Upcoming weekend intensive with Matt Licata

Dear friend,

I wanted to let you know that registration is now open for The Path is Everywhere weekend intensive which will be held June 15-18 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado.

To learn more/ register, please visit the retreat website.

Many of us find ourselves interested in and longing to participate more intimately in life, open our hearts, heal old wounds of unlovability, and awaken to our true nature; to work through old patterns of shame and self-abandonment. We sense the real possibility of living in a different way, but there are not a lot of viable pathways in our modern world which facilitate this sort of discovery.

What might a spiritual approach to life look like in the modern world? One that is emotionally-sensitive, body-aware, and psychologically mature? One that honors both the darkness and the light, which includes difficult feelings, and isn’t organized around some new belief system. One that holds the tension between the opposites that the sacred is always, already here, and the truth that sometimes we are not able to see this and live from it.

During our time together, we'll step into a very alive and provocative, yet nourishing and safe vessel of healing, wisdom, and love. Over the course of the weekend, we'll explore therapeutic, somatic, and meditative approaches to psychological growth, emotional healing, and spiritual transformation, and how we might approach these mysteries within the context of our lives exactly as they are.

Psychotherapy and shadow, mindfulness and compassion training, meditation, body awareness, and relational work each offer a unique set of views and tools addressing the nature of a rich life of inner abundance and resources, one that is imbued with purpose and meaning, oriented in our innate longing for wholeness. Within the holding context of an empathic, attuned relational field, we will explore these approaches as well as the mystery that the path of the heart truly is, the value of not-knowing, and how it is love itself that is the ultimate medicine.

The weekend is open to anyone interested in healing, spirituality, mindfulness, psychotherapy, meditation, yoga, opening the heart, and the mystery of awakening to our true nature. We'll meditate together (no experience required), explore what an integral approach to spirituality and healing might look like for those of us active in the world, and have plenty of time for questions, sharing, and discussion.

We'll begin on Friday evening at 7pm and end Monday morning at 12pm, meeting for a total of eight sessions. You will be well nourished at Sunrise Ranch, with fresh, local, organic food, including plenty of choices for those on special diets. 

We're looking forward to seeing everyone in the mountains in June!

A creative dissolution

In each moment the sacred process of death and rebirth is playing out within us. With each breath, something in us is dying: some aspect of who we think we are or what we’re doing here, the death an old dream, a relationship we were sure would last forever, an idea about how it was all going to turn out.

In the face of this dissolution, the question isn’t so much how can we be reborn, but will we participate in death, fully, and with an open heart, paving the way for new forms to emerge, trusting that rebirth will take place according to a timeline originating far away in the stars.

In times of transition, our tendency is to rush to rebirth, quickly back into the known, in an urgent attempt to cure, maintain, or heal that which is dying, that which longs to transform. It is so natural to resist falling apart in our need to put it all back together. But it is only from the core of the womb of death - a death tended to consciously - that re-birth can come into being.

The invitation, which we can at times hear clearly, during the dark of night, in the slowness and the depths, during time with the moon and as we move in and out of states of sleep and dream, is to not abandon death in our rush to be re-born. To not short circuit the intelligence and creativity that death is, and to remember that rebirth is not possible without the creativity of dissolution.

Allow the death some time to unfold, to share its poetry and its fragrances, which are not partial, but of a light that is whole. In those times in our lives, when things are being rearranged and reorganized inside and around us, we can attune to what is truly being asked, whether it is to cure death and reassemble the known, or to allow the forms of love safe passage to continue their journey.

To honor the forms of love as they come into our lives and touch us and share with us their beauty. But equally allow them to dissolve so that new forms may emerge and enchant this place. To give them permission to dance and play and participate fully in the sacred return.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado 

A great meeting is being assembled

A great meeting is being assembled, the abandoned pieces of our bodies and hearts the honored guests. The beloved is the host and is taking shape as a luminous vessel of holding and transmutation.

The particles which form the vessel spin and dance and reveal so that the wisdom buried within the confusion can be known. The material is heated by the burning and the longing to return home.

Inside the vessel, all experience is valid. Nothing need be discarded. It is all utterly workable, a manifestation of psyche in its majesty.

Every thought, feeling, symptom, image, dream, fantasy… each an emissary of the mystery, an ally of wholeness.

An unfolding according to a blueprint written in the stars.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado 

Already held

Many are familiar with the term “holding environment” as elucidated by Winnicott, a warm and poetic description of a relational configuration rooted in empathic attunement and right-brain to right-brain resonance.

As the matrix of secure attachment, it provides the rich, creative terrain from which we can explore reality, resting and playing in unstructured states of being. From this ground of safety and creativity, we journey out of the familiar, experiment with our vulnerability, and stay embodied to the full range of human feeling.

Any effective holding environment is weaved of qualities of contact and space, dancing in the holy middle where there is intimacy without fusion, closeness without engulfing, tenderness without impinging. This is the soil from a little baby’s brain and heart and nervous system grow. What a miracle. Real magic.

While honoring the interpersonal aspect of holding, there is a transpersonal dimension as well. From this perspective, open awareness itself is the ultimate holding environment. Training ourselves to access, become familiar with, and relax into our true nature reveals the deeper dimensions of contact and space, where we come to the embodied realization that we are always, already being held, by something infinite and vast.

While as an infant we depended upon another to provide this environment for us, it is wired into the human heart. Every inner experience is made of this space, luminous, and undifferentiated from awareness itself. From this perspective, what we are is the quintessential holding environment. Those substances which cause a little nervous system to grow, unfold, and differentiate are the same that keep the stars from falling out of the sky.

While it is unlikely we will ever resolve the mysteries of self and other, intrapsychic and intersubjective, personal and transpersonal, or sun and moon, we can apprehend the miracle together with awe, remembering that we will always be beginners on the path of love and humble messengers of its outrageous, relentless activity.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado 

An old dream

There was an old dream that opening our hearts was always going to feel safe, that somehow love promised that.

