Â
Â
WHAT IS RELATEFULNESS?
A modern meditation practice for connection, truth, and love
 Â
Â
Relatefulness is a dynamic and evolving approach to human connection that at its heart involves a set of practices focused on honest in-the-moment relating.
The aim is to train your attention to be intimately present with yourself – in connection with another (or a group), and to reveal and discuss what's happening within and between you. This real-time feedback allows these mindful interactions to move you, and you learn to receive and see the other in their reality, all the while becoming profoundly aware of your own. Being together honestly and authentically in this way, sharing presence in the impact we have on each other, not only connects our hearts and minds; it uncovers the layers of our being that we tend to hide in our day-to-day interactions, and self-awareness blooms.
Learning to be truly present in relationship, and seeing and being seen in this way can be confronting, but is also life-changing. With experience you will start to see yourself with new clarity, mindfully in the flow of human connection, and perhaps in a deep field of co-presence that unifies us in (and as) the flow of life. With Relatefulness profound personal and spiritual growth can take place.
Part of its uniqueness is that Relatefulness stays aware of being a technique that leads to a new and fulfilling way of being... aware that it is a finger pointing at the moon and not the moon itself. The actual experience is something so much more personal (and yet universal), and meaningful than this language could ever capture. Knowing that Relatefulness is a signpost allows exploration, experimentation, curiosity, and holding things lightly while staying intimate with what really matters.
Even though it invites us to play with what it points to, Relatefulness represents a synthesis of individuality and unity, where self and other blur and interpenetrate, and through our many online sessions and worldwide events, it provides a dynamic and adaptive framework for this to happen.
* It is helpful here to emphasize that this is a relational, not solitary practice. For many people meditation brings up images of sitting silently in a dim room with eyes closed. Relatefulness is generally much more vibrant and conversational, and can involve any number of people together.
The most common understanding of Relatefulness, is as a set of practices that point toward the integration of truth and love
Â
Â
Our guiding principles are both truth and love. We use both because people often think of "truth" as a little harsh and individualistic, and "love" as perhaps too soft and relational, whereas we endeavour to embody the good parts they both share. We also know that these terms can be ambiguous and subjective, and we encourage you to find your own meaning in connection, but as a starting point we define them as:
Truth: Practicing honesty (with yourself and others), integrity, discernment, authenticity. AÂ lot of people think of truth as something static that once you find it, it never changes, like the number of protons in a hydrogen atom. But when it comes to psychology and relating, you have to keep asking the question, "What's really going on here?", because life keeps happening, and because we're so good at hiding from ourselves without even realizing it.
Â
Love: Practicing compassion, empathy, trust, surrender, inclusion. We aim to see everyone's (including ourselves) innocence and cultivate acceptance of them exactly as they are, including their suffering. Practicing love in this way often leads to transcendent experiences and deep feelings of universal goodwill.
Relatefulness aims to foster profound personal and collective experiences of co-presence and wonder through:
- Conversation that’s deeper and more attuned
- Cultivating curiosity into self and other
- Entering flow
- Working with emotions
- Working with the body, and including all the meaning making centers in listening-expression/expression-listeningÂ
- Facilitating self-transcendence (transcending the subject/object distinction), unity, and mystical experiences within the collective, allowing individuals to experience a sense of oneness and interconnectedness
- Subject/object moves. Subjective experiences become objects that we can see in a larger subjectivity. As Robert Kegan describes, this gives us choice over them, rather than being “had” by them
- Collective shadow/bias practice. Intersubjective experience become interobjects. Similar to what happens within an individual, groups can see ideologies and collective constructs that they’ve been “had” by without even realizing it
- Collective epistemology
- Presencing, or more precisely Dynamic Presencing as laid out by our colleague and professor Olen Gunnlaugson
- Working with awareness, awareness of awareness, collective awareness, and collective awareness of awareness
But Relatefulness is also so much more, we are an Evolutionary CollectiveÂ
Â
When you practice Relatefulness, you are connected to a global network of people who are exploring and committing to this practice from many different cultures and life circumstances, and each for their own reasons.
