تمرین دهم

THE TENTH PRACTICE

Being the Board

“That’s right, Five, always put the blame on others.”

— LEWIS CARROLL, Alice in Wonderland

WHEN the way things are seems to offer no possibility; when you are angry and blocked, and, for all your efforts, others refuse to move or cooperate, to compromise, or even to be halfway decent; when even enrollment does not work and you are at your wit’s end—you can take out this next practice: our graduate course in possibility. In this one, you rename yourself as the board on which the whole game is being played. You move the problematic aspect of any circumstance from the outside world inside the boundaries of yourself. With this act you can transform the world.

Imagine this scenario: a car waits peacefully at a red light; another barrels up behind and smashes into its rear. The driver of the second car, it turns out, is intoxicated and unlicensed. Who is at fault? According to the law, there is no doubt: the drunken driver is 100 percent at fault. However, in this chapter, we are introducing the notion of responsibility of a different kind.

This new kind of responsibility is yours for the taking. You cannot assign it to someone else. It is purely an invention, and yet it strengthens you at no one’s expense.

Ordinarily we equate accountability with blame and blamelessness, concepts from the world of measurement. When I blame you for something that goes wrong, I seek to establish that I am in the right—and we all know the delicious feeling of satisfaction there. However, inasmuch as I blame you for a miserable vacation or a wall of silence—to that degree, in exactly that proportion, I lose my power. I lose my ability to steer the situation in another direction, to learn from it, or to put us in good relationship with each other. Indeed, I lose any leverage I may have had, because there is nothing I can do about your mistakes—only about mine.

Let’s get back to the peaceful, law-abiding driver. To apply the practice of being the board, that driver, even from her hospital bed, will cast a wider framework around events than one ordinarily does in the world of fault and blame. She might begin with the thought, “Driving is a hazardous business: Every time I step into a car I am at risk. While usually I can count on other drivers to be awake, aware, and law-abiding, there is always the chance, the chance, that one of them may fall asleep, drink too much alcohol, have a sudden seizure, or simply be young, angry, and feeling reckless. When I drive, I take that statistical risk; I own that what happens on the road happens in my sphere of consciousness and choice.” THE PRACTICE: PART ONE

So the first part of the practice is to declare: “I am the framework for everything that happens in my life.” This is perhaps the most radical and elusive of all the practices in this book, and it is also one of the most powerful. Here is another way of saying it: “If I cannot be present without resistance to the way things are and act effectively, if I feel myself to be wronged, a loser, or a victim, I will tell myself that some assumption I have made is the source of my difficulty.” It is not that this practice offers the right choice or the only choice. We may want to make sure the intoxicated driver gets his due. We may want sympathy, and we may want revenge. Being derailed from our larger purpose, for a length of time, may be an acceptable option. However, choosing the being the board approach opens the possibility of a graceful journey, one that quickly reinstates us on the path we chose before the fateful collision intervened. It allows us to keep on track.

Grace comes from owning the risks we take in a world by and large immune to our control. If you build your house on a flood-plain of the Mississippi River, you may be devastated when the waters overflow, and you may rail at the river. However, when you declare yourself an unwilling victim of a known risk, you have postured yourself as a poor loser in a game you chose to play. Out of a sense of self-righteousness, you will have given away your chance to be effective. Perhaps to gain other people’s sympathy, you will have traded your own peace of mind.

In the legal sphere, fault and blame play an important role. The law-abiding driver is entitled to sue the perpetrator to cover his losses, however they be construed. But we are talking about access to possibility, not to victory or remuneration. Gracing yourself with responsibility for everything that happens in your life leaves your spirit whole, and leaves you free to choose again.

A HIGH WIRE ACT

BEN: Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony starts off as though the music is making a joyful sprint toward a double handspring that catapults it to the high trapeze. Mendelssohn gives the winds eleven quick steps before the violins make their first energetic somersault, but in one concert, while I was pointing to the winds, a single violinist came in with exuberance and gusto after just five steps! It was the kind of confident violin playing you can’t help admiring, but it left us out there in space, no trapeze within our grasp. For the first time in my conducting career, I stopped a performance—in front of more than a thousand people. I smiled to the orchestra, said to myself, “How fascinating!” and began the piece again. This time, of course, there was no mishap.

