Practice 1 - Meditation in connection
The practice begins with presence as its foundation—this is the awareness of what is happening inside and outside of you in each moment. Strong meditative awareness is a solid base for conscious communication.
Preparation for the practice
The first stage is to develop more awareness of what it is really like to be in connection with another. What is the impact, emotion and sensation created by being in eye contact with them?
Instruction
An ideal way to begin the practice is to sit opposite a partner, in silence with your eyes closed, noticing what happens inside you. Do this before you make contact with your eyes.
For a more advanced meditation, start to notice each part of your body; your legs and arms, and any areas of sensation, pleasure, or numbness. You could also try to notice a sense of emptiness or witnessing, your breathing, and your mind and thought activity. Invite a surrender or letting go into what is present.
When you are ready, open your eyes and stay in the silence together—with eye contact if you can.
Pay particular attention to the shift in your experience as you make connection. This gives each person an opportunity to feel what it is like to be in connection with the other. Vulnerability can arise as you sit looking directly into another’s eyes—something that could be considered unusual in many settings.
Notice how this impacts you. This often brings awareness to the difficulty of seeing another and being seen, especially when we step outside of a conversation and let words fall away.
Why this is practice is powerful
When you start to relax into the practice, barriers can begin to drop, and a new awareness may become accessible—potentially leading to a deeper state of presence in connection.
It is common in this practice that the more we feel connected to our own body and feelings, the more we can feel the other at a deeper level. Also, in this space you may start to notice an emerging curiosity about the other, and what they are feeling in relation to you.
You can play with shifting attention between yourself and the other, and also sensing into how much you are revealing yourself in their presence.
This practice can begin to reveal deep unconscious mechanisms and patterns, that may be underlying many (or all) of your connections.
When this practice is taken further, people often experience expansive states while being connected; such as feelings of spaciousness, calm, changes in colours and vision, emptiness, and deeply meditative spaces.
It is said that the Sufi Mystic, Rumi, reached enlightenment through eye contact with a friend over a prolonged period. From our experience of doing this practice—this doesn’t surprise us!
The more you practice this way of connecting deeply, the more you will be able to tune into what is happening in you and others in all your relationships.
Taking these insights into your life
All our connections have the potential for this level of presence and contact within them, even those that usually stay on the surface level of relating. By doing this practice regularly you may start to notice how this level of intimacy is often avoided in interactions.
This first practice: Being in silent presence and eye contact with another, is a powerful tool for increasing your level of presence but is not something that can easily be taken into the world on its own. Looking deeply into someone's eyes in a supermarket or when meeting someone for the first time can lessen connection—as it may be received as intimidating or overwhelming.
With regular practice, you may begin to get the feedback from people that they aren’t sure why, but they feel comfortable in your company. Could this be due to your own increasing comfort with yourself in deeper connection? You may also start to notice how little eye contact people often make with each other.
Looking at yourself authentically is essential, and a useful exploration is to look at whether you really want to be in deep eye gazing intimacy. Perhaps you are using it as a way to hide your vulnerability or uncertainty?
These practices can lead to a continuous de-conditioning of habitual patterns of relating that you have developed throughout your life. In becoming aware of certain ways of being, where you are perhaps on autopilot—whole new possibilities can open up in your relationships and in your way of being in the world.