~ I Set Myself Free ..................

"   I'll keep on striving to be the me I am inside, even if the world doesn't yet see and accept me for that person I want to be on the outside..........."








 


 



 



 



 

Where Is The Solution? ...........

 This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival;
a joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house empty
of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourable.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the same, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each guest has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

We look for solutions in many places,
but where is the solution?
The solution is ............in the human heart.

A woman’s response to “Beautiful advice from a divorced man after 16 years of marriage” .........

began by “Wendy” ...............

I’m a woman, divorced after 7 years of marriage. I read your post and appreciate the heart behind the advice. The fact that you you recognize the part you played in the scheme of things is a feat in itself. Being able to face the past with openness and humility is admirable and not something many can, or even want, to accomplish.

Given my experience, there are some key concepts I learned in my journey as well. We women have equal responsibility in making a marriage work. For all the points mentioned for husbands, there are perhaps also some for wives I would like to share.

1. Seek counsel from older, wiser women who have succeeded in their marriages. It’s impossible to make good decisions when we’re emotional. And seeking counsel from your friends who are your own age isn’t as good as counsel from elderly women.

2. Never forget or take for granted that your man chose you.

3. Always seek out the best in him. Dwell on those things, not what you don't like about him.

4. It’s not your job to change or fix him. We are all on a journey. 

5. We are responsible for our reactions, no one else. We must take full accountability of our emotions and how we respond. And so must he.

6. Allow your man to just be. Be a comfort, be a gentle and giving spirit when the times call for it.


7. Love him in the way he needs it, not the way you assume he needs it. Find out your different love languages and be sensitive and ready to show him you love him in ways he understands best.

8. Be present. Give him your time and attention when he needs it. In my experience, during those times I did serve him, he over time, served me.

9. Be willing to have him sexually. Let him know you need his masculine presence, that you trust him fully.

10. Give him space. He needs times to find his new self (we change constantly) before he can give of himself.
11. Be vulnerable. Do not be afraid to share your fears and feelings. Men tend to know when we’re keeping things from them. And they know when we’re transparent. And, I can’t emphasize this more: acknowledge your mistakes. Say you’re sorry when you know you need to.

12. Do not be afraid to be fully transparent. This builds great trust over time.
13. Find common hobbies, goals and dreams. Also, find common ground in your faith. Never stop growing together. Laugh lots. Fall in love over and over again.
14. Don’t let financial issues come between you.
15. Forgive. Don’t let history hold you or your man hostage.
16. Always, choose love. Love is action, not emotion. Don’t miss that.

Beautiful advice from a divorced man after 16 years of marriage .........

My advice after a divorce following 16 years of marriage, by Gerald Rogers.


Obviously, I’m not a relationship expert. But there’s something about my divorce being finalized this week that gives me perspective of things I wish I would have done different… After losing a woman that I loved, and a marriage of almost 16 years, here’s the advice I wish I would have had ..........

1. Never stop courting. Never stop dating. NEVER EVER take that woman for granted. When you asked her to marry you, you promised to be that man that would OWN HER HEART and to fiercely protect it. This is the most important and sacred treasure you will ever be entrusted with. SHE CHOSE YOU. Never forget that, and NEVER GET LAZY in your love.

2. Protect your own heart. Just as you committed to being the protector of her heart, you must guard your own with the same vigilance. Love yourself fully, love the world openly, but there is a special place in your heart where no one must enter except for your wife. Keep that space always ready to receive her and invite her in, and refuse to let anyone or anything else enter there.

3. Fall in love over and over again.  You will constantly change. You’re not the same people you were when you got married, and in five years you will not be the same person you are today. Change will come, and in that you have to re-choose each other everyday. SHE DOESN’T HAVE TO STAY WITH YOU, and if you don’t take care of her heart, she may give that heart to someone else or seal you out completely, and you may never be able to get it back. Always fight to win her love just as you did when you were courting her.

4. Always see the best in her. Focus only on what you love. What you focus on will expand. If you focus on what bugs you, all you will see is reasons to be bugged. If you focus on what you love, you can’t help but be consumed by love. Focus to the point where you can no longer see anything but love, and you know without a doubt that you are the luckiest man on earth to be have this woman as your wife.

5. It’s not your job to change or fix her… your job is to love her as she is with no expectation of her ever changing. And if she changes, love what she becomes, whether it’s what you wanted or not.
6. Take full accountability for your own emotions: It’s not your wife’s job to make you happy, and she CAN’T make you sad. You are responsible for finding your own happiness, and through that your joy will spill over into your relationship and your love.

