Roland on Relationships

It’s all about people. So when we mess up our relationships with people, it spoils everything. Problem is, most of us live long enough to do just that—mess up our relationship with our kids, our partner, and just about everyone else.

But what really hurts is when you sit there one night and realize that communication has failed between you and someone important to you, and you sense that you are part of the problem. You used to rage and blame, but now you sit there dumfounded and oppressed. You want to redo it all, start over and make things right. But it’s never worked before.

And you don’t know how to make things right. Over and over you tried. First you tried imposing your will on them, then you tried getting angry and threatening. Then you tried being nice, extra nice, to win their favor. Maybe you begged. Perhaps you tried to change them.

Then you tried to change yourself.

Nothing really worked. Each tactic and each manipulation only made things worse. Sure, for a while things seemed better on the surface, but deep down, nothing had changed. You are left with seething resentment—toward them, yourself, or toward life.

So there you sit, finally realizing that your manipulations just don’t work. You might try running away, finding someone new, or throwing yourself into your work—but the truth remains—someone with whom a good relationship is important hates you, communicates with you only out a sense of guilt or duty, or they ran off and want nothing to do with you.

You might even think of doing away with yourself. But that is just another escape, another cop out; and definitely not the answer.

You didn’t start out to mess things up. But that is what happened.

But there is a positive side to reaching rock bottom. Now you are ready for a dose of truth, and you are finally searching for real answers.

Oh, one more thing: in your desperation you may have reached out to counselors and family therapists. They may have done some good. Perhaps both of you (if it’s your partner that you are trying to get along with better) met with the counselor and talked things out. It just may have helped. But often it doesn’t.

It really and truly works only if the counseling is an opportunity to face the truth, and both parties are willing to admit error and be sorry for it. Then real change can take place.

Unfortunately, it is often one party that is ready and willing to change, but the other is intent upon blaming and won’t even admit to their part in the problem.

Divorce? Well, that’s the easy so-called fix that many people reach for. But divorce is devastating, especially for the kids. Sure, if the other person in the relationship is violent, vicious, a drug addict or alcoholic, or cheating on you-–then divorce (or at least a separation) is most likely called for. You have to protect yourself and the kids.

But how about if the other person is a decent person, and you are a decent person? Is divorce the answer? I don’t think so.

So here we are again, back to square one.

Well, take heart. Things may yet change for the better. The problem looks complicated, but the solution is simple.

It’s not your partner. Nor is it that you are not trying hard enough. The problem is that something is missing. The solution is finding what is missing.

Now I will give you a hint (both about what is missing and about where you can find it).

But first an analogy. It is well known that really hard core addicts will never change until they see their wrong, are truly sorry about what they see, and really, really, really want to change. Often this only happens after they see, without trying to deny it, that they have caused the total devastation of their life and other’s lives around them.

Finally they see their wrong and have to admit it with sorrow.

Now they can change. Prior to that, it was all denial, excuses, blame, and manipulations to fool others. Generally the moment of truth—and that is what it is—comes when they hit rock bottom. They wake up one morning in the gutter and ask themselves “why am I here?”

Now perhaps you see what the magic is: real searching for answers to sincere questions, real desire for the truth, and really seeing the need for change.

Another way of saying it is—the person sees that there has to be more to life than selfish pleasure and pain relief. The person starts to really search for the purpose for their existence.

The missing ingredient is truth. Truth is the leaven that leavens the entire loaf.

The truth is like sunlight—it contains both light and warmth. It is so good that it makes you feel bad. It is both tender and stern. It brings new life and hope for the willing soul, and devastates and destroys the old way of living (dying really).

Of course the truth was always there, but the person was not ready to receive it. Most people find a way to accept truth on a shallow level so that it does not penetrate.

The truth must penetrate, and for it to penetrate deeply enough, the person must be willing to accept it.

Truth spoken with love from a friend can wake a person up. But only if the person is willing to accept it without resentment will it do much good.

What the truth spoken with love does is it wakes a person up to the light of truth within. If the person then continues to stay awake because they want to be awake and know the truth – then the light and love of truth will change them and also extend through them and change for the better the world around them.

All you need is to want this light of truth and have a willingness to yield to it and allow it to shape you, and soon your problems will be over.

Bear in mind that this does not mean that all of your issues will disappear. Though some will! Some issues will remain for you to see, understand your error; and then you will be given a second chance to handle the same situation that gave rise to the issues, but this time with wisdom and grace. Things will be different now—you’ll see--because you’ll have the inner light of intuition guiding you moment by moment.

So where does this truth come from? It comes from within. In this light you know without knowing how you know, you intuit, you realize, you regret your errors, your hard heart is softened, and you are chastened.

The truth can do what no one else can do and what you cannot do for yourself—it can change you for the better.

Of course, it goes without saying that this Truth of which I speak cannot be gleaned from books or experts. It cannot be found out in the world. It can be found only within, and it is from God.

When you accept this truth, love this truth, yield to this truth, wait upon this truth, and trust this truth – you are thereby yielding to your Creator. You are accepting and wanting His truth in your life and since truth only comes from Him, you want Him in your life too.

But now here is the beautiful part--it counts with God that you accept the truth when you see it.

You probably won’t, in the early stages, even know that it is from God! You may not even at that point be sure if there is a God. All you know is that you are sick and tired of being sick and tired. You see the truth and are sorry about what you see about yourself. You also see that you cannot change yourself. And you also don’t want to blame or resent anyone anymore. Your conscience has caught up with you. And you don’t try to run from it. That is enough.

Now just go about your life and see what there is to see. Wait for the truth to dawn. Most of your insights will come at odd moments during the day. See, realize, feel a bit of embarrassment or pain over what you see about yourself. Then sigh and feel the burden lifted from you. One day you will come to know just who is taking the burden away. You may even find long held guilt suddenly gone and be puzzled by this. For now, just be grateful and move forward boldly to meet your new life.

Don’t try to change your partner. Don’t try to make anything work out. Just see the need for improvement and wait for the inner light to show you just what your error is. There is little more to do than to just sigh a sigh of relief and press onward.

When you see an error in the light, that error (your resentment of your partner for example) is highlighted so that you can see it. It is something that is out of line and at variance with what is right. The light itself will rectify and make things right.

In fact, just seeing the error is already enough in many cases. God is like a good parent. When the child has done something wrong, the parent is happy and perfectly satisfied when the child sees his wrong and admits it. Nothing else is needed.

This book contains lots of information. Just read what interests you until you get an insight and then put the book down and ponder what you learned. Or just open the book to any page and start scanning. Chances are you will quickly see something of value and meaning: a clue about your relationship (or about what went wrong in your parents’ relationship).

So whether you are in a troubled relationship now, whether you wish to mend fences, whether you are thinking of getting married and don’t want to make the same mistakes your parents made, or whether you have issues that go way back to childhood and what happened to you there--surely there will be something of value here for you.

Finally, I sometimes refer to a little meditation (which is free to download at my website). I have found that it helps a person calm down, get centered and then be attuned to receive delicate insights. Mostly people are so upset all the time that they are lost in thoughts and negative emotions. The meditation simply teaches you how to stand back from worry, doubts, and upsets so it is easier to see clearly and act wisely.

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What is the Number One Cause of Divorce?

Are you stressed out? Have you noticed that when you are resentful, you become more sensitive to life's little issues? When you are stressed at work, do you come home and easily lose patience with your kids? Do you come home and resent your husband over some little things that he does?

Do you get angry at slow traffic or slow grocery lines? Would terms like "exasperated, nervous, irritated, or impatient" describe you?

If so, you are probably over-reacting. And the worst reaction of all is that of resentment. It sets you up for becoming increasingly sensitive to what you might otherwise take in stride. I know, times are tough. The problem is that most of us do not know how to pay attention without becoming upset by what we see. Early in life, we encountered unfairness and were dragged into bad situations, and we became upset. Trouble is: now we do not know how to deal with injustice or mean people without being upset.

Worse yet, we do not even know how to observe other people's little imperfections without judging or resenting them. Early in life, someone was unfair with us, and we got upset. Someone teased us and we got upset. We were conditioned to become upset. And not knowing how not to be upset, we became resentful and judgmental toward others. But what then happened is that we learned to resent and judge others as a compensation for having been on the receiving end of injustice. We could hate someone for their wrong, and secretly gloat in a sense of superiority.

But later, when we became adults, we continued to have the habit of becoming upset and judging. So when our spouse turned out to be less than perfect, we began to secretly judge him. When he would not bow to our will or when we were disappointed by him, we reveled in judgment and hurt feelings.

And when someone smaller than you came along, like your kids for instance, it felt good to dump on them when they spilled some milk or did not pay attention. As a child you were on the receiving end of some authority's wrath and impatience, and now you could relieve yourself by taking it out on your kids. But this is totally unfair.

I can honestly tell you that the number one reason for marriage break ups and relationship problems is resentment.

I know: most of us do not really want to be mean or impatient. We do not really want to judge our husband or yell at our kids. But we do not know how to stop ourselves. We get out of control, and then either blow up or suppress and get a headache or tummy ache.

Some people even turn to pills or alcohol to try to control their upset. Others turn their judgment on themselves. In short, they end up hating themselves when they see that they have become just like those that were mean to them when they were a child.

Here at the Center For Common Sense Counseling we help people learn to stop over-reacting. We teach them about letting go of resentment and about being patient with others. We help people to see that it is resentment that destabilizes them and makes them easily upset. And it is resentment that keeps reinforcing the upset.

Being upset is a way of life for most people. It supports our ego. If we did not have something to be upset over, we would become bored and would not even have motivation to do anything.

Most of us are motivated by upset, irritation, or pressure. We even use upset as a spur to activity. We then use the energy of resentment and anger to get a lot done. After then upset, we are fatigued and tense, and we use that as an excuse to "unwind." We look forward to our after-work drink or marijuana. We become thirstier and hungrier when we are upset. Pleasure feels better when it takes away pain. But afterwards comes another round of upset and pain.

However, the truth is that if you were not upset, nervous, or tense in the first place, you would not need relief in the second place.

Billions of dollars a year are made on people's needs for pills, booze, drugs, vacations, and diversions. It's big business. Not to mention all the doctor bills and hospital bills when our excessive upsets and unnatural forms of relief catch up to us physically.

There you have it: for most people, being upset, nervous, irritated, and angry--after which they seek pleasure and relief--is the only life they know. But I assure you: there is a way of living without being upset, that is full of joy and true purpose. It begins when you learn how to not resent and be impatient with others.

The second reason why we are upset all the time is this: Most of us think we have a right to be upset because we think we have the right to judge and the right to resent. Upset adds an edge to our judgment and resentment. When you resent someone driving ahead of you for being slow, you can then "feel" that judgment as irritation. When your kids want something when you are trying to "unwind" after work, you resent their demands, become impatient, and then feel the resentment.

When your husband does not meet your needs, you can secretly resent him and judge his weaknesses. You can feel the upset (or the headache), and then get another round of ego boost by resenting him for "causing" your discomfort. Then your ego can get yet another ego high by feeling like a martyr, giving your service to an unappreciative good for nothing husband. Since we think we have a right to resent and to judge, and since we use our upset for an ego high and for intensification of pleasure, most of us do not want to give resentment and judgment up.

Our whole life is built on upset. Yes, you have the choice to resent, but is that really the human and compassionate way of living. How do you feel when others exercise their right to be angry and resentful toward you?

For some of us, it is only when our upsets lead to health problems, headaches, ulcers, ruined relationships, or addictions, that we are stopped short in our tracks long enough to see the need to give up our right to resent. Some people just will not give up what is killing them. They go on reveling in irritations and secret hostility, and then they have to pay the piper.

But there are some, and perhaps you are one of them, who do not like the way they are. They do not like their secret judgments. They see their anger and do not like it. They yearn to be kind and patient. They yearn to live the good life. But after years of over-reacting, they do not know how to stop reacting and being upset.

That is where I can help. I know what you need. You need two things. First, you need to know how to be still. That is what our meditation is for. It teaches you how to become still and re-find your center of dignity. When you re-find your own center of dignity, you will be able to flow from within; instead of reacting to externals and becoming upset.

Secondly, you need some basic training about life. You probably learned to become upset and emotional over things when you were a child.

Chances are your mother was emotional and you picked it up from her. Most likely your dad was weak or a nonfactor. Dads are supposed to represent calmness and self-control, and demonstrate how to live life with patience and courage without suppressing on the one hand or being angry on the other. Dad is supposed to be a living example of calmness and poise. But most likely he too lost the center and the best he could do was suppress anger and go along to get along. So without his example, you ended up reacting with upset just like everyone else

Few people nowadays are there to stand for calmness and composure. Mostly everyone encourages us to get excited, get angry, party, yell and scream at sports events, and so on.

But becoming a person who is truly calm both within and without is what you must become. Your life and your marriage depend on it.

Maybe you had parents, grandparents, teachers, a coach, or a minister who talked about self-control, forgiveness, and taking things in stride. But you did not listen.

Now, years later, and suffering from your excesses, you are ready to listen. Just trying to deal with the symptoms of anger and upset is not enough, you must learn how to nip resentment in the bud before it has a chance to fester and ruin your relationships and your health.

In other words, if you learned how to let go of resentment--see it rising and let it pass--anger and judgment would diminish. You might be able to have a good laugh about things instead of getting angry about them. You might be able to let go of the judgments and wrong presuppositions that resentment supported.

Behold! Your partner. Suddenly, free of resentment and judgment, your vision is unclouded. You see that your partner is just a man or just a woman. You no longer see a need to be angry. You two might become very good friends.

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My Husband and I Argue All the Time

If it is any consolation to you, arguing is very common in marriages. You could almost say that all the squabbling and arguing are "normal." I would venture to say that if a couple isn't arguing--something is wrong.

If there is silence, then it is usually an eerie silence, with buried resentment and hostility underneath. Or it's a marriage in name only (like some celebrities get married just to further their career). Or perhaps one person has completely capitulated and has become a repressed doormat.

Arguing is to be expected. Men and women are different and live in different worlds. Someone once said that a good marriage is a good fight. Yes, there will be arguments. But there is such a thing as a good fight.

A good fight is when what is right wins. A good argument is when--instead of sniping, anger, violence, or a game of one upmanship--reason prevails.

But when one or both parties do not understand what love and marriage are all about, the argument will be angry, resentful, petty or hurtful. When both partners, and especially husband, do not have their emotions under control, the discourse will deteriorate. When both are basically selfish and egotistical, how can love and understanding prevail?

Just as bad is when bad decisions and wrong choices prevail because one partner, especially husband and father, is weak and says nothing about things that something should be said about.

Dad cannot be violent, but neither should he be a wimp and a door mat. If he wants to win a popularity contest and is afraid of rocking the boat, how can he stand for what is right? If he has a cigarette in one hand, how can he lecture the kids about marijuana?

Error must be addressed. Wrong behavior must be exposed and opposed. And because it is the nature of people to deny their wrong and defend their errors, there will be debate and disagreement.

But most of us are so busy worrying about our own needs that we fail to see our own wrong. Many of us are selfish and do not see the other person's true needs. Many of us are not right ourselves, so we are defensive and guilty. We get upset and irritated over little things that don't really matter; and we clam up and say nothing about important things that should be addressed.

We must learn how to argue the right way (where what is right wins, not who is right). And we must learn to make our points without resentment and anger.

And before I go any further, let me say that it is basically the man's fault. I personally think that women suffer more because they are more aware of something being wrong. Men tend to be kind of dumb in such matters. Men tend to think that just going to work and taking her out to dinner once in a while are all that is needed. He just doesn't get it. .

But it is ironic that the man is supposed to be the dispenser of wisdom. The man is supposed to have understanding and wisdom, and from it longsuffering and patience. Instead many men are like big kids.

So, men, please read what I have to say.

If the man could learn to be more fatherly and stop demanding that she support his ego--then she could stop playing the role of tease or nag. If he had real love, she would not have to tease him for it (only to be disappointed again). And when she is finally assured that he loves principle more than anything in the world, so that he would never fail her, she could stop giving him such a hard time. All the bickering could stop, and they could be very, very good friends.

Ladies, now that I have placed responsibility for what is going wrong squarely on the shoulders of the man, let me say that your problem is most likely that you just can't resist judging him for his failings.

Yes, all men (including the author) have failed women, and so they are ooooh so judgeable. But I have to say that judgment is a terrible sin. It fixates you to the object of judgment, and by way of guilt (for the judgment) locks you into an endless cycle of love and hate. It leads to deterioration in one's being and to bitterness.

When we become quite resentful and judgmental, we find it almost impossible to be objective. A resentful wife can become so hateful toward her husband that she literally cannot see any good in him. Even if he improved, she would not see it.

The ability to stand back and look at the situation objectively is of absolute importance. That way, error can be observed without resenting what one sees. Another's wrong can be observed without judging (hating and condemning) the other for it.

So, if you are like most couples, you are arguing all the time. As long as there is no violence, then perhaps all you need is to let go of resentment. When resentment is gone, you will be able to see clearly what is going on, and with a little understanding, interpret it properly.

Maybe your husband is wrong; maybe not. Maybe your wife is out of order; maybe not. Until you let go of resentment, judgment, and blame--you won’t be able to know for sure. Your perceptions are currently clouded by resentment, judgment, anger, hurt feelings and blame.

Because men and women are different, because most couples bring baggage to the marriage, and because there is so little wisdom out there--many young couples don't have much of a chance (without a little coaching from someone with understanding).

Probably you have bought the cultural foolishness about what love and what marriage are all about. Love is not sex; nor is it just hearts and flowers. Nor is marriage just for pleasure or getting our needs met. If we buy into the popular misunderstandings about marriage, then we will feel cheated, deprived of getting our needs met, and we will be resentful.

Before I go any further, let me just say that sometimes one person is a violent disturbed or terrible person. This is exceedingly difficult for the other. You need professional help.

But in this chapter, I will address the more common situation, where both are basically decent--not perfect, of course--but decent. There is always hope in such a relationship that a positive change may occur.

Let me also say that when misunderstandings occur--and they will occur--both sides often become so fixated resentfully on the other's wrong that neither really looks at their own attitude. So, for the moment, put aside picking apart the other's wrong. Stand back and see if you can look objectively at the relationship between men and women in the light of what I am about to say.

If received with a spirit of humble inquiry, it could be a life changing breakthrough for you. You will see that all couples around the world are in the same boat: they are struggling without understanding. And so, they begin to resent each other, instead of understanding what is really going on.

A whole lot of soul searching, a change of heart, and a willingness to give up resentment, judgment and blame are part and parcel of maturing and learning not to be selfish. Then perhaps all you need is a little "basic training" about the nature of women and the nature of men, and a little understanding about our fallen human race.

Some say it's a myth, but I think it all started in the Garden of Eden. Adam was ambitious and failed. Instead of loving Eve, he used her to further his ambition. As a result, Paradise was lost. Today's Adam uses his mate to support his ego, and the potential Paradise of marriage is lost.

With some new understanding and a more forgiving attitude, you might be able to make a fresh start, salvage your marriage, with the two of you becoming very good friends, and perhaps living happily ever after.

The evidence that what I say about the man/woman relationship is true is all around us. You probably know couples among your friends and family--who you know for sure are nice people--yet who are making terrible mistakes, fighting and hurting each other. You wonder why they can't just stop arguing and just love each other. It is only in the light of understanding that their error makes sense. You will be able to avoid the same mistakes, and perhaps one day even help them.

Marriage is not just two animals coming together. People have souls, and the human race has a history. And marriage has a purpose. It is an institution ordained by God to bring children into the world, and a framework within which to learn not to be selfish.

There is an ancient mystery between men and women going all the way back to the Garden of Eden. And there is a legacy of misunderstanding that is passed down from one generation to the next. It is hard to convey all I wish to say in just a few paragraphs, but I can provide a few hints to get you thinking along these lines.

Divorce is not the answer. Just living together is not the answer. Just lovey dovey flowers and candy is not the answer. What is needed is understanding.

Abraham Lincoln once said that two people can disagree without becoming disagreeable. Arguing, especially if done in the right way, gets things out on the table and is better that the typical eerie silence with resentment and secret hostility underneath. If one person is unreasonable--it should just draw forth more reasonableness in the other. Remember: what is right is more important than who is right. When right prevails, then it is a win-win for both.

We must also wake up to see that we have been resenting and blaming the other person. Most of us are basically selfish. We have an agenda we want to impose on the other. When our needs are not met, we become resentful and begin to look elsewhere.

Some people are troubled by their own selfishness. They wish to understand what is going on and seek true answers. It is for these people that I write. Don't expect a lot of help from the world. Most of the so-called experts give more of the kind of advice that obviously isn't working. They may be well meaning, but their advice is ego supportive. What we really need is the Truth that awakens and corrects aberrant egos.

