Awakening to the Truth — Part 1

How a Spiritual Experience Ended My Marriage

We rode the highs and weathered the lows, both of us pushed by a life that taxed us heavily. There were moments when opportunity shined bright—my career offered some good breaks, and we began to prosper, or at least thought we might. But for every gain, there was a loss. Ventures failed, money vanished, and often we found ourselves on the edge of financial ruin. The pattern repeated with such predictability that we came to expect disappointment following closely on the heels of any success. Like waves on a shore, each triumph eventually receded, leaving us grasping at wet sand that slipped through our fingers. We stayed together, but more for our son than for each other. Anger settled in; we couldn’t reach forgiveness before anger would reignite, turning anger into resentment. Small disagreements erupted into battles neither of us could win, leaving scorched earth where tenderness once grew. Every apology came with an expiration date, a temporary truce in a war that never truly ended.

A Sad Summary of a Forgettable Marriage

Even in good times, Southern California’s cost of living was a constant battle. The mortgage consumed half our income, leaving little room for error in our monthly calculations. We lived paycheck to paycheck, a precarious balance that could tip with the slightest misstep. The crash in 2008 hit my real estate work hard, launching us into a dark period that furrowed my brows. Clients disappeared overnight. Projects stalled. Income dried up like desert creeks in summer. Anxiety was the houseguest who wouldn’t leave, sitting at our dinner table, accompanying us to bed, greeting us each morning with fresh worries. I felt its weight in my chest, a perpetual tightness that made full breaths impossible. I carried that burden alone, rarely sharing its depth with my wife, not wanting to add to her own struggles. This silence, intended as protection, built another wall between us.

Later, through entrepreneurship, I made investments that promised a better future. I poured everything into new ventures, telling myself and my wife that sacrifice now would mean security later. But the benefits were distant, and the bills still came due each month. Every day was a grind, a slow burn of financial anxiety that unraveled the fabric that bound us. We postponed happiness, deferred dreams, existed in a holding pattern waiting for prosperity that remained just beyond our reach. The strain showed in our faces, in the way our shoulders hunched forward, in the absence of laughter in our home. Our son witnessed this constant tension, absorbing it like a silent sponge, though we tried to shield him from the worst of our worries.

Eventually, we left the coast for a more affordable, stress-free life. The decision came after years of struggling against the financial tide that threatened to drown us. For me, it represented a step toward something better, a chance to move forward, to breathe freely without the crushing weight of coastal expenses. I saw the move as liberation, an opportunity to rebuild what years of struggle had eroded. I imagined us flourishing in a place where financial pressure no longer dominated our days. For her, the move felt like a retreat, a loss of the life she knew, the weather, the rhythm, the things she loved. She mourned the ocean breeze, the familiar streets, the community she’d built. The desert landscape seemed alien and hostile, nothing like the home she’d cultivated. She left behind not just a place but pieces of herself, sacrifices I understood only dimly at the time.

Paradise Lost

At last, we made it. After years of struggle, we reached the life we had always dreamed of—a place we thought was only for others. The strain of scraping by had lifted, the financial weight that had pressed on us for so long finally eased. Our new home cost half what we’d paid in Coastal California, yet offered twice the space. I no longer woke in the night calculating how to cover next month’s expenses. The business ventures began paying dividends, creating financial stability we hadn’t known in decades. We found ourselves in a community where we could settle, build a life, and set down roots. We even had the dream house, one with space and quiet, somewhere we could call ours. It had a private pool where out son’s noises and behaviors concerned no one, and it had rooms for each of us and spaces designed for comfort. The backyard was secured, giving our son freedom to explore safely. By all external measures, we had arrived at the destination we’d struggled toward for so long.

Before the move, her health began to falter—sciatica that clung to her like a shadow, leaving her in constant pain for almost three years. It was agony for her, a trial for all of us. The pain dictated her days, limiting activities, interrupting sleep, dampening any joy that might have broken through our difficulties. Doctors offered little relief beyond medication that dulled her mind along with the pain. Physical therapy provided temporary reprieves but no lasting solution. I watched helplessly as she withdrew further into herself, the vibrant woman I’d married now confined by the prison of her body. The distance between us expanded with her pain, creating another barrier to intimacy neither of us knew how to bridge.

