The alchemy of inner exploration

With practice and courage, over time we can train ourselves to move toward uncomfortable emotions, to stay with them and explore their qualities, textures, colors, fragrances, and signatures. We can replace the demand for relief with that of a fiery, caring curiosity and longing to know the full-spectrum of what it means to be an open, alive human being.

This alchemy of inner exploration is not just a matter of clarity or awareness, but is primarily an activity oriented in the heart. While it is an important developmental task to learn to witness our experience and take a perspective on it, it is the surrounding and infusing of the material with warmth, kindness, and compassion that will unwind the tangles and the knots in the psyche. Mere insight is not enough. It is love that is the ultimate medicine.

We heed this invitation not in order that the emotion goes away, shifts, or transforms into something else – which it sometimes will do – but out of our love of the truth, longing to know more than anything how love is coming into form in this moment. Our emotions are not what we think. They are translucent, flexible, and non-solid. They have not come to harm, but as harbingers of wholeness.

While the shell of the emotion is filled with all of our personal associations, complexes, and a very vivid storyline and colorful cast of characters, at the core of the emotion is pure space. It is from this space that flow the qualities of warmth, compassion, luminosity, and wisdom. Inside this core is a special type of guidance, filled with energy and information for the journey ahead.

Each wave of sensation, each surging of somatic data, like a snowflake is unprecedented and carries the fragrance of your true nature, surging to reach you and share its unique signature.

Photo by Comfreak c/o Pixabay, Creative Commons license

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

Doing nothing a radical act of kindness

There is such a deeply rooted belief that we must do something with intense surges of feeling and emotion as they wash through: understand them, determine their cause, link them to some life circumstance or person, change them, transform them, eliminate them, or even “heal” them. Somehow we lose touch with entering into relationship with them.

This organization was weaved into our sensitive nervous systems as young children when we did not have the capacity to metabolize the intensity in an environment of empathic, attuned presence. Out of this we created our unique strategies of reaction and avoidance, often rooted in quickly removing ourselves from very intense, dysregulating states of vulnerability and psychic overwhelm. This was not neurotic, but adaptive. It was intelligent, and represented the best ways we knew to care for ourselves at the time.

But here you are, no longer a child in your family of origin, and longing to fully participate here. To feel fully alive. To practice intimacy with external others as well as the “other” inside you that is surging to be held and integrated.

What if for just one moment, you did absolutely nothing in relation to the arising of emotional intensity? If you neither repressed nor denied it, nor urgently scrambled to seek relief from it? If you did not spin to apply spiritual teachings to your vulnerability, but moved toward it, with a fiery commitment to no longer abandon yourself. To curiously explore what is appearing and its qualities, trusting in the activity of the wisdom-guests and intelligence they carry.

What would happen if you replaced the demand for relief with the curiosity of relationship? Even for just a moment. To dare to allow in the possibility that there is purpose and meaning wired into this relationship and into the somatic, psychic, and emotional material as it comes into awareness to be met.

What if the most wise, loving, attuned response was to take no action? For now. To not rush to mend your broken heart, transform the sadness into happiness, or seek relief from your rage, hopelessness, or confusion? To not give into the ancient demand that you fall into the extremes of denial or seeking relief, abandoning the uninvited ones through the fueling of a story about what has happened, who is to blame, why they are there, when they will go away, and what their presence actually means about you as a person? Or applying techniques to convert the experience into some other that you have been told you should be experiencing instead?

These feelings and emotions are pure energy flow and information. They are not enemies or obstacles on your path, but are the very path itself. They have not come to harm you but only to be allowed back into the majestic vastness that you are. To remind you of something you may have forgotten and lost contact with along the tired journey of becoming.

This “doing nothing” is not a cold, passive resignation, but is an alive, sacred activity, infused with presence and a wild sort of compassion. It is an expression of embodied intimacy and care. This open-hearted doing nothing is a radical act of kindness and love, and a holy gift that you can offer yourself and others.

