The Many Benefits of Unconditional Love (and how to get there)

Love. We crave it, we cling to it, we wrestle with it. We are like clowns juggling bowling pins in relation to it. But the only kind of love in which we find ongoing joy and freedom is unconditional love.

Most people are familiar with the experience of unconditional love only in relation to their pets, creatures from which they make no demands and consequently are freed up from all the needs and resentments we often hold for those other sentient beings, humans, that we engage with in the otherwise complicated act of loving.

“Perhaps if he (or she) would just stop talking,” we say to ourselves, “then I could love my partner as much as I love this furry creature that waits adoringly at my feet.” Perhaps, as it is through language that we mediate most of our needs and desires. But there is another, more simple, prescription for loving our lovers, partners, spouses unconditionally than them being suddenly struck dumb. And that prescription is unconditionally loving ourselves.

When we begin the daily practice of loving ourselves, of recognizing the autonomous and divine spark in our own being, of nurturing and expressing tender affection for ourselves, then we do not need to enter our relationships with our partners from a place of needs or demands. We are already complete.

And it is from this place that we are able to—as Mary Oliver invites us to do in her poem Wild Geese—“let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Utterly, unconditionally. And before anyone else, what it loves is you.

Magnificence

Some say that every 7 or 10 years, depending on who is doing the telling, that every cell in our body has been regenerated, replaced.

Others say that every inhalation and exhalation is a complete cycle of birth and death.

Then there is the snake, which regularly molts and sheds, freeing itself of its outgrown skin.

There are many ways we shed our own skin, slither out of our too-tight sheath. We quit a job, leave a relationship, move across the country. When we walk away from people, places and things that restrict our growth, we are engaging in the important practice of molting.

But molting can also cause us to feel more vulnerable. When a snake is molting its vision may be impaired and, as a result, it may act more defensively. When we are sloughing of those things that, in some way, keep our worlds small, we may also be without long range sight. We may not even know what is coming next. 

It is precisely this vulnerability, or the fear of it, that all too often keeps us in unhappy situations. But our vibrancy, the magnificence of our lives, depends a continual process of molting.

The snake begins to shed with the simple act of rubbing its nose against a rough surface to split the old skin. You can begin the process by asking yourself, what in my life is holding me back, weighing me down, preventing my growth and fulfillment? You may notice subtle constraints that result from the way you talk to yourself—the judgments and self-criticism. You may notice larger constrictions that come from the way you let others treat you. Or you may discover that your job or environment is so limiting that you are being suffocated by it.

In many Native American cultures, the snake represents the transmutation of life. Through the shedding of its skin, the snake dies and is reborn over and over again. We too need to continually transform, slipping off our old skin in order to slither into the ever-expanding luminosity of our lives. 

Moving Wondrously, Less Wildly Forward

Things move too fast, they move too slowly, we want more, we want less. Such silly creatures, these human beings, someone somewhere must be saying.

These past few months have  flown by. It was fall, then winter, and now it’s almost spring. And all the while, I have been kicking and screaming about all the movement and change, the incredible speed with which everything has come and the seemingly endless amount of work it takes to keep up with the magnificent life I am creating. Huh. Right. I am creating. I am creating the change and too the hurried, harried pace. 

As Diane Ackerman says, “I don’t want to be a passenger in my own life.” Yes. And too, I don’t want to be in a car chase. So my intention now is to move wondrously, but less wildly forward, maintaining, even in motion, some sense of ease.

I liken this intention to running. It is one thing to be running because we feel like we have to or we must, as this creates some recklessness in our bodies. You can even see this recklessness in the grimaces on people’s faces; every step hurts a little, some twisted pressure to the ankle, knee or hip. It is another thing to run with purpose and breath, to let the spine settle lightly on the pelvis and the knees lift gently with each step. To match movement and breath. You can see this connection on people’s faces as well; they are the ones who are smiling, taking pleasure in each stride.

