling on time.4 He also passes the test of having suggestions and ideas about what will be an appropriate way to deepen their connection. He suggests dinner and dancing, allowing her to dress up and show off.8 When he arrives with the corsage, it is really over the top for her.7 While she assumes that he is taking her to a nice restaurant, she doesn’t realize just how nice it is until they arrive and the valet takes his car. He gets bonus points for having called ahead so that they are seated immediately. While he is concerned about how much money he is spending, he acts as if he is indifferent about it in front of her.5 He also focuses on her emotional well being by inquiring how her day was.3 This allows him to demonstrate how emotionally open and available he is to her.3

She asks about his business, church and his desire to have children. She guides the conversation in such a way that he is not put on the spot, but she senses that he is open to what she wants in a relationship.8 This leads her to discuss their past relationships and what constitutes really being available for a new relationship. Both are fearful that the other person may not be ready.3 The most important thing she finds out is that he hasn’t been with a partner for a year and that his ex-partner is no longer in the country. He explores by asking about her parents and her connection to them. This leads him to conclude that she isn’t that codependent with her parents and has developed her own unique direction in her work. This is a relief since the last woman he dated was overly attached to her mother’s conservative ways.8

This leads to a degree of intimacy where John starts making some sexual comments that throw Jennifer off balance.2 He states that he doesn’t do well with a woman who is sexually demanding.4,8 What he doesn’t say is that he fantasizes about aggressive women, but this creates challenges with his performance.5 While the comment isn’t about her, it raises a red flag since until this point he has been acting like a perfect gentleman. She has previously gotten involved sexually with partners too quickly, and is determined not to make the same mistake again.8 What she doesn’t say is that she fantasizes about an easy going, romantic, mystical connection where her energy is met and honored.5 Unfortunately, what partners seem to want from her is intense, passionate action, which exhausts her.2 They agree to take their time before getting sexually intimate.

When they finish dinner, he asks her to dance. While initially, she feels awkward, his physical assuredness and acceptance of her makes her willing to melt into his arms.7 She is amazed by his ability to lead her in such a sensitive and caring way. As a result, Jennifer feels like a great dancer, and John compliments her on her dancing. Over the course of the evening, the dancing became more intimate and the heat and tension build.2 When he starts perspiring he realizes the tension has reached a peak and he needs to cool down.8 He strategically leads her back to the table where their intimacy moves to an emotional level.6 After some intimate conversation, she is feeling relaxed and is able to share how happy she is to have met him.

The conversation soon shifts to what they would like to do with their lives. Jennifer, who is a practicing nurse, wants to go back to school to become an Aryuvedic doctor and healer.6 John owns a contracting business and sees himself expanding his business into new markets by hiring more managers so that he doesn’t have to be so directly involved in everything.6 His unexpressed concern is whether she will be available to have children, but he feels it is too early to talk with her about this.5 Her unexpressed concern is that he will think she needs economic support to fulfill her dream, so she makes it clear that she has her plan in place and she knows she can do it herself.6 The evening ends with some gentle, but exciting kisses.2

The weekend is approaching, so he arranges to spend time with her on Saturday, going on a picnic, a walk and perhaps even a movie afterwards. She is concerned that this might be too much, but he is overly enthusiastic about not limiting options. He is so obsessed with the potential of the relationship that he wants to take it as far as he can.7 By this time, his resolve to not lose himself in her has weakened to the point where he is fantasizing madly. Fortunately he realizes that he has to appear grounded and realistic for her to feel safe.4 He does not realize how much he is projecting onto her his idea of who she is. On the other hand, the more Jennifer feels him being submerged in his ideas, the more concerned she is that she has to put the brakes on.8 While she likes the notion that he is madly in love with her, she is also scared that he will become so fixated on her that she can’t live up to his expectations.4 Since he had graciously paid for dinner, she feels it is only right that she prepare their picnic basket and puts together some champagne and fruit for Saturday.

On Saturday, she senses a little distancing because he is so much in his fantasy about the relationship. She goes into playing the role of gracious hostess in a seductive way. She decided to start flirting with him to draw him out.2 Her passion does not fully engage him in the process. Instead, he seems to be fixated on holding and caressing her while keeping the conversation light. She is surprised at how disconnected she feels with him, so she starts pouting and acting more difficult. The more challenging she becomes, the more interested he is.7 He becomes stimulated by the chase. She begins to respond by playful wrestling. At the same time, he takes it as a sign that she is more available and willing to do some necking, which isn’t really what she wants.

This leads to their first overt power struggle. She tries to cool him down by splashing some water from the river on his face.8 By doing it in a joking manner she thinks she could divert his attention, but this actually just irritates him. Instead, he asks her if she is just a tease.2 She is shocked at his abrupt change of behavior, but realizes that she must have misled him. She tries to soothe him, which make him reconsider his fear that she is just leading him on.4 This shifts his feeling of connectedness.2

The rest of the afternoon is anti-climatic. Both individuals feel that they want to recreate the connection they had on the first date.7 Both are feeling cheated that the other person isn’t playing along. At the same time, there is considerable sexual chemistry and tension in the relationship that is starting to erode their personal decision not to get immediately sexual.2,9 They make plans to go out dancing the following week. As he takes her home, he starts getting concerned that her demands are too much.3 The final word he gives to her is that he will call her on Wednesday to arrange the next date for Friday evening.

During the week, both have time to reflect on what they liked and didn’t like in the relationship. Both of them end up feeling somewhat indifferent after the last experience with each other.3 When John doesn’t call on Wednesday night, Jennifer decides to take a step back because she isn’t feeling comfortable with the process.9 When John does call on Thursday, he is already in hot water with her. As a result, he is thrown off balance and begs her to forgive him.3,4 After a significant amount of groveling, she gives in and decides to go out with him on Friday night.

When he picks her up on Friday night, things are very different. She is not as open or available. He has to prove himself more to get her to go along with anything he suggests.4 Her own self-interest and preoccupation became the focus of the conversation. He ends up feeling that he has to perform to get her approval and support. The more he has to work for it, the more he unconsciously resents her.4 Jennifer, on the other hand, is beginning to feel back in balance only because John is doing the same things he did the first night.7 Little does she know that he is already starting to feel stressed out and used, which drives him to attempt to get sexual at the cost of the relationship.5,9 As the date evolves, each partner is experiencing more and more how the other person’s expectations need to be fulfilled.4

When he takes her home, he asks to come in and spent some time with her. While he clearly sees that she isn’t interested in sex that night, he senses that she is interested in sex at some point. He believes that there is some value in the relationship if only he can get through this dark tunnel.8 He responds by asking her what she really wants in a relationship to consider it successful. They have a great conversation about what is critical for them in relationship. In the safety of her home and being seen, she feels more comfortable. She tries to determine if she trusts him and ends up testing him to see how open he is to talk about his past sexual experiences, etc. Realizing this is a test, he responds with the “Right Answers”.4,5 In her own mind, she explores what it would be like to make love with him.

When he leaves that night, he feels more confident that the relationship is back on track and that some of the differences that have come up are not going to be a big obstacle. What she notices is that they seem to do things well together which reassures her. He is also entertaining various fantasies about a long-term relationship, particularly how some of the guys at work would really improve their opinion of him with her on his arm.7 He leaves with her promise that she will call him to arrange their next time together. In this way, she doesn’t have to deal with the anxiety of waiting for him to call her, which she knows would put her in a much more irritable mood if he did not.8

She calls him two days later. They decide to hook up the following evening. They have a two-hour conversation on the phone, talking about romantic things, which eventually leads to some sexual innuendo.2 She feels that she is ready to get sexual with him and begins to plan how she will bring that about. She arranges an evening at her home where she will prepare dinner and everything that comes after that. What she wants is a nice, easygoing experience that will last until the morning. Her plan is to begin with a elegant meal, conversation with romantic music in the background, then some time on the couch for cuddling and kissing, This could lead to more dramatic foreplay, and a dessert of strawberries and whipped cream in the bedroom. She has plenty of ideas of how to use these items.8

When he arrives, he brings her chocolates and flowers. He immediately senses that there is a plan in the works. The challenge for him is that it seems to be pre-scripted. He experiences some resistance to playing the game the way it is already established.7 In a paradoxical way, he is both attracted and repulsed with the process, which makes her anxious and upset. This brings up issues that come out and both John and Jennifer have a frank conversation about their intentions in the relationship. She sees that her expectations of him were unfair.4 While he likes playing the game to some degree, he doesn’t like having her establishing when and how things are going to happen.8 He feels manipulated, which causes him to withdraw somewhat. This stimulates her and traumatizes her into believing she has to do whatever she can to fulfill her fantasy.3

