We never really meet anyone, until we discover this intimacy with ourselves. Without needing anything from anyone else, I can rest in this wide open sense of presence, this aliveness, that I usually take for granted.

Imagine the freedom that comes when I realize it’s always available. We can love ourselves, without waiting for any kind of appreciation or approval. In the midst of all my imperfections, my ongoing flaws, my raw and naked humanity, I can feel this love for whatever is here.

This is possible for all of us. Then we can let go of all the ways we bind each other-- in duties, obligations, demands and resentments.

Nobody owes anything to anybody, in the radical freedom of love. Everything is freely given.

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Mutual Evolution is not a place where information is given to you, or any image or idea of how you should be. It’s a field of presence in which all of this falls away, and you are simply left with yourself.

And everyone else, as they are.

What happens, when we really let go of needing to change ourselves and others? We can’t imagine this until it actually happens.

This is what we find out, in The 8 week Mutual Evolution Online Intensive, starting Feb. 7th:  Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together

“These sessions were an opportunity for me to be in touch with my true heartfelt expression-to speak as things arose, and to really listen to the others. As I am giving myself this opportunity to be very present, these thoughts, these old thoughts, don’t have room to take over in that presence.” (Penelope K. Kennedy, Squamish, BC)

Once we have a sense of how to rest in this open space, we begin to explore how to speak, and how to listen, from our authentic being.

Not trying to get anything right, not making anyone wrong.

This way of being, this conscious presence in relationship, is how we find our freedom. No-one else can give this to us. We have to discover this way of being, which is clear, effortless, open and alive.

The Free Intro Telecall is tonight, Jan. 4 at 5:30pm pacific, and on Saturday Jan. 7, at 10am pacific. Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together- Free Intro Telecall

Check it out. All you have to lose is your pain, your struggle, your isolation, and your judgments.

“If I can engage with people in this very naked and direct way, I can learn so much from anyone.” (Valerie Bouchet, Mass. US)

This is an invitation to the Free Intro Telecall on Jan. 4th at 5:30pm pacific, for ‘Mutual Evolution’ -Waking up Together-- The 8 week online intensive

When we join together, when we are really here for each other, everything is so much easier. We can stop postponing the authentic life that wants to be lived, now. This intensive is simply a place to open, with your whole being, to this precious opportunity. This is the time when you can awaken to a clear, loving, and natural way of being. At home with yourself, at home in the universe.

To register for this call:  Mutual Evolution-Free Intro Telecall

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Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.
Love moves away.
The light changes.
I need more grace
than I thought.

Rumi

Last summer I was part of a group of people who engaged in a 6 day retreat, focused on healing and awakening. We were bringing together practices from the shamanic and the nondual traditions. A beautiful young woman named Heather was one of our facilitators. One of her most powerful offerings to all of us was something that she communicated with great energy and clarity: “When you need help, just call out to me, and I’ll be there.”

Because of her experience working in this field, she knew that it is not so easy to actually reach out in this way. To call out for what we need is not something that most human beings have learned to do. A good deal of our training, both explicit and implicit, has taught us just the opposite: to appear strong, independent, self-contained--and to carry on struggling by ourselves.

I felt this too, every time I heard Heather make this offer. I know the pressure of this conditioning from my own adult life, from my early life with my family, and from a lifetime of working with people. So I was wondering how we were actually going to do what Heather was inviting us to do. To actually embody this capacity to reach out and ask for help.

Then Heather came up with a brilliant idea, just before an evening in which we would be participating in some rigorous practices, all night long. “Just try it,” she said, “just call out and ask for help, even if you think you don’t need it. Practice doing this now, so that you’ll know how, when you really do need help.”

I remember something swinging open inside me, when I heard her say these words. She had somehow made it easy for me-I realized that I would be able to do it. I felt joy about this, and a deep sense of relief.

Later on that evening, I found myself in a difficult place. I noticed the tendency to withdraw into myself, to pull back, to isolate. To sit there and wait until I was desperate.  And so I just called out, across the room, “Heather, are you there? I need your help.”

What I noticed, in the moment of calling out, was something extraordinary. That I was totally empowered, even before Heather came. And I also noticed that I was blessing the whole field of our consciousness, by making that clear and lucid request. This was confirmed to me later on, when many people in the room spoke about what happened to them when they heard me call out to Heather.

Of course, once we call out for help, we have to know how to receive the help that comes. Because it’s usually not what we are expecting or hoping for. Real help does not collude with the helpless child within us. Real help does not feel sorry for us. Real help awakens our inner capacities- our clarity, our patience, our humility, our wisdom.