This analogy is offered as an invitation. In this moment between winter and spring, consider how you are moving forward. The motion itself is wonderful, as is the pleasure we can take in our own progress. But there is no need to suffer the discomfort of an overly harried pace. Simply shake your shoulders, lift your spine, align your hips and heels and remember to breathe. Joy does not come from being out of breath. Joy comes from breathing deeply and relaxing into the run. We are traveling a great distance. 

The Invitation of Fall

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
 - Norman Cousins

This from a man who treated heart disease and arthritis with high doses of vitamin C and laughter, a man who dedicated his life to nuclear disarmament and world peace. 

As we move into fall, the air cools and the trees loose their leaves. There is much within our selves that begins to draw inward, pulls back toward our root. I am marking this seasonal shift with a 10 day cleanse, a process of shedding habits and foods that do not nourish me. This is my fourth cleanse and none of them have been easy. But it is amazing what shows up when you let everything that is not serving you and your body fall away: caffeine, alcohol, sugar, animal proteins, gluten. For me, what shows up is a sense of peace in my body and a lightness to my entire being. 

But fall is not only a process of shedding and removing, it is also about getting back to what lights the fire within us. What makes our hearts sing with joy. For me this always means making more time for writing and spending more time running, cycling or swimming in the beautiful natural spaces around the Bay Area.

So as the days shorten and you begin your own movement into fall, think about the invitation this season presents, the habits you can shed and the practices and/or activities you engage in more often in order to fuel the hearth of your heart.

Because the greatest loss is to live our lives as if habit. To stumble through our lives in a sequence of repetitions that is not unlike those of the half dead.

September’s Song

September is a time of transition. This period of late summer marks the movement of fire (summer) to earth (late summer). There is a slowing down during this time, a settling in. I am often reawakened to the concept of health, of cultivating a deep sense of well being, in September as it is the month of my birth and thus the month that connects me most deeply with my sense of growth and change.

Part of this movement toward earth involves a release of the heat we build up during the playful and energetic time of summer. But sometimes we struggle to let go, to open our hands, to release the grip. For our health, all five elements need to move in an uninterrupted flow. Fire to earth, earth to metal (fall), metal to water (winter), water to wood (spring), wood to fire.

We can no more insist that the elements cease their movement than we can demand that aspects of our lives remain the same. This truth was rendered so completely for me recently when coming back from a brief but fantastic weekend getaway. I didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to go back to the hustle of my life, of building my business, writing my book, training for a triathlon. I wanted to rest on the porch overlooking the ocean and when the sun set, move my place of relaxation from the deck chair to the hot tub. (Yes, it was a lovely getaway.)

But the purpose of a weekend getaway is to rest and rejuvenate not resent returning to the beautiful life that I have created. And resent it I did. I found myself in an old and familiar place, occupying the wanting self.

According to Tara Branch, author of Radical Acceptance, “we are unable to give ourselves freely and joyfully to any activity when the wanting self is in charge. And yet, until we attend to the basic desires and fears that energize the wanting self, it will insinuate itself into our every activity and relationship.” 

Hmmm. Such a small thing, resenting the end of a vacation, and yet, it pointed me back to the ongoing work of being human, to attend to that part of me that lived in fear, that remembered only absence, lack, abandonment, that would do anything to stave off the end of vacation because such an end would signal the return to the emptiness I felt so strongly for most of my childhood and early adult life. 

Wow. I had managed to turn the end of a dreamy weekend in a house overlooking the sea into a battle against suffering. A battle by its very nature that never ends and no one ever wins.

As Tara Branch writes, “there are many streams of condition that give rise to the wanting self.” The key is to simply let it rise, to not act from its grip. When the wanting self arises we can sit with her, walk with her, dance or breathe with her, until the grip of the wanting self releases. And it always does; nothing is permanent. Once it passes it is easy to see that all things are moving, cycling, shifting. That we are not who we once were and that our lives are not doomed to repeat themselves over and over. At any moment we can acknowledge the longing and grief, its older twin, and simply let it go.

When all five elements move in an uninterrupted flow, when all our fears and desires can rise and fall, then we, like all things in nature, of nature, have optimal health and, with it, continue to grow.  