Afterward, someone associated with the orchestra asked me in a hushed voice, “Would you like to know who came in early in the Mendelssohn?” Whether it was the slightly conspiratorial nature of the question that put me off, or whether it was that such a question was in disturbing contrast with the spiritedness of the music that we had just performed, I found myself saying, “No” abruptly, and then adding, “I did it.” Not literally, of course. I didn’t actually play the violin. But in that moment, in the context of the great music we had just made, it seemed absurd to me to consider handing out blame. It could only divide us, and for what? Certainly that player would never again come in early in the Italian Symphony, nor, perhaps, from this time on, make the mistake of a premature entrance in any performance. And I myself would know to be especially careful in guiding the orchestra through those eleven steps whenever I conducted that passage again. There was absolutely no gain to blaming anyone, and a real cost in terms of the blow to our integrity as a group. Besides, I know full well that every time I step onto a podium, I take a risk that things won’t turn out exactly as I anticipate them in my ear—but then, there is no great music-making without such risk taking.

I think, in retrospect, that my “I did it” response represented even more than that—I was saying that I was willing to be responsible for everything that happened in my orchestra. In fact, I felt enormously empowered and liberated by doing so.

THE TYPE OF responsibility we are most familiar with is the sort that we apportion to ourselves and others. Dividing obligations helps us keep life organized and manageable, as for example, “I’ll be responsible for making the kids’ lunches, if you feed them breakfast,” or, “It wasn’t all my fault that our check bounced; you forgot to enter other checks in the ledger.” We often use reward and punishment to regulate accountability—the carrot and stick, the bonus at the end of the successful year, the threat of being fired. Approval and disapproval are also strong motivating factors, which rely for their effectiveness on the individual’s desire to be included and to do well within the community. Because the model is based on the assumption that life will be under control if everyone plays his part, when things do break down, someone or something naturally gets blamed.

Apportioning blame works well enough to keep order in a relatively homogeneous community that boasts commonly accepted values and where everyone is enrolled in playing his part. It appeals to our instinctive sense of fairness. However, its effectiveness is likely to be circumscribed in communities of divergent cultures and widely varied resources. It is at this point, when everything else has failed, that you might find it useful to pull out this new game, the game of being the board.

A GAME OF CHESS

We might use the metaphor of a game like chess to describe the difference between the usual measured approach to responsibility and the perspective of the new practice. Normally if you were asked to identify yourself with an aspect of the game, you might point to one of the pieces on the board: you might choose to see yourself as the important king, the wily knight, or the humble pawn. As any one of the pieces, you would understand that your job is to achieve your objective, do well by your team, and help conquer the enemy. Or, you might see yourself as the mastermind, the strategist controlling the movements of your forces in the field.

In our practice, however, you define yourself not as a piece, nor as the strategist, but as the board itself, the framework for the game of life around you. Notice we said that you define yourself that way, not that you are that. If you had the illusion that you really were the cause of the sun rising or of all human suffering, your friends would soon have you carted off in a white van or at least prescribed a large dose of Rule Number 6 as an interim measure. The purpose of naming yourself as the board, or as the context in which life occurs to you, is to give yourself the power to transform your experience of any unwanted condition into one with which you care to live. We said your experience, not the condition itself. But of course once you do transform your experience and see things differently, other changes occur.

When you identify yourself as a single chess piece—and by analogy, as an individual in a particular role—you can only react to, complain about, or resist the moves that interrupted your plans. But if you name yourself as the board itself you can turn all your attention to what you want to see happen, with none paid to what you need to win or fight or fix.

The action in this graceful game is ongoing integration. One by one, you bring everything you have been resisting into the fold. You, as the board, make room for all the moves, for the capture of the knight and the sacrifice of your bishop, for your good driving and the accident, for your miserable childhood and the circumstances of your parents’ lives, for your need and another’s refusal. Why? Because that is what is there. It is the way things are.

THE PRACTICE: PART TWO

Then, in this game, you take your practice one step further: You ask yourself, in regard to the unwanted circumstances, “Well, how did this get on the board that I am?” or, “Now, how is it that I have become a context for that to occur?” You will begin to see the obvious and then the not-so-obvious contributions of your calculating self, or of your history, or of earlier decisions that landed you where you are, feeling like a victim. This reflection may bring forth from you an apology that will knit back together the strands of raveled relationships. And then you will be standing freely and powerfully once again in a universe of possibility.

