ON READING "TO LIVE WITHIN" BY AL MCGEE
Jacob Needleman describes “To Live Within” by Lizelle Reymond as “one of the most profound, hopeful and spiritually authentic books of our time, offering clear evidence that there does in fact exist a science of inner awakening.” (on the cover of “To Live Within”, Lizelle Reymond and Sri Anirvan)
I immediately found the book at a local bookstore and now cannot put it down. Needleman introduces the book by saying: “There exist certain books that quietly appear in the world and quietly live apart from the world, where their inner force moves the hearts and minds of all who chance to find them.” (Ibid)
Lizelle Reymond had an unexpected encounter with an East Indian spiritual teacher who changed her life forever. And he changed her life without saying anything to her! That, I’m sure, is how the entire quality of a marriage relationship could change forever if at least one partner begins the practice of learning how not to say anything but instead learns to be something.
When Lizelle Reymond, guided by a good friend, met Sri Anirvan she expected conversation. There was none! Instead as they sat together in the early evening on a veranda, as she writes: “a strange silence fell upon us, enveloping us completely. And the silence persisted, soon becoming heavy and oppressive. I no longer knew what I was doing. I yearned to escape. My back and my neck grew numb...” and soon, as Needleman says, “she was wondering if she could bear it much longer.”
“The time seemed without end. But then the atmosphere seemed to lighten and, at the same time, there came a relaxation of mind and muscles, a slackening of tension in the plants and trees, in the very air itself. My breathing became almost imperceptible, my body felt supple, as light as a feather; I thought that it was filled with a new consciousness that came from the heart.”
“Two or three hours passed. Night came with the stars and the sounds of crickets. And at a certain moment, her host ( the friend I mentioned) quietly rose, bowed before Sri Anirvan, as did she, nodding farewell, and both left without breaking the silence.” For many years I have had conversations with a friend about the power of being versus that of doing. Here is a dramatic case in point. What Sri Anirvan was as a human being spoke more deeply and powerfully than words could express. Can we learn from such a one that our quality of being matters far more than ever what we say?
Lizelle Reymond describes the after-effect of the encounter in this way: “There was nothing left of the emotional impulses that I had known in some spiritual disciplines - impulses of devotion, of self-abandonment, of submission, of a sudden understanding of what was beyond me, of gratitude to those on my path who had opened up my heart and mind.”
“This time I felt alone and laid bare in my inner life. And his look held me to the awareness of the moment without any possibility of escape.” (p. xi Ibid.) Her “taste of truth” was so powerful that months later she wrote to Sri Anirvan asking if she could work with him “under any conditions whatsoever and no matter where.”
I find the story of this life changing encounter exceedingly powerful. It reinforces what I am trying to say about how to get on with your spouse or for that matter, with anyone. I need to share with another on a level of a deeply shared space of compassion and understanding that will change the quality of our relationships for ever. Anything we can do, including a deep listening that we perhaps have not tried before, to enter that Divine space together, is worth unending effort. Glory be to God. Amen
By AL MCGEE
When I first observed people sitting for meditation I was in awe of their obvious dedication and devotion. Seeing these meditators sitting so tall, still and serene, I wondered if it would ever be possible for me, too, to sit as they did, poised and collected, still and calm, full of bliss. The way they sat was awe-inspiring to me, so utterly different from anything I’d ever seen in Protestant worship.
There actually was no comparison. I thought: ‘They know something I do not know.‘ I knew in my bones when I saw them that I had been missing something essential, something deep and necessary to engage the whole of my being. My achingly starved soul longed to enter that space or that zone that these people seemed to inhabit. I felt that I knew nothing about spirituality and that perhaps these people could teach me.
Well, fifteen years has passed now and the practice of sitting for meditation in the early hours of the morning is a deeply ingrained habit. And it’s meaning more to me, not less, as time passes. If I knew that a more powerful practice existed to calm the restless mind and to raise the spirit, I would do it. As it is, this simple practice of sitting cross-legged with a straight spine while repeating a mantra prayerfully seems to me to be the best thing I can do to find a certain, exquisite, lightness of being.
Sitting for meditation always involves for me a shift from a heavy, burdened spirit to a light one. I sit in the early hours of the morning poised for bliss and usually find it. I sit poised in the presence of God in my meditation practice just as I stand poised in His presence weekly at the Divine Liturgy.
