When we are in pain, suffering, and stuck against some vicious patterns, the grace in this is that we must act.

Finally, we have to risk change. Perhaps we dare to pray, or find other ways to ask for help. And then we find inspiration, insight, a teacher, a coach… life offers up a path. We find a path to peace that in some way makes sense to us. In some way, it speaks to us about transformation, aliveness, change. We can see the path we need to take to move forward.

Maybe – if we are really available, really ready – we will get precise, practical, step-by-step instructions. And we find there is a natural inspiration to follow those steps.

And then we take a step, and it feels good. We take another, and it feels really good. We run a little down the path, feel some spaciousness, some ease, something softer against our broken, wounded places. We are sure this is the way forward. We may even come off a little self-righteous in our certainty that this is the way forward.

Then a voice of fear whispers to us. It whispers doubts, subtly, spinning out of nowhere like spider threads, softly at first, and it’s hard to even notice the web. Fear says that we are not really going to continue at this pace; it tells us we aren’t doing this right. It tells us little ideas about not being worthy of peace, that it’s not safe to dare for happiness, or finally love.

These whispers are soft, but enough to make us pause our step for a moment. In that pause, leaning in to the whisper, fear starts to remind us of all the injustice in the world, and begins listing our past betrayals.  And we begin to falter in our step. We are leaning toward those memories, these images, those painful concepts. In so doing, we are less sure footed on the path… but just a little.

Now we move with half-steps forward. One foot is still on the path, but the other foot steps wider, to the side, on the grassy, boggy bank. We continue on like this until we find that we are uncomfortable. We don’t feel that same ease, certainty, and flow as before. Instead, there is more discomfort. We  pause again. We are flustered, we don’t seem to be moving very fast. We find ourselves confused and admit finally that we aren’t entirely on the path anymore and it is becoming hard to see it as clear as before. Fear is coloring our vision.

We need more inspiration. We need more support. We need life to intervene on our behalf and make the path obvious again.

And again, we risk some kind of prayer. We ask, and we are genuine in our need, and it appears. Inspiration, support, a ray of light become available. The path is clear again, we have something to follow again. And the fear, our forever companion, starts in again…

But this time, we know. We know the path better; we are steadfast that we are not going to step off this time. So we keep walking, and fear keeps talking. And it’s getting very irritating with these voices barking away in our mind. So we keep one eye on the path, and just stop and listen to try and solve all this irritation. We start to rationalize with fear. Or we try to apply some good old common sense. Eventually, and we don’t know how this even happened, but we find ourselves fighting with barking voice in our mind. Every justification seems to get us nowhere fast, and it all starts to spin into something really unhinged – something so boggy, draining, and dull. And now we find our attention is on the chronic negotiation in the mind.

We attempt to negotiate new conditions with our companion fear. We will accept some of the terms, sure… there seem to be a few rational arguments going on, even though some of it is rather suspect because it just feels like the old stuck patterns. So maybe, without being very conscious of this, there is an indulgence of fear. Part of us really does want the fear to stick around… but just on the sidelines, calling out a warning to us if we are in danger. A kind of acceptance is at play. There is a resignation to its insistence, but not a total surrender to its terms. But in all this negotiation, we have lost the path yet again. We got so very involved. Still, something does seems quieter in ourselves. It was getting so triggery and so loud, and now something seems quieter.

Then, in a moment, it happens. Suddenly it seems like maybe the whole path was an illusion and it was all just a strategy to avoid being stuck in the first place. Maybe we can accept all of what is right in front of us. Not just the insistent resistance of mind, but also the dull sensations, and the discomfort in the body. Right here, on this one spot, it seems suddenly clear that it is all fine. It is all okay just as it is. And then, in that curious exploration of surrender, freedom gets stumbled upon. And everything, all of it, drops away.

Something mysteriously got settled. And surrender becomes something more realized in your system, more deeply groked. Suddenly, it all feels spacious inside of you – like peace, like this could be all that you were looking for.

