Under the Golden Shower Tree

Last week when we sent out the Photo of the Week we mentioned that we were celebrating our thirty-third year of marriage on Saturday April 20. That day we were in the arboretum and happened upon a young couple getting married outdoors in a small amphitheatre. We quietly took a seat on a stone wall atop a hill overlooking the celebrants. We were positioned under the marvelous tree in the photo above.

As we sat with our arms around each other’s waist, we could hear the minister performing the ceremony below, including reading a quote from Neal Donald Walsh. As we listened, leaning into one another, we silently renewed our own wedding vows. We count it no small miracle that we are not only still together, but deeply in love, cherishing and respecting one another even more as the years go by.

Thank you for being here to read this and share in our lives. We wish you no less love and happiness than this.

But, most likely you aren’t. Like us, you are probably in the world, engaged in the hustle and bustle of the modern marketplace with diverse value systems in which a permanent state of bliss can seem challenging, if not impossible. Or you might be sharing life’s path with intimate others who regularly “push your buttons.”
So, for now let’s allow it to be a process in which we are all in various and changing states of wakefulness. And we can help each other to become more awake.

For those of you who have known us for a while, you probably know already that
our specific goal for our love relationship was to bring out the best in one another. For us that included attaining higher levels of consciousness, sometimes referred to as the Higher Self, Buddha Mind, Christ Consciousness.

What does the dictionary have to say about partnerships? Partnership is a relationship between individuals or groups that is characterized by mutual cooperation and responsibility, as for the achievement of a specified goal.

The key thing here is mutual cooperation and responsibility. We would also add commitment. Partners usually have something at stake, whether money or heart or both. Partnerships are intentional relationships. People enter into partnerships because they choose to create a future together.

Well then, what makes for enlightened partnership? First, let’s distinguish between the partners and the partnership, for they are not the same.  The partnership is a completely separate entity from the individual partners. We think of our relationship as a garden that we both nurture and receive from. So, there is Paul, Layne and our relationship.

We say a relationship or partnership is not a “thing” you can own or be owned by. Rather, a relationship is a “space of possibilities”; it is a living, probably evolving, process in which you participate. For many, this concept represents a paradigm shift in their thinking about relationships. Relationships are alive and they have a flow of life in them and that flow has a direction.

What is the direction of the flow in your partnerships? Where is the partnership headed? What is the partnership focused on? It is the flow of a partnership that determines whether the partnership is enlightened or not. What distinguishes an enlightened partnership from an ordinary one is that it is always headed in a direction that honors the Spirit. Enlightened partners are motivated by a vision and passion that results in an extraordinary level of cooperation and creativity.

As teachers of spiritual relationships for over 35 years we have demonstrated the essence of our Spirit is love. When we make choices out of love we elevate our spirit. The opposite of love is fear. When we make choices out of fear we diminish the expression of our spirit in the world.

Therefore, an enlightened partnership is one that is committed to making choices out of love and an elevated vision rather than fear. In an enlightened partnership we ask ourselves, “What would love see here? What would love say here? What would love choose here? What choices honor the spirit in all of us?” These questions help us gain some spiritual altitude that delivers uncommon and inspiring solutions.

We use the terms enlightened partnerships and evolutionary relationships interchangeably. We also use the terms spiritual or soulful relationships to define relationships that honor the incandescent Light of spiritual awareness. No matter what term you use, we know that the awareness of your internal landscape and an experience of your Higher Self come into play.

We have found there are relationship savvy skills that take us far beyond the ordinary relationships that we used to settle for. And the learning of those skills requires regular practice to master. Just like playing a musical instrument or martial arts requires practice sessions to be as good as you can be, so does the art of spiritual relationships.

If we all learn the practices of enlightened partnerships and we used the skills, what kind of future could we create for ourselves and others? In our experiment with this idea, we have found that we can enjoy intentional creative relationships that foster the development and evolution of everyone involved. We continually dedicate ourselves and our relationships to a soulful wisdom, compassion and trust.

