A short transcript excerpt in which Gay Hendricks argues that relationships should be treated as a living meditation and spiritual practice. He suggests that interpersonal encounters—especially with a beloved or children—reveal personal edges and accelerate spiritual learning, and that committing to using relationships as real-time practice transforms resentment into participation.
Chapters
The second thing that I wanted to mention, too, is at a certain point, I think every wise person needs to take on relationship itself as a spiritual path, relationship itself as a living meditation. Because where is your meditation is if, you know, if you say, don't bother me, honey. I'm meditating right now. If your actions aren't in harmony with your spiritual essence. And so I think you can learn more about your spiritual development in 10 minutes with your beloved than you could with 10 minutes with your guru. Because you see all the places there where you need to love yourself more or love your beloved more. You find all the edges, all the places where you're not loving toward yourself or toward your beloved. If you have kids, toward your kids. And so it's a constant living meditation. But here's the thing. I think most people haven't committed to that as a practice. And so therefore, they resent the constant stuff that goes on in relationship. But I think if everyone made a living right now, real time, right now, commitment to. I commit to using my relationships themselves as a form of meditation, as a form of the deepest learning about myself. To make a commitment like that gets you in the game. It takes you out of kind of not being willing to participate fully. So you can learn more In 10 minutes with your beloved if you make that commitment to being fully open to whatever you need to learn. So that's a great thing. I wish somebody had told me about 35 years ago.
