CREATING THE FOUNDATION FOR A MAGICAL RELATIONSHIP

As you begin reading this book, ask yourself why you have picked it up. Is it because you have heard good things about it? Were you attracted to the title or cover? Perhaps you are stuck somewhere on your personal journey toward creating a magical relationship. Or perhaps you are searching for tips to fi x your partner so that he or she is less irritating. Maybe you are simply curious. Any reason is valid. To get the most from all that How to Create a Magical Relationship has to offer, it is important that you begin to know yourself.
Since you have picked up this book, chances are you are interested in having relationships that are rewarding to you and to the people with whom you relate. In the following pages, you are likely to come across things that you do and have done naturally all along that work well in your dealings with others. You will also identify things that are impediments to your ability to have a day-to-day sense of well-being. Both are
important.


The ideas presented in this book are a radical departure from working on yourself or your relationship to bring about positive change. This book is about discovering a new way of seeing, a new way of looking at yourself, your life, and your relationships. It will require you to learn a few very simple principles that can shift the way you relate and the way you think about your life.

The two of us have found a far faster and more lasting approach than that of picking on oneself and one’s partner and making endless lists of resolutions designed to force ourselves to behave in a more positive manner. We have discovered the possibility of Instantaneous Transformation.

WHAT IS INSTANTANEOUS TRANSFORMATION?


Instantaneous Transformation is a phenomenon that we will be exploring over the course of this book. This is only the initial foray into an explanation of this complex, yet simple, happening. Transformation is a shifting in the essence of something.

For example, a molecule of water turns from liquid to solid at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. Even though its molecular structure stays the same, ice does not resemble water because it has transformed.
It is a shifting of the way you interact with life so that mechanical, automatic, unaware behaviors cease to dominate your choices. Transformation might be equated to a proactive way of life but not in opposition to anything. Most people have determined their lives either in agreement or opposition to something they have experienced or to which they have been exposed. With Instantaneous Transformation, the circumstances
of your life may stay the same, but the way you relate to those circumstances radically shifts. Before
people’s lives transform, they blame their circumstances for how they feel.
However, after transformation takes place, circumstances are no longer the determining factor. It is a state where the mere seeing of a behavior pattern is enough to complete it.

Instantaneous Transformation affects all aspects of a person’s life, not merely one area. It is not produced by will or a desire to transform. It happens to a person, and it happens when a person lives life directly rather than thinking about how to live life the “right” way. Transformation is the natural outcome when you bring awareness to your life.

AWARENESS
Our defi nition of awareness is a nonjudgmental seeing. It is an objective, noncritical seeing or witnessing of the nature or “isness” of any particular circumstance or situation. It is an ongoing process in which you are bringing yourself back to the moment rather than complaining silently about what you perceive as wrong or what you would prefer.
Most of us have been taught that when we become aware of something, we then have to do something to change or fix what we discover. With Instantaneous Transformation, awareness itself is often enough to facilitate resolution without doing anything about what is seen.
You could equate it to walking through a large conference hall with the lights turned off. If there were chairs and tables strewn about and you attempted to cross the room directly, you would undoubtedly stumble or fall. However, with light, you could easily avoid all of the obstacles. Merely by illuminating what is, those pitfalls that stand in the way of having a harmonious relationship can be circumvented. This is accomplished
not by rearranging the chairs or tables but by simply bringing awareness to them.

An Anthropological Approach
Our approach is anthropological in nature. Rather than being concerned with why people are the way they are, we are interested in seeing the mechanics and dynamics of how people function. An anthropologist suspends judgment to study cultures objectively—not as right or wrong, good or bad, or as something that needs to be fi xed or changed, but simply to see their social mores, customs, and standards. He or she
observes how a culture operates and interacts. We invite you to investigate your way of relating through this anthropological metaphor. Be a scientist and objectively, without judgment, study a culture of one—yourself.
In order to create a magical relationship, it is important that you learn the art of self-observation without self-reproach.
Most of us do not simply observe how we function. Rather, we judge ourselves, comparing how we are to how we think we ought to be based on cultural standards (or the resistance to those standards). We are addicted to fi xing what we perceive as our weaknesses and faults rather than observing ourselves
neutrally. Instantaneous Transformation is not about fixing yourself to be a better you or fi xing your partner to be a new and improved version of himself or herself. It is about being the way you are. If you simply see how you are without judging, manipulating, or trying to fi x what is seen, this will facilitate the completion of unwanted behaviors.
How? Well, neutrally observing something doesn’t add energy to it—for or against—and everything in this universe needs energy to survive. If you don’t energize your habits, they will naturally dwindle and die away all on their own.
It took the two of us many years to discover how to relate in a way that allowed our relationship to fl ower and grow, be nurturing and deepen.
If you pick on yourself, you will pick on your partner. We have discovered that working on yourself
(or your relationship) doesn’t work.

To begin with, see if you can read the information presented without trying to apply it to your life or your way of relating. We realize that this may be challenging, but with Instantaneous Transformation there is nothing that you need to work on or do, try to fi x or change, in order to create a magical relationship.

