In my work as a teacher and counselor over the years, I’ve noticed that intimate relationships are generally the most challenging area when it comes to embodying and living our awakened understanding in everyday life. The people we’re closest to are often our strictest teachers because they mirror back to us where we’re attached to our stories and identities and have closed our hearts and created separation. We may recognize our oneness with all of life in the stillness of meditation or the simplicity of nature, but when it comes to our partners, loved ones, and friends, we hunker down and react from our most primitive conditioning, defensiveness, and self-clinging.

In this intimate online six-week group intensive, we’ll dig deep in exploring our stuck places, core stories, and limited identities in order to free ourselves to be fully awake, authentic, heartful, and empty in our primary relationships with family, friends, and—the most important relationship of all—ourselves. The class will include guided meditations, teachings, dyadic exercises, self-inquiry, opportunities to work in the group with our individual relationship issues, and homework assignments that invite us to take what we’re learning back into our lives.

Limited to 16 participants.

Here are some of the themes we ‘ll explore:

• Love is what you are, not what you get

• Your partner/friend can’t “make you happy”—your happiness is 100% your responsibility

• Telling the truth—honesty and transparency at every level

• Letting go of being right, one of the most persistent challenges

• Owning your projections, both negative and positive

• If everything is indeed perfect, no one is to “blame”

• Die before you die: sacrificing your separateness on the altar of relationship

• Maintaining healthy boundaries in a world with no boundaries

• Merging and individuation: the paradoxical dance of absolute and relative

• How to know when to let go and move on, rather than continuing to “try to make it work”

• No other: closing the gap between you and me

• Gratitude and appreciation for the “other” as sacred mirror

We’ll be using the Zoom video-conferencing platform, which enables us to meet together as a group in a virtual space with both video and audio contact. If you don’t have access to a computer, you’re welcome to join by phone.

Dates: Six Wednesdays, October 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, November 6

Times: 9-11 am US PT; 12-2 pm ET; 5-7 pm UK; 6-8 pm CET

Cost: $350; $600 for couples until September 1; $425/$750 therafter