Conscious Growth Workshop DVDs

I received the initial DVD masters from the videographer — 8 DVDs total for the whole weekend. I’ll start watching them this week to see if any additional edits are needed to create the final product.

After that I’ll need someone to design a cover/package for the DVDs and then get a bunch of them duplicated so we can start shipping them.

For anyone who pre-ordered the DVDs at the workshop and paid via credit card, your card won’t be charged till the DVDs actually ship.

It’s hard to say how long it will take for the DVDs to be ready since I’ve never made DVDs before. I should have a better idea after I watch the DVDs and see how much more editing will be needed. My goal is to get them released by the end of the year.

As for pricing, I’m leaning toward $297 for the set, but I’ll likely offer a $100 discount for the first few weeks or so.

Conscious Growth Workshop #2

The second Conscious Growth Workshop is 2-1/2 months away, January 15-17, 2010 at the Flamingo in Las Vegas.

Just a reminder that the $100 early registration discount expires on December 15th. After that the price will be $597 instead of $497.

I’m really looking forward to doing another workshop. The energy people brought to the first one was just amazing! It’s been 4 weeks since the last one, and I’m still buzzing with excitement from it.

To learn more about the workshop and to register for it, please see the Conscious Growth Workshop page. You may also want to check out the Workshop FAQ, which will help you plan your trip to Las Vegas — my favorite city on earth.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Hot Topic Media products page

After posting my review of Man Transformation, I still had lots of other products from the same publisher (Hot Topic Media) to review and potentially recommend. It is a ton of material to go through, however, and I think it would be way overkill to attempt to write a separate review for every product. So I opted to simply add a separate Hot Topic Media products page that lists their top-selling, most recommended products for men and women. This page is linked from the bottom of the Man Transformation page.

Hot Topic Media has a hugely successful dating and relationships product line with more than 40 products created by top experts in their fields. I wish I had time to review them all because I’ve found them fascinating so far, but that would require watching dozens and dozens more DVDs, and if I do it at a pace that’s comfortable for me, it could take more than a year.

At this point I can personally recommend two more of their products I really liked: On Being a Man and Deep Inner Game. All of their products include a free 30-day trial and a money-back guarantee. Check out the Hot Topic Media products page for the details.

My Mac experience

I’m really enjoying my new Macbook Pro so far. It took me a while to get used to the interface, but overall the adaptation has been fairly easy. The hardest part was getting used to using command-C, command-V, command-X, command-Z instead of using the ctrl key, but I’ve got the hang of it now. I also found it odd that closing a window doesn’t close the app and that I have to close the app from the menu bar or by hitting command-Q.

Fortunately most of my work involves using online tools, so I don’t actually need that much native software. Once I figured out the web browser, I was able to be productive right away. I do miss Google Chrome, but Safari is working out okay so far.

I really like that I can connect the hard drive from my PC to my Mac (via a USB enclosure), and access all my PC files. It’s painlessly simple to open my MS-Office documents on my Mac without having to convert the file format.

For HTML editing and FTP, I’ve been using Coda and Transmit (I used HomeSite and CuteFTP on my PC). These two apps were among the most popular recommendations I received when I asked about Mac apps on Twitter and Facebook. I’m very thankful for all the people who gave me software suggestions within minutes of my asking.

I found Coda and Transmit very easy to learn and was editing files on my website within minutes after installing them. Right now I’m still using the free trial versions. I especially like that Transmit is built into Coda, so I’m wondering if I can get by with just Coda by itself. In general I tend to prefer try-before-you-buy software as opposed to free open-source software because in my experience the features, quality, usability, and support are usually better. Coda is $99.

What I like most about the Mac is the usability. The interface is elegantly designed, and it isn’t cluttered with stuff I don’t need to see. I also like that booting up and shutting down takes only seconds. With my PC I would sometimes go make a cup of tea while it was booting up. So far I haven’t had a single piece of software (or the Mac itself) crash on me. “It just works” is proving true in my experience.

I was stunned by how incredibly simple it was to connect the Mac to my wireless network. Before it even finished booting up, I was already online because the Mac detected my wireless network during the initial setup process. By comparison Windows networking looks like it was designed by an absolute lunatic.

I haven’t even booted up my PC in more than a week.

There is some PC software I still really like, such as The Journal, and some stuff I need for my business like Quickbooks Pro with the Payroll module (that module apparently isn’t available on the Mac), so I’ll probably install a Windows partition on my Macbook this week. I don’t need to use any Windows apps multiple times per day though, so I don’t think it will be necessary for me to install something like Parallels to run Mac and Windows apps side by side.