Are we enlightened? The most honest answer is yes and no. Remember we consider enlightenment as a process of awakening. This process is never ending because it involves the eternal nature of our individual souls. That means as advanced as we may get in our comprehension of Truth and Sprit, it can always get more sublime.
It can always get more expansive. The possibilities are truly infinite.

There are times when we easily shift the gears of our awareness to a soulful wisdom and love. There are other times when we are stretched to the limit of our capacity and we fall short. Falling short is a familiar experience for us because, as conscious evolutionaries we are living at the edge of our capacity.

But, if you ask us do we enjoy an enlightened partnership, we would unequivocally say, “Yes!” We have been loving and learning together for over 35 years. We are wiser and more loving because of what we are dedicated to in our relationship. We’ve had lots of ups and down, hard times and good times. We keep falling deeper in love with one another. Our experiment was to find out how to keep the love alive in our relationship and we discovered how to do that. It was to connect with a soulful love that never ends, within ourselves, and then to share it with one another.

We know that the kind of relationship we are talking about here may seem impossibly on the moon for some of you. It certainly was for us before we met. But, now we know it is possible for anyone who is sufficiently motivated, willing to let go of the past and preconceived notions and willing to learn and be coached in learning the skills of enlightened partnership.

So, what do you think? What does this bring up for you? Please share . . .

Many blessings,

Paul & Layne

You won’t neutralize these limiting patterns unless you stop judging feelings as good or bad and start looking at what they are trying to teach you. When you act blindly out of your feelings, you can limit and even damage your relationships. But, your feelings can be your greatest teachers if you will listen to them.

You can seize healing opportunities by paying attention to your feelings, discovering where they are coming from. This eases the way for deeper integration of your spiritual nature. This moves you to embodying higher spiritual truths rather than living in empty concepts about them.

Perhaps you need to acknowledge what you are really feeling mad or sad about. It is usually deeper than the obvious and being able to be fully present to your feelings without judging those feelings opens the door to your own deep self-awareness. This attentiveness to your deeper emotional landscape is part of re-claiming emotional health and well-being. You must also be able to let the emotional energy move through and out of you without judging it.

Find a way to express yourself in a way that doesn’t hurt others and gives you the chance to fully purge the emotion. Find a healthy balance that actually clears the feeling from your energy body. Getting into your head about your feelings usually doesn’t produce fullness of emotional healing. Most of the time you’ve got to feel to heal.

Here’s an idea, you might keep some old dishes safely taped up in a cardboard box that you can throw around in the garage in a creative tantrum. (One of our clients said there was no greater satisfaction for her when she got mad. She made a trip to the second hand store to get her supplies). Or you may need to cry or scream into a pillow or just have a “conscious pout” for a while.

This means that when you get upset, you look more deeply, rather than deftly suppressing it, only to have it resurface under new circumstances. Let’s say someone was going to do the dishes but didn’t, and you’re peeved. Maybe it’s really resentment that he or she isn’t spending much time at home. Maybe you were brought up in a house where the kitchen was always a mess and you were embarrassed about that. Who knows? Only you do.

You’ve probably heard that what you resist persists, so allow yourself to feel your feelings without judging them, to honor whatever emotion is there in a safe and healing way.

Keep in mind, there are steps to honoring/mastering your feelings:

1. Give yourself permission to have these feelings.
2. Recognize what they are, name them.
3. Fully feel them. Breathe deeply into them.
4. Determine the appropriate level of expression.
5. If the feelings come from a memory, look to see if there’s another way to view the painful incident. Is it possible that the meaning you have attached to it is not the highest thought? Look for a higher-self interpretation. Often the gift in our pain is wisdom.
6. Take responsibility for your feelings and get the lessons they hold so you can move to a higher level of awareness.

