Podcast appearances and mentions of jett psaris

How do we become fully ourselves, as adults, in contact with our essential depth and capacity and without being so much in the grip of the defensive patterns of personality we developed as children? Being an adult who is in touch with their essence. Being an adult who can play. Being an adult who can be joyful. Being an adult who can find freedom in themselves. Being an adult who can not shut everything down just to make everything okay the whole time. Being an adult who can be open to people's views. Being an adult who can be accepting of difference.  Being an adult who isn't trying to corral everybody into one way of doing things the whole time. Being an adult who doesn't blame everything on everyone else for whatever they're going through. Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: Holding Personality Lightly  Early in life we all experience emotional states we cannot tolerate - being left alone, interaction with an anxious or depressed parent etc - and in response we begin to build shields of protective armour around our essence. These defence structures constitute our personality. Doing their job well, they continue to guard our vulnerability, but they also prevent the intimate contact we long for. What we routinely identify as our selves is actually this personality… a construct, an idea or self-image that hides the part of us that is vulnerable and capable of unmediated connection. This mask plays a crucial role in our lives. It is likely that we could not have survived without it. But we are so much more than this learned self-concept. Knowing ourselves solely as our personality limits us severely. When we delve into the truth of our personality, we begin to see how our daily struggles in relationship result from our inclination to defend this assumed identity. Before we can have direct, unmediated contact with ourselves or with a significant other, we must take the necessary step of unmasking our personality. In this process, we do not give up the personality entirely, but rather learn to wear it more lightly. Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons from ‘Undefended Love' Photo by Caleb George on Unsplash

The need for safety is frequently spoken in conversations. But what if the way we seek and understand safety actually interferes with our capacity to authentically relate? This episode examines and challenges the need for safety and references the book Undefended Love co-authored by Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons (New Harbinger Publications 2000). Here's a quote from the book: "The capacity to sustain our view of reality in the face of a divergent one while remaining in relationship until and organic resolution is reached is one of the cornerstones of an undefended partnership. Sustaining our own view is not the same as rigidly defending our position as "right." It is a mature capacity to investigate both points of view with equal vigor and dedication, with the realization that there is a third more encompassing reality yet to be known."

The personality you're carrying around and displaying to the general public is only a set of defenses you've gradually constructed through your experience of growing up. The way you navigated your childhood and dealt with the needs, pressures and emotions in yourself and others, crafted the set of apparel you wear. Some are sporting a 90 pound suit of armor, and others a sleek pair of stretchy pants à la luchador. Underneath the outfit you've manufactured, is your essential self. The word essence is defined as the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, that determines its character. I believe that your essential nature is immortal and divine. I also believe that the more you get in touch with it, the sweeter your marriage will become. Why? Because when you know who you truly are, you don't get triggered by other people's misevaluations of you. You just know they're inaccurate. And when you know who you are, you are more likely to have compassion for your blundering, armor wearing husband, than annoyance or disgust. As the late, great Wayne Dyer put it, “As you awaken to your divine nature, you'll begin to appreciate beauty in everything you see, touch and experience.” So how do you get in touch with it? Many, many ways, but there's one beautiful exercise in particular I want to share. Learn more: bethechangeinyourmarriage.onuniverse.com Reference: UNDEFENDED LOVE by Jett Psaris, PH.D & Marlena Lyons, PH.D

I call it your “Secret Horror,” because I love to wax melodramatic, but in the literature it goes by many names: “Cracked Identity,” “Schema,” “Raw Spot,” “Self-Defeating Belief,” etc. What you really need to know about it, is that it's a thought or a story you're carrying around with you because some buried part of you has learned to believe it, but it really only sticks around because you're too scared to deal with it. And because you're too scared to deal with it, anytime someone or something brings it up, you get… triggered. Contains a step by step process for discovering your own “Secret Horror” and what you can do about it. www.bethechangeinyourmarriage.com. Blog: https://www.bethechangeinyourmarriage.com/blog “What is Your ‘Wife Style'?” Quiz: https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/61c0e2c4b3f4200018bf41e0 Free Guide and Episode Updates: pages.bethechangeinyourmarriage.com References: UNDEFENDED LOVE by Jett Psaris, PH.D & Marlena Lyons, PH.D ACCEPTANCE & COMMITMENT THERAPY FOR COUPLES by Avigail Lev, PsyD, and Matthew McKay, PH.D WHEN PANIC ATTACKS by David D. Burns, M.D. HOLD ME TIGHT by Dr. Sue Johnson

Jett Psaris returns to speak with Susan on Midlife Awakening. “A part of us has to die to transform and a part of us dies if we don’t. Which part will prevail - what has been or what will be?” Midlife is known as the old age of youth and the youth of old age. If we enter this passage as an invitation to learn about ourselves, we will find the deeper rivers of love, wisdom and caring. We will discover that “Everything is deeply ok.”

When you start a relationship, something special becomes possible, something unique that the world has never known before. However - how do you figure out what that “something special” is? And how can your love be a vehicle for actually helping us evolve? This episode is an invitation to you to step into an experience of “shared consciousness” - what happens when you’re able to explore the space created between you and another person. Our guest is Patricia Albere, founder of the Evolutionary Collective and author of Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening. Patricia has been guiding others on this path for years, exploring the edges of how consciousness shifts when two (or more) people step into it together. In her book, and in this episode, we talk about the practical aspects of her work - how it translates into higher levels of connectedness, personal growth, healing, feeling supported, and supporting others. And we also talk about some of the fundamental principles that are required when you want to explore and experiment with your partner (or others in your life who are up for the journey). Here is a link to the first appearance of Patricia Albere on Relationship Alive: Episode 6 - How to Deepen Intimacy through Shared Consciousness. And, as always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Resources: Check out Patricia Albere's website Read Patricia’s new book, Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide www.neilsattin.com/patricia2 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Patricia Albere Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. What we're trying to do with this show is create a change in culture, and for the purposes of our conversation here, most of that change has to do with how we relate to our partners, our lovers, our spouses, our boyfriends and girlfriends and other friends. That's the foundation of the conversation that we're having here, and we're part of a larger conversation about how we relate to each other in the world in general. Neil Sattin: In order to talk more about that and where our relatedness is going, how to take conventional relationships and actually turn them into something that's deeper, more fulfilling, more enlivening, and part of the evolution of our species and our culture, I brought in someone really special who was here in the early days of the podcast. Her name is Patricia Albere and she is here on the heels of releasing her new book, Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening. Neil Sattin: She was on Relationship Alive way back in episode six, and if you're interested in hearing that episode you can go to neilsattin.com/patricia and that will take you there so you can hear what we talked about the first time she was on the show. We may take a moment this time around to talk a little bit about mutual awakening and how to do it, which is something that we talked about back then, but otherwise we are going to dive even more deeply into the skills of relatedness and how to create something even more amazing as you explore the shared consciousness created between you and your partner, or you and someone else with whom you feel that spark of an evolutionary relationship. We're going to talk about what that means in just a moment. Neil Sattin: If you are interested in downloading the transcript and action guide for this episode, you can do that at neilsattin.com/patricia2, that's the name Patricia and the number 2, or as always, you can text the word PASSION to the number 33444 and follow the instructions, and that will get you all the information that you need. Okay, I think that's it for now. Patricia Albere, thank you so much for joining us again here today on Relationship Alive. Patricia Albere: I am just smiling, I'm just so happy to be with you and to be able to have another conversation about something that we're both passionate about. Neil Sattin: Yes. I don't want to set an unrealistic expectation but I will say that after our last conversation, I just remember this so clearly. I got off Skype and I went and found Chloe, my wife, and I was just like, "That was probably the most powerful conversation I've had up until that point." You know, it was just so expansive and it's such a treat to be able to have you back here today. Patricia Albere: Thank you. Neil Sattin: The title of your book, it's called Evolutionary Relationships, and I don't think we can really talk about the practice of mutual awakening and all of the activating principles - we will hopefully cover some of those on today's conversation - without talking about what you even mean about evolutionary relationship. How is that different than the kind of relationships that we're used to having and why is it so important? Patricia Albere: Great question. Evolutionary relationship, you can approach it from a couple of different angles. One is evolutionary. We are lucky enough as human beings to be conscious of the fact that evolution exists, that we're actually headed somewhere. For thousands of years no one had that concept at all. I mean basically we were just on the planet, we were living, we were doing whatever we were doing, and for the most part time and the movement of time was very ... It looked like things weren't even changing. Like most people's children did the same thing they did. Patricia Albere: If you think of thousands and thousands of years, the sense of no change was pretty strong. For us, we are now living at a time where the quality of change and how everything is moving is so crazily intense. Every day scientists are discovering things, there's technology. I mean it's like the newness of what is occurring and how we are hooking up and even consciousness itself is evolving, that to be connected to the fact that your relationships too are evolving, love is evolving. Patricia Albere: We think love is just some eternal expression between human beings that has been the same forever, and actually love itself is evolving. For relationships, the evolutionary quality of relationships, I talked about in the first chapter, first or second chapter, I can't remember, talking about Maslow's hierarchy. If you look at relationships from Maslow's hierarchy of needs, some relationships, none of it is bad or good, it's just different. You can have a romantic or a marriage type relationship where in a way it's at the basic needs of Maslow at the bottom, it turns into logistics. Patricia Albere: Sex is kind of very basic, you have a home together, you take care of things, you get food, you have meals, you get a new car, there can be a quality where much of the relationship starts getting devoted to just the survival needs of what it means to live together. Just even saying that sometimes you're like, "Ooh". You can feel when your relationship is sort of slipped into, that that becomes the dominant. Patricia Albere: Even if you're doing it at a high level of going on vacations and getting another fabulous car, or something else, it becomes kind of on a survival level and the relatedness is not very awake and expanded, and there aren't tons of potentials that are going to show up between you. Patricia Albere: Next level up you would move into safety and security. Most people navigate that in their relationships to feel safe, safe psychologically and physically with each other, and secure and able to trust. Next level up is belonging, a sense of being loved. Some relationships never get beyond sort of like third level up which is just that just to be loved and to feel