Do you live in a happy, healthy relationship?

Do you live in a happy, healthy relationship?

Lucky you! The majority of us probably have arranged ourselves with our situation in cultures where we blindly follow our emotions or in cultures where the needs and the status of the family is a more important factor.

A word we do no use too often in western societies is the responsibility. My father was responsible enough to marry my mother after they found out that she was pregnant. But my father himself was an orphan and the role models in his life … I never asked him and now he is gone.

You probably have enough common knowledge that out parents are our main role models. In a way this is know in the bible:!...I am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation…"  Often we look like our grandparents and behave like out parents - they are our role models.

Can I ask you? Did your parents sit down with you and explain how love works? If you were lucky you got a sexual education and you were told. "You do it when you love somebody". But you were not told how to love somebody. Maybe I am unjust. It is not so long ago that even in Germany marriages are arranged and in areas with a low density of population you take what you get better what is available. Some times when I drive through remote areas in the Philippines or in Africa and I see young girls playing along the roads I pity them for their limited options in education and in finding a suitable mate. I know where ever you are you can "Make Love Work". And if the area is not densely populated the temptation after marriage is not as demanding as in a big city or even in a squatter area. For us westerners - as the Chinese like to call us - love is the central theme in our lives. And often it does not stop when we get married but resurfaces after some years when we have paid the mortgage and the kids start to have their own families. And despite the fact that we can look back to 20 or more years of conscious living and a few years of conscious loving we know for us what worked and what did not. But most of us do not feel competent to hand a guideline to our children.

Should you not change that? If you are young you should learn how to operate or at least drive your love life and not be driven by it. And if you are in the second half of your live, it is never too late to learn or at least to understand what happened. Here is the link: Make Love Work by Eugen Grathwohl

Can we learn (to) Love?

Flowers for love at all Saints day

Have you been told how to love? Have you been told how to love by a successful "lover" or by a disappointed lonely woman? Do you get my point? We are never told how to Make Love Work".

We copy the ways our parents showed us, maybe our uneducated same-age friends tell us or how we liked it in a movie.

Then we fall in love and are happy.

After some time we are no longer so happy and if we ask our role models we are told "That is normal!"

Is it normal?

Yes, if normal is what the majority experiences.

Is it inevitable?

No!

I think it is OK to start living and loving and have one or two failed relationships, but then we should stop and look what goes wrong and where to find a solution or a teacher.

When we are young and inexperienced we are unsure if we do things the right way and maybe insecure how to do things when we come into contact with the other gender, especially if this is a person fate has chosen to be outstanding in our life.

But it is really a problem to find a sound instruction how to love the right way.

I am not sure is there is a right way. Maybe the trial and error approach we practice today is the best. If yes, I wrote my book "Make Love Work" for me and not for you. Which would be sad financially, but ok spiritually because I learnt a lot?

Maybe older or smarter people in a way are not only older and smarter but arrogant to. (I am afraid I am both - older and smarter. We think the others should not make the same mistakes as we did. That is was parents do, don't you agree?

Some of our mistakes are so obvious after we have gone through the experiences that we do not understand why we did not see it from the start. Don’t you think it would be nice to have a book that teaches you how to love without pleasing a deity? It is amazing we are told God love us and love is the highest. But the ones teaching us engage themselves more in warfare than in love making.

The intention of the eBook "MakeLove Work" was and is, to help you see and understand some of the mechanisms we experience when we "love" but which are not necessarily connected to love itself.

I also would like to see love in a less religious way, even if I am not sure if we can separate love from God.

Make Love Work

Years back I was very active in my spiritual group. By the way I found a nice definition of religious

Make Love Work - Get first hand experiences

and spiritual:

In the group there was a man who had not been very active for some years but was now. In one discussion, I am not sue maybe he felt accused, he something like "Building a house and paying the mortgage is as spiritual as sitting around in an Ashram". I am not very sure why it stuck. Since then every now and then it pops up in my head and I am asking myself if I am hiding or of I live a spiritual life.

Christmas is near and with it the need for Christmas gifts for him and Christmas gifts for her. I am not sure if this enforced giving and commanded loving is necessary.

