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COURSE

Realizing a Life of Love: Mastering the Art of Loving

With Michael McGee, MD

Welcome to this course on mastering the art of loving! I’m Dr. Michael McGee. I’m a psychiatrist with over 30 years of experience living and practicing in San Luis Obispo, California. Much of my practice is helping patients heal from trauma. I also specialize in addiction psychiatry, and I’ve written two award-winning books on recovery from addiction. Over the years I’ve developed a personal practice for my own healing, growth, and transformation that I also use in my clinical work. It is called the 3 As of awakening to Love. This is the practice I’m going to teach you in this course. It is deceptively simple and profound. I’ve seen many of my patients heal and realize a life of love with this practice, as I have. Love is an implicit skill we hopefully learned by growing up in a loving family. Unfortunately, many of us suffered some degree of trauma and/or neglect growing up, which left us with a love wound, which leaves us feeling unlovable and disconnected. If this is the case for you, then this course will be a good start for the beginning to heal your love wound. This is an excellent course for anyone who has suffered hurt or heartbreak in relationships, including the traumas of divorce, betrayal, or breakups. If you are doing well at loving, this course will help you to get even better, and ultimately transcend the limitations of ego. Virtually no one is too broken or wounded that they cannot heal. May this course help you to heal, grow, transcend, master the art of loving, and realize a fulfilling life of love! 1. Developing a personal practice for healing, growth, and transformation. 2. How to heal from a traumatic past. 3. Transcending the limitations of ego. 4. Building stronger loving bonds with friends, family, and yourself. Anyone can take this course. Virtually no one is too broken or wounded that they cannot heal. Those suffering from trauma, neglect, or heartbreak, feel disconnected from their fellows and want to improve their capacity to love.

In this course, you will learn about the wound that damages our reverence and thus poison our inspiration to love. This is called the "Love Wound." It is wounding our sense of our lovability, our connection to others, and something greater than ourselves. This wound is universal; all people experience this wound to some degree. The differences among us are only matters of degree. This course will teach you lifelong practices to heal this Love Wound to enable and inspire you to realize a life of love. Along with healing practices to cultivate reverence, joy, awe, and wonder, this course teaches 31 different love practices to help you master the art of loving. Love is an implicit skill we can all get better at through practice. With practice, effort, and support, over the next weeks and months, you will likely notice a profound transformation of your life to a life of love. And with this, you realize peace, joy, and fulfillment to you can live the best life possible.

52 Days

1.9k students

4.9 stars

23 min / day

English

About this course

Self-Compassion

RAIN

Mindful Self-Discipline Practice

Meet your Teacher

Michael McGee, MD

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Naples, FL, USA

Michael McGee, MD, believes everyone deserves mental healthcare with a human connection. He provides compassionate clinical care and spiritual support to people from all walks of life. He has three different board certifications in General Adult Psychiatry, Addiction Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. McGee treats a wide range of psychiatric conditions and offers spiritual counseling and meditation teaching as part of his psychotherapy work. With more than 30 years of experience in psychiatry, Dr. McGee specializes in integrating psychiatric treatment with spiritually informed interventions and practices. He is the creator of Awakening Therapy, a contemplative-relational approach to psychiatric treatment, and The WellMind Method, a practice that teaches people how to use love to heal wounds caused by trauma and neglect. Dr. McGee graduated from Stanford University in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree with distinction in biology. He then graduated in 1985 from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed his residency training in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

View Profile

52 Days

1.9k students

4.9 stars

23 min / day

English

Lesson 1

What is Love?

Welcome to this course on realizing a life of love! It’s wonderful to be with you! I designed this course to help you realize a life of love. Love is the most fulfilling of all human activities. Love sustains us. Love buffers the hardships of life. And love brings us the greatest peace and joy. Love is essential, but it’s also challenging, because it’s a skill that can both be simple and complex. We have all experienced the challenges of loving and being loved, including frustration, confusion, conflicting emotions, loneliness, hurt, and even heartbreak. Because loving can seem mysterious and subtle, it can take a lifetime to become a master at loving. Unfortunately, most of us didn’t grow up with ideal loving parents in ideal loving families. Most of us experienced some degree of trauma and neglect that left us feeling unlovable and challenged in our capacity to love and be loved. We entered adulthood with a Love Wound. Fortunately, there’s hope, no matter how hopeless you might feel about love. The love wound can be healed, and loving can be learned through a variety of practices. That’s what this course is all about.

