Acknowledgements

—Chris Saade

My ability to participate in the creation of this book is largely due to the support, love, input, feedback, challenges, partnerships, and life-lessons afforded me by precious relationships. A quick mention here will only portray a tiny bubble of my gratitude.

First, to my wife, Jessie Thompson, I offer my deepest gratitude for her spirit. I am blessed by her commitment to look outward with me in service to the world. She is a passionate advocate for diversity, justice, and inclusion. I am gifted by her loving support.

To my daughter, Amal Maria, I cannot thank her enough for her insightful wisdom, and for her inspiration as she contributes to the community through her dramatic artistry, among them her efforts to serve children and promote causes of justice. I am very grateful for her beautiful heart and spirit. I am also very grateful to my wonderful stepsons, their partners, and my sonin-law.

To Andrew Harvey, the co-creator of this book and my dear friend, I offer plenty of heartfelt thanks. I honor his sacred pursuit of the relationships of the future. His work calls me to my edge and inspires me to go for broke. I am grateful for the dance we do, inspiring one another to greater heights within our work and our pursuit of love-in-action for the Earth, its people, and animals. He is undoubtedly a most generous and passionate heart fire.

In addition to my family, I am blessed by many companions of heart and soul. To Casey Robertson, my soul sister, I celebrate the deep diving she does in her life to live authentically, and the rich nuggets of wisdom she mines from her unremitting pursuit of authenticity and generously brings to our dialogues. Her huge heart, nurturing, and intuitive nature fuel and feed my pioneering work. I also want to thank Barry Sherman for our cherished decades of friendship, his years of service to children, championing the disadvantaged, and speaking truth to power. He is ever present to me in my writings. To Ginger Wagoner, my long standing friend, I offer much gratitude for her genuine heart-dedication to the work we do. In addition to being an artist and highly skilled photographer, she is also my trusted assistant, an excellent editor, and a voice for justice and diversity.

The choice to write has brought me the gift of working with many other people of soul and great commitment. I commend Victoria Gailey, our fantastically detailed office manager, for her thoroughness, creative problem solving, and commitment to the message I endeavor to promote. To Sarah Mae Baucom, I offer great appreciation for her excellent assistance. Her good nature and wise mind is an enrichment to our time working together. Likewise, I am grateful to stellar editors Janet Thomas, Jenny D’Angelo, and Jessica Bowling. Their commitment to refining my voice and yet keeping it true to my spirit is a talent in itself, as well as their commitment to detail and prompt assistance.

My sincere appreciation for our publisher Jeff Brown is profound. To Jeff, I offer my gratitude for his passion, his care for a heartfelt relatedness with others, and his desire to advance a deeper way of loving for humanity. I am thrilled by our common interest in pursuing a spirituality of the self, one that refuses self-bashing and self-transcendence, and instead hungers to see each self matured into nobility and service.

I also wish to extend my gratitude to my dearest friends of the heart, my companions of the self and spiritual development circles at the Institute for Life-Leadership and Coaching (theilc.org) and at the Olive Branch Center (theolivebranchcenter.net). I am indebted to them for the countless weekend retreats of exploration, delving deep into the heart, cultivating cutting-edge relationship tools, and, mostly, supporting one another’s raw authenticity. Their wit, intellect, commitment to authenticity, joie de vivre, and pursuit of love-in-action have all contributed greatly to my journey as a writer.

And to those of you inspired to pick up this book and discover its contents for yourselves, I am grateful that there are people like you in the world. Thank you for joining us in our pursuit of evolutionary love relationships.