Thursday, May 31, 2018

Online discussion group


Dear friends, here is the link to the Facebook Discussion Group where over 2000 of our sisters and brothers around the world are sharing their experiences, dreams, longings, pain, grief, joy, vulnerability, healing, and awakening on the path of the heart, supporting and holding one another along the way. Please feel free to stop by!


Wisdom in the dark


During times of transition it can seem as if things are falling apart, which they are. At times, initiation must come by way of dissolution to offer revelation not available when things are clear and held together. It is as if an ancient part of ourselves, a fellow traveler who has accompanied us for so long is no longer permitted to continue the journey by our side. The crumbling of an old dream—my life and the way I was sure it was all going to turn out.

This prior soul-companion might be another person or it can be an ally of the inner landscape—an image, feeling, memory, idea, or lens through which we’d been seeing ourselves and others; any emotionally-significant part of our world that has finished its time here. It must complete the sacred return.

In order to be initiated in this way and to fully participate in the emerging creative cycle, we must slow down, return into the earth and attune to the music, poetry, and high-voltage guidance found in the depths. At times, this art may take form as nothingness, flatness, numbness, and cloudy vision. There may always be an urgency to cut into the dissolution and get to the next phase as quickly as possible. But there is wisdom in the dark which is preparing the vessel for the next illumination.

Allow the old to wash away and grieve the recycling of the passing form. This grief is holy and opens the heart to imagination and revisioning.



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 

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

The womb of now


Slow way down. Breathe deeply from the lower belly. Feel your feet on the earth. Sink into the womb of now.

For just this moment, set aside the need to understand, to figure it all out, or to replace this moment with another.

Today may not be the day for answers, but to let your heart break open to the vastness of the question.

As the stars surrender to daybreak, lay your hands on your heart and behold what is happening here:

Blues coming into existence that have never made their way into this dimension.

Yellows, reds, and purples sent to remind you
of the rarity and outrageousness

of one human heart.



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 

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Already held


In those moments when we are held, our nervous systems down-regulate, our minds soften, our hearts open, and we come into an ancient sort of rest. That rest that we've been longing for in a lifetime that always seemed just out of reach. The rest from becoming.

While our true nature as open, luminous awareness is the ultimate holding environment, as tender human beings we are wired to rest within a relational matrix. To enter into this field with another – weaved of the alchemical substances of presence and of space – is one of the great mysteries of the embodied world.

Held by another, held within by our own hearts, or held by a star - despite the pain and confusion and hopelessness and doubt - somehow we are already held. It's not something we must earn or deserve or frantically search for.

Held by the morning light as it comes into a room, by the song of the birds, by the imaginal world. Somehow. Already held.



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 

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Shadow illumination


Usually when we talk about parts of ourselves that we have disowned and placed into the shadow, we're referring to less desirable material such as fear, rage, shame, and despair. The shadow is seen as the dark repository for all of the so-called negative aspects of ourselves, i.e. unhealthy dependency, unacknowledged narcissism, unmet hopelessness, and the looming ghosts of our unlived lives.

But it is not only negative aspects that we defend against, dissociate from, and place into the unconscious. Many of us have lost the capacity to access, embody, and express more “positive” experiences such as contentment, pleasure, creativity, sexuality, intimacy, and excitement.

While it is a bit harder to wrap our minds around, some of us have disconnected from the simple experience of joy, a spontaneous sense of elation at being alive. For example, if the very natural, raw, human experience of joy constellated complexes in our parents – say it brought up anxiety in Mom, anger in Dad, or caused others to shame or pull away from us – we learned quite quickly that joy is not okay, and even potentially dangerous. This reality can be very confusing as we come to associate the experience of joy with being unsafe.

As a little one, with a developing brain and nervous system, we learn to disown or dissociate from any state of mind which has the potential to disrupt the tie to critical attachment figures. This capacity of repression is intelligent and creative, and in many cases saved our lives. But many of us long to know joy again, to feel alive, to fully participate here. Illuminating, tending to, and working through these contradictions is difficult, heartbreaking, and rewarding work.

To re-train ourselves to feel joy is not an easy path as by definition we will have to step back through that anxiety, panic, and sense of annihilation that the repression of joy has served to protect us from. But it is a path well worth exploring. To allow ourselves, as part of our inquiry, to see the ways we have placed not only “negative” material into the unconscious shadow, but how we have split off from the positive as well.



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