Supporting Your Spouse

In one week and one day, Frank will celebrate a benchmark birthday.we will soon after celebrate twenty-four years together. Fifty-one days after that we will celebrate twenty-four years together.

That gives me one year to save up for a trip somewhere for our twenty-fifth!

It is natural in a marriage for shifts to take place, and these can be navigated smoothly with open communication. In our case, I have always been the provider and Frank has always been supportive of my career and tended to the homestead, as well as to me.

Throughout the course of a successful marriage or long-term commitment, the two people in the relationship may shift in and out of various roles. For example, I've gone from a successful career to becoming a starving author while attending classes for a real estate license, life insurance license, and theological studies. I never thought that, as I approach the half century mark in my life, I would become a full time student! However, life changes, and we must be supportive of one another if we are to survive as couples or families. And sometimes roles change.

For example, one person in the couple may support the other person going back to school. 

In order to do this, he or she steps into a supporting role, setting aside certain goals or aspirations in order to provide a stable base from which his or her partner can launch forth in a new direction. There are many gifts of learning inherent in this role - from having the opportunity to embody a nurturing stance to feeling the pleasure of seeing a loved one thrive. When our partner expands his or her horizons, ours expand, too, and we gain access to a world that would otherwise remain closed to us.

However, there is also much to be said for having a turn to be the one stepping outside of our space, perhaps taking time to attend to our personal healing, spiritual pursuits, or other interests. In order to maintain balance within our relationships, it’s important that we address these issues each time one person steps into a supporting role so the other can try something new. When we are conscious about acknowledging that one person is bearing a bit more of a burden so that the other can grow, we stand a better chance of making sure the ebb and flow in the relationship remains fair and equal. 

The most important part of this process is open communication in which each person has a chance to express how he or she feels and come to an understanding about the roles they have agreed to and when they expect them to shift. 

Each time a dynamic shift occurs, a ceremony of acknowledgment can lend an air of distinction to the moment. This can be a simple dinner date at home or an elaborate ritual, depending upon what works best for us at the time. Perhaps the most important thing is expressing gratitude to the person in the supporting role and encouragement to the person moving in a new direction. 

When the flow of feeling and communication is mutual and open, a healthy closeness develops that allows each person in the relationship to have a turn at each of these important roles. It is then that we build our relationship in maturity through absolute love and commitment. 

With love and light, 

Rob

Moving Mountains

Keeping Things in Perspective

Recently, I have been deluged with prayer requests.

In fact, there have been so many that I have not been able to focus on my own personal concerns. That is fine for me as I believe in care for others first.

Thankfully I have Frank to keep me in balance with that and remind me that I do need to tend to our life together here at the top of Mount Pocono as well.

When someone asks me to pray for them, my typical response is "Prayers ascend from atop Mount Pocono".

It almost sounds as though prayers ascending from a mountain top are better from those from a valley, although I don't subscribe to that train of thought at all.

However, we do have certain perspectives.

From the top of a mountain, we are able to witness life from a different perspective, bringing us a new awareness.

Mountains have always captured our imaginations, calling us to scale their heights, to circle and worship at their feet, and to pay homage to their greatness.

Granted, Mount Pocono has nothing to compare with the Rocky Mountains or the Himalayas, but it maintains its own history as a break-away from a glacier as it moved south from Canada during the end of the ice-age.

Mountains can be seen from hundreds of miles away, and if we are lucky enough to be on top of one, we can see great stretches of the surrounding earth. As a result, mountains symbolize vision, the ability to rise above the adjacent lowlands and see beyond our immediate vicinity. From the top of the mountain, we are able to witness life from a new perspective. Cities and towns that seem so large when we are in them look tiny. We can take in the entire landscape with a single glance, regaining our composure and our sense of proportion as we realize how much bigger this world is than we sometimes remember it to be.

Mountains are almost always considered holy and spiritual places, and the energy at the top of a mountain is undeniably unique. When we are on top of a mountain, it is as if we have ascended to an alternate realm, one in which the air is purer and the energy lighter.

