Serge
Hi, Russell.
Russell
Hey there, Serge. Nice to see you.
Serge
So we're having this conversation and recording it as a continuation of what we had started to talk about, about the notion of conflict.
Russell
Yeah. So I want to bring a starting point. I was going over with my wife, as we usually do first thing.
Well, what do you got going on for today? I said, well, I've got, I think it's about 15 or 16 emails to write and responses that are fairly serious to certain questions from students. And so she goes, wow, you got a lot on your plate.
I go, yeah, and then I've got this and that. And I go, well, how do you feel? And I go, well, it seems like a lot, but, you know, it'll all just get done.
And I realized a shift in me from some years ago, from feeling like I have to to I get to. Like, oh, I have to write this particular person who's a little tricky for me, and a student from overseas. And it was so wonderful to see how when I was carrying 15 emails and now this person, it could so easily feel like conflicted with myself, conflicted with the presence I want to bring to the letter, and all the other letters somehow very easily felt the backgrounding of the others and the presencing of this one letter.
And at a meta level, this guy was very concerned about all these things he had to do and didn't want to do. The shift that I experienced some years ago between just between I have to and I get to. Doesn't mean I want to, but it means I have the capacity, I went from a subtle feeling of, I'm applying conflict to feeling like there's a lot I have to do, a conflict within, not a conflict with another, and celebrating the absence of it, or the elimination of it, or something like that.
Then I realized my wife was really upset about something about a half hour ago and very demonstrative about it and feeling the place inside that begins to realize I really don't need to change her story. And so again, I could feel how I wanted to engage in conflict for habitual response that lasted, I think, about five seconds and then go, I don't need to be in conflict here. And feeling the whole change in the nervous system.
You know what I mean?
Serge
So I totally resonate with you and I'll start with what you said last about that sense of that instinctive urge to engage them. But, you know, And that's my story. And you had that body movement there as you do it.
And I so resonate with it. And then, you know, that other body movement, it's like a little bit of going backwards and settling. I don't need to.
And that sense of there's an urge to do it and I don't need to.
Russell
Yeah.
Serge
And that I don't need to feels great. and I've caught myself smiling and relaxing as you were doing it. That I don't need to feels wonderful.
Russell
Yeah, I mean, I hadn't put all this together till we started talking, but it's somehow related to, I have to, I get to.
Serge
Yeah, absolutely.
Russell
It's like the habitual bodily response was defend or engage. I also know how I can disengage in a distant way. And this is different than that.
This is not engaging in the pattern of relationship conflict, yet not exiting, not going on freeze or run away or any of that. But finding in this situation, not every situation, but in this situation, I can find that place of being present without defense. And maybe the most important thing is not trying to change her.
I think that was a key element. And that's not easy.
Serge
So where I resonate with it is that there is a change that has to do with feeling, sensing, being in a different place vis-a-vis the situation. Like the situation has not changed, but the I don't need to react is realizing that there is something in my position vis-a-vis the situation that I'm in the interaction, but it's different. I live it differently.
And I live it differently from a place that engages all of me. The pushing is about something is pulled out of me by the situation. And there's only that coming up.
And this is I have access to more of me. So in the middle of the interaction, I'm not losing myself. And I have that sense of I can be present with the interaction and being myself.
Russell
Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. The only subtle difference, the way you said it was the situation stays the same, but I could be different in it, which is one accurate way of describing it. another accurate way of describing it.
Because I was different, the situation changed. Because the situation is not what's happening externally only. It's happening in my way of being with what's happening. So it's totally accurate to say, well, there are two people and this one's like this, this one's like this. So that is the situation.
But now it's not that I'm different in the situation only. That's true also. But the situation is now different because I'm different.
Serge
And so I'm with you. I think it's key. The situation is different because I'm different.
However, what's happening is I hear you retell what I said is I'm noticing you're using the word different, and it doesn't quite feel right. Because what was important for me to say is not different but more complete, more whole. That the initial reaction drew only a part of me.
And in that part of me that it drew, I left off a lot of who I am. And so there's a sense of reclaiming all of me. And how reclaiming all of me, instead of just that little part of me, changes the situation.
