Imagine this story. A young, handsome teenage boy turns into a young man, enjoying life, women and his sexuality. He can’t get enough of it, takes every opportunity he has to be with another woman and often “lines up” the next one before he “dumps” the current one. Soon he approaches his 30s and the drive to have a family arises and with it the wish to get married, to stay faithful, to have a family and a true partner for life.

He finds her, this partner for life, they get married and they have two boys. They buy a house and the dog, of course, and all seems dandy. She’s a stay-home mom while he’s out working and earning the bacon. He’s happy, she’s happy – at least at the forefront. He’s a really handsome guy and gets offers to be with other women left and right, and he graciously declines. After all, he’s found his life partner. She too is a beautiful, tall woman, not bad to look at and she too gets hit on by men on a frequent basis. To no avail, because she too has found her life partner and they now have a family to raise.

On the trot through life, every day pretty much looks like the previous one. He goes to work while she stays home with the two little boys. All is well, at least for a while. The boys are getting to be Kindgarten age now and the daily routine the way they used to know it is shifting just a tad bit. He’s still off to work every day, she’s still the stay-home Mom.

One day I ask him how his life is going and he said: “Everything’s going great except I’m frustrated with my job. I want to do more with my life and I want to build my own product, but my wife is a stay-home Mom and I can’t really afford leaving work and getting a pay cut while I am off inventing my product. And money is too tight for me to put anything else aside. So life overall is good, our marriage is great, the kids are great, I’m just frustrated professionally.”

This was 4 years ago. Yes, this is a true story.

I specifically remember feeling compassion for this man because I know better when I hear “everything’s great EXCEPT…” Anytime you hear the “except” word all it really means is that EVERYTHING is out of order, it only shows up in one area. If the Universe or Life or God would show us all the things that need to change in our life, all at the same time, we would have a heart attack and die. So we’re giving little bites to chew on. These “little flags” are here to wave at us and they’re yelling: “Hey, I’m not okay in here, do something about it!” And yet we dismiss it as “everything’s okay, EXCEPT this one little thing over here.”

So 4 years pass and I ran into this gentleman perhaps 2 or 3 times over the past year. I just saw him again and he seemed to have lost a lot of weight. I stopped him and we talked.

Over the past year he has been trying to continue working on his business idea while keeping the same job. His wife continued being a stay-home Mom and money continued to be tight, even tighter, because the boys are getting bigger. Last year they discovered that one of their little boys was not quite developing the way he should have. He wasn’t talking, his balance was off, many things worried them and he was tested for a terminal disease. They found out that he had some physical handicaps that would affect him and them for the rest of their lives.

The wife snapped.

Suddenly she went on a rampage telling her husband that it’s all his fault and that he wasn’t making enough money and that he should be the provider and on and on she went. The way she is dealing with all of these issues that life is dealing them is by hanging out with the wrong crowd, going out partying in the middle of the week, coming home at 3 a.m. or not coming home at all. She doesn’t love him anymore and now she wants a divorce because “it’s all his fault for not making enough money.” However, there is no money for her to move out and get her own place because she’s been taken care of since she was 21 years old.

He reacts to this by going to counseling, trying to find out where he went wrong and how he can stick in there with her while she’s going through this rough time. He lost 35 pounds because he’s been too stressed. While she’s out partying and disappears all weekend, he’s working and then taking care of his two boys full time. He’s desperately trying to hold on to the house and continue paying for the mortgage on his own, but it’s getting tougher.

And needless to say, their sex life has been non existent for almost a year.

When is Enough enough?

I was not in the exact same position in my marriage, but my husband and I certainly went through our financial troubles and we certainly experienced strain in every department of our lives. And yes, we didn’t have sex for 8 months, the next year for 6 months, and so on. Everyone seems to experience this droughts at some point in their life and their marriage. The question is, what can be done? What should be done? What are they going to do? And what about the children who are caught in the middle?

You, my reader, are on your own evolutionary journey and you have chosen to be in this body living your current life, on purpose. The question is: Are you living your life to the fullest? Are you truly wanting to do with your life what you have come to do? Are you sacrificing your Life and your Self for some myth just so you can fit into someone else’s box and say “I did it!” when it’s all said and done? Who are you? And who are you living your life for if not for you?

This man saw the warning signs 4 years ago but remember, all was well except the job thing. No, not all was well, everything was out of order back then, it only showed up in one area because it would have been easier to deal with one area than to now swallow this entire elephant at once.