Lesson 2

Love Wound: Trauma and Neglect

In this session I discuss the impact of trauma and neglect. Trauma and negelct create a "Love Wound." We will now explore the nature of this wound and the impact it has on our capcity to love.

Lesson 3

Love Wound: Disconnection, Shame, and Adaptation

The Love Wound impairs our capacity to love for many reasons. In this session we will explore the consequences of the Love Wound on our lives, in particular as it manifests as shame, disconnection and a distoration of our life agenda to unconsciously living to heal our love wounds through external sources of affirmation and validation. We will see how our wounds and our misguided efforts to heal them poison our capacity to love fully and authentically.

Lesson 4

The Three A's: Attending

In this session we will explore the first and most foundational of the 3 As of awakening to love--Attending. Again, the 3 As of awakening are Attending, Appreciating, and Acting with love. Attending leads to appreciation, which then leads to skillful loving action. Appreciation has two meanings, however: both understanding the nature of things and understanding the value or sacredness of Reality. Both of these aspects of appreciation arise from careful attending. Together, the twin practices of and Appreciating (“Appreciative Attending”) generate wisdom and reverence, which enable us to fulfill our purpose—to nurture and savor Life. Inspired by reverence for Life, we can then take Action with love, while enjoying each brief and precious moment of existence.

Lesson 5

Cultivating Reverence #1: The Practice of Presence

In this session we will go deeper into the practice of attending by exploring the most foundational practice of the practice of love—the practice of presence. It is through attending to the Now that we gradually develop both and enduring sense of reverence for this eternal moment and the deep wisdom needed to love skillfully. Again, as a reminder, the 3 As of awakening are Attending, Appreciating, and Acting with love. Attending leads to appreciation, which then leads to skillful loving action. Appreciation has two meanings, however: both understanding the nature of things and understanding the value or sacredness of Reality. Both of these aspects of appreciation arise from careful attending. Together, the twin practices of Attending and Appreciating (“Appreciative Attending”) generate wisdom and reverence, which enable us to fulfill our purpose—to nurture and savor Life. Inspired by reverence for Life, we can then take Action to benefit all of life—others and ourselves—with a loving heart, while enjoying each brief and precious moment of existence.

Lesson 6

The 3 A's: Appreciating

Again, as a reminder, the 3 As of awakening are Attending, Appreciating, and Acting with love. Attending leads to appreciation, which then leads to skillful loving action. Appreciation has two meanings, however: both understanding the nature of things and understanding the value or sacredness of Reality. Both of these aspects of appreciation arise from careful attending. Together, the twin practices of Attending and Appreciating, called “Appreciative Attending,” generate wisdom and reverence, which enable us to fulfill our purpose—to nurture and savor Life. Inspired by reverence for Life, we can then take Action to benefit all of Life—others and ourselves—with a loving heart, while enjoying each brief and precious moment of existence. Last session we discussed the practice of presence. Today we will talk about the second A of awakening, the practice of appreciating. Two aspects of appreciation arise out of attending. One is the wisdom aspect —seeing the nature of things, or appreciating Truth, including an understanding of oneness. Out of this appreciation of Truth arises the second aspect, which is reverence or the appreciation of the sacred nature of your life, of all of Life, and of Reality. This is the value or heart aspect of appreciation. We can call this radical reverence in the sense that radical refers to something propound and fundamental. This reverence is absolute and unconditional, and it stands apart from our personal likes, dislikes, and judgments. Appreciating the truth of things triggers awe and wonder, which then trigger gratitude, humility, and a desire to live a life of love. Together, wisdom and reverence make up the two wings of appreciation that inspire a life of skillful loving. We sustain our appreciation through Attending and through conscious management of our attitude. It’s relatively easy to appreciate the sacred nature of all things and all people when we’re still and comfortable. It’s more difficult when we feel threatened or are in pain. This is where attitude management comes in. Appreciating is the practice of accepting and honoring our painful feelings, as well as our destructive urges, even as we abstain to the best of our ability from acting on them. In the practice of Appreciating, we remind ourselves that this moment is sacred, we are sacred, everyone is sacred, and everything is sacred.