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

The Way of Rest: A 5-Day Retreat with Matt Licata and Jeff Foster

at the beautiful Sunrise Ranch, Loveland, Colorado 

July 26-31, 2017

Information/ registration - we do expect the retreat to sell out (it's currently around 50% booked) and will take registrations in the order they are received. Please note that this will likely be mine and Jeff's only retreat together (and my only public event) in America in 2017. 

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What would it be like to live a life that is not based around fixing or improving yourself, transforming into someone else, healing all your childhood wounds, or completing some mythical journey of awakening?

What would it be like, to awaken from the trance that you are broken, unworthy, unloveable and far from enlightenment?

Join authors and speakers Matt Licata and Jeff Foster as they share a radical form of mindfulness, which is also an ultimate act of self-compassion: an invitation to be exactly what you are, and awaken from the trance that you are less than Divine in your beautifully imperfect humanness.

On this popular 5 day retreat, we will take time out of our ordinary lives to turn towards the stillness of the heart, and discover the peace, joy, aliveness and, yes, humor, that is always, already here. We will come to realize that freedom is wired into us and is not dependent on whether we first improve ourselves, become worthy, find all the answers, or get “enlightened” by way of some sort of spiritual process.

Visit the retreat home page here

When it comes to the present moment, we are all beginners, all amateurs. There are no teachers and no experts, here in the aliveness of Now. Matt and Jeff do not have pre-prepared answers for you! They are not here to fix you or make you into something second-hand. They are original human beings, just like you, sharing from the depths of their lived experience, inviting you to come closer to yourself and perhaps find your answers there. On retreat, you become your own guru, your own therapist, your own loving parent. Matt and Jeff simply facilitate this Homecoming, inviting us in their gentle yet direct way to a radical self-love in which even our ‘unlovable’ parts are welcome…

During the retreat, we’ll rest together in silence, share intimate dialogues and guided meditations, all the while tuning into to the power of the field of loving presence that is always around and within us. We will bathe in a radical yet simple truth: that we have already arrived Home, that we never left Home in the first place, that we are perfect exactly as we are, even in our imperfections… and that we can return to this realization in ANY moment of our lives!

We will turn courageously toward our unmet heartbreak, grief, despair, and hopelessness – as well as toward our natural joy, peace, wonder, and bliss – and come into contact with the wisdom, the love, and the wild uniqueness that is always here. As we befriend ourselves and our immediate experience, through curiosity and an uncompromising and unapologetic kindness, we will touch a profound rest that is filled with the revolutionary qualities of love, compassion, and huge creativity.

While not formally a silent retreat, we will be returning time and time again to the silence of the Heart, meditating and contemplating reality together and exploring the a life beyond belief. In addition to regular group meetings – facilitated by Matt and Jeff – there will be plenty of time to explore on your own, both the inner landscape of the heart as well as the natural world in the beautiful Colorado mountains.

It is important to note that while these retreats often result in deep, therapeutic healing, they are not therapy groups. Rather than engaging in our personal narratives of past and future, we will be diving into a field of presence together in which we can rest in the dimension of the heart that has never been unhealed and is not in need of transformation, healing… or even understanding.

ABOUT JEFF

Jeff Foster studied Astrophysics at Cambridge University. In his mid-twenties, after a long period of depression and illness, he became addicted to the idea of ‘spiritual enlightenment’ and embarked on an intensive spiritual quest for the ultimate truth of existence.

The spiritual search came crashing down with the clear recognition of the non-dual nature of everything, and the discovery of the extraordinary in the ordinary. In the clarity of this seeing, life became what it always was: intimate, open, loving and spontaneous, and Jeff was left with a deep understanding of the root illusion behind all human suffering, and a love of the present moment.

