Life as we knew it is passing away, and something new is emerging to take its place.

All of us are playing a part in a larger transformative process, as each of us is being forced to confront whatever it is we do, or even think, that keeps love at bay. For as we block love’s power to change our own lives, we block its power to change the world.

Humanity is moving forward now, though in some ways we are doing so kicking and screaming. Nature seems to be saying to all of us, “Okay, it’s time. No more playing around. Become the person you were meant to be.”

We would like to, but it’s hard. The problems of the world today seem larger than they have ever been before, making it easy to succumb to cynicism, fear, hopelessness, and despair. Until, that is, we remember who we are.

For who we really are is a power bigger than all our problems, both personal and collective. And when we have remembered who we are, our problems — which are literally nothing other than manifestations of our forgetfulness — will disappear.

Well that would be a miracle, you might say. And that is precisely the point.

This book is about learning who we are, that we might become agents of miraculous change. As we release the fear-based thoughts we’ve been taught to think by a frightened and frightening world, we see God’s truth revealed: that who we are at our core is love itself. And miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.

It is said in Alcoholics Anonymous that every problem comes bearing its own solution. And the gift being borne by our current challenges is the opportunity to make a large leap forward in the actualization of our own potential. The only way the world can make a quantum leap, from conflict and fear to peace and love, is if that same quantum leap occurs within us. Then and only then will we become the men and women capable of solving the problems that plague us. As we leap into the zone of our most authentic selves, we enter a realm of infinite possibility.

Until we enter that zone, we are blocked, for God cannot do for us what He cannot do through us. To say He has the solutions to our problems is to say He has a plan for the changes each of us needs to go through in order to become the people through whom He can bring forth those solutions. The most important factor in determining what will happen in our world is what you decide to let happen within you. Every circumstance — no matter how painful — is a gauntlet thrown down by the universe, challenging us to become who we are capable of being. Our task, for our own sakes and for the sake of the entire world, is to do so.

Yet for us to become who we most deeply want to be, we must look at who we are now — even when what we see doesn’t please us. This moment is driving us to face every issue we’ve ever avoided facing, compelling us to get to some rock-bottom, essential truth about ourselves whether we like what we see there or not.

And until we make that breakthrough in ourselves, there will be no fundamental breakthrough in the world. The world we see reflects the people we’ve become, and if we do not like what we see in the world, we must face what we don’t like within ourselves. Having done so, we will move through our personal darkness to the light that lies beyond. We will embrace the light and extend the light.

And as we change, the world will change with us.

From Fear to Love

We spend so much time on unimportant things — things with no ultimate meaning — yet for reasons no one seems to fully understand, such nonessentials stand at the center of our worldly existence. They have no connection to our souls whatsoever, yet they have attached themselves to our material functioning. Like spiritual parasites, they eat away our life force and deny us our joy. The only way to rid ourselves of their pernicious effects is to walk away … not from things that need to get done, but from thoughts that need to die.

Crossing the bridge to a better world begins with crossing a bridge inside our minds, from the addictive mental patterns of fear and separation, to enlightened perceptions of unity and love. We’re in the habit of thinking fearfully, and it takes spiritual discipline to turn that around in a world where love is more suspect than fear.

To achieve a miraculous experience of life, we must embrace a more spiritual perspective. Otherwise, we will die one day without ever having known the real joy of living. That joy emerges from the experience of our true being — when we detach from other people’s projections onto us, when we allow ourselves permission to dream our greatest dreams, when we’re willing to forgive ourselves and others, when we’re willing to remember that we were born with one purpose: to love and be loved.

Anyone who looks at the state of the world today is aware that something radically new is called for — in who we are as a species and in our relationship to each other and our relationship to the earth itself. Yet the psychological fundamentals that hold this dysfunctional world in place are like sacred cows: we are afraid to touch them, for fear something bad will happen to us if we do. In fact, something bad will happen to us if we do not. It is time to change. It is time to do what we know in our hearts we were born to do.

We are here to participate in a glorious subversion of the world’s dominant, fear-based thought forms.

There are only two core emotions: love and fear. And love is to fear as light is to darkness: in the presence of one, the other disappears …

This book is not meant to be read in only a linear manner. It often offers an experiential process. It is as much poetry as prose. Absorbed phrase by phrase, image by image, it allows healing to enter the heart, the mind, the body.

We share the process from which we are learning daily for the benefit of all who wish to use relationship as a path of self-discovery. This work is not to be taken lightly. This is a book about co-commitment, not co-dependency. These techniques are not applicable to anything that resembles the old-style dominant/submissive relationships which have for so long perpetuated our all-too-human suffering.

When true hearts truly join there is a mystical union. An inter-connecting of whole human beings which, is the foundation for great insight and growth. It is a collaboration in healing.

Although we often speak in terms of merging, or becoming one, or dissolving into oneness—-this is not a giving up of one person to another. It is not – as the great German poet Rilke fears of such commitments, “a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both of their fullest freedom and development..”

Indeed, if two people attempt only to become one, they certainly may get lost. But if the oneness just beyond such concepts is their ultimate concern–if each heart is committed to the universal heart, our birthright, our original nature–neither stops. And the ongoing aerial act is spectacular.

Indeed, when Rilke says that the most that can be expected is that “two solitudes protect and border and greet each other,” he is speaking of the best of the ordinary way. They do not burn for the Beloved. They do not love the truth even more than each other. They refuse to give it all away. To be blessed surveying new frontiers.

The distance from your pain, your grief, your unattended wounds, is the distance from your partner. And the distance from your partner is your distance from the living truth, your own great nature. Whatever maintains that distance, that, separation from ourselves and our beloveds, must be investigated with mercy and awareness. This distance is not overcome by one “giving up their space” to another, but by both partners entering together the unknown between them. The mind creates the abyss but the heart crosses it.

A conscious relationship teaches us to treat ourselves and others as our only child. And to do it mindfully. It does not break the heart. A conscious relationship is as healing and life-affirming as an unconscious, old-style relationship is at times harmful and life-denying. The harmful effect of an unconscious relationship is that it keeps us so small, dependent on external circumstances for our happiness. More needs than gifts are brought to such an entanglement. But a conscious relationship, offers the possibility of relating across the gulf of I and other all the way into the heart of our beloved. A conscious relationship shows us to remain conscious while in relationship. It’s a whole new ball game.