So, what if you are in a troubled marriage now? If you are the man, chances are you are angry. She is not happy with anything that you do. She is in charge of your life. You have seen that anger does not work. Express it and you look bad, get in trouble, or become a tyrant. Repress it and you get tummy aches and headaches or worse. Plus everyone has contempt and walks all over you.

Of course, anger management helps. But only as a quick fix to teach you some behavior modification skills or how to transmute your anger in work or sports instead of violence. But what you really need is understanding: you need to see and be sorry for your selfishness. You will see that anger is born in selfish. But you will also see that wimpiness is copping out from your role of dad and father. If anger gives her power, then wimping out and handing control over to her does the same.

The man must search for the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job. He must learn how to stand for what is right in a no-nonsense way, but without anger. He must learn to be kind and considerate. He must learn to stand for principle. He must learn to be more fatherly.

Of course, a good aunt, grandma, or uncle's advice can be very helpful. They have been there, and they have the wisdom of years. But for the most part, your journey of discovery will be a solitary one. You must learn to stand back and observe with objectivity. Seeing the big picture of a situation will permit you to see why you must not become angry, why you must not resent, and why you must seek in your heart for what to say or do.

If you do not know how to stand back to get the big picture, get the meditation we have at the Center For Common Sense Counseling. It will teach you how.

What is needed is understanding. You need to understand what is going on, so that you won't over-react. For example, gentlemen, if you begin to see your wife as a person instead of an object of use, your understanding will begin to mitigate your behavior. You will become more considerate, less angry, and more fatherly.

Ladies, perhaps your searching will lead you to see that what you are really looking for is the father you have never known. Most dads lack an inner bond with the Creator. Most men are women oriented. They do the best they can, perhaps being good providers; but without the inner bond, they cannot give the love they do not have.

What we all need is agape love, emotionless love, the kind of love that comes from God. This love is not a feeling. It is corrective of our ego excesses. It leaves us feeling chastened and throws us back on ourselves. In the Light of Truth we see our error, and we become self-corrective. True love has a humbling quality to it. And afterwards, a sense of joy and freedom. True love is liberating. Such love can come through a person (who gets their ego out of the way). But it is not from the person. It comes through them.

If we see it in another, especially our father, it is a wonderful thing. But ultimately, we must search within, and if we are blessed, find it within. Here is a hint: You may find it when you are willing to drop your judgments and resentments against others. When you forgive others, then your Heavenly Father forgives you, and when you no longer seek the ego supportive love of the world, you are rewarded with His warm love from within.

The truth with love is supposed to set us free. But few of us have the love to set others free.

I once had a listener who could not understand why she so resented her husband. He was decent, hardworking, honorable, always there, and kind. But he lacked something special (a love that would come through him from God). I explained to her that she was looking for something from him that he could not give. He cannot give what he does not have. This was a profound insight for her. She realized that he had not found love from God. Thus he too was empty and suffering. When he was a little boy, he was hurt and damaged; and he never fully recovered. He could not give what he did not have.

An insight like this, if realized deeply, can lead to being able, for the first time, to drop resentments against the other person. And when you forgive the other person, then your Heavenly Father forgives you. Just beyond forgiving others and dropping our grudges and judgments, comes the healing fulfilling love from God to warm our soul.

Ladies, you cannot make a man into a man. Even if you were to succeed, he would be in your image, with you as his god.

Men, do not look for love from your wife. Give love instead. Become more fatherly. Look upon others as if they were naughty school kids. Set a good example. Be forthright, but kind. Do not have expectations as to what the other person should be like or do. Be there for your family.

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How to Forgive and Forget

Remember Ann Landers? She was the famous advice columnist who had a daily column in hundreds of newspapers from coast to coast. People sent her troubling personal problems. She gave advice, often quite good.

I will never forget something she said. Near the end of her long and illustrious career, she was interviewed by someone who asked her: After all your years of giving advice, if you could give people just one piece of advice--what would it be?

Being in the advice business myself, I could not wait to hear her response. She thought about it for a moment and then responded: "If I could give people just one piece of advice, I would tell them to be more forgiving."

She had seen too many relationships and families destroyed by resentment, unforgiveness, and grudges. She had seen too many people destroyed by bitterness and unhappiness, the result of not forgiving another person.

Her advice: "Be more forgiving." All I can say is amen. If a person were to set out to ruin their own life, there would be no "better" way than through harboring resentment against others.

Resentment (hatred), you see, is a big trauma for a human being. We were never meant to hate. Resentment forms a memory that sticks in your craw.

Worse yet, resentment and hatred cut us off from our own good. It is true that others are cruel or mean, others are confusing, and others make errors. But when we resent them, we lose patience with them. This negative energy of impatience and hostility then sustains the fallen ego that lives apart from God and experiences conflict with God. We think we have a right to judge and resent. We think we can get away with resenting. But we only reap what we sow. When we exercise our right to hate another, we are doing a terrible thing.

It is unfair to the other person. It tempts them to hate us back. Being cut off from life devastates our own being. Many of us were abused, rejected, mistreated or traumatized when we were young. Our being was devastated, and some of us have never fully recovered. We went out in the world seeking love to fill the emptiness. We used people, food, substances and distractions. But none satisfied. When they did not, we felt betrayed, resented them, and then felt all the more empty. Others of us were not really mistreated or abused and yet we too felt empty, loveless, and went out into the world looking for love. There we discovered abuse.

Why is it that we become so empty and feel so unloved? Why are we so needy that we grovel before others for a few crumbs of approval or settle for the most lowly and sometimes loathsome substitutes for love?

It is not what others did to us. Nor is it because of what we were denied or thought we were denied. It is because we became resentful and hateful. Resentment cuts us off from our connection to our inner ground of good within. Resentment cuts us off from the wellspring of good to which we have access when we are not resentful. It was our own resentment that hurt us more than anything.

We felt empty and we then blamed those who did something to us. But blame only reinforces and adds another layer of resentment, keeping us apart from our Creator.

Whether we blame others or turn the blame on ourselves, blame is a way of justifying our hate. All it does is keep us tied to bitter memories and cut off from the healing balm of love. Our need for human love is to fill the emptiness from not having inner wholeness and love. That is why what we call love often ends up in fighting and hurt feelings. What we call love is a substitute for the agape, emotionless love we all need. This agape love would correct our childish need for love. True love corrects us of our need for the love from others that does not fulfill. True love sets us free from our neediness. And when we no longer need love, we can give love. And when we found the love of the Father it would immunize us from hurting or being hurt by others.

Therefore, I would like you to consider watching for resentment in yourself. When you see it, stand back and let it pass. You will be glad you did. By learning to be patient with others, you will find the love welling up inside you. You will then be able to be patient with yourself too.

Therefore, dear ladies, forgive your father for not being there for you; and then do not resent your husband. If he is decent, then appreciate his good qualities. If he does not have the mysterious emotionless corrective love, then simply do not resent him. You will then be able to receive the love from your Creator within.

Husbands, do not look to your wives for love. Instead of looking for love, have love for others.

And if, through soul searching, yearning and seeking the wisdom you did not have, you should find an inner rapport with intuition and principle, you will then have the ground of being from which you will be able to share love with others. It will not be your love, but the love coming through you.

- 4 -

My Wife Cheated on Me - Now What?

This question is coming up more and more. I am very sorry to hear this. It is much more common nowadays than before. Many, if not most, women are now in the workforce. There are a lot of temptations out there. Also, many people have a different view of marriage today than people did years ago. Today we have been shown on television, movies, and in music, and we have even been taught and counseled that marriage is about having our needs met.

Actually, marriage is a framework for raising a family and in which to learn how not to be selfish.

I've written some articles and posts about the issue of unfaithful husbands. So I guess it's time to talk to men about the issue of unfaithful wives. I've been talking to people about relationships for thirty years on the radio, written some books and more than a few articles and blog posts, and my wife and I just celebrated our thirty third wedding anniversary, so I've got as much right as the next guy to write about this topic.

So here is my response. First the short answer.

If you just found out your wife cheated on you, stay calm. Do not do anything rash. Go about your business, do your duty, go to work, be there for your kids. You've heard the old expression "stand back and count to ten." Well, stand back and maybe let a few weeks go by. As time passes the initial anger will diminish. Watch out for resentment. Let reason rule.

It takes a real man to stay the course and respond with calm reason instead of anger. There is value in being able to talk it out. Most communities have organizations and church groups focusing on men's issues, marriage or anger management. Avail yourself of any that are helpful. Talking to a trusted mentor or pastor can help. There are also resources available on the internet.

Long term you don't want to become dependent on external support, but right now reading, talking it out, and getting good feedback from someone knowledgeable with understanding can be helpful.

If the cheating happened a few months or years ago, and it is still sticking in your craw, it means that you are still resentful. Watch out for resentment. Stand back and when you see it rising, observe it from the neutral zone and let it pass.

Now the longer answer.

The advice I have given to women in this circumstance (where a spouse has been unfaithful) is just as fitting for men. Basically, the woman has to deal with resentment and judgment. If she can let go of these, then she will be spiritually and emotionally safe. It is resentment that hurts us more than what the other person did to us.

Resentment ruins everything. But if you can let go of the resentment, you will be okay. Moreover, when the mind is clear and not clouded with resentment and bitterness, you will be able to see what is reasonable and wise to do. Remember, resentment robs us of joy and many other things.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of letting go of resentment.

In circumstances of an unfaithful spouse, the woman's main spiritual issues are letting go of resentment and judgment. The man faces a much bigger challenge because of what husband and father represent.

You see, husband or father has a very special role. He holds a station in life. He holds the office of husband and if there are kids, the office of father.

In the eyes of children, father stands in for God. Can you see why it is so devastating when a father fails?

Husband or father is supposed to be like the George Washington or Moses of the family. He stands for what is right. He cannot have any vices. He must be principled, honorable, wise, patient, long suffering, and kind.

He has to be as steady as the ticking of a grandfather clock in a thunderstorm. If others become upset, he remains calm and reasonable. If others fail him, he does not fail them.

Most dads are a little weak. They say the right things, but say them too weakly. Husbands and dads must not vacillate. They must stand on principle. He must not be there to win a popularity contest. He has to stand for what is right and persist even in the face of rebellion. But he must not be angry. When a good policeman has to deal with someone exhibiting harmful behavior, he has to be strong, but not angry. Dads and husbands must also be strong, but not angry. Quiet strength is a phrase that comes to mind.

Many men clam up, but are angry and resentful underneath. When they do finally speak up, their message is tainted and ruined by the pent up anger. Feeling guilty for the anger, he may clam up again or sit on the sidelines while the family goes to ruin.

A man simply cannot avoid his duty without harming the family. That is why he must learn to stand for what is right with patience and firmness and kindness.

He has to be there for his wife and children. They need a very special love from him: emotionless agape love. A man cannot have this love if he is selfish or unprincipled. Nor can he have this love for them if he is a womanizer or tries to make his wife into his mother. He must not look for ego support from either his wife or the world. He must look within and find a bond with what he knows in his heart.

He will then not need love. He will give love. He must love principle more than anything, even his wife.

However if you think about it for a moment, you will see that this is the man she can trust. She knows he will always be there for her and she knows he will never be unfaithful (because he does not need the love of a woman, a drug, or some worldly support). This is the man she can respect and perhaps even love.

Now, gentlemen, most wives are aware of their husband's weaknesses before they get married, but she hopes that he will become the noble knight she needs.

Once within the confines of marriage, the nobly inclined man will become aware of his failing her in some mysterious way.

He will search his heart and out of true love for her and the children, he will see what they need from him. He will learn to be less selfish and eventually, one day, unselfish. He will begin to fail less, and one day not fail at all.

She will see his nobility, his heart felt efforts, and his love of principle. With this man, there is hope.

Of course, there are some women who will not take kindly to his new inner authority, and she will most likely resent him even when he is right. If she is a permanent hater, then she will make his life as miserable as possible. If he remains noble, she will probably go off to find someone else. If this happens, so be it.

Before you jump to any conclusions, let me say this: you cannot know what is in your wife's heart until you straighten up and fly right. First you must become right. Only then might your noble love draw forth the good in her.

Many women have been so used and unloved that they cannot imagine or believe that a man can be noble. She may test him and give him a hard time for years (or decades). If he is tested and not found wanting, he will win her heart. They will become very good friends and live happily ever after.

As I said, most men are weak (or weak and violent). Their weakness literally tempts the wife and kids to rebel. So if you have been weak or selfish, before looking at other's wrong, first look at your own. See your part in what has gone wrong and repent of it.

Many wives had a father who was not there for her. She resented him and went out in the world looking for love. What she got was use and abuse at the hands of boyfriends. Since all men failed her, she expects that her husband will too (though a good woman will hope in her heart that her husband won't fail her).

Perhaps you can see why the man needs to have the wisdom of Solomon and perfect self-control. All men have failed, but that is not an excuse for more failing. You must find the way to fail less.

I cannot say what to do in any particular circumstance. There are just too many particular situations. But I can speak in general terms.

Generally divorce is not a good thing. Sometimes a separation may be of some help, so that both sides can find themselves and get their bearings, but maybe not.

Please note that my comments are directed to the typical situation where both are good people, not perfect of course, but decent. If your spouse is extremely disturbed, violent, or criminal, you will need to protect the children and get professional help and assistance from the authorities.

If there is a divorce, it is best not to begin the process yourself. If your wife divorces you, you will then not be guilty for having begun it.

If you have only been married for a short time, things might be worked out, but if there is not true marriage, then going your separate ways may be best.

But when there are children, everything changes. Now the man is both husband and father.

I recently heard a man tell about his father who he loved deeply. His mom was not a nice lady and she made a lot of trouble. He stayed there for the children and was a good father to them. He suffered for decades, but never hated his wife and never complained. The children loved him dearly.

You see, the children were aware of his suffering. They saw his sacrifice and nobility. And they loved him all the more. It didn't matter what mom did. Father was there for them.

But if he had walked out on her and them, what would be foremost in their minds would not be what mom did, but what he did. He quit on them.

Dear Sir, I know that infidelity is a severe test. But just as there can be no courage without danger, so likewise there can be no character without a test of that character. A final word: sometimes we do the right thing by simply not doing the wrong thing. Someone can tempt you to do something wrong or foolish. Just don't do it and you are safe. Always do what you know is right in your heart.

- 5 -

Are There No More Good Men Left?

Yes, there are. Unfortunately, many of them are misguided about what it means to be a man. The media would have you believe that men are dumb, slobs, unprincipled achievers, or at best just big selfish kids.

When men buy into this notion, it works out to the advantage of the advertisers and those who want power over them. That is why men are constantly being tempted into acting like party animals or sports junkies.

But if he falls for the temptation, in the long run, his wife and other people will not have any respect for him. He will also find that he has no authority in his home and is generally treated with contempt.

On the other hand, some men are angry and violent. They are obviously wrong. Their anger may frighten people, but these men are also of weak character. They are easily tempted to anger. And because of their anger, they are not only wrong, but also get in trouble.

How about all the decent men who go to work, earn a living, spend their weekends with their family or working in the yard? Unfortunately, these decent men are often also held in contempt by the media and by those who basically do not like men. How is that otherwise good and decent men are self-conscious, self-doubting, and generally feel like they need advice about how to communicate or be? It is because they have become outer directed and subject to the very ones who hold them in contempt.

Today power goes to the institutions and a sea of experts, writers, pundits, counselors, educators, social workers, ministers, and facilitators. A long time ago it was: "Father Knows Best." Now it is: everyone knows best except father.

That is how the so-called helpers get power and get rich.

The key to restoring order, harmony, love and understanding in the marriage relationship has to do with waking up and seeing the truth.

For every home where there is a violent father, mother, or guardian, there are many homes where everyone is decent but is held in subtle contempt by other members of the family who have bought the lie. The media and the advertisers appeal to the lowest common denominator. Most people are far, far more human and sophisticated than we are portrayed as.

Dad may not be dumb or uncommunicative. He may be quiet because he is kind or knows that his words would be misinterpreted.

He may live a simple old-fashioned life, not because he is unsophisticated, but because he is giving up many selfish pursuits and excitements for the good of the family.

I know of a sad story where outside experts convinced a wife to divorce her husband who was regarded as decent but dumb, so she could "do her own thing." The kids, closer to her and viewing themselves as educationally superior to their behind-the-times dad, took her side. Soon the whole family was in rebellion against dad.

Bear in mind that he was decent, hardworking, non-drinking, nonviolent, and not a womanizer. The divorce destroyed the family, hurt the kids, and ruined both of their finances.

Sadly she got lupus and then cancer. He died alone. Years later, the kids realized that dad was not as bad as they had thought. But it was too late. Meanwhile the experts, who talked her into divorcing, did not have to even suffer any inconvenience for their social experimentation.

Yes, some men are no good. And, yes, some women are no good. Just make sure that someone, such as the entertainment media or so-called experts, has not gotten between you and your beloved spouse or between you and your beloved kids--and fed your mind with false notions and suggestions instead of human understanding.

Marriage is a union and a bond, both physical and psychic. Believe it or not, marriage is sacred.

Admittedly, most people marry for the wrong reasons; but marriage is a wonderful opportunity to learn not to be selfish.

And I have to say: what goes wrong with the family is the father's fault. He holds a very special office: the office of fatherhood. The man must wake up to see that he is not being a man. He cannot be violent, and he cannot be a wimp. He must have the patience of Job, and the wisdom of Solomon. He must not fail.

The media and others who want his power will never stop tempting him and seeking to degrade him. He must see what is going on and simply stay the course. A husband and father must be principled, honorable, patient, wise, longsuffering, and kind. He must have the courage of conviction. He must make principle more important than anything. He has to be able to stand on his own feet, know what is right and do what is right--without his wife's or anyone else's support.

When the man sobers up and realizes what is required of him, he will throw away his drink, drugs, and marijuana.

Sports and entertainment will return to their proper place at the bottom of the list of things to do--recreation should be reserved for only when all other duties and responsibilities, tangible and intangible, have been attended to.

The man must do what is right even if it means not being popular. He will stand for what is right, with courage and kindness; and will not need the support of a wife, buddies, peers, support group, or church. He will reach within and find an invisible means of support: and his aloneness and honor will breed respect.

The good men are there, but they must step up to the plate. Husbands--your wife and your children need you to be the noble knight in shining armor. If you will, Sir, be that man.

When you look for a man—look for one who is good marriage material in the light of what I said above. Look for a man with a fire in his belly for justice. Look for a man who loves and honors truth.

- 6 -

A Mother’s Lament – My Son Does Not Listen to Me

How many times have I heard moms say this? Usually it involves a preteen or teenage son. Often dad is not there, perhaps because of divorce. Mom is left alone with the kids.

I hope this chapter will shed some light on the subject so that both sons and moms can understand each other better--and love and not resent each other. I will address single and divorced moms, though my advice should prove enlightening for any mom or parent to be.

First of all, I understand that it is difficult to raise a child when you are a single mom. I have compassion for your situation. I wish your husband were there for you. But he is not. So I have to deal with the topic at hand.

There is an old expression: the boy is father to the man. And in keeping with this truism, a boy wants to someday be a man.

A boy wants to begin doing the things a man can do. He wants to be competent and good at something. He wants to be strong and courageous. He wants to know how to do things and fix things. We wants to be worthy of respect. He wants to one day be a good provider. He wants to be a man.

It is tough if dad is not there. It helps if there are role models around: teachers, neighbors, coaches, a good older brother, uncle, or grandpa.

But no matter how many or few role models there are around, a boy needs opportunities to be a man (albeit a young man).

Now, it takes a very wise and perceptive mom to be cognizant of the above and to defer a little and give him a chance to lead.

Many ladies do not realize what a force they are. It is easy to be bossy. It is easy for a mom, being older and being far more verbally skilled, to always be right. It is easy to always win the argument with your child. It is easy to accuse and berate. It even happens that a mom will unconsciously resent her son because he is a male (like other men she has resented) and who reminds her of them by the mere fact that he is a male.

Having experience violence or use at the hands of a man, it is tempting to put down her son. I'm sorry to have to say this. But it does happen and has to be mentioned.

Even the best of parents has a tendency to become a bit bossy and authoritarian at times. When we were kids we were bossed around. It feels good to turn around and do it to someone else. And yes, big brothers, big sisters, baby sitters, and aunts can and often are bossy too.

Mom gets used to issuing orders and commands. Being directive (as long as it is with kindness) is appropriate for little kids, who need direction. But when kids get older, delegation is often in order. When an older boy or girl is told what to do, there is no space for self-direction.

But self-direction and a chance to develop and practice self-motivation, and learn responsibility are what older kids need.

Perhaps you can have some sympathy for the plight of the boy. Surrounded by mostly women authorities, and being bossed around, he hardly has a chance to be a man.

