What is your most deeply held conviction with respect to our relationship? HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Thank you for my beautiful wife and all the love she has for our family. Thank you so much that her relationship with Jeanae has been restored. That is a wonderful thing! Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was letting me rub your feet when you came home, and ooohing and ahhhing while I did so. I really love to rub your feet! They are cute!

My most deeply held conviction with respect to our relationship is that we are one.

Our oneness has many aspects. We are one in the spirit. We are one flesh. We are one united in our position with respect to the children. We are one in our desires and aspirations for our lives in the areas of finance, spiritual pursuits, health and so forth.

We are one together in many, many areas of our lives. I am constantly amazed at how the things you say mirrors my thoughts as well.

A very significant recent conversation that we had is a very good example of this. When we were at the Shiki Sushi restaurant having lunch yesterday we had a conversation concerning the verse in Galatians 3 that says:

Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. What a man sows he shall also reap. If he sows to the flesh from the flesh he will reap corruption. If he sows to the spirit from the spirit he will reap eternal life.

I spent a great deal of time during the meeting contemplating this verse, as I told you during our lunch. The questions in my mind were:

What does it mean to sow to the flesh?
What does it mean to sow to the spirit?
What is the flesh?
What is the spirit?

In the process of discussing this with you, you perfectly clarified the nature of sowing to the spirit with your example from our drive to yoga recently in which I did not react to you when you were upset.

Basically, you confirmed and affirmed what I was already thinking in my mind (and receiving in my spirit) concerning these things. This is an example of us being on a parallel path. The fact that we are one does not mean that we are the same person. It does mean that we are on parallel paths. That our paths are side-by-side, never converging, but also never diverging.

I take great comfort in this oneness. That is my strongest feeling with respect to our oneness, a feeling of comfort and peace in knowing that you and I are one. It is like the feeling of getting into bed at the end of a hard stressful day, and getting all of your favorite, familiar pillows around you, relaxing into the softness of the bed, and allowing your stress and tension to melt away. As you fall into the deep, relaxed state, you feel a feeling of great peace and comfort that you are safe, warm and secure in this wonderful place. This is how the oneness of our relationship feels.

You have posted so I will stop being a yackety-yack and post too.

I love you with an undying love.

Love,
Me

How do I feel about the battle raging between Sam and Jon and Jon moving out? DYFF.

Dear LORD:

Be with our sons. Help them to resolve their conflict. Help them realize how immature they are both being. And how selfish. Help us to be patient. It is difficult to talk to them without condemning them. Which would of course not be helpful. Give us your grace. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was the loving way we worked together side by side to fix up the fish tank, and the way you kissed me while I was doing the filters. I love to be with you!

The way I feel about the two issues you raise is different, so this is really two questions. I will not belabor the issue, but will simply answer them both separately.

The way I feel about the battle raging between Sam and Jon is torn, grieved, conflicted, and sad. I suppose my strongest feeling is sad. It is truly sad to find out how stupid and sinful our boys are being. I suspected but did not know. Now I know. It is much more difficult to know, as you said recently. You said you really do not want to know that much about what our boys are up to. It is enough to know that they are up to no good. Dealing with the fallout and drama from their stupidity is horrifically sad and difficult for both of us. It simply fills me with grief.

The way I described my feelings, and I wept as I did so, on Friday night with Sam is that my attitude is the attitude of the father of the prodigal son, looking off to the hills for his son to return. I told Sam that I have been waiting for a long time for my sons to return. I do not expect them to be like me. That is not what I mean. I do expect them to live meaningful, thoughtful, mature and responsible lives. It is difficult to find any honor, nobility or virtue in their current lifestyles. I feel ashamed for them. It saddens me terribly.

The color is black. It is a feeling of grief. In terms of a shared experience it would be similar to the feelings that we shared at your father's funeral in Morgan City. Definitely a 10+. I have shed many tears over this since last week, and expect that there are many more to come.

But that after all was the plight of the father of the prodigal sons. I suppose my feelings should be no different. The sadness is there because I care and love my sons, and want them to live in a manner that is worthy of who they are.