The relief of financial stability finally arrived, we moved into the dream, finally feeling at home, but by then, the road to get there had taken its toll. Even with less stress and better health, adjusting to desert life was a challenge. The heat pressed down during summer months, keeping us indoors when we longed for activity. The isolation of our home, once appealing for its privacy, sometimes felt like exile from the world we’d known. We’d achieved what we wanted only to discover that external circumstances couldn’t heal internal fractures. The damage had been done long before we reached our destination. Like travelers who arrive after the festival has ended, we found ourselves standing in an empty field, wondering what we’d missed while focusing so intently on the journey.

Physical Touch and Emotional Closeness

When we first moved in together, our days ended wrapped in each other’s arms, our passion relentless, like a fire we thought would never cool. Each night was alive with intensity, and we fell asleep tangled together, bodies and hearts close. Touch came naturally then, a language we both spoke fluently, requiring no translation or negotiation. We sought each other out, craving the connection, the electricity that passed between us with each caress. Our bodies seemed made for each other, responding instinctively to the slightest gesture. Physical intimacy reinforced our emotional bond, creating a virtuous cycle that strengthened our relationship. Those early days held a magic neither of us questioned or analyzed—we simply lived within it, assuming its permanence.

Unfortunately, the touch that once soothed her began to keep her awake. The shift happened gradually, almost imperceptibly at first. She’d move slightly away, creating a small gap between us as we slept. I didn’t think much of it initially, attributing the change to comfort or temperature. But the distance grew. First, it was sleeping without embracing; then, it was sleeping without touching at all. The warmth we’d shared cooled by degrees, like a slowly setting sun. She explained that physical contact kept her mind active, made her aware of my presence when she needed unconsciousness. Ostensibly, she couldn’t sleep because it made her think about me instead of sleeping, a pleasing lie we both accepted without examining too closely. The truth, more complicated and painful, remained unspoken between us.

Finally, she moved to another room where my night breathing wouldn’t disrupt her sleep (I don’t snore). The separate bedrooms began as a temporary solution to her insomnia but solidified into permanent arrangement. With each incremental withdrawal, the intimacy we’d shared began to drift further away, like a boat untethered from shore. The physical distance created emotional space neither of us knew how to navigate. Without the anchor of touch, we lost the nonverbal communication that had once bridged our differences. Conversations became more stilted, less intuitive. Arguments increased as we lost the physical reconciliation that had often resolved conflicts before words could. The language of our bodies, once so fluent, became halting and awkward, full of misunderstandings and missed connections.

Her desire for closeness waned, and as her health took a downturn, she wanted little more than relief from the pain, certainly not an amorous husband. The sciatica that tormented her made physical intimacy difficult, sometimes impossible. Pain consumed her attention, leaving little room for desire. I understood this intellectually but struggled emotionally with the rejection. Each night alone in our bed, I felt her absence like a physical presence, a negative space that grew larger as time passed. I tried to be patient, to focus on her recovery rather than my needs, but loneliness settled in me, a cold weight that never fully lifted. I missed not just the physical act but the connection it represented, the wordless way we had once communicated our love.

Couples rarely last long if there are significant differences in levels of desire. The distance between our needs grew from a gap to a chasm. Frustrations mount on both sides, and one of the best opportunities for connection becomes a source of friction. Her appetite for passion faded, while mine remained, adding tension to our relationship and stranding us on different cliffs of a widening chasm. I felt constantly hungry for a connection she couldn’t provide; she felt constantly inadequate, failing to meet expectations she no longer shared. The mismatch created resentment on both sides—mine for what I perceived as rejection, hers for what she experienced as pressure. We stopped discussing it directly, allowing the silence around our intimacy to grow until it occupied most of the space between us.

