Welcome to Spiritual Health, united by a mission to spread the Word of God through unique experience. My purpose is to inspire and empower believers to express their faith boldly and creatively.
My tunnel is my mind. You’ll enter my tunnel, realize my thoughts, then exit my tunnel. Whatever your state of mind is, I am going to take you through my tunnel (this is my experience). While in my tunnel, you will not see a journey of darkness. You will only see the resulting state of my actions and/or the resulting state of the actions of others. As we begin to exit my tunnel, with the help of videos, I illustrate some ways that helped me plan my escape from my tunnel(prison).
I will not be writing in chronological order but I opt to provide you with what a relationship lacking substance looks like. I recommend you watch all the videos in full so you can absorb and learn as much as you can about yourself. I am the fourth child of Six. We slowly grew apart after leaving the nest – the nest where we typically come back to – to optionally celebrate two special days of the year, christmas, and thanksgiving. My parents weren’t poor and they were not rich. Gift exchange was an unspoken option but none of us practiced in gift giving. Birthday celebrations were optional but most times we didn’t celebrate birthdays. When I was seven, my relationship with my siblings was mostly based on passive-aggressive behaviour so there was a lot of conflict among us. That conflict conveyed a lot of cloudy information to decipher while growing up into my teens. This type of relationship continued until I left the nest at eighteen.
My mom was the biggest part of my life and has a beautiful heart – it was my duty to connect with her – to get me back on track, she would reach out to me when she wouldn’t hear from me after a couple months or so.
My dad has a good heart and explicitly lived out his love selectively – after I left the nest, he reached out to me about six times in over 30 years; my relationship with him has always been healthy. He is a passive father figure – while I was living at his home, he spent most hours of his day in his world. When my dad – from youth to adulthood – connected with me, he would lecture me; the experience was overwhelming and deeply imploded my brain – not a good experience. Our conversations were monologue – he did the talking by way of long-winded lectures. This is his style of communicating – To my demise, I adopted and carried this style of communication for a very long time as I struggled to shake it off my persona. He was an aggressive speaker, aggressively passionate in terms of conveying what he thinks. My dad has given me a few skills: first to tinker endlessly with electronics, mechanical objects and so forth, second to be passive, and third to speak with unidirectional passion.
I have three sisters – strings attached – of the girls my youngest was the only one to completely disconnect and completely disengage from my life – We did not have a relationship. I was very happy to see her when mom and I visited her to meet her first born child. We greeted each other and carried on the next couple hours, distant of each other, speaking with other individuals within the room. Thirteen years passed and we had our first conversation and the experience was nice and estranged. Because I adopted the art of monologue-communication from dad, my youngest grew to hate our relationship – monologue is how I would communicate; that was my relationship with her. Of the three, my oldest sister found God in her forties and has lived several years learning and finding peace. My middle sister has the greatest heart of the three and lived her life connecting the dots, and doubt.
I have two brothers – strings attached – of the boys my oldest was disconnected and disengaged for the most part. He found his home as far away from our sibling family as is possible but kept in touch on as needed basis. He has always been a good host the few times I’ve visited his home. He was there for me when I needed his help but I never felt like he needed me to be in his life – I used to call him often and realized it is a one-sided relationship. At some point in time, there came to be a silence between us the lasted about 17 years. I continued to learn about my oldest through my mom who tells me about his activities because I have always been interested. Mom would tell me, with a sorrow tone, that he works day and night, seven days a week and he has no time in his days. I don’t know much about him, In my opinion, I believe he has devoted his life to work – I do not see or hear directly from him to discuss our lives so I can not make my own conclusions about his life; so I make my own mental translations based on word from siblings or parents. We’ve had an okay relationship but he too has the personality and the character of my dad. Recently, I learned through my oldest sister, that within the last couple years, he found God. I’m not sure where he is in the faith. I believe he is a work in progress in terms of opening his heart and his mind and yet to actively build relationships. My experience in speaking with him in recent days is a work in progress and pleasant.