Lesson 7

Releasing Judgments and Cultivating Loving Intent

As I discussed in our last session, Appreciating What Is allows us to see that the Universe is neutral without judgment of anything as “bad” or “good.” As William Shakespeare said in Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Our minds are designed by Nature to judge. For our purposes, I distinguish judging from discerning, where judging entails forming an opinion about the value or merit of someone or something, and discerning means to see the nature of someone or something. With these definitions, discerning something is to just see it for what it is, while judging someone or something involves an assignment of value as either good, bad, or neutral. Judging something or someone as “good” or “bad” is the way our biology helps us to discern what’s beneficial vs. what’s harmful. When something harms us, causes us discomfort, or threatens us, the brain judges it to be “bad,” and there’s a feeling tone of aversion. This can be felt as dislike, annoyance, disgust, contempt, resentment, anger, or hatred and rage in the extreme. These emotions drive us to avoid, harm, or even destroy what we judge to be “bad.” Conversely, when something gives us pleasure, comfort, relief, or safety, the brain judges it to be “good.” When the brain determines something to be “good,” there’s a feeling tone of attraction. This can be felt as like, pleasure, relief, contentment, satisfaction, or even the feeling of intense affection. These emotions drive us in in the form of desire or even cravings to seek out and acquire or to experience the gratification of whatever the brain judges to be good. Among other things, this might be friends, lovers, material possessions, social positions of status, entertainment, food, or drugs. The evolution of “gooding” and “badding” and the associated emotions of desire and aversion have served us well as a species. Our emotions of desire and aversion along with our understandings of what is good and bad create our intentions, which drive our actions to promote our satisfaction, comfort, and survival. These mechanisms make up the ego, without which we wouldn’t survive. Despite the benefits of judging, it has its downside. Specifically, it’s a barrier to loving. Why? Because love is reverence-inspired beneficial action. As humans, we’re simply not wired to have reverence for something we judge to be bad or neutral. It’s difficult to love someone you hate. In fact, judging others to be bad or irrelevant leads to apathy, exploitation, and violence, including war, oppression, and genocide. Because of our interdependence, our species is now at an evolutionary crisis in which we must transition from judging to discernment. We must transition from “good” and “bad” to “helpful” and “harmful.” We can’t afford to make each other “bad” anymore. This leads to “othering” people, dehumanizing them and then disregarding, rejecting, harming, or even killing them. Because of this, think of judging as a psychological act of violence that can lead to actual violence. We live in a psychologically violent, judging society. We judge each other all the time. We place people on social hierarchies of value and worth, such as who is the brightest, the most athletic, the most attractive, the most talented, or the most charming, to name just a few hierarchies. If you attend closely within, you’ll see that not only does judging cripple your ability to love others, it’s also the source of your Love Wound or your sense of your own unlovability. Reflect on your own life and how you may or may not have measured up on these different social hierarchies. Since most of us can’t help but buy into these judgmental hierarchies to some degree, our place on the social status ladder can wound our sense that we’re good enough and have enough. There’s always someone better than us who has more than we have. Conversely, seeing ourselves as better than others cultivates arrogance, which also damages our capacity to love. Unless we had particularly enlightened parents, we were also wounded by the judgments of our parents or caregivers growing up when they told us we were either “good” or “bad” based on our behavior. If we were neglected or abused, we also absorbed and took on the judgment that we were “bad.” Since we were wired with judging brains, our brains soaked up the judgments of our caregivers, or we formed the judgment that we were bad because of the way we were treated. In essence, we believed the negativity we received. So judgment is at the root of the Love Wound. We’re left with a global felt sense that we’re somehow not good enough or that we don’t have enough. Our self-judgments and the judgments of others leave us feeling unlovable. Judgment robs us of our existential value and damages the reverence that’s the root of love.

