Spiritually Responsible Living

Lisa is having a really difficult time letting go of her marriage despite knowing, as she says, that staying in the marriage is unhealthy for her.

She is living separately from her husband and has been for a while, though she is hesitating on completing the processes that would make a divorce final. She said she felt mired in the “muck” of the in-between, knowing where she had been and utterly unsure of where she was going.

She feels anxious and fearful and out of sorts. She has trouble figuring out how and if to move on because, she says, there is really a lot that is wonderful about her husband. Most importantly, she’s looking for a spiritually responsible take on her situation.

How might we help Lisa out?

I would probably start with what she describes as her knowing that the marriage is unhealthy. The intention of this would be to get her in touch with her intuition. Her intuition being the best possible guidance she has available to her. It’s her strength and the foundation for everything else that will follow.

Next, I would ask what it means to her to be “mired in the muck.” If she says it means something like she’ll never get out of it, we can work on helping her to change her belief about it because, of course, she will experience what she believes. She might replace that belief with something like “the muck is temporary.”

Similarly, with regard to her feeling anxious and fearful and out of sorts, it would be important to know her thinking behind it. If she has a belief that says, “I can’t take care of myself,” that is another one we’d want to help her eliminate and replace with something like “I am fully capable of taking care of myself.”

Taken to another level, keeping in mind that we are here for a reason, in any given moment, that there are no accidents and every situation is for our growth and development, she may see that stepping up to taking responsibility for herself and her life is exactly why her higher self has directed her to this situation.

To address her confusion about moving on or staying, about finalizing the divorce or not, and her uncertainty about where she is going, I would engage her in a conversation about her intentions. Intentions matter because they guide our actions and behaviors.

When we are unsure about our intentions, we are unsure about what to do. So if, for example, her intention is to be in a marriage that is healthy and dynamic and vibrant and fun and she knows that is not possible with her husband, she would naturally finalize her divorce. If she hesitates, it’s only because of what it means to her to be divorced like, perhaps, “divorced people are failures.”

If this is her belief, it will keep her stuck where she is and so it will be necessary for her to change her belief about what it means to be divorced.

There is no inherent truth to the beliefs we hold. At this level, beliefs matter because they guide our experiences and spiritually responsible people take responsibility for their experiences and, thus, their beliefs.

As an extension of this discussion, I would very much encourage Lisa to focus on exactly the kind of relationship she would like to experience. I would remind her that it is not about making a list of the characteristics and attributes of a future husband; rather, it is a deliberate and conscious choosing and an imagining of how she will feel once she is in the marriage she wants to be in.

For example, “I am in a marriage where I feel safe and secure and comfortable; my husband and I are in love and it shows; we are wildly attracted to one another and share a high level of intimacy; I can talk to him about anything.”

This is about consciously engaging the law of attraction and when she believes it, she is well on her way. If thoughts and/or beliefs arise in the form of “yeah, but” as in, “yeah, but those things don’t happen to me,” then we are back to helping her to eliminate that belief and replace it with one that is in line with what she wants such as “my history does not dictate my future.”

So Lisa has a terrific starting point: her intuition. And while focusing on her intentions and what it is she wants is important, very important, much of her work will revolve around making sure she believes she can have what she wants. When it comes to challenging our beliefs, it all starts with knowing what they are.

Many of my clients and students are often quite taken aback when they discover underlying beliefs they didn’t think they had. The good news is that because beliefs are things and everything is energy, ill-serving beliefs that fly in the face of our desires, our intentions, can easily be transmuted and replaced with beliefs that support them.