Now, as far as Jon moving out, my feeling about that would be somewhat gleeful. I really want Jon to go on with his life, figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life here on this earth, stop wasting time playing WoW, and get his own space. If he wants to straighten up and get his life under control, then I would not be as strong on this issue. But with him acting the way he is, thinking with his penis, lying to me and you, screwing everything that wears skirts, etc., I just don't want him to live here anymore. I am hoping for a way to make that his decision and initiative. That would be my prayer. Let him figure out that he needs to be on his own himself, rather than us having to kick him out. Barring that, I suppose we are going to have to put him on a deadline, and push the issue.

Again, the way I feel about this is gleeful. This is our time. We need to be a couple, and be freed up from child responsibilities. Jeanae is almost out of the nest too. I would love for us to be able to travel, moving around on this earth, enjoying what it has to offer, without the worry and fret of naughty kids. Let them figure it out for themselves. I am through.

You already posted, so I will too.

Love,
Me

If you knew you could not fail, what would you attempt to accomplish? HDIFAT?

Dear LORD:

Be with us in our marriage, intimate relationship and other areas of our life. We love you. Be with us as we go to Vintage tomorrow. Help Jeanae to connect with a church. She needs that badly. Be with our sons. Help them to see that the way they are living is no good. It leads nowhere but down the tubes. They think they are so smart but they are being so stupid. It really pisses me off, but you already know that. I don't want to mess with them anymore. At least until they wake up and get out of their insanity. Help me with my attitude. I am very frustrated with them right now. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was telling me you love me in the car and then kissing me when we got home. It rocked my world!

If I truly knew that I could not fail I would become a spiritual teacher, similar to the work of Eckhart Tolle. I would help people in the area of their emotional and spiritual lives.

I have been so transformed by the practice of yoga and the reading that I have done in the area of my day to day life. I cannot possibly describe how amazing it is that I am able to function now in the area of my emotions and relationships. I have never felt so deeply and profoundly connected to you, to our family and to the earth.

Something similar to this happened yesterday in my conversation with Sam. I began to flow. It was amazing. I found myself simply allowing the Nooma in me to express itself.

I am not sure if this had any impact on Sam or not. But ultimately that doesn't matter. I want to speak to people who want to listen eventually. Right now, I am simply talking to anyone who will listen.

My feelings about spiritual matters are changing radically. I am on a revolutionary path. I cannot describe it any other way.

The reality of my spirit is the core conviction and understanding that I have obtained. I spent years in Christianity and later in the Local Church with people who would tell me to "turn to my spirit", but no one ever told me how, or even what my spirit was.

Now I finally understand. My spirit is my Nooma, the infinitely deep pool of stillness lying beyond the realm of thought, where I truly live. I am not my mind. I am that pool of stillness which is in the eternal Now.

This has been a process. The revelation of the eternal nature of God was a big step in that process. But I never went beyond that until recently. I knew that the church had it fundamentally wrong with respect to the nature of God and the eternal. But I never had a framework to build it upon which had an experiential basis. Something beyond that brief moment of insight that happened in my shower so long ago.

Now I have deep spiritual awakenings almost every day. If nothing else in final savasana as I lie their on the practice floor, listening to my breath, calming my mind, reaching into that deep pool of stillness, feeling my body, the aliveness awakening within it, going deep into the body.

These experiences are similar to those I have had in a few brief and rare moments in time in my Christian walk. Some of the Christian writers I have read have mentioned these moments. Rob Bell is among them. But they are regarded as rare and wondrous mountaintop experiences. What if you can actually live in a state of transformed Joy? What if you can actually live in the spirit, walking day by day in communion with the Eternal?

This is becoming my experience. It is something I am finding wonderful, and I truly want to share it with the world. If I knew I could not fail, I would find a way to become the messenger of this message to insane, dysfunctional world we find ourselves in.

The way I feel about this is transformed, brand new, reborn. Like the day I was born again on March 15, 1983, so long ago. When the color of the grass was more green, the color of the sky was more blue, the smell of a rose was more sweet, the taste of simple food was more profound and amazing. Like the nature of space and time itself had changed radically. Like I could fly, sing and dance all at the same time. It feels like a new beginning to a new life in a new world with you and me together!

The color is a bright, bright yellow, the color of sunlight on a golden, perfect day. A shared experience would be the newness of our relationship after we got back together and how everything felt new, alive and fresh again. Wow!