A few years ago Ondrea and I were scheduled to give a talk about healing on what turned out to be Valentine’s Day. Coming from the stillness of our mountain retreat to the commotion of the “big city,” we were deeply touched by the care and kindness exhibited as the meeting hall filled. So many couples aiding each other. Those alone helped to their seats by the loved ones of the recently departed. The weary, nearly translucent faces of patients, friends and colleagues. So many others drawn with illness or gray with grief. So many returned for healing with their families. Their lovers. Men and women of every description—teen-agers and octogenarians, janitors and physicians, car salesmen and poets: black, brown, yellow, and white; gay and straight; sick and well–the loved, the loving, committed to a mutual process. So much buzz and affection. Five hundred gathered for an evening in this beautiful old stone church in an investigation of healing.

These open faces, and the exceptional, nearly initiatory, day we had just had, overwhelmed us with waves of loving kindness.

And we thought what a perfect day to speak about human kindness and maybe even share that term we love so in private but rarely used in groups: the Beloved. A word that incorporates the heart of the sacred into a profound appreciation of our deepest nature. A word that is a “bonding responder” for the way our relationship has become our spiritual practice. And how our practice, our work on ourselves, has become the central core in our connectedness.

And we asked ourselves whether we needed to talk about healing or could just effuse about the Beloved a few times before we realized there was no question. There was no difference. As healing progresses deeper, a more tangible sense of being ensues. From that sense of being there constellates the quality of “being present.” Being present we come into “the presence”: the space in which the process floats: the Moved.

We find the term “the Beloved” quite functional for many reasons including the obvious parallel between the hearts affinity for such an idea and the draw of the personal toward the universal. And, of course, because it is our practice to meet our beloved as the Beloved.

It is a term used in many spiritual traditions and is particularly well served in the Sufi tradition, whose mystical, devotional aspect seeks the “hidden mysteries,” yearning for the direct experience of the one they call “the Beloved.” In perhaps the greatest of all devotional poetry, in the spectacular longings of Rumi, Kabir, Miribai, and Rabia, the Beloved is all that is sought. The Beloved is the context into which the wounded and dismayed may enter, as the ever-injured and uninjurable vastness embraces. their pain and transmutes it to mercy. But to all who seek their own true self, whether Sufi or Buddhist, Christian or Jew, Jain, Native American, or agnostic, the Beloved is the ever-experienceable vastness of our true heart, our original nature. And for all, it is the possibility of freedom, the divine capacity to transform our pool of tears into the Ocean of Compassion.

The Beloved is neither a person nor a place. It is an experience of deeper and deeper levels of being, and eventually of beingness itself–the boundarylessness of your own great nature expressed in its rapture and absolute vastness by the word “love.” It is not for the concept, but for the experience, that we use the term “the Beloved.” The experience of this enormity we falteringly label “divine” is unconditioned love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and com-passion. We use this concept, not to name the unnameable vastness of being–our greatest joy–but to acknowledge and claim as our birthright the wonders and healings within.

As we began to speak on that Valentine’s evening, the words “the Beloved” exited our lips with a sigh–a gentle bow to those gathered in the room and to that within each of us, which is only love and boundless being.

Who are you? Why are you here? What are your beliefs about life? For thousands of years, finding the answers to these questions has meant going within. But what does that mean?

I believe there is a Power within each of us that can lovingly direct us to our perfect health, perfect relationships, perfect careers, and which can bring us prosperity of every kind. In order to have these things, we have to believe first that they are possible. Next, we must be willing to release the patterns in our lives that are creating conditions we say we do not want. We do this by going within and tapping the Inner Power that already knows what is best for us. If we are willing to turn our lives over to this greater Power within us, the Power that loves and sustains us, we can create more loving and prosperous lives.

I believe that our minds are always connected to the One Infinite Mind, and therefore, all knowledge and wisdom is available to us at any time. We are connected to this Infinite Mind, this Universal Power that created us, through that spark of light within, our Higher Self, or the Power within. The Universal Power loves all of Its creations. It is a Power for good and It directs everything in our lives. It doesn’t know how to hate or lie or punish. It is pure love, freedom, understanding, and compassion. It is important to turn our lives over to our Higher Self, because through It we receive our good.

We must understand that we have the choice to use this Power in any way. If we choose to live in the past and re-hash all of the negative situations and conditions that went on way back when, then we stay stuck where we are. If we make a conscious decision not to be victims of the past and go about creating new lives for ourselves, we are supported by this Power within, and new, happier experiences begin to unfold. I don’t believe in two powers. I think there is One Infinite Spirit. It’s all too easy to say, “It’s the devil,” or them. It really is only us, and either we use the power we have wisely or we misuse the power. Do we have the devil in our hearts? Do we condemn others for being different than we are? What are we choosing?

Responsibility Vs. Blame

I also believe that we contribute toward the creation of every condition in our lives, good or bad, with our thinking, feeling patterns. The thoughts we think create our feelings, and we then begin to live our lives in accordance with these feelings and beliefs. This is not to blame our-selves for things going wrong in our lives. There is a difference between being responsible and blaming ourselves or others.

When I talk about responsibility, I am really talking about having power. Blame is about giving away one’s power. Responsibility gives us the power to make changes in our lives. If we play the victim role, then we are using our personal power to be helpless. If we decide to accept responsibility then we don’t waste time blaming somebody or something out there. Some people feel guilty for creating illness, or poverty, or problems. They choose to interpret responsibility as guilt. (Some members of the media like to refer to it as New Age Guilt.) These people feel guilty because they believe that they have failed in some way. However, they usually accept everything as a guilt trip in one way or another because it’s another way to make themselves wrong. That is not what I’m talking about.

If we can use our problems and illnesses as opportunities to think about how we can change our lives, we have power. Many people who come through catastrophic illness say that it was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to them because it gave them a chance to go about their lives differently. A lot of people, on the other hand, go around saying, “I’m a victim, woe is me. Please…doctor, fix me.” I think these people will have a difficult time even getting well or handling their problems.

Responsibility is our ability to respond to a situation. We always have a choice. It does not mean that we deny who we are and what we have in our lives. It merely means that we can acknowledge that we have contributed to where we are. By taking responsibility, we have the power to change. We can say, “What can I do to make this different?” We need to understand that we all have personal power all the time. It depends on how we use it.

Many of us are now realizing that we come from dysfunctional homes. We carry over a lot of negative feelings about who we are and our relationship to life. My child-hood was filled with violence, including sexual abuse. I was starved for love and affection and had no self-esteem at all. Even after leaving home at the age of 15, I continued to experience abuse in many forms. I hadn’t yet realized that the thinking, feeling patterns I had learned early in life had brought this abuse upon me.

Children often respond to the mental atmosphere of the adults around them. So I learned early about fear and abuse and continued to recreate those experiences for my-self as I grew up. I certainly didn’t understand that I had the power to change all of this. I was unmercifully hard on myself because I interpreted lack of love and affection to mean I must be a bad person.

All of the events you have experienced in your lifetime up to this moment have been created by your thoughts and beliefs from the past. Lees not look back on our lives with shame. Look at the past as part of the richness and fullness of your life. Without this richness and fullness, we would not be here today. There is no reason to beat yourself up because you didn’t do better. You did the best you knew how. Release the past in love, and be grateful that it has brought you to this new awareness.

The past only exists in our minds and in the way we choose to look at it in our minds. This is the moment we are living. This is the moment we are feeling. This is the moment we are experiencing. What we are doing right now is laying the groundwork for tomorrow. So this is the moment to make the decision. We can’t do anything tomorrow and we can’t do it yesterday. We can only do it today. What is important is what we are choosing to think, believe, and say right now.

When we begin to take conscious charge of our thoughts and words, then we have tools that we can use. I know this sounds simple, but remember, the point of power is always in the present moment.

It is important for you to understand that your mind is not in control. You are in control of your mind. The Higher Self is in control. You can stop thinking those old thoughts. When your old thinking tries to come back and say, “It’s so hard to change,” take mental command. Say to your mind, “I now choose to believe it is becoming easy for me to make changes.” you may have this conversation with your mind several times before it acknowledges that you are in charge and that you really mean what you say.

Imagine that your thoughts are like drops of water. One thought or one drop of water does not mean very much. As you repeat thoughts over and over, you first notice a stain on the carpet, then there is a little puddle, then a pond, and as these thoughts continue, they can become a lake, and finally an ocean. What kind of ocean are you creating? One that is polluted and toxic and unfit to swim in, or one that is crystal clear and blue and invites you to enjoy its refreshing waters?

People often tell me, “I can’t stop thinking a thought.” I always reply, “Yes, you can.” Remember, how often have you refused to think a positive thought? You just have to tell your mind that that is what you are going to do. You have to make up your mind to stop thinking negatively. I’m not saying that you have to fight your thoughts when you want to change things. When the negative thoughts come up, simply say, “Thank you for sharing.” In that way, you are not denying what is there, and you are not giving your power over to the negative thought. Tell yourself that you are not going to buy into the negativity anymore. You want to create another way of thinking. Again, you don’t have to fight your thoughts. Acknowledge and go beyond them. Don’t drown in a sea of your own negativity, when you can float on the ocean of life.

You are meant to be a wonderful, loving expression of life. Life is waiting for you to open up to it–to feel worthy of the good it holds for you. The wisdom and intelligence of the Universe is yours to use. Life is here to support you. Trust the Power within you to be there for you.

Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one “falls into” if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter.

Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love — yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love.

This peculiar attitude is based on several premises which either singly or combined tend to uphold it. Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especially used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one’s position permits. An-other, used especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating one’s body, dress, etc. Other ways of making, oneself attractive, used both by men and women, are to develop pleasant manners, interesting conversation, to be helpful, modest, inoffensive. Many of the ways to make oneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, “to win friends and influence people.” As a matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.

A second premise behind the attitude that there is nothing to be learned about love is the assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an object, not the problem of a faculty. People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love–or to be loved by–is difficult. This attitude has several reasons rooted in the development of modem society. One reason is the great change which occurred in the twentieth century with respect to the choice of a “love object.”

In the Victorian age, as in many traditional cultures, love was mostly not a spontaneous personal experience which then might lead to marriage. On the contrary, marriage was contracted by convention–either by the respective families, or by a marriage broker, or without the help of such intermediaries; it was concluded on the basis of social considerations, and love was supposed to develop once the marriage had been concluded. In the last few generations the concept of romantic love has become almost universal in the Western world. In the United States, while considerations of a conventional nature are not entirely absent, to a vast extent people are in search of “romantic love,” of the personal experience of love which then should lead to marriage. This new concept of freedom in love must have greatly enhanced the importance of the object as against the importance of the function.

Closely related to this factor is another feature characteristic of contemporary culture. Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Modem man’s happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He (or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl–and for the woman an attractive man–are the prizes they are after. “Attractive” usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and sexy, was attractive; today the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of this century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious–today he has to be social and tolerant–in order to be an attractive “package.”

At any rate, the sense of falling in love develops usually only with regard to such human commodities as are within reach of one’s own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should want me, considering my overt and hidden as-sets and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market.

The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about love lies in the confusion between the initial experience of “falling” in love, and the permanent state of being in love, or as we might better say, of ” standing” in love. If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting.

The same principle is true of the creative energy of God. The whole universe is full of it, but only the amount of it that flows through our own beings will work for us.

We have tried often to make this creative power flow through us, saying, “Oh, God, please do this or that!” And He has not done this or that, so we have concluded that there is no use in prayer, because God, if there is such a Being, will do as He likes regardless of our wishes. In other words, we doubt the willingness or the ability of God to actually produce within our lives and bodies the results that we desire. We do not doubt our own ability to come into His presence and fill ourselves with Him, but His willingness to come into us and fill us with Himself.

My baby had been ill for six weeks with abscessed ears. I prayed desperately that God would heal the child. My mind was filled with thoughts of fear and of bitterness, and these are not of God. God is love, and perfect love casts out fear. So God could not go through me to heal my baby, for there was a break in the pipeline that connected me with Him.

Nevertheless, in His great kindness He did what He could for me. He sent me one of His own ministers. The minister was a young man, ruddy-faced, clear-eyed, full of normal, healthy interest in people and in life.

“I’ll go up and have a prayer with him,” he said.

“I don’t think that will do any good,” I replied wearily. ‘He’s only a year and a half old. He wouldn’t understand.”

What I really thought was, “If God doesn’t answer my prayers, why would He answer this minister’s prayers?”

“Oh, that won’t matter,” cried the minister, disregarding my feeble protests. He went upstairs.

Light shone in his eyes. I looked at him and saw his joyfulness, and I believed. For joy is the heavenly “O.K.” on the inner life of power. No dreary, long-faced minister could have channeled God’s healing to my baby, and it was the joy on the minister’s face that called forth my faith. Looking on him I knew that he had been with the One who came to give us His joy, and so I knew that the baby would be well.

The minister placed his hands upon the baby’s ears and said, “Now you close your eyes and go to sleep. I’m going to ask God to come into your ears and make them well, and when you wake up you’ll be all right.”

