BS”D
PARADISING OUR RELATIONSHIPS

By Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Schwartz


THE GREATEST OBSTACLE

1. Perhaps the greatest obstacle that any of us have to living the life we

would love to live, is not us or our competence to make it happen, rather it's

all about the other people in our lives and our relationships with them that

gets in the way! This certainly stands to reason. I can exercise control over

my own life - enough control to direct it any way that I please, assuming

that I have the strategies, the discipline, the G-d connection and all else

that's needed to see it through. But other people oftentimes interfere,

especially when the relationship is a difficult one. My personal experience as

a life coach, has taught me that the number one obstacle that gets in the

way of people achieving happiness and peace of mind, is the

troublesome 'significant other[s] in their lives - past and present. So what's

a poor person to do?! Of course, as you may have guessed, the only possible

solution is to paradise our relationships!! So, hang on tight for the next 3

weeks or so, when we will further explore the possibility of living the life

that we would love to live completely, despite of - or better yet, as a result of

all of the various relationships we have!!

 

CONNECTING ALL OF ME TO ALL OF YOU

2. What I'd like to present here is a collection of strategies, all designed to

engage our relationships in a way that enables us, and oftentimes those who

we are relating to, to be in a state of paradise, whether a mild one or a

powerful one. I again reiterate at this point, that the state of being that I

refer to as 'Paradise' or 'P.L.U.G. I.N.', depicts a consciousness whereby I

am totally present [P or Presence], both my Higher or Divine

connected faculty [I or Infinitizing ] as well as my lower soul [L or Lower

soul] and I engage all of my resources [N or Nitzul which means salvaging

all of my resources] in a unified direction [U or Unified] and thoroughly enjoy

the whole process [G or Grooving].................Now that we are in the realm

of the interpersonal, we could add one more factor, that of the effect that we

have on others. Therefore, perhaps a good way of summing up the

paradising of relationships, is CONNECTING ALL OF ME WITH ALL OF YOU.

 

OUR WAY OF APPROACHING IT

3. .... Anyway as I was saying, we will bring a number of approaches or recipes. We

will divide them up into 3 relationship categories -  - [1]Standard, [2]'Family' or kindred

souls and [3]difficult or impossible ones. I believe the best way to approach each

strategy or recipe is as follows:

A. Try to choose the recipe or recipes that work best for you. I suggest using a

combination of a number of different strategies. This, I base on very wise advice that I

once received from a healer friend of mine, who told me that the most effective way to

heal is to 'BLITZ' the problem away - i.e. ... to activate 5 or 6 different strategies at once.

The same would apply in our case.

B. Some strategies are more difficult, or require more expertise and experience than

others. Try out those which you feel you are ready for, and maybe begin to explore the

harder ones afterwards , a little bit at a time...

C. Our Sages say, 'Who is the wise one? the one who sees the most likely result [of any

intended action taken].' Before acting, project into the future to see [often based on your

knowledge of a similar situation in the past] the consequences that your action will illicit,

and act accordingly...

D. There is no substitute for getting good advice from wise and experienced people,

especially with regard to our topic of dealing with people and all the unknown factors

involved.....

E. The question of when to escape or when to confront very difficult people, is one that

is very delicate and often-times dangerous. I am researching it for a long time now, but

I'm not certain enough of some of the finer distinctions involved to give you clear cut

guidelines therefore I suggest that before making drastic life-changing moves brought

on by being challenged by very difficult people, please seek the advice of

experts... [ by the way there are a lot of guidelines in the realm of

interpersonalizing, brought in 'Halachic' works - our essays are not designed to provide

Halachic answers, but rather pathways in higher consciousness that B"H don't

contradict Halacha ]...

 

A FEW RELATIONSHIP PARADISING STRATEGIES

FOR STANDARD RELATIONSHIPS:

1. MY OWN PERSONAL GROWTH - The main focus here is to view all people as

being opportunities for me to 'get what they've got' and grow with it. Every person alive

has at least one unique point that no one else has, but that everyone else could benefit

from. One good way to take advantage of this wellspring of unique traits, is to make a list

of 10-20 people that you know. Choose a unique point that each one of these people

possess, and make at least a minimal effort to try to internalize this point into your life,

especially when you encounter the person. They will truly appreciate the fact that you

appreciate what is unique about them.

For those serious people-paradising-students [especially the areas that deal with

personal growth], I refer you to do a more thorough exploration on the subject by

clicking the following Parsha Tools essays:

 

a. Parsha Noach - Seeing people positively

b. Parsha Lech Lecha - Holy selfishness fusion

c. Parsha Vayeira - Grooving on giving

d. Parsha Vayeishev - All-encompassing communication

e. Parsha Vayakhel - -The everyone in me

f. Parsha Acharei/Kdoshim - Holy interpersonalizing

g. Parsha Vayishlach [2nd year] - Parenting

 

2. 'SHLOMO-ING' - R. Shlomo Carlebach's [OB'D] life was filled with stories [especially

as brought in the excellent biography called 'Holy Brother'] depicting his very unique

way of paradising relationships [I'm not sure if he would have articulated it like that, but I

have a feeling he wouldn't have minded]. The stories taken as a whole, illustrate a way

to view all people that you encounter as being Holy and special. Everyone, without

exception was seen by Shlomo as being the MOST holy and the MOST special person

in the world [and he let each one know it too!] If we could, so to speak, put ourselves in

Hashem's place and see how He views people - i.e. ...seeing them not only for how they

appear to us at the present moment, but also who they have been in the past and

seeing them right now, the perfected person who they ultimately will become -  then

we too, just like Shlomo, would begin to see everyone's uniqueness and holiness -

and we too, just like Shlomo wouldn't say no to anyone, nor would we divert our full

compassionate attention to a person in need, even when there are as many as 10,000

people waiting in anticipation for our teachings or music...etc. ....

It takes a lifetime of work and some people are more Shlomo-like than others, but everyone can

practice opening up this faculty inside themselves just a teeny bit more than they are

presently doing....

 

3. 'ANCHORING' - The premise of this strategy is that since we all have our

strong traits and our weak traits, why not give ourselves some leverage and anchor

power and call into action our strong [paradise] traits when interpersonalizing [or any

other venture in life for that matter], and thereby, not risk fallout we might experience if

we would utilize our weaker [Gehinom] traits. For example, instead of calling on our

confrontational side when dealing with a confrontational type of person, let's try using

for example, our thirst- for- wisdom- side, and interview the person, make their

difficult traits the object of our inquiry  -  or else, call into action our benevolent side

and connect with the person with compassion and benevolence...etc. etc..

What we will most likely encounter, is that the person will reflect us, and instead of being so

confrontational, they'll be benevolent as well....



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