Yes, this is peace. Here, just stopped like this.

And the stopping remains.

For awhile.

Because it starts to feel a little empty, a little too void, and although it’s very hard to notice, those tiny spider threads of fears are spinning again. It starts to seems restless, here on this step. And we start looking around; it feels like it is time to start moving again. We are itchy for some movement.

But we’ve lost the path.  We had this insight and then we stopped and now all motivation to follow those steps again has been corrupted. Doubt and confusion seem to be a strong influence. It just doesn’t feel the same to keep going.

But perhaps there is a path to follow anyway. Perhaps it is very close to the one we were following before. Maybe if we skip ahead? Nope, it just doesn’t feel the same. Doesn’t feel so clear, so transformative, so easy. We can’t find it.

We are aimless. Once again we come back into the familiar stuckness, and the only thing that now seems really clear is that we are bogged down, heavy with doubt.

And our buddy fear whispers: “See, you have tried and tried and nothing changes. You have failed. There is no use. You got ahead, things even got really good for a bit, but here you are, stuck again. There is no point in continuing.” And we agree.

We sit down. We are stopped, but this time it just feels stalled out. We feel paralyzed and disconnected. It’s painful. Maybe we wander a bit, indulging the fears, because at least that is something. We can even be very busy, which is somewhat depleting, sure, but that is better than the emptiness, than the void ahead, we rationalize to ourselves. We can’t find an easy inspiration to act upon, and we are distracted, with distraction that feels kind of juicy, and it is easy.

It continues to be painful. And pain is such a useful teacher; it is so effective at making us change our route. It takes awhile for the pain to get very insistent again, but it does. It gets very loud, maybe in months if we are lucky, maybe in years if we are not. But wandering with fear is uncomfortable. Sometimes we are jumping out of our skin, even if it often feels manageable, being rather busy, distracted by an endless doing of tasks. But the good news is that eventually it becomes not at all manageable, and it builds to an unavoidable crescendo.

And we do, in fact, finally change.

First, the crescendo forces us to stop. Then we pray. We ask on our knees for intervention. And it happens; intervention comes. Inspiration comes: a teacher, a coach, an insight. We are again clear on a path. You find yourself so grateful, so lucky to get clear again; you were gifted inspiration and are again clear on a route to follow.

And it feels good… it feels really good. And we start to run a little down the path, feel some relief around those jagged edges. It feels good again.

Fear is still beside us, and it wants us to linger a little with injustice, or a past betrayal. Confusion or doubt come calling again.

Will we be uninterested, finally?

Will we skip down the path, devoted with our full being to just this simple step in front of us: this one step, this next step, clear, simple, sweet, just placing our foot down right in front of us?

Or do we find ourselves once again a little captivated?

The solution to stress, anxiety and heartbreak is being conscious

It was hard to watch the news this week, to read about everything going on in the world. It was hard to stay connected, listening, and loving. It was hard to have a tender heart and an alive intelligence. Maybe it’s been like that for awhile for you. Maybe you, like me, have offered up money, time, energy, your voice… you’ve signed petitions, you’ve marched in marches… and it feels like all your activity is going nowhere. Occasionally you want to admit that no matter what you do, it all feels impotent. This can leave you feeling powerless and somewhat devastated.

But we can remember that we have a deeper, real power at our disposal. This power comes not from our actions, but from our awareness – the awareness of our dreaming.

Consider the dreams we have every night. We get emotionally hooked by the storyline of our dreams when we’re asleep and unaware that we’re dreaming. But if you happen to realize while dreaming that you are in fact in the middle of a dream, everything changes in an instant. Becoming conscious that you are dreaming means you are no longer at the mercy of your unconscious mind. The fear, anxiety, and the frustration no longer own the narrative. With such lucid dreaming, it is sometimes possible to then influence the direction of the dream’s storyline, but the true power is to simply recognize that you’re dreaming. If this little miracle happens to you, your dreams become conscious – connected to your heart, instead of your unconscious mind – and will often suddenly turn playful or insightful.
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Romantic relationships can be wonderful to experience, but they also have a way of putting us through hell. What makes them so painful? And how can we create a more conscious relationship so that we can find them less challenging?

