Becoming Divinely Human
by CC Leigh

Chapter 8: Mutuality and Love Trust

Our Story: In the environment of “mutuality,” we became freer and more authentic in our expression, knowing that perfection was not required. We also remained accountable to one another, ever-ready to see, admit, and even embrace our limitations, and make amends when necessary.

What is mutuality?
Mutuality is the art of honoring one’s true and total self while also making room for others to be doing the same. In this chapter we’ll explore what that simple statement means in practice. Mutuality is one of those things that “takes minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.”
Mutuality involves honest speaking, deep listening, and the giving and receiving of feedback, with a tacit agreement to stay in communication and try to work out problems when things get difficult. Sometimes it involves agreeing to disagree, and finding a way to be heart-connected anyway. Mutuality is a key element of the threefold Trillium Awakening path that incorporates Consciousness, embodiment, and relatedness. It is the venue where our awakening divinely human nature has the opportunity to come fully forward as we learn how to interact more consciously with others who are also awakening. Eventually, what we learn about conscious relating with other divinely human beings can be carried into all our relationships.

The special power of mutuality groups
There is a special power in groups beyond what is available in one-on-one situations. In a group situation, you are able to hear what a variety of people are experiencing, and see them in their challenges and their triumphs. And, as trust grows, you may find yourself willing to let them see you in your own struggles to be fully here. Although you might feel shy at first, over time you may find it easier to speak your raw truth within a group than at home with your intimate partner or family members. In those one-on- one situations, a great deal rides on how the relationship is going, so conflicts are often fraught with pressure and difficulty. But in a group you get to practice speaking your truth and making room for others to speak theirs, without so much on the line.

In Chapter 7, I introduced mutuality groups as one way to come together to explore awakening. You can practice mutuality in teacher-led groups, if you are fortunate enough to live near a teacher who is offering sittings. Or you might find (or start) a peer-based mutuality group—they’re beginning to crop up in a variety of locations and even meeting virtually. Because it’s important to create a safe-enough space for mutuality to grow, I have posted some guidelines for mutuality groups that can be found at www.trilliumawakening.org/guidelines-for-practic- ing-mutuality.

Vulnerably speaking your truth
Honoring your true and total self begins with speaking your truth—giving voice to what is going on in your inner experience, including the range of successes and failures, joys and sorrows, wounds you’ve received and injuries you’ve caused. It includes your visions and dreams for your life, your family, and the world. Mutuality is risking to speak what you might have formerly wanted to keep private. It means allowing others to see all of your many moods, whether they are creative and dynamic or reactive, unattractive, or downright “dysfunctional.” It also means letting others know when you’re upset, disappointed, pissed off, or feeling like you want to cut off from them.

Mutuality means speaking up even when you expect that what you are about to say might be unpopular. It means taking the risk that others will disagree with you, as well. It is through these bold moves that your most authentic self begins to discover its right to be here just as it is, without apology.
We are not advocating speaking indiscriminately, however. Mutuality is not about walking into your office Monday morning and telling your boss all the backed-up judgements that you’ve been suppressing. Especially when you are just getting started, you will want to choose appropriate venues to practice mutuality, those places where you feel welcomed and safe enough, and also trust that confidentiality will be honored.
Responsible communication

Mutuality attempts to find the balance between uninhibited expression and being unnecessarily hurtful to others. In that light, practitioners are advised to speak about their own experience, feelings, and reactions, and pay special attention to any urge to want to blame what they’re feeling on another person. It is never okay to insult people or address them in ways that demean their character. On the other hand, you are welcome to let people know when something they have said or done has hurt your feelings, scared you, or brought up anger. The idea is to let people know how they have impacted you, knowing that your reaction is your own responsibility (and that someone else might have felt entirely differently about what was said or done). But if you don’t let them know, they may unconsciously continue to do things that bring pain to you—so it is honoring both of yourself and the relationship to let them know how you are feeling so that adjustments, if necessary, can be made.

In the early stages when you are just learning how to GET here as your true and total self, don’t worry too much about what other people might think. Most of us have adopted patterns of withholding our true feelings from others out of fear or shame. Just think about it: one of our most primal fears is that we will be shunned or cast out by our social community, because in our evolutionary past being cast out often spelled a certain death. We learn through a million subtle cues that 1) some others simply aren’t interested in what we think and feel, 2) many others are uncomfortable talking about certain types of things, especially deep feelings, and 3) some types of thoughts and feelings are socially unacceptable and might cause us to be rejected, so it’s better to keep them to ourselves.
To break out of the prison that these messages have put us in, we need to begin telling it like it is. It’s more important to get it out than to have it be all polished and nice.

