When Those Close to Us Don't Agree

What do you do when you love more than one person in your life, but they are at odds with each other, and you find yourself torn between them?

It's a pretty common scenario. For one reason or another, a daughter or son doesn't approve of who you, as a divorced person, are dating. A mother or father doesn't approve of the person you intend to marry. You colleagues at work, or your friends, don't like the person you are living with.

If we are coming from oneness, we can't write people off when they disagree with us or somehow seek to change something about us. If a situation of this kind has arisen, it has arisen for a reason. These kinds of things, as Michael Brown brings out in the Namaste book The Presence Process, are "messengers." They have come into our life to help us end the mess.

The first thing that love, which is the essential nature of the oneness of all things, requires us to do is to give full attention to what is being said to us by all parties. Not that we agree with them, but that we hear them, because somewhere in this situation there is something for us. There's wheat beneath the chaff.

Later this year, Namaste will publish a book entitled The Conscious Parent. The insights in this manuscript, with which I'm currently working, are eye-opening. I'm seeing how few of us ever really grow up to be true to who we are. And the reason is simple. Parents who aren't authentic can't raise authentic children.

So one of the things we have to ask when those close to us—such as parents, sisters or brothers, or friends—oppose us in an important aspect of our life is what this is really about.

It so happens that I have been in a situation in which both a brother and a mother of the person I was committed to opposed the relationship, whereas the father and the sister approved. How did I respond?

The key at such a time is to behave in a way that is completely nonreactive. This means we don't take anything personally, and it means we don't rail against the other parties.

In acceptance lies peace.

When we accept the as is of a situation, instead of wishing it were different, we are able to become completely present in the situation. Instead of applying some technique or clever answer to try to solve the crisis we may be facing, we simply bring our presence to it.

Presence is the most powerful transformation agent there is.

There is a world of difference between real presence, and a concept of presence that we try to apply to our everyday life. We can't do this from our head. It isn't a matter of "trying to be present."

When real presence breaks through, people feel our presence when we enter a room. It has a huge impact.

I think of the incident in which Jesus spoke in the synagogue one week when he returned to his home town after becoming famous, and so offended the congregation that they ran him out of town to the brow of a hill, ready to throw him over.

In that moment, a real "presence" came from Jesus, and he was simply able to pass through the crowd unharmed. This is why, when it came time for him to lay his life down, he was able to say that no one was taking his life from him, even though it might appear that way on the surface. It was a choice he made.

In all our relationships, we are invited to "show up" as a real presence. An authentic presence. Situations arise for the precise purpose of inviting us to do this.

So, what do you actually do when there is a conflict between two parties you love?

I cannot tell you what to do. I can only suggest you let yourself become fully present, nonreactive, unattached to the outcome, and come entirely from loving presence—and the path will unfold before you spontaneously, and perhaps in a surprising way.

Non-attachment to the outcome is crucial. No ego. Just allowing, accepting, and going with the flow, wherever it may carry us.