That allowing another to matter was going to be easy, that staying close to our vulnerability was somehow not going to feel shaky and at times unbearable.

That to heal meant we’d be in some protected, resolved, untouchable state where we had transcended the sensitivity of being an open, naked, alive human being. That somehow healing meant we’d only have to live in one narrow band of the spectrum.

But the beloved has no interest in our fantasies of invulnerability, of sure knowing as to what is coming next, or conforming to anything. He or she is just too wild for all that, too creative, and oriented in the mystery.

In whatever form the beloved is currently appearing in your life – as an intimate partner, a child, a fellow traveler, as one who triggers and annoys you… as an animal friend, a sunset, a color, a vision, as the water or as the moon… these ones long for your burning. For permission to penetrate and be penetrated by you.

… for that quivering in your heart, for your tender not-knowing. To stand in awe as you touch this world together, not as an expert or master, but as an amateur and a beginner… sometimes broken, sometimes whole, sometimes a mess, but always alive.

When we are totally unclothed – of all our spiritual concepts and fantasies of certain, safe knowing – love will show us what we are. When the known crumbles away, all that remains is this burning heart. There is nothing more alive than that. There is nothing more sacred than that. There is nothing safer than that.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado 

Shadow illumination

To engage the work of the shadow, to travel along the descendent current into the unlit places, is a radical act of courage and kindness. For when we re-embody to the unwanted – and touch it with curiosity, warmth, and attunement – we remove the burden from others to metabolize it for us, which they cannot do. We are then able to love them, and to set them free.

In this way, love is not something we urgently seek more of or even something we can “give” to another. Rather, we become the activity of love itself, in all our interactions with the phenomenal world. With other people, with the trees, the sky, the ocean, the sun, and the moon. Even with the colors, the sounds, and the visions that emerge here.

For most of us, the disowned material of soma and psyche is most vividly displayed in close relationship, especially as we take the risk of allowing another to matter to us, to make that journey with them into the unknown fires of intimacy. As nearly all our wounding arose within an interpersonal environment, it will be most powerfully activated – as well as untangled and transformed – within a relational field.

As the ancient beliefs, emotions, and feelings erupt out of the body, they do so seeking refuge and sanctuary where they can unfold and illuminate. While the visitors of the nervous system may appear to be working against us, they are emissaries of wholeness, harbingers of integration who long only for reunion.

From the perspective of the day world, they may seem dimly lit, darkened, and unclear. But from within the dream and the underworld, they are filled with light.

With curiosity, openness, and kindness as our guides into the depths, we may discover that the shadow is in some paradoxical way only love in disguise, come to re-introduce us to life, to the fierce power embedded within our vulnerability, and to the field of warm, tender, open space that we are.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado 

A servant of the mystery

Emotionally-sensitive, somatically-grounded, cognitively flexible inner work is unique to each nervous system. We must discover for ourselves the most skillful, effective, and compassionate ways to bring illumination into body, psyche, and heart. No one can do this for us. The journey is individual by nature, requiring experiential, primary experience; a collective spirituality is not going to be subtle, nuanced, or creative enough to meet the longing raging within.

It is difficult to work with and integrate shadow on our own as by definition it dwells outside conscious awareness. In this sense it requires an “other” to hold and reveal projection, where surges of the visitor can be co-regulated, in very small doses, titrating and pendulating emerging feeling states by way of the relational field itself. To “borrow” another’s soothed, calm nervous system as we enter into uncharted territory.

The way of direct revelation and embodied, experiential discovery is not the easy way. It is not the path of five-steps to empowerment, manifestation, or thinking our way into permanent happiness, abundance, and bliss. It is a humble journey, heart wrenching at times, as we will inevitably be asked to compassionately confront the disowned selves that surge for reunion.

The goal is not to become dependent upon another in an unhealthy way, but over time to learn the art of self-regulation and be able to shift wisely, skillfully, and compassionately between the two. This is the hallmark of secure attachment: the capacity to care deeply for ourselves while at the same time allowing the other to matter, building resources within us which are rich with skillful self-compassion while also turning to others to co-regulate difficult states of experience.

Slow way down. Ground into the earth and open into the heavens. Ask a guide to bear witness as you move into unknown territory, honoring the truth that reorganization requires an immense outpouring of courage and support. Find a therapist, lover, mentor, or friend; a tree, a bird, a mountain, or dog; the sky, the sun, the stars, or the moon. A God or Goddess, wise inner figure, or being of light. Allow your symptoms to merge into these protectors and enter into dialogue, practicing intimacy with the inner material, but without fusing with it.

It is unlikely we’ll ever fully understand or resolve the mystery of self and other, of separation and union, of sun and moon. But we can break open into the questions together, as beginners, as amateurs, and as servants of the mystery.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado (tickets on sale starting April 13)

On spiritual bypassing

I’ve received a few messages recently regarding “spiritual bypassing” and how to relate most skillfully with its (inevitable) appearance in our lives. In some circles the term has taken on a pathological tone which is neither warranted nor helpful. Like any other spiritual catch phrase (e.g. accepting everything the way it is, the “power” of the present moment, immediately forgiving everyone who has hurt us, fear is the “opposite” of love) it is important that we journey under the surfaces of these concepts and into the subtlety, nuance, and depth that their skillful engagement requires.

In my experience, "spiritual bypassing" is no different than any other defense mechanism. It serves an important adaptive function and must be honored and respected as such; not attacked, shamed, and torn down in some glorious heroic enlightenment project. There is a tremendous amount of data we can discover in reflecting upon the ways that we engage with particular beliefs to avoid certain aspects of ourselves. The goal is not to "get rid of" spiritual bypassing, but to bring more consciousness (and compassion) to its inevitable and varied expressions, to bring it into the vessel and begin to heat it up with curiosity, awareness, kindness, and warmth.