It’s not just radical honesty
There’s a difference between mutuality and radical honesty. Mutuality is not simply about speaking the raw truth of whatever pops into your head at any given moment, without censorship. Nor does it mean pointing out others’ bullshit bluntly, even when it is apparent to you, because this can overwhelm that person and lead them to distrust you. On the other hand, some sort of pointing out may be exactly what someone needs to hear in order to come out of a fog of self-deception. Mutuality flourishes in an environment of introspection, and willingness to discover the deeper truth behind your surface thoughts, reactions, and impulses. You might use this rule of thumb: begin by focusing on yourself and your own struggles to be in integrity and self-disclosure. If someone else seems out of integrity and you can’t easily let it go, speak what is going on in you as you listen to them. Then you can be free of stewing about something, and they can take in what you have said to the degree possible for them in this moment. In this manner mutuality becomes a tool for self-discovery in relationship with others who are similarly motivated.
Mutuality takes into account the listener, staying mindful that they too are sensitive and vulnerable and will be impacted by what you say. Mutuality means speaking the difficult truth, but also sticking around to find out how your communication landed in the other person, and being willing to hear their feedback.

Active listening
The flip side of speaking about your own experience, feelings, and reactions is listening to others who are doing the same. Mutuality is very much a two-way street, where leaning in to listen as deeply and heart-fully as you can is just as important as stretching to speak your own truth.

Remember how a key element of the Inseeing Process™ is being able to bring the warm, interested curiosity of Presence to whatever is arising in you? That spacious welcoming is a powerful agent of healing, and it is this same sort of deep listening that is most beneficial in mutuality. To whatever degree you are capable in the moment, listen with whole-being openness so that, if you had to, you could repeat back everything you have heard. Then reflect something back to the speaker, something that lets them know you heard them or empathically registered how they are feeling. It need not be the exact words (like you do when practicing Inseeing in pairs); a paraphrase is sufficient and more suited to the interpersonal dynamic of mutuality.

Being able to listen from Presence takes some practice. Typically, as we listen to someone speaking, we get activated ourselves and begin forming responses to what we’re hearing even before the other person has finished speaking. If this happens, you can turn part of your awareness inward and say “hello” to whatever is coming up. Then return your full attention to the person who is speaking.

Speaking makes it (more) real
For humans, one of the ways we discover and confirm what is true for ourselves is through our words as we speak them to interested listeners. This is also and perhaps even more true when you are in a process of awakening and integrating your insights into your divinely human life. When given the opportunity to speak to conscious others who can understand and validate your experiences and new understandings, speaking your truth is very empowering and lends support for taking the steps that will bring you to a full and stable realization. It is natural to feel shy when you’re speaking about the tender transitions that go with coming fully alive and awake, yet to find your voice in these tender places is the very thing that most helps your awakening become solid and trustable.

Unfortunately, cultural taboos can suppress speaking about spiritual awakenings. Some spiritual communities frown on it because it can stimulate jealousy in others or create competition around having the “best experiences” and “most progress.” Or you may have heard something like, “He who knows does not speak”—as if talking about it somehow makes it less valid.

It’s true that a profound awakening is a very personal experience that does not require—and can even be diminished by—speaking. For sure, it is better to hold one’s tongue than to speak indiscriminately to people who have no framework from which to understand what you’re saying, or to take it in the spirit in which it is intended.

For example, there were times in the past when someone who, upon having a profound mystical experience in which everything and everyone was seen to be of one divine essence, proclaimed, “I am God!” In the moment, that was the truth as they saw it. Unfortunately, such a statement could—and sometimes did—lead to persecution or even death. Whether we are conscious of it or not, our collective memories of such atrocities has led to a strong cultural inhibition against making statements that proclaim one’s unity with “God.”

In the western world at the beginning of the 21st century, we are very fortunate that we have great freedom to speak about our spiritual experiences with much less likelihood of being, for example, burned at the stake as witches. This is not to encourage being indiscriminate, but to definitely encourage leaning in and facing subconscious taboos in order to claim what is true for yourself. In the back and forth of mutual truth-telling, the most complete truth can be unearthed. And in stepping forward to tell your story, you support others in doing the same.

Speaking helps us see that we’re not freaks, nor uniquely “bad”
There is another and very important benefit to be had by speaking your truth to others. If you hold back your private difficulties and embarrassments, you permit deep distortions to persist unchallenged. You may begin to believe that others are more together, successful, confident, capable, and happy than you are (indeed, you may already believe this to be true), and that something about you is more dysfunctional or broken than is true for other people. You may feel ashamed of the ways in which you think you fall short, or have failed to make your life work out as it should. While it’s true that different people have different capacities and skills, and therefore some people are better at some things than others, it is a surprising discovery that almost everyone harbors a secret shame that they are somehow less than, or not as good as, others (even those who put on a good front and look really “together”).

Such shame gives rise to a vicious circle: 1) you feel too ashamed to tell anyone the truth, and 2) your silence in turn reinforces your misconceptions about what it’s really like to be human, and 3) your misconceptions lead to more shame and more silence.
When you speak up (in good company), you begin to undo this cycle. When you really get how difficult it is for everyone to be here, and how much embarrassment and shame everyone feels at times, you begin to release yourself from the demand to figure it all out and do it perfectly. You become free, and you set others free in the process.

“Coming out” is a service to others
Speaking can serve a special function in helping us get here—actually experience a radical shift into our divinely human embodiment. For human beings, verbal expression is one of our main ways of bringing things out of the realm of ideas and dreams into a shared field of reality. When we speak the discoveries and new perspectives that are arising in us, they get support to take root and grow.