Because now the situation includes more of me to stabilize, you know, to give some ballast instead of the more volatile part of it.
Russell
Right, right, right. Not having that reactive voice or that place take over and more of the entirety of self can be there.
Serge
Yeah. And I like the way you put it. It's like you say, not having that reactive voice take over. So you're not saying and we're not saying eliminating the reactive voice. The reactive voice is still there.
Russell
Right.
Serge
But in the whole ensemble that is A through Z, that reactive voice is just A. And there's 25 other letters for the whole L.
Russell
Right, right. And the good news is, or another piece of the good news is, because in the moment of the grounding and the breathing coming in and like that, it's not even A anymore. It's more like P or R. It's less prominent in the alphabet. Yeah, yeah,
Serge
yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything changes as we engage. So we're literally in that sense of a process of interaction where things are not set.
They change as we interact. Let's slow down a little bit. And I want to maybe go back to how we started the conversation.
You started with that notion of, oh, I have all of these emails and especially this email, which is the difficult one. And I so relate to that situation sometimes about feeling like that sense of carrying a big burden and it feels like it will take forever and there's not enough hours in the day and not enough days in the week to really do all of that stuff. And what happens sometimes is actually as I engage in doing it, it changes.
And it's amazing how quick it was and how relatively easy it was because the nature of engaging with it in a certain way just made that whole thing, that whole difficulty, that whole boulder just melt.
Russell
Yes.
Serge
And so it feels like what we're talking about here is like the nature of engagement is one way of engaging with things that I come up with time and again. You know, I wish I could say I've become wiser and I don't. It still comes up time and again, you know, of, oh, my God, there's me, poor little me and all of these things, you know. And so there's something that changes in the process of engaging. In a way, the interaction itself becomes something. It's not that I and the world have become one, but as I interact with what's happening, the entity, if you want, is the interaction.
Russell
Yeah.
Serge
The engagement, the interaction.
Russell
Yeah.
Serge
And so that sense of seeing things as like this big stuff and me here has changing because the experience is of engaging and engaging is one thing. And it's a very satisfying process.
Russell
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's a very satisfying process. the interaction, the engagement, the shift that is often propels that for me is long background in Zen meditation and the commitment to a path of returning to presence, returning to here, returning to this.
This is, I am formed by engaging in this letter. And so that having that commitment or that, let's just call it commitment in life, doesn't mean that I don't get pulled away, but it takes very little to remember. What is my commitment in this life?
What is core? What is central?
Serge
You're talking in terms of a path. You use the word commitment and you're talking about context. okay and so and what you're talking about is how having this path helps bring you into a different context and and i want to say it a little differently that for me the word context is more important than commitment that commitment implies a sense of something forced that you want to bring yourself to in a way, you know, push back.
Russell
Right.
Serge
And I like the word, the word context, because the context is a word that stems from experience and assimilated experience. And so where I relate to what you're saying is over time, time and again, noticing that pull to reactivity, that pull to, you know, little me against big things and separation, and to noticing how when I happen to see it in a different way, when I see it in a form of engaging in the present moment, all the theory in the world about what Zen is or philosophy or whatever, the moment where the rubber hits the road is the present moment when I'm engaged in that difficult that this is it. There's nothing bigger than that.
And so there is something about an acquired context over time of having time and again encountered these kinds of situations. And so when I'm in the moment of writing that difficult email, there's a part of me that can also have the awareness of that context and it brings me back there. And so that's why I like the word context rather than commitment, because it comes from that sense of learning as opposed to abstractly defining how I want to be.
Russell
The commitment, the path are so in my bones that it's almost not different from context.
Serge
Yeah, yeah.
Russell
So what happens is it's not that you choose, well, I have to be present. I'm a Zen student or something like that. It's the path, what you call in Zen the vow, the path, the context calls me. It's not that I call it.
Serge
Yes.
Russell
Only. I mean, it's not that it's irrelevant in my thought. But there's enough of a base that something larger is saying.
Serge
Yeah, yeah.
Russell
Remember? Hello?
