How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration

The starting point of our love for others is our sane and fearless love of ourselves.

Steps in Psychological Work Leading to Change 1. Letting go of neurotic ego attachments, control, and entitlement NOT: “This has to come out my way.” BUT: “I let go of having to have this come out my way.” 2. Unconditional Yes to what is occurring in events, feelings, circumstances: “I allow this fully. I trust it without having to know why.”

love: how we can see it, how we can show it. In a very real way, we are who we are because of the love others have shown us. Our every adult asset began as a gift from someone who loved us as we were and thereby encouraged our unique self-emergence.

When you notice yourself drifting with your thoughts, label it “thinking” and return to awareness of your breathing. In this way you remind yourself that you can choose to leave your personal storyline and come back to the here and now. Meditation thus empowers you to acknowledge your present predicament as a light on the next step of your path and

We needed all the experiences of our life—positive and negative—to become as emotionally and spiritually rich as we are! “My barn having burned down, I now can see the moon,” the Zen saying goes.

Active Imagination is to the Self what therapeutic processing is to the ego. Images are to the Self what thoughts are to the mind.

I accept this reality: This is my Body. I surrender to every This and Now. My love lets in what fear shuts out. I parent myself. More and more I yield and make peace. I drop “shoulds”; I make choices. I always have a choice. I walk freely on the earth. I have power: I let go of the need to control. I drop guilt: I deserve pleasure and power. I drop

“My destiny is to create more consciousness. The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being,” Jung wrote toward the end of his life.

If our self-actualization means that our inner work must all be done and we must be perfect, we are choosing never to be happy. No human being is perfect like that, except momentarily. If integration means wholly containing a process, then, as St. Catherine of Siena says, “All the way to heaven is heaven.” We are complete now and all along the path