The more he speaks directly and tells his truth, the more turned on she gets because she feels more secure with the process. The more turned on she gets, the more he feels he wants to and has to respond. This leads to some passionate groping and clothes hitting the floor. They are each fueled by the need they have for each other, resulting in some great unconscious sex.2,9 In a way, getting sexual takes some of the edge off the relationship. At the same time, it makes John and Jennifer feel that they need each other more.3,7 Now that they are sexual, she sees it as a commitment to a deeper relationship and he sees it as an obligation to make sure she is taken care of. When he leaves that evening, it is before she wants him to, bringing up some issues for her. She questions how committed he is if he won’t even stay the night.4

John is feeling compromised, because he doesn’t really know what kind of relationship he wants.3 As a creative guy, he has always had issues about commitment and he is very careful not to let women know he had these problems in the past.5 Usually, he needs several weeks to see if the relationship is worth it. During this time, he realizes he can’t tell his truth to Jennifer.5 As a result, he knows he has angered her by leaving early. He decides to send her some flowers to try to make up for not being there.8 The real problem is that he doesn’t call her for several days.9 During this time, she decides she doesn’t want a relationship with him.8 After many discussions with her girlfriends she is convinced that there is no way he is ever going to be what she wants. When he finally calls, he is shocked at her tone and again feels that he has to perform and do some tap dance and soft shoe to get out of the problem.3 He agrees with her completely about his insensitivity and lack of follow through.4 He promises her that he will never do it again. She reluctantly agrees to see him again.

The next time he goes to her home, he has a plan to win her back.8 Basically, he decides that he is going to be with her, hear all of her concerns, agree with all of her fears, and just snuggle and cuddle with her.2 When he walks in the door, the plan suddenly changes. He realizes that she doesn’t trust him enough to open up. Instead, he has to approach things in a more logical way, focusing on how each of us can be supported by the other person.3 In adjusting to this shift in direction, he also feels taken aback by her directness in challenging the value of the relationship. Instead of just accepting what they both previously discussed, she is now questioning it. Put on the spot, he collapses to some degree and ends up repeating himself.3 This works for her, as now she sees his weakness and can be compassionate about his situation.4 They end the discussion that evening with her giving an inspiring pep talk about how he can do things better with women if he just follows some simple guidelines.8 

Going home that night, he is as confused as he has ever been in his life.3 He moans about how he can’t figure women out and feels unable to know what to do from here to get things back on track.8 Little does he know that she will do it all. >From this point on, she takes responsibility for making things work the way that she wants them to. She establishes when he needs to show up, when they are going to have sex, and at what parties he has to be present to prove to her girlfriends that he is a responsible partner.4.8 What she has to do is to mend his reputation that she has destroyed with her girlfriends. What he gets from this situation is someone that heightens his sense of excitement and terror and keeps him on his toes.1,3 Their relationship continues in this way. As a result, he is less able to operate from his masculine and she becomes less able to operate from her feminine. 

Over time, competition sets in and everything becomes a power struggle to get their wants met without having to meet their partner’s wants. It is hard for either party to really know how to move forward in the relationship, but it seems impossible to leave. Undecided issues can become overwhelming, because we are both compromised. For example, the possibility of having children can lead to anger and recriminations. The only other factors that can disengage the roller coaster ride of the relationship are job changes, infidelity or the death or illness of a family member. All of these situations threaten the status quo and our ability to demand what we want from our partner. The more time we are together without establishing a more authentic way of connecting, the more the relationship becomes mired in fulfilling the outer form. As a result we lose our aliveness and our ability to engage things in a new creative way.

… and they did not live happily ever after.

Nine Warning Signs of Unconscious Dating

1. Immediate Instinctive Attraction (Excitement)

Focusing on physical attractions keeps us from seeing and accepting the deeper attractions of others. We attracted to physical characteristics, to common interests, common interdependent lessons, aligned creative projects or to common life contributions. Until we realize that we consciously can create our attractions, we are at the effect of the ones that were created through associations with our parents and our peer group as we were growing up. The more we are in our creative power, and can create magical connection with a partner through common life work, the more we can generate physical attraction with these partners. Unconscious individuals cannot change their attractions, and therefore feel driven to choose partners that mirror the compatibility characteristics of their opposite-gender parent, generating the experience of excitement. They are unaware of their own truth and seek others to validate their illusions.

2. Requiring Constant Titillation and Stimulation

The less we are honoring our wholeness, the more we need constant attention, adoration and admiration from a partner. We seek constant reassurance about our gender identity attractiveness, believing that this will make it difficult for others to reject or leave us. We objectify ourselves by visualizing ourselves as having qualities we think other people want. These qualities include being cute, sexy, endearing, smart, special, playful, imaginative etc. Most of these characteristics are actually based on role-playing, and are not natural expressions. This doesn’t mean that we do not have these qualities, just that the role-playing framework we are using keeps them from being authentically expressed. We can tell that there is role-playing occurring by noticing the level of boredom being experienced. The anxiety we feel when people don’t respond in the way we imagined they would is a good indication of this. Overall, needing constant titillation and stimulation suggests that we are defined by our physical image, and have not owned our creative power.

3. Defining Ourselves In Terms of Others

The more we seek individuals with opposite defenses and different compatibility factors, the more likely we are intent on maximizing our apparent security. The misguided belief that we need to find a partner that will complete us sets in play a situation in which we attempt to cover all the bases. This leads to relationships where we define ourselves in terms of others, thinking that we need them to be whatever we’re not. We project on our partner what we want them to be in order to complete us. When they can’t live up to this image, they undermine our projection with their own projection. This creates relationships where we cannot acknowledge or value our partner’s contribution to us,  We usually feel incapable of learning how to do what our partner does successfully, resulting in being further traumatized by the differences and creating co-dependent, reactive interactions. This establishes a competitive defensive framework, where we are always trying to prove how our way is the best way. Our need to be right means that we need our partners to acknowledge that they are wrong. This never occurs, generating intensity and increasing the fear of being rejected and left.

4. Requiring Others To Meet Our Expectations

Having a perspective that, if our partner really loves us, they should be willing to do things the way we want them to, creates a situation that no one can live up to. The greater the differences in compatibility factors, the more likely what we think of as loving is not the same as what they think of as loving. When we don’t meet on a loving level, only one person can experience being loved at a time. When we realize that creative experiences are the source of our mutual experience of love, we will begin to see how conflicting expectations about how to be loving actually sabotage the experience of love. The more aligned on compatibility levels we are, the more our natural creative expression of how we experience love will be the same as that of our partners, creating the experience of mutual love without compromise. When we have to remember how our partner wants to be loved, we’re in trouble, because conflicting expectations will lead to disappointment. The only alternative is to cultivate a space of detachment about how our partners love us, so we affirm our love of ourselves.

5. Not Being Able To Tell Our Truth

The more we don’t know our truth, the more we use excitement as a substitute for our own truth. As excitement is a disconnection from our physical body, we don’t have to experience the fear that is present within us. If we do experience the fear, we get caught in the anxiety of trying to determine how to tell our truth to others without upsetting them. We usually spend considerable time and energy in advance to find the best way and time to express what we need to say. Ironically, the more difficult it is to tell our truth, the more likely it is that we are not telling it completely. Our complete truth involves our physical sensations, our emotional feelings, our intellectual thoughts, and our intuitive knowing. If we are not talking to someone who is conscious enough to differentiate our truth from their own, anything we say could provoke a reaction. When we seek to be in agreement with others, we also compromise our truth. An individual is not conscious unless they are able to disagree with us without reacting to the process. The ability to tell our truth allows us to be heard, seen and valued. Without the truth, others don’t know how to support us in a way that works for us.

6. Creating An Image To Manipulate Our Partner

 The more we try to convince our partner how great we are, the more likely they are to try to convince us how great they are. This happens when individuals do not accept their own natural creative abilities. We exaggerate and lose a sense of perspective and boundaries whenever we deny our own creative nature. The more we become identified with our image, the more defensive we become. We are able to manipulate others more when they are defensive, because they don’t have any boundaries to know that it’s not appropriate. While this manipulation process may work temporarily, it will only distance the partners from each other and create a lack of trust. The more seduction is involved, the more likely it will destroy and/or diminish the self-esteem and self-respect of both parties. The more we have to pretend to be acceptable to another, the more demeaning it is for us to be with them. Do you want to be with someone who doesn’t accept or love you for who you are? (The common answer is “Of course, it’s what I’m used to.”  The enlightened answer is “NO!”)

