Coming Home To Yourself

“It’s not your job to love me, it’s mine.”-Byron Katie

Imagine freely loving who you are now.
Imagine being deeply grateful for everything that has ever happened to you. (Yes, everything)
Imagine living without the fear, or insecurity of what anyone thinks of you.

Can you imagine this? Or do the stories you believe tell you that this is impossible?

In this retreat, Tania and Shayla invite you to find out who you are without these stories, judgements and beliefs. How does this happen? It happens when we give these stories room to breathe, to move, to speak. So that we can investigate them, inquire into them, exactly as they appear.

These beliefs that keep us in hiding, that create self judgement, shame, regret, and guilt--they can all be held up to the light of truth.

Coming Home To Yourself

Of course we need to adapt, and learn the ways of our culture. But most of us lose something quite precious in this process. The good news is that it’s not really lost. It can’t ever be really lost-we’ve just forgotten about it.

‘Coming Home To Yourself’

This untamed being, this natural wildness and vitality is still here. And we can learn to recognize it, open our hearts and minds to it.

This is what inquiry can reveal, in such a direct and immediate way: this stream of vitality, of natural freedom, of unbound creativity.

In our ‘Coming Home to Yourself’ retreat, we’ll be calling this forth, and exploring the beliefs and perceptions that have kept it buttoned down.

‘Coming Home To Yourself’

Why does this feel so difficult to live? It’s because of all the ways our conditioned mind tries to make it happen. It’s because of our polarized beliefs in success and failure. It’s because of the energy we give to the images in our head, instead of reality.

Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together

If I’m good at something, I don’t give it to the world. I give it to my daughter, I give it to you. I give it to the one in front of me, because I’ve received it myself. I have the ability to do that.
If I have the most wonderful thing in the world, it’s not for everyone, it’s for the one in front of me—it’s for me first, and then you. That’s all. That’s all that’s required. No push, no pull.

Suppose I had the thought, “Oh my God, I’m not doing my job. I’m a failure. I’m not enough.” Who the hell do I think I am? It doesn’t move until it moves.

( Byron Katie, from Who Would You Be Without Your Story)

Mutual Evolution is a practice, a way of being together that allows us to open to the natural movement of life. When we are not pushing, not putting any pressure on ourselves, that’s when the miracles happen.

We can learn to trust in life, to let go into a space that really support us. And when we discover this with other people, the joy, the clarity, and the courage are all magnified.

Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together

I think this is something that is often misunderstood. We confuse commitment with bondage, duty and obligation. There is a deep commitment that awakens in the heart, from our natural desire to be at home, natural and at ease.  In order to awaken and evolve, we need this deep and ongoing commitment. It’s our connection to what really matters, and it allows us to relax, to trust and to let go of striving.

Below is something from Lena Stevens of the Power Path work, that speaks of this coming full moon as a precious opportunity to deepen our commitment.

with love
Shayla

May 5: Full Moon is at 9:36 PM Mountain Daylight Time. This is a super moon, the largest moon of the year and very powerful. Harness the power for some commitment that you are working with right now. We remind you here that you do not need to KNOW all the steps and all the details. Having the right intellectual information before embarking on a bid for power and a commitment to it is not essential. In fact it will often get in the way and hold you back from just going for it. Stretch yourself this full moon. Get outside your comfort zone and commit to something you never thought you could do. Just make sure it is something you really want.

Then he went to Paris, to visit Rodin, the sculptor. He was going to write an article about him. At this time, Rodin was at the height of his creative power. Writing about him was difficult; it was like writing about a volcano, or a hurricane, of creative energy. Rilke was just hanging around the studio, trying to write, and failing miserably. Sometimes he couldn’t even write a word. He was frozen, paralyzed.

One day Rodin got fed up with him. He sent him on a special assignment--to the Paris zoo. He told him to go there and find an animal, and to study that animal deeply. He instructed Rilke to stay there, to keep connecting with the animal, for three, four, five days, until he had to write something.

Rilke’s animal was the black panther. He did stay there, with the panther, for days. In the panther he recognized a being as trapped as he was. And in the recognition of this, and the clear expression, his creative energy began to flow, at last. What emerged was his first great poem: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-panther/

I can see Rilke sitting there, outside that cage, whenever I feel stuck and immobilized. I can feel how the direct, sustained, intimate contact with this creature opened up something deep inside his being.

