A small light of hope

Underneath so many forms of suffering we find a chronic sense of shame, a deeply rooted belief that I’m not okay as I am, that when all is said and done there is just something wrong with me.

It’s such a painful way to organize our experience, leaking out into just about every area of our lives but especially into our relationships, affecting perception and causing us to do whatever we can to compensate for that core feeling of unworthiness.

This primordial sense of defectiveness seems to have its origins in early environments lacking in mirroring and empathic attunement, where there was not enough contact and space for a little heart and nervous system to unfold, explore, and rest in unstructured states of being. Not knowing any other way, we blame ourselves, concluding that there must be something fundamentally wrong with us.

It’s so heartbreaking, really.

While it can feel so overwhelming at times, this narrative can be re-authored. New pathways can be unearthed in the body and psyche and new grooves can be laid down in a tender, sensitive, and flexible nervous system. A more integrated story can be told. A new dream can be dreamed. New cloth can be woven.

It is possible. I have been honored to witness this reorganization in the lives of many courageous women and men over the years. It is not easy and asks everything of us.

It is an act of mercy, kindness, and compassion to remind one another of this revolutionary possibility, especially during times of struggle, that there is hope. Even in the core of the most profound hopelessness, a small light of hope is buried there, the flame is still alive.

This is not some overly romantic, positivistic fantasy, but one grounded in the capacity of the brain and nervous system to reorganize. Of course, none of us know if everyone can heal and find a way out of profound trauma and pain. All we can really do is share our own experience which, for me, is of the outrageous intelligence and bravery of the broken human heart and its ability to return home, a force truly greater than exploding stars.

Photo by James Kirk

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

The next event is The Healing Shame Retreat: Spiritual Awakening and Unraveling the Core Trauma of Unworthiness, April 24-29, 2019 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with co-facilitator Jeff Foster - details to come

The dream of unworthiness

The invitation of the heart is not into transcendence, but into mystery. Into subtlety and depth. Into the earthy, muddy richness of the embodied world.

Not to leave here for some other reality or dimension, but to finally realize that spirit and matter were never two; that while they appear separate, upon inquiry that display is revealed to be translucent.

To perceive the sacred in matter, infusing form, as well as the materiality within spirit; to see that they are each crafted of the same substance. What we call that substance is a secret word that is placed inside each human heart and must be discovered in the fire of primary experience.

Buried in the chaos, hidden in the mess, disguised in the tender body, watery emotions, and this majestic brain are the silver and the gold and the sun and the moon. In the heartbreak and shakiness, in the confusion and uncertainty, even in the core of the dream of unworthiness, the soul is awash with the substance of love.

This “love” is not a feeling that comes and goes—a sweetness or peace or even contented happiness—but is that fiery, relentless activity that keeps the stars from falling out of the sky.

Even in those moments when we fall apart and forget, love is at work behind the scenes. Love has no bias for “forgetting” and “remembering,” only in deeper and deeper invitations into the mystery. For it has embedded itself into the very core of the forgetting, the ground from which new and more creative remembering may emerge.

Photo: the glory of Maroon Bells c/o US Forest Service

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

The next event is The Healing Shame Retreat: Spiritual Awakening and Unraveling the Core Trauma of Unworthiness, April 24-29, 2019 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with co-facilitator Jeff Foster - details to come

A crucible of open awareness

In a moment of activation, the emissaries arrive. A great meeting is being assembled. Invited guests, uninvited ones, weary travelers, raw achy parts, and the ones representing joy, heartbreak, and aliveness.

When you find yourself overwhelmed by habitual, ruminative thinking; when the repetitive thoughts and feelings are cascading and looping; when you are caught in the trance of disembodiment and self-abandonment... just stop. With the power and presence of the warrior’s sword of compassion, cut the storyline. “No, not this time. This time I choose differently.”

Slow way down and feel your feet on the ground. Breathe deeply into your lower belly and activate your senses. See what is around you with clear vision, enter into pure listening. Shift your sacred life energy out of the spinning and into the aliveness of the body. While it may appear otherwise, the safety you seek is in self-attunement, self-compassion, and holding the visitor as he or she appears.

It is an act of kindness to not fuel the dysregulating narrative, a radical act which takes practice, courage, and the willingness to fail. Something is erupting under the surface, longing to be integrated and allowed back home, but it is raw, naked, and unknown. Rather than turn into the restless, claustrophobic, and sticky somatic aliveness, we default back into conditioned history—to the shame, blame, attack, and aggression, anything to keep us out of the tender core of vulnerability at the center.

The invitation in these moments is into the shaky interior. Use your breath as a guide into the inner landscape. You are being asked to care for yourself in a new way. See what feeling state the very vivid and colorful storyline is attempting to take you out of, and slowly, with kindness drop underneath the conditioned history and into the hot, claustrophobic, pregnant life that is surging to be held. See, finally, if it is an enemy coming to take you down or whether it is you, in disguise, seeking reunion in the spaciousness and majesty of what you are.

At times, we must set aside our agenda to understand, to change, even to heal… for a moment. We can return to transformation and improvement at a later time once we have come back online and into the safety and regulation of Now.

Replace understanding with a fiery curiosity. More interested in spontaneous primordial experience than in our interpretations of it, turning our body into a crucible of open awareness, filled with the qualities of empathy, attunement, and a previously unknown compassion.

In doing this we call off the war. We dare to practice peace. To step off the battlefield where the mystery awaits, and into the wisdom-field of the always blooming, awakened heart.

Photo by Petra/ Pezibear via Pixabay

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

Care for a weary heart

In the realms you find yourself now, you need not worry about words and understanding concepts. Honor a long journey of becoming and that ancient tiredness that we feel along the way.

Rest. Slow way down. Pause. Remember what is most important.

Tend to an exhausted nervous system. Care for a weary heart.

Receive. Nourish. For there is another language attempting to make its way known.

There is writing weaved within you that is not composed of ordinary symbols. Unfolding letters of dark and of light, washing through the inner pathways and cleansing them with the water of life.

Listen. Feel. See with new eyes. Open the senses. Revision. Reimagine. Bear witness to what is emerging from the womb of now.

This longing, this burning, this tenderness, once seen as mistakes or errors to be remedied, pathologized and shamed away… these are your only scriptures now. Filled with wisdom-essence and guidance for the journey ahead.

Photographer unknown via Pixabay

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 

And listen once again...

As we bear witness to a new day, in awe at the gift that has been given… the breath is here. The heart is quivering. The birds have come. Sounds from the other world, another opportunity to hear, to behold the miracle of the senses.

The sun has come up again. The moon rests and plays until she is called to return. For just one moment, the veil parts, revealing the flow that is always, already here, uncaused and uncreated, simply longing for our participation.

Life is not waiting for us to heal our past, awaken to our true nature, become more “spiritual,” or manifest something. But only to fall to the ground in wonder, to be astonished by the outrageous appearance and unfolding of form. By the relentlessness of love as it washes into the world of time and space.

While the longing for transformation is utterly valid and can be honored, we must be careful not to fall into trance. This life is more than a self-improvement project and this surging, tender vulnerability is not something to master, gain power over, or transcend.

It seems unlikely that today will be the day when we figure it all out, get all our questions answered, or resolve the raging contradictions of love. It's just too wild for all that. Just too creative. Just too alive. A truly majestic day.

No, today may not be the day for answers, but to let your heart break open to the vastness of the question. To fall to the ground as a humble lover of the mystery. And listen once again.

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