Lorne Brown:

By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guest or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.

Today on the Conscious Fertility Podcast, I have Gila Golub, and if you didn’t listen to her episode that we did earlier, it’s episode 10 on you Deserve to have it all. And we’ve had so much positive feedback. I invited Gila to come back to talk about relationships. So holy relationships, conscious relationships, basically the relationships that everybody is seeking. Uh, just a quick intro to Gila. Gila is one of my main teachers of consciousness. Um, she’s really influenced my life on a personal and professional level. So much of her work has gotten to come through me in my practice when I’m using acupuncture and laser therapy. And, uh, she’s the one that really got me on the path to do my inner work and how that helps heal not only me, but my family and my ancestors. And so it’s such a gift to be able to interview you again, Gila. So welcome back to the podcast.

Gila Golub:

Thank You.

Lorne Brown:

I wanted to talk to you today about relationships and if I can set it up, it’s because many of the men and women I see in my practice often at some point are having some resentment towards their partner. You know, there’s no longer intimacy or there’s a lot of blame. And I thought we could talk about relationships from a conscious perspective, and you usually use the term holy relationships. And I think before we even go there, maybe we introduce a little bit of your work, like the assumptions that you have about your thoughts create your reality and how attachment theory is a big part of your work. So can you kind of warm up our audience basically with why conscious relationships are important and how you understand what we’re doing here on planet earth and how this will all tie in?

Gila Golub:

Okay. Well, as you said to me a moment ago, relationships are not to make you happy. They’re to make you conscious. And we have had a fear-based belief system from the beginning of time. And now we are moving toward God willing, moving toward a love-based belief system. We’re moving from unconsciousness with unspeakable suffering to consciousness with peace and prosperity and health. So I talk about holy relationships, it’s a, a term out of, uh, of course miracles. And I define it as the willingness, not the mastery, and not the trying, the willingness to see the wholeness, completeness and innocence of self and others. So that’s my definition of holy relationship. But most of us are trapped in what we call a special relationship, a belief that we are inherently unworthy because that’s the product of being raised by behaviorism. Behaviorism is fear-based. And behaviorism has dominated parenting for a very long time.

And so we believe ourselves in the 95% of our thoughts that are unconscious. So 95% of our thoughts are unconscious. And in that unconscious mind, we believe ourselves to be inherently unworthy and not deserving and flawed and possibly broken and guilty and maybe even shameful. And then we project that all over our partners. And so we spend our lives looking for someone or something. This is my definition of a special relationship from outside of ourselves to come along and fill us out. Now there’s something that can be even academic degrees or titles or material things, and there’s someone, ah, there’s someone who has to have just the right words and just the right tone of voice and offer the right gifts and offer the right amount of sex and the right amount of validation and acknowledgement and acceptance. And what I know for sure, and all the science bears this out, is that we cannot get what we think we need from outside of ourselves. Gordon Neufeld says that the most important relationship is the relationship with self, the relationship with others is the fruit of the relationship with self.

Lorne Brown:

I like this and I wanna repeat something that you said which might have gone over a few people’s ears. You said relationships are not meant to make you happy, they’re meant to make you conscious. So we have to go with that first assumption that if you’re, so, if somebody’s coming in looking for that relationship to make them happy, they’re going down the wrong rabbit hole

Gila Golub:

Or to complete them or to make them whole , they’re definitely going down the wrong rabbit hole.

Lorne Brown:

Yeah. That’s too much responsibility to put on any human being, isn’t it?

Gila Golub:

Exactly.

Lorne Brown:

I think I’ve read this about athar as well, talking about how relationships are not, um, here to, to make us happy. They’re here to make us conscious.

Gila Golub:

That’s exactly what they’re, they’re meant to do. So the purpose of relationship is to grow us up,

Lorne Brown:

As in they’re, they can trigger us. They help us find our wounds. Is that what you mean when they grow up?

Gila Golub:

Well, that, that’s one way to put it. One of the great relationship experts from the states, Hendricks says, we always marry someone for the purpose of finishing our childhood. So the purpose of a relationship is to heal our minds. And most of the time we want someone to change. We feel that if someone else changed, then we’d be happy. And we are really here to heal our own minds, not to change someone else’s behavior. That’s a very tough one, right?

Lorne Brown:

It’s true. Because people are like, no, if they just were this way, I’d be happy. Yeah, but we know that’s a big lie.