In addition, it is easier to come into your spiritual maturity when you know there are others like you in the world. When you are engaged in a profound transformative process, you may feel as if you are changing so much that you will lose all your friends; that you and they will no longer be able to relate to each other in the same easy fashion that comes from sharing common frames of reference. There is some truth to this. Awakening precipitates shifts and changes in how you show up in your life as you become more authentic, and some of your former friends may drift away in the process if they aren’t able to appreciate who you really are.
Most likely the people who love you will enjoy your growing authenticity, as well as the opportunity you create for them to express themselves more fully also. The good news is that, as you let people see who you are, you will draw new people into your life, people who like the real you! In our experience, new relationships always get formed with people who are attracted to, and resonate with, your true and total self.

You will not be alone in your awakeness. More and more people are now undergoing the radical shifts of spiritual awakening. But they—we—are still rare on planet earth, so whenever someone “comes out” and proclaims their awakened condition, they are rendering a service to the whole community. They are saying, in effect, “Come on in, the water’s warm and you’re going to find a whole new community of people who will recognize you and join you in exploring this new territory.”

Balancing masculine and feminine
Speaking one’s truth can also serve to bring the masculine and feminine sides of your nature into greater dynamic balance. The feminine side is where intuitions, feelings, values, and hurt places reside in our psyche. For most of us, this is our private world, the part of us that society tells us to keep hidden or only share with our chosen inner circle. However, keeping this rich meaningful treasure trove hidden can also be disempowering, so that you end up living your public life in a sort of half-light.

The masculine side is the doing side, oriented to action, manifestation, and accomplishment. Although this side is socially acceptable, it can tend to run off half-cocked, as it were, if it is not informed by the feminine side so that it is taking action on the very things that really matter deeply to your authentic self.
Speaking your truth is where the two begin to work together. When the voice is used, the private world is brought out—made manifest—into the shared world. With practice and positive experience, confidence grows. When you discover that you are able to speak what you formerly felt was unspeakable, and that you are not rejected, discounted, or shunned, you begin to change and come alive in ways that you could never have predicted or imagined. Self-confidence and trust grow as you discover what is possible.

Mutuality puts all of our skills into use
In Chapter 5, Inseeing was defined as the experience of seeing into another living being so totally that it is as if you were standing in their center and understanding them from that perspective. You insee their wholeness and divine perfection, in and of itself, without needing to change it in any way. When you practice Inseeing you become more able to be the spaciousness of Presence which has room for all your conditioned parts, broken zones, and partial selves. Presence effortlessly holds all of the inner parts without needing them to change in any way. And then, almost magically, when parts are held in this unconditional fashion, they begin to spontaneously change and evolve into greater wholeness.

In mutuality, the process occurs a little differently. The speaker is freer to speak as whatever conditioned state or partial self is wanting attention, while the listener(s) take the role of Presence—to whatever degree is possible for them in the moment. There is a tacit understanding that the speaker is more than what he or she is expressing—that it’s only one aspect of the totality of Who They Are (whether they currently are aware of that or not). This framework provides a context for mutual Inseeing: beholding the divinity of one another so fully it’s as if you were inside them, understanding them from that perspective.

Mutuality takes our inner work of self-discovery out into the interpersonal arena and shares it. It empowers everyone, not simply to become uninhibited about sharing personal information, but to become confident that we have a divine right to be here as we are, without shame. Through sharing we learn that our presence and our words matter to other people, and can help them heal and get here in all of their magnificence, too. When we open up together with the intention of becoming more fully conscious, we learn that our old ways of viewing things aren’t the only possibility. As we take in more perspectives, we increase the likelihood of discovering deeper underlying truths—truths that transcend our personal stories.

Try this: Inseeing in mutuality
Here is a way to begin incorporating Inseeing into mutuality. When you are invited to share something about yourself, take a moment to pause and sense inwardly, into your core where you are most likely to get a felt sense of what’s up for you right now—what might bring the greatest benefit by speaking it to good listeners. Say an inward “hello” to it, and then begin your sharing by saying, “I’m sensing something in me that .” Fill in the blank with whatever you are in touch with—something that wants some attention, or maybe something that feels tense, or hurting, or even happy. Maybe it’s something from the past that’s triggered and would like some space to talk it through. It’s not necessary to go through all the specific steps of the Inseeing Process at this time. Just let yourself spontaneously speak what’s up, knowing that others are hearing you and holding you.

When you are the listener, you can sense how your body is registering what the other person is speaking. Sometimes you might feel a deep empathy with the other, and when you reflect what you are sensing back to the speaker they will likely feel really “gotten” by you. However, there may be times when you feel triggered or reactive in light of what they’re sharing. You might, at such times, place your hand over the area that is activated and inwardly greet it with a “hello, I see you there.” And, often as not, that will give you enough breathing room to be able to return your attention to what the speaker is sharing. You might check if this “something in you” would like you to give it some dedicated attention later—and if so, be sure to do that.

“Wounds created in relationship are most deeply healed in, and by, relationship.”
This statement by elder teacher Sandra Glickman reminds us that mutuality is one of our most powerful healing tools. Your interactions with others will sooner or later trigger your broken zones, and it is precisely during these times of regression into old feeling states that consciousness can penetrate into those dark places. Consciousness will bring new light, new insights, and new possibilities where before there was only the prospect of endless repetitions of the same patterns over and over. Healing begins when you re-experience a painful event, but in a different context than the original—for instance, while in the company of people who actually care about you and your feelings. You then have the opportunity, in this moment, to form new conclusions about what’s possible here in life.