Lesson 8

Acting with Love

In this session we will now explore the third A of awakening, Acting with love. Appreciative attending inspires radical reverence, which in turn inspires us to act with love. There are three inseparable strands of acting with love to nurture Life: to love ourselves, to love others, and to love all of Life. It’s very difficult to love others unless we first love ourselves. First, we must take very good care of ourselves and become our own ideal parent, treating ourselves as if we were our own cherished child. The practice of self-love involves optimizing our vitality through rest, good nutrition, exercise, stillness practices, good sleep, regular routines, time in Nature, and fun. It also involves asking for, opening to, and receiving the love of others. You love yourself by letting others love you. This means you need to be able to ask for help. If you have a Love Wound, you need to borrow the love of others temporarily at times to heal that wound. If you never learned to love well, you need people who are skilled at loving to teach you how to love, which requires that you connect deeply with others. The second strand of love is to love others and devote our lives to benefitting others. In this way, we balance living for “me” and for “we.” But it’s in living for “we”—which includes “me”—that we find our purpose, meaning, and ultimate fulfillment. Our intention is to nurture the harmonious vitality of all. The third strand of loving is to love the planet that sustains us and care for all of Life. So how do we practice loving ourselves, loving others, and loving all of life? This will be the topic for the bulk of this course, because as an art, loving requires both knowledge and skill in the various love practices. I’ve identified 31 love practices that we will be exploring in detail. For today, let me now give you an overview of them.

Lesson 9

Practice

Loving is an implicit skill we hopefully begin to learn from our caregivers when we’re young. But if we weren’t taught well, all is not lost. The most wonderful thing —and the reason we are all together—is that we can learn to love well. All we need is practice. Then, behaviors that were uncomfortable or awkward become more automatic. In this course we'll take a deep dive into 31 different love practices. But before we talk about what to practice, let’s talk about how to practice. If you study people who become masters at what they do, you can learn something about how to practice the art of loving. If we practice skillfully, we will more quickly master the Art of Loving.

Lesson 10

Abstaining

In this session, we'll discuss on of the most important love practices, the practice of abstaining from harm. Abstaining is the practice of self-restraint. Out of our reverence for Life, we make a vow to abstain from harmful behaviors, including both harmful words and actions. What do we abstain from? Examples include killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, physical violence, addicting, gossiping, judging others, the self-centered manipulation of others, or the exploitation of others. Abstaining can be thought of as a form of action, for to not act is also to act. It can take an effort of will and self-discipline, however, especially when the impulse to act in unproductive or harmful ways is strong. It takes effort when we experience fear, anger, or intense desire, coupled with a strong compulsion to act in a way that we believe would relieve these feelings. This is why abstaining can be challenging and why we often need support to abstain from harm.

Lesson 11

Self-Compassion

The tragic fact of our Love Wound is that it robs us of the capacity to show our selves compassion. Self-compassion is essential for a life of love, because we need to be vital to love others well. In this session we will explore self-compassion. What it is, its benefits, and how to begin to practice and develop this core love skill.

Lesson 12

Fostering Self-Compassion

Now that we have a good sense of what self-compassion is, we’re now going to focus on practices for fostering self-compassion and neutralizing harsh self-condemnation.

Lesson 13

Compassion

We've started with self-compassion, because we deserve compassion first and foremost. In this session we'll now investigate the practice of compassion towards others. Compassion is an action we take to relieve the suffering of another person. It starts with an intention to help, followed by actions to help.

Lesson 14

Self-Forgiveness, Part One

In this session we will now move from compassion to forgiveness, starting with forgiveness of ourslevs for the harm we have done.

Lesson 15

Self-Forgiveness, Part Two

Self-forgiveness is so critical to the practice of love that we will not spend another session on this critical practice with a focus on how to cultivate self-forgiveness.

Lesson 16

Forgiveness

In this session we will now delve into practices that foster forgiveness of others. Forgivenss helps us to love by desoxifying the poisonous resentments in our hearts that cripple our capacity to love.

