It's okay to feel sad and to grieve

It's okay to feel sad, to be uncertain about it all, to be melancholic, to lament, and to grieve.

Despite the madness of our world and a collective disembodiment to the blue shades of the spectrum, these states are not evidence that something is wrong with you, that you have failed, that you need to meditate more, pray harder, become better at staying in the present moment, manifest the opposite of sadness, or that you are lost or beyond redemption.

It is high-voltage evidence that you are alive, with a tender beating heart, subtle and perceptive mirror neurons, and senses that are open to the chaotic glory of being a human being who is simultaneously broken and whole.

Just in this one moment, be sad. Fully. Not partially. Go inside the sadness. Find the sad one there. Speak with her, listen to him, feel what she is feeling, see what he is seeing, stay embodied to the reality that you are a vessel, a temple where the lost orphans of psyche and soma can come to rest.

Separate a bit from the visitors so you do not fuse with them. Dare to go close, but not too close. Intimacy without fusion. Relationship without merging, honoring your own integrity and perspective. Find the boundary which is provocative, but not flooding. Enter the middle. Provide sanctuary and safe passage for the broken pieces to unfold and illuminate. For they, too, are filled with light.

Sadness is not something you need to fix, cure, or transform. It need not be healed but held. You need not shift sadness into some “higher” state or apply teachings so that it will yield into something else. For it is complete and pure on its own.

With the fire of awareness and the ally of your breath, descend into your belly, touch your heart, tend to your throat. Go on a journey into the core of the feeling, the sensations, images, and the raw, shaky life that is longing to be held. And listen.

It is by way of this journey that sadness will be revealed to be what it is, a secret wisdom-guide and bridge into the universal heart, a messenger of power, mercy, and fierce compassion that wants you as its midwife.

Photo by Anemone123/ Österreich

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

The next book, A Healing Space: Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come

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

The gift of a broken heart

At times, disappointment will appear as our most sacred guide, breaking our heart so that an old dream may be liberated and provided safe passage into the other world.

It can ache as we realize it was never going to turn out the way we thought, but it is through this dissolution that a new form may emerge. Honoring the forms of love as they appear in our lives requires that we allow these forms to continue without us. This ache is holy and is evidence that you are always heard and always seen.

While it may seem so clear that our task is to mend our broken heart, we must ask the heart if it wishes to be mended. And listen carefully to its response. For if we mend the heart too quickly, we lose contact with the water of life, pouring out of the brokenness and into a world that needs it now more than ever.

We can remove the burden that we will ever resolve the activity of love for it is just too vast, creative, and majestic for all that. While we will never be able to “integrate” love into our lives, we can rest and dance and play knowing that it is always integrating us.

Photo by Mabel Amber

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

The next book, A Healing Space: Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come

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

A spiral of grief

The image of the spiral and sense of an unfolding process occurring deep within the heart, circling the material of our lives in all its varied layers is such a rich imaginative lens through which to navigate the unique journey we are on.

At times, it can be incredibly frustrating and repetitive as we spin around the same themes, without seeming like there is much movement. At other times, we encounter some crack where the light breaks in; what seemed at first glance to be a mere repetition is somehow different, revealing a piece of the mystery that we couldn't quite see at an earlier time.

The alchemists called this spiral the circulatio or rotatio which was envisioned as a sacred process, a touching and re-touching of the heart, of the material of our lives, where we circle or rotate around the essential themes that are unique for us, that form the prima materia of our own personal opus. From an alchemical perspective, while it may appear that we are no making any progress and stuck, things are not always what they appear.

Even if we no longer grieve the sense of a personal loss, we may be asked by forces larger than ourselves to grieve for the ancestors, the ones yet to come, and the earth and her fertility. At some point, perhaps we can no longer discern between our own grief and that of a galaxy being born and dying.

Grieving is not only personal but cultural, historical, and archetypal. As it humbles and purifies, it opens a portal into the mystery. The invitation into that place will be unique for each of us and regardless of how it appears—sweet, fierce, peaceful, or wrathful—it the activity of love, of the beloved one as it appears here, spinning and twirling out of the stars and dancing the worlds of time and space into being.

Photo of the aurora unfolding light by Noel Bauza

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

The next book, A Healing Space: Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come

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

Valentine's Day

Wondering what to give your friend or lover this Valentine's Day?

Give them the gift of your presence. Take a moment to make tender contact with the one in front of you: allow them to matter to you, be curious about how they are making meaning of their life: what moves them, scares them, keeps them up at night, lights their heart on fire. Touch their longing to feel heard, to feel seen, to feel felt. Flood them with the warmth of empathy, attunement, and deep listening.

Stay close to the actuality of their lived, embodied experience. Send your presence into the core of their heart, into the cells of their nervous system, and into the secret caverns of their body. 

For just one moment, remove the burden that they change, become someone different, or see things the way you do. Set aside the secret requirement that they confirm who you think you are in order for you to love them.

Make contact with the one in front of you, as if it were for the very first time. Allow the dream figure you have created to dissolve in the place of clear seeing. Say goodbye to the one you hoped was there, needed to be there, or feared would not be there. So that you can finally see the one who is here. No, they were never going to turn out the way you thought they would. For who and what they are is too wild and creative for that. Meet the one who is actually here, for that one is an outrageous miracle.

In addition to contact, provide your beloved the space to be who he or she is. Through the cells of your heart, the light-strands of your DNA, and the mirror neurons lighting up in your brain, let them know you are there for them, that you will stay close… but not so close that you fuse or engulf them with the shadows of your unlived life.

If they need you, you will be there, but not otherwise. You will not impinge upon the unfolding of their unique journey, even if it triggers you. You will allow them to live their life, make their own mistakes, make their own meaning of what is happening, and to chart their own course. You will allow their heart to break, to touch the depths of their own pain and vulnerability, and to stand in their existential aloneness, with you by their side in deep, mutual knowing just how alone the path can sometimes feel.

Honor your separateness as well as your connection, and provide space in which they can make the journey in their own way.

And even if you find yourself alone on this day, the beloved is waiting for you inside the mirror of your own being. Look carefully and you will see. Even within this field of aloneness - which we are all standing in together - you are in the perfect place to make this same offering, by giving these gifts to yourself.

Be your own Valentine and watch what emerges from that radical commitment to self-care and non-abandonment. Watch as this world lights up with the outrageous activity of love and as the veil separating "self" and "other" reveals its translucency.

Stay in close, intimate contact to whatever is arising within you and offer the space for your experience to unfold and illuminate exactly as it is. For you will never be able to provide to another what you are unable to give to yourself.

Wishing my friends a Valentine's Day of true intimacy and wild aliveness, from the holding of the Boulder mountains. From the clear water in the creek, from the ducks and the geese, and from the deer who have come near to give the gift of their presence on this new morning. Humbled on the muddy earth. Totally alone. Unbearably connected. I feel you. And honor you. And accept, with honor, the gift of your being.

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

The next book, A Healing Space: Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come

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