We consider Relatefulness as "evolutionary" because the Relateful culture is not static, it's dynamic, constantly changing, and evolving. Our body of knowledge is ever-expanding, and develops through group processes that tap into our collective wisdom. We like to call ourselves a "collective", instead of a "community", to emphasize the networked, porous, and multi-faceted nature of what we are doing together. Using the reality of our modern, internet-connected world, we have created an online platform where members can connect from their own locations – anywhere from a remote farm in Portugal to a high-rise in New York City, or even on the move as digital nomads. Our evolutionary collective is built to bring us together despite our geographical and socioeconomic differences.
We believe that better relating and deeper connecting is about all of us; the whole human race, the whole planet, and whatever else there is, this is not about 'us versus them'. The Relateful Company guides people to build and refine these skills for a better world and for more ease in our daily lives, through our online platform, our online and in-person events, and our online programs and courses. Relatefulness is not only an interpersonal meditation practice, we also delve into the deeper, often unseen aspects of individual behaviour and group dynamics, psychological patterns, and relational power structures. We share and draw from the wisdom of many other growth practices, particularly Integral Theory, which we apply and expand upon regularly.
Ultimately, Relatefulness is a practice dedicated to fostering collective consciousness and spiritual growth, akin to the blossoming of a shared "mind" or "spirit" that evolves with the group, with an essential (and beautifully paradoxical) part of this growth being the practice and recognition that there is absolutely no need to get anywhere or make anything or anyone change.
Â
Â
What Relatefulness is not
Â
- Not precise: It’s an evolving practice that's defined by the collective experiences of its participants.
- Not static:Â It's a dynamic, evolving approach to interpersonal connection and growth, in theory and in practice.
- Not another religion or organizational system: The Relateful Company is a business that facilitates Relatefulness in the world as an ethos, with an aim to make “being Relateful” so commonplace that we have to find a different mission or retire. We use Relatefulness a lot in our business, and we have helped dozens of businesses bring the practice into their day-to-day in a way that has been incredibly powerful for their wellbeing, and ultimately the bottom line of their mission. But we do that in conjunction with whatever organizational systems you’re already engaged in. That’s a different science, and we defer to those who are cutting edge there.
- Not presenting itself as a "safe-space": This phrase is extremely loaded with expectations that I do not believe any person can actually guarantee, so we don’t use it. Being Relateful encourages open, authentic expression and exploration and openness to feedback, which can sometimes involve uncomfortable or challenging experiences. That said, we are actively cultivating a space for people to do the practice, which requires structures of support. We always follow the local laws so people are physically safe, and if a group appears to no longer be pointed towards truth and love, we’ll stop the practice and reorient.
- Not feel good fast: In embracing the whole experience of being human, we often open ourselves up to more discomfort, uncertainty, ambiguity, and a whole host of emotions and experiences we’ve avoided for decades. There’s no particular aim at these experiences, but neither are we avoiding them. You might feel good fast, but that’s not the aim.
- Not a healing modality: Many people come wishing for healing, but it’s not an explicit aim of Relateful practice, and ironically aiming for it often makes healing less likely. Rather, the conditions we create—such as presence, focus, awareness, love, and letting go of control—are what foster healing and deep transformation in someone who is naturally ready.
- Not a way of judging or excluding others: We are an inclusive practice that treats love and respect as fundamental.
- Not here to save the world:  We may have a beautiful part to play, but we see both the “world needs saving” frame and “we’re the special ones to do it”, as extremely problematic from the point of view of both truth and love. We love our work and love how deeply it impacts people, but we believe we are part of a much larger movement aiming at increasing well-being and consciousness, that includes not just other practices, but technology and systems as well. For more on this, check out Existential Risk and Relatefulness.
- Not certified by any governing body:Â We are a governing body that certifies.
- Not a metatheory: We use Integral Theory because we think it already does a fantastic job of orienting with the Wake Up, Grow Up, Clean Up, Show Up frame.