Lesson 17

Protection

Unfortunatley, while the world if full of grace, it is also a dangerous place. To love well, we need both a light of love and a shield to protect ourselves. This is because we live in a world of wounded people who can harm us due to their inability to love. As a dynamic living system, we each need to protect ourselves from harm to secure our vitality. At the extreme, we cannot love well if we have sustained a mortal wound. In this lesson we'll discuss out to protect ourselves while also living with an open heart.

Lesson 18

The Practice of RAIN

Many evidence-based heart-mind practices help heal the Love Wound. One of the best practices that helps us turn the light of awareness on our pain so that we might then heal it is the called "RAIN." RAIN was first developed by Michele McDonald. As Tara Brach uses it, “RAIN” is an acronym that stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. This four-step process is another practice rooted in appreciative attending. It is a fantastic practice for getting to the root of our pain and for then healing that pain. Dr. Brach adds a fifth step, called “after the rain,” in which we rest in awakened, loving presence after working through the first four steps of RAIN. In this session we'll explor the practice of RAIN. I hope you will make this a lifelong practice for processing pain. May we all RAIN on our PAIN to realize a life of love.

Lesson 19

Caution

Caution is care taken to avoid danger or mistakes. Since life is inherently risky, we need to be cautious to minimize the risks of being harmed or harming someone else. In this session we'll discsuss the love practice of caution.

Lesson 20

Connection

For the practice of love, of course, connecting to others is critical. No one can thrive without connection, and it is connection that makes us human. Most of the love practices speak to how we connect with each other in loving ways. I will focus mostly on how we create secure, connected, loving bonds with each other—what psychologists call “secure attachments.”

Lesson 21

Benefactor Meditation

In this session we'll practice antoher great heart-mind practice for healing the love wound, the Benefactor Meditation. I am deeply grateful to John MacKransky, who inspired this practice. His book, Awakening Through Love, brilliantly describes these practices. After a few months of this practice, you will find the benefactor meditation to be a ready resouce when feeling unlovable. It will help you revive your orignial state of innate lovability.

Lesson 22

Authenticity

In this session we'll talk about authenticity, as authenticiy is critical for a life of love. Authenticity is being who you are —being real and true to yourself. At the same time, it’s also not being false. For many of us, we abandoned ourselves growing up so that others wouldn't abandon us. The practice of authenticiy helps us to reclaim the ability to be real and then create connections to others who honor who we are.

Lesson 23

Collaboration

In this session, we'll talk about the critical love skill of collaboration. Collaboration is working together toward the same goal or a common good. Life is a team sport. If we can't collaborate with others, we cannot fully benefit from all that others can provide us. We must learn to collaborate well with others to survive and thrive.

Lesson 24

Tonglen

In this session we will discuss another practice for cultivating reverence when we are in pain called “Tonglen.” This is an ancient practice first developed in Tibet for healing pain with loving compassion. “Tonglen” means “giving and receiving.” In this practice, we take in our pain or the pain of others on our inbreath, and then breathe out love and compassion to ourselves and others on the outbreath. In this practice, Tonglen involves converting pain to love. This is an excellent practce for soothing ouselves when we are in great pain. Since pain will always be with us, you will find it useful many times over for the rest of your life.

Lesson 25

Trust

To love well, we must take skillful risks to trust in others, for trust is necessary for vulnerability, connection, and collaboration. If we have been abused or neglected, trusting others can be very difficult, and some of us have difficulties discening who we can trust, and for what. When we've suffered trauma, trusting can be terrifying. In this lesson, we'll examine the benefits of trust and how to develop our capacity to trust skilffully.

Lesson 26

Assertiveness

In this session we'll ponder the love skill of assertivness. To be assertive is to stand up for your rights, needs, feelings, and opinions while respecting the rights, needs, feelings, and opinions of others. This is a critical love skill, as it is up to us to request what we need and want from others, and to say "no" to harmful or upsetting behavior. We must learn to be assertive, because conflict is a normal and inevitable part of human relationhips. This skill may be difficult if punished or disregarded in the past. But now is a different time, and you have a right to assert yourself.

