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

The decision with wisdom usually finds a way not to exclude one side totally, not either…or but both…and. Such a decision embraces risk rather than avoids it. It is the decision with power but without control, with respect for others’ wishes but with request for what one wants, with acknowledgment of one’s history but with no enslavement to it.

Strongly expressed anger is called rage. Strongly held anger is called hate. Unexpressed anger is resentment. Anger can be unconsciously repressed and internalized. It then becomes depression, i.e. anger turned inward.

“your inner emptiness conceals just as great a fullness if you only allow it.”

Our problem is not that as children our needs were unmet, but that as adults they are still unmourned! The hurt, bereft, betrayed Child is still inside of us, wanting to cry for what he missed and wanting thereby to let go of the pain and the stressful present neediness he feels in relationships. In fact, neediness itself tells us nothing about how

A commitment to maintain the relationship during periods when one’s needs are not being met, since the other is valued for one’s inherent worth, not just for need fulfillment.

When a fear is stimulated, we get an opportunity to work through it or we become more entrenched in it—usually blaming our partner. When a fear is allayed, we can feel safe enough to risk more openness or we can become complacent—expecting our partner to protect and insulate us.

You can be informed by others’ behavior rather than affected by it. You can observe the behavior of others without having to react to it or to be controlled by it. You operate from your own repertory of responses that uphold you no matter what others do, say, or mean to you.

We spend our lives waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the great deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many, nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed passionately into the spirit in everything, then that spirit will emerge from our hidden, nameless efforts.

Guilt is not a feeling but a belief or judgment. Appropriate guilt is a judgment that is self-confronting and leads to resolution. Neurotic guilt is a judgment that is self-defeating and leads to unproductive pain. Appropriate guilt is resolved in reconciliation and restitution. Neurotic guilt seeks to be resolved by punishment. In appropriate guil

The essential inner core of yourself must remain intact as relationships begin, change, or end. The journey never violates our wholeness. When you are clear about your personal boundaries, the innate identity that is you is not bestowed by others nor do you let it be plundered by them.