7. Lost In Fantasy and Romantic Mythology

The more we are lost in our fantasies, the less present we are with each other. Instead, we feel alone and isolated, and subject to the projections of our partner about what they want us to be for them. We don’t even realize how much we’re not connecting with each other. We require greater consistency in our role-playing and expectations to even keep the relationship “on track.” Most of the time we do Romantic Mythology as a way to acknowledge the potential of our partner, because we aren’t honoring our own creative implementation abilities. Usually, we are doing fantasy and Romantic Mythology as a way of creating our own sense of safety, not realizing that it is disabling our ability to manifest what we want in our lives. The more we tell our truth about what’s really going on within us, the less power Romantic Mythology will have over us. If we remain identified with our fantasies, we will actually float through a life, unlived.

8. Creating A Plan To Control The Outcome

Control is an illusion. While we may think that we can create something based on a plan, the world has the last laugh. The more variables there are in a situation, the less likely that things will turn out as we anticipate. Planning, while useful as a guideline to create a framework, creates disappointment when we are attached to the outcome. The more we try to control our reality, the more we become exhausted. What we could seek instead, is a sense of adventure and playfulness in creating possibilities with others, so that we are not trapped in our beliefs about what is needed. By being open and inclusive, unforeseen events can be embraced as opportunities, permitting new creative possibilities. Growth is a possibility in this situation, rather than role-playing, which only produces expectations and stagnation.

9. Not Keeping Agreements With Partner

With personal integrity, we seek to keep our agreements with others. When we break an agreement, we need to own and clear the issues surrounding it with the other person in order to regain the trust we have lost. A lack of personal responsibility for what goes on will result in others becoming closed down around us. They will become protective if we do not demonstrate a commitment to acknowledge and clean up our mistakes. Trust is either growing or diminishing, based on their experience with us. While many people get caught up in making an effort, some individuals will find it difficult to forgive the breaking of an agreement, because an effort is not a result. For many it is annoying when others offer excuses when they consistently break agreements, reducing our willingness to continue to participate in the relationship.

Why We Become So Attached To What Doesn’t Work

Introduction

Enlightened Dating is the process of making friends for the purpose of exploring creative synergy with them. Old notions about dating (as trying to find someone who makes us happy, or pursuing the possibility that there is a person who would complete us) have finally been transcended with the advent of enlightened dating. The key to enlightened dating is to be fully present with ourselves so that we can be with others as we naturally are. This is the opposite of preparing ourselves to convince others of our value or protecting an image of how good we would be as their partner. One example of how different this process is in practice is that we speak about our weaknesses and frequently admit our fears as a way of opening up space for the other person to connect with us in a deeper way.

The challenge of this process is that many individuals will not be able to live up to the promise of it. In fact, many would be uncomfortable with just the notion that we’re going to be playful with each other and not fall into some familiar role-playing pattern. This means we are first and foremost seeking to be authentic with ourselves so we can be authentic with others. Many individuals, not knowing who they are, seek to be what others want them to be, not realizing that it attracts others who are also not being themselves. In our attempt to be funny, intelligent, sexy or seductive, we cover up our true creativity, which only attracts others who are denying their creativity.

Unconscious people always prefer the known to the unknown. From this perspective it is easy to see how we fall into the trap of objectifying people to assure ourselves that they have what we need. Unfortunately, this externally-focused assessment process reflects our lack of bonding with our parents and our lack of trust in our choices. It also reveals how we have come to see our partners as critical elements in fulfilling our needs. Conscious individuals, on the other hand, enjoy the mystery. Instead of seeking love and affirmation externally, we find it within ourselves by honoring our creativity. Inner discovery of the mystery allows us to become more open with others. We discover that being with a partner with whom we can reveal more each day becomes a powerful feedback process for growth.

Underlying this process is learning how to be strong enough to share our weaknesses. What is important to realize is that any weakness is only a part of us, not all of us. This requires that we transcend our reactiveness, which is the primary indicator that we are over-identified with a part of us at the cost of our wholeness. By establishing this larger perspective we become more interesting and can see how our weaknesses are valuable to our motivation process. Along the way we learn how to create space around our weaknesses so they can be appreciated as solutions in our lives and not problems. This material will challenge our beliefs about how we contribute to others and will only be fully successful when we stop protecting our image of ourselves. Along the way, we will show how to break up and transform our image so that it is no longer an obstacle for us to be with other people.

For most individuals, the way in which we want to be seen is opposite to how we fear we will be seen. Who people present themselves to be is actually the opposite of who they fear they are. When we become attached to the image of who we think we have to be in order to please others, we also find ourselves trying to hide our weaknesses so that others won’t judge us negatively. This disassociates us from our own natural being. Who we actually are is a creative being, operating on a deeper, third level that is usually completely different from our image or fears about ourselves. When we learn to release our attachments to who we fear we are, we will no longer be compelled to present ourselves in any fixed way. This allows us to increasingly show up as we truly are so that our inner and outer perspectives become more congruent.

Recognizing Unconscious Influences

Transcending Entanglement

Three qualities keep us believing the false premises that we can rescue, save, direct or make others listen to us. Our process will be assisted by releasing ourselves from these three qualities, which are the false power of: 1) caretaking, 2) contraction and 3) control. Each of these three “Unconscious Influences” as we call them, is a way to evoke responses in others so they will feel the need to compromise themselves for us. Each one of these attempts actually compromises our autonomy by making us appear to be selfish, uncaring and unavailable. In different ways, each of these is an attempt to take a situation in which we feel uncomfortable and turn it into around in an attempt to make our partners feel that something is wrong with them. The fears we cannot own within ourselves we project onto our partners because we are unwilling to go deeper within ourselves. The more we can own these projections and tell our truth about them, the less entangled we will be in our relationships. Enlightened Dating processes work because we are able to go deeper within ourselves and own our truth.

Our belief about how we should be with others prescribes most of our caretaking behavior. Caretaking is actually a way for us to go unconscious and objectify others so we can feel superior to them. The more we do caretaking, the more that unconscious people will believe that we need them, when in fact we are just going through the motions. We need to release ourselves from doing what we think we must to get their reassurance that they want to be around us.

The second quality, contraction, is how we distance ourselves when we believe we can be rejected, made wrong or can’t live up to the expectations of others. Frequently, contraction can be disguised by our attempts to make others think there is something wrong with them or by distracting them when they are getting too close to some truth of ours. We can also see how our fear of being rejected can lead us into dating strategies where we play hard to get.

The third quality, control, may be more obvious in relationships because it is more overt. Control hides our lack of power and our fear, which comes from the belief that we are going to be overwhelmed by the chaos around us. Control is actually an acknowledgment of weakness because we lack the creativity and confidence to affirm our truth without needing others for support. Caretaking, contraction and control are all subtle ways to influence our partners so that we can feel more powerful in the relationship.

Enlightened Dating, therefore, reveals the illusion that others are somehow extensions of our will who can be cajoled into the right behavior by establishing the right motivations. What we need to realize is that every being has free will. To attempt to compromise their free will only leads to the loss of our own. When we begin to understand that it is in our own best interest to be around people who are autonomous and operating out of a choice to be with us, then we will have partners with whom we can be in conscious relationship. The more we compromise our own autonomy, the more we will seek out people who have compromised their autonomy to convince them that we are the right person for them. This produces Unconscious Entanglements because if we can’t own our power, we won’t attract people with enough power of their own, and the quality of our relationships will remain unchanged.

The real lesson we are trying to learn is how to relate to ourselves in a way that allows us to love and honor our own choices. By investing in ourselves in this way we become people whom others would like to get to know and be with. Otherwise our self-denial about who we are as creative beings becomes projected onto our partners as a need for them to entertain, support and educate us. Unconsciously, we see this as the way to set standards for the kind of person we want to attract. Many of us operate from a place of entitlement, where others have to perform to our wants in order for us to get what we believe is in short supply. We both end up operating from a place of disentitlement, (which we call “lowered expectations”), where we feel that anyone interested enough in us must be crazy and will soon leave. We call this approach either an Exuberant or Enrolling Dating Style. Ironically, both of these approaches are equally out of balance and have arisen by our being too attached to the past, believing it to be a prediction of the future.