So far I’m quite happy with my purchase, and I doubt I’ll be using my old Windows-based PC anymore.

Yes, there is a premium to pay for a Mac, but I’m not in a position where it makes sense to be cheap. Quality is a much more important consideration for me.

Relationship update

Erin and I appreciate all the love and support that has come our way since we announced our separation last month.

We’re both in a pretty good place right now. We still talk and see each other often. As I mentioned previously, we remain close friends. We separated due to a lack of compatibility as husband and wife, not a lack of love or respect for each other. As one friend pointed out to me recently, our relationship had become like that of brother and sister. A marriage simply wasn’t the right form for us to enjoy our particular connection.

At this point it’s unlikely that Erin and I will be blogging much about the details. The love and support are much appreciated, but there were also lots of immature reactions to our announcement. For example, a few bloggers tried to capitalize on it by writing ridiculous posts to play up the drama in order to garner more attention for their blogs. We really don’t want to feed the drama addicts. Many people also projected their own relationship and divorce issues onto us and our children, asserting all sorts of false assumptions about the nature of our relationship and our reasons for separating. These people’s personal issues have nothing to do with the reality of our situation, and a high volume of low-quality feedback and advice from people who’ve never even met us really isn’t helpful to us, so I don’t want to encourage more of that silliness.

Erin and I are getting plenty of constructive advice and support from our friends who know us well, so it makes much more sense for us to connect with those people as opposed to trying to summarize our relationship in a few blog posts. I probably spent about 30 hours on the phone last week, and I’m glad for it. Blogging really isn’t the right medium for addressing a topic like this though because it’s tough to convey emotions through plain text, so I tend not to even try (which admittedly makes my writing about it seem a bit cold). However, Erin and I might share more of our experiences together at the next Conscious Growth Workshop in January. Hopefully we can help people release some of the social conditioning regarding what a relationship or a divorce is supposed to look like.

One last thing I want to address is that some people seem to expect that I should be feeling sad or depressed right now, as if that’s my solemn duty as a guy who’s going through a divorce. Apparently I’m supposed to be miserable since that’s what divorcing people do to themselves. At the very least, I’m supposed to feel bad for my kids and the wretched existence they’re about to endure. To anyone who thinks that way, the best reply I can offer is, “Please remove thine head from thine arse.” A conscious separation is a very different experience than one filled with animosity and resentment.

There have been a few sad days in the past weeks, but overall I’m feeling immensely happy. If you see that as a betrayal of reality, of Erin, or of my children, that’s your business, but please don’t foist it on me as if it’s my business too. Rest assured I won’t be joining you in such foolish nonsense. I see no reason to wallow in negativity during this time when I’m perfectly capable of creating the emotions I want to experience — especially joy, abundance, bliss, excitement, and gratitude.

I feel genuinely grateful for my relationship with Erin — past, present, and future — and I’m delighted to continue exploring our soulful connection without trying to wedge it into the unwieldy shape of a marriage or a cohabitation arrangement. I’m feeling very happy and excited these days, and for those who expect me to feel otherwise, well… get used to disappointment. I choose not to create misery for myself — I think that would be incredibly foolish and selfish. I have a duty not only to myself to keep radiating joy and gratitude, but also to all the people I interact with. So I choose to be happy. Life is beautiful!

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Drinking fresh juice has many benefits. With the fiber removed, fresh juice digests very easily, so you don’t have to expend as much energy on digestion. This extra energy then becomes available for your body and mind.

When I incorporate a lot of juice into my diet — about 32-64 oz per day, roughly 25-50% of my day’s caloric intake — I immediately notice a difference at the gym. My body just feels lighter and cleaner, and exercising feels easier as well.

Juicing and interval training

Lately I’ve been doing interval training at the gym on an elliptical machine. I know from past experience that interval training is an effective way to boost my cardiovascular fitness level in a matter of weeks. I’ve also shed several pounds this month.

For interval training I like my baseline heart rate to be around 148 beats per minute. Then I do various short intervals (usually 1-2 minutes in duration) that spike my heart rate as high as 180. Over a period of weeks, this training makes my cardiovascular system progressively more efficient, so my heart doesn’t have to pump as hard to handle the same workload. The effect is easily measurable with a heart rate monitor.