I don’t think that we can ever expect that our lives will be changed in any deep and insignificant ways unless we are poised and ready for change. We need to put ourselves into position for change to occur. Deep change is possible, I think, if we learn to stand tall and to sit tall, poised and ready to be baptized by the Spirit into deep bliss.
People I meet tell me all the time that they never do anything like what I’ve just described, ever. It seems to them that a meditation practice is but some great mystery, beyond their scope of interests and concerns. They say that they cannot imagine actually ever doing such a thing. I’m at the point where I cannot imagine living without this kind of spiritual practice!
Our Meditation session on Tuesday night is not a hugely popular event. Few people come though thousands of angels are there weekly. I have so much conviction about it that, even if it’s only ever just me and the angels, I will still feel happy about it. I’m thinking that perhaps we may take a short break in the year 2030. Perhaps. No, probably not. We’ll keep going through 2040, God willing. When people do join us, we receive them with great joy and feel so fortunate to share this practice of stillness that means everything to me.
Sri Anirvan, the Hindu holy man who changed Lizelle Reymond’s life forever, describes what it was like for him as a little boy to observe his parents meditating: “My father and my mother would rise very early in the morning, take their baths and sit side by side before a picture of their Guru. And they would meditate for a long time. We had a small house; when the curtain was drawn back, I would stare at them from my bed. They sat motionless, so still! That stillness made me full of awe, And I thought: ‘There must be something in that stillness.‘ So, after a while, I began to imitate them and I felt: ‘Oh! so this is what they have!’ (p 248 “To Live Within”, Lizelle Reymond and Sri Anirvan) What wonderful words these are! The little boy, upon observing his parent’s meditation practice, was so impressed that he concluded: ‘There must be something in that stillness.’
It’s quite amazing, I think, that this little boy, upon watching his parents do absolutely nothing, that is, just sitting there, quiet and still, began to feel some great, grand hope that, if he, too, were to sit quietly and in stillness that he could attain something wonderful! The little guy wanted to have an experience like his parents. He hoped and longed for a kind of inner sensation, a sensation of being attuned and aligned with God’s Spirit, of being wholly in communion with Him. I used to feel as a young boy in contrast that if I could just get away from the church where my parents worshipped that there would be hope for me!
I’m going to emphasize here that we need to be poised to be blessed and poised to find bliss. So that means, for example, sitting up tall and standing straight. There are three twists in our spine. Our spines are crooked. Sri Anirvan writes about how there’s a relation between a twisted, crooked spine and twisted, crooked thinking. To find bliss we need to straighten our spines. If we straighten our spines, our minds will be straightened out without having to go for expensive psychotherapy!
When we straighten up and wait long enough for the pain to subside, a certain energy begins to flow freely between the base of our spine up through the crown of the head. A certain light and warmth can be experienced usually arising in the tailbone area and then rushing up the spine and up out of our heads.
I had a rather dramatic experience of this flood of warm energy travelling up through my body when I was 20 years old. The experience was so powerful that it led to my transferring out of the Education Faculty into taking preparatory courses to enter the ministry.
I think that our forever false idea is to think that we will find satisfaction through some external event of some kind, such as, for example, moving to a new location and acquiring a new home. The problem always is of course that we have to take ourselves to the new place and live with ourselves there, just as in the old location. It’s actually very easy to be miserable wherever we are. An inner shift is required for true bliss to be found and felt.
I’d like to share with you Sri Anirvan’s specific instructions about how to be poised for bliss. He says: “Just sit straight. Close your eyes and try to feel the spinal column as straight. Forget that it is not straight. Imagine that it is straight! Gradually you will feel a lightness and also that heat is being generated. Your temperature rises. If on a winter night you sit erect outside in the cold, even if you shiver and whine like a puppy, you will feel heat being produced with you.” I haven’t tried that yet, but you never know. I just might.
He goes on: “To sit straight still and rigid, eyes closed, is to be living truly within. Deep concentration takes place. Go deeper into a vast calmness, a deep vital energy and an illumination. To sit straight is to think straight. You must sit straight, die straight, with no crookedness and no bending. Then you are open, waiting for eternity.” (p. 218 Ibid)
What I do not wish to live with is a sense of heaviness either in my body or in my soul. Deep meditation, as I said, takes away the sense of heaviness to replace it with an exquisite lightness of being.
