before we begin

Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Wherever You Go There You Are is a book that pours light on our work together this month. Whenever I have a question or a ‘niggle’ I turn to his book, knowing that a solution will be found.

JKZ’s Question: “How can I set right a tangle which is entirely below the level of my consciousness?”

Nisargadatta’s Answer: “By being with yourself…by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

Nisargaddatta Maharaj in his book I am That.

In this time of COVID, our present hurt is reflected in our wounded world. the pressure that we have all been under for the last few years has been debilitating not only for Nature and our communities, but also for our bodies and minds, and even more importantly, our souls.

And yet I think of you artists, and your powerful ability to embrace awareness, create magic and build connections despite these limitations. despite the frustrations that amplify our more existential sense of loss.

Initially, you will be excited by the requests and challenges presented in the next few posts which focus on what we have come to know as our Rituals of Practice, but as time moves on, you may find yourself avoiding your Rituals of Practice: “I’ll do it later” you may tell yourself. I am here to remind you that it’s the rituals that hold us in difficult times. And these are complicated times. It can be difficult to turn up for ourselves, but when we do, over a period of time, we build our resiliency muscles, our ability to hold lightly the dualities that we are faced with on a daily basis and we move into a softer, kinder way of being in our world.