Serge
Yes, I think that's beautifully said because in that sense, the commitment is not something that's external. It's something that is constantly reinforced and recreated by the practice.
Russell
That's right.
Serge
And so the context is the commitment because the commitment comes from the experience of what it feels like to act that way, by the experience to be present.
Russell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really appreciate how precise and how you get it. You get what I'm saying. Yes.
Serge
Yeah. And so it's interesting because we started with that notion of talking about conflict. and that the milk cannot function without grit. And so we encounter things.
Russell
Right, right, right. We can say it was startling for me years ago to hear that peace is not a creative state. When I hear you say the generativeness, my word, the generativeness of the conflict, the generativeness of working the grist for the mill, the thing that's definitely throughout the history of consciousness and life itself, it's been through the rub of things that we had to create some new way of dealing with the situation.
Serge
Yeah. So it brings me to that sense of the Buddhist essential truth that life involves suffering and that I think we cannot run away from that reality. And say, even in Bali, you're going to have a rage and death and illness. And so that sense of how we, all of us, and certainly me, very much included and very much among the people whose first reaction is try to avoid that.
Russell
Sure.
Serge
And how it's really a learned habit to kind of go beyond that reaction of running away from it and face it.
Russell
Yes.
Serge
And so what we're talking about is how natural it is to want to run away from it, but also how much there is to be gained when confronting it and facing it and accepting it and embracing it.
Russell
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's well put. The importance, the value of choosing to engage in the unpleasant or the not wanted.
and how much, how grateful I am for a very long-term intimate relationship because you're going to run into difficulties. It's part of the function, I think, of intimate relationship is to put you up against yourself in a certain way and having to work with another human being in respectful ways and different wantings and learnings. And, you know, my wife and raising my daughter have been the biggest teachers of my life, right?
And I've had great teachers. I've been blessed. But in terms of rubber hitting the road and what you experience on the cushion in meditation and what you experience in interaction and how they affect each other.
I was shocked in the first 20 years or so of meditation and then looking around and realizing how many of the really senior people didn't maintain relationships very well. It was like it was separate. their practice and relationship were different.
And one of the things I so appreciate about gene and focusing and how they can create situations where you can take what happens on the cushion in deepening meditation and see how you're not applying it in a relationship or you're not applying it to a voice that comes up inside and have a way of, wait a second, I don't just want to try to be at peace all the time. I want to see how to engage in this kind of moment and not override it and to have skills to do that. And I don't know a meditation path that gives you all that.
Serge
So, you're talking about noticing how relationship.
Russell
Absolutely, yeah.
Serge
And I want to go maybe use that same analogy to say that in a way, in a relationship, it's not that the practice of love and connection is separate from the moments of disconnection, disharmony, and conflict. But actually, the practice of embracing the conflict's disharmony, disconnection is very much at the heart of living relationship as a connective practice.
Russell
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Beautiful. Yes. We need that for the deepening of the intimacy, for the furthering of the us and the individuals.
Serge
It's not we have the loving relationship despite the conflict, but that it's a home.
Russell
Beautiful. That's lovely. Yes.
Serge
And might imply to some people there's all the ugly sides of conflict. There's all the ways in which conflict can be very destructive. And it is in many ways.
So what we're talking about is a context where there is an intention and a capacity to be loving, and that is fed by embracing conflict. We're not talking about, you know, emphasizing conflict as the be-all and end-all and exclusion of love. No, it's very, very clearly a context in which both exist, but saying in that context, it's not one or the other.
Russell
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And not only both exist, but what you're saying even bigger than that, that I'm appreciating is that if you're really devoted to love, you're also embracing conflict. And that's another kind of creating a hole that it's not now I'm loving and now we're dealing with our difficult.
No, let's look at our relationship as the grounds for furthering love in difficult moments, which doesn't mean trying to superimpose being nice, but it means really engaging and having our relationship has this setting, and that that changes things enormously. One of the great gifts that I attribute, A big part to the women's movement in the 50s, 60s, 70s was inviting us all to become more whole and to engage, not through dominance, not through control, but to really engage in what does it mean to support our deepening individuality. in the context of a deepening relationship and how that differentiation allows for a new level of integration, which then produces other kinds of periods of quiescence, and then it starts getting chaotic again.
