The inner pathways of relating
& the practice of Inner Science
by Giselle Charbonnier
“When someone really sees you deeply, in those moments your heart opens”
Thomas Hübl
What’s the process of relating? How do we relate?
The first relation is the relation to myself, how I perceive myself. I can usually perceive my body, my emotions, my thought processes, and ideas, my internal images, my behaviors. This all belongs to my interior space, my relation to myself.
Then, there is the world around me. Then there's the world around me. The world is, apparently, outside of me. However, if we look closely we see that the world never happens externally. The world happens inside of me. In order to relate to the world, I need to let it in. For the external world to appear as a flow of information, I need to allow a representation of it inside of me, inside my brain, inside my guts.
Every sentient place in me can perceive the world. Actually, every place in me is capable to feel, but, to a great extent, we have blocked, forgotten, and fallen asleep to these capacities.
As humanity evolved into rational, goal-oriented cultural patterns, to a great extent we lost our capacities to feel nature neither within nor around us. As we cannot feel ourselves, we also can’t feel others. This has become a growing core conflict that we carry throughout generations. Our parents and grandparents have grown in families where felt connection was sometimes lacking to a great extent. For many of our ancestors, this disconnection was provoked or intensified by big survival struggles like war, famines, immigration, etc. We have all inherited a certain degree of disconnection from our feelings and, in different ways, we all struggle between our desire for human connection and the fear of it.
Our next evolutionary step as humanity requires us to recuperate our felt senses, as a means to build healthy conscious communities and access the highest potential of our collective intelligence. As we re-learn to feel and think together, we can shine a new light on our personal, collective, and global conflicts. Felt connection is not only the remedy for our hearts, but it also shines out as the remedy for our global crisis. It’s both the path and the reward.
As we thread the journey from disconnection to connection, as we learn to relate again, to ourselves and others, we meet the wounds, the fears, the repressed emotions - ours and those from our ancestors. Reclaiming our felt sense involves bringing our awareness into personal, transgenerational, and cultural hidden dynamics. While many therapeutic modalities support these processes, sustainable change requires some degree of transformation of our lifestyle. It requires specific practices - personal, group, and collective practices.
Conscious communication implies recognizing my limits and the limits of others, it implies recognizing the usual filters of my perception. A statement of intent is not enough. It is not enough to read what is written here. While these things can inspire us to initiate change, the crucial tests happen in the most difficult moments, where we tend to contract or withdraw from the conversation, or where we react in inappropriate ways, hurting others and damaging our bonds. That is why it is necessary to practice in real-time, to recognize our limitations and rewire our neural circuits. We practice in order to remain open and appropriately responsive to each situation.
In order to support these transformation processes, the Transparent Communication and Inner Science Practice Groups* created by Thomas Hübl and his team have been providing stable containers and refined practice tools for many years, and now form a network of more than 50 groups in various countries. Some of the essential areas covered by the Practice Groups are:
● Subtle perception
- Self awareness
- Awareness of the others
- Awareness of the relational field
● Creating a culture of healthy feedback
● Showing up: Fostering the healthiest and fullest expression of ourselves as responsible citizens and members of our families and communities.
These practices are not necessarily confined to extra time apart from our schedules. We practice in each decision we make, in each interaction with our close family and friends, or in our workplaces. The more we practice, the more we become aware of a dimension of reality where our true longing and potential abides: the dimension of our interconnectedness - the longing of our hearts.
This is the first of a series of articles to introduce these practices and provide tools for personal exploration. If you are interested in the follow-up, you are welcome to sign up for our newsletter.
If you would like to find a practice group in your area, please visit the Practice Groups Site
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* The Inner Science Practice Groups are part of the Academy of Inner Science, founded in 2008 by modern mystic and author Thomas Hübl, to connect inner wisdom and outer knowledge. The Academy offers training modules, workshops, study groups, and facilitation training. These programs support individuals seeking a framework for their personal development as well as the opportunity to cultivate a deeper transpersonal awareness and participate in collective evolutionary development.
