Let the paradox be your guide to understanding that there is less to be right or wrong about and more to be in the presence of. Every path takes us back to the center.

All In Love,

Michael

Thanks for being here this morning. I will come back at a later time to expand upon what is brought up in this sit.

All In Love,

Michael

We begin by practicing returning to the breath, repeating this process over and over again. It took a long time to become so skilled at dissociating, and it will take a lot of work to reconnect with our bodies. You may find it difficult and uncomfortable. The sensation is not the ultimate goal because it is always in flux. The work here is the relationship. What relationship would we like to foster with ourselves? What would that do to how we relate to the world? As we strengthen our relationship to our self, we will see the walls of what we thought was ‘other’, start to crumble. Then we are home.

Thank you to bell hooks for showing us the turkey today, and reminding us that to move with confidence that we belong is our birthright, too.

Appalachian Elegy 47 bell hooks red beard strut strut wild turkey congregate walk in peace deciduous woodland undercover walk to mate walk to feed strut strut iridescent plumage moving harem doing a slow dance strut strut

Strut, friends. Strut.

All In Love,

Michael

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We hear it all the time: you have to let it go. Tshirts. Stanley Cups. Bumper Stickers on Cybertrucks. I even have a poster in our bathroom at Journey Home with the Buddha instructing us to “Let that s**t go.” For a culture of consumption, we are hyper-focused on letting go. But what does it look like?

We touch on it a bit this morning. I would love to read your perspective and experiences with ‘letting go’. Comment here or send me a message. If you’d like, we can arrange a voice message or invite you to join the sit live to share with us all. Reach out!

We ended today being gifted such an amazing set of lines from the poet bell hooks. Just gorgeous, really.

Appalachian Elegy 46 bell hooks overlooking water I stand at the top of the hill looking out see swans on the lake grand plumage more elegant than peacocks their presence mysterious all secrecy how came they to choose Appalachia gracing us with their vision as we climb down to be close to such beauty that it may open our hearts show us such love as to offer no turning back

to be close to such beauty…that it may…open our hearts…show us such love…as to offer…no turning back

Thank you bell hooks! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

All In Love,

Michael

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Thank you for taking the time to be here today and to tend to your breath. Today I was listening to a talk by Brother Phap Huu of Plum Village. He was talking about how he found himself burning out in last year. A monk, burning out? Well, I was intrigued because here I am, often exhausted, faltering in practice, slipping into poor diet and health habits again, and all around feeling like I am functioning on a deficit. Of course, I was chalking it up to my own failures because that is the practice I have had for a long time; shame. But if a venerated monk and abbot of a monastery can suffer from burnout, I might not be an anomaly of failure!

And, of course, I am not.

The brother spoke of how he discovered his busy mind/busy body to be the vehicle that was taking him outside of himself in his practice. Yes! I do this too! Maybe you do as well?

It did not become clear for me until I had an encounter with an actual vehicle that my understanding of my busyness is the vehicle where my consciousness rides. I was driving to the meditation hall this morning, and moving at a slower pace than normal for me. I was quite enjoying this small rebellion against the gods of ‘not enough’ when I was passed by a fast-moving truck. That is it. No negative exchange. No honking or swerving. Just another person driving a truck on their way somewhere, moving faster than I am. I felt the ping of my training into machismo ding like Pavlov’s dinner bell. “What a maniac!” Just a moment, nothing that overtook my composure, but enough of a thought that I was invited to inspect what it means to have a busy mind/busy body. I was busy with concerns about that person. I was more present in their mindset, in their intention, in their purpose (of which I know none of these things and cannot) than I was in my own enjoyment of moving slowly. This is busy mind.

So I breathed. And I sensed the breath. And I knew I was breathing. And I was back in the slowness of my vehicle, both my body and my car. Thank you practice.

Appalachian Elegy 45 bell hooks barren broken hill once a place of possibility now only remnants old glory gone heritage sullied with hate ancestors indigenous and dark held captive by soldiers and greed by bloody conquest battlefields where the dead live unclaimed not mourned histories buried forgotten lost to a world of cover-ups ghosts return to these hills to grieve cry out lamentations mourning the desecration of earthbound bodies ghosts gather here make promises of resurrection and return

Oh, this poet! bell hooks reminds us time and again that there is not outside that is not inside. To be of a place and in a place is the same thing. Today she reminded me that I am full of ghosts. Thank you poet!

All In Love,

Michael

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This morning I had the rare occurrence of waking into a state of dread and panic. I was stricken with fear and nearly paralyzed in my ability to move through the feeling. It was a gift in disguise. Because of this, I was able to inspect some language and ways of seeing my panic that I had not before, and also found that even in the most difficult of challenges, coming to my breath as a way forward was possible. Check out the sit and let me know what moves for you.

We touched on two pieces from Appalachian Elegy in today’s sit. Yesterday we had audio issues, so I revisited the piece from then and opened into the new piece right after.

Appalachian Elegy 43 bell hooks when the dawn is still almost dark I rise restless watch the morning come sly slow movement into light from shadow play an unveiling inside this dark heart a yearning to live as nature lives surrendering all Appalachian Elegy 44. bell hooks fly high dreaming bird higher and higher on the wire of time no road blocks no stopping to think through why wings flap what makes the worthy soar only this pure heaven right now sky high

Thanks for being here today, and for tending to the part of you and the part of me that is open to be received.

All In Love,

Michael

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Thanks for being here today. This practice was from earlier in the week, and I am only now getting to upload it. I am not precisely recalling what was discussed in this sit, but I do know we read number 42 of Appalachian Elegy by bell hooks.

Appalachian Elegy 42. bell hooks heavy heart as fallen snow bringing behind wet damp darkness small dreams coming true green coming from seeds planted long ago draw from this winter death courage to go on in the face of white cold see past this all-surrounding whiteness that beyond there is hope that sorrow ends

All In Love,

Michael

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It is the way we practice today that will dictate the way we respond tomorrow. This is true in so many ways in our lives. We get better at what we practice. If we spend much of our day avoiding being present, we will strengthen our ability to run away from anything. If we build our capacity to be with what is, even that which is painful, that which is suffering, the more we will be able to hold. We need our practice to be our resting place, that place we can lean on when we need balance. Can you hold your pain in love? Can you suffer in kindness? Can you be gentle today? Try breathing gently and KNOW you are breathing gently. See how that shifts.

All In Love,

Michael

On my drive into Beside Meditation Hall this morning, I was struck with curiosity surrounding the teachings of “taking refuge”. What could it even look like for me to begin to find shelter in the midst of a storm of emotions and self-doubt? Lucky for me, there are many teachers who have illuminated the murky pathways of the dark for us. Thich Nhat Hanh is one who has taught so many the teachings of the first Buddha. I turn to him often to find my own footing in the teachings through his lens. bell hooks is another.

Today the synchronicity of number 41 in Appalachian Elegy with what we are contemplating in the sit is uncanny.

Appalachian Elegy 41 bell hooks fierce unyielding winds pressing pushing against window glass trees swaying branches falling chaos warning of danger she does not want to cut them down she does not want to fear those mighty oaks standing guard for more years than can be counted strong roots sustaining life holding back the rush of time let earth testify they have the right to fall when life comes to an end to move in harmony with fate

All In Love,

Michael

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After this session, take time to listen to Thay as he talks about where to find refuge.

Today I am thinking about many things. So many caverns carved into my consciousness by streams of thought. My mind can really run amok. Even as I move form my thoughts into my body, I find that my thoughts will still gather around the sensations of my body with their own, ofttimes well crafted, narrative.

Breath through it. Find the magic in your transformation.

bell hooks take sus there in her calling forth for a ritual in part 40 of Appalachian Elegy.

Appalachian Elegy 40 bell hooks on hallowed ground I cast the circle that there may be haven for the lost refuge and sanctuary turning to the hills I place feet on steady ground letting earth hold me in praise of air I lift my hands to the heavens call down grace for blessings for anointed being turning toward water I let go remembered sins cleanse and purify burning sage I bring fire to warm and illuminate all around this body light moves a communion of gathered spirits

All In Love,

Michael

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Until we learn to understand how our bodies communicate and what they communicate, we will suffer from not being able to meet our basic needs. This is our practice today, and each day. A practice of listening to understand.

bell hooks certainly is a great teacher in that practice, as we are reminded that ‘there are altars in these hills’.

Appalachian Elegy 39. bell hooks ritual places a set offering dead bird on wooden slats carry beauty still stretched and moaned as though bearing its own cross suffering those last moments there are altars in these hills organic monuments calling the sacred rock on which to stand and know divine presence witness and testify as birds of prey fly high opening wide wings reaching past death

Thanks for learning to listen to your body with me today.

All In Love,

Michael

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How do we balance our embodiment of “self” with the awareness of everything “else”? What a curious word: else. This way we define that anything but here, anytime but now while also being used as a threat. “Or else” is a common phrase used to manipulate someone into doing your bidding lest they face consequences. We know that the concept of not being one with something is, in and of itself, a punishment.

bell hooks has moved our attention through the hills of her home and through the hills and valleys of our own experience with her epic poem Appalachian Elegy.

Today we read number 38.

Appalachian Elegy 38. bell hooks toward light each bird flies higher then higher then swooping down as though to plummet as though air a net to catch and comfort who can fear earth who can fear sky when faced with an infinite possibility each moment given a chance to soar to enter beyond

‘each moment given…a chance to soar…to enter beyond”

Thanks, bell hooks. And, thank you for practicing today.

All In Love,

Michael

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We are made of change. Why then would we suffer the unchanging view of suffering that our minds hold like an old photograph? Let us be with our pain and our suffering in a way that creates more spaciousness for our presence. This is our key to unlocking a more profound understanding of what we are capable of holding. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.

bell hooks offers us a glimpse into this quest for liberation.

Appalacian Elegy 37. bell hooks stained black Kentucky oak plank fences mark boundaries ghost riders where the dead live on the edge of time slaves worked here long ago caressing horse flesh breathing shared dreams cared for them when witnessing the breaking of yet another animal spirit born to be wild and free a bond forged whisper to forgotten souls run run go as fast as you can run run seek an end to bondage

Thanks for doing this thing.

All In Love,

Michael

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Today, I arrived at Journey Home/The Beside to find that someone had driven by in the night and thrown glass bottles from their vehicle, presumably at the sleeping bodies of the unhoused folks who rest under our overhang on rainy nights. This is the reality that most who have never been unhoused do not know exists. It is a daily reality for so many of our neighbors. It is uncontrolled rage being unleashed on the most vulnerable among us. This is my meditation today.

Today, on my drive in, I was listening to Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) telling a story of an encounter with a hungry ghost in the hamlet of Plum Village, his monastery in France. In hearing his account of this hungry ghost, I began to hear a story of parts of myself being displayed. It was fascinating.

Gabor Mate famously used the Hungry Ghost as a metaphor for addiction, which has been quite helpful for many since the publication of In The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts.

Today, I offer my perspective on this terrifying condition of the human experience. Then, of course, bell hooks comes to us with an offering of universality and beauty with number 36 from her Appalachian Elegy.

Appalachian Elegy 36. bell hooks mammoth caves places alive before the invention of hours paleolithic hunters painting the caves of lascaux horses shot with arrows wild creatures no longer seen cave dwellers searching for sacred paths then sharing revelation on these walls connecting caves crossing boundaries of nation and time bold remains of untouched history

Thank you, friend. I encourage you to explore where the hungry ghost in you lives, and how to nourish this part of your being.

All In Love,

Michael

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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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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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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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Thank you for taking a moment in your day to invite stillness and silence into your consciousness. It is a gift that we can offer the world once we can find it for ourselves. It would appear that this is a gift that is very much needed in this world today.

To find this gift, we must offer vulnerability to receive belonging, and belonging to create the closeness we need to touch into our deepest feelings. So we breathe deeply, and we bring our awareness there with the breath.

