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OVERVIEW
FROM CODEPENDENCE TO INTERDEPENDENCE – Rev. Linda Jackson
As we explore our shadows for personal growth we cultivate more fulfilling relationships grounded in trust, respect, and mutual support. Unraveling the complexities of codependence supports us to come together in interdependence – transforming conflicts within ourselves, our personal relationships, and the world around us. Join us this Sunday as we complete our February theme on Conscious Relationships.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Linda Jackson (00:04):
So one more time for Dom and Ben. And it’s kind of amazing that we could have as many of our main volunteers out today and that it could still come together in such a powerful way. So thank you for those of you who are here to make this happen today. So I am Reverend Linda Jackson and I use she her pronouns. I spent the week in Charleston, South Carolina at the CSL Annual conference, and I am so grateful to have spent time with all of these like-minded people, people from all over. And there’s so many differences in us and yet we hold the same core values and even the things that we might not agree on, we agree on the things that are deep in our core, love human dignity. We practice our core principles and that’s one of the things that I love about this teaching is that it connects me with people who I would not necessarily otherwise have been connected to.
(01:18):
So it was really wonderful to be immersed in the teaching with so many powerful speakers and the music and in honor of Black History Month, we didn’t just have a black, yellow and red tablecloth with a poster and a quick little thing. It was a week of celebration, predominant number of black and other persons of color as the speakers, our very own Reverend Daryl Jones, who was amazing. And it included a trip to the International American Museum. Now, if you haven’t been there and you’re going to Charleston, highly recommend it. I mean, the museum itself is beautifully designed and the exhibit, but it’s built on the site of Gadsden’s Wharf where around 40% of all American enslaved persons disembarked. It’s hard to go through.
(02:24):
The museum’s main focus is on the transatlantic slave trade. Again, a horrific story, right? It’s difficult to take in that inhumanity. And then there was a night of the conference that was dedicated to the local African-American entertainment. There were drumming dancers. I can’t remember the name of that group, but then there was a group of Gah Geechee singers was so fabulous. There was spoken word and there was the Sean Genwright who wrote the book for pivots that we’ve done. He was a keynote and there was also a focus on creating greater belonging and inclusivity specifically in the trans community. You heard me say my pronouns. We say our pronouns as a way to create a welcome space for everyone. It creates an opportunity for others to say how they want to be recognized, addressed, identified. So for us to be the welcome and inclusive space that we say we are to be welcoming for all it requires that we don’t make assumptions about the person standing in front of us. Another thing that I realized about saying my pronouns, which I’ve been practicing in my personal life, I just haven’t really done it up here, but
(04:00):
Another thing that I realized when I announced my pronoun, I’m also beginning to rewire my brain, reprogram my constructs about the binary, right? I begin to recognize, oh, I don’t want to just make that assumption. So it serves a couple of purposes. And Jamie Deia, one of our community members, she has started an organization called Hair has No Gender, and she donated a bunch of these pronoun buttons for us, and they’re on the table over there. And I invite you to take one where one and begin to practice with us. We can show support and really invite others to feel that they have a safe place to be here. I’m not a pro at this and it can feel a little scary to get up and talk about things that aren’t my first nature, and I’m just going to invite us to be a little messy with it. It’s okay if we don’t get it right. I might misgender, I might use a wrong term. I might not say it the right way, but if we don’t lean into it and if we don’t begin practicing, we’re silent and silence is complicity. And if we practice all the things we teach here and if we practice what’s in the book this month, we recognize when we make a mistake, we take responsibility for it and we do better. It’s that simple.
(05:41):
And I just want to take a moment to acknowledge Nex Benedict, if you didn’t know, Nex Benedict is the 16-year-old gender fluid person. Sorry, this is a tough one. Who was beaten and then collapsed and died earlier this week, 16-year-old beaten because of how they identify. Again, unfathomable, the inhumanity. I don’t understand. So what does this have to do with our February book? What does this have to do with our theme conscious relationships? It has a lot to do with it. The book is really about moving from the dysfunction of codependent relationships into more functional and fulfilling relationships, interdependent relationships. So the book is really exploring predominantly significant relationships for anyone in your main circle. But we’re developing our relationship to ourself first so that we can then be in right relationship with others. And I’m inviting us to extend that out into exploring the dysfunction that is playing out in the relationships in the world at large.
