Alexandra Katehakis

Stand up for the underdog, the 'loser.' Sometimes having the strength to show loving support for unacknowledged others turns the tides of our own lives.

Endow yourself with healthy self-esteem. What is the feeling tone in your life that radiates in you and makes you shine, that makes you feel whole, that makes you feel your heart? That feeling tone, which we long to hear from others, is the tone we want to practice with ourselves. That__ where we want to live with ourselves. It doesn__ happen from the outside in. That__ why it__ called self-esteem.

How can you get through to yourself?

When loneliness is a constant state of being, it harkens back to a childhood wherein neglect and abandonment were the landscape of life.

The heart of compromise is the willingness of all parties to sacrifice reciprocally and equally for the greater good of a relationship. Reconciling conflicting needs for the sake of unity can't work if just one person does it. A coerced compromise, when one partner deceives or overpowers the other without allowing room for shared truths, usually results in an empty agreement that's soon undermined by unilateral acting out.

It__ crucial to practice self-empathy, for trust can__ be willed into existence. That didn__ work when our caregivers tried to impose their will on us, and it won__ work internally, either. Only when we can tap into a place of self-trust, with a reliable process of reparation for inevitable mistakes, can we build trust with another person.

Right where you are, the potential of the universe is.

When inhibition has become the de facto setting in a person's manner, stiffness and lack of spontaneity produces an unnatural self-repression. Life looks gray, dull, and rigid, without space for relaxation or play to burst forth in natural ways.

The process of dissociation is an elegant mechanism built into the human psychological system as a form of escape from (sometimes literally) going crazy. The problem with checking out so thoroughly is that it can leave us feeling dead inside, with little or no ability to feel our feelings in our bodies. The process of repair demands a re-association with the body, a commitment to dive into the body and feel today what we couldn__ feel yesterday because it was too dangerous.

People often ask: If there__ a God, how can He allow so much suffering in the world? Realize all world suffering you perceive is a mirror to your own psychological self-abuse, gender imbalance, prejudice, poverty, and hunger. You couldn__ even perceive each suffering aspect of external reality if it didn__ already exist within you. Touch and transmute your own psychological suffering, and perceive the world in kind.

Perhaps the most important sexual tool is consciousness. If we think we are "not enough" or "too much," we surely are. Similarly, when you give a gift, create artwork, or perform any task with the thought that it's "not enough" or "too much," it surely will be.

All of us lived life when sex was the farthest thing from our minds. Try to remember the careless freedom of play, basking in the beingness of others. As adults, responsibilities and obligations can often bind us to a daily grind. For some adults, then, sex might be one of the few interactions that restores their openness and sensory exploration of play. It__ not hard to see why sexual preoccupation might take over when people become locked out from experiencing fulfilling lives.

Remember, sex is never a thing you just had. Sex is the intercourse, the merging or convergence, of who the two of you are__our spirits merging. People ask, __ow was it for you?_ The reply is often, __t was great._ But is this really the right question and answer? Instead, personalize your question and ask, __ow are you?_ Respond with depth. Gaze into each other__ eyes and speak your truth: ____ over the moon,_ or __ love you,_ or __ melted and I__ just coming back into myself.

Much healing can occur through the sexual act with a person you love and trust if the two of you can stay with each other during your most vulnerable moments. You enter into a sacred space, this unknown territory, from which you__l emerge into new and unexpected states of being.

Take a trip to the exotic landscape of your lover__ body.

When you are secure in yourself, know what turns you on, and enjoy watching your partner watch you experience sexual pleasure, you have a highly novel relationship grounded in love. The experience of seeing and being seen fuels lust and desire. This is exactly the way you integrate healthy lust and love into your sex life. It__ relational sex, not the old pornographic sex of past addictions.

To develop emotional and erotic intelligence we need to practice enlarging our inner passion at every moment. It doesn__ matter what__ going on in our world, or even how we feel about ourselves in the moment. In fact, the best time to accomplishing something may be when we least feel like trying, because the hopeless part of ourselves most needs the light.

Above all, consider this: The greatest gift we can give ourselves, our children, and our world is to live well and love well.