Into the creative middle

Becoming curious about and “staying with” a difficult thought, feeling, or bodily sensation is not the same as passively wallowing in it, becoming flooded by it, merging with it, becoming enmeshed in, or fusing with it.

The invitation is into a very pregnant, creative, and not easy middle territory in between engulfment and the other extreme of rejection, turning from the life that is emerging, and abandoning ourselves in moments of emotional activation.

Navigating and holding the tension of those opposites is a much more fiery, active process rooted in the aliveness of our attention, care, compassion, and interest in psyche and its manifestations. It is oriented in curiosity and the longing to care for ourselves in a new way.

In this we dare to consider that even our most challenging symptoms, emotions, recurring thought patterns, vulnerabilities, and sensitivities are intelligent, filled with sacred data, and worthy of our tending.

We must go slow as we explore this new landscape, for seconds at a time testing the waters as we overwrite the circuitry of shame and self-aggression with that of compassion and attunement.

We must pay careful attention to our window of tolerance and while pushing up against it and exploring its borderlines, to not push ourselves into overwhelm or retraumatization. It can take a lot of experimentation and practice to discover this area of experience for ourselves.

Even one or two seconds, then rest. And then maybe three seconds and then rest. And then care for ourselves by taking time away from inner work and nourishing ourselves in other ways – taking a walk, talking with a friend, taking a bath, doing some yoga, playing with our dog, making a nice meal, spending time in nature.

No urgency, no great hurry, no glorious self-improvement project to complete by the end of the week. Just love. Slow. Curious. Caring for ourselves in new and wild ways. One second at a time.

Art by Couleur/ Ilona in Freiburg

My most recent book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available 

The next book, The Unfolding Heart, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come

The next event is The Healing Shame Retreat: Spiritual Awakening and Transforming the Core Wound of Unworthiness, April 24-29, 2019 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with co-facilitator Jeff Foster 

A moment of revelation within

Engaging the pathway of the broken and the whole, we weave together the various layers of our experience, dance within the opposites, and plant the seeds for future freedom.

Untangling the wounds of the heart, the contractions of the body, and the worn out narratives that have emerged in response to personal, cultural, and collective trauma. Falling to the ground in awe at the pain, the glory, the mess, and the preciousness of this human form.

To flood this material with breath, spirit, and soul, attending to each layer, in turn, bringing light to the darkness. Thawing the frozen, untangling the complexes, and flooding cells with new vision. At times giving up, then remembering, giving up again, and remembering the beloved as her infinite forms wash through this place.

While awareness is required to find the light, mere insight is not enough. Clarity is not enough. We have seen this in our own experience. Knowing, while necessary, is not sufficient.

Rather, it is some activity of love that seems to be required, to discover new breath, to infuse this heart, this nervous system, and the soul of the world with new life.

But what this love is must be discovered by each of us, not as a concept, but as a movement of revelation within.

My most recent book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available 

The next book, The Unfolding Heart, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come

The next event is The Healing Shame Retreat: Spiritual Awakening and Transforming the Core Wound of Unworthiness, April 24-29, 2019 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with co-facilitator Jeff Foster 

A home for the wrathful and fierce

The ally is not always peaceful and oriented in clarity, but at times wrathful and fierce. Throughout history, we find images of both forms of psychic guidance, the latter evidenced by India’s Kali and Tibet’s Palden Lhamo. These ones are considered protectors of the dharma, guardians of wisdom, compassion, and truth.

Despite their disturbing forms, they are helpers nonetheless, whether we view them as parts of ourselves, aspects of the archetypal unconscious, or as autonomous beings with their own subjectivity. Despite appearances, they come not to harm, but to reveal.

At times, they take confusing and aggressive forms, which we see in certain depictions of Christ on the cross, in dismemberment rituals of the shamans, and the putrefactio and mortificatio operations of the alchemists. These images can be disrupting as they provoke confrontation and contradiction, questioning our deepest beliefs about healing and transformation.

We must decide for ourselves how we will tend to these images as they come in dreams, literature, myth, fantasy, and symbol, but one possibility is as a doorway to integration of the darkness within – to touch and metabolize our own unmet rage, unacknowledged narcissism, repressed grief, and dissociated joy – providing a home for this material in a world that does not ordinarily provide a holding environment for it.

To discover the wisdom within the core of these thoughts, emotions, and sensations, entering into partnership with them that we might transmute this energy as way to help ourselves and others. To include the fierce, wrathful side of the psyche so that we are not forced to locate it outside ourselves in a way that will generate additional suffering.

In this embrace, we reimagine the way we have come to see ourselves and others and care for life in new ways. It seems this world needs the wild, relentless, creative energies of compassion, clear-seeing, and skillful activity now more than ever. It is up to each of us to prepare these bodies, psyches, and hearts as vessels where love can erupt and come alive here.

Photo by MabelAmber

My most recent book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available 

The next book, The Unfolding Heart, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come

The next event is The Healing Shame Retreat: Spiritual Awakening and Transforming the Core Wound of Unworthiness, April 24-29, 2019 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with co-facilitator Jeff Foster