7. Never blame your wife if you get frustrated or angry at her, it is only because it is triggering something inside of YOU. They are YOUR emotions, and your responsibility. When you feel those feelings take time to get present and to look within and understand what it is inside of YOU that is asking to be healed. You were attracted to this woman because she was the person best suited to trigger all of your childhood wounds in the most painful way so that you could heal them… when you heal yourself, you will no longer be triggered by her, and you will wonder why you ever were.

8. Allow your woman to just be. When she’s sad or upset, it’s not your job to fix it, it’s your job to HOLD HER and let her know it’s ok. Let her know that you hear her, and that she’s important and that you are that pillar on which she can always lean. The feminine spirit is about change and emotion and like a storm her emotions will roll in and out, and as you remain strong and unjudging she will trust you and open her soul to you… DON’T RUN-AWAY WHEN SHE’S UPSET. Stand present and strong and let her know you aren’t going anywhere. Listen to what she is really saying behind the words and emotion.

9. Be silly… don’t take yourself so damn seriously. Laugh. And make her laugh. Laughter makes everything else easier.

10. Fill her soul everyday… learn her love languages and the specific ways that she feels important and validated and CHERISHED. Ask her to create a list of 10 THINGS that make her feel loved and memorize those things and make it a priority everyday to make her feel like a queen.

11. Be present. Give her not only your time, but your focus, your attention and your soul. Do whatever it takes to clear your head so that when you are with her you are fully WITH HER. Treat her as you would your most valuable client. She is.

12. Be willing to take her sexually, to carry her away in the power of your masculine presence, to consume her and devour her with your strength, and to penetrate her to the deepest levels of her soul. Let her melt into her feminine softness as she knows she can trust you fully.

13. Don’t be an idiot…. And don’t be afraid of being one either. You will make mistakes and so will she. Try not to make too big of mistakes, and learn from the ones you do make. You’re not supposed to be perfect, just try to not be too stupid.

14. Give her space… The woman is so good at giving and giving, and sometimes she will need to be reminded to take time to nurture herself. Sometimes she will need to fly from your branches to go and find what feeds her soul, and if you give her that space she will come back with new songs to sing…. (okay, getting a little too poetic here, but you get the point. Tell her to take time for herself, ESPECIALLY after you have kids. She needs that space to renew and get re-centered, and to find herself after she gets lost in serving you, the kids and the world.)

15. Be vulnerable… you don’t have to have it all together. Be willing to share your fears and feelings, and quick to acknowledge your mistakes.

16. Be fully transparent. If you want to have trust you must be willing to share EVERYTHING… Especially those things you don’t want to share. It takes courage to fully love, to fully open your heart and let her in when you don’t know i she will like what she finds… Part of that courage is allowing her to love you completely, your darkness as well as your light. DROP THE MASK… If you feel like you need to wear a mask around her, and show up perfect all the time, you will never experience the full dimension of what love can be.

17. Never stop growing together… The stagnant pond breeds malaria, the flowing stream is always fresh and cool. Atrophy is the natural process when you stop working a muscle, just as it is if you stop working on your relationship. Find common goals, dreams and visions to work towards.

18. Don’t worry about money. Money is a game, find ways to work together as a team to win it. It never helps when teammates fight. Figure out ways to leverage both persons strength to win.

19. Forgive immediately and focus on the future rather than carrying weight from the past. Don’t let your history hold you hostage. Holding onto past mistakes that either you or she makes, is like a heavy anchor to your marriage and will hold you back. FORGIVENESS IS FREEDOM. Cut the anchor loose and always choose love.

20. Always choose love. ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. In the end, this is the only advice you need. If this is the guiding principle through which all your choices is governed, there is nothing that will threaten the happiness of your marriage. Love will always endure.


In the end marriage isn’t about happily ever after. It’s about work. And a commitment to grow together and a willingness to continually invest in creating something that can endure eternity. Through that work, the happiness will come. Marriage is life, and it will bring ups and downs. Embracing all of the cycles and learning to learn from and love each experience will bring the strength and perspective to keep building, one brick at a time.

These are lessons I learned the hard way. These are lessons I learned too late. But these are lessons I am learning and committed in carrying forward. Truth is, I loved being married, and in time, I will get married again, and when I do, I will build it with a foundation that will endure any storm and any amount of time.

If you are reading this and find wisdom in my pain, share it those those young husbands whose hearts are still full of hope, and with those couples you may know who may have forgotten how to love. One of those men may be like I was, and in these hard earned lessons perhaps something will awaken in him and he will learn to be the man his lady has been waiting for.

Nothing ... but Hope ~

 



Though love is light it becomes darkness when its law is not understood. Just as water, which cleans all things, becomes mud when mixed with earth, so love, when not understood rightly and when directed wrongly, becomes a curse instead of bliss.


