Spiritual Support & Guidance
Your body is trying to awaken to your true nature, right now. That is its deepest, most natural movement. It wants to return to itself, and it is moving there in each moment.
Our challenge is to begin to recognize and trust its movement. Our challenge is to stop moving, so that we can see that we are already unfolding into peace.
It’s hard to talk about awakening without saying the same old things, and raising the same old images in someone’s mind, of something other-worldly, mysterious, exalted, or out of reach.
Of course awakening is none of those things.
It truly is here now. Reading these words. Feeling the chair underneath you.
Most of us are looking for fireworks and bliss. But awakening peacefully waits for us to recognize its pervasiveness. Its constancy. Its gentle emptiness. Its utter simplicity.
I know I might sound as esoteric and mysterious as most others do when they speak about these things. But I want you to understand that awakening is simply about seeing Reality, as it is, without the filters of the ego. When the mind relaxes completely, what's left is what we call enlightenment.
It's one thing to do this for a moment, and quite another to sustain it. Thus, after our first tastes, we begin the process of embodying what we've seen so that it can live through us.
Through the practice of learning to listen to and follow our system’s deepest movements, we begin to unravel. We uncover more and more of who and what we are. Love awakens and flows from our deepest nature, living through us in the way it wants to, embodying as power or gentleness, compassion or fierceness. Our life is given over to something ancient and wise - the incredible intelligence of the body, of Life.
If we truly want peace, this is the pathless path we must choose.
I've seen that many need support in addressing held traumas and learning to navigate their nervous system’s rhythms before awakening is able to unfold in the way it is trying to. We remind the system of its power and establish a sense of safety so that the system begins to trust turning towards peace and ease. As this becomes a habit, we are more and more able to orient towards awakening, that ultimate letting go, when previously our system had contracted away in fear.
In case it's helpful, I will list a few of the teachers and spiritual persons I have been most influenced by: Adyshanti, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Joseph Goldstein, Erin Treat, Brian Lesage, Chas DiCapua, Sera Beak, Andrew Harvey, Mukti, Susanne Marie, Reggie Ray, John Welwood, Marion Woodman, Bill Plotkin, and Ajahn Sucitto, and many more.
I deeply respect the feminine and grieve the loss of its influence in most of our spiritual traditions. The feminine receives and surrenders. The feminine understands the true nature of intimacy. The feminine is embodied. The feminine listens and responds.
The masculine offers a container, ground, discernment, clarity, and structure. In recovering my own feminine, I find I now love the masculine just as much. In honoring what both the feminine and masculine bring to our spirituality, we create a more balanced foundation through which awakening can unfold.
It is my deepest joy to support my clients in turning towards and learning to trust their true nature, in embodying the Life that wants to live through them in the way only they can. Like a magnet, we are always being drawn towards the end of our suffering.
Trust your True Nature.
*Integrity is incredibly important to me both as an individual and as a therapist and spiritual teacher. I am a proud member of the Association for Spiritual Integrity, an organization committed to holding spirtual teachers accountable to standards of behavior in order to limit harm to spiritual seekers. Feel free to talk to me about this commitment and what it means in my life and work.
Here is a useful article to support you in discerning whether a spiritual teacher or healer is integrous and truly has your best interest at heart:
8 Red Flags to Help to Discern if a "Healer" is Real and for You
Book Recommendations:
Awakening, Rodney Smith
Falling Into Grace, The End of Your World, Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti
Leaving My Father's House, Marion Woodman
Red, Hot, and Holy, Sera Beak
Touching Enlightenment, Reginald A. Ray
The Experience of No-Self, Bernadette Roberts
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, Jack Kornfield
I am That, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Love and Awakening, John Welwood
Soulcraft, Bill Plotkin
Awakening, Rodney Smith
Falling Into Grace, The End of Your World, Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti
Leaving My Father's House, Marion Woodman
Red, Hot, and Holy, Sera Beak
Touching Enlightenment, Reginald A. Ray
The Experience of No-Self, Bernadette Roberts
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, Jack Kornfield
I am That, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Love and Awakening, John Welwood
Soulcraft, Bill Plotkin
The new generation of spirituality |
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“At the moment of enlightenment everything falls away - everything. Suddenly the ground beneath you is gone, and you are alone. You are alone because you have realized that there is no other; there is no separation. There is only you, only Self, only limitless emptiness, pure consciousness.
To the mind, the ego, this appears terrifying. When it looks at limitlessness and infinity, it sees meaninglessness and despair. However, the view changes to unending joy and wonder once the mind is let go of.
When you are enlightened, you stand alone. You need no supports of any kind because there is nothing to support; a separate you no longer exists. You realize that the whole ego experience was a flimsy illusion. You stand alone but are never, never lonely because everywhere you look, all you see is That, and you are That.”
~ Adyashanti
To the mind, the ego, this appears terrifying. When it looks at limitlessness and infinity, it sees meaninglessness and despair. However, the view changes to unending joy and wonder once the mind is let go of.
When you are enlightened, you stand alone. You need no supports of any kind because there is nothing to support; a separate you no longer exists. You realize that the whole ego experience was a flimsy illusion. You stand alone but are never, never lonely because everywhere you look, all you see is That, and you are That.”
~ Adyashanti
