Have you been looking away? Not just in your marriage. I think we can safely agree that you have definitely been looking away in your marriage. But what about in your work life? With your children? Your parents and siblings? Your friends? How about when you were a kid? In school? In your first job? Here’s a scary one: how about at church or temple? Or with your health? When and where have you looked away?

If you can find the pattern in what you have chosen not to see, Pilgrim, you can change your life. Because you can decide to see. You can choose to be present and experience what is really happening instead of living in a fantasy world of your own making. And isn’t that what really happens when we look away? We don’t like what is happening, but we don’t feel we have the personal power to say, “This is unacceptable to me.” So, we pretend it isn’t there, but by pretending, we create an illusionary world, an illusionary relationship, a whole life that actually isn’t real at all. But think, Pilgrim. If we can learn to see what is and determine how we feel about it, and—here comes the most stunning part—say what we want, we can reclaim our power. Isn’t that what we want? Our power?

To get that power, start first with all the times you looked away. Take Spirit through them all. Start with your relationship, but don’t stop there. Once you begin, I think you’ll discover that if you looked away in one major aspect of your life, you looked away in others. It became a habit, a way of living (or not living). Don’t be ashamed; it’s what we do when we can’t bear the truth. But you can bear it now, Pilgrim. You’ve been working hard to unearth all the ways you created a life that didn’t work. Don’t stop now. You are so close. So close.