Describe the impact Eckart Tolle on your life and our marriage. HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Thank you that we are making an effort to be faithful in the area of diablogging. It is so important. Thank you that we have had a good day together. Thank you for our wonderful lunch and the little projects that we accomplished today. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ was the way you gave me a smiling kiss after I did the Redi-blind on the back door. That was so sweet! You also did the same thing when I cleaned out my car. When I do things for you and you really appreciate it, that makes it so worthwhile.

Eckart Tolle has had a profound impact on my life and indirectly on our marriage. I had originally included yoga in this question because in my mind they are somewhat related. I become Present (in the Eckart Tolle sense of the word) while doing yoga. This continues for a significant period of time (several hours at least) after yoga. I call this my "post-yoga state". I used to have a "post workout state", but it was nowhere near as intense as the post yoga experience.

Eckart Tolle has explained to me why yoga works. Effectively, what this means to me is that by being Present, I can stop reacting. I am not perfect at this, as we observed recently when we had our little tiff on the front porch over Jeanae's education. Even then, when I was reacting, I was observing myself reacting.

The other effect is that I am very aware of my body and my emotions now. When I do yoga, and also when I make an effort to practice what Eckart Tolle has taught me, I go into my body and thereby into my emotions. I become as intensely aware of my feelings on many levels as I used to be numb and indifferent to them. No, indifferent is not the right word. What I was really doing was violently negating them. Denying their existence.

I have had many experiences like the following recently: I woke up with a sense of dread and anxiety. Instead of trying to deny the feeling as I have in the past, I embraced it. I savored it, accepted it, and looked it straight in the eye. I began to focus on my breath as I turned the feeling over and over in my mind. I did not analyze why I was having the feeling, or try to rationalize it away. It simply doesn't matter. Who cares why I had the feeling? Maybe it was a bad dream, or something I ate before going to bed. Certainly, massaging the issues of my life in the middle of the night while I am in the midst of what could be perceived to be a panic attack is not going to help things. So I simply let the feeling Be. I reached a state of total acceptance of this feeling.

Before I knew it, the feeling was gone, I had fallen back to sleep and it was morning.

I cannot tell you how many times I have struggled, tossing and turning in the bed, with some feeling of generalized indeterminate fear, anxiety or dread. This has robbed me of peace for years. By denying the feeling, by trying to make it go away, I simply strengthen it, and it becomes my identity.

It is by acceptance of that which Is that you go on. All change comes from this. Railing against that which Is is simply stupid. The feeling exists. It is not going to kill me. It is what it is.

The impact on our marriage has been profound. I cannot count the number of times I have found myself in a situation with you in which I would have reacted in which I have not, or if I did, I observed myself doing so and in the process of that observation, allowed myself to relax into the feeling. An example would be when you became very aggressive one day on the way to yoga, talking about how much you hate to be late, and how stressed you were. You began to cuss and swear. Normally, this would have stressed me out significantly. It didn't. I just sat there, accepting you where you were at that moment, realizing you were stressed. Would me being stressed too help at all? Definitely not. I simply became quiet, both within and without. Before too long, your stress passed. After yoga you apologized sweetly. Actually, I had completely forgotten about it. It had simply not affected me.

Thus, the impact on our marriage is simply this: To the extent that I am Present, I do not react. If I do react (and I will never be perfect at that), at least I observe myself reacting. In the process of observing that, I become Present and then I become more calm. This means we have less conflict, at least from my side.

I suspect something very similar is happening to you. Once you have read Eckart Tolle and you start to apply what he has written, the transformation process is pretty much inevitable. You simply become Present. Everything stems from that.

The way I feel about this is very peaceful. There is a core of peace within me that I have not known for many years. Even though our lives are somewhat stressful right now, what with our financial issues, Nella, my job, your job, Jeanae's education and the like, I find myself more calm and stress free than I have been in a long, long time, maybe even in my entire life. That is exciting, in a calm peaceful sort of way. :-)

The feeling is like the feeling you feel on a beautiful summer day, sitting beside a river. You remember the place you described in West Virginia where we went in the RV that we discussed recently? Like that. A place you never want to leave. You sit and watch the river flow by. You just stay there, being still and quiet. You are content.

The feeling is very strong, very powerful. Yet it is not like a powerful feeling of passion, pleasure or pain. It is much deeper, and yet less intense than those feelings. It is like a deep pool of stillness lying below the realm of thought, which I can access when I think about it. No, that's not quite right, really when I stop thinking. When I listen to the silence which lies beneath my thoughts, it is there. It is always there though. The thoughts and events of the day simply are louder. But the feeling of peace remains underneath whatever else is happening.

The color is one like the deep, intense blue of the sky just as the sun has set and the stars are appearing. When you look up and see the sky, knowing that it is infinite, and you feel touched by the presence of God.

I access this feeling frequently when listening to music. I am transported into a place of deep stillness and peace in those moments. Also when I look in the faces of dear ones. I had that feeling profoundly at the last Friday night meeting I attended at the Hookers' house when I was explaining the impact of Job 41 and 42 on my life. As I gazed intensely into the hearts of those saints and shared my heart, I had that feeling of peace profoundly come over me. I think they felt it too.

You are my heart and soul. Know always that my love is with you.

Love,
Me

What does our commitment to the Retrouvaille process mean to you? DYFF.

Dear LORD:

Thank you that we are dialogging. It has been too long. Help us to continue to communicate in this way. It is so helpful to our marriage and to our persons. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was the wonderful way that you came home and folded yourself into my lap after work. I was so sad during the day when you were gone. It blessed my heart so much for you to love me in that way. I needed you to be there and you were. I love you so much!

To me, our commitment to the Retrouvaille process is very important. I have been somewhat frustrated that our efforts to be connected to a CORE group have been thwarted so far. I believe that attending the Arizona meeting will give us another perspective on what Retrouvaille can be. So far, our view of the Retrouvaille organization has been limited to the Raleigh and Greensboro groups, plus your contact with Patti. That's not a lot of experience, in other words.

It is similar to the way I viewed Bikram yoga when all I had done was go to Naeda's studio. One voice, and one view. When I traveled extensively, going to yoga studios all over the country, then I got a richer view of what Bikram yoga is like. It is a tapestry of teachers and yogis all over the country, much more interesting and complex than one little studio on Chapel Hill.

Our view so far of Retrouvaille has been similar. We need to branch out and see more of this movement. We need to understand what it has meant to people's lives in various communities. We need to see for ourselves.

I would actually like to do more than just this weekend. I think a trip a quarter would be nice, or at least one every six months. Wouldn't that be great? I would like for us to continue to be in the atmosphere of other couples who have been through the process we have been through, learning and growing from their strength.

My strongest feeling about our commitment to Retrouvaille is one of joy. I am energized and joyful that we are going to get to be in another weekend together! Yay! It is like the unmitigated joy of a baby who has just fed from her mother's breast and looks up at her mother's eyes and breaks out into a big baby milky grin. Then the flow of joy between the mother and baby is a beautiful thing to behold! That is the feeling that I feel about us being together in another weekend.

I could go on, but you and I are both tired. I will post now. You are my dearest heart.

Love,
Me