It wasn’t clear sailing for Rilke after that. He had to confront that place in himself, over and over throughout his life, in order to bring forth the great gift of his poetry. But he never abandoned his life as a poet. It was something bigger than his mind and his ideas. It feels like the force of creativity chose him. And he stayed true to that choiceless choice. He didn’t try to wiggle out of what his heart, his authentic being, was most deeply drawn to.

Sometimes I catch myself wishing it was easier for Rilke. Easier for him, for me, and for all of us who are called to a creative and authentic life. I really wonder about this wish of mine. It’s true-human beings do not like to feel anxiety, or frustration, or grief. And we certainly don’t like to feel stuck. But how much of the creative power of who we are gets stifled, because of what we want to avoid? Wishing for something easier is kind of like wishing for an air-brushed life.

The air-brushed life looks so good. We see images of it everywhere. It’s what we are supposed to be longing for. There’s only one problem with it-it’s dead. It has nothing to do with reality. Or with being fully human.

Being fully human and creative is not always pretty. It’s not even pleasant. But it’s alive. And edgy, messy, unpredictable. My real wish is not that things are easier. It’s that we stop giving so much importance to what we like and don’t like. An experience of discomfort, of being shaken up and disturbed, is not really such a big deal. When we know what we want to do, or how we want to live, these things do not need to stand in our way.

We can make the same choiceless choice that Rilke did, and decide not to give up on ourselves. We can be there, in the midst of the chaos, the anxiety and the frozenness, as long as we don’t believe that we should be experiencing something else.

This August, I am happy to be offering a retreat focused on awakening to our authentic and creative life:‘Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together’

We have been trained to give so much weight to our preferences. Of course I’d like my life, my work, my relationships, to be easy and smooth. But life is a big thing. I can’t just order what I want off the menu, when it comes to my life. All these things I didn’t order, like anxiety, and sorrow, and stuckness-- they are my life too.

Why exclude them? Why decide that they mean there is something wrong? If I allow them completely, if I don’t treat them as enemies, I have so much more room to move, to love, to be myself.

If I am okay with the wild and messy parts of life, then there is very little to stop me from following what is really true for me, and alive.

Let my hidden weeping arise
and blossom. How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn’t I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself
in your loosened hair.

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

with love
Shayla

To find out about the August retreat, to get connected to your authentic and creative being:‘Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together’

Dear Sara:
I am writing to you about this whole issue arising for you around friendship, and the big questions we are all asking right now: What is love? How do I relate to myself? & How do I really want to be with others?

Just like you, I find it difficult when people I think of as good friends do not come through for me when I am sick.

This has been one of my biggest challenges, because it’s such a vulnerable, helpless place, where we actually do need love and support. So I’m not speaking to you as though I expect you to rise up one fine morning and not have these feelings anymore.

But there is a big sea change coming over us all right now. I have actually seen radical transformation happen in my closest relationships, over the last few years. I know now what is possible. But only when we really see that the way we have been is no longer sustainable. Only when we take complete responsibility for how we create our own suffering, moment to moment. Only when we really get tired of blaming anyone else for our difficulties.

I see myself falling back at times, into familiar and habitual places with the people in my family. I know now that I can’t stay there. I am committed to calling on awareness itself to allow me to see what is going on.  I am willing to let this suffering be released, through the power of awareness and the power of inquiry.

I can’t control what arises inside me, and sometimes the feelings are very intense. I feel hurt, abandoned, misunderstood, separate, invisible--all the feelings I’ve been trying to avoid my whole life can be right there in front of me in such moments.

I can’t control these feelings and I can’t control what the other person is doing or thinking or feeling. But I can choose what I will make important. And I can choose to judge, to push away my experience, or to welcome it. 

To really welcome it! What a remarkable possibility: I can stand present as awareness, and allow all of my experience to be here as it is. I can ask for help, ask for wisdom, ask for guidance. I can open myself to being with this person in a way I have never been before, and I can honor and respect myself enough to realize that this is possible.

Not only possible, but unavoidable! This is what is calling me forward, what I am longing for, what so many human beings right now are hearing: “The old ways of being with each other are unraveling at a tremendous speed. Something from a new dimension is required, another state of consciousness, something quite different from what my conditioned mind tells me is possible. I cannot possibly know what this new way is from where I am now. All I can do is be willing to stay open, stay present, and let go, again and again, of what is not working.”