(07:09):
Another theme that was introduced at the conference this week from our Spiritual Leader, Soni Contrell Smith, was from Me to We… Moving From Me to We. And that’s what this book is about, interdependence. So I have a quote from Thomas Hübl. There’s a new book I’m looking forward to reading it called “Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma and Our World”. The quote…
(07:37):
To survive much less to flourish, we must make conscious, our essential interdependence and awaken into new forms of vibrant, sustained relation.
(07:52):
So he’s inviting us to bring this interdependence, our oneness into our conscious minds, not just for surviving but to flourish. And in doing so, creating more vibrant and sustainable relations. This idea of interdependence is something we hear about in nature, right? The roots of the trees communicating with one another in support of the entire ecosystem. The cells in our bodies are interdependent, operating together to create our wholeness.
(08:33):
And a quote from Thomas Merton,
(08:36):
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another and all involved in one another.
(08:53):
So as students of science of mind, as people who practice oneness as a core spiritual principle, it is difficult not to take responsibility for what’s happening in the world. And I’ll come back to this idea of moving from codependence to interdependence. I’m going to jump to some of the things that we’ve heard about in the book. So the speakers this month have covered the seven secrets, and they’re not actually secrets to me. They’re more like keys, keys to how to have healthy relationships. So the secret of commitments,
(09:32):
Early relationships are based on seeking approval and we make commitments based on conditions, right? When you hear that you love me when… or I’ll love you if… that’s conditional relationship, he calls it domestication through praise and punishment, we manipulate ourselves and others to use love as some kind of a reward. And sometimes withholding love. Does anybody ever have any experience of that?
(10:02):
So the real commitments start with a commitment to yourself. If we don’t honor who we are, it is impossible to honor someone else. And how I map that into this conversation I’m having about what’s going on in the world is like if you really honor yourself, would you harm anyone? Right? So it goes beyond just this intimate relationship.
(10:31):
So the secret of freedom, relationships thrive when both partners feel free. That seems so obvious, but yet when we get into relationship in codependent relationship, we tend to lock down. We tend to grip and want the other one to do the things we want or the way we want, how we want it. Right? In the commitment of freedom, each person is responsible for their own wellbeing and they choose to be together with spaciousness around it.
(11:13):
And the third commitment, the secret of awareness… and I’m just doing a brief summary of each of these. The secret of awareness, and I love the way he describes awareness very succinctly.
(11:25):
Awareness is the practice of simultaneously observing what is happening in the exterior world, while also witnessing our reaction to it.
(11:35):
It’s that witness consciousness. We’re seeing what’s happening here, and at the same time noticing what’s coming up here. And it gives us that space for making a choice rather than just moving out of reaction, choice or the space, we have to choose a different response, right?
(11:56):
And the fourth secret, the secret of healing. He’s inviting us to identify where you might be using your past experiences to hurt your present self. I don’t think we usually think of it as hurting our present self, But our past experiences, if they’re running in the background, if there’s a belief we hold that’s driving a behavior and we perpetuate the pattern and we’re continuing to hurt ourself or damage the relationship or just keep the relationship in that pattern, that past experience is hurting our present self.
(12:39):
So the invitation is to look at the people or events that bring up feelings of shame and blame. And the authors offer questions to ask ourselves to learn how our early experiences are influencing our current responses. And in asking these questions, we begin to get the answers for moving through relationship in new ways.
(13:11):
The fifth secret is the secret of joy. An important thing to note here is that…
(13:17):
In order to experience joy, we have to experience our full range of humanity.
(13:25):
It’s not like this secret is saying you have to be joyful all the time. In fact, he’s saying that we have to be willing to feel our loss, our betrayal, our other wounds to feel all of it. Because if we’re cutting off one emotion, we’re cutting off all of our emotions. So being fully alive and feeling our feelings, ultimately leads us to being able to have more joy. And they offer three ways to cultivate joy in relationship through creativity, curiosity, and play, and through sexual pleasure.
(14:05):
And now the sixth secret, the secret of communication.
(14:13):
Any word will transform into a weapon the moment we use it to create pain in another person.
