Epistomology

People ask why I insist on Body-Mind-Spirit as balanced goals in my students.  It is simple: if you can stay balanced in all three arenas, you can be fairly confident that your perceptual apparatus is working properly.   It is, in a sense, a way of using the tangible to touch the intangible, to develop an instinctive understanding of the world around us.  I know too many brilliant people who have lost their way utterly, and can't understand why they fail over and over again to reach their goals.  They argue about the reasons they can't succeed financially, or why their lives seem to have so much pain.  and usually, there is some clue sitting right in front of them: their maps of reality are distorted, and one can see it in their waist lines, their relationship history, or their inability to create goods and services cherished by their chosen community.  Accepting goals in these three arenas is a process of "re-calibrating" the perceptual apparatus.  It isn't lack of will power that creates obesity (we're not talking about a little `spare tire' here--that is probalby just lifestyle, and values incompatable iwth a lean body).  Ask almost anybody who's been 80 pounds overweight or more, lost it, and kept it off.  They'll tell you that the change was emotional.  They DECIDED to change.  They dealt with the abuse, confusion, depression, or whatever, and adjusted their habit patterns.
The same thing is true in relationships.  If you have a series of disasters in thiws regard...if you wouldn't want your ex's to be the ones holding the rope if you were dangling off a cliff, you have to look at YOU.  YOU chose them.  They were the best YOU could do at the time.  As Ian Fleming said in "Goldfinger", "Once is happenstance.  Twice is coincidence.  The third time, it's enemy action."  We are our own enemies.  Face the truth of what is happening within you, and you create the possibility of a new, better future.