This book should be on everyone's shelves, whether single or married - in a relationship or not! The concepts and ideas discussed here go deep to the heart of what love is, and how we make love a conscious choice daily. No matter what place you find yourself in along life's path, this book will apply to you in many ways. I would love to buy a copy for all of my family and friends, have preordered the new book to be released in 2000, and just ordered "Love and Awakening" because I learned so much from this one. This author is fantastic, and the book is life-changing!

I have read Journey of Heart well over a dozen times and I always come away with deeper insights and awareness into myself and how I interact in relationships. For the past 5 years, I have given a copy of this book to all of my friends, relatives and even strangers. Reading this book can be truly transformative. Unlike many other books in this field, it does not presribe a set of techniques. Welwood beautifully articulates the various aspects of romantic love - passion, conscious commitment, conditional and unconditional love etc. He weaves them together and demonstrates how this relates to our authentic spiritual development. Journey of the Heart will stand as an all-time classic as we pioneer into the evolution of conscious relationship. Only the Levines' book Embracing the Beloved explores these issues with such depth and sincerity.

This thought provoking book is one of the best books on relationships I have read. The author's use of real life cases to highlight his points deepens the teaching and keeps the reader engaged. The basic premise of the book is that an intimate relationship is a path, an opportunity to work on the personal issues you came into this world to solve. Contains real life techniques and knowledge you can apply to your life and your relationships.

"In addition to waking up to our ultimate spiritual nature," John Welwood observes about the psychology of awakening, "we also need to grow up--to ripen into a mature, fully developed person" (p. xviii). Welwood is a San Francisco psychotherapist and a thirty-year student of Tibetan Buddhism and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In this collection of articles written over the past three decades, Welwood integrates Eastern spiritual practice with Western psychology, maintaining that "awakening needs psychology just as much as psychology needs awakening" (p. xvi).

Too often Westerners attempt to avoid dealing with their "emotional unfinished business" by turning to spiritual practices instead. Welwood calls this "spiritual bypassing (pp. 5; 11-12; 207-13). Many people engaged in spiritual practice suffer from psychological wounds including self-hatred, aggression, emotional reactivity, narcissistic egocentricity, depression, and other defensive patterns, and Welwood maintains that a course of psychologically-oriented personal work could serve, support and further their movement toward awakening (p. xviii).

Welwood's 330-page book is divided into three sections, each exploring the interface between Eastern spiritual practice and Western psychology. The first explores what it means to be human: the relationship between personal growth--becoming a more mature, authentic person--and spiritual development (p. 3). "Enlightenment is not some ideal goal, perfect state of mind, or spiritual realm on high" Welwood writes, "but a journey that takes place on this earth. It is the process of waking up to all of what we are and making a complete relationship with that" (p. 33). In the second section of his book, he explores the capacity to be fully present with our experience "as it is" through psychological healing (pp. 134-35). He calls this "unconditional presence" (p. 141)--"just being with what is, open and interested, without agenda" (p. 143). Welwood confronts the subject of depression not only as an affliction that should be suppressed, but as "a potential teacher that can convey an important message about our relationship with ourselves, the world, or life as a whole" (p. 172). Part three explores personal relationships, intimacy, love and passion, and more specifically, how to remain conscious in our personal relationships with friends, lovers, coworkers, parents and children (p. 229), "in a sane, wide awake, spiritually vital way" (p. 231).

Fascinating, compelling, and insightful, Welwood's guide to personal and spiritual transformation is sure to become one of the most frequently revisited resources on my bookshelf, and is highly recommended for anyone interested in living a more meaningful life.

G. Merritt

Ok, this guy knows what he's talking about. I've been looking for a book like this for a long, long time. So many books offer advice on how to attain enlightenment, like the excellent The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, but there is so little about what to do after you do. Like how to bring what you realize back to your life and community in a safe, mature and responsible way. This book is the one to get if you need a guide to your enlightened experience....get it even before you have an enlightenment experience, it's THAT good. Cheers!

This is the best book on integrating psychology and spirituality that I've read, written in both a clear and heartfelt way.I'm truly moved by the great depths that the author has touched. His ways of discussing how healing happens and the warmth and brilliance and range of his insight are quite inspiring. His way of discussing the ground of being is the clearest I've read, and he writes of it in many different ways that will reach a wider range of people, both in the healing professions and in ordinary life. I felt that everything he discussed came from his own realization. He shows how spiritual work helps us discover how "the ground of our being actually holds us up" and how the essence of healing lies in learning how to let be. Can someone heal who doesn't learn that whatever emotional states they have can be held openly and unconditionally in awareness? This book shows how in both psychotherapy and spiritual work, it is being awake with thoughts, feelings, and sensations, without separation and distance, that heals. Then the mind can "self-liberate" when we stay open right in the middle of what's coming up.In Welwood's words,"unconditional presence is the most powerful transmuting force there is, because it is a willingness to be there with our experience." Each one of the therapy examples in the book moved me and focused on the larger field of how we are with our experience.This book will undoubtedly by a guide for brand new ways of practicing therapy. Let me share one of my favorite quotes (among so many). Welwood describes a client whose fear of nothingness was a symptom of being cut off from herself. As she began to open unconditionally to "being nothing," her inner division fell away "as she stepped out of the fixed stances/attitudes/associations she held toward 'being nothing' with their long history dating back to childhood. In becoming present in a place where she had been absent, she experienced her being, rather than her nothingness. 'Being nothing' transmuted into the empty fullness of being--where the fear of being nothing no longer had a hold on her." For me, this is the crux of healing and the author describes it so wisely and compassionately that it has opened up many new vistas for me.