The long term effect of emotional healing is that unresolved historical feelings don’t intrude and keep recycling in your current relationships. You no longer have this big reservoir of feelings in your heart and belly, looking for new evidence to justify their existence.

Emotional healing gives you the freedom to be happy with yourself and others more and more of the time, making your relationships an oasis of love, peace and fulfillment. You will feel more alive and find a greater happiness naturally bubbling up from your deeper spiritual nature, infusing you and your relationships.

For us, choosing to use our relationships for our personal development and conscious evolution required us to heal our emotional body. We committed ourselves to the process with great gusto! We learned to trust that underneath all pain, fear, judgment and anger burned the eternal flame of spiritual love. Doing our own personal work led us into a profound understanding there is no wisdom in suppressing our feelings.

We are committed to helping others with relationship challenges to gain relational maturity,
so they can enjoy harmonious, co-creative relationships bursting with trust, fulfillment and a compelling vision for their shared future. We hope you will join us for the journey.

Please share your thoughts, feelings and impressions about what we have said here. What was new or validated for you?

Thanks for spending your valuable time with us,

Paul & Layne

Giving Thanks

We all want the holidays to be beautiful and filled with love and joy. But, more often than not we are stressed by too much to do in too little time, obligations we would much rather avoid and unresolved family issues bubbling to the surface of our awareness or even erupting in our relationships. If any of these seem to come along with the holidays for you, we have some solutions to make this holiday a whole lot better.

Not enough time? – Create your idea of the perfect holiday season this year.  It is often difficult to observe how our culture affects our thinking. We often blindly follow the dictates of social custom without any deep thinking. These cultural or societal values show up in our minds as “supposed tos”. For example, “The holidays are supposed to be a time to give gifts” or “The holidays are supposed to be spent with the family.”

Want to know what beliefs are stored in your own mind? Try this simple exercise. Write at the top of a piece of blank paper:

The holidays are supposed to be _______________.

Then if you like, do this one.

During the holidays I must ______________.

Then with a free flow of consciousness pour your responses onto the page. Repeat the statement after each written response until you run out of responses.

Then read over what you have written with a discerning eye. Are the things you wrote absolutely true? Are you aware of where you got these ideas? Is there any merit to thinking beyond these ideas and re-creating your current version of the perfect holiday season for this year, unfettered by the rules of the past?

If so, then see how you can design this year’s holiday to be as enjoyable as possible. Discuss it with your loved ones and come to a mutual agreement for this season.

Too many obligations? Look to see how you can shorten the list. Are the obligations parties? Work related? A long gift list with shopping, wrapping and shipping involved? Are any of them optional? Could you have a good holiday season without fulfilling any of these obligations? Can you relieve yourself of any of the obligations without undesirable consequences? Can you decline any of them without feeling guilty?

Unresolved Family issues? Is there a way for you turn your complaints into requests?

For example, “My brother always spends a lot of money on gifts and I can’t compete with that,” could be translated into a request that sounds like a brief phone conversation where you say, “This year I’d like to suggest that we give one another cards where we acknowledge what we appreciate or love about one another. We could read them out loud around the tree. I think this could be a good way of making our love visible in a different way than the usual gift giving and I think it could make us feel even closer as a family, what do you think?”

Or another complaint could be, “My parents feel hurt if we don’t spend the holidays with them and it makes me feel guilty to not be with them.” This could be translated into “Mom, we would love to be with you during the holidays, yet John & I haven’t had any quality “alone time” for way too long. So I’m wondering if we could get together after the holidays for a family meal. Would you like to do that?”

Or the complaint that says, “My wife is always is so stressed doing things for other people that she is too tired to really enjoy herself,” could be translated into “Honey, I want us both to enjoy the holidays together this year. So, how about we ask everyone to pitch in and keep things as simple as possible. Would you help me put this idea into action this year?

Turning complaints into requests is a useful idea even after the holidays are over, and it takes some practice to get good at it. Hint, hint

For those of you in the United States, we wish you a most fulfilling and nurturing Thanksgiving!