He did ask God exactly that, in the simplest possible way. He closed his prayer by saying, “We thank you, Heavenly Father, because we know that this is being done. Amen.”

The fever-flush died out of the baby’s face immediately. He turned very pale, closed his eyes and slept. When he woke, he was well. And he never again has had abscessed ears.

This incident turned on the light for me in the world that had grown very dark with futility. It showed me that God is an active and powerful reality. True, I understood very little about Him. I merely thought that the visiting minister had the gift of healing. Now I know that he had no gift except that which is open to all of us, the infinite gift of the life of God Himself. God’s water of life could rush through him, for the pipeline between his spirit and God’s spirit was intact. He was in harmony with God. The life of God flowed through him, and could therefore be turned on by him for the healing of a child. He knew it, and therefore had the courage to speak with authority.

“We thank you because we know that this is being done,” he had said, adding the word, “Amen (So be it),” a word of command. All prayers end with “Amen,” but usually the word is meaningless. The people who utter it do not in the least intend to send forth a command so positive that they would dare to say, “When he wakes he will be all right.” This is one reason many prayers do not seem to be answered.

God is both within us and without us. He is the source of all life; the creator of universe behind universe; and of unimaginable depths of inter-stellar space and of light-years without end. But He is also the indwelling life of our own little selves. And just as a whole world full of electricity will not light a house unless the house itself is prepared to receive that electricity, so the infinite and eternal life of God cannot help us unless we are prepared to receive that life within ourselves. Only the amount of God that we can get in us will work for us.

“The kingdom of God is within you,” said Jesus. And it is the indwelling light, the secret place of the consciousness of the Most High that is the kingdom of Heaven in its present manifestation on this earth. Learning to live in the kingdom of Heaven is learning to turn on the light of God within.

We must learn that God is not an unreasonable and impulsive sovereign who breaks His own laws at win. As soon as we learn that God does things through us (not for us), the matter becomes as simple as breathing, as inevitable as sunrise.

“But God is omnipotent!” some people say. “He can do anything He likes! ” Certainly, but He has made a world that runs by law, and He does not like to break those laws.

Few of us in the north would ask God to produce a full-blown rose out of doors in January. Yet He can do this very thing, if we adapt our greenhouses to His laws of heat and light, so as to provide the necessities of the rose. And He can produce a full-blown answer to prayer if we adapt our earthly tabernacles to His laws of love and faith so as to provide the necessities of answered prayer.

Some day the world will come to understand this fact, as it is now beginning to understand the miracle of light waves, for one generation’s miracles are the commonplaces of another generation.

Some day we will understand the principles that underlie the miracle-working powers of God, and we will accept His intervention as simply and naturally as we do the radio and television that cause us to see and hear a person far away both in space and in time.

Compassion as a Wave of Change

I’ve spent the past few years researching a book on the compassionate heart. I began what I called my “field notes” feeling both hopeful and hollowed-out. In a time of war, the ice caps melting like Sno-Cones, and meanness an item on the national agenda, I had set forth, as the poet Derek Wolcott once urged, “to fall in love with the world in spite of history.”

My journey took me to a man who had forgiven his daughter’s murderer; and to one who had given his kidney to a total stranger. I chatted (via pictograms) with oddly empathic bonobo apes. I hung out with Balkan kids who called themselves “the Post-Pessimists” — survivors of war who’d made peacemaking the whole point of their lives. I met Tibetan monks and neuroscientists studying the inner workings of the soul, and spent time with those who did the heart’s heavy lifting, succoring the sick, feeding the hungry, comforting the abandoned.

Spiritual teachers have always claimed that compassion is not a case of being born a saint, but of cultivating — like diligent, sweat-stained gardeners — the secret kernel of benevolence that is our birthright.

This is not to say compassion doesn’t take some grit. It can draw us to places where the candle gutters in the soul’s darker, draftier labyrinths. The word itself derives from the Latin cum patior, “to suffer with” (think Mother Theresa: “Ache, ache, ache: one by one by one”). It might sound like a bummer but it’s what we’re made for — for that fellow-feeling that renders kindness not only possible, but ineluctable; for the joy of knowing each other deeply, as we really are. Our limbic system, the emotional brain we share with all mammals, is a powerful antenna, attuned to each others’ wavelengths. When we say, “My heart went out to him,” we’re saying we can’t help but resonate, even when we try not to notice.

A Tale of Deliverance

I’ve known my friend Kate for decades. Now 50, her rangy six-foot frame is still topped by a mane of auburn. When I first met her, Kate was an activist with a wild streak and a big heart. She’d fronted her own bar band, become a registered nurse and a midwife, gone to work for Sting, and co-founded a natural shampoo company. She eventually drifted into public relations, becoming a consultant-for-hire — a semi-retired bodhisattva in a glittery, jittery life funded by what she called, in a Seussical singsong, Boring assignments/For corporate clients.

It wasn’t even Christmas yet, but she was already sick of the season, with its synthetic cheer, slushy streets, and eggnog gossip sprinkled with leftover election gripes. Then the Great Tsunami tore a chunk out of Southeast Asia.

At first horrified, then numbed by the images of suffering that coursed at light speed around the globe, Kate was struck by a message that popped up on her friend Steve’s computer screen: “Why aren’t you on a plane to Thailand with a pocketful of cash, helping some small village recover?”

Steve, a successful businessman, also had been pierced by the images on CNN, but couldn’t bring himself to ship off a wad of his cash to some bureaucratic charity. An investment analyst and a wizard of arbitrage in a world where swarms of darting numbers demand risky split-second decisions, Steve was flummoxed. But, finally, he concluded: “The only way to see if I could make a difference was to be there on the ground.”

A few days later, they were on a plane, with Kate and Steve still asking: “Who are we to do this? How can we possibly help? Will we be in the way?” Twenty-four hours later, they alighted in Bangkok.

They wanted to get to Phuket, the tourist island whose beachfront was the tsunami’s Ground Zero. But when they arrived, they were told that the relief efforts were finished; the only work left was identifying the dead.

Kate sat down with Steve, the metaphysical agnostic, and composed a plea to the universe: “Lead us to a place where we can relieve suffering and bring hope.” She dropped off to sleep muttering it like a mantra. The next day, a man at the American Embassy appeared and directed them to a hotel 90 miles north. Arriving by rattletrap Jeep at a hilltop resort packed with relief workers, soldiers and missionaries, they entered a surreal world — inside, a luxurious tropical swimming lagoon; outside, a devastated flatland littered with miles of rubble and hundreds of white caskets where entire coastal communities once stood.