Getting triggered into your old, conditioned patterns is not pleasant nor usually what you think you want. But it’s a very valuable part of your process of becoming divinely human and able to participate in life with creative action rather than automatic reaction. As you open these areas up, consciousness can flow in and bring new understanding and possibilities.
Mutual triggering

Given human nature and how difficult it is to really get a handle on everything going on inside yourself, it’s inevitable that engaging with others is going to, at times, result in a messy situation. Despite your best intention to listen from a state of Presence, you’ll find yourself flaring up into some kind of reactivity, triggered by what the other person is communicating. It might not even be what they actually said. Maybe they just reminded you of a situation from your past and wham, you’re off and running with a whole pattern of upset. Then your reaction might trigger further reaction in the other person, and before you know it, there’s some kind of blowup replete with misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Now what?

Equalizing pressures
On an energetic level, when you feel injured by someone it is likely that they have sent out some energy, perhaps unintentionally, that you are reacting to. You may experience a complex mixture of anger, sadness, pain, agitation etc. Or you may run through an inner litany of grievances and arguments as if on a tape loop, rehashing the situation over and over or imagining ways to get back at the person, or to prove that you were right and they were wrong. When this is happening, you are backed up with this issue and may find it very difficult to let it go—or to have it let you go.

What is called for is a means of releasing and equalizing that pressure so you can return to a state of ease. If you are not conscious of this energetic dynamic, you may tend to hold a high level of pressure in your body because you don’t know how to release it, or aren’t even aware it’s present. This can go on for years on end. Although there are many ways to release this energy—even enjoyable ones like lovemaking—the result of this mounting pressure is all-too-often an explosive outburst or attack directed at whoever happens to be handy when the dam breaks. The positive side of such outbursts is that you feel some relief. But the downside of this approach—and it’s a significant one—is the collateral damage done if the pressure release comes as hostile, attacking energy. Now the next person is highly pressurized and will sooner or later need to blow their top to equalize their pressure. And so the cycle is perpetuated.

Another way you might try to release pressure is by turning your hostility inward, on yourself. While avoiding collateral damage to others, this can become quite crippling to your psyche and health.

Daring to speak
When you speak the difficult feelings you’re backed up with to appropriate people in a constructive way, the pressure can be released without the sort of major eruption that can damage a relationship. You may be judging yourself or attempting to censor your thoughts and not express them, but if they don’t go away easily you may have little choice but to give them voice. What doesn’t get spoken will only fester and lead to other, less appropriate methods of expression. Or else it may contribute to an inner toxic environment that creates fallout of other kinds, like illness or depression. It’s not healthy to hold the sorts of inner tension that we have come to take for granted in Western culture!

It’s not easy to acknowledge your judgments and reactions and to bring them to another. You may feel embarrassed that you are having such thoughts, or even suspect that it’s as much about you as it is about them. You may also feel reluctant to let them see your pain, or your vulnerability. But it is in these very places that seem so messy and difficult that amazing healing can occur, even healing of long-standing issues that you thought might live in you forever.

Staying in the room
For mutuality to really work there needs to be an agreement to stay in the room with each other long enough to hear feedback and work through the sticky parts. If someone says or does something that hurts your feelings or pressures you, it is important to let them know, and take a stand for your own empowerment. Mutual interactions are seldom simple. What was it about what they said that got you so triggered? Perhaps their communication reminded you of something very hurtful that happened to you in the past. As you are sharing your reaction, you also have the opportunity to revisit that event and bring some healing to it.

This is not to say that all reactions are solely the responsibility of the one experiencing them. That would be going too far. Mutuality is a messy process where all sides play a part in working together to explore and learn from the broken zones and conditioned responses that inevitably get triggered when people interact. It is impossible to totally avoid this sort of inadvertent hurt that happens in relating because no one can know where another’s broken zones lie. And most people aren’t fully aware of their own broken zones, never mind other people’s. In relationship, you will likely find yourself repeatedly surprised by the intensity of some of your reactions to even innocuous comments or situations, and whenever that happens, you will have to work your way carefully through the fallout in order to come to a positive resolution and a restoration of harmony and trust.

Staying present does NOT mean taking abuse
Staying in the room, however, doesn’t mean allowing yourself to be abused. Abuse is never useful, and allowing it to continue harms not only the receiver, but the abuser as well, and has devastating consequences on relationship. Constructive learning and growth cannot happen in that kind of environment. It is neither desirable nor suggested that anyone should passively allow others to be abusive toward them, whether the abuse is overt and physical, or subtle and verbal. It is part of taking responsibility for everyone’s wellbeing to walk away if someone demeans you, calls you names, insults you, or threatens your safety in any way.

Much abusive behavior is unconscious, so those who have been abusive need to bring their behavior into conscious awareness in order to modify it. It is best for them (and their friends and loved ones) if they will seek professional help and guidance with this. In the meantime, those who love them can help by leaving the situation when abuse begins, and only returning when the abusive party is able to be present without resorting to that sort of inappropriate communication.

