Each individual exists only as part of a network of interdependent relationships within an ecosystem. We only exist as relationships;

the more flowing and open they are, the more we are in

a state of well-being or health.

Thomas Hübl

Dear Michael,

I recently started dating someone after a five-year hiatus. Breaking up with Meriel was hard, even though we both knew it was the right decision. She was clearer than I was, but in hindsight, it was the right choice. I'm happy to say that we managed the breakup well and have remained close friends. Now, she is happily in a new relationship. If it weren't for her, you wouldn't be reading this newsletter. I'm so grateful for her love and support, and even though we are no longer a couple in a “relationship,” we are still “relating.”

In our upcoming Relational Intimacy course, I make an important distinction between "relating" and "relationship." When we think about the word "relationship," we recognize it as a noun—a person, place, or thing. When I talk about my relationship with my partner, mother, or friend, I'm primarily referring to our past experiences together. In other words, it's static, non-emergent, lacks future possibility, and is based on our past history rather than what's alive and in the moment.

But when we talk about “relating” with someone, it's a verb implying action, movement, presence, and emergence. Relating always emanates from the present moment and is more open to possibility, awareness, and connection. It invites future, creativity, clarity, and curiosity and is a function of aliveness, seeing, being seen, and sensing the sacred other who is showing up as an inner movement of awareness in our nervous system. Authentic relating connects us with what Thich Nhat Hanh called “inter-being".

My willingness to be intimate with my own deep feelings creates 

the space for intimacy with another. 

Shakti Gawain

How can we be intimate with another when we have a hard time being intimate with ourselves? When we are judgmental or critical toward ourselves, when we don't have a sense of belonging, when we carry unresolved pain from our past, how can we expect to be close and connected with another? The beauty of relating is that it gives us the opportunity to discover and heal the chronic tension, numbness, and wounding we carry from our families, ancestors, and our cultural denial of how we have normalized our individual and collective pain and separation.

Conscious conflict can reveal our own unintegrated past and lead to a deepening of our capacity for intimacy with ourselves, others, and even the natural world. The term "Imago," from the Latin word for “image,” refers to an unconscious image of familiar love, developed in childhood and remaining unchanged in adulthood. As we explore these childhood relationships, we come to recognize our personal Imago as the image of the person we think can make us feel whole again. In reality, we often find partners whose unintegrated past matches our own unresolved history. Our nervous system heals and evolves when we simply bring conscious awareness to our inner process of relating.

When we practice embodied relating, we move from the head and our relational narrative to the body and emotions. To deeply connect with another, we have to build our capacity to feel and sense ourselves, the other, and how we are interconnected. This process creates inner space, which allows us to transform our dysfunctional relationships into opportunities for growth and healing, where we can learn to love and accept ourselves fully, and in turn, love and accept others more profoundly.

I invite you to explore these concepts in your own life. Reflect on your relationships and consider how conscious conflict and responsive relating might deepen your connection with others. Engaging in practices like meditation, contemplation, and prayer helps us move from our heads to our hearts and discover shifts in how we relate to ourselves and others. Through this journey, you may discover new dimensions of intimacy, spaciousness, and connection, not only with those around you but with the entire tapestry of life.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. 

Thomas Merton

The current poly-crises are a product of our incomplete and unintegrated past, including personal, ancestral, and collective numbness and tension. This leaves us feeling separate, alone, and fragmented. When we heal our past-based wounding, it impacts the collective, just as collective trauma affects us.

In the upcoming Relational Intimacy Workshop, we will explore how to deepen our natural ability to connect, communicate, unblend, and integrate our wounded inner child, tapping into the resources and embodied wisdom of our personal, familial, and ancestral history. I hope you will consider joining us in Nevada City, CA, for this deep dive into relational transformation. You can find out more by visiting www.WellofLight.com.

Thank you for being a part of the Well of Light Family.

with love and blessings,

Michael and the Well of Light team

Love does not happen where we already love someone. Love happens when we embrace something that was difficult to include. 

Thomas Hübl

Video of the Month

Relational Mindfulness: From Trauma to Connection

- Terry Real

US

by Terrence Real

US by Terrence Real is one of the most readable, insightful, and entertaining books about relationships I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot of them). Terry has a way of bringing humor into the kind of challenging relationship issues we are all familiar with. His recognition of the pandemic of individualism helps us understand why we have so many repetitive experiences in our relationships. Terrence encourages his clients to look into their upbringing to make sense of their individualistic qualities and how their childhood forced them to develop particular survival techniques. Then, he encourages them to draw connections to how they are triggered in their adult life, causing them to act like that child in survival mode. I highly recommend taking the time to read this book. The payback is exponential.

Poetry Corner

For Love In a Time of Conflict 

When the gentleness between you hardens

And you fall out of your belonging with each other,

May the depths you have reached hold you still.

When no true word can be said, or heard,

And you mirror each other in the script of hurt,

When even the silence has become raw and torn,

May you hear again an echo of your first music.

When the weave of affection starts to unravel

And anger begins to sear the ground between you,

Before this weather of grief invites

The black seed of bitterness to find root,

May your souls come to kiss.

Now is the time for one of you to be gracious,

To allow a kindness beyond thought and hurt,

Reach out with sure hands

To take the chalice of your love,

And carry it carefully through this echoless waste

Until this winter pilgrimage leads you

Towards the gateway to spring.

By John O’Donohue

About Michael Stone

Michael Stone is a spiritual author, mentor, shamanic practitioner, radio host, producer, and trauma integration facilitator who co-creates individual and group environments and experiences that support people in transcending the myth of separation, and experiencing deep and profound interconnection with others and all of life. He has been teaching and leading experiential events, classes, teleseminars and workshops on Organizational Development, Embodied Shamanism, Moving Meditation, Mysticism, Relational Intimacy, Personal Growth, Trauma Integration and Spiritual Fulfillment for over 40 years. www.WellofLight.com

Soul Remembering and Restoration: Rediscovering Our Essential Goodness

• Somatic Trauma Integration Facilitation
• Group & Couples Counselling
• Movement & Meditation Experiences

To meet the financial and emotional challenges of our time Michael is now offering a sliding scale for therapeutic sessions online & in person.

If you are interested in working with Michael you can set up a 15 minute introductory call here.

For more information click here.

"I’m ready for some relational intimacy.

How about you? "

Buddha