Manifestation

Our lives are a continuous series of creative acts. From the moment of birth to our first few steps, from our childhood friendships to our life partnerships, every act, every relationship is a creative construction, a manifestation of choice.

In the early phase of manifestation, we are usually consciously at play. We paint the grass red then blue, then a brilliant fuchsia. We are creating. Anything is possible.

As with all manifestations, what we create takes form, solidifies, and—without attention to our creative construction—becomes rigid. We chose a job which provides learning and growth and at some point both the learning and growth stop. We chose a relationship which is passionate and filled with love and then one day we find the passion has faded and the love atrophied.  Somewhere along the way, we have lost sight of our continuous, creative process; the ongoing cycle of change and choice.

It is easy enough to do. The world is one in which stability, structure, repetition are reinforced. And yet nothing remains the same, especially our consciously creative selves. Even unconsciously, this energy of creation is inside of us. Without being given ample movement, it begins to bang insistently at our door. The creative self, the bountiful life spirit, is screaming to be let out. And with good reason. It is through our creativity that we are most closely connected to the divine.

Play is at the root of any manifestation. Imagine you are floating down a river on a raft, basking in the afternoon sun. Or grab a bathing suite and a blowup mattress and head out the door to make a beach of the local parking lot. Put up an umbrella; make a pond out of a plastic tub and some water. Either way, you are consciously creating. What are the sights, sounds, sensations that you experience floating down the river of your imagination or lying on a mattress in a parking lot in your best bathing costume? What could you add or adjust in your life that would bring in more of these sensations everyday? What could you create in your relationships with family, friends, your partner that would surface this sense of pleasure and playfulness?

When we cease to create and we become focused on accommodating the angles and hard surfaces of our lives, we have lost touch with our power of manifestation. Without a connection to this power we become victims of our life circumstances. But we are only victims to the degree that we ignore our power of conscious creativity. Take this moment now. What are your creating in your life? Does it bring you pleasure, playfulness, joy? If not, then paint the grass fuchsia, go on a river rafting tour. Anything is possible when you connect to the divine, the creative life force inside of you.

Transformation

The last nine months have easily been the most difficult of my adult life. What I have come to understand through navigating this time is that the challenges are the gift; if accepted, they lead to immense transformation, resurrection, rebirth.

I have found this to be true for my coaching clients as well. Illness, unstable housing situations, loss of employment, the end of a long-term relationship, the loss of a loved one, all of these things meet every one of us at some point. For some of us, they come together, all at once, like a storm. But the beauty of this disaster of circumstances is that it calls our best selves forth and in so doing forces us to shed those aspects of our old selves that have stood in the way of our best possible life.

At a time when so much in our lives, in the world, causes stress, even suffering, it is easy to get fatigued and shut down, to duck and roll. But when we do this we are no longer present to life; we are no longer living. We take the greatest gift we have been given – our sentience – and toss it away.

So the practice is to become present with what is, whatever is, in our lives, to experience the often painful emotional terrain. To actually sit with it. To let the flood of emotions wash through us, for the emotions themselves point us toward the exact changes we need to make. The fear focuses us, the anger grounds us, the sadness helps us release. From there our physical and spiritual bodies are freed up; we can move forward.

The practice requires patience and trust that we have everything we need. Our innate power and wisdom are always available. All that is required to let it surface is to use our emotions as they are intended, as information, the tools to help us shift. Our emotions are an immense source of knowledge and power.

It is easy to confuse the story about our emotions or even the story about our circumstances with the wisdom of the emotions themselves. But they are not the same thing. The stories are what circumscribe our emotional bodies, bind them so that the emotion is difficult to release.

We are not our circumstances. We are so much more majestic, powerful and vibrant than this. By letting the emotions move through us, by not binding them up with the stories of what happened—who did what to whom, how much the past is writing our future—we can allow the suffering parts of ourselves to die and the creative, resourceful and boundless parts of ourselves to emerge.