So, if you are waiting peacefully at a traffic light and get smashed in the rear by a drunken driver, you may ask, after your immediate medical needs are ministered to and the shock and fury die down—“How did that event get on the board that I am?” If you are playing this game of being the board, you do not say, “Why me?” or “The bastard!” or “This has destroyed my summer!” or “I’m never driving in Boston again!” Instead, you might look around, and say, “It’s not personal that my car was totaled. It’s a certain statistical probability that someone would have been there, waiting at the stoplight.” Then you might look into the statistics on drunk drivers and see how many are repeat offenders, and notice that there are some loopholes in the law, which, if closed, might reduce the probability of the accident you just experienced, for others. You include your previous lack of awareness of these facts in your definition of how the accident got on your board. Or you might simply notice that you take a certain risk every time you step into a car.

Being the board is not about turning the blame on yourself. You would not say, “I should have been more aware of the loopholes in the laws …” or, “It’s my fault I didn’t look behind me when I stopped at the traffic light” or, “I know I brought this on myself.” Those would be sentiments from that other game, the game in which you divide up fault and blame.

GAINING CONTROL VERSUS MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Because, in the world of measurement, we live in the illusion that we have only ourselves to rely on, our need for control is amplified. So, when mistakes are made, and the boat gets off course, we try to get back in control by assigning blame. The “shoulds” and “oughts” from the blame game give us the illusion that we can gain control over what just went wrong, and that’s an illusion of language again. Of course we can’t change it or control it—it has already happened!

The practice of being the board, is about making a difference. If, for instance, after hearing all your good ideas, your boss makes one mistake after another that you warned him about, you may think to yourself, “He never listens, he’s competitive with me—he just wants to be right.” And you feel once again like a prophet unsung in his own time or like Cassandra watching the towers of Ilium fall. This is a time you can use the practice of being the board to make a difference. Here is how you might proceed.

“How did it get on the board that my boss is not listening to me?” you ask yourself. Soon you notice that “not being listened to” has become an abstraction for you, with meanings attached, like: he doesn’t want to listen to me, or he is competitive or closed-minded. You know full well that you have had many such experiences in your life or you would not have recognized this one coming down the road. So you say, “How would I describe what is happening if I were to take away those extra elements of my story?” And when you point to real things instead of abstractions, you boil it down to: “I told my boss what I thought and he did not take my advice.” Now you can draw a conclusion that gives you leverage. You can say without fear of contradiction, “My boss did not take my advice because he was not enrolled in it. It is up to me to light the spark of possibility. So if I want to make a difference, I had better design a conversation that matters to him, one that addresses what and how he is thinking.” Whereas “should haves” are commonplace in the fault game, apologies are frequent when you name yourself as the board. That is because when you look deeply enough into the question, “How did that thing that I am having trouble with get on the board that I am?” you will find that at some point, in order to give yourself a feeling of control or equilibrium, you have sacrificed a relationship. Whether you got into silent combat with your boss because he did not take your advice, or you failed to speak truthfully to your daughter because you did not want to upset her, or you just did not recognize how important you are to an old friend; at some point, a relationship broke down or is in the process of breaking down. And your effectiveness has deteriorated with it. In these cases, an apology often serves as a restorative balm.

But in the model of fault and blame you cannot authentically apologize if you do not believe you are wrong, according to a shared measure of responsibility. It would be foolish for the pawn in the game of chess to apologize to the bishop for not having captured a piece five diagonal squares away, in a location where the rules prohibit him from moving. But when you, as the pawn, name yourself as the board, you can easily say to the bishop, “I think I sensed that you did not have a thorough knowledge of the rules, yet I failed to enlighten you. For that I apologize.” In the fault game your attention is focused on actions—what was done or not done by you or others. When you name yourself as the board your attention turns to repairing a breakdown in relationship. That is why apologies come so easily.

YOU MAY BE ASKING, “Why should I put so much emphasis on relationship when it will inevitably slow me down? Sometimes I just need to get a job done, and people have to understand that.” Well, the answer is either they will or they won’t. Sometimes you can enroll people in the necessity for short-term results, and sometimes your being heedless of the long line of relationship will slow down the overall “tempo” and run you into time-consuming difficulties.

CORA AND THE LONG LINE OF RELATIONSHIP

BEN: While the early days of rehearsing for a concert with a community or semiprofessional orchestra are easy-going, with the full performance only a light on the distant horizon, absenteeism is initially taken in stride. Members are juggling school, work, holidays, business trips, and conflicting performance obligations. But the final rehearsal days take on a more serious cast. For the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, this cycle is amplified because of the rare position it occupies in the music world. The BPO maintains the essential nature and protracted rehearsal schedule of a community orchestra, yet it has gained a reputation for high-profile, high-quality live recordings and performances that are favorably compared with major professional orchestras whose fully recompensed players are required to attend every rehearsal. So, as the concert approaches, the pressure mounts, just as it would on an amateur baseball team about to play in the majors.