Four years ago he had to deal with this:

• Marriage: great
• Wife: great
• Sex Life: great
• Health: great
• Children: great
• Self: great
• Job: needs improvement

Four years later here is what it looks like:

• Marriage: hanging on a thread
• Wife: miserable, partying, losing herself, perhaps cheating on husband
• Sex Life: non existent
• Health: not good, lost 35 pounds because of stress
• Children: under way too much pressure, missing their Mom
• Self: questioning Self, wondering what happened, in counseling looking for answers
• Job: still needs improvement but is now shoved to the end of the line because of all the other more important things

We all live a picture similar to the above example, only the bullet points are different. If you were to take a snap shot of your life today in the same way, you would see that your life too has areas that are out of balance. You can predict very easily what your life is going to look like 4 years from today, or 10 years from today, if you do not take care of those out-of-balance areas right now.

Don’t delay – please don’t put yourself in a box pretending that “all is well” when in fact Life is calling you to grow and change.

Much love and strength and passion to continue on your path to freedom!

First, let’s talk about what kinds of desires there are. When I walked up to the church where I was asked to give this sermon, the church bulletin outside for all to see said “Desire.” I said a silent “oh, oh” to myself, because the word by itself can mean a lot of things. My instructions, however, were to come up with a sermon on how to RESURRECT desire (implying that it must be dead or healf-dead first).

The congregation was pleased when I summed up the desires, because in essence the little flame of desire, no matter what desire we are talking about, burns in everyone.

Here is just a partial list of desires that we can experience in our life time.

- Desire to be healthy
- Desire to get married or find the love of your life
- Desire to have children
- Desire to get rich
- Desire to have true friends
- Desire to pray
- Desire to achieve something
- Desire to have sex or share oneself with our partner
- Desire to leave a legacy behind
- Desire to live
- Desire to love God, Life, the Universe, whatever you call it

Often we lose the desires for these experiences, due to other experiences that threaten to snuff out our light. I had to go inward myself and remember the first time I had a burning desire and remember the intricate details of what caused this desire to burn until the fire had to be quenched by its exact replica on the outside world. It was when I was 4 years old. I never forget the moment when my parents took my sister and I on a Sunday stroll in Switzerland, along a gravel country path heading towards the farm next to us. There it was – the most beautiful, powerful, magnificent, majestic, elegant, 4-legged thing I had ever seen! I remember thinking to myself: “This must be God in the flesh.”

They were two horses coming towards us. I had never seen such an animal and yet one desire immediately flared up within me: the desire to sit on one of these animals. I was too young and the riders of course wouldn’t allow me to sit on one of their beautiful horses. My mother told me that when I was old enough to make my own phone call to a horse back riding stable and find out how much lessons cost, she would pay for a horseback riding lesson. I didn’t read yet but I was determined. The passion and desire within me was burning stronger and stronger. I got my hands on horse books and drew horses all day long. We had binoculars and from our place I could see the horse back riders along the edge of the forest along the horizon. I just had to ride one of these majestic animals soon.

I was 5 years old when I was able to make the entire call by myself. The lesson cost about five US dollars per hour back then. I don’t remember sleeping the night before my first lesson.

Once I was sitting on this amazing animal, a new desire was born within me, the desire to one day own my own horse. I started to work at the horseback riding stable for free, cleaning horses, picking up horse poop, sweeping the floors, cleaning the saddles, anything just to be around the horses.

Ten years later my mother bought me a 1-year old horse that I couldn’t even ride yet, but I was the happiest girl in the world.

We have been taught that the kingdom of God is within and that the it belongs to little children and that unless we become like little children we can not enter the kingdom of God. At first blush this seems like a contradiction. If the kingdom is already within me, then why do I need to enter it in the first place? And why is it not all children but only LITTLE children?

Anyone who has children knows that there is a huge difference between a 3-4 year old and a 8-9 year old! We are told to become like little children. From my own memories of childhood I know that I forgave easily when I was that little. I remember going into what my mother called room arrest for seemingly hours. Yet the moment she closed that door I was in my own “kingdom” and was happy as a clam not even remembering why I was there in the first place. Today when we get in trouble, mostly because of our own doing, we mope around a sad face for days, weeks, months, even years; and it shows in every face on our elderly generation.

A Proverb says that “a happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit.” (15:13)

Yet how many of us, including myself, let heartache crush our spirit more than once, and worse, we hold on to the pain for dear life. Why? For what?

So a journey began for me a couple of weeks ago, one to remember my happiest moments in life as a child, going back and studying the moments that robbed my desire to live, even as a child. And remembering the happy times when I was blissfully joyful and nothing could pull me from the kingdom within.