All In Love,

Michael

Please join the conversation. Your vulnerability invites mine.

Thank you to the students of KCA for joining us on Monday mornings as part of a curriculum of learning wholeness practices for health. You are most welcome.

Today, our practice meets an understanding of the multitude of who we are. We are larger in any moment than we could imagine, and small enough to be with all of it at once in just one breath. The contradictions are glorious and make us who we are. Learning to embrace ourselves fully is learning to embrace the world.

Keeping your practice simple allows you to grasp the complexities of it. Simple is not always easy, and complex is not always complicated. Layers upon layers simply means we can move through our levels of understanding from up close to farther away with our own attention. This is beneficial when we are beginning to feel overwhelm during our practice, or anytime during our day or night.

All In Love,

Michael

How do you carry your upset? Your anger? Your disappointment? As we begin to practice re-associating with our bodies, you may find the answer is “not as well as I thought”. As we encounter these feelings that are yoked to our sense of embarrassment and shame, we touch into some brutal truths about our own defense mechanisms. We have more than one of us running this game. It seems there are times when we call out the commander of defense to take control when we are faced with emotional pain. The Commander has all sorts of tricks to avoid the reality of feeling the upset for what it is…upset. We create injustices, slights, affronts, and offenses from our own preferences for not wanting to be uncomfortable. We battle the world!

I could have said things like, ‘I think there’s something happening in the world.

Everybody seems to be upset.’

Well...

Oftentimes when you think everybody seems to be upset, it’s because it’s you who’s upset.

And, what is also true: we are allowed to be upset, and we don’t have to blame anyone for our discomfort. We can be okay with not being okay.

This is the practice.

All In Love,

Michael

Thank you for your attention today. My thoughts this morning seemed to keep returning to what it is to be home. To feel at home. Having been a person without a house many times in my life, and sometimes having a house that was unsafe to be in for many different reasons, I have learned firsthand that to be at home has little to do with addresses and much more with where I can feel safe, rested, and cared for. When we have difficulty finding these ways of being in our own bodies, it can be quite challenging to want to keep a practice of embodying our present moment.

So, we practice. And we keep practicing. And we shift and we ebb and we flow and we practice. Breathing in, Breathing out.

Then we are met with the synchronous nature of being here and now. There we find our friends who meet us “in the space between what is right and what is wrong”. Today, we find bell hooks in that place.

Appalachian Elegy 32. bell hooks walking the long way home walking ever so slow talking to be wholly in this world of wonder standing still waiting standing in the center of a long and winding dirt road leading uphill to a small house surrounded by lilacs black-eyed susans roses and honeysuckle vines a bench at the bottom that bodies may rest before they climb

Be wholly in this world of wonder, friends. Be still and wait.

All In Love,

Michael

In a world seemingly built for separation, it would track that our minds are also well practiced at division. It could also be the other way around. Either way, a practice of interruption is key. We must practice interrupting our own thoughts and words that perpetuate the notion of unbelonging if we hope to feel a sense of belonging in ourselves. This is where the method of compassion presence with whatever we may be carrying, whatever may arise from within, is so critical.

Often, though, we can become mired in the muck of shaming from a new place. If we practice only accepting kindness and acceptance, but continue to reject our own rejection of what causes harm, we are no closer to connection than we were before.

We must open ourselves to being more than we think. Our heart is far larger than our mind.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a wonderful teacher of practices that bring us into harmony within and without. He does this not by trying to be “better than” anyone else, but by not allowing himself to be swept entirely away from his center by anything he thinks or feels. Recognizing thoughts and feelings as aspects of our experience, but not the experiencer. We must remember our nature, which is in this body, a temporary thing. This is true for every person you meet. We are all born with needs we cannot meet alone, and each of us lives our lives trying to meet those needs. It is through learning that we can only meet our needs together that we will find a pathway to peace and harmony. 

Thank you all for being here today. Please remember to follow, like and share these practices. If you wold like to become a financial support of this offering, there is a Venmo link at the bottom of this post.

All In Love,

Michael

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Today we are joined by a group of students from a local high school who are learning a meditation and mindfulness practice. We welcome them with ecstatic open arms!

There were some sound issues with the original broadcast, and with a bit of attention paid to it, I was able to repair the sound levels, so thank you for your continued patience with our learning curve with technology. I appreciate your work.

I spoke this morning a bit on why it may seem like many of our subtle voices that can and do arise in our practice seem to be uncomfortable and difficult emotions. The answer for me is that I have very little problem being present with comfortable and pleasurable feelings. It is the feelings I characterize as negative that I tend to suppress and repress, making my body a repository of suffering. It follows then that a practice of opening up to a hidden thing would open us up to the feelings we put ther eint he first place. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Thanks to the students today for being present and participating in the practice, even though it is very uncomfortable. I appreciate your willingness to grow.

bell hooks magic is real! Today we read Appalachian Elegy 31 and boy howdy is it relevant to our practice this morning.

Appalachian Elegy 31. bell hooks returning to sacred places where all is one embraced belonging an intense field of possibility wondrous goodness fills the air grant us great spirits another chance to reclaim and nurture earth glorious sky divine water in everyday the blessing of weather offering change a constant passing of life into death and back again

Thanks for being here. Please like, follow, subscribe, share, and tag a friend in today's practice. Remember, we are on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as Journey Home Meditation as well.

All In Love,

Michael

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Needs are non-negotiable. We cannot bargain our way out of a need, and we cannot compromise a need for a desire. We need what we need.

When we are not able to meet those needs, we function at a deficit. This means we are moving through life in a way that is passable, but not optimal for our health, be it mental, physical, or spiritual health. Unmet needs are the drivers of our unhealthy coping mechanisms. So, let’s learn to identify what we need in any moment, and then learn how to ask for what we need. It is so simple that it just might work. And what is also true is that simplicity is complex sometimes.

bell hooks hits it just right once again in Appalachian Elegy #30.

Appalachian Elegy 30 bell hooks burning pain has its own rhythm back and back shaking the foundation of trees once strong brought down by fire by fierce want uprooted all solid familiar ground naked now going once going twice leaving damaged and broken unending blackness

Thanks, bell hooks. It means the world.

All In Love,

Michael

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First, allow me to apologize for not taking a moment this morning to recognize that my mic was muted for the first ten minutes. Thank you for sticking it out, if you could.

Today we worked on discovering silence and stillness as both an aspect of our internal landscape, as well as a need for our engaged self. I know that I went to great lengths to exploit my justification for the chatter in my mind, and it led eventually to being hellbent on self-destruction. This is a common outcrop of abandoning our needs, or never even learning what our needs may be!

We also open up Appalachian Elegy and find more gems of wisdom and beauty from the great bell hooks.

Appalachian Elegy 29 bell hooks softly treading black bear leaving a trace green crushed under innocence just for now breaking free leaving forest for hill and mountain fleeing coonskin caps memories of renegade red men running fleeing daniel boone white wrath all nature slaughtered in the colonizing wake animals abandoned alone untouched sheer good fortune guides one bear away a gift of time with no boundaries for soon hunters come soon comes dying soon we are captives

Thank you for your attention and your love.

All In Love,

Michael

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Thanks for being here today. We have so many options when it comes to methods to find our way out of being us in any moment. We can adopt the costume of a thousand identities, and pick and choose who we want to be in each different relationship. There are no shortage of programs and quick fixes, new therapies and old, religions and sciences, all manufactured just right to take you away from this person you have not learned how to love being with. Inevitably, though, it comes right back to us. We are our only home while we are here. So let’s practice finding familiarity and sticking around for a bit.

Today bell hooks continues telling us of the horses of Appalachia.

But like any poet, what they are saying is probably not all they are saying.

The horse can be a fantastic metaphor for our own domestication and wildness, our sense of yearning for freedom and our history of breaking and being broken down. bell hooks does not miss the mark with today’s offering.

Appalachian Elegy 28. bell hooks morning dawn mist-covered day dreaming triumph and victory horses gather a herd at the top of the hill bonded whispering souls ready to run speaking a language only they can hear sounds beyond interpretation no heavy rider’s move in this magic time no need to tame and mount all at once they race to reach the beyond

race to reach beyond…this seems like an invitation to go beyond who you think you are in any thought loops you may have about yourself. I like it.

All In Love,

Michael

With the focus on violence and violent language being so prevalent in our cultures today, it is very important to understand how we feel and what that could look like if we were to remove the importance of a well-practiced punitive narrative.

You can feel all of it without creating a story for any of it.

Breathing with mindfulness, that is to say, by bringing our conscious awareness to the breath, is the key to liberating our lives from the tyranny of a well-trained mind. Minds think; it is what they do. They relate, remember, create, and function as ideas. There is NOTHING WRONG with this. This is what its function is, and in many ways, the reason we have survived for so long as an otherwise unlikely species. However, the mind does not need to run the show. We have an entire existence that has sensations, emotions, memories, and movement as core components for a reason. Why relegate our entire existence to thought?

Appalacian Elegy 27. bell hooks sublime shadows of midnight bronze brown in gray white dappled black beauty thunder man of war a dynasty of flesh roaming in the mind’s eye pondering such power harnessed driven preyed upon by human will and desire

Let us find our way out of violence by creating space for our gentleness.

All In Love,

Michael

Still working on getting started closer to the set time of 8:30, alas, I had a doctor's appointment today, and if you are from the US, you know well how difficult it is to get into a doctor's office and get more than three minutes of attention, so I took full advantage. So, we did what we could with the time I had today. Let me know:

How do you accommodate yourself? Do you extend this to ‘others’?

It is an important exploration of where we have adopted individualism as a way of being. To see how we think treating ourselves with disdain would ever teach us to treat anybody with true kindness. This is important work for building our compassion capacity.

All In Love,

Michael

Today took a lot of effort to arrive. Seeming more and more each week. And this is exactly why I keep the practice of showing up. Not because I am a glutton for punishment, but rather it is because I understand that discomfort is not a punishment; it is a voice. It is a voice of my insecurity, my fear, my pain, my anxiety, and so many more expressions of what it is to be uncomfortable. Often, the voice is a scream, but it always begins as a whisper. When we cannot hear it, it will insist upon being heard.

So there we are, all jacked up on resentments and regrets, with very little capacity for understanding or compassion. Discomfort can lead itself to A LOT of misunderstandings, OR it can hold open a doorway to greater understanding. It truly is our choice, but choice is a matter not of options but of resources.

Choice is a matter not of options but of resources.

So we prac tice, because practice is how we expand our resources. So, thank you for sitting with your discomforts, and allowing me to sit with mine. Together, we can find our way into hearing that subtle voice when it is subtle, and being forgiving when it screams.

Today’s dive into Appalachian Elegy by bell hooks:

Appalachian Elegy 25. bell hooks soil rich with lime grass beyond green turning toward blue hills of plenty all but gone bent under the weight all human greed we speak then tell of a god of miracles who moves mountains yet manmade steel ravishes this earth all for coal deep and black a destiny of burning heat covering flesh in ash

PLEASE COMMENT AND SHARE.

This is NOT an isolation practice of individualism. Healing is a practice of connection and togetherness. Your energy going into leaving a brief comment or sharing this practice with loved ones and enemies alike is energy coming back to me. This helps us to sustain our sharing of this practice. Your participation helps to sustain my offering. Thank you.

All In Love,

Michael

I am returning to a more regular schedule of sharing this practice, and hope to be on a fully functioning daily schedule of 8:30 AM PST, Monday through Friday, next week. This return from a break, wherein I was intentionally closing inward and not sharing publicly or with many people at all, has been wonderful as well as uncomfortable.

Discomfort is not failure.

We are often uncomfortable because we are finding new ways of feeling and responding, ways with which we are unfamiliar. This is good! This opens us to receive and to give in a way that we have not yet in our relationships, and this is a deepening, not a marker of a lessening. Explore that discomfort, and find the new shape of your growth.