Sara: Why is it always me that has to take responsibility? Why is it always me who has to let go of the old and embrace the new? What about them? Why don’t they change? Why don’t they wake up and smell the coffee?

Shayla: The answer is so obvious isn’t it? I have no control over the other person and what they may or may not see, do or understand.

And please remember, that the new way may very well include taking responsibility for the fact that you no longer want to be in this relationship. Taking responsibility for ourselves does not mean that we have to put up with someone else’s craziness. It’s actually the reverse of that. We put up with ridiculous behaviour only because we are not strong and clear enough to stand by our own boundaries and limits. We hold on to relationships for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with deep love and wisdom.

And we also avoid people, because we don’t know how to really embody with them the love that we are. We get disconnected from the intelligence of the heart, from the brilliant clarity of how it is when we meet people as they are.

Most of the time, up until now, when I suffer in relationship, I think you should be different. But how can I change you? What an everlastingly hopeless project.  When I really let myself feel the truth of this, I discover that I am helpless to do anything but take you as you are. And respond directly to you as you are.

Without believing that anything should be different.

This is our evolution, our awakening. Can you feel this way of being in relationship calling you, nudging you along? How can you support this in your life, accelerate this, magnify this?

When we come together on retreat, we dedicate ourselves to really discovering this open and alive way of being with each other:  ‘Mutual Evolution’-Waking Up Together

This retreat gives you the time, the freedom and the space to explore this way of being with yourself, and with each other. This freedom, this open-heartedness, begins when we can actually stop fighting against the sense of deficiency, of smallness and separation. When we rest in our experience as it is, and learn to question our beliefs and assumptions, our natural freedom, our innate well being, becomes obvious. The ways in which we have turned against ourselves fall away, by themselves. The joy of intimacy, of being fully ourselves, flows through this space of radical acceptance. We share the truth of this with everyone: there is nothing more loving than accepting our own experience as it is.

Something inside us deeply relaxes when we don’t have to struggle for a better state or a different experience. We begin to recognize our authentic presence, no matter what is going on. When we join with our own being in this way, the whole world changes too. 

We have all been waiting a long time for this kind of connection, this tenderness, this yes.

There is no more time to hide. Let’s come together in the clear light of this presence, that includes every single bit of who we are. Nothing excluded. Nothing shunned. This is the healing power of inseparability.

God is a letter to everyone. You open it. It says, Live.
—Rumi

‘Mutual Evolution’-Waking Up Together

I left off at the place where I called out to Heather for help. When she came over to see me, I told her about the intense physical distress I was in. After I went into some detail about my suffering, she simply looked at me with a look of great lucidity, a clear and tranquil gaze. “Yes,” she said, “sometimes it happens like this.”

This was not what I was expecting from Heather in that moment! I experienced her as being fully present, completely open, and utterly without pity. There was nothing coming from her, not even in her expression or the tone of her voice that said, “Oh that’s too bad Shayla. I know how hard that is. I wish it wasn’t like this. I’ll do something to change this for you.”

Nothing. Just a recognition that this is how it is sometimes.

It was only then that I realized I had been hoping for something else. It was only then that a window opened in my perception and I saw that I was actually feeling sorry for myself. I had no awareness of this until I received the shocking clarity of Heather’s response.

While I was taking all of this in, Heather sat down and began to sing for me. It was not a song for the mind--I couldn’t understand the words. It was a song for the heart, the body, and the deeper intelligence. Every note of that song was like a crystal clear bell, reflecting back to me the same luminous clarity: things are as they are, and whatever I think about them is extra. And most of the time the extra just creates a whole lot of suffering.

As the song continued, I realized that in my secret place of self pity I had collapsed. I had withdrawn from a genuine relationship with the physical discomfort, because of my story that it was too much, because I believed that it should be different. I had closed down and retreated into a passive place, a place where I was not ready to meet my experience at all.

The nature of Heathers’ gaze, her words, and her song, punched a big hole in everything I was believing. As I felt myself rise up from the place of collapse, the intense nausea and physical turbulence were still there, but my relationship with them was radically different. I felt as if I had grown up. It was clear to me that I could work with whatever was happening in the body. I was not holding myself as a victim anymore.

I began listening to the intelligence in the body, and responding to it with movement, with breath and with massage. I continued to receive clear responses from the body, as if we were having an actual conversation.
Instead of being stuck, frozen and collapsed, I was engaged in a dialogue, and an inquiry. Slowly, the energy began to move. Tension dissolved, space opened up, sensations flowed freely. In about half an hour I was fine.