Lesson 27

Lovingkindness

In this session we'll talk about another heart-mind practice that you can combine with your other heart-mind practices. The practice of lovingkindness. I’m grateful to Sharon Salzberg, Tara Brach, Joseph Goldstein, and others over the years who have taught me this lovingkindness meditation. This classic practice works by imagining yourself or someone else in your mind and then wishing yourself or the other person well with loving phrases that you repeat over and over.

Lesson 28

Affirmation

In this session we explore the love skill of affirming both others and ourselves. This is a sorely-needed skill in a world where people often tear each otherdown and rarely build each other up. To affirm someone is to acknowledge their value or goodness. You affirm someone when you compliment, encourage, or praise them. You also affirm others when you show them appreciation or notice their good efforts and contributions. Examples include, “I see you put in a lot of effort on that report. It was very clear and detailed,” or “You are a good friend. You’re always so supportive of me.” It’s just as important to affirm yourself as it is to affirm others. We are often our own harshest critic, so affirmation starts with us.

Lesson 29

Nurturing

In this session we'll talk about the love skill of nurturing. To nurture is to promote the growth and development of yourself and others. Relationships are inherently unstable, so they require our nurturing to thrive. When you’re loving, you provide this nurturing, helping your relationships blossom and stay vital.

Lesson 30

Innate Goodness

Part of awakening is captured in appreciating the untimate goodness and perfection of all that is. This includes our innate goodness adn the innate goodness of others, apart from all of our harmful behavior. This realization is core to the manifestation of radical reverence, the wellsring frokm which loving action flows. In this session we will discuss in greater detail our innate goodness that it might help us to discover this reality in ourselves and others.

Lesson 31

Acceptance

Love starts with an attitude of reverent acceptance of ourselves exactly as we are, others exactly as they are, and the world exactly as it is. We are called to love everybody, including ourselves. That includes the people who annoy us, the people who don’t like us, and the people we don’t like. It even includes the people who want to harm us. It includes people who have molested children, murdered, raped, and engaged in other criminal activities. In this session will begin to look at the very confusing concept of acceptance. What does it mean to accept all that is, including this moment as it is, everyone on this planet, and ourselves? For many of us, this may seem impossible. I hope that after we are done today you'll see both how possible and necessary acceptance is for the practice of love.

Lesson 32

Consideration

In this session we'll consider the love practcice of consideration. To be considerate is to be thoughtful—to carefully consider the feelings, concerns, preferences, and needs of others. It involves having a sense of what others are going through and thinking through the impact of your actions on them. By the end of this session you should have some practical tips for increasing your skill at being considerate of others. You'll find that in doing so this will greatly enhance your relationships.

Lesson 33

Sensing the Sacred, Part One

We all have a remarkable ability to take the miraculous for granted. In this first of two sessions, I will offer you contemplations of aspects of reality to consider to awaken you roriginal child-like sense of awe and wonder.

Lesson 34

Empathy

Empathy is understanding the experience of someone else.Of all the love skills that most benefits others in daily life, empathy my be the most important of all. In this session, we'll examine the nature of empathy and how to develop this critical love skill.

Lesson 35

Kindness

In our contentious world, kindness can be in short supply. In this session we'll discuss the benefits of kindness and how to be kinder to others.

Lesson 36

Sensing the Sacred, Part Two

In a recent session, we discussed Sensing the Sacred, Part One. In today’s session, I’ll be sharing with you the second of the two-part series on contemplations for cultivating awe and wonder. These contemplations will help to develop your sense of the sacred nature of all that is.

Lesson 37

Generosity

We all know that it is loving to be generous. But did you know that the person who most benefits from your generosity is you? In this session we'll discuss discuss these benefits and how to intentially cultivate generosity.

Lesson 38

Helpfulness

Helping others may be one of the more difficult love skills. It sometimes takes a great deal of wisdom and discernment to know how to help. In this session we'll explore some of the nuances of helping others that you might be more skillful at this love skill.