(14:22):
Are y’all feeling this? I mean, I find this stuff really powerful. Healthy relationships require healthy communication, which requires practicing all of the previous secrets. We have to have a willingness to be vulnerable. We have to share our wants and our needs and our fears and remain open to listening to the other’s wants, needs and fears. Being willing to admit when we don’t know, when we’re wrong, when we’re scared, rather than blame or guilt. No withholding, not saying yes when you mean no. These are the opposite of vulnerability – that is using words as weapons.
(15:22):
They give a checklist even of moving from emotionally reactive communication to clear emotional communication. I was practicing with Jason this morning. I had something come up in me and then I noticed something and I said, oh, I see what I just did there. So, an example that I’m paraphrasing an example from the book, is instead of saying, well, why would you ever do such a stupid thing? It would be, I’m noticing I’m scared, and you must have been really upset to do that. Can you please help me understand?
(15:59):
Right? Very different, very different way of communicating. So taking responsibility for what I’m feeling, what’s coming up in me, the story that I’m making up, and then being able to inquire, get curious, ask. I would add to this something from the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership that I really find helpful is making clear requests and having clear agreements. A lack of clear agreements leads to drama like you can’t believe, and drama is a symptom of codependence.
(16:38):
And now the book moves to the seventh of the secrets, the secret of release. So we must actively release and even suffer the loss of our previous reality. This is kind of a fascinating section of the book here. They’re talking about letting go of who we were in order to be in this relationship, right? So for example, when we begin the partnership, we released being single. In a monogamous relationship, we release dating others. As the relationship grows, we release the idea of total independence and are now accountable to someone. Later, we need to release the need to be right, release the need to have the last word, and the need to control our partner. And something that I really enjoyed in this section of the book was releasing the need for our partner, or any relationship, releasing the need for them to be the same person today that they were yesterday. And I just think this is such a great way to think of things.
(18:01):
He uses the statement or they use the statement, not sure. There’s co-authors here. They invite us to greet our partner with Good morning, my love, who are you today? And how about loving what is there’s a Byron Katie moment for you.
(18:27):
And finally, if it’s time to end the relationship, you can choose to use the same lessons, to have a conscious ending – to end with unconditional love. Because in the world of physical existence, all relationships are guaranteed to end. Either through someone choosing to end it or because our body chooses to end it. So not coming from a place of fear, but in knowing that every moment is precious, we can ask ourselves, how do we want to spend this time? Such a great reminder? How do I want to spend this time? It’s precious.
(19:15):
So the seven secrets to relationships, and I don’t remember the full name of the book. Amount to practicing unconditional love. Conditional love is at the center of the drama triangle. I work with the drama triangle a lot. And these are the sheets that are on your chair. I’m going to get to those in a moment if I haven’t spoken too long yet. So we’re moving from codependency – drama triangle, to interdependence, which is the empowerment triangle. So what is codependency?
(19:50):
Wikipedia’s definition: In psychology, codependency is a theory that attempts to explain imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person’s self-destructive behavior such as addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility or underachievement.
(20:12):
And Mental Health America says, it is an emotional and behavioral condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. That could apply to pretty much everyone.
(20:30):
But another thing that’s fascinating about codependency is that it’s a learned behavior. We learn it in our first relationships or early significant relationships. It’s the idea of having a sort of one-sided relationship that’s emotionally destructive and it becomes circular where one person needs the other person who needs to be needed. So there’s like a giver and a taker or an enabler. And the giver feels worthless or like they’re not needed unless they’re needed by the other person. So it just becomes this pattern. They keep doing the things to feel needed. Anybody ever done this? Has anybody experienced any of this in their relationships? Thank goodness I am not the only one.
(21:24):
Well, last month when I spoke and I had some handouts, one of the handouts that I offered was the Aspects of Consciousness. And I’m not repeating it today, but I just want to mention it. Because in the four aspects of consciousness – To Me, By Me, Through Me, and As Me – we have this unhealthy ego part, the Victim, in that To Me. And in Victim consciousness is where we experience the Drama Triangle. And that’s what’s on your paper today.
(21:51):
So in the Drama Triangle, we see the Victim, Villain, and the Hero. And I am going to try to do this quickly so I can get through it. At the center of the triangle, we are not present. We’re in a triggered reaction. We are experiencing conditional love. The I love you “when” or “if”. We have a lack of power. So we’re trying to get something out here, we’re navigating by trying to get something from someone or have it be a certain way instead of sourcing our power within. And we have an unhealthy expression of feelings. And if you notice around the triangle, there’s unclear boundaries, and that could be a whole nother talk. But there’s blame, resentment, shame, guilt, right? So the victim feels at the effect of. Something’s wrong. It’s somebody’s fault. Why me?