And then you've got to find new ways of integrating by going deeper and including your conflicts in that. Yeah.
Serge
And so there's three phrases you use that I want to just highlight, like that sense of deepening individuality, deepening relationship, and integration. And so we normally take the deepening individuality and deepening relationship as inherently in conflict, that you cannot have one and the other. And in a short moment, it's absolutely true that harmony is the absence of conflict and relationship is smoothing over the conflict.
But you put it within a dynamic framework and that's where the notion of integration comes because it's a process in which it's not about harmony every moment. It's that what makes a harmonious relationship is the moments of conflict. There is a respect for each individual's needs within a context that grows deeper and more connected because of that.
Russell
Yes. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's true in human relations, but from a larger view, it's, I think, true in dynamic systems, that as the system differentiates its parts, more potential gets created.
And as more potential gets created, it can either integrate at a higher level or it dissolves. It gets so disrupted, it can't continue. but that new integration then has a kind of honeymoon period where it's we're in a new level of harmony but then something wants to grow again and there needs to be some disruption in the harmony sometimes called chaos sometimes disruption if the system is committed, if there is a basic looking toward love and depth or whatever you want to call it, that disruption is now the opportunity for the new differentiation becoming a new level of integration.
Serge
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the moment when things are seemingly happy and cloudless, to not forget or not want to disregard the difficult parts. But at the moment where things are difficult and so disrupting the system to not forget there's more than that.
Russell
Right.
Serge
And so that's where we talk about that capacity to individually and collectively increase our ability to perceive complexity and hold different things together. It's not that simplification of it's all love or it's all disaster, it's all suffering or it's all joy and bliss. But that sense of, you know, kind of holding both. And at time, one is going to have more of a pull and at time, the other is going to have more of a pull. But individually and collectively, having that kind of reminder that there's both.
Russell
Right. Yes. Yes.
the reminder that there's both. And it sure makes a huge difference, as I said before, but I want to underline it in terms of what you just said. When there is a context that says that's larger than what we are experiencing in this moment, I mean, that's the positive historical value of getting married is that you are making a statement that more than my pleasure only or my happiness only, there is something larger that I am contextualizing my relationship to life through.
Serge
Yes, I totally want to come with you with the notion of commitment. Because what we're talking about at this moment is an intention, a very strong intention. While my immediate gratification or my impulse is to go toward a certain way, I'm learning more and more that there is a benefit in having that larger context. And so, yes, I have an intentionality, I have a commitment, to remembering that. And so I have a commitment to, you know, giving a chance to reconsidering that larger picture instead of just the impulse of the moment.
Russell
Individuals, we are systems in ourselves, and in all of our relationships, new systems, new us's are formed. If there is a commitment to staying in harmony, that system will have less potential of a system that is more dynamic.
Serge
What you were saying, I want to say it in a slightly different way. That sense of, you know, under fear, there is a tendency to grab, you know, to tighten our grip, to tighten the control. And so that's my concept of, in a way, the attachment, the negative attachment.
The non-attachment is more that sense of, hey, it's okay, I'm open, there's more where it comes from. And so there is this kind of breathing rhythm, like the expansion, contraction of the heart, to inhale, exhale, and that we have these moments of expanding and trust in the openness of what comes, and moments of tightening of fear. And so what I'm getting from what you're talking about is that we cannot be totally in one or the other because, you know, it doesn't go anywhere.
But that sense of being part of that larger process, that's going to include both.
Russell
Got it. Perfectly said. Perfectly said.
Yes. Yes. And I'm grateful.
I'm grateful to you for the conversation, for the consistent, my experience of the consistent capacity for finding language that's precise and connected. So I'm grateful for that, Serge.
Serge
And I feel very grateful for that sense of presence through what happens in life. And a sense of, you know, that's it. Of embodying that sense of presence.
Russell
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what they say. Quarrel with life and you're going to lose.