When we don’t know who we are, we seek reassurance from others that we are okay. In order to feel valued by people we perceive we need, we learn to compromise and deny our true feelings. The more we feel compromised by their expectations, the more we seek to escape. This means that we’re always vacillating between seeking the assurance of others and feeling overwhelmed by the work we have to do to maintain the relationship. Unconscious attractions, in which we end up choosing partners who are energetically similar to us (in the way we are familiar with our parents), only compound our issues about being seen and end up trapping us. The way out of this dilemma is to dare to be who we are as creative beings without apologizing for who we are or for telling our truth.

Finally, Enlightened Dating is a different way to connect with others because it is not based on scarcity or fear. Instead, when we are doing Enlightened Dating we understand that when we love ourselves we will attract partners who are similar to us and with whom we can operate in alignment together. This also means that we do not try to press people into romantic relationships until we have a well-defined track record of creatively enjoying each other. Our mutual productivity is naturally enhanced, revealing alignment on multiple levels. The Higher Alignment program recommends that we first establish friendships without any romantic attachments. Only after we can synergistically collaborate together are we able to consciously explore romantic possibilities. This, of course, means that we’re not trying to use our sexuality or our success as individuals to prematurely take care of each other’s sexual needs.

Caretaking

When we try to caretake others we lose ourselves in the process by becoming identified with the role. This means we become the care-taker and they become the one that is taken care of. If we truly love them, why are we separating ourselves from them by doing this? The answer is that we are more concerned about our image of caretaking them than we are of truly loving them. This does not mean that we can’t show our love of them through service or caregiving. It does require, however, that we be connected with them and be loving them as well as ourselves while we’re doing what we’re doing. Otherwise our caretaking is a pretense, or a behavior that is primarily done to influence their perception of us.

What we are suggesting is that we embody our love by being present with our partners and friends. This is a much more nurturing way of being available than is doing something for them. It is also more responsive in the moment, so that what you’re doing is not out of synch with where they are. Most caretaking behavior does not take into account their uniqueness or personal issues. Instead it is a disconnected response to a past belief about where they were. As such, it doesn’t do much but reassure insecure people, people who don’t know the difference between your being with them consciously and when you’re doing caretaking behavior. The more we deepen ourselves in our caretaking behavior, the more we can see and own how we are actually more fearful of their negative perceptions of us than of how we are really effectively contributing to them.

What caretaking behavior does is reinforce perceived differences in respect and esteem between ourselves and the person we are caretaking. When we accept caretaking behavior, we are subtly sending the message that we need help and are willing to accept this behavior as a way of artificially stabilizing the relationship. In actuality, the more we accept caretaking behavior, the more we are taking a back seat to others. They can then use it to leverage us into behavior to take care of them, which we may not want to do. This is why many of us are afraid to accept gifts and support from others, because we have experienced the hidden strings that others use to get us to do what we don’t want to do. Most caretaking behavior is carefully accounted for, allowing caretakers to justify their requests or vacations from this behavior.

What’s worse is the way caretaking can be used to undermine the confidence and self-esteem of others by leveraging their fears and convincing them that they don’t know how to take care of themselves. This insidious seduction process exploits the weaknesses of others in the name of caretaking and can end up reducing a person’s self-esteem and self-respect to zero. Most professional seducers always use the justification that they’re doing what they’re doing for the other person’s benefit, when in fact they’re doing it so that they can vicariously feel the false power of being able to mess up another person’s life. The real problem, of course, is that the victim gives the seducer the power to do this to them by believing their caretaker’s claims.

The best way to neutralize caretaking is through the intuitive motive of Conscious Participation. When we are present and creatively available, anyone caretaking us begins to realize how out of touch they are with themselves. Caretakers begin to discover that their attachment to unconscious “doing for others” is not effectively serving others. This shocks them into acknowledging that they don’t know what to do or how to be with us. It is critical that we do not judge caretakers, but rather love and acknowledge their unconscious motivation to be there for others. Suggest that the best thing they can do is to be present and to calibrate to what is going on moment-to-moment. Use their present attempt to caretake to see how they may be denying their own truth or needs in order to please us. Reinforce the reality that caretaking, as role-playing, only covers up or denies real issues and connections to others.

Contraction

One of the best ways for our parents to control us was to ignore us. It is no wonder that our greatest wounding comes from a lack of interaction and connection. Contraction is one of our favorite ways to flee from the attention and engagement of others. It is also the primary indicator that we have touched on a subject that is internally sensitive, where we lose our ability to see the larger picture. Contraction naturally occurs when we lose the larger picture. Sometimes we believe that what they said can only be interpreted as a personal attack. Unfortunately, the more we react, the harder it is for others to reach us and support us. This is why we need to learn to engage the lessons in front of us, rather than letting them pile up and slowly strangle or smother us to death. By learning that we can usually deal with what it is that we have right in front of us, we are encouraged to find ways to make what is happening support our growth and development. The more we try to ignore what is going on, the more we set ourselves up to be overwhelmed and swamped by our problems.

Expansion and growth means engaging our partners playfully and paradoxically to discover what it is they have to teach us. At the core of our desire to contract is the belief that we need to be perfect to be accepted by others. The reality, of course, is opposite to this cultural belief. Conscious individuals know that only by making mistakes can we grow. They see the perfection in themselves as they are, rather than in some absolute, black-and-white terms defined by culture. Unconscious individuals are always trying to protect themselves by reinforcing their image of themselves in the people around them. They do not realize that such “protection” only attracts the lessons they are denying. This suggests that the best way to overcome our reaction is to not be defensive, but to give others the benefit of the doubt and recognize that any reactions are useful in determining those places where we need to honor and love ourselves more.

Our premise as defensive individuals is that others will hurt us if we don’t protect ourselves. This produces a contracted feeling within us, which invites attack because it makes others uncomfortable and fearful. It also creates a sense of scarcity and limitation that people interpret as a lack of participation and openness. People engaging Enlightened Dating practices are abundant and inclusive in their way of operating with others. They know there is nothing they need to protect within themselves, because in a spiritual sense, they are invincible. Of course, individuals who believe we are only our “outer physical appearance” will have a hard time practicing Enlightened Dating because they will not be honoring their inner Creative Being.

This suggests that the best way to engage other people is by being vulnerable, open and available. The more engaging we are, the more we grow into being able to take care of ourselves in any situation. While there may be individuals who want to take advantage of us, this kind of relationship will not continue for long and we will grow stronger by being softer. The paradox is that our real strength comes from being able to own both our strengths and weaknesses. If others cannot accept us as we are, then it is best not to be with them. This is not society’s perspective, as society holds that we can make fundamentally bad relationships better by having the right intention. What society at large is not getting is that it is being aligned on a creative level that makes great relationships great, not trying to preserve a fantasy by ignoring reality. Finally, contraction produces loneliness, which generates desperation. This is not an effective way to build conscious, consensus-building relationships.

Contraction is offset by engaging others in creative ways. Using the intuitive motive of Mutual Accomplishment allows us to connect in a way that generates synergy. Outwardly, this can be experienced by being around others who have the same compatibility factors. Inwardly, this can be experienced in team or work situations where we are synched up and operating in harmony to accomplish some goal or process. These two experiences are tied together when we build the skills to be present with ourselves and others as they are. The experience of expansion occurs when we love ourselves enough to be creative with others.

The more we learn how to interact without reacting to differences and uncomfortable similarities, the greater the possibilities we can make real. Our true creative power is enhanced greatly by our capacity to be present with others without judgment. When we are attached to our image and others seek to undermine it by disconnecting and judging us, contraction can be expected. When we are able to let go of protecting our image, it frees us to meet others where and how they are. By letting go of judgment of others, our judgment of ourselves is released and we gain great flexibility to expand and engage others truthfully.

Control

Individuals who have to be in charge (either overtly or covertly) are primarily operating in the illusion that their personality can manage their circumstances better than their Creative Being. Only by honoring our creative reality can we actually have real influence on the world and rise above the superficial control of appearances that many individuals crave. Many conscious individuals realize that creating order does not come through control, but comes through engagement in the process. This means that if we want to move something and rearrange it we need to be able to embody it within ourselves. Control is therefore a defensive illusion when we believe our personality (also know as our Safety and Security programming) can dictate our creative reality. Fear and desire are unconscious motivators which deny our creative connections. Both of these motivators keep us from embodying our truth, which reduces the possibility that we can bring about change through conscious choice. The greater the distance we create between ourselves and that which we want to change, the less influence or affect we will have on it. It is only through being present and aligned with our creative power that we can become able to make real changes.