Two missionaries they met in the lobby invited them to help haul supplies to a devastated fishing village. The next day, at an encampment of plastic tarps housing 76 displaced families, they learned the group had lost more than 40 family members. Though the circumstances of these survivors couldn’t have been more dire, Kate was struck by “how incredibly warm, friendly and welcoming they were.”

The village leaders explained that they needed help rebuilding their fishing fleet. By the next day, Steve had pledged the money and Kate applied her organizational chutzpah to start a foundation to build a new flotilla of traditional long-tail boats. Within hours, Steve and Kate were in a nearby town, buying saws, drills and lumber. Later, at the site of a newly donated boatyard, they handed over the tools and equipment to the fishermen, bowing ceremoniously in the Thai manner to seal the deal. Fortuitously, the improbable debut of the Waves of Hope Boat Building Project was captured by a TV news crew. The next day the whole global village heard the story.

“Boat-building turns out to be more ‘win-win’ than I could imagine,” Kate says. “It gives people food, employment, self-reliance, dignity, hope.” Back in the States a few weeks later, she got a call from the new shipyard. In the background she could hear the “amazing, sweet music” of crews hammering in the nails on their second craft. The project may be replicated in other villages in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

The whole experience left Kate thinking about chance and design, accident and fate. She’s convinced, no matter if it sounds like mystical gobbledygook, that “setting a clear intention to serve the highest good — and empowering that through our minds and hearts — made it so.” She’s considering giving up her consulting jobs to follow “this thread of service.” She finally feels plugged back into something she’d forsaken a dozen years before, when she’d “traded away inspiration and passion to pursue houses and things.”

The High Road to ‘Elevation’

Kate’s journey was less one of self-discovery than other-discovery, our real terra incognita. Father Thomas Keating, a Benedictine monk, once observed: “The American way is to first feel good about yourself, then feel good about others. But spiritual traditions say it’s really the other way around — that you develop a sense of goodness by giving of yourself.”

It’s sometimes hard to figure out what good we can do for a world that often looks like it’s coming apart at the seams. But that cynicism is a slur, a cheap shot, on our own true nature. Our smaller selves may not know how to proceed; our larger, wider selves do. Every time we see an act of nobility, our hearts swell with the sheer certainty of it.

That very feeling has caught the interest of mind-body researchers like John Haidt of the University of Virginia, who has been investigating what he calls “elevation” — that state of soaring inspiration (sometimes accompanied by a poignant, choked-up sensation) we feel when we see a particularly selfless deed. In this near-automatic, evolved response, he thinks he might have found a key to positive social change.

“Elevation seems particularly capable of fostering love, admiration, and a desire for closer affiliation,” Haidt told me. He has written: “If elevation increases the likelihood that a witness to good deeds will soon become a doer of good deeds, [it] sets up the possibility for an ‘upward spiral’… raising the level of compassion, love, and harmony in an entire society.”

Now, more than ever, we need such a fine-mesh web of kindness to bind us together. On an interconnected globe, the good of each is tied to the good of all. Every border is porous; anyone’s business is everyone’s business; a problem “over there” becomes, in an eye blink, a problem over here. What’s in any one person’s heart right now can be as big as the whole world. A few people with desktop computers can collaborate between continents on the blueprints for a new concert hall or the specs for a suitcase nuke. Or, a few people like Kate and Steve can revive entire communities of boat builders, halfway around the planet.

The Empire of Compassion

I know a young woman, Nadja, who during the siege of Sarajevo was wounded by Serb shrapnel. After the war, watching a scared-looking Serb soldier weep during his televised trial, she couldn’t help weeping with him. When her brother angrily scolded that the man could be the same one who’d lobbed the mortar round that wounded her, she replied: “I can’t keep a separate heart, one for my friends and one for my enemies.” Yet Nadja’s no pushover. She went on to become an effective global campaigner against child slavery and the abuse of women.

She echoed a Burmese activist I know named Ka Hsaw Wa, c0-founder of Earthrights International, who confided that he feels ko gin ser (roughly translated: “My heart is trying to be your heart”) for the government soldiers once tortured him. He chose to oppose them with the nonviolent weapon of international law. His group won a settlement from Unocal, a California oil giant accused of complicity in brutalizing local villagers to build a pipeline. “We have to stand against what’s wrong,” says Ka Hsaw Wa, “But I know we have to change the human heart.”

I like to think of Kate, Steve, Nadja and Ka Hsaw Wa as loyal subjects of some rising Empire of Everybody, an emergent world order with compassion as its central organizing principle. Why not believe that a culture based on “social healing” is germinating within the husk of the old — an evolutionary leap made up of small changes of heart that will burst forth, like the Czechs’ Velvet Revolution and the Ukranians’ Orange one and gently take over the world?

I’ve been inspired lately by Gandhi’s famous 1930 Salt March. When the British government in India imposed a salt monopoly, making that necessity nearly unaffordable, there was widespread despair and a call to arms. But the Mahatma had a better idea. He led a mass procession down to the seashore, picked up some of the ocean’s bountiful white condensate, and held aloft a handful for all to see. The roar of the crowd that day shook the foundations of the British Imperium. People suddenly knew they had the resources to reclaim their lives and remake their society. They could withdraw consensus from an irrational system, unhobble their creativity and, in Gandhi’s words, “be the change you want to see.”

A lot of us are trying to do that today — to live holistically, to be smart, green consumers, to support the causes we believe in. But if we really want to heal our world, we need more than topical remedies. If war is an infection in the human system, the antidote lies in strengthening what it most directly attacks: our capacity for compassion. Knowing how to properly “value” Nature may not be enough; we may need to love it as well (either that, or start looking for a new evolutionary niche). And love, as everyone knows, is less about grand gestures than daily increments.

If we each all simply took less, gave more, tithed our time and energy, invested our love and our imagination — can we even imagine: “What then?” Loving-kindness sounds gentle, but it’s deeply unruly: it won’t stay in its seat, refuses to follow instructions, doesn’t know when enough is enough.

I’ve concluded — like any unjaundiced observer throughout the sweep of history — that compassion, empathy, altruism and forgiveness are the most powerful forces in the known universe. As St. Paul said, love is all that endures when everything else crumbles. In our beautiful, imperiled world, it is the only way to imagine an infinite future.