You have posted already so I will too.

Love,
Me

How involved should we get with our children's relastionships. HDIFAT?

Dear LORD:

Thank you that we were able to help our children yesterday with their issues. Thank you that no one got hurt or ended up in jail. Thank you that we are still on good terms with our kids. Amen!

MDDL:

You MEQ today was putting up with my restlessness last night without kicking me out of the bed. Thank you so much for that! I had a very rough night as you can tell. It was sweet of you to ask me what was wrong without complaining or asking me to move. As you can tell, the skin issue is very much stress related, and last night was pretty stressful.

I suppose my answer to this question would be that this is somewhat our children's call. We got way more involved last night than we have ever been, that's for sure. In the process, we found out things about our children (especially about Sam and Jon) that I frankly think we did not want to know. I know I have been trying to avoid knowing that much. It is simply uncomfortable to know that your kids are misbehaving this badly with their lives.

My tendency is to want to distance myself from them because their lifestyle is so chaotic and stressful. They are creating so much drama for themselves it is ridiculous. With all of the sex, drugs and rock and roll going on, it is amazing that they have done as well as they have. I know that I could not live in an environment that chaotic, stressful and out of control.

So my tendency is to want to pull way back out of self preservation. I am not sure that is the right response, though. If something very serious had happened last night, and our kids had ended up hurt, in jail, or worse, I am sure we would regret if we did nothing to help them. It was undoubtedly a divine intervention that got us involved. Now we are involved whether we like it or not. That is certainly pushing the limits on my coping mechanism. I wrestled all night in my dreams about Sam, Kate, Jon, and all the rest. So this is certainly taking an emotional toll on me. I am sure it is doing the same for you.

But, what choice do we have? They are our kids. We have a strong connection to them regardless of whether we agree with their lifestyles or not. My parents and I became very estranged for many years because of things I did in my life. (Most of that was related to my becoming a Christian, but still.) I would like for us to have a close, loving relationship with our kids for the rest of our lives. In the same nature as Y'Shua, I would want to do that without any expectations on my part as to their performance. Accept them where they are in other words. Yes, I do have some expectations and aspirations for them. So far, they are not living up to those very much, if at all. But I cannot stop loving them.

I keep getting back to the prodigal son from the Gospel of Luke. The attitude of the father was to look for his son to return to him. He kept going out day after day to a hill looking off to see if his son was returning. Eventually, his son returned, and then he said "this son of mine who was dead is alive again." How could he not rejoice? Perhaps our son Sam is beginning to come to life again. That would be wonderful. I would love to be there when that happens.

In terms of their relationships, I suppose that is simply another aspect of being involved in their lives. Their relationships are part of who they are. I had a check in my spirit about Kate from the moment I first met her. I knew that she was going to cause a lot of trouble. Sam now agrees that this is the case. Whether he is being stupid as well (with all of the sneaking around, snooping in Jon's email and such) is certainly debatable. I am not going to go there with him. He needs to work that out with Jon. They have certainly done a lot of damage to each other in the process, that's for sure. Whether their relationship can ever be healed is something we need to pray about. That is a relationship we should certainly be involved in, if for no other purpose than to make them go out in the garage and get their stuff worked out.

My feeling right now about this is unsettled. I have a pit in my stomach. I did not sleep very well. I need to do yoga. I need to dump this stress and let it go. I am trying to be Present, in the moment, but it is difficult. The worrier in me is very strong right now. I am concerned for my sons. I do not know how to stop doing that.

The feeling is like the unsettled feeling when you realize your bank account is overdrawn. A sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. The color is a battleship grey. It feels heavy, like you are walking through sand. Leaden. It is not a pleasant feeling. I am somewhat grieving for my son, just like the father in Luke. I want my son to return to me. I am concerned for him feeding on the pods the pigs are eating. I want to know he is OK. I am finding out that he is not OK. How can I not be concerned for him?

I will post now. Maybe we can connect further on this one.

Love,
Me

What is my vision for our future together? HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Thank you that we are taking time to dialog today. It is so important. Please help my sweetheart to like this question and enjoy dialogging on it.