Opening to the New Year

There is something so voluminous about a new year unfolding. And yet it is still winter when so much is still sparse and tightly furled. This season and its strange newness reflects perfectly the seemingly dichotomous aspects of life in which we are always opening and closing.

Like breathing, these episodes of opening and closing can pass without our notice. And too, like breathing, the greatest benefit comes from being present and deliberate in what we are opening up to in our lives and what we are acknowledging is coming to an end.

These beginnings and endings are not just the large shiftings of life — a new job, new home, new relationship —but also the subtle adjustments. When we open to greater balance and ease in our life, we close to those things that destabilize us, that make our daily living hard.

At this slope of the new year, consider what you would like to invite more of into your life and what you would like to let go off. Make it a practice each day to acknowledge what you are making space for and what you no longer are going to feed. It is these subtle adjustments that enable us to create a life of joy and ease.

Going Gently into that Good Night

In Buddhism, the most transformative act is to wake up, to see what is present, to actually open up our eyes. It can take a lifetime to accomplish this simple, this monumental feat.

With many of my clients who have experienced deep trauma, the process of awakening can feel like crawling blindly forward until the film in one’s eyes finally clears. And yet even those of us who have somehow managed to live this long without experiencing intense trauma, it is still difficult to open to what is rather than twisting ourselves up in with the illusion of our own grand design.

These last few months of coaching, of living, have rendered this truth acutely. Not everyone is on a spiritual path, or at least, perhaps, not overtly. But most of us are seeking a way of living that can allow for our intentions, our challenges and the truth of what is around us. And if we are not able to acknowledge what is, we cannot open to what else can be.

When we become tethered between our wants and our struggles, eyes wide shut to our circumstances, our bodies always step in to remind us, to demand that we pay attention. With our eyes, ears, hearts closed to what is, we get ulcers, injuries, our tissues become inflamed.

This is the great gift of our bodies, of our spirits’ fundamental refusal to ignore what is. When we get so wrapped up in our needs and desires, designing for them, against them, in elaborate paths that circumnavigate them as if the deepest truths of our lives were islands to be glimpsed only through binoculars from far, far away, we get panic attacks, insomnia, tendonitis. The body demands our attention.

This time of year when there is more darkness than light, more time to plan away the present, give yourself a practice of opening your eyes. Be gentle. You do not need to toothpick yourself awake. Simple ask yourself what is true right now? What are the circumstances of your life? What is your body telling you? What in your life is demanding your attention?

The process of awakening does ask of us deep curiosity, impeccable honesty, and an incredible amount of compassion, for ourselves most of all. What it yields is a body, a life, a way of living in which we can breathe deeply. A gentleness even in the face of difficulty. A place where we can be comfortable in the darkness, present to both the density and the luminosity of each moment.

The Mammalian Dilemma

It has been, for me, a strange, difficult and wondrous summer, one than cannot be easily summed up in a string of words. The best expression of it would be a line, which mentor, writer and scholar, Renate Stendhal read at a recent retrospective on the work of Gertrude Stein. "Every moment is a new beginning that contains all that happened before." It is so Stein to slow things down to their most apprehensible, their most syntactical. There is such simplicity to her arrangement of nouns, adjectives and verbs and yet the meaning is quite profound. We are everything that has come before and we are always, perennially, renewed.

As I prepare to move into a new home, a new space, a new way of being, I find myself continually pulling and being pulled back to my old habits, my old ways of living. It feels, quite literally, as if I am the beginning sitting anxiously on top of the end, a black-tail deer, nose twitching, perched on the edge of a rock. Beneath the rock is the layers of strata, of years, of past experiences. From my stand above the profusion of sediment, there is an immense vista. But the vista is visible as a result of my perch on the past and to shift, move, leap into the present, the future, I must jump off the rock, let go of the view. From the old place everything is known; everything is seen. From the new place, well I am not there yet, and I most certainly can't see a thing.