In my hermitage in France there is a bush of japonica, Japanese quince. The bush usually blossoms in the spring, but one winter it had been quite warm and the flower buds had come early. During the night a cold snap arrived and brought with it frost. The next day while dong walking meditation, I noticed that all the buds on the bush had died. I recognized this and thought, This New Year we will not have enough flowers to decorate the altar of the Buddha.

A few weeks later he weather became warm again. As I walked in my garden I saw new buds on the japonica manifesting another generation of flowers. I asked the japonica flowers: “Are you the same as the flowers that died in the frost or are you different flowers?” The flowers replied to me: “Thay, we are not the same and we are not different When conditions are sufficient we manifest and when conditions are not we go into hiding. It’s as simple as that.”

This is what the Buddha taught. When conditions are sufficient things manifest. When conditions are no longer sufficient things withdraw. They wait until the moment is right for them to manifest again.

Before giving birth to me, my mother was pregnant with another baby. She had a miscarriage, and that person wasn’t born. When I was young I used to ask the question: was that my brother or was that me? Who was trying to manifest at that time? If a baby has been lost it means that conditions were not enough for him to manifest and the child has decided to withdraw in order to wait for better conditions. “I had better withdraw; I’ll come back again soon, my dearest.” We have to respect his or her will. If you see the world with eyes like this, you will suffer much less. Was it my brother that my mother lost? Or maybe I was about to come out but instead I said, “It isn’t time yet,” so I withdrew.

Becoming Nothing

Our greatest fear is that when we die we will become nothing. Many of us believe that our entire existence is only a life span beginning the moment we are born or conceived and ending the moment we die. We believe that we are born from nothing and when we die we become nothing. And so we are filled with fear of annihilation.

The Buddha has a very different understanding of our existence. It is the understanding that birth and death are notions. They are not real. The fact that we think they are true makes a powerful illusion that causes our suffering. The Buddha taught that there is no birth; there is no death; there is no coming; there is no going; there is no same; there is no different; there is no permanent self; there is no annihilation. We only think there is. When we understand that we cannot be destroyed, we are liberated from fear. It is a great relief. We can enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.

Finding a Lost Loved One

The same thing happens when we lost any of our beloved ones. When conditions are not right to support life, they withdraw. When I lost my mother I suffered a lot. When we are only seven or eight years old it is difficult to think that one day we will lose our mother. Eventually we grow up and we all lose our mothers, but if you know how to practice, when the time comes for the separation you will not suffer too much. You will very quickly realize that your mother is always alive within you.

The day my mother died, I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tenderly, very sweet… wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine along but a living continuation of my mother and father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.

When you lost a loved one, you suffer. but if you know how to look deeply, you have a chance to realize that his or her nature is truly the nature of no birth, no death. There is manifestation and there is the cessation of manifestation in order to have another manifestation. You have to be very keen and very alert in order to recognize the new manifestation of just one person. But with practice and with effort you can do it.

So, taking the hand of someone who knows the practice, together do walking meditation. Pay attention to all the leaves, the flowers, the birds and the dewdrops. If you can stop and look deeply, you will be able to recognize your beloved one manifesting again and again in different forms. You will again embrace the joy of life.

Nothing Is Born, Nothing Dies

A French scientist, whose name is Lavosier, declared, “Rien ne se cree, rien ne se perd.” “Nothing is born, nothing dies.” Although he did not practice as a Buddhist but as a scientist, he found the same truth the Buddha discovered.

Our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death. Only when we touch our true nature can we transcend the fear of non-being, the fear of annihilation.

The Buddha said that when conditions are sufficient something manifests and we say it exists. When one or two conditions fail and the thing does not manifest in the same way, we then say it does not exist. According to the Buddha, to qualify something as existing or not existing is wrong. In reality, there is no such thing as totally existing or totally not existing.

We can see this very easily with television and radio. We may be in a room that has no television or radio. And while we are in that room, we may think that television programs and radio programs do not exist in that room. But all of us know that the space in the room is full of signals. The signals of these programs are filling the air everywhere. We need only one more condition, a radio or television set, and may forms, colors and sounds will appear.

It would have been wrong to say that the signals do not exist because we did not have a radio or television to receive and manifest them. They only seemed not to exist because the causes and conditions were not enough to make the television program manifest. So at that moment, in that room, they do not exist. Just because we do not perceive something, it is not correct to say it doesn’t exist. It is only our notion of being and non-being that makes us think something exists or doesn’t exist. Notions of being and non-being cannot be applied to reality.

For most of us, relationships are a struggle. We each have a strong inner urge toward conscious loving: toward love relationships that are free of mistrust, disharmony, and unspoken words. We want our relationships to be springboards to higher consciousness and enhanced creative expression. Yet within us also lives an urge toward unconscious loving: we are encumbered by the burdens of our past programming. In this book we will present the results of our exploration of relationship issues over the past twenty years. From our work with over one thousand couples we have discovered the key flaws that produce distortion in relationships, and we have developed a precise, step-by-step program for turning your loving into conscious loving. We have also identified the crucial choice points in the evolution of a relationship that enhance or ruin the opportunities for intimacy.

Unconscious loving turns relationships into entanglements which bring out and actually require the destructive habits of each participant. Unconscious loving saps energy and creativity. By knowing the crucial choice points and practicing the skills of conscious loving we describe, a state emerges that we call Co-Commitment. It is a state of well-being which enhances the energy and creativity of each per-son. In our journey together through this book you will learn the intentions that allow co-commitment to unfold, how to spot and overcome the unconscious patterns that emerge in any close relationship, how to identify feelings and key body sensations, how to tell the microscopic truth, and how to make and keep commitments.

The ideas in this book apply not only to couples, but to any close relationship. They work even if you have an uncooperative partner. They work even if you have no current partner. Many of our clients worked out their major issues while single, then went on to form successful, co-committed relationships. A great deal of powerful change can occur when one person in a relationship breaks free. Don’t fall into the trap of waiting to change until your partner is ready. Waiting for others to change is a sign of unconscious loving. Go ahead and make a total commitment to your individual development. However, if your partner is willing to commit to the program, the changes can be rapid indeed.

When we first began to “wake up” we found ourselves mired in many patterns of unconscious loving. Both of us came from dysfunctional families, and in adulthood we had re-created many of their patterns in our own relationships. Unless you are very blessed, you are also trapped in some aspect of dysfunctional relationships. We developed the ideas in this book during our journey to co-commitment. Eventually, an exciting new state unfolded, which we call co-creativity. A co-creative relationship is passionate, productive, and harmonious. We turned the energy that would have been wasted through conflict into creative projects such as writing books, giving seminars and lectures, volunteering for activities, and building a happy family. We found that we had access to much more creativity as a partnership than each of us ever had on our own. Now we have applied the techniques to a substantial number of people in therapy and workshops. We have determined to our satisfaction that, with some intense work on themselves, people can move from co-dependence to co-commitment and co-creativity. Now we want to make the material avail-able to a wider audience.