There are five chief sins against love, which turn nectar into poison.
1)  when the lover deprives the beloved of freedom and happiness against her desire, because of his love.
2)  when the lover gives way to a spirit of rivalry and jealousy or bitterness in love.
3)   if the lover doubts, distrusts, and suspects the one whom he loves.
4)   if he shrinks from enduring all the sorrows, pains, troubles, difficulties, and sufferings that come in the path of love.
5)  And finally, when the lover pursues his own will instead of complete resignation to the beloved's wish.


These are the natural failings of a loving heart, as maladies are natural to the physical body. As lack of health makes life miserable, so lack of love makes the heart wretched. Only the lover who avoids these faults benefits by love, and arrives safely at his destination.


 Love must be absolutely free from selfishness, otherwise it does not produce proper illumination. If the fire has no flame it cannot give light, and smoke comes out of it, which is troublesome. Such is selfish love.



Love lies in service. Only that which is done, not for fame or name, nor for the appreciation or thanks of those for whom it is done, is love's service.


The lover shows kindness and beneficence to the beloved. He does whatever he can for the beloved in the way of help, service, sacrifice, kindness, or rescue, and hides it from the world and even from the beloved. If the beloved does anything for him he exaggerates it, idealizes it, makes it into a mountain from a molehill. He takes poison from the hands of the beloved as sugar, and love's pain in the wound of his heart is his only joy. By magnifying and idealizing whatever the beloved does for him and by diminishing and forgetting whatever he himself does for the beloved, he first develops his own gratitude, which creates all goodness in his life.


Patience, sacrifice, resignation, strength, and steadfastness are needed in love, and ultimately nothing but hope, until one is united with the beloved. Sacrifice is needed in love to give all there is, wealth, possessions, body, heart, and soul. There remains no 'I', only 'you', until the 'you' becomes the 'I'. Where there is love there is patience, where there is no patience there is no love. The lover takes hope  the only thing that keeps the flame of life alight. Hope to the lover is the rope of safety in the sea.


 The effect of love is pain. The love that has no pain is no love. The lover who has not gone through the agonies of love is not a lover, he claims love falsely. 'What love is it that gives no pain? Even if one were crazy in love it is nothing.' The pain of love is the lover's pleasure, his very life. The lack of pain is his death.


 Everybody can speak of love and claim to love, but to stand the test of love and to bear the pain in love is the achievement of some rare hero. The mere sight of love's pain makes the coward run away from it. No soul would have taken this poison if it had not the taste of nectar.


He who loves because he cannot help it is the slave of love, but he who loves because it is his only joy is the king of love. He who, for the sake of love, loves someone who falls short of his ideal is the ruler of love. And he who can seal his heart full of love in spite of all attraction on the part of the beloved is the conqueror of love.


The heart is not living until it has experienced pain. Man has not lived if he has lived and worked with his body and mind without heart. The soul is all light, but all darkness is caused by the death of the heart. Pain makes it alive. The same heart that was once full of bitterness, when purified by love becomes the source of all goodness. All deeds of kindness spring from it.


 Rumi describes six signs of the lover: deep sigh, mild expression, moist eyes, eating little, speaking little, sleeping little, which all show the sign of pain in love. Hafiz says, 'All bliss in my life has been the outcome of unceasing tears and continual sighs through the heart of night.'


The pain of love becomes in time the life of the lover. The soreness of the wound of his heart affords him a joy that nothing else can give. The heart aflame becomes the torch on the path of the lover, which lightens his way that leads him to his destination. The pleasures of life are blinding, it is love alone that clears the rust from the heart, the mirror of the soul.



When love is for the human being it is primitive and incomplete, and yet it is needed to begin with. He can never say, 'I love God,' who has no love for his fellow man. But when love attains its culmination in God, it reaches its perfection.


Love creates love in man and even more with God. It is the nature of love. If you love God, God sends His love evermore upon you. If you seek Him by night, He will follow you by day. Wherever you are, in your affairs, in your business transactions, the help, the protection and the presence of the Divine will follow you.

Forever Love ........

Open The Door ! .....

   


" The soul feels suffocated when the doors of the heart are closed........"



There is a door to man's heart; it is either closed or open. When he holds a thing and says, 'This is mine,' he closes the door to his heart; but when he shares his goods with others and says, 'This is yours as well as mine,' this opens his heart. We must learn consideration for others; it does not matter whether they are rich or poor. We may have only one slice of bread, but when there is another sitting by our side we share that slice with him. 

By doing this, even if our bodily appetite remains unsatisfied, our heart is filled with joy to think that we shared our happiness with another. It is this spirit which is necessary just now to change the condition of the world, not political and commercial disputes. We must be awakened to the main truth, that the happiness and peace of each can only be the happiness and peace of all.

Why Stress ? ..........

 " Problem is wisdom."

Know Your Rights ...........