Category: questions

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talking with (god) retreat

I have two questions for you. Both are very important.

The first question is, are you ready for a life changing experience and the second is, would you like to discover answers to your biggest questions in life?

These are not idle questions. They are fundamental and potentially life altering, depending on how you answer them.

I am offering a retreat, the details of which appear later in the post, but for right now I want to share a few important things with you.

I have been having my own direct, intimate, personal conversations with spirit, divine, creator, or whatever name I choose for (god) at the time. After reading Neale Donald Walsch’s book, Conversations With God, I thought to myself, if he can talk with god and receive answers, so can I.

So, for the last 27 years I’ve been having my own talks with (god) and have received incredibly profound answers to my most challenging questions. During all that time, I’ve never experienced even one harsh word from god. The voice I hear is filled with love and compassion and as long as I quiet the noise inside my head, I hear answers to everything I ask. I need to point out, they are often not the answers I expected, but are always the answers I need.

If this sounds too fantastic to you and you want to stop reading, I’ll understand.

But if you’d like a deeper connection with god (or whatever name you use), please keep reading.

I am comfortable promising, that if you attend, you will be guided toward some insights you seek and feel a profound sense of love, as you work through the issues that challenge or possibly confuse you. This retreat will offer you opportunities to share your experiences with others, at your comfort level, and in a beautiful loving sacred space. Each attendee will have the freedom to explore their journey through journaling, conversations, meditation, music, art, walking and relaxation.

If this sounds appealing to you, I invite you to join us. The talking with god retreat will be held from Friday, December 13, 2024 (6:30pm registration) through Sunday, December 15, 2024 (closing at 11:30am) and will be held at the Dominican Retreat Center at 1945 Union Street, Niskayuna, New York 12309.

The cost is $295, which includes two-nights’ accommodations, four nourishing meals and a gift copy of my book, talking with (god) to the first thirty participants to register.

To register, please contact me (Rob H Geyer) at rhgeyer@gmail.com or call my cell phone (518) 469-8676.

I believe this is one retreat you will not want to miss.

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What Are You Looking For

Do you suppose that everyone is looking for something? Some extra portion of life? Some new spice, experience, dimension, or transition?

Are you?

If you are, do you know where to look?

This seems like a simple question, but it’s more than that. It’s the essential question. We have so many places and directions we can move, but how do we know for sure which will lead us toward what we want?

As you’ve observed by now if you’ve been with me for a while, asking questions is one of the main ways that helps me plot my course through life. Without questions, I wander, moving about aimlessly. I need focus and questions create pathways for me.

So, if you are willing, I’m going to take you on one of my journeys. In this case, it’s a somewhat poetic journey which starts with an important question. Because none of us is more important than another, sometimes it seems we don’t feel we can share what feels true to us.

I am taking a step. A step beyond my comfort level and placing words on a page, with the idea in mind that they may offer you something of value.

Who am I to speak to you?

And yet, who do I have to be?

Who do any of us have to be?

We all know a part of the whole.

I am wondering…

What do we look for in each other?

To be someone to help fill us up,

Someone to hear us,

To know why our heart beats?

Someone to touch our soul,

Someone to stand next to,

Or lean up against,

To help weather life’s storms?

Someone to remind us about love,

About why we’re here,

To ask us about our dreams,

To lead us forward,

And to catch us when we fall?

Someone to remind us that we are family,

That we’ve chosen each other,

To support, to suggest,

To increase our range and

Help us see beyond ourselves?

And someone to help us know love

Through both human and divine touch.

To me, what each of us may be looking for is found both inside of us and inside of others. When we connect, we’re bigger, brighter, bolder than we are alone. We need each other. We want each other.

Solely looking outside doesn’t work for me. Neither does looking only on my inside. I need both. I need insight and reflection.

How about you?

What do you need and where are you looking?

After years of searching, I settled back, relaxed my mind and heart, and waited for an answer. A divine connection appeared, and a voice spoke.

“You can look wherever you like, but there is one sure, true path.”

“Tell me please,” I asked, “what is this path?”

“Always choose love. Open your heart and offer love, to yourself and to all others. From here you will find all that you seek.”

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Why

As a kid I used to ask my parents, “why?”

I rarely received a satisfactory answer. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe they didn’t know either. More likely, they didn’t feel it necessary to answer or they just plain didn’t want to. They were probably too busy for the onslaught of follow up questions I was no doubt going to ask.

In order to avoid this, I was told, “because I said so.” And that was supposed to be that…done deal…conversation over.

Well, I’m a grown up (mostly) and I still want to know, “why?”

The issue is, who do I ask now?

Do I have to answer all of my own questions from here on in? If so, I’m going to be in trouble because this world is far too complicated for me to figure everything out that I’m curious about.

