Excerpt taken from the April 2021 Diving Deep 5 day retreat talking about the dawning recognition of non doership and the implications of this, the place for different spiritual teachings and practices, yet the transcendence of them too, and the bliss of tasting and accepting all textures, all experiences of life.
Video excerpt talking about how to be with what's here, more than just holding space. Finding a deeper clarity and higher resolution for that which afflicts us. Also touching on what I mean when I speak about the spiritual heart. Excerpt taken from the December 2020 Diving Deep 7 day retreat.
What is your capacity to be with loss, to be with grief and sadness and loneliness, to be with fear? What is your capacity to embody all aspects of the human experience, not just the ‘good’ stuff? It’s not that we need to go looking for this stuff, court it, wallow in it, seek it out. But it will inevitably find you, one way or another. If you spend your life running from this, finding safe ground away from the mud and melee of life, when it does show up it will feel overwhelming and scary, it will feel like it could break you, even worse, it could kill you. This safe space, this gilded cage that you have created from life will be shaken to the core. Your fragility will become apparent. Freedom is the ability to encompass and embrace it all, it’s the antifragility of life. It’s the allowance of the full expression of life to move through you unimpeded. Root out where you are feeling fragile with life. Become aware of it and the tendency to avoid it at all cost. The seeing of this tendency, the noticing of what it FEELS like, how the body responds…
Sometimes you just want someone to hear you, to see you, without needing to fix you or explain away your pain and confusion. To hold the space, the pregnant silence, the love for all that you're going through. To not project into the void of uncomfortableness and fill it with solutions, comparisons and stories. To be okay with just having the space be about you and only you. To create a refuge and safety for you to go through what you're going through. To compassionately be there for you, to listen to you and not make it in any way about them. To give you space without any needs or any conditions or any time limits. Sometime you really WANT this. Sometimes you really NEED this. We all do. And that's okay, that's not bad or wrong. Let it sink in... WE ALL NEED TO BE HEARD AND HELD SOMETIMES. When you do receive this gift of space freely and wholly given, it lights up your heart, it lights up your world. The healing that comes from this act of being held, this act compassion and tender love is immense. But it's not always easy to find it in those…
Spontaneous and casual morning walk contemplations; This morning talking about counterproductive sufferings when dealing with strong emotions.
A Deeper Kind of Love - Video excerpt from the Living Your Full Expression webinar with Imogen and Leonor on 22nd February 2020.
It's those moments where we are hardest on ourselves that actually call for the most kindness, for the most understanding, most forgiveness, the most self love. But sometimes that feels like an impossibility, the moment feels too heavy, too overwhelming to bring kindness into the equation. It feels like too much of a leap and too far to go. In those moments where self love and compassion can't be found maybe it's possible to look instead to the ways in which we're being unkind and too hard on ourselves and loosen the grip just a little, for just a moment. Let some space, some breathing room into the moment. Take a momentary pause and feel the relief and space and peace that that brings. Sometimes it's not a case of completely flipping the script, sometimes it's just the case of simply finding the tiniest of cracks to what is already there. Those cracks can be found anywhere and are waiting and willing to be found. Sometimes the kindest thing that can be managed is to find that single crack in life to take a momentary respite.
There's a tendency to avoid dealing with the subject of mental health in some spiritual traditions and teachings. To poo poo inner work and growth, to try to meditate away 'negative' emotions, reactions, thought patterns and conditioning. But spirituality and spiritual awakening is not a panacea, it is many things and in some ways a lot of the "problems" of the mind do in fact disappear. But in some ways post awakening the work and cleanup becomes intensified and it can become even more important to address and give attention to anything that's still arising. This can be when some of the true work begins, because the strategies that have stopped you from looking beneath the covers of the mind dissolve. It is the embracing not the running away that allows one to look at where the stored traumas, memories, reactions, conditioning and energetic imprints are having an impact on the current moment, your current experience of life. So in some ways it's only then that you can truly move through and on from the issues or patterns that may have plagued your life. We all know someone, or maybe ourselves that have experienced mental health issues, and yet it's…
There are none so bright and full of love than those that have allowed life to penetrate them fully. Cracked open so immensely and felt so deeply the depth and breadth of their experiencing. Leaving no stone unturned, no shadow unseen, no feeling unmet. Those that have surrendered so tenderly to the acknowledgement that they know nothing. That they are but a whisper on the lips of life, carried in the arms of Grace, and held in the groundlessness of Being itself. Their cracked open heart laid gently to rest at the feet of their very own beloved Self.
One of the biggest helps for me to move beyond my conditioned responses and traumas and to heal and integrate them has been learning how to cope with strong and intense emotions - which for the record I was pretty fantastic at avoiding for most of my life! I would say that when all the strategies for avoiding no longer worked the only way to turn was through and into them. It was a case of let go or be dragged but turning into them was definitely the last thing I would have originally thought would be of help, go figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ For me this was learning to hold emotions and energetic arisings like you would a small child in a loving embrace, to pull them closer and say, "It's okay you can be here. I don't need you to change or be gone, you don't need to be fixed or healed. You can be just as you are for as long as you need. You are also free to leave if and when you're ready to as well." It was Adyashanti that first introduced me to this idea of embracing not running away from difficult experiences. To lovingly hold…
When we experience a strong emotion or felt response to life there is a call to be present, a call to sink into it. It's not the moment to run away and avoid. It's not the moment to reject and try with all your might to change the course of life. Life is giving you a gift, an opening, the natural call to Self, the great unknowing by which all becomes known, accepted and loved. Don't be afraid, the call into the unknown is the call home, the call to the ground of your Being, it's the natural call of freedom and peace. In this moment attention is your true power, your place of healing. The only doing is the seeing, is the accepting. Tender loving attention embracing the aliveness of life.
My heart hurts today. The loss of a loved one is never easy. Tender, broken and so wide open. So full of love, so beautiful. The waves of emotions, energies and memories break over me when least expected. Life is a precious thing, but so is death. Death brings up so much to the surface The unavoidable mirror of change and the inevitability of loss. The lack of certainty and control, and the great unknown. Emotions are high, everyone dealing with it in their own way, messy and inelegant. The appreciation and love for those who are both gone and those who are still here. All parading past in my heart. Every moment filled with equal intensity of love and pain. In memory of my dear Uncle Andrew, 1951-2019