Copyright 2026 ProactiveMindfulness.com
Hi, Russell.
Russell
Hey there, Serge. Nice to see you.
Serge
So we're having this conversation and recording it as a continuation of what we had started to talk about, about the notion of conflict.
Russell
Yeah. So I want to bring a starting point. I was going over with my wife, as we usually do first thing.
Well, what do you got going on for today? I said, well, I've got, I think it's about 15 or 16 emails to write and responses that are fairly serious to certain questions from students. And so she goes, wow, you got a lot on your plate.
I go, yeah, and then I've got this and that. And I go, well, how do you feel? And I go, well, it seems like a lot, but, you know, it'll all just get done.
And I realized a shift in me from some years ago, from feeling like I have to to I get to. Like, oh, I have to write this particular person who's a little tricky for me, and a student from overseas. And it was so wonderful to see how when I was carrying 15 emails and now this person, it could so easily feel like conflicted with myself, conflicted with the presence I want to bring to the letter, and all the other letters somehow very easily felt the backgrounding of the others and the presencing of this one letter.
And at a meta level, this guy was very concerned about all these things he had to do and didn't want to do. The shift that I experienced some years ago between just between I have to and I get to. Doesn't mean I want to, but it means I have the capacity, I went from a subtle feeling of, I'm applying conflict to feeling like there's a lot I have to do, a conflict within, not a conflict with another, and celebrating the absence of it, or the elimination of it, or something like that.
Then I realized my wife was really upset about something about a half hour ago and very demonstrative about it and feeling the place inside that begins to realize I really don't need to change her story. And so again, I could feel how I wanted to engage in conflict for habitual response that lasted, I think, about five seconds and then go, I don't need to be in conflict here. And feeling the whole change in the nervous system.
You know what I mean?
Serge
So I totally resonate with you and I'll start with what you said last about that sense of that instinctive urge to engage them. But, you know, And that's my story. And you had that body movement there as you do it.
And I so resonate with it. And then, you know, that other body movement, it's like a little bit of going backwards and settling. I don't need to.
And that sense of there's an urge to do it and I don't need to.
Russell
Yeah.
Serge
And that I don't need to feels great. and I've caught myself smiling and relaxing as you were doing it. That I don't need to feels wonderful.
Russell
Yeah, I mean, I hadn't put all this together till we started talking, but it's somehow related to, I have to, I get to.
Serge
Yeah, absolutely.
Russell
It's like the habitual bodily response was defend or engage. I also know how I can disengage in a distant way. And this is different than that.
This is not engaging in the pattern of relationship conflict, yet not exiting, not going on freeze or run away or any of that. But finding in this situation, not every situation, but in this situation, I can find that place of being present without defense. And maybe the most important thing is not trying to change her.
I think that was a key element. And that's not easy.
Serge
So where I resonate with it is that there is a change that has to do with feeling, sensing, being in a different place vis-a-vis the situation. Like the situation has not changed, but the I don't need to react is realizing that there is something in my position vis-a-vis the situation that I'm in the interaction, but it's different. I live it differently.
And I live it differently from a place that engages all of me. The pushing is about something is pulled out of me by the situation. And there's only that coming up.
And this is I have access to more of me. So in the middle of the interaction, I'm not losing myself. And I have that sense of I can be present with the interaction and being myself.
Russell
Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice. The only subtle difference, the way you said it was the situation stays the same, but I could be different in it, which is one accurate way of describing it. another accurate way of describing it.
Because I was different, the situation changed. Because the situation is not what's happening externally only. It's happening in my way of being with what's happening. So it's totally accurate to say, well, there are two people and this one's like this, this one's like this. So that is the situation.
But now it's not that I'm different in the situation only. That's true also. But the situation is now different because I'm different.
Serge
And so I'm with you. I think it's key. The situation is different because I'm different.
However, what's happening is I hear you retell what I said is I'm noticing you're using the word different, and it doesn't quite feel right. Because what was important for me to say is not different but more complete, more whole. That the initial reaction drew only a part of me.
And in that part of me that it drew, I left off a lot of who I am. And so there's a sense of reclaiming all of me. And how reclaiming all of me, instead of just that little part of me, changes the situation.