Gila Golub:

Partner could sit at your feet and keep you with adoration every day and give you all the material things that you think you need and it would never be enough, because we really can’t get it from outside. We are all at the effect of multi-generational family trauma. We are all at the effect of unmet attachment needs. So let me justify attachment and behaviorism. So I think I might’ve done it in our last podcast, behaviorism is fear-based and it is a dominated parenting. Um, a behaviorist is likened to a sculptor who chips away at what God made. And in behaviorism, we want our children to perform. So performance is the currency of behaviorism. Performing is the currency of behaviorism, and it didn’t work. Our children can never do enough or be enough. And in developmentalism to be loved unconditionally is your birthright. And under the umbrella of developmentalism is attachment theory.

An attachment theory is defined as the drive or relationship characterized by the pursuit and preservation of proximity. So every particle in the universe has a driving overriding force to attach to a particle like. A quar to a quark can, atom to an atom, a mammal to a mammal. That’s what drives us. And when relationships break down, it’s because someone believes that their partner isn’t fulfilling their own needs. Now, we all have this wounded inner child within us who’s still at the effect when we overreact. All overreaction is an age regression. So when we’re reacting to our partner to something our partner said or did or didn’t do, that’s actually an age regression that actually has nothing to do with our partner. But we project all of that onto our partner.

Lorne Brown:

That and Gila. That’s why I think we think we fall in love because when we first meet somebody, we have this craving that’s not actually based on the actual quality of the other person, but rather our idealistic image, imagination of them. We’re projecting our needs on them and we hallucinate that they’re gonna feel the needs. We feel good for a while. And then over time, that disappears. And then they’re not filling our holes and now they’re reflecting. So in a sense, it’s coming outta my mouth as, as it’s coming into my head, when we first see them, we’re projecting our needs being met. And so we’re in love with them. But over time, they’re projects, they’re reflecting our holes and, and now we think we fall out of love with them. So can you run with that a bit, a

Gila Golub:

Little bit clearer? Our partner is a mirror. Our partner is a reflector. All they can do is reflect back to us what is going on in us. And remember, 95% of what’s going on in us is unconscious. And our partner is reflecting that back to us. So my thoughts create my reality, but only a hundred percent of the time. So if there’s something in my reality that I want to change, that I want to change, then I have to change my thoughts. Now, when you describe the beginning of a relationship, Chopra has a whole book on that. And he says that that stage of the relationship is all chemicals. It’s all infatuation. And we’re making, you know, oxytocin and dopamine and all of that. There’s no part of it that’s real. There’s no part of it that’s sustainable. That’s not really what a relationship is for. That’s the dance of getting together, the dance of courting. It’s part of nature. Uh, animals do it with pheromones. So do humans, because every thought you have, and if you’re in that state where you’re making all those delicious chemicals, then you’re making lovely pheromones.

Lorne Brown:

When I bid in your workshops back in 2014, that’s when I think we first kind of connected and I started learning from you. And then I come to your circle. Because as you shared so perfectly that a paradigm shift and to rewire those unconscious subconscious beliefs is a daily practice. So we connect once a week to continue that in a group. I have witnessed couples in the room. They’re, they’re one part, one person of a relationship. And as they heal their minds, they see shifts in their partner and in their children. And for me, and I, because I want you to kind of unpack this a bit, but I have to tell you, I had the most, that was an epiphany for me in that I had this belief that to be happy, I had to change the world. I had to change politics, the economy, racism, and hate.

I had to change my children, my spouse. And what I heard in one of our sessions, in one of our workshops is I only have to work on myself. And then everything else falls into place. And you’re welcome to share stories from yours because you’ve been doing this for so long. But so what is happening then when people work on themselves and all of a sudden their relationship changes and their children change. And I’ve seen this in my clinical practice as well. So I think this may inspire, motivate people to want to know more about how I heal my mind because of how it affects the field.

Gila Golub:

Thank you. So people come to me, uh, sometimes one spouse could be the husband, could be the wife, and they tell me about their relationship. And of course everyone goes to therapy to get the therapist to change their partner. I did that actually for a decade with, with my husband, uh, many, many years ago. And in my own marriage, it just got worse and worse and worse. And it was horrible. And I ended up finally, finally finding someone to do my own work and did my own work. And as I did, my relationship began to transform. And I have a lot of people come to me, a lot of spouses, and they do their work with me. And I explained that they come to me with, with shattered marriages and with children who are extremists, children who have been in their room for three years, not eating, not sleeping, not going to school, uh, teenagers and so on.

Um, suicidal. And I tell the parent that comes, just do your own work. Parents do their own work. But my, my, my child, but my my partner, no, no, no, just parents do your own work. And they do. And then the partner says, wow, this is really interesting. This is really different. And sometimes the partner comes to do the work or sometimes they don’t, but the marriage heals hundreds and hundreds of marriages. And then what happens? The children heal. I had a client whose marriage was completely shattered and her youngest child had been in his room for three years. And I said, just do your own work. Her partner was vehemently against her doing this work with me. But she hung in there. And within months after having taken him to children’s hospital for years and years and years for a diagnosis, after she did her own work, he walked up and out of his room.