Four weeks ago I started out at level 10 for my baseline on a particular brand of elliptical machine. Sustained exertion at that level would get my heart up to about 146-148 beats per minute. Today that same setting will only get my heart rate into the 120s. To hit 148, I have to set the machine to level 14 now.

Also, four weeks ago I was doing intervals between levels 10 and 14. Now I’m doing intervals between levels 14 and 20 to create similar spikes in my heart rate.

How does juicing play into this? Well, I recently observed that if I drank a lot of juice the day before my workout (as opposed to all solid foods), my heart rate wouldn’t spike as high during the intervals.

Presently at level 14, my heart rate will be sustained at around 147 beats per minute. I don’t notice a change in that number whether I’m juicing or not. However, after a minute at level 19, my heart rate has been spiking to 177. But if I drink lots of juice the day before (about 64 oz), that same interval only spikes my heart rate to 163, and a minute at level 20 only spikes me to 171. If I go back to all solid food (including smoothies), then my heart rate spikes back up to 176-177 for that same level 19 interval. I don’t push it to level 20 on those days because I don’t like going past 180 (that puts me a little too close to passing out or throwing up).

So not only do I feel the difference when I’m juicing, I can also measure it at the gym when I’m working out. My heart doesn’t have to pump as hard to handle the same workload when I’m getting more of my calories from fresh juice.

If you’re curious if this would work for store-bought juice, I haven’t tried that. Pasteurized (i.e. cooked) juice isn’t something I want to put in my body.

I’ve also noticed that if I have a smaller amount of juice (like 24-32 oz), then the training benefit is diminished but still measurable. I haven’t tried going a full day on juice, which for me would require about 128 oz (1 gallon), but I may try that at some point to see if the effect is even greater.

Of course there’s a training effect whereby interval training helps my body adapt to greater workloads over time, but this effect isn’t too significant in the span of just a few days. By flip-flopping from juicy days to non-juicy days now and then (something I did simply by accident), I was able to get a reasonable idea of how my previous day’s diet affects me at the gym the next morning.

I don’t think this is because the juice is medicinal per se. I think the reason is that when I drink more juice, I eat less solid food, so my body doesn’t need as much energy for digestion, but I’m still getting adequate calories, so it’s not like I’m fasting. Digesting solid food also generates a lot more metabolic waste, some of which may be making my cardiovascular system and my muscles less efficient. The less energy my body has to expend on digestion and waste management, the more efficiently it works when I’m exercising.

Since I can push myself a bit harder when juicing — without causing my heart to explode — this makes my interval training more efficient. I’m able to burn more calories in the same amount of time. Beyond that, it’s hard to measure the long-term training impact as an individual trainee, but I can’t see it being a bad thing.

I’m eating 90-100% raw these days (and always 100% vegan), so I can’t say what effect juicing would have if you eat a diet heavy in cooked and/or processed foods. I suspect it may have an even greater impact though since you’d be crowding out foods that create a much greater digestive burden and which generate significantly more metabolic waste. However, if you jump right into it from a heavier diet, you might trigger a detox effect for the first week or two and feel a bit weaker during that time.

Juicing and weight training

What about weight training? Does juicing have an effect on that too? I haven’t been able to measure that yet because I’ve been so focused on interval training lately. I just added weight training back into my exercise routine today. This morning I did 30 minutes of interval training (including 5 minutes of warm-up and 5 minutes of cool-down), then 35 minutes of weight training, 10 minutes of basic stretching, and 20 minutes of yoga.

In the past I’ve noticed an obvious benefit to weight training on a diet of raw food vs. cooked food. I can lift more weight, and I have more muscular endurance (i.e. I can do more reps at the same weight) when I eat raw. I also don’t feel as tired during or after my workouts. As soon as I add back a little cooked food, like some cooked potatoes, I become a little weaker. I can’t lift as much weight or go as long.

Another cool benefit I’ve noticed is that my strength doesn’t degrade as much during periods when I’m not actively weight training if I’m eating high-raw or all-raw during those times. Normally on a cooked food diet, if I took several months off from weight training, I’d lose a lot of strength from atrophy, and it would take me at least a month or two to build back up to my previous high.

On a raw food diet, I seem to retain most of my strength gains even when I don’t train for months. This morning when I started weight training again after taking a lot of time off from it, I was pretty close to my previous max on most exercises. My chest seemed to have the most degradation, whereas my biceps were just as strong as they were a few months ago.