But we can only learn how to receive help after we have learned how to ask for it. The mind thinks that reaching out like this is a terrible risk. That it leaves us helpless, and vulnerable. Kind of like hanging off the edge of a cliff, blowing in the wind.

What I experienced that night was just the opposite. So much of life is like this. We are living our lives upside down. When I called out to Heather I felt supported, before the help even appeared.  How could this be?  How can we make sense of this?

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This year
I let Christmas in.

And it occurs to me that
every year
the spirit of Christmas goes wandering
looking for room at the inn
of my heart

turned aside
by the hurry of business
the demands of desires
the walls of grudge, bitterness

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Tonight, we pass through the Winter Solstice. What happens to us when this great shift takes place? When the movement into darkness turns around?

The return of the light sounds very dramatic,

and I am more and more interested in the how this light actually emerges in our everyday lives.

I see it these days as the possibility, in the field of relationship, for small, courageous acts of change.

Not just with our partners or our lovers, but in all of our relationships--with family, friends, and community.

With ourselves, and with the world. With life, and with death.

The mind wants to take these great leaps forward, to experience immense breakthroughs, with no turning back.

Look at the Solstice-how slowly the light comes back.

The basic sanity we are longing for in our relationships is like this: The moment when I refrain from giving advice, because I realized you never asked me, and I am not the expert on your life.

The moment when I let you know how vulnerable I am feeling, when I am used to being the competent one, the one who keeps it all together.

The moment when I take my attention away from you and how I want you to be, and turn back to my own immediate experience in the body.

The moment when the bitterness and regret in my heart for all the things that never happened opens up,

and allows a drop of deep grateful sweetness.

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‘If we could really listen, there would be no suffering in the world.’ Byron Katie

Mutual Evolution is an opportunity for anyone who is drawn to a way of being that is transparent, open, and authentic. A way of being in relationship, based on non-separation.

We engage in this way of being, this practice, together, and learn to trust in this natural presence. We cannot see it or grasp it, but it holds us and nourishes us deeply. There is a radical intimacy here: we do not stand back from others or from ourselves. We enter into each moment from inside, without knowing anything. Untamed feelings may arise, deep wisdom may emerge-we are not in control.

In this new world, we trust in the intelligence of presence, the integrity of the heart, this awakeness that lives in everything.

We are willing to be with the rawness, the tenderness, the anxiety that arises when we are no longer protected or defended. We can say to our most difficult feelings, “Show me how to be with you.” We can listen to everything, without pushing anything away, without needing to defend our self-image.

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The winter solstice draws near now, the darkest time of the year. Our daylight here in British Columbia goes away at 4pm. And after the solstice come Christmas and Hannukah.

I notice how it often feels like the space of not knowing is dark and quiet.  A few mornings ago I was resting in awareness with someone who lives in Germany. He said to me, “It feels like you are a companion in this darkness, so that I can really be here, without making myself into anything.” I felt a lot of gratitude when he said this, gratitude because I have also struggled with wanting to know, wanting to be someone, wanting to be loved.

It feels like so much of my evolution has been a stripping away, an uprooting of all my old, constructed notions about love, relationship, caring, and giving. At times it has been very rigorous, almost too much to bear. So as we enter this time of year, I notice how strong the collective beliefs are about all these things: what love is, what it is to be in relationship, how we can support each other.

I can feel how I was taught to believe in these things, to hold them as real. Sometimes they weren’t even explicit--it felt like an ocean of conditioning that I found myself born into, drinking from, at my mother’s breast.

Now I notice that I don’t believe these things anymore. To question these beliefs and ideas is to cross lines that may not have been crossed before, in the lineage of my ancestors, and in yours. Sometimes it feels like punching a hole in a reality we have all agreed to uphold. I’m amazed at how much courage it takes to engage in this kind of inquiry. Or maybe it isn’t courage-maybe it’s love itself, from the very beginning, that is at the heart of this questioning.

Jesus got into a lot of trouble with his inquiry. So did Socrates, and many others. One thing that arises for me, at this time of year, is how lucky we are, in the immense turbulence of our times, that we can gather together and freely engage in this kind of inquiry together. Without the fear of death or punishment. This is such a great privilege.

My daughter has a large tattoo on either side of her sacrum. On one side it reads, “Question Everything.” On the other side it reads, “Believe Nothing.” It’s such a blessing to have this freedom. And it’s an even greater blessing to use it, to sail right off the edge of the known world, without knowing where we will end up.

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