That was 10 years ago. That whole family is thriving. That marriage is healed. So just do your own work. I’ve said to many people who have already been in other relationships, that those relationships would blow up in their face and they would’ve destroyed their whole family for that. And they won’t be able to enjoy their grandchildren as a whole family. And their grandchildren were teenagers then. So they said that was silly. They weren’t interested in that. And every Christmas, I get a lot of calls from grandfathers and grandmothers who are thanking me for their whole family being together. And I’m one of those families this afternoon, all my children will be here together with the grandchildren, with bub and Sadie.

Lorne Brown:

I shared this metaphor actually before I go to that idea, because when you talk, when you talk about this again, so how’s this happening? And you’ve often shared with me that you know, what are you putting out into the field? Are you detoxifying or are you detoxifying? Or are you contaminating the field? And this is why this inner work is so important because I think of ourselves as like wifi, right? And so when you do your inner work, you’re changing the signal you put out there. And when you do your inner work, I see one of two things. And when I simplify it, I say one of two things are gonna happen often, both. First your perception of the situation shifts. So you experience it differently because you have changed. So you have a different experience. Or two is the external environment changes.

And as you’ve witnessed, and I’ve witnessed in my practice, when people come and do their work, they start to notice the behavior in their children without trying to change the children’s behavior. Although they wanted it. That’s why they came. They didn’t want it. But they came from a different, rather than trying to make the child change, they decided to work on themselves and their partner. The relationship changed. And this is happening from this new idea of trying rather than trying to get the love or your needs met from someone else. because neediness is very unattractive. You had once said many times, not once that are you willing to be the only one to see you here? You love you. And when you take that approach, when you take that approach and this is the inner work, then you’re not pulling from others anymore. because you’re doing it.

You’re filling yourself up on your own. And this is where I, I think, I don’t know if it’s quantum, why I don’t, you know, it’s beyond what, uh, we don’t know what we don’t know here. But something shifts and uh, people see a shift in their, in themselves first, and then they see a shift in their families. And as I said, one of them is that you have a different perception of it, but two is that sometimes the external environment really changes. Like this is a shift on the outside. And as you’ve shared that is because it’s being reflected back to who you are. So you have changed. Am I understanding that correctly?

Gila Golub:

Yes.

Lorne Brown:

And you have said it only takes one person to have this shift to have a holy relationship. Why is that?

Gila Golub:

It? Because it’s so powerful for one thing. It only takes one person in a relationship to heal a relationship. All great relationships, uh, gurus will say that it takes two people to ruin a relationship. It takes one person to heal a relationship.

Lorne Brown:

Well, I gotta hear, can you say that again? That was awesome.

Gila Golub:

It takes two people to ruin a relationship. It takes one person to heal that relationship.

Lorne Brown:

So only one person needs to be really awake and conscious in a relationship for a relationship to

Gila Golub:

Work. I’ve seen that a thousand times over. One person or a couple will come to me and do their work and the relationship will heal and then the children will heal and then the family is healed.

Lorne Brown:

I want to share with you how I understand this. What I’ve witnessed for myself, for my patients and what I’ve witnessed watching you do the conscious work in our group. So for the awake, the person that’s awakening, that’s, that is becoming more and more conscious. Two things. One is they no longer take it personally when their partner reacts. Instead they get curious and listen without defending. So they’re no longer looking for their partner to fill them up. So that takes some pressure off. So for the awakened person, and two is they’re filling themselves up. They’re not actually going outside of themselves. So it’s, I guess I’m repeating myself here. They’re not going outside of themselves to get their needs met. So that’s why it works. because they’re not putting pressure on their partner to fill their needs and they’re not reacting to their partner. They’re seeing through the

Gila Golub:

Ego. I’m gonna let you all know an exercise that we do in the level two workshop. So my level one workshop is, uh, what’s your wake up call? And we look at the family of origin Mm. And begin at the beginning. And then level two is called relationship and spiritual practice. Where we look at the beloved, the relationship with the beloved. A moment ago you talked about perception. We see everything through the lenses of what we came in with. Our experiences of conception. Yes, our experiences of conception, our experiences of utero, our experiences of birth trauma and our experiences of those profoundly uh, informative six years of life. So we see everything through those lenses. And when we are triggered, it is because of the perception of what’s going on in the present moment that comes from those first six years and, and what went before.