A wise mom (who has self-esteem and love) will sometimes let her son lead. Remember the old fashioned style of dancing (such as ball room or square dancing)? The man leads. If mom occasionally lets her older son lead when it comes to a few decisions around the home, it is actually a gracious and noble thing.

If a boy has a chance to be the man of the family, serving as big brother to siblings, watching out for them, fixing things, and even sharing in decision making--you would be surprised how many will rise to the occasion.

It takes wisdom, grace, and a lot of love to stand back and let the young man be protective and helpful. But it must not be too obvious. I love the old television shows (such as Andy of Mayberry, Leave It to Beaver, or Father Knows Best). They show how a parent can be vigilant without being intrusive.

I love the old television series The Big Valley, where the main character (played by famed Hollywood actress Barbara Stanwyck) is the matriarch of a powerful California ranch family. She shows how to be strong but not pushy, and both competent and gracious. She had self-esteem. Because she was not over-bearing, her kids were strong and had self-esteem too.

It is amazing how much wisdom was written into these old television shows. For example, they often have a story about the parents sometimes secretly watching what one of the children is doing, but pretending not to see.

They stay in the shadows, vigilant and observant, ready to help out or even take charge if necessary--but hoping the child will do what is right on her own..

And even if the child makes a mistake (the parents watch to make sure that nothing really bad happens), it is a learning experience. The child was allowed to handle it himself (though the parents were quietly on guard). Another win-win is when the child sees for himself that he is in over his head and comes to the parents for advice.

There is even a passage in the Bible where it says that Mary watched her son from the distance and held things in her heart. Not everything has to be said. Some things are guarded in the heart. Nor does everything need to be said right away. People need a little space to discover for themselves.

Finally here is one of my favorite helpful hints for parents, and especially moms (since most single parent homes are headed by moms). I heard one of America 's top family experts casually state this gem as an aside. When I heard it, I immediately knew it was right and have never forgotten it.

He said this to parents, and especially parents of teenagers: "Don't be so confrontational."

When a parent disproves of something that a child has done, there is a tendency to get right in his face.

Not only is this painful to watch, and even more painful to be on the receiving end of, it tempts the child to become angry, or to become a wimp with secret hostility.

Give them some space. Remember the cute song "Talk to the Animals" from the movie Dr. Doolittle.

Talk to the family pet, talk to the pictures on the wall, talk to the stuffed animals on the shelf. Tell them what is going on. Say it so that your child can overhear what you are saying to the stuffed teddy bear on the shelf:

Say to the teddy bear: "I don't know what to do. I've got company coming in half an hour, but John (the 12 year old son in question) says he has to go next door. I need someone to help me vacuum the living room. Jane is at ballet. I have to prepare food. Oh, what am I going to do?"

You would be surprised how many times, after a few minutes go by, John, (who overheard your conversation with the teddy bear), will suddenly appear and say: "Mom, I heard you tell bear about your dilemma. I gave it some thought, and I decided I better call Joey and tell him I can't come over because I've got to help my mom!" He realized it himself, grew in character, and will feel good about himself--all because you gave him the space to see it for himself.

In conclusion, boys need opportunities for work, for competition, and for sports. A boy needs to have something that he feels competent doing. If possible the activities should be real: not looking at pictures of hiking, but going hiking; not just watching a movie about swimming, but really swimming. Most importantly, he needs opportunities to lead and make decisions. What better place to learn than at home under the wise and gentle tutelage of his parent?

- 7 -

Why Do I Feel Tired and Drained at Work and Around People?

If your health care provider says that you are physically okay, then it could be that you are reacting emotionally and giving up energy because of people pleasing and striving toward goals.

Somewhere in your past, someone tempted you to react emotionally and give up energy. Perhaps it was to please mother or to avoid her wrath. Perhaps it was to prove something to someone or to avoid criticism.

By making something too important, you were forced to use effort. What could and should have come naturally and effortlessly became a willful struggle, leading to tension, fatigue, anger (when it didn't work out), disappointment, and even exhaustion.

But once your ego got involved, trying with effort became the only way you knew to do things. You forgot the graceful way. And when things made you tired and frustrated, you might have just thrown in the towel and quit. Many a failure in life became that way because he or she tried too hard to please others, and just could not bear another round of pain, guilt, and fatigue.

Focusing, trying, studying, people pleasing, and setting goals have to do with making something too important. This process is also frustrating and leads to a sense of futility. Why? Because the goals are not even your own. They are goals someone else gave you. Even wanting to please others is a goal that someone in your distant past gave you.

That is why it is not surprising that we become fascinated and fixated--a sure sign that our attention has been captured. Through our captured attention, various suggestions are funneled, and soon we find ourselves doing the will of the motivator.

Because the motivator wills that we exert effort, and because any egotistical action required effort (whereas realizing and flowing from grace is effortless), we strain, try, and exert effort. This leads to tension, fatigue, and sooner or later frustration. We soon become drained. And when we are tense and drained, it puts a stress on our glands and organs.

Soon our adrenals or other glands become exhausted. No wonder we feel fatigued and tired all the time. And soon physical problems may result from our run down state, such as we become more susceptible to germs.

There is a direct link between being ambitious and willful (which someone else tempted you to be) and your eventual deterioration. That is why you must learn to meditate for mental distance.

Learn to stand back, realize, and flow from realization. From the neutral zone, you will begin to be able to see what things capture your attention.

You will also see where you are struggling, straining, and applying effort--when graceful ease is all that is needed. You will also see activities that you will find you are no longer interested in doing. Some of them were programmed into you. Others are just no longer needed. But you became locked into them through resentment and struggle.

Now as you become unlocked, you will be able to now just let go of activities that are no longer of value. Some activities will still be necessary (such as work, for example) but you will be able to learn how to work without strain. If the work is not for you, you might change your work. Or perhaps stay where you are while saving money to make a change.

Other work environments are just not right for you, and you will be able to leave and find somewhere that fits you better. If the work is okay, then all you need do is change your motivation--learn to flow gracefully instead of straining out of resentment. If you see what I am saying, you might just put this book down and go and meditate. Just becoming aware of the fact that you are resentful is already a big breakthrough step. Most of us are not even aware of how resentful we are.

The proper meditation is the antidote to fixating and concentrating. When you learn to calm down, slow down, and stop straining; your body will have a chance to rest and recuperate.

Watch out for resentment. It is perhaps the worst form of willful struggle, where another person upset you into struggling resentfully.

The meditation that we offer at the Center for Common Sense Counseling is very spiritual and practical. It teaches you how to de-fixate, how to stand back and see the big picture. It permits you to become re-centered and to begin living your own life, flowing from within instead of reacting to everything.

- 8 -

True Love

Love is a response and a kind of energy - so you could say that a need draws love. But there are two kinds of love. There is true love, which is rarely seen, and there is false love of the human variety. This false love comes in various guises and is seen everywhere. It is in the false sex love that men give women, it is in the meddling mothers, it is in the dry educational system, it is in the fake hypocritical love of organized religion, it is in the bureaucrats and experts who think they know what is best for you, and it is in the false compassion that smothers, corrupts and breeds the next generation of conformist hypocrites and angry rebels.

True love comes from another dimension. It comes from God, and this steady state of love imparts to and gifts the receptive human with insight, enlightenment, patience, understanding, and wisdom. The willing recipient receives an answer to his need: it fosters relief, faith, cessation of worry, patience, insight, energy and even healing.

And this person who is the beneficiary of God’s love, now with an attitude of true concern, without guile and without selfish intent, now may give his attention to another person in need.

There is a passage in the Scripture that covers this.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. (2 Corinthians 1: 3)

Can you see how love is a gift from God to the receptive person? God’s love is always there, but we must receive it willingly and with pure intent. It is freely given, and it is freely received. It does not demand obligation to create obligation. It enlightens and lightens your burden. Love does not tempt. It is as different from sticky obligating or permissive human love as night and day.

Our love really is need; the need of the creature for the Creator Who answers our need. God knows what you need before you even ask. He knows what is good for you.

Now look at the delicate moment with your partner or child. Your partner or child has a need. What do they need? Above all, patience. Perhaps correction. They need the right word, with the right energy, the right timing and the right measure. The perfect response in other words.

The perfect response chastens, enlightens, frees. It asks nothing in return. It does not use. It is freely given without strings attached.

Look now at the instruction from the Messiah and see how He is actually teaching you how to permit love to flow. You must see that the slightest selfishness, use, ego involvement, emotional energy, impatience, goal (other than what is right), preplanned words, external motivation or plan given by another, or resentment do not permit love to enter. Your intent must be pure, without guile, without goal, without use. Now do you understand why Christ told us to not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing? Can you see the wisdom in giving your shirt and coat if someone asks you for a coat? Can you see why we are not to preplan what we are going to say?

Thereby is there an opening for love to flow.

There is magic that happens in the spontaneous life--good comes to pass without effort on your part. Good things happen seemingly out of nowhere when you least expect them. It is magic. But when you try to plan everything and try to make things happen, your interference blocks the magic.

Your willfulness and the energy of impatience and resentment, not only block the magic, but also taint what you do; and what you do often has a reverse effect. Many meddling manipulative parents have discovered too late the harm they have done to their child.

This does not mean that you can’t make a grocery list or plan what materials to get for a project. It does not mean that you don’t take water and other emergency items with you in your car when you go on a long trip. But it means that you must take the willfulness and impatience out what you do. It means that you should meditate and keep in contact with your intuition and then move without effort, spontaneously with the wind of the spirit.

I’m sure you have seen where someone planned a dinner for some guests and then fretted over every little thing. So worried was she that she didn’t have any fun. I’m also sure that you can remember little trips and events when you were a kid that just happened spontaneously without planning. Now you think back on them and realize they were some of your most fun moments. Life must have spontaneity in it.

That is also why you must not have any goals, other than to do what you know is right in your heart. “Your” goal is not really yours anyway. It came from somewhere, and it did not come from God. So “your” goal is one that was given you by someone else.

But regardless of the source of said goal, it not only robs life of its magic but it will also be harmful. Your goal causes you to move in a hypnotic trance with some sort of emotional energy. So the energy is wrong. Moreover, timing is a very important element in life, and when you move impatiently toward some goal, the timing is all wrong. So even if you do or say the technically correct thing, the wrong timing will cause it to go awry or backfire. Life is a very delicate thing, and the right word or deed at the right time can be very important, especially when dealing with your partner or kids. But when in your time instead of the Lord’s good time, the result will not be good.

Now look at the magic from the other person’s perspective. When you do not meddle, pressure, or challenge, the other person is not forced to react to your temptation. They remain free to act out of what they see is wise or know in their heart is right.

Take your kids for example. Many parents ruin their kids by doing everything for them. But if you give them space to do things for themselves (within safe boundaries, of course) they have to reach within and thus develop character. If you do everything for them, they never grow and instead learn to be dependent on external help.

The same principle applies when it comes to pressure and impatience. When you pressure, or seek to motivate your kids, you are doing them great harm. They become dependent on external stimulus and pressure in order to function, and then fail to grow independent.

Likewise harmful are excessive praise and reward. Kids should learn to do for themselves because they see something needs to be done or is in accord with their natural interests and talents. It is okay to acknowledge good performance, but excessive praise only tempts them to become dependent on external praise and reward. It also builds their ego, and they will have conflict over that.

So if your kids are suffering from too much mom, then back off and butt out. Give them a little space and watch them blossom.

Don't get me wrong. I’m not saying to be permissive. Most parents get everything backwards. They are too controlling when it comes to some things but not vigilant enough when it comes to others.

Give kids a safe project to work on, the materials needed, with just a little supervision and watch them soar. But when it comes to such things as too much socializing, music, video games and so on--you should put your foot down.

Love has a tender side and love also has a corrective side. You should meditate for objectivity, so that you can discern the right measure of giving and withholding, letting them struggle with things on their own and stepping in with a helping hand. No one can teach you the perfect response; you can’t find it in online, in a book or from an expert. It comes from within with just the right timing and the right energy as a gift from God to those who wait upon Him and look to their God-given intuition.

When you seek and trust what you know in your heart, you will know what to say or do. It will just come to you as a reward for having faith.

- 9 -

My In-laws are Ruining My Relationship

As I was picking up my mother in law from the airport, I asked her, “So, how long do you think you’ll be staying with us?”

She answered, “Well… for as long as you like.”

“Not even for coffee??”

I often talk to young couples about the importance of "leaving and cleaving" - in other words, leaving home and joining to your new partner. Leaving and cleaving is how the Bible describes leaving home and getting married. Making a clean break and building a separate space for the two of you is the main protection from intrusive or manipulative in-laws (especially parents).

If problems have already developed, the principles for dealing with any controlling people apply--namely, dropping resentment, speaking up calmly, and not getting into no-win arguments. However, I also need to add some extra help for the issue of nosy and manipulative in-laws.

Let's say, for example, that you are the fiancée who is feeling pressure from his (your future husband’s) parents. First you have let go of resentment and speak openly with your potential husband about your concerns.

After that, I cannot tell you exactly what to do. For example, I can’t say whether to proceed and get married or not. I am not in your shoes, nor do I know your boyfriend or his parents. But with a clear unemotional perspective, unclouded by anger or resentment, you will be able to gather information, assess the situation, and do the right thing.

Although I cannot give specific advice I can give you some guidelines.

I am addressing this chapter to young adults dealing with confusing, manipulative, controlling or even downright bossy parents. Other in-laws can make trouble for a marriage too, but let's be honest--the issue is most often with your partner's parents. Everything I have said about letting go of resentment obviously applies when dealing with your partner's parents.

In fact, if you resent your own mom or your dad, you will remain trapped in the conformity and rebellion mode. You will not be able to deal in a mature way with your partner's parents either. The past will keep cropping up in all your future relationships. Unless you forgive your parents, you are destined to become just like them or marry someone just like them and then be to your kids what they were to you. If you resent your parents, you will transfer this dysfunctional immature pattern of relating to your partner's parents too.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that all parents are confusing--just most of them. I'm not saying that all families are dysfunctional--just most of them. That's why many readers appreciate my forthrightness--because I am addressing issues that they are dealing with.

If you are like many people, you can relate to what I am saying because you happen to know parents or in-laws who are confusing, intrusive, manipulative or bossy. Besides, many of us have parents who were good people and who did the best they could; yet they failed us in some way, and we resented them for that.

In fact, even if you had had saintly parents, you probably would have resented them anyway (for not letting you have your way, for example). So if they were decent but you judged them a bit harshly, then letting go of resentment still makes excellent sense.

By letting go of resentment, your relationship with your parents will improve and you will be able to deal gracefully and maturely with your new in-laws.

Now that I have covered the importance of letting go of resentment, let me lay down some more general guidelines. As a young person, it is good to start your own life. You can't remain dependent on your parents forever, nor can you remain tied to them forever. You won't grow.

To grow, you need to get out on your own, earn a living, build a career, a family, and develop your skills.

When I see grown kids and a parent who are too emotionally close, I suspect a co-dependent relationship based on resentment that has them both trapped by guilt. The parent is guilty for manipulating and smothering the child. The adult child who has not left home is guilty for buried and suppressed resentment. Neither is free to speak the truth, and neither has the love to set the other free. On the surface they are close, but it is out of guilt to cover layer upon layer of resentment.

This is not to say that a parent and child cannot be friends, respectful, and considerate of each other. Of course they can. It is a beautiful thing when an adult child has a noble and wise parent to whom he or she can turn for advice and counsel. But this is a far cry from clinging in guilt and dependency.

I am saying that when a young person who should be going out to start his or her life is hanging back and clinging to parents in an enmeshing or dependent way, and they are too emotionally close, it is not good, especially if he or she is engaged or a newlywed.

Sometimes the best thing for the adult child is what one counselor called a parentectomy. What I mean is: there is a time to cut the apron strings. Even parent birds will sooner or later shove the little bird out of the nest. He has to learn to fly, and no one can do it for him. He has to do it for himself.

So if you are having issues with your partner's parents or in-laws, make sure that you two have found independent space for your new marriage. Sometimes putting a great deal of distance between you and them is the easy solution.

I heard a senior counselor on the radio say that one of the biggest trouble causing issues for young marriages is the failure to "leave and cleave."

This is true for both the man and the lady. The lady's leaving home is a bit easier because after she meets and becomes engaged to her future husband, one day he takes her to their new home, carries her over the threshold, and together they start a new life together.

If she is a bit clingy to mom, then her husband, graced with strength and wisdom, helps her, through his love, to feel secure with him.

But when the man is still tied to his mother's apron strings, it does not bode well. He should have the vision to see this. As the husband or husband to be--he is head of household and he is supposed to become the Moses or George Washington of his family. He must have the wisdom to see that he must establish himself in a trade or business, become independent, and separate himself from being too close to his parents. This does not mean that he cannot still respect them and honor them. One day he may even be able to help them when they are elderly. But as a young man, he must leave and cleave to his wife.

If he does not, then there will be pressure on his wife to have to conform to his parents, to continue the dependency relationship he still has, and to resent him for his weakness.

Often the wife sees the problems with being too close more clearly than her husband does. He is perhaps a dutiful son and does not realize the pressure and insecurity his wife will feel when she is curtailed in setting up her own home and feathering her own nest.

She instinctively sees the importance of independence, and although he should see it too--he may not. If so, she will have to tell him in no uncertain terms.

If they are still engaged and she sees that he is too close to his mother, for instance, to the point that his mother rules and dominates his life--she will have to make her concerns known to him. If he cannot or will not see the importance of becoming the man of the family, becoming established in business, setting up a home, and setting some boundaries to shield his wife from nosey intrusive relatives--she may have to draw a line in the sand or even end the engagement.

Another situation fraught with red flags is where he is not established in a trade or business. If he is a student (or worse yet, the eternal student), is used to handouts from someone, or is not working--these liabilities should be dealt with before she gives herself to him. What I mean is she should speak candidly and then watch (for a long time if needed) to see if he becomes independent, emotionally and financially, and solid in his profession. She should not try to change him. Wait to get married. Watch to see if he is standing on his own feet. If not, there is no hope with this man. Better to find someone else or to remain single.

Of course there are rare situations where he is only temporarily unemployed, he is finishing up school, or he is at home while working and saving money--nevertheless, a young lady will have to use her best discernment about this guy. There are plenty of fish in the sea, as my mother used to say.

To summarize: married couples need a place they can call their own. It is not good when a partner is so close to his parents that they begin to dominate his wife. This can ruin a marriage. She must speak to him about it, and he must leave and cleave. She must be careful not to resent her husband or his parents or in-laws. She should remain calm, but speak up for herself. If they are not yet married, he must have the wisdom to become established in a business or trade and not rely on his parents.

- 10 -

Sex and Marriage – The Shocking Truth Revealed by a Counselor

"The truth is that sex is not that important. Way too much is made of it--to the point that we have the notion that sex has to have Fourth of July fireworks all the time until age 90. This misconception has led to more unhappiness, resentment, impotency, divorce and infidelity than you can imagine," says author and lecturer, Roland Trujillo.

The popular but erroneous concept that marriage is to get our needs met, when combined with an incessant focus on sex, has done a lot of harm. How?

Because otherwise reasonably happy couples--with a nice lifestyle, good kids, and a tranquil home--start to become convinced by urban myths, media hype, pop psychology, catty girlfriends, and even misguided advisors that their marriage must be unfulfilling because fireworks in the bedroom are not going off five nights a week.

You end up with men with wandering eyes, wondering if the grass would be greener or struggling with some erectile dysfunction drug, women reading romance novels and dreaming of someone else who is more romantic or always trying harder to please and feeling inadequate--and partners who are just perpetually vaguely dissatisfied.

All of which can lead to unhappiness, extramarital affairs, broken homes, divorces, financial ruin, and the kids being hurt. Five years later after a breakup, one or both partners are still unhappy or more unhappy, and looking back and realizing they had it all and threw it away.

Just who are these strangers who talk so pompously and cavalierly on camera, in the advertisements, in books or in front of the seminar--who egg us on from stage left to be dissatisfied and demand more and more pleasure?

And just where did the notion that marriage is for getting our needs met come from?

One thing is sure--confusion abounds because of misdirection, wrong ideas, and misguided advice. So let's state a couple of things that you are not likely to hear, except from a grandma or great-grandmother.

First of all, the purpose of sex is not pleasure. It is for starting and building a family. Children are a blessing from God, and it is for the procreation of children that we are given reproduction by our Creator.

Of course, He attached pleasure to it. I am not a prude. I understand that it can be fun and pleasurable. God is the one who designed it. It was His idea.

It has its place, like any other pleasure. For example, we also derive pleasure from eating. But as the old saying goes, keep in mind that we should "eat to live, not live to eat."

A couple meets, has a courtship (and it should be a chaste one), and gets married. Then they have the pleasure of the marriage bed. It is good that they enjoy each other, and before you know it--kids come along.

But after the first few years of marriage and with a family established, other things become more important, such as parenting, working, growing and maturing, and making some contribution to the good of society.

