... how to save a relationship
“Give him space!” Your friends and your intuition have been telling you to relax and chill out. So what can you do? Do you want to learn how to give space? Well, here’s the deal: falling in love is the easy part, but making a relationship work requires trust and understanding way beyond what you think when you start a new relationship.
Your new love; your first love; it is all so intoxicating. Love is all there is, right? So as things of value go, a genuine relationship tops your list of human desires. And when you desire something what do you do? You want to possess it.
But can you actually possess love? If you think you can, does that also mean Continue reading →
...I learned as a child
Life is… let me think a minute… alright then, here’s a picture for you: life is a ball of tangled elastic bands with something really special buried deep inside. The lure is to find the hidden treasure.
Life is like that; full of intriguing discoveries. Like those cereal boxes when I was a kid, with the baking soda powered toy SUBMARINE FREE INSIDE (you’d have to be a certain age to remember that one). Well, It was a hook and who could resist?
Back to the ball of elastic bands though. When I was a small boy I wondered why golf balls bounced so high. My Dad was a golfer so I took one of his golf balls and dissected it to find out why. I was exhilarated as I cut through the casing, like I was splitting the atom or something. What would happen? Would it explode in my face? The energy of that ball had to be locked in there somewhere, and I was about to release it.
Continue reading →
The clouds were low; silver-grey with blushes of violet to the west, and an intense blue-grey to the east. It was 1994, and spring was about to bless us with some needed rain.
“The garden will love it,” Rosemarie said. I agreed, though not with the same hard-won conviction as my Wife’s, after all, it was Rosemarie who created our garden and it was she who mainly toiled in it.
We had a large garden (and still do) filled with plenty of delicious raspberries, gooseberries, currants of all sorts, and most of the vegetables we needed for the year ahead. For Rosemarie, the garden was her labor of love; her way of connecting to life at its purest, and to who she is at heart.
It was a quiet day, and every living thing seemed to be in their own separate world, including us. I was taking a break from a new painting I was working on, Rosemarie was finishing some planting, and the ravens were dive-bombing Jones, our black cat.
Continue reading →
The one relationship we cannot end is between our body, mind, and emotions
When I receive email regarding relationship problems, the dominant impression I get is that most people who write in are not just unsure of their situation, they are unsure of themselves. They long for a fulfilling relationship, but the person they desire does not return their feelings in the way they would like, etc., etc., and so they feel at a loss.
If a person is uncertain and does not feel their own strength, they will seek validation and strength from others. This is never good. In a relationship, that person will seek cues from their partner before they determine how they themselves feel. Their self-conception follows closely on the heels of that conclusion. The relationship then becomes more about selfish need, than about sharing and mutual motivation. The uncertain person becomes increasingly dependent on their partner for strength.
My best answer to most of these folks is: Continue reading →
... a trip into Wells Gray Park
Over the past while I have been feeling a bit down. My life seems to be on a cusp of change, but I feel that I am spinning my wheels. Do you know what I mean? Have you felt like that? Old patterns are, well, they are getting old.
New vistas are drawing beautiful and powerful images in my mind, but the stress of living in a redundant mental space is wearing on me. I can feel the change but I am caught by habit.
What to do? Well, whenever I am confronted with stasis — whenever I feel stuck in a lifeless rut — I go back to basics. And what can be more basic than nature? Nature has always been my bedrock; it has balance and moves gracefully with change. Nature can stimulate us likewise to regain our own balance, and to accept change with enthusiasm and grace.
And so we went on a trip into the wisdom of nature’s beauty and power. Continue reading →