like you have a sense of belonging, you belong to one another, is the scope and the territory of the level of relatedness which is also important and wonderful, but it isn't on the edge of evolution. Patricia Albere: Evolution is always pushing into the newness into what's possible for human beings. An evolutionary relationship is like where our human potentials and possibilities are evolving into, moving into. As you move up the scale, I went through the whole thing, but on that higher levels, there's the two higher levels, one is called actualization. You can be with a partner where you experience empowering one another to really actualize your potentials to both be successful in the world, to make a difference or whatever it is that you have a value for in that way, and to love each other from more of a place of abundance rather than need. Patricia Albere: Instead of just "I need this" or "I need a relationship for the various things", you start to feel like an overflow, like you actually have a lot to give and you can give to one another. Neil Sattin: Right. In our first conversation we talked about how in that kind of relationship you can even be taking a stand for each other, like, "I'm taking a stand for you being the best you could possibly be." Patricia Albere: Yes, definitely. I think a lot of the current things, you know, the courses and conversations, and the things that you can do are very much about empowering that sense of actualization where you have two independent human beings who are self-authoring. They're trying to really fulfill themselves, their higher purpose, their sense of self, their interior sense of self, and that you have two people loving each other from being more actualized whether it's in the world or also in your own consciousness and development. Patricia Albere: The evolutionary relationship is taking it a step further which is something that not everybody needs to do but some of us need to. If evolution is going to continue to move, the thing that is worth knowing is that it isn't just about relationship, evolution itself is happening through human consciousness and human relationship at this point. We aren't creating new creatures, in fact we're eliminating many of them. Patricia Albere: Evolution isn't fooling around with "how do we have new species", where it's interested, where the push is in the entire movement of billions of years of evolution is human consciousness is where it's happening. Where it's happening in human consciousness is no longer with just people's individual consciousness, that's been being worked with for the last few thousand years. Individual enlightenment, personal transformation, individual salvation through like religion and stuff has been - Neil Sattin: Right, that's old news. Patricia Albere: Kind of. The way I see it, that's been going on. We've been doing that for a few thousand years, somewhat, I guess okay, and we're failing in a lot of it, but that's not new. Science is pointing to that we're not separate objects, that actually the only thing that's real is exchanging. There's no there there, there's no atom. We think there's little billiard balls that we're made of. When they go down to the root of the root of what's there, they don't find anything, what they find is exchange. These little balls of exchanging energies. If you want to translate that, that is relating. What that is, is relationship and relating. Patricia Albere: Ultimately, all there is, is relating on the most fundamental levels, and the way that humans can begin to push the consciousness, awaken to and begin to be a part of, being able to manage the kind of consciousness that we need to start to get access to, kind of like atomic fusion, is what is the space between us, what is actually happening in the space between humans and how can we lean into and become awake to, and sensitive to reality together. Neil Sattin: I'm curious to know a couple of things, one is do you recall when you first became aware that that was what was happening? That there was this space between a shared consciousness that was where evolution was taking us. Was there like an "aha" moment for you around that? Patricia Albere: Yes. I didn't know about the evolutionary part until later, but my path has always been I'm like taken into experiences and then 10 years later I understand what happened. I guess I'm mystic at heart, I'm willing to not know. I'm sure I probably shared a bit of it on the first conversation that we had, but it happened in a relationship. There was a man named Peter who was a beautiful German mystic, and we fell in love and came together. His obsession for awakening and for enlightenment was from the moment he woke up all the way through his sleep. He never was interested in anything other than that and he never stopped paying attention to awakening, to consciousness, to being fully present in every moment. He was pretty obsessed. Patricia Albere: For me, I had had a background of working with thousands of people and I think my heart, my ability to love was very developed. I had a childhood that ... A great mom. My heart was very available. When we came together and I am convinced that he is my twin soul, it was one of those things that you couldn't not recognize and you couldn't not be in. The magnet that pulls us together was not ... There was no choice, it was choiceless. Patricia Albere: Our being together, what happened was was as we said yes to one another and we were so focused on each other and the space that was happening between us, and with his meditative consciousness and my capacity and attunement to love and the energies and what's going on there, and then just the way we felt about each other, we were so made one, and 24/7 we were always aware of what was happening. There was never a moment where he was unaware of what was happening with me, what was happening with us and vice versa. We never were separate, we never went in to like, "I'm just me over here, and he is just him over there, and I don't really know what's going on." Patricia Albere: Most relationships, if people look are pretty separate. There's times of relating, it's always sort of there, but a lot of the time we're functioning on two separate tracks a lot. Especially in that actualized level, you're very focused on your own separate track even though you love each other and you're supporting each other. This was being what I call interpenetrated, like we were completely inside each other and inside of this relatedness that we were together. Patricia Albere: I had four years of that before he was in a car accident, and he was brain injured, then eventually he died. I was in something where we were opening and being taken somewhere. Evolution was definitely having a field day with us. I felt it, I felt like I'd look at him sometimes like we'd make love or something would happen and I would look at him and I'd go, "Oh my god." I felt like love itself had just gone some place where it had never been before. Patricia Albere: Sometimes it felt more like it was just beautiful, and full and amazing, but there were times where I could actually feel the newness of existence finding new pathways because we were so available. Just like if you were two great tennis players, like if you're two genius tennis players, sometimes tennis goes some place where tennis has never been before. It was pretty exciting to have that in the level of relatedness. Patricia Albere: For me when I later found out many years later about evolution and about the edge of evolution, and about consciousness, I could see that what I had experienced with him was part of the future of where we were headed. Where not just couples were headed, but that the multiple beloved. There is a way to be connected that has that mystical dimension, that has our divinity being evoked as much as even more than just our humanity and our limitations. That's pretty exciting. Neil Sattin: Yes. When I hear that what I am brought to is thinking about the capacity that we have to experience the miracle of life, the blessing of interrelatedness to bring that into even just our simple day-to-day interactions which brings a quality of aliveness that once you experience it I think it's challenging to be like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna go back to paying the bills and pretending this doesn't exist." Patricia Albere: It's true. There's even a more, to me, kind of exciting opportunity in all of it for those of us who are drawn to love, drawn to pay attention to relatedness as you are, as we are, and I'm sure the people that are obviously listening to this. The thing that's so exciting that I didn't know when I was with Peter was the quality of the consciousness that we were developing was different than nondual consciousness. Those people who have done a lot of meditation and a lot of work in nondual quality of consciousness which is usually what people consider being enlightened or awake. Patricia Albere: It's completely different than that. There's actually a new kind of consciousness that's absolutely enlightened but it's not that. When they do brain studies they can actually see that when you're meditating which is by yourself with your eyes closed in silence, you are learning how to let go of thinking, you're learning how to move into a certain state where they find that the mind when they measure it, you're letting go of your particular relationship to the world. You go into a deep state of relaxation and the brain goes into a certain place. Patricia Albere: When you're doing the kind of practices that we're doing, that I'm practicing and working with people where it's like super focus with the other, with the space between, your brain goes into this amazingly other place, it ignites different lobes and parietal. I don't remember the names of all of it but it activates your brain in such a way that it goes into a place of flow, it goes into a place of like joy and positive love, like different kinds of experiences and energies that lift people. Lift their mood and lift their stabilization there, and it also allows them to be incredibly engaged in the world. Patricia Albere: Like you're in contact with this kind of intimacy, and love and care for the trees, for your kids. The feeling of intimacy, like everything is touching everything, like you feel like you're inside your cat when your petting their fur, like you're both the fur and the cat. It makes sense because ultimately with love or lovers, people that have studied tantra, you experience your lover, you're like inside them experiencing their experience, your experience and then something else simultaneously. This consciousness is that. Patricia Albere: I think it's way more attuned to eyes open, moving around in this world, and it is what is necessary. It's a kind of flow state rather than just being in yourself, focused on your higher purpose, focused on how you feel, grounded in your body. All of that is good but it's so separate, and it's not like, "You know, as long I am completely focused on my own subjective experience, and how I feel, and how I'm moving, and what I want and where I'm headed and all the rest of it", I'm not all of that related. Patricia Albere: That makes a certain kind of flow not possible, it also makes the fact that 7.5 billion people right now moving towards 10 billion in 2050, to me, evolution is not that interested in everyone individually really knowing themselves only, it's not going to really work. Neil Sattin: It's going to be a lot of life coaches. Patricia Albere: Oh my god, we're going to have a problem. We need to learn how to be like those sports teams, and the people that, well we see them become like one organism, and then spectacularly empowered to be individuals within it. Like the way basketball team that's really got that oneness, all the team members are like knocking it out of the park but they're not operating individually, there's this oneness of the way that they're flowing and moving together that's tastable. My work is about ... We've hacked into how do you bring people into that level of consciousness and relatedness without having to have like a basketball or a violin. Neil Sattin: There are two places I want to go right now, one is giving you listening a taste of what we're talking about, like how this actually happens, and then there's the question that's in my mind around like how do you know if a certain person that you're interacting with, how do you know if this evolutionary potential is there between the two of you? Patricia Albere: Interesting. The first thing would be, as we've talked about, people can download a couple of chapters of the book in evolutionarycollective.com. You personally need to first go, "What is she talking about? And who am I in relationship to this?" If it starts to make more and more sense, if you feel like you're a candidate or maybe you're quoted for this edge of evolution, to understand more about it and to begin to experience it for yourself. Patricia Albere: There are ways that we take people into the practice. There are certain practices like meditation that give you a very powerful experience of being in this consciousness with another human being who's also interested in being the consciousness with you, because you need two people that are mutually interested which is one of the great things and it's one of the problems because you can't do it by yourself. You can't just do it with anybody. If you have somebody sitting across from you who's kind of going, "I don't really wanna do this and I don't really wanna be here", it's not going to