For people who have a history of abuse as children, or who’ve been caught up in a chronically-abusive relationship, it may be difficult to distinguish what is abusive or to know when to walk away. Some people don’t even know that there are other ways to communicate that aren’t abusive. If you are unsure about how to draw the line, please talk to a skilled counselor who can help you learn how to create healthy boundaries.

So how do you distinguish what is abusive? Anger in and of itself is not abusive. It becomes abusive when it resorts to insults, name-calling, demeaning remarks designed to hurt your self-esteem, or tactics intended to prevent you from expressing yourself. Physical threats or attacks are also abusive. You never need to remain with someone who is engaging in this sort of behavior.

In most cases, the conversation can be resumed once the triggered person has calmed down and become civil. However, if you don’t feel safe enough to continue one-on-one, you may need to bring in a third party to mediate so that a trustable environment can be maintained.

When to use a third party (when really triggered)
Given how challenging mutuality can be, no one is expected to do it perfectly. That’s part of the gift that we can give one another: understanding that we won’t be able to always do it “right” or “nicely” or avoid pushing each others’ buttons.

Although we do recommend speaking directly to one another and staying in the room to work things through, there are also times when it will be best to bring your feelings to a third party first, especially when you are highly triggered. If you find yourself so angry or distraught that you want to attack the other person, and take their head off or say things that insult their character, it is advisable to turn to a trusted helper and ask them to hear you out. In that fashion some of the pressure can be released and you can sort through the waves of feeling that might be coming very fast at that moment. Then you will be able to make a more informed choice about whether, and how much, to bring to the person who triggered your reaction in the first place.

Using a third party in the form of an awakened therapist (or teacher), is also strongly recommended when you are feeling chaotic inside, when your emotions threaten to overwhelm you, or when you find yourself struggling to understand what is arising in you internally. Therapists are trained to give you their undivided attention in order to help you sort through things and gain insight and healing. Most of us at one time or another need this sort of assistance in order to work our way through past traumas and gain some freedom around them. Mutuality may be too challenging when you are dealing with major interpersonal crises, but the personal work you do during those times will give you a foundation for even deeper mutuality going forward.
Mutuality with TATC teachers
Sometimes it might be your teacher who pushes your buttons. Teachers make mistakes, react inappropriately at times, create messes in their personal relationships, do things that they wished later they hadn’t done, etc. Sooner or later, your teacher may disappoint you (especially if you were idealizing them in some fashion). If you find yourself feeling hurt by something your teacher has said or done, or not said or done, it is your opportunity to practice YOUR end of mutuality and let them know.

Mutuality outside Trillium Awakening
Mutuality, in the sense of having the intention to stay in communication and work things through even when it gets difficult and messy, is best practiced with others who have agreed to it. You cannot require it of anyone, nor force a reluctant person to meet you in that way. It is best by invitation, and by education. It will be easier for your loved ones to join you if they understand that your intention is to be healed, whole, and fully expressed in your life, and that you wish the same for them. If they remain uninterested, that is their choice to make. However, that does not prevent you from being honest in your communication with them. It is only through honest, direct communication that you can be free.

Not a utopian ideal
Mutuality is not some utopian ideal of the perfect community of people who are always loving, patient, and kind with one another. Or, perhaps I should say it’s not about everyone always being “nice.” In fact, “nice” is one of those concepts that tends to keep people suppressed and repressed. People who are trying to be nice adjust themselves to a perceived social standard to such an extent that they lose touch with themselves and what they really feel, want, and are willing to take a stand for. In order to be fully here as an embodied divinely human person, this tendency to suppress oneself has to be reversed, whatever it takes. Mutuality is the sort of real, intimate, and honest mutual engagement that can help further our collective unfoldment into our full potential. It’s challenging and sometimes messy. It can be a real workout!

Love-trust
We have all experienced things in our lives that caused us to begin distrusting others. Because humans are not perfectly attuned and sensitive to one another, it is inevitable that they will sooner or later do something that hurts another. And given human nature, this can run the gamut from completely uninten- tional to downright vicious intentional harm. It would be foolish for us to ignore this fact about humans: we can be mean to one another, and we’ve all experienced that at one time or another in our lives.

In light of this, it is pretty remarkable that people can be trusting at all. Trust is a precious commodity, something that allows us to let down our guard around another and allow them to see our tender side. Trust is a gift—it says to another, “I am willing to take a chance with you, to let you get close to me with the assumption that you won’t mistreat me if I do.”

For healthy people, trust with someone new develops in stages, organically, over a period of time. First there are small intimacies, invitations that let the new person know something personal about us. If this is met with care and not used against us, there can be greater intimacies and deeper sharing. If this is respected then we move to greater intimacy, perhaps including physical intimacy, and only if this level is handled well do we consider taking further steps—like living together, or forming a business partnership, or getting married.

Growing trust
Of course, no one is perfectly considerate all the time—we are far too preoccupied with just trying to make it through our own lives to always take our friends’ and lovers’ interests into account. There will be missteps along the way—but a big part of establishing healthy, trusting relationships is what happens after things get messy.

