Ever hear from your partner,

‘do you expect me to be a mind-reader?’

Well, the truth is

Yes you do!

Why?  

Because if your partner really paid attention then he or she would know what you want in the relationship.

Using your full capacity to listen, and pay attention results in the other person feeling seen, loved and understood. This article is about mind-reading 101.

Mind reading…. 101.  It’s really about being mindful and observant, like a mentalist, which will look and feel like you have esp.  When you pay attention with all your senses and mindfulness you can really understand your partner.  And, when you feel heard by someone else you feel real and loved.

Kahlil Gibran references this in his poem book, The Prophet (1923, 1978, 1984).  Which is an oft-quoted book at marriage ceremonies.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s Mindfulness book, Peace Is Every Step (1991, Bantam Books, New York), offers insight:

“Darling do I understand you enough? Or am I making you suffer?Please tell me so that I can learn to love you properly…..”  Real Love, pg 80.

“Love is a mind that brings peace, joy,and happiness to another person.  ….The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves ‘inside the skin’ of the other.  We ‘go inside’ their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering.  Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. …When we are in contact with another’s suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us.  Compassion means, literally, ‘to suffer with’.

…” Meditation on Compassion, pg 81, 82.

To develop this quality in yourself, follow these 6 easy steps.

1. Know yourself.  Develop your understanding of your wants, your strengths, and limitations.  Once you know where you are you can allow yourself to feel trust and then open to your partner’s needs, wants, and perspectives. Knowing yourself allows you to connect with other’s and see not only your own perspective but that of another.
2. Open your heart.  From an open heart you can hear through defensiveness.  From an open heart you are able to practice compassion and loving paradigm shifting.  Think duck, bunny paradigm shifting – both are real/true/accurate, just different perspectives of the same image:
3. Reset your senses to neutral. This is the idea of choosing to connect rather than be right.  Choosing to remove fight from your vocabulary in order to focus on deflecting negative or attacking energy and going underneath that to the injury or suffering or pain of the other and seeking to create/find understanding and connection.
4. Observe another’s face, voice/tenor, and gestures. Stop, look, and listen.  Make the connection through observation and clarification.  Pay attention, notice incongruence and seek a way through to a deep understanding and knowing of your partner.
5. Use yourself as a reflection of your partner. Feel into your own body as a reflection of the other’s heart rate, anxiety, breathing, tension, peace; listen to your inner voice – for something off, something strong, something intuitive.
6. Speak your feelings and thoughts, use clarification and inquiry from a balanced loving neutral place – not defensive. Reflect what you see as the incongruence.  Deflect/deflate another’s anxious negativity, or look for clarification of how he or she got there… discover what was the preceding action that triggered the anxiety or angry response; feel into yourself and then inquire from your partner, to ascertain what you partner is looking to receive so that he or she feels seen, heard, connected and loved.  Once you understand or get clarity on this information, give it lovingly and without condition.

Your capacity to read another’s mind is directly related to your personal self-knowing and your desire to connect, understand, and paradigm shift.

Meditation, Mindfulness, Removing fight from your vocabulary, and Developing you connection to your internal sensory guidance center are actions that improve your capacity to develop compassion, understanding, and care within you.

Living in this way will elevate your spiritual consciousness and result in deeper, more powerful, and mutually satisfying relationships in all aspects of your life.  in love and light, bg