I cannot swear that Tami Simon, the founder of Sounds True, which produces Insights at the Edge had pondering fathers on her mind when she shared “Fierce Intimacy” with Terry Real. Now, I have to confess, I devoured two of Terry’s books — I Don’t Want to Talk about It : Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression and How Can I Get Through to You? Reconnecting Men and Women — long enough ago that he was going by Terrence Real.
Perhaps being a teenage wife (to an equally teenage husband) was part of the motivation of my avid interest, but I am honestly assuming the relationship of my own mother and father as I was growing up played an even more significant role.
In the interview with Tami Simon, Terry answers her question about how he developed the core skills he teaches with brutal transparency:
Bloodily. [and he laughs] People have asked me how I became a family therapist and I jokingly always say, “I started about four years old in my dysfunctional family.” I come from a violent, dysfunctional, depressed family and I was pretty messed up for most of my life. I write about it in I Don’t Want to Talk About It. That’s autobiographical in part. There’s this old joke that therapists are people that have to be in therapy 40 hours a week.
I had never heard that line about therapists being people who need to be in therapy 40 hours a week, but it resonates. I had also never heard of using the parallel of becoming relationally fit to becoming physically fit.
Tami Simon: In your book, The New Rules of Marriage, you actually make this comparison in the beginning of the book that becoming relationally fit has parallels to becoming physically fit. If you work out, if you do it, you’ll become physically fit. I thought, for most people, they think… I think most people think, that happiness in relationship is a lot more mysterious than becoming physically fit.
To become physically fit, this is something I’m going to do on my own. And I know that if I’m not physically fit, it’s because I haven’t been to the gym. I’ve been eating ice cream. Whatever. I take responsibility. I know inside, I’m not physically fit. I haven’t been doing it. But relational happiness, this is going to take a miracle outside of my own energy and effort because there’s this other person involved. And this other person’s really difficult.
Terry responded with, “Yes, isn’t that amazing the way the other person is always so difficult and we’re all so nice?”
Last week during the Dharma Path Intensive, we heard an amazing teaching from Aaron, channeled by Barbara Brodsky, about bringing beautiful flowers up from the deep crevasse of darkness. That certainly seems to fit with becoming relationally fit. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of a talk given by Aaron on June 1, 2021.
Now let us brave the long ladders that we find. Going down, and down, and down into the darkness.
Your feet finally touch the bottom. Firm ground. But what is there around you? Is it safe? But there is a sweet scent in the air.
Just as you get your footing, the sun crests over the edge high above you and shines straight down and illuminates a land filled with flowers and beauty. Just a few seconds, because the crack above you seems so narrow, so high above, and then it passes and you’re in darkness again.
Can you imagine this? You came down the ladder with courage and fear. You land on your feet, not knowing if you’d be attacked by something that wanted to destroy you, to eat you. And there in the darkness were radiant flowers with a beautiful scent.
You have large baskets on your backs. You ask the flowers, “Who will come with me?” And so many of them shout out, “Me! Me! Take me!” So you begin to fill the baskets with flowers. You carry them up. Some of them you cut; some of them you actually dig out by the roots and put in small pots. You climb back up.
Now instead of just your heart carrying the light of the Dharmakaya onto the bridge and out into the nirmanakaya, instead of just reaching for those who are able to come on the bridge and directing them toward the Dharmakaya, you have something of substance.
You carry it across the bridge. You do not set it on the nirmanakaya end of the bridge. You do not set it off of the bridge, but you set it on the edge of the bridge, so that people must take one step into the sambhogakaya to reach this wonderfully-scented offering.
Picture the beings who come and take these flowers, beings living in a nirmanakaya realm who have never seen anything except the most mundane flowers, and those still being beautiful, the dandelions and such. But this is something with such an exquisite scent and beauty…
Feel yourself there on the end of the bridge, holding out these flowers and asking people to simply take one step up to reach the flower and to receive their flower. Inhale the heavenly scent. See the radiant colors, colors so much more vivid than anything in the nirmanakaya realm.
But to reach this you had to have the courage to move off the safety of the bridge and into the darkness. There are flowers there. There are also tigers with enormous fangs, and huge snakes. This is not a realm only of light.
But as you brave the darkness and bring up the flowers, who say, “Take me! Take me!” and offer them out to the world of suffering, that world also can become transformed.
Janice Keller has transcribed Aaron’s teaching for decades. When she sent this one, she included an image and the precious line: bringing beautiful flowers up out of the crevasse.
You will know it is significant that you are reading this. I only know it is significant I am writing it as I am pondering fathers….
