Waking Up Together: Intimate Partnership on the Spiritual Path

Waking Up Together is written for those who want to journey to new depths of intimacy, both spiritually and in their love relationship. The book shows how a committed, long-term relationship can enhance spiritual development and how relationships can be transformed by spiritual practice. Written by two Zen teachers married for thirty-seven years, it shows that relationships and all that arise from them can be a help--not a hindrance!--as we seek greater freedom and joy. It is possible to wake up together!

Going far beyond merely recommending skills and strategies to improve relationships, Waking Up Together serves as a guide in our ongoing process of spiritual discovery and intimacy. Throughout the book the authors intermingle stories and poems along with anecdotes from their married life, empowering couples to awaken to an ever-expanding experience of relationship that is full of spontaneity, mystery, awe, love, and unlimited possibility. Waking Up Together will be useful for couples of all persuasions. It affirms and encourages couples to cultivate the richness of their own relationship, and open to the unbounded potential of love.

Ellen Birx, a Zen teacher, has a PhD in psychiatric-mental health nursing and for the past twenty years has been a professor at Radford University. She is the author of Healing Zen.

Charles Birx, also a Zen teacher, has an Ed.D. and has worked for many years as a reading specialist and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at Radford University. The Birxes are cofounders of New River Zen Community. They have been married for thirty-seven years and live together in Radford, Virginia.