Most controllers persist in the view that superficial changes are more profound than they seem. We refuse to go within ourselves to confront our own fears and personal desires, and because we are unclear about how to change ourselves, we seek instead to change others to meet our needs. Conscious Beings, on the other hand, realize that attempting to make the outer would conform to our desires is an impossible fantasy. Instead, we focus on what drives us to control others so that we can neutralize our own fears. This allows us to eliminate the source of our upsets, namely the unconscious beliefs and assumptions that reinforce our feelings of powerlessness. While it is a step in the right direction to let go of trying to control others by first controlling ourselves, it is even better to see that we need to stop controlling ourselves when it takes the form of attempting to live up to the image and expectations of others. Instead, let us recognize and honor our humanity by learning to love both our strengths and weaknesses. This can best be brought about by identifying with our creative natures, which means developing the discipline not to use fear or desire as tools to try to get our way.

It is useful to express our frustration and fears so that we can reconnect with our original intention, which is to make something happen. As we are not responsible for the actions and choices of others, it is important for us to establish clear boundaries that respect others’ free will. In this way, we can respect and honor that our will is only expanded when others consciously choose to align with us. When we control others through fear or desire, we unconsciously become trapped by the process of taking the easy way out. Attempting to control others “for their own good” makes them as children and denies them choice. This process creates only pain and entanglement for both parties as resentment grows. This means we need to practice making requests and learning to live with the choices others make. The more we can discipline ourselves to focus on what we can affect, the more we will appreciate our true creative power.

We neutralize control by learning how to honor and respect the choices of others. The more we engage others by first discovering their truth (so that we can make sure we don’t compromise them), the more naturally interested they will be in us. The intuitive motive of “Universal Dominion”, is that when we honor the creative natures of people and respect their potential, they have to engage us. We can also reduce control by not taking anything seriously. The more we can be open, playful and curious about life, the less control can increase our defensiveness.

Eventually, we will come to understand that caretaking, contraction and control are ways to manipulate people. While these can be natural reactions we use to try to make something right, when they are used with unconscious motivation to try get others to respond in ways that we want, they reduce trust in the relationship. The problem is that these unconscious strategies confuse boundaries because they send mixed messages. The message is, “I love you, so this is the way you should let me support you (while taking care of myself)”. Caretaking, contraction and control are all distancing mechanisms to the effect that an individual takes unilateral action to prove how much they love the other person. While these processes may originally help individuals to survive an entangled relationship, they are anti-merging reactions that attempt to fix the other person without mutual agreement or alignment. This is why they are counter-productive in an Enlightened Dating situation.

How Attractions Establish Relationship Frameworks

What Is The Problem With Having Wants?

Enlightened Dating begins with understanding the way our attractions define the type of individuals who show up as partners. Sadly, the way we become hurt in relationships drives us to protect ourselves, which only reinforces the mechanism that assures that the very things we don’t want to show up will show up. We become effective at Enlightened Dating when we heal ourselves of these attraction/rejection wounds so that we no longer compromise ourselves in relationships. There are three primary attraction frameworks: Instinctive, Intellectual and Intuitive. (The feeling/emotional level is actually not an attraction framework but a repulsion framework when we don’t seem accepted, admired or adored. We will discuss more about this later.) Ultimately, our goal is to integrate all three frameworks so that they each have a proper place in relationship to one another. The more wounded we are in relationships, the more we end up focusing on lower level attractions at the cost of our creative and intuitive attractions.

The Instinctive attraction framework is based on sexual chemistry. Since fears predominate at this level, it is necessary that each partner be equally fearful about the outcome of the relationship to maximize the experience of safety. Pheromones unconsciously communicate our degree of fear, which means the more equal the fear between potential partners, the more attracted we will be to each other. On visual levels, we use body-type attraction frameworks to automatically screen out potentially unhealthy partners. Certain attributes convey associations with safety, making us temporarily fearless about the outcome. Taste and smell are also critical initial factors that are used to determine our sexual chemistry. The whole purpose of Instinctive attractions is to guarantee genetic diversity and the desire to perpetuate humanity as a species.

The Intellectual attraction framework is based on common life lessons. Since desires predominate at this level, it is necessary that each partner desire the same things to maximize the experience of security. Partners calibrate to Worldview differences through the degree of common understanding. What makes this process more challenging are defense style differences. On one level we want to understand, but on another we love the challenge of a mystery. We mistakenly believe that common interests will be effective in choosing life partners, not realizing that interests change relatively quickly. Ultimately we are only assured of a great partnership if we discover ways to create together. The more synergy is produced, the more aligned the relationship. Unfortunately, the Intellectual framework points the way but lacks the capacity to fully identify what works.

The Intuitive attraction framework is based on loving ourselves. Since creativity predominates at this level, it is necessary that as partners each of us know ourselves as Creative Beings to avoid the problems of compromise. Personal autonomy and truth-telling are balanced with our desire for intimacy, which creates opportunities for mutual growth and learning. Our joyfulness at being loved for who we actually are eliminates the need for Defenses and Pretenses. Who we are as Creative Beings is best identified by our primary Creative Expression and our Pacing, Communication Process, and Decision-Making Approach. The more we are seen and honored in these ways, the greater our natural unity and trust in the relationship. The greater our relationship skills, the better able we are to work with our compatibility differences. Ultimately, it is mutual Aliveness, Wisdom and Awareness that come to be the predominant indicators of attractions in conscious relationships.

Each attraction framework can be identified by its energy/intent, its content/time and context/space. For example, an Instinctive framework is based on the energy of excitement, which seeks a safe context. It is of relatively short duration because it is based on fantasy and role-playing. The Intellectual attraction framework is based on the energy of intensity, which seeks a secure agreement so that we can persevere in our ability to maintain the relationship over a long time. The Intuitive framework is based on the energy of enthusiasm, which creates the space of mutual autonomy and truth-telling so that we are able to choose the relationship in each and every moment. The problem is that we are commonly denied and discounted in our true creativity by our parents, which reduces and limits our focus to Instinctive (and eventually Intellectual) attractions.

Our healing process begins when we own our creative energy and learn how to be with others in ways that honor our creativity. When we are naturally present being ourselves then we are incredibly attractive to large numbers of people. The more we love ourselves, the more others who love themselves will be attracted to us. The difficulty arises when we deny our creative energy. The more we deny our creativity, the more we are attracted to others who deny themselves. When this is the case, we do not show up in natural ways with others and it becomes more likely that people will be repulsed by us. This is the way we establish for ourselves the reality that love is scarce and that finding a person to be with us is a difficult, if not impossible, task.

Healing ourselves requires that we start to see and accept how it is that our Aliveness,

Wisdom and Awareness are ultimately the most attractive things about us. When we fall into the trap of defining our attractiveness by our appearance, we have objectified ourselves. This objectification is the worst way we can wound ourselves. It is our negative self-judgment (in effect our negative image of ourselves) that actually attracts the pain we experience with people. We could also fall into the trap of defining our attractiveness based on our defensive qualities, where we seek partners to affirm our strength and outer power. Needing to be needed keeps us in defensive relationships far after the light of the relationship has been extinguished.

Instinctive Attractions

When we don’t know who we are, we seek for others to reassure us that we’re okay. This limits the partner choices we see in the world to people who look safe and familiar. The key quality that we substitute for our own Awareness is excitement, which keeps us from being with ourselves. Instead, we focus on the fantasy that other people will make things better in our lives. The fantasy we are seeking is that others will heal and support us in being who we are, because we don’t know ourselves who we are. This level of attraction is superficial and focuses around our ability to be sexual with others because we are uncomfortable loving ourselves. What we want is some form of physical and emotional connection that is supposed to fill our emptiness when we are with people who love us.

The deepest fantasy is the idea that someone can love us if we don’t know who we are. We become attached to getting the approval and attention of others as a way of reassuring ourselves that we are attractive. At this level of gender identity, the role we play to get seen depends on our perception of our attractiveness to the gender of our choice. We are distracted by our excitement, which really tells us that the partners we are focusing on only reflect certain characteristics of our parents. We recreate a scenario in which the way we wanted our parents to acknowledge us for who we are is played over again with our partners. In this way, we are unconsciously seeking out partners who reflect the qualities our parents had or wanted to have.

We also become attracted to what is familiar in terms of the kinds of relationships in the past where we were seen by others to some degree. For example, if we have a somewhat successful relationship with an individual, we can build assumptions based on their appearances that lead us to believe that we will be safe when these appearances show up again. These associations, in which we feel safe around particular attributes, make us feel at home. In this way we build up a library of experiences (and the ways they have impacted us in the past) that make us feel safer with people with particular physical characteristics. For example, we may feel better about a certain hair color, skin tone, body shape or even height.

