You are loved the way you are. The need for affection is fulfilled when you are loved unconditionally all the time and genuinely liked most of the time.

The original emotional needs of life were fulfilled in the holding environments of the womb, our nursing mother’s arms, the warmth of our home, and parental protection, which are the requisite loci of serene development. In such a safe and embracing environment, children feel they are living in a folder of security that is also roomy enough for

The healthy ego—what Freud called “a coherent organization of mental processes”—is the part of us that can observe self, situations, and persons; assess them; and…

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Can fathers provide the container for the holding and separating experience so crucial to growth? It seems unlikely. Their role is to protect us from being contained too long! Women can provide a safe place for us to express our feelings and make our unique choices. Men can show us a safe exit into the larger world. And if fathers are sometimes so

Faith commitments call for trust in an invisible source of nurturance, and when visible sources of nurturance have let us down, we are less likely to trust the invisible sources. Yet Jung says the longing for the spiritual is as strong in us as the desire for sex. We therefore ignore an inner instinct when we totally deny the possibility of a power

Enlightenment can only be embodied in the world by people who love one another. So relationships are not about how two people can survive each other but about how the whole world becomes more capable of love, with all its dim anguish and glowing rapture. The work and practice I recommend here are not aimed at making your life together smoother but

When we come to others with the five A’s, we are profoundly present and closeness happens. When we come at others with the five mindsets, we are caught in a personal agenda and distance happens.

Paying attention and letting go are the twin tools that will be presented throughout these pages.

The unconditional presence of someone who loves us hearkens back to the past and repairs our childhood sense of being unwanted. At the same time, no human being can or is expected to be fully and unconditionally present all the time. An individual…

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