My youngest brother has the greatest heart of the boys but eventually lost his way. His struggle, in his words, is to become a better person – I hope and pray he will find his way to God to seek out the simplistic and ever so Godly secure lifestyle.
Basis of Love – Mom raised us up with love – love was her conviction – everything she did was based on love. Her kids are the love of her life – with strings attached. Hand and foot, she served me, my siblings, and my dad to her elder age and if she could, she would continue to do so. We were raised catholic by mom, dad did not believe, love is a conviction that mom raised us to believe in but that belief did not stick with any of us as her belief in the acts of love, were unidirectional. Looking back, love looks like duty – duty to acknowledge the existence of each other so it is my opinion that duty became the de facto love among siblings; in other words, the acts of duty was used in place of the acts of love. And mom became the de facto designated cook, the de facto designated dishwasher, the de facto designated person to serve us all and to keep us together in relationship, the de facto for celebrating special days — for the rest of her life. Surprisingly, long after his retirement, dad is helping her as best he can – even if it is minimal.
Lack of substance – My relationship with my parents and my siblings did not feel right. Too complicated because of all the strings that have us all wounded up. I found Jesus at the age of 15 and I realized how simple life can be. I learned a lot from reading the bible but I was 15 and none of my siblings, friends, and relatives, wanted to hear a 15 year old speak of God’s knowledge; even worse, I had adopted a mentality of delivering a message like a lecture – just like my dad! Growing up, my relationship with my cousins was better than my relationship with my siblings but my cousins were not a good example for me as they were addicts of narcotics and they too lived their lives in conflict. At 16 I wanted to join the military, lacking insight or substance that a person needs to successfully survive the real world, but I did not receive consent from mom. Then I turned 18 and I was on my way – Go Navy! It was the greatest and best decision for me and I regret opting to leave the forces when I did. After leaving the forces, I put myself back in the midst of my sibling family, in the chaos,… I was in my 20s now and relationships were still in deep conflict, competition, passive-aggressive behaviour. I was confused in terms of what a good relationship would look like. Just like my Dad, my actions were based on self-induced wisdom and self-induced conviction with zero relationship experience in terms of how a healthy relationship should look like. In the latter years of our adult lives, silence became the de facto method for dealing with the emotional state of any one individual; in other words, no one knew how to respond with the emotions of another so you were replied with silence, an outcast, an outsider – disagreement, sharing ideas and thoughts were tossed out the window – you will not be heard.
Furthermore the relationship I grew up within my siblings was a disastrous example of what I learned and how I would carry my life over the next two decades. I knew I could find my place in society but I struggled nonetheless to fit in. I lacked maturity, direction, and most importantly, substance as I grew into a family that lacked it. Opinions among my siblings of each other were formed and offered to destroy character and spirit; as a result, we learned to survive and to implement self-induced confidence in ourselves and self-induced confidence in our behaviour – we no longer needed opinions of others; as opinions formed among us do not empower. I selected to post the video that follows to help me illustrate the purpose of empowerment. He does a great job making the point.
But still I carried God’s wisdom, in an immature state, in my life with my self-proclaimed convictions and I built a wall so high and so strong that no-one could penetrate through it and the more I think I got cheated out of life, the wall became stronger. My thinking was not working for me and not Impactful as God would have me become.
Although my sibling family was not an ideal environment to grow up into; to learn from, I look back and have remorse for how our relationships panned-out. But the love I feel, the love mom portrayed as an example, keeps my heart filled with hope – I am the luckiest guy to have my siblings – even if it is only the relationship sealed in biological terms – we may not have lived the ideal relationship but knowing they are my contacts, at this point, is enough for me to smile about. The lack of trust harbors amung us as we had inflicted so much verbal pain in our upbringing but it seems all of us are all-in to keep trying with our relationships. I believe that one day each one of us will get past this state of thinking.