The Top Ten Habits for Successful Relationships

#3 – Speak Your Truth Appropriately, Quickly, with Good Intention and Emotional Congruence

>> Turn Up Your Speakers <<

Click Here to learn about our new Heart to Heart Talks Communication Program!

We hope you are enjoying these videos! What are your thoughts about telling the truth as discussed in this video? Please let us know what your own experiences have been.

The Top Ten Habits for Successful Relationships

#2 – Listen without Interrupting or Being Distracted and Respond with Sincerity

>> Turn Up Your Speakers <<

Click Here to learn about our new Heart to Heart Talks Communication Program!

We hope you are enjoying these videos! What are your thoughts about listening as discussed in this video? Please let us know what your own experiences have been.

The Top Ten Habits for Successful Relationships

 #1 – Know What You Want and Ask for It In Ways That Inspire Cooperation

>> Turn Up Your Speakers <<

Click Here to learn about our new Heart to Heart Talks Communication Program!

This is the first  in our new series of video blog posts. Please leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

So sorry, but for some unknown reason the
video on this page has stopped working.

Click Here to see the video and check out our
Art for Heart Legacy Project.

I love to watch Layne when she’s loving our trees with their lacey leaves casting enchanting shadows and light patterns.

I captured this scene from our back deck as the sun was going down, illuminating the low hanging storm clouds and the windows of the building on the hill. This time of year the New Mexico skies present spectacular shows on a daily, even hourly, basis! Also, I made this with my iPhone!

One of the members practices EFT and offered to do some “trigger work” for the whole group. Each person identified what was hurting them most. For Sandy, it was watching Robert be affectionate with others in the group. For Linda, it was the familiar conflict of having to choose between the people she loves, something that went back to her parent’s divorce when she was a child. For Stacy, it was feeling helpless to help. For Robert, it was guilt because he was the one who initiated the breakup.

Each friend clarified what was troubling them and held it in mind while they rated the level of intensity of emotional pain on a 0 to 10 scale, 10 being as emotionally intense as it could be and 0 being no sense of distress at all.

They all sat together focusing on their individual issue and using the EFT procedure, which includes tapping gently on the end points of the major meridians on their face, torso and hands. After three rounds, in about ten minutes, they all stopped and rated their intensity level again. All but one of them had experienced a significant drop in their emotional pain and reported relief from the physical discomfort that accompanies relationship pain. Emotions can cause headaches, nausea, tightness in the face, chest, stomach and throat and a variety of other physical symptoms.

They decided to do several more rounds to see how much better it could get. Several more levels of improvement occurred for each of them. Most of their levels had dropped to a 0 or 1 and a few others were hovering at3 or 4. EFT had treated the invisible perturbations in their individual energy fields that were generating the group tension. This gave significant and rapid relief because they were treating the cause, not just the symptoms.

After the EFT treatments, about 45 minutes, they spontaneously started to discuss how each of them had been affected by the “breakup”. Instead of everyone feeling heavy and stilted, they were all laughing again, joined in the familiar camaraderie that had kept them together for fifteen years.

Our own experience with this invisible “whateveritis” has shown up in our own relationship since the very beginning when we first met. And it has continued to show up in our work with relationships, deepening our own sensitivity to fluctuations in the field.

If you do not have certain distinctions about what actually causes relationships to be the way they are, the way to healing, repairing and evolving relationships can appear impossible or difficult, at best. And without these distinctions many relationship interventions are more like a band aid on a gushing artery.

We’ve worked with families, companies, teams and communities in which there were relationship challenges between two or more people that had a significant negative effect on the entire group. Families have been torn apart, production in companies negatively impacted and communities damaged for lack of understanding how a single unresolved issue between people can affect and damage the whole.

It happens all the time and it doesn’t have to. In our view, this level of relational sophistication and maturity is actually the leading edge for human evolution.