The Chasm

The minor disagreements—the ordinary quarrels of daily life—started to bite harder, more challenging to brush off without the bond we’d once had. Small irritations that we might have laughed off in earlier years now festered like splinters under skin. The way I left cabinet doors open, her tendency to leave lights on throughout the house, my habit of interrupting, her withdrawal during social gatherings—these trivial frictions accumulated, gaining weight and significance beyond their actual importance. With each little pull, the connection we’d built came undone, thread by thread, until finally, there was nothing left between us but distant memories and faded hopes. We operated in the same space but inhabited different emotional worlds, parallel lives that touched only at practical points of household management and parenting decisions.

The love that once anchored us turned cold, replaced by a quiet indifference that blackened our lives. We moved through our days like ghosts haunting the same house, present but not connecting. Conversations became transactional—scheduling, finances, our son’s needs—devoid of the warmth that had once made even mundane exchanges meaningful. We still functioned as a family unit but had ceased being partners in any real sense. The vitality drained from our relationship left a hollow shell, a marriage that existed on paper but had died in practice. Yet neither of us acknowledged this death, continuing the motions of couplehood without its substance, maintaining appearances for our son’s sake, for financial stability, for the comfort of familiar patterns, even when those patterns brought little joy.

We saw the fracture and knew that something vital had slipped away, and we tried to find our way back to each other. Awareness of our disconnect prompted sporadic efforts to reconnect. We went out, dressed up like we used to, and pretended the years hadn’t put miles between us. Date nights orchestrated with careful planning, designed to rekindle what had dimmed. For brief moments, we’d glimpse what we once had—a laugh shared over dinner, a meaningful glance, a touch that didn’t feel obligatory. These moments gave us hope, temporary respite from the emotional desert our marriage had become. But each time, the same old troubles crept back in, rising up like ghosts from the past, haunting whatever spark we hoped to reignite. We couldn’t shake them, couldn’t pretend the scars had faded. The weight of accumulated disappointments, unresolved conflicts, and emotional distance proved too heavy to lift, even in our most determined efforts.

Options for retirement opened up. For the first time, the horizon looked clear. We were poised for something great, but life had other plans. The financial stability we’d finally achieved brought possibilities neither of us had dared consider during our struggling years. We could travel, pursue interests long set aside, create the life we’d postponed for decades. I felt relief, a rare excitement for the days ahead, and I allowed myself to believe in the future. The tightness in my chest eased; sleep came more readily. I began making plans, researching destinations, calculating budgets that didn’t require constant compromise. In retrospect, I let myself feel the excitement too much, allowed hope to flourish without tempering it with caution. The foundation on which I built these dreams had already crumbled beneath my feet, though I hadn’t yet felt the fall.

Best or Worst?

When our special needs son was born, at first, we believed it was the worst thing that could have happened to us, only later to recognize the priceless value. The diagnosis crushed us initially, collapsing the future we’d imagined into dust. We grieved for the typical childhood he wouldn’t have, the milestones he might never reach, the independence he might never achieve. Those early years felt like moving through quicksand—each step a struggle, each day an exercise in endurance rather than joy. Experts offered grim prognoses; relatives suggested institutionalization; friends drifted away, uncomfortable with what they didn’t understand. We felt utterly alone with a burden we weren’t sure we could carry. Yet as the years passed, perspective shifted. His unconditional love, his unique way of seeing the world, his genuine nature untainted by social deception—these qualities revealed themselves as rare gifts. What we once viewed as tragedy transformed into a profound education in what truly matters. He taught us patience, resilience, and a deeper understanding of human connection than we might otherwise have known. In short, what we initially believed was the worst was actually the best.

When I had a profound spiritual experience, I believed it was the crowning achievement of 35 years of spiritual practice, the best outcome I could imagine. Later, I discovered the price was my marriage and family life, not what I wanted. The awakening felt like ascension, a breakthrough to a higher state of consciousness I’d sought through decades of meditation and study. In that moment of ecstatic revelation, I believed I’d reached the pinnacle of spiritual development, the reward for years of disciplined practice. The energy coursing through me seemed Divine, connecting me to something larger than myself, larger than ordinary human experience. I felt chosen, blessed, fundamentally transformed. What I couldn’t see through that brilliant light was the shadow it cast—the fear it inspired in my wife, the instability it introduced to our home, the foundation it cracked beneath our feet. What came as illumination to me arrived as darkness for her. My spiritual zenith became the nadir of our marriage, a cruel irony I couldn’t comprehend until much later, when the dust of our separation had settled and clarity emerged from chaos.