To what degree are my beliefs and practices bringing me closer to myself; to previously disowned feelings and shadow-aspects of my personality; to the underlying core beliefs I have about myself, others, and the world; to my fears and longings for intimacy with another; and to the way I am unconscious organizing my experience? Alternatively, to what degree might my practices be keeping me away from those parts of myself, promoting distraction and avoidance, and unaware of my own narcissism, blind spots, and habitual behaviors in relationship? The invitation is to get really curious about why we are drawn to certain practices, our intention for taking on certain beliefs, and the unconscious functions that our engagement with them may be serving.

I see spiritual bypass as an inevitable, natural, and information-filled dimension of the journey and, like all defensive organization, imbued with very important data for our own healing and awakening. It is not something to shame ourselves for, but in some sense to celebrate its recognition in our lives. What a miracle, really, to be able to see this and to care enough to tend to what we are seeing with new levels of awareness, curiosity, and compassion. The mere appearance of spiritual bypassing is not confirmation that something has gone wrong or that we have failed, but evidence that we have a raw, alive, beating human heart; that there is a longing deep within us for wholeness, meaning, connection, and to feel alive.

There are times when psychologically defending against certain feelings can be the most skillful way to handle our lives. If, for example, we use certain meditative practices to reduce symptoms of anxiety so that we can make it through the day, attend to our jobs and children, etc. - is this "spiritual bypassing?" Let us not answer too quickly. We have to go deeper and see how nuanced and subtle this territory really is; not to use compelling catch phrases like “spiritual bypassing” to attack parts of ourselves and re-enact dynamics of splitting and self-abandonment.

In psychodynamic practice, working with defensive organization takes an incredible amount of awareness, skill, insight, compassion, and capacity in self-reflection. In a more poetic sense, mechanisms of defense are allies on the path and not obstacles. Training ourselves to see how we might be using our relationship with spirituality to avoid certain aspects of our experience, to hide out from intimacy and relationship, to keep certain emotions and feelings dissociated and outside awareness, and as a way to avoid certain developmental tasks is a real act of kindness that we can give ourselves, others, and the world.

In this sense, spiritual bypass is/ was an effective strategy we’ve learned to care for ourselves, to honor the delicate nature of a traumatized nervous system, or to prevent too much conscious awareness to emerge too quickly, overwhelming us with buried self-experience we have not yet been able to embody, hold, metabolize, and integrate. To not crash through the wall of our defenses, but to approach them with love.

We must remember that more spiritual practice is not always the most wise, skillful, or loving container for working with developmental trauma and other types of wounding, or the right medicine in any given moment of activation. In fact, it can overwhelm the body and nervous system, and constellate re-traumatization. More meditation, more resting in the present moment, more forgiving, and more accepting are not always the right prescription in a particular life at a particular time.

This is an area of inner work that I find immensely complex, nuanced, and rich, and one of quite a lot of depth. I appreciate the willingness to stay with it, to really go deep into it and its implications.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado (tickets on sale starting April 13)

Being and becoming

When a painful thought or emotion arrives, do we accept it as it is, flooding it with non-judgmental, compassionate awareness? Or do we engage more actively, enter into relationship with it, get messy, burn with it, ask it why it has come, turn it into a partner of the inner world and explore its meaning, purpose, and qualities?

Acceptance and change. Being and becoming. Yin and yang. Transformation and rest. These are the great archetypal beings we meet when we do this work. As with all psychic opposites, they will never be resolved into some neat, tidy package in which we can take refuge. For they are too alive and too majestic, as they come to us as emissaries of the mystery.

The invitation is not one of resolution, but of alchemy, dancing as archaeologists of our own bodies, hearts, images, and dreams, exploring inside the tension of the opposites, that rich middle territory that is oriented in the creative unknown. At times, it is rest and acceptance that is the medicine that is most needed; at other times, more fiery, more active, more messy, and more relational. Neither are “true” or “better” or “more spiritual,” but each skillful means which we can call forth in a moment of activation.

Mindfully allowing the fires of the inner world to emerge, play for a short while, and then dissolve… with compassion, acceptance, and kindness. At other times going into the content with longing and curiosity, meeting the visitor in a different way, speaking with him or her, listening to what she has to say, how he is organizing his experience and his view on our life, to begin a dialogue with the “other,” find out why they have come, and what it is that they want and need from us. To use the mind as a vehicle of relationship, of discovery and depth, to think creatively and in new ways, to discover perspective, and to re-organize the characters, plots, storylines, and narratives.

Each of these paths is utterly valid, a profound offering for ourselves and others. We need not take sides but engage each with curiosity, as experiments in love.

In the end, to discover how it is that we’ve come to imagine ourselves, others, and this world; and even more importantly, how we might begin to re-imagine the entire landscape, re-author the poem that is our lives, and re-enchant this place with new vision.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado (tickets on sale starting April 13)

The end of self-abandonment

When caught in the grip of an ancient, limiting belief; when you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of unworthiness, shame, and blame, convinced that something is wrong with you; or when a core vulnerability has erupted and is coloring perception… the outline of a new path appears.

It starts with the willingness to pause, to slow way down, to cut the momentum, and to allow the visitors safe passage, to provide sanctuary for the allies of wholeness, as they bring light to hidden places.

For just one moment, shift your sacred life force out of the repetitive thinking, for it has lost its freshness, spontaneity, and creativity. It can be re-enchanted at a later time, after you’ve tended to the raw life that has come from beyond.

Rather than trying to understand, transform, or heal the old voices (you’ve tried a million times), just this one time instead descend into the mystery and the non-conceptual aliveness of the body. Drop into the vastness of space. Use your breath to enter into that field of not-knowing and into pure imagination.

Open your senses and meet what has come, what has found you in the inner temple. Listen. See. Touch. Feel. Sense.

Attend to the fire as it blazes. Allow the slow, healing rains of kindness to soak your belly, your throat, and your heart. As awareness begins to drift back up into the old, vivid, compelling story of what has gone wrong, gently return it into the open field.

