Speaker Series
Friday Speaker Series
July 11, 2003 (a past program)
Invitation to this program:
- "The Undefended Start: A 'True Meeting'"
- With: Jett Psaris, Ph.D. and Marlena S. Lyons, Ph.D.
Do you want to:
- Learn how to be emotionally free to be fully yourself in the presence of another?
- Explore ways to create an intimacy with yourself and another that is sustainable?
- Develop the capacity for intimacy, starting right from wherever you are?
Then come and join us for this presentation!
"Intimacy-direct, unmediated, heart-to-heart connection with ourselves and with others-can only occur when the heart is undefended. To cut through our personal differences, to reach the unveiled part of ourselves that is deep enough to express the most profound and untamed aspects of our being means learning how to love and be loved without defenses and without obstructions. It means cultivating the capacity to be emotionally present even when we feel exposed or vulnerable, learning to relinquish the many strategies we have employed to feel safe and in control; and finding the courage to love without guarantee or requirements. Through developing the capacity for intimacy in this way, we discover love as an abiding presence in the emotional center of our being, our heart, and we can never again feel emotionally disconnected, incomplete or unloved."
~From Undefended Love
The view you hold of the function and purpose of relationship will determine how you will relate to what arises in relationship. Conventional relationship approaches try to neatly package relationship into a number of steps, focusing on problem-solving, fixing, explaining, and telling us what it should look like if we are doing it "right." These approaches have one thing in common: They misunderstand the very nature of being human. We are a mystery, too great to know in any definitive or total way, but dynamically unfolding throughout the entire course of our lives.
In the undefended approach, we use the issues that arise -- within and between us -- we don't solve them. They become a sort of solvent or detergent that we allow to work on us in an alchemical way so that we are changed in the process. The challenges that emerge in relationship -- and in the process of exploring the potential for relationship -- are pointing out where we are stuck in our own evolution and thereby can help guide us in the developmental process that ultimately ends in emotional liberation and unconditional love.
We hope you will join us for an experiential evening of plummeting the depths of who we are. We can only know and love another to the depth that we can know and love ourselves.
About the presenters:
Jett Psaris and Marlena S. Lyons (co-founders of the Conscious Living Center, a counseling and workshop center in the San Francisco Bay Area) have been leading seminars and retreats which guide couples and individuals to cultivate the capacity for undefended love - with oneself as well as with others - since 1990. Marlena has been in private practice specializing in relationship issues since 1979. Jett came to the field of psycho-spiritual work in 1988, after a decade in business as an executive in several high-profile companies. Through their work together, they have gone beyond researching the reasons why people have failed to create exceptional relationships and have developed a unique approach to accelerate personal and relationship development to allow individuals to connect with themselves and each other in an undefended and open way.
www.undefendedlove.com