In fact, marriage is a framework within which to work out our differences and to learn to be unselfish.

There comes a time when sex is just not that important. A husband and wife can become very good friends, sharing many wonderful times being together, such as walking along the beach, enjoying the kids and then grand kids, and working and helping others. They can enjoy holding hands, hugs, and lying side by side and having warmth and coziness. But it does not always have to end in “you know what.”

It is not true that women need sex. And though men tend to be more sexually oriented than women, men eventually don't need it either. In fact, men should become more fatherly as the years go by--less beastly, less juvenile, more noble. A man must become less selfish, and more understanding and respectful of her needs.

A couple can be perfectly happy and perfectly fulfilled without sex; or with less sex (but enjoying it more because it is with love, tenderness and understanding).

I understand that a sexless marriage can result from one or both partners being resentful. It can also result from one or both placing too much emphasis on performance, which can make a man feel nervous or inadequate, or even impotent. It can happen when one side is withholding affection--again because of resentment.

In such cases, the situation can often be solved by simply realizing that resentment is the blocking factor, and letting go of the resentment.

There are also situations where a wife has been abused by other men in the past and develops an aversion to sex or to her husband’s touch because sex reminds her of what happened before. The husband, realizing that this is the case, must be patient and thoughtful. There is a good chance that his decency, gentleness, and thoughtfulness will help her to see that he is not like those other men.

I am very aware of such complications and exceptions, but I will not deal with them in this chapter. Instead, I wish to focus on general principles.

First of all, people tend to think that either sex or money are the reason for unhappiness in marriage, but I can tell you that marital issues are more likely to be a symptom of resentment and anger and the subsequent cascade of negative emotions, notions, and actions that ensue.

Secondly, if a husband and wife love each other and grow in affection and friendship, then after the children have come along, sex becomes less and less important, and soon not important at all. It can be an occasional expression of mutual affection and closeness. But so is walking hand in hand, sitting side by side on the sofa in front of the fire, enjoying family gatherings, and sharing memories and planning new things to do.

I recently heard a very nice man and a famous Christian author talk about his experience with depression. At one point he said that he was seeking to find more of those happy moments in life when you are not guilty and nothing is required. This is a wonderful insight.

Remember those carefree moments of childhood or youth, when you could just be yourself? When you were not guilty (or being made to feel guilty) and nothing was required of you?

Therefore, dear married partners, I hereby give you permission to relax and not make too big a deal of sex. Live life intuitively and spontaneously, not according what some stranger says you should be doing.

Enjoy each other and don't try to make anything happen. Incidentally, I know of several people who were trying to have a child with no success. No sooner did they adopt one and stop trying too hard, then--voila--soon there were two!

Enjoy the delights of the honeymoon and the morning of your marriage. Grow older gracefully and become very good friends.

- 11 -

Why Do I Get Upset all the Time? Could Resentment be the Culprit?

Have you noticed that when you are resentful, you become more sensitive to life's little issues? When you are stressed at work, do you come home and easily lose patience with your kids? Do you get angry at slow traffic or slow grocery lines? Would terms like "exasperated, nervous, irritated, or impatient" describe you?

If so, you are probably over-reacting, and the worst reaction of all is that of resentment. It sets you up for becoming increasingly sensitive to what you might otherwise take in stride. The problem is that most of us do not know how to pay attention without becoming upset by what we see.

Most of our upsets are over daily small irritations. You have probably heard the expression "Don't sweat the small stuff." We know this is true, but the problem is we do not know how not to sweat the small stuff. This is because we have literally conditioned ourselves to become irritated. And when the next little thing occurs, our body reacts.

A small irritant to which we have reacted can literally build to the point that we're ready to have an emotional meltdown over it. Moreover, we react and suppress our emotions all day long, so there is an accumulation of upset and tension leading us to explode in anger at a loved one or reach for the bottle.

How is it that little irritations can lead to big physical symptoms? Of course, conditioning is one factor. But there is another factor: one that you need to know about. It is resentment. If you are upset all the time, there is a good chance that your over-reactions have been preceded by the exciter emotion of resentment.

We are all familiar with the term psycho-somatic. We know that there is a connection between mind and body. An emerging field of research is called psychoneuroimmunology. It studies the relationship between the mind, nervous system and immune system. All this is to say that mind and body are intimately connected. What does this have to do with you and your upset?

Here's the story. Resentment is on the cusp between mind and body. Just as light is both particle and wave, so resentment is both thought and emotion. Moreover, just as a neurotransmitter is a chemical substance that facilitates the transfer of an impulse between neurons, so resentment is the translator of a negative mental state to the body. Once the transfer of the negativity takes place, a due process takes over and the body is compelled to react negatively (anger, upset, hurt feelings and so on).

Another way of looking at resentment is to consider it a sort of exciter. In engineering, an exciter is a small generator that excites a larger machine. Resentment incites not only anger but a host of stressful emotions.

It is not necessary to understand the ground breaking information I have just shared with you. All you need to do is grasp the basic insight that resentment is bad for you and leads to negative emotions. Therefore, letting go of resentment is the first basic but important step you can take to calm down. Here are some tips to help you.

1. Learn to watch for and let go of resentment which sustains and reinforces our reactions. It was resentment that led to the very first reaction to a look-alike situation long ago, and it is resentment that sustains it and reinforces it. The resentment must be let go of--whether it be resentment against the situation, the person, the first occurrence, oneself, or resentment against anything.

2. Becoming upset is a way of life for most of us. When you were a kid, you learned to be emotional. Now that you are an adult, you are beginning to see the health and mental health impacts of being upset all the time. Now you know that it is better to calm down. So the second thing that must be learned is to practice going through life in a more detached way, as more of an observer. Maintaining a dispassionate state of mind and calm way of living will be easier now that you know to watch for and let go of resentment.

Incidentally, the practice of letting go of resentment corresponds to the beautiful spiritual and philosophical principles of forgiveness and patience you may have heard and appreciated but never really knew how to apply.

3. The secret to regaining self-control has to do with the timeless moment just before we react. In that moment we have the freedom to make a choice between going with the resentment and all that follows, or to remain patient. Once we go ahead and resent or choose to indulge resentment producing judgment, then there is a due process that occurs, and the bodily stress responses take place, one after another.

We all know that we need to calm down and be reasonable, but as soon as we react, we forget and lose control. It happens so fast. That is why stillness meditation (which helps us be centered and calm) is helpful.

In a nutshell, meditation helps you to be still and then carry a calm awareness out into your daily activities. Pre-armed with patience, you won't get caught unawares. And when the previously upsetting situation comes along, you can observe it instead of resenting and then getting caught up in it.

When you are not resentful in the first place, you are less likely to become upset and irritable in the second place. You will have a greater capacity to be patient with your loved ones.

- 12 -

I Cheated on My Wife Should I Tell Her?

If you just cheated on your wife, there is a reason for telling her: basic decency and disease prevention.

There are many sexually transmitted diseases and they are rampant. Any contact outside of the bounds of marital fidelity carries the risk of contracting and spreading one or more of the many sexually transmitted diseases.

You owe it to her to advise her so that she can monitor her health and partner with her medical provider to make sure that she is free from disease (or receive appropriate treatment, if through you, she has acquired a disease).

Just be aware of the fact that she may decide to divorce you.

If you had a relationship with someone long ago before you were married, it is none of her concern. Only tell people things on a need to know basis. If you unnecessarily divulge some dalliance that occurred before you were married, you are likely to discover that she will remember it forever and secretly judge you for it, and even throw it in your face. Your emotional weak confession was a big mistake.

If you cheated on her many years ago, and you are both disease free, then what good will it do to tell her? The only thing you are likely to accomplish is to burden her with something that she will judge you for and will never forget. You risk destroying progress you have made in the relationship by giving her a new reason to judge and condemn you as being just another user and cheat.

If you want to confess to someone: confess quietly to God. If you confess to your wife, you are casting her into the role of God. So watch out for this trap and temptation.

If she asks you a direct question "Did you have a relationship with so and so eight years ago?" you may not be able to duck it. You will have to decide whether honesty is better for her and you or whether it is better to fib. Sometimes a fib is better if the other side is not sincere or will take advantage of your honesty. There is even an example the Old Testament of someone who told a lie for a good reason.

If you cheated on her a long time ago, whether to tell her or not depends, in part, on your reason for telling her. You must go in with your eyes open, prepared to do what is right, but also factoring in what makes sense and is prudent, rather than just emotionally saying things that might be misunderstood or forever used against you.

I am a pastor, so my advice to individual people who consult with me about this topic may surprise some. Most people expect me to advise them to confess everything to the wife and ask her forgiveness. But this can, and probably is, the wrong move.

Many men, instead of confessing and making things right in their heart before their Creator, get on their knees before their wife, which is akin to begging her (instead of God) for forgiveness.

His display of wrongness and weakness is a tremendous temptation to her to puff up in judgment, and also to feel superior and righteous by comparison.

If she is judgmental of men, based on experience with men beginning with her father who was not there for her and then other weak men she has known, your confession will only confirm what she already suspected--that you are just another weak selfish man who is a user--and she may judge you forever.

If you have changed for the better over the years--you saw your own selfishness and you saw that your wife and children need you to be there for them--and now you have mended your ways, a weak admission of some long ago dalliance will serve no purpose other than tempt her to judge you and never be able to forget what you told her.

She might "forgive you" for guilt relief, but secretly resent you for making her have to deal with it. Your weak admission is also a temptation to her to play God and revel in feeling like a saint in taking back her whimpering dog husband.

I am not saying not to be honest, but I am also warning you that what you say to her can and will be used against you. Women tend to have a memory a mile long when it comes to a man's mistakes. Your weak emotional admission would actually be a temptation to her to judge and condemn you and all men. And this is not good for her psychologically or spiritually.

So first, look at your motivation, become very well centered, and have a crystal clear calm understanding of what you are doing before you dump your sins in her lap.

- 13 -

Guilt for Resenting Their Parents is Often a Factor in Why Kids Turn to Alcohol and Drugs

Teens and kids who drink alcohol, puff on marijuana, or take other drugs are repeating the age old quest for the high. In their case, though, it is also most likely to escape from guilt for resenting their parents or to escape from the boredom of school. It often begins with being introduced to it by so-called friends, but then it becomes the easy escape from conscience. In this chapter I will address why kids resent their parents, and what parents can do to avoid the mistakes that are likely to tempt their kids to resent them.

Kids are often angry at their parents--especially when the parents have been impatient, accusatory, or dad has not been there for them. Looking for love and support, they turn to the peer group. Soon they drink or smoke to escape from the guilt for hating their parents and copping out to peer pressure.

Other kids, such as the ones in college, are often guilty for having given in to the pressure to be ambitious, for selling out to the pressure to study and become something (other than what the Good Lord had in mind for them).

Here is a subtle but important point that is rarely mentioned. None of us begins life wanting to be a groupie, a gang member, a pot smoker or ambitious achiever. Sensing that he or she has been degraded, the young person knows at a deep level that had his parents been stronger and wiser, their virtue and understanding would have been a powerful protection from worldly pressure and might have shielded them from losing their innocence. This is the deepest cause of resentment toward parents and especially toward father.

With all the peer group, gang, drug, sex, school and pop culture pressure--life becomes a pressure cooker. When parents basically abandon their kids to the pop culture, and to school and peer pressure, it is just too much for the kids.

Sooner or later the pressure gets to them, and they make the understandable but unfortunate mistake of resenting the pressure and giving in. Then at a deep level they resent their parents for their the parents’ lack of wisdom, vigilance, moral strength, and protectiveness.

To make matters worse, when they go home their parents pressure them! Resentment makes them guilty. So they look for something to take away awareness of guilt, namely alcohol or drugs.

Today's parents need the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, and the courage of conviction. Parents must be solidly grounded, know what is right, and have the courage to stand for what is right. The parents must also have patience and understanding. They must be wise enough to see the danger in too much socializing, in ambition and performance pressure, in inappropriate music and video games, and so on.

Make no mistake about it--parenting today calls for the utmost wisdom and thoughtfulness. The parent who smokes marijuana or is taking drugs cannot correct his kids for smoking. The parents who are like big kids themselves cannot teach maturity. Nor can the angry parent teach how not to get upset or give in to pressures.

The extreme of nagging and imposing rigid values (without love and understanding) will not work either. This is just another pressure, which actually tempts the kids to resent the parents and to rebel (to the very seductive forces the parents are lecturing against).

Parents, stand back and realize your need for grace. Realize your need for understanding. Get back in touch with what you know in your heart is right. Learn to talk to your kids instead of talking at them. Be there for them. Learn to set limits without pressure. Learn to make your points without anger.

If you are not the strongest influence in your child's life, then someone else will be. But for Heaven's sake, don't drive a basically good kid away by yelling instead of listening. Let your influence be love, understanding, kindness, and yes, even the courage to be firm if need be. Let your firmness not be in anger but rather from thoughtfulness and a deep commitment to do what is right. Let there be love in everything you do.

- 14 -

The Best Parenting Advice for Parents of Toddlers and Teens

Our hearts are restless, O Lord, till they find rest in You. Augustine

Whether you are dealing with a toddler or a teen, here is the secret to parenting success. I will tell you the secret in two words. But you may not believe me.

You will say it is too simplistic and dismiss it. You may do this despite the fact that you are looking for answers. People are generally not interested in this topic unless they are looking for answers. They have a need. There may be rebellion in the house, arguing, hurt feelings, or upset. Communication may be poor. Some people are also searching for answers because they want to avoid the problems their parents made.

Being busy and in need, people look for a quick fix: some technique to apply and get immediate results.

I do have the answer, but it is not a gimmick or a quick fix. Though I must say that proper application of this principle will likely have some amazing immediate results.

Here it is. The secret to successful parenting is understanding and patience.

Okay, you've spent your nine seconds here and you are reaching for the mouse. But wait! Hear me out. I'm an advocate for families. I want you to succeed and I want your kids to be happy and successful too.

Understanding is the basis of parenting success. Where do you get understanding? Fortunately we all already have the basis of understanding and patience within us. You don't have to look out in the world for it. It is called intuition--what you know deep down. What you wordlessly know is right. It is a wordless knowing or a gut instinct. Some people call it their deepest instincts. Some call it their highest instincts. I call it intuition.

It is both a protection and a guide. People who have been in ultimate situations have relied on it. True scientists, explorers, inventors, and innovators rely on it. So why shouldn't a parent rely on it?

The trouble is--we tend to doubt it or ignore it. How many times have you had an inkling not to do something, but you went ahead anyway? And what was the result? It’s never good. Afterwards you could kick yourself and exclaim:: "Why didn't I pay attention to my hunch?"

Now, think back to when you were a kid. What you needed was someone to understand you. Someone who did not go to extremes. You did not need someone to yell at you or arbitrarily punish you. All emotional displays and arbitrary rules did was tempt you to be angry, rebel, and feel all alone.

On the other hand, you did not need someone to feel sorry for you. That embarrassed you and undermined your self-confidence. Okay, it was nice when your peers sympathized with you. But their sympathy could not really help you.

What you needed was someone who set aside emotions and rules, and who understood your true needs.

You needed someone calm and unemotional. You needed someone who did not try to force some pre-decided rules on you, but someone who had fresh eyes. In short, you needed someone with understanding.

When you were a little kid and you spilled something on the floor, you just needed someone to help you clean it up. When you were a teen, you needed dad to be there, strong and wise, and to be kind. Sometimes you needed him to gently but firmly say: "No, you can't go out with your friends after midnight ." You needed someone to stand for what is right, but to do so without anger.

You needed someone who saw the danger in too much socializing and who set limits. You needed someone who was there for you. You needed someone to take you to the Father Daughter Night.

If your parents were decent, they probably did the best they could. They made some mistakes, and chances are you resented them. Years later, you probably saw that they were not all that bad. You are grateful for what they did do for you, but you saw that they needed a little more understanding. If only they had had just a little more understanding.

If only mom had not resented dad and given him such a hard time. If only dad had been a little less wimpy. If only he could have been less angry. If only they had not made money or work too important. If dad had been there more. If only they had seen the dangers of excessive socializing and early dating. If only they had talked to you instead of at you.

Now that you are more mature, you can look back on your parents and see that they did have some common sense, and they did try to warn you about some things. They did care. So what could they have done so that they could have gotten it just right?

For one thing, they could have let go of resentment. When mom resented dad, or dad resented mom--this resentment cut them off from understanding (intuition). Resentment also cut them off from patience. The resentful person simply cannot have understanding or have patience.

So if mom resented dad, she turned around and yelled at the kids or felt sorry for herself.

But she had let go of resentment, then love and understanding could flow. As a bonus, the tension and stress of resentment would also be gone. Life becomes easier when we are not resentful.

When dad resented mom, he became angry and violent, or wimpy and suppressed--either way he was cut off from intuition, from which would come patience, understanding. and wisdom. Even if he still had some understanding, his anger probably caused him to shut down and become uncommunicative.

If dad had let go of resentment, he could have spoken up for principle without anger. And if he was not angry or resentful, he would not have been suppressed (because of guilt). He could have been firmer (when you needed him to be).

With understanding and patience unblocked, he could assume his proper role as father with kindness and unselfishness. He would no longer need love (to counter the insecurity and guilt for being resentful and wimpy or resentful and violent). No longer needing love, he could have given emotionless agape love.

The other thing they could have done is rely more on their common sense and intuition, instead of doing what everyone else said. Most parents doubt themselves and go along with what some expert or authority tells them to, even when it conflicts with what they know in their heart is right. God gave us intuition as a gift. Ignore it to your peril.

We loved our grandmas when they smoothed the waters with their calm know-how and patience. I call it intuition. Grandma probably calls it common sense.

Start becoming acquainted with your intuition again. Trust your gut. Let go of resentment. Get your ego out of the way. Discover love. When you do, understanding--the gold standard of parenting success--will be there for you.

- 15 -

There is Little Love in the World

There is no love in the universe except for God’s love. The best we can drum up on our own is need, a need for God and a yearning for Him and for what is right. He answers our need by ever so slowly and gently making Himself known to us, and He gives us light and lets us know that He has forgiven our sins. We then are grateful and we love Him when we see His goodness, His mercy, His kindness, and His forbearance. Our response is thus appreciation, awe, wonder, gratitude, and thanksgiving.

Having received God’s love, we, in turn, are able to love others by not hating them, by not judging them, and by not trying to do something to them or use them. God gives us insight and understanding. With that insight and understanding we see the need for patience for others; we see that they do not know what they are doing; we see that they are lost and out of control. These insights permit us to be patient with them.

So where is the love? It is already there--it is God’s love that extends to us the gift for not resenting others, and it is His love in us that stabilizes us and permits us to observe without emotion or impatience the errors and foibles of our fellow human beings.

Our patience then is not really our patience--it is an extension of His love in us. His love holds us calm and gives us the ability to remain calm and patient. His love gives us insight that permits us to persevere in faith and in seeing the need for obedience to His promptings and laws.

His love sometimes moves through us, giving us a few words to say to another that might awaken them to the love and light within themselves. If so, our words spring from His love and we are but the conduit of His love which moves through us as we express what we are given.

Each time we are patient, our being is fortified and understanding is made flesh.

Each new growth in character results when you meet a stress without flinching, without emotion, without anger or resentment, and without reaching into your brain to dreg us some clever response. By holding fast, you go through the experience without the experience going through you. Something within restrains you and stabilizes you, The mere fact that you do not come unglued and react is evidence of that within, and even as it restrains and stabilizes you, something of it is transmitted to your mind and body, and so you grow in wisdom and love with each such successful encounter.

Similarly, the way we grow in skill and ability is through the overcoming of challenges. At first, you don’t know how to do something, then you do it; and as you do it your skill increases until meeting the same challenge is no longer a challenge--you have overcome it. Now you have reached a new level, and having successfully traveled through the experience you now are ready to face a new and greater challenge from this level. Each level required passing through the experience, learning from it and overcoming it, and as you do, you become stronger and ready for a greater challenge.

Either you overcome the challenge or the challenge overcomes you. A plant grows through absorbing the stress of the sun and the wind and rain. Because it meets each of these challenges properly, it grows stronger and bigger. But should it be overcome, it withers and dies.

The bird grows stronger when it leaves the nest and successfully learns to fly. The math student who successfully understands and does all the pre-calculus problems is ready for calculus.

So if you do not meet and overcome a challenge, then it overcomes you. If someone makes a remark and you resent it--you have been overcome by the challenge. If you run and hide, you have been overcome. If you shrink back and fail to bring forth something from within, then you have been overcome. The challenge grows stronger (having overcome you)!

Now do you see why becoming resentful is such a big failure? We are created in the image and likeness of God and as such we are creatures of love. As children of God, walking in His light and love, we are filled with His love and every action we take and every word we speak has love in it. Love is the proper energy for the human being.