And then we spent the rest of our lives looking for our partner to remediate that, to make it better. And to fill us up. I do recommend a book called The Eden Project by James Hollis. The title is The Eden Project in Search of the Magical Other. And he says, it takes great courage to ask this fundamental question. What am I asking of others that I ought to be doing for myself? For example, I’m asking others to be mindful of my self-esteem. I have a project waiting to be addressed. If I’m expecting others to be a good parent and take care of me, then I have not grown up. If I’m expecting the other to spare me the rigor and the terror of living my own journey, then I have abdicated the chief task and most worthy reason for my incarnation on this earth, if we really love other, as other, we have heroically taken on the responsibility for our own individuation, our own journey.

We can’t do it for each other. And we are all at the effect of the trauma in our families and our unmet attachment needs. And if you want to know what that means, unmet attachment needs, then you can take the courses by Gordon Neufeld, particularly his basic courses that you can see on his website because we are organisms of attachment. And it’s, we didn’t come with the owner’s manuals, right? We really don’t, we really don’t know how to reparent ourselves. John Bradshaw has done beautiful work with that, but looking for our partner to make up for all the deficits in our lives. You know, hall has, he was here one day, he said this in a lecture. He said, expectations at the altar, this is what we really should be saying when we marry. He said, we should be saying, I’m counting on you too. Make my life meaningful. Always be there for me, bind my wounds and fulfill the deficits in my life to read my mind and anticipate all my needs and to complete me, to make me a whole person and heal my stricken soul.

Lorne Brown:

And that’s what you would call an unholy relationship, I think.

Gila Golub:

Well that’s special relationship

Lorne Brown:

Yeah. Special. And

Gila Golub:

It doesn’t work.

Lorne Brown:

And how do we know it doesn’t work? Because look at the divorce rate. We are living it so we know why it doesn’t work.

Gila Golub:

That’s right. Right? And we’ve got children who found them, as an effect of it. I take 20 people in a workshop nowadays, and I would say three quarters of them come from divorce or are divorced or both. So it’s a huge epidemic with profound consequences and, and collateral damage,

Lorne Brown:

Right? And you’ve shared that your children express what’s between the parents and behind the parents. So you can’t, even though you pretend not to fight in front of the children, if you’re being conscious of that level, they’re still picking up these young, these.

Gila Golub:

So every thought we have emits a vibration into the relational field, basic science, every thought we have emits a, uh, a vibration into the relational field. So they’re soaking it up. And when you’ve got your teenagers being, uh, suicidal, when you’ve got your teenagers smoking dope five times a day, that’s not, it’s not about changing your kids, it’s about healing your own mind. Parents do your own work because what are you putting into the field? Your marriage isn’t working, you’re distant, there’s no intimacy. What are you putting into the field? So I have an exercise in level two and it goes like this, person A asks person B, what needs do you think you have that you look for someone else to fill? And person B can say anything, I need someone to change the oil in my car. Or I need someone to make love to me every day. And everything in between. Person A will then say, you have no needs. You are whole and complete. Now do that for an hour and see how you make some new neuro pathways. See how you take yourself out of victim, out of needing how, looking for how you take yourself out of looking for others to fill you up, actually raise, literally raise the vibration of the relational field, the family field.

Lorne Brown:

And you rewire your brain. So it’s important to mention here that you can’t think your way into this shift. This is process work. Yeah. So it’s not enough to know about this. There’s actual exercises and process work to change these neural pathways.

Gila Golub:

All kinds of process work. That’s what I’ve been studying for many years. And what is process work? If 95% of our thoughts are unconscious, process work is a way, and there are many, uh, disciplines of it. As you’ve said, process work is a way to enter the unconscious and begin to build new neuropathways.

Lorne Brown:

Uh, you know, this just reminds me of the Viktor Frankl quote that I’m going to paraphrase, summarize a bit. But in every situation, even reacting to your partner <laugh>, in every situation there’s a moment where you either unconsciously habitually react or you choose to consciously respond. And this is what your process works and everything is about changing that wiring to create that space. So now are you going to unconsciously react? You’ve and I use my notice except to choose again. Notice I’m triggered. So my partner has activated something in me. So there’s the accountability responsibility. Yeah, it’s been activated, but it was on me. So accountability, responsibility, this is not blaming them. I’m getting curious about what’s going on inside of me. And now you start to do the work and you have so many tools for this. So it’s seen beyond that, not taking it personally.

So if your partner does something and all of a sudden you’re in your wound, you know this because you don’t feel good, you’re angry, whatever the emotion is. Soon as for me anyhow, as soon as I have that feeling, the words that you said, they’re my mirror. So forget everything else. Yes, thank you for the gift. It’s happening for me. You’ve activated something inside me and now I’m gonna do my inner work and start to get curious what this is. I’m not blaming myself, I’m bringing compassion to it. I’m willing to see, be the only person to see here and love me. And through many tools I get to heal this. And again, this is how you’re changing the field as well when you’re doing your inner work.