How marvelous, that Heather did not rescue me. She responded with what I call ‘awake compassion.’ This was an induction into a direct experience of what it is to be radically responsible for my own experience. This place of no pity no longer seemed cold and heartless. I realized that Heather was expressing a deep trust in my capacity to meet this situation, to respond to what life was bringing me.

The way of awake compassion is profoundly empowering. And it flies in the face of everything we have been taught about love, kindness, support and caring for one another.

Over the last few years, the circumstances of my life have dragged me into a deep exploration of what awake compassion actually is. I say ‘dragged’ because it has not been easy to pull up all of my precious ideas about love and compassion by the roots. These ideas were part of my identity, my belief that I was a kind and loving person. And that I should try to be even more so.

What I found was that my ideas of love and kindness were simply not sustainable. They were not sustainable because they were fixed, based on an idea or an image. So they were really not relevant to the moment to moment experiences of my most challenging relationships. They did not bring me and the people i loved to a place of freedom or ease or real intimacy. The redemption I was looking for came through inquiry, and through the spontaneous blessings of times like this one with Heather.

Life will always bring us to our knees. Sooner or later. There is nothing to be afraid of in this place. It’s often the only time we can really listen to something beyond what we already know.

There’s courage involved if you want
to become truth. There is a broken-

open place in a lover. Where are
those qualities of bravery and sharp

compassion? What’s the
use of old and frozen thought?

(Rumi)

with love
Shayla

Would you like to do more than just read about this work of awakening and evolution? If you can feel this clarity, freedom and love calling you, please have a look at the coaching I offer by phone : Discovering Your Authentic Being
and my live events.:‘Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together’

What I have discovered is a way of being sexual that is as radically different from our conditioned notions of sexuality as the nondual is from traditional spirituality. The parallels are quite striking. I don’t yet know what to call the kind of sex that I’ve been discovering. I don’t want to give it any fancy names or make it seem at all esoteric. So I’ll just call it slow sex.

Slow sex, like nondual practice, is effortless. When we engage in slow sex, we are not trying to get anywhere. When I look back at my lifelong spiritual practice, so full of striving, I see now that I was holding the idea of enlightenment or realization like a great big shiny object, an explosive experience that would deliver me into a place of no more self or struggle.

Couples coaching & mentoring; “Waking Up To Love”

(This painting is by Lasha @ lashamutual.com)

This feels quite humorous to me now, but it was deadly serious for many years. I can see that I made this whole self realization thing up, that it was my fantasy, and that it ruled my life.  It was also supported by the culture I was a part of. Very similar to our whole culture around sexuality, and the way we have been mesmerized by the fantasy of the orgasm. The funny thing is, I did have enlightenment experiences, and they only left me wanting more. Kind of like the orgasm. Not ultimately fulfilling at all.

Slow sex is gentle, and it calls forth a deep sensitivity and presence in us. When we are not pumping and grinding our way toward the orgasm, every touch is received as profoundly erotic. I’ve worked with women who told me they discovered their whole body as an erogenous zone. When we have orgasm as the goal, we can’t possibly open to the softest and most beautiful sensations. In fact, what I discovered is that the years of flailing wildly around often leave the body hardened and armoured, so that is very difficult to feel a lot, to open to the depth of sensation.

This doesn’t mean that orgasm doesn’t happen. It can, and it doesn’t need to. Or it happens in a way we never imagined it could. When we relax this deeply, we find that this tenderness, this slow and very sweet way of touching and loving each other makes each moment enough. There’s nothing more to ask for.

One of the most beautiful things has been what happens with the men. They have said things to me like, “I can hardly believe that I don’t have to perform anymore. I can just relax and enjoy this, without any pressure. Is this really possible? It’s like a whole new world.”

Isn’t this a lot like the nondual? The incredible freedom that reveals itself as soon as we take off all the pressure? As soon we we are ready to recognize what is already given?

This is such good news to me, this easy, gentle and loving way that men and women can be together. Some days I want to shout about it on the rooftops, especially to the men. I see them discovering their hearts in this way, laying down the addictions to porn, and coming to rest in an embrace that is bigger than both man and woman.