I like to think all that is is necessary one way or the other. Christmas gifts for him and Christmas gifts for her for sure are a way to spend money needed in more and better spend in other places. I read that the average spending on America for Christmas gift for him and Christmas gifts for her amounted to almost 900$ per family in 2012. And the self gifting was 59% Well this I am sure was one of the reason Amazon was happy. I published my first book in Amazon in the first week of December. (Make Love Work) You should consider it as a self gifting target, but it is a nice gift for all the couples you know (except the newly wed). It is almost 200 pages and will not dig a big hole into your budget,

Now I am fascinated by the word self.gifting. But I wanted to write about the spiritual adventure of paying the mortgage over some time or like I did writing a big or a blog. Wise people say, I say it too but I am not sure if I am already wise, that it is good to keep a dairy. When I wrote Make Love Work I did not because I was using up my energy to write and did into the other worlds to find gems I can write about.  But for sure I agree that it is a spiritual adventure.

I appreciate and salute all those people here in the Philippines who are brave enough and probably determined enough to buy a house, a condo or even only a car.

Do you have a vison for your life?

I am not even sure how it happened! I was reading an article in Der Spiegel about journalism, journalists, Snowdon and the end of democracy.
I had known about the government spying on its citizens,because a few years ago, as a translator, I had translated some manuals. And here in the Philippines the TV series "Person of interest" is shown. What really shocked me was the extend by which we are spied on.  And a question that never was answered, not even asked, was/is "Whom do they think they protect" with millions or even billions of our (taxpayers) money?
Then I read about an e-Store builder, because one of my options is to have my own online store.
Maybe it adds that the last few days I had thought or better wondered why I seem to have problems to find the proper people to work together with.
Now I also remember when I went to bed last night I was thinking about my leader qualities and my "lack" of follower qualities.
Yes, then it happened, like a flash of lightning it hit me"I only plan my future and live it"
I live my live like an employee. No, this is not to belittle employees, it is more the mechanism I want to point out: I plan my future, I set goals, and milestones and start working to realizes it. At the milestones I stop and check, adjust means and direction. And very often I reach my set goal.
Yes sometimes I do not. But I never fail, because I always learn.
This had made me content and no matter if I was in an up or a down part of the live cycles I knew I do well.
Do you see what I mean? I have no vision to follow!
You may wonder what makes the difference some call it a goal others call it a vision.
I see a huge difference!
A goal is something you know, see or have heard about.
A vision is something that only exists in the other worlds and you started to make it come true in this world too. The Apple founder Steve Jobs was a visionary!

Yes, not everybody can be a Steve Jobs. And if you live an ordinary live a goal might suit you well and even put you in the top section of mankind, because most struggle day to day to "survive".
What if this is the problem?
What if we struggle so much
because we do not have a vision?
I am not talking about hard times, even visionaries have them (Jobs for example had cancer, as you know). What I mean is most of us are like soldiers in a medieval battle, we see the enemy closing in on use, swords threatening us and step by step we advance or move back wards, we get wounded and continue to fight.
If we have a vision, we do not only see the enemy in front of us, we know what we fight for and more like the commander on his hill, we see the battle as a whole!

Maybe you should stop for a moment and check if you have a plan for your life and your family and probably even your business. And if you follow a religious or spiritual path, kindly do not exclude it!

Is founding a new business a new andventure?

Having the tendency to be a loner, I had kept my spiritual life separated from my every day life. But still I was quite active in our local Eckankar group.  Are you doing the same? Then, years back another member of Eckankar who was not so active because he had bought a house and needed to pay the mortgage (work harder) in a discussion asked exactly the same question: "Do you think it is less spiritual to be fully involved in life?"
About a month ago I joined CashUnite and emerging worldwide MLM company. Currently the known Product is a MultiMediaSuite. The Company is still in pre-launch which may give me a head start, but if the announcement are all hot air, I will have a painful landing in reality. Do you know why I joined CashUnite? Because I saw the potential of the MultiMediaSuite. But I am also a dreamer! I like to see the world and its part very idealized - I am a loving optimist. Do not get me wrong. Like every human I have my dark moments. Moments when he dark forces of fear and doubt attack me, when the routine of daily life  lowers my guards and when the soft skin of a bosom steals the memory of real life and lulls me into the wish to stay there and all will be fine. Or when worries for money, health or family (sometimes even mankind) cut my eagle wings and try to confine me to a chicken pen.
And even when my eagle feet scratch ground at night I am back to the sky and be what I am - a free Soul. And in the morning when live catches up in the back of my mind lingers the memory of being free and knowing I CAN DO IT.
Then back to CashUnite and the recruiting the waves of daily stupidity force me to raise my guard. But life can be cruel wave by wave it crashed into my defense an often before lunch my defense is down, overloaded, to weak. So the only thing which is left is to limp back into the chicken pen and with discipline finish the task of the day.
But I am and eagle, I am Soul and no longer need the bars to protect me from life. When I feel the waves sucking out my feathers, driving me back into the chicken pen I remember my life line: Love even if the waves crash in me like a Kingfisher (susulbot in tgl) I emerge and rise again.
Cashunite is not only an adventure for me, it is a spiritual training ground.
I invite you to join me in this journey. CashUnite is new and it is only online, but if you prefer established companies Amway or Nuskin it will work as well.
Yes I hope the MultiMediaSuite will be a success because I need the money. But it is only money, but the experience independent of the outcome will last! SO money would be nice and hopefully comes, but the ways is the goal!
Come join, lets start this adventure (it is worldwide)

