John Welwood is a practicing psychotherapist and clinical psychologist who lives and works in Mill Valley with his wife, Jennifer. Through their seminar work, based on the experience of their own marriage, they offer a unique psycho-spiritual dimension to the realm of couples consciousness. The author of two earlier books on relationship, Journey of the Heart and Ordinary Magic, Welwood's newest book, Love and Awakening, focuses on relationship as a spiritual path. John Welwood also teaches at the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco.

CG: You practice a psycho-spiritual approach in your work. How is that different from traditional couples counseling?

JW: Traditional couples counseling and most "how to" books on relationship have a focus on problem-solving. The classic American way is to find the problem, find the solution, and get on with life. And that's fine for certain things. But if you just take the problem-solving approach, you often lose the opportunity the problem offers to actually look at something deeper inside yourself. My approach is to see every psychological difficulty as a chance to contact yourself in a deeper way. Every problem that comes up in a relationship is really just a symptom that you're out of touch with a deeper resource inside yourself. You can attack the symptom with a psychological band-aid, but it won't really heal the underlying cause. The symptom will simply resurface in another way.

Relating to another person is really about relating to yourself, with the full range of who you are. That's how we can see the full spectrum of our being. But we all have parts of ourselves that we're cut off from, and that's what shows up as a problem in a relationship. The truth is that you can only be as intimate with another person as you are with yourself. By meeting yourself in this place where your sense of value is missing, you can be unconditionally present with yourself. You don't have to go outside yourself to prove your worth or gain approval. When you can face your own fear, you can regain what you have lost. You can fill the hole where you've been disconnected. As you begin to reconnect with yourself, you awaken to your own energy.

CG: Do you think that certain people are attracted to each other because they have things that they need to work out?

JW: Unconsciously, yes. In my book, Love and Awakening, I talk about a "soul connection." A soul connection is where you recognize that you are in each other's life in order to grow and expand. There's a mutual and intuitive recognition that you can fulfill your potential in this person's presence. It's like a seed that wants to blossom and bear fruit - but it needs certain conditions in order to thrive. Love is the primary nutrient required for the seed of the soul to develop. A soul connection is more than the new age notion of finding a "soul mate," which is really just another version of Prince Charming. No one's going to rescue you and magically transform you into a being of light. But a genuine soul connection does activate the seed.

CG: What is the difference between a heart connection and a soul connection?

JW: You can have a heart connection with anyone walking down the street. It refers to a general openness of being. A soul connection goes deeper. You can have a heart connection with almost anybody, but a soul connection is something you share with a very few people in an entire lifetime. There's a feeling that you are meant to be together.

CG: Would you explain the dynamic between expansion and contraction in a relationship?

JW: When we fall in love, we start to expand. It's a natural process. As the seed starts to expand, it hits the shell its contained in. The seed wants to break out of its shell; that's love's call to awaken. And when you start to break out of that shell, the false self has to die. It's what the poet Ibn al Farad meant when he said, "Death through love is life." It's inevitable that you're going to encounter obstacles that are in the way of that expansion - the old identities, the old beliefs about who you are. As the seed expands and hits the shell, it hurts and that's the cause of contraction. It brings you up against the prison walls of your own self-image, your patterns, your fears, your limitations. This endless cycle of expansion and contraction happens all the way along in relationship. It's a matter of learning how to work with that dynamic. The point where the seed hits the shell is what I call the razor's edge, and that's where the growth can happen.

CG: Does your inspiration and insight come from a particular person, philosophy or realm of experience?

JW: Yes. My first book, Journey of the Heart, describes my personal path. It begins with the end of my first marriage, like so many of us who are coming from unconscious relationships. I felt like I really needed to understand why it didn't work out, and what relationship is really all about. I knew I didn't want to settle down into the traditional Ozzie-and-Harriet suburban routine. So I had to ask: How do you go about creating a relationship that's really going to last? Is it even possible?

It was the early 1970s and I had no teachers, no models. I had no answers - just all these questions. I had just finished graduate school at the University of Chicago and hadn't even begun my own practice. I discovered that all my teachers and colleagues had their own share of misery in this area. In my quest, I delved into spiritual literature - both eastern and western. I found a few books here and there, but not much about intimacy as a connection between body, mind, soul and spirit. None of the classic religions really talk about the dynamics of relationship between a man and a woman.

 

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