The Undefended Approach
The Undefended Approach utilizes a remarkable blending of Eastern and Western teachings, embracing our practical concerns with spiritual arms. It begins with the understanding, perhaps appreciated only intellectually at first, that within each of us is an inner core of goodness — a place of love, joy and peace — and that each of us can use our relationships to help us learn how to access and express this authentic center of our being. By identifying the layers of emotional defense we have built up over our lives (while interrupting the ways we keep adding to these layers), we learn to peel back, dissolve or reshape the personality structure (our emotional defense system) so that it becomes a transparent vehicle through which our Essential Self can be cultivated and expressed.
Undefended Love offers readers a path to self-development, individually and in partnership. It is unlike other popular relationship methods in that it is based in the recognition that we are each unique — this approach does not attempt to mold people to conform to a recipe or formula for how they should be. It offers a distilled body of wisdom that can guide, not direct, each person to find their own unique and essential nature and uses relationship as this vehicle for self-discovery. Change then, becomes about becoming more of who you are instead of someone you are supposed to be.
Instead of agreeing to agree through negotiation and compromise (the problem-solving approach) to relationships or providing a standard of behavior that readers can measure themselves against (the moral-ethical approach), or informing readers that they must accept differences as a part of being male or female (the gender approach), the Undefended Approach utilizes one basic tool — self-inquiry — to help readers recognize their uniqueness and use relationship to uncover and express who they are at their most essential levels. The byproduct of this process is increasingly greater levels of intimacy, love, inner peace and joy and the capacity to experience and express these in primary partnership.
The Problem-Solving Approach
When we approach relationship issues as problems to be “fixed” we achieve, at best, topical solutions for issues lying well below the surface. It is true that problem-solving techniques can provide a quick answer and temporary relief from emotional pain. Unfortunately, the short-term symptom relief of these techniques is obtained at the expense of long-term development, personal growth and intimacy.
The Undefended Approach is a problem-utilizing method: Every problem is used as an intimate opportunity to help clear away whatever lies between us and the heart-to-heart connection we long for.
The Moral-Ethical Approach
Moralistic or Ethical proponents have tended toward simplistic behavior-modification attempts — the recipe method — which produces what one might expect: a cookie cutter outcome. They prescribe good and bad ways to be and we try to live up to these standards. This approach teaches us that the answers lie outside of us: Someone else has the “right” answers and we should follow what they say. As you can imagine, a prescribed way of being does not provide for exceptions nor embraces individuality.
The Undefended Approach maintains there is no universal “right” or “wrong.” Each person’s actions must be weighed upon a greater scale than any one person’s single-minded perspective can appreciate. No one knows who you are meant to be. The Undefended approach offers a process to help you realize who you are and to express your potential in a committed relationship and out in the world.
The Gender Approach
Most authors and teachers of relationship fall into the “gender trap” — they see relationship issues through the lens of gender conditioning. This is like looking at a person with an overcoat on and trying to describe his or her naked body. The Gender Approach is useful in shining a light on where most couples begin their relationship journeys but as a prescription for how to be in a relationship can lead to disastrous results. Instead of fostering intimacy, they can actually reinforce the differences between us, leading to feelings of alienation and separation.
The Undefended Approach immediately dives below the “cloak” of gender conditioning. Gender is viewed as two sides of the same coin. The reader’s attention is drawn to the common substance, the gold of the coin, that we all share.