Gila Golub:

So Lorne, I want to point out that often people will come to me and say, my partner has betrayed me and is condescending and disrespectful.

Lorne Brown:

Let’s, because I’ve seen a circle. So how would you handle this? My partner cheated on me.

Gila Golub:

Well, you know what I do in a circle  because everybody in the circle has already done my workshops.  I just say who? Yeah.

For our audience, I will say that people come to me and say my partner is disrespectful to me. Okay? I will eventually get them to say who really is disrespectful to them? Ask yourself, where are you disrespectful to you? Where are you condescending to you? Where are you? Where do you betray yourself? So it’s really not your partner. Your partner is a mirror. And when you just even begin to think that way, where am I betraying myself? Where am I disrespectful to myself? Uh, where do I abandon myself? When you even ask yourself those questions in the asking of those questions, you raise the vibration of the relational field partner and can feel you becoming accountable.

Lorne Brown:

And this is why one person being conscious can work in a holy relationship. Because if you are being accountable as you said that you’re awake and the vibration is changing, then your partner’s no longer at the stress of you needing them to change when you turn inside and start to take the responsibility of that change. Because on an energetic level, they are feeling they’re not having that pull on them to fill your needs. It’s an unconscious experience for the other individual.

Gila Golub:

And nothing happens to you. It happens for you. If your listeners today can pick up that one piece and really upload it, nothing happens to you. Not an illness, not a tragedy. It happens for you. It’s a wake up call, it’s a test. It’s an opportunity to really go from a fear-based belief system to a love-based belief system or from unconsciousness to consciousness.

Lorne Brown:

You know, I’m sure some listeners are like, are coming up with 101 reasons why their partner is wrong and needs to change. And I just wanna share this, that this is not just Babel that I have observed since 2014 in a circle with you, people’s families and relationships are changing. And usually it’s only one person in this group. The other person is not in your circle, it’s just one person doing the work and then they’re coming back reporting how their relationships are shifting and they don’t need the relationship to shift. They don’t need the partner to change anymore. And that’s the paradox I guess. Because when they don’t need the person to change anymore, that’s when the change happens because they’re getting it all on the inside. They’re not needing it from the outside most of the time.

Gila Golub:

So the destination of the journey that I take my clients on is to have a big, juicy, passionate, committed, and completely unconditional love affair with yourself. That’s the basis of all healing.

Lorne Brown:

And you’ve,

Gila Golub:

And you can’t do it if you don’t understand attachment theory and consciousness work. Those are the two.

Lorne Brown:

And you’ve mentioned before, and I’ve seen it on your, on the wall when I’ve been to your, to your space. Where we do the conscious work is that, are you willing to be the only person to see you hear you love you? This is so important because to hold space for somebody to have that gift, to let somebody else be seen, heard and loved, or first you have to be resourced. If you can’t see, hear, love yourself, then you’re not available for others. So when you do this work, now, this is the other reason why the unconscious partner can be at peace in a, in your relationship because you are able to give them the gift of seeing, hearing and loving them because you’re able to do it for yourself. So you’re more available to hold the space for them. I have a Eckhart Toi quote, which summarizes what we’ve been talking about.

And I know, I think you’re a fan of Eckhart Toi. Oh yes. So, and, and feel free to add to this, but I think it summarizes what you just shared here. He says, the greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is without needing to judge or change them in any way. That immediately takes you beyond ego. All mind games and all addictive clinging are then over. There are no victims and no perpetrators anymore, no accusers and accused. This is also the end of all codependency of being drawn into somebody else’s unconscious pattern and thereby enabling it to continue. You’ll either separate in love or move even more deeply into the now together, into being. I

Gila Golub:

Actually, I read that at level two.

Lorne Brown:

Can you talk a little bit about codependency? because I, that gave me such a shift in my life with so many of my relationships in my life, bringing that awareness to me of how you define codependency and, and how it can be destructive.

Gila Golub:

Codependent is not speaking or doing your truth for fear of upsetting, angering, disappointing others, and then they won’t love you. So that is my definition of co depending and co depending is a very dangerous thing to do because the co dependent always ends up with resentment and the co-dependent gets stuck. So it’s a, it’s a huge module of my level two workshop, uh, speaking about co depending, because we do keep others stuck if, if we co depend on them now. So co depending is not speaking or doing your truth. In order to speak your truth, you have to know what your truth is. So you have to have a relationship with yourself. I’ve had clients phone me and say, oh, I, I didn’t co-dependent him. I told them my truth. And I said, what did you say? And, and my client said, I told them, you’re an asshole. 