Jeff was voted #59 on Watkins Review’s 2014 list of the world’s 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People. Jeff has published five books in over six languages. His latest book Falling in Love With Where You Are is now available from Non-Duality Press. His new book - Way of Rest: Finding the Courage to Hold Everything in Love - was published by Sounds True in 2016.

Jeff's website can be found at: http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/

ABOUT MATT

Matt Licata, PhD is a psychotherapist, author, and teacher, with clients and students worldwide. For 25 years, he has been on the forefront of the dialogue between therapeutic and contemplative approaches to healing and spiritual transformation. He mentors students seeking graduate degrees in psychology and spirituality, and is editor of A Healing Space, a blog dedicated to the exploration of the journey of embodied spirituality in contemporary life.

Matt is author of the The Path is Everywhere: Uncoveringthe Jewels Hidden Within You, which will be published in April of 2017. He is also author of the forthcoming The Only Way Out is Through, a behind-the-scenes look at the ways spiritual beliefs and practices can serve a defensive function in the avoidance of unresolved emotional wounding.

Matt's website can be found at: http://www.mattlicataphd.com

You are endless

It is possible to discover that the purpose of the journey is not to solve our problems or make us happy. And by insisting that our inquiry, our practices, and even our intimate relationships function primarily in this way we vastly limit what they are truly offering.

As emissaries of wholeness and depth, they have seeded an invitation within you. To proclaim once and for all with the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars as your witness. With the roar of a lion or lioness, shouting from the rooftop that you will no longer abandon your surging immediate experience, pathologize your sensitivity, or turn from your raw achy heart. But only honor and bow to the altar of your tender not-knowing.

As you continue along the way, yes, sometimes your problems will be solved, sometimes the symptoms will go away, sometimes the feelings you like will replace the ones you’d prefer be banished into the dark wood. But your inquiry is no longer oriented around replacement. It is far too wild, unprecedented, and creative for all that. As a pure expression of your love of the truth, it is full-spectrum. For your longing will never be satisfied by that which is partial.

Love has brought you to this very place that you are now, as it continues its journey to know itself, through you and as you – by way of your perception, emotions, feelings, and imagination; and by the signs and symbols that it places along your path. Not so that you can fix something that is broken, or even “heal” in any conventional sense, but so that you can connect more deeply with your longing, to more clearly hear the call of the beloved within you, and become more and more transparent the feast of the offering that has been laid out before you: To be fully alive to and to fully participate in the mystery as it makes its way into the world of time and space.

No longer oriented in how to get from “here to there,” but endlessly fascinated with how it is that love wishes to infuse “here” with its qualities. The path is endless. You are endless. Your heart is endless. And love will continue to reveal this endlessness to you, in ways that are at times peaceful, sweet, and soaked in pure joy. At other times, as wrathful, disturbing, and awash with the transmutation of the dark.

Both equally grace and appearing now as vehicles of love, and as infinite doorways into who and what you are. And what is to come.

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

One of love's children

At times, as a sensitive human being, an image will appear. A sign. A symbol. A symptom. An emotion. A feeling. A sensation. Ripping through your body.

While it may appear that this one is working against you, it comes bearing an invitation. As a harbinger of integration. Asking you to slow down. To remember what is most important. And to honor the unique journey you are on.

Before you turn from the fire, enter inside it. With your breath, your awareness, and with an open and curious heart, descend into the center. With the earth as your witness, you are here.

See that nothing is happening to you from the outside. An old, orphaned aspect of yourself is expressing its longing. One of love’s children is seeking to be readmitted into the inner family. Stay close and listen carefully, as the request emerges out of a thundering silence:

Please know me. Please hold me. Please care for me. Please remember. Please provide sanctuary where we can come into relationship again. I am not here to harm you. Only to remind you of how whole you truly are, and the revolutionary implications of what it means to be alive. And where we are headed next.

Photo credit: Sangre de Cristos mountains on the New Mexico/ Colorado border, by Krista Ahlfors

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

The portal of fear

Some will tell you that fear is the opposite of love. And in this teaching the war begins.