If we have confidence in the deep joy and pleasure that stream forth when we slow down and relax, we find such tenderness with each other. The toys and the drugs and the strutting and the posturing fall away, all by themselves. We aren’t afraid anymore of our inadequacy or our frigidity. In this new way of coming together, those terms have no meaning.

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
(ee cummings)

Couples coaching & mentoring; “Waking Up To Love”

What happens when we make a strong commitment to living this way? When we actually get serious about recognizing this well-being that is unconditional?
How do we encourage this possibility in ourselves and the people in our lives?

I have been wrestling with these questions deeply during the last while. I’ve written about the Dalai Lama as a living example of someone who has found an unshakeable sense of well being, undiminished by everything that has happened to his country.

Does it seem arrogant, to open myself to the possibility that I could live like this too? Is it possible that this unconditional happiness is not just reserved for special people, like the Dalai Lama?

Whenever I really get deeply engaged in this question, all hell seems to break loose in my life.  It’s as if life is nudging me, saying, “Do you really want to know how to be unconditionally happy? Then try this on for size.” In retrospect I can feel the nudges as loving. At the time they seem anything but that.

For quite a while now, I have been dealing with some major difficulties in my life, connected with my family, that won’t go away. It makes perfect sense to my conditioned mind to get very unhappy about these things. And this just perpetuates the whole illusion that I can only be happy when things are going ‘my way.’ I don’t want to live like that anymore. It’s just that simple.

What I noticed recently, when chaos seemed to be infiltrating my existence, was how we all seem to agree collectively that events really are what determine our inner experience. There’s not a lot of inquiry going on in our culture about this!

In fact, it almost seems taboo, unthinkable, that I could actually be okay when things seem to be falling apart. This fundamental well being, that asks for nothing, seems to challenge so many of our beliefs and perceptions. It’s often labelled as denial or repression. “Well, she seems to be okay now, but just wait..”

What if this isn’t true? What if we all have a natural capacity to remain just fine, even when intense feelings are moving through us, even when what we want, what we desperately want, is not being given to us?

During this most recent period of disintegration in my life, I was pulled again and again into stories and beliefs that were incredibly painful. The only place I could rest was right here, in this moment. That’s where life was nudging me, like a loving mother, right back into the not knowing, the unfathomable nature of what is here, right now.

It wasn’t easy. My images about the future were so vivid, so alive and so compelling.

One night, when my anxiety was keeping me wide awake, I realized that my mind would rather imagine the worst, than face the fact that the future is utterly unknown and unknowable.
It was shocking to really see that need to know playing itself out in this way.

And to recognize the loving nudge, the question that wouldn’t go away, “What if this moment is all there is? What if you really have no clue about what is going to happen next?”

What if everything that has happened is already gone, and this moment is new, and this one, and this one..

What a strange place to live. So edgy. So open.  And so alive.

Free expression is our capacity to express ourselves fully, without holding back. To speak from a space that is unconditioned by our fear of other people’s judgements, and even our own. Free expression is spontaneous, natural and uncontrived. It’s a flow, and it can be bumpy, challenging, and ultimately deeply enlivening and full of joy.

The nature of free inquiry is similar. In order to inquire, to question, to deeply investigate, we need the kind of innocence and freedom a young child has. We need to be able to ask our real questions, the ones that are alive and compelling for us, without caring about how this looks, without needing to be seen as intelligent, or wise, of kind.

What stands in the way of our capacity for free expression and inquiry? Our self-image. The way we want to appear, and the way we don’t want to appear. Our self image is not who we really are. It’s constructed. Our authentic being, the transparency of our true nature, has no image. It is open, and without any need to defend or protect itself.

The self image is defensive, and touchy. It is built on a deep sense of inadequacy, a feeling of not being good enough. Everyone feels like this. Every single egoic being struggles with this, whether they recognize it or not.  Sometimes it is fully conscious. And sometimes all the things we do to compensate for this sense of inadequacy cover up this aching hole, for a while. Maybe for half a lifetime. Until something happens and our sense of being flawed or lacking comes to the surface.

Without being confined to a self image, we are naturally, effortlessly authentic.

In the work I have done for the last 35 years, it has been apparent that speaking freely, especially in a group setting, does not come easily to most people. We are too afraid of what others might think of us. A lot of the time fear comes from our own self-judgements, which we project on the people listening to us. We can learn to access wonderful states of consciousness, we can achieve a lot, we can do all kinds of work on ourselves, without discovering this freedom to inquire and to express ourselves, without holding back.

