Relative to Everything - Reclaiming Intimacy in a Time of Global Crisis - Paperback

by Brian J. Gleason (Author)

We are living in a time of profound transition. The world is changing in ways that will challenge us to significantly alter our business-as-usual lifestyles. In Relative to Everything. Brian Gleason suggests that the global problems we face.are actually symptons of a disconnection from each other and the natural world. Perhaps the most destructive aspect of our modern, industrialized world is how we have learned to cut off from authentic connection from one another and from the larger-than-human world. Gleason has coined the term Separatism to describe how our approach to life leads us down a path of environmental, social and cultural degradation.

What are we to do? As we can no longer rely on political, technological and financial solutions, it is time to turn our attention to how we relate to each other. In Relative to Everything, Gleason offers a direction for nourishing and evolving our inherent relationship skills, what he calls meta-skills. As a psychotherapist who has worked with couples for four decades, he suggests that most relationships suffer less from psychological dysfunction and more from living in high stress, unsustainable ways. We all need to learn from those cultures who have long-practiced reciprocal, earth, and community-based lifestyles. As our planet goes through dramatic change, it is imperative that we learn to combine the wisdom of indigenous cultures with the critical skills of emotional fluency, conflict mastery, neuroscience, somatic psychology, and what Gleason calls Full Self Expression.

Delivered with an engaging style, Gleason's message is simple: we can no longer afford to rely on a social structure that privileges money over human connection and individuality over a felt sense of our interconnectedness to everything. Relative to Everything will open you to a paradigm that is both old and new. Here we learn to move from protection to connection, from autonomy to intimacy, from domestication to rewilding. The skills essential to your intimate relationships will become increasingly crucial as we adapt to a radically changing world. Likewise, learning to re-integrate ourselves into the natural world will be necessary to nourish our human relationships. Gleason suggests that our goal is to move beyond approaches to personal growth that privilege the mind over the body, and learn to feel our connection to everything. This, he calls empathy. Relative to Everything invites you to reclaim empathy as your inherent nature and offers clear and practical steps we all can take.