Attend to the flow of energy as it circulates. Hold yourself in a new way. At a later moment, from the ground of a calm, soothed, spacious nervous system, you can go back in and explore meaning. You can engage thinking from the spirit of play, re-authoring and re-enchanting the words, discovering a new story and new purpose.

In a moment of activation, you need not follow the ancient path of self-abandonment, shame, blame, and self-aggression, especially during times when you need yourself more than ever. Choose something different. Just this time. Even for one or two seconds, that is enough. A new world is born from that.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado (tickets on sale starting April 13)

A portal back into life

It is not an error
that you have been born
a sensitive human being,
with a tender nervous system
and a heart that is sometimes
broken.

Your vulnerability is not a mistake,
but a portal back into life,
into a world that has forgotten
how to dream.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado (details/ registration information to come)

Update from Matt Licata

Dear friend,

I hope this note finds you well and enjoying the spring (autumn for my friends down under!). Below you will find the story of a courageous woman that I spent some time with who has given permission to share some of her journey. Her experience moved me and I found it to be powerfully illustrative of this work of the heart that so many of us are drawn to.

We just returned from a deeply moving retreat, The Place the Light Enters, and I want to thank those of you who attended for your great courage, love, and befriending, and to honor the healing power of the field that you so bravely and vulnerably explored. It's incredibly heartening for us to be able to participate in the presence of that level of commitment to the path.

My next event is a weekend intensive - The Path is Everywhere - in the beautiful mountains of Loveland, Colorado, from June 15-18. You can find more information here.

The purpose of the intensive is to come together in the relational field and to explore the nature of a contemporary spirituality and path of healing, which includes the shadow, our bodies, our emotions, and how our deepest realizations might flow down into our relative lives of love and work. We'll meditate and rest together, create a home for the lost parts of ourselves, step back into the unknown, touch the mystery, and remember what is most important. For a fuller description, please visit the program's website.

I'm looking forward to seeing many of you in June in the mountains of Colorado!

All my love,
Matt


The following is my recollection, in words, of an experience I had with a woman who was struggling with overwhelming feelings of unworthiness, hopelessness, and despair. She had dedicated the last decade to spiritual practice and community and had come to a real turning point in her life.

While details have been changed to protect the identity of this courageous person, I have been asked by several readers of my book, The Path Is Everywhere, to share this story which was originally published in the book's Appendix ("The Love That Assembled the Stars").

Before printing the story in The Path - and again before sharing it here - I received permission (and the blessing) to do so, from the woman who is the subject of the encounter. I hope you find her journey inspiring, interesting, and helpful.

A Love That Assembled the Stars, part 1 of 3
I spoke recently with a friend who shared with me how her spiritual life had given her so much: the many ways it had helped her open her heart and experience a depth that she had been longing for since she was a young girl. She had also become aware of how her engagement with spirituality, in subtle ways, enabled her to avoid aspects of her emotional life and unmet pain from the past and kept her split off from feelings she did not want to feel.

While her practices at times brought her closer to herself, which she was deeply grateful for, she saw that at other times she was actually using them to escape from herself and abandon some of her most vulnerable experience. She was in such a raw place with it all: such appreciation on the one hand while also knowing that she needed to look anew at everything, be willing to start over fresh with beginner’s mind and the amateur’s heart, as she was being called deeper. I just listened … and felt honored to be able to bear witness to such intelligence, such unfolding wisdom, such genuine passion for the truth, such darkness, such raging light.

As she continued her inquiry in the relational field unfolding around us as we sat together, she noticed some grief that she had touched at an earlier point in her life but, for whatever reason, had not been able to stay with at the time, and as a result had covered it over along the way. As the grief (and accompanying shame and sadness) poured out, it was like a firestorm of energetic possibility, all of this unmetabolized material in her psyche and in her heart, unleashed in an eruption of reorganization.

She wasn't sure she could do this; she would dive in for a couple of minutes and then retreat, only to head back in once she felt it was safe enough to return into the fire. I told her I knew she could go deeper, that I trusted the intelligence of her process, and assured her we would stay close regardless of what appeared, with no shame, no blame, and no pathologizing what emerged into the holding environment we had found ourselves in together.

We made the commitment to go wherever she was guided, into the utter darkness and emptiness if that was what was required, into the black hole inside her that she was beginning to touch, as well as into the light that was attempting to break through. We would dare together to hold all of her symptoms and experiences as pure information and guidance, honoring them as the attempt by her psyche and her heart to reach her and reveal wholeness.

While she had quite a bit of doubt and fear about how much she could actually hold, I felt confident that she could tolerate and contain a lot more. She trusted that I would push her in a way that was provocative and on the edge, but not so far that she tipped into overwhelm or fell too far outside her established window of tolerance. I explained that, in my experience, confronting anxiety, groundlessness, and uncertainty could be supportive as long as we stayed close and attuned in real time to what was unfolding. She remained unsure and shaky, acknowledging that some fear was present. But somehow she kept going.

As she allowed her experience to unfold and remain for short periods of time inside the core of the intensity, things slowed way down in a way neither of us fully understood and she touched something she had not quite known before. Something new was emerging from deep within her body and her unconscious apart from what had historically revealed itself. In this place, she discovered a cosmic sort of permission in which she could allow herself to go into the unknowing, despite the fear, and allow herself to fall apart a little, removing the pressure to hold it all together and maintain any image or idea of herself. This felt somewhat risky, but despite the trepidation she was curious and almost excited. For the first time, she was able and willing to see clearly the ways that she did not feel seen and loved at the most primordial level. She had thought she had been to the depths of this wounding and was surprised to find even more. And even more.

And so it goes on the path of love … always more. We realized together that there is no ending to the depth of the heart. No final landing place in which all of its wisdom has been given. Always another layer, another revelation.