But love has no opposite, for it is whole and without division. Love is the field in which all form comes and goes, including the temporary, wavelike appearance of fear. It is the vast, tender space in which all emotions, feelings, and physical sensations arise, play in light and dark, and then dissolve.

Just like passing clouds could never taint the purity of the sky, the temporary dance of fear could never stain the majesty of what you are.

Enter inside fear and practice intimacy with the feelings, the emotions, and the tender, achy sensations that are arising for integration. Something very pure is longing to be touched, held, and allowed back into the vastness. When fully met and sanctuary is provided, fear is able to reveal itself, like all other form, as none other than love in disguise.

There is raw life coursing through you, taking whatever form it must to open you into the mystery. Even fear, when no longer feared, appears as it is, as a portal into the luminous.

If you will take even your fear as a lover, new life will emerge from this union. You need no longer practice a spirituality of aggression. Fear is not the opposite of love, for love has no opposite.

Photo: in the holding of Saint Clare of Assisi in Taos

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

Wondering what to give your friend or lover this Valentine's Day?

Wondering what to give your friend or lover this Valentine's Day?

Give them the gift of your presence. Take a moment to make actual contact with the one in front of you: take a risk, allow them to matter to you, be curious about how they are making meaning of their life: what moves them, what scares them, what keeps them up at night, what lights their heart on fire. Meet their longing to feel heard, to feel seen, to feel felt. Flood them with the warmth of empathy, attunement, and deep listening.

Stay close to the actuality of their lived, embodied experience. Send your presence into the core of their heart, into the cells of their nervous system, and into the secret caverns of their body. See that the "other" is not merely an object arising in your awareness, but is an actual person, a subject in their own right. They are alive, their heart is beating, they are longing for connection, and trying to make sense of it all. They want to be seen, held, and loved, just for a moment. Just like you.

In a moment of pure contact, remove the burden that they change, become someone different, or see things the way you do. And set aside the secret requirement that they confirm who you think you are in order for you to love them.

Honor the reality that they will never, ever be able to meet all of your requirements and needs. They will never be able to take care of that which remains unresolved in your heart. This is their great gift, to return this sacred activity to you. Rather than unconsciously shaming or blaming them for this, honor them for it. Bow down to the altar that is formed in the space between.

Make contact with the one in front of you, perhaps for the first time, and let the dream figure go that you have created in your mind – the one you hoped was there, needed to be there, or feared would not be there. They were never going to turn out the way you thought they would anyway. For who and what they are is far too wild and creative for that. Meet the one who is actually here, for that one is an outrageous miracle.

In addition to contact, you can provide your beloved the space to be who he or she is. This space is not actually something that you can give to them, but is what you both always already are. You do not need to spin around them, ensuring they are okay and that they are continuously confirming your hopes, fears, and unmet longing. Through the cells of your heart, the light-strands of your DNA, and the mirror neurons lighting up in your brain, let them know you are there for them, that you will stay close… but not so close that you fuse or engulf them with the shadows of your unlived life.

If they need you, you will be there, but not otherwise. You will not impinge upon the unfolding of their unique journey, even if it triggers you. You will allow them to live their life, make their own mistakes, make their own meaning of what is happening inside and outside them, and to chart their own course. You will allow their heart to break, to touch the depths of their own pain and vulnerability, and to stand in their existential aloneness, with you by their side in deep, mutual knowing just how alone the path can sometimes feel.

Honor your separateness as well as your connection, and provide space in which they can make the journey in their own way.

Perhaps these are the greatest gifts you can give on this Valentine's Day, but please don't take my word for it. Look into your heart and into the eyes of the beloved in front of you and see for yourself. And even if you find yourself alone on this day, the beloved is waiting for you inside the mirror of your own being. Look carefully and you will see. Even within this field of aloneness - which we are all standing in together - you are in the perfect place to make this same offering, by giving these gifts to yourself.