Lesson 39

Humility

In our "Big Me" world of social status, materialism, acquisition, individualism, and narcissistic self-preoccupation, humility can seem a rare comodity. Underneath our grandiosity is a subterranesan sense of unworthiness and vulnerability--the Love Wound. Part of the healing of the Love Wound and the restoration of our capacity to love is the cultivation of humility. Humility liberates us from the compulsion to be extraordinary so that we can then focus on enjoying and benefitting life. In this session we'll review the nature of humility, its benefits, the barriers to humility, and how we might cultivate our humility.

Lesson 40

Respect

It seems one of the toxic factors in our current divisive, demeaning, dehumanizing, and demonizing social political culture is the loss of treating each other with respect. A damaging aspect of this is the idea that only certain people deserve respect. For some, it is an alien and radical idea that all people unconditionally deserve respect. In this session we'll try to correct some of these misunderstandings and discuss ways to treat others with more respect.

Lesson 41

Patience

You may be surprised to see that patience is a love skill, but it is, because it is good for both us and others. To be patient is to wait calmly in the face of frustration or adversity. When we’re patient, we can endure delays, difficulties, distress, and obstacles calmly without getting angry or upset. When combined with hope, patience allows us to support and belive in others as well. In this session we'll explore patience, its benefits, the barriers to patience, and how to cultivate patience.

Lesson 42

Accountability

Accountability is being responsible for our attitude, behavior, and success. It is also holding others accountable for managing their attitudes, behaviors, and successes. To live a life of love requires that we eschew blame but still hold ourselvs and others responsible for our actions. Given our profound interdependece, life requires accountability. Accountabilty is als over healing and empowering, as it takes us out of the victim role. We may have ben dealty a tough hand, but we're accountable to play it the best we can. In this session we'll discuss the nature of accountability, the benefits of accountability, the barriers to accountability, and how to cultivate accounability.

Lesson 43

Integrity

Integrity is doing what is true, right, and good. It’s doing the next right thing according to your conscience despite urges to do otherwise.Integrity as a daily, moment-by- moment life practice. In this session we'll discuss the nature of integrity the beneifts of integrity, the barriers to integrity, and ways to cultivate our integrity.

Lesson 44

Repair

Repair refers to fixing the harm we inflict on another person. Unfortunately, we hurt each other in ways both large and small, knowingly and unknowingly, intentionally and unintentionally. So knowing how to reapir the harm we cause is an essential love skill. In this session we'll discuss the nature and benefits of repair, the barriers to repiar, and who to go about reparing relationships when you can.

Lesson 45

Courage

Courage is intentionally doing what’s right despite fear. It isn’t the absence of fear, but the overcoming of fear. It’s having confidence in our ability to pursue a worthy goal despite risk and discomfort. In this session I'll discuss the nautre of courage as a love skill, the benefits of courage, the barriers to courage, and ways to cultivate courage.

Lesson 46

Discipline

Discipline is the capacity to do what is right regardless of urges to do otherwise, even when doing what’s right is painful or requires effort. It’s a form of love because we act to help ourselves and others rather than do things that may feel comfortable but don’t benefit us long-term. Discipline can get a bad rap. But it is truly loving to live a disciplined life, as long as you're being flexible and adaptive to changing circumstances. In this session we'll discuss the nature of discipline, the beneifts of discipline, the barriers to discipline, and ways to cultivate discipline.

Lesson 47

Contentment

In our late stage capitalist society that depends on our discontent for profits, contentment is rare. This is ironic, given our incredble abundance, which is greater than at any time in human history. Contentment is a practice of reverence for the reality of this moment just as It is, reverence for who we are just as we are, and reverence for others just as they are. When we’re content, this moment is more than enough, and enough is an abundant feast. In this session we'll explore the natureof contentment, the benefits of contentment, the barriers to contentment, and ways to cultivate this love skill.

Lesson 48

Gratitude

Gratitude is being thankful for all that’s good in our lives. In this session, we'll explore why gratitude is loving, the barriers to gratitude, and how to cultivvate our gratitude. In doing so, we markedly improve the quality of our lives and the lives of those we touch.