The Questions that Began Our Search

Our approach to relationship therapy grew out of questions we began asking ourselves many years ago. These are questions that you have no doubt asked yourself, such as: Why are close relationships, which are supposed to be about love, often so painful? What are we doing that causes the pain? What are we overlooking? How can we have more love and less pain? The answers came, not always in the way we expected or in a kindly manner. Sometimes we were so stubborn and resistant to learning that life had to take a sledgehammer approach to teaching us. Ultimately, we got the relationship we wanted, but it was many times better than we ever could have imagined.

Most of us are born into families that are full of conflict or the avoidance of conflict. Both of us came from families in which conflict was always avoided, so we had to learn to acknowledge conflict before we learned to transform it. It is important, however, not to stop there. In close relationships, conflict is not necessary or desirable, although it is what most of us know. In this book you will learn how to resolve conflict effectively and you will find a path that will take you beyond conflict, if you are willing.

Love is a powerful force. If we do not know how to handle its power, we slip very quickly into its powerfully painful distortions, such as conflict and co-dependence. But know this: It is resistance to love that causes the problems. There is nothing wrong with love. Love is a force that focuses its light on the deepest shadowy parts of ourselves. It brings to the surface the parts of ourselves that we most desperately try to keep hidden. When these parts of our-selves emerge, we often retreat, blaming love and those who have loved us. In this book you will learn how to do something radically different, something that will allow you to live in a state of continuous love and positive energy. You will begin where you are, possibly stuck in a troubled relationship or feeling the pain of not having a close relationship, and you will move at your own pace to a place of freedom and real growth.

Part I of this book explains all the essential ideas, with examples drawn from our personal experience and that of our clients. (All the examples in this book are drawn from real life. Names and identifying details have been changed to ensure the privacy of the people involved.) The thirty-four activities in part 2 contain the experiential techniques that will make the ideas a reality for you. We want to acknowledge you for beginning this journey with us. Our relationship has been the catalyst for unparalleled growth and creativity in our lives. We hope that you will use your relationships to fulfill undreamed-of potential in yourself. It will help if you commit yourself completely to this process now, at the beginning. The most creative and evolved people we know are those who use every situation as an opportunity to learn about themselves. Openness to learning is a hallmark of evolution. It makes learning and acknowledging even the most soul-shaking facts about yourself easier and more fun. With a strong commitment to inquiring into yourself, the universe does not have to use catastrophes to wake you up.

Unconscious Loving and Co-Dependence

Co-dependence, a term that first appeared in the field of alcoholism treatment, is a particular form of unconscious loving. It originally referred to a pattern that healers noticed time and again when working with addicted persons. Frequently the addicted person was in a relationship that supported the addiction and interfered with the treatment. Often the co-dependent did not drink, but due to deeply flawed interaction patterns, he or she made it possible for the addicted person not to change.

Anyone shopping for a Mother’s Day card today might reasonably linger in the Sympathy section. We can’t seem to stop mourning the state of modern motherhood. “Madness” is our new metaphor. “Desperate Housewives” are our new cultural icons. And a mother’s brain, as commonly envisioned, is impaired by a supposed full-scale assault on sanity and smarts.

So strong is this last stereotype that when a satirical Web site posted a “study” saying that parents lose an average of 20 I.Q. points on the birth of their first child, MSNBC broadcast it as if it were true. The danger of this perception is clearest for working mothers, who besides bearing children spend more time with them, or doing things for them, than fathers, according to a recent Department of Labor survey.

In addition, the more visibly “encumbered” we are, the more bias we attract: When volunteer groups were shown images of a woman doing various types of work, but in some cases wearing a pillow to make her look pregnant, most judged the “pregnant” woman less competent. Even in liberal San Francisco, a hearing last month to consider a pregnant woman’s bid to be named acting director of the Department of Building Inspection featured four speakers commenting on her condition, with one asking if the city truly meant to hire a “pregnancy brain.”

But what if just the opposite is true? What if parenting really isn’t a zero-sum, children-take-all game? What if raising children is actually mentally enriching for mothers – and fathers?

This is, in fact, what some leading brain scientists, like Michael Merzenich at the University of California, San Francisco, now believe. Becoming a parent, they say, can power up the mind with uniquely motivated learning. Having a baby is “a revolution for the brain,” Dr. Merzenich says.

The human brain, we now know, creates cells throughout life, cells more likely to survive if they’re used. Emotional, challenging and novel experiences provide particularly helpful use of these new neurons, and what adjectives better describe raising a child? Children constantly drag their parents into challenging, novel situations, be it talking a 4-year-old out of a backseat meltdown on the Interstate or figuring out a third-grade homework assignment to make a model of a black hole in space.

Often, we’d rather be doing almost anything else. Aging makes us cling ever more fiercely to our mental ruts. But for most of us, our unique bond with our children yanks us out of them.

And there are other ways that being a dedicated parent strengthens our minds. Research shows that learning and memory skills can be improved by bearing and nurturing offspring. A team of neuroscientists in Virginia found that mother lab rats, just like working mothers, demonstrably excel at time-management and efficiency, racing around mazes to find rewards and get back to the pups in record time. Other research is showing how hormones elevated in parenting can help buffer mothers from anxiety and stress – a timely gift from a sometimes compassionate Mother Nature. Oxytocin, produced by mammals in labor and breast-feeding, has been linked to the ability to learn in lab animals.

Rethinking the mental state of motherhood is reasonable after recent years of evolution of our notion of just what it means to be smart. With our economy newly weighted with people-to-people jobs, and with many professions, including the sciences, becoming more multidisciplinary and collaborative, the people skills we’ve come to think of as “emotional intelligence” are increasingly prized by many wise employers. An ability to tailor your message to your audience, for instance – a skill that engaged parents practice constantly – can mean the difference between failure and success, at home and at work, as Harvard’s president, Lawrence Summers, may now realize.

To be sure, sleep deprivation, overwork and too much “Teletubbies” can sap any parent’s synapses. And to be sure, our society needs to do much more – starting with more affordable, high-quality child care and paid parental leaves – to catch up with other industrialized nations and support mothers and fathers in using their newly acquired smarts to best advantage. That’s why some of the recent “mommy lit” complaints are justified, and probably needed to rouse society to action – if only because nobody will be able to stand our whining for much longer.

