marriage counseling

communication is the prime necessity in any relationship.

having attended several workshops, Amalia and i have seen the bitter ends of relationships where the couple hadn't communicated effectively in 10-plus years,
and it isn't fun and certainly isn't a happy time.

relationships are a funny thing. most relationships start out of chance meetings that blossom rather rapidly into significant time spent together.

with your friends, you've probably had years to communicate your feelings, but in romantic relationships the get-to-know-each-other phase is accelerated in proportion to the time spent together. thus communication is crucial to the health of the relationship.

we all arrive into relationships carrying our world-view with baggage.

recognizing that mental baggage has a direct affect on the ability to communicate effectively and efficiently, it is important that each individual first seek truthful introspection. meaning that you must strive to come to peace with your past and your present in order to give your relationship a future.

one exercise we learned helped eliminate listening issues projected by the self. we sat in a large circle in a yurt overlooking the ocean, each couple sitting facing each other knees to knees. when prompted one of us would start a two-minute diatribe sparked by some beginning phrase, such as, "I feel angry when...".

after the time allotted, the other one of us would start with the phrase, "what I heard you say was...," followed by a recanting of all that you had heard said. once you had finished restating as much as you remembered, you would then ask, "did I hear you correctly?" if not, the speaker simply stated, "No," without explanation; thereby leaving you to continue rehashing your understanding until correct.

we now use this method to both understand and to be heard correctly without tempers flaring and or indignation rearing its ugly head.

have you really heard your partner? do you understand the history shaping his or her world-view?

another important aspect i learned that afternoon was that feeling heard diminishes anger and resentment very significantly. sometimes just being heard is sufficient to make the issue vanish from care.

these types of interchange are crucial to the relationship's healthy growth. they serve as insights into the other's perspective, making his or her actions understandable. to understand is to gain respect for their opinions, making them as weighty as yours.

effective communication takes work to start but the end results are a life blessed with love.

love is respect-in-action. to love fully, communicate truthfully without hesitation.


*the above mentioned exercise was part of a Warren Farrell workshop we attended. see the side post of interesting links to find out about Mr. Farrell, or click HERE.

trifecta of your existence, one poem

blessed is the creative life-force rushing through the atoms in your days.

honed at the duality of wave and particle, your yin and yang sides meet to exchange light and dark energy in your mind.

sensing its presence in the world around it, your body is a genetic gateway awash in the universal creative flow.

balance leads to long life
Niels Bohr Max Born Louis de Broglie Nicolaus Copernicus Marie Curie Paul Dirac Albert Einstein Michael Faraday Enrico Fermi Richard Phillips Feynman Edmond Halley Stephen Hawking Werner Karl Heisenberg Edwin Powell Hubble Lord Kelvin Johannes Kepler Irving Langmuir James Clerk Maxwell Robert Andrews Millikan Sir Isaac Newton Blaise Pascal Wolfgang Ernst Pauli Max Planck Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen Sir Ernest Rutherford Erwin Schroedinger Sir Joseph John Thomso Hideki Yukawa

Two years plus of marriage

So the story goes briefly like this:

I, who up until that point was not considering marriage anywhere in the future, was riding a train in France from Paris to Bordeaux reading a book that had thrice hitherto confused me. Hidden in the texts of Steppenwolf lay the key connector between the vision of a door and my viewpoint. Once the mystery vanished in my mind I was left to understand i. Nor more was I to be an I, but an i.

When the ego of I disappeared into i, i realized i had reached the end of myself and found a door. It stood outlined against the end of my mind, in testament to love.

i realized at that moment that i was incomplete. Beyond that door lay love.

Two years plus into our marriage i am stunned beyond measure at the complexities and intricacies of love.

To learn to accept your idiosyncrasies and carve off the rough edges is a wonderfully, at-times scary phenomenon. Love is nothing to balk at, love demands constant attention and respect; and within its release are wonders and delights well beyond oneness.

To speak your heart is to speak Love.

At the bottom of the whole smelly, warm, genetic bottom of it all, love's whisper continually sings out. The way to know love is to listen effectively and without judgment. In that way you give proper respect to the speaker.

Recognizing the projections of I upon another's statements helps bring misconceptions into the mind's view. Love softens the self making more receptive its senses. And receptivity is two-thumbs up good for relationships!

We have learned to speak our minds and to be heard. Both fairly equal in number.

Respecting, caring, releasing and loving are natural stages of our love in action. It is within these self polishers that growth is nurtured and love is cultivated.

Communication was the Key to letting my true self out from beyond selfish mirrors and into Love more fully and deeply than I had ever thought possible.