She sensed that it was possible for her to meet and directly experience these long lost soul-parts of grief, hurt, unlovability, and abandonment—and that until she worked through this material in a deeply somatic way, the realizations she had experienced would always remain on the surface, never able to fully penetrate her most deeply embedded conditioning and somatic armoring. As part of her inquiry, she also had a deeply embodied intuition that she could never truly love another until she offered a home and sanctuary where the perceptions, emotions, and bodily sensations could become conscious and be illuminated in her loving awareness. She saw so clearly how this yet-to-be-metabolized material was not and had never been “obstacles” to her healing and awakening but each a certain type of ally on the path.

As she continued to share all of this with me, I couldn't help feeling such awe and love for her, for her (our) journey, and for the immensity and implications of what it truly means to be a human being.

As she continued to open—not all at once, but in many short bursts, followed by periods of quiet and rest—she discovered that she could meet this ancient sorrow directly rather than orbiting it by focusing solely on her thoughts about it. And that it took a lot of awareness and concentration to make this discernment in her immediate experience. What appeared as “moving closer” was often not that, but more of a conceptual approach to her experience that was still serving to keep her out of the fire and at a distance.

As we went deeper into this, she discerned that she could practice intimacy with her feelings while not falling inside them, not tumbling down the rabbit hole, and not becoming fused or identified with them as who she was in an ultimate sense. Intimacy, without fusing—that was the alchemy she was exploring. She was experimenting with sending awareness and warmth into what was happening in her body at the level of felt sense and raw sensation, and how these affective and somatic experiences colored her perception by way of a subtle narrative that grew around them.

Additionally, she had deep insight into how these various levels of experience (perception/emotion/sensation) intertwined and interpenetrated one another. Without our conscious awareness, they tend to fall into a looping pattern, playing off one another, on automatic pilot with a seeming life of their own. But as she slowed down and made experiential contact with each level of the spectrum, something else revealed itself. What this was we could not name, necessarily, but it seemed to catalyze a wave of freedom, as well as compassion for the tender complexity of the human experience. More than anything, more than needing to pin it down into some conceptual framework, at least for this moment, we wanted to touch the mystery of what she was in its entirety. A partial communion was just not going to do. Not for her!

In some ways, what she was encountering was so very personal, but in other ways she was touching the sorrow that dwells in the collective, that all sentient beings have met at some point. In this way, inner work is never for the individual alone and is intergenerational and transpersonal in its implications, reaching back into the past and forward into the future to untangle the knots of the cosmic heart and reveal greater meaning and purpose.

As she continued her exploration in an embodied way, descending beneath the density of the narrative about why the sorrow was there, who caused it, how it originated, and the urgency around transforming it, she began to cry, shake, and tremble. Her breath became shallow and she was struggling to hold it all together. Something was reorganizing and she wasn't sure she would make it through to the other side. Even though she was feeling anxious and fearful, I reminded her to breathe deeply and ground her awareness into the earth, and that together we could go a bit further. At times she pulled back and we rested together, feeling our feet on the ground, looking up at the sky, listening to the birds nearby. When she approached that place of near overwhelm and shutdown, we would stop the active part of the work, sink into the sensual world together, look at one another, and reaffirm that everything was actually okay—and then she would return into the fire.

Memories streamed in of when she was a little girl, gazing out the window while her mother and father drove away, leaving her alone and helpless at a young age. “You’ll be fine,” Mom admonished; “Stop being such a baby,” said Dad. She remembered wondering what she had done wrong to cause them to abandon her, to reject her, and to need to spend private time without her. She saw images of herself crying in her bedroom, totally alone, longing to be touched, to be seen, to be held, and to be validated as a unique, living, breathing being. It was the most profound feeling of existential aloneness and despair.

After staying with her deep sadness and grief, we were both a little shocked as these feelings yielded to a wild, untamed sort of rage at consistently being discarded and unseen. In an instant she went from sorrowful and sweet and transformed into Kali, goddess of the dark, emissary of the black, representative of the alchemical nigredo. There must be something she was doing wrong that triggered her sense of core rejection but she couldn't quite pin it down. The only truth she could access was that no one was listening. No one wanted to listen because she was so wretched and unlovable as she was. The rage intensified in the wake of this perception.

“Where the fuck was everyone?” she yelled. “And by the way, where the fuck are they now?” She thrashed around and screamed at the top of her lungs, all the while eyeing me carefully to see if I would reject her, invalidating her rage, shame, blame, and turn from her, which had been the pattern in her family during times of emotional intensity. As I discussed earlier in the book, in our families or origin there were certain feelings and ways of expression that were allowed and others that were strictly forbidden. In some families, for example, anger was okay, but not sadness; in others, the expression of dependency led to anxiety and disruption, while showing independence was honored and rewarded. We learned (often the hard way) that certain emotions, styles of vulnerability, and personality structures were safe and led to increased affection and attunement while others were disastrous, triggering withdrawal and profound anxiety in those around us, leading to aggression, rejection, and neglect of all kinds.

In this particular case, she was never allowed to be angry or sad, or to create any sense of disturbance. Dad was too busy with work and Mom was an alcoholic and depressed. Any emotional expression was treated as an attack on the family, and asserting any sort of need was interpreted as an utter lack of gratitude for everything they’d given her. She learned that retreating to her bedroom and burying her feelings was her only chance to stay safe in an environment that was simply not able to contain the intensity of a fragile little girl. The sensitivities get buried, the vulnerability squashed, the emotional intelligence thwarted. It’s not difficult to see the untoward consequences of such dismissal in our lives and in our world today.

Fortunately, she felt safe enough, held enough, and heard enough to continue, though I wasn't’t sure where we were headed. This is always a very delicate time in relational work, when the unknown is clearly in charge, something is breaking through, and there is no clear road map to follow. Psyche is clearly in the lead. During these times, which are liminal in nature and feel as if we are in between birth and death, the intensity can become too much and the temptation is to quickly return to safe ground, a natural response to prevent disintegration and re-traumatization. To fill the space with some meaningless conversation, to cover over the embarrassment, rage, fear, and despair, anything to counteract the open nakedness of the groundless ground.