Many a human being has climbed to the top of a mountain in order to connect with a higher source of understanding, and many have come back down feeling stronger and wiser.

Whenever we are feeling trapped or limited in our vision, a trip to our nearest mountain may be just the cure we need.

There’s a reason that mountain views are so highly prized in this world, and it is because, even from a distance, mountains remind us of how small we are, which often comes as a wonderful relief.

In addition, they illustrate our ability to connect with higher energy.

As they rise up from the earth, sometimes disappearing in the clouds that gather around them, they are a visual symbol of earth reaching up into the heavens.

Whether we have a mountain view out of our window or just a photograph of a mountain where we see it every day, we can rely on these earthly giants to provide inspiration, vision, and a daily reminder of our humble place in the grand scheme of life.

After all, humility is not thinking less of ourselves, it's thinking of ourselves less.

Mountains are also often viewed as obstacles and take on a negative connotation.

In these instances, they seem overbearing. These would be our own mountains of grief, sorrow, troubles, and despair.

Can we move those mountains?

Yes. One rock and one shovel at a time, carefully spreading what we remove so as the share the burden of the weight of the mountain and being careful not to build another one behind us and on top of others.

So, the next time that something insurmountable appears in your path, grab a rock from it and a shovel of soil, and pass it along for someone else to help level that mountain - and do the same for the person in front of you.

With love and light from atop Mount Pocono,

Rob

New Beginnings

I'm writing this during the simultaneous occurence of the Christian celebration of Easter and the Jewish celebration of Passover.

These events take place during springtime as Mother Earth renews herself and all of Creation springs forth in newness, fullness, and gladness of life.

We often take this time to freshen our homes, our bodies, our minds and our spirits. However, we can choose to start over at any moment. There is no need to wait for a new year, a new season, a new month, or a new week. There are times in our lives that lend themselves to starting something new.

The beginning of a new year, finishing school, changing a career, or moving to a new home.These all are times that turn our minds to fresh starts. Their advantage is that they bring with them the energy of that event, creating a tide of change around them that we can ride to our next shoreline.

However, we can choose to start anew anytime. In any moment we can decide that a bad day or a relationship - be it personal or professional - that has taken off on the wrong foot can be started again.

It is a mental shift that allows us to clean the slate and approach anything with fresh eyes, a fresh mind, and a fresh expression of our thoughts.

We can make this choice at any time.

Starting anew is most powerful when we focus our attention to what we are choosing to create.

Giving all of our attention to the unwanted aspects of our lives allows what we resist to persist.

We need to remember to leave enough room in the process of new beginnings to be kind to ourselves, because it takes time to become accustomed to anything new, no matter how much we like it.

There is no need to become difficult or judgemental on ourselves if we don’t reach our new goals instantly. Instead, we acknowledge the forward motion and choose to reset and start again, knowing that with each choice we learn, grow, and move forward.

Making the choice to start anew has its own energy. It’s a promise we make to ourselves. This type of forward momentum creates a sort of vacuum behind it, pulling toward us all we need to help us continue moving in our chosen direction.

Once the journey has begun, it may take unexpected turns, but it never really ends. Like cycles in nature, there are periods of obvious growth and periods of dormancy that signal a time of waiting for the right moment to burst forth.

Each time we choose to start anew we dedicate ourselves to becoming the best we are able to be.

We can begin to improve our overall physical well-being by first starting to notice not only our thoughts, but our reactions to our thoughts as well. The power of the mind is a curious thing, because it is so powerful yet so difficult to control sometimes. We often find ourselves thinking a certain way, knowing that this thought may be creating trouble for us yet we find it difficult to stop.

For example, many people have the experience of becoming ill at the same time every year or every time they go on a plane. They may even be aware that their beliefs impact their experiences, and so they continue to believe they will become ill, and then they do.

