The power of communication: an open heart and expanded self

Living beings form relationships through the power of communication – the sharing of information. Information is the communication of uncertainty. If nothing unknown is communicated, no information is transmitted. The communication of uncertainty enriches every relationship across the spectrum of life.

When we behave in predictable and conditioned ways, there is no sharing of uncertainty and no deepening of the connection. Relationships falter when we know how people will respond before they say or do anything. Effective communication requires that we break out of our conditioned responses, while tuning in to the needs of the moment. Relationships that consistently refer to the past or impose certainty onto the future inevitably become stagnant or disintegrate.

Get clarity about what you need, be sensitive to the needs of those around you, and commit to enhancing your communication skills. Getting your needs met and helping others meet theirs begins with paying attention to three basic principles: 1) Vulnerability, 2) Code breaking, and 3) Accordance.

The essence of communication in relationships is the crossing of boundaries. This requires that you acknowledge the boundaries of your and the other’s self-image, and then consciously open a channel that allows information to flow. Effective communication requires a willingness to be vulnerable. Allowing yourself to be consciously vulnerable means opening to the possibility that something unexpected and unpredicted may transpire. Only if you can relinquish your need to defend your self-image while seeking to communicate something original is there the possibility of deepening intimacy. Most arguments are created when we sense we have to sacrifice some aspect of our ego and decide that the price may not be worth the intimacy. Being sensitive to your sensations of comfort and discomfort helps you decide when to be open and when to do a better job of clearly defining your boundaries. If you find that you are having a recurrent argument, it’s usually a sign that you need to be more conscious of where you want to set your margins. It is your choice to say yes or no. If your heart says it’s safe, allow your vulnerability to take your relationship to a new level.

Code breaking means being willing to suspend your assumptions and listen attentively to what another person is trying to communicate. Particularly when approaching emotionally vulnerable issues, we are prone to talk in our own code, testing whether it is safe to be more vulnerable. Practice being willing to say, “I’m not sure I understand what you need right now, or I am not sure that you are hearing what I need right now. Can you tell me (can I clarify for you?) in a different way?” Breaking out of the conditioned code words, means exploring a new vocabulary so that real information is communicated.

Accordance means seeking solutions in which both people get some needs met. Relinquish your pattern of belief that if one person wins another loses. Practice saying, “I’ll do my best to give you what you’re asking for. Are you willing to help me get my needs met?” If you lead with a commitment to serve, you are more likely to hear “yes” in response to your requests, deepening your connection and developing the confidence that your relationships can be nourishing. Through the power of communication, your heart can open and your sense of self can expand.

David Simon, M.D., is the co-founder and medical director of the ChopraCenter for Wellbeing at the La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad. Learn to make choices that support your daily well-being at the ChopraCenter’s weekly Perfect Health program. For more information on this and other programs, visit chopra.com, email info@chopra.com, or call 888.424.6772.

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Reminiscences on healing:

from Edgar Cayce’s original readings

By Elaine Hruska

Some of the things Cayce recommended we take for granted, like keeping a healthy attitude or expecting to get well. Or, when you do pursue a particular health regimen, to pursue it consistently and persistently. He emphasized that.

As far as emotions affecting the body are concerned, in reading 40:21-1, Cayce said, “No one can hate his neighbor and not have stomach or liver trouble. And no one can be jealous and allow the anger of same, and not have upset digestion or heart disorder.”

It seemed from comments like this that he was ahead of his time when he was giving these readings, that he was sort of pre-figuring psychosomatic illnesses. Another thing that’s interesting is that even though he does mention particular attitudes affecting one’s health, when people came to him with different phobias (what we might call mental illnesses…the old word was dementia or senility), in almost every instance Cayce would always be concerned about how to get rid of this fear or anxiety, and he would always go back to a physical problem or disturbance in their glandular system. Or, most the time there was something out of alignment in the spine. So spinal alignment was a big thing.

But it kind of goes both ways. A lot of times the mental illness is the direct result of the physical. Sometimes people would ask him if they should go to a counselor or a psychiatrist. And he would say that if you follow these – and he would give them a whole regimen of treatment – he said if you follow these you don’t need to see them. And so it was amazing the complexity of the body being so interwoven.

Cayce used to say, “The mind is the builder.” And so he would caution people sometimes, and in some of the physical readings he would mention an attitude, or maybe that they were worried about something, and this particular worry was creating a disturbance in their digestive system. He spoke to this one person and talked about how their digestive system was out of balance and that one day a food would agree with them and the next day that it wouldn’t. And that it had to do with sometimes the secretions in the stomach being out of balance. He said especially that happens when a person is worried.

He also said that they could be either mentally or physically worried – and I thought, How could you be physically worried? But he said they could be worried about themselves or other people, and that this particular attitude affected the digestive system.

Cayce said, “Don’t get mad. And don’t cuss a body out mentally or in voice. This brings more poisons than may be created than even taking foods that aren’t good.” So he seemed to indicate that any kind of emotional stress had an effect on the nervous system or the body in some way.

In another reading - the people around this person had asked for the reading because the man seemed to be experiencing a gradual deterioration of his mental faculties, and any type of help they would try to give him he would fight them. And in his reading Cayce said, “For anger can destroy the brain as well as any disease, for it is itself a disease of the mind.”

Cayce had different ways of explaining things. He even talked about things in the body being depressed. Not emotionally depressed – but physically depressed when things were not functioning properly in coordination with the nervous system. In one place he said, “Conditions have been so aggravated by animosity and by hate, that we have a deterioration in the nerve force along the spinal system.”

In some of the physical readings he would be describing in detail the person’s physical condition and then weave in a little bit of an attitude or something that was aggravating the problem. Though there are over 9,000 physical readings, I don’t know if anybody has ever counted how often he does mention an emotional component.

He didn’t say those kinds of things to every person. But he would sometimes target a worry or an anxiety that they were having that seemed to be particular to that person. Many times he’d say, maybe at the end of the reading, to be more cheerful or optimistic; or stop thinking of yourself; or give yourself in service to others, and that that was one way, sometimes, of overcoming a lot of their distress.

Elaine Hruska is on the faculty of the Cayce-Reilly School of Massage in Virginia Beach, is a massage therapist, co-editor of The Association for Enlightenment and Research’s (A.R.E.) True Health newsletter, and author of a book on Edgar Cayce’s health principles, When Illness Strikes. For more information www.edgarcayce.org