It is within the racing heartbeat and warm embraces, that i have found my Amalia lovelier than ever. We consider everyday better than the last because we strive to make it so.

We fight rarely and weakly now because the fierceness has gone out of the bite.

One of Love's greatest lessons learned thus far is humility in action. Within humility lies the strength to learn love's lessons and watch them blossom into more complete humans, more evolved souls.

To communicate effectively and with hearts and ears open to change, doors give way to brilliant moments of light and love. there is no doubt:

Amalia Jude takes my breath away.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning Lewis Carroll Emily Dickinson Robert Frost Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Edgar Allan Poe William Shakespeare Alfred Lord Tennyson Henry Dylan Thomas David Thoreau Walt Whitman William Butler Yeats Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Alcaeus of Mytilene, Anacreon, Apollonius of Rhodes, Aratus, Archilochus, Arctinus of Miletus, Arion, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Euripides, Epicharmus of Kos, Epimenides, Herodotus, Hesiod, Mimnermus, Philitas of Cos, Simonides of Ceos, Solon, Sophocles, Terpander, Theognis of Megara, Tyrtaeus and Xenophanes Al-Ma arri, Aboul-Qacem Echebbi, Abu Nuwas, Al-Shafi i, Adunis, Ahmed Shawqi, Akl Awit, Khalil Gibran, Joumana Haddad, Mahmoud Darwish, Mustafa Lutfi el-Manfaluti, Nizar Qabbani, and Samih al-Qasim Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, Li Qingzhao, Qu Yuan, Shitao, Bei Dao, Xue Tao, Yu Xuanji, Su Xiaoxiao, Lu You, Ouyang Xiu, Mei Yaochen, Gu Cheng, Li He, Bai Juyi, Su Shi, Yang Lian, Qiu Jin and Cao Zhi. Johannes Secundus, Jens Immanuel Baggesen, Jens Fink-Jensen, Piet Hein, Ambrosius Stub, Jeppe Aakjaer, Hans Christian Andersen, Steen Steensen Blicher, Holger Drachmann, Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Adam Gottlob Oehlenschlager and Johan Herman Wessel William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Wyatt, Lord Byron, Alexander Pope, John Milton, William Blake, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Edgar Allan Poe, W. B. Yeats, Robert Browning, Isaac Rosenberg, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Hart Crane, Emma Lazarus, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Edna St. Vincent Millay, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, William Empson, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Derek Walcott, Henry Lawson, Shel Silverstein, Banjo Patterson and Geoffrey Hill Chretien de Troyes, Adam de la Halle, Beroul, Thomas d'Angleterre, Marie de France, Charles d'Orleans, Rutebeuf, Francois Villon, Clement Marot, Joachim du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard, Maurice Sceve, Agrippa d'Aubigne, Jean de Sponde, Vincent Voiture, Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant, Jean de La Fontaine, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Voltaire, Andre Chenier, Alfred de Vigny, Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Aloysius Bertrand, Gerard de Nerval, Alfred de Musset, Theophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme, Francois Coppee, Jose-Maria de Heredia, Paul Verlaine, Tristan Corbiere, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Cros, Comte de Lautreamont, Pierre Louys, Jean Lorrain, Georges Rodenbach, Jean Moreas, Stephane Mallarme, Anna de Noailles, Emile Verhaeren, Jules Laforgue, Paul Claudel, Paul Valery, Guillaume Apollinaire, Victor Segalen, Blaise Cendrars, Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Jacques Prevert, Robert Desnos, Jean Cocteau, Gaston Miron, Saint-John Perse, Antonin Artaud, Maurice Maeterlinck, Henri Michaux, Francis Ponge, Gherasim Luca, Aime Cesaire, Edmond Jabes, Rene Char, Yves Bonnefoy, Jacques Dupin, Claude Esteban, Andre du Bouchet and Philippe Jaccottet Angelus Silesius, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gottfried August Burger, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, Peter Rosegger, August Silberstein, Gotthold Lessing, Friedrich Schlegel, August Schlegel, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Novalis, Friedrich von Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Holderlin, Christian Morgenstern, Georg Trakl, Theodor Storm, Rainer Maria Rilke, Erich Kastner, Adalbert Stifter, Karl Kraus, Ernst Toller, Franz Werfel, Else Lasker-Schuler, Nelly Sachs, Hermann Hesse, Paul Celan, Bertolt Brecht and Gunter Grass Constantine P. 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Health, the final human frontier

Human civilization breeds unhealthy people across many cultures. In nature however, unhealthy living kills.

The western concept of health is flawed because it's primarily a reactive model. Western hospitals are mainly concerned with halting sickness versus pro-actively stimulating healthy living.

