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

Change the statement “This is how bad I am” to “This is how badly I need to know this, or to do this, or to include this.”

The fear of revealing the True Self is disguised in these words: “If people really knew me, they would not like me.” We can change that sentence to read: “I am free enough to want everything I say and do to reveal me as I am. I love being seen as I am.”

While in a monogamous relationship, I have sexual desire for someone else. Integration does not mean violating my experience by rooting out the desire. I contain the desire, but instead of acting on it, I look into what it may be saying to me (and us). In this way, I am faithful to my inner life and to my relationships.

Appropriate fear leads to a flight or fight response which is activated and dealt with, and is followed by repose. This fear is necessary since it signals a danger we need to avoid or eliminate.

When change and growth scare me, I still choose them. I may act with fear, but never because of it.

Feeling the pain keenly without being so possessed by it that it devastates your self-esteem. Feeling but not acting on feelings is the way we let the experience in without letting it penetrate the core of our self-worth. “I acknowledge this reality even though I don’t like it. It could be better or it could be worse.”

Every relationship includes some hurt You may hold on to your indignation or to the pursuit of vengeance after being offended by someone. This maintains your grievance and prevents you from ever getting on with mutual commitment. Resentments that are worked through and dropped are the pathfinders to commitment. Resentments that are avenged, held on

accept full responsibility for the shape my life has taken. I need never fear my own truth, powers, fantasies, wishes, thoughts, sexuality, dreams, or ghosts. I trust that “darkness and upheaval always precede an expansion of consciousness” (Jung).

If the ratio always remains the same or keeps altering in favor, of what is negative and self-defeating, we are not evolving. If the ratio is changing in favor of the positive—even a moment or inch at a time—we are growing.