Ultimately, I think most of the pain in romantic relationships comes from the battle of living with attachment to one’s painful deep wounds of trying to be someone worthy of love, versus just loving what is. We really run into problems when we sacrifice our authentic expression for the sake of not creating a rift with a loved one. We feel a pressure inside ourselves — sometimes very low grade, sometimes very intense — to present ourselves as “easy,” “loving,” or what our partner wants us to be, so we can be loved and not rejected. But the truth is that we cannot shape ourselves in a way that is uniformly awesome to our mates.

We are all very different, and the old “Mars vs Venus” challenges affect us all. We each inhabit a spot on masculine-feminine spectrum, and sexual magnetism comes from the polarity between where you are on that spectrum and where your mate is. And your particular position on that spectrum defines a way you speak, think, and interact within a relationship.

In general, over on the masculine side of the spectrum, people tend to let their actions speak — they are motor-skills based. Moving around space is their basic fluency, and therefore action speaks volumes to them. But over on the feminine side of the spectrum, people are relationship-based. Their fluency is reading all that a person is communicating, regardless of whether it is being communicated consciously or unconsciously.Continue reading…

What do you really want to do with your life?

At some point in our lives, we all wonder what we’re doing here. Growing up, most of us feel like we’re supposed to find some deep calling within us that will automatically lead us to be successful, happy adults.

But as adults, most of us still struggle with this same conundrum. So let’s take a closer look.

In non-dual spiritual teachings, there is an experience we call Being: having your senses connected to the present moment, with the simplicity of being focused on those senses, instead of all the mental thoughts or swirling emotions. And when you are really standing in the present moment—in the ground of Being—you can notice that it has a will; a direction that isn’t influenced by those thoughts or emotions.

This direction appears with much less effort than the directional pull of the mind, because ego’s direction has so much force in comparison. And if you listen close to this impulse, you will see that it also feels sweet, like there is a natural desire to be moved by this direction. But to most people, this impulse is very subtle.Continue reading…

There’s a recent article in the New York Times titled Let’s Ban Porn, which reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote:

There is no such thing as moral or immoral books. There are well written or badly written, that is all.”
—Oscar Wilde

I came of age in a feminist community in the far northern regions of Canada. We rejoiced in sexual freedoms, and I learned that it was important to take politics out of the bedroom to be truly free. I learned that I needed to own my sexual desires and that I was responsible for knowing what turned me on and what turned me off. I was handed a copy of Betty Dobson’s Sex for One at 21 years old, which ushered in a deep inhabiting of my sexuality, as it has done for countless women since it was first published. I read books like Cunt, and The Vagina Coloring Book. And I was, and still am, a disciple of Annie Sprinkle—the prostitute turned porn star turned performance artist—who is a queen of sexual consent and liberation. These influences taught me that pleasure was my responsibility.

And porn has played a part in that. But it was well-crafted porn, like really good erotic fiction, poetry, and film making. These were educational tools, places to be exposed to human bodies and various desires and tastes, and to discover what a turn-on was. But I have since realized mine was a rarefied education.

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Awhile back, I wrote about what happens when your sense of ambition fades away: when your ego, that desperate “TO DO” voice in your head no longer has any influence on you. It’s a common experience for many on the path. It sounds blissful, but in reality it can be uncomfortable when your personal will fades out and there is very little motivation to “do” anything. It’s weird and a little unsteady.

Well, today I had an inspiring conversation with a friend. He is in a deep egoless place, and yet is profoundly affected by something deep inside, passionately wanting expression.