Today, we practice kindness. Poet and Cellist Daniel Austin Sperry shares his reading of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Kindness. Click his name to go to his website.

Kindness Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Thanks for being here today.

All In Love,

Michael

So we shift. We shift our bodies for a more helpful posture. We shift our minds for a more helpful position. We shift our focus to meet the needs that we are well practiced as ignoring, which has contributed to a great deficit in our body. We are updating; and we are always practicing.

Appalachian Elgey 24. bell hooks clouds dressed in gray for mourning for grief held white for adoration dark for sorrow come soon an eternity simply hidden where all sun and glory reigns even so in this now there is just a promise of shadows relentless

All In Love,

Michael

Today, we shift from contemplative thought to working in some active practice of breathwork. Bringing the work we are doing to open ourselves to the teaching of Love Everybody begins in the body. It is from this place that we grasp onto narratives that may inform our resistance to loving ourselves, which, of course, justifies our belief that we cannot possibly love everybody. To untie those knots, we need to be able to be with the stories that block us and to work through them.

Many of those stories contain shame and guilt around our bodies. This is a massive barrier to the joy of the body. To be in a body is an opportunity for joy! We must open ourselves to joy if we wish to engage fully with love.

So we breathe. And we breathe. And we breathe. Today we work with two pranayama practices, breathing practices from the Vedic traditions. Kapalabhati and Brhamari Pranayam.

This is a good short video from Bharti Yoga on the most fundemental aspects of Kapalbhati and Bhramari Pranayam. This video only shows the technique, and does not go into the rich history and inherent connections of this and other pranayama practices to the cultures which developed them, and I highly encourage anyone interested in this practice to begin to study and learn about these practices and their roots in communal health.

Enjoy these practices!

Our poem today is from William Carlos Williams, and for me, it personifies the personal that having a body can offer.

Danse Russe William Carlos Williams If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,— if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: “I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!” If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,— Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

To dance with your joy is genius, indeed, Mr. Williams.

We also spend another moment with bell hooks Appalachian Elegy 23.

Appalachian Elegy 23 bell hooks bring Buddha to rest home in Kentucky hills that outside each window a light may shine not a guilt teaching tradition be balanced know loving kindness end suffering rejoice in the oneness of life then let go carry nothing on your back travel empty as you climb steep mountain paths

Read it and read it and read it aloud. Thank you bell hooks. thank you thank you thank you.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Sometimes we find ourselves feeling the quick comeuppance of old feelings, emotions, and wounds emerging. Usually, this is not as surprising in it’s reality as it feels in the moment because these things are often slowly building up over time. Often, it is a result of bypassing feelings and uncomfortable situations under the guise of thinking that is what it is to ‘let it go’. Letting it go is not a bypass. We must first acknowledge the feeling, sit with it for a moment, and accommodate what is being given to us, and release our attachment to continuing to think the thoughts that hold us to the feeling. This is far different from bypassing.

Luckily for us, the old things will always come back. Always. And when they do, we have another chance to step into the place of presence with a slew of new tools we have been practicing in our daily mindfulness work! Use them.

Go to the breath.

Go to the body.

Ask the feelings questions of curiosity not defensive dismissiveness.

Listen to what you hear.

Act accordingly.

This is how we understand that understanding itself is a name of love. It is what love requires of me most in the moments I feel misunderstood.

Today we sit with bell hooks Appalachian Elegy 23, once again. We are going to work with this poem for the rest of the week, I believe.

Appalachian Elegy 23 bell hooks bring Buddha to rest home in Kentucky hills that outside each window a light may shine not a guilt teaching tradition be balanced know loving kindness end suffering rejoice in the oneness of life then let go carry nothing on your back travel empty as you climb steep mountain paths

Find the teaching today that you were not present for yesterday.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Some days, the breath is the central focus; some days, it is what brings us to our central focus. Today, the breath is at the forefront of the practice. This helps us to get our conscious awareness directly to the center of our body, and from this place, we are centered. It has a physical space within our body. Moving our awareness out of our head and into our body is the essence of mindful practice. The thing to remember here: THIS IS A PRACTICE. It requires a bit of doing, no matter how elementary you feel the work may be. Take the time to take a few breaths, being truly present, and you will see the shift in each moment of your awareness. See if you can find three breaths in succession without wandering into a thought. It is simple, but not easy.

ON NEARUDA'S DEATH Allen Ginsberg Some breath breathes out Adonais & Canto General Some breath breathes out Bombs and dog barks Some breath breathes silent over green snow mountains Some breath breathes not at all 25 Sept 1973

The breath is what connects us to one another. Thank you Allen Ginsberg. OM.

We revisit bell hooks profound work, Appalachian Elegy, specifically number 23.

Appalachian Elegy 23. bell hooks bring Buddha to rest home in Kentucky hills that outside each window a light may shine not a guilt teaching tradition be balanced know loving kindness end suffering rejoice in the oneness of life then let go carry nothing on your back travel empty as you climb steep mountain paths

I am really enjoying revisiting this poem each day this week. There is a lot offered within.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

The most common response to “Love Everybody” that I hear is: That’s great…but everybody? I mean…you can’t love everybody. As a thought, I agree. There is no way I can love everybody in my thoughts, because thoughts are not the source of love. Thoughts are not where love lives, or where it originates, or where love can flourish. The nature of a thought is one that is maleable, penetrable, fickle, and very conditional. This could not be the source of love. It can be a place of reverence for love. Of adoration of love. Thoughts can be the altar, or even the temple of love, though more often, thoughts act as the gate to the temple. (We can adorn the gate, but we would not worship there.) But love as an idea, well, that certainly pervades our thoughts. We use the word often, and in many ways. Great! I LOVE the idea of love.

I love a lot of things in my mind. I love pizza. I love punk shows. I love road trips. I love those hilarious videos of cats smacking dogs. I LOVE a lot of things in my thinking mind. Having space where love can flourish is a wonderful thing, and not to be taken for granted. The more places, no matter how temporary, that we can find love, the better we all are for it. This said, the love that is required to follow the teachings of Love Everybody is not a thinking type of love. It is a love of understanding and of stepping outside of any judgments I carry. That can be really difficult for a thoughtful person. A person who identifies strongly with their own mind, and their thoughts, and their extraordinary abilities to find (or create) reason in an otherwise unreasonable world will most likely struggle greatly with this teaching and practice, at first. I know I still struggle with what it could look like to love my enemy. What could it look like to love in the face of disgust, terror, and even hatred? Yep, there it is, that most taboo word in the world of self-help spirituality. Hate.

Oh my, it is juicy and tempting, isn’t it? To be brought into hatred. There are billions of dollars spent on investing in your very human experience of hatred, which influences your worldview and thoughts. There are people whose whole ass job it is to make you hate, and to teach you to enjoy it. And yet, when we bring hate up in polite spiritual company, the “feel-your-feelings” crowd splits like a crowd at the last concert I stagedove at. Feel all your feelings but the ones you are not supposed to have is the lesson there. Well, we have them. We have big fearful emotions that are fed by and in turn feed big hateful thoughts and feelings. So how can both Love Everybody and Hate anybody? Good question, glad I asked. Stop thinking about it.

Stop overanalyzing who is deserving of love and when and how, because inevitably, you are only collecting irrefutable evidence for the times you didn’t feel the love you needed to feel and justifying them as you didn’t deserve to be loved. This is the foundation of conditional love, perhaps. What is unacceptable about you, and how can you find it in others? Okay, that is part of it. The next part is, what if you didn’t know a thing? What happens in the moments you either do not know about the worst things a person has done in their life, or you can, through great effort, ignore those things, and you are tasked with caring for them? I addressed this in the sit this morning, but honestly don’t know if it was before or after I got the microphone turned on, so I will offer an example here.

You are driving along when you witness a vehicle swerve to avoid hitting a deer and go off the road, slamming into a couple of small trees before coming to an abrupt stop with significant damage. You pull over and see that the person driving is hurt and struggling for breath. You can open the door and help them to find a more relaxed posture without a steering wheel in their throat with relative ease. Do you interview this person to ask what their politics are, their history of behaviors in personal relationships, and what their preferred diet is? Not likely. You would most likely do what you could to provide what is needed to relieve as much suffering as you can. Why? Because you want to relieve what suffering you can in the world, knowing that the less suffering in the world, the less you will suffer. This is the recognition that my wellness and your wellness are inextricably linked. They are not codependent upon one another for validation, which is what the world of conditional love insists; instead, they are interdependent upon one another because of their inherently linked nature.

This is a small invitation into a big understanding of an even bigger love. Wendell Berry offers some word on what love in absence could look like.

For An Absence Wendell Berry When I cannot be with you I will send my love (so much is allowed to human lovers) to watch over you in the dark — a winged small presence who never sleeps, however long the night. Perhaps it cannot protect or help, I do not know, but it watches always, and so you will sleep within my love within the room within the dark. And when, restless, you wake and see the room palely lit by that watching, you will think, “It is only dawn,” and go quiet to sleep again.

When love is unconditional, it is ubiquitous.

Today we did not have ample time to really go over bell hooks offering from Appalachian Elegy as much as I would like, so I will be visiting this piece in the next sit as well.

Appalachian Elegy 23 bell hooks bring Buddha to rest home in Kentucky hills that outside each window a light may shine not a guilt teaching tradition be balanced know loving kindness end suffering rejoice in the oneness of life then let go carry nothing on your back travel empty as you climb steep mountain paths

Let’s continue working on this practice more this week.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

“My anger about this…

I was frustrated and angry.

It was blocking my access to my deeper emotions…”

Thanks for being here today. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of becoming familiar with the complexities of our feelings. It is with the practice of sitting in stillness that we can recognize the more subtle movements already occurring in our body. These stirrings are the underpinnings of our emotional experience and the foundation for how we can accommodate our emotional expressions and find wholeness. We may only be able to hear the loud voice of surface emotions, the ones most practiced at accessing, and not understand the depth to which we feel about any specific thing we are going through.

and then we get to bell hooks today, who reminds us that it is within the experience itself that lies the hurt and healing.

Appalachian Elegy 22 bell hooks sometimes falling rain carries memories of betrayal there in the woods where she was not meant to be too young she believes in her right to be free in her body free from harm believing nature a wilderness she can enter be solaced believing the power that there be sacred place that there can be atonement now she returns with no fear facing the past ready to risk knowing these woods now hold beauty and danger

that there can be atonement now she returns with no fear

Beautiful! Thank you thank you thank you bell hooks!

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

I will be very brief in this posting. Today’s practice is one of finding our feelings through our thoughts. Our beliefs are informed greatly by the ways in which we speak and especially by the speech we repeat. When you find yourself telling your pain story over and over and refining your hero’s tale, pay close attention to where you fit into the story, and even closer attention to what you're feeling in your body as you rattle the well-rehearsed details off the tongue. This is a good practice to understand how we form beliefs that we can get stuck in.

Today we also revisit the great bell hooks with their amazing work, Appalachian Elegy.

Appalachian Elegy 21. bell hooks turtle islands everywhere heads poking out bodies embraced in the world before the coming of the white man a sea of calm where turtles rest on lands breathing life outside water that turtles may play fat succulent slow enchanting us with strength to guard and protect a wall of hardness store dreams of a world without humans a wet world everlasting

Thanks for being here. See you soon.

All In Love,

Michael

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Today my brain did not want to congeal. Thoughts wanted to be flighty, light, fluffy as a cloud. Okay, then, let it be! Use your breath to find your needs and desires, and nourish your experience with attentive, kind, and loving awareness. Walt Whitman gave us a great set of guidelines in the preface to his life-long opus, Leaves of Grass. Generally known as What You Shall Do, the piece serves as a wise and strong piece of advice to, well, anyone who is human. That is the gift of poetry, to give us permission to be exactly that; human.