While there is some intelligence guiding the process of when to pull back and turn from the intensity, at the same time dousing the fire too soon can interfere with the unfolding of some very high-voltage guidance and information, where who we are at the deepest levels is trying to break through an old internal working model of partiality and reorganize in a way that is more integrated and a more transparent reflection of our wisdom nature.

Again, it is uncertain, complex, and contradictory territory, and it doesn't easily yield to conceptual analysis and the timelines we have laid upon the healing journey. Unless we’re careful and in very close touch with what is appearing for integration, we can unconsciously remove ourselves from the cauldron, defending against and splitting off from the jewels that are attempting to emerge from the darkness. It is so easy and natural to slip into distractions of all kinds at this point and it is helpful to remind one another of this tendency and renew our commitment to stay in the fire, if we can.

A Love That Assembled the Stars – part 2 of 3 - Deeper into the crucible...
In that moment of rage, she hated God, she hated me, she hated herself, and she was in total revolution against a reality that refused to see her, left her alone to sort it all out and somehow make sense of a world that didn't care, one that deemed her deserving of rejection and profound neglect.

No matter where she looked, she could not locate any “good other” to rest in who would provide confirmation and containment, no one to idealize and look up to for presence and wise guidance, and no one to mirror her experience back to her. And why was she not able to find this good other? Was it because her parents were simply too consumed in their own struggle and suffering, and were limited human beings doing their best with the training and resources they had? No. Not even close.

There was only one explanation that made any sense to a young developing brain and nervous system: she was unworthy of such contact and that level of care. She was wretched at her core, fundamentally flawed and broken. Something was wrong with her and that is why no one was there to witness or be curious about her unfolding subjective experience. It was really that simple.

As the organization of a young girl presented itself in the field between us, she had enough awareness to know that she had stepped into the time machine of the “there and then,” which had replaced the immediacy of the here and now. She “knew” on some level that her parents had offered all they could, that they were not trained in this work; they did not attend mindfulness retreats or yoga classes. They did not have the luxury of a therapist who cared deeply about them and did not have access to writings and teachings by elders on the path who had made the journey before.

Just as she acted in unskillful, unwise, and non-compassionate ways—as the result of her own pain, suffering, and struggle—so had her parents. At this very human level, they really weren't all that different. Just stepping into this reality for a moment sent waves of freedom, forgiveness, and clarity throughout her being, and washed into me as we continued to hold her experience within the healing crucible of the relational field.

This realization in no way excused her parents from the neglect she encountered, but it placed it in a larger context, allowing her to begin to transform the unconscious organizing principles that had colored her perception as someone utterly unworthy of empathic attunement. She could begin to reauthor the narrative of what happened and make new meaning of it, weaving a more integrated and nuanced story of her early life and its relationship to her journey as an adult. The limitation of her parents’ awareness, empathy, and compassion that were the root cause of the misattunement, and not her own wretched, flawed nature that was the culprit. Just allowing this in sent shock waves throughout her body.

This moment of discovery was in no way calm, peaceful, or free of the eruption of very powerful and disturbing feeling states, as together we touched, contained, and held the rage, panic, and fear of a little one on the brink of decompensation. She had enough awareness and self-kindness to allow me to help her titrate the intensity so she didn't fall into a completely dissociated freeze state, which we both sensed was a real possibility if we were not skillful. She had gone there before and remained committed to staying awake.

We did everything we could to keep her within her window of tolerance while still pushing her some, not knowing for sure where the boundaries of overwhelm might lie. Despite the intensity, there was a sense that everything was okay, that even in the face of dysregulation and periodic erupting emotional disturbance, the process had its own intelligence, it could somehow be trusted, and it was being guided from a deeper place of wisdom than ordinary consciousness.

As the fire passed after a few minutes, she came to a deep realization and was able to develop some perspective regarding her lifelong quest to be seen and beheld as a person worthy of love; she saw that she was special and unique, unbroken, and whole as she was. She even saw how this pursuit had played out in her spiritual life and how it filtered down through everything, including her most intimate relationships, and formed a template for how she related to her close friends and family. She saw how it even impacted her relationship with her own body, which had been something she had struggled with since her teenage years.

I was quiet and empty; we were both really raw. We breathed deeply. It was as if we had taken a journey out to the farthest star and returned, only to be shot back out again. In some sense, nothing had changed, but everything was different. We had started with the intention to provide sanctuary for the entirety of what she was, for those parts, aspects, feelings, and limiting beliefs to finally be provided safe passage in a warm holding environment where they could be illuminated at the deepest levels.

We wanted more than anything to stay close and in communion with her unfolding subjective experience in all its messy glory. We met so many perceptions, core self-narratives, emotions, and vulnerabilities along the way as they arose and passed, each an important messenger of held trauma from her past.
Through all of this, she came to know at the deepest, cellular, quantum level of her being that she would not die if she allowed this material in, that if she dared to be who and what she was and stayed true to what she knew was most true, she could trust unconditionally in the validity and intelligence of her unfolding subjective experience. And that even if the panic, the fear, and the dysregulating anxiety, shame, and rage threatened to take her down, it could never truly destroy who she was in an ultimate sense.

She had faith that she could return to that true nature that had never been in need of healing, that had never been broken, and that was never untransformed—if and as such inquiry was in service to her, and not in a way that denied or bypassed the very alive emotional and somatic wounding or the developmental effects of chronic and consistent empathic failure and misattunement.

She realized in a deeply embodied way that she had capacities as an adult in the here-and-now that were simply not available to her as a young girl in the there-and-then. She saw that beneath the compensatory and deeply embedded stories and narratives that held it all together was the direct experience of the darkness of not being loved: the black hole in the center of the heart that we have all spent so much of our sacred life energy turning from at all costs and covering over with our defenses, addictions, numbing, and avoidant strategies of all kinds.