I don’t exactly know why this is so. Perhaps it’s because cleaner burning foods generate less metabolic waste, so there isn’t as much waste build-up in the muscles during non-training periods. Initially though, the training effect tends to be more neurological than muscular, whereby more muscle fibers get activated (as opposed to building new muscle tissue via hypertrophy). So perhaps with cleaner burning foods, the mind doesn’t find it as necessary to de-activate as many of the muscle fibers when training stops. Perhaps that de-activation process gets triggered to help free up resources to handle waste management with the higher toxic load from cooked foods. I’m just postulating here — quite honestly I haven’t a clue as to what’s really going on. But I’ve seen a marked difference in how my own body behaves on raw vs. cooked foods, and I rather like it, so I wanted to share it in the hopes that it may benefit you as well.

Making delicious juices

I tend to make fairly complex juices because I love how the different flavors combine. Even if I use the exact same ingredients, every juice comes out unique.

As I write this article, I’m drinking 34 oz of carrot, apple, beet, celery, mixed greens, dandelion greens, kale, parsley, ginger, lime, pomegranate juice. It takes me about 20 minutes to make that much juice, including prep and clean-up.

I frequently use 6-7 medium-sized carrots and an apple as a base for a 32-oz juice (one quart). It has a pleasant flavor and guarantees a sweet-tasting juice no matter what I add to it. When I start with carrot-apple, it’s hard to screw it up.

If I want a slightly sweeter, earthier juice, I’ll add 1/2 to 1 beet to it. I juice the beet greens too.

Carrots, apples, and beets are all high in natural sugar, so you can use them in any combination to create a sweet base for a juice that will effectively mask stronger flavors like those of bitter greens. Over time you may wish to decrease the quantity of these ingredients as your palate adjusts.

Celery, cucumber, and romaine lettuce make nice alkalizing additions to any juice. They’re mild in flavor, so they won’t overpower your juice. Usually I’ll include at least 4 stalks of celery and/or a small cucumber. Sometimes I’ll juice a whole head of celery. These foods are very water-rich, so they’re great to use for adding volume to a juice if you want to make a lot of juice quickly without a lot of prep work. Because of their mild flavors, they won’t wreck the flavor of your juice no matter how much you use.

Romaine lettuce (and most other lettuces) also have a mild flavor when juiced, so that’s another good ingredient to use frequently.

Next I include some dark greens, usually at least 2-3 different types. My favorites include spinach, dandelion greens, kale (especially dinosaur kale), beet greens, and parsley, mainly because they’re easy to feed into my Green Star juicer. Sometimes I’ll use mixed greens, Swiss chard, or collard greens. Dark greens tend to have a very strong flavor when juiced, so I don’t recommend trying to drink them straight. You’ll want something to mask their bitterness. Carrot-apple does a great job of that, so you can include a lot of greens while still enjoying an extremely palatable juice.

Lastly I add a few ingredients to create more sizzle and spike up the flavor. My favorites are lime and ginger — it’s rare that I make a juice w/o one or both of them. I normally use 1/4 to 1/2 of a lime plus 1-2 tsp of fresh ginger for a 32-oz juice. Sometimes I use lemon, but I almost always prefer lime. You can juice the lemon and lime with the skin too — and the ginger as well.

Other flavor-spiking ingredients I use are pomegranate seeds (several tablespoons), kiwi (one or two of them), and fennel (1-2 sprigs). Some people like to toss in a clove of garlic or some hot peppers, but I’m not really into that. Don’t use onion though — even a small amount of onion can overpower a juice and make it taste pretty nasty. I learned that lesson the hard way.

When I want to clean out my fridge, I will sometimes toss in a zucchini, sprouts, some cabbage, or some bell pepper (any color). Most water-rich produce can be juiced, but not all juicers can accommodate every type of produce. For example, my juicer doesn’t handle tomatoes or pineapples well because they clog the mesh filter.

Many juice-loving friends of mine prefer to make much simpler juices with only 3-4 ingredients, such as cucumber, celery, romaine juice or carrot, romaine, spinach. I sometimes make such juices too, but I seem to keep going back to the complex ones with 10-12 ingredients. I just love how the different items combine to create an explosive layering of different flavors and sensations.

My favorite simple juice is probably pineapple-garlic juice. I blend one pineapple (minus the skin) plus 3 garlic cloves in my Vita-Mix and then run it through a nut milk bag to remove the pulp. I know it probably sounds disgusting, but it’s quite delicious. Since it’s mostly pineapple juice, the garlic adds an interesting accent. When I drink this juice, however, I can expect to smell like garlic for 2-3 days afterwards. Raw garlic is pretty potent!