Preface to Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms ​​to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to ​​others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the ​​​people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go ​​freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of ​​​families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine ​all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own ​soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its ​​words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in ​​every motion and joint of your body.

One may begin to see an ancestor to the wonderful Mary Oliver in this permissive missive. “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves,” encouraged Mary Oliver in what is possibly her most well-known poem, Wild Geese.

I remember hearing Mary Oliver herself speak about this wildly famous poem and how she came to write this masterful piece. It was a huge relief to learn that she had written this poem somewhat nonchalantly as an example of how to write an end-stopped line poem. There were not hours upon hours of laboring over the right words and sounds; there was only simply allowing the words to fall out of her mouth the way they came to her, onto the page to serve as a facilitator of understanding. When we are of service, we are often exactly where we need to be to allow for truth to go further.

Finding my way into my body through my breath gives me so much agency in that relationship of what it is to be of service, and to whom. I am practicing being of service to the breath, and allowing everything else to reap the fruits of that labor. It is when we can leave behind our adherence to the past and what we thought we were that we can truly allow what we are now and what we are becoming to be centered in our attention.

Then we get to bell hooks and her amazing Appalachian Elegy magic.

Appalachian Elegy 20. the glory in old barns surpassing time wood gray shadowed black faded colors places where painted signs tell of products no longer in use standing or falling down these structures carry the weight of history work done and undone memories of toil and torment there was bounty here tears for sowing lamentations for the dead all fragments that remain remind us give thanks gather praise

give thanks! gather praise! Yes, ancestor, yes we can do that!

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Today’s sit really honed in on the simple practice of three breaths as a way to begin to bring peace and quietude into our daily activities and relationships. The implications of taking a pause can be huge and long-lasting, helping to guide us into a place of solace within ourselves. I am not going to spend a lot of words on describing this right now, except to say that I have found, for myself, a key to unlock doors I thought were closed, or ones that were closed for so long and hidden so well, I thought they were walls, with the simplest of practices. You can go in for whatever methods you would like, and will no doubt find some really helpful and life-changing results; and still you will be breathing in and out all day, and night, for the rest of your life. So, why not incorporate that into your practice?

It is through the steadfastness of breath that we can become in sync with the movement and cycles of our body. And it is through the body that we open the pathways into emotions, thoughts, fears, loves, joys, sorrows, and everything that a material existence has to offer and teach us! Amazing, really! When we get in touch with our body, we can feel the magic of connection to everything we have ever known, and know that it is all at the center of who we are. We are not the center of the universe, yes, and it is at the center of who we truly are.

At Blackwater Pond Mary Oliver At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?

Life is that beautiful thing, again and again and again and again.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Today I made a mistake. It happens (often). It was a simple mistake, easily remedied, and I was SO HAPPY about it. Because I knew I was okay. This is a big deal for me. I developed a touch of perfectionism, which is a nice word for the ways we rationalize feeling like a failure all the time. It is easy to justify self-criticism if you have a standard for your actions and results that is unattainable. So we do. And we even laud this behavior as one who works with a high work ethic, or other such nonsense. Truthfully, though, we are usually making excuses to judge most of our lives as subpar. So I was very happy to make a mistake and feel good about myself and move on.

I work through a lot of this in the first part of the sit today, and incorporate some more wonderful work of Andrea Gibson. We come to a crescendo today with a wonderful poem by Angela Franklin. I absolutely love this poem. The layers are as deep as you would care to go, and also work very much as a collection of beautiful sounds and an ode to grief. I personally prefer to dive deep into the work, and it takes me on a journey with each reading. I encourage you to try out digging in a bit as well.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video Mon-Fri 8:30 AM PST in the app.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Coming in a bit later this morning, I am reminded what it is to feel rushed, and to function from a place of ‘not enough’. So, as I said to kitchen staff for years at my restaurants: “if you are in a hurry; slow down!”.

This counterintuitive guideline has saved me from fumbling through more days (and omelettes) than I could count. The notion of slowing down seems antithetical to the operation of a fast-paced kitchen or a fast-paced mind. I promise you, though, it is precisely what is needed. Coutnerintuitive ideas are sometimes the most helpful because our intuition has been taken for such a ride on the trauma train that it is sometimes patterned to keep doing what we have done that got us where we are. We have survived so whatever it is I am doing must be working, right? Sure, could do. And what is also true is there is a way to see that you want to grow out of old patterns and to stop receiving old results. You have to try it different. Here is Andrea Gibson to help us out a bit.

And then Wendell Berry comes in for the can opening poem Breaking.

Breaking Wendell Berry Did I believe I had a clear mind? It was like the water of a river flowing shallow over the ice. And now that the rising water has broken the ice, I see that what I thought was the light is part of the dark.

Did I believe I had a clear mind? What a question. To even begin to believe may already be the muck and mud of a clouded mind! Brilliant. Muck and mud are not so bad, though. Lots of things sprout in the dark.

Thanks for being here today. Please engage with the posts by commenting and sharing with us a bit of your practice. Three uninterrupted breaths.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

When I rise

Let me rise like a bird with no regrets.

Joyfully.

When I fall, let me fall like a leaf with no regrets.

Joyfully. - Wendell Berry

And a love letter from the afterlife from Andrea themself.

My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.

…..

Thank you for being here, wonderful people.

I adore you.

Love, Andrea 🖤

Rest in Peace with love and gratitude, Andrea Gibson

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

We must be willing not to turn away. Our belief that we are not enough is fueled by our unwillingness to sit with feelings of powerlessness. Being unable to enact the change we would like to see is a defeating position to take and is absolutely rooted in our tendencies toward monothoughtism. Monothoughtism is the overarching belief that the way I see myself in the world is the way the world is. It is most likely exactly the opposite of this, ironically. The way I see the world is the way I am.

Now, this can be a wonderful understanding that can bring a level of equanimity with our own thoughts. It could also be a direct route to spiritually bypass our responsibility to actively participate in and engage in the reduction of suffering in the world. That is going to depend upon how we engage with our own awareness. Are we going to find a way out or a way in? The way brings us fully into the level of awareness that lives in these bodies, in these houses (or not), these cars (or not), with this food (or not). We are material as well as ethereal. Engage appropriately.

Speak the Metta Meditation with goodness in your heart and in your mind. This is key to creating action of goodness. Goodness is not dependent upon the approval of our identity or aligned with our identifiers. Goodness brings love into any situation. It is not the opposite of badness, but the water that feeds the garden so that it may grow as it needs. It is a choice that is informed by a lack of choosing. Not choosing as a choice is a bold and challenging way forward.

Recently, I was espousing my self-righteous anti-capitalist stance on death and dying to a fellow death worker who has been doing this work for a long time as well. He is also a teacher and “Minister” of the holiness of dying. He reminded me to boldly not believe that I should choose who does and does not get to receive the teachings of what I have gained by my time sitting with death. It is for everyone, always. I needed that reminder, as speaking from my pain and fear wasn’t acting with goodness in my heart, mind, and mouth. Thanks, Bodhi Be.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

It is often that experience a thread of thought and teachings in the world of “spirituality” that the abandonment of the flesh, the material world, is a cornerstone. I could not be further unimpressed by this idea. We are in bodies for some reason, and for some reason, these bodies have sensations. I find these sensations to be beautiful and sensual gestures of spirit, and embrace them as fully spiritual experiences. No apologies for loving what your body loves. Of course, beware the traps of becoming stuck, or of chasing down and grasping onto expectations of sensual pleasure, but why would this mean do not experience the rhapsody of material life knowing full well that this is temporary?

It is precisely the temporary nature of all life that we find our greatest joys and our greatest sorrows, and through our awareness that we learn they are the same.

To love something means to be brought into the place of love, the experience of love. This is equanimous in its essence. It is our judgments, read: fear, that removes equanimity from love. This is okay as well. It is when meeting my greatest fears that I have opened my most tender loves.

“The poet says, I sculpted my mirage out of language and brag. Yeah, that sounds, I can identify with that. Some of us sculpt our mirage out of fitness. Some of us sculpt our mirage out of financial success.Some of us sculpt our mirage out of silken scarves and spiritual necklaces. And some of us sculpt our mirage out of anger and resentment. And some of us sculpt our mirage out of each of these things in different times in our lives and in different ways, in different moments. But we're all just working with lumps of clay”

The inimitable bell hooks brings us home today with number 19 of her Appalachian Elegy.

Appalachian Elegy 19 bell hooks all fields of tobacco growing here gone now man has made time take them surrendered this harsh crop to other lands countries where the spirit guides go the way of lush green leaving behind the scent of memory tobacco leaves green yellow brown plant of sacred power shining beauty return to Appalachia make your face known

Thanks for breathing together today. Thanks for returning home.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Hello friends. If this practice is to invite wholeness, we must begin to question individualism. I think, with any level of serious scrutiny, the concept that we are individuals begins to fall apart. Not a single one of us was born of no one. Not a single one of us was fed by no one. Not one of us could live in this world without anyone. We are inextricably interdependent upon one another. I would go as far as to say that we are never not one. Oneness does not begin with our awareness of oneness. We always were and always are. This can be a statement of comfort, and also a statement that opens extreme discomfort. How would this understanding work with my current belief that I am solely responsible for my spiritual life? My practice? My healing?

We have an easy enough time believing that “others” are responsible for our pain, but tell us when we are in our pain that our pain requires “others” to see it for it to be opened to be healed, and we run for the hills. This is true for all of us sometimes.

How do we begin to take our collective healing seriously then? Do we follow the teaching of Christ and rid ourselves of our belongings, join the choir of voices singing Hosanna, and live in a commune or monastery for the rest of our incarnation? Well, I think there have been many movements to talk that talk, but few of us in the modern world can walk that walk. But, in short, the answer is yes, this is the way. Not necessarily to sleep twenty to a room and live on unseasoned lentils and rice. Mary Oliver tells us:

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”

Thankfully someone has given us permission, and a poet is the perfect voice to do so. Thank you Mary Oliver. Thank you permission to live more fully and more human.

The last part there is the real kicker. It is telling us that sharing our despair is precisely how we will begin to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”. There is no question to me that this is transcribing the message of the collective inviting us all back in. When I say that, what is mean to say is inviting our awareness into what is already happening. It is in our awareness that we discover the truth of our suffering, and in our awareness that we are able to find our way through that suffering. It is awareness that Ram Dass reminds us that is also our love. It is the same place.

Place is important to us, and for very good reason. It is from place that we are born to move into that place’s consciousness of the whole. We are the eyes of place, and the ears, the mouth, the body of feeling of place. Would it be here without us? Of course. But who then would tell the story of the cherry blossom exploding into a spring day? Who then would tell the story of the “little living creatures uprooted” if not for bell hooks.

Appalachian Elegy 18 bell hooks when trees die all small hearts break little living creatures happy and safe uprooted now in need of finding new places when home cracks and breaks and falls all life becomes danger how to find another place where all is not yet barren

We must find one another to find that place that “all is not yet barren”. That’s my story, and I am sticking to it.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you Angela Franklin, Kristi Cederstrom, and many others for tuning into the morning sit live today. If you are not yet aware, we hold this space live as an in-person and in-stream shared practice Monday through Friday at 8:30, most days.

Today, we begin where I like to begin, with a bit of focus on our breath. Sometimes this may seem like old hat information. I don’t think, though, that there is ever a time when coming back to the very foundational basics is not helpful. So we begin with breath.

One of the places my personal practice has consistently led me to is the line between discomfort and pain. Both can feel very much the same in our emotional body, and our thought body can only do what it does, which is to think about it (or not) and develop a story to make sense of it. So both pain and discomfort can easily, and often do, become a story of harm. A tale of abandonment, injustice, rejection, wekaness, fear, etc etc etc. It can go on and on, the ways we will attempt to justify our not feeling what we think we should be feeling.

