The search for truth, like any authentic realization, is impossible to describe; it is, at its heart, a process of ceaseless negation. I believe the Sanskrit expression is Neti Neti - "not this, not that."

The divided mind is greatly trouble by this timeless truth; it only knows to search for what it has imagined, including an attending sense of self that doesn't exist without the notion of becoming, arriving at that time and place when it will, at last, set itself free.

Of course, the problem with this "plan" -- and why it is never realized -- is that it begins with a false perception that -- somehow -- we are prisoners in this life who must set themselves free.

The truth is, the only thing we are a "captive" of is a deeply conditioned, completely misplaced love of self that only exists as it does -- moment-to-moment -- to pursue what it imagines will validate its reality, or to run away from anything that challenges it.

Understood rightly, this revelation is the negation of one level of self made possible by the light of another level of consciousness that is "the light that dwells in the darkness that knows it not." And, as bitter a pill it may be to swallow, all of the "dead ends" we come to... are only dead ends when we fail to learn something about ourselves that we didn't know before. So I think it can be rightly argued that the journey you and your husband have made to date... is preparation, not a punishment; not a judgment of character, but its intended development.