This is a reader that John Welwood compiled when writing his excellent 'Journey of the Heart'. As he says, helpful writings on relationships are relatively rare, and I found this collection most absorbing. Sometimes successive authors have messages that seem to contradict each other, and yet each has something helpful to say and I find myself agreeing with both!

D H Lawrence is as Welwood says 'annoyingly polemic' but is worth reading, and Rilke's passages from 'Letters to a Young Poet' are classic. Welwood ranges wide. I was interested to find a piece by J K Bennett, an English 'guru' whom I met once, in 1963, and I was moved by the contribution of Elizabeth Bugenthal.

I sometimes lend this book to friends and it takes a long time to get it back!

"Spirituality is completely ordinary. Though we might speak of it as extraordinary, it is the most ordinary thing of all.

Spirituality is simply a means of arousing one's spirit, of developing a kind of spiritedness. Through that we begin to have greater contact with reality.

If we open our eyes, if we open our minds, if we open our hearts, we will find that this world is a magical place. It is magical not because it tricks us or changes unexpectedly into something else, but because it can *be* so vividly and brilliantly." ---Chogyam Trungpa

Everyday life is something that we are all mired in, yet few of us appreciate. When was the last time you heard the birds singing outside your window or were aware of the raindrops as they fell from the sky? Have you ever bathed in the moonlight of a warm summer night? Are you ever aware of the miraculous act of breathing?

This book is a joy to read. It has gently led me to the wonders of awareness---"So many of us are leading half-lives, half-heartedly with only half of our minds actively engaged in making contact with the universe around us." Page 148. Each chapter is written by a different person. Some of my favorites are: Natalie Goldberg on writing fearlessly; Allen Ginsberg on meditation and poetics; Ram Dass on the listening mind; Thich Nhat Hanh on sunshine and green leaves.

I very highly recommend this book to anyone who considers themself a seeker in this journey we call life. It will brighten your path and illuminate the way and best of all, open your eyes to the recognition that there is absolutely positively NOTHING ordinary about your daily life!

Although this book might help some people, I did not like the conversation format. The subjects seemed to take on a whiny tone and used "psychobabble" such as "I fell into myself" and "He isn't in his heart". I could not read this without thinking about a 70's group therapy session due to the lingo.

Welwood has crafted a masterful book. Although he expands on the material he presented in his previous book Journey of the Heart, this book can be read by itself. Journey of the Heart was like a roadmap of the terrain of intimate relationships. Love and Awakening provides dialogue from some of Welwood's clients rediscovering their personal authenticity in relationship. There are also brief sections throughout the book narrating a quality or observation about relationship that are truly stunning in its poetic clarity. It perfectly echos the truths we all know deep in our hearts. His section on the "Broken-Hearted Warrior" is the most poignant, eloquent and beautiful passage about the path of intimate relationship I have ever read. The real power and magic of this book is that it does not prescribe cures like a doctor towards a patient. It gently guides us to our own center, our own being and provides tools for awakening greater awareness.

This is a very valuable book - not just for those in relationships - but for anyone interested in the path of personal development. Welwood writes lucidly and with authority: therapeutic and spiritual concepts and practices are clearly and accessibly presented. This book usefully develops the ideas outlined in Welwood's earlier Journey of the Heart. The inclusion of 'dialogues' gives readers an insight into the experiences of people Welwood has worked with - and this provides a very helpful practical model for readers wishing to explore their own lives in similar ways. Based in solid scholarship, but designed for the lay-reader, I heartily recommend this book to all who are interested in the 'warrior work' of looking into one's own heart.

I am a senior in college and majoring in Psychology. I have a senior thesis paper do and I have choosen your book to read. What our teacher wanted us to do is to: a) Find a book that talks about psychotherapy. b) write a thesis statement c) The thesis statement would have to have an approach to therapy in a way which can be proven either wrong or right from a person, with a good argument. For example, How come therapists are not able to sleep with their clients. An approach like that can be rediculous but that is what our teacher wants us to write. Now, I have choosen your book and it is very interesting in catching the eye of the reader. I would really be content and overwelmed if you could help me with some imput in writting this paper. See your book Awakening The Heart deals with an approach that is so different than just regular therapy and drugs. For example, Prozac is, to me, a drug that is over prescribed to people. Meditation is different. People might critisize that but I believe that it could assist relationships with the therapist and the patients.

If that could be possible for you to help me I'd really appreacheate it. Thank you

Thank you, Chris

AWAKENING THE HEART is a classic introduction to the contrast between eastern and western perspectives on the mind and counseling. It is an edited collection of essays on meditation, self-awareness, humility, and the interaction between "patient" and "counselor" - indicating that the counselor is affected by the process, as is the patient. It was a good book for me when I was early in my counseling career (ca. 1985), having exited an engineering career and become re-educated as a social worker. I gave gift copies to colleagues when I recently changed positions, and it was well-received, some 13 years after its initial publication. A good read for any counselor or any of his/her customers who are somewhat educated.