Because now the situation includes more of me to stabilize, you know, to give some ballast instead of the more volatile part of it.
Russell
Right, right, right. Not having that reactive voice or that place take over and more of the entirety of self can be there.
Serge
Yeah. And I like the way you put it. It's like you say, not having that reactive voice take over. So you're not saying and we're not saying eliminating the reactive voice. The reactive voice is still there.
Russell
Right.
Serge
But in the whole ensemble that is A through Z, that reactive voice is just A. And there's 25 other letters for the whole L.
Russell
Right, right. And the good news is, or another piece of the good news is, because in the moment of the grounding and the breathing coming in and like that, it's not even A anymore. It's more like P or R. It's less prominent in the alphabet. Yeah, yeah,
Serge
yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything changes as we engage. So we're literally in that sense of a process of interaction where things are not set.
They change as we interact. Let's slow down a little bit. And I want to maybe go back to how we started the conversation.
You started with that notion of, oh, I have all of these emails and especially this email, which is the difficult one. And I so relate to that situation sometimes about feeling like that sense of carrying a big burden and it feels like it will take forever and there's not enough hours in the day and not enough days in the week to really do all of that stuff. And what happens sometimes is actually as I engage in doing it, it changes.
And it's amazing how quick it was and how relatively easy it was because the nature of engaging with it in a certain way just made that whole thing, that whole difficulty, that whole boulder just melt.
Russell
Yes.
Serge
And so it feels like what we're talking about here is like the nature of engagement is one way of engaging with things that I come up with time and again. You know, I wish I could say I've become wiser and I don't. It still comes up time and again, you know, of, oh, my God, there's me, poor little me and all of these things, you know. And so there's something that changes in the process of engaging. In a way, the interaction itself becomes something. It's not that I and the world have become one, but as I interact with what's happening, the entity, if you want, is the interaction.
Russell
Yeah.
Serge
The engagement, the interaction.
Russell
Yeah.
Serge
And so that sense of seeing things as like this big stuff and me here has changing because the experience is of engaging and engaging is one thing. And it's a very satisfying process.
Russell
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's a very satisfying process. the interaction, the engagement, the shift that is often propels that for me is long background in Zen meditation and the commitment to a path of returning to presence, returning to here, returning to this.
This is, I am formed by engaging in this letter. And so that having that commitment or that, let's just call it commitment in life, doesn't mean that I don't get pulled away, but it takes very little to remember. What is my commitment in this life?
What is core? What is central?
Serge
You're talking in terms of a path. You use the word commitment and you're talking about context. okay and so and what you're talking about is how having this path helps bring you into a different context and and i want to say it a little differently that for me the word context is more important than commitment that commitment implies a sense of something forced that you want to bring yourself to in a way, you know, push back.
Russell
Right.
Serge
And I like the word, the word context, because the context is a word that stems from experience and assimilated experience. And so where I relate to what you're saying is over time, time and again, noticing that pull to reactivity, that pull to, you know, little me against big things and separation, and to noticing how when I happen to see it in a different way, when I see it in a form of engaging in the present moment, all the theory in the world about what Zen is or philosophy or whatever, the moment where the rubber hits the road is the present moment when I'm engaged in that difficult that this is it. There's nothing bigger than that.
And so there is something about an acquired context over time of having time and again encountered these kinds of situations. And so when I'm in the moment of writing that difficult email, there's a part of me that can also have the awareness of that context and it brings me back there. And so that's why I like the word context rather than commitment, because it comes from that sense of learning as opposed to abstractly defining how I want to be.
Russell
The commitment, the path are so in my bones that it's almost not different from context.
Serge
Yeah, yeah.
Russell
So what happens is it's not that you choose, well, I have to be present. I'm a Zen student or something like that. It's the path, what you call in Zen the vow, the path, the context calls me. It's not that I call it.
Serge
Yes.
Russell
Only. I mean, it's not that it's irrelevant in my thought. But there's enough of a base that something larger is saying.
Serge
Yeah, yeah.