I was already anticipating a fraught situation before the Thursday night rehearsal for an upcoming performance of Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka. This was to be the penultimate rehearsal for a work considered by most musicians to be one of the most treacherous in its technical demands on both orchestra and conductor. The weekend’s concert was being recorded live, with the intention of releasing it as the companion to a reissue of our CD of The Rite of Spring, a recording that had set a very high standard and had received much acclaim. Our performance of Petrushka was not going to go unnoticed!

Already, three student members of our viola section were going to have to miss the rehearsal because of a performing obligation with the Boston University Symphony Orchestra. A fourth had called in sick that afternoon. Only five violas remained, the very minimum to achieve any reasonable balance with the other sections.

As seven o’clock approached, I noticed that Cora, the assistant principal violist, appeared to be missing as well. One or two players seemed to think she had a chamber-music coaching session that evening. I was beside myself! Not only were we down yet another violist, but Cora had failed to notify either the personnel manager or me, so there had been no chance to persuade her to come or to find a substitute to sit in for the rehearsal.

I began working with the orchestra, my head turning continually toward the door, expecting Cora to walk in. How could she ignore such an important rehearsal? At the break, I rushed around the Conservatory looking for her, and finally found her on the third floor, chatting with two other students in one of the classrooms. I stormed in, saying (or was it shouting?) “Cora, don’t you know that we have a rehearsal going on?” Cora replied calmly, “But I told Lisa I wasn’t coming tonight.”

This made me even more furious. What was the use of her telling another member of the viola section, rather than the personnel manager or myself? And how could she be so nonchalant? “Cora, we cannot possibly do Petrushka this weekend with only four violas at the last rehearsal. At least come to the second half!” “No,” she said. “I have a coaching session tonight.”

There was no coach in sight, and the young women did not even have their instruments unpacked. I said sarcastically, “Doesn’t look like a coaching session to me!” and stormed off. I’m afraid I rather forgot Rule Number 6.

Cora arrived at the end of the rehearsal and said coldly, “I’ve decided to resign from the orchestra. I will not be abused like that.” Here was yet another problem thrust in my lap. “Oh, Cora, don’t be silly,” I said with irritation, “I wasn’t abusing you; we’re just under so much pressure because of the Stravinsky, and so many people missing.” She did not change her stance. “Well, I can’t help that; that’s your problem,” she said and walked out.

Now I was really sunk. Our second best violist had just quit—no time to find a new one. That meant we were down to just eight violas for the all-important recording and concert. I went over it in my mind several times, thinking what could I do, what were my options?

As I frequently do on such occasions, I presented the problem to Roz and asked for her help. She said, “If you absolutely have to have Cora back in the orchestra for this concert, you have very little room to move. In that case you will have to persuade her to return, and since you are a master of persuasion, you don’t need my help for that. If you are really angry and want a little revenge, you could even try to get her back for this one concert, and then fire her afterward.” She smiled, testing me, but I was in no mood for humor. She went on, “But if you can imagine letting her go, you have some other options. Let me know if you decide that you are willing to consider playing the concert without her, and then we can talk it over.” At first, all I could feel was anger: “Why should I have to play the concert without Cora! She owes it to me to see this concert through!”—and then I clutched. “I can’t get anyone else to play the Stravinsky, the performance is in only two days.” After a while I tried on the other scenario—eight violists, all who wanted to be there, all playing their hearts out. Wouldn’t that be better than having a top-notch player whose injured attitude was pulling against the flow of the music? Now that I was no longer deeply submerged in the absolute necessity to have her back, I felt more open to hearing whatever Roz had to say.

“I can see that I don’t absolutely need Cora, and I don’t feel like persuading her or putting pressure on her to return,” I told her. “I’m willing to risk that she won’t come back. What, then, are my other options?” And Roz said, “You can always grace yourself with responsibility for anything that happens in your life. You can always find within yourself the source of any problem you have.” “But that’s ridiculous!” I protested. “I couldn’t have stopped her from walking out, and anyway I have too many things to think about, I can’t be responsible for everything every player does. I have a concert to prepare….” “Hold on,” she said, “I’m not suggesting you blame yourself instead of Cora. This is a way of thinking that has nothing to do with blame at all.” And she went on to explain the distinction.