As the politicos debate health care insurance coverage, the system bleeds money into the pockets of well connected drug companies.

The western health system has failed to promote holistic wellness by viewing its role as "in case of emergency," only.

This type of system generally rewards unhealthy habits with pharmaceutical compensations.

Obesity and diabetes occur frequently in such systems due to unhealthy diets and lack of exercise. Essentially, obesity and diabetes have been bred into the human race.

Further evidence of this type of system's failure can be witnessed in the society's reaction to health crises such as cancer.

Cancer is currently viewed as something to be cured instead of something to be avoided. Instead of pointing the microscopes at the disease and marching to find a cure, perhaps the same fervor and resources should be spent rooting out all sources of carcinogens and stopping them from entering our bodies.

Carcinogens accumulate in the body and develop into a myriad of cancers; and yet surprisingly, society allows trace plus amounts to be manufactured and enter our environment.

If the system were turned on its head and health care centers served primarily to educate and lead citizens in a healthy lifestyle, insurance rates would drop as emergencies decreased.

Comprehensive health centers should be lively places of healing and rejuvenation. Surely emergency centers must endure but the model must shift to encourage community involvement in health stimulating programs such as yoga and cooking for your health. Stimulating and supporting the body's natural healthy responses in these ways will improve the overall health of the member and the community.

Healthcare costs will decrease as community health improves, thereby eliminating opportunist drug companies by capping pharmaceutical profits naturally.

Such health care approaches would produce ripple effects on agriculture via the promotion of sustainable and organic farming practices, which in turn would limit the chemical exposure of agricultural workers and the end consumers.

Rippling further, manufacturing and production industries would be continually evaluated in order to limit the environmental introduction of chemicals hazardous to our health. Thus, the health of waterways would improve and natural balances would be restored through diversity.

The advancement of a society to a sustainable state must involve such comprehensive health care centers and systems.

It makes no difference if humans conquer space because they continue to carry flawed concepts of health with them.

Remember: A consistent health maintenance program including organic and sustainably raised foods (which contain the most nutrients thereby decreasing necessary consumption quantities) and yoga and exercises (which stimulate the body's natural defenses), contains the power to a healthier you, a healthier society and a healthier environment.

If you don't have your health, expect death sooner.

God is nobody

Michael West Photography, © 2008

The inverse proportion between downer feelings and comprehensive reality percentages means that as the individual mind increases its comprehensive understanding of its real surroundings, the amount of downer negativity experienced decreases.

Downer negativity is a result of thought refraction of truth via the introduction of lies, which produce a negative draw on the neural system.

Neural scattering, caused by lie introduction, results in the miscategorization and miscataloging of crucial perceptual information pertaining to the body's accumulated history.

A comprehensive understanding of the mind-body's connection to its surrounding reality depends on a neural web of accumulated truthful perceptions.

Falsities/ 'lies' fracture the neural flow thereby decreasing its efficiency, thus limiting the individual's comprehensive reality.

Questions categorize and catalog perceptions across the history of your life.

The body's manifestations of the mind's perceptions ultimately determine life's pattern.

Time cycles between extremities of existence and history builds complexity amongst neural web patterns.

God is nobody.

Subjectivity vs. Objectivity

you must breath for every activity. the amount and rate of breath controls the blood's oxygen content, which stimulates cells and burns toxins.

a proper oxygen rate must be sustained throughout any activity for the body to maintain optimal health. therefore the depth and rate must correspond to the requirements of the activity.

the breath depth rate can be neurally controlled. it has been shown that the breath depth rate control of Tibetan monks may decrease neural activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe near the crown of the head.

neural states affect the level of neuron activity available for breath's depth rate calculations.

neural states exist of configurations of neural energy cycles maintaining some overall neural energy flow in the brain.

the addition of "meaning" to a neural state occurs as a correlation between the current neural flow and neural flow archives in memory.

Movement between subjective and objective neural states allows for perspective juxtaposition necessary to discern the validity of all neural flows in memory.

magnetic polars

At the maximum compression of all particle matter, magnetic polars spin on their axes.

All corresponding matter has an attractive overall magnetic flow concentrated about the spinning polars.

so what, who cares?

it means that polar flow anchors all existence and these polar flows can be seen.

Conceptualization lies outside reality in the metaphysical layer. The metaphysical layer is bounded by all the energy configurations possible in current reality. Reality is composed of magnetic polars at the core directing overall energy flow.

Ranges of light produce levels of energy radiation that provides the proper temperature range for life growth allowing for these words.

Resetting the neural network is necessary to expand conceptualization of current reality.