The truth about speaking up, about letting ourselves be seen and heard, is that we have no control. I cannot control what you are going to think of me if I speak up.  And I can’t control what I am going to think of myself!  All kind of self-judgements might arise after I express myself. Many people have told me that they hear voices inside their head attacking them, after they speak in a group.

In some of the courses and retreats I have offered, we have worked with a confidentiality agreement. Everyone agrees to keep whatever happens within the group totally confidential.

There are obviously very good reasons for doing this. It appears to create a container in which people feel safer, and more able to speak and inquire without fear.

Lately I have been questioning this whole approach. Because I’ve noticed that even when the confidentiality agreement is in place, many people in the group do not speak up, do not engage, do not share, and do not allow themselves to fully participate. They remain silent, unwilling to take the risk, unwilling to feel the discomfort that comes when we express ourselves, when we inquire deeply.

Free expression is a flow. And if I allow that flow, there is no way I can protect my self image. I could easily say something that appears stupid, or unkind, or insensitive, or irrelevant. I am not perfect,and never will be. And neither are you. In order to open to the free flow of our authentic being, we have to be willing to fail, to fall down, to make mistakes, to be fully human.

This is how we discover our fundamental freedom, our unshakeable well being. Even when I make a mistake in front of others, even when I sound a bit crazy to myself, I survive the moment. And not only survive, i discover that I’m fine. That others have already forgotten about me. I’m not as important as I thought I was. My failures and my flaws are not the central focus of everyone else’s life. They are only hugely significant to me!

So this practice, of free expression and inquiry builds courage in us, and humility, and freedom. We may think that it is someone else we are protecting when we don’t speak up, when we don’t ask our real questions. I invite you to really question this. I think, most of the time, what we are really protecting and defending is our self image.

Who are you without this image of who you would like to be? Or this image of what is wrong with you?

Who are you when there is nothing to defend, nothing to prove, nothing to know?

Isn’t it worth finding out?

My daughter once called it ‘the aching chasm.’

We can learn to ask for something else, we can learn to pray from a bolder place inside us, a place of deep trust in life, that doesn’t need anything to be different than it is.

It might take us a long time to get to this place, to rest in this unconditional gratitude. It’s not a familiar place for the mind.

It’s where the grace pours down, its where the smallest things are appreciated.

Where a drop of kindness feels like a whole ocean.

God give us rain when we expect sun.
Give us music when we expect trouble.
Give us tears when we expect breakfast.
Give us dreams when we expect a storm.
Give us a stray dog when we expect congratulations.
God play with us, turn us sideways and around.

(Leunig)

What we are exploring in this course comes under the rubric of ‘nondual’ practice or awareness, and it is, in fact, very different from traditional spirituality and therapy.

The main difference is very simple:  the nondual approach is about recognizing and resting in what is already here-unconditioned presence or awareness. So there really is no journey to make, on that level, at all. The journey is more about getting used to what is here, aligning ourselves with a way of being that doesn’t experience anything as missing, or wrong, or needing improvement.

In traditional practices there is a lot of effort and striving-in the nondual approach there is an ongoing discovery of your effortless being.

I think there is a time and place for more traditional approaches. And I think we also get tired of the striving, at a certain point, and are ready for something else.

I wouldn’t say that I ‘turned away’ from my practice in India-I simply outgrew it. It fell away from me, I think. And I was very happy to say goodbye to it.

Another key distinction is that most traditional practices are about getting to a certain state. Because all states and experiences are transitory, this is ultimately very unfullfilling.

The inquiry and contemplation we engage in during this course are not about getting to a certain state or achieving any particular experience. They are just ways of seeing through our conditioning, so that we can rest as we are, right here and now.

Does this mean that the stories and beliefs dissolve and disappear and never come back? Not at all. Stories go on and on and on. And we no longer have to believe them, even when they vividly appear. We can rest, awake and alive, in the space where not a single thought is true. Even though they appear to be so real. Even though each thought invites us into a three dimensional universe-if we believe it. 

To find out more about discovering the freedom and clarity of nondual awareness:“Effortless Presence-90 Days of Awakening” A coaching program designed for you, as you are, right now

It was the grandfather who put their question to the Buddha: “The feats we perform together are dangerous, and our safety is crucial,” he told the Buddha.