I have a mile long list of questions I’d like the answers to. Maybe you have a few on your list too. It would be fun to compare notes sometime. But until then, here’s something I’d like to understand.

Why can’t we all get along?

I try to sit back and listen so that I might discern some of the reasons. The first thing that jumps out at me is that we’ve all received strong cultural training, whether from our parents, other family members, teachers, bosses, leaders, really everyone that surrounds us.

We seem to start out with a blank baby slate. Nothing on it at all, just some inner coding to help us get what we feel we need: food, tender loving care, clean diapers, a nice crib. “Why” doesn’t seem to matter.

But as we grow older, we become a part of an opinion factory. We are told what to think and how to act or we observe it. Either way it becomes a part of us. We absorb everything around us and filter it through our training. If it doesn’t fit, we set it aside.

And in that very moment, “why” becomes lost. We act by rote.

I wonder, how could it be different from this? How might we be trained so that we could be open and so that we could listen and ask questions and hear answers?

And while it would be nice to start over, fresh and clean, that’s not very realistic, so I search for an alternative. From the place I am right now, can I become a blank slate, ready to have an open dialogue with others, ready to talk about all of the “whys”?

What would make this possible?

My first impression is that compassion, sympathy, and empathy need to take center stage. I need to acknowledge that I have pre-formed opinions about almost everything. And further, I need to consider that none of them might be accurate or fair.

If I can accept this starting place, I think I have a chance. I think I can ask real questions and hear real answers. I think I can fit the new answers in around all the other things I’ve been told and let them influence each other.

And perhaps I’m asking the wrong question.

Maybe the question ought to be…”how” can we get along? Maybe “why” is a rabbit hole, a deep set of tunnels where everyone gets lost.

I like the idea of “how” because it’s active and leads me forward, rather than “why” that often leads me in circles.

“How” is hopeful and full of potential. “How” is worth exploring. It’s connective and alive. So, I think I’ll release needing to know “why” and focus my time and energy on “how”. Maybe you’ll want to join me.

“How” is a way forward that folks can work on together. We can explore our views and preconceptions with each other and seek commonalities, then build from there, believing that there are answers and solutions for everything.

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Valuable Questions

I’ve discovered how incredibly valuable questions are in my life. Have you noticed this being true for you too?

A well-timed question can open doors you thought might never be opened or guide you in directions that provide insights you hadn’t anticipated.

Asking questions can narrow our focus so that we can feel, sense, or work our way forward. They can also prompt us to dive deeper and find meaning and purpose.

Asking questions was one of the main reasons why my friend, Cheri Warren (Website www.creativewarrens.com. Instagram @cheriwphoto. Facebook.com/creativewarrens) and I developed the Four Word Questions Oracle deck, also known as Self Discovery Cards. In addition to the questions I offer, Cheri provides stunning artwork which adds imagination, color, and beauty to the cards, making them immensely appealing. Together, we believe they have the power to spark your creativity and offer you clarity and insight in your everyday lives.

To give you a better idea of how it works I’d like to share a quick example, so you can see exactly what I mean.

There are 52 cards in the deck, along with two instruction cards, one section of which outlines three ideas for card spreads. A card spread is where you select four individual cards which represent meaningful aspects in your life. In the case of my example, I chose the card spread that focuses on, ‘influences, obstacles, solutions, and outcomes’.

It would take some time to review all four of the cards I selected, so I thought I’d center on one card for now.

The first card I chose proposed this question, “once free, what then?”, and represented the ‘influences’ part of the spread.

Occasionally, at first glance nothing of importance comes to mind, but I know if I stick with it, benefits will follow, as was the case with this card.

I wondered, what are the negative influences in my life? What impacts me the most and impedes my sense of progress, happiness, and hope?

Of course, each of us is surrounded by both positive and negative influences, but I don’t seem to pay as much attention to the positive, as I do the negative. How about you?

Maybe that’s because I tend to take the positives for granted, so my focus shifts to the negatives, the dramatic or the troublesome aspects of my life. And along comes this question reminding me that I have a choice. Further, it prompts me to ask a follow up question, sort of a part A and part B question.

If I allowed myself to release the elements of my life that I label ‘negative’, and free myself from them, ‘what then’?

The promise of liberation from these negative influences and the chance to embrace what I consider to be the ‘positives’, entices me forward.

There is excitement in the idea that this is up to me. No one outside of me is actually in control of my direction, despite any appearances to the contrary. I can choose my attitude and decide what to pay attention to.

Not bad observations for a card that at first glance did not seem to offer me much.

The rest of the reading increased in value and allowed me to adopt new beliefs, ones that serve me and bring happiness and joy into my life.

I believe this deck offers everyone this same opportunity and it is why Cheri and I believe in it so much. If you’d like a deck of your own, go to Cheri’s website: https://www.creativewarrens.com/self-discovery-cards and follow the simple directions.