An ancient trust

At points along the way, we may become aware of a call to set aside the theories, teachings, and techniques for just a moment and rest. Something else is revealing itself, a way of being that is already here and not the end-product of an exhaustive search for something different.

For a moment, to cut into all the effort to become and to understand, and open to the completeness of this moment as it is. To reacquaint ourselves with a dimension of experience we may have known at an earlier time.

It is unfamiliar here and can feel disorienting as we are so used to doing, interpreting, getting somewhere, and resolving something. Fixing ourselves. Completing inner to-do lists.

But somehow, we notice ourselves becoming more curious about the space in and around our thoughts and emotions, rather than entangled and fused with their content. All the ordinary thoughts and feelings continue to come and go, but our relationship with them becomes one not of solidity but of play.

We notice our center of gravity shifting from the varied forms of awareness to awareness itself as we sink into the background field. The bottom drops out from underneath us, as well as the top and sides. We’re home, but it is not the home we thought.

The grooved organization of getting from “here” to “there” is replaced with a primordial sort of relaxation, an embodied tending to reality as it is, oriented in curiosity about what has already been given and what is unfolding in the here-and-now. Despite the pain of the past, we are fully here, already intimate in the immediacy of this moment.

We discover an ancient sort of trust in ourselves and in life. Nothing need be cultivated or generated, shifted, or transformed. Not for right now anyway.

To stay with this much space requires a radical sort of friendliness toward ourselves. Without it, we’re not going to be able to move toward the vulnerability, enter fully into the unknown, and open to the vastness of having no reference point other than awareness itself.

Inevitably, in the next moment, we will notice that we have left the freshness of now and traveled into past or future, images, memories, daydreams, and fantasies. So human. So valid. This time grace taking form as “forgetting.” Totally honorable. Worthy of awe, in fact.

When you notice this has occurred, which it will be sure to do many times during the day, you could get curious, become fascinated with what it is like to travel in this way and the gloriousness of even that. Set aside the habit of shame, blame, and self-attack, and replace it with wonder… touch the mystery of lost and found and very gently return into the spaciousness of now.

Art by Stefan Keller

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

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

My next event: 

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

Transformation and rest

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

Acceptance and change. Being and becoming. Healing and holding. Transformation and rest. These are the great archetypal energies that we meet along the way.

As all archetypal opposites, we will never settle them into some tidy package in which we can land and take refuge. They are unresolvable, wild, and free, creative emissaries of the mystery. Inside the opposites, in that rich middle place of intimacy without fusion, the water of life is at flow.

The invitation is not one of resolution, but of curiosity and exploration, as we are asked to become archeologists of the inner landscape.

At times, it is rest and acceptance that is the medicine we most need, while at other times, the remedy is more active, fiery, and more involved, more messy, less clean and whitened, and oriented in relationship. Neither are “right” or “true” or “better,” but each are skillful means which we can call forth in a moment of activation, shifting to the other in a future moment, and then back again as we answer the call.

Mindfully allowing the fires of the inner world to emerge, to dance for a while, and then dissolve, with presence, acceptance, and kindness. At other times to go into the content, following the thread, longing to know it in a different way. To speak to it, listen to it, to know it at the deepest levels and in all its subtlety and nuance.

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

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 re-imagine and re-author the poem that is our lives, and re-enchant this place with unique, wild, unprecedented being.

Photo by Jose Antonio Alba

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

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

My next event: 

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

The nutrients of experience

Just as we must properly digest the food we eat to absorb its nutrients, we must also metabolize our experience, as it enters by way of our senses, nervous systems, hearts, and minds.

Each time we have a conversation, engage our daily activities, dialogue with a friend, cook a meal, spend time in nature. Each time we open to this world, allow another to matter, lead with our vulnerability, or an emotion surges within us, we are invited into the temple.

But to what degree are we actually experiencing all of this? 

Are we present in a way where it penetrates us, where it can become true experience and not just an unconsciously recorded event? To what degree are we on auto-pilot as we journey through the miracle of a here and now moment?

Just because we “have” an experience does not mean it is properly metabolized. If our rage, grief, disappointment, and joy remain partly processed, we become leaky and unable to access the fuel required for a life of intimacy, connection, and flow.
If we do not properly chew and digest the food that we eat, we are not able to mine the energy our bodies need to function optimally. Without embodied experience our souls remain unnourished and we find ourselves missing life.

While the longing for transformation is noble, if we are not careful it can serve to reinforce the realities of materialism and self-abandonment. One of the shadow sides of spiritual seeking and the (seemingly) endless project of self-improvement is that we never slow down enough to digest what we have already been given, which is often much more than we consciously realize. Which, in some sense, is everything.

Not the “everything” the mind thinks it needs to be happy, found by way of a journey of internal and external consumerism. Not the “everything” that conforms to our demand that we always feel safe and invulnerable, or free from the raging implications of what it means to have a human heart.

But the “everything” that is already here as part of our true nature, the raw materials for a life of inner abundance, revealed through humility and compassion, not by way of unconscious acquisition.

Photo by Anja Osenberg

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

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

My next event: 

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

In the secret middle place

It is to the degree that we can attune and integrate the surging of the inner other that we will be able to practice compassion for the other that appears external to us.

And in the secret middle place discover the richness of intimacy without fusion.

Photo by Bich Nguyen Vo/ Singapore

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

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

My next event: 

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

Encoding new circuitry

In a moment of activation, the ancient pathways appear. To fight or flee. To shut down, freeze, or dissociate. To deactivate or hyperactivate the attachment system. While the reactions are varied, what they have in common is that they are subtle (or not-so-subtle) expressions of self-abandonment.

We must remember that these strategies arose intelligently, creatively, and adaptively to prevent overwhelm in a little brain and nervous system. The invitation is not to shame, judge, or rail against them when they appear, but with a fierce self-compassion to see if we are still in need of the protection they once provided.

Despite a deeply embedded belief, we do not need to abandon ourselves to stay safe. In fact, the most unsafe thing we can do is to turn from ourselves in a moment of emotional charge, when we need our own presence more than ever.

It takes practice to encode new circuitry, but slowly we can replace the grooves of abandonment with those of empathy, attunement, and kindness, caring for ourselves in wild and new ways. The realities of neuroplasticity and the outrageous intelligence of the human heart keep hope alive.

We all have feelings we’ll do just about anything to avoid, strategies to keep us out of the tender, shaky, and groundless. These make up the whole realm of addictive behavior, from eating when we’re not hungry to lashing out at others to compulsively engaging social media to attacking our own vulnerability. It is an act of mercy and kindness to get to know our specific strategies and begin to bring them out of the shadows. Not to attack them but to infuse them with light.

If you feel called, and it feels safe enough to do so (remembering it may never feel fully safe), you can begin to invite in the abandoned ones, to meet that lost, frightened, confused, unworthy one who has been carrying these painful feelings and beliefs for so long. To offer sanctuary for him or her, to listen carefully and with compassion to his or her story, to hold and validate her feelings, to tend to his dysregulating sensations, and to provide a home for the shamed one to rest, from a long, ancient, heartbreaking journey.

Photo by Bess-Hamiti

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

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

My next event: 

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