Mostly, though, these stories are entirely historical fiction. Loosely based on something that happened, but prettied up and played by blockbuster actors in our minds. The memory of our unhealed wounds is the hero’s journey. One we are sure we will return from with epic tales of vanquished enemies and stolen hearts….someday. Just not today, right? Anything but here, any time but now, anyone but me. That is the name of the game. So what do we do? We breathe. That is all. Breathe and know that we are breathing and we are, nearly every time, alive. And in this being alive, we are able to find the calm and the peace of living things.

bell hooks takes us there often, into that place of place. That moment we are grounded in our wholeness, and that wholeness is our oneness, our belonging. In Appalachian Elegy, bell hooks takes us over and over through the hills and removed mountaintops of her home place. Today, she reminds us of the peace of living things.

Appalachian Elegy 17. bell hooks straight ahead the road curves signs signal no motorboats allowed this lake our water source let us drink clear and true there are swans resting here magical presence all reflecting peace

I love, and I mean absolutely love, the opening of this prayerful poem, which tells us that it is not our concern to waver from moving straight ahead; the road will bend and curve for us, taking us exactly where we need to go. The road will curve for us. Then, to remind us to be in place. To not impose upon the relationships we have an unnecessary intensity. We are nourished here, and must be present with this. There is magic here in this. Thank you, bell hooks.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

It is certainly lovely to be back on the cushiopn at The Beside, and with you all for this morning practice of sitting, breathing, and sharing thoughts and poems. That is really all this is. Just some time taken away from the grinding weight of capitalism, war-mongering corporate policies, the attacking police state in our neighborhoods, and the subjugation of 1/3 of th epopulation by another 1/3 while 1/3 sit by and wait idly to be next on one of the two sides. Does this seem glum? Well, it may be. I am okay with recognizing that a good portion of my energy is is actively resisting the violence of this culture on a very personal and interpersonal level. This is what makes this practice so vital to my survival in these times. I need rest. I need respite. I need solace. And I think so do you.

When we begin to sit with these stirring of emotions by seemingly outside forces, “you must speak up…over the clatter…of my noisy heart” is a directive for connection. Allow the healing to be louder than the pain for a moment at a time.

Then we take some guidance from the great bell hooks, once again with the magic.

Appalachian Elegy 16 bell hooks go high up climb to the very top look out remnants of majesty remain here where soldiers stand watching their gods die what will be given in return for shelter an end to hunger sanctuary look from the mountaintops an army of broken promises land invaded then left as though there were no other way to claim belonging

My question today, to you and to me: What other ways have you learned to claim belonging than domination and subjugation? Let us know in the comments.

All in Love,

Michael

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Taking our time to breathe, to bring our awareness into our body, and to settle our mind is no small thing. It is not about “being healed”. I’m not even sure what healed means. Does it mean no more wound? No more scar? No more memory of pain that our training wants to avoid? Who knows? I certainly don’t want to wait to be happy, or to love, or to be in love until I am “healed”. I want to be all of those things right now, in this messy, confused, forgetful body.

I don’t want to keep functioning as if I am broken.

If I want to stop pretending “I am okay”; I have to stop believing “I am fucked up”.

We can actually be okay in all of our neuroses. We can have all of the joy, the splendor, the wow and amazement of life right now!

All in Love,

Michael

We have been here all along. This old road. I think we forget that. I think we forget that we are not “new” or “old” but “always”. When we enter into the conflicts within and without, we can feel so isolated, or so aligned, depending on how we can open our hearts in that moment.

When I am in my wounding, everything hurts. When I am in my healing, everything is medicine.

It is from this place that we can see, in any moment, how our heart is opening or closing. All along, though, we are on that road we have always been on, and eventually it will bring us right back around. This means we are working along a lineage of all of the love and the pain that we ever have had. We cannot bury the past, because it is our history. The difference is the past happened then, and our history is always coming through us.

bell hooks brings us into what that looks like in the place from which she comes.

Appalachian Elegy 15. bell hooks pink and white oleander not native to Appalachian ground still here lies years and years of poison rebel flags heritage and hate in the war to fight hunger and ongoing loss there are no sides there is only the angry mind of hurt bringing death too soon destroying all our dreams of union

Thanks, again, bell hooks for that wonderful breath of grief and love and memory.

We also heard from Padraig O Tuama:

Men in a war Padraig O Tuama Men in a war prefer the talk of politics than of pain.

In many ways, we are all in this war we have agreed to inside of our heart and minds, I think. And when we are embroiled in that war, it is the weapons of pretext and emotional dysregulation that we use the most.

And finally, we have a great love poem from Ellen Bass, a prayer.

Prayer Ellen Bass Once I wore a dress liquid as vodka. My lover watched me ascend from the subway like I was an underground spring breaking through. I want to stop wanting to be wanted like that. I’m tired of the song the rain sings in June, the earth, her ornate crown of trees spiking up from her loamy head. There are things I wanted, like everyone. But to this angel of wishes I’ve worshiped so long, I ask now to admit the world as it is.

Ah, yes! The best of prayer. To learn to really truly love the world as it is.

All In Love,

Michael

First, this video and audio is poorly synced. I would fix it but it seems to come in and out throughout the video, making that difficult. You may want to listen to the podcast audio instead of the video, today.

Today’s sit was encouraged by Angela to contemplate on the why it is we seem to seek external validation, but have such a difficult time finding internal resources for these very feelings. It is very interesting how we are all interdependant and at the same time have all of these feeling sna dunderstandings within, if we can access them. Perhaps this is where our interdependance comes from. Perhaps we are not meant to be able to do this alone, but acutally do require one another to see what we cannot seem to see in our selves. That said, the problem, if ther eis ever such a thing, is believing the voices of love when we hear them. That is very different.

To be able to believe something from outside of us, we must be willing to challenge the belief that is within us. To do this, we must use awareness practices to zoom out and see the multitude of who we are at any moment.

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet.

We are much larger than we believe ourselves to be, and contain so much more than we can see at any moment.

Drifting Mary Oliver I was enjoying everything: the rain, the path wherever it was taking me, the earth roots beginning to stir. I didn’t intend to start thinking about God, it just happened. How God, or the gods, are invisible, quite understandable But holiness is visible, entirely. It’s wonderful to walk along like that, thought not the usual intention to reach an answer but merely drifting. Like clouds that only seem weightless. but of course are not. Are really important. I mean, terribly important. Not decoration by any means. By next week the violets will be blooming. Anyway, this was my delicious walk in the rain. What was it actually about? Think about what it is that music is trying to say. It was something like that.

Like clouds that only seem weightless. But of course are not. Thanks Mary Oliver!

I decided after spending so much time on this topic today to hold off on Appalachian Elegy for today. I want to give it proper space each mornign, so we will revisit on Monday.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity by Donating Here.

Today, I asked a loved one if there was something I could consider focusing my contemplation on today. She said forgiveness.

It is something I could talk for hours about! There is so much in my life and in my practice that are deeply grown in the fertile soils of forgiveness. I find it to be such an expression of love for myself, and an opening to be with myself when I can move beyond forgiveness being only letting someone off the hook. It is much more than this. It is falling in love, it is growing in intimacy, it is being in communion with another, and with your own body and history and beliefs and healing. It is so very rich.

Some would say that it is not a necessity for healing, but I am not sure how it could not be the essence of healing. It is NOT the cure for our feelings of separation, but it is a barrier to us ever being able to truly confront those feelings. And, it isn’t truly about anyone but you.

Then we get to today’s offering cfrom Appalachian Elegy, and I am once again astounded at the poignancy of the poem today.

Appalachian Elegy 14. bell hooks hard rain softens harder ground from solid rock to mud so thick feet go under making every step dirge and trial even as joy surfaces at last today we plant we hope

Hard rain…softens harder ground.

Yep, bell hooks, forgiveness. Thank you poet!

Tell us about something you learned to forgive and how that changed your life. Leave us a comment and get the conversation going.

All In Love,

Michael

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The practice might begin with “everything is leaving. I, too, am leaving. I am arriving. I am leaving. I am the expansion and the contraction.”

Now, that is some nice, flowery language, and probably would serve just fine if I were to leave it at that. I, however, want to make this more present for me.

My elbow hurts.

It throbs and barks at me with the tiniest of movements, and I am unsure of which movement will trigger the pain from moment to moment. I am feeling pain, and with that is the invitation to suffering. Oh, poor me, why me, stupid me, I am not what I was, I am becoming weak, fragile, and slow. There you go, my famous Suffering Sauce recipe. Or, I can recognize that this too is changing, and this body is getting older, and with that comes limits that I sometimes push, and sometimes defy, and sometimes am forcibly pulled back into place with a great thump!

This morning, I feel the thump like a Zen stick to my back. “Remember your breath!”

Okay, thank you; breathing in, breathing out.

We are far simpler than we would like to think. We have been trained to think that complicated is superior. Fully in-depth programs with mathematical diets, astrological exercise routines, and organic crystal insertions are on the 72-fold path to a better you. Really, though: we breathe, we think, we feel, we decide, we believe, we fail, we move on. This practice is one of returning. The ebb and flow, expansion and contraction of life bring us to and from and back to where we begin, again and again and again.

Appalachian Elegy 13. bell hooks wingspan wide death covers all prey and predator turkey buzzards overhead at the bottom of the hill no eternity beckons just ongoing decay a deep smothering emptiness profound prolonged lamentation birds cry high

Profound prolonged lamentation. WOW! Thanks bell hooks. This is it. This is the sound, maybe, of all creation. A wailing of loss. Since the moment of the separation of all matter into an ever-expanding galaxy of rapidly departing bodies, we are wailing an aum of loss.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

We are wailing our lives into creation. Join the ancient chorus.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity here

Today’s sit meets shame and guilt as something other than roadblocks and failures. We are to look deeper into what it is that served us in the past with these emotional expressions, and to understand how we may be not in right relationship with them now. This is not a tip or trick to escape these experiences, rather a way forward to hold yourself with these experiences. Sit with it.

Today’s poem from bell hooks reminds us that sometimes that which nourishes us does not have what we need to heal.

Appalachian Elegy 12. bell hooks mud sliding down wet can do this make danger fall upon us turn the pure in heart away no water for holy cleansing no water for drying thirst just black death smothering earth soot after fire

Try to find your way into this discomfort, this smothering, oppressive fear, and you will find yourself in there.

Thanks for listening to today’s practice. You are invited to join this conversation by either commenting below or sending me a personal message. journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

I will be very brief in this description. I’m holding the pieces of my broken heart. Each one, a jigsaw cut piece, fitting somewhere that I cannot find. This is the grief. To sit with this. This is the love. To sit with this.

This is the grief. To sit with this. This is the love. To sit with this.

All in love,

MichaelAll in love,

Michael

Today’s sit really took a meandering path inward. Sometimes the meandering path is the most direct route. We have to be able to get out of the map and into the territory, and the territory is full of beautiful and dark places. So often, we become experts at hide-and-go-seek and find little places to tuck away the things we do not believe we can let go of. But when we find ourselves in safe and secure relationships, and that includes the relationship to our own body, mind, and spiritual self, we can begin to open in such a way that there are no longer spaces to hide. There is a blossoming and an opening. There is only an invitation to the feast.

Today’s bell hooks magic is pretty amazing. I don’t know how this is happening this way, but I’m here for it. Sometimes you just have to accept things as they are without applying too much disbelief. We visit her wonderful multiple-part poem, Appalachian Elegy. Today we hear number 10.

Today’s bell hooks magic.

Appalachian Elegy 10. bell hooks here and there across and down treasure uncovered remnants of ancient ways not buried deep enough excavated they surface objects that say some part of me lived here before reincarnated ancestors give me breath urge me—live again return to familiar ground hear our lost people speak

The magic is real. Just under the surface of the earth, as well as under our skin, there are buried things that want to come to the surface. It is in our awareness that we can allow for these uprisings to be as bountiful gardens. It is in our avoidance that we experience this as a disruption. Both are fine. To be blessed with outcrops of a good harvest or to be disrupted in our programming, both are nutrimental.