Try it for yourself

If you enjoy physical training or if you’re just curious about juicing, try incorporating more fresh juice into your diet to see if you notice a difference in your workouts. I suspect that at the very least, you’ll notice that exercising feels a little easier, so you can push yourself a bit harder each time.

Note that juicing is different from blending up a smoothie. With a smoothie the fiber remains intact, but with juicing the fiber is removed as pulp. I even run my juice through a nut milk bag just to remove the last bits of fiber that made it through my juicer.

If you don’t have a juicer yet, read the section on Juice Feasting Equipment from my juice feasting article for some recommendations on how to get started.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

We came to this decision very consciously, and we’re separating amicably because we can see it’s the best thing for both of us. We intend to remain good friends and continue working together, so as far as our blogging is concerned, it’s going to be business as usual for the time being.

Why?

Over the years we’ve both noticed that our goals and desires were pulling us in different directions. When we talked about our future together, we each had a different vision of what we wanted to create and experience. That didn’t seem like a big deal at first, especially since there was a lot of overlap, but when those visions began to manifest and take shape, we had to start dealing with the incompatibilities that came up.

At first we tried to keep pace with each other and made compromises to that effect, but that only made both of us unhappy. Eventually we realized we’d both be happier if we ended our marriage, not by going our own separate ways per se, but by transitioning our relationship into something other than a marriage. We love each other enough to see that we must allow each other the freedom to pursue our own individual dreams.

Separation Details

Erin and I already worked out most of the details of our separation. Since we own two houses that are only 6 miles apart, and one house was vacant, deciding on the living arrangements wasn’t too difficult.

On Friday Erin and the kids moved into our other house. Erin bought some new furniture and appliances for the place, and we moved some furniture from our existing home. We lived there for a few years (2005-2007), so it’s a familiar environment. Since it’s a 4-bedroom home, Erin has her own bedroom and a home office, and the kids each have their own bedrooms too. It’s plenty of space for 3 people.

For now I’m staying in the larger house by myself. It might seem that Erin and the kids should take the bigger house while I move into the smaller one, but the financial realities make that an unwise choice in the long run. Although we’ve been paying down the mortgages on both homes much faster than we need to, the Vegas housing slump and the local unemployment rate (currently around 14%) has caused home prices to fall even faster, so neither home has any equity right now. We’d prefer to own the homes we live in and not overcomplicate things, and Erin favored the smaller home with the smaller costs, so I’m getting the bigger house with the bigger debt and expenses.

Erin and I are both pleased with this arrangement. It took a while for our friends and family to understand it, but it makes sense to us, and ultimately we’re both getting what we want. By taking the smaller home/mortgage, Erin will have more flexibility to move to another home if she so desires, and her living expenses will be well within her means. I don’t mind taking on more of a financial burden in this case, not just with the bigger mortgage but with alimony and childcare payments too.

It’s a bit weird to be living in a 6-bedroom house all by myself though. It’s a huge amount of space for just one person (4300 square feet), and even with a guest room and my home office, 3 of the rooms are totally empty right now. This will take some getting used to. I’ll probably be living here for a while though because I like the house, I like living in Las Vegas, and I definitely don’t want to sell in this housing market. Since this community has a rather strict homeowner’s association, I’m somewhat limited in what I’m able to do with the house. So for now I’ll just have to treat it as my private batcave and surrender to the weirdness of it.

As for what we’re going to do with the business, we’re still working out the details there, but we’re close to an agreement on the major items. Suffice it to say that the business will continue running as usual. It would be a lot harder if we weren’t on such good terms with each other. The most important asset we both want to maintain is each other’s goodwill.

Children

Our kids (ages 6 and 9) are handling this transition pretty well. Las Vegas is a place where divorce is pretty common, so our kids have friends that have seen their parents get divorced. Emily was a bit concerned about it at first, but she’s gradually adjusting to it. Kyle is young enough that he sees this transition as more of an adventure. They’ll continue going to the same school (at least for the rest of the year), and they’re living in a home that’s still familiar to them, so the changes aren’t as dramatic as they might otherwise be.

Most likely Erin will get sole custody of the kids, and I’ll be paying some child support. That seems to be the best arrangement for both of us, given our future goals. Neither of us wants to subject the kids to a shared custody arrangement where they live part-time in two different homes. We think it’s much better for them to live in a single stable home.

Friends

Erin and I share many friends in common, and we hope to keep it that way. We let our friends know that we’re still on good terms with each other, and we don’t want anyone thinking they must take sides. This transition might be a little weird, but the last thing we’d want to do is alienate our dearest friends.