work. Patricia Albere: The first thing is find out for yourself, then from there ... You read the book together, you could start to do the practices, you could then begin to invite someone into like, "Would you be willing to experiment with me and see, and see what happens for us?", like you and your wife, and start to see if something begins to open in a way that is compelling for both of you. Neil Sattin: Actually you were just mentioning talking about the brain activity that might be involved in this kinds of practice. We just released an interview with Alex Katehakis who, she focuses mainly on addiction, and sex, and love addiction, and the power of relatedness in healing the pathways that went offline and that created an opportunity for addiction to emerge in a person. I can imagine this practice will have an enormous healing potential for connection, like if you're in a place that feels really disconnected from your partner if you can invite them into it in a way where they feel like, "Yeah, I'm willing to give that a whirl." Neil Sattin: The kind of presence with each other that we're talking about, and we'll get a little bit more into that I think, offers a healing experience when you're bringing those parts of your brain back online. This is total speculation, but it must be that when you set up that kind of resonance that's what allows this shared consciousness to happen. Patricia Albere: Yes, definitely. It was so amazing. I just came from teaching for like almost eight days or nine days which isn't usual, I mean normally I have some breaks in between. We have the people that are very, very interested in what can happen between people who are really inside this way of practicing and want to work together instead on their personal work. We have 100 people who are doing these kinds of practices with each other and just spent five days together in a retreat. Patricia Albere: They're practicing all year long and we meet a couple of times a year, so we're building this quality of the beloved, of this amazing ridiculous-like levels of our nervous systems getting hooked up. What you're saying is, like the people that understand attachment theory and the various kinds of ways in which people develop, this is first of all like when people are inside of something that's large like that and the level of connectedness is so absolute, the pathways around not having had healthy attachment, and not being able to trust, and not being able to relax literally start getting handled without even paying attention to it. Patricia Albere: So you're not actually processing that stuff, you're actually in a larger nervous system that's already stabilizing and harmonizing and regulating you which is crazy powerful as far as healing people. We're not doing it for that reason but that is happening. The other thing ... One of the most exciting things that's happened at least up until this week, the group is from all over, everybody came. There are people from Japan, and Australia, and Europe, and New York, and Vermont, and California. Patricia Albere: We were all together and we've all been working together for anywhere as from one to eight years, there are people that have been in that. What started to happen, we were all together is you know how like when you're working with someone, and consciousness-wise, they can all of a sudden shift their consciousness and become totally silent or totally focused, or they could drop into a certain kind of depth reliably? You can just point the there and they go, "Whop", and they kind of go there. Patricia Albere: Our collective being, because it actually feels like something that's bigger than us, literally has new skills. It was amazing. We could be in this powerful sense of unification, and focus and depth of love, and then if I said something you could tell if somebody started to think, there was a tiny bit of fragmentation, I could just point to it and it would just be like, "Woo." Patricia Albere: The level of unity. One of the women shared this morning, we had a call earlier, she said she's always felt like a little bit afraid to speak up for herself in certain situations that are challenging. She always thought she should and blah, blah, blah, and she said there is something that is so powerfully in her now that she can't not. Almost like something was, some strength was placed - in her level of not being alone, her level of this consciousness connection that we have, she's standing on something that she never stood on before and it's changing her behavior. Which is kind of cool! Neil Sattin: Yes, very cool. Bringing that back to the context of romantic relationship, it's very common that the battles that emerge are around actually fighting for connection, fighting to prove that you're not alone, and it can feel like you're really alone. Again, I can just imagine how creating a backdrop of connectedness has such a powerful impact on the level of trust in relationship as one example. Patricia Albere: Yes. Part of what the practices are, I mean there is a main one but there are some different things, is where you learn to make the connection is not on the surface, it's not on the personality level, it's not even on that subtle connection level where you're feeling your heart, and there's like a deeper place that people usually are trained to connect from. We're actually moving it from the subtle to this causal dimension which is the deepest origination point of that particular human being and yourself. Patricia Albere: When I can work with people I can get them to drop into this place, and from that place you're not solid. You're like this opening of who you are that's very particular but it's not a solid object, it's like what the scientists are saying - you're like this space of potential as Neil. When you and I connect from that deepest opening that you are, and you can see into the deepest place of where I am, and we literally start to connect from there, two spaces could connect, two fragrances can connect, two stones can't. Things that are solid can't actually interpenetrate. Patricia Albere: When you start to build that level of the we, like you literally become a new kind of wine. Your grape and my grape, we become Merlot. When you're deepening and deepening into that, now does it mean that your personality and the crazy things that drive each other crazy go away? No. We still have separatenesses that are still going to operate but we have that to ... That becomes louder and louder and a place to return to and stand on. So that when you're dealing with the things that are different and challenging, you don't lose each other, you do it from being connected instead of separate. Patricia Albere: Most arguments are completely separate. That's why people love having fights and making love because when you make love and you all of a sudden go, "Oh, it's you, it's me. You know, I remember you. You know, you don't look like the evil guy who's making me crazy." You go back to that place where the real connection is, and we have a very sophisticated but powerful way to just have humans find that, nurture that, deepen that because that's also where divinity arises from. Patricia Albere: We include our human limitations and failings, but there's some source that I know Peter and I found where I felt myself as more beautiful, and more powerful. It was like I was almost witnessing her as he was. It was like some way of me being myself that I had never experienced nor had I ever been received in that way. My work is really devoted to deepening that for people, exploring that not as a spiritual bypass kind of thing but as making that louder and louder, and clearer, and more rich and substantial so that the other levels of us are kind of put more in their place. They're not everything. Neil Sattin: Yes. We have had Jett Psaris on the show, one of the authors of Undefended Love, I'm not sure if her conversation will have aired by the time. We may do this one first. One of the places that she comes from, I'm not sure if you're familiar with her work at all is basically getting couples to the place where they're able to be totally open and vulnerable with each other. Neil Sattin: When we're young we start out from a place like that and then we end up suffering some wound or something happens that creates a crack in the veneer of everything being one and perfect which gives us a really hard emotional internal experience. From that our personality emerges which she talks about as basically all of our ego structures that are about protecting us from the experience, from what we're afraid will happen if we're that vulnerable again. Neil Sattin: Her practice is a lot about going inwards when you feel that fear happening, that closing happening. I love that this is almost like the equal and opposite approach to very similar way of getting at the essential self. Like what is there beneath the veneer of personality. Patricia Albere: Yes. It's interesting because as you're speaking I'm realizing the direct access to the core which actually is findable  - interestingly -  I don't know why but it's almost like giving people ... Like if you're doing remote viewing and you give them coordinates. The coordinate of finding this deepest place in oneself is actually findable even though people think they can't, they find it. Neil Sattin: Is that something we could talk about now? Patricia Albere: I'm just saying when you find that and you deepen into that then when stuff comes up there's a way in the way that we practice where we turn towards whatever is there together. If I'm feeling defended, I'm feeling hard like cardboard, and I'm sensing into like the phenomenological reality of feeling separate. That would happen with Peter, sometimes we'd go, "Wow, it feels really flat." We'd go, "Yeah, it does, doesn't it?" we were like kids, like we were so curious about whatever was there, we didn't have like a certain kind of preference that it had to be always profound or deep. Patricia Albere: Whatever was there, we were like we wanted to be close to that, and we wanted to be close together with it. When you turn that way towards whatever is there even if it's a weird defensive thing, it seems to unravel, it tends to show itself without you trying to do anything, and it tends to, in my experience, the power of things dissolving in the face of "the two" being with it instead of it's just my process and and it's my stuff. It's exciting because it moves very quickly and it feels different when you're not just by yourself working on your stuff. Neil Sattin: Yes. It feels to me like there's alchemy in the space. Patricia Albere: Yes, that's a good way of saying it, interesting. Yes, definitely. Part of what I'm excited about too, I mean I've worked for 40 years with people with their individual work, and I love people, and I've always been committed to people being able to express their highest, deepest selves and why they're here. For the people who are able to not make it all about them and want to explore the edges of where evolutionary relationships could go and what's possible together, what I find is that the kind of activation and healing, and empowering people to move forward is just a hundred times more powerful, and it makes sense. Patricia Albere: If I was creating the universe, instead of having everybody selfishly working on themselves individually forever as the fastest mode, that wouldn't make sense. It makes sense that if we somehow find a way to come together that everything goes faster, that we're rewarded for that makes sense to me. Neil Sattin: Yes. Patricia Albere: It's more efficient, it's kind of like I can't build a house by myself, if we're like a hundred people we can do it. Neil Sattin: Honestly, I'm also thinking about the power, like in the power of relatedness. I was just reading a book by Deborah Tannen about friendships among women, and it was talking about this girl who, she was on the autism spectrum, and seemingly incurable and getting worse. No amount of therapy, no amount of intervention from a teacher, like nothing was helping, and then she made a friend who actually accepted her. I think they connected around horses or something like that, and did this amazing turnaround where she went from being completely shut down to being open, socially engaged. Neil Sattin: It was like the power of healing that was there in the relatedness versus trying to fix something, or cure something. Patricia Albere: That's so beautiful. Here's another thing I'll throw in that you'll probably appreciate. I don't know if everyone will appreciate this. In this evolutionary piece, when you think about evolution there are jumps to evolution. We went from nothing to matter, so there was geosphere, there was just this dead planet here, and then from a dead planet life showed up which is kind of crazy, like how did that happen. There are jumps that just are completely miraculous. From dead matter to life, and then from life, from single celled creatures, we have Einstein, we have geniuses and human beings, and plants, and birds and everything come to life, and then humans with consciousness which is just a miracle. Patricia Albere: From humans, we have what he calls the thinking layer. Teilhard de Chardin called that the noosphere , he said we go from the biosphere which is life and human life, to the thinking layer which is the noosphere which is all of culture, and language, and art, and philosophy, and psychology, everything that you're talking about on your show, and love. All of that he called the noosphere, and you can see it in the internet, you can see the