A few months ago my wife, Archana-siddhi, and I visited the ISKCON temple in Alachua, Florida. We always appreciate this large devotee community, though it seems there is never enough time to visit all of our dear friends. Apparently now, we would have to spend a few months here to properly honor our friends by […]
“Love and Trust” is Developed, Maintained, or Depleted, by our “Emotional Bank Accounts”
While we often hear Srila Prabhupada’s statement that “our relationships should be based on love and trust,” we don’t often expand on how this can be created and maintained. One process I have found helpful is something we teach in our relationship seminars, namely the practice of checking the balance in the “Emotional Bank Account” […]
Four Marital Relationship Tips Meant to Improve Your Life
My wife and I are traveling to the devotee farm community, Gita Nagari, near Port Royal, PA this Thursday to assist other members of the Grihastha Vision Team facilitate a couples’ retreat this weekend (June 7-9). In preparing for our part of the retreat, I’m naturally thinking of what makes a successful marriage and relationship. […]
The Power of a Family Prayer Group
During the December 2009 couple’s retreat in South Africa my wife and I gave couples different tools to help their marriages, and also different ways of thinking about themselves and their problems. One of my topics was family or couple’s prayer. The subject of prayers groups I feel “passionately” about—i.e, strongly, intensely–since I have first […]
Thanks for Being Such a Pain
“Later I’ll be able to understand that Sam is Krishna’s instrument to test my spiritual ideals, but now Sam is really upsetting me.” As I drive the forklift to pick up more freight to load onto the truck, my coworker Sam watches me with a disdain obvious from his body language—scowling, arms folded, rigid like […]
Lessons from Death
“My co-workers’ reaction to this incident pushed me to examine my own attitude toward suffering.” EARLY THIS YEAR (2002) law enforcement officers, acting on a tip, visited the Tri-State Crematory on sixteen acres in Noble, Georgia, owned by the Marsh family. When police found a skull and a torso floating in a lake on the […]