This is the mammalian dilemma, our collective dilemma. On the precipice of change, do we take a deep breath and leap or do we stand on the edge of our life and take comfort in the view? The leap requires we have faith in the clarity of our choices, in our alignment with our life purpose. Staying still requires a willingness to live our life as past tense.

This fall take some time to reflect on the beginnings that arise with each dawn, each opening of the great circle, and the ends that are marked by dusk, its close. Each day, like each breath, "is a new beginning that contains all that happened before."

Ask yourself where are you gripping tightly and where, in your life, would you like to leap forward. Experiment a little. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Name the new place, the new way of living, that you intend for your life. Bound a few feet forward. The view may be blurred, but you will be right there beside yourself, cheering wildly onward.

We Are What We Practice

A few days ago, one of my favorite yoga teachers said something while we were pressing our palms and feet deeply into the earth in Adho Mukha Svanasana, downward facing dog. It was such a simple reminder and yet it struck me as a deeply important instruction. “We are what we practice,” she said.

I took another deep breath and settled more softly into the pose. Yes. We are what we practice, I thought. Then the question arose, what am I practicing? In yoga, I often find myself pushing my body into positions, straining toward something. But what exactly? Each day, I wondered, what am I creating with my habits, my beliefs, my behaviors? The answer was not what I wanted it to be.

But before turning against myself by making a painstaking list of all the things that I am not doing right, I reminded myself of the purpose of the question. The purpose is to realign practices with intentions. To make gentle, but firm corrections.

If my intention is to be kind and loving with others, do I practice this by being kind and loving with myself? Beyond the ways I nourish myself, these daily acts of care, am I kind and loving in my thoughts as well?

Often, it is not our habits of behavior but our habits of mind that can benefit most from realigning our practice with our intention. And it was here that I focused my energy.

Every time that the story that my mind strings together throughout the day did not support my kind and loving intent, I would guide the language to one that did. Thoughts about what was hard become thoughts about the gift in the present circumstances. Worries about how others might be preventing me from having what I want became reminders of all the ways people have helped me get where I am.

I offer this simple reminder and invitation to practice the life you want to live, the person you want to be. In this way, you tap into the deeply joyous person you are, that we all are. That great spark of life that began us can shine bright if we allow it to. In each moment, we are here, luminous.

Connecting to What Matters

Life is filled with distractions, demands, opportunities, and obstacles. Sometimes in the cacophony of all that is happening around us, we loose sight of what truly matters. It is easy enough to start spinning around and around in circles. This motion can create a strange sense of integrity, as if the movement itself keeps everything connected, establishes an orbit to our lives. But, by getting caught up in the spinning, we loose contact with what matters. We cease to be present in our own experience; we become disconnected from the deep wisdom of our bodies. Absent this fundamental connection, we are adrift.

A few days ago, I found out that my dearest friend has cancer. This news sent me into an old orbit, one about illness and isolation, about loneliness and suffering. For almost two days I was spinning in this place, utterly unable to be breathe, to be present for the sadness this news brought and too unable to be present for the immense gratitude I have for this woman, my dear friend, and her radiant life. I lost contact with the joy of life, of love, of friendship. It took Buddhist author, Tara Brach’s reminder to sit still and breathe in order to stop the spiral. Once I reconnected with my body, once I sat in the feelings rather than spinning in the endless stream of negative thoughts, I could finally reconnect to what matters.

As we move into the myriad of summer activities, remember to stay connected to your body, to breathe into your life. From this place, you can open to all of life’s gifts and stay grounded in the face of life’s challenges. From this place, a life of authentic joy is possible.

Fearlessly, Exuberantly You

We are in the full flush of spring and all its celebrations of life. All around us the earth shows itself in a chromatic display of vivacious living. Spring is the time for rebirth and renewal, to nourish oneself and to flower boldly in the world. There is a simultaneity to this, the rooting down and rising up, the grounding and pushing toward the sky.

Flowering is both metaphoric and literal. Just as plants spread their roots while blossoming in luscious, rich hues, you can fortify yourself while bursting forth in a brilliant display of the many gifts inside of you. To draw on your own immense capacity, you need only ask yourself, how can I best nourish myself and my life? What do I want to open myself up to?