physicality of this noosphere, hooking up, hooking up, hooking up, so that we have omnsicience. We can know anything anytime, we can contact each other. Patricia Albere: If the aliens land outside my house like in the next five minutes, if I captured it on my phone, the whole world will know in about 10 minutes. If it was real, but it was compelling enough, billions of people would be focused on the same image and the same words in a heartbeat. It is unbelievable. That didn't even exist 10 years ago, and we are hooking up, hooking up, hooking up, right? People have it on their phones. Patricia Albere: The noosphere was the next layer that evolution was innovating and is obviously pretty excited about. The next one is what I'm going to call the spondic sphere. Spondic love, the term is this experience of I am, may you be. In the way that we practice there's this experience of love, and when you love someone, it comes from some place that's deeper than your personality loving them. There's almost like this cosmic energy that wants to just go, "Ha, I want you to have everything. You know, like I love you, I love you." You just want to imbue them with everything. We feel that for our children. Sometimes our heart bursts into this kind of empowerment that is deeper than just human love. Patricia Albere: You can feel it when you're on the other end of spondic love, it is palpable, you actually feel like part of your life just got made because this person loves you from a place that they're in and for you in a way that's real. This mutual spondic love which is also part of the consciousness that we're working with and the consciousness that I think is next, I think that the next place of innovation will be that kind of love where we, instead of being separate, instead of not being even neutral towards each other and just surviving on our own, or competing or actively using each other and stomping on each other. Patricia Albere: This spondic quality of love and connectivity will be the foundation for a ridiculous amount of miracles, innovation, creativity, coming together, working together, doing things that can't be done, et cetera, et cetera, that's going to be the next explosion of where evolution is going to be working. Neil Sattin: I'm going to ask a hard question here which is what's the place of monogamous relationships in the birthing of this interconnectedness and this evolutionary consciousness. Patricia Albere: I think when you are in fact with your twin soul, it doesn't happen a lot, but when it happens, there is nowhere to go, there really isn't. Even if they ended up marrying someone else they are yours. You are so one and there is nowhere you want to be. The kind of sexuality, the kind of love and the depth that's shared, there's no desire for anyone else because the newness of love, and the depth, and the profundity of what's there is just crazy unfolding between you. You'd have to be crazy to want to actually go and try to be with someone that you didn't have that with. Maybe you eat the best food in the world and then you decide to go have a- Neil Sattin: Have a burger. Patricia Albere: McDonald's hamburger. I don't know why did I even want to do that. Neil Sattin: It's just interesting because it sounds like the experience, because we're talking about being able to evoke this kind of consciousness in an exercise with a partner, and yet it is creating the experience of deep, deep love and interconnectedness. Patricia Albere: There is still a discernment. The thing that I find with the groups of people is, what happens is because everyone is so starving for being seen for any kind of real depth and relatedness, the moment someone sees you deeply you think you want to have sex with them or that you love them. It's so pathetic, I mean we're so starving as humans, and it's nobody's fault. We live in a world of separation. People don't look at each other, we literally live in so much separation and isolation that we don't even realize that it doesn't have to be normal. Patricia Albere: What happen is is like in the people that I'm working with intensively, I remember two people and they're both married to other people, they did a practice and they went somewhere, and they both came out and you look at them and you were like, "Whoa, what just happened?" They've gone to a level of love and depth that they didn't ever even experience with their partners. Patricia Albere: Initially they were kind of like, "I don't know, you know, what do I do with that?" It was a man and a woman, and I just said keep allowing it, keep holding, and then more of that started to happen in the group. Part of what comes through then as you begin to create these deeper connections and you're being so nourished and so seen and you realize how abundant that is, you can then bring that to your partner. You don't have to go being, what do they call it, polyamorous. Patricia Albere: Polyamory is a lot of work, to try to juggle. You have to have no life I think. To navigate one relationship is hard enough as you know, if you're trying to navigate with depth, and with openness, and transparency and honesty, two relationships or more, that takes a ridiculous amount of real energy and work. I respect it, I think that there is some newness, something that's opening there and people are learning and growing within that, so I'm not condemning that, I'm just saying I don't think that ultimately that's where we're headed, not at all. Because you can experience profound connection without having to have sex with everybody. Neil Sattin: Thank you. Patricia Albere: You're welcome. Neil Sattin: This really makes me want to dive in to some of your activating principles. Neil Sattin: Great. Patricia, like I mentioned in our first episode together, we talked about the mutual awakening practice. Could you give us just a quick like 30 second rundown. If you're going to try it with your partner, this is how you try it. Then we can talk about some of the principles that make it so unique in terms of your approach and how to really deepen in that experience. Patricia Albere: I honestly, I can't do a 10-minute version of how to do it, I can't because it wouldn't really help and if people tried to do it from there it wouldn't work anyway. You need to know enough of where to come from, you need to take the time because otherwise ... People do it from the superficial level of self, it's pointless, it wouldn't do anything. Again, if they just go to evolutionarycollective.com and they at least download the first three chapters that will start them on their way. If they listen to the other interview that we did that will help as well. If they're genuinely curious, they're going to need to invest some time and energy in actually discovering what this is and how it works for real. Patricia Albere: The activating principles which are in the book, the chapters in the book are basically mostly dedicated to not only how to do it but then how do you turn it on, how do you continue ... If you were to do it with your wife you would start to learn how to do it and then you could take a chapter and work with that for awhile to open it, to make it even more full, and to continue to work through the pieces. Patricia Albere: One of them is engagement. It's simple but when your turns towards each other, to really recognize how fully engaged are you and how much more can you open and give yourself into the connection. If people just think about that for a moment, the next time they listen to their small child...how engaged are you? Are you just sort of passively listening, being polite, being a good parent and hoping that it won't take too long, or do you actually go over where their enthusiasm is, get inside their little six-year-old consciousness, try to really enter into them and engage fully in what it is that they're actually experiencing? That's one of them. Patricia Albere: In life, you don't have to know how the practice works, to just pay attention to the engagement not as someone as separate but can you get inside them, can you be inside their world and then connect. That turns something on. When people are, when you're inside their world with them and then getting engaged, something happens that's different than if you're just listening from over where you are. Neil Sattin: Can you talk about how that interacts with the next activating principle of commitment in terms of your committedness to staying inside as you work through whatever comes up. Patricia Albere: That's a little bit bigger. If you created an evolutionary relationship, if you are practicing with each other, if you're entering into this interpenetrated consciousness, consciousness where instead of ... Most people have a subjective experience where "I feel this", and if I'm vulnerable I'll let you in on how I feel, I'll share it with you and you compassionately listen and usually relate to it from yourself - from the way you feel like that - which is still we're very separate. Patricia Albere: Interpenetrating is where you learn how to place your consciousness. This is like against all the boundary stuff, but you actually go inside and you feel the other as they feel themselves. You feel me as I actually feel myself. There's a way that I guide people into how do you actually do that. When that level of relatedness is being developed and built, from there and from a commitment to each other, then the committed-ness make sense. Patricia Albere: Like if something happens or if you do something that's driving me crazy, instead of me working it out in my head by myself and then announcing to you how I'm going to deal with it, or announcing to you that I'm leaving you, I'll let you know what I worked out for myself. I stay inside with you and I share with you, and we kind of go in together into what the resistance is, what the concern is. We do it from being inside the commitment to each other, and to the relationship, and to the experience that's actually there. I don't do it as a separate something. Does that makes sense to you? Neil Sattin: Yes. What you're committing to is that you're involved in a process that you're co-creating, and so the act of going off on your own to figure something out is a step away from what could emerge if you gave that thing to the process that you're in. Patricia Albere: Yes, right, and that we'll share it. It doesn't mean anyone is going to be perfect, it doesn't mean that we won't disturb each other in different ways, but that we bring it forth, and we bring it in, and we bring it towards, instead of that it's a function of separation. When you have that spondic relationship too, when you activate that in and for each other, that also makes it a lot safer. Neil Sattin: Then you can actually be invested in the truth without it being something that's about separating. Patricia Albere: Yes, totally. Neil Sattin: Obviously we won't have time to talk about this whole topic but I didn't want to end this conversation without being able to talk for a moment about trust. I love the way that you articulate the different levels of trust. The level that you call basic trust, how that feeds into the way that we trust each other, and then the generative trust that leads to your trust growing and the expectation of it being potentially a little messy that's included there. Neil Sattin: I'm wondering of you could just explain, because I think what would really be helpful for our listeners is if they could come away from this with a sense of what basic trust is, and then let's see where that takes us as we wrap up this conversation. Patricia Albere: You keep asking me for the one-minute version of something that takes like- Neil Sattin: I'm bad, I know I'm so bad. Patricia Albere: The basic trust is obviously - there's one of the chapters that goes through that, relative trust and generative trust. There's a course that I have online that's in evergreen that people can buy that has two whole sessions dedicated to the basic trust part. To do the very simple version is basic trust is something that we have when we're born, until it's disturbed there's this sense of being connected to the flow of life where we feel like ... It's without thought, it's like things are going to work out. Patricia Albere: If you get fed, you get off, you get a little frustrated and you get fed, and somebody picks you up. Different things are happening without too much frustration, you tend to grow up to be a human being who has some sense of being relaxed in life. Even if something is hard that's happening, you kind of sense that it's going to work out or you're going to figure out a way through it. Patricia Albere: The people that have basic trust interfered with, they constantly are not getting what they need, they tense up and their egos are wired to try to make it all happen themselves. Ultimately, when basic trust is restored, you relax and life unfolds. Actually, faith, true faith, the kind that saints have, is basic trust restored, and that's full relaxation. You actually feel utterly okay being in the world that even when things don't go well. Patricia Albere: It's unbelievably important, it shapes your relationship to absolutely everything, and it's one of those concepts that when you find out about it and you begin to work with it, it can change your whole life. It's super important. Obviously with the hundred people, that is what is partly being restored. Neil Sattin: Right. That feeds into, if you can operate from that place then it makes that that much easier to have relative trust which you talk about as the way that two people learn to trust each other