Trusting Your Way

There are SOOO many different ways of doing this work of holding space and guiding & supporting others. And so many ways of awakening to our nature and integrating and embodying that fully in the human expression that we are. Infinite ways of Being. If I could ever impart anything to anyone - It is to trust YOUR way. To not assume that just because there's someone, a teacher or such, that seems amazing, and they have all the answers and they are doing it the way you aspire to even, that their way is the "correct" way (for you). Do not diminish and take for granted the wisdom that you hold, through your life experience, through your body, through the embodied spark of consciousness that you are, the particular flavour and footprint of your life. That this is actually what life has gifted this world and birthed into existence and it's not a mistake at all. We cannot dishonour life or ourselves by assuming that there is any part of who and what we are that is incorrect. And in that way you can use other people as a model and a mirror, but never step away from the…

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My Heart Breaks, I Pray for All

What is going on in the world affects us all on many different levels, both seen and unseen. For me, what's currently happening also feels a touch personal, closer to home in some small way. I made the mistake of going on social media today, barely a moment in and I realised this was not the place to be, not for me, not right now. Especially during a retreat, the very thing I advise people against during a retreat! So here I am instead, on beyondimogen.com - my little nook of the internet. I'm not sure if this post will ever make it elsewhere. -- I am horrified by what is going on in the world on all fronts. The divisiveness, the hate, the lines we have drawn in the sand, too many to count. It all feels impossible. How can we make our way through all of this? What is to be done? Today is the anniversary of my grandmothers death. She walks with me closely still to this day. In someways closer than ever... but that's a story for another day. My grandmother's family were Ukrainian Jews, my grandfather's, Russian Jews. The current war between the two was…

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The Power of a True Companion

To be in a close and sustained relationship with another that provides a clear mirror and crucible for burning through all that you are not is one of the greatest blessings of this temporary dream we call life. There is not a moment in life that I am not cognisant of this gift that life brought me in the form of Martyn, my husband. We have been together for 19 years and there's not a day that goes by that I am not filled to the brim with gratitude for him and for our relationship. Life in many other ways has brought great aloneness, challenges and heartbreak in my life. Life lessons that required me again and again to chart my own way, to walk through the darkness towards my own light. It has not been easy. It is still not easy. To have no path, to have no-one else to rely on in that sense. My life again and again goes through cycles of birth, death and re-birth, sometimes faster than a breath that causes such whiplash. Sometimes years upon years in the making that it feels never-ending. Much of it goes unseen to the world, except to those…

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Give It to the Heart

The grip of looking to the mind needs to be loosened, all needs to be given to the heart. All questions, all "need to know" when dropped innocently and openly into the heart of acceptance, the heart of awareness, will find their rest, will find their completion. From there we will notice that life will bloom and flow in all ways that it must. From there we realise that we have no clue, but thankfully enough, we have no need to have a clue. And so we start to really live life, we start to live life from the primordial ground of Being, not from the heights of the head that thinks it knows.

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Keep Quiet; The Seeing Is the Doing

Keep quiet, let the mind flail around and burn itself out with exhaustion... you don't need to go to war with life, trying to subdue and submit it to some image of how it 'should be'. Eventually you’ll come to recognise the constant ground in all of this is you, awareness you. Awareness that holds within it all the multitudes and flavours of experiencing, effortlessly without tire. Keep quiet and this shall be known, the seeing is the only doing necessary, all else that you find yourselves doing is in support of that... every practice, every book, every teaching, every circumstance that life throws at you, every dead-end, every challenging relationship, every 'wrong' turn... all in support of life showing you the nature of life, showing the groundless ground of Being - Awareness. Consciousness. Self.

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