Transformation through Intimacy, Revised Edition

Intimate relationship has long been viewed and lived as a lesser alternative to spiritual life. More recently, the need to integrate our spiritual and intimate lives, rather than maintaining separate spheres and relationships on autopilot, has become increasingly apparent. Given the high rates of infidelity and divorce, it would seem that the possibilities of freedom through intimacy have not been explored in much depth. Too often we pull away when relationships become difficult, missing out on the rewards of connecting more profoundly. The passage from immature to mature monogamy is not only a journey of ripening intimacy with a partner, but also a journey into and through zones of ourselves that may be very difficult to accept and integrate with the rest of our being. Transformation through Intimacy explores intimate relationships through a four-stage lens: me-centered, we-centered codependent, we-centered coindependent, and being-centered. Bringing his many years of experience as a psychotherapist and spiritual practitioner to the subject, Masters shows readers not only how to navigate the thickets of reactivity, conflict, shame, anger, fear, and doubt, but how to understand them in a new light so that a deeper level of relating to oneself and one's partner becomes possible, opening new levels of trust, commitment, and love.

Robert Augustus Masters, PhD, is a relationship expert, an integral psychotherapist, and a psychospiritual guide and trainer, with a doctorate in psychology. He is the cofounder, with his wife Diane, of the Masters Center for Transformation (MCT), a school featuring relationally rooted psychospiritual work devoted to deep healing and fully embodied awakening. He is also the author of many books (including Transformation Through Intimacy, Spiritual Bypassing, Emotional Intimacy, and To Be a Man) and an audio program: Knowing Your Shadow.
 
His uniquely integral, intuitive work, which he developed over the past thirty-seven years, dynamically blends the psychological and physical with the spiritual, emphasizing full-blooded embodiment, authenticity, emotional openness and literacy, deep shadow work, and the develop­ment of relational maturity.
 
At essence his work is about becoming more intimate with all that we are, in the service of the deepest possible healing, awakening, and integration. He works side by side and in very close conjunction with Diane. They live and work in Ashland, Oregon. His website is http://robert­masters.com.
 
He posts regularly on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/robertaugustusmasters