I saw a completely new possibility and went to my desk to begin a letter. Cora had been a member of the Friday class, so she knew about the formulation of giving an A and writing a letter dated the following May. This was what I wrote to her: October 6

Dear Cora,

I’ve decided to write you a letter like the one I asked each person in the Friday class to write to explain why they got an A this year. Here it is: May 18

Dear Cora,

I got my A because I finally broke the cycle of lashing out at people when they didn’t do exactly what I wanted them to do. I came to see that when I got angry with people or became sarcastic, it was like wiping them out, and our relationship never fully recovered.

It was hard for me to “get” that what I wanted was not necessarily what they wanted. For example, if we were preparing an important and difficult concert and players didn’t come to a rehearsal or came late, I would be disappointed and angry because I thought that they should care as much about the project as I did and let nothing stand in the way of being there. Now I see that in a volunteer orchestra whose players have many other commitments, I cannot assume that everyone’s priorities are exactly the same as mine.

I have come to realize that people will do what they want to do—which means that sometimes they will come to rehearsals and sometimes they won’t—and I must respect their decisions. And if in my view they fail to adequately inform me of their intentions, I now ask them politely, to please, in the future, leave a message on the voice-mail, or inform the personnel manager directly, so that we can have some idea in advance of what to expect.

I see that conducting the BPO is an enormous privilege and that with it come certain risks: for instance, that I will not always have a full orchestra at important rehearsals. I know now that while I will do what I can to see that every chair is filled, I will accept the fact that this will not always be the case.

I have come finally to the realization that relationships with my colleagues, players, students, and friends are always more important than the project in which we are engaged; and that indeed, the very success of the project depends on those relationships being full of grace.

I have also realized that someone who stands up to me and is unwilling to accept abusive behavior is more of an ally than someone who goes along with it, either out of fear or resignation.

As a result of this breakthrough, I have a happier life, and so do the people with whom I interact. Even the music sounds better. So I think I really deserve the A.

Thank you, Cora, for being brave enough to guide me to this realization. I have known it for a while, but last night I really got it, that it is more important to make this breakthrough than to persuade, cajole, threaten, bribe, or charm you back into the orchestra. I have come to respect and appreciate you deeply. We will miss you.

Best Wishes, Ben

People with whom I have shared this letter invariably ask me two questions. The first is, of course, “What did Cora do when she got the letter?” In one sense that question might mean, “Did your strategy work?” because after all we would prefer to get our way as well as have good relationships—we don’t really want to have to choose between the two.

The answer is that she did return to her chair in the viola section, and I was thrilled; moreover, my relationship with Cora is now of a strong and enduring kind. This exercise truly took my attention off the issue of scarcity of time and players, which had me so often in a clutch, and heralded a different life for me. All sorts of situations that can be interpreted as crises of scarcity continually occur in the various orchestras I conduct, but now I recognize the specter of need and frustration as it appears. And I remember Cora. Once you have a new distinction, you have it forever. So, when people ask me the inevitable second question, “Couldn’t that apology have been a manipulation, just another technique for getting Cora to do what you wanted her to do?”—the answer is yes, it could have been. You can take almost anything and turn it into a strategy. Yet, from the way I felt, the lightness and wholeness, my complete lack of attachment to the outcome—I know it wasn’t.

JUST AS THE PAWN in the chess game is subject to the moves of the other pieces, white and black, much of one’s life in the fault game is subject to others’ actions, capacities, will, and whims. The perception of dependency arouses fear and leads to repeated breakdowns between us, which become the basis for the appearance of barriers and problems throughout life.

So, in everyday life, when bad things happen, we have a spectrum of response that includes guilt, blame, regret, helplessness or resignation, the sense of injustice, righteousness, and anger. But each of these responses actually takes us on a detour, into an eddy or a whirlpool, away from what we might call the living stream.

Let’s see how it looks from opposites sides of the table when both parties practice being the board, requiring nothing of each other.

Two “100 Percents” Make a Whole

A man discovers his wife is having an affair and is devastated, because she did it and because she lied. In his pain, his response is to withdraw, get angry, blame, and reassess his choice of mate. She has changed; she is not the woman he knew. Everything seems different than before; he sits in the eddy trying to come to terms with the new reality, to get used to this new woman who was his wife, and to figure out what he should do. She has become the liar, the abuser, the stranger, and he struggles over whether he can and should treat her as someone he can talk to or whether she deserves to remain the enemy. He gets his friends on his side. Meanwhile things move ahead, and life passes him by.

