Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

In Embracing the Beloved, authors Stephen and Ondrea Levine wrote: “If another person is the most important thing in your life, then you’re in trouble and they’re in trouble because they become responsible for your suffering. But if consciousness is the most important thing in our lives and relationship is a means toward that end … Ah! then we are

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. —JAMES BALDWIN

And yet, no matter what bravery we show to the world, most of us have recurring doubts about our worth. We worry that we’re not desirable enough, good enough, successful enough. We fear we’re not enough, period. Intellectually, we may appreciate that loving ourselves would give us a firm foundation, one from which we could extend love out into the

REFLECTION Appreciating your aliveness This reflection is adapted from the teaching of one of my colleagues, Kate Lila Wheeler.

“In the hothouse atmosphere of committed relationships, our defenses arise again and again,” says George Taylor. “But the tools of mindfulness allow us to work with them and to fulfill our own vision of becoming a loving person, with all the care, forgiveness and generosity that suggests.”

PULL THE THORNS FROM YOUR heart. Then you will see the rose gardens within you,” wrote Rumi,

WHEN WE LIVE together in a committed relationship, we live with our teacher, says George Taylor, a therapist who specializes in working with couples. “We’re tested daily, and every day we have the opportunity to meet our own resistance and reactivity. Moment to moment, what’s going on inside us is reflected in our body language and our response to

Often when we believe we are practicing self-control or self-discipline, we’re actually confining ourselves inside an overly analytical, self-conscious mental chamber. This precludes us from giving and receiving love both from others and ourselves.

Loving ourselves calls us to give up the illusion that we can control everything and instead focuses us on building our inner resource of resilience. When we learn to respond to disappointments with acceptance, we give ourselves the space to realize that all our experiences—good and bad alike—are opportunities to learn and grow. This itself is an a