The more we become fixated on physical characteristics the less present and creative we are with others. What we’re actually doing is losing ourselves in the fantasy that somehow certain new relationships will lead to a different endings than the ones we experienced previously. This process parallels how we felt not seen by our parents and how we wanted them to “get us” even though we continually got the same kind of response from them. Thus, excitement is necessary to distract us from our fear that we will be disconnected, rejected or denied in a way similar to what we experienced with our parents. This instinctive impulse, which is to seek out ways to heal our unsuccessful past relationships by recreating past circumstances and hoping for a new answer, are similar to the addictions we get caught up with in our life. In other words, the more we pursue substitutes for what we really want, the more hopeless we feel.

The problem is that we are always going through the motions hoping for a different result, when in fact we have not created the possibility of a different result. What we need to do is examine why we are unconsciously attracted by certain physical appearances and personality characteristics. Instead of getting lost in unconscious ways of connecting with others where we are not seen or valued for our creativity, let us identify how we created these attachments to begin with. The more we investigate the sources of our Instinctive attractions, the more we realize we made it all up based on certain external circumstances. We are like baby ducks who have adopted a certain picture of their mother and then will follow that picture anywhere.

We can also identify this stage of relationship by how we get into unconscious animalistic sex at the cost of heart connections with people. We do this because we have anchored our attractions on an Instinctive level where we have been objectified as a “thing” which possesses no consciousness or intelligence. The more we lose ourselves in this type of sexual activity, the more covered up we are because we are denying our natural Creative Selves. We seek reassurance from others who want us sexually. Our fantasies about how we are really wanted drive us initially to seek safe people to be with, but we eventually come to realize that when people are not safe, we are attracted because we want more danger to spice up our experiences. This is because we eventually come to believe that safety is no fun, which leads us to try out being with people who are progressively less safe. 

This is how we reinforce our hate of ourselves: by losing ourselves in situations in which others don’t care about us. Ironically, the people who don’t care about us then pretend to overly care about us to make the situation sustainable. In other words, we become very good at presenting the opposite of what is true for us in order to keep people on the hook. Our sexuality can also be a way for us to feel more powerful because who we are is not being seen as powerful. The more we try to amplify our attractiveness to the gender of our choice, the more false we feel. We soon realize that our image that we are packaging and projecting is consuming all our energy and attention. For example, the more we need to be seen as attractive, the more our natural insecurities grow, pushing us to greater heights of augmentation. For example, cosmetic surgery for both men and women has grown exponentially due to our obsession with outer attractiveness.

The more we believe we are our image of ourselves, the more we get disgusted and hateful about who we think we are. This fixed idea of ourselves keeps us from growing. By seeking outer perfection, we are not able to engage others authentically. As a result, others commonly believe we are stuck up, arrogant and unavailable. Whenever we end up talking about ourselves it becomes about convincing others of our great abilities and/or accomplishments. Our stories become more elaborate and the reasons why we haven’t succeeded in the way we imagined we could become more intricate. All we imagine we have to fall back on is our Instinctive attraction. Erroneously we believe that we need great looks to attract someone to whom we can be physically attracted. When we isolate the physical attractions as a separate need it reinforces our fears.

Our instinctive unconscious yearnings can wreak havoc with our relationships when we are not anchored in our Creative Being. Our fears grow as we realize that our physical attractions have a limited life span, so we become more desperate to find others who need us so we won’t feel so lost. Protecting our image becomes very important, and our ability to shade the truth or to not tell the whole truth becomes more pronounced as a result. In this way we become parodies of our own truth because we deny our Aliveness and end up seeking pleasure wherever we can get it. Excitement because a substitute for an enthusiastic creative connection where we can actually engage others and learn more about who we are.

Physical pleasure, however, is only one of four different types of pleasure that are available to us. We become more whole and love ourselves more when we can enjoy touch, emotional closeness, intellectual stimulation and creative collaboration. Focusing extraneously on one type of pleasure over the others is like consistently eating one section of the available food groups; it is not a healthy balance in the long run. In fact, excitement burns us out when is it not a balanced part of a larger “dietary living” plan. What we need to recognize is that emotional, intellectual and creative connections are also all pleasurable processes. The extent to which our parents denied our natural creativity is the extent to which we will operate primarily on an Instinctive level, where sexuality and pleasure are the driving wants in our relationships.

Being attached to certain physical characteristics over who others are as Creative Beings is what we call the beauty trap. While beauty is a natural attraction, we become jaded when we only look for it on a superficial level. Beauty, like pleasure, has multiple levels which evoke different responses in us. The more we are attached to beauty on an outer level, the less we are able to see or even understand contrary indications when people are not embodying their beauty. The beauty trap is one of the primary ways that we keep from developing ourselves on different levels. By focusing on outer appearances, we attract people who judge us by those appearances and who attempt to purchase those appearances for their own use. This is a profoundly depressing process because the purchase has nothing to do with us, but concerns only our outer form.

The more we fall into the image trap of beauty, the less we develop deeper ways of connecting, which increases our insecurity over time. Eventually we will realize that relationships based on outer beauty have many hidden costs which deny both us and the object of our affection growth opportunities. The more we need our partners to look a certain way, the more we deny both our and their authentic Creative Expressions. As an object of beauty, it is easy to allow others to take care of us. This is the hidden trap, for many outwardly beautiful people get caught up in their image and don’t develop themselves on other levels. Over time, their outer beauty erodes, increasing their insecurity.

Typically we are not conscious of how we distract ourselves into living in a world of appearances only. One of the primary costs of this type of relationship is our ability to tell our truth. If we tell our truth it is likely we will scare our partner into leaving, because it will no longer be a safe place for them to vegetate. Even the experience of comfort, which seems so important initially, becomes discomfort when we can’t grow with our partners. Eventually, the hollowness and emptiness of the relationship becomes apparent and we learn to live with our poor choice or leave to seek another fantasy.

To heal ourselves of a preexisting attachment to sexuality and excitement we have to learn to become more indifferent to the outer beauty of people we are around. The more we reinforce their “specialness” in terms of physical attractiveness, the more we do them a disservice by not encouraging them to be deeper and more real. It is most important to notice how we become so attached to others’ approval that we become unwilling to do anything that would threaten it. This is how we start defining ourselves in terms of others. One of the main problems in our society right now is that so many people are caught up in needing the outer appearances to make up for their own perceived inner shortcomings. The more an individual learns to rely on their outer beauty to “get them by”, the less likely they are to grow in ways that make them more conscious as creative beings.

We can see how beauty (or the lack thereof) has impacted people by the way people categorize themselves based on their attractiveness on the Instinctive level. Many of us have taken positions about our beauty (or lack of beauty) and have reinforced our beliefs by emphasizing it as a way to make a statement. While none of us wants to be objectified, when we focus on our beauty (or lack of beauty) in this way we are in fact promoting these objectifications as a way to make a social statement about who we are. For example, if we are not classically beautiful on the outside we may overemphasize our lack of beauty up front in order to prevent people who are not comfortable with our image from faking it with us. We also have the situation where those of us who are classically beautiful are idolized and put on pedestals, which makes us no longer real.

When we are able to be more conscious about how we and others are not our image, then we will have more appreciation of the gifts that others can give us. Unfortunately, many of us are not willing to deepen our perspective and understanding, and instead operate on snap judgments and preconceptions that limit our choices of partners dramatically. First impressions can reinforce our tendency to make compromised choices when we operate from Instinctive reactions. The bottom line is that the more we scale back our choices based on our superficial judgments and past preconceptions, the more scarcity we will experience in finding the partners we want to be with. It is the Institute’s recommend-ation to turn our previous attachments to appearances into preferences rather than requirements.

The unconscious part of ourselves will hate this perspective because it wants to feel justified in its need to have certain things it can fixate on to go unconscious. When it can’t use the physical form to go unconscious, it has to start becoming more aware of who it is with. This means we realize that we are no longer able to use people or manipulate them to get our needs met. Instead, we will have to engage them as true equal Creative Beings who have a right to their own reality. One helpful process in learning to detach from our unconscious image-making is to break our association that somehow people with certain characteristics are superior to other people who are simply different. For example, if we can see that a certain characteristic does not mean that a person is better, safer, sexier or more powerful, we start neutralizing the process that sustains unconscious attractions.