based on their agreements, and their humility, and their expectations. Again in your book, Evolutionary Relationships, it's such a compelling read because for one thing, it's not like an entire book about trust, but it also distills it in such a way that I think makes it really real and practical for you to examine. Neil Sattin: This is an area like for instance, "my relationship has tons of trust based on our commitment, but we don't actually have the capacity to communicate in order to keep our trust intact", and so we have to increase our capacities. I love how you do that. What I love too is how it evolves to this generative trust and I think this is one of the hardest things in relationship because people expect like, "Oh, we're going for it and we're really deep and we're connecting, and we're interpenetrating with each other, then all of our problems are gonna go away." Patricia Albere: Yes, not so. Neil Sattin: How did that emerge for you, that concept of generative trust and why that's so important. Patricia Albere: Having worked with people forever and just having been in relationship, I mean the clarity around that was just given. Because you have to manage all of it. The relative trust is also important. If you have somebody who never keeps their word no matter how deep the connection is, you're not going to trust them and you shouldn't because they're not trustable. Neil Sattin: Right, or if they don't have the humility to be open to influence. Patricia Albere: Absolutely. People have to also take responsibility for having character, and I think that in some of the post-modern work everybody's working and dealing with their limitations. We get to a point where we just assume everyone is doing the best they can, and people are following the flow. They are following their subjective experience individually, but they're not taking responsibility for being related and actually showing up and having character, and dealing with the impact of a certain lack of integrity in certain ways. That definitely gets addressed in the book. Neil Sattin: Yes. It's funny that there are people like Dale Carnegie who write on and on, and on about how to become trustworthy, how to be someone that other people will turn to for influence. You sum it up pretty well in one chapter. Patricia Albere: Cool, thanks. Neil Sattin: Well, Patricia Albere, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today on Relationship Alive to dive more deeply into the question of what makes an evolutionary relationship, what's possible. Again, you can visit her website, evolutionarycollective.com where you can download the first three chapters of Patricia's book, Evolutionary Relationships, and also find out more about her work and her trainings. We will have links to Patricia's book and website in the detailed transcript and action guide for this episode which you can get at neilsattin.com/patricia2, or you can text the work PASSION to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Neil Sattin: Like I said, our first episode together, episode six, we do talk a little bit more about the actual mutual awakening process and I encourage you to check out that episode that we did together as well. In the mean time, thank you so much for joining us, Patricia. Is there anything else? Maybe you could just mention you do in person intensives where people can come and learn this. Patricia Albere: Yes. People that are intrigued by the possibility of being with a cohort of other human beings that are really interested in this quality of relationship, there will be a three-day in New York in April, the 13th through the 15th, we only do those twice a year, it's kind of special. If they sign up for the book, they'll have access to knowing what's happening and then people can, from the menu of what's there, see if something serves them. Thank you and thank you Neil, you do such a good job with this and with bringing just a myriad of ways to empower people with relatedness which I really respect. Neil Sattin: Thank you, I appreciate your saying that. Resources: Check out Patricia Albere's website Read Patricia’s new book, Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Power of Mutual Awakening FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide www.neilsattin.com/patricia2 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Patricia Albere Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out    

Let’s get practical for a moment. You’ve heard about the importance of courage and vulnerability in taking your relationship to the next level. How do you do that in a way that actually makes you stronger? How do you truly overcome feeling like a victim - in your life and relationship? How can you literally become a “yes” to everything - the painful moments as well as the joyful moments - to create new levels of spark and connection in your relationship? In today’s episode, you’re going to learn a way of showing up that helps you face your fears and heal the patterns that no longer serve you, no matter what's going on in your relationship. Our guest is Jett Psaris, co-author of the book Undefended Love, and her work clearly illuminates the path to wholeness, healing, and deep authenticity - especially in relationship. I’ve been excited to speak with Jett Psaris ever since the beginning days of the Relationship Alive podcast - and it was well worth the wait. Plus as an added bonus, you’ll get to hear us sing the “Namaste” chant together at the end of our conversation! As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources: Check out Jett Psaris's website Read Jett’s book Undefended Love and check out her new book Hidden Blessings: Midlife Crisis As a Spiritual Awakening www.neilsattin.com/undefended Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Jett Psaris Amazing intro/outro music (not including the Namaste chant) graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. How do you take your relationship to a totally new level where you actually transform, where you get past the things that hold you back, that keep you from shining your brightest? And that keep you from supporting your partner in doing the same? We've talked a lot on this show about how to evolve into a relationship that creates deep safety, and trust and respect, so that you can be fully in the moment with your partner. And yet, even then, some of us feel like, well, maybe there's something more or maybe there's like, "I'm disconnected from this place within me and I'm not quite sure how to get there. I've heard about relationship as a vehicle for transformation, and I could really use some help doing the transforming and knowing what that process is like." Neil Sattin: Well, on today's show, we are going to dive deep into the black hole of transformation with Jett Psaris, who is one of the co-authors along with Marlena Lyons of the book, "Undefended Love". This book will truly open your eyes as to what is possible. Not only in partnership but also in how you reveal to yourself the ways that you are holding yourself back from being centered in your essence and operating from there. And also, how to bring that kind of clarity into your partnership and to see ways that you can stop defending yourself and instead be undefended, vulnerable, courageous and alive. So with that, we will dive right in. I do want to let you know that we will have a detailed transcript and an action guide for this episode, which you can get by visiting neilsattin.com/undefended. And you can always text the word "Passion" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions to also get a link to this show guide and all the other show guides from Relationship Alive. Neil Sattin: Jett Psaris, so happy to have you here with me today on Relationship Alive. Jett Psaris: And thank you so much for the invitation, I appreciate it. Looking forward to it. Neil Sattin: Great. And it's my pleasure. And just so you know, listening, this is a conversation that actually started a couple of years ago because I knew very early on in the inception of this podcast that I was really hoping to have either Jett or Marlena here on the show to talk about "Undefended Love". So with a little patience and waiting for the timing to feel right, here we are. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: I'm excited. And Jett, I'm wondering if we can start right out by talking about this concept of... We're talking about undefended love, but what is defended love? What is being defended and what are we defending ourselves from? Maybe that's a good place to dive in. Jett Psaris: Yeah, in fact, yes it is. The reason we titled the book "Undefended Love", is really because most people, while they're aware of defensive behaviors and actions like reactions, getting angry, withdrawing, most people are aware that those are defensive but unaware that our entire perspective is born out of a defense. For example, if our orientation or role or sense of self that we adopted as a child was to be super competent, that itself is a defense against feeling not good enough. And so, while we can catch ourselves in defensive behaviors or being triggered or reactive, we seldom know that we're going through each moment of every day oriented around protecting ourselves from an experience we had as children that we could not endure. And so, I often point out that these roles that we play and ways of perspectives that we have taken on, they actually got us to this place in our lives. They helped us survive. But now, if we don't relinquish those roles, self-concepts, worldviews, and emotional coping mechanisms, we don't relinquish them - then it's a little bit like an acorn husk, if it doesn't give way, the seed possibility for who we can be, ourselves and in relationship, will never be realized. So undefended, undefended love, is the work of recognizing and dismantling those defense structures which will then dismantle, and the defensive reactions and behaviors will no longer be necessary. And I love the way you did this introduction, it was very subtle, but I want to point it out to listeners. The introduction that you gave, Neil, is you very subtly wove in that the starting place is with ourselves. The starting place is not getting the other to be different. The starting place is that relationship and love call us to a profound inner transformation. After which, we can relate to others in an undefended, or in a non-provisional way. So that's our starting point. Neil Sattin: So many places that we can go from there. I'm curious... Well actually, maybe a good place to go from here is... A lot of people were asking me, "What can you tell me about 'Undefended Love'?" They were like, "What are you reading now for your upcoming interview?" And I was like, "Alright, well basically, when you're growing up, things happen that lead you to form erroneous conclusions about yourself which you call the cracked identity." And it's this sense, and it can be distilled often down to simple statements like, I'm not lovable, or, I'm not worthy, or I'm not valuable, or I'm always wrong. I think those identities, they're not things that are there all the time for us, but from that come our personalities. And one thing that I loved about what you wrote about was how you showed that the personality - things like being a really generous person - are actually there to help us avoid feeling the pain of this underlying cracked identity. Jett Psaris: Exactly, right. Yeah, what you're speaking about here is there are two main layers to our identities, self-concepts or what we created in order to manage our childhood. And the one, the deepest one, the one that is the most gnarly are these self-concepts that are deficient. And it's very interesting to me that the way these are born. I'll give you an example, is, let's say that your dad comes home from work. He's had a rough day at work. You're five years old, you're just excited to see him. And so, you run up to him and he pushes you away, tells you to give him space, not now. And so, here you're wide open, your arms are out literally, you're reaching for the person you love the most in the world, and you experience a physical punch; it feels somatic when he says, "No, go away." Jett Psaris: And so, then the child is left with a dilemma. How do I make my world make sense? And so, what they do is they actually do a kind of translation and say, "I must have been too much in that moment." And so, that's the birth of a self-concept as deficient. "I am too much." And then what they do is they create a compensation to manage themselves. "Since I'm too much, I need to control, contain, suppress, repress my natural emotions, exuberance, actions." And so now, we're beginning to build this self-concept of being restrained, that's the compensation. But that's built on top of, "I'm too much." And so, we do that basically... This is the most important part for me. We create that in order to maintain our relationship like this child in the example with his father. He wants to stay in a relationship with his father, so in order to not make the father wrong for his impatience and anger, the child makes himself wrong and says, "I'm too much." Jett Psaris: And so, you see the impulse is to maintain the relationship. But the way we maintain that, psychologically, produces a self-concept that we just build on over, and over, and over again. And maybe later in the show, we'll talk about how we do that in partnership, how we maintain that entire mistake. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And with that, I thought another great example that you offer in the book is just because you might be listening and thinking, "Well I'm not shut down. I'm a really generous, giving person, full of exuberance. So this probably doesn't apply to me." So what would you say to that person? Jett Psaris: Well, I think there is a case study in this book, I'm not sure if it's this one, or the next one, where a minister saw himself as... His self concept, he was generous, and probably everybody he knew would consider him to be generous except his wife actually. And so, I said, "Well, tell me what happens with your wife if your generosity isn't appreciated." And he said, "Well, actually, I get angry with her and I withdraw." And I said, "Uh. Well, essential generosity has no strings attached. So because you are committed and attached to being seen as a generous person, that's where we have the clue that that is something you developed, and that you are reinforcing because if it doesn't get reinforced from your wife, you actually separate; you sever the relationship, you punish her or you withdraw in some feelings of reactive hurt." Jett Psaris: And so, that's where we begin to see that. We're not actually working purely with essential generosity here. But I want to hasten to mention that we cannot develop a concept of generosity unless we have that essential quality. So the truth is, he does have that essential quality and it's apparent if you sit with him for a number of minutes, you can see that he has that essential quality, but especially with his wife, it also has become a compensatory identity. That has become an obstacle in their relationship because he is more focused on being seen as generous than making authentic contact in a given moment. I just want to mention one more thing about this just coming to me, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Neil Sattin: Sure. No, go ahead. Jett Psaris: Is that the other thing about this is that when he is giving to his wife and she receives that, it's actually not enough. So there's a little backside here, it's a nuance, but he is more attached to a constant stream of validation, and if that stream is broken, then we begin to see the cracked identity underneath that compensation. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Can you chat a little about how that compensatory identity, so you'd think, "Okay, I'm great. I suffered under my parents. I became... I learned how to hold myself back a little bit", or "I learned how to be really generous." But at the same time, these compensatory strategies, they actually perpetuate that underlying belief as well. Jett Psaris: That's exactly right. It's very rarely understood that if our emotional survival strategy is to seek approval, every time we seek approval, we reinforce our deficient identity as not good enough, or not smart enough, or not generous enough. So it's like we're putting coats and coats of paint on that deficient identity and we keep... It's a little bit like an addiction. We keep having to fill that hole, H-O-L-E of deficit. "I'm not good enough so I need to constantly hear from you and everyone around you that in fact I am." So it actually does the opposite. The approval just gets us by for that moment, but it never is going to fill that hole. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and so let's make the leap, at least in this moment that the way that we typically find ourselves in relationship is driven by some aspect of this personality, the compensatory strategy. Jett Psaris: That's right. That's right. A good question and if we take this into a little bit more concrete example is, if you ask yourself, what experience am I trying to get in this moment with my partner, or what experience am I trying to avoid in this moment with my partner? Then you will begin to see the workings of the compensatory and the cracked identity, because authentic and essential interactions are never trying to get something and they're never trying to avoid something. Neil Sattin: So yeah, so now I'm wondering, and you're probably wondering if you're listening, where we're headed with all of this 'cause alright, great, you've got this, I have these cracks in my identity and then my personality came up and there are things about it that are great and maybe there are things about it that are not so great. If I'm gonna be delaminating all of these coats of paint that Jett was just talking about, where do I get with that? What possibilities actually open up for me if I'm willing to go through this process? Jett Psaris: Well, the one piece is that we through this process, we develop ourselves into a much larger, we become much larger. And I often use this example of, if you picture a glass of water next to a large pristine blue mountain lake, and where we start this journey really as that glass of water. So if you picture putting maybe a teaspoon of salt into that glass of water and drinking it up, you'll be repulsed. But that same teaspoon of water into that blue mountain lake, that water is just going to be as refreshing as it always was. Jett Psaris: So life delivers us and also of course relationship on a daily basis, things that don't taste good. If we're that glass of water, we're gonna constantly be saying "no" to everything that comes toward us that we believe is going to produce discomfort and displeasure. But as we become that large, blue pristine mountain lake of our beings, all the things that come to us, they become absorbed and refreshed. And we actually become a source of nourishment and refreshment to everyone around us. Jett Psaris: You can see this a little bit with people who have gone through cancer a number of times. The first time they get the diagnosis, they panic, usually reach for whatever treatment is offered, and go into kind of a trance state and just try to survive. The second time, well, they have their medical team together, they know what worked and didn't work. They move a lot more slowly, generally speaking. And they have the ability to recognize that life is continuing, and this recurrence has also come into their lives. But they have much more stamina and capacity to show up for what's happening. Jett Psaris: And the third time, they'll come into my office, and then say, "Well, there's been a third recurrence, and I feel capable of taking the necessary steps, and I also want to talk about what's happening currently in my marriage." And so, the capacity to be with what life offers becomes larger and larger. We're less likely to feel resentment, we're less likely to feel collapse, we're less likely to feel emotionally defensive or reactive. We develop a general "yes" to everything, because we are so large and have already experienced our capacity to show up for life, that we're no longer afraid of life, as we are when we begin this journey. Neil Sattin: So, as you peel back these layers, you get to reveal essential qualities about yourself that are larger, and deeper, and more constant, more resilient. Jett Psaris: Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the capacity, also... Neil Sattin: Go ahead. Jett Psaris: Everyone knows what it feels like to have these essential qualities bubbling up in them. And I often use the example of the first time you fell in love. And if you can remember that, the first time you fell in love, a lot of us will focus on what the other person was like. But if you focus for a moment on what you felt like, that experience of yourself, when you first fell in love, that openness, that joy, that capacity, that willingness, that love and all of that, that's actually the destination of this journey. When we fall in love we glimpse that possibility for who we can be with another, and within ourselves we glimpse that possibility. And then, the hard work of realizing that possibility begins. And so, in short form, the answer to your question is, who you were when you first fell in love, the experience you had of yourself, that's actually the destination of this journey. Neil Sattin: That would make sense. And it's making sense to me on this deep level of, right, of course, I've been summoned by this vision of potential. And then, I think often couples find themselves heeding the call, being summoned and then a year or two or 10 later, totally forgetting what called them into that relationship to begin with. Jett Psaris: Right. Neil Sattin: So what happens when we get stuck? And as I did mention in the intro, which you heard, Jett. A lot of what we've talked about on the show has been about creating safety in relationships, so that people really feel freedom to be vulnerable, to be courageous. And yet, I couldn't help but notice that further along in your book you talk about "REACT", and basically identifying all of these qualities of a safe container. And talking about, how maybe those are great to get you to one place, but then you have to find ways to shed those qualities. Jett Psaris: Yeah, and you need a ratio of what I call closeness and intimacy. The closeness is the safe container you're talking about, that holding environment, where you feel like you can rest in the relationship. And the intimacy really is that transformative edge. So the hallmarks of a close relationship are things like reciprocity and the capacity to make and keep agreements. And those very same things that are capacities in a healthy, close relationship can also prevent intimacy. So for example, yes, while it is wonderful to have a relationship where both of you are doing the work. If you maintain, "I will if you will... " Neil Sattin: I'm working with a couple right now who are very mired in "I will if you will", and that is not gonna move forward. We actually have to have a fidelity to our own unfolding. And assuming there is nothing violent or damaging going on in the relationship, we have to be willing to continue to unfold, and reveal, and tell the truth about what we are experiencing, and explore. We have to be willing to do that even if our partner is not willing to do that, otherwise there is a... What creeps in is an unhealthy dependency where we are requiring the other person to be a certain way in order for us to feel safe. When technically speaking, we don't really need another person to be a certain way in order for us to feel safe. Safety is found in that large lake of our being, or the ocean of our being, it is not found in a temporary ability to manipulate or coerce our partner to show up in a particular way. So we need a balance, we do need someone who is not chronically going to be attacking us but we also need the ability when we experience someone like our partner being critical, we have to have the ability to say, "Okay, what is true about the criticism that you are telling me about?" Instead of, "No, I'm not that way." "What's true about that?" Jett Psaris: And also, "In the presence of your criticism, what essential quality or aspect of being do I lose access to?" And clearly, that would be curiosity. So in order to have a fidelity to our own unfolding, we have to say, "Okay, in this moment in the face of your criticism, I have lost access to my essential curiosity. And so now, what I want to do is I want to try to access that curiosity and apply it to your criticism," and then you'll notice that the whole relationship moment, the tension will soften because you're willing to listen to what your partner has said even if your partner has said it in a way that is not simple. Neil Sattin: How do you avoid then, this becoming totally one sided in a relationship where one person is willing to do the work and where the other will happily dish out criticisms and ways of trying to control their partner to make life easy for themselves? Jett Psaris: Well, the truth is you don't avoid that, you don't avoid anything in this approach. And what you do is you establish this fidelity to your own unfolding, and that's primary. And then, what actually happens is one of two things, you outgrow your partner and that becomes very evident and then the question is of whether I should leave or not really becomes moot, becomes obvious, or your partner sees who you're becoming and jumps on board. And I can tell you that happens more than... The latter happens more than the former. The experience they have of your openness, your clarity, your kindness, your skillful means, they begin to say, "I want to be more like that. I want to find that in myself. I want to join with you in this enterprise that you have initiated." And I can tell you when that happens, often the turn is quite dramatic, and then you have established a new chapter on your ground between you based in the shared value of being allies, intimate allies in this journey. Jett Psaris: But it is true that there are those who resist and defend and say, "You know, I don't want to do this work." And then the person who is doing the work, they become stronger, clearer and then they have a choice. Do I want to stay with you and accept you 100% as you are? And then of course, they also have developed the abilities to set boundaries and the rest of that, or is this really no longer... Has this taken us where we could go together, and do I want to actually step outside of this relationship now and move forward on my own? And that's a scary place for people. But it's a lot scarier not to take the journey because if you don't take the journey that seed acorn of you will wither and die. Neil Sattin: So journey or death? The choice is up to you. [laughter] Neil Sattin: And guess what, we all die anyway. Jett Psaris: We all die anyway. It's a series of deaths. Of course, this is a totally transformational process, we get very good at dying psychologically