All of our relationships exist in an invisible field of energy that can be calm and stable, in a state of homeostasis. But when there are powerful emotions between two or more people, those emotions, such as anger, sadness, resentment, hurt feelings, etc. ripple out through the field, having an effect on everyone involved. The more people suppress or deny their feelings the crazier the field gets which has an undesirable effect on everyone else involved.

Emotional Tanking

The illustration on the left depicts a phenomenon called “emotional tanking”. Click on illustration to enlarge

The story above is similar to the one we shared in our last post and is typical of what EFT can do. It is a deceptively simple and powerful tool for healing relationship issues of any kind. We use it all the time in our coaching practice and in our relationship with each other.

What most people fail to realize or know how to look for, is the earliest similar incident to what is going on in the present that appears to be causing emotional pain. Nine times out of ten, present time emotional pain has its roots in our childhood and our relationship with our parents and siblings.

It’s just that the present time incident is so overwhelmingly compelling that it really looks like that is the problem, when in fact the present time event “triggered” the  pre-existing, unresolved event from the past. The force and velocity of the feeling is historical. When you deal with the deeper historical level, the current issue loses its steam, as well.

It is one thing to “know about” this as a concept and another thing to “know” it as an opportunity to clear the past with tools designed to heal at the deepest level possible. Once it is cleared and resolved, your own energy field becomes less affected by difficult situations in the present. This allows you to be more resourceful, loving of yourself and others and a more powerful creator of your life and relationships.

EFT is an evolutionary tool that clears unwanted emotions. It isn’t always clear to people that their ability to adapt to accelerated change is directly related to the density of their “pain body”. The pain body holds the unfinished business from the past that often determines your perceptions of the now.

Because of these phenomena we often can’t see new and powerful possibilities in difficult situations. Now is a time for all of us to see clearly “what is” so we can make wise choices for ourselves and the people we love.

© Paul and Layne Cutright

Resources: The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra  and The Field by Lynn McTaggert

Santa Fe Easter

“We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” ~ Joni Mitchell

This is Easter weekend, a time for the celebration of renewal, rebirth and resurrection. This time we call Easter is actually a blend of the secular and religious, deriving as it does from a myriad of cultures dating back to ancient Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Italy and Persia leading up to Judaism and Christianity. 

All of these cultures had central figures of legend who died and were resurrected centuries before the birth of Jesus. Even bunnies and eggs were associated with fertility and new life in Spring by Romans, Persians, Egyptians and Babylonians. Though they were probably not made of chocolate and sold in stores as we do today!

The true meaning of Easter is to be found within your own heart and celebrated in ways that bring you joy in feeling connected to the Universal rhythm of life as resurrection is made plain in newly budding and blooming nature; a nature in which we, as human beings, are as embedded as a fetus in the womb.

It is in this spirit that we share with you a story of the miraculous resurrection of a marriage relationship that was experiencing its own kind of death.

 John & Lisa Heal the Deep Pain of Infidelity in Record Time

When “John” and “Lisa” walked through our door together, it was the first time they had seen each other since his recent affair was revealed. It had been an ongoing affair, but Lisa had just found out only a week ago while John was away on a business trip.

John was in California and Lisa was on the other side of the country. She was going along in her life as usual when she had a strong impression he was having an affair. Without much thought she picked up the phone and heard herself ask him if it was true. He knew he had been caught and though his first impulse was to lie, he confessed instead.

"Oh my god, what have I done?"

Lisa sat there frozen in pain. The collision of feelings left her speechless. Disbelief, hurt, anger, wanting to strike out, fear and dread sent seismic shock waves through her whole body. John was in a panic. He loved his wife and never wanted to hurt her. He thought she would never find out. His mind raced trying to find the right thing to say. He kept running into dead ends. The silence over the phone line was deafening.

“We’ll talk later,” Lisa said and hung up. John heard the click, awash in a sea of his aloneness.

