I want to thank all the people who have written to me from all over the world in response to my newsletters. I love getting your emails. Please let me know if there is anything in particular you would like me to focus on: a question or challenge you might be working with.

People have been asking me where I’ve learned what I’m writing about. These newsletters are not literature! They are reports from an ongoing practice and investigation that is my life. I discover most of what I am writing about in the relationships, inquiries, and dialogues I have with my students and clients.  The courses, retreats and sessions are the laboratories in which we drill down into the living wisdom that reveals itself, again and again. I call it ‘deep learning,’ the kind of learning that takes us down to the ground of our being.

“Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?” (‘Last night as I was sleeping,’) Antonio Machado

David Mackenzie reminded me last week of James Hillman’s book, ‘The Soul’s Code.’ Hillman is a prominent Jungian therapist. He speaks about the myth of the hero/heroine in our world, and what an illusion it is. The heroic approach demands what I call ‘false courage’, a will of steel, and endless struggle. As a hero or heroine, we are invested in being strong, in ploughing our way through obstacles, in never admitting defeat.

Click here for more...

Speaking from our heart does not always need to be serious and profound. The heart can be gay, spontaneous and full of humour and creativity. Where does it all come from?

Resting at Point Zero
The source of this creativity is the creative emptiness or silence (point zero) out of which your words come. “Your willingness to meet this nothingness without panic is your greatest ally.” (Michelle Cassou-Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression) Each time we speak, we can rest in this emptiness, and wait without demand or expectation, for what wants to arise.

This is one of the core aspects of my work, helping people open to the silence and space within them, and recognize that they do not need to be afraid of it. It’s the creative source of our being, our greatest resource. But we have to learn to respect it, acknowledge it, and listen to it. The more we practice this, the more we can let go into trusting this place in us-this silence that reveals itself to us in so many beautiful and surprising ways.

Minnows live in all my toes,
my body is the ocean.
A dolphin plays in my belly
and in my heart
a purple sea anemone
opens and closes.
They all stay far away
from the shark that lives
in my mind.
He swims since before time
in the sea of my thoughts
and never sleeps.

Shayla

each of us carries
in our chest
a song

so old
we don’t know
if we learned it

some night
between the murmurs
of fallen kisses

our lips
surprise us
when we utter

this song
that is singing
and crying at once

-Francisco X Alarcon

I am posting an email written straight from the heart by a dear friend of mine and a great poet,
about life in a brand new city-an adventure that requires great faith and courage.

Dear Shayla,
Thank you so much for having me on your e mail list. I really enjoy
the newsletter, and of course it comes at the time when my heart is
aching for connection, and I am trundling blindly into that vast, deep
sea of nothing.

This is where I have found myself, have no knowledge of my destiny,
trusting, albeit, sometimes from a place of deep fear or grief, yet
still, trusting that I am cradled and this fall, this dive into
darkness is my sweetest journey yet.

I cry a lot, grieve many things, perhaps cry the collective grief
that penetrates me from this strange world that has no rhythm but her
own, a wild horse, that we all think we can ride, but no, she froths
and bucks us off..and then laughs as we attempt to brush off the dust
and set our selves straight.

What i understand is that there is no straight line to
follow...it is an undulating river...i can soften, surrender and allow
myself to be drawn to the sea.

That is all I can do in this moment. Let life have her way with me,
and just try to breathe

love Lana

Please print this newsletter if you can. It is meant to be held in your hand.

A Foot in Both Worlds

When we were living in India, there was not much about our life that was certain, safe and predictable. Life in that country is full of wild and spontaneous happenings that cannot be controlled. Floods, cholera and diptheria, landslides, thieves, and terrorists were a regular part of our landscape. Not to mention daily power outages and water shortages.

I used to watch westerners who came to live and study in our community go through a whole process, just learning to live in India. Often they would get really angry, and burst out in wild rages when they experienced the lack of control they had over their day to day lives. Our whole conditioning in the West seems to be telling us that we can and should take control of our lives, and that if we can’t, there is something wrong with us. I’d like to look at that basic assumption right now, explore for a few minutes that underlying belief and some of its consequences.

Is it really true that you are the one that is in control of your life? This body-mind, this person with a name and form, who thinks they are a separate, concrete entity - is this really who is making things happen?

This person, this human being, lives in what Deepak Chopra calls the local or manifest domain. This is the world of the senses, of things we can grasp and understand with the body and mind. This is the world that most people call ‘real’ in our western culture.

In India it is very different. The manifest field there is not considered primary. What is primary is the unmanifest world, the non-local domain, which cannot be grasped by the mind or the senses. The ancient and traditional culture of India, and of many indigenous societies, was based on the primacy of the spiritual realm, the unmanifest, the source of being. Even the activities of daily life were engaged in so that the nature of this human conditioned attention could be drawn back into this source, recognizing it as the one life in every being, the unseen force that moves everything.

Click here for more...

My friend David Mackenzie inspired me to offer you this invitation:
Please print this newsletter. It is meant to be held in your hand.

In the Native American shamanic tradition, there’s a way that a teacher chooses the students who come to learn the art of plant medicine. “Here’s your first test,” says the teacher. “Go and find as many sacred plants as you can in the next hour and bring them back to me.”
If the student walks away to look for them, the teacher knows he or she is not ready to begin the apprenticeship. The ones who are chosen do not move. They stand where they are, and look for the plants that live right under their feet.

There is a lot of talk about gratitude these days, a lot of talk about learning to appreciate what is right under our feet. People all over the place are awakening to the power of gratitude, not just as a warm fuzzy feeling, but as a liberating and transforming force in their lives. Who could deny that gratitude is good thing? It’s easy to talk about it, easy to think about it-quite a bit harder to walk the gratitude walk in a genuine and sustained way.

A few years ago I came to a place where I realized how conditional my gratitude was. I could feel gratitude for things that pleased and delighted me- not for the times when I was stuck in between a rock and a hard place.  I could only appreciate those times in retrospect, after I had gleaned the hard- won wisdom out of the pain and struggle.

I found myself becoming more and more curious about how it would be to be grateful for it all, for every single moment of my life-nothing left out.  It was one of those questions that wouldn’t go away. It just kept drilling down into my heart, into the moments when I was deep into resisting what was going on. It drilled into the annoying little moments: “How would it feel to be grateful for this parking ticket?” and the big ones, “How can I be grateful for losing a chunk of my investments?”

Click here for more...