and emotionally speaking, over and over again, that's we become part of the cycle of life, and that's why I think we all long for intimacy so much because it's so fresh, it's so new, it's so exciting, there's no longer, been there, done that, everything becomes sacred. And that's when I think life really becomes everything that we've read about. Neil Sattin: So what does the process look like? And I think this would be good to complete our overview of what someone's gonna go through and then maybe we can offer some actual beginning steps for you, listening, so that you can get a sense of how to take this journey. Jett Psaris: Yeah. Can I blend those two together? Neil Sattin: Please. Jett Psaris: Yeah. The first step, it's just non-negotiable. The first step is that your starting point is "Whatever is happening is about me, not about my partner." And I have to tell you that that can be an easy step for some, and a very, a very large leap for others. For a period of time, at least as an exploration, take on the task that this is about you and not about them. And later on, when you have done that thoroughly, you can examine what part is also about them, but initially you cannot do that. I ask my couples to go on a detox diet of not critiquing, complaining, evaluating, noticing, psychoanalyzing their partner. When you stop, even doing this verbally or in your mind, when you stop focusing your attention on your partner, you're left with having to explore, which is difficult, what is actually going on for you. So the first task is "This is about me, not about you." Jett Psaris: The second one is to stop critiquing. Stop that outward flow and that is very important. The next task is to recognize that there's more to you in that moment than you think. So whatever you think is going on, there's a lot more going on than that. And so, your work is to inquire into the experience you're trying to get in that moment and the experience you're trying to avoid in that moment. Once you do that, it will bring you naturally down into whatever the contraction is that is keeping the self-concept in place. So I'll use an an example. So if you come in... Oh actually can I use you as an example? Neil Sattin: Sure. Let's go for it. Jett Psaris: Okay. [chuckle] Good. Can you give me an example of a reaction that is familiar to you, you have it with your wife, and it happens periodically? Or everyday? [laughter] Jett Psaris: Because a lot of these reactions they happen everyday. Neil Sattin: Right. Well, this almost never happens but... Jett Psaris: Okay. [laughter] Jett Psaris: Good. Neil Sattin: Yeah, sure. Let's go with, I'm working and I'm working a lot and, I get a complaint from her that that I'm working too much and I haven't prioritized our connection enough. Jett Psaris: Okay. Neil Sattin: Let's say in that day even. Jett Psaris: Yes. And let's say in that moment, you're not in your most conscious and spacious self who would probably say, "Oh, you know, I hear that you are wanting more time with me," right? So in our most conscious self that's what we would say. But let say that you're actually working really hard and you're trying to get somewhere, accomplish something, and so this interruption actually threatens what you're trying to accomplish. What's the first thing you experience was the reactive experience when she interrupts you with her complaint? Neil Sattin: That she doesn't value what I'm doing. Jett Psaris: Right. And how is that familiar for you? Neil Sattin: Well, it's a pattern that certainly came up in other relationships that I had before. And I think it connects me... In this moment, I'm seeing my parents very clearly and thinking about how I had to justify my choices to them. Yeah, things that were interesting to me that I wanted to pursue that they didn't necessarily approve of. So, in those moments I would feel like they didn't value what I was doing. I had to do something different to get their approval. Jett Psaris: Right. So in that moment when she has that complaint, it brings you back to an old area of sensitivity that who you are and the choices you make are not valuable. So, in that moment, you lose access to your intrinsic value which is your essential trait and you experience the part of you that wants to make his own choices, but also his choices in some way threaten the stream of goodwill and approval from the other, whoever that is, parents or your wife. And so in that moment, if you don't become reactive and push against her complaint, you don't value me with your own complaint, that's how we separate from each other. If you were to use her complaint as an invitation to drop back in your history to the young boy who had passions and desires that were disapproved of, what vulnerable experience would you have there? What was the vulnerable experience of that young boy? Neil Sattin: He felt alone and self doubt comes up for me. Yeah, like maybe I... Yeah, a lot of uncertainty and confusion almost, like if I can't... I guess, I can't trust myself. Jett Psaris: Yeah. So the self doubt comes up in order for you to maintain the relationship with your parents or your wife. But the vulnerable feeling that you're talking about is you feel lonely. You feel like they severed the relationship with you in that moment. You lost access to the common ground you once shared. And you also lost access to the feeling of passion that you were engaged with when you were in your own little world alone. And so, that's a moment of trauma. And if we can use your wife's complaint to bring you back to to that moment of trauma, and to just simply feel it, what you will find is there'll be a little unwinding, the contraction will soften, and there'll be more space to actually experience the real message that your wife is conveying which is, "I miss you." Jett Psaris: It would be great if she could say that, but it's equally important that she can't because you need to develop the ability to stay in contact with yourself without defending against what she says, and to stay in contact with yourself and also it will bring you to deeper contact with her because she said, "You know, I hear what you're really saying is you miss me. And that is actually what I wanted in the beginning." And so, then the two of you can be allies, "You know, I hear that you miss me and actually now that you're saying that, you've kinda jogged me out of this addiction to my work. And let me just finish this up and let's spend some time together." Or you'll say, "I miss you too, but this is a priority for our family. And so can we kinda support me around completing this project, and then let's plan some extended time together so that we make sure that we're also nourishing the well of our relationship." So then you become resourced. Neil Sattin: How helpful is it to, when going through that inquiry, to let my partner know that that's... Like to let them know what I'm going through or what I'm experiencing, what I'm seeing? Jett Psaris: Well, if you have the emotional strength to reveal your process and there is a welcoming environment to do that, I would say do that. If it feels too risky, then I suggest that clients say to their partner, "Listen, something's just come up for me. I just feel triggered in this moment. It's not about you. I'm gonna spend the next hour to diving in into that and can we meet up at 3:00, so that I can reveal that to you and we can talk about it." It is very important to let your partner know that you're in process. And if you don't have the strength to reveal that process or that process needs some incubation time to protect its space. But you maintain the relationship with a promise to do your work and come back into discussion about what just transpired. That is very important. Neil Sattin: And just to be clear, the process of diving in, there wasn't some magical mantra around the experience that I was having. It's more about simply being with that experience to get to the other side. Jett Psaris: Yes. It's well said, first of all, I just want to also appreciate, I mean how many... Just to, this is a note to the listeners, how many podcasters you know who willing to enter the process personally, so a big thank you for that. It is about freshly meeting each experience with the knowledge of the patterns but the willingness to let this step outside those patterns. And so, there is a mix. You have a knowledge of familiar patterns which you are able to quickly identify. And that's very important, because patterns are always a result of the compensatory and cracked identity. But there's also the willingness to have a completely fresh insight and a completely new experience of that moment where you lay down the pattern, and maybe for the first time, come into contact with the original heart of the moment when you were disproved of, or not appreciated, or rejected. Neil Sattin: So what are some ways that that could manifest? So that if you're going through this at home, you're probably wondering like, "All right, what could that look like for me if I'm willing to just be there? It sounds scary." I have to say, as I was reading your book, I was feeling mixes of elation like, "Wow, this is amazing." And I felt very viscerally the fear coming up of my parts responding to, "Ooh, that's gonna be scary when you do that [chuckle], or that could be frightening when you just rest in that with Chloe. Chloe's my wife. So yeah, it brings up a lot. And you call it the black hole, and I'm sure there's some good reason behind that. Jett Psaris: [chuckle] Yeah. Well, the black hole is where we really drop into that core sensitivity, and it feels very uncomfortable. And it feels uncomfortable to the compensatory identity which has just failed at its mission to keep you out of that discomfort. That's the whole idea of the compensation is for you to actually maintain control, feel safe, and feel comfortable. And so, when you drop into these core sensitivities, most of us scramble quickly to get out of them. You know, that's okay too. What happens is, in my experience, we don't drop into the black hole in a way that is annihilating. It's a little bit more like a snake shedding its skin. When we're ready to drop into the black hole and reveal that piece that's needing our attention and healing, there really already is a substantial experience of ourselves ready to pick that... Pick something up to, in essence, rises up to carry the day. And so we're not gonna drop into the hole and go into a self-destruct. It will absolutely feel uncomfortable, and it feels uncomfortable every single time. Jett Psaris: But what happens is, we develop the capacity of making that transition, and the rewards on the other side are... They're so positively reinforcing, because we get to have that experience of ourselves like when we first fell in love. And so, it is something that happens over time. It's very helpful if you have a therapist, or a spiritual guide, or close friend to do this work with, because it is helpful to have a kind and gentle holding environment. But over time, you just begin to look for the opportunities to fall into that place and recover the sense of self as infinitely loving, open, generous, kind. And so this work really builds on itself. Neil Sattin: Yeah. You talk about the, I think you call it the flip where your fear of not doing the work outweighs the fear of facing into those experiences that you were initially trying to avoid. Jett Psaris: Yeah. I call it the flip. Other traditions call it the spiritual warrior. You develop the commitment to your own unfolding, and you place that over these passing discomforts. At that moment, you have shifted your center of gravity away from a protective, controlling, predictable sense of self and life into a more fluid, more surprising, definitely more spontaneous, and exciting way to be. It's a little bit like moving from the land which is predictable. We walk on land, it's predictable, and jumping into water, where there are all kinds of new, and interesting, and exciting, but also scary movements that occur, you're not in control anymore. