Hello Friend.

Today, we move into our practice as a way to open us up to the discomforts we carry. We will find that the growth of our capacity for love may come with some great feelings of being stretched. This opens us to receive all of the suppressed emotions that we have buried for years, decades, or even longer. As we approach this protective wall of shame, we will be well rehearsed at dissociating from the experience, and this may be our impetus at the beginning of the practice. When you can find your ability to sustain the practice, and be with the breath for a long enough period, you will see how you can be there with your pain, and not be in pain.

You can cultivate the practice of loving kindness towards your own experiences. In fact, there may be no other way to cultivate loving kindness at all.

Then, of course, bell hooks comes along to shine light on our footpath.

Appalachin Elegy 35. bell hooks winds of fate take the air push it past the known in this world of nature no one can undo mystery abounds harsh cold burns skin fire waits raging tempests sweep us carry us toward destiny recorded written down past present future change comes

change comes. Yes, it does bell hooks. Yes it certainly does.

All In Love,

Michael

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Hello Friends.

Today, I took some extra time for the sit. My attention has been tugged and pulled in so many directions lately that it took some time to sift through the thought pile to get to something that was connected deeper to the gut feeling that I am having. Would you believe I found it in a children’s song?

As kids, we would sing the sorrowful tale of the old lady who swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die, we sang. So, she swallowed a spider (the one that wriggled and jiggled inside her) to catch the fly. Then a bird for the spider. A cat for the bird. And on and on, and who knows what she is having to swallow these forty-some years later.

I don’t have to imagine too much, though, because I now understand this woesome tale better. It was a misunderstanding. A simple mishap of telephone. It was not a fly she swallowed, but a lie. A small lie at first. But then she needed bigger and bigger lies to cover for them. She is me. And you.

We do this often. One small bit of information that we know may not be true, but some part of our identity desperately needs it to be true, so we swallow it. Then we just snowball into an avalanche of separation and loneliness. Sounds alarmist, I imagine; therefore, I believe you to say? Well, that is the point of children’s tales. To offer guidance, and usually away from something.

So we now are where we are, and simply by way of course. We steered our attention towards separateness, and we found it. Let’s steer back.

bell hooks is a great driving instructor in these matters.

Appalachian Elegy 34. bell hooks fierce winter cold mind whispers a lost landscape telling stories of how it was then seated near fire drinking homemade spirits sake and brandy wine spirits bring contentment for a time carry us closer to the sacred moving through bitterness our yearning to hold on to moments of ecstasy where we imagine we hear clearly destiny calling

Thanks for being here, in this place, right now.

All In Love,

Michael

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Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Hello Friends.

Our practice is not only a practice of healing from, it is also a practice of becoming. To be in the moment, in each moment, is to become a possibility. So as we offer our attnetion into our own bodies, and we release the past and ungrasp from a future that is impossible, we can be in the realness of this moment. One after another afte rnaother after another. Our days are made of moments, and our life is made of days. We are a series of these moments, and our awareness saves us from the sorrows of missing them.

All In Love,

Michael

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