Lorne Brown:

That’s, I think that’s, that’s not the truth. That’s speaking your mind. Maybe not speaking your truth, but it’s not

Gila Golub:

A truth, not a truth. And so there’s a whole, you know, it’s, it’s a big subject co depending,

Lorne Brown:

Uh, I just wanna mention here, it’s important. Please continue. But Gila is in Vancouver and she offers her programs online. And so for those that are listening right now, I just wanted let people go, Hey, I want some of this. I just wanna let you know, you can go to her website and we’ll put it in the show notes because she offers these workshops a couple times a year. And so if you’re looking for that transformation, I’ll put out the warning here. And it’s a good warning that this is work conscious work. So it’s process work and that it’s about accountability and responsibility. Um, so if you’re willing and ready to do your work, um, this is a great opportunity to have that spiritual growth and evolution that many of us are looking for, that we’ve been doing through relationships, work, food, drugs, money, whatever. And as we all know, the sages have said that’s not the way to go. Um, but you can get what those things are meant to bring to you and to feel whole and complete. And there’s a way to do this. And as I shared this has influenced how I practice at my clinic here in Vancouver. So a gratitude to you again, Gila. It’s great that you’ve entered my life. I’m so grateful for it.

Gila Golub:

Thank you

Lorne Brown:

Laura. So we were talking about co-dependency, and I don’t know if you had anything else you wanted to add to that, but I did like your story. because so many people say, after hearing that I did speak my truth, I told him he’s an as*hole. But that’s, and you have to figure out who your truth is. And that is about doing your own work.

Gila Golub:

Absolutely. I’m looking at two sentences here in the Eden project that I think are worth sharing. So we talk about being accountable, taking responsibility. Uh, Hollis says, no matter what the historic wounding, we must now and forever assume responsibility for our choices. We are afraid to be ourselves, afraid to be wholly responsible. Surely there is another somewhere who can spare us the burden. So often when you see relationships shattered and ending, especially when there’s children, the partners immediately start looking for another partner to take up that burden. And it doesn’t work. No. And yet a family is shattered.

Lorne Brown:

And doing this work can heal you, heal your mind, your heart, and then you see this show up in your relationships with your family, parents, spouses, children. You know, the metaphor I use Gila for when I talk to my patients and clients is I said, we’re all like glasses of water walking around and you’re bumping into people and you’re taking some of the water. So somebody has water and they give you water in your glass, it feels nice, but to the other person, if their glass isn’t full, it doesn’t feel so good because you’ve taken some of their water. So everybody’s walking around in relationships, bumping each other, taking each other’s water. And this idea of filling yourself up to do your work, being willing to be the only person to see you hear you love you, this full love for self that you, you talk about, to me, inner work is getting a faucet over your glass.

So you’re being filled up constantly through sources. So your glass is so overflowing that when somebody bumps into you and takes your water, you don’t even notice it because your glass is always full and overflowing and you become very attractive to other people because your glass is overflowing. And so if you wanna live this fulfilling life, the goal is to do your inner work. So you’re tapped into a faucet, you’re always full and now you, it doesn’t matter who’s around you, whether their glass is half empty or not, because you’re always full and you’re, it’s easy for you to share. You don’t even need to know you’re sharing it because you’re just overflowing. And so that’s how I understand the inner work and filling yourself up is tapping into that faucet and now you’re full. And then you can go share it amongst all the relationships in your lives. All these other glasses. And to me, for some, for me and many people, it’s like, I got it. because I’m, I’m going to my kids or I’m going to my spouse trying to get their water. And if their glass is half or less, it feels really uncomfortable. As we said, neediness is really unattractive.

Gila Golub:

Oh boy, it really is. And so imagine saying that maybe for 10 minutes a day or a couple of times a day, I have no needs. I’m holding it completely. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t want something that’s completely different, but going into a relationship with neediness and expecting others to fill you up. And there are very famous people in the world who really seem to be very full. Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, he came from this village and did some bodybuilding and became an American movie story even though he couldn’t speak English or act and then married American royalty and then became governor of California. And then we know what happened. He sabotaged his life. None of that filled him up. None of that from the outside was enough. And then Tiger Woods did a very similar thing. And Elliot Spitzer, who was the governor of New York, did a very similar thing because they couldn’t get filled up from outside themselves.

And Jimi Hendrix for that matter, who had more appreciation and acknowledgement and adoration and acceptance and material things. But you see his early life, his early life dictated those first six years, those staggeringly formative first six years where he did not receive what a child needs, where his attachment needs were absolutely not fulfilled. That’s what we have to learn about attachment, because even though later in life he got it all, that little guy inside of him didn’t know he deserved to have it all. And so he overdosed at 27. It’s a really big deal to learn to have a love affair with yourself and to heal the multi-generational wounding of your family system and to, to reparent yourself, to become your own champion, to repair that little inner child. It may be your inner embryo, maybe you weren’t invited to exist at all or you weren’t invited to exist as the gender or body type that you are. So it is all about healing your inner child, which there’s wonderful work to do and healing your family system with, with constellation work and so on. We do it all.