Sometimes we feel as though we need to suffer illness, be it physical or mental - such as depression, in order to process something or move something through our bodies. However, we often suffer at the hands of our own minds and become ill, or feel exhausted, because we don’t make the effort to galvanize the power of our minds in the service of our physical or mental health, which is one of its most important functions.

We really can use it to communicate to our bodies and our minds, yet we often regard the two as separate entities that have little to do with one another. Knowing this, we have the power to create physical health and mental health, simply by paying attention to the tapes running in our minds.

Once we hear ourselves, we have the option to let that tape keep running or to make a new recording.

Frank often tells me that it's "time to weed the garden".

By this, he means that it is time to cleanse ourselves of the negativity, impurity and distraction of the weeds we have allowed to thrive within us. It is time to cull the gardens of our homes, our bodies, our minds, and our spirits. We harness the power of the mind in our defense when we choose supportive, healing words that foster good health and high spirits. All we need to do is remember to tend the field of our mind with the attentive and loving hand of a master gardener tending the flower beds and gardens of our lives, culling out the weeds so that the blossoms of springtime may come to fruition.

The beauty of life is that we don't need to wait for spring in order to begin our spiritual garden. Perhaps it's time to dig our hands into the soil and plant our future.

May your garden be fragrant and fruitful.

With love and light,

Rob

We're Stronger Than We Realize

Very often our anxiety gets to the better of us.

Often this is for valid reason, but there are times that we permit this to happen as we are almost always stronger and more capable than we believe ourselves to be.

Our capacity to cope successfully with life's challenges far outstrips our capacity to feel nervousness. Yet in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to an event that we believe will test our limits, we can become nervous. 

While we may have previously regarded ourselves as equal to the trials that lie ahead, we sometimes reach a point at which they near and our anxiety begins to mount. We then become increasingly worked up, until the moment of truth arrives

We are almost always stronger and more capable than we believe ourselves to be. 

Anxiety is not rational in nature, which means that in most cases we cannot work through it using logic as our only tool. Reason can help us recognize the relative futility of unwarranted worry but, more often than not, we find more comfort in patterns of thought and activity that redirect our attention to practical or engaging matters. 

Most of us find it difficult to focus on two distinct thoughts or emotions at once,but we can use this natural human limitation to our advantage when trying to stay centered in the period leading up to a potentially stressful situation. 

When we concentrate on something unrelated to our concern - such as meditation, prayer, deep breathing, visualizations of success, pleasurable pursuits, or exercise - anxiety dissipates naturally. 

Meditation and prayer are also useful coping mechanisms as they provide us with a means to ground ourselves in the moment. This can provide us with a focal point wholly outside of our own sphere.

The intense emotional flare-up we experience just before we are set to embark upon a challenge is often a mixture of both excitement and fear. 

Once we take steps to eliminate the fear, we can work with embracing the excitement with confidence.

We may find it difficult to avoid becoming worked up or anxious about our situation, but our awareness of the forces acting on the supportive side of our feelings will help us to return to our center accept that there are few hurdles we will face which will ever be as high as they at first appear.

With love & light,

Rob

The Wisdom of the Owl in Our Darkness

The night before last, Frank turned on the television in our bedroom at 1:00 a.m.
That woke me and, once awake, I have trouble returning to sleeping.

I remained in bed and thought that I saw an owl perched outside our window. I was not certain if it was an owl and we have many birds that gather outside our window. Frank counted twenty doves the other morning. I decided to retreat to my Wine Room, which is where I read my prayers, and I first noticed a figure of an owl that I have atop the curtain rod next to the wine cabinet.

I thought about the renewed interest in owls since the Harry Potter craze and I pondered my own fascination and interest in owls.

For as long as humankind has recognized animals as teachers, wise men and women have recognized traits worthy of respect in both wild and domestic creatures. 

The cultural and spiritual significance of certain animals transcends geographical boundaries, unifying disparate peoples. Not so the majestic and mysterious owl, which has over many millennia served as the focal point of numerous contradictory beliefs.