If a friend or partner acts inconsiderately, then is unwilling to listen to you when you bring your grievance to them, you will naturally feel that your trust has been misplaced with this person and that it is unsafe to continue being vulnerable around them. On the other hand, if they do listen respectfully, and let you know what’s going on in them as well as expressing sincere regret for the hurt you feel, then trust can actually deepen as a result of such breaches.

This dynamic of gradually building trust with another over time does not come easily to everyone. Children raised in abusive situations—no matter if the abuse is physical, verbal, or sexual, or whether it is invasive or by omission—may have such deep wounding in the area of trust that they simply don’t know what trust is, never mind how to achieve it.

Blind trust
If you didn’t have the process of gradually building trust over time modeled for you, you may either distrust everyone or you might be overly-trusting with people you don’t know very well. Blind trust is practically a given in romantic stories: when the handsome or beautiful stranger appears, all caution is thrown to the wind as you give yourself over completely to the fantasy that this person will never betray or cause harm, and that you will live happily ever after. Taking the time to build trust gradually may be viewed as decidedly un-romantic and therefore its value can be overlooked.

Many people seem especially prone to blind trust of religious or spiritual teachers. Shouldn’t they be safe people to trust, since they say they’re committed to living by a higher standard than the average person? But you only have to listen to the spiritual grapevine a while to realize that more than a few highly respected spiritual figures have fallen ignominiously from grace and mis- used the position of trust they were given.

Blind trust sees things only in black-and-white, and when the inevitable letdowns occur, there is shock and outrage in response. Blind trust says, in effect, “I know you’ll never hurt me because you are a good person.” Blind trust completely ignores the fact that no one is perfect, or capable of always having your best interests in mind (even if they do have them at heart). Blind trust is a setup for being disappointed. When you’ve been overly trusting, you are unlikely to weather the inevitable ups and downs that occur between real people in real relationships.

Pragmatic trust, on the other hand, is healthier. It says, in effect, “I am hopeful that you won’t hurt me intentionally, although you might accidentally. I’ll hang around and see how you show up over time.” This sort of conditional trust allows a relationship to go forward, step by step, as both parties get to know the other’s style of relating and their trustworthiness.

Trust is also an inside job
Trust is not just about how the other person treats you. It is also about how well you trust yourself to land on your feet in dynamic interactions with others. As you grow in your ability to be in Presence with all your feelings and emotions, you will feel more confident of your ability to embrace what gets triggered in you by the behavior of others around you. This is not to say you will welcome callous treatment by others, but that you will be able to extend more trust to those around you if you trust your- self enough to know they will not be able to damage or destroy you by what they say or do.

The art of being accountable
No one can ever know if they have fully plumbed the depths of all their unconscious broken zones, nor can they fully know that they won’t fall into a conditioned or trance state and begin acting unconsciously in their relationships from time to time. Whether for a brief period or a more protracted phase, “unconscious” is just that—out of sight, beneath awareness. It only becomes conscious when there is reflection from others to help reveal what’s going on. Any unconscious pattern will only cease to drive our behavior when it has been fully seen and worked through over time.

Unfortunately, spiritual awakening does not immediately change your ingrained patterning. This is what mystifies so many people: why doesn’t a profound revelation of your divinity immediately do away with fear and its resultant survival strategies, or with selfishness, or with unkind behavior to others? The answer has to do with how you are wired: your survival patterns (and most of your patterns are somehow linked to your sense of safety) are necessary and therefore quite resistant to change. So the predicament you’ll face as an awakening, divinely human being is that, while on some level you’ll have transcended feeling alone in the universe, or cut off from Source or divine love, you will still be conditioned to act in ways that are quite different than you might expect from an awakened person. Or prefer.

But our human nature isn’t second class to our divine nature— it is actually also divine. The broken, wounded, childish one crying out in outraged fury is every bit as divine as the sublimely peaceful one who is embodying grace in the moment. Unconscious doesn’t mean un-divine. This is a really important point worthy of deep contemplation. Most of us automatically assume that “divine” means “of the light”—all that is good, flowing, loving, compassionate, creative, joyful, or wise. And we assume that the ways in which we are conditioned, reactive, self-protective, egoic, angry, resistant, etc., are not of the light. We judge ourselves and others by this yardstick, looking in vain for that which embodies all light and no dark, all love and no fear, all good and no bad, or all freedom and no limitation.

Even when we accept conceptually that we are ALL of the entire range of experience and response, and accept that awakened people also continue to embody the entire range of human behavior, on some level we may hold out hope for a type of virtue that is still very rare on earth. And we may continue to hold a dualistic view that judges people as “less divine” if they demonstrate personal weaknesses, vulnerability, or reactivity. It is worth looking at— these ways we hang onto our hopes and expectations for ourselves and others, that we and/or they will become totally safe and trustable, so that we won’t have to feel so scared any more.

This brings us to the paradox of awakened relating: we greenlight ourselves and one another in our humanness, accept that we have limits that are resistant to change, and yet still strive for greater freedom and kindness in all our relations. We long for less conflict and more harmony. Given how we are, how do we get there?
There is a way to honorably deal with the fallout that comes from the inevitable messiness of human relationships. It’s called “coconut yoga.”