At this time of year we are again involved in a fast as Orthodox Christians, anticipating Christmas. We’re practicing not simply giving in to our various animalistic impulses. The experience of letting go of the heavy food has the effect of creating a lightness of being.
In a cruel experiment a man once threw a bunch of monkeys into a deep well. For the first few days he threw some food into the well and could hear the monkeys shrieking and fighting with each other for it. Then he stopped giving them food. I am not enjoying tell you this story!
“For many days the man heard shrieking and hissing from the well and then it stopped. The man thought: “They must all be dead. Then he peered over the edge of the well. No movement. No sound...
Tied to a rope, he let himself down and saw a mass of dead bodies, partly dismembered, savagely contorted. But on a stone which was jutting slightly out of the wall, there sat a small monkey, his arms wrapped tightly around his body, his eyes wide open staring at nothing.” (p. 22 Ibid) One little monkey survived. Why? The story suggests that he was alive because he did not give in to his crude animal impulses. By refusing to participate in the fight for the food he entered a deeper dimension of himself. He tapped into certain spiritual energies dormant within him.
It is said that the little monkey then demonstrated various miraculous powers. I’m not going to push my monkey story too far here but am using it to make a point. That point is to say that if I choose to sit tall, poised for bliss through meditation and poised for bliss by disciplining my various appetites and impulses, that I can trust that my inner being will be renewed and rejuvenated.
It is said that the rays of the sun are embedded in carbon and that upon experiencing tremendous pressure the arrangement of the atoms is changed to produce a diamond. We, too, are like that carbon, unformed and shapeless. But if we focus our attention and position ourselves to be poised and ready, we, too, will experience a certain life changing, creative pressure. Our energies that formerly were dispersed everywhere will coalesce inwardly. This experience of synergy will lift us out of any dull, heavy state of inertia into an experience of an exquisite, diamond-like sense of being.
Sri Anirvan writes about the birth of Christ in our inner being. Surely if Christ’s presence is there in our hearts there will be a sense of the crushing of heavy matter, that is, a crushing of all those things which burden and enslave us. As that “heavy matter” is crushed, we will be fashioned into God’s likeness and Being, which is light.
‘Come to me’, Jesus implored, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ His presence, in other words, has a freeing effect. ‘If the Son of Man makes you free, you shall be free indeed.‘
So, here I am poised and ready as I sit for mediation and poised and ready as I stand in the Divine Liturgy. There’s something I need to do, after all. No great change will occur if I’m just sitting there like a bump on a log! Thanks be to God. Amen.
A friend of mine, who happens to be a psychotherapist, used to say about this or that person, not unkindly: “She’s not there”. By the statement “she’s not there” she meant that somehow the person in question was not fully present. Perhaps such a one is standing there before you but still absent somehow. As we might say: “She lives somewhere else but not in her body and not in her life.”
We say for example about someone that “Yes, she appeared at the event. She was there the other evening but only physically, not in any other way.” We might say: “Yes, I met her at the party or after church but it was a non-event. We might say and perhaps unkindly, “Yes, she was there in some bodily sense only. Her lights were on but, it didn’t seem that anybody was home. I recall that she chattered incessantly but nobody had any idea what she was talking about. Eventually something distracted her, thank God, and we were able to make our get-away.”
My psychotherapist friend would often go on to say that she thought that to not “be there” is a choice that many people make. They choose never to be in their bodies and in their lives and live somewhere else instead. Her explanation for their absence from their life was that many of these live within their emotions and distractions. That is, they do not live from a deeper ground for their being. Which means therefore that they never show up anywhere soulfully. We call these social butterflies, flitting about.
So these folk who are never present though they are present, may of course be ever so busy, running hither and yon but, as the years go by it is found that they have been fulfilling what T.S. Eliot wrote about in his play “The “Cocktail Party”. In the play, the psychiatrist O’Reilly talks about how many people live their lives without ever truly knowing each other and who then go on to create children who don’t know each other. An endless empty cycle. The central character in the play is Celia a seeker after wisdom and truth who has had quite enough of the ‘phoniness’ and is determined to find another way to live. The other way to live has to do with discovering a life within that is deeper than one’s social act.
My therapist friend did not speak with a sense of disdain about the people she observed. It was a fact for her that many people show up here, there and everywhere not as vital and real presences but as walking, talking, joking robotic, automatons. These have demonstrably not found the “key”, if there is one, that enables one to be “fully there” whenver they’re somewhere.
