Hidden underneath the rich and textured narrative, erupting
under the colorful flow of image and emotion, there exists a fertile,
vibrating, mysterious world of sensations: a somatically-organized field of
intelligence, creativity, and aliveness.
As we enter the body with breath and awareness – descending
under the conditioned and guided by new levels of curiosity, kindness, and care
– we may come to appreciate our neurosis, our heartbreak, our fear, our
disappointment, our “failure,” our doubt, our confusion, and our fragility. No
longer viewing these forms as evidence of our lack of awakening or that we have
fallen short… but as unique portals and invitations back into the center.
As the trance of shame, blame, and unworthiness burns up in
the warmth of awareness, we find ourselves at the threshold of the sacred
world. It is exhilarating here inside the opposites, but simultaneously
terrifying to a mind longing for resolution, certainty, and control.
As we become aware of the ways that we distract ourselves
from the open, center-less, alive nature of immediate experience, we can then
make a choice to re-embody. We can return to the life of the senses, to our
uncompromised commitment to self-kindness, to no longer apologizing for what we
are, and to fully participating here in an unfolding miracle... setting aside
the dream of postponement until a future moment.
In this place of heart-centered, compassion-infused
embodiment, we can no longer pretend we’re not feeling what we’re actually
feeling; whatever guest arrives in the home of the heart is allowed, surrounded
in warmth, and taken directly into the inner sanctum. Inside this secret
chamber, your neurosis, your fear, the deep need to be special, the frenetic
scramble to be seen, to be “awake” – all this begins to become dismantled,
dissolved, and taken apart by love.
While this disassembling is sure to involve both sweet and
fierce grace, it is a movement of wholeness, and evidence of the full-spectrum
nature of the path of the heart.
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