“However, my granddaughter and I have different ideas about how to maximize our safety.  My feeling is that each one of us should have our first attention on the other one. No matter what happens when we are working together, I have committed to taking care of my grand daughter first, even beyond concerns or fears for my own safety. This really seems to me to be the way that love works, and the best way to care for our safety.

My granddaughter disagrees. Her point of view is this: We need to take care of ourselves first, no matter what is happening. Our first attention should be on our own safety.

We cannot reconcile our two points of view, so we have come to you, to ask for the blessings of your wisdom and clarity.”

The Buddha smiled at both of them. Then he turned to the grandfather and said, “How lucky you are to have a granddaughter with such intelligence. I invite you to really listen to her, for she is clear about this. You have been conditioned to another way of thinking which will not serve you here. Listen to the voice of this young one. Question your ingrained ideas about what love is.

How can you possibly help her if you yourself are in danger? Where will you stand? What kind of help can you offer her, if your foundation is shaking and trembling? 

We would all do well to follow the wisdom of your granddaughter. Taking care of ourselves first is not selfishness, it is basic sanity.”

Of course, this is no news to most of us. We know it in our heads, with our minds. We hear it every time we fly: “Please put your own oxygen mask on first, before you try to help anyone else.’

It’s kind of an no-brainer. Except when it comes to really caring for ourselves, in the middle of our everyday lives.

Then this basic sanity takes a back seat to everything and everyone else: our lists of tasks, our family and their needs, our work, our social life....

Where is there room here for deep rest, for exercise, for eating well and wisely? For doing what we need to do in order to live strong, alive and grounded in our body?

The reason we have gotten lost in all this crazy busyness is because we’ve let the basic sanity of real self respect fall away. It may exist as an idea, but is no longer a genuine priority for most of us. We have too much else to take care of!

To enter into another kind of relationship with our body, with our basic vitality, seems to demand some kind of will, or a level of commitment that we don’t have access to.

I have been asked to lead a coaching circle of people interested in living this way, discovering a way of being that is aligned with our natural aliveness, with our willingness to live as fully embodied human beings.

Stay tuned for news about this online coaching group. 

We can’t really say that this whole solid world exists. It certainly appears to have a very solid and separate existence. But things are not what they appear to be. We don’t exist the way we think we do. Our thoughts and feelings don’t exist the way we think they do. Everything just has a ‘tendency to exist.’

This is the impermanence, the endless flow of life, nothing to hold onto.  No solid reality anywhere to point to, to say, “This is the way it is.”

“Studies show now that’s there’s one thing we human beings are just doing all the time. We’re projecting our meaning and interpretation onto everything and everyone. In fact, even so much of what we see is only because we have the neuropathways and receptors to even see that.

There might be whole universes existing around us within the same field that don’t exist. We just don’t have the receptors to make it an image in our sensory system”.  (Dr. Henry Grayson talks to Tami Simon)

This is good news.  Like strong medicine, the medicine we have been waiting for.  This is where the streams of grace can start to flow. When we just relax into the impermanence, the endless flow, each moment disappears and then here is a new one.

‘Everything that has ever happened to anyone in this universe, is gone in this present moment. We live in a state of Grace.” (Byron Katie)

In The Work of Byron Katie, all of this reveals itself. There is actually no way to avoid it. We started inquiry because we wanted some relief for our suffering. We didn’t know that we were going to lose our whole world. Our house of cards cannot really stand up in the clear light of inquiry.

This chance to work with another human being, a friend in inquiry, is amazing. I feel such a deep love and respect for my friends in inquiry. All over the world we know each other, and practice together.. Such a joy.

These days, I feel it every time I sit down to do The Work with someone. It’s a willingness to see the truth, to speak the truth, to let go of our certainty, and all the ways we protect ourselves with our beliefs. Our memories, our self-images, our stories.

I sit down to do inquiry with you naked. As an act of deep friendship, great love. It’s not always like this at the beginning. But in the community of inquiry, this is what happens, naturally.

I look at you, and I know that you have a deep, abiding interest in letting all of these burdens, these accumulations, fall away, so that you can give yourself the freedom to question anything.. To awaken your natural intelligence. The bright shining clarity that is here when we don’t abandon life- we take it in our arms, the way it is. 

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.

Give yourself the gift of opening to this possibility:Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together

To register for the Free Intro Call on Saturday Jan. 7th:
Mutual Evolution-Free Intro Telecall