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was your wrestling with the issue of Samuel moving back home and putting your thoughts down on paper. That was great in that it helped me to get in touch with my feelings on the issue as well. Thank you for being so proactive in this way.

My vision for our future together is for me to get out of the IT business and for us to go into some other form of business together, possibly in the food service business or in exercise and health. I would love to become a yoga instructor for example. I know that I am still at a very low level, but yoga has done more for my health than anything else I have tried so far. I have always believed that the thing that you should do for a living is the thing which has transformed your own life. So, for example, getting into Mannatech would have been a natural if it had actually worked. I understand now very well why it did not work, having gone through the process I have gone through. (It is, after all, a dead processed food.) Now I see clearly that there is no shortcut to eating real food (in the Michael Pollen sense of the word), and doing the real work of stress reduction, relaxation, and spiritual transformation.

I guess my current vision would be for us to start a yoga studio which is combined with a vegan health oriented restaurant. Feeding the body, soul and spirit in other words. Your getting involved with ACC and the culinary arts degree program is a real natural for this. That is one reason why I am so excited about that move on your part, and want to support it in any way that I can. For example, you are not going to hear any push back from me on your need to attend classes or spend time doing your online training. I think it is totally wonderful that you are pursuing your dream, and if it fits into my vision as well, so be it. Either way, I am terribly proud of you and what you are doing with your life.

As you said today, when you start a program like ACC, you figure out what your dream is. Maybe your dream will change, and undoubtedly mine will too. I think it helps to know that it is that we are trying to do, though, even if that changes over time.

So, my vision, again, would be IOYK combined with a vegan fast food restaurant (with possibly meat and dairy options as well) in the same sort of relationship as Equinox and Soulstice Cafe. Synergistically working off each other. As I saw yesterday, folks who do yoga are also health oriented in other areas of their lives. Monica does not feed her child soda, for example. Never has, never will. They were horrified by my story of the three year old child at Retrouvialle CORE who was being fed Kool Whip directly from the tub by her obese parents.

What I want to do is to enable other folks to see what we have seen. This is my vision. To have the same results and such as we have had. To live healthy productive, stress-free lives. To find out that they can be Present in their Being without living in their ego. (Rob Bell actually talks about that as well.) In other words, to help people in every area of their lives. Holistically, not compartmentally.

This is a vision which is very big. But someone said recently that if you can achieve what your vision is in your lifetime, your vision is not big enough. This one is certainly very, very big.

The way I feel about this is energized and enthusiastic. Now that my health is finally (!!!!) turning around, I am becoming more and more jazzed by the idea of doing something in this area. While my health was declining, I was pretty hopeless and felt that I needed to focus on that. As I am beginning to become healthy again, I am aware that my creative juices are flowing. Yes! I am becoming a functional human being again. This feels really great! I want to share that with the world, and that is making me very excited.

It is a feeling of being energized and pumped. Kind of like the feeling you have when you crest a hill on your bike, when your legs are fully warmed up and pumping. When you hit the top you are like: Yes!!! Or like a feeling you have when you hit a home run and you start pumping your fist. Yes!!! Like a team that has just won a big game and they are all jumping up and down and clapping each other on the back.

It is a bright red, like a really nice sports car. Snick snick with the shifter as you climb the switch backs on a winding road with your tires squealing and the sound of the racy exhaust in you ears.

I am really really looking forward to exploring this vision with you. If we cannot do it together, I do not want to do it at all. You and me babe, all the way.

Love,
Me

How does it make you feel when you are treated unjustly by family members, coworkers or anyone else for that matter? DYFF.

Dear LORD:

You word says that you justify the saints and that we should not avenge ourselves. Be my justification. Let me release and forgive all of the injustice of the world.

MDDL:

Your MEQ this morning was wanting to just hang out with me and be together instead of going to the meeting. I really like that idea, now that I have gotten used to it. Another lazy, relaxed day of just being together. Wow!

My past reactions to injustice have driven much of the misery of my life. Let's see: Start with my father and his insanity towards my mother, my sister, my brother and me. Practically from when I could remember, his life and its dysfunction stretch a long shadow over my heart. It has taken years for me to come to grips with with that. Even in the hypnotherapy sessions that I have had, I have been able to forgive my mother, but never my father. The difference is that I can understand my mother and her motivation in what she did. My father seems morally reprehensible to me. That should not matter. I should be able to forgive him anyway, but there is a place in my heart where I still harbor anger, bitterness, and rage against him.