Still, it’s worth considering that the torrent of negativity about motherhood comes as part of an era in which intimacy of all sorts is on the decline in this country. Geographically close extended families have long been passé. The marriage rate has declined. And a record percentage of women of child-bearing age today are childless, many by choice.

It’s common these days to hear people say they don’t have time to maintain friendships. Real relationships take a lot of time and work – it’s much more convenient to keep in touch by e-mail. But children insist on face time. They fail to thrive unless we anticipate their needs, work our empathy muscles, adjust our schedules and endure their relentless testing. In the process, if we’re lucky, we may realize that just this kind of grueling work – with our children, or even with others who could simply use some help – is precisely what makes us grow, acquire wisdom and become more fully human. Perhaps then we can start to re-imagine a mother’s brain as less a handicap than a keen asset in the lifelong task of getting smart.

Katherine Ellison is the author of “The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter.”

Several times in my medical career I have been privileged to witness miraculous cures. The most recent began last year when a 32-year-old Indian woman came to see me in my office outside Boston. She sat quietly facing me in a blue silk sari. To keep her composure, she clasped her hands tightly in her lap. Her name was Chitra, she said, and together with her husband, Raman, she ran a neighborhood import store in New York City.

A few months earlier, Chitra had noticed a small lump in her left breast that was sensitive to the touch. She underwent surgery to remove it, but unfortunately the surgeon found that the lump was malignant. When he explored further, he detected that the cancer had spread to her lungs.

After removing the diseased breast and a large portion of tissue around it, Chitra’s doctor gave her initial doses of radiation and then placed her on intensive chemotherapy. This is standard procedure for treating breast cancer and saves many lives. But the lung cancer was going to be much harder to treat; it was obvious to everyone that Chitra was in a very precarious position.

Examining her, I noticed that she was very anxious. When I tried to reassure her, she surprised me with a touching statement: “I don’t mind for myself if I have to die, but my husband win be so lonely without me. Sometimes I pretend to be asleep and then sit up all night, just thinking about him. I know Raman loves me, but after I’m gone, he will start seeing American girls. I can’t bear to lose him to an American girl.” She stopped and looked at me with suffering in her eyes. “I know I shouldn’t say that, but I think you understand.”

You do not get used to the sorrow that cancer creates, but I felt a deeper sorrow from knowing that time was Chitra’s enemy. For the moment, she still looked healthy. She had even managed to hide her disease from her relatives, dreading having to be watched as she wasted away. We both knew it was going to be very bad for her.

No one can say that he knows a cure for advanced breast cancer. Conventional therapy had provided all that it could for Chitra. Given that her cancer had already spread to another organ, the statistics said that her chance of surviving for five years was less than 10 percent, even with the most intensive routine of chemotherapy that could be safely administered.

I asked her to start a new course of treatments, as prescribed by Ayurveda.

Like me, Chitra had grown up in India, but she had little idea of Ayurveda. Her grandparents’ generation was the last to “believe” in it, I would imagine; today, every progressive Indian living in a big city would prefer Western medicine if he could afford it. To explain to Chitra why I wanted her seemingly to turn her back on progress, I told her that her cancer was not just a physical disease but a holistic one. Her whole body knew she had cancer and was suffering from it; a tissue sample taken from her lungs would show that malignant cells had migrated there, while a sample from her liver would be negative. Yet, her liver had the same blood coursing through it, and therefore it picked up the signals of disease that were coming from the lungs. This in turn affected its own functions.

Similarly, when she felt pain in her chest or had to sit down owing to shortness of breath, signals were racing throughout her body, going to and from her brain. Sensing the pain, her brain had to respond to it. The fatigue she was feeling, along with her depression and anxiety, was a brain response that had physical consequences. So it was wrong to think of her cancer as just an isolated tumor that needed to be destroyed. She had a holistic disease and for that she needed holistic medicine.

The word “holistic” which tends to offend orthodox doctors, simply means an approach that includes the mind and body together. I believe Ayurveda does this better than any alternative, although it may not be very apparent on the surface. In fact, many well-publicized mind-body techniques such as hypnosis and biofeedback are far more flashy than Ayurveda. If Chitra had gotten sick at home in Bombay, her grandmother might have fixed her some special meals, brought home medicinal herbs in a brown paper sack from the Ayurvedic pharmacy, and insisted that she stay in bed. Various purgatives and oil massages might be prescribed to clean the body of toxins generated by the cancer. If there was a spiritual tradition in the family, she would have begun to meditate. In essence, I was going to have her do these same things, with a few additions.

There is as yet no scientific reason why any of this should work, except that it does. Ayurveda has hit on something deep in nature. Its knowledge is rooted not in technology but in wisdom, which I would define as a reliable under-standing of the human organism gathered over many centuries.

“I want you to go to a special clinic outside Boston for a week of two,” I told Chitra. “Some things that will happen to you there will seem highly unusual. You are used to the idea of a hospital as a place with respirators, IV tubes, transfusions, and chemotherapy. By that standard, what we will do for you at this clinic will seem like nothing. Basically, I want to get your body into a deep, deep state of rest.”

Chitra was a trusting person; she agreed to go. In part, of course, she had no alternative. Modern medicine had done all it could, using the strategy of physical assault on her cancer. The initial advantage of assaulting a disease is that you hope to wipe it out physically as soon as possible. The tremendous disadvantage is that the whole body is damaged in the assault on one of its parts. In the case of chemotherapy, there is the very real danger that the immune system will become so weakened that the door is opened for other cancers to develop in the future. However, untreated breast cancer is considered deadly, and today’s medicine is good at wiping it out over the short run. In a climate of opinion ruled by fear, people prefer to run the risks of the cure rather than the disease.

I referred Chitra to the clinic where I work, the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center in Lancaster, Massachusetts. She stayed for a week and received treatments; she also learned an outpatient program to use at home that included a change of diet, some Ayurvedic herbs, a specific daily routine including simple yoga exercises, and instruction in Transcendental Meditation. These measures look different on the surface, but underneath they all aimed at bringing her day-to-day existence to a settled, restful state, building a foundation for healing. In Ayurveda, a level of total, deep relaxation is the most important precondition for curing any disorder. The underlying concept is that the body knows how to maintain balance unless thrown off by disease; therefore, if one wants to restore the body’s own healing ability, everything should be done to bring it back into balance.