We must begin with ourselves.
We must pull up a chair and take a seat in the rooms of our lives that we would much rather run out of.
Through loving awareness,
We can make secret the terrain that was once terrifying.
We can learn to keep our hearts open to what we don't want to see and trust that the pain needs to be witnessed in order to be released and transformed.
We must practice bringing presence to the dark places in our own psyches.
Dark not as in bad or wrong,
But dark as in unexplored,
Unconscious,
Unknown and not yet understood.
We can learn to meet the parts within us that perpetually judge with curiosity and the voices that continuously criticize with compassion.
Compassion not necessarily as in kindness,
But compassion as in openness,
Spaciousness and loving awareness.
And all of this emerges through a willingness to be present.
Compassion finds its form along the gradient of integrity.
It becomes what is needed to course correct towards truth,
Towards love.
And there is a way of recognizing love not as a transaction,
But as a way of being and seeing.
The highest octave of love organizes around each moment to express itself in the most liberatory form.
It is only when we can approach the most devastating places inside ourselves with kind eyes and a soft touch,
Only when we can accept the most heartbreaking of internal circumstances,
That we can honestly and sustainably offer this approach to the world.
Each time we practice meeting our own process with unconditional allowance and forgiveness,
We support the universal shift away from aggression and towards compassion.
Staying with yourself as you feel healing yourself are powerful gifts to your own life and lineage,
And also necessary offerings to your community and the collective.
The forever practice is to welcome each experience as it is,
And to be with it,
To breathe with it long enough to understand the teachings it brings,
Long enough to understand the medicine it needs.
The path is humbling,
And may we be humbled.
And it's pretty difficult to notice in real time,
But things really do begin to shift little by little on certain footsteps,
Forge new pathways.
So let it be unhurried.
Receive yourself reverently,
With grace and compassion.
The deprogramming takes time.
We are unlocking cages forged long before we were born.
We are untangling ourselves from generations of control and disconnection.
We are simultaneously remembering the lineages of wisdom that reside within.
Walk slowly,
Listen carefully.
Pay attention to how you are paying attention.
How you see changes what is seen.
It's not just what you're looking at,
But how and from where are you looking.
It is not just any kind of awareness,
But loving awareness,
The capacity to see both kindly and clearly.
For if we are not practicing with love,
Then we are not really practicing.
A little deeper.
Let your roots drop down deep and yield to the way gravity guides you closer and closer to the earth.
Find a way,
Find your way to sit with dignity,
With honor,
With valor.
Soften the grip in your hands.
Bring more space to the clench of your jaw.
Roll your shoulders back and down.
Interact with your heart.
And when your vision becomes sharp and narrow,
Widen the aperture.
Let more light in.
See through kind eyes.
The alchemy that occurs in the heart does not come by way of force,
But through presence.
Again and again.
Over and over.
Follow your breath and the invisible pilgrimage it will forever guide you on.