If he were to adopt the practice of being the board, he would start by asking himself the question, “How did this get on the board that I am?” and if he is disciplined enough to stay in the game and not revert to the fault model, he will see something new that will empower him. If he looks long and deep enough, he will be able to tell the story with such understanding and, yes, compassion that a new world will open up for him.

Here is an example of what he might see:

This was the one thing that was not supposed to happen. He had made every attempt to let his wife know that infidelity was something he could not tolerate. And furthermore, they both agreed that honesty was the rock foundation of their relationship.

But, he asks himself, why was “betrayal” such an issue before it happened? Why had he made such a point of it?

He thinks of plenty of minor examples of betrayal in his life, starting as far back as when his mother left him at kindergarten in spite of his highly vocal objections. In fact, he realizes, one of the initial reasons he was attracted to the woman he married was that she seemed like a person who was not likely to oppose or betray him. She was accommodating and sensitive to his needs. He trusted her 100 percent.

When they fought, as he presumed all couples do, she accused him of not valuing her work. This was true—he realized—he was not really that interested in her marketing job. Yet he did his best to listen. They had agreed, he thought, that her desire to go to law school was probably unrealistic until they finished paying off his business loans; although he had said he would be willing to consider it at a future date. He felt that, by being a good provider and caretaker, he was all one could ask for in a husband.

In this moment of reflection, he noticed how resolute he had been in dismissing her independent experiences and desires.

His assumptions?

• Powerful, independent women betray.

• My wife is not one of those.

Does this mean that by ignoring things that were important to her he drove his wife to having an affair? That it was “his fault?” No, certainly not, and furthermore, it is not the game we are playing. Can he claim total responsibility for the breakdown that occurred in their relationship? Of course.

How might the same story look from his wife’s point of view, if she were to adopt the practice of being the board?

Instead of justifying her actions by blaming him for not taking her seriously nor giving her the attention she deserved, she asks herself, “How did it happen on the board that I am that I did the very thing I promised—and really believed—I would never do?” Perhaps she starts by acknowledging that she has never had an easy time balancing responsiveness and independence. Her formative years were riddled with guilt. Only when she had proven her loyalty and devotion to her mother, who had selfishly held on to her, had she felt free to live her own life. An assumption she lived by was that: • Loving people support your independence.

She realizes she had not been able to contemplate that there might be a legitimate concern for the marriage in, for instance, her husband’s resistance to her attending law school. She could only understand it as a kind of selfishness from which she had eventually to escape. She now realizes that between her total surrender to accommodating her husband and her growing need to escape, there had been little room for real partnership.

So, should she feel that the problem in the marriage was all “her fault?” No, that is not the game we are playing. Can she claim full responsibility for a breakdown in their partnership? Absolutely, as can he.

What can these two do? She could say to herself: “Of course he loves me. He deserves an apology; he’s nothing like my mother.” And he could say to himself: “When I look at it, it was absurd to hang on to her like a five-year-old and refuse to face that relationships grow and change. I had her in a vise grip. My first step is to apologize and see if there is anything left to build.” Together, they come up with new distinctions.

• Love is neither about self-determination nor sacrifice. It is a context in which two people build the life they want together.

• Strength and independence are qualities that can enhance a relationship.

In the practice of being the board, you are not concerned that the other person examine her own assumptions. You see that the “stumbling blocks” that stand in your way are part of you, not her, and only you can remove them. Moreover, once you embark on the practice, you may find yourself relinquishing your claim for “fairness” or “justice” in favor of the riches that an intimate relationship can offer.

WHEN YOU ARE being the board, you present no obstacles to others. You name yourself as the instrument to make all your relationships into effective partnerships. Imagine how profoundly trustworthy you would be to the people who work for you if they felt no problem could arise between you that you were not prepared to own. Imagine how much incentive they would have to cooperate if they knew they could count on you to clear the pathways for accomplishment.

This practice launches you on a soaring journey of transformation and development with others, a completely different route than the one of managing relationships to avoid conflict. It calls for courage and compassion. You do not find compassion simply by listening to people; you open the channel by removing the barriers to tenderness within you. Among the rewards are self-respect, connection of the deepest and most vital kind, and a straight road to making a difference.