Lesson 49

Hope

In this session, we'll discuss mature hope, which arises from seeing the nature of things clearly. We'll discuss the benefits of hope, the barriers to hope, and how to cultivate hope. As you'll see, it is truly loving to hope for ourselvs, our world and for others.

Lesson 50

Endurance

Endurance is the ability to withstand hardship and adversity. It’s persevering without giving up when the going is tough. People who endure have grit. You may not have thought of grit as a love skill before. In this session we'll explore the many benefits of endurance, the barriers to endurance, and the ways we can enhance our grit.

Lesson 51

Devotion

Ultimately, a life of love is a life devoted to the practice of love. This is a wise from of selfishness that maximizes our happiness. Loving can be easy, and at times difficult. To succeed, we must devote ourselves to the worshipful practice of love. we must live lives devoted to loving. In this session we'll discuss the nature of devotion, the benefits of devotion, the barriers to devotion, and ways to cultivate our devotion.

Lesson 52

Conclusion: A Life of Love

If you did this course in just 52 days, you probabaly feel like you've taken a drink from a fire hose! I hope you will not go back anddevote a week oir a month to each practice, combining your practice of the various love skills with your heart-mind practices. It usually takes time and a lot of practice to develop mastery of any skill, including the art of loving. May you be gentle and patient with your practice of the art of loving. Get help, guidance, and support from othres as well. May this course be but one inspiration and source of guidance for you. For many of us with more severe love wounds, we may also benefit from therapy to heal as a companion ot this course. In this session I conclude with some reflections on my own journey, which is far from over, and which I know will never end. Mastery of this art of loving is a lifelong practice. I also offer some additional sources to further your study and practice of this highest of art forms. May you be happy. May you be well. May you be joyful. May you heal. May you realize a wonderful life of love. May you be a channel of love that helps others realize a life of love. May your efforts and practice send out ripples of benefit into the world. May we all leave this world a bit better off because of our existence. Blessings.

Lesson 1

What is Love?

Lesson 2

Love Wound: Trauma and Neglect

In this session I discuss the impact of trauma and neglect. Trauma and negelct create a "Love Wound." We will now explore the nature of this wound and the impact it has on our capcity to love.

Lesson 3

Love Wound: Disconnection, Shame, and Adaptation

Lesson 4

The Three A's: Attending

Lesson 5

Cultivating Reverence #1: The Practice of Presence

Lesson 6

The 3 A's: Appreciating

Lesson 7

Releasing Judgments and Cultivating Loving Intent

Lesson 8

Acting with Love

Lesson 9

Practice

Lesson 10

Abstaining

Lesson 11

Self-Compassion

Lesson 12

Fostering Self-Compassion

Now that we have a good sense of what self-compassion is, we’re now going to focus on practices for fostering self-compassion and neutralizing harsh self-condemnation.

Lesson 13

Compassion

Lesson 14

Self-Forgiveness, Part One

In this session we will now move from compassion to forgiveness, starting with forgiveness of ourslevs for the harm we have done.

Lesson 15

Self-Forgiveness, Part Two

Self-forgiveness is so critical to the practice of love that we will not spend another session on this critical practice with a focus on how to cultivate self-forgiveness.

Lesson 16

Forgiveness

Lesson 17

Protection

Lesson 18

The Practice of RAIN

Lesson 19

Caution

Lesson 20

Connection

Lesson 21

Benefactor Meditation

Lesson 22

Authenticity

Lesson 23

Collaboration

Lesson 24

Tonglen

Lesson 25

Trust

Lesson 26

Assertiveness

Lesson 27

Lovingkindness

Lesson 28

Affirmation

Lesson 29

Nurturing

Lesson 30

Innate Goodness

Lesson 31

Acceptance

Lesson 32

Consideration

Lesson 33

Sensing the Sacred, Part One

Lesson 34

Empathy

Lesson 35

Kindness

In our contentious world, kindness can be in short supply. In this session we'll discuss the benefits of kindness and how to be kinder to others.