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Chloe often... I've heard her recount this story of snorkeling in Bali. I think it was Bali. And being right at the edge of this drop-off from... It went from, I think, the coral reef down into who knows how many thousands of feet and just seeing the shadows lurking just below the light and how terrifying that was. Jett Psaris: That's a wonderful experience. And I often use snorkeling, because most of us when where based in our self concepts, we're like looking at the surface of the water, and this work you're putting on some gear and you're dropping below the surface and there's an entirely new magical, beautiful world. And so, at some point, we long for our depths and for that magic, and mystery, and largeness, and relationship definitely is the sacred path to that experience. Neil Sattin: I have to say, it was kind of funny to me thinking just now about how so much of our time can be spent trying to avoid conflict, and in that situation that I described with Chloe, we would probably make some agreements that would be around like, "Okay, on Mondays I only work until 6:00 PM," That sort of thing to avoid... Coming across that circumstance and what I hear you saying is, well that could be great and you get this magnificent opportunity by being in the discomfort of failing or where you're compensatory strategy is. The things that initially brought you together with that person because you complimented each other so well, where they start to fall apart. Jett Psaris: Yeah, beautifully said. Basically, my way of saying that is, if you can make an agreement and keep the agreement, by all means go ahead and do that. When you make an agreement and you can't keep them, then you know that you have created false ground between you and that there's something deeper that's actually needing to be seen and addressed. And so, when the agreements fall apart which they will, if it's a repetitive deep issue, then you want to ask yourself, what does the agreement protect you from experiencing? And usually that will be as you said earlier discord, it protects you from experiencing that you're having a different experience than the other, and we want to protect ourselves from that. Neil Sattin: Are there core agreements that you think are important in relationship? Jett Psaris: I think, I encourage all couples to address that question, more kind of maybe in terms of core values which might cover the same area. So, some relationships have a core value of telling the truth as we know it, creating a receptive environment for the truth, becoming conscious of underlying motivations and behaviors, so it depends. It should be born of the specific couple not kind of universal, I think, core agreements, but doing the work of forging those core values in agreements is probably as or more important than when you come up with on your list. It's saying, this is how I want to be in life with you, and can we agree to that? And if that seems to change, can we speak about what's changing? Neil Sattin: And it makes me curious to know, like those situations where an agreement is broken, and that could be something like, "I said I was gonna stop working at 5:00 and it turns out I planned an interview for 6:00." [chuckle] Or it could be something more that feels bigger like a betrayal, an emotional infidelity, an affair, something, I gambled all our money away, like those kinds of things. How do you apply... 'cause what I heard you saying earlier is to help someone realize, "Well, this isn't about the other person, this is about me." And how do you merge that in a situation where there's maybe some shock or trauma going on from an agreement having been violated? Jett Psaris: Well, I'll been meeting with a couple tomorrow, where it's a man and a woman. And the man has apparently gambled away their life savings, and she feels deeply betrayed by that. But I have to say that her starting point in asking for the session is that she said, "I recognize that I contributed to the outcome I'm experiencing. I did not take an active role in finances because I was afraid. I knew all along that he had tendencies around gambling, and I didn't want to look at them. We have two children, I didn't want that as another issue to have to deal with." And so, right out of the gate, she's recognizing that this has to do with her. It doesn't mean she doesn't feel betrayed, because she has a pattern, as you talked about earlier, her father also gambled. And so, the narrative is very personal for her, but her starting point is one of taking personal responsibility for what occurred, and wanting to explore what occurred, instead of just making him into a rotten, horrible human being. Jett Psaris: And so, that's the rigor of this and that can be very hard when we talk about gambling away one's life savings. It can be very hard when you talk about having an affair. These are the areas that hit us the most deeply in our psyches, and touch into the deepest of our sensitivities and traumas. And they're the ones that really provide generally the most transformation because they are touching so deeply. So again, the content of what's occurring is not as important as the commitment and the fidelity to unpacking... I love your phrase "delaminating," I'll have to use that. Delaminating these places that we have become hardened and separate from life. Neil Sattin: So now, I'm listening to us and I'm driving in my car, and I'm thinking about this conversation that's touching down into the core of my essence, and I know it's there. What can I do in this moment to take a step in that direction of getting clear on where my work lies, and also maybe how to... Well, I understand you're saying, Jett, that it's not required, but how might I invite my partner into that with me? Jett Psaris: Well, I think the best invitation is by example. And so, the strongest invitation is this is the way I want to approach what has just transpired between us. I want to look at how I became a part of this narrative with you and how it's familiar in my own life so that I can be more awake, and conscious, and resourced when things like this occur, and so that we together can create a digestive system that can digest what life brings to us. And so, I think that's kinda the answer to your second question. The first question is not quite so clear. If you just experienced a betrayal and you just found out about that, the first thing you're gonna experience is shock. And so, when we experience shock, that is something has come into our field that feels larger than what we can handle. Jett Psaris: And so, the first thing we need to do is not scramble and to actually do the opposite which is very hard to do, which is stop and rest and wait until our warm animal body calms down. And we can walk, we can meditate, we can bathe in warm water, whatever helps us calm our animal body, which always is the one that bears the burden of these shocks. And when we begin to feel like we're coming out of the shock, then we begin by slowly wondering, what does this situation have to do with me? How is it familiar? And we begin to apply that essential curiosity and interest to what has transpired and recognize that the content of our lives is there to grow the context of our lives, our being, our openness, our resourcefulness, our genius, our capacity to love and care for ourselves and each other. The more we recognize that the content is there to rub us in a way, create a friction to enlarge that context, the more likely we are to use what happens between us, what arises within us, to actually do the work that I'm describing in undefended love. Neil Sattin: And one quick addendum question to that. How do I stop from victimizing myself? I want to inquire, I don't want to blame myself. Jett Psaris: You don't want to blame anyone. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Jett Psaris: Because this isn't actually a problem. This is the way transformation occurs. The only way we can see what we can't see is by bumping into it and suffering the discomfort of it. [chuckle] Jett Psaris: So, we don't want to become a victim, we don't want to identify as a victim, we don't want to victimize others, we want to join together. And it's all hands on deck, and do what's necessary to wake up and to use the weather of our lives, that's what I'm calling the content, the weather of our lives, to see that which the weather is happening in. So, if I have a feeling, I don't have to become anger, I'm just feeling angry; it's something that is occurring within me. I don't have to... If I have a thought, "This isn't right," that's just a thought. That thought is occurring within me, and there're gonna be thoughts, 60,000 according to Stanford, additional thoughts before the end of the day is up. And so, we become larger than these passing inconveniences or moments of disruption and confusion. Neil Sattin: And then, you get to experience yourself as bigger than all of those things. Jett Psaris: Yes. And more resilient and more skillful. Neil Sattin: And more able to show up for love with your partner. Jett Psaris: Exactly. Well, all those things is love really. We become love instead of being a consumer of love. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Then you embody it in what you do. We're not gonna have a chance to talk about it today, but I loved your discussion of needs versus desire versus wants versus desires, and how we progress through that to get to a place where we're actually good with how life is, which doesn't mean we don't desire things. Jett Psaris: Right. Neil Sattin: But we welcome it. Jett Psaris: Exactly. Neil Sattin: The big yes that you mentioned earlier in our conversation. Jett Psaris: That's right. Neil Sattin: Well, Jett Psaris, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure. I could talk to you for another hour I'm sure, but your tree crew showed up. [laughter] Neil Sattin: And I'm just so delighted to have you here. Jett is, as we mentioned the co-author of "Undefended Love" along with her partner Marlena Lyons. And you can get links to her websites through the show guide for this episode. Again, you can visit neilsattin.com/undefended, or text the word "Passion" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Neil Sattin: Jett, is there anything else currently going on in your life or your world that you'd like to tell people about? Or if they want to find out more about you, where should they go? Jett Psaris: Oh yeah, my website is www.jettpsaris.com. And I just published a new book this year which I'm very excited about, "Hidden Blessings: Midlife Crisis As a Spiritual Awakening", that has won a couple of awards already. And for those in midlife, over the age of 40, that might me something if you like this approach, basically. It's an undefended approach to the midlife passage which I believe is arguably the most transformative passage of one's lifetime. So, do take a look at that, if this approach is of interest you. Neil Sattin: Well, I definitely will, and I encourage you listening to do the same. And thank you so much for your time and wisdom today. And I look forward to speaking again at some point. Jett Psaris: Thank you so much. I appreciate you and the work you're doing. Neil Sattin: Thank you! Sponsors: Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources: Check out Jett Psaris's website Read Jett’s book Undefended Love and check out her new book Hidden Blessings: Midlife Crisis As a Spiritual Awakening www.neilsattin.com/undefended Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Jett Psaris Amazing intro/outro music (not including the Namaste chant) graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

We have a deep longing to experience the essential core of who we are - the essence of ourself that we glimpse when we fall in love. How do we work through the defenses that obstruct that core of love and joy? Jett Psaris suggests cultivating ‘Butterfly Consciousness.’ Listen in as she discusses Undefended Love with Susan.

In this episode of FEAR NOT, Psychologist and Author Jett Psaris helps to understand the process of midlife and the fears that come with it.

Yesterday Hidden Blessings: Midlife Crisis As a Spiritual Awakening by Jett Psaris won the 2017 Independent Press Award for Spiritual Self Help. We're in the process of recording the audiobook edition of this award-winning book. Congratulations to Jett Psaris! The post Award winner! appeared first on Pro Audio Voices.

There is a Buddhist teaching that says, "Love is like a bird with two wings. One wing is wisdom and the other is intelligence." Rev. Catherine McLeod ties all three---love, wisdom, and intelligence---together by drawing from three inspiring books to remind us that we are all deeply and truly loveable. The three books are Undefended Love by Jett Psaris and Marlena S. Lyons, Spiritual Partnership: The Journey to Authentic Power by Gary Zukav, and SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence by Cindy Wigglesworth. On our spiritual journey, we crave a deep intimacy with the Divine within us---to feel the connection to Spirit and to allow It to give us strength and wisdom when we are unexpectedly brought face-to-face with some unpleasant part of ourselves. From Undefended Love, we learn to "stay open in the face of fear and inquire into every thought, feeling, and behaviour. The deeper we love ourselves, the more the Universe will align with us." "When we are angry, depressed, jealous, thinking critical thoughts or having any of the familiar, painful experiences of frightening parts of our personality, we can choose to shift our perception to the loving parts of our personality." -- Gary Zukav

We cannot transform what we do not acknowledge. In Undefended Love by Jett Psaris and Marlena S. Lyons, and Breathing Underwater by Fr. Richard Rohr, we learn about our personality preoccupations and strategies, comprising what is called our defended personality. Simply, these are survival strategies that, without our conscious attention, become addictions. The strategies include doing everything perfectly, taking care of everybody, working hard, searching for what's missing, withholding ourselves, avoidance, controlling, being constantly on guard, self-distraction through constant activity and open-endedness, working to create a just world, trying to put the world in order, etc. If we try to change our ego with the help of our ego, we only end up with a better-disguised ego. We must be willing to go deeper. Having another good idea from the mind is not the answer. We must start incorporating the heart intelligence and the intuitive intelligence into our approach to life. One of the challenges with spiritual practice is that it will move us into a state of Grace. Grace is always a humiliation for our ego. We need a vital spiritual experience---a spirituality that reaches to the hidden levels and a deeper and wider perspective, an openness, a willingness. To finally surrender ourselves to healing, three spaces must be opened up within us: our opinionated head, our closed-down heart, and our defensive and defended body.