Beloved,
Imagine with your last breath feeling truly safe.
Not because you were free of pain,
Not because you had managed to solve the riddles of your life,
But because you knew without a doubt that safety was a way of being in this moment,
Without separation,
Even as the lights went out.
We have deeply misunderstood safety.
We believe it is a fortress that can be built,
A distance that must be maintained.
We tighten the muscles of the body to hold our protective shape against change,
Loss and uncertainty,
As if we could be sheltered by the brittle architecture of thought.
Our sense of security is often derived from concept,
Rather than felt presence.
We believe we are safe when we think things are familiar,
Constant and unfolding in a predictable way,
But the opposite is not true either,
In the way we then try to conceptualise the unknown,
Or spiritualise life's fluidity and impermanence.
What if this was just another attempt to create safety through thought,
Equally futile,
Equally estranged from the unconditional well-being that is right here and now.
The body is blind,
It does not perceive threat,
It can only respond in its raw and honest way to the stories we tell ourselves,
And because we are so often taught as children to suppress our emotions,
We often unconsciously mistake the body,
This tender vessel,
As the source of danger.
Whereas in truth,
It is our belief and identification with thought itself that gives rise to all fears,
The deepest fear we have isn't actually being unsafe,
But in feeling unsafe.
Because that's what our thoughts are trying to protect us from,
Not the world itself.
True safety is not the absence of threat,
It is the absence of separation from our emotions.
It is the ability to feel the trembling of this body creature,
The terror,
The fragility of the moment,
And to relearn that this feeling,
However it's being expressed,
Is safety itself.
If you look closely,
At any fear you may be holding,
You'll notice that what feels unsafe isn't what might happen,
But how you imagine you'll respond to it.
The real fear is not the event itself,
But your emotional response,
And the responses of others.
This is radical,
It means that even anxiety,
Loss,
Death,
Illness,
Can become safe the moment we allow ourselves to feel what they stir in us,
Without splitting off from their present expression.
So let's make this real right now,
Let's take a moment to descend into the only place true safety can be found,
Here,
In the wild,
Unmanaged dark of the body.
I'd like you to close your eyes and sink your weight into the earth,
Let your spine rise from the ground,
Flexible and steady.
Gravity is always here,
Even when we forget it,
Always hugging us into itself.
Feel it in your body,
Earth's magnetism,
Assuring,
Constant,
And yet invisible.
Feel the temperature of the air around you,
This wild air cycled through the lungs of wolves and lichen.
Your true nature is not a concept,
Not a thought,
Not an identity.
You are the very real,
Yet ungraspable presence,
Always here,
Just like gravity.
Take a conscious breath,
Staying with the physical sensations of it as much as you can.
I'd like you to imagine that this life is a vast and varied landscape,
From ice-capped mountains to lush meadows,
Swamplands and bodies of water.
Consider for a moment how you've tried to keep yourself safe in this life,
In what feels like a wild territory full of hidden unknowns.
What shelter have you built to protect yourself from those unseeable beasts beyond the ridgeline?
That unknown future beyond the horizon?
Just imagine for a moment what this protective shelter might look like.
Don't struggle to create it,
Just be open to any image that shows up.
Maybe it's a perfect fortress,
With every detail in place.
Maybe it's more a spiritual dwelling,
A hermitage.
Or maybe it's just a worn backpack,
Because constant movement feels like a shield.
Take a moment to imagine what your hiding place looks like in this wilderness,
And what it feels like to be inside it right now.
Have you ever felt truly protected in what you've built?
Does it ever feel lonely at all?
Have you ever felt truly at home in this enclosure?
The truth is not that you need to keep anything out of your shelter in order to be safe.
But gently see the exhaustion that this kind of protection offers.
See that no matter how much you have closed yourself away,
That the air still seeps in,
The walls wear down,
The grass grows wildly between the plants.
If you have to keep moving in order to be safe,
How truly safe are you when you get tired?
Or when you suddenly meet the large,
Raging river?
If we have ever spent a night in the wilderness,
We know that a tent is a psychological safety,
Not a real one.
