Diane Musho Hamilton is at the forefront of one of the most significant spiritual emergents in contemporary culture: the realization of the power of our everyday relationships, even troubled ones, as a means of awakening.

For many progressive spiritual practitioners it no longer feels like enough to merely follow an individual meditation practice, as valuable as that is. We want to apply our enlarged selves, skillfully and in real time, to the circumstances of our complex lives, and particularly to our relationships with others.

The spiritual potency of relationship is a subject Diane Musho Hamilton explores in her new book, The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone. Diane grounds her teaching in the enduring cosmic polarity between difference and sameness. It is the sameness we share with others that provides comfort and safety, and the differences we have with them that bring liveliness and creativity. As integralists we are called to integrate these polarities into a deeper mutuality.

Diane’s approach is particularly relevant to the contemporary social challenge of relating to our American family as it continues to polarize both culturally and politically.

I always feel a little bit wiser after a conversation with my dear friend Diane. I hope you do too!

Written by Jeff Salzman

About The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone

The people who get under your skin the most can in fact be your greatest teachers. It’s not a matter of overlooking differences, as is often taught, but of regarding those difficult aspects of the relationship with curiosity and compassion–for those very differences offer a path to profound connection. Diane Hamilton’s practical, reality-based guide to living harmoniously with even your most irritating fellow humans — spouses, partners, colleagues, parents, children — shows that “getting along” is really a matter of discovering that our differences are nothing other than an expression of our even deeper shared unity.