Be your own Valentine, and watch what emerges from that radical commitment to self-care and non-abandonment. Watch as this world lights up with the outrageous activity of love and as the veil separating "self" and "other" reveals its translucency.

Stay in close, intimate contact to whatever is arising within you and offer the space for your experience to unfold and illuminate exactly as it is. For you will never be able to provide to another what you are unable to give to yourself.

Wishing my friends a Valentine's Day of true intimacy and wild aliveness, from the holding of the Boulder mountains. From the clear water in the creek, from the ducks and the geese, and from the deer who have come near to give the gift of their presence on this new morning. Humbled on the muddy earth. Totally alone. Unbearably connected. I feel you. And honor you. And accept the gift of your being.

Art credit: "Valentine's Tree," the inspiring and visionary work of my friend Alice Mason

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

Orphaned pieces of psyche and soma

When speaking with a friend who is feeling down, confused, hopeless, or lost, we can quickly become convinced that something is wrong which must urgently be corrected. We feel as if we must do something, anything, to remove them from their experience and replace it with another. To scramble to put them back together, to quickly remind them of all the gifts in their life, how everything will be okay, and to reassure them that things will be better soon.

All the while remaining mistattuned to the surging creativity and integration which may be unfolding in front of our very own eyes.

Of course it is natural to want to help a friend who is in pain. But underneath this genuine wish often lurks our own disavowal of the darkness within, and the impending confrontation with our own unlived lives. If we attune to this underlying groundlessness – with curiosity, with holding, and with a fiery, uncompromising kindness – we may discover a previously abandoned feeling, emotion, symbol, or vision which is longing to make its way into conscious awareness. Stay close. This is no ordinary moment. You are at the threshold.

While it may appear otherwise, this very disturbing material is not a mistake, but is sacred. It is not pathology, but path. It is a long lost friend that we very intelligently split off from at some earlier point in our lives, to ensure our own psychic survival. But the orphaned pieces of psyche and soma are gathering around you, longing for reunion and to resume their place back in the inner family.

Slow down, come back into the center, and remove the burden from your friend to change. Free them from the requirement to take care of your unmetabolized emotional world for you. Recommit to staying embodied to your surging vulnerability, in whatever form it happens to appear. You are in the intelligent, creative, rich terrain of the jewels which are buried in the dark. Stay close.

It is possible the kindest thing you can offer your friend is to sit in the unresolvable complexity and the hopelessness with them, doing whatever you can so that they know you will not abandon them if they do not conform to our cultural fantasy that they be happy, grateful, and full of hope all the time. What they are is vast and contains multitudes.

Trust in the unfolding of their embodied experience and dare to no longer pathologize the appearance of the dark, for within it is a light burning with a billion suns. With the entirety of your presence, make it clear to them that they need not ‘get over it,’ ‘transform,’ ‘heal,’ ‘raise their vibration,’ be happy, or ‘awaken’ in order for you to love them as they are. Stay close.

Love is the totality. It is whole. It is raging and alive in the darkness, shining brightly in ways the mind and the conventional world may never understand. Within the confusion, the sadness, the despair, and the aloneness there is often something very real attempting to break through the dream of partiality, attempting to clarify what is most important and something you may have forgotten. There is a richness here – something is happening – but what that is may never support the consumeristic spell of consistent feelings of happiness, certainty, and a life without vulnerability.

Here, in the very core of your friend’s experience – which is utterly inseparable from your own – everything is alive, everything is path, and everything is holy. The divine is not only the joy and sweetness, but comes at times as Kali to reorder your world. Let us step out of the trance and into the fire with our precious friend, hold hands with him or her and keep them near. We can then turn toward Kali together, create a sanctuary for her wrathful wisdom-essence to unfold in our hearts, and finally see what she has to say.

