Monday, June 10, 2019

A visitor of melancholy


As we wander through the day, as dusk approaches, there is always the possibility that the visitor of melancholy may join us, coloring our experience, infusing the interactional field with a longing, a broken-openness, just feeling raw about the whole thing. About this precious, devastatingly, relentlessly alive human experience.

Not the mind’s version of sadness where we enact the primordial trance that something is missing, that we’re not okay as we are, that we must become something new or someone different. Instead, it is an emissary of the tender, a reflection of how open it truly is here and how it will never really turn out the way we thought.

Inside this body is the sun and the moon, the stars, the oceans, and the entirety of the seen and unseen places. Joy is here, as is loneliness, confusion, heartbreak, and bliss – each a unique portal through which to enter into intimacy with all things.

No longer having a bias for union over separation – or for oneness over multiplicity – free to fully engage here and to no longer postpone the offering that you are. Committed to whatever appears, ready to hold and transmute it for the benefit of self and other. In awe at the spirit buried inside matter and the richness of the sensual world.

From inside the center, it is no longer possible to weave the narrative that the broken, the vulnerable, and the melancholic are obstacles on the path. Rather, they are the path itself, illumined from within by pure awareness. While at times this awareness may appear empty and of the void, it is filled with outrageous qualities of luminosity, warmth, and compassion.



Photo by Ganossi



Befriending Yourself - you are invited to join me and my friend Jeff Foster at our new online membership site at the intersection of spirituality, meditation, and depth psychology. Video-based teachings, live meditations, question-and-answer videos, and a moderated online support community. 

The next retreat - The Deep Rest Retreat: Slowing Down and Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times - September 4-9 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado - registration open 



My most recent book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is available in both paperback and Kindle editions. 

My next book, A Healing Space: Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times, will be published by Sounds True in 2020.