If we’re not getting along with the people in our lives, what good is all our spiritual ‘progress’? Demonstrating the interconnection between our spirituality and our relationships, John E. Welshons begins his One Soul, One Love, One Heart: The Sacred Path to Healing All Relationships with a parable: a yogi meditates in his mountaintop hermitage for many years, eventually reaching the pinnacle of enlightenment, radiating an aura of peace and wisdom. That is, until he goes down to the nearby village and is accidentally shoved by a peasant, at which point he loses his hard-won serenity and explodes at the poor fellow. Therefore, no matter what spiritual path we follow, our first priority is maintaining good relationships, whether romantic, familial, professional, or casual.

Synthesizing many spiritual traditions, including elements of Buddhist, yogic, and western psychology, as well as his own experience as a counselor and workshop leader, Welshons constructs a broad three-point plan for relationship repair, ‘Seeing the Light,’ ‘Freeing the Light,’ and ‘Being the Light,’ that easily resonates no matter our background or beliefs. Endeavoring to cover the entire spectrum of human relationships, from the difficulties of caring for an aging parent to the lessons we can learn from our pets, Welshons’ advice remains sound, even when resorting to speaking in generalities. Writing in a gentle, even playful tone, he never allows the enormity of the task—the reform of all our interpersonal relationships–to feel overwhelming. For as Welshons points out, the path to healing our relationships is not to dwell on the problems that beset us, but to see the opportunities for greater love that surround us.

One Soul, One Love, One Heart: The Sacred Path to Healing All Relationships