And I have learned that there are 3 key things that steal our desires:

1. Holding a record of wrong and harboring unkindness towards others

2. Stopping the growth process, stop living, mediocrity

3. Stop believing that we are indeed here for a greater purpose

The question is, once this desire for life and love seems to have disappeared or been robbed from us, how do we resurrect our desires?

1. Bless and love our enemies and let go of the record of wrongs

2. Realizing that little children change faster than a lightening bolt, they constantly grow, they literally live in the moment as if tomorrow didn’t exist. They forget sorrow quickly and they never hold a record of wrong, they forgive in a flash without reasoning through the “ifs, whats, and buts.” If we can become like a little child and grow and change frequently, never staying stagnant, then we will hear the desires burning within us once again.

3. Find the one thing that you would do for free, when you do it you are lost in time; your are guided by spirit

Out of these 3 the first one is probably the most difficult one to achieve. It’s not an achievement, it’s a journey, it never ends. Just when you think you have forgiven all the people that have hurt you in the past, there will be another person to put on that list so you can pray for them, bless them and love them.

I am currently working on a prayer that I am writing for myself that I intend on reading over and over again several times throughout the day, with the focus to bless my enemies and wish them only the best of the best. When I have it, I will share it with everyone so you too can move on in loving rays of sunlight with only the best wishes for others in your heart.

Much love to everyone today and in this very moment…

This has been a most difficult week for me and my daughter. We experienced a lot of tension and we fought and disagreed almost the entire week. She ended up spending the night at her auntie’s place and after dropping her off I came home and cried, and cried, and cried some more. It was one of those weeks that was just difficult. No, no one died that I personally knew. I just didn’t have anything in me to write about, at least not seemingly.

And yet I was asked to give another sermon at a Unity Church tomorrow and you would never guess the topic: “Resurrecting Desire.”

Urgh! Just when I feel like putting my head in the sand and forgetting about the fact that I’m alive. I was looking and searching and asking for answers, but nothing came to mind, at least not much that made any sense. And the more I searched for material, the more tense I seemed to get. Do you ever feel like you are just stuck in a black hole type of vortex that you can’t seem to get out of? Kind of like a nightmare that you want to wake up from so desperately? That’s exactly what I’ve been feeling like this week.

I’m still coming out of it and I’m still working on my sermon, and as I meditate and let it come to me, I know I’ll be fine. I always am.

What helped me tremendously this morning was sitting on my meditation pillow facing East right when it started to get light. The few sprinkled clouds on the horizon that at first were black, turned white and then bright orange as the sun started to come up more and more. Then it all turns “normal” and the gorgeous and brilliant colors disappear. I sat there for a minute and enjoyed the brightness when the sun started to appear from behind the mountain. I closed my eyes and let the rays warm my face when I realized that I had been harboring all this anger and frustration and disappointment inside of me this week about these things that are not going as I want them to go these days. I was in particular upset with a few key people when I realized that the rays of this sun will hit those people and warm their skin as much as mine and provide light to them as much as to me. Suddenly I felt “ugly” inside for holding so much bitterness and “poor me” attitudes towards these people that are getting the same benefits from nature that I do.

And suddenly I was able to see that although the sun and the moon and the rain do their job for everyone on this planet, the good and the bad, it is not for me to judge who or what is good and bad; especially not since I have done some things myself that are not worthy to be shouted from any roof tops. I was able to let them go and wish them well.

And then the real challenge came. I know that in addition to let them go in peace, we are to also bless our enemies and pray for them and to wish them well and even help them if they ask us to. Ah, do I really have to go there now!? Can’t I just let them go in peace? Must I? Really, must I also bless them and wish them only the best and even help them?

So that is where I am now. Mustering up the heart and the love to wish my enemies well and to bless them with my kindness. I’m in the transmutation process, if that makes any sense. While I have made the decision to send kindness and love only, doing it and feeling it and meaning it takes a little extra time, I find.

So here is my sermon material for tomorrow. Why do we get to a place where we lose our desires? Whether it is our desire to live or our desire to be healthy or in love? What exactly is it that robs us of our desire to only want what’s best for us and others? How do we get into these black holes that seem to suck the life out of us?

I can’t answer for anyone else but me; and what I see for myself is that what robs my desire the most is when I get bogged down by anger, depression, frustration, irritability, lack of patience or kindness towards another living being. Being frustrated or angry at anything or anyone only hurts me.

I’m learning to go within, the desires have never left me, they have never left you – they are merely covered up and blocked by the “ugliness” of our own selfish ambitions. And rest assured, there is a karmic law that goes beyond our natural laws, and karmic law affects all of us, just like our sun does. It is indeed not mine to avenge but God’s.

Much love to everyone.