So when we do not have love or when our love fails, we become resentful. We are cut off from everything that is truly human. We become profoundly negative and everything we do, say, and think becomes tinged with negativity. The outside is positive and it overcomes you. Everything easily overcomes you when you are negative.

If you compensate for your inferior position with anger and cunning, then you become a monster. If you do not compensate then you become a weak vessel for the world to dump everything on you. You become prone to disease and illness, and negative thoughts hone in on your mind.

Love never fails, says Paul the apostle. If you have love (God’s love) then you cannot fail. Love never fails because it is God Who loves. Love overcomes evil because the love is from God, and God never fails.

So let me restate it again because this is little known or understood. People think that they have love or someone else has love; but the truth is that with rare exceptions, no one has love. People have need, desire, guilt, compensations, and perhaps empathy; but not love.

Love is from God. Only He has love and those people through whom His love is manifest.

Love is a magical thing--creative, transformative, and energizing. It is creative and gives generously and without strings attached.

The best thing you can do is to see what love is not, and then realize that whatever you have had--it was not true love.

This humbling realization will permit you to begin to wean yourself for stray feelings for others. These feelings are not love. Some are forms of desire and others are derivatives of guilt and are a compensation for the lack of real love. We can rush to other’s aid and feel very holy and self righteous, but mostly we are only serving what is wrong with them and not effecting real change. True love starves what is wrong with the other person and does not support that wrong. True love disables other’s wrong by exposing it for what it is, as well as causing it (the internalized wrong) to feel failure when it does not succeed in emotionalizing or upsetting you.

Your realization will also relieve you of your false guilts. Others have always encouraged you to give yourself to them and serve them by giving you approval for your striving. But all you have done is make them spoiled, guilty, and more wrong. Better to leave them alone and let them fend for themselves.

No, you are not guilty for not doing enough for another person. You are guilty for resenting them and then playing God and doing too much for them. Your so called help was self-serving. You did too much for them to get rid of your guilt, but in the process you made them weaker (for which you acquired more guilt) and for which they resented you. Then sensed deep down that you were weakening them and they also say that you did not really have love. Your false love created a sense of obligation in them, fortified with their resentment and guilt for resenting you and talking your help. Resentment and feeling beholden made them feel inferior to your glorious self. You, in turn, saw the effect of your love as they deteriorated. You resented them for failing and then doubled down on your help.

The only thing that will set the two of you free at last, is a dose of the truth and clearly seeing your role in the problem without resenting the other person.

Then there is the voice in your mind and in others that tells you that you feel guilty for not doing enough for others. In truth you are guilty for serving them. When you stop serving them, they withdraw their approval and then you feel your guilt (which they had always taken away). Your real guilt is for looking to them for approval and giving your life to them for it. You should be only looking to God for approval.

With time you will become less emotional and then not emotional at all. With your emotions on idle and now more objective and no longer serving others, you are free to be just a humble nothing. But now a humble nothing that can begin to perceive people’s true needs, and if there is something that you can do, the action or word will be impelled and energized by a new energy from God. Now it won’t be you who is doing it, but God through you.

- 16 -

Just How Important Is Dad?

Many dads are decent and basically say the right things. Why then do their wives secretly resent them? Why does the daughter feel he has failed her, and why is there a distance between her and him? Why is the son angry and rebellious?

And if the kids are conformists, seemingly doing all the right things, why do they go on to lives that end in disease and suffering? Why indeed.

The problem is that dad, although saying the right things, does not say them strongly enough. Most dads are wimps. They do the will of their wife and their boss. They tow the party line, and they uphold the status quo. Those dads who speak up strongly usually do so angrily, and the anger, being a failure, taints their message.

Other dads do honor what is right and do recognize what is right, but they stand silently by because of some feeling of inferiority or guilt. Such a dad fails to speak up because he does not feel qualified to do so. Or he fails to speak up because he is or was involved in the very thing he should speak up about. In order to understand how dads fail and what the result is for their family, we will discuss the subject in detail.

From the outset, let me state the bottom line. Dad stands in for God in the eyes of the child.

This is dad's role: he must represent what is right clearly and unmistakably. He cannot have any vices and he must have outgrown or be in the process of outgrowing any need for worldly approval and support. He must see clearly what is right and not doubt it.

He must speak honestly and firmly about what is right without vacillation. He must also be able to express what is right without anger--anger itself being a failing. The man of faith does not need anger to support himself or what he is saying. His invisible support comes from a bond with his Creator within.

He must also live what is right. He cannot lecture about drugs while holding a marijuana cigarette in his hand. Dad can only do these things if he has faith, wisdom, long-suffering, kindness, firmness, honor, and courage. Any doubt on his part, any vacillation, any selfish indulgence, and he fails. And when he fails, the whole family suffers.

It is simply impossible for a dad to have the super strength and faith to withstand the subtle pressures of the world without an inner bond with his intuitive Ground of Being. He must have the kind of relationship that Moses, David, the prophets, or Jesus had with the Father. If he looks to the church, to his wife, to his company, to medicine, to the doctor, to the government, or anyone for support, his roots will go out into the world and he will fail.

That is why apparently good people who say and do all the right things, often fail at home and cause their families to secretly or openly suffer. Their so called faith is emotional and is based in words, study, and other people. It is worldly in other words. All their "churchianity" saves them from is the Truth: that they have not yet found an inner bond with the Creator. They are religious, but not religious enough.

For the time being, let us put aside discussion of the violent, abusive, drunken, drug taking or womanizing man. He is obviously wrong and cannot possibly do any good. Let us also put aside discussion about the angry, self-righteous dad who forces religion on his family. He is also obviously wrong.

Let us also put aside discussion of the hypocritical dad--who puts on an act for others but who is secretly wrong. This person is also obviously wrong (at least to the perceptive observer).

About the above, I would say that there is not much hope for them, unless they realize in the Light of Truth that they are wrong and become truly sorry. Unfortunately, this is rare because most people do not want to admit they are wrong. Even when they do, it is only to save their pride, put on a show for others, and prevent the loss of perks or privileges.

However, I will say that the dad who has a keen sense of justice and who is indignant over injustice has a chance of recovering if he can see that it is anger and resentment that have made him wrong.

Let us talk about the average dad who is basically decent. If he is angry, he must learn to give up anger; and he must learn to stand for what is right, not with anger, but with resolve and patient endurance.

The decent but wimpy dad must learn to give up the support of his wife, friends and other worldly affiliations. He must stand for what is right, instead of standing silently by with secret hostility and resentment. And he must stand up alone if necessary. He must only look to God for approval. But he must also search his heart, and if he is still secretly resentful, he must first let go of the resentment. Otherwise, anything he says will be tainted with that resentment.

Before proceeding, let me say that as the child of a failing dad, your only hope of recovering from your problems is to forgive your parents, especially your dad. Otherwise, your lack of forgiveness keeps you tied to his wrong, and makes you an extension of that wrong. You will be destined to become like your dad or to continue hating and serving men like your dad all your life, or perhaps compulsively rebelling against such authority.

As a lady, you will be compelled to keep finding men just like your dad, who you will judge and resent. And this judgment will keep alive the wrong in you.

Your continuing lack of forgiveness will block you from recovery and your continued emotionality will result in relationship, health, and financial problems.

Everyone thinks that mother is the most important person in the family, but it is actually dad, even in his absence. Most kids today suffer from too much mom and not enough dad.

Father stands in for God in the eyes of the child. When father fails, it is as if God had failed the child. At a very deep level, the child is wounded. Dads who are drunks, drug addicts, ambitious achievers, or womanizers are obviously wrong. But the importance of dad is such that even the half way decent dad--the one who goes to work every day and watches TV at home every night--is not wise enough or strong enough to deal with the power of the world to corrupt and tempt the children into doubting truth and virtue.

The weak but affable dad is likable enough. But being likable is not enough. Even saying the right things is not enough. The man must search within for the strength, patience, wisdom, and virtue he does not have and cannot find in the world. He must look within, and he must not look to his wife to be his support.

Let's face it, all dads have failed their families. But wait! This is no excuse to resent him or hate him. If you resent your father, a wall is put up between you and the Creator. You remain tied to the error operating in your dad, and your lack of forgiveness blocks finding God's forgiveness.

Realize that perhaps you never really knew your real dad. What you saw was the error operating through him. It got into him because he resented his failing parents.

Therefore, forgive your dad by dropping your grudges and judgment against him. You will then be free to find and express love from within. And you will be free to be a good mom or dad yourself.

- 17 -

Marriage Advice For Men – Why You Should Not Be Unfaithful and What To Do if You Have Cheated

Who was it who said: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?" If only men understood just how devastating it is for a wife when a husband fails to be the noble man she had dreamed and hoped for.

Many of us remember the Tiger Woods scandal when his wife discovered he was cheating on her. It was a big shock to all of us but a devastating one to her. What does a tough-minded Obviously we do not know all the facts, so there is no use judging him or speculating. But I can use the interest in marital relations that such stories arouse to make some important points.

The first thing we can learn is this: a man must never fail. He must be principled and honorable. That is a father's role and husband's duty. When he fails the whole family suffers. I've been saying this for thirty years, and nothing has changed.

Secondly. I want to say that no one can make a man into a man. He must find it within himself.

It is the Father Spirit that our wives and children need. I will never forget something I once read. It was about the life of a sea captain who lived in the 1800's. It told how despite the fact that he was at sea for months at a time, his wife and his daughter respected and loved him dearly. They were happy and secure though thousands of miles away. He was a man of the highest honor and impeccable virtue. He was a noble, principled man doing his duty. He had the father spirit from an inner bond with his Creator. And it is that spirit that protected the family, made them secure, and was a powerful antidote to the doubt and confusion in the world. Loving the good in him was the same as loving the good for which he stood.

If a man fails big time, his only hope is to realize his wrong, be sorry, apologize and then never fail again. Maybe his wife will forgive him and maybe she won't. He must live the rest of his life honorably and with dignity, knowing full well that she may never forgive him.

Even if she does not forgive him, he must continue in the marriage, do his duty and never look for sympathy. If she divorces him, he must live a principled and decent life. He must suffer in dignity--forever if necessary. He must not become bitter; he must become better.

Marriage was never meant to be a pleasure party. He must learn to be unselfish. It is his job to be there for his wife and kids. She will test him to see if he is sincere. She may test him and give him a hard time for years, decades even. He must never fail.

Maybe one day she will see that he is sincere (not just pretending to have changed so as to keep the marriage perks). If nothing else, his nobility and quiet dignity will foster respect. If his apology is merely the crocodile tears of a wounded ego and not truly sincere, his duplicity will backfire. He must be sincere.

He must not seek to divorce his wife. If she divorces him, and she gets the kids (which is most likely), then he must remain chaste and should not remarry if possible. He must live honorably and be available for the kids.

Divorce is a really big thing for kids. They will undoubtedly resent him for failing them. They may side with mom and hate him. He must never hate back. He must suffer in dignity, with good will. His goodwill and graciousness, his cheerfulness and chasteness, will at least not tempt them to resent him more.

Father stands in for God in the eyes of the child. That is why he must be principled, honorable, wise, thoughtful, kind, and he must stand for what is right (without anger). He must have no vices. A man cannot lecture about marijuana if he has a cigarette in his hand. He cannot correct excessive socializing, for example, if he is surrounded by a bunch of phony friends. He must not be a wimp, but he should not be angry and violent either. He must search within for the patience and wisdom he needs and does not yet have.

As I have often said, most women have issues with their dad. He was not there for her, and she went out in the world looking for love. Chances are she had a bad experience or two with boyfriends who took advantage and did not really love her. Thus, when her husband fails her, it reminds her of all the previous men in her life who failed her.

When her husband fails, power goes to her. She is tempted to judge him and to hold him (and other men) in contempt. And she will probably hold his failing against him. Many women tend to have a memory a mile long when it comes to men's failures. All I can say is "serves him right."

Many men get married and expect it to be one big party. They have no idea how important husband and father are.

Their wife, on the other hand, has high expectations, but fears he may turn out to be like other men. She may have some baggage from the past: unresolved issues beginning with her father who was not there for her. She may also have been disappointed by other men, such as boyfriends, who did not really love her.

When her husband fails in some way and she resents him, she tends to project her prior judgments on him. He finds out that there is a lot more going on than just flowers and candy will fix. He discovers that he needs the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job which he does not have.

What he should do at this point is realize his lack and seek his inner ground of being to find understanding.

Sadly, most men will err in how they go about seeking to repair the damage. Some whimper and beg their wife for forgiveness. These men are afraid of losing the comfy relationship they enjoyed. She may or may not accept her whimpering dog back. Either way she gains the power and ascends as his god. Though she may accept him back, she has no respect for him.

Other men will seek external guidance from ministers, support groups, accountability groups, counselors and other experts on how to be a better husband. Though the advice may be well intentioned and helpful, it is nevertheless second hand. It may validate what we know in our heart but should never substitute for it. Without realizing it, he thus becomes become more externally based and dependent.

What he needs is an independent means of support (his Creator within, actually). This is an inner thing, based on a re-found sincere commitment to principle, without any middleman involved. From this inner rapport will come intuition based understanding, as well as the patience, kindness, wisdom, commitment, and yes, courage to do what is right.

Some men seek support from other men, the bartender, alcohol, drugs or other women. But these supports (basically accepting him the way he is--prideful, selfish and unrepentant) just take the place of an ego supportive wife. Remember, it was seeking support for his ego from his wife (or the other woman) that undermined him in the first place.

Some men become married to their work or to money--these also take the place of the woman in supporting his ego.

As you can see, his troubles tested his commitment to principle and love for his family. Alas, his commitment and love were tested and found wanting. All that remains to be seen is whether or not he will be sincerely sorry and willing to change his ways or not. Without a true change of heart and commitment to principle, everything else is just window dressing.

As for the lady, I will discuss how she might salvage the situation later. For now I will just say that her emotional and spiritual well-being depend on her being able to stop resenting and let go of her grudge against her husband (and all men). This does not mean that she has to like what he did or pretend nothing happened. It means seeing his failing, but not resenting him for it.

Just as at work a manager can deal with a difficult situation without resenting it and can deal with a troublesome employee without resenting him, so we must learn to deal with personal situations without resentment. Just as it is possible for a teacher or coach to see and patiently correct a student's failing (without resenting the student for it), while at the same time not supporting or condoning it--so can a wife see her husband's failing without supporting it on the one hand or condemning him on the other.

Men are always looking for a woman to mother and support his failings. This craving for (sexual) support for his failings can become way out of bounds. It makes it difficult for a woman to love her husband without supporting what is wrong with him. To the ladies I will just say: don't resent him. It is resentment that hurts you more than anything. Forgiveness is the answer. Again, I must say that forgiveness does not mean pretending nothing happened or going along with what happened. It means not resenting.

How wonderful it is to be married to a noble man. Supporting him in this case is cooperating with and being a helpmate to his goodness. How much better this is than supporting enabling what is wrong with another. Just remember that many men, though having failed as all men have, nevertheless begin to wake up and start learning to be unselfish. Such men become more fatherly and one day transcend their former weaknesses.

When a woman resents her husband, she tends to then feel guilty (for the resentment and judgment). She then blames herself and seeks to "be a better wife" to make up for the guilt. Watch out for this trap. Self-blame and guild result from the resentment and judgment. Let go of resentment, and you will be able to honestly assess what is going on without guilt.

Of course, my fondest desire would be reconciliation and forgiveness, with both sides realizing their role in the situation. Alas, reconciliation and true forgiveness do not usually happen, but there is always hope. And yes, I understand that if the man is a terrible cad, a separation may be the best and safest way to go. The main thing is watch out for resentment. Let it go. Be there for the kids. Live on in dignity and graciousness.

Therefore, dear ladies, forgive your husband.

Men--although you have failed, your past selfishness and lack of understanding may yet result in a happy ending, if your suffering moves you to repentance and change of heart, leading to the hope of redemption and reconciliation. Drop resentment, and let love come through.

- 18 -

The Magic of Giving with No Strings Attached

A wise man said “Our benevolence is in reality the blood sucking kind--so that we may obtain from others their admiration, approval and worship.” We have a goal in mind and this makes our approach to others not whole hearted and pure. We think (or fool ourselves into thinking) that we only want the best for them, but there is some sort of self-service involved.

It can be a very subtle thing like “I don’t want my kids to lack what I lacked as a kid.” It sounds good but there is often resentment behind it, or even a subtle notion of doing for others what we blame God for denying or not doing for us. But most often the reason for our “benevolence” is not so subtle, we just want others to think well of us and admire or worship us.

But the wrong emotion (resentment) or goal ruins the effect of our service. Other people see our hypocrisy and resent it. If they don’t see our hypocrisy it means that we are pulling the wool over their eys and deceiving them. This is sad because, in the case of our kids for example, they worship or admire us for what is not really true and they are caught up in our false greatness. This will make them feel guilty and inferior, and also will result in their being fooled by others just like us. We are setting them up to fail.

But when our action is spontaneous with no strings attached and no ulterior motive, it is pure and from the heart. It is such an action that God may inspire or even assist. Sometimes you hear stories of some 90 lb. lady lifting a car off of an accident victim with superhuman strength. I would not be surprised if the strength came from God with her as a conduit for His purposes.

When we have some self serving goal in mind, it acts as a provocation or stress for others, provoking them to react and give their natural energy in submissive compliance or it provokes them to resentful rebellion.

Their resentful rebellion, making them feel guilty, often results in their coming around and complying. But look at how they have been separated from their own inner independent mode of functioning.

When we react to the provocation or stress of others we have to use your own energy either way--to comply and give of ourselves to them, or the energy of resentful resistance. Once we start to become conditioned to respond to other’s pressure, their demands become like commands to our body, and even their mere presence can serve as a pressure. We feel like we want to comply in their presence without knowing why. Or we feel like we need to comply and look for ways of serving their ego.

Of course, it is always begins with people (and what is in them) that make demands, give us goals, act needy, tease or challenge us—we react and then through conditioning we begin to respond to the mere presence of people. We tend to go along with the group or crowd, we look for ways of conforming and pleasing, or if we are used to resenting and resisting, their presence makes us tense, nervous, or upset.

Remember, by Pavlovian conditioning, the reaction spreads to more and more stimulants that resemble or remind us of the original. We become hypersensitive to the presence of pollen or the presence of people. I’m sure you have heard of people who tend to faint when in a crowd. Their body is reacting to the presence of people--and it is people who have made us sensitive and reactive.

Therefore do not pressure or challenge your kids to be good. Don’t give them goals or encourage or pressure them to comply with pressure monger teachers and coaches.

On the other hand, do not immediately reach to satisfy or answer any need they have. Give them the space to search and come up with an answer from within. This way they will learn to solve their own problems and not be dependent on others. Sure you can provide resources, offer guidance, or give them a helping hand when they have some project they are working on. Just don’t do for them when they could do for themselves or give them answers before they have the space to search for themselves. Don't give them ready-made solutions robbing them of the opportunity to reach within or bring to fruition self realized solutions.

They are better planting a lemon tree and then a year or two later making lemonade from the lemons they picked from the tree. Sure you could just given them store bought lemonade every time they want some, but you are sending the wrong message and robbing them of self reliance.

This is not to say that you can’t get them lemonade when on a trip somewhere and they are thirsty. But just remember the basic principle and then use common sense and wisdom. If your intent is pure, you will get it right. And as a bonus, you will also grow from sincerely searching within to know what is the right measure of giving and withholding.

- 19 -

Homework Issues – How to Insure Your Child’s Success

So many parents get so bogged down in the homework issue that they forget about the most important thing of all: the relationship. Relating to your child with love and understanding is a million times more important than any particular homework assignment. How much homework did Einstein do? Who knows? Who cares? He did not do very well in school. So instead of homework, he was probably doodling and daydreaming. Does your child doodle and daydream? Maybe he or she is another Einstein.

Many people do not know that when Mozart was a kid, his dad home schooled him and took him on several long trips. His dad intuitively knew that music was important for his son. He took his little son to major music centers so that he could meet composers, perform, attend concerts and see operas. One trip, when Mozart was less than 13 years old, lasted a year and a half. If he had had to sit in a class all day and sit around doing homework every night, Mozart's music never would have happened.

Mozart's dad looked into his heart and devoted himself to truly helping his son, instead of pressuring him with homework every night.

As a parent you must look into your heart to know what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Look into your heart and love will teach you what to do. If you don't know what to do, then just wait until you do know.

Timing is important; and proper timing is a facet of understanding. Whatever you do: you must find the right measure of giving and withholding, of giving and receiving, of taking charge or deferring, of gentleness or firmness.

No one can teach you this: you must search out the way with attentiveness, kindness, concern (not worry), and prayer. If you really and truly want to do what is right, and honestly admit in your heart that you don't know what to do, and if--and this is the big IF--you get your ego out of the way, you will be given wordless intuitive guidance. In fact, trusting in wordless intuition is the basis of faith.

