Lifeletter #114: The Untamed You
This untamed you, this natural wildness and vitality is still here. And we can learn to recognize it, open our hearts and minds to it. Sometimes I call this aspect of who we are the soul, or essence. It doesn’t matter what we call it. What matters is learning to value it, care for it, and reawaken it. What matters is opening to the truth of what cannot ever really be tamed.
Read MoreLifeletter #113: The Things We Don’t Talk About
Ever since that night I’ve been paying a lot more attention to the other things we turn away from, in our culture. The things we don’t talk about, the topics that are practically taboo. Like money and sex. I notice this a lot in my work. Whenever anyone tries to speak to me about money, they get all choked up. Friends too. Who decided that money, like death, is something we just don’t talk about? Not really, not honestly, not in any depth.
Read MoreLifeletter #112: Ready For Yes
What kind of motivation will allow you to transform this no? How will you become ready to say a real yes? You can talk about it, you can consider it, you can listen to teachings about it. That’s all part of the old story. But to be vulnerable enough, open enough, present enough, grounded in your body enough, so that you can really start to feel what you have been avoiding–you are not there yet.”
Read MoreLifeletter #111: Healing & The Fair Witness
My world is so different from yours, that unless I am willing to step into your world, I will only see a little bit of who you are. I’ll see you through my own biases, my own limitations. That’s not really fair, because it doesn’t include that much of who you are.
Read MoreLifeletter #110: The Trouble with Being Nice
The real danger with being too nice for too long is that you really lose track of your ‘no’. Your real, genuine, authentic, instinctive ‘no’ gets buried under a mountain of niceness. You can’t protect your natural boundaries. You can’t look someone right in the eye and say, “No, I am not going to go along with that.” Or “No, I will not allow you to do that, in my home, in my room, on my computer, in my car…” Or, “No, I don’t have the time and energy to talk with you right now.”
Read MoreLifeletter #109: Learning to Wander
Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse, did a study on the top regrets of people who are on their deathbed. She revealed the most common regret of all: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” This is the focus of the ‘soul work’ I do with people. Befriending my soul is all about this: learning to be faithful to what I really love, discovering what I am most deeply drawn to, what my deepest and most abiding interest is. When...
Read More
Stay Connected