Still living in my tunnel, over the years, I have succeeded in my professional career to master the development of software computing, internet, intranet, database, local, and cloud-based computing. And yet I find myself constantly behind technology as it rapidly changes. Technology has been a very big part of my day to day life as I have devoted a big part of my time to it, it’s changes, it’s demands… As a result, I spent very little time to work on myself – to manage my character in a type of person that God would want me to become. To break down that wall that I personally built as it got in the way of building better relationships was a battle in and of itself… I can say now that I have broken down my wall – approximately 90% maybe not 90 but by a lot – and I feel better about myself and the people around me. While I do not aim to live my life in a way I think would please my sibling family or anyone else, I am more at peace knowing, God is my compass. I live out my days being me because I am great at being me – based on God’s humility. I am not perfect and I will never be; however, through God, I will remain confident of the person I have learned to become… Over the years, I grew in and out of my relationship with God but mostly out and I managed to hold on to the wisdom that would catapult me to become the person I am today. I have spent roughly 20 years in the leadership within the Boy Scouts to serve our boys in the community. I was fortunate to serve in a community where the men agreed that God would play, first and foremost, a role in the lives of the boys. So learning about God’s word was primarily a big part of their survival training and their civil training. Our philosophy became this: it is more important that our boys grow up to embrace God’s will; and secondly to succeed in their careers – this process would introduce substance in the lives of the boys.
Planning my escape from my own prison – Over the past 20 years I realized that if I do not commit to embracing and adopting to God’s will that I would become a lost soul, that I would not have the capacity, in many ways, to become an impactful human as God would have me become; otherwise, I would become a useless human being playing the victim that I am not… Are you your own worst enemy… The message in the video helped me understand who my enemy truly is. The tunnel was my prison and in some ways it may still be so – now I have God on my side. Many of you are stuck in your tunnel(your experience). To exit, keep an open mind so you can experience life in a new and profound manner. Ground yourself and fall into the practice of positive thinking – embrace positive for the rest of your lives. You may consider writing your own narrative so to describe and to put into perspective what your tunnel(prison) looks like. Memory lane was a horrible experience for me while writing but by writing about it, it helped me to plan my escape from my tunnel. I wrote my narrative years ago; I couldn’t find it so I had to rewrite it. You are your own worst enemy if you can not get through your tunnel – these include negative emotions that you may be going through and are keeping you a prisoner within your tunnel – identify and release those emotions. Keeping your mind healthy is as important as keeping your body healthy.
Win the battle… – Helped me realize I am a nobody so that I find it within my powers that I am POWERLESS then to become somebody such that I will not feel empty as God fills me and leads me by forces of the spirit and humility.
I married at the age of thirty; we raised two beautiful children then divorced. I am in my late fifties and, in past years, I have learned to accept failure as it came to me just as powerful as my success did. I am in my second marriage; am I ready for my second marriage – I don’t have very much confidence in myself to make our marriage work so I look to my wife for assistance. In my mind our marriage will be an experience where we will discover success and failure together and God will live within me to help me – we shall see where it leads to but God will be a part of it. I am in a better place; equipped with God’s humility,… Failure no doubt is still part of our lives but success in our marriage, through God, is my main focal objective – I am happy; I can’t speak for my wife but I believe she is happy, and we have a beautiful girl and she is very happy to. We have our disagreements(failures) but we seem to get through them with ease and dignity. I am in text-messaging dialogue with my siblings whom are very much in my heart. I am living my life looking through the eyes of God’s reality – a reality of becoming a better human being so to coexist under circumstances, positive or negative, I create.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Denzel Washington – I love what he has to say and I can not say it without providing you his video. In his words, When you fall; fall back on God so you can fall forward. enjoy!
This blog is dedicated to my sibling family and to all individuals in the world who struggle a life without substance – My prayer for us all: May we all find God, be filled with Grace, and embrace Humility and Joy. May we learn to accept our reality of our own human nature and be driven to become impactful citizens of our countries, our siblings, and our communities, in a new found world of unconditional character of substance, and without strings attached, live a simple life through God, as God would want us to – Amen