Lisa then called us and said she felt like killing him and asked for an appointment. The arrangements were made and within a week she flew in. John, already in California, drove down the coast, showing up at the same time for their session with us.

It was taking everything they had to appear calm and rational on top of a boiling cauldron of relationship pain. They looked as though their emotions would burst out of control at any moment. She loved him but felt betrayed, angry and hurt. He felt guilty, confused and he didn’t want to confront her anger. It was a very strained situation, to say the least.

Meridian Tapping Techniques

We worked with each of them separately, for about an hour, using a meridian tapping technique to calm and heal their pain. We have been using meridian tapping since the late 1990’s. It is a form of Energy Psychology that uses the invisible meridian lines that are used in Chinese acupuncture. But, the technique is to gently tap on the end points of the major meridian lines with your fingertips. The tapping activates what we call the emotional immune system.

Literally, in a few minutes our clients are restored to emotional balance and wellbeing. They are then free to access the more resourceful parts of their brains and think through problems calmly. They are in a good state of mind where they can be coached to locate the “learning opportunity” in the most difficult of situations and find workable solutions.

Within an hour Lisa had shifted from wanting to punish him and hurt him as badly as she had been hurt, to wanting to take responsibility for her part in the marriage deteriorating to such a place. She wanted to stop feeling victimized.

John’s feelings of guilt were so intense he could sense the part of him that wanted or needed to be punished to get some relief. The meridian tapping helped him work those feelings out and forgive himself enough to stop feeling so defensive and more able to support Lisa through her feelings.

After the individual work, they sat on the couch looking into each other’s eyes. Their energy was now completely different. It wasn’t that the problem had been resolved but they had defused their emotional pain sufficiently so they were able to think clearly. They were able to be in one another’s presence and look at each other without feeling like they were going to pop out of their skin.

They were then ready for us to coach them. There were a lot of questions asked and answered to bring clarity to how the whole thing happened and what they wanted to do about it. This situation had the potential to be a devastating crisis that ended the marriage or be a catalyst for more intimacy and understanding and perhaps an even stronger marriage than before.

After a total of about three hours they left holding hands and gazing softly into one another’s eyes. They had essentially fallen back in love with each other. Now, that’s a lot of territory to cover in three hours. Of course, they had work to do when they got home, but they were able to overcome a huge hurdle in a short period of time. They were able to gain enough perspective to be able to see this as an evolutionary learning opportunity and to embrace it as such.

Feelings of Gratitude

When they left, we talked about how grateful we are to have a tool so powerful that it can produce truly remarkable, some would say miraculous, results in minutes. We have been relationship educators and coaches since 1976 and we have a reputation for being on the leading edge of the latest theories and techniques for working with relationships. Even we were somewhat surprised at what we had just seen happen.

What did we do that allowed John and Lisa to cover so much painful emotional ground in such a short period of time? We used a meridian tapping technique you may have heard of or be familiar with, called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). We learned EFT from the man who created it, Gary Craig, and we’ve been using very successfully since about 1997.. We were certified as EFT Masters in January 2006. EFT has transformed our coaching practice and allowed us to serve people all around the world working with them over the phone.

Relationship education and coaching has been a passionate commitment of ours for over 35 years. We are continually on the lookout for easier, more effective tools and methods for helping our clients. EFT is the simplest and most potent tool we have discovered, so far. The kind of miracle we relate here in John and Lisa’s story has become common place in our work with others.

EFT is easy to learn in a relatively short period of time and can become a life-long skill that you can use for releasing fears and phobias, dissolving anxiety, overcoming self-sabotage, fear of meeting new people, public speaking, insomnia and so much more.

If you have followed our blog for any length of time, you may recall our sharing about the incredible challenges we have faced in the months since Paul’s emergency open heart surgery last summer. We can tell you right now that the physical and emotional pain we have gone through individually and in our relationship was significantly mitigated by our regular (often daily) use of EFT, both with each other and alone.