No more sits this week, or probably next, as I am travelling about the country a bit and going camping with 60 of my favorite high school students in our school’s end-of-year trip. Looking forward to the space to explore and to returning when I can. Check out the archives if you are interested in more shared practices!

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

We are blessed with the ability to roam, and the curse of feeling unplaced. It is why we seek refuge, to sit under the giving trees of our youth and to find kinship in the way an autumn day smells like forgiveness with the bouquet of dead leaves and forlorn trees weeping.

I was reminded by a friend that in all of the work of letting go, be careful not to eject. We do not need to force out anything, only find the opening and allow it to go. He asked me to consider that the critical voice inside my thoughts and the wounded feelings inside my body are not to be removed, but to be heard, seen, and inevitably held.

Then there is the apparent magic of bell hooks. I should note that I am making a solid discipline of not reading ahead in each day as we explore Appalachian Elegy, bell hooks’ love letter to place. When the poem aligns with the contemplation, that is not preplanned by me.

Appalachian Elegy 9. bell hooks autumn ending leaves like fallen soldiers manmade hard hearts fighting battles on this once sacred ground all killing done now dirt upon dirt covers all signs of death memory tamped down ways to not remember the disappeared dying faces longing to be seen one lone warrior lives comes home to the hills seeking refuge seeking a place to surrender the ground where hope remains and souls surrender

This morning sit is so relevant, as was yesterdays, to myself and two people in my life, Angela and Lilly. It is amazing how we can find strands in this existence that connect us to our deeper selves, even from different places and different experiences. This reading of Appalachian Elegy has been an oracular tome for many of these experiences lately. I am curious: How are you feeling tethered to love and unbound at the same time? How is your practice finding synchronicities? What poems are speaking to you?

Thanks for being with this practice, and I look forward to your sharing with us all.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

Daniel Sperry opens us up this morning with his reading of a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. Click his name to learn more about his amazing work.

Kindness Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

Kindness as a shadow. What a way to understand even more deeply the ways in which we could love. Or perhaps it is just the way we do love; we are only lacking that understanding. When I am in the deeps of my sorrow, I can feel like I am wallowing,. and then the old voices are called into action, shaming, blaming, avoiding, guilting, manipulating all as a way to do what? I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that is not who I am; it is only an old voice I am rehearsed at hearing. There is another voice that I am not yet rehearsed in hearing. It calls to me in a steadier and melodic way. The birds in the early hours. The hum of my kettle. The soft brush of a hand on my back when I am unstill. There is a continuous voice that echoes love love love love love. And I have adjusted my focus, and again I can hear its lovely song. Right here in the midst of my sorrow, I learn, again, that I am not wallowing. I am swimming in it! I am splashing in the sorrow because it is here, right now, where my heart lives. It is here, right now, where my spirit wants to sit a while.

Appalachian Elegy 8. bell hooks snow-covered earth such silence still divine presence echoes immortal migrants all life sustained darkness comes suffering touches us again and again there is pain there in the midst of such harsh barrenness a cardinal framed in the glass red light calling away despair eternal promise everything changes and ends

Here it is again. The magic realness of poetry. THIS is why I love poems. This is why I am a poet. Becasue anytime a person can write a few lines like this, and drive directly into the soul of another, I know that I am not alone.

and then there is this, a gift from Mary Oliver.

When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention Mary Oliver “As long as we are able to be extravagant we will be hugely and damply extravagant. Then we will drop foil by foil to the ground. This is our unalterable task, and we do it joyfully.” And they went on, “Listen, the heart-shackles are not, as you think, death, illness, pain, unrequited hope, not loneliness, but lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety, selfishness.” Their fragrance all the while rising from their blind bodies, making me spin with joy.

Spin! Spin and spin and spin in it’s dizzying glory, friends. Your heart is in pain BECAUSE it is working! You are ALIVE! You are so very loved.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

It occurs to me that no matter where I am in my life, emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, my practice is there to facilitate my returning to a center line. It may be only for a brief moment, but even this is regenerative, healing, and helpful in my understanding of how to love and be loved. Realistically, it is probably neither possible nor ideal to think about my life as needing always to be centered. The vast range of experiences is all a part of the canvas of our existence. The difference made by the practice of returning with and to awareness is that I can experience the chaos, the ups, the downs, the plateaus, without believing myself to be any of those experiences. When I get stuck in a role, it is dreary.

There is a more expansive space inside of us. We are not confined to our worst days or best days as the gauge of our entirety. Going inside, through the breath, sitting with patience, kindness, and offering the loving care of silence to our body and mind is a very accessible pathway to the home that is our awareness.

bell hooks, again, brings us to that place:

Appalachian Elegy 7. bell hooks again and again she calls me this wilderness within urging me onward be here make a path where the sound of ancestors speaks a language heard beyond the grave this earth I stand on belongs to the many dead treasure I find here is all gift tender solace holding back the future the dead that will not let us forget late ones and even further back the ancients dreaming achieving they will not let us forget time is aboriginal eternal they carry us back take us through the sacred portal that we may come again then again into the always present

into the always present…such a wonderful way to invite our awareness! To even be reminded of the present as being the only place we truly exist is a meditation bell. Thank you to bell hooks for her ability to receive and transmit the messages to so many people. treasure I find here is all gift…remembering that it is all grace.

All In Love,

Michael

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Praying Mary Oliver It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.

Another voice. That is the key to truly understanding that there is no way you are alone. In the depths of the greatest belief of your isolation, it is still true that you cannot be alone. If what you are made from is also what I am made from, and there is nothing new under our shared sun, then we are both made of old things. Old things are pulsing through us. Things that have been here, and have seen this, and will move through this with a grace that may, at times, be unimaginable. Not knowing who we are means not knowing if who we think we are is real. Hint: it’s not. Not really. And the problems arise when we are trying to liberate ourselves to become this next thing, thinking we can carry who we thought we were with us. There are a thousand tiny deaths we must die just to be alive. Those are the letting go moments that open us. Step into this!

bell hooks also offers us a reminder that we are held this morning in 6. from Appalachian Elegy, her loveletter to the place from where she learned to live and love this world.

Appalachian Elegy 6. bell hooks listen little sister angels make their hope here in these hills follow me I will guide you careful now no trespass I will guide you word for word mouth for mouth all the holy ones embracing us all our kin making home here renegade marooned lawless fugitives grace these mountains we have earth to bind us the covenant between us can never be broken vows to live and let live

The covenant between us can never be broken. Ah! There it is! This promise is kept in so many ways that once we are here, and we know it, we can never not be here. We can only imagine, once again, that we are not. We can only believe we are somehow not where we are supposed to be. But the truth may be that what is not supposed to be is the belief in the first place. And, even the belief of not belonging invites us into our belonging.

Thank you, friends, for being here with this practice. We will not be holding practice on Wednesday or Thursday of this week, however will return Friday. I am considering rolling out some modules in a workshop format surrounding Poetry and the Practice, as well as Recovery and Breath. I will post more on those two separate sessions soon, and will be asking for people who would like to attend to RSVP. Let me know your level of interest below.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

Some mornings, the thoughts are calm and slow. Like a smoke from the incense, drifting in their own time, and on their own weight in the wind. This morning, they were the numbing screeches of construction work, pounding incessantly, and unwilling to listen to reason. This is fine. I am not taken off guard by this, as this is something I have had in my mind’s experience for a very long time. Chatter. Only chatter.

Of course, after years of identifying as a person who prides myself on using my mind to own knowledge, solve every problem, and never be wrong under penalty of rejection and certain abandonment, having a practice of not listening to every little thing my mind vomits out has been quite helpful. So I worked it out on the typewriter, clicking out a rhythm that a melody of words and sounds could find their way into, and wrote a poem. Not a great poem. Maybe not even a good poem. Whoever said they have to all be good is probably an editor and a capitalist and must be liberated of their need for trophies. We aren’t here to be good! We are here to be clumsy sometimes, and that clumsiness makes us fall, and that is why we call it falling in love.

We pick back up in bell hooks Appalachian Elegy with number 5 today. Quite an astonishing thing, to be given permission by a poet. It is as near to the voice of God as humans have ever had on the page.

Appalachian Elegy 5. bell hooks small horses ride me carry my dreams of prairies and frontiers where once the first people roamed claimed union with the earth no right to own or possess no sense of territory all boundaries placed by unseen ones here I will give you thunder shatter your hearts with rain let snow soothe you make your healing water clear sweet a sacred spring where the thirsty may drink animals all

What a thing it is to be given the attention that we are given by bell hooks in this poem. The poet is focusing all of their love right here into each of us, reminding us that all of this life, all of this world, all of this earth, all of this knowledge, this love, this sorrow, this…grace; it is all here for those who are thirsty. No secrets. No miracles. No mistakes.

Thanks, bell hooks. Good looking out.

Then we met with Pastor and Poet Drew E. Jackson again in his work God Speaks Through Wombs. This is his first collection of poems responding to and repurposing the book of Luke from the Christian bible. Here we are again met with a permissive gift that offers us the reassurance that we must, even in our biggest angers, loudest throws of liberations screams, find our softer song to sing.

Where lambs Feed Drew Jackson Luke 2:6-7 This moment is singular. A blank space. A blank slate, before the world has its chance to mark you, scar you with harsh words. What locution will I utter as your initiation into this world of sentence and syllable? I think I will sing again. A lullaby this time. And this lesson I will teach you: Even revolutionaries must know when the time is right to sing softly.

If you ever doubted that poetry was the way we get to share how God sounds when we listen, ask yourself why it is that every religious text is written in poetic form. This pastor and poet, Drew Jackson, is qualified to take us to this place and offer us the permission to keep a softness in our hearts, even when we must harden the outside with protection. And take us there he does.

Thanks for being here with me today. Please take a moment to expand the conversation with a comment, a question, a remark, or a story as to how you are carried like a seed, and what seeds you carry to find their right place.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

Hello, friends. How many times have you had the experience of feeling pretty good about your life, your work, your fit, and then a small thought of doubt pops in and, in short time, becomes the center of the internal dialogue? It is a familiar voice, and for better or worse, we are attached to familiarity. It makes us feel safe, even if it is unsafe. Like a song you never liked coming on and you know every word so you sing along. This is our bias of unlovability to a t.

No belief is as unshakeable as an old belief. I would bet that many of us, if not most of us, have a belief that we just cannot measure up. So this familiar voice is soothing to us, like an apology after an abusive fit from one we love, we are lulled back into its grasp. This is our belief bias in full effect, reassuring us we were right all along when we thought we just weren’t worth it. And we are trash collectors of the highest caliber when it comes to defending our rightness, because another longheld belief is the belief that to be wrong is also unloveable. We find things that defend our feelings of being right about even that which makes us feel terrible! Such a lovely mess we make!

So algorithms come along, feeding upon our need for validation and offering it up innocently (just doing their job) so much so that we cannot help but feel justified in our worldview. We get our “feed” full of things that interest us, and then the interest becomes identity, so we are now being reaffirmed in how we identify ourselves. From there, it is a quick jump to not seeing the same affirmations in the people whose algorithms are completely different form ours, so we begin to believe we do not belong with the people around us who do not have the same views being validated, and either we must confront that we are “wrong” (wrong = unlovable) or they are just not aware, just not as awakened. But this is also a reaffirmation that we are “not like them”. There it is, then, that lifelong belief that you just don’t belong, 2.0.

I have never lost so much love as the love that I talk myself out of having.