Agreeing and Disagreeing
Please hold in abeyance the tendency to agree or disagree with the ideas being presented, because if you pick them apart, you will never get the essence of what is being said. This is because if you are agreeing or disagreeing, you are comparing what is being said to what you already know rather than really listening.
Part of the technology of Instantaneous Transformation is to train yourself to listen to the point of view of the speaker rather than think about whether or not you agree or disagree with what is being said. In this case, the written word is the speaker.
To discover something new, you must give up the idea that you already know what is being said. You also have to move past the fear of looking stupid, either to yourself or to others, for not already knowing what you discover. Our request is that you give it a chance. What we are talking about works. It has been proven in the lives of the many people who have mastered the principles in this book. Please know that we appreciate the courage it takes, and we know the discomfort that one goes through in learning any new skill set, and learning the skill set of awareness is no exception.

Agendas
Many people will be reading this book with an agenda to fix something that is wrong with their partner. When this is the case, they will focus on the sections that they feel address their partner’s “problems” and will disregard anything that does not support what they are proving to be true. People gather evidence to support their points of view and disregard anything that does not support them. Take, for instance, the woman
who has the idea that men are crude, rude, and insensitive oafs.
Any time a man is kind, gentle, or nice to her, these behaviors are disregarded. It is not that she thinks to dismiss them; it is as though there is a fi lter that sifts out anything that does not support her point of view. As you read on, we will explore the subject of agendas in more depth. This will support you in becoming aware of your personal fi lters, which were created by a less expanded, younger version of yourself. Your agendas
limit what is possible for you.

Confusion and Paradox
There are two possible impediments that you may meet while discovering how to create a magical relationship and learning the technology of Instantaneous Transformation that need to be addressed. The fi rst is confusion. Since this approach is so outside the commonly held reality regarding relationships,
confusion will be a common response. This is not a problem. It is part of the process when the mind grapples with new ideas.
There are two primary reasons for confusion. The first is when something doesn’t fit what is already known the mind gets confused trying to find a place for it, trying to make it fit, trying to make sense out of it. For instance, if you have been immersed in the idea that having a good relationship is “hard work,” then the concept that your relationship can instantaneously transform won’t make sense. There is a prevalent idea
in our culture that in order to improve your relationship you have to work on it. So the concept of simply bringing awareness to how you are relating, rather than working on your relationship, may be confusing.
The second reason for confusion is to avoid the domination of the information being presented. In other words, people get confused when something conflicts with an agenda that they are currently holding. For example, the suggestion that you can let go of your past and it no longer has to determine how you are in relationships today, in this moment, is extremely confusing to one who is determined to prove that his or her parents have caused irreparable damage by their dysfunctional way of relating. If you are committed to proving a point of view, such as “I am not responsible for how I relate; my parents screwed me up,” then confusion is an effective device to avoid giving up that point of view.

The second possible impediment is paradox, which happens when there are two seemingly conflicting or contradictory ideas that are both actually true. A classic example of paradox would be the statement, “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.” These are two seemingly contradictory statements, but if you have ever seen a river after it has overflowed its banks in a flood, then you know that these two
statements are both possible at the same time. In a flood situation, there is water everywhere, but you certainly would not want to drink it.

Here is a story that illustrates paradox: A master and his servant were crossing a desert. They came to an oasis and decided to spend the night. In the morning, they awoke to discover that their camels were gone. The master said to his servant, “Where are the camels?”

To which the servant replied, “Well, I just did what you always tell me to do.”
“What is that?” asked the master.
“You always tell me to trust in Allah, so that is what I did. I trusted Allah would take care of the camels.”
“Ahh,” the master replied. “This is true. Of course, you must trust in Allah, but you also must tether the camels.”

The paradox in a transformational approach to creating a magical relationship is that there is nothing to do with what you discover. Sometimes, though, things need to be done. For example, if you do something without awareness that is hurtful to your partner, a simple recognition without judging yourself for the behavior can be enough to dissolve the pattern and yet you may still need to apologize. Learning Something New What needs to be addressed next is how the mind works. It operates much like a computer, sorting information by similarities to or differences from what it already knows. This is a very useful function; however, it can also work as an obstacle to discovering anything that exists outside the known.
Our minds function by extrapolating from our past. They can only suggest possible futures based on what is already known. So if you have never had a good relationship, to conceive of a great one is impossible. It is much more difficult to see what you don’t already know because the mind is likely to fi ll in with past information and knowledge that colors the moment. Take, for example, the old expression, “Paris in the
the spring.”

“Paris in the spring” is a saying that you may have heard many times. But, when you read the statement above, did you notice anything out of the ordinary? Did you see that in fact this quote had a duplication of the word the? It actually reads “Paris in the the spring.” The mind sees what it is expecting to see and often overlooks what is really there. It will rearrange what is actually being said to fi t its logic system.
If you read this book to see if you agree or disagree with what is being said, you will miss what is new because you can only agree or disagree by comparing what is said to what you already know. You will be inadvertently reinforcing all the ways you currently relate, including those aspects of your relationships
that you fi nd distressing.