A continuing practice of reading good therapists is an immeasurably useful way of gaining confidence in your work. For this book I read Jung, Hillman, Winnicott, Laing, Rogers, and Yalom. I restore my skills by consulting books and videos by Rollo May, Fritz Perls, John Tarrant, Ronald Schenk, Robert Sardello, D. W. Winnicott, Rafael López-Pedraza, Patricia Berry, David L. Miller, John Moriarty, and Nor Hall. I keep certain spiritual books at hand: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Tao Te Ching, Black Elk Speaks, Upanishads, Sufi poetry, Jane Hirshfield’s Women in Praise of the Sacred, and my own translation of the gospels. This is a partial list. I could add many poets and writers of fiction.

Learn how to give loving attention to your whole experience. Open yourself, even to those aspects you would rather do away with. Cultivate equanimity rather than searching for the next peak experience.

If I’d been better schooled back then in the art of accompaniment, I would have

understood how important it is to honor another person’s ability to make choices. I hope I would have understood, as good accompanists do, that everybody is in their own spot, on their own pilgrimage, and your job is to meet them where they are, help them chart their own course. I wish I had followed some advice that is rapidly becoming an adage: Let others voluntarily evolve.

As we sincerely seek to understand and integrate these principles into our lives, I am convinced we will discover and rediscover the truth of T. S. Eliot’s observation:

We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.

And watch what happens to you. The more deeply you understand other people, the more you will appreciate them, the more reverent you will feel about them. To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.