The use of a language of spiritualism is not immune to the algorithms, and there is an issue now arising where the ends of psychology are being met with the questions of spirituality and answered in ways that appeal directly to our need to be affirmed. And still, there is a voice that proceeds affirmation that we are unlovable if we are wrong, so we hear the ways in which we are right and refuse imperfections! When we start to have feelings that defy our thoughts, we are at war with ourselves, and in this war, the casualties are most often our connections to one another. Because it is in our fear of losing connections that we safeguard ourselves from having them in the first place.

This article from Rolling Stone sheds a little light on what some people are experiencing in this new technological infusion of spirituality. People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies

I land in the camp of caution with a heavy dose of skepticism generally when it comes to technologies anyway, so my personal bias is usually to be a little avoidant of things like AI. That said, I can see that if there is a tool to be used, it can help some people find their way to navigate a sometimes scary world, and what is also true is that it can be used to avoid anything. It is the avoidance that fuels my addictions in the past, and even into today. That which removes me from my ability to be present with life on life’s terms right now. I don’t suggest avoiding avoidance; rather, understanding what it is the voice of in the first place. And that may be that little voice of unlovability creeping back in.

Also, let us not forget the name of grief that moves through us in so many vibrant patterns, seeking its way to be seen, and to be expressed, and all of the ways in which our avoidance inflames our tenderness to its steps.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

How wealthy are we to have bell hooks offering us such gifts for the table? This morning’s sit was, again, a confluence of serendipity. My thoughts before coming into the Beside meditation hall were around the place of death. My friend was killed last month while walking down the road in the early hours of the morning. Struck by machines of our unmaking, so it goes. My morning poem was in dedication to this man and the place that will be marked for his final moment. Did he erupt into a green flash on the horizon of his life? Probably not that anyone could see, because to see that, to witness it in its avalanche of splendor, to quote bell hooks, requires of us pause. To stop.  We aren’t accustomed to that, around here. So we move through it, missing all of the flashes of goodnight and goodbye (sounds like a good thing so it must be a good lie. -Counting Crows)

The signposts on the path are pretty clear today, as we find bell hooks is taking us to the place where earth is all at once a grave.

Appalachian Elegy 4. bell hooks earth works thick brown mud clinging pulling a body down heard wounded earth cry bequeath to me the hoe the hope ancestral rights to turn the ground over to shovel and sift until history rewritten resurrected returns to its rightful owners a past to claim yet another stone lifted to throw against the enemy making way for new endings random seeds spreading over the hillside wild roses come by fierce wind and hard rain unleashed furies here in this touched wood a dirge a lamentation for earth to live again earth that is all at once a grave a resting place a bed of new beginnings avalanche of splendor

Let me know your thoughts on the place on which you stand in the comments. It would be lovely to have a conversation spring forth from this experiment in opening.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

Today, we take on the alignments we find when we are in accord with life. What chord is being rung is not in question, as even discord is a harmonic tool that invites resolution into harmony. Dissonance gives depth to the music of our existence. It is precisely the dissonance that we are looking at in much of our practice because it is the dissonance we have, most of us, turned away from in our lives.

bell hooks has been our teacher this week (and for some time) in Appalachian Elegy, a 66-part love poem of sorts to the Appalachia she knew well. You don’t have to be from there to resonate with her love of the place, as the place is also our internal landscapes. In part 3, bell hooks takes us into the moment of darkness moving through us.

Appalachian Elegy 3. bell hooks night moves through the thick dark a heavy silence outside near the front window a black bear stamps down plants pushing back brush fleeing manmade confinement roaming unfettered confident any place can become home strutting down a steep hill as though freedom is all in the now no past no present

no past…no present

I am not sure what the poet had in mind with this, but one of the beautiful things about poems is that once released, they are free to shift shape as needed. So these two lines, to me, are saying that without your past, there is no present. The bear in this piece is like a wrecking ball of freedom, barrelling down the steep hill with abandon, a kind of freedom without fear or anxiety. Beauty is enraptured by liberation from manmade confinement. What have we made to confine ourselves? What thought-forms hold us in solitary spaces, struggling alone? Finding and stamping those forms may be a path to our liberation.

Then, Pastor Drew Jackson chimes in again this morning through his poem A Grand Unfolding from his book God Speaks Through Wombs. This poem, as is the whole book, is a response to the Book of Luke in the Christian New Testament. Not too many years ago, I would have stayed far away from anything touching the Christian Bible. Now, though, this work and these teachings bring the kind of familiarity that feels welcoming and inviting, known, and safe. Somehow, the healing of those religious woundings is bringing me back to the truth of the love and the suffering of the lore. 

A Grand Unfolding Drew Jackson Luke 6:12-16 A new chapter begins, turn this page, not because the story is changing, it is just progressing forward. I sit up all night, late like a writer into those hours only God is awake, to choose which names will dot tomorrow's blank pages. It is agony to choose. I hate decisions. I only do what I am told. Listening tells me where I need to go. As the soft orange blaze of dawn begins to break around the corner of my window shade, it is time for me to descend this mountain of struggle. To let the ink fall, letting these characters know which roles they will play in this grand unfolding as old as time.

From the source of inspiration, Luke 6:12-16, Jesus is returning from prayer in the mountains. This prayer was a deep listening. The kind of listening that may entail hearing what you don’t want to hear, but know that you have to hear. That to not hear is to not live. In this case, Christ hears that he must understand the complexities of his relationships with these twelve figures in his life. Remarkably, the naming of Judas Iscariot is the only name with a prophecy attached to it. To become the traitor. If you are at all familiar with the Christ lore, you know the importance of the work of Judas Iscariot. No Judas, chances are: no Jesus. no past…no present.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

Today, bell hooks' Appalachian Elegy takes us into contemplation with a bullet. 

Appalachian Elegy 2. bell hooks such then is beauty surrendered against all hope you are here again turning slowly nature as chameleon all life change and changing again awakening hearts steady moving from unnamed loss into fierce deep grief that can bear all burdens even the long passage into a shadowy dark where no light enters

We would do so well to remember that the shadowy places are the precursor to a new perspective of lightness in our bodies that cannot be synthesized. It requires us to really go there, to go deep into the heart of the caverns of our soul.

Today, I am unable to go into the morning sitting with much vigor, as I spent the whole day with 50 students on a day-long field trip to see one of the best performances of one of the best reimaginings of Hamlet I have ever seen. Fat Ham. It really took on the theme well of going into our shadowy places to heal. I recommend it highly.

However, the day-long trip to Oregon Shakespeare Festivals in Ashland has zapped my brain power for the night, so I must leave you with a brief exposition.

The poet Angela Jackson helps us to remember that our goal can be to come through the darkest moments. …to get out with love in my mouth

Epiphany Angela Jackson I’ve been old. I’ve been poor. I’ve been vulnerable. I’ve been exploited. I’ve been called an angel. I’ve studied spiders. I’ve lingered in love like a hummingbird outside a window. I’ve likened myself to a pigeon, a dove. I’ve been duped. I’ve been brilliant. I’ve been a genie in a bottle. I’ve been let out. I’ve been put back in. I am in the dark. How to get out with love in my mouth? from Poetry issue 110

Thanks for being here today. I would LOVE to hear your feedback on these morning sits, so don’t be afraid to engage in the comments.

All In Love,

Michael

An arrival of discomfort is an opportunity to deeper understanding. Most often, though, we avoid this. Oftimes with a cost of our own peace. Strange thing, that, to avoid our suffering and in doing so actually increase the suffering. One thing I am finding in my life is the ways in which I attempt to go around my suffering, to placate it with sensible thinking, or to pathoilogize it into a box in the corner of my mind, simply brings that suffering right back around the corner again, and this time with a vim to be front and center in my consciousness. I become overtaken by anxiety, or grief, or anger, or whatever accessible emotion my body can grab to express the deeper feelings I am experiencing, but cannot name, or define away.

It is this that invites in a moment of reflection and an invitation to to do the deeper work. You kind of have to. What is the alternative? To create new coping mechanisms for the overwhelm of yourself? Chances are, they would not be the most well formed copes, and would be just as temporary anyway, so why not face it full on, if you can? And we can. And we begin with three simple breaths.

Finding a way to express yourself is vital as well. It may be a physical movement of expression; a dance, a jog, twenty minutes on the punching bag, anything to move the body. Or, it could be a few minutes at the typer, banging away at the keys until the door opens.

So I did that, and the feeling did not go away. No. What happened was much greater than that. I grew. I recognized my capacity to hold even this was larger than my thoughts.

So I sat down, took time, and breathed into this body.

This body of pain and discomfort.

This body of shame and fear.

This body of misunderstanding.

And my breath was received. And my body released.

And I was healing.

Appalachian Elegy 1. bell hooks 1. hear them cry the long dead the long gone speak to us from beyond the grave guide us that we may learn all the ways to hold tender this land hard clay direct rock upon rock charred earth in time strong green growth will rise here trees back to life native flowers pushing the fragrance of hope the promise of resurrection

Again, bell hooks gives us the direction we are seeking. reminding us we are being guided that we may learn all the ways to hold tender this land.

This land is also our body. This body is also this mind. This mind is also this spirit. There really is only as much distinction as we need to feel in control. But we are not.

So breathe in, and breathe out.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

This morning was asking for what each day asks for: to arrive. Waking early helps me feel more like I have agency in my days and life, but it is not always easy. Some mornings, the chill in my bones makes it difficult to move without certain pain and discomfort. Other mornings, the promise of just a bit more dreaming binds me to the bed. But when I am aware of the work I want to do, I move through those feelings, stretch my body out to the world, and move. This is my work.

To stretch myself outward and toward.

The hardest part of the morning is the beginning. Once we begin, the rest is simply the momentum of life doing what life does. Move. So if all this movement is the trajectory, why stillness? Why silence in the cacophony of the world? The answer is simple, because this, too, is my work. My work is to find the stillness within the chaotic blur of everything moving by, and to be in the silence of a loud and persistent place. This is my work because making space even for this or even for that is the way into love. Love makes space. Love is my work. Making space is my work.

The Buddha's Last Instruction Mary Oliver “Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha, before he died. I think of this every morning as the east begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness, to send up the first signal -- a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green. An old man, he lay down between two sala trees, and he might have said anything, knowing it was his final hour. The light burns upward, it thickens and settles over the fields. Around him, the villagers gathered and stretched forward to listen. Even before the sun itself hangs, disattached, in the blue air, I am touched everywhere by its ocean of yellow waves. No doubt he thought of everything that had happened in his difficult life. And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire -- clearly I'm not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. Slowly, beneath the branches, he raised his head. He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

Whether or not this is a mistranslation of the words of the Buddha doesn’t even matter. It is what is in front of us to see, right now. So then, how is this for me?

We must understand what a light does. It shines, glows, illuminates, and helps us see more clearly. This, I feel, is aligned with the teachings of the Buddha. To shine a light of awareness is one of the core teachings through many Buddhist lineages. Beyone this, I find it to be quite valuable to my own practice to understand myself as the light I need to see all that I carry.

bell hooks, the great poet, philosopher, writer, feminist, artist, intellectual, voice of black liberation, and voice of Appalachia, gave us some amazing wisdom from the land itself, and for the land, which is to say everything that temporarily springs forth from these oldest mountains in the world; people and all. Her landmark piece, Appalachian Elegy, offers us 66 moments of pause for the land. bell hooks reminds us in number 50 that this is a sacred act of movement for us to walk…anywhere. This is our work.

50. from Appalachian Elegy bell hooks all old souls chant be tender walk soft the bodies of our dead lie here wildflowers red yellow white pink purple blue lost in a world of green all have been promised wedded to morning that will soon come tears fallen and gone only faint traces of grief remain sorrow lingers making soil soul deep our weeping ground

When the work is not on the ground, it is in the ground of our identity. We hold things to be true that just aren’t, not in the way we think, Rita Dove gives us a wonderful slice of time where grief, regrets, fears, wishes, resentments, all collide into the failure of memory to tell the whole story that the body will.

click on the title of Tarnished Psalm to hear Rita read this poem herself.