Inside of you is sweet nectar. Open fearlessly, exuberantly, yourself, your life and show the world the thrilling color of you.

Living an Authentic, Joyous Life

Outside my friend’s apartment window in Honolulu, there is a rainbow. Hawaii is known for its rainbows, so much so that to mention the unbelievable beauty of the purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red arch is almost trite. Any yet the rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon, a spectrum of light appearing in the sky when the sun strikes moisture in the earth’s atmosphere. Rainbows occur when there is sun and rain, fire and water. Rainbows reflect the complexity of the earth’s elements, the diversity of human experience, the light and dark that surface in each of our lives.

The greatest joy, it is said, comes from being connected to one’s life purpose, to living an authentic life. This does not mean that life is without it storms, its black clouds and torrents of rain. It does mean that with rain and sun, there are rainbows, spectrums of light so spectacular that it is impossible to witness them without gratitude and joy.

Rainbows are a symbol of authenticity, of our connection to our truest selves. When we are coming from that place in us that is most resonant, our decisions are clear, our purpose is true. We are grounded and yet able to cross the expanse of a sky streaked with storm clouds and sunlight.

Connecting with your life purpose is a process of listening to yourself. What are the things that bring you the greatest joy? Who are you being in those moments? What is the life you want to create for yourself and those you love? What are you willing to do to create this life? What will sustain you in this process?

As we move into spring, remember the rainbow. It is outrageously colorful, at once utterly itself and able to inhabit, with beauty and purpose, the intensity of atmospheric disturbances. It is you living an authentic, joyous life.

The Mysteries of the Human Heart

The heart is a muscle about the size of your fist. Its purpose is to move blood through the body, taking in the de-oxygenated blood through the right atrium and moving oxygenated blood through left ventricle back into the body. It, like all systems in the body, is perfect in its symmetry. As in all aspects of life, there is the in and out, opening and closing, acceptance and rejecting, attachment and release. Rather than situating these oppositional movements in a rigid polemic of good and bad, there is great value in honoring the fluidity of the process.

Around Valentines Day—that strange holiday which honored the martyred Saint Valentine of Rome and during the Middle Ages of Chaucer became associated with romantic love—we tend to focus on what we do and do not have. If we have a lover, we tend to evaluate the romantic-ness of that love (that is its presence and lack). If we do not have a lover then our attention is often on the absence of love. And yet, there is such an abundance of love in the world, in our lives. We have the love of the rain, of our friends and family, of the pink and blue streaked sky at dusk.

And too, within relationships, there is often a tension between closeness and distance, between acceptance of love and fear of its limitations. Here to, we have a unique opportunity to open to the full spectrum of de-oxygenated and oxygenated moments of love, knowing that the blood of it moves throughout our system, that we are fed through its circulation.

Whatever the circumstances of your life, your ways of loving, may this day, this week, this month, open you to the fluidity of love, to its presence in all its forms, to your own breathtaking cycle of vulnerability and connection, contraction and release.

Widening the Margins

At this lip of the new year, we tend to focus on all that we will do better, or right. Often the voice in our head is something like “finally, darn it, I will change this thing about myself, my relationships, my life.” And then we buckle down and get to work. But there is so much more to living, to being, than to seeing our life as work, as labor.

The other day, someone reminded me of the words of Henry David Thoreau in which he speaks to loving a broad margin to his life. There is so much generosity in this image, in the empty space between words and the borders of the page, a generosity to self, a spaciousness.

This year, consider broadening your margin. Cultivate spaciousness. Give yourself the permission of ease.

Some people find spaciousness comes from giving oneself precious moments of quiet and reflection through meditation or writing. Others find a good long run opens their hearts and minds, widens the page. There are those who find the greatest opening comes from spontaneous play, from breaking out in song, dancing an impromptu jig in the living room. I often go to the ocean to breathe in the immensity of our planet, to do cartwheels in celebration of our water world.

