Instead of prematurely asking what you should do, try something new. Ask no questions rather than an action question. Try meditating, exercising, sensing your arms and legs, or any of the approaches we have suggested for putting you in touch with your inner creative ability. Then try answering any or all of the following questions:

• What is it I don’t yet understand? This question or ones like it can penetrate the mind for clarity and understanding.

• What is it that I’m really feeling? When there is a problem there are usually emotions - fear, anger, hurt, or sorrow - and this question can help you become aware of seeing them specifically.

• What is it that I’m not seeing? Problems usually come from not seeing clearly. By asking about what you are not seeing specifically, almost as if it consists of material objects, you heighten your perceptual ability.

• What voice is speaking? Is it your Voice of Judgment, your objective intelligence, your voice of childhood emotions or fears, or the voice of your Essence speaking inside of you? You can bet that if you have a problem, the objective intelligence and the Essence are relatively silent. But personifying and identifying the inner voices contributing to a problem sometimes is enough in itself to achieve the clarity needed for action.

This kind of exploratory questioning for clarity doesn’t take long, especially when preceded or followed by meditation.

Our schemas are like guessing machines. Schemas help us predict what will happen and, consequently, how we should make decisions. The Enclave asks, “Didn’t see that coming?” No, we didn’t. Our guessing machines failed, which caused us to be surprised.

Emotions are elegantly tuned to help us deal with critical situations. They prepare us for different ways of acting and thinking. We’ve all heard that anger prepares us to fight and fear prepares us to flee. The linkages between emotion and behavior can be more subtle, though. For instance, a secondary effect of being angry, which was recently discovered by researchers, is that we become more certain of our judgments. When we’re angry, we know we’re right, as anyone who has been in a relationship can attest.

This is a crucial step in connecting with others through curiosity: communicating your new understanding back to them. This is where a lot of the magic happens, where the connection between people becomes solid, visible, and meaningful. Hearing an accurate understanding of our own experience coming from another person, articulated in their words, can be thrilling, especially when we’re feeling alienated in a social setting. Suddenly someone is seeing us as we are, and that experience momentarily breaches the barrier that we feel between us and the world. To be seen is an amazing thing.

Stage One: Watch (Curiosity Cures the Cat)

There’s an old adage in psychiatry: Don’t just do something, sit there. Our initial impressions of a situation are powerful, but they are rarely complete. We tend to focus on the familiar, and this narrow view risks excluding potentially important information. Regardless of how much you can observe initially, there is almost always more to see. Whenever you encounter a stressor and you feel the emotion brewing, a bit of purposeful curiosity right away is useful. Thoughtful observation can round out our initial impressions, expand our view of a situation, and press the pause button to prevent a potentially harmful reflexive response…

Watch refers to the entire situation: the environment, the person you’re interacting with, and you. Is the situation unusual or common? What typically happens next? What have I not considered that might be an important part of what is unfolding?...

Context is incredibly valuable. It never hurts to take in as much information as possible, beyond what you notice right away.

The curiosity that we muster during the watch phase also includes curiosity about your own emerging reactions—how you’re feeling, and why. You might notice what’s happening in your body, that your heart is beating faster, that you’re pursing your lips or gritting your teeth (signs of anger). You might notice an impulse to lash out or to hide yourself because you feel ashamed. Becoming more conscious of how you react and what you might be about to do can help you ride that wave of emotion rather than having it crash over you.

So when you bump up against something about your partner that bothers you, before reacting, pause to watch, and take note of your reactions and what you are thinking.

Then interpret your feelings and try to make sense of what’s going on.

Ask: Why is this issue important to me? What exactly is my view? Where does it come from? Is this something I learned from my family growing up? Something I learned from previous relationships? Something that was emphasized in my religious training?

Then, the harder part: try to step into your partner’s shoes. Why is my partner having such a strong reaction, behaving in this particular way, thinking this particular thing? Why might it be important to my partner and where might my partner have learned this? Where is it coming from?