Lorne Brown:

And this is why it’s important because one of the ideas behind our podcast, it’s called the Conscious Fertility Podcast, is this idea that if you’re going to parent and you’re unconscious, then how’s this going to affect your family system and the world? And if we want to see the planet heal, we all have to do our inner inner work. And so we go from conscious fertility to conscious conception to conscious pregnancy, to conscious parenting. And so this has many layers of impact. because not only do your relationships change first with a self, but with your partner. But you’re going to raise a child and you’re sharing that the way of raising children through a developmental lens and behavior lens has different effects on the children. And so this is why this is important to your heart as well, this kind of work.

Gila Golub:

I wanna remind people that every challenge you have as an adult is a replication from something that happened either in your early childhood or in your family system. Everything is a replication, all the more reason to do your own work.

Lorne Brown:

And Gila goes into much detail on this in our episode 10, um, that I believe the title is, you Deserve to Have It all. So I really invite you if you haven’t listened to it or listened to it again, because hearing this now, you have a new lens on your eyes. And so you’ll hear more when you listen to that again. And also to visit Glas website to see when she does her workshops. And the message we’re having here, Gila, is to have a wholly conscious relationship. It takes one. So yes, I want, so it takes two to destroy a relationship. What, how did you say it? I, because I really thought that was brilliant. It takes,

Gila Golub:

It takes two people to destroy a relationship. It takes one person to heal it.

Lorne Brown:

And so one person. So there’s the count, there’s so there’s no reason not to start because you don’t need your heart to be involved in this. And then the beauty of this is when you, when you’re healing your work, not only do you experience life differently, you’ll get more joy and love and peace in your life. It impacts your relationships with everybody. And so either your perception of them changes. So what does that mean? You’re not at the effect of it, it’s not triggering you. You may still know you don’t like a behavior, but it’s not creating this emotional turmoil anymore. You’re having a different perception. You’re conscious, you’re awake, you’re not taking it personally. And what you have witnessed, many times I’ve seen in my practice, there is a shift in the external world. Like, they’re like, no, my, my child is no longer I’m having nightmares. My partner is actually saying kind things and buying gifts and being really attentive to me. So bizarre, right? Like they, they’ve changed, right? Because you’ve changed.

Gila Golub:

I got an email yesterday. Last Sunday I finished level two and I got an email yesterday from a lady that was in that workshop and she said her husband is walking around for the first time in seven years saying, my wife loves me. Because her energy changed so much from doing those two weekend workshops that it just filled the relational field and they were talking divorce for the last few years.

Lorne Brown:

So Gila, what is the greatest gift you can give yourself and your partner then?

Gila Golub:

The greatest gift that you can give to your partner is to listen, to listen with your whole being and to let your partner know they’ve been heard. That’s a very big skill. I liken that skill to, uh, cock perelman playing Tchaikovsky’s, filing concerto, uh, at Carnegie Hall. It’s a big skill, but we can, we can all start by just listening to our partner and letting our partner know that we heard what they said without defending, without defending is to attack. So to just let our partner know they’ve been heard. When

Lorne Brown:

You say be heard, are you saying, um, we heard them and we agree with them? Or what do you mean when you say let their partner be heard and listened to?

Gila Golub:

So listening has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing. You’re such a good interviewer.

Lorne Brown:

<laugh>

Gila Golub:

Listening has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing. Listening is just letting someone know that you have heard what they said, whether you agree or whether you don’t agree.

Lorne Brown:

And you, this ties into what you said in your podcast episode 10 and what you said today. That every human being, actually I see it on the, our listeners can’t see this, but in the back of your door there is a quote that says, I’m gonna read it. Every person on the planet wants the same thing to be seen, heard and loved, or to be seen and heard, which equals to be loved. Yes. So you are saying the greatest gift you can give anybody is to let them know that you have seen and heard them.

Gila Golub:

So when somebody speaks, the only reason they’re actually speaking is to be heard. It really isn’t even about the subject. Let’s say that your partner says, I wanna wait. I want to paint all the walls black. Instead of saying, oh, that would be terrible, that would be too dark. And it would be, oh, I would, that would be ugly. Instead of saying that, you could say, so what you’re telling me is that you want to paint all the walls black. Tell me more about that. Now we have a conversation, now we have a dialogue and your partner got hurt. Maybe your partner says you’re spending too much money and, and the visa cards are running up too big a bill. The temptation there would be to defend would be to say, well, I had to buy this, that, and the other. And I work hard too.

