Dear Friends, May these messages bring you new perspectives, upliftment, and support in your efforts to bring love, trust, and the best of who you are to life and to those around you.

Watch on YouTube: “Freedom Is from the Past, in the Heart”

Dear Friends, When people go into therapy or personal reflection, looking for the cause and hopefully the solution to their personal problems, they usually find a cause outside themselves. Something from their past—some hurtful situation, some traumatic event—that now limits them. The trouble is, the past is over. Nothing about it can be changed. So whatever caused their problems is still causing their problems. …

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Pleasure: A Hidden Test of Love

It’s obvious to everyone that difficulty puts love to the test. But who suspects that pleasure also tests our love? Almost no one. And that’s why we’re blindsided when we’re tested by pleasure, and we so often flunk the felicity test.  We’re not used to thinking of pleasure as a test of love. Isn’t love a wonderful source of pleasure, and a great pleasure …

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Possessiveness: Selfishness Disguised as Commitment

I still feel a twinge when I think of my high school best friend, Sharon (not her real name). After graduation life pulled us in different directions, and we lost track of each other. But we managed to find each other several years later, and we had a visit I’ll never forget. Sharon told me about her successful professional life and her marriage, which …

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Wooden blocks that spell selfish or selfless depending in what position the last block is

Martyrdom: Selfishness Disguised as Service

We human beings are kind, generous, and serviceful by nature. It’s in our DNA to give freely to those we love, to those in need, and ultimately, to everyone in our lives. When done in the right spirit, it’s our pleasure to give. And the pleasure is mutual. But some people are literally “generous to a fault.” They carry giving too far. They exhaust …

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Now on YouTube: “Looking through the Anals of Human History”

Dear Friends, Everyone who reviews human history sees a saga of suffering, difficulty, and trouble—which seems to repeat itself, and never gets far from the same old SHIT. Are we stuck with such a terrible destiny? David Truman says NO! In this talk, he identifies the cause of all the suffering and the way to avoid repeating the same destiny. It’s the way exemplified …

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Manipulation: Selfishness Disguised as Sincerity

It’s a classic movie plot: A couple falls in love, but there’s a dark cloud on the horizon…. The courtship begins with a misrepresentation or misunderstanding, which is kept up through most of the movie. But somewhere near the end, the relationship gets serious enough that the deception can no longer be maintained. The pretender admits the truth, hoping that it won’t end the …

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New YouTube Video: “Revising the Blueprint for Love”

Dear Friends, The usual approach to love and relationship is to find a special someone to love, and focus our love and attention on them primarily. Others are not “supposed” to matter as much. But we’ve all experienced what a lie that is. In “Revising the Blueprint for Love,” a talk recorded in 1983, David Truman says: “In theory, it should not matter that …

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Collusion: Selfishness Disguised as Support

It’s your happy day when you discover that your house is infested with termites. Wait a minute! What’s so happy about that? Well, it’s truly fortunate to find out about a serious but hidden problem that is threatening the very foundations of your home, so you can promptly take care of it. And it’s the same if you’re unknowingly doing something that’s bad for …

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Just Added to YouTube: “Apology Is Golden”

Dear Friends, All human beings do things we feel legitimately guilty about — things we know better than, things below our personal heartfelt standards, things that cause someone else a pain or a problem. At such times our guilty feelings are the natural response of our heart, drawing our attention to our wrong turn, asking us to correct it. But typically, people react badly …

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