Tarnished Psalm Rita Dove She awoke thinking: Sunday. Had to be—that crack of light slivering her footsteps from bed to bath, silence anointing her solitude. Blessedness. A word her mother proffered frequently, hissed as steam issued from the scarred kettle hoisted in benediction above her favorite cup for tea ...  No. Her mother hated tea, was caught chewing raw coffee beans between pregnancies. Whose recollection had she borrowed, what wounded sanctimony? It couldn’t be Sunday— that was yesterday. Or will be tomorrow. Either way, there was work to be done. Source: Poetry (April 2023)

This is our work, too. To re-member with all of our awareness who we truly are.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

I am a little sad to find that the audio was not working this morning, as I thoroughly enjoyed this morning’s session. I will revisit the poems tomorrow, possibly, so please come back. I, unfortunately, have made it a practice to not record the sessions on an external platform since having some issues with my current free DAW, and will be resuming that practice after having lost not only this audio, but some from other projects as well. Learned!

I will take this moment to encourage anyone who is checking in on the sessions to engage a bit. I would love to hear from you, your thoughts, your struiggles, your openings. And not only would I appreciate your showing up, others would as well. It is helpful to hear another voice, and another, to grow into our own. So, please consider joining the conversation here. Thank you, friends.

All In Love,

Michael

Some days you just aren’t that interested. There are a million opportunities to pathologize this experience, and I am sure many of us could list our diagnoses like a roster for a really weird baseball team. But the truth is, sometimes a thought comes up that questions what it is we are doing; what is it that I am doing?

I came across this poem by Tim Seibles this morning, in the usual fashion. Ten minutes to gather my belongings, finish my hygeine, make a cup of coffee, feed the cat, feed the dog, find my left shoe, and make sure I have the keys; but first…let’s sit down and write and read poems until that ten minutes just doesn’t exist any longer. So that is what I did. Opening Septemeber 2023 issue of Poetry, I found this gem that sat under me like a pepple in my chair. Right there, the feeling of why stretched out onto the page, two of them really, lounging back like the man on the couch that has been here for weeks and has no plans of leaving or paying rent. But you think maybe he has some wisdom today, so it’s fine that he ate your cereal last night, and polished off the milk.

There it is. The feeling of dysmorphia, but not with a part of your body, rather with your body in the whole of the earth. A mouse in a maze. Click on the title of the poem to hear the author read the work.

Something Like We Did IV By Tim Seibles Space is the place. —Sun Ra Wind in the leaves of the live oak next door and the June bugs click-click hard bodies hitting the screen. Couldn’t tell how much time had passed. Light from traffic on the ceiling. Late that sound in the sky soft. Thinking out loud then inside my head: they were still there— the way they walked that bright flicker in their chests. Sometimes I have believed I don’t belong here— I mean it’s not just the American insanities but everywhere: the sense of having been left on Earth with no explanation— a mouse dropped in a maze Source: Poetry (September 2023)

Working through this experience with the intention of understanding and the goal of curiosity, we can get to the deeper places that is being asked of us. It is not the thought that is deep, but the listening.

Listen deeply. But don’t believe your ears. Look closely, but nevermind your eyes. Feel everything, and kiss it goodbye. This is the way through our forays into isolationism. To not shun or exorcise the feelings, but to embrace as an old friend and bid farewell to as an old lover. Try it. It starts with a few breaths.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

Hosanna! Save Us! The shouts came from the people as this disheveled revolutionary walked into town, on his road to his own death. That was the foundation of the poem by Drew Jackson in his phenomenal tome Touch the Earth called Hosanna. It follows after the pastors reading and responding to Luke 19:36-38, where-in Jesus makes his way down from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, and is met with the people coming out to call unto him, Hosanna! They are are not simply heralding him, they are begging for deliverance. For liberation.

This single poem took me into a thread of memory that was like sutres in the wound of my heart. I was given access to a place in my life where I saw my mother crying out for liberation. She knew she was trapped, unlike so many of us who assume our failures are our failures and not the limits of the prison walls of thought. She seemed to know, to understand, that she needed liberated from some kind of binding on her soul. And I heard the congregation sing “Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” and I was a child again, tempting to say only a child, but it is a child who shall lead them, they taught me. So now my child is leading me into my wounding and showing me the gory details, and there are ghosts. And these ghosts are not so scary any longer. They are only needing me to see them to be freed. And I do.

This poem brought much relief from a burden I was unaware that I was carrying. Thank you is all I can say for that.

Your practice, whether it is poems, or body movement, or breathing meditation, no matter it’s method, is an ivitation to reassociate with your history. There is a burden there, I would nearly guarantee it, and it must be relieved. Simply befriending our ghosts is loving our enemings, and that is another teaching I remember well, especially because it seems it was always an enemy teaching it to me. But isn’t that the way, too?

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

Some days, you can catch that glimpse of you and see how pretty the worlds sees you, and some days you just can’t figure out why your shirt feels like crying. Hmm. But then you breathe in and breathe out and pay the attention of devotion to your body, just for a moment of pause, and there it is: your love is here, and within, and never left, and you can stand up to move through this morning, Not so bad, eh?

Seven White Butterflies Mry Oliver Seven white butterflies delicate in a hurry look how they bang the pages of their wings as they fly to the fields of mustard yellow and orange and plain gold all eternity is in the moment this is what Blake said Whitman said such wisdom in the agitated motions of the mind seven dancers floating even as worms toward paradise see how they banter and riot and rise to the trees flutter lob their white bodies into the invisible wind weightless lacy willing to deliver themselves unto the universe now each settles down on a yellow thumb on a grassy stem now all seven are rapidly sipping from the golden towers who would have thought it could be so easy?

Well, Mary Oliver, I for one did not think it could be so easy. Now I do. Thank you for the reminder that we can always, at any moment, pause and see ourselves alight and rest down in our pretty.

All In Love,

Michael

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This morning I saw that the cherry blossoms have gone. This invited a moment of pause, and of connection in my heart. I know what it is to see newness gone. And, I know that it is an invitation to my growth as well. When I saw that I had missed the last days of the blossoms, unaware in my busyness, distracted by the importance of my own thought, I was ashamed. There are worse offenses, for sure, and of many I am guilty. But this one, this moment of reckoning the way the glow is not going to explode off the branch at first light, this one gave me a chance to forgive. It is much easier to forgive myself missing the final breaths of the cherry blossom than it is to forgive when my unawareness gave way to insistance with my beloved ones; but it is the same thing. One of them just has barbs in it’s story.

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen reminds us in Today to dance with ‘the sweetness and the bitterness of being both perfect and brief”.

Today Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen O day today, O day of bright hours Blooming on the waves, singing in the forests, The air glitters transparent, caressing, And the ghost of strange marvels Visits, one by one, your every hour Sometimes with sudden rests As full as the pauses in a line of verse. O day today, O day of fleeting hours Dancing in the sweetness And the bitterness Of being both perfect and brief.

Remember that we are not the expressions of beauty in the season, we are more steadfast in our temporary lives, to be able to stand through the seasons of loss and the seasons of birth, and the times of great and surprising gifts that come as flashes and sparks and flaming out at our feet like so many stars.

All In Love,

Michael

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How do we focus on Joy, and still honor the spaces of sorrow? It is through a practice of equanimity, to see with equal vision, that we can see all of the expressions of our being as expressions of creation, of love, and of spirit. It is when we use our mind and body to grasp tightly to any of these sensations that we become stuck in a loop of suffering and escape from suffering, which is still suffering.

By returning to our Joy, our experience of suprise and familiarity, love and connection; we can hold that sacred sorrow on the altar of our body and celebrate with Joy even this.

David Whyte offers us a poem of the journey from despair to joy here:

'The Journey' David Whyte Above the mountains the geese turn into the light again Painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that first, bright and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart. Sometimes with the bones of the black sticks left when the fire has gone out someone has written something new in the ashes of your life. You are not leaving. Even as the light fades quickly now, you are arriving. From ‘House of Belonging’ by David Whyte

In this individualism-centric culture, we can assume that we must contain and have ability to access anything we need on our own. By our self. This is a wrong thought. It is because we can see beauty in our world, that we can be reminded of where we are from. We are from where we are formed, and we are always formed into love. Even the deep gouges made in our clay become wonderful reminders that we are penetrable, and as such, we are connectable.

The desire to hide away our difficult feelings makes sense in the context of a culture that teaches us in so many ways that we are not supposed to feel pain. That somehow pain is an abberation of our “natural state”, which as children is to be happy little images of their parents ultimate success. So, of course, unhappy equals failed parent equals defensive parent equals dismissive parent. This dunamic extends to almost all power hierarchies in our lives, espevially the ones within us. This may seem to be a harsh criticism, but truly it is not shared out of resentment, but in recognizing these tendencies in myself to feel a bit impotent against the sadness of my loved ones, and to feel a bit helpless with it. Also, the ways in which this messaging comes through is vastly different for each person. My mother would soothe me with sweets and treats to assuage my pain, where-as my brother might ‘give you something to cry about’. These are the same lesson from two different teachers. By force or by fawning, we are taught that our pain is not healthy, and we never learn how to be miserable. So, the practice of seeking Joy is conflated with the practice of running like hell from pain.

These are not the same thing.

We can begin the practice of forgiving our training, understanding our humanness, and embracing our amazing capacity for feeling all with the equanimity of a breath. Breathing in, this is okay; breathing out, I am okay. Whether we are swimming in a sea of happiness, or treading water in the tide of sorrow, we are in the same ocean of love.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

What about the way you think you are has been able to change as you change? What has been kept from changing? How are you opening into love in each moment?

The work of changing is the breath of becoming, and in each moment we can become if only we are able to release what we think we should be, or are supposed to be. We have heard the weaponized ‘you’ve changed’ thrown like a grenade into the foxhole of our insecurities. Becoming with each moment is a terrifying sort of death and birth and requires it’s own grieving. Greif work is the work of loving what change is.

Joy Harjo invites this change loaded with this grief and pregnant with possibility in It’s Raining in Honolulu.

It’s Raining in Honolulu Joy Harjo There is a small mist at the brow of the mountain, each leaf of flower, of taro, tree and bush shivers with ecstasy. And the rain songs of all the flowering ones who have called for the rain can be found there, flourishing beneath the currents of singing. Rain opens us, like flowers, or earth that has been thirsty for more than a season. We stop all of our talking, quit thinking, or blowing sax to drink the mystery. We listen to the breathing beneath our breathing. This is how the rain became rain, how we became human. The wetness saturates everything, including the perpetrators of the second overthrow. We will plant songs where there were curses.

We are welcomed into the growth and rebirth here, and made aware that this cyucle falls evenly upon all of us; that everyone by virtue of being is worthy of cleansing, and able to be forgivable.

This is one of the most crucial elements to the process of becoming, being forgiven and forgiving. This is what has us grasp tightly onto what was, even when…no, especially when what we are holding onto is hurt.

What must open this doorway wide is the grieving. Not the grief itself, but the process of engaging livingly and openly with the grief. That is the grieving. The breathing in and out with the mouth of los, fill one another’s lungs with our own breath.

Drew Jackson takes us there:

The Tragedy of The Disinherited The doom of the children is the greeatest tragedy of the disinherited. Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited Down in the valley, in the belly of this beast, Tamir can't run free. The Emmetts are threatened till their young bodies are seized by the demonic, squeezed out of the life that others enjoy. And we are left helpless in the face of the evil that is suffocating our sons. Wondering what else can be done, we begin to lose faith that any change can come. So we lift our eyes to the hills, questioning when and where our help will come from.

Grief. Rage. Despair. Loss. and the questioning when it will change. This is the poetry of shift. The verses of becoming.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

So Damn Thirsty Hafiz First the fish needs to say “Something ain’t right about this camel ride- and I’m feeling so damn thirsty.”

What better way to start the journey than to awaken to your journey than