Coconut yoga
Coconut yoga is a rather whimsical term that means to bow down to the aggrieved party, as if your head were falling to the ground like a coconut dropping from a tree—with a big THUNK. In short, this means being willing to receive people’s feedback when they feel hurt or wronged by you, and to make a real apology that indicates your concern and interest in not repeating that kind of injury.

Showing up to receive feedback in this manner is not often easy or fun—that’s why it’s called “yoga.” It is a spiritual practice, and it takes practice to develop some facility with it. Most of us have a knee-jerk reaction to critical feedback that instantly goes to avoidance, denial, or defense. We either don’t want to take responsibility for our accuser’s pain, or we want to turn it back on them and make them see how they caused us to act that way. It’s difficult to just sit and let the feedback in— but that is what is needed to begin to undo the cycle of injury, blaming, and defensiveness that causes people to withdraw from one another in distrust and hurt feelings.

Coconut yoga doesn’t instantly erase the soreness that can result when you feel missed, or mistreated, by someone else, but it usually clears the way for healing to begin. While not perfect, it may well be the best skill we can learn to foster true healing between people. Unlike the typical drama of relationship, where hurt feelings either escalate into full-blown fighting (with attack- ing and greater injury) or cause withdrawal into icy silence, this is a third option with the potential to defuse the situation and initiate a process of healing.

Forgiveness
There’s a lot said in many spiritual teachings about forgive- ness. We are told that the loving thing to do is forgive, and that forgiving is good for us. But just as blind trust is unwise, blind or too-quick forgiveness can be counter-productive to genuine healing between people. You may have good reasons NOT to forgive that person, at least not yet.

Forgiving someone as a spiritual practice may feel good and virtuous, but if you haven’t really allowed yourself to feel and process the full extent of the impact that person’s behavior has had on you, it may be a superficial act that doesn’t really release the trauma. Your best intentions to let go of a grievance may not be able to get much traction if the grievance won’t let you go.

One reason for holding onto a grievance can occur when something in you is trying to keep you from being hurt again.

You might think that forgiving means acting as if the injury never happened, or that you need to open yourself to this person again. However, forgiving someone doesn’t mean you now have to blindly trust them again, or allow them the same access to your tender inner parts. That MAY be the outcome, but depending on the degree of impact they have had on you, and the degree to which they broke your trust, you may need to create some new boundaries between you. With time, and depending on your mutual motivation to rebuild your relationship, trust can be gradually rebuilt if you both work toward that end.

Once you realize that you can forgive someone without re-engaging at the same level of intimacy, it becomes easier to at least have a willingness to forgive. The actual forgiveness, when the charge is fully dissipated, comes when it does, more an act of grace than of will. After all, the more honest we are with ourselves, the more we see that we all share a common human predicament. We mess up. We make mistakes. Sometimes we hurt one another. Sometimes we just fail to see how we’re impacting others through our actions or our neglect. Forgiveness is a generous act; it’s compassion in action. When we extend forgiveness we are making it easier for all of us to be here as our flawed human selves.

All that said, if you haven’t yet expressed your hurt feelings to the one who triggered them, you may simply be unable to let it go. The hurt may cycle around in your thoughts and/or emotions without any means of resolution until it is spoken in an appropri- ate fashion—and received by the other person. To that end, here are some guidelines to follow if you find yourself in a situation that calls for making amends.

Coconut Yoga Guidelines
Bringing feedback
If you are the person bringing the complaint, do your best to speak about your experience and your feelings or reactions without making the other person solely respon- sible for creating these feelings in you. Your feelings are your own. The other person’s actions or words may have triggered them, but your reaction is uniquely your own and may well have as much to do with what happened to you in the past as it does the current situation. It’s not, however, necessary to figure all that out in advance—give yourself permission to be imperfect in your presentation.

Have an idea of what you want to get out of the meeting. What will satisfy you? You may not get everything you want, but having some clarity around that will make it more possible for the other person to give it to you.

Keep in mind that it’s hard for most people to hear feed- back, especially those who had critical parents and for whom criticism brings forth extreme shame. Try to make some allowance for them to be imperfect at this, too.

Try to be willing to forgive the other for whatever they did that brought you pain.
Receiving feedback

To whatever degree you can, stay open to receiving feed- back from anyone who registers that they are feeling hurt or wounded by you in some way. Keep in mind how difficult it is for people to come forward with their feed- back and try to support them in their effort.

Practice active listening by repeating the essence of what you have heard them say. Continue until they agree that you have fully gotten their message. Do this before you jump in and present your side of the issue.

Find in yourself some sense of compassion or regret for the hurt they feel, even if you don’t think you caused it or should be held responsible. Let them know you care about how they feel. If you can’t feel compassion for their pain or upset, it is a clue that you might be feeling defensive or unjustly accused. Rather than fake it, let them know in the simplest way possible that you’re not fully available to meet them at this time. Plan another meeting.

If you felt too triggered to go forward, talk to a teacher or other member(s) of your support team and explore what has come up in you around the incident.
If the situation feels highly pressured, you might ask someone to join you and act as a mediator when you next meet. Sometimes both sides want to have a support person present.

Find out what the person bringing feedback wants from you, either an apology or some other form of amends. If possible, give them what they want, including your sincere intention to not repeat the same behavior in the future.