While it was intense and disturbing and even shocking, she came to see, finally, that this material was not an enemy coming at her from the outside. It was her, all of the lost pieces and aspects of herself that had become split off at an earlier time, now longing to be integrated and allowed back into the inner family.
She further discovered that not only could she tolerate the intensity, but she could practice honoring it: moving toward the fear, the sorrow, the grief, and the rage, not because she “liked” it or it felt good, but because it held a tremendous truth that had the potential to untangle her body and her heart like no other. While at times it seemed as if she could not stay, that she would be taken down and overwhelmed, she knew she could practice and return over and over again for short periods of time. She did not have to go in all at once, urgently scrambling to understand or shift something.

This holding was the work of a lifetime, ever deepening and more subtle, and there was no urgency to transform the feelings, to replace them with some other more “spiritual” experiences, or on the deepest levels even to “heal” herself. She saw that the mere presence of previously unmet rage, sorrow, shame, and grief was not evidence that something was wrong with her, that she had failed, or that she was “unhealed.” Rather, the direct, heart-guided confrontation with this material was evidence that she was alive and whole, and that who she was at the deepest levels would always be seeking this wholeness in greater depth, including its integrated, embodied expression in her outward life.

She trusted that she could find the right balance, with my help and that of other attuned friends, between staying in the alchemical fire of metabolization for contained periods of time and coming back out to rest. She could alternate, pushing herself to the edge where growth takes place but without any agenda that she storm her body and psyche in the name of “healing.” She could engage in this work in a way that challenged her; it was provocative and growth inducing but not in a way that pushed her outside her window of tolerance and into dysregulating, sympathetic arousal on the one hand or parasympathetic freeze and dissociation on the other. There was another option, a sacred middle territory that is unique for each of us. She had touched it and knew she could return to it at any time, no matter how intense the inferno that was burning within her.

Once she had soothed the fire some with the cooling waters of her own presence, attunement, and loving self-compassion, she was able to return and inquire into the overall situation from a more centered place, exploring the organizing narratives that had formed the lenses through which she had been perceiving herself, others, and the world. Because she had worked through the highly charged emotions and feelings first, she was able to come back to the narrative in a slower, more grounded, and less urgent way.
By first calming her sensitive nervous system—which had been spinning in fight-flight for relief and to ensure its own survival—she could then rely on and orient from the spaciousness of other, wiser, more integrated capacities as she inquired into the limiting beliefs, templates, and working models that had been shaping her perception.

As her exploration deepened, alternating between clarifying and updating the narrative on the one hand and periodically going back into the feelings and sensations on the other, she very organically circled back to her relationship with her spiritual life, which was where this had all started. She wanted to clarify how she was relating to her beliefs and practices and how they fit into the entirety of her life. Even the language she used was deeply influenced by her relationship with her spiritual path. It had become such an important part of her identity, how she spent her time and energy, who she spent that time with, and the way she had been making meaning and finding purpose in her life. She felt a lot of gratitude for her community, her teachers, and the ways the journey had facilitated new levels of awareness and had helped her open her heart.

Along with this, she also started to see that her beliefs and practices were serving a defensive function, working alongside her earliest protective strategies in helping her avoid certain parts of herself. She wasn't blaming the teachings or the traditions or even the teachers for this, but saw that there were certain aspects of her journey that were not most skillfully addressed—were sometimes even devalued—by her spiritual practices. Her body, emotions, intimate relationships, meaning and life purpose, her uniqueness as a separate being.

Especially in the area of emotions, she discovered that in her relationship with spirituality she had learned to diminish—and thus dissociate from—powerful feelings such as anger, fear, jealousy, and heartbreak. In some way she had come to believe that these were “unspiritual” and obstacles on the path that must be meditated or prayed away and converted as quickly as possible to more “awakened” emotions and feelings. She wasn't overtly asked to distance herself from these feelings (well, maybe anger, which is the king of all “unspiritual” feelings in many traditions), but in subtle ways the emotional and somatic landscape was not all that honored, nor were the body or relationships or even her unique life purpose. Somehow the feminine principle had been neglected, abandoned, even abused in a more masculine rush to transcendence.

She longed at an intuitive level to integrate more yin energy into her practice, as it had become overly yang in its movement away from her sensitivity and vulnerability, in the quest to transcend the messiness of the human condition. She sensed that an integration was possible and that her spiritual life had to include the entirety of what she was. This was an important contemplation for her. She sensed there was something here and she wanted to get to the core of it.

She let all of this sink in and we took a short break from where she had been and from the intensity of her inquiry. We rested together, reconnected with the natural world and our senses, and just took some time to come back together to the here and now, providing some respite from how far she had traveled.

A Love That Assembled the Stars – part 3 of 3 - The outrageous intelligence of the human heart...

After some time, she asked if we could continue for a little while longer. Something was bubbling up and she didn't want to lose the thread. She was discovering that in her family she had so rarely experienced being loved or appreciated as she was. In order to receive love, affection, and attention, she first had to adopt a secondary, compensatory identity structure. Without this substitute identity, she felt ignored, unseen, and abandoned, convinced that she was unworthy in her nature. Unless she could figure out who others wanted and needed her to be—and quickly shift and adjust her outward expression—she concluded that she was without value and uninteresting, and deserved to be discarded.

As a result, like many of us as young children, she learned very quickly which feelings, emotions, and behaviors, even which body language and manner of speaking, were most likely to result in the receipt of affection, attention, and the emotional holding that she so longed for. On the contrary, she also learned which of these same manifestations would result in responses of neglect, mis- or malattunement, and even abuse. Her ability to sort and spin and shape-shift was both intelligent and creative, but it came with a price tag: splitting off from half of what she was, leading to chronic anxiety, feelings of flatness and depression, and a deeply embedded conviction that there was something wrong with her.