Many of our friends have been through divorces themselves, and in a city like Las Vegas, there isn’t much of a social stigma attached to it. In some ways it’s almost the opposite: Ahhh… your first divorce… welcome to the club! That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.

Questions

Here are some answers to a few questions that I figure some people will ask us.

Did you know about this before or during the October workshop?

No, this decision was made afterwards. It was partly the awareness-raising effect of the workshop itself that encouraged us to take a deeper look at our relationship. If you had told me at the start of the workshop that this is where we’d be today, I wouldn’t have believed you.

We meant what we said during the workshop segment on conscious relationships. Although we’re ending our marriage, we intend to continue relating to each other in various ways, so the same principles still apply. When I talked about consciously breaking up, I didn’t think we’d be applying those ideas to our own relationship that same month. Life can be funny that way.

It’s possible we may both share the stage again at the January workshop and talk about what we’ll have learned between now and then. That depends on whether or not we think our personal lessons can provide substantial value for others.

Human relationships have a lot of fluidity to them, and marriage is only one of many forms they can take. In this case the most conscious decision we can make to improve our relationship is to end our marriage.

The nice thing is that the universal principles we talked about during the workshop still apply to a separation and/or divorce. In that case, it’s about recognizing and accepting the truth of your situation, deciding what you both need to be happy, and taking action to ensure that both people end up in a better place. Perhaps one of the most important principles to apply in this case is courage. Courage is especially vital when the short-term prediction may seem negative at first, but the long-term prediction looks much brighter.

Did polyamory play a role in this?

To a certain extent, yes. It helped us discover new truths about ourselves.

This year we both opened ourselves up to having deeper intimate connections with other people. This was a bit of an exploration process. It gave both of us more clarity to see that our marriage wasn’t the best vehicle for our long-term happiness. We were happy in some areas but not in others. We had reached a dead-end and needed to let go of the marriage to get around it. Otherwise we’d end up working harder and harder trying to make each other happy, with worsening results.

I learned that I really enjoy relationships based on a deep emotional connection, openness, honesty, trust, compatible interests, and having fun together. I definitely want to have more of that in my life. But I found it very awkward to do this within the scope of my marriage. It was like trying to straddle two different worlds. An open marriage is practically a contradiction in terms. I found that I resonated more with the concept of openness than with the concept of marriage.

Erin and I realized that we were disempowering each other by giving too much power to the marriage itself. It was as if we somehow owned each other’s hearts and had to keep checking in and asking permission for anything we wanted to do intimacy-wise. We went out of our way to avoid serious misunderstandings and to check in with each other’s feelings, but the communication burden become insane after a while. It was a fun thing to explore, and I don’t have any regrets about it, but I wouldn’t want to keep this up long-term within a marriage structure.

I’m reminded of the quote from Kahlil Gibran: “Let there be spaces in your togetherness.” Erin and I had become so close that we were smothering each other. We both needed to step back and give each other more freedom, and ultimately that led us to step right out of the marriage itself.

It’s fair to say that polyamory was a catalyst for ending our marriage, but only partly. Another catalyst behind that one was my decision to get into raw foods. That’s partly what spawned this exploration of intimacy in the first place. Eating raw is an emotional amplifier. I had to learn to start processing the emotions I was feeling because they couldn’t be so easily dismissed.

But an even deeper causal factor beneath that was my commitment to conscious growth. The desire to relate to other people as consciously as possible eventually made it impossible to continue giving my power away to an external structure like a marriage. That was a problem for both of us. For years we fell into the trap of treating the marriage as something more powerful than ourselves, something we must preserve at all costs even when it didn’t make us happy to do so. I’m glad we finally saw the folly in that mindset.

What’s next?

It’s too soon to answer that question in much detail. For starters Erin and I will need some space to adapt to our lives as single people. It will probably take about a month for us to feel settled into our new routines.

Beyond that we still have some details to work out regarding the divorce. We’re not in a rush, but we’d like to have that figured out by the end of the year. Since we’re splitting up amicably, it shouldn’t be that tough to work it out.

At this point we’re taking it one day at a time.

Although our marriage is ending, Erin and I still expect to remain good friends. We want to thank you in advance for your patience and support during this time. After 15+ years together, it will take time for us to navigate this transition and adapt to life as single people again. We know, however, that this is the right direction for us and for our children, and we’re letting go consciously and with great love and regard for each other.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.