In this time of great transition and uncertainty in which much of what we hold dear seems to be being stripped away, we need powerful tools that can help us navigate the unknown as we are being reborn into a new life in which it is safe to love, to trust and to embrace the unknown as the very crucible of our own resurrection into new life.

“We are stardust, billion year old carbon, we are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” ~ Joni Mitchell

Easter Bunnies with Easter Eggs

 
© 2012 Paul & Layne Cutright

Santa Fe Magic!

Emerging from the Dark

Have you ever had the feeling of being hungry, but you don’t know what you want? Maybe you open the cupboard or the refrigerator and look at what’s on the shelves, hoping to see something and say, “That’s it, I’ll have that!” But, you don’t find anything you really want to eat.

That’s how I have been about writing this blog post. I am hungry to communicate with you and let you know what’s been going on, yet I hardly know where to begin. Each time over the last several weeks that I have started something, I end up deleting it with the judgment that it’s just too trite or pedestrian for you to bother reading.

As unusual as this feeling is for me, I think I know where it comes from. I feel a sense of being inwardly pushed to be more revealing and vulnerable with you than I usually am in writing. Somehow, what I want to say would be easier to communicate in person, in a group, much like we used to do in our seminars and trainings. Then we could look into and through the eyes of love and my authentic vulnerability charged the room with a kind of grace. Telling the whole truth about fears and feelings joined us through  the heart in our common humanity.

To set a little context for what I am about to share, let me say this up front. This year has been perhaps the most difficult year of our lives. Actually, it’s been going on for a couple of years.

Have you noticed that it is rare to hear teachers of higher consciousness, supposedly enlightened
individuals or modern wisdom givers, talk much about their current or very recent hard times? They
may talk about hard times at some distance in the past, after they have learned and integrated the
lessons and they’re back to being enlightened again. But, you don’t hear or read much from a closer
perspective when things are not yet so clear or when things are still in a state of unsettled chaos.

And that’swhat I want to write about now because that’s where we are. And we have been here
for longer than any previous period like this. I think that’s why it has been so difficult to get to
writing about this, because it is still so close and fresh for us.

So, life has been about acceptance of what’s happening in the moment to what has seemed like
an onslaught of one catastrophe after another, and before we can even catch our breath we find
another anvil falling from the sky! It’s been about being as present as possible to the feelings our
situation has brought up and using all the tools at our disposal for dealing with the ongoing stress
of uncertainty and the accompanying doubt and fear.

Our last posts back in July, August and September have been about my emergency open heart
surgery and early recovery period (http://bit.ly/open-heart-surgery). Thankfully, according to my
surgeon, my physical recovery proceeded ahead of schedule. Having had nothing to compare it to,
it still seemed to be taking entirely too long to suit me!

I was having to listen to my body much more than I was accustomed, causing me to confront my
habitual impatience and push to be productive and get on to the next thing. In the process of
confronting things about myself that had been pretty invisible to me (but not to Layne, of course!),
what emerged was an unexpected level of healing.

As my physical healing progressed and I could tell I was getting better, e.g., being off oxygen and
going for long walks. My stamina and strength was returning. But then I entered an unexpectedly
deep level of depression that caused me to question everything about my life, including why I had
survived in the first place.

Depression and thoughts that death would be a welcome relief startled me into the reality of my
depression and plunged me into deep self-reflection.  Yet, there was no sense in denying the truth
with positive thinking or affirmations. If I did not confront and accept the reality of my depression,
I ran the risk of driving it underground and making it worse through denial.

I noticed how the feelings would come and go, rising and falling in intensity, like large swells on the
ocean.  I became reclusive and did not respond to messages from friends for weeks as I burrowed
deeper into my dark silence.