We are also able to break our unconscious attractions when we turn anything that generates excitement into Aliveness by telling our truth so that we’re not holding on to a fantasy about the other person’s qualities. Until we are able to see both the positive and negative of each quality or behavior pattern and hold it in a neutral way, we cannot begin to appreciate and acknowledge people as they really are. This neutrality initially takes a considerable amount of personality detachment. Where we are attached to another’s role or position it indicates that we are seeking a false sense of Safety and Security. Operating without these guidelines can seem confusing initially, but it actually opens up opportunities to engage others differently. We might even recommend creating a new “negative” association to specifically to help neutralize our past unconscious “excitement” associations. We can do this by focusing on unpleasant smells, disgusting thoughts, or even disagreeable tastes. The purpose of this process is not to make the person wrong, but to release ourselves from our preexisting unconscious identification with them.

Intellectual Attractions

When we feel we have to prove who we are by being around people who are opposite to us, this sets up a competition that mutually discounts and denies both of us. Comparisons and compromise create intensity in this relationship, especially when we become attached to how right we really are. While initially we make sure our partners need us more than we need them so we can feel secure, eventually this type of relationship degenerates into arguments, threats and ultimatums because we don’t feel that the other person is being fair with us. This is because we’re learning to value our strengths by devaluing their strengths. As a result, we end up defining ourselves in terms of “not being them” rather than by honoring who we are independently. This leads to the belief that we can grow fastest by being around people who are our opposites.

Growth and mutual learning at this level of relationship is actually an illusion. We quickly become threatened when the other person demonstrates that they don’t really need us. Since our security is based on being able to provide what our partner cannot easily provide for themselves, any time we grow and end up not needing our partner it upsets the balance in the relationship. This codependent merging is because we do not believe we are whole and complete within ourselves. What we really have is mutual compromise, because we expect the other person to be in equal pain with us. In fact, the more they accept this pain, the more we believe they must love us. The ideal of this level of relationship is working for a larger goal by common sacrifice toward that goal. The problem is that any sacrifice for the other creates resentment if it’s not primarily done to uplift and transform our own perspective.

Being successful on an outward level can also become a trap when our partners are not as successful as we are. The more we define ourselves in terms of needing each other, the more co-dependent we become, which results in the inability to define ourselves on our own terms. We end up defining ourselves in terms of our partners (or society), which undermines our own creative identity. What we need in conscious relationships is the ability to see, honor and value simultaneously both ourselves and our partners. Each of the different defense styles undermines these skills and keeps us from operating together. While we may tell our truth more about our needs in this relationship, this does not translate into our being more cooperative with our partners, because we are still not affirming our true power. It is our fear that we are not complete within ourselves that keeps us defining ourselves in terms of them.

The two ways that this shows up are: 1) being a provider, and 2) being a nurturer. The more we identify and build an image based on one of these two perspectives, the more we are trapped into a status quo contractual relationship. Some individuals can actually be doing both roles in different circumstances, which only increases the complexity of the needs they’re trying to meet. Each of these roles tends to idealize some over-contribution to the other person. As providers we feel superior because we are producing the money and energy that sustains our lifestyle. As nurturers we feel superior because we believe our partner wouldn’t be successful without us. Unfortunately, we are both are caught in roles that keep us from becoming whole within ourselves. This is why, at our foundation, we must be able to autonomously choose the relationship, not because it meets our needs but because we are able to contribute in a way that supports both our Self and our partner.

The costs of being in the success trap are conflict, discounting, denial and defenses. We lose our playfulness, spontaneity and ability to see the whole when we cannot embody our success. Our freedom is curtailed and we become bored as we “go through the motions” by trying to get our needs handled through others. We feel successful to the degree that others conform to us and address our needs directly. When others do not take us into account we build elaborate positions about why they should include us in their process. The real cost of the success trap is the belief that the chances are better for us to be successful if we stick with our partner despite our problems. In other words, we believe that the devil we know is less problematic than the devil we don’t know.

The more we judge people based on their outer success, the more trapped we become in our own fears about our success. When we compare ourselves to others we have to be better in some way, otherwise we will feel inadequate and not powerful. This process is extremely destructive in that it reinforces an artificial set of standards that has nothing to do with our creativity as human beings. Instead it is an objectification of us that attracts the wrong kind of people to us. In other words, the more successful we see ourselves as being, the less we end up trusting the motives of those attracted to us. This distinction we have created and believe ourselves to be, called “being successful”, allows us to demand that others conform to our needs. Some people would see us as arrogant and self-absorbed, but this mainly reflects the fact that they have their own way to feel superior to us.

For many the game becomes about having all the goodies but trying to minimize the downside that those goodies bring. When we are identified with outer success it allows us to experiment with what we think we deserve. Hopefully we become more capable of managing a more sophisticated process about getting what we want. Ironically, the more we have, the more responsible we have to be about how to best use it. Otherwise we create situations where we lose what we have, or else find ourselves in opposition to others so that we have to become more refined in our use of money and outer power. The lesson to be learned is that we are more than our outer success. In fact, who we are as a creative contribution is more indifferent to the outer expression than to the inner truth of our greatness. While it is important to manifest our dreams, it is the quality of our being that attracts others. The more we fixate on outer-success packaging, the more likely it is that we have not owned our own success.

The more we imagine that our greatness comes from rescuing and taking care of others, the more we’re operating in the delusion that what we have to provide can fix them. The underlying truth about the situation is that as creative beings, only we can “fix” ourselves. The greater challenge is to support people in discovering for themselves how they can be successful without leaning on us. Every time we intervene in another person’s process, it only reinforces that they could not do it for themselves and that they need us in order to be complete. This is why we need to be able to honor the autonomy of our partners as well as ourselves so that there is always a choice about how and when we participate together. In relationships that are defined in terms of outer success, there is always a pecking order in which the most outwardly powerful partner believes they have greater choices than the other who is lower on the pecking order. If we’re really creating a mutual learning environment, then there is no such thing as a hierarchy of decision-makers who have power over us.

This also means that we need to let go of our expertise as a reason why we should be the primary decision agent in our relationships. The more we define ourselves in positions that demand esteem and respect from others, the less effective we will be in creating a mutual learning environment. Our positions actually reinforce the reasons why we think we should be able to decide things for others. Holding positions is a way of expanding our dominion so that others conform to our ideas about what should be done. Of course this means that we are not honoring the autonomy of others around us and are, instead, manipulating them to get what we want at the cost of their creativity. This keeps us from embodying success as our natural state of being. Not embodying success creates the experience of competition.

The way we heal ourselves of these kinds of attractions to false power and success is by letting go of controlling and projecting our needs on others in any way. The more conscious we are about how our needs have evolved (based on where we were denied in past relationships), the more we can stop projecting our past needs on our present partners. Instead of being caught in our fears of not being seen, let us embrace that we have the power to create solutions to past issues. In this way we can see all the options that are around us. The more we support others in finding and expressing their own truth, the less defensively we will operate. This takes our being willing to move from a personal point of view to a place of seeing ourselves as part of a larger community. It means that we must be willing to let go of our problem orientation and “fix-it” mentality and embrace seeing the ecology of how things work around us in a cooperative, consensual way.

From a relationship perspective, the more we can honor our partner’s way of being while simultaneously honoring our own way of being, the more we can begin to see the similarities and differences that make our relationship what it is. This means we have to stop seeking personal advantage in every situation to leverage others to do what we want, and begin letting things flow according to others’ creative natures. The more we support the freedom and authentic expression of our partners, the more pleasure and joy we will get being around them. Their exuberance and passion can also inspire and uplift us into a more natural expression of our own creative energy. This is a far more beneficial way to relate than defining ourselves in terms of our needs. Instead, let us engage and honor our creativity.

Intuitive Attractions

When we operate initially from the Intuitive level, we first establish a creative connection with each other. It is easiest to create this kind of connection by not using pre-established rules or defenses. When we fall back on those artificial ways of connecting, it pulls energy from the creative level so that our attachments to each other and our positions with each other become how we relate. While this higher way of connecting may feel difficult to describe, it will have the qualities of enthusiasm, joy, peacefulness and presence so that we will feel capable of supporting one another. The primary qualities that tell us we are working on this level are Aliveness (because we express our truth harmlessly), Wisdom (because we are not operating from pre-defined ways of being) and Awareness (because we are not objectifying ourselves on lower levels of identity). These qualities enrich the Common Neutral Ground, making it a delight to interact with others openly on this level.

Participation and cooperation are the keynotes for our intuitive attractions. We feel invited to engage more deeply and are attracted to those who are similar to us creatively. This is because we are able to love ourselves enough to not run away from people who can see us and be with us fully. We feel a greater sense of connection because we share a context where we are co-creative together. We become sensitive to subtle energies ranging from physical sensations to the emotional reactions of others. It is easier to distinguish these energies because we have established effective boundaries so that we don’t take on the issues of others. This enables us to find ways to contribute beyond the relationship because we don’t have to use our creative energy to maintain the relationship.