In a way that didn't blame her parents—while at the same time allowing and integrating the profound rage and grief that surfaced in reaction to aspects of their behavior—she saw the ways in which she was an object in her parents’ reality and rarely held as a subject in her own right, with her own feelings and ways of organizing her experience. She and I shared that it was important to not hold these memories as some exact, objective recovering of the past but more about the way she had come to make meaning of her early life. Whether the memories and associated details were objectively “true” wasn't what was most important; rather, what was germane was the way she had come to organize what happened to her, and even more importantly, how she was continuing to live out this organization in the present.

This is hard for any of us to do, as it requires that we step beyond the role of victim and take responsibility for ourselves, as adults in the here and now. Of course we were influenced by the past, but now the invitation is to stand courageously in the reality that we are no longer young, powerless children in a misattuned holding space. We have capacities we once did not have, and we are being called into new levels of organization and perception.

We consciously long to move forward, to step out of the tangles and limiting perceptions of our early lives, but we may also have an unconscious investment in holding on, in a strange way, to the familiar and the identities we have spent so much energy maintaining. Paradoxically, they still serve a function and protect us from our vulnerability, our sensitivity, and the painful feelings of unworthiness and abandonment that have been buried in the body and the psyche. Holding the tension of these opposites—of genuinely wanting to heal and not wanting to confront what we know that healing would require—is a critical art to learn on the path of wholeness, and an important alchemical milestone along the way.

In the course of her inquiry, she shared memories of how hard she tried to be seen as special, as unique, as worthy of being loved just as she was, all centered around her profound yearning to receive the empathy, mirroring, and attunement that she did not believe was available unless she became someone else. And how she had transferred this very same relational template onto her adult life and relationships with lovers, friends, family, coworkers, and spiritual teachers. And in the spirit of classical transference, how she related to me from this template and how this organization colored our relationship. She and I spoke about this always being a two-way street with the therapeutic couple, as my own unconscious organizing principles and complexes interacted dynamically with hers, forming my own countertransference contribution to the intersubjective field and crucible that existed between us. We had talked about this before, but where we both were now—vulnerable, shaky, a little fragile, but so alive—it took on new, embodied meaning.

As we explored this template together—and the ways it was impacting her current relationships, including our own—in a really embodied way, she met this deep wound of unlove in the center of her chest and felt it expand out into her throat and into her belly. She touched it in a full-spectrum way, sending her awareness and holding into its cognitive, affective, physiological, and behavioral manifestations. This was not easy for her and we had to stop and start as periodically she would begin to travel outside her window of tolerance into overwhelm. But slowly, over some time, she was able to tolerate, then contain, and then in the most miraculous way practice kindness toward this old material. It was personal, yes, but also had transpersonal and collective implications, describing how she (and all humans, and perhaps other sentient beings) had come to organize her life around avoiding or remedying this wound of unlove, including her relationship with her spiritual life and community.

She went on to share with me that it strongly felt as if she had lost a part of herself, a piece of her soul, to this trauma of unworthiness, that it had been taken from her by some sort of being who represented the qualities of shame, wretchedness, and unlove. At times, she took this image literally, describing to me these archetypal beings of unlove and what they looked and felt like, which I associated with the wrathful herukas of Tibetan tradition, such as Vajrakilaya or Yamantaka.

At other times she related to it metaphorically as a bundle of thoughts, feelings, and emotions that had become tangled within her. But what was most fascinating to her in the course of this part of her inquiry was that she clearly saw how an important part of her intention to be an “awakened” person and to become “enlightened” was avoidant in nature, organized around defending against this primal wound of unlove. Of course, this avoidance didn't account for the entirety of her spiritual aspiration but it was a part that she had never recognized, and from her perspective it was significant and worthy of further exploration.

In some ways, it explained so much and made so much intuitive sense to her; this realization really unlocked something in her psyche and deep within her body. It was exhilarating for her to see, while simultaneously raw and painful. It was as if she was completely naked before the universe, with no idea what was to come next. Who would she be without this compensatory identity as the unlovable one? How would this change her intimate relationships, her work in the world, her friendships, and her relationship with the spiritual journey?

Rather than attacking her defensive organization as “unspiritual,” neurotic, or evidence of some sort of “personality disorder”—being careful not to reenact the misattunement she had felt so often growing up—she and I worked together to reframe the realization and open to being grateful for the protection and feeling of safety that her avoidant strategies provided, while at the same time acknowledging that she was ready to take the next step: organizing her experience in a new way.

Yes, she would have to come face to face with all the unmet emotions and aspects of herself, those hidden core vulnerabilities and feelings of unlove that her protective strategies had more or less successfully defended her against. But she knew that this was where she was being called. And while it was unlikely that she would be “perfect” at it or would be able to feel safe all the time or in a consistent state of flow and joy as she did this work, this was her journey. She believed that this was why she had come here, to do this work, not just for herself but for all beings everywhere. I was in awe of her courage, dedication, vigilance, and her relentless love of the truth.

As she re-embodied those feelings, sensations, and soul parts that she had lost touch with over the years, and allowed them to penetrate the deepest levels of her body, psyche, and heart, I could feel the opening and expansion in and around her. Just being with her allowed me to touch many of these same places in myself, and I was grateful.

As she led me through the open door, we touched the preciousness of this life together, the sweetness, the chaos, the heartbreak, and the glory. We had traveled into the darkness and the light and the pain and the bliss, where stars and galaxies were born and died. We were left in awe of the unbearable magnificence of this human body, these senses, the fragility and sensitivity of this brain, heart, and nervous system, and with a raging gratitude beyond words for the mystery that is this journey, for the love that assembled this universe, star by star, cell by cell.

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

My next two events: 

The Path is Everywhere: A Weekend Intensive, June 15-18 in Loveland, Colorado

The Place the Light Enters: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado (details/ registration information to come)