Undefended Love Paperback – October 30, 2000

Undefended Love is a rare and wonderful book. It speaks with timeless wisdom about the nature of our true self, and of how we relate to ourselves, our lives and our loved ones. This book can free you and enhance you - providing a deeper and compassionate understanding of the reactive and compensating patterns we all develop to protect ourselves. It is these very patterns that so often cause us to contract in our lives and in our relationships, and that cost us the full experience of feeling open, safe, and connected to life and others.With a wonderfully balanced mix of concepts, examples and solutions, the authors take us on a journey into our deepest selves - into both our timeless essence and into our deepest and most fiercely protected fears. They then lovingly illuminate the path beyond those fears into greater wholeness, peace and open-heartedness. This is a book about true strength - the strength to face and fully experience those parts of ourselves which we so often deny and turn away from, the strength to be open and experience ourselves and others absent our usual constricting defenses. It is so often the same walls we think protect us that deny us the full experience of the wonder of our own life and of connecting with others. This book is one of the most elegant maps of the territory beyond such defenses that I have ever encountered - a place of texture, nuance and richness that most people believe is reserved for just a few special moments in their lives.I have read many books on psychology, conditioning, communication, relationship and the like. Very few have touched me as deeply as this one. Do yourself a true favor and read this book. It will enrich your life.

What if the world isn’t flat. What if we could expand our perspective beyond the simplest explanation for our world and expand our understanding to the point we can imagine our world as a big ball like structure that spins around at a thousand miles and hour while spinning around a much bigger ball that burns hot enough to heat our planet. What if there is a force so subtle that we do’t even notice it but it is strong enough to hold us on this spinning ball and make us feel like we are still.If the world is flat we notice there are unexplained things that happen to us. Imagine instead of the world, there were things about ourselves that were equally complicated and interesting with far reaching implications for our every day lives. What if our happiness seems to be dependent on how other people treat us. That we need others to make us feel whole and good and of value. What if this outside stimulation is only a small part of who we are but we think of ourselves as flat and of only of this one dimension.Imagine that our outside world stimulates deep places inside of us. Imagine that we think the love we feel when we are with someone close comes from them and that we need them to feel deeply connected. Once you feel that way it is pretty lonely with out it.Just for a second imagine that it was the situation that allowed us to touch a place inside that holds this deep love and our friend gave us the mysterious combination of insights and permissions to open ourselves to this deep pool of love and harmony that is who we actually are.What if our very lives, growing up separated us from this internal round spinning ball and that if we face the ways we have misunderstood what and who we are, we can access these deep expressions of our selves, brining this love and compassion into our every day lives to share with the ones we care about rather than holding them responsible for making us feel that way.Its hard work. It is full of ironies that are confounding. There are so many times the biggest feeling is one of it being impossible to survive. But like any good adventure, it is completely doable. It is the most fascinating extreme sport because it is of our mind and our lives and what we recover are the parts of ourselves we left behind because they were unwelcome fitting into a world we happened to arrive in.Undefended Love is terrifying in it’s ability to penetrate every defense while creating the idea of a holding environment that allowed me to stay with my feelings, be completely over whelmed and then release the energy from my past giving me back parts of myself I looked to others to satisfy.It takes courage to work with this material full strength but the outcome is really worthy of the effort. I went through a difficult divorce and found that this book is clever enough to allow me to work directly on myself even if I didn't have access to my old partner. Over the course of a year I read this book three times and had the good fortune to work for a time with one of the authors as my therapist and also did a work shop. I am still stunned by the depth of my good fortune.Someone once told me the truth just exists, only lies have to be argued for. Weather reading this book as a curiosity or like me needing to be thrown a life jacket to keep my head above my confusion and longing, there are so many insights embedded in this text that took my breath away.A wise person once told me not to worried about doing work that is to challenging, they believed I would only face past trauma that I was ready for so I could allow myself the freedom to immerse myself in my process. Working alone with this material felt like free climbing by myself, but I was already on the cliff face and needed to get through. Great book.

This book was recommended to me over 17 years ago by a dear friend. Over those years I have purchased about 30 copies of this book as I gladly keep on giving my copy away to friends, family and clients. Every time I give away my copy, I do so with the knowledge of the impact this work has had on me, my relationship and my career. When i encounter a difficulty in my life, I have learned to turn that conflict or problem into an opportunity for depth-full self inquiry. What does this bump in the road give me an opportunity to learn about myself? Rather than blaming, shaming or vilifying the "other", I can see how my reaction leads me right back to a place within myself that needs tending. Since I have encountered the book, i have also become a psychotherapist. I use this book in my work to help individuals and couples to take responsibility for their reactions and learn more about themselves, open and grow. Through all of my studies of theories and approaches to therapy, I found this work to be the most direct route to enduring change.Every time I reread a section, i am also struck by the many layers this book has to offer. When i first read it, I was new to self inquiry and I got a tremendous amount from that read...but as i continue to grow and learn about myself i find the book offers new and surprising insights with every subsequent read. As I peel back yet another layer of my defenses, I am so grateful to have this book on my nightstand. It is the gift that keeps on giving.