Hey this is Ish and in today's talk I'll be going over how being present and presence in general improves your relationships all around you.
So the first way it does is that you become more attentive to others and this is quite literally a skill that you develop on your meditation cushion as you focus on one object or changing objects.
So for example if you're staring at a candle and anytime your attention wanders you simply bring your attention back.
This is the capacity to train your attention.
Another way you can do this is say you are scanning for sensations in the body.
You are observing changes and you're being attentive to the changing conditions of your meditation object.
Now how this affects your relationships and translates over is that some of the biggest heartfelt compliments you can give someone is when you're fully present and noticing how they've changed.
So you can make someone feel really heard and seen when you observe how they've really made an attempt at something or you notice say like a haircut even something very simple like that and I think it really stands out more in today's chaotic and distracted world because people's attentions are always split between multiple things and there's a lot of distractions and things competing for a person's attention.
A lot of stimulus going on and at first people can actually be shocked that you've given them such a very simple compliment but that goes to show you the quality of presence in our crazy world all around us.
Now the second way this attentiveness spills out in your relationships is that you're able to offer your undivided attention and presence really be there for someone.
We can often hear this in the phrase be there for a friend.
What that really means is that you're not trying to correct or offer your unsolicited advice and try to spill over your own views when someone is talking to you but you're actually just receptive and fully listening to them not trying to change anything and I noticed this often when I was first learning about meditation I'd often go to my teachers and really try to get answers for things and answer things in a logical way and oftentimes I'd be really frustrated because they wouldn't give me the answer I was looking for.
They would just listen and be understanding and I was like getting all frustrated but now I realize that there's actually a lot of wisdom there because what they were able to provide is their undivided attention and the ability to be heard and even now to this day I still think about those moments where they were fully accepting and they weren't trying to push their own agenda on me or try to change things but really just be there and again this comes back to the point of making other people feel heard and seen and validated and again this is in short supply in today's times and with this ability to focus a bit more and be present comes a another side effect which is the increased ability to pay attention to things like body language or microexpressions and this is sort of a murky territory that a lot of meditators typically don't like going into but one of the things that you become more adept at is reading social cues and this is because again you're being more present you're able to notice things these things and I've also made a separate talk on microexpressions which you can check out but in gist you can really see the hidden emotions or underlying emotions that a person has even if their words say something else so even a person seems like very happy but deep down you can see that they're really sad you can see this conflict in emotions and this underlying emotion of sadness was actually always there but normally if you have a very busy mind or you're not very focused and what happens is that you're unable to pick up on these things and maybe if you have your own very busy mind you're focusing on your own thoughts so you lose this ability to be very present but if you have less things cluttering in your mind and you're able to focus more you'll actually be able to pick up on these things and with this you can channel this ability to be very present and notice the subtler cues for good so actually use if you notice these hidden emotions of sadness of anger in the other person you can actually direct this in a skillful way to be very present and help them help them out in whatever way that the moment calls for now the next way that meditation and presence work in general helps you and improves your relationships is that you become more grounded and this sense of groundedness provides safety in other people so in our modern world full of stimulus you have a lot of people that are fueled by desires so a lot of this restless energy where people are constantly chasing after things and they look at other people through their uses and how they can benefit them and this is again seeing other people through the lens of desire and desire is just a lens that that blocks your natural way of seeing and being present or for example you have may have aversion and this is kind of like this pushing away quality of resistance so you can see this a lot in like divisions in politics or us versus them kind of mentality and this creates separateness rather than togetherness or union which is what we're trying to aim at in our practice and lastly when we have things like ignorance delusion we are unable to see clearly and with meditation and wisdom-based practices you're able to see clearly and not have any things kind of blocking or obstructing your view and when you're able to simply just be in the present moment like we talked about earlier and you don't have anything obstructing you and you're also very calm as a result of your practice that you've developed over the years you start to become less pulled by things all around you and you become very firm within and when you become firm within you become like a very strong oak tree that is not really pushed around by the winds and this has an effect a ripple effect on other people because you're that one person in the room that is very calm and stable while everyone else is freaking out so people can actually look towards you for guidance so take this responsibility that comes your way and act on it ethically and this is why oftentimes a lot of the contemplative traditions really emphasize morality because the concentration aspects that you developed in your practice is like sharpening a sword but how the sword is used really varies because you can use that to say cut bread or you can use that to cut someone you want to be ethical and mindful of how you are conducting yourself with this increased power that comes with the practice and then the next thing is that with meditation you become more and more authentic and this is because you dissolve false layers and different masks that you have learned to put on and there's also unconscious patterns that you may have been operating on that you may have not had any idea about that become more apparent as your mindfulness increases now when you have this combination of strengthening your mindfulness and the ability to pay attention more and more and noticing these patterns of conditioning that have kind of ran your life before so you become more mindful you become more awake plus your mind becomes more unified you let go of distractions there's more of a one-pointedness and in fact yoga by the way means union so it kind of gives you an idea of where the practice eventually goes to when you have these the combination of these things you start to become more comfortable just being yourself without any false layers added onto you and you're not trying to get anywhere else you're fully present just right here and right now so this again adds to this capacity of focus of listening and also just being you you're not trying to be any false self trying to impress others or trying to do anything else but just you're just right here and this again is also very rare in today's world because everyone is trying to be someone or go somewhere be someone really big but you're just one person that is simply just yourself now the next way that meditation and presence work improves relationships is that you become more loving so we often hear about how meditation makes you more loving but maybe wondering how is this possible or how does this work well one way to do so is you become more compassionate and this can actually be a practice that you take on so in buddhism and in yoga there are sublime qualities of the heart boundless qualities of the heart known as the brahma viharas and these brahma viharas are made up of four different qualities which are actually the same but they're looked at through a different lens and these qualities are metta or loving kindness karuna or compassion mudita or sympathetic joy and upekka equanimity now in the first when you're first generating this goodwill or loving kindness or meta you are seeing other people or yourself as a friend and you're offering yourself or others goodwill and when you start to do this you'll actually notice you become more compassionate and more accepting to yourself and to other people as well and there are many benefits of this practice and two things that the buddha had mentioned is that there are 11 benefits of loving kindness and two of those are you become dear to human beings and dear to non-human beings and i've also noticed this where more pets have become happy to see me the more that i practice this and it's a very nice thing because you become less guarded less jaded you become just a bit more open to others and actually look forward to seeing other people and you radiate this goodwill to others and they in turn also radiate that back out to you so a lot of your relationships can positively change as you start to let go of anger in your heart or resistance or pushing other people away and you become more open free and loving to others and other people generally look forward to seeing you and this can have a positive effect on a lot of people's lives and i can't highly recommend loving kindness and the brahma vihara practices enough because they can have a dramatically positive effect on your relationships in your in your life so i hope you like this talk on how presence and meditation can positively impact your relationships in your life and if you have any observations yourself on how meditation has improved your relationships please leave a comment and share your thoughts