Another thing that was happening, and still is, was a heightened emotionality. Since I have been on
a path of emotional healing for the last 35 years I have learned to know, respect and express my
feelings. But, this has been something of a different order. I can hear a song, watch scenes of love
and tenderness or violence in a movie or TV show and find myself crying or even sobbing deeply,
way out of proportion to the triggering stimulus.

And over the course of the last few months both Layne and I are aware of deep, personal inner
changes that we are still trying to make sense of. Things have changed, continue to change and so
are we. We have a sense that our work will be changing as a result of our experiences the last couple
of years.

Of all the spiritual studies in which we have engaged, the teaching that has always sustained us
through challenging times of chaos and uncertainty is A Course in Miracles, in particular the lessons
in the Workbook. A Course in Miracles is all about making the shift from ego identification to
identifying yourself as your Soul.

The ego is grounded in fear and is subject to all the conditions and circumstances I have been
talking about here. If we believe that is our reality, our only reality, then we are stuck in those
conditions.

When we can identify with our Soul, however, then a vast space of peace and calm can open up
for us. We believe what we have been going through (and so many others are also going through,
perhaps even you) has much less to do with processing the effects of our negative, limited ego
mind than it does with a Soul transition. I am certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that my
heart failure and three near death experiences (all on the same day) had to do with my Soul’s
influence over my life.

A Course in Miracles is a radical teaching that can be, and usually is, ego shattering. But, it also
can put you in direct contact with your own Soul or Higher Self. So, being forewarned, below are
the first dozen lessons that have been particularly apropos for us. Perhaps you will find them
helpful, as well.

For example, Lesson 1 says, “Nothing I see in this room (on this street, from this window,
in this place) means anything.”

Lesson 2 – “I have given everything I see in this room (on this street, from this window,
in this place) all the meaning it has for me.”

Lesson 3 – “I do not understand anything I see in this room (on this street, from this
window, in this place).”

Lesson 4 – “These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see in this
room (on this street, from this window, in this place).”

Lesson 5 – “I am never upset for the reason I think.”

Lesson 6 – “I am upset because I see something that is not there.”

Lesson 7 – “I see only the past.”

Lesson 8 – “My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.”

Lesson 9 – “I see nothing as it is now.”

Lesson 10 – “My thoughts do not mean anything.”

Lesson 11 – “My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.”

Lesson 12 – “I am upset because I see a meaningless world.”

Lesson 13 – “A meaningless world engenders fear.”

Lesson 14 – “God did not make a meaningless world.”

A Course in Miracles also teaches that only Love is real and fear is an illusion. The one unchanging
constant through all of this has been and continues to be our love for each other. That is what has
always sustained us through any kind of trial or difficulty. That and the consciousness tools we
have learned and teach.

We will continue to share with you as these changes unfold. And, as always, we welcome your
comments and thoughts.

As this year draws to a close we are being presented with a wonderful opportunity. On January 1, 2012
we are catching a plane for Europe! We have been engaged by some clients to work with their entire
family of five in a six-day Private Intensive Retreat.
(http://paulandlayne.com/coaching-programs/exclusive-private-intensives)

We’ll be in Munich, Germany for about a week serving these courageous souls then we will fly to Turin,
Italy for a visit to the Federation of Damanhur, a conscious, eco-society and spiritual community that
has been in existence there for 30 years. (http://www.damanhur.org/)

In fact, Layne applied for and was accepted into a three month “temporary citizenship” program they
began last year. I will be with her for the first week or so to help her get settled, then I will return to
Santa Fe.

This is a HUGE change on many levels and portends wonderful new opportunities and
directions for our life. For one thing, we have never been apart for more than a week at a time
for the last 35 years! We don’t want to speculate too much right now about what those
opportunities and directions might be, but we will definitely keep you posted with more regular
blog posts, photos and possibly videos in the months ahead.

In the meantime, please know how much we appreciate you reading this and being a part of our
lives through this virtual connection. Your thoughts of love, healing and prayers are meaningful
to us beyond words.

We are wishing you and all those whom you love a most blessed holiday!