And, it’s my money too. And what I call defending is to attack. What you could let your partner know is that you heard that they feel, they think that you’re spending too much money and you can say, I really get that you, that you feel that I’m spending too much money, that it’s really unnecessary to run up the bill that high and that when the bill gets that high, it’s pretty scary for you. It makes you uncomfortable. And it doesn’t matter if your partner says, no, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. At least you heard them and you gave them an opportunity. And then if they said, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, you can still say, well, tell me how it does make you feel. This is a huge subject, the art of listening and just a teeny weeny introduction. And Virginia Satir, a great American psychologist, said, the greatest gift that I can imagine receiving from another human being is to be seen and heard.

Lorne Brown:

Because as you’ve shared many times in our communications that people are trying to attach often in inappropriate ways, meaning they’re trying to be seen and heard. And so if you can allow somebody, if you can hold a space to really see, hear them. And it is a skill, you know, you call it the art of listening. It takes practice. What I think is happening is the resistance lowers, and I’m talking on a subconscious nervous system level where the resistance lowers. So when they don’t feel heard and seen, they’re going into not feeling safe and their nervous system is shifting and they’re going into attack or defense. And when you allow somebody to be heard, this is why it works so well in relationships that the person starts to relax because they feel safe. And the nervous systems really start to shift. Steven Porges talks about this in his polyvagal theory, right?

And so they feel safe because they feel heard. So the attitude or the intention here, and what I think you’re sharing here, Gila, is rather than trying to get your needs met, rather than trying to, rather than you trying to be understood, your intention is can I them I wanna understand their perspective. And you’re saying that doesn’t mean I agree with them. The greatest word you gave me to help me practice listening is after somebody speaks. Sometimes it’s just to say thank you and thank you. Doesn’t mean I agree with them or disagree with them. Thank you just means I heard you. And so thank you for that wisdom.

Gila Golub:

Even if someone unleashes a tirade at you still listen. It’s so tricky to not fall into your own wound. And by the way, you can’t listen when you are in your own wound.

Lorne Brown:

Yeah, you’re regressing. Now you talk about your regression then that’s

Gila Golub:

Right, you’re regressed. And so let’s say you are in a situation with your partner and they’re saying something that’s so triggering for you and you know that you’re not able to really hear them, to really listen and let them know they’ve been heard. You can say, I’m not resourced right now. Maybe you’re tired, you’re exhausted, maybe you’re hungry. You can say, I’m not resourced right now. I would really like to hear what you’re saying. I can do that in an hour or I can do that tomorrow. So you are not always able to listen. And when you’re not able to listen, you can buy some time. And while you’re listening, even though you’ve set the intention to listen, you might notice that your mind is drifting and that you didn’t really hear what was said in that case. You can always say, my mind drifted, could you please repeat that? Could you please tell me that again?

Lorne Brown:

And when you do this, I know this from my personal experience and in my practice, I bring in this kind of conscious work with my acupuncture and laser for people, whether they’re trying to conceive or not, just if they’re in relationships. And this skill and this intention to listen has changed the relationships

Gila Golub:

Completely in, in many, many cases.

Lorne Brown:

because we said earlier, it’s important not to try and get your needs met from somebody else. And it, I always say, well that’s great how the first step is learn to listen.

Gila Golub:

You can make enormous inroads to healing a relationship through listening. Because the only thing anybody in the whole world really wants is to be heard, to be seen and heard and listening doesn’t mean waiting for somebody’s lips to stop moving.

Lorne Brown:

It’s beautiful. I’m so glad that you do the work and you know, you’ve been doing this for a while. Your Sheila’s got a few decades behind her. And so that means there’s some wisdom there because she has a lot of life experience and has worked with many couples over many decades. So again, thank you for, um, bringing this to the masses and to find more about Gila, our website’s, gilagolub.com, G-I-L-A-G-O-L-U-B. It’s in the show notes as well. And it’s a great opportunity to have that love affair with self, right? That’s what this is all about. And that means developing tools, processes, and working to heal your heart and mind.

Gila Golub:

Yes, it does.

Lorne Brown:

Gila, thank you so much for, uh, joining me again on the Conscious Fertility Podcast. I always enjoy our conversations.

Gila Golub:

Always a pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 3:

If you’re looking for support to grow your family, contact Acubalance Wellness Center at Acubalance, they help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach using low level laser therapy, fertility, acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the Acubalance Fertility Diet and Dr. Brown’s video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to acubalance.ca. That’s a-c-u-balance ca.

Lorne Brown:

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne Brown official. That’s Instagram, Lorne Brown official, or you can visit my websites, Lorne brown.com and accu balance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.