There is much talk today in spirituality circles about the importance of being present. I think that what’s required to be present is that I have to first be present to the deeper life or soul within myself, an experience that does not come easily. Great and sustained attention is required to cultivate that deeper dimension.
As I write, I’m flashing back to when, many years ago, I sat in a horribly boring class at the University of Victoria. Hundreds of students sat there with me, dulled and bored. Sardines in a can we were, enduring the unendurable, in a class called “Social Psychology”. But, happy day, one little guy, way off in the upper left corner kept looking back and around the room, doing, as it seemed to me, the kind of scan of everything, that I always do. Our eyes met. We instantly knew what each of us was thinking which was something like: “All of this is a colossal waste of time and, surely there’s something more to life and I’m going to find it!” A friendship began, one of my best ever, with Ian Rabin, the Jewish rock musician from New York. Ian had soul. He was vividly present there in that class and then in my life as a friend. Ian! If you’re out there somewhere! I remember you with great affection!
The story is told that in ancient India there once lived a nun who was required to become a Queen. She agreed to play this role but with one condition. This was that she would be allowed to have a room for herself to which only she had a key. No intruders allowed and especially not the King!
But as time went on, the King did not like this arrangement. He wanted control of everything, including her secret. It is said that he was also “jealous of her radiance.” He could not account for the vitality of her presence. She was in touch with a reality he knew nothing about.
So one day the king followed his queen to her secret room to find out what was going on there. Upon seeing him, the Queen did not react but simply went about her business. In an exceedingly plain room, all bare and whitewashed, the Queen took off her rich attire and jewels and put on a sackcloth robe. Then she meditated for a very long time, seated on the floor. Finally she turned to face the King and said: “Here I am “myself” a woman who loved God alone before she became Queen and who still loves only God.” (p. 95 “To Live Within”, Lizelle Reymond)
I love this story about knowing a deeper life than the surface role that is played. That she was the Queen meant nothing to her! She didn’t care about the status and recognition it brought. It was simply a role she played. Her deeper life was what she found in deep meditation. It was that life, cultivated alone in her room on the floor while wearing sackcloth that caused her to be a radiant presence. Her powerful presence, her ability to be “really there” was the result of deep spiritual practice.
Another aspect of the Queen’s meditation practice was the element of renunciation. It’s easy to think that to renounce is to give up some external thing. Well, that may well be. But there is a deeper renunciation that Lizelle Reymond writes about it. It is the giving up of all emotion whatsoever. (p. 172 Ibid) As I said, in quoting the psychotherapist, emotions and distractions disable our ability to “be there”. Says Lizelle Reymond about destroying emotion: “If you want to climb to the top of a mountain, do not lose yourself in sentimental ramblings about its beauty. It is better to look for a clearly marked path that will take you to the top.” (p. 170 Ibid.) That is, do not get all “happy clappy” about this or that. “Get a life!” as we say. Which in this context means the discovery of a life that exists beyond our emotional one.
We’ve got to destroy our emotions, as Metropolitan Anthony described to the philosopher, Jacob Needleman. Professor Needleman had noticed that Fr Bloom’s Russian Orthodox choir sang without emotion. Which did not mean that there wasn’t deep feeling there. Anthony Bloom explained to Needleman that it had taken a long time for his choir to shift from emotion to feeling. There’s an enormous difference between these two things.
Emotion has to be destroyed so that inner feeling can emerge. To find “ananda”, the bliss of our being, is not about emotion but concerns something much deeper than that. The bliss of our life is a deeper sensation than emotion. It is a steadying force within.
It was this deeper dimension of being that Lizelle began to discover when she first met Sri Anirvan. As I wrote and said last week, “the taste of truth” destroyed the emotional impulses that she had known before, including impulses of devotion, of self-abandonment, of submission, of sudden understanding or gratitude. This time, as she wrote: “I felt alone and laid bare in my inner life. His look held me to the awareness of the moment without any possibility of escape.” (p. xi Ibid)
Sri Anirvan was helping Lizelle to discover an inner stability and balance that exists beyond emotion and beyond the distractions of the mind.