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

Spiral into the center

At times, disappointment will appear as your greatest teacher, breaking you open as an old dream dissolves. It has completed its work here and is requesting safe passage. Allow it to return to its source as you make room for what is to come next. While it is tempting to hold tightly to the way it has been, it is the nature of all form to reorganize. In this way love is relentless.

Something new is calling but what that is can never be known ahead of time by means of the conceptual. Enter into the liminal and listen. Stay close. There is high-voltage creativity here, though it comes by way of vision and symbol. While the world may never understand, and those around you may be activated by the path you have chosen, the unfolding of your heart is wild and will never be tamed.

No, it was never going to turn out the way you thought – your relationships, work in the world, your body, what you once were so sure would provide the meaning, purpose, and security you have longed for. It is all a bit up in the air now, as you are being re-oriented to wholeness.

This process by nature will be thrilling and disorienting simultaneously, and inevitably disillusioning as the references points begin to fall away. This disillusion is not an error or mistake, but is a special ally of the sacred world.

As you place the deflation on the altar before you – and move toward it, rather than away – you weave a sanctuary in which the reorganization can occur. Hold the brokenness near as the new birth circles around you, and open as the path spirals into the center.

Art by Helen Klebesadel

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

The sacredness of the relational field

While there are many valid reasons for being in relationship (romantic or otherwise), it is possible to make use of the alchemy of intimacy as a profound vehicle of healing and metabolization. As we take the risk to allow another to matter, we can be sure that the other will illuminate the “inner other” that we have lost contact with along with way.

Perhaps this sort of confrontation is of interest to us. And it’s okay if we want something else from our relationships. Or aren’t sure. As Rumi reminds us, there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. To have contradictory feelings about this is an expression of intelligence.

But if we do choose the crucible of intimacy as one of the greatest illuminators of our unlived lives, as a true modern-day temple of revelation, we can count on our partners to continuously reveal that which is longing for integration within us, inviting it out of the shadows and into the warmth of conscious awareness. This reminder is often painful… but aches with the holy.

From this perspective, the promise of intimacy is freedom and wholeness, not a life where there is no negativity, conflict, or pain. No fantasy of a life free of vulnerability, heartbreak, and fiery deflation in all its forms. We don’t get to stand on the sidelines, safe and protected by our amazing spiritual realizations and insights. For we come to discover that the beloved isn’t all that interested.

Within the sacred field where one and two dance, there is no promise of consistently flowing high vibrations, unending joy, continuous connection, and feelings of safety and certainty. For this is a full-spectrum crucible of wholeness, weaved of light and dark, where everything is allowed. Even the most profound feelings of abandonment, engulfment, jealousy, fear and rage – even the most primordial of all, the anxiety around death – it is all welcome here, arising for holding and integration. For this is the gift of intimacy, all of it.

As we remove the burden from the external other to take care of that which we have disowned in ourselves, we plant the seeds of a new heart. For to return this task to us is the wildest, most tender, most devastating act of love that they could offer.

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

It's okay to feel sad

It's okay to feel sad.

Be sad. Fully. Not partially, for your longing will never be satisfied by that which is partial. Love is full-spectrum and will unleash all of its children here, including sadness, to awaken itself in all form. It is an act of profound kindness to turn into the open, sore, achy caverns of the heart and seed them with holding.

Allow yourself to fall apart, just for a moment. You can put yourself back together soon. But for now… end the war. Call on the seen and unseen ones to bear witness and hold you as you fall to the ground. Ask the moon to help you, or a tree, a friend, a lover, a deer, an owl, or the mud of the earth. There is guidance everywhere. Attune to the vision as it erupts within and around you.

Waves of hopelessness, despair, and heartbreak… touch them, give them a home, provide sanctuary and safe passage for the broken pieces to unfold and illuminate. For they, too, are filled with light.