Goal setting in the inner and the outer

More than half a life time back I came to Eckankar. At first the goal was clear I wanted to become a HI, an Higher Initiate. When I finally reached that goal my live changed, which was to be expected - in the inner and the outer. It took me about 6 month to master the mayor changes and deal with it in the inner. And then?
Yes!
And then I realized I had no more goal!
You might think "And? What is the problem?"
You define a new goal!
 I agree and that is easy as long as you can imagine what is within your reach.
Imagine you die, reach the pearly gates and St. Peter asks you what you want to do the next million of years. If you do not know what the heaven really is, it is difficult to image what to go, where to go.

About 2 month ago a long term contact ended and I was a freelancer again (without regular income) and about 1 month aho I came across Cashunite. Gathering the available information together with my knowledge if the net, I immediately saw a huge potential for me and for others. So I decided to go for it and as a side effect help others.
As a spiritual being in a certain situation I tend to see something for me to learn and something to give. For a beggar a coin might be worth much more than a friendly or wise word.
Well, I have more wisdom to share than coins.

Now with Cashunite I could do both. If you know the Philippines you know that beside miles and miles of endless empty beaches and a beautiful landscape, there are also lots and lots of social problems. What I referring too is that schooling/eduction is expensive and that there is no divorce law. So many women are dumped by there husbands, together with their children.
Being an online worker I also do a lot of chatting and meet a lot of those women.
There is hardly a week I am not asked if I have work for them. With Cashunite I thought I have.
I admit I am a dreamer, a careful dreamer. Cashunite, like many other Internet businesses promisses a lot. So not to give false hope I was thinking up what to do if Cashunite did not work out. With this in mind I started to promote and offer this chance to the dumped mothers and ex-wives.
I had expected that they more than willingly would grab this opportunity.
I was wrong.
And I had problems understanding!
But with questioning the ones I knew from chatting I realized most of them had a fairly close horizon. It is like  living in a small valley. What I was offering them was behind their horizon and hardly imaginable. Like I was when I finally had reached my first spiritual goal in Eckankar. To make things worse, things we do not know create a feeling of uncertainty and fear. But fear is something we try to avoid instead of confront.
So here I was with a solution to their problem. In a way this is a frustrating situation.
But frustration is not a solution! They could not imagine and hence could not set it as a  goal!
Then what is the solution?

Well, as Richard Bach says in his book "Illusions - the adventure of a reluctant Messiah" we are looking for problems because we want the gifts hidden in the solution.
One of my gifts is to realize that this outer experience is a reflection of something inner I go through.
And the solution for these women and their children?
That is NOT my problem! Hence my solution would deprive them from the gifts they learn by solving their problem?
So I am an egoist?
It may seem so, but I think it takes more love to let people do what they need to do for themselves than to insist on a solution which is not theirs.
I would not be surprised if this is the reason why so many development projects fail.

I already learned a lot by joining Cashunite. I invite you to join me in this adventure - no matter where in the world you are! It can solve your financial problems, but even if not you know often walking the way is what matters, not (only) reaching the goal.

Spirituality and Vulnerability

I read an interesting blog  (Ethics for doing Good) which inspired me to write this:

I do not think God makes mistakes, but this would be bad for God (no mistakes means no learning means no growth). Let me correct myself: "God makes no mistakes in the area we humans can understand."