Check in and see if she or he is willing to hear your side of the issue, if not now then at some time in the near future when you could meet again.

Remember that coconut yoga is a generous gesture to- wards mutuality rather than something anyone is entitled to receive. It is a gift when someone is willing to participate in this fashion, so try to appreciate their efforts even if not done perfectly. Coconut yoga is as much about the empowerment you get from daring to bring your feedback—and then being seen and heard by the other—as it is about anything specific that they say or do in response. If you remember that your old wounds were often compounded by the fact that no one was available to see and hold you in your pain, you will realize what a great healing gift we extend to one another when we are willing to listen and honor.

If your attempt at coconut yoga goes wrong, as it some- times will, and things seem to be getting worse than when you began, ask for assistance. There are many people in the Trillium Awakening community who will lean in with you to help bring about a positive resolution, and specially trained Trillium mediators can be found under the “contacts” tab at www.tril- liumawakening.org.

When coconut yoga is not enough
Coconut yoga is a vital gesture toward honoring another’s reality and mending the inevitable hurts that happen between people. However, there are times when listening and expressing remorse are not enough.

If the outburst that led to the need for making amends is due to deep-seated defensive patterns, then more work is required. For example, think of the alcoholic parent who, while drunk, lashes out at his or her child either with hurtful words or physical abuse. Later, when sober, this parent feels and expresses their deep remorse and begs forgiveness. Yet sooner or later the outburst is repeated, followed again by abject apology. In this situation apologies and regret are simply insufficient. The underlying cause of the outbursts must be addressed and healed before the amends will carry weight.

Within the Trillium Awakening community there is an intention that if a pattern of hurtful behaviors becomes apparent, especially if feedback is brought by two or more people around the same type of interaction, then it is time for that person to seek professional help to change the pattern. Most of the time, a series of sessions with a body-centered therapist will help identify and heal the underlying issues that are triggering the reactive outbursts.

Teacher commitment to doing their work around difficult patterns is integral to upholding their ethics agreements (described in Chapter 7: Support). Mutuality begins with honoring and bringing yourself forward, deepens when you develop sensitivity to your impact on others, and comes to full fruition when the underlying issues that precipitate hurtful behavior are explored and consciously integrated so that they are no longer primary drivers of your behavior.

Awakened community
I’ve written extensively here about the challenges of relating in mutuality. And although I have described some of the benefits that come from being freely expressed (i.e., speaking your truth), this chapter would be incomplete if I didn’t at least attempt to convey the real heart of mutuality, the payoff of all the hard work.
Mutuality creates the container for Being to see and encounter Being, deeply, fully, even passionately. As people awaken, at least when it’s an embodied awakening, they come ever more fully into their unique expression. They become more independent and autonomous the more they take responsibility for their own lives. They also become more willing to state their opinions even when they might be unpopular, and one effect of all this is that they become far less likely to just “go along to get along.” While they become more open to hearing others’ viewpoints, they also become less willing to give up their own to make someone else comfortable. In other words, a room full of divinely human beings is likely to be a room full of strong personalities who love deeply yet aren’t afraid to mix it up from time to time.
Awakening Being seems to somehow thrive on just such encounters. It’s as if the light that shines out of my eyes gets excited whenever it sees a similar light shining out of other eyes, and just wants to hang out with “itself” appearing as the “other” over there. The fact that each unique person comes with a personality is just the way it is, and it’s the nature of the beast for personalities to bump up against one another about as often as they fall into synergistic harmony. In the very bumping up against, we bring to light the ways we aren’t yet as understanding or compassionate as we wish to be, and thus create opportunities for deeply healing our broken zones. This in turn leads to greater freedom and greater room for divine Self-expression. We call forth the divine in one another by our willingness to see and be seen, hear and be heard, meet and be met.

Mutuality begins with an intention to hang out together for our mutual growth and benefit, and it really matures when conflicts arise and get successfully sorted out through a mutual intention to honor ourselves and one another as fully as humanly possible. We stretch our capacity to hold the inevitable tensions of human relatedness, and we become more trusting of ourselves, one another, and Being in the process. What we learn in mutuality groups then also extends to other relationships outside the circle as well. We become more able to see, honor, and call forth the divine in every other being we encounter—whether they see it in themselves or not.

There is no substitute for the company of other awakened and awakening people who can fully get you in all the dimensions of your total being. Being seen and recognized by those who relate to what you’re experiencing validates and greenlights your tender awakening self to keep going toward ever-more-complete realization of its potential as a divinely human being.

What this is all leading to is awakening
Despite the psychological tone of this chapter, mutuality is not just a psychological program leading to mental health and wellness. It is a profound spiritual practice that creates a framework into which Consciousness can fully arrive and find expression. Mutuality is both a practice that helps facilitate embodied awakening and also a means of giving expression to that awakening once it has occurred.

Not only does mutuality support and enhance embodied awakenings, awakening, in turn, is a prerequisite for the full flowering of mutuality in which the Other is seen to also be Self. It is only when you fully arrive in your divinely human awakening that you will be able to show up sufficiently to really engage mutuality full out. And so, with that in mind, let us move on to our next chapter, Illuminations.