I was up very late last evening and so was surprised when I woke up early. As is my practice, I sat for meditation. The shift I experienced was so deep. When I went back to bed I fell into a very deep sleep. The result was a sense of grounding in ultimate reality. I had to face a crisis the next day. I was able not to flinch in the slightest during the tension. I am sure that that was because of the early morning meditation.
I repeat over and again: “Lord Have Mercy, Lord Have Mercy”, or, “Om Namah Christaya, Om Namah Christaya.” I cannot live without meditation. How’s your practice going? I think that the ability to really “be there”, to be fully present to others, is related to the alone time spent in deep meditation. Otherwise, we can tend to be social fluffs, social lightweights. So, I repeat that not “being there” means that I’m not here, that is, not living in a vital connection with the ground of my being. The remedy is to acquire a still mind and the steadying sensation of an abiding deeper reality. “
I’d like to consider here two possible approaches to getting on with your spouse. One approach doesn’t work but is well-used and exceedingly popular. The other approach does work but is rarely tried.
The first approach is what I began to observe when I was a young Pastor. I had this idea that it would be a very nice thing to invite couples over to our home as a way of reaching out to them. Too often the invited couple would spend the evening jabbing at each other. Snaps, cuts, jabs, little put-downs and insults. Never all- out- war, at least not in public. Instead, when out for a social evening these couples engaged in lots of little pokes and jabs. Perhaps they imagined that the tensions between them were not being noticed! I noticed and was aware during these long, tortuous evenings that the couple had “issues”, lots of unworked out stuff.
Their failing approach to each other was kind of like a boxing match. ‘If I can jab him here or cut him there , or if really lucky, land a solid punch, then, maybe he’ll see that light of day that I’ve been wanting him to see, all these years.‘ If I can just stab him really well with the final, sharp, wounding, word, ie my latest insight into what his problem is, then he will see how wanting and deficient he is and will come around to my way of looking at things.’
I personally couldn’t take these ”couples evenings.” I’d spend days recovering from being with some “nice” couple from the church. I established at the time a way of evaluating whether a social evening had been worth the effort or not. I called it the “residual effect”. My wife and I would ask each other: “What’s the lingering, residual effect of having been with Fred and Mary the other evening? Is there an inspiring after-glow, a sense of inspiration? Is the energy flowing at the thought of the time spent with them? Or are we recovering?” Sadly the effect of being with far too many couples was a sense that our energy had been depleted and exhausted.
Perhaps many of these couples went away feeing just fine about the time. They’d unloaded their stuff and left it with us. How nice for them. But I got tired of being used in that way. So I began to practice the idea, as I used to say to myself: ‘Life is short. My time and energy is limited. I’m going to pray for the gift of discernment as to how best to use my time.’
My wife and I have somehow lived in another zone, another territory, indeed another world! We energize and inspire each other constantly. I have never put my wife down in any social context and she, likewise. We don’t have any “unworked out stuff”. We have had lots of wonderfully royal battles over the years all in the effort to make sure that the relationship continues to go on from “strength to strength.”
We were advised as a young couple never to let the sun go down on our anger which has meant that sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning we’ve had to face this or that difficulty. When someone tells me that in their marriage a cross word has never been shared I know absolutely that he’s either lying or on some very effective medication of some kind. If there’s spirit there will be sparks. I think that a couple who live dynamically and deeply are experts at delivering shock therapy to each other. They do not dim and dull their inter-action but heat-up and intensify it. Surely the effect of a deeply shared love is to electrify each other.
So this first approach to getting on with your spouse, though very popular, does not work. ‘Going after him’ in this way or that doesn’t ever seem to work, no matter how dedicated you are to tearing him limb from limb. But I am not saying that you should give up in despair while he watches football and you get fat, in another room, watching so- called “Reality TV”. There’s another approach entirely to getting on with your spouse.
This other approach has to do with a deeper listening than you’ve ever done before. For example, she says something and, before I respond, I must play back to her what she’s just said. My task is to sum up and to rephrase so well what she’s just said that she will respond: “That is accurate. You’ve understood exactly what I’m trying to say.”
If she cannot say wholeheartedly that my summation is correct then I must try again and try harder to say what she’s said. I have to listen more intently, which means that I have to separate from my ego to hear her. I have to kill the compulsion in me to make my dam point before I’ve understood hers.
I must not give up in trying to “hear” her. I have to be “all ears” and I have to be present to her with great respect and great love and with al my heart.