Russell
Remember? Hello?
Serge
Yes, I think that's beautifully said because in that sense, the commitment is not something that's external. It's something that is constantly reinforced and recreated by the practice.
Russell
That's right.
Serge
And so the context is the commitment because the commitment comes from the experience of what it feels like to act that way, by the experience to be present.
Russell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really appreciate how precise and how you get it. You get what I'm saying. Yes.
Serge
Yeah. And so it's interesting because we started with that notion of talking about conflict. and that the milk cannot function without grit. And so we encounter things.
Russell
Right, right, right. We can say it was startling for me years ago to hear that peace is not a creative state. When I hear you say the generativeness, my word, the generativeness of the conflict, the generativeness of working the grist for the mill, the thing that's definitely throughout the history of consciousness and life itself, it's been through the rub of things that we had to create some new way of dealing with the situation.
Serge
Yeah. So it brings me to that sense of the Buddhist essential truth that life involves suffering and that I think we cannot run away from that reality. And say, even in Bali, you're going to have a rage and death and illness. And so that sense of how we, all of us, and certainly me, very much included and very much among the people whose first reaction is try to avoid that.
Russell
Sure.
Serge
And how it's really a learned habit to kind of go beyond that reaction of running away from it and face it.
Russell
Yes.
Serge
And so what we're talking about is how natural it is to want to run away from it, but also how much there is to be gained when confronting it and facing it and accepting it and embracing it.
Russell
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's well put. The importance, the value of choosing to engage in the unpleasant or the not wanted.
and how much, how grateful I am for a very long-term intimate relationship because you're going to run into difficulties. It's part of the function, I think, of intimate relationship is to put you up against yourself in a certain way and having to work with another human being in respectful ways and different wantings and learnings. And, you know, my wife and raising my daughter have been the biggest teachers of my life, right?
And I've had great teachers. I've been blessed. But in terms of rubber hitting the road and what you experience on the cushion in meditation and what you experience in interaction and how they affect each other.
I was shocked in the first 20 years or so of meditation and then looking around and realizing how many of the really senior people didn't maintain relationships very well. It was like it was separate. their practice and relationship were different.
And one of the things I so appreciate about gene and focusing and how they can create situations where you can take what happens on the cushion in deepening meditation and see how you're not applying it in a relationship or you're not applying it to a voice that comes up inside and have a way of, wait a second, I don't just want to try to be at peace all the time. I want to see how to engage in this kind of moment and not override it and to have skills to do that. And I don't know a meditation path that gives you all that.
Serge
So, you're talking about noticing how relationship.
Russell
Absolutely, yeah.
Serge
And I want to go maybe use that same analogy to say that in a way, in a relationship, it's not that the practice of love and connection is separate from the moments of disconnection, disharmony, and conflict. But actually, the practice of embracing the conflict's disharmony, disconnection is very much at the heart of living relationship as a connective practice.
Russell
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Beautiful. Yes. We need that for the deepening of the intimacy, for the furthering of the us and the individuals.
Serge
It's not we have the loving relationship despite the conflict, but that it's a home.
Russell
Beautiful. That's lovely. Yes.
Serge
And might imply to some people there's all the ugly sides of conflict. There's all the ways in which conflict can be very destructive. And it is in many ways.
So what we're talking about is a context where there is an intention and a capacity to be loving, and that is fed by embracing conflict. We're not talking about, you know, emphasizing conflict as the be-all and end-all and exclusion of love. No, it's very, very clearly a context in which both exist, but saying in that context, it's not one or the other.
Russell
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And not only both exist, but what you're saying even bigger than that, that I'm appreciating is that if you're really devoted to love, you're also embracing conflict. And that's another kind of creating a hole that it's not now I'm loving and now we're dealing with our difficult.
No, let's look at our relationship as the grounds for furthering love in difficult moments, which doesn't mean trying to superimpose being nice, but it means really engaging and having our relationship has this setting, and that that changes things enormously. One of the great gifts that I attribute, A big part to the women's movement in the 50s, 60s, 70s was inviting us all to become more whole and to engage, not through dominance, not through control, but to really engage in what does it mean to support our deepening individuality. in the context of a deepening relationship and how that differentiation allows for a new level of integration, which then produces other kinds of periods of quiescence, and then it starts getting chaotic again.