Loss is gain, and gain is loss: the irony of the worldly winds.

Buddhist teachings speak of the eight worldly winds that blow through human life: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute. These opposing forces constantly shift, reversing with unpredictable timing. What we grasp as positive often reveals hidden costs; what we avoid as negative frequently contains unexpected blessings. Our son’s autism, initially received as devastating loss, yielded profound gains in perspective and capacity for love. My spiritual awakening, celebrated as ultimate gain, manifested as irrevocable loss of family stability. These reversals remind us that attachment to any fixed view—whether of triumph or disaster—misses the complex interweaving of experience. What seems finished often begins something new; what appears broken often creates space for unexpected wholeness. The winds continue blowing regardless of our preferences, teaching us again and again the futility of clinging to any permanent state of affairs.

The Night Everything Changed

On October 30, 2023, my emotionally exuberant experience ended our marriage. The date stands fixed in my memory, immovable as a gravestone marking the death of what we’d built over two decades. About a month earlier, I’d received life-changing financial news that promised security and ease, a vision of a bright future for us all. Years of risky investments had finally paid off, creating the stability we’d sought throughout our marriage. That excitement simmered inside me, a pressure building until it felt like it would burst. I carried it close, letting it grow, perhaps unwisely failing to recognize how the intensity of my emotion might appear to others. The anticipation built day by day, filling me with an energy I struggled to contain, transforming my outlook, reshaping my understanding of what our future might hold.

At around 5:30 in the evening, I felt it crest—a torrent of emotions I didn’t want to hold back. Surrounded by family, safe in our home, I let it flow. The dam broke, releasing years of pent-up tension, anxiety, and—finally—relief. The feeling wasn’t simply happiness or excitement but something more profound, a fundamental shift in consciousness that altered my perception of reality itself. In that moment, it felt like a spiritual awakening, something people chase after at revivals or on mountaintops, seeking a connection to something larger. I experienced it as transcendence, as elevation beyond ordinary constraints, as liberation from fear that had shadowed me through decades of financial insecurity. My body tingled with energy; my mind expanded beyond familiar boundaries; my heart opened with a love that seemed to encompass everything and everyone.

But in my home, it became the breaking point. What I experienced as spiritual awakening, my wife witnessed as frightening instability. The decision not to suppress the emotional onslaught and prevent the experience became the triggering event that finally prompted her to want out. Looking back, I can see how my behavior—jumping, shouting, moving erratically—might have appeared alarming to someone not experiencing the internal transformation that drove it. My choice to surrender to the experience rather than maintain composed exterior control fractured whatever trust remained between us. The very moment that felt like my greatest freedom became the catalyst for the end of our union. The irony cuts deep: what liberated me imprisoned our marriage in a terminal diagnosis from which no recovery proved possible.

My Experience

I felt forces brewing inside of me that were building to something. I didn’t know what it was exactly, but I strongly suspected I was about to have an intense emotional experience, a heart cleansing. The sensation began subtly—a warming in my chest, a lightness in my thoughts, a sense of expanding awareness that grew stronger by the hour. I recognized the signs from previous, milder spiritual experiences during deep meditation. This felt different, though—more powerful, more all-encompassing, as if years of practice had been preparation for this singular moment. I felt curiosity and excitement envelop me, the question arose: How much love can you channel? My adventurous spirit yearned to press the limits. Rather than fear the intensity building within me, I welcomed it, curious about where it might lead, how far it might take me beyond my ordinary consciousness. The energy felt clean, positive, loving—nothing that warranted resistance or control.