There is no time limit here. I have to be able to say well what she’s just said or be quiet. For there is no point in going on. If I have not understood her, then I do not have the “green light” to say anything. If I speak now without having heard her, the message I’m sending is that I can’t get past my own agenda and don’t want to. I’m intent on making my point instead of listening for hers. So it’s better to sit there like a dumb ox than to make yet another of my unhelpful points. It’s better to be quiet then to begin to argue.
Perhaps if I am quiet long enough I will begin to experience that inner shift that creates enough space within me to “be able” to hear and understand another human being. If I do not know what it means to create space inside myself it’s a message, perhaps an unwelcome one that, I have a lot of inner work to do before I will be a worthy partner to anyone, let alone by spouse.
If I cannot listen, which is an indication that my inner life is clogged, then I need to practice getting unclogged. Perhaps sitting in silence for 10 minutes a day would be a good start. Is that more than you’re willing to do for the sake of a quality relationship? You’re rather be “up and doing”, would you? You won’t feel that way when she’s lying there dying and you recall that you never really took the time to hear your spouse’s deep heart.
I’ve been reading the philosopher, Jacob Needleman, for more than 30 years now. I’ve read his classic “Lost Christianity” at least 15 to 20 times. Because of Needleman, I became aware of Anthony Bloom. Because of Metropolitan Anthony, I’m an Eastern Orthodox Christian. My debt is very great to Jacob Needleman. So when I read somewhere the other day his recommendation of a book I acted promptly.
Jacob Needleman describes “To Live Within” by Lizelle Reymond as “one of the most profound, hopeful and spiritually authentic books of our time, offering clear evidence that there does in fact exist a science of inner awakening.” (on the cover of “To Live Within”, Lizelle Reymond and Sri Anirvan)
I immediately found the book at a local bookstore and now cannot put it down. Needleman introduces the book by saying: “There exist certain books that quietly appear in the world and quietly live apart from the world, where their inner force moves the hearts and minds of all who chance to find them.” (Ibid)
Lizell Reymond had an unexpected encounter with an East Indian spiritual teacher who changed her life forever. And he changed her life without saying anything to her! That, I’m sure, is how the entire quality of a marriage relationship could change forever if at least one partner begins the practice of learning how not to say anything but instead learns to be something.
When Lizell Reymond, guided by a good friend, met Sri Anirvan she expected conversation. There was none! Instead as they sat together in the early evening on a veranda, as she writes: “a strange silence fell upon us, enveloping us completely. And the silence persisted, soon becoming heavy and oppressive. I no longer knew what I was doing. I yearned to escape. My back and my neck grew numb...” and soon, as Needleman says, “she was wondering if she could bear it much longer.”
“The time seemed without end. But then the atmosphere seemed to lighten and, at the same time, there came a relaxation of mind and muscles, a slackening of tension in the plants and trees, in the very air itself. My breathing became almost imperceptible, my body felt supple, as light as a feather; I thought that it was filled with a new consciousness that came from the heart.”
“Two or three hours passed. Night came with the stars and the sounds of crickets. And at a certain moment, her host ( the friend I mentioned) quietly rose, bowed before Sri Anirvan, as did she, nodding farewell, and both left without breaking the silence.” For many years I have had conversations with a friend about the power of being versus that of doing. Here is a dramatic case in point. What Sri Anirvan was as a human being spoke more deeply and powerfully than words could express. Can we learn from such a one that our quality of being matters far more than ever what we say?
Lizelle Reymond describes the after-effect of the encounter in this way: “There was nothing left of the emotional impulses that I had known in some spiritual disciplines - impulses of devotion, of self-abandonment, of submission, of a sudden understanding of what was beyond me, of gratitude to those on my path who had opened up my heart and mind.”
“This time I felt alone and laid bare in my inner life. And his look held me to the awareness of the moment without any possibility of escape.” (p. xi Ibid.) Her “taste of truth” was so powerful that months later she wrote to Sri Anirvan asking if she could work with him “under any conditions whatsoever and no matter where.”
I find the story of this life changing encounter exceedingly powerful. It reinforces what I am trying to say about how to get on with your spouse or for that matter, with anyone. I need to share with another on a level of a deeply shared space of compassion and understanding that will change the quality of our relationships for ever. Anything we can do, including a deep listening that we perhaps have not tried before, to enter that Divine space together, is worth unending effort. Glory be to God. Amen
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