We want to be in open, loving communion with each other and our greatest fear is intimacy. That it won't work and we'll be rejected.

I would say both Western psychology and Eastern paths would recognize that we get caught up in feeling like a separate self and an unworthy self.

The fear side can have us pull away and protect us, but it's really a withdrawal, a disassociation, a cutting off. Rather than the word detachment, I usually use the word non-attachment. That can be wholesome when we care and are completely engaged with each other but are not attached to things being a certain way.

Mindfulness is a pause - the space between stimulus and response: that's where choice lies.

We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering.

Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.

Compassion can be described as letting ourselves be touched by the vulnerability and suffering that is within ourselves and all beings. The full flowering of compassion also includes action: Not only do we attune to the presence of suffering, we respond to it.