Love has no agenda …

Even after we think we’ve taken full responsibility for our actions, no long blaming anybody else for them or expecting anything in return for them, a committed relationship can present fresh challenges and excuses. Even after we’ve learned not to personalize somebody else’s behavior, how can we NOT personalize an intimate partner’s?

Well, the same truths apply!… More

Occasionally the truth flashes in front of us; and we catch a glimpse of what contradicts the theory that we’re being honest, or that we have it all together, or that it’s somebody else’s fault that we don’t. We’re busy, though; we don’t have time to sit with the truth. And acting on it is just too much this week … this month … and this year.

We can stop, though. And we can decide one minute at a time to tune in to our own music and take our life back. … More

ntimacy is a connection based on what you know about each other. If what you know is false, so is your connection. And that connection is the foundation for your love!

Get stark naked and be radically honest.… More

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We may look at the latest headlines and wonder why some celebrity had an affair; but when somebody more “ordinary” has one, we tend to assume they wanted something they weren’t getting at home.

Can’t the famous be dissatisfied? Of course, they can. And they can find what they’re missing elsewhere — whether they seek it out or just run into it. And, yes, they can do this despite a public stand against infidelity.

We all fall down; and we all put our foot in our mouth. We don’t do it in the headlines, which is more humbling, but maybe it’s also more liberating.

When you live through your worst nightmare — being caught with your pants down abroad or in the Oval Office — and survive, you realize that you can survive anything. What’s left to be afraid of? And it’s purging, even noble, to openly confess and apologize. Maybe that helps to answer the other question we ask: How do they get through the public embarrassment?

The last time I saw Bill Clinton, I was both surprised and impressed that so many still love the man. He engages us, because he seems to truly see us; he endears us because he’s real.… More

It’s tough enough to assume responsibility for our actions and words. Should we, can we, also be responsible for our thoughts and intentions? Those are private, right? Yours alone?

Apparently not.

According to Marilyn Schlitz, president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, we’re interconnected in a way that hasn’t been studied in conventional science. I don’t have to touch you, or even be in your physical presence, in order to provoke a response. I need only send you my thoughts.

“Intention is very powerful,” says Schlitz. “It gets overrated, but you see intention at work even when you go to put your foot on the ground. And now, we have studies that show your intention has measurable effects on another person’s physiology.”

Schlitz conducted her own laboratory study with 36 couples. A wife was placed in an isolated room with electrodes attached to her hand to measure her unconscious nervous system. A husband, placed in another isolated room with a closed-circuit TV, was instructed to send loving, compassionate thoughts to his wife when her image appeared at random intervals on his screen.

A scientist could then follow a graph of the wife’s physiological responses. The wife stopped relaxing and became “aroused” within about two seconds of her husband’s “messages.”… More