The Universal Heart by Stephanie Dowrick
What might it take to open to a life that's drenched in love? In a world ruled by notions of scarcity, how might we discover that the more freely we give love, the more we have to give? Might peace of mind follow if we could think more about how to be loving than about our hungry dreams of how love might save us? We take seriously almost everything but love. We improve our skills in almost everything except how to give and receive more freely within our relationships. We ask each other constantly what we "do" for a living, not how well we live. We move our attention away from the people we love for years at a time. And we wonder why the relationships we intended to value and honour break down or disappear. An absence of love is somethng that countless people experience on a daily basis. They may call it loneliness, isolation, dissatisfaction or emptiness. Often what it adds up to is that they have become strangers to love - and in significant ways strangers to themselves. A life worth living "is" a life of love. And anything worth discovering about love will deepen not just one but every one of our relationships. Just as crucially, though, love joins us to the deepest parts of ourselves. It allows us to know that our own life has legitimacy that from our own inner world we can reach out to give willingly to other people. And receive what they can give to us. In "The Ultimate Heart" Stephanie Dowrick explores not just our most intimate relationships, but also the other key relationships of our life - with family, friends, children, ex-partners, colleagues and people in our everyday world. She invites us to discover the power we have to create relationships built on a rich, generous and inclusive idea of love!
Psychotherapist Dowrick's Golden Rules for Successful Relationships (her subtitle) explores love as an endlessly self-replenishing resource available to all who practice giving and receiving it more freelyAlthough dauntingly wordy (with reams of 'how to' advice at the end of each chapter and case histories within), it is a worthwhile and stimulating volume filled with therapeutic insights and common sense. Its subheadings make it more manageable to dip into: why abandonment is devastating, for example, or the aggression which blights lives. Its constant message is to roll away the illusions of our own helplessness and cultivate self-love and love of others.
Stephanie Dowrick is a psychotherapist and has published several non-fiction works - INTIMACY AND SOLITUDE, FORGIVENESS AND OTHER ACTS OF LOVE, and DAILY ACTS OF LOVE, as well as fiction. She founded The Women's Press and is still Chair. She lives in Australia.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780718145088 |
| ISBN 10 | 0718145089 |
| Title | The Universal Heart |
| Author | Stephanie Dowrick |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2002-01-31 |
| Number of pages | 448 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |