Guiding Principles of Our Work

Guiding Principles of Our Work

1. Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem in the same state of consciousness--or with the same type of thinking--which created the problem. For this reason our trainings contain many experiential activities designed to shift you out of the state of consciousness in which problems occur and put you into a state of consciousness in which those problems can resolve effortlessly. Our work assists you in shifting from seeing through the "eyes of the mind" to experiencing life through the eyes of the heart. When this shift occurs, previously intractable problems often resolve quickly and with ease.

2. We take a spiritual approach grounded in what we call organic spirituality. Our training is designed to produce spiritual shifts which are felt in the body and which do not depend on changing your beliefs or intellectual understanding. In other words, four people--an agnostic, a Buddhist, a Christian and a Jew--might feel a heart-centered awakening of love and compassion even though each of them came to the training and left with differing cosmological beliefs. We are not so much interested in beliefs as we are in the underlying consciousness out of which all mental phenomena emerge.

3. Our ideas and practices have been tested in the real world of relationship transformation. We only advocate practices that we have found transformative in our own relationship. and which have been carefully tested on the thousands of partnerships with whom we've been privileged to work.

4. In our thirty-plus years as therapists, educators and consultants, we have never seen dishonesty produce happiness and intimacy. So we advocate absolute honesty in any relationship that matters to you. If your relationship to yourself matters, be scrupulously honest in acknowledging your feelings and motivations to yourself. If your relationship with a specific person matters, scrupulously tell the full truth about your feelings and your deeds to that person. Almost every relationship disaster people have brought to our office began with lying to protect the feelings of another person. For this reason, we never advocate concealment.

5. Commitment is crucial to relationship harmony. Almost all relationship problems are problems of commitment. We have worked with couples married for twenty years in which one or both people had not yet made a full body-and-soul commitment to the relationship. In other situations, problems were caused by a person being more committed to an addiction--such as smoking, alcohol, work or others--than to the ongoing dance of intimacy with a partner. Unconscious commitments can best be discovered by listening to what you complain about, out loud or in your mind. When people complain about something repeatedly, it is almost always because they have an unconscious commitment to it. Take, for example, the common complaint about weight.  Most insightful people eventually discover that they were unconsciously committed to perpetuating their weight problems. If they weren't complaining about weight, they'd have to do something with all that energy, something truly risky like expressing creativity. We advocate a monogamous sexual commitment, and have never seen any other model work.

6. Arguments start when someone points the finger of blame and races to occupy the position of "wronged victim." This causes the other person to blame and race toward the victim position. Both people end up feeling wronged, justifying that position and burning immense energy in a futile attempt to get the other person to accept the role of villain. Our work deals with this problem in a radical way: We invite both people to take full responsibility for any problem in a relationship. Both people are invited to shift to asking, "What's my role in this problem?" and, "How can I shift my consciousness so it doesn't re-occur?" rather than "Why is he/she doing this to me?"  When people are courageous enough to do that, the energy that previously was burned in the race for victimhood can be re-channeled into creative activities.

7. Our work focuses on learning to appreciate other people and learning to receive appreciation rather than trying to get other people to appreciate us. When you open to receiving appreciation and learn how to appreciate skillfully, other people go to great lengths to appreciate you.

8. We are much more interested in how people are the same than how they are different. While some approaches focus on the differences between men and women, for example, we focus on the underlying unity of genders. Whether you are in a same-sex relationship, a multi-cultural relationship or any other variation, you still face core issues common to all.

9. Creativity is crucial to relationship harmony. Unless both people express their creativity, they are going to think the other is oppressing it.

10. Most relationship problems can be resolved with five questions:

What am I not facing?

What truths have I not spoken?

What have I been blaming others for that I need to own responsibility for creating?

What choices do I need to make?

What actions do I need to take?