What ever it is, where ever you find it, give yourself some time each week to cultivate the joy of spaciousness. Widen the margins to your life.

“There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.”
- Henry David Thoreau

Freedom (or the limits of control)

There is a state of being that we often strive for: being in control. And when we get there, we congratulate one another for reaching this sublime state of order. We’ve got it together. We design perfect plans. We make it happen.

During the holidays, in the cold, damp of winter, with more to do and less daylight to do it in, we often construct elaborate plans with even greater zealousness. There are usually more people involved, so the circle of our control must widen. It is more difficult managing the complexity of other people’s lives, but we plan well, we communicate thoroughly, we are “in control”.

And then something happens. Perhaps something small. Some one changes their mind. Or perhaps the quixotic nature of things presents itself. A flight is cancelled or someone gets snowed in and suddenly all our planning, all our effort and best intentions, come screeching to a halt. It is easy to become disappointed and in this disappoint be reminded of others, of the ways in which people have failed us, life has thwarted us.

But there is another story here. A story about letting go. We can know that we did the best we could to make our desires known, to make something possible. And we can know too that we are not in control. The world and its inhabitants have ways of opening and closing that we can neither predict nor plan are way out of it. But this is good news. What fun would life be for us if we always knew in advance everything that was going to happen?

So take a big, wide, exuberant gulp of air and let go. Take another breath and notice the world around you, the music of the rain, the odd elegance of your thumb, a stranger’s smile. By letting go we allow a sense of ease in our bodies, in our lives, and in our relationships. It is when we are here, in this place of openness, that the world can show up in all its mystery and magic, that the people in our lives are free to be themselves. And they are radiant in that freedom. We all are.

Turning Inward

As the days become shorter and the nights become longer, it seems as if life contracts, the cold and dark directing us back into ourselves. It is an important time for slowing down, turning inward, cultivating self.

In the words of that enigmatic writer, Albert Camus, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” And it is true, in the coldest, darkest moments there is always our internal light. But the light requires cultivation and winter is a great time to nourish the flame.

In the coming months, allow yourself the time to rest, to reflect, to recover. Focus your energy on those things that are most vital to living a life of joy. By buffering your essential light from the frenetic pull of an ever busy life, your flame will strengthen and grow. Come spring, you will be alight in the world.

“Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle … a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream.”
- Barbara Winkler

Ambivalence

There is something so lovely, so musical about the word ambivalence. It conjures, for me, images of bodies moving fluidly through an aerial landscape, back and forth, swimming in air. But the word is often most often used as a pejorative, as if to feel intensely, oppositionally is somehow strange, possibly, in Freudian terms, sick.

The word derives from the Latin prefix and root: ambi (meaning both) and valentia (meaning strength). But unlike ambidexterity, which is thought to increase one’s strength and ability, ambivalence is more often said to wreck havoc on our lives. And it can be exhausting, holding the positive and negative emotions, balancing the weight of such divergent feelings. But ambivalence is also a highly generative place. It is not unlike the tension between temperatures and particles that birthed the universe.

Ambivalence is an important marker of change, or a place in one’s life where change is called for; it is the resonant blast of a horn.

Whenever you feel the pendulum of ambivalence, know you are in a place of incredible opportunity. What, you ask, is my life calling for now? Let the brilliant galaxy of this new possibility come forth.

We are this essence of

There is a lake within each of us. It is deep and wide, cerulean, emerald, aquamarine in ever shifting hues. This lake, this zaaga’igan, is everything we have been, everything we are becoming. In it rests the rough, shorn boulders of our past and the tree filled islands our future. If we are still long enough, we can feel the expanse of the lake, hear the wind skating across the water’s surface. Everything we need is here; it is the depth and breadth of our sentience.

There are days when we can only venture our toes in the cool water, when we can barely breathe in the rich juniper that surrounds us. Other moments, we dive head first into the depths and swim as if returning to. Yet in all times, there is the lake within us; we can rest here and know we are already everything we are becoming. It is only how we choose to inhabit the stark granite and lush beauty that marks our experience of.