BetterListen!

Excerpt 2 from "Four Essentials of a Dream Relationship" with Harville Hendrix

In this transcribed excpert from Harville Hendrix's workshop on the "Four Essentials of a Dream Relationship", Hendrix once again emphasizes that if we heal our relationships, we can heal the planet. And while the concept of healing relationships is really quite simple, living it, as most of us know, is quite difficult.  We're grateful to have teachers like Hendrix to help guide the way. Read on...

I want to get back now to the core, to the title. So you kind of got the set up about how we get into marriage, what causes the trouble in a committed partnership, and what you have to do to get out of it. Now I want to get… what I’ve sort of done is set up boxcars like the relationship. Then I’m going to talk about what has to go into those boxcars and here they are.

Excerpt 1 from "Four Essentials of a Dream Relationship" with Harville Hendrix

Harville Hendrix -- one of the foremost relationship experts of our time -- guides listeners through the four most important elements to the kind of relationship we all want in "Four Essentials of a Dream Relationship".  In this transcribed excerpt from his workshop, Hendrix talks about how having a healthy relationship is not only beneficial to ourselves, but to the world.

Having a healthy relationship is the best health benefit that anybody can have for themselves, for their children if they have them, and for the culture they live in. And because of that, in my old age I have decided I’m going to spend the next 40 years of my life… I’m 75 I figure I’ll go to 120, which is the life span if human beings are healthy, I see no reason to die.  It seems like a terrible inconvenience, especially since I have things I want to do, which is to transform all couples on the planet so that we can end war and violence in all its forms. And that the best thing you can do for that is to have a great relationship with your partner because that’s what a global couples movement would be about --- is a healthy relationship is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Excerpt from Marianne Williamson's "Relationships Workshop"

In this inspired transcribed excerpt from Marianne Williamson's "Relationships Workshop," Williamson tells workshop attendees -- and us -- how we simply have to get out of our own way.  

Enjoy:

You know, I often use the story of Michelangelo being asked how he created a sculpture. And he said that in his mind, he had been given a huge piece of rough marble, but in his mind, God had already created the sculpture. God had already created the Pieta, Moses, David. Michelangelo saw his job as getting rid of all the excess marble.
 
Now see, the way the world sees relationships is “What can I add on to make myself more attractive?” But everything in the thinking of the world particularly in the area of relationships is upside down.

Excerpt 2 from Marianne Williamson's "A Return to Love Workshop"

In this transcribed excerpt from her wonderful "A Return to Love Workshop", Marianne Williamson explains that there are, for all of us, essentially only two emotions:  love and fear.  And when we live in one or the other, we quite simply manifest "heaven" or "hell" in our lives.   

The Course in Miracles says love is to fear as light is to darkness. So when I shut my heart and I do not allow the love of God that is in me to stream through me, in that moment I deflect love and my mind flips over like a breaker switch and I move into fear. The Course in Miracles says there are only two emotions: love and fear. All what you and I would think of as negative emotion derives from fear. But as I said, love is to fear as light is to darkness. How do you get rid of darkness? You turn on the light. How do you get rid of fear? You turn on the love.

Excerpt from "Relationships" with Ram Dass

Recorded in 1980 in San Francisco, Ram Dass gives a glimpse into one of his more challenging experiences as a teacher.  His humanity and humor come through in this transcribed excerpt from his workshop on "Relationships."

I found myself a couple of years ago in Hawaii, on an island in Hawaii, where I had been invited to a meditation group. I thought, “Gee. Wonderful, They will fly me to this island.” I had never seen this island. I was met and taken up into the mountains into a plantation way in the back woods.
 
The whole thing started to feel a little weird to me, and it turned out that they were an intensive group encounter group and there were about thirty of them. They had been together for years and they had taken acid like 250 times together. They all slept in one room with the children and everybody, and they talked funny. The headman called me into his room and he went, (gibberish), and I did not want to do anything. I thought he had a tick and so I just sort of looked like it had not happened and he said, (gibberish). So I thought something was called for here. There is a questioning tone in his voice so I said, “Om.” You can throw that in anytime. Anytime he says a bad faux pas, you can always use om. Om, om, om! So I realized we were starting a new language and we played new language and it was great fun.

Excerpt 1 from Harville Hendrix's "Finding and Keeping the Love You Want"

Harville Hendrix has become perhaps the leading expert on relationship -- finding and keeping the love in your life.  In this transcribed excerpt from his workshop on "Finding and Keeping the Love You Want", Hendrix talks about how he came upon what has become his life's work.

I think that my interest in the subject we’re going to have tonight arises out of that correlation between relationship and frustration. It certainly has been true in my own relationships. I’m in a second marriage now for twelve years, having a first marriage of seventeen years, and I will have to say that when I ended my first marriage, I didn’t know why I was divorcing. I do know that I was in a quandary because at the time I was a professor in a university and was teaching a course, a graduate course, on marriage therapy.