Only You ~ embodying a radical self respect
When I was talking to a dear friend of mine one day, she said a beautiful thing. I reminded her of a dilemma I had been struggling with a while ago, and the wisdom she had shared with me about it then. She said, “Yeah, that might be true, what I said to you, but to be honest with you, I don’t have a clue. How could I know what forces are playing themselves out in your life? Or how you are growing and evolving? Or what would be the right thing for you to do? The mystery is too big for...
Read MoreOur Natural Vitality ~ do you really want to live?
One of my clients spoke to me this week of a longing that emerged in her, out of nowhere, to say a big ‘yes’ to everything. And it wouldn’t disappear. She couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle. This impulse to let go of the struggle, the ongoing ‘no,’ has nothing to do with falling into passivity. This ‘yes’ is the totally natural way of presence, the freedom of our open awareness. This longing often comes when we finally begin to see how high...
Read MoreStoking the Fire of Our Intent ~ a deeper willingness to meet life as it is
I was working with a beautiful young woman a while ago. She was exploring her capacity for true intimacy, and how that intimacy depends on a deep commitment to staying present when she is with her partner, even when she wants to run away. I told her that I had recently been seeing, for the first time, many of the subtle ways that I still ‘leave the room’ when things get uncomfortable for me in the field of relating. I said that seeing these tendencies in myself had ignited a strong...
Read MoreThe Down & Dirty Truth about Self Love ~ the medicine we need is strong & simple
I’m not one of those spiritual people who thinks that self-love is a distraction because there is ultimately no separate self.
Read MoreThe Trouble with Teachings – The Abandonment of our Authentic Being
Teachings are great–without our teachers and what they offer us, we would be pretty stuck. Teachers can take an infinite variety of forms; sometimes a heartbreak or a crisis is a more powerful teacher than a human being who sits on a special seat at the front of the room. Many people have been transformed in the presence of animals and trees and children. The trouble with the more formal teachings is that they can very easily just live in our minds, not in our guts, our bones, and our...
Read MoreTo Ground Myself in Nothing ~ finding our way in the liminal space
Now that I’ve been in Victoria for nearly two and a half years, I finally feel as if I have a life here. It’s not an idea, but an actual feeling in my body, that I am rooted here now, in a new life, that I am a vibrant part of the landscape, that I belong. It’s a glorious feeling and very interesting to me since I have been engrossed for several years in a deep study of the nature of belonging. Human beings have a deep primordial need to belong. This is not always a happy...
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