Dare to see that the presence of sadness is not evidence that something is wrong with you. It does not mean you’ve “failed” or that you are lacking in faith, trust, or gratitude. It doesn’t mean you need to meditate better, become better at staying in the present moment, manifest the opposite of sadness, or that you are lost or beyond redemption. It means you are alive. Welcome.

Sadness is not something you need to fix, cure, or transform. It need not be healed, but held. You need not shift sadness into some “higher” state or apply teachings so that it will yield into something else. For it is complete and pure on its own. You need not pathologize your sadness or fall into the spell of a world that has abandoned the tender gold buried inside your body.

Stay close to your sadness and surround it with curiosity, presence, and warmth. With the fire of awareness and with the ally of your breath, descend underneath the story of the sadness and into the crucible. Go on a journey into the core of the feeling, the sensations, the images, and the raw, shaky life that is longing to be held. And listen.

It is by way of this journey that sadness will be revealed to be what it is, a secret wisdom-guide and bridge into the universal heart, come to remind us of something we’ve forgotten in a world that has gone a bit mad.

Art by Toshiyuki Enoki

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 


New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

The magic of your own heart

It’s so natural to want to alleviate disturbing feelings, transform difficult emotions, and heal unexplainable somatic manifestations. This yearning need not be pathologized, but held in spacious awareness. Honor the longing for relief, while simultaneously opening into the mystery.

Before you turn from the symptom, enter into relationship with it. Practice intimate communion with the signs, the symbols, the images, and the feelings. Travel into the center of the sensations, the emotions, and the ancient core beliefs. Drop inside the vulnerability, the achiness, the claustrophobia, and sink into the hot, sticky surging field of the inner world, illuminating the pathways with the light of awareness.

Remember the vow you once made to no longer abandon what you are. Surround the fire with the cooling rains of embodied, attuned resonance, flooding the crucible of your body with the waters of slowness, curiosity, and kindness.

Hold the symptom close. Set aside the habitual movement to trace back its origins, or to become lost in conditioned interpretation, which will only keep you orbiting around the aliveness that is attempting to break through. The symptom is a portal into wholeness, but this mystery has been lost in a world that has forgotten. As an archeologist of the heart, you will unlock the mystery for the benefit of beings everywhere. For this work is never for ourselves alone.

Enter inside, slow down, and open: What is the purpose of this visitor? Why has it come? What guidance is it offering for the way ahead? Where is it leading me? What is its secret meaning?

Listen carefully. Are you being asked to change something about your life? To remember what is most important to you? How have you lost contact with the magic of your own heart, and the erupting reality of the sacred world?

While it may appear that they symptoms are devoid of meaning, random, and are working against you, things are not always as they seem. Your true nature is that of relentless creativity, and love will appear in infinite forms in order to remind you of what is truly happening here in this lonely, luminous star.

There is seen and unseen guidance all around you, though it may never look quite like you imagined. Inside your body is consecrated and outrageous intelligence. In this sense, healing is not found in the removal of the symptom, but in the intimate union with it. 

The freedom you are longing for will never be found in the eradication of the unwanted, but only in the transmuting love and information it carries.

Photo: the raw, beating heart-field of Orion Nebula

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April

Filled with sacred data

When you are hooked and your emotional world is on fire, slow way, way down. Touch your heart. Send awareness into the muddy earth. For just a moment, drop under the vivid storyline into the hot, sticky, claustrophobic energy surging in your body. Into a sea of information.

An old, orphaned aspect of yourself is expressing its longing. It is yearning to be allowed back home, so that it may reclaim its place in the internal family. Open your raw heart. Stay close. And listen.

Please know me. Please hold me. Please care for me. Provide sanctuary where we can come into relationship once again. I am not here to harm you, only to remind you of how whole you truly are. I am filled with sacred data, but it can only be released into a field of kindness.

Love would never turn from one of her children. Likewise, let us not turn from the guests of the heart, but provide a warm home where they can rest from a long journey. Once rested, they will illuminate the way ahead.

Photographer unknown

The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April