Relationship — Catholics, Shamanism and Spirituality

By Michael Peter Langevin

 

My wife and I have been a couple for thirty-one years. We have raised two wonderful and amazing children who are now in their twenties. We all love each other. My wife and I have been having many prolonged heated disagreements about our values and goals in the recent few years since the children moved away to college. It got to the point where I felt emotionally abused and that my wife no longer loved me. She stated she felt similarly.

When I realized about seven months ago, that I was soon turning sixty, and no longer was enjoying my work — I felt like I was living my wife’s life and not my own, I guess that I had something like a midlife crisis. At any rate something broke loose in me and I had to return to Peru. 

I resigned my income situations which I was sure would drive my wife into a confused, insecure and angry state. Then I used that to prove to myself how impossible our marriage had become. I sold my car and bought a six-month round-trip plane ticket to Cusco, Peru. It was only then that I informed my wife.

Justified anger and indignation, along with feelings of betrayal and desertion are a few emotions she expressed until I left, and during the first four months I was in South America. While there I had amazing adventures all over Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, and wrote two books, one about my travels and one about the work I had done with underprivileged children and their families.

After being gone for about four months, my wife went on a Yoga retreat to Tulum, Mexico for two weeks. While there she remembered many of the great times and memories we have shared. I was invited to spend time with a number of extended Latin American families, staying in their homes and sharing their holiday celebrations.

And I was reminded how much value Latin culture puts on extended family and friends, over everything else. I was reminded while traveling in Latin America of the difference between their culture and ours. I spent time with some powerful Shamans, who lead me and several others in transformative San Pedro cactus and Ayahuasca rituals and ceremony, in which I re-examined all of my life’s values and goals.

At that point our email correspondences took a major turn toward healing. We began to speak of what was at the essence of years of arguing and what we might do to come back into realignment as a couple. Both my wife and I were raised as Catholics. I worked to de-program myself from those aspects that didn’t work for me and incorporate the ones that did, like ritual and ceremony and prayer, into my own personal spiritual practices.

My wife doesn’t attend mass weekly but practices meditation, Yoga, visualization and affirmations among other non-Catholic spiritual tools in her spiritual life, but at the root, she is still a Catholic in her belief system. This has caused so many conflicts because I tend to be very Shamanic in my beliefs and way of approaching life. Evolving spiritually is why I feel humans exist, my wife is a more material woman. We discussed our differences at length and our very divergent desires of how we should live the next twenty to thirty years we most likely have left.

During the first four months of my journey my wife was done with me and I was sad, but understood. She even requested I not live in Northern California any more. Before my six months in South America were up, we had agreed that I would return to our Northern California farm, which she had valiantly maintained for six months, and spend my time there doing much-needed repairs and spring cleaning, while we explored whether we could possibly forgive each other. We agreed to try and find ways to redefine our relationship. We agreed to work at empowering both of us, and to assist each other in evolving on as many levels as possible. 

As I write this I am almost shocked, but very pleased to report we have agreed to go forward as a couple, with new awareness and new resolve, to communicate more clearly, listen better, compromise more, argue less and love as much as we can. Our children and many friends seem to be pleased with our new goals. We know there are no guarantees in life or relationships, but we are optimistic the love we tested, and can still feel, will take us to a higher spiritual outworking on many levels.

Michael Peter Langevin is the author of “Secrets of the Ancient Incas,” “Spiritual Business,” and “Secrets of the Amazon Shamans.” He was the former Publisher/Editor of Magical Blend Magazine, Natural Health and Beauty Magazine and Transitions Magazine. He has traveled to Latin America many times to deepen his shamanic studies and widen his knowledge of ancient pre-Columbian cultures. He is a Life coach and offers workshops, talks and tours to South America. For more info email michaelpeterlangevin@gmail.com