As you know, the single most painful moment of my life was when my father looked up to me from his hospital bed and said the words "I believe." At that moment, I knew that God had forgiven him, when I could not. If I had been the judge of the universe, I would have cast my father into Hell. Instead the real Judge chose to welcome him into paradise.

We spent the remaining weeks of his life going out onto the parking lot during the day where the camper was parked, and singing songs like Amazing Grace while my father wept bitterly, undoubtedly greiving over his wasted life and the choices he made. The most bitter and painful memory was undoubtedly the death of my sister, of which he was the cause. He of any of the family members could have done something about her situation and could have been there for her when she needed him. He chose not to do that, giving her the gun instead with which she shot herself.

I have begun, through Eckart Tolle's work, to understand that the part of my father that was at work was his insanity, his ego. He was a very egoic person, certainly one of the most dysfunctional and insane people I have ever known.

A typical example of his insanity would be the scene from one of the Star Trek movies where all of the crew members have joined with an emotional Vulcan named Sybok who is Spock's brother. Sybok brings them to a place of enlightenment where they surrender their pain to him, and come to a state of total peace. When Kirk is offered this choice, he refuses. He says: "No, I like my pain. It defines me. It makes me who I am. I need my pain."

That has been my father. That has also been me, in the image of my father. I also related to Kirk in this way, knowing that my father clung to his pain, feeling that it defined him. His motto was: "You've never lived until you've almost died." He tried to create near-death crises whenever possible. He lived for the thrill, a true adrenaline junky. He always wanted to escape from the snares of death by the skin of his teeth. Only by doing this did he feel truly alive.

This was much of the cause of the havoc he created in our lives, a great injustice and one of the tragedies of my life. All of the injustices that I have experienced as an adult pale in comparison to the great injustice of my childhood and the knowledge that I was defenseless against the manipulation of a truly insane man.

Be that as it may, I must come to a place of peace with this. My ego still rails against it. But my spirit knows that I am a sinner too, no more deserving of peace or love than Howard J. Browning. It is only in the ego, by comparing and contrasting my life to that of my father, that I am allowed to justify myself. When I look at things truly, knowing that my father and I are ultimately exactly the same, then I can forgive. We both end up in exactly the same place: Rotting corpses, followed by dust, followed by nothing at all. Only our spirit, the spark of the divine given to us by God, endures. The egoic structures with all of its rationalization and justification and manipulations, rots away with the rest of it.

That means that I will see my father once again. He will undoubtedly weep with profound grief at all of the pain and suffering he inflicted upon my mother, my sister, my brother, and me. He will see, as he probably did at the end of his life, that his actions were terribly evil. He will know that he was truly an instrument of Satan in this world. And I will be able to look him deep into those flinty blue eyes and love him once again, as I did when I was a small child, innocent of anything, simply basking in the light of my father's love.

The feeling that I have as I write this is one of profound sadness. I feel terribly, terribly sad knowing that my father's life was wasted and what an amazing life he could have had, had he simply awoken earlier than he did. I also feel terribly sorry for him. The sadness I feel is very strong. It is like the sadness of a child who has just lost a treasured pet, one that was a dear, dear friend to him. I have felt that feeling, such as when Sean, my first dog, died when I was 12. For years after that I never wanted to have another dog because the sadness I felt was so strong. Even after that, if I ever wanted to lose an erection, I simply had to think of Sean and I would become sad. The feeling is like that. I deep, deep wound of sadness over the injustice of my life and the wasted life of my father, who I probably loved as much as anyone I have ever known in my life, but who hurt me more profoundly than anyone as well.

The color is black, jet inky black. A darkness you cannot see through. Absolute total black.

In terms of a shared experience, it is difficult to think of anything that we have ever gone through that measures up. I suppose the best example would be the year of Hell we went through when my father, your father, and then my mother all died. That year is like a deep, black hole of sadness in my memory. I remember nothing of joy during that time. It was simply too painful.

Know always that I love you.

Love,
Me