(22:50):
The villain blames, shames, perhaps finger points, they’re driven by rage, anger usually. Have rigid thinking. Important piece here. The villain is keeping the victim down. Oh darn, Connie just waved me the five minute sign. The victim or the villain withdraws when they’re not getting things their way. And the hero – I identify over here, folks. The hero, which looks good or it, sounds good. I guess hero always sounds a little better than villain or victim, but the insidious part of being the hero is that we keep the drama going. We are the enabler. We’re the one who keeps trying to fix it, keep trying to smooth it over. We discount our own needs. And what’s really happening, we think we’re helping the other person, but we’re trying to relieve our own discomfort. So we have to lean into the discomfort in order for something else to happen.
(23:53):
And the good news is that we can shift this. We can move into the empowerment triangle by taking responsibility, right? By letting go of superiority and inferiority. When we move to the center of this empowerment triangle, we are in presence. We source our power from within. We have a healthy expression. These are all the things they’re talking about in this book. Taking responsibility for ourself, practicing forgiveness, unconditional love flows easily here.
(24:28):
So everyone in this triangle is taking a hundred percent responsibility for a hundred percent of their thoughts, feelings, and actions. One hundred percent of the time. There’s no blaming the thing over there, or the situation or the person. The Victim becomes a Creator, moving into choice. The Villain becomes the Challenger, supporting through healthy encouragement. And the hero becomes a coach asking supportive questions. How will you do it? Here’s some ideas… Rather than doing it for them and keeping them down. And again, having clear agreements and clear requests is very important here. I mean, it’s a critical piece of this puzzle.
(25:18):
So I have to figure out how to move to an end since I’ve only minute left. Alright, so I was going to have you do a little practice with one another, but I’ll skip that since we’re short on time. And I just want to invite you certainly there would’ve been something there that came up for you that might’ve resonated with you in terms of how you experience relationship and how you might have experienced or might be experiencing codependence. So I just want to say that interdependence is supporting is a mutually supportive relationship.
(26:00):
And I have a quote from Desmond Tutu. The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence. A person is a person through other persons.
(26:14):
So it’s how we relate to others that makes us who we are.
(26:21):
And the Dalai Lama’s quote that you heard earlier…
(26:26):
Our human existence is so dependent on the help of others that our need for love lies at the very foundation of our existence. Therefore we need a genuine sense of responsibility and a sincere concern for the welfare of others.
(26:48):
So you see, when we do our work in ourselves and we do our work in our personal relationships, it really does ripple out into the collective. We do our work in service to a world that works for everyone, which is the Centers for Spiritual Living vision or mission statement.
(27:12):
So I invite you into a little bit of centering and closing as I pray us out. There’s a statement from Martin Luther King, and I’m paraphrasing, as long as there is poverty in the world, I will never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as there is disease and there are people who can’t live longer than 20 or 30 years, I will never be healthy.
(27:45):
I can’t be the full expression of who I am here to be unless you are the full expression of who you are here to be. This is interdependence. So I invite us all to leave here today in the spirit of opening ourselves to true interdependent relationships. To recognizing that we are one with this individual expression of love, of freedom, of joy, and that this is true for each person. All beings are individual expressions of the divine. There is no better than or less than. We are all perfect, exactly as we are. Perfect expressions. No matter how we identify, no matter what part of the world we come from, what neighborhood we live in, what religion we practice. Let us see each other through the eyes of that love, that curiosity, wanting to know more, wanting to understand, wanting to feel the interconnectedness rather than the separation. Dissolving that separation. Opening ourselves to more love, to more possibility. Becoming a welcome space, doing the work, moving through the discomfort, making ourselves available to be a safe space for everyone, for all beings to feel that they can be safe to be fully expressed. Let us create the healthy ecosystem within ourselves that supports this world of what is good, for one is truly good for all.
(29:41):
And let us be the ones that change the world – moving from me to we. To be the love in support of everyone, everyone thriving. And I just bless us as we do this work. I call in transformation. I call in inspiration. I call in all the resources necessary. And I just say yes, knowing that we are feeling the goodness moving through our experience. I let it go. I call it good. And together we say. And so it is.