For just one second, enter the fire and infuse it with presence, compassion, and holding. Renew your vow: I will not turn from myself and my vulnerability. No, not this time. I will not desert myself. I will no longer pathologize my emotional experience. Grief is not pathology. Heartbreak is not pathology. Rage is not pathology.
Two seconds. Then rest. Then three. More rest. As we send breath into the broken shards, into the lost pieces of soul, a new groove is laid down, new circuity is encoded.
Inside the core of the emotional activation, buried in the shaky embodied sensations, hidden in the unique images that psyche is bringing to you now… unrecognized wisdom, a forgotten creativity, a surging of sacred life energy.
Ask the earth to hold you, to share her soothing water, shade, and safe haven, and stay near as you open.
Find a friend, therapist, lover, ocean, moon, star, or holy roaring lioness to bear witness as you turn into the raw alive somatic world.
The seen and unseen ones are always here to help us, to reveal the way home. To illuminate the pathways of darkness and of light, each containing a particle of the mystery, a strand of love seeking you as a tender vessel through which it can come alive here.
Art by Krista Marleena
Falling in Love with Where You Are: Embracing the Joy and Heartbreak of Spiritual Awakening - our annual spring, five-day retreat - will take place April 22-27, 2020 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with myself and Jeff Foster. More information here.
My online community, co-facilitated with Jeff Foster - Befriending Yourself: Discovering the Beauty in the Wounded and Broken Places - is currently closed to new members, however will re-open later in the year if you'd like to add your name to the wait list. Learn more here.
My most recent book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is available in both paperback and Kindle editions.
My next book, A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times, will be published by Sounds True in 2020. Learn more here.