Though owls have been regarded with awe and fascination, they have also inadvertently served as agents of fear. Since owls are nocturnal, human to owl encounters tended to occur at night and likely when the bird was swooping silently down to earth to grapple with prey. Yet even as some shied away from the owl, calling it an agent of darkness, others recognized the depths of awareness in beautiful owl’s eyes. 

Often owls are understood to be patient messengers, bringers of information, the holders of wisdom, and capable of seeing the unseen.
In the classical Greek tradition, an owl could often be found perched on the shoulder of Athena, goddess of wisdom, while owls could ward off bad luck in Roman lore. 

It is in Native American mythos, however, that the owl attains its own unique identity. With their keen eyesight, it is believed that they can glance into the soul to discern meaning and motive, and they are totems of truth. Unlike our distant forebears, we may never encounter an owl in the wild, but we can nonetheless internalize the wisdom of the owl by attuning ourselves to its most venerable qualities. Fully integrating the insightful abilities of the owl into our own spiritual existence is a matter of considering how we might open ourselves more fully to the wisdom that can be found in the larger universe. 

Should we find our efforts blocked as we attempt to comprehend and commune with the owl, we need to remember that it was not always revered as an icon of wisdom. 

This creature of the night has overcome many prejudices in its long association with humankind. To reveal those hidden elements of the self that impact our lives for better or for worse, we must often make our way through the darkest parts of our souls as if we are the nocturnal hunter in order for us to overcome prejudice and obstacles.

There is indeed darkness both inside the self and outside the self. However, like the owl, we can transcend the darkness by drawing nourishment from the insights we receive once we penetrate it and allowing ourselves to shine as clearly as the eyes of an owl.

May your true heart shine through the eyes of your soul with the wisdom of the owl.

With love & light,

Rob

The Maps of Our Lives

We recently discovered that we have lost our GPS.

We're not certain if it was removed from our vehicle by someone or if we relocated it from its usual indoor residence while decorating the house for Christmas.

Either way, we have been forced to return to tapping into our memories in order to find our way out of the driveway.

Just the other day, I drove a friend home from our shift serving at our local food pantry and became lost leaving her community. I didn't mind being lost as I saw it to be an opportunity to explore, and I knew that I would find my way eventually. So I just enjoyed my ride.

I did consider what my partner Frank had said about how we will have to return to paper directions until we either find our GPS or purchase a new one. I could have referred to the directions I keep in my BlackBerry, however, I tend to prefer to rely upon instinct.

Typically, most of us have an internal sense of direction and this brought me to my decision to explore. However, this also brought to mind a good friend of mine who is entering seminary.

David is infatuated with paper maps of any sort. Upon seeing one, his eyes light up as those of a child and his attention is often lost to the map.

Thinking of his journey in life causes me to reflect a bit upon my own insistence to travel without specific direction, but rather to allow myself to wander and trust my instinct.

When we learn to attune ourselves to our inner compass we follow a map that only we can see ... our own path.

All the major spiritual traditions serve the purpose of offering us a road map to guide us on our individual journeys to enlightenment. These road maps are made up of moral codes, parables, and, in some cases, detailed descriptions of mystical states.

We often study the fine points of a particular narrative in order to better understand ourselves and to seek inspiration and guidance as we travel along our journey.

In the same way, when we plan a road trip, we carry maps and guidebooks in an effort to understand where we are going.

However, in either situation, the path we choose has a life of its own.

While maps are helpful, they can only take us so far. There is just no comparison between looking at a line on a piece of paper and driving our own car down the road that line represents.

Some of us prefer following maps, while others among us are always looking for new ways to find our destination.

In relation to our spirituality, the only reliable compass lies within us.

The maps and travelogues left behind by others are great blessings, full of useful information and inspiration, but they cannot take the journey for us. When it is time to merge onto the highway or pull up anchor, we are ostensibly on our own.

Strange weather patterns, closed roads, and traffic jams arise in the moment, out of nowhere, and our maps cannot tell us what to do.