He was sharing with me that when he hangs out in the non-dual/spiritual crowd, everyone seems to summarize this drive, or “purpose”, as something purely egoic, and they kind of shut the conversation down there. I think a lot of non-dual teachers disengage from the conversation around purpose in order to drive home the very delicate and necessary teaching of no separate self. I understand the need for this, because separate self or ego can be so subtle, and seeking purpose from there will always come to a dead end. Ego’s drive is never going to lead one to peace, so these teachers tend to keep the message about purpose simple. And from this reference point, it’s not something that needs a lot of focus; it just fades out and then kind of finds a more natural expression.

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So I’ve been getting these little notes lately, about a spiritual teacher who is accused of creating a cult-like environment for their students. People who are clearly on the path of conscious spiritual awakening are sending me links to articles about this and want to know what I think…

And the first thing I notice is that in every field the world over—whether it be political activism, engineering, high-tech business, self-help gurus, or spiritual counseling—there will be extremism, and there will be cult-like behavior. And I will define “cult” as authoritarian leadership with a subservient community that is non-consensual and forced to remain in community. Bad business the world over—not unique, not original.

And in exposing the truth, invariability we run into witch-hunting territory. Because, as often as there is extremism in communities, there will always be as many people “crying wolf,” as the saying goes. Like most of you, I am pretty wary of witch hunting. Sadly, humans always do it; we love to project injustice from our personal fear. A personal painbody feels injustice, and that painbody starts publicly calling out. But how do we discern if real injustice has been perpetrated by the accused?Continue reading…

A happy, feel-good blog for the Christmas season? Kind of like the 12 days of Christmas? Sorry, this one isn’t it! I do hope it’s helpful, however – especially since ’tis the season to be (conscious) with family!

In my last post, I talked about boundaries. Naturally, many of you started looking at where your fear of boundaries originally came from, and where you struggle. And some of you started to notice how you influence your children, or how you were influenced as children.

Boundary issues can be fixed once you become conscious of them, so I made an easy cheat sheet for you minimize the chances of you being the reasons for your children to seek spiritual counseling in the future! Here are 12 basic places boundaries issues creep in with children. See if you don’t recognize some of these from the home life you grew up in. Since the Holidays are coming, hopefully this will be helpful material to understand your own quirks. After all, spiritual awakening takes work, and conscious parenting is a great way to put in the work for conscious enlightenment.
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Boundaries… my goodness, I could talk about boundaries every day and still have subtle layers of challenges that arise!

As you all know, I don’t play around with any spiritual ideas about boundaries being unnecessary when you realize all is One. You know: there are no such thing as boundaries, they’re just an egoic movement of separation, blah blah blah. I hate that crap, because it’s just not true. That’s largely the reason I just don’t play around with much spiritual theory anyhow. I stick to the basics. I stick to reality. And in reality, we all have a very real NO. That no is essential for our very real YES.

This last month has been a ripe opportunity for me to practice this fine art of expressing and actualizing boundaries. My skill continues to need evolution and deepening. There always seems need for subtler and subtler execution. And honestly, I’m not sure what mastery in boundaries looks like. I’m not sure any one of us has hit that level in this big ol’ world yet. But I sure would love to meet them!

For my part… wow, this month has been full of strange reactions in my system, including getting sick for a couple of weeks so that I had to express some boundaries with my darling and deeply-loved friends and family. Boundaries that felt so weird and so awkward to express, with pressure in my system that feels like, “Am I allowed to ask for this? Am I totally weird and unlovable if I need this?”

My system runs in a very effortless, very still, very expanded way. And I am profoundly sensitive to heavier pain bodies. So my need right now is that my home—where I eat, sleep, and work—needs to be sacred ground, so to speak. I need this space to be easy and effortless and expansive, and therefore anyone who is living with me, staying with me for an extended period, or hanging out here, needs to be available to land into this effortless ease.

And that was excruciating to ask for.

But I think everyone understands how excrutiating boundry-setting can be.
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