And then you've got to find new ways of integrating by going deeper and including your conflicts in that. Yeah.
Serge
And so there's three phrases you use that I want to just highlight, like that sense of deepening individuality, deepening relationship, and integration. And so we normally take the deepening individuality and deepening relationship as inherently in conflict, that you cannot have one and the other. And in a short moment, it's absolutely true that harmony is the absence of conflict and relationship is smoothing over the conflict.
But you put it within a dynamic framework and that's where the notion of integration comes because it's a process in which it's not about harmony every moment. It's that what makes a harmonious relationship is the moments of conflict. There is a respect for each individual's needs within a context that grows deeper and more connected because of that.
Russell
Yes. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's true in human relations, but from a larger view, it's, I think, true in dynamic systems, that as the system differentiates its parts, more potential gets created.
And as more potential gets created, it can either integrate at a higher level or it dissolves. It gets so disrupted, it can't continue. but that new integration then has a kind of honeymoon period where it's we're in a new level of harmony but then something wants to grow again and there needs to be some disruption in the harmony sometimes called chaos sometimes disruption if the system is committed, if there is a basic looking toward love and depth or whatever you want to call it, that disruption is now the opportunity for the new differentiation becoming a new level of integration.
Serge
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the moment when things are seemingly happy and cloudless, to not forget or not want to disregard the difficult parts. But at the moment where things are difficult and so disrupting the system to not forget there's more than that.
Russell
Right.
Serge
And so that's where we talk about that capacity to individually and collectively increase our ability to perceive complexity and hold different things together. It's not that simplification of it's all love or it's all disaster, it's all suffering or it's all joy and bliss. But that sense of, you know, kind of holding both. And at time, one is going to have more of a pull and at time, the other is going to have more of a pull. But individually and collectively, having that kind of reminder that there's both.
Russell
Right. Yes. Yes.
the reminder that there's both. And it sure makes a huge difference, as I said before, but I want to underline it in terms of what you just said. When there is a context that says that's larger than what we are experiencing in this moment, I mean, that's the positive historical value of getting married is that you are making a statement that more than my pleasure only or my happiness only, there is something larger that I am contextualizing my relationship to life through.
Serge
Yes, I totally want to come with you with the notion of commitment. Because what we're talking about at this moment is an intention, a very strong intention. While my immediate gratification or my impulse is to go toward a certain way, I'm learning more and more that there is a benefit in having that larger context. And so, yes, I have an intentionality, I have a commitment, to remembering that. And so I have a commitment to, you know, giving a chance to reconsidering that larger picture instead of just the impulse of the moment.
Russell
Individuals, we are systems in ourselves, and in all of our relationships, new systems, new us's are formed. If there is a commitment to staying in harmony, that system will have less potential of a system that is more dynamic.
Serge
What you were saying, I want to say it in a slightly different way. That sense of, you know, under fear, there is a tendency to grab, you know, to tighten our grip, to tighten the control. And so that's my concept of, in a way, the attachment, the negative attachment.
The non-attachment is more that sense of, hey, it's okay, I'm open, there's more where it comes from. And so there is this kind of breathing rhythm, like the expansion, contraction of the heart, to inhale, exhale, and that we have these moments of expanding and trust in the openness of what comes, and moments of tightening of fear. And so what I'm getting from what you're talking about is that we cannot be totally in one or the other because, you know, it doesn't go anywhere.
But that sense of being part of that larger process, that's going to include both.
Russell
Got it. Perfectly said. Perfectly said.
Yes. Yes. And I'm grateful.
I'm grateful to you for the conversation, for the consistent, my experience of the consistent capacity for finding language that's precise and connected. So I'm grateful for that, Serge.
Serge
And I feel very grateful for that sense of presence through what happens in life. And a sense of, you know, that's it. Of embodying that sense of presence.
Russell
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what they say. Quarrel with life and you're going to lose.
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