May, 2006                           

Rhoberta Shaler, sixty, lives in Escondido, California.  She is an author, speaker, teacher, and coach.  I met Rhoberta on the phone recently when I did an interview with her on the program she hosts. I was intrigued by her question “What influences came into your life that created your spiritual journey?  It got me to thinking about the sequence of teachers, life experiences, books, and the conclusions I made from all of that! After our interview (you can hear her programs on www.SpeakingaboutGod.com  when it launches in May) we talked about some of the similarities between our paths in life.  About the same age, we were emerging from the prevalent cultural expectations for women to be homemakers, nurses, or teachers—take your pick.  Both of us have experienced the ups and downs of exploring new territory and possibilities for life work and relationship.

Early Dreams, Early Challenges
    “I’ve been on the spiritual path since I was three years old,” Rhoberta told me with a laugh. “One day I decided I wanted to go to the church across the street.  We lived in a small town in Canada, and my parents allowed me to walk across the street by myself.”  Rhoberta, like myself, grew up in a small town with a strong conservative culture. From an early age, she realized that she didn’t fit the mold. Musically talented and a natural leader, her earliest dream was to become a medical missionary.  The dream was thwarted when she discovered she was pregnant just as she was about to enter the Medical School program.  Despite the strong cultural taboo against being an unwed mother, Rhoberta decided to have her baby.  Anticipating the overwhelming challenges of being a single mother going through medical school and internship, she chose, instead, a career that would support her being a mother— education.  “But first,” she says, “I felt I had to leave my parents’ home because they were very critical of my decision to have the baby.  I went away and had the baby by myself at an unwed mothers’ home.  When I returned home, I also had to confront a lot of people who snubbed me because of the pregnancy.”

    Funded by a student loan, Rhoberta persevered with her University education.  After earning a teaching credential, she remarried and had two sons.  However, when the youngest was two, she divorced, and was on her own again.  With three children and no child support, she continued to work full time and obtained a Ph.D. in educational psychology. 

     Obviously, not one to idle, she remarried, and took on a new project of starting a retreat center. I was quite interested to hear about this venture, as I encounter many people who express this dream of starting a retreat center—not realizing, of course, that such a center is usually more about business than it is about wellness and tranquility.  “Absolutely,” said Rhoberta, “It was such a romantic idea, but such a pain!  Starting a retreat center was everyone’s dream of an idyllic place, but it’s enormously hard to get it going and keep it going successfully.  I taught yoga and offered vegetarian cooking classes at night to try to draw people to the center while still keeping my day job in education.”

Honoring Our Stages of Life—Re-Orienting
    About this time, Rhoberta’s children had left the nest. “When my youngest was out of the house for two years, I told my children I was done with active parenting,” she laughs.  Taking a break by traveling and studying in India for a month, she came to the realization that she did not need to continue doing what she had been doing.  Interestingly, her intuition proved correct.  Her life was about to change once again. “When I came home from India, I felt I was free to reconstruct my life and career.   I knew I didn’t want to work for someone else.  I felt I had things to say, and I wanted to teach, write, and speak.” 
Often when we make an important life decision, we find that life immediately throws us a challenge.  In Rhoberta’s case, she says, “When I got home from India, I took one look at my husband and said, ‘You’ve had an affair.’  He admitted it.  Infidelity is  one thing I cannot tolerate, and so I asked him to move out.  From there on, I started changing my whole life.  I sold the retreat center and moved into a condo.” 

Was This a Mistake or Feedback from the Universe?
    At first, things only got worse.  Rhoberta says, “In my experience, as soon as you have a new intention, the Universe picks up on that energy and runs with it! I had taken a job in a school for at-risk teen-agers.  During this time, I literally had the colleague from hell.  I did everything possible to solve the conflict, but there was no escape.  If I had stayed, I believe I would have become seriously ill.  Even though I had originally planned to take early retirement,  I quit the job, and moved to Vancouver to explore my options.”

     As Rhoberta was coming out of this difficult period, she decided to participate in one of the online dating services. “I found the world was filled with wonderful, interesting men and opportunities.  A man came into my life from Seattle, and he seemed like a perfect partner.  I was anxious to start a new life, and we married. However, I quickly found out that he was not the man I thought he was.  Despite the fact that he had been in New Thought spirituality for thirty-five years, and I thought we were spiritually aligned, I began to discover that he had not told me the truth about himself or anything else.” 
Trying to make the best of the situation despite the difficulties of being in a new country and new job, Rhoberta stayed with her husband for six years.  Then, divorcing, she moved to San Diego.  By this time, however, her career fortunes had drastically changed for the positive.  Within this time she had published three books and established a speaking career.  She now feels that the greater purpose in this last relationship was that it brought her to the United States, and helped make her even more self-reliant. 

Another Turning Point
    Synchronicities kept occurring that moved her once again into alignment with her desire to serve and use her talents.  During a corporate training assignment in Canada, Rhoberta offered to speak one Sunday at a local spiritual center. “The results were amazing,” she says. My plan after the training had been to go home and begin marketing my seventh book, which had just been published.  But life had other plans for me.  At the airport, the board of the spiritual center met with me, and asked what it would take to have me come back and rebuild their church.  I pulled a figure out of the air, and went to my gate.  Twenty minutes later, my cell phone rang, and they asked me to start the following week.” 

    Within two months Rhoberta increased the Sunday service from ninety people to 200.   “It was a rich experience reminding me that walking the talk is the most important thing I can do.”  Once her nine-month, half-time contract was fulfilled, she returned to her work in California.

    Interestingly, however, just before she got the minister contract, she had been doing some online dating.  Knowing that she would be in Canada for awhile, she decided to remove her profile.  That day, a man had just left her a message that said, ‘Too intense for some, too deep for many.  I want a woman who ‘gets” the journey.  I wrote back, and said, ‘I’m just leaving this dating service and leaving the country.  Here’s my hotmail address.’  The rest is history.” She describes her partner as a mythologist, a musician, and a down-to-earth human being.  “With this man,” she says, “I have finally found a deep love and true understanding.  We have such a surprising intellectual compatibility, and a feeling of being known that had never happened before.  This remarkable man has led me to examine myself, and to discover new depths and insights and talents.”

    Rhoberta ends our interview by saying, “Life is good.  I just released a new version of my book, Wrestling Rhinos:  Conquering Conflict in the Wilds of Work, and I’ve been drawn back to the ministry.” She is the CEO of Optimize Institute, and works with the kind of forward-thinking organizations that value their employees as a top resource . While Rhoberta works in both the corporate market and the spiritual arena, people are the common element. “Thanks to the Canadian experience, I created www.yourspiritualhome.com, an online Center for Spiritual Living.  With my new learning and my amazing relationship, my life has changed. Now, I can honestly say I am a grownup!”
You can contact Rhoberta at rs@yourspiritualhome.com.
Happy May!
Carol Adrienne