Category: Relationships
Special Announcement: Upcoming Courses for Parents at Sacred Stream
Sacred Stream is committed to supporting parents in bringing greater consciousness into their relationships with their children, their partners, and themselves. All of our Empowered Living courses are designed to help you get the most from your everyday experience. Several upcoming courses are especially helpful for parents.
Conscious Parenting will help you connect more deeply with your intentions and values as a parent and respond to whatever arises with greater self-understanding and grace. Tracking Spirit in the Birth Environment provides an opportunity to connect to powerful resources for giving birth or integrate the birth experience you already had. The Path of Service strongly connects you with your own needs and how to address them so that you can maintain your energy level while caring for others. And if you find, as you parent your children, that how you were parented is coming up as something you would like to understand better, Relationship and Karma will help you do that.
On the Air: A Meeting of the Ways with Diane Solomon and Helen Palmer: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life
Diane Solomon, host of A Meeting of the Ways on KKUP, and Helen Palmer, bestselling author of The Enneagram, discuss how The Enneagram can help you in understanding yourself and the others in your life
Video: The Nature of Universal Power
Isa Gucciardi discusses the differences between universal power and personal power and the interplay between the two. She discusses the play of negative intention and how it impacts the energy exchanges that form the basis of relationships between people. Isa is the author of Coming to Peace, the Founding Director of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, and the creator of the ground-breaking therapeutic model, Depth Hypnosis. This talk takes place at the Sacred Stream Center in Berkeley, CA.
On the Air: A Meeting of the Ways with Diane Solomon and Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.: Relationships & Soul Mates, Valentines Day and the Spring Equinox
Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., speaks with Diane Solomon, host of A Meeting of the Ways, on the very ancient connection between Valentine’s Day and the Spring Equinox – and how both celebrations have everything to do with relationship.
On the Air: A Meeting of the Ways with Diane Solomon and Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.: Tools for the Thanksgiving Holiday
Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., speaks with Diane Solomon, host of A Meeting of the Ways on KKUP on the topic of Tools for the Thanksgiving Holiday: Managing Challenging Relationships and Understanding the True Nature of Forgiveness.
Blog: The Two Truths: Finding Meaning in Difficult Situations
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
In a recent dinner conversation with friends, the Buddhist concept of the Two Truths came up. In Buddhist philosophy, the Two Truths offers an explanation of the nature of reality. The discussion wound around to how I introduced adapted elements of the Two Truths to students in the Depth Hypnosis Foundation Course. This adaptation is a bit like an overview, making the concept a little easier to grasp and apply in a Western context.
Special Announcement: Sacred Stream’s Summer Parenting Series
Sacred Stream is committed to helping build more conscious families. Our Empowered Living programs are all designed to help you understand yourself and others better. This summer, our Summer Parenting series can help you begin at the beginning – to understand birth from a new point of view with Tracking Spirit in the Birth Environment. And help you all the way to the end – by offering you resources to help you through all the years of parenting with the Conscious Parenting workshop.
Article: Relationship as a Vehicle for Consciousness
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Relationship forms the core of our experience as humans. We define ourselves and are defined by the nature of our relating. The Buddhist concept of interdependence affirms that nothing exists independently. Everything exists interdependently. In relationship, we do not and cannot exist independently of one another.
It is through relationship that we come to know ourselves. It is through relating that we hold up a mirror to others for them to come to know themselves. Others do the same for us, providing us with information about ourselves that we could not see without the lens of relating. In this way, relationship provides us with a path of revelation. As we learn more about ourselves, our experience takes on richer meaning.
Blog: Finding Power in Powerlessness
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
The roots of anger, and indeed, the roots of many potentially destructive emotions, lie in powerlessness. Most people would not choose destructive emotions as a way to gain control over circumstances if they could learn to tolerate not having control over the situations around them.
It is important to be gentle with yourself and have self-compassion as you learn to be present with your anger. It is easier to be compassionate with yourself if you can trust your ability to take responsibility for any way you may have harmed yourself or another with anger. In this way, you won’t look for the easy “out,” but instead learn everything you have to learn from the way you have related to your anger. In this way, you can understand the roots of your anger more fully, make amends where needed, and honor the information contained in your anger.
Blog: Listening to Anger
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
There is a Mahayana Buddhist idea that everything in our experience is part of the path to enlightenment. This is very important to remember when we find ourselves wanting to avoid relating to others because it seems too overwhelming. We must remember that everything that comes up in our experience is workable.
Blog: Having Compassion for Yourself and Others
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
How attentively do you listen to yourself? Are you engaging in negative self-talk? Are you seeing your own self-talk reflected in how you talk to others? Are others having a reaction? Is it hard to ignore or deny that reaction?
Here’s a hint: There is probably a part of yourself that is hearing that negative self-talk and having a reaction similar to those around you who you might be treating in the same way. This is one of many benefits of being in relationship. We can learn about ourselves and see ourselves through the lens of relationship.
Blog: Being Present in Relationship
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
It is a common tendency to think that if we just ignore a problem, it will either go away on its own or we won’t feel its effect. Ignoring our problems leads to confusion about what is real and what is true. Unfortunately, one of the most common responses to this state of confusion is to go into denial about the fact that the effect of not being present is causing a problem.
Blog: Interdependence
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
In a recent podcast, Robert Thurman, noted Buddhist scholar, asked, “What would you do if you realized that you would never be able to get off the subway car you were on this morning – that you were going to be with those people for infinity?”
For one thing, it would probably change the way we viewed those people. If we are all in a subway car together cruising through eternity, it would probably be a good idea to start figuring out how to get along.
I have spent many years trying to help people figure out how to get along through my Depth Hypnosis practice and teaching. Mostly I try to help people figure out how to get along with themselves – because you really can’t get along with anyone else until you have yourself figured out.
Article: Forgiveness
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
True forgiveness is serious business. To forgive or be forgiven is a complex and stirring process that requires each party to dive deeply inward in order to restore peace. To reach a place of true forgiveness, we must set our sights on the heart of the conflict and begin the necessary work of self-examination required to find and release our attachment to the offense. Only then can we truly be free from our pain.
Article: Personal Responsibility: A Buddhist Perspective on Relationship
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Relationship forms the core of our experience as humans. We define ourselves and are defined by the nature of our relating. In Buddhism, there is a concept called “interdependence” which postulates that nothing exists independently. Everything exists interdependently. Applying this concept to relationship implies that we do not and cannot exist independently of one another.