It can be useful,
But nothing compared to being fully alive and present in the body.
So let's take this a little deeper,
And meet what we're really trying to keep ourselves safe from,
And that is our own feelings.
We never touch the safety of reality through thought.
We do not need to pay attention to them right now.
We just want to gently meet our raw sensory feelings in the flesh.
So just become present with the body as it is,
Without labelling anything.
Just notice what is here,
In the emotional body,
Just as physical sensation.
A knot,
A tightness,
An ache,
A warmth,
A chill,
It doesn't matter what it is,
Or why it is,
Only that it is.
However you feel right now,
Is how you need to feel.
It is not unspiritual,
Or spiritual,
It is beyond both,
It's reality just as it is,
As wild as wild can be.
If there is a sense of not being safe with what is here,
A subtle sense of separation has appeared,
A kind of false shelter the mind is trying to pitch in order to protect you.
So let's find the heart of true safety now,
By gently feeling into our sensations,
And ask ourselves this one question.
Where does this sensation end,
And I begin?
The I who is having this emotion,
Where are they?
Try and find the boundary between who you take yourself to be and this feeling.
Where does the tightness in the chest end and Kate begin?
Where does the burning in the belly end and James begin?
Where does this sensation end and you begin?
The deeper truth is that you do not feel your emotions,
They are simply arising and falling away like a flurry of wind through the valley of the body.
When you realise there is no one to stand apart from emotion,
There is no need to fight or protect yourself from them.
Like a wrestler who embraces her opponent so fully that there is no distance left for conflict.
You do not need to shelter yourself from life,
Because you are life.
You can step out into the unknown wild,
Because you are the wild.
Our fragile protective shelter is the thought made separate self.
You are the landscape that needs no protecting,
No borders,
No state lines.
Sense your feet right now,
The steady pull of gravity gently holding you.
Feel your whole alive body,
Your sense of simply being.
Safety is the only thing that is real,
It is our undivided presence with what is here.
Without thought made resistance,
The only resistance there is.
Truth feels very healing to our blind body.
Truth frees us.
Truth reveals that love has always called itself by our name.
We just forgot,
Because we momentarily believed we were something that could stand apart from love.
Take a deep breath,
Just see your fragile self-shelter once more with your mind's eye.
See that it is too included in your vast body,
That it doesn't need to be fixed or removed.
That the wild earth will grow around it,
Making it a smaller and smaller aspect of you.
And you can open your eyes when you're ready.
It has taken my body time to readjust,
To trust that the raw,
Present moment,
However it feels,
Is true safety.
Trauma-induced dissociation brought me to non-duality,
To inquire into the nature of self and reality.
At the beginning of my journey,
I used it simply as another way to escape,
But something felt off,
Like I wasn't quite home.
I learned that the nervous system doesn't know what non-duality is,
Doesn't know what emptiness is,
Or what the Heart Sutra says.
It only knows something far more ancient,
Breath,
Touch,
Sensation,
Intimacy,
Gravity.
When the body is grounded,
Felt in the present moment without resistance,
It becomes a doorway beyond all spiritual concepts,
No matter how profound they might be.
And this feels like freedom,
Feels like home.
As our capacity to feel expands,
The seemingly narrow confines of life widen with it.
We begin to see our true power was never in arranging life so we could be protected.
But in meeting it fully,
Feeling it just as it is without division,
Allowing even the hardest moments to become moments of true refuge.
I hope this offers you a way to meet the day ahead,
From the ever-present body.
Whenever you feel yourself afraid or thinking protective thoughts,
Pause,
Take a breath,
And step back into the body.
Ask yourself where your emotions end and you begin.
Rest as the loving,
Vast,
Mysterious landscape you are.
That includes it all without want of change.
And you will begin to feel at home in the world,
As the world.
This meditation flows with a similar theme in part two of my wholeness course.
If you feel called towards remembering your inherent wholeness,
You are warmly invited to join us.
Thank you for your shares and thank you for taking the time to comment and be here.
I read all your words and I take them to heart.