We can take refuge in the comfort of a local Inn by the side of the road, persevere and continue forward, or turn back altogether. The decision is entirely up to us.

Maps are based on observations from the past and we are living in the present, so we are the only true experts on our journey to enlightenment.

We may find that the road traveled by our predecessors is now closed.

We may feel called to change direction entirely so that the maps we have relied upon no longer apply.

It is at such times that we learn to attune ourselves to our inner compass, following a map that only we can see, as we make our way into the unknown territory of our own enlightenment and journey through life.

With love & a map-light,

Rob

The Wisdom of Surrender

Very often, resistance equals persistence.Resistance tends to strengthen the energies it attempts to oppose us by giving them power and energy to work against us.

We all know the feeling of being repeatedly haunted by the same issue, no matter how we try to ignore it, avoid it, or run away from it. 

This might come as a need to tend to loved ones, pick ourselves up in order to move past experiences which harmed us, or a call to arms -- be that for country or for our faith.

Sometimes it seems that we can become rid of something we don’t want by simply pushing it away, in the manner of which we sweep away the dust and dirt from our sidewalks, lest the filth and debris enter our homes or shops. We build thresh-holds in order to keep away the silt.

However, most of the time, the more we push away the silt the more it returns with the motion our our broom.

There are laws of physics and metaphysics which explain this perceived phenomenon.

This can be summed up as "That which you resist persists".

This "law" exists in physical motion, emotional reaction, and spirituality.

Through human nature we tend to resist our strengths, and it is only through resistance that we can physically build and grow the very muscles of our bodies.

Resistance training is how we grow from that proverbial ninety pound "weakling" to the muscle bound hero.

Resistance strengthens our physical muscles and bodies in the same manner of which it strengthens our metaphysical energy and spirit.

On the obverse, resistance keeps us from learning more about what we resist.

In order to fully embrace and comprehend and ideology, theology or perception, it is absolute that we must open ourselves to the energy which we explore.

If we fail to do so, we fail and we become ignorant of the lessons which the universe yearns to yield to us.

In our Wine Room, each corner and angle is protected by a statue of a monk.

I was taught that this must be done as I researched the construction of this little room.

Some statues are rather tall and built of stone.

Some are tiny and rather whimsical.

The point is that, in this tiny space which was built for private meditation, there are many.

There is a Tibetan story of a monk who retreats to meditate in a cave only to be plagued by demons.

He attempts to evade them by all means ... chasing, running, fighting, hiding -- anything to be rid of the demons.

You can imagine the horror he endured.

Exhausted by the battle, he lays down all that he held to battle the demons and surrenders himself.

The demons disappeared.

Do you see?

There was no hand-forged sword on earth that could defeat the demons. The only manner in which to be rid of them was to surrender.

However, this monk did not surrender to the torment of the demons. He surrendered to his faith.

Now, this is a story, and the wisdom earned here must be applied with practicality.

It is not the intention of our life's universe to place ourselves in the pathways of harm or foolish intent.

Bur rather, this story speaks of how, in essence, our demons are inside of us.

What plagues and pursues us, what prevents and prevails us, exists on an inner level and has the ability to manifest itself in many different ways in our emotional environment.

This manifestation takes place in the way that we treat the people in our lives, the way we treat ourselves, and the way that we respond to exterior situations. These may be community,

local, political, national, global ... the plague can become consuming.

However, it is nowhere near all "doom and gloom". Once we become aware that this perception of manifestation is merely a perception and that it exists only within the limitations of our minds and not our souls, we can then embrace the reality  that these expression which haunted us were merely reflections of the fears that lived within ourselves.

Once we surrender to our faith, to our belief, we become strong.

With faith comes strength. With strength comes bravery. With bravery comes strength in faith, and therein lies courage.

And with that, the more demons that plague us disappear in their weakness, and the more courageous we become.

With love, light, and an uplifted sword in my heart,

Rob