6 Disturbing Truths Beckoning Us in these Chaotic Times
For those of you well versed in my writing, you may notice that I’ve touched upon points 1-5 in other articles. Though there is new information in each section, you may want to go straight to #6. Because that’s the heart of what I am conveying, here. Truths 1-5 are building blocks for this finale. I’d also like to add that these are my truths, expressed passionately. They may not be yours, or even the truth. For now, they feel true enough in my heart to share with you as we traverse together through these chaotic times. Enjoy! “We must always be disturbed by the truth.” ~ Dogen 1. Go beyond the literal Most of what you are witnessing across the world these days […]
Fear Beneath
Whatever narrative you are choosing right now, set it aside for a moment, still yourself, and you may feel a tremble in your heart, one of wisdom, one of uncertainty, and herein lies the place we hide from in all our grasping, all our need to know, to figure out and control, herein lies the invitation to us all in these times of quieting, to dwell here for a while, humbled, confronting that which compels us to answer and solve, to keep busy fretting and seeking: death, dear one, death of the one you’ve known yourself to be, the fear beneath all other fears, the fear that keeps you preserving that which no longer works, while, underneath, preserving a self who clings to life. _____________________ […]
Why the Nuanced Language of the Soul is Rare and Needed in These Times of Growing Divisive Opinion
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. “When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” ― Rumi As the world moves into increasing complexity and confusion, the lightness of nuanced language will be necessary to navigate the darkness. Because nuance is the language of the whispering, mysterious soul, and these are mysterious times. At a time when there is a platform for every person to shout from, and an ever-saturated supply of all sorts of conflicting mainstream and alternative information, there is a pull, for so many, to write and speak to our growing collective uncertainty. To toss their opinion into the widening arena of debate and conjecture. As […]
The Wisdom of Pain and Suffering ~ Surrendering to the Gifts of Weakness in a World that Pedestalizes Strength
“Be crumbled. So wild flowers will come up where you are. You have been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender.” ~ Rumi “To be worn out is to be renewed.” ~ Lao Tzu Pain and suffering are difficult gateways no one avoids. We wish it was different, but it is the way of life. They are fierce and necessary teachers at times, initiating us to disarmour, soften into vulnerability, into our heart. They wear the edges off our hubris and pride so we become humble and compassionate in ways we could not without the adversity. To feel more deeply at a cellular and soul level. Pain and suffering did exactly this for me. Bit-by-bit, they crumbled the arrogant, overly-driven and insensitive man […]
The Courage to Break Free from Worry
“Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts so seriously.” ~ Eckhart Tolle It takes courage to break free from worry. This may sound strange, but there is comfort in the fears that underly our mental fretting and catastrophizing. They are familiar, more familiar than we know, and they buffer us in insidious ways. For these reasons and more, we easily get stuck in fear and thus in worry. Many don’t associate worry with fear. They spend their minutes, hours and days worrying, often believing it’s a feeling—“I feel worried”—without considering that worry, like planning and analysis, is a state of mind. The thinking kind of mind. Fear, however, is clearly an emotion, and it’s the primary and primal one giving […]
Some Say That You Cannot Heal Until You Stop Identifying With Victim Energy. I Strongly Disagree!
“Be confused, it’s where you begin to learn new things. Be broken, it’s where you begin to heal. Be frustrated, it’s where you start to make more authentic decisions. Be sad, because if we are brave enough we can hear our heart’s wisdom through it. Be whatever you are right now. No more hiding. You are worthy, always.” ~ S.C Lourie Some say that you cannot heal until you stop identifying with victim energy. That it’s a hinderance to the healing process. I disagree strongly. People heal if they can come to terms with the extent of how they were a victim in their life, and if they can feel the full impact in their body/mind/soul. Healing is about owning what happened to us, not […]
The Dark Forces are Waiting for You to Show Up in Your Power
Maybe the dark forces are waiting for You to show up in your Power. And that in spending so much time pointing them out, highlighting their nefarious hidden agendas, you can continue hiding your light. All the while you confuse your persistent pointing with your power. It’s a deceptive and convenient game many are playing these days. Your power arises first from confronting your powerlessness. This is the purpose of tribal initiation practices and rights of passage—giving youth a taste of the depth and wisdom of uncertainty and vulnerability; of giving way to a higher force. Because most in the West have not been initiated, they, most naturally, are afraid to be powerless. Yet there are significant consequences. Namely, that they project this fear onto […]
Forget Positivity. Black People Have a Right and Need to Rage and Protest. This is Their Time for Healing.
In regards to healing, the way out is the way through. It’s not necessarily about feeling better, but being better able to feel the full magnitude of what the body has kept at bay. There are some voices out there insinuating that the Black Lives Matter riots are problematic because, due to the law of attraction, they bring more violence to those involved. Violence attracts more violence. People “should not” be expressing their pain this way. That there should be a more “positive” or “constructive” way for Black people to express their anguish. So I need to offer a trauma resolution informed perspective, here. When I assist people with their healing in my practice, and they, for example, uncover memories of sexual abuse, in every […]
More Than Feeling, Healing Demands Courageous Questioning and Acting
“We live in times when the call to full and critically aware citizenship could not be more urgent. We need to rediscover the careless courage, yet devastating simplicity, of the little boy who, in the middle of the numbed multitude, in naïve Socratic fashion, blurts out: ‘But the emperor has no clothes.’ When spoken, the word of truth can bring down citadels of falsity.” ~ John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings Healing is more than uncovering and feeling old pains lost in our bodies. Healing demands something else, something that can take even more courage: Questioning and acting… Questioning that invites us to brave the unknown. Questioning the old, entrenched, outdated agreements we’ve made with others, and ourselves. Ones […]
A Love Whose Time Has Come ~ Healing the Disembodied Human and Our Ravaged Planet
“A person suffers if he or she is constantly being forced into the statistical mentality and away from the road of feeling.“ ~ Robert Bly We are a disembodied species, deprived of the weighted feeling of being in touch with our senses, attuned to the murmurings of our heart, the pleasures, ecstatic and intimate, that go with rootedness. We have lost touch with the once innate feeling of connectivity to strangers, the delight in a butterfly, the awe when struck by the glowing moon’s presence. We have squandered the feeling worlds of imagination and creativity born in pause and even boredom. And we’ve lost touch with the inborn capacity to feel profound sadness and anger, fear and pain, to be unbridled in our emotional expression, […]