I began hugging and later jumping while embracing my 22-year-old special needs son. His presence acted as catalyst and amplifier to what was already occurring. My son loves me unconditionally, and his love and mine combined to bring about a powerful spiritual burst. His innocence, his pure acceptance, his complete absence of judgment created the perfect environment for what was unfolding in me. As I held him, the energy intensified, a current running between us that magnified what had begun as my individual experience. His joy at my excitement fed the cycle, creating a feedback loop of positive emotion that accelerated the process. I felt boundaries dissolving—between him and me, between my ordinary self and something vaster, between human limitation and divine possibility.

The feelings overwhelmed me, overtook any rational thought, and the emotions poured out, raw and untamed. I surrendered completely to the experience, allowing it to carry me where it would, relinquishing the controlling voice that normally monitored and moderated my behavior. I jumped. I shouted. I moved. My body needed to express physically what was happening spiritually; stillness felt impossible in the face of such expansion. I let the energy flow as it would, like a dam breaking open. The release felt necessary, inevitable, beyond choice—as natural as breathing or heartbeat. I was empowered. OMG! I was really, really Empowered!!! The sense of limitation that had constrained me throughout my life vanished, replaced by a powerful knowing that I was connected to something infinite, something beyond the small self I’d identified with for decades. My heart light ignited, and I was ablaze!

In those first moments of true power, when the euphoria dulled just enough to feel the raw Qi surging through me, I could sense every chakra was blown open, the heart pulling most of the flow. Energy coursed through my body’s centers like electricity finding the path of least resistance. My heart chakra dominated—expanding, radiating, connecting me to everything around me with cords of light and love. The sensation was physical as well as spiritual—warmth spreading through my chest, a rhythmic pulsing that synchronized with but transcended my heartbeat, a tangible force moving through and beyond the boundaries of my flesh. Gratitude for my training rose in me like a steadying anchor. To tame the chaos, my mind leaped to a familiar Lamrim meditation, instinctively seeking balance in the storm of energy. That meditation held the map to what was happening, grounding me, giving direction to the rush. The structured practice provided context for the overwhelming experience, helping me navigate waters that might otherwise have drowned rational thought entirely.

… through the power of our pure intention of wishing love and great accumulation of merit… Infinite light rays radiate from our body and pervade the entire universe, reaching the bodies and minds of all living beings and bestowing upon them the supreme happiness of permanent inner peace.

The words from the meditation practice flowed through my mind, giving shape to the formless energy surging through me. This wasn’t just emotional release but directed compassion, universal love extending beyond personal boundaries. My heart felt like a quasar radiating light with such intensity that it outshone the entire Milky Way galaxy by a thousand times! The metaphor felt literal in that moment—my physical body a vessel for cosmic force, my individual consciousness a conduit for universal love, my separate self dissolved into boundless connection with all beings. OMG!!! The exclamation rose from depths beyond thought, a primordial recognition of something both entirely new and eternally familiar.

Per my training, I held that feeling as long as I could, holding it, feeling it, watching it, marveling at the Power! It was incredible! I maintained awareness even as I surrendered to the experience, applying mindfulness techniques cultivated through years of meditation. This dual consciousness—simultaneously immersed and observing—allowed me to fully experience the awakening while retaining memory and integration of its lessons.

Perhaps you felt my Blessing? I assure you I did!

The energy seemed to radiate beyond my physical form, touching everything around me, creating a field of positive intention that transcended ordinary boundaries of self and other. Imagine that experience!

Blast Off!!!

The rocket metaphor captured the sense of leaving behind familiar territory, of accelerating beyond normal constraints, of entering a new dimension of consciousness where different laws apply and new perspectives become possible.

I felt an emotional release like no other. Years—twenty-four of them—of financial tension, of stress, coiled tight around my nerves, vanished in an instant, never to return. The liberation felt complete and permanent, not a temporary relief but a fundamental transformation of my relationship with anxiety. The weight I’d carried for decades simply dissolved, leaving lightness in its place. My heart was suddenly unburdened; my whole body, every cell, came alive. Energy replaced exhaustion; possibility replaced limitation; hope replaced resignation. The chronic tension that had become so familiar I’d stopped noticing it disappeared, revealing by its absence how deeply it had affected my daily experience. My adrenaline surged, flooding me with a surge of energy that felt boundless, like life itself coursing through me, vivid and fierce. The biochemical reality of the experience was undeniable—my nervous system engaged in ways that created physical sensation matching the spiritual revelation.

