i am a dwelling place of spirit, hope, healing and possibility.
a resting place for doubt, grief, fear, uncertainty, worry, frustration, disappointment and anger to be aired out with breath and tender patience.
an abiding of body, heart and mind in joy, equanimity, compassion, transformative love and freedom.
a sacred space.
This. Right. Here?! So on time for this season of transitions and ascensions. Trust the process and who you’ll be and what you’ll see on the other side of it.
“whatever you are struggling with, whatever feels heavy and hard to hold,
remind yourself that there is something sacred about the way
you are learning to hold it.
you don’t have to do it well yet.
you are allowed to learn along the way.
you are allowed to make a mess.
just do so with a lot of compassion for yourself.”
“The Sangha is an island of peace. The Sangha is a community of resistance against violence, hate and despair.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
These words of my root teacher Thây live at the core of our sangha’s suchness. They have shaped our evolution into a community of spiritual friends who find sanctuary in journeying together through challenge and change; being stretched and sharpened by wisdom teachings, shared insights and loving (re)assurances; shedding skin, healing, transforming, blooming wholy into our radiant bodhisattva-ness!
We are called together to revive, reclaim and fortify ourselves with liberating contemplative spiritual practices. We take refuge in the full embrace of sangha to “remember to remember” that we have all we need — breath, willingness, enough time, connection to wise companions with gifts, skills and rich life experiences — to (re)connect with our true selves and nourish our wholeness.
“Retreating” from the madness of the world around us is not a viable option for everyone. For me, access to organized retreats set in bucolic off-the-grid environs invites us to interrogate spiritual elitism and the socioeconomic realities and other disparities and inequities among practitioners in all spiritual traditions. It points us back to the question of how we practice and cultivate justice, liberation and healing as people of faith and wonder.
So we take refuge in “the wisdom of no escape” each time we come back to ourselves wherever we are in a given moment, when conditions are not optimal, when our lives aren’t set up for leaving.
Each time we spring back from our worst moments, we strengthen our resilience, self-trust and capacity to resist being swept away by the toxicity of systemic degradation, violence and oppression that spreads like contagion.
It is my deepest hope and prayer that we know the freedom of trusting ourselves, of embodying the spirit of refuge that feeds our radical being-ness.
Who are we when we cultivate and embody refuge?
Who are we when we cultivate and embody resistance?
Who are we when we cultivate and embody resilience?
Who are we when we cultivate, embody and celebrate radical self-expression?
This world has tried to convince us to mark our days by the standards of industry, technology, and empire — productivity, performance and pursuit — and to measure and define our lives by the tempo of striving.
Yet the rhythms thrumming in our veins remind us that we are guided by forces more powerful than the promptings of a civil calendar.
Those drawn toward the earth will feel the pull of nature in the change of seasons, calling us to burrow, germinate, root, sprout, blossom, harvest, release what has gone to seed, compost…then (re)cycle through this organic unfolding again and again.
Those drawn toward the sky will feel “the full and change of the moon” summoning us to align with its peaks and plummets in order to discern from its energetic flow when to build, create, amplify, illuminate, pause, contemplate, rest, release, dismantle, renovate.
Whether we are drawn to one source or both, the call is the same:
I was blessed to be introduced to the we’moon calendar almost 16 years ago and have found freedom in reclaiming my connection to moon wisdom.
I’ve learned to attune my teaching and practice schedules with the seasons, encouraging those who study/practice with me to do the same.
Listening deeply to these guiding rhythms has helped me live a life more sacred.
today, the exhale was the hardest.
a trust fall in giving and taking —precious tears and shadowed fears, irrupted hopes and radical imaginings — into a world that cannot hold them gently.
where supple lungs now resist the inhale, constricting to protect me from inviting in a swirl of noxious fumes (engineered to smother epiphanous dreams and embolden all manner of delusion).
i can only manage a sip of air: a shallow 4-count laced with doubt that queries for fulfillment.
then comes the subtle pause. a fleeting moment to contemplate beginning again.
i tentatively measure my next release: 6 counts, loosening and softening toward relief.
the next pause, extended, to steady my racing heart and test the limits of suspension.
but i cannot sustain emptiness for long and concede to the will of change.
quaking. inevitable. relentless. burning and swelling into an elastic 8 beats of oxygen.
palm pressed to heart, i yield to the sending, taking, giving, getting, sharing, receiving, filtering and transmuting of sorrow and despair into joy and wonder —
a persistent rally for life-love-light.
i hear the mothers whisper-chant: do not abandon yourself, dear one.
blending with the harmonies of grandmothers singing: seek refuge in the dance between heartbeat and breath.
buoyed by the infinite canon of their prayer-magic, i have trusted myself into love,
loved myself into healing,
healed myself into death and rebirth,
becoming more and more of myself, and still something new.
Through our collective musing last Sunday, it became clear to me that “Transformative Love” is the energy that changes the shape of our hearts and minds.
As I become more and more of who I am — and something new — I am contemplating the question:
What does this look, sound, feel and act like in practice as we cultivate, celebrate, nourish, sustain and dissolve relationships?
Larry Yang’s aspirational prayer reminds us to lead with love girded with the honest and discerning awareness that — where love is not possible or present — we can at least commit to minimizing the harm.
Last week, we opened the new season of contemplation by diving into the study and practice of Transformative Love.
Sangha is fueled by the cultivation of spiritual friendship where we support one another in developing spiritual faculties such as trust, discernment, skillfulness, compassion, and diligence. These qualities facilitate transformation and healing, and root us in our wholeness and authenticity. With spiritual friendship as the model for skillful relationships, we’ll explore how to bridge gaps existing in our connections outside of sacred space.
Queries for Collective Musing
How do we nourish and sustain authentic and liberating relationships in all areas of our lives?
What are the qualities that constitute “transformative love” and how do we embody and model it?
Related Reading — Good Spiritual Friends: Walking the Path Together
Doors open just before 11 am. Centering starts at 11:10-ish.
Doors are locked at 11:30 am.
for Weekly Contemplations + Practice Updates, click the dates below:
Week 2 — January 14
Week 3 — January 21
Week 4 — February 11
Week 5 — February 18
Week 6 — February 25
First of all: Y’all already know that every breath is a new chance to begin anew so today is no more special than yesterday for aligning your clear intentions with skillful actions!
For those who are already clear about what you’ve been called to manifest — the energies to conjure up and call toward you, the aspirations to crystallize into visions that contribute to your legacy — then it’s a beautiful day to draw on the full moon’s power and level up!
If your vision is not yet apparent, then invite the luminosity of the full moon to reveal your divine order, timing, purpose and placement.
I’m calling in clear vision to cultivate lasting legacies rooted in transformative love and elder wisdom.
In our very bodies, hearts, and minds we are programmed to be in relationship and community together.
Breaking together means, when community gets tough, we can feel how much difficulty, pain, and suffering there is in the community. We break together because none of us wishes to add one more drop of suffering to this world that already suffer so greatly. And we break together to continue, from the sum of our individual selves, to create a larger whole that all of us can be a part of and contribute to — a larger whole whose only destiny is evolution, becoming ever more fully human.
In this way, we aspire toward freedom in the mist of the many forms of suffering, in the mist of the first noble truth. We may not be able to become fully awake in this lifetime. We may not be able to create a…
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