The most powerful way to deepen the relationship is to explore a common way to express our life work together. The more we feel a sense of alignment on this level, the easier it will be to manifest ourselves together as a team in the world. To be effective, the relationship has to be built on mutual autonomy and intimacy, and honoring each other’s creative expressions to the fullest. The major trap on this level is that of feeling superior to each other or to the people we are serving. The more we emphasize our differences with others, the less we will be able to be present with them, which reduces our value to them. The more conscious we are about our natural creative contribution, the more at ease we will be with others. The more we are not consciously honoring our creative being, the more uncomfortable we are with others. It is easy to discount others because they may not be as alive, wise or aware.

Similarly, it may be easy for unconscious people to discount us because we make them uncomfortable by being present in this way. It is important not to judge or discount others for being where they are. To do so actually diminishes our experience of who we are in the relationship. It is therefore self-defeating to unconsciously create these ways in which we are not inclusive and present with the people we are trying to serve. This does not mean that we cannot hold our own opinions differently from other people. It does mean that if we use these differences to polarize people whom we are trying to serve or be with, we are actually sabotaging our own growth and development. This is why developing Common Neutral Ground skills is so critical to our growth process.

Our healing on this stage becomes most apparent when we start honoring the different perspectives and diversity in our world. Until we can see and honor people where they are, we will have little success for ourselves in linking up with others like us. The Higher Alignment program is committed to accelerating our ability to see and feel these energetic similarities and differences. Understanding compatibility factors will enable us to deepen our creative expressions and transform the quality of our relationships. Building relationship skills allows us to neutralize these differences. We challenge everyone to explore and share their truth about their creativity so that we all can become feedback loops for one other to enhance our creative power.

One of the final obstacles we have to overcome is trying to remain attached to people because of what they represented to us in the past. We need to learn that we are not discounting them if we move forward and embrace new relationships. One of the realizations we will eventually have is that hanging on to old relationships not only consumes our energy (energy that could be directed to other places), it also keeps us from moving on and being with people who are appropriate for us. If we look closely enough, we will also see the obstacles to Enlightened Dating happening in these relationships because our Aliveness, Wisdom and Awareness are not being honored. These obstacles, of course, begin with Caretaking, Contraction and Control. On emotional levels, it is No Clarity, No Confidence and Compromise. On intellectual levels it is the requirement to be Convincing, the need to Cover-up and the belief that we have to be Conceited to be effective. We will discuss these behavior influences in the chapter on Negative Entangled Relationships. When we see these issues coming up it is best to attempt to neutralize them, or failing that, to have a real discussion with those who bring up these obstacles for us. Telling our truth harmlessly, without attachment to our image, allows us to find and experience our true compassion with others. If this fails to uplift the situation, we realize that it would be most supportive to move on.

The more we operate using these nine entanglements, the more trapped we are in needing the adoration, acceptance and admiration of others. When we deny our natural feminine energy using contraction, no confidence and concealment, we are caught in believing we need the adoration of others to survive. As a result, we become very attached to how others demonstrate their adoration. We are looking for them to do the same pattern that our parents did with each other. When we deny our natural masculine energy through control, no clarity, and being convincing, we attempt to compensate by believing we must get admiration from others. When we deny our own natural feminine and masculine at the same time by caretaking, compromising and operating in a self-important, conceited manner, we set ourselves up to need the acceptance of others. When we deny ourselves, we need others to confirm and reaffirm who we are.

Preparing for Enlightened Dating

Engaging The Future

We prepare ourselves for enlightened dating by learning how to let go of our attachments to our image. This means that we express who we are without telling a story about ourselves. The more we are established in our creative nature, the less effectively any story can capture who we are. By learning how to tell our truth about both our weaknesses and strengths, we learn how to be honest without encouraging others to fantasize about us. The more we learn how to show up without projecting a fantasy about ourselves, the more cleanly others will be able to choose us as a partners for the right reasons. Otherwise, the more we try to convince them that we are the best partners for them, the more they are going to be disappointed when they find out who we really are.

Enlightened Dating practices do not try to make it too easy or comfortable for others by attempting to take care of their needs. To do so only makes others want to be with us because they feel we are going to make their lives easier. What we want is to be with partners who create their own lives and who have their own way of doing things. It is important for our partners to appreciate how relationships can transform and enrich both of our creative expressions. This type of partner is powerful enough to be co-creative. The most important thing we can do is to maintain a spirit of playfulness and engagement so we can discover who we really are on deeper levels, both within ourselves and in the relationship. It is important to trust our knowing about others and not what others say about themselves. The best way to evaluate others as potential relationship choices is to examine the degree of congruence we experience being with them. The more alignment we experience, the more we can love each other without compromise. This is truly the best reason to create partners for ourselves and to let them define, with us, the appropriate level of involvement.

One of our best recommendations for individuals who have not completed Defensive Healing is to neutralize the defensive issues by choosing partners with the same Defense Style. This means that if we have a Distant Defense Style background, we will want to find individuals with the same background. If we are Disarming, look for Disarming individuals; if we are Dynamic, find Dynamic individuals of the gender of our choice so we can be seen and appreciated for being exactly who we are in this moment. Unconscious fears will both keep us from seeing and recognizing people with the same defense style, and make it initially difficult to be around these individuals. The degree to which we do not love ourselves fully is the degree to which we will experience difficulty in being with people doing defensive behaviors.

In the Enlightened Dating Book we teach Disarming men how to engage Disarming women successfully, as well as teaching Dynamic women how to invite Dynamic men into a relationship. Disarming men and Dynamic women are less traditional and tend to be the most interested in this work, and we have discovered that they get great results by being the initiators of the Enlightened Dating process. We show Disarming men how to honor their Dynamic side by defining and communicating what would work for them, creating a safe space for a Disarming woman. We show Dynamic women how to be vulnerable by creating openings where Dynamic men can contribute. We also deal with the more traditional Dynamic men and Disarming women, as well as explain how this process works in gay and lesbian environments.

Our Enlightened Dating experiences will also improve the more we creatively interact with individuals who are fully being their primary creative expressions. This is why we recommend “hanging out” with individuals who share those things that motivate, amplify and honor our way of being. Any challenges to being present with others of our primary creative expression reflect the degree and nature of how our energy was denied and discounted by our parents. Another reason we may feel uncomfortable is that we are not used to being seen to the degree that we are by those who are embodying our own creative energy. The more time we spend with individuals who are like us, the more prepared we will be when a Spiritual Partnership possibility shows up. This is why we encourage participation in the Creative Expression Parties each month.

In the rest of this book, we will cover common dating positions that create four dating styles. We will explain how we get trapped in negative entangled relationships. We will show how most people get stuck in the Connection, Consideration and Commitment stages, which keeps them from creating Spiritual Partnerships. Most importantly, we will describe how to move into the Co-Creation, Co-Measurement, Communion and Completion stages of Enlightened Dating, so that we will experience our ability to choose our partner in each moment. This will inspire us to prepare to create conscious relationships. It will also provide a larger context for appreciating the value and power of relationships in our lives.

The primary Enlightened Dating preparation recommendations are to eliminate Pretenses and Defenses by understanding how these positions limit us. We are supported in this process by releasing our intellectual, emotional and physical repressions, allowing us to establish clean boundaries where no Defenses are necessary. Of course, it is helpful to be able to recognize compatibility factors and demonstrate Relationship Skills in order to invite others to engage us in a Common Neutral Ground. This process will be facilitated by breaking out of our self-limitations around Playfulness, Paradox and Mutual Learning. This course focuses our intention on our aspirations, which will assist us in recognizing the underlying motives of our partners. We will discover how easy it is to see through our partner’s fears and desires to uncover the true degree of alignment we naturally possess with them.

We encourage “Learning Engagements” where we consciously commit ourselves not to be “the one”, but to explore how we can creatively connect on deeper levels. Learning Engagements have one primary agreement: to learn if we can be Spiritual Partners, and if not, to discover how we can support each other in finding them. The paradox of Enlightened Dating is that most of the people we engage will be friends and not lovers. The more we know about their creative ways of connecting, the less important a purely sexual connection will be. Some will even become great business partners, but only a few will actually have what it takes to create a self-generating and sustainable Spiritual Partnership. When we look at people from a creative viewpoint first, we can identify quickly those people who hold the possibility of being congruent and resonant with our creativity.