For a while, my mind felt sharper, clearer, as if some fog had lifted and I could see straight to the heart of things. Thoughts flowed with unusual coherence and insight; connections between ideas emerged that I’d never noticed before; solutions to long-standing problems appeared with startling simplicity. I felt connections I hadn’t felt before, a deeper sense of who I was and how the world moved. The boundaries between self and other, between internal and external, between past and future all softened, revealing an interconnectedness that had always existed beneath the illusion of separation. It was elation, pure and simple, the kind that takes hold of body and spirit. Joy bubbled up from an inexhaustible wellspring, flowing through me without effort or attachment to cause. I felt magnificent—physically, mentally, every part of me alive in a way I hadn’t known possible. The integration of body, mind, and spirit created a wholeness I’d glimpsed in meditation but never experienced with such sustained intensity in ordinary waking consciousness.

Her Experience

Her experience was not as uplifting. In fact, it couldn’t have been further to the other extreme. While I floated on waves of ecstatic revelation, she drowned in terror and confusion. The contrast could not have been more stark or more tragic. She was terrified. What appeared to her was not spiritual transcendence but psychiatric emergency, not awakening but breakdown. My behavior—the jumping, the shouting, the uncharacteristic physical expressiveness—triggered deep fear rather than understanding or participation. She saw someone she didn’t recognize, someone whose actions seemed dangerous and unpredictable rather than enlightened. The intensity that felt liberating to me registered as threatening to her, creating an immediate fight-or-flight response she couldn’t control. Her body tensed; her breathing shortened; her mind raced with worst-case scenarios that seemed increasingly plausible as the evening progressed.

What I felt as a wave of life and release, she saw as something dark and dangerous. To her, it looked like madness—a psychotic break unraveling before her eyes. The behaviors that expressed my inner transformation appeared to her as symptoms of serious mental illness. Where I experienced expansion and connection, she perceived disintegration and chaos. Her clinical background in psychology provided categories that seemed to fit what she witnessed—mania, psychosis, break from reality—terms that carried weight and consequence, that demanded intervention rather than celebration. She feared for herself, for our son, feared what might happen if I lost control. Her entire life, the life we’d built, seemed to be crumbling, disintegrating right there in front of her. The stable partner she’d counted on through decades of challenges suddenly appeared unstable, unreliable, potentially harmful. Everything she thought she knew about me came into question, replaced by frightening uncertainty about who I had become and what might happen next.

When I brought my son into the moment, hoping to share what felt like a revelation, her fear only deepened. She worried I might harm him, her mind racing to protect him from whatever chaos she believed was unfolding. Our special needs son required consistency and calm, thriving on routine and predictability. My unusual behavior disrupted everything he depended on for security, potentially triggering his own anxiety and confusion. She saw me involving him in what she perceived as dangerous instability, perhaps even putting him at physical risk with the jumping and movement that accompanied my awakening. All she wanted was for it to stop, rewind time, and erase what she saw as a descent into madness, pretend it never happened. The need to restore normalcy, to protect our son, to salvage the security she thought we’d finally achieved after years of struggle drove her actions that night and in the days that followed.

Two worldviews collide

For her, the experience was a nightmare. For me, it was dream come true. We couldn’t have seen things more differently. The same event, witnessed from radically different perspectives, created irreconcilable narratives. No common ground existed between her experience of witnessing psychological breakdown and my experience of spiritual breakthrough. These contradictory interpretations created a fundamental incompatibility that no amount of discussion or explanation could resolve. It was the kind of divide that swallows everything whole, a chasm too wide to cross. She and I dug in, each clinging to our own version of the truth, unable to yield. The certainty with which we each held our perspective made compromise impossible. Neither of us could accept the other’s interpretation without abandoning our own, and neither was willing to do so.