Vulnerability has to do with self-esteem and how I perceive the others especially the offender. If a little child shouts the worst insult at me most likely I will not feel insulted, but if the president in a kind voice would say:"Oigen, I thought you could do better!" I might not be able to sleep for a night or two. I assume you get my point. But for me the outside is not important, because I cannot control it. Don’t get me wrong, the outside is important not not in connection WITH "my life" but rather as a mirror OF my life. What I mean is that I live basically in my (inner) world and the outer world is an indication of what I have to attend to and what I have achieved.

If I am angered by my neighbor, he behaves in a way which creates a resonance in my inner. If it is anger for example, it is something I have to attend to, or if it is something I like, it shows me what I have achieved. And for your brainies out there this resonances changes. What gives me comfort now (meeting with drinking bodies) might make me sick at a later state of my development.

Years back, when it was time to go to the Philippines, God lured me into it by placing love on my path. We westerners tend to follow our heart, but because I am not a heart person rather a mind person, I also needed an argument to follow my hear. I got the argument and then followed my heart.

In a way which I did not realize at first, it was like being taken out from one petri dish and placed into a different one. From one of the leading countries of the world and time (Germany 2005) I was placed in a location with fast differences.

Whatever I will write might sound judgmental, but this is not my intention. If I apply the mirror technique described earlier, I have to start crying. But then things we do not see, not necessarily do not exist. It is a complicated sentence, but I like it. What I like less is the realization I just had.

I used to apply the mirror technique on specific issues like lets say punctuality, which is a big issue here too, but I was referring to the big picture. Hmmm judgmental again. Do I know if God prefers a certain petri dish (like Germany/US) or 3rd world countries like the Philippines? I am engraved with the German way of life, society, work and the like and hence the Philippine way in a way is the one I compare it too and it falls short of course. Now you could say "Why not go back?" I think that is is not the question and not the point. I am here for a certain reason, and I have to fulfill a certain task. I mean I need a realization, need to learn what I came here for!

Maybe I am a slow learner.

When I started to write I had a different intention of the outcome. I wanted to write for you but ended up writing for me.

So what about this vulnerability?

I think on a physical level we all are vulnerable. What happens if we are hurt? In a way the other shows us our limits. Is that bad? I had an interesting realization this week and it is connected to what we are talking about here: "In our comfort zone we grow fat, if we leave it, we grow personality". 

So why are we hurt if someone tells us the truth?

Thinking about it shows me two options: 1: My ego tells me "I am better!" and my ego feels falsely accused or 2: I did not give my best. If I give my best it was all I could do, so even if the president is kind with his words, he is wrong. And let's be honest, deep inside we "know" the truth and how often we fall short of our best - but hope for the best.

And what is the connection between spirituality and vulnerability?

For me spiritual does not mean doing good in a sense of charity, of giving. Spirituality means living an inner life parallel to the our life or at least of being aware of the inner side of life which in the out often mean letting the others be where and what they are just now.  And this at least at the beginning of the journey means being more vulnerable.

The ego learns to make itself strong or makes us to feel strong and with this strength the outer world loses it challenge and we evolve to become a spiritual being, a spiritual baby. And babies are very vulnerable!

So the vulnerability Callaghan speaks of in his blog is a sign of mankind evolving? Yes!

To become more spiritual?

I am not sure. In the last century Sri Harold Klemp, the leader of Eckankar talked about that mankind is at the brink of evolving to the next level. A few years later USSR went down history lane, war started in former Yugoslavia and other places all over the world then even the war against terrorism started (which was - and still is - an attempt to instill fear into our hearts and minds).  I do not think mankind as a whole evolved. I see it rather like in a chemical reaction. You add a substance to a solution and the more you ad the closer you come to a saturation point where the reaction starts. Or you ad the base substance and the system moves away from the saturation point.

For me this is not good or bad. It simply IS.

I think God infused the base substance and we moved away from the saturation point.

What does that mean for you or me, for those on a spiritual adventure?

Nothing!

Maybe it is even good. Basically nothing changed. IF mankind would have evolved, a lot of things would have changed. Imagine the driving force no longer would be fear but reason. Imagine you are not hurt if someone insults you but you stop and think "Why does he say that?" Or "What is God telling me through this person?"

You might even think you have reached the end of your journey! Richard Bach the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977), made me realize the world is perfect as it is (like the field for a ball game) and Eckankar made me realize God loves us so much IT allows us to make the same mistake again and again until we are no longer vulnerable and start learning.