Here is an example of understanding. Your son is in his room, but not doing his homework. Normally he does. Instead of barking orders from the living room, you thoughtfully take a look to see what is going on. You see that other kids are outside playing. You notice that today is the first sunny day in weeks. You remember that your son has been sitting in class all day. So you say: "Billy, why don't you get some fresh air and you can do the homework later?" Argument avoided, and everyone is happy (and he does his homework later). Your parenting grade: A.

Another scenario. Your daughter is not doing her homework. You take a look and see that she is text messaging silly messages to friends instead. "Give me the iPhone. Do your homework." Firmness and directiveness here; not giving in or excuse making. Do you see how important intuition is? Do you see how important love is? You need them to know, in that delicate moment, what to do.

Here's an example from my own life.

When I was 8 years old, I was invited to a birthday party after school. Never having been invited to a birthday party before, this was a really big day for me. My mother was to wait for me in the car after school to take me to the party. I guess I was excited that day and somehow did not finish a math assignment. The teacher made me stay after school to finish it (the first and only time in life I ever had to stay after school).

I was in a state of panic because my mother was outside waiting in the car. So I just wrote down any numbers that came to mind as answers, quickly handed it to the teacher, and tried to take leave. Teacher called me back, saw what I had done, and started giving me a hard time. I burst into tears and began to sob. I told her about the party and my mother waiting.

I am sure teacher's heart softened, and she realized in that touching moment that today was not the day to give an otherwise good kid a hard time. She told me to enjoy the party and let me go. Incidentally, I had a good time at the party (and I got A's in math in high school).

You see, I cannot tell you in advance what to do in any particular situation. But when I am there, I check with my intuition (understanding). Sometimes nothing needs to be done. Sometimes just observing and watching is all that is needed. Sometimes just being there is all that is required. Other times an action or word is called for. Sometimes it is "no" with an explanation.

And yes, sometimes bold action is called for. But more often than not, the calm presence of a good authority, a patient thoughtful parent, nips most problems in the bud before they have a chance to develop.

Nevertheless, there are times when taking the computer out of the room, getting rid of video games, restricting use of the iPhone, a big reduction in socializing, changing schools or starting homeschooling are needed.

I recently became aware that when a child gets a little behind (and this can happen for a variety of reasons, none of which are the child's fault), the child can simply become overwhelmed. For example, one child missed the classes where it was taught that multiplying two negative numbers results in a positive number. For weeks he fell further and further behind, getting all the answers wrong. He basically flunked out.

Only when his parents realized something was wrong, took him out of public school and put him in a private school, did things get better. When he went to the private school, he was so far behind most of the other students, he was put in the slow class. Guess what happened! He was able to follow what was going on, began to excel,, and got A's in math. This student went on to receive a four year academic scholarship to a major university.

- 20 -

Finding the Best Marriage Advice – Trust Your Instincts

It is obvious that many people have lost their way. This is especially obvious when it comes to marriage. Look into many families and you will find misunderstanding, resentment, suppressed anger, and hurt feelings. Husbands and wives argue. Parents and kids yell at each other. Communication is poor or nonexistent. Even worse, families are breaking up and divorces are rampant.

It is clear that people need the right kind of guidance. But if I may be so bold as to say so--it appears that the information and advice they are getting now is somehow lacking. Today there is so much relationship information on the internet, in books, from experts, and in courses. Yet family break ups and divorce are on the rise. Today there is more information and yet more problems. I am not knocking the various sources of information; I am just saying that something must be missing.

Where will we turn to find the kind of knowledge that will help us solve our problems once and for all, instead of just endlessly "working on our relationship?" Where will we find the kind of knowledge that will heal our relationships, restore our marriages, return the hearts of the children to the parents, and build strong families?

Perhaps you have heard that long ago--when a young couple had marriage issues--a grandmother, a Dutch uncle, or an old and trusted friend would be called in. Often that person had common sense, patience and understanding. They had a mysterious know-how. They had kindness, perhaps a twinkle in their eye. They bore good will: they really and truly wanted the best to happen. They did not experiment with theories or approaches. Their guidance was solidly grounded in common sense, patience, and understanding.

That is what we need today. We need understanding. The question is where did the older and wiser person get their understanding? From a book? No, it came from within. Understanding was the missing ingredient, which tempered everything and showed them how to apply any experience they had gained.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could find understanding to deal with your marriage and family issues? Better yet, if you had understanding yourself then you could solve your own problems.

Such understanding and common sense would permit you to see which advice is good and which is not. If you had understanding, then you could listen to what others have to say and sift the wheat from the chaff. You would know what to do with your knowledge and how to apply it with love and proper timing.

Sound too good to be true? Keep reading and I will show you the source of understanding available to you now. I say that we can find this insight and deep understanding within when we learn to relate to our God-given intuition. In the light of intuition, you would begin to see the reason why we squabble. Let me give you a few clues.

For example, you would begin to understand the mystery of the relationship between the sexes. It is an ancient and reoccurring cycle of ambition, rebellion, and failing. Just as in the story of the Garden of Eden, the woman is still used today to entice and support her modern day Adam to be ambitious. When Adam looks to the woman and her guile for support, instead of to principle, paradise is lost and the family suffers. She feels used, and he feels trapped and betrayed.

Without understanding of the real dynamics in the man-woman relationship, people continue to hate and blame each other.

Forgiveness is truly the answer. But in order to forgive, we must have insight into the deep dynamics behind all the squabbling we see in families. We simply need to see, really see, where we are failing and why. When you see that we humans are all in the same boat, you could be more forgiving toward your mate instead taking everything personally.

In order to do this, what we need is a very special kind of knowledge called understanding. You cannot get understanding from a book, even a religious book. Understanding comes from intuition--what we know in our heart--when we look within and trust what we know in our heart as our authority, instead of looking to worldly experts.

Intuition is first hand and alive. External knowledge applied without understanding is second hand and lifeless. External knowledge is useful only when it awakens understanding. Of course you can listen to what others have to say; just remember to run it by your gut instincts to see if it sits right with your intuition.

When it comes to marriage and family relationships, we need to understand why we fight. We need to understand our own inherent pride and see what is wrong with it. With understanding, we can observe our own failings with compassion. We need to understand what other's true needs are. We need to understand that most of the time your loved ones are not being cruel on purpose. They are out of control.

The family is the bedrock of civilization. The relationship between the man and the woman, within the institution of holy matrimony holds the key to happiness, prosperity, and domestic tranquility.

The family is the matrix in which the next generation comes forth, and it is the family which supports, nurtures and maintains the best of what it means to be a human.

Yet everywhere you look in the world--you see families boiling over with intrigue, betrayal, cruelty, suffering, and misery. Each and every couple starts off expecting to be happy. But something goes wrong. We need to understand why.

The kind of useful living knowledge I have in mind is found within. It is intuition. Some call it their highest instincts, some call it a gut level knowing. Some describe it as what they know in their heart. Even common sense is a basic form of this intuitive understanding.

It is just what we need. Look at it this way. Let's say a delicate situation arose between you and your mate, or between you and your child. Suppose that out of disinterested love of what is right, you really and truly yearned with all your heart to know what to say or do. Let us suppose that you passed up on the quick angry response. You did not reach for a slogan, verse, or memorized one-size-fits-all fact to misapply. You heard but did not mindlessly follow the advice of other misguided souls or strangers. Instead, you waited and looked into your heart for wordless intuition.

Then whatever you did or did not say, or did or did not do, would be based in intuition, love, and common sense. It would spring from a deep and limitless source. It would be rooted in rightness, love and principle. Its motivation would be selfless love, not expediency.

Your mate and your child would see the face of love: they would sense your quiet searching for what is right instead of seeking to win or impatiently looking for a quick fix. The mere fact that they become aware of the presence of love already begins to restore a right relationship.

Our families suffer for lack of this kind of knowledge. The one who is most to blame is the husband. It is his job to be the leader, the Moses or George Washington of the family. It is his job to be a man of impeccable honor, courage, patience, understanding, kindness, forbearance, and graciousness and wisdom.

Father is supposed to have understanding, and everything he does should be tinged with love and understanding. There is no way that he can be the man he needs to be unless he finds an invisible bond with the Creator Within. He must be so grounded in principle and faith, that there is no wavering, no failing, and no room for a lack of commitment to what is right.

He must be stronger than the world. But if he is woman centered, if women are the ground of his being and if his wife is his boss (or she lets him be the boss), then he will not be grounded in good. Instead he will be a beast man, violent or wimpy, grounded in the woman, and beyond her in the serpent of old who tempted man through Eve .

My heart goes out to the decent women everywhere. They are tempted to take charge because of the weakness of the man. They are tempted by his weakness to support and console his prideful ego. Men require it of women. And when she gains power because of his nothingness and growing weakness, she is then called upon to nag him to get him to function.

When he greedily goes for her love offerings, first with excitement then with resentment, he becomes enslaved. And when he is enslaved by the temptation that he wanted from her, he is full of rage. The weak angry man goes off to another woman or to the bottle. Some me marry their work or money (which take over her role of supporting his ego, or he takes on her mature and becomes a seducer himself.

All the while, the children are suffering. Men need to have a thorough knowledge of their own weakness. They need to see just why they must not fail. They need to see why they must be principled and honorable.

Women need to see that the Adam and Eve story is recreated over and over again. They need to see that, yes, most men are weak and failures. But she must learn not to resent them for it. She must see her own role in tempting him and rising to the occasion of his need to gain power over him. She must see why she must not support him in his wrong, on the one hand, but must also not give him such a hard time that he doesn't have the space to find himself.

When you resent your husband, that resentment blocks understanding. In other words, when you become resentful or angry, you are disconnected from love. And love is what intuition has in it.

Now you know why understanding is the missing factor. It has love in it. It is missing when couples resent each other; and it is missing when we try to apply external knowledge egotistically.

Perhaps a good starting point would be to realize that your husband is just a man, and judging and nagging him will only stand in the way of his finding himself.

Men, you must see that you must not look to your wife to support your ego. Look within. You must look to no one except your Creator for the strength, wisdom and understanding that you do not now have but will need if you are to be the kind of husband and father that your family needs.

Husbands and wives: regardless of what your situation is, begin right now to be more forgiving. Drop your grudges. If others are wrong, see their wrong, but don't hate them for it. Let go of judgment. Make it unimportant.

You yourself become wrong through resentments and holding grudges. When you let go of judgment and blame, you will then be free to see what the real truth is. Do you see how intuition leads to understanding, and understanding to love?

- 21 -

The Strong Family – Eight Lessons in Faithfulness and Duty

Sure, money and career are important. But at the end of the day, family is what matters most. Single persons can devote themselves to career, but when a family forms, everything changes. Integrity and healthy relationships become the keys to true success. That's why when a partner is unfaithful, it is usually devastating to the other family members.

Together let's ponder the disappointment and betrayal people feel when a partner cheats. Maybe we can remember to appreciate our own family just a little more. Perhaps we can even take away a lesson or two that will help us to be better partners and parents.

Lesson one. Honor your commitments and do your duty. Someone is counting on you. In fact, if you step outside the bounds of marriage, the message to your wife and kids is: dad does not love us. I know this is a hard teaching, but hear me out.

Isn't it true that when a well-known person (you had respected) is discovered cheating, you feel disappointment at some deep unplumbed level? If so, you are getting a small dose of what the spouse and kids feel when something like this happens to the family. You husbands and dads--I hope you see why you must never fail, because of the effect it has on others.

For example, if you feel a little let down by unfaithful sports heroes, you're not alone. Plenty of people feel hurt and betrayed. I understand. Thank goodness I have found a solid spiritual base for my life; nevertheless, even I occasionally feel a little disappointment when someone I had looked up to lets me down. Let it be a reminder to us all to do our duty. Someone is counting on us.

Lesson two. Moms and dads, you are the first role models in your kids' lives. Don't let them down. In fact, if you have any public visibility at all, people will identify with you. Any appearance of impropriety disappoints and disillusions them.

No wonder many of us are disappointed. We took it for granted that what our sports coaches always told us was true: that sports build character. We thought that we could safely identify with someone and look up to someone as a role model without being embarrassed or let down. But dads, here is the good news. The failings of others will not bother your kids if you do not fail them or let them down.

Lesson three. I have always heard that integrity is important. I heard that the word integrity came from the Latin word meaning "whole or undivided." But I never really understood the term. Now I see that many people who are unfaithful have compartmentalized their lives.

Now I see that integrity means wholeness. That's one thing most of us love and respect about our moms. Mom is always mom. You get the whole Mom all the time. She may not be perfect, but she has integrity.

What can you say about a man who has a secret life? It is not a good thing. A man of character is whole. He is always the same. He is the same through and through, and he has no secret life.

Lesson four. Be a champ. Dad, your wife and kids are likely to put you on a pedestal. They want to look up to you. They want to respect you. They want to trust you. You are more than just a role model to them--you stand for something very special.

Watching the scandal stories, you can see with your own eyes how quickly a person can go from being a champ to a chump. Don't let it happen to you.

Now let me address myself to the ladies and kids.

Lesson five. Maybe your dad is not such a bad guy after all. Is he home every night? Is he true to your mom? Then no matter how little money he makes--in the arena of fidelity, he is a bigger man than any successful person who cheats on his wife.

Lesson six. Be grateful for a husband who goes to work, comes home, watches television and works in the garage. If he is basically a good guy, don't give him such a hard time. Okay, he's not perfect. But don't we always say "No one is perfect?"

Lesson seven. Many men are far more decent than you realize. Many dads appear not cool because they don't do a lot of "cool" things. Instead, they talk about work and the weather. They watch the news. They are interested in cars and trucks. They tend to fall asleep on the couch (after a hard day's work). Therefore, some of us assume that dad is boring.

Could it be that dad is eschewing the exciting life in order to be there for his family? In other words, maybe he is living a quiet and dull life not because he has to but because he has chosen to. Maybe he is sacrificing selfish pleasure for the sake of his wife and kids.

Lesson eight. Dad may not be dumb. Dads sometimes appear dumb because they don't say much. Could it be that he is exercising patience and self-control? Could it be that he sees things that trouble him, but holds his tongue? Could it be that he is sometimes hurt, but he says nothing because he does not want to return the hurt? Could it be that his thoughts and love are too profound for him to easily put in words?

Lesson nine. Cherish and appreciate your family's love. Men, have you ever received a mug or a greeting card from your child that says something like: "My dad is my hero?" Women, have you ever received a card that says "to the world's greatest mom?" If you have, cherish it; for the sentiment it conveys is worth more than any degree, title, or trophy the world has to offer. Make sure you are worthy of it.

Gentlemen, now that you have been reminded of what it is like to be betrayed and disappointed by someone, don't mess up. Put a picture of your wife and kids on your desk at work. Wear your wedding ring at all times (this applies to you wives too). When you travel, carry a big picture of your wife and kids with you and place it in plain sight in every hotel room you stay in.

Lesson ten. Get married. I know this is a little controversial. But I say it after thirty years of teaching and counseling. If you and your mate are just living together, may I suggest you consider tying the knot and making it formal?

Never mind what everyone says about it "just being a piece of paper" and so on. Marriage is not casual (even if you think it is). The formality of wedding vows before a justice of the peace or minister, witnessed by others, means commitment and fidelity. It says that you really mean it. If you are unwilling to sign on the dotted line and say "I do," it means you are not 100% committed. It has the appearance of impropriety.

Even if you are 99% committed, your mate is aware of the 1%. Trust me.

After you are married, just for fun, wear a tee shirt that says: Sorry, I'm already taken.

- 22 -

Staying Calm in Times of Trouble and Economic Downturn

Financial crisis does not have to lead to family crisis. Economic troubles don't have to result in relationship or health problems.

You can still be reasonably happy, healthy, loving, and cheerful in spite of external circumstances.

We all know this at some level. We have all heard that money can't buy you happiness. We've all seen families who have very little, but who have a lot of love. We've seen great men and women come out of poverty.

Many of us who are a bit older remember when we were young newlyweds, for example, and had nothing but a one room apartment, a lamp, and some boxes to sit on. We remember that we were happy, much happier perhaps than years later when we had many material possessions.

Some of us have experienced getting what we wanted--having our heart's desire and yet feeling miserable and unfulfilled.

So if you know this, why do you get upset, worried, distraught, and begin to have a churning stomach when you can't pay all your bills or lose your job?

The reason why is both simple and profound. First the simple sound byte version: you've permitted yourself to become upset over trivial issues. Thus you indulged emotions, and now when the bigger issues arrive, you are easily thrown out of control. How can you remain calm in big troubles when you allow yourself to get upset by the little ones?

The simple solution is this: start to exercise what character you have left. Have some discipline. Be a man. Be a woman. Set a good example for your kids. Don't indulge worry, doubts, and fears. Never take counsel of your fears, a great general once said. Be patient. Remember: this too shall pass. Get busy, do something, go for a walk. Help someone. Look for work. Volunteer. Forget self.

Pay special attention to and beware of anger, which makes you wrong and guilty, and which conditions you to be reactive and out of control. See how judgement leads to anger. Let go of judgment.

Now the more profound reason why we permit external circumstance to affect our inner life, and by extension our relationship with others. We are egotistical and selfish. We lack faith, and we have always been taught to look to the outside for answers or into our intellect for answers. We are too externalized.

In other words, we look to the outside world for guidance. We look to the outside for support and comfort for our ego. And when we are not looking to others, we are looking into our intellect, hoping to dredge up some answer from there.

Where we should be looking is to intuition, what we ascertain wordlessly in the inner Light from God. But we avoid intuition, because having strayed from it, it now comes back as twenty/twenty hindsight. It feels like conscience, and it makes us feel bad. And as long as we don't want to be sorry and admit our mistakes, we avoid feeling bad and we shun conscience.

Of course, that is what just about everyone else is doing too. Can you see the folly of looking to some expert for guidance: an expert who is a prideful intellectual and who is devoid of conscience because he or she avoids conscience too? It is truly a case of the blind leading the blind.

But as I said, it is not totally your fault. You could not help inheriting the nature that is prone to being prideful. Nor could you help believing what everyone told you to do: get an education, look to experts for knowledge, be ambitious, set goals, and so on. You may have had a suspicion that there was something wrong with the teachers, educators, professors and experts' advice, since most of their own personal lives ended in failure.

But you did not grasp intuition (your hunch about such things) firmly enough. In your natural pridefulness, you wanted to get what you could out of life, and you went down the garden path that everyone else said was the way to go.

Without true faith, how could you argue with what you saw: all around you people chasing after material possessions and fame, pleasure seeking, and working the system, the hell with everyone else?

Yet, perhaps you suspected that all was not what it was cut out to be. You may also have seen examples of people who were industrious but not ambitious, who were principled and honorable and who succeeded without selling out, lying, cheating, or tricking people.

Now it is not your fault that the culture in which you live does everything in its power to convince you that the answer to your problems is out there somewhere. We are told education is the answer, that knowledge is the answer, that popularity is the answer, that security is the answer, and that money is the answer. We are told that romantic "love" is the answer. We are always looking to some person to make us happy, cure us, or give us some secret to getting rich.

Advertisers, and particularly the chemical pharmaceutical companies, spend billions to convince you that the answer to your problems lies in a pill or the latest jab.

We are treated like sheep, like children, even worse. We are treated as if we were just stimulus response animals to be manipulated and experimented on.

Until you fully grasp that you are a human being with a soul, and until you find the secret to the power of good available within to resolve problems, you will be at the mercy of those who want power over you.

The answer is within. The answer is in learning to become objective and aware, functioning from intuition with faith, and the guiding of intuitive understanding, and the protection of God's inner Light. The answer is to trust more in your own God given intuition than in what others say.

So long as you look to the world for answers, for love, or for some sort of ego validation, you will remain tied to the world and dependent on it. You will become resentful when others betray you.

So long as you are externalized, when a change occurs, when the rain falls, the economy falters, or the customers aren't buying, you will become upset and frustrated.

Learn to go through life with equanimity. Do not become overly excited when things go well. Don't become crestfallen when they don't. Remember: man does not live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God.

Also remember that other people are lost too. Others are externalized. They have not found the answer. No one loved them enough to tell them the truth. No one had the understanding to share with them the inner path to God.

Therefore you must not hate other people. Many of us have grudges against our parents for not guiding us properly and for letting something bad happen to us. Just remember: they could not give you what they did not have themselves. Also know that hatred and resentment cuts you off from inner love.

Begin by letting go of your resentments against others, beginning with those closest to you. Stop looking to the world for love and guidance. Stand back and observe. Listen to what people have to say without reacting emotionally for or against them. When you read, don't get absorbed. Instead scan lightly for clues.

- 23 -

Healing Relationships by Letting Go of Anger

Let's face it: 99.9% of us get angry too easily. We mask our anger with a pasty smile on our face, or perhaps we repress it and walk away. But we are angry. In fact, suppressed rage is one of the biggest emotional factors contributing to health issues.

Another thing we do is find a euphemism to describe our anger: we say we are "upset, nervous, tired, or disappointed." In marriage, years of suppressed anger can result in someone "suddenly" saying: "I need to find myself or I've changed." What they really mean is I'm resentful. In other words, sadly, "I'm harboring secret hatred and judgment toward you."

Now let's get to the bottom line: if you have a problem with alcohol, drugs, food, or even porn, most likely it is a direct result of anger. How so?

When we are angry, we need something to distract us from the guilt and soothe our hurting and frustrated ego. We need something to take away the pent up hostility and drain us of tension.

Some people work off their hostility (which has its own problems). Others turn to booze, drugs, marijuana, or food. You see, when we become angry and full of rage, we become an animal. The beautiful human qualities of graciousness, kindness, reasonableness, and magnanimity go out the window. In its place stands a hurting, inferior, rageful, resentful shell of a human, whose only relief is in escape and tension relief.

Some of us are even sneakier about our anger. We are secretly judgmental and resentful at others (especially our husband or wife), sometimes cleverly making the other person look wrong and then hating them with a superior hate.

Some women, for example, so upset their husband with insinuations, nit picking, unreasonableness or confusion, that he eventually becomes angry. Then she can secretly resent him, judging his anger and failing. He looks bad, and the wife look like martyr, but she was the one that started it. Of course, both of them are wrong. He in his way and she in her way. But I’m just illustrating how creatively cruel egos can be at playing games, causing confusion, and making others look bad. If you catch yourself doing it; admit to the other person what you have been doing, and then stop doing it.

Another thing: it's easy to be cruel to our children, blaming and dumping on them until they become angry and express their anger. Being without the advanced manipulative skill that the adult has, the child is foolish and clumsy in expressing his anger. This permits the parent to double down and punish the child for getting upset.

But the manipulative spouse or parent does not get away with their cruel games without hurting themselves. Their cruelty and secret hostility and judgment bring condemnation from conscience. And conflict with conscience brings pain and a need for comfort. Again, the person turns for comfort to food , drugs, alcohol or anything else that will "save" them from conscience.

I am trying to make you aware that anger is the result of judgment, willfulness, and selfish egotism. While it is true that your spouse or coworkers may be imperfect, even irritating--if you really had love, you would not resent them. The truly human person has patience. This patience comes from not having judged in the first place.

Someone once said that when we are wronged we cry out for judgment; but when we wrong another, we cry out for mercy. As long as you are angry or resentful, you won't even see your own rudeness and inconsideration toward others. You are too busy judging others to see your own fault.

Recovery from food, drug, or other addictions means seeing, really seeing, why you needed the false comfort of drugs or the misuse of food in the first place. If you were not angry and upset in the first place, you would not need comfort and tension relief in the second place.

And if you did not form secret judgments in the first place, you would not become angry. If you were not playing God, and easily frustrated and angered when your will is not done, you would not become tense and needy of lowly comforts.

The problem now is undoubtedly that your wrong self craves and cries out for the false comfort and false deliverance of lowly things we have mentioned. You have fallen to become a creature that now craves the drugs and false comforts.

Change begins not with struggling with your lower nature and its lowly needs, but being able to stand back so that your soul can be objective to the lower self. By now you know that struggling with your own lower self, using anger, is just more of the wrong way of dealing with things that got you in trouble in the first place.

If your soul is ready to drop pride and be sorry for your game playing and judgments, and if your soul is ready to admit it is wrong, then suddenly the proper meditation will work for you. You will be given the power to stand back and observe what is wrong with you without being involved in it. The power of observation is sufficient to begin a change for the better, beginning with your soul.

You will discover that you have the power to observe the wrong without becoming upset by what you see. And with no more emotion added, reason and patience come to the fore. You will have the power to observe and to get better without any effort on your part, and this by the grace of God. It will be a gift to you for being patient with others. And when you are patient with others, you will also be able to be patient with yourself.

Once the soul reconnects to conscience, intuition, and the God of conscience, once the soul is repented and experiences a profound regret, it becomes a friend of truth, a friend of conscience, and a friend of God.

Suddenly conscience becomes intuition again, a friend and presence we wish to walk with, not something to run from and avoid.

And when you are a friend of conscience, suddenly you no longer become tense in the first place or angry in the first place. Without the buildup of tension, there is no need for unnatural relief. Suddenly the soul enjoys seeing the truth instead of wanting to run from it. The soul becomes incompatible with the old deleterious and energy draining practices that lowered consciousness.

- 24 -

Bear Each Other's Burdens

We must bear each others burdens.

It says in the Bible: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6: 2) Now do you understand the meaning? When you see others making mistakes and doing foolish things, you must learn to not resent them. Christ set the example for us when He said “Father forgive them for they know now what they do.”

Bearing others burdens means to not become impatient with others and use their error to resent them or to take advantage. This is especially important in your own family. Your spouse may test you and try your patience with demands, for example. Stay calm and carry on.

Your kids will do wrong things, go against your wishes, they will be selfish and may even betray you in little things. You must steadfastly point things out but never grow angry or impatient.

You must never try to motivate your kids, lest they only conform or rebel but never learn to do rightly for themselves. It may take time for change to occur, and may never occur. Overlook with forbearance and longsuffering the little lack of graces and the little shortcoming they have, never tiring of pointing things out with calmness and patience. Then one day, they change for the better, and it will be because they saw it for themselves.

Christ bore the sins of the people. He was mocked and misunderstood; he had to escape being killed and stoned; he even had to bear the lack of faith and understanding of his disciples at times.

You must learn to look upon people as if they were naughty children. Never resenting them, never trying to force or manipulate them into understanding, and never throwing in the towel and quitting on them.

The words of the Serenity Prayer are very apropos here.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

The context for Paul’s words that we should bear one another’s burdens is that if one of our family or friends should fall to sin, we are to “restore him with a spirit of gentleness."

Mostly this means pointing something out with firmness and kindness. If they see their error, then they can self-correct. All you are doing is bearing witness to the truth which we all have access to.

However, people can be stubborn. People also come under wrong influence. People are selfish and generally lack understanding. They are like naughty children who need watching and gentle correction.

In other words you must speak the truth, but not expect any outcome. You should not expect people to change just because you said something. Take your ego out of it. Speak the plain and simple truth and have no thought of the outcome. If they see it, that is good. If they do not, don’t worry about it.

You can’t save anyone. Any efforts to save or change someone will only result in frustration and making them into a slave of your correction or a rebel.

In other words, with your family your own responsibility is to point things out. But with others, only if you sense an openness to what you have to say. Mostly, it is not your job to correct others. Simply set a good example. But with your family, you do need to say things and correct excess.

But don’t expect immediate change for the better. Remember, they may never change. You may need to point something out (with kindness and without resentment or impatience) for years. Then one day, they may begin to see.

This is what Paul meant. Shakespeare talked about suffering "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." The idea is to remain steadfast, never wavering, never growing impatient, never angry, never quitting on others, never expecting anything. Thus you bear other’s wrongs, standing in quiet disagreement but realizing that you do not have the power to change them. Wait, watch. If an opportunity presents itself, you may say something.

It is a kind of suffering---especially when your own family misunderstands you, accuses you of being mean, or willfully rebels against simple common sense things you ask of them, or perhaps even betrays you. You will feel the pain, but don’t resent them. Feel the hurt but not the hate.

They do have some awareness, and when they see you bearing injustice with patience and never resentment, they will respect you and perhaps be deeply moved.

The world is currently not in good condition. People hate each other, take advantage, lie to each other, and people make a lot of mistakes. You will have plenty of opportunities to practice patience. See their errors, but don’t hate them.

Remember that most of the world lies in darkness. People are lost sheep and do not know what they are doing.

They also carry a heavy burden of sin and guilt. Most people have burdens laid upon them from the time they are little children. Guilty parents project their sin onto the child and then accuse and punish the child for their very own sin.

The sins of the child are not really the child's; they are what was laid on them, as guilty parents unloaded their sin onto the child. The child then has the burden of sin, as well as a guilt for sin he did not really commit.

Sooner or later the child began to resent and hate the parent. And it is this hatred that really opens the door to error and the sin nature that comes in. People do not know how to deal with injustice.

Then the sin gets in and makes a home in them. Then they don’t know how to deal with that sin nature within. They try not to see it. But it compels them to seek out wrong experiences and to one day do unto others what was done to them.

Now you know what others are dealing with. So don’t hate them. You do not have to like them either. Nor do you have to remain silent. Some people need watching, some need admonishment. Others need to be stopped. But stopped with the force of love, not the force of hate. Just as sometimes a policeman has to stop someone form hurting themselves or others. He restrains them because it has to be done, not with any anger. When the person recovers from their emotional bout, they are grateful that someone stopped them from hurting themselves or others.

The scripture puts in well:

But we who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not just please ourselves. (Romans 15: 1 NET Bible)

A very wise man once said that we must learn how to deal with imperfect people perfectly. You will be able to do so when you practice the meditation and learn the art of patience.

Patience, you see, comes from God. He gives you the power to be patient, and with that power you observe errors without reacting to them. If you react then you become an extension of the error. The fact that you are reacting to it means that you are not master, it is master. Perfect mastery of life means not reacting, but rather observing and lovingly giving your attention.

Can you see the difference between having your attention captured by something (especially something irritating, for example) and giving your attention? When you give your attention you in charge of your response. Then with perfect scrutiny and wisdom, you will be able to respond appropriately.

Perfect mastery of life means remaining calm; never becoming irritated, exasperated, angered, or upset to the slightest degree.

When you are calm and have no goal or plan in mind (other than to do what is right but not knowing what the right is), when you do not resent the other person, but simply stand there observing them, then a marvelous thing can happen. They see the light of love in you--not your love but the love from God--and they are profoundly touched.

When you do not react, then something present in you manifests. It is only the power and the love that comes from God through Christ, and for which you humbly stand that can change everything for the better. It is God Who forgives and remits sin, and it is He Who heals our soul and makes right our life. Go now and meditate to find God within.

Christ spoke of this several times in the recorded gospels.

On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. (John 14:20)

Abide in me, and I in you. (John 15: 4)

There are many references to the indwelling Christ in the Epistles of Paul, such as:

Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4: 4)

Because the God who said, Out of darkness light shall shine, is the One who shined in our hearts to illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not out of us. (2 Corinthians 4: 6-7)

Most of us would like to deal with life's problems with calmness and understanding. Instead we find ourselves reacting and becoming upset. The more upset we become the more resentful we become toward others. We become impatient with them and then we become impatient with ourselves. Soon we start to blame others for our lack of control.

Of course, this is unfair to others. So they react to us. Soon family and relationship problems escalate. Once the process begins, we don't know how to stop it. Either we explode at one another or we repress our hostilities until we are seething volcanoes. All this repressed material soon erupts in other symptoms.

When we can't control ourselves, then we look to experts to control us. Soon we are their subjects, paying dearly for their treatments which never really seem to make us better.

Individually and collectively, at home and at work, the whole world is brimming over in anger and upset. Fortunately there is a real answer to your problem. It focuses on the moment of reaction, when you succumb to some stress.

Look at it another way. If you could learn to be calm in the moment of stress (without expressing or repressing impatience, anger or upset), you would not be adding fuel to the fire.

Calmness and reason could be brought to bear, and you might even have a good laugh instead of becoming angry.

In order to solve your problem, you must learn to have an attitude of alert preparedness. When the moment of stress arrives, you will be ready for it, already graced with calmness and understanding. Now, you will have a twinkle in your eye and meet the moment with understanding. You will influence the moment instead of the moment influencing you.

The way to be prepared to meet life with understanding is through a proper meditation. This meditation is learning how to go into your room, close the door, and become still. By learning to be still (instead of lost in thought), you will rediscover your intuition, a wordless way of knowing.

You were close to your intuition when you were a little child. But you fell away from it when you were upset and emotionalized. Now it is time to re-find it.

We have all been given good advice about following our deepest instincts, trusting our gut, and doing what we know in our heart is right. We knew that such advice was true, yet we doubted it and went the way of intellect and emotions. Now, after years of error, most of us don't even know how to get back in touch with intuition.

That is why the proper meditation is so important. Through this practice, you will learn how to re-find your intuition. When you do, you will rediscover a healthy awareness, common sense, and a way of knowing that is far superior to intellect. Moreover, you will be able to download (so to speak) enough calmness and understanding to meet the day's vicissitudes.

What most of us do, on the other hand, is go out into the world and react to something. The rest of the day is spent playing catch up. Plus, there is left over baggage from previous upsets which carries over into the next interaction.

Already upset we feel anxious and impatient. When someone comes along and asks us a question or makes a request, we react impatiently. Then we feel guilty and perhaps become too nice as a compensation. Soon everyone starts to walk all over us, and this too frustrates and upsets us.

It is much better to allow reason and patience to lead the way. When you begin the day with a commitment to knowing and flowing from the Truth in each moment, you become less subjective, less suggestible, and less "upset-able".

What remains is to learn this marvelously simple ancient technique. All you need is a sincere desire to know the truth and a willingness to admit your wrong.

The secret to alert preparedness is to get out of being lost in excessive thought and imagination. Look carefully and you will see that whenever we fail in reality (by becoming upset, angry, greedy or resentful) we retreat into thought. We replay the scene in our mind and we fantasize about ways of justifying our over-reaction. Thought becomes a refuge and a comfort from dealing with life.

Unfortunately, the more we escape into fantasy, the less prepared we are to meet the next moment with composure and reason.

What is wrong with most of us now is that we are lost in our thinking. All it takes is one good upset, and we walk around reliving the past, worrying, planning and scheming about the future. Being lost in thought makes us unprepared for the next moment which catches us without love and understanding.

Patience and understanding are not to be found in the past or future. They are found in the Eternal Now. Patience and understanding are not to be found in fantasy. They are found in the Reality of the present moment.

Our thoughts make us selfish because most of our plans and schemes are attempts to make up for past failings. We compensate for our lack of grace and understanding with thinking. Others can see the self-serving nature of our plans and schemes. Those with true perception can see that we don't really have love.

A proper meditation involves observing thought, which is a far cry from being involved in thought or blanking thought. The answer is to observe thought from a detached neutral standpoint.

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My Wife Asked Me to Leave – Should I?

This is an issue I hear all the time. In this chapter I will consider it as if it were written by a husband wondering what to do.

But first, my favorite quote on the matter from Jon Bon Jovi when asked about his secret to staying married. He replied:

"My wife tells me that if I ever decide to leave, she is coming with me."

You go, girl! Now let me address the question. Generally, for spiritual reasons, I recommend that you not be the one who initiates the divorce.

If the other person moves out or files for divorce, it is still a free country, as the expression goes. But if you make the first move, then you have the guilt for it. Generally divorce is not a good thing, so initiating it puts a burden of guilt on you. This advice applies to both husband or wife.

There is the situation where the other person is drug addict, criminal, or abusive person. Of course, you have to protect yourself and the children. You might have to get the help of the authorities.

But in this chapter, I'm addressing the more typical situation where both husband and wife are decent, good people.

When both are good people, it is best not to divorce. It is best to work things out. But if the other side is determined to move out or divorce, let them be the first to make the fateful move. You will then know that you did not initiate it and won't have that hanging around your neck as the years go by.

Now a special word for men:

I cannot advise about any legal issues. Also, every circumstance is different, but I can speak in generalities. For spiritual, emotional, and strategic reasons it is not good for the husband to leave first.

Why is it generally not good for the husband to leave first? In the mind of the wife, he made the first move and left her. She may have teased him and tempted him to leave first (secretly in her heart of hearts she may have hoped he would not leave her), but, after all, he did not have to leave. But he did.

When he leaves, it means that he walked out. Worse yet, in the eyes of the children, it means that father left them. Roberto Duran, though one of the greatest boxers in history, will never live down being thought of as a quitter when he said "no mas" in his fight against Sugar Ray Leonard. A dad who leaves has made a bad move. His family will never forget that he moved out on them.

The wife will now have the advantage in every respect. She did not leave him. He moved out on her and left the kids.

You see, husband and father has a very special role. He holds a station in life. He holds the office of husband and if there are kids, the office of father.

In the eyes of children, father stands in for God. Can you see why it is so devastating when a father fails?

Husband and father is supposed to be like the George Washington or Moses of the family. He stands for what is right. He cannot have any vices. He must be principled, honorable, wise, patient, long suffering, and kind.

He has to be as steady as the ticking of a grandfather clock in a thunderstorm. If others fail him, he does not fail them. If others become upset, he remains calm and reasonable.

In my book Putting the Forever Back in Love, I have a chapter entitled “ Coach Roland Talks to Dads.” I advise husbands and dads to stay the course.

If the wife creates an emotional scene, asks him to leave, threatens divorce and so on - he should just sit in the living room, if need be, and watch television. Let the storm pass. Don't even go to the bar. Just sit there and let the storm pass. When it does, everyone will be glad that you were steady, calm, and did not over-react.

Most dads are a little weak. They say the right things, but say them too weakly. He must not be there to win a popularity contest. He has to stand for what is right and persist even in the face of rebellion. But he must not be angry. He must always have a twinkle in his eye.

.Many men clam up, but are angry and resentful underneath. When they do finally speak up, their message is tainted and ruined by the pent up anger. Feeling guilty, he may clam up again or sit on the sidelines while the family goes to ruin.

.A man simply can't avoid his duty without harming the family. That is why he must learn to stand for what is right with patience and firmness and kindness.

He has to be there for his wife and children. They need a very special love from him: emotionless agape love. A man cannot have this love if he is selfish or unprincipled. Nor can he have this love for them if he is a womanizer or tries to make his wife into his mother. He must not look for ego support from the world. He must look within and find a bond with what he knows in his heart.

He will then not need love. He will give love. He must love principle more than anything, even his wife.

But if you think about it for a moment, you will see that this is the man she can trust. She knows he will always be there for her and she knows he will never be unfaithful (because he does not need the love of a woman, a drug, or some worldly support). This is the man she can respect and perhaps even love.

Now, gentlemen, most wives are aware of their husband's weaknesses before they get married, but she hopes that he will become the noble knight she needs. And once within the confines of marriage, the nobly inclined man will become aware of his failing her in some mysterious way.

He will search his heart and out of true love for her and the children, he will see what they need from him. He will learn to be less selfish, and eventually one day, unselfish. He will begin to fail less, and one day not fail at all.

She will see his nobility, his heart felt efforts, and his love of principle. With this man, there is hope.

But you cannot know what is in your wife's heart until you straighten up and fly right. Only then might your noble love draw forth the good in her.

Perhaps you can see why the man needs to have the wisdom of Solomon and perfect self-control. All men have failed, but that is not an excuse for more failing. You must find the way to fail less.

I cannot say what to do in any particular circumstance. There are just too many particular situations. But I can speak in general terms.

Generally divorce is not a good thing. Sometimes a separation may be of some help, so that both sides can find themselves and get their bearings, but maybe not.

Please note that my comments are directed to the typical situation where both are good people, not perfect of course, but decent. If your spouse is extremely disturbed, violent or criminal, you will need to protect the children and get professional help and assistance from the authorities.

If there is a divorce, it is best not to begin the process yourself. If your wife divorces you, you will then not be guilty for having begun it.

If you have only been married for a short time, things might be worked out, but if there is not true marriage, then going your separate ways may be best.

But when there are children, everything changes. Now the man is both husband and father.

You see, the children were aware of his suffering. They saw his sacrifice and nobility. And they loved him all the more. It didn't matter what mom did. Father was there for them.

But if he had walked out on her and them, what would be foremost in their minds would not be what mom did, but what he did. He would have quit on them. Thank God he did not.

Dear Sir,

I know that marriage can be a severe test. But just as there can be no courage without danger, so likewise there can be no character without a test of that character. A final word. Sometimes we do the right thing by simply not doing the wrong thing. Someone can tempt you to do something wrong or foolish. Just don't do it and you are safe. Always do what you know is right in your heart.

I've always told men--if you have an argument with your wife--whatever you do, don't walk out. Walking out means something to a woman. Just go sit in the living room and watch television or read a book. Let the storm blow over.

I heard the true story of a noble lady named Sister Hortense who lives in Chicago . Her husband was unfaithful and walked out. She waited eight years (remaining chaste and pure) and never gave up hope. One day, eight years later, there was a knock on the door. Repentant and chastened, her husband asked if they could perhaps reconcile. And they did. Sister Hortense sets a good example for us all.

- 26 -

Free at Last

If you ever want to be truly free, you will have to learn to be less emotional. It may take a while for you to come to see for yourself what I am about to say, but here it is. The evidence of sin is emotion. Emotion itself is sin. In our emotional involvement we are experiencing some wrong thing over and over again in our body and mind.

It’s a treadmill of slavery that began with, say condemning someone for something, and by thinking about them over and over, and feeling anger and resentment over and over, you perpetuate that wrong state.

Now I know that sin is not a popular term nowadays. But it is a real thing and the evidence is all around us. People think they can get away with violating the kind of laws that Jesus told us about, and they live their life getting angry when they feel like it, being selfish, ignoring common sense, resenting their partner, cutting corners, being stubborn and holding grudges. Then sure enough, their marriage, life, and health go to rack and ruin. Then they scratch their head and wonder why.

You see, sin (whatever that is) is not just stealing, lying, cheating, and so on. Sure these are examples of behaviors that are not good, but sin is far more subtle and far reaching. People are very special. We are not just animals, we are metaphysical beings, created by love in the image of love and beauty. We are light created beings, made for a very special purpose. So when we fail to love we failing to express our true nature. When we resent others, we are expressing an alien and inferior nature. When we lie or are dishonest, we expressing our true nature grounded in truth. Designed for love and truth, anything that conflicts with love and truth is not good for us.

God equips humans with something called intuition. It is a guide by which we know wordlessly how to express what is right and grow in love and true purpose. So if you ignore your intuition, even that is not good.

As a spiritual being, every breath, every movement, every thought, and every intent should be graced with love and wisdom.

If the above does not describe you, you have a lot of work to do. But wait! Don’t throw in the towel. You’ve tried to be good in the past and you failed. Now just realize that you were going about it the wrong way.

Remember how I talked about intuition? God gives animals instinct. The beaver knows how to build a damn naturally and effortlessly. The bird knows how to build a nest. You too can know how to build a wonderful life, effortlessly and naturally, just like the bird builds a nest. How? Find and follow your intuition. God will show you wordlessly, intimately, privately, and just in time. And He will give you the energy too—a special energy called love. Love is powerful but it is not emotional. It is a spiritual energy, given by the Creator. And when it starts to flow through you, just watch the magic happen!

Love Overcomes Emotion

Nature deems that the environment create a hold on its subjects. This hold of the environment on the creature keeps things in their proper place. Various attractions form which keep the animal loyal to its environment to which is drawn back.

This happens to humans too--whether individuals, groups to which we have become a part of, or a partner. A natural attraction and sense of belonging develop, which are physical, psychic and emotional.

Pining, wanting, needing and so on are evidences of that loyalty, and so are thinking obsessively, worrying about, wanting, and daydreaming of. In one way or another--in body and mind--we are attracted to and drawn to the new environment.

And so we become physically, psychically and emotionally addicted--it becomes a total involvement. That is why people fall in love with their therapist and why we feel tender feelings for what comforts us.

When we are lured away from what is right, our native environment of innocence, we begin to experience more and more holds on us by our new environment. Emotion is just one evidence, though the most primitive it is powerfully physically compelling. But the range of holds (enslavements) continues to expand.

Soon we also begin to feel obligation (another hold). We even feel guilty when we don’t indulge ourselves. We feel even think about trying to get away from some person or group who is no good for us. Eventually our indulgences (and yes emotions, and particularly the emotion of resentment are indulgences) lead us into a life of total slavery and dependency.

We all have seen how some people become hopeless addicts, but others are co-dependent, some addicted to hurting and others to being hurt. Whatever you fall to becomes your master. It’s an inexorable law. Now do you understand what Christ meant when He said: all who sin are slaves of sin?

So returning to the topic of emotion, it is easy to see what happens. We all sense that being angry is an inferior response. We know that we should not get angry. So let’s just go ahead and say it: anger is wrong! Now look what happens when you get angry: it’s not long until you feel the walls closing in on you. You become enslaved to proving you are right (and they are wrong); you feel guilty and then enslaved to trying to compensate for your guilt; you have to try to hid the anger; you become subject to head aches or upset tummy and soon are spending all your time trying to get rid of the symptoms. You might become addicted to a therapist.

And the whole elaborate system of enslavements—to people, substances, work, guilt—is a structure built upon and sustained by anger and resentment.

Now let’s look at another enslavement: obligation. Generally there is some subtle resentment (often going all the way back to childhood) that is sustaining it. It’s entwined with guilt. But the truth is: you resent your obligations and they enslave you. You’re not free. You should be able to willingly give without reluctance, and easily say no when appropriate.

Where Christ is, there is liberty. We are freed from obligation so that we might willingly serve God and do good. Not because we have to, but because we want to. We meditate not because we have to but because we want to.

We should do our duty not to please others or to look good in their eyes, but because we see that we should. Christ said that no person can serve two masters. So we serve God or serve others. Here we must look at what true service to others is. The person, who loves what is right and does what is right in his heart, does good naturally without even realizing it. He is simply doing what is right or wise or what he or she is delicately moved to do by intuition.

The human being was made to acknowledge truth and worship the Creator. But what do most people do, mostly without realizing it? They deny the truth and worship everything but the Creator.

Christ once said something interesting. When speaking to the woman at the well, He said “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship him.”

I believe that He was talking about those whose home is in the spirit, those who know God intimately (or are getting to know Him) within. This is the mystical way, the way of the true meditation, where one’s soul responds to the wordless Word within. It is the intuitive life, one based on trusting in one's intuition and of standing back from imagination and externally stimulated emotions.

The person who is in the meditative state is not hypnotized. But the average person you see on the street is on some level of hypnotic trance. They react to everything, become emotionally, and then hide in thoughts and imagination. Down there in their thinking they do not have to see that they failed. It becomes a lifelong habit; each step feeds the others and leads to the others in an endless loop. Reacting leads to emotions and the usual emotional thinking. Answers that are not real answers come to mind and when acted on lead to more problems on the outside, to which the person again reacts.

The devil himself enters little by little into the person through this loop. Reacting, emoting, thinking, daydreaming--all favor his modus operandi.

He wants to take you away from pure faith and from trust in what you know in your heart wordlessly. He wants you to react to challenges, and soon it becomes a conditioning. Everything becomes a challenge with which you struggle and then capitulate, hiding in daydreams and sleep walking.

But the person in the meditative state of mind is objective to thoughts and emotions. Standing back, he sees in the inner light from God. He or she responds only to the inner light, and this response of faith leads to calmness and detachment from the world.

Can you see that detachment from the world leads to a calm spirit and to waiting patiently without anxiety for guidance from God? Detachment, calmness, patience, and the responding to truth realized in the light save you from sin, from hypnosis, from errors, and from death itself.

All you have to do is practice the little meditation every day and learn to stand back from the teases of the world and the remnants of having responded to tease, which consist of emotions, thoughts, images, and symptoms.

- 27 -

Finding Your True Identity

Understand this: categorically speaking, emotions represent and are an adaptation to a lower level of existence. The emotion itself is a compensation and not a natural thing at all for the spiritual human. Emotion is evidence of the fallen human responding to the environment, and this response means change, loss of identity, identity transfer, loss of energy, and ultimately death. The human being falls through every response to the world and becomes more animal and less human.

The environment puts something inside of us when we fall. For sure, it puts a memory--both the image memory of what happened, but also a tissue memory. And even more, it puts a replica of itself or a seed or a replica around which flesh will grow and evolve.

This is the basis of corruption, and it also explains why we become attached and identified with people and things, and also why people grow to resemble each other.

As you grow in the image of that person you are reacting and responding to, little by little something of them is in you, and little by little changes occur in you that accommodate the identity and spring up around it. Everything is altered a little, as the identity grows and will gradually displace who you were.

A way of looking at it is that every pole has its opposite. The south pole of one magnet is attracted to the north pole of another. Though seemingly opposites yet they are compatible.

The dominant external puts something of itself in the host, and that something is attracted to that which put it there. Attraction, yearning, desire, and so on are just various terms to describe this phenomenon. Words such as change, evolution, adaptation, growth, becoming are just terms that describe this phenomenon as it occurs over time.

The tiny changeling within the host then cries out to the change agent because it is the model for what it will become, it template, and also that which will approve and validate its growth.

Can you now understand what Christ meant when He said here comes the prince of the world but he has nothing in me?

This phenomenon is psychic, emotional, mental, and physical. When a human has changed enough physically and mentally, he or she is ready for the final complete indwelling of the spirit of evil, which has been changing the person for a long time. Each emotional shock and trauma and then each subsequent emotional reaction add something to the change process and progression.

When finally the spirit of evil manifests itself, the totally changed person is either horrified or delighted, depending on the proclivity of his soul. Because he is in the image of the evil, he cannot resist it because he has become like it, and if so inclined he will gladly totally identify with.

But we don’t have to go there to see this phenomenon in action. You often see a child who becomes like his mother. Her spirit and her identity are in him. People and their pets can even start to resemble each other.

But at a more universal level, the fallen man is born from the lineage of his mother and he becomes the extension of her. His inner is opposite to her in the way that a south pole is opposite to the North Pole. She is his maker, and his external male is simply the outside of the inner feminine core. His life will then revolve around her.

Of course the ideal man is inside like the Creator, and he grows in the image of the Father, so that one day his character is on the outside an embodiment of the secret inner God core within.

But we are all born of the lineage of Eve because of the failing of Adam. That is why everything revolves around mamma, and men are women centered instead of God centered.

The fallen man, born of woman, gets his identity from his mother. Thus his core is a feminine identity around which is built an opposite but compatible (like north and south poles of a magnet) shell. The shell is compensation. In other worlds, what you see as the fallen male is really a compensated being, with his external casing a compensation in order to match the masculine earthly casing he has been bequeathed.

He came from the woman, is built on compensating in the flesh in order to fashion the masculine casing and personality that then serves and revolves around his female god. Growth you see is both by out folding and also by projection, forming an external replica template, with the materialized creature then fashioned from the material around it. The dominant form’s external creature has an opposite spin so to speak. Opposites attract, and the opposite structure is alike and yet the reverse mirror image, something like looking in a mirror.

Take for example, the sun and the plant. The plant is created in the image of the sun, but is opposite in that the plant receives, and thus has receptor organs, whereas the sun is the giver of life to its sun child. The sun radiates and the plant absorbs, distributes, and transforms the energy from the sun. There is no effect without the cause, and the effect, intermediately the plant and more so the final seeds, flowers and fruit are evidence of the existence of the sun for the person with an eye to see.

The sun example is not exactly one of opposites, but it shows how the plant and the sun are intimately entwined--with the plant the offspring of the sun, yet they look quite different.

But opposites do evolve in a more obvious way. For example, the casing of organs or the shell of the turtle is of a tougher material than the inside, yet both are the same thing. In a more abstract way, you can see that the symptoms and the cause may not resemble each other; in fact the symptom may appear to be the opposite of the cause--such as the rebellion against smothering false love; or the anger at being treated condescendingly.

So in the case of the male, the cause or core is the feminine identity, but in order to grow as a male, what results is total compensation. To the untutored eye, the compensated macho male looks like a real man, but he is actually hard casing around a feminine core.

The main thing to see is that opposites are often not really opposites. In the case of the fallen male and female, male and female are not opposites at all. The male came from the female and his life revolves around her. She cannot help but give him an identity and then nurture and support what she gave him.

The man, on the other hand, cannot help but grow as a compensated (or not so compensated) male. But the thoughtful man questions the way he is, and when he gets married and starts a family he can see his wife and kids needing something from him that he does not have. He sees that they are suffering, and seeing this he cries out for true answers.

His cry is answered by some light, and he is given to see that he needs to be saved from the fallen existence. He also sees that there is an ultimate way of life for him, a perfect way of existing that revolves around the Creator. He sees that he must begin to abandon the wrong ideas about what a man really is, and he must search out the way.

Finding his Creator, he becomes a reborn child of God, and now he quietly grows in virtue and character around a God core. He now becomes a real man, and his wife and kids may, if they so chose, step across to the bright side where he is coming from.

Then through all the suffering he undergoes, he develops character and he is taught of God about how to be the man that his wife and kids need him to be.

He will see for example that what he thought was love was really just his low fallen side crying out for the mother of his existence. His love was not love at all, just a need, often manifesting as lust. He will also see that his ego, not wanting to see its failings, became resentful; and any good he did was just out of guilt for the resentment.

Now he will see that there is an entirely different way of living. One that revolves around true love and it is seen as patience and correction. This love has two sides --a tenderhearted side and a stern side (just as false love has false compassion and hate).

Can you see why there is no true love in just humanistic compassion and so-called love? Only when a need draws a truly loving response from within does it contain the magic energy from the Creator. When it is only human love, it is dead and has no life in it.

Therefore, seek the Divine Fount within. Get your ego out of the way. Remain objective. Then when you perceive a need, you will be able to see whether it is a true need and you will be guided in the correct response. Because the guidance and the energy to move come from a good place, the response will be just right and will have creative life in it.

But if you respond egotistically, with the energy of willfulness, guilt, impatience, or pride--then that response will be devoid of true life. Worse yet, the inspiration for your prideful, emotional or intellectual response may come from the invisible tempter whose answer is always false compassion for what is wrong and the kind of help that breeds rebellion or contempt in the recipient.

Let me briefly address myself to the woman. If she happens to be married to a man who finds God within, then her problem is much easier. All she has to do is appreciate and love the good that she sees in him and she will be saved. Loving the good in the good man is the same as appreciating and loving God. You see, the good in the man is not really his good, it is God’s good abiding in him.

A woman who is not married may find true love in her soul by respecting and appreciating the good in her good father.

Regardless of married or not married, the key to her finding love is to let go of her judgments of all men and her resentments of the men in her life who failed her. She will then be able to receive the love from God directly. Particularly important is forgiving (letting go of resentment) toward her earthly father. You cannot love the father you cannot see if you hate the father you can see. Letting go of resentment and judgment, she will then find the love she has been looking for all her life. It is the love from the Father she has never known but now has found.

- 28 -

Living Life with Love

Just as change draws energy, so a need draws help. But be careful of the source of that help. From the tempter, it will nurture what is wrong, promote the error, and defend it. But from a good source, it nips error in the bud and fosters an environment that allows for healing, health, happiness, freedom and understanding.

Press down on the accelerator in your car and you will feel a force pressing you against the seat--in this case a force opposing the change in velocity.

So just as in physics, we see forces rise to oppose change, we also see opposition to change in animals and humans. We all know that people are resistant to change. But we often do not see the simple basic meaning--nature often opposes change. Try to get some heavy object moving and you will experience inertia. Force is needed to get it moving to overcome the inertia. Once it is moving, then it wants to stay moving, and force is required to slow it down. It takes energy to get your car rolling, and then it takes energy to slow it down.

People resist change, and if you try to force change on someone they rebel against it. It’s only natural.

Now let’s take it one more step to see what resentment really means in terms of energy draw. Resentment is opposition to something, usually the truth. And that opposition requires energy.

So when you resent something or someone, you literally must draw upon energy to oppose them, mentally and physically.

Now let’s continue looking at the concept of drawing of energy. In order to do something egotistically, willfully or resentfully, you must overcome inertia and find energy with which to move. You might also have to overcome another’s resistance to your efforts to change things. The energy required comes from your vital force and whatever other energy you have handy.

In a nutshell, by resenting anything—another person, yourself, the truth, a memory, even the neighbor’s noisy dog--you are becoming drained.

Dr. Hans Selye, the father of stress research, discovered that mice which were subject to cold temperatures fell into two categories. Some resisted and tried to survive but quickly died. Other rats were able to adapt to the cold for a prolonged period of time. But when a new stress arose to again challenge them they then quickly died. Their adaptation and prolonged life was not without a price--they were drained of their vital force. Once depleted they also died.

So now you know why you are so fatigued all the time. Undoubtedly you are resenting and resisting many things: you resent traffic, a new bill, more work on your desk, your partner and kids, and you also resist the truth. Your battle against everything and everyone, including the truth, drains you of energy. Sure you may get away with this practice for a while, all your little resentments and tension add up and after years.

Then one day some new stress comes along, and you have no energy left to draw on. Remember what happened to Pavlov’s dogs. So it would be wise to start overlooking other’s foibles and be patient with yourself also. Most of all, admit the truth about your own errors and inadequacies, sheepishly perhaps, but not resentfully. Now let us look at draw from perspective of love--true love and false love.

This false love comes in various guises and is seen everywhere. It is in the false sex love that men give women, it is in the meddling mothers, the dry educational system, it is in the fake hypocritical love of organized religion, it is in the bureaucrats and experts who think they know what is best for you, and it is in the false compassion and sympathy that smothers and corrupts and breeds the next generation of conformist hypocrites and angry rebels.

True love comes from another dimension. It comes from God, and this steady state of love imparts or gifts the receptive human of insight, patience, understanding, and wisdom. And this person, now, in turn, gladly gives his attention to the one in need. The reward for being patient with others instead of resenting them is even more patience, energy, and even healing.

Can you see how love is a gift from God to the receptive person? God’s love is always there but we must receive it willingly and with pure intent. It is freely given, and it is freely received. It does not demand obligation to create obligation. It enlightens and lightens your burden. Love does not tempt. It is as different from sticky obliging or permissive human love as night and day.

Love is for the creature from the Creator. God knows what you need before you even ask. He knows what is good for you.

Now look at the delicate moment with your partner or child. Your partner or child has a need. What do they need? Patience and sometimes correction. They need the right word, with the right energy, the right timing, and the right measure: the perfect response in other words. The perfect response chastens, enlightens, and frees. It asks nothing in return. It does not use. It is freely given without strings attached.

Look now at the instructions from the Messiah and see how He is actually teaching you how to permit love to flow. Understand that the slightest selfishness, use, ego involvement, emotional energy, impatience, goal (other than what is right), preplanned words, manipulation, some plan given by another, or resentment do not permit love to enter. Your intent must be pure, spontaneous, without guile, without goal, without use.

Now do you understand why Christ told us to not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing? Can you see the wisdom in giving your shirt and coat if someone asks you for a coat? Can you see why we are not to preplan what we are going to say?

Thereby is there an opening for love to flow.

There is magic that happens in the spontaneous life--good comes to pass without effort on your part. Good things happen seemingly out of nowhere when you least expect it. It is magic. But when you try to plan everything and make things happen, your interference blocks the magic.

Your willfulness, and the energy of impatience and resentment not only block the magic, but also taint what you do with pride, and what you do backfires and has a reverse effect. Many meddling manipulative parents have discovered too late the harm they have done to their child.

This does not mean that you can’t make a grocery list or plan what materials to get for a project. It does not mean that you don’t plan to take water and other emergency items with you in your car when you go on a long trip. But it means that you must take the willfulness and impatience out what you do.

It means that you should meditate and keep in contact with your intuition and then move without effort, spontaneously as the wind moves you.

I’m sure you have seen where someone planned a dinner for some guests and then fretted over every little thing. So worried was she that she didn’t have any fun. Sensing her pressure, the guests enjoyed it less too.

On the other hand, I’m also sure that you can remember little trips and events when you were a kid that just happened spontaneously without planning. Now you think back on them and realize they were some of the family’s most fun moments. Life must have spontaneity in it.

That is also why you must not have any goals, other than to do what you know is right in your heart. Your goal is not really your goal anyway. It came from somewhere, and it did not come from God.

So “your” goal is one that was given you by someone else. But regardless of the source of said goal, it not only robs life of its magic but it will also be harmful and deleterious. Your goal causes you to move in a hypnotic trance with some sort of emotional energy.

So your energy is wrong. Moreover, timing is a very important element in life, and when you move impatiently toward some goal, the timing is all wrong. So even if you do or say the technically correct thing, the wrong energy and the wrong timing will cause it to go awry or backfire.

Life is a very delicate thing, and the right word or deed at the right time can be very important, especially when dealing with your partner or kids. But when it is done in your time, instead of intuitively in God’s time, it will not be good.

The same goes for excessive praise and rewards. Kids should learn to do for themselves because they see something needs to be done or is right. It is okay to acknowledge good performance, but lavished praise only tempts them to become dependent on external praise and rewards. It also builds their ego beyond measure and they will have conflict over that.

So if your kids are suffering from too much mom, then back off and butt out. Give them a little space and watch them blossom.

Don't get me wrong. I’m not saying to be permissive. Most parents get everything backwards. They are too controlling when it comes to some things but not vigilant enough when it comes to others. Give them a safe project to work on, the materials needed, just a little supervision, and watch them soar. But when it comes to such things as too much socializing, music, video games and so on--you should put your foot down.

Love has a tender side and love also has a corrective side. You should meditate for objectivity, so that you can discern the right measure of giving and withholding, and knowing when to let them learn to do projects and solve issues on their own and when to step in with a helping hand. No one can teach you the perfect response. You can’t find it online, in a book or from an expert.

It comes from within with just the right timing and the right energy as a gift from God to those who wait upon Him and look to their God given intuition. When you seek and trust what you know in your heart, you will know what to say or do. It will just come to you as a reward for having faith.

Shedding Shackles

Roland on Relationships