The Intimate Life ─ Awakening to the Spiritual Essence in Yourself and Others

This is a book about making contact—with yourself, your partner, and everything around you—at the deepest level possible. The basis for this connection is what Dr. Judith Blackstone calls fundamental consciousness---what we all are in our essence. In The Intimate Life, this innovate teacher and psychotherapist shares 17 relational practices from her unique approach to embodied spiritual awakening known as the Realization Process. Offered to help us relate “core to core” with compassion, understanding, and joy, The Intimate Life explores:

• Attuning to Unified Consciousness—how to let go of our conditioned perceptions and behaviors to foster spiritual maturation
• Overcoming boundary problems—how to embrace the paradox of oneness and separateness
• Awareness, emotion, and physical contact—the three main pathways of interpersonal connection
• The spiritual essence of sexuality—spiritual exercises that apply unified consciousness to sexuality to enhance pleasure, liberate the body’s subtle energy, and more

To genuinely love other people is one of the central ideals in every spiritual tradition. It’s also one of our greatest challenges. Here is a transformational guide to becoming “lovers of life” and experiencing the full potential of our intimate relationships.

“Our spirituality flowers as we bring love alive in our lives. In The Intimate Life, Judith Blackstone guides us in how to release resistance to authentic contact and how to realize our inherent oneness with all beings. Her teachings are lucid, powerful, and wise—this book is a gem!”
—Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance

“With grace and profound insight, Judith Blackstone presents wise guidance on how we can more genuinely connect with and recognize the luminous depth of each other—and the world.”
—Marci Shimoff, New York Times bestselling author, Love for No Reason and Happy for No Reason

Judith Blackstone, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychotherapist in New York and an innovative teacher in contemporary spirituality who has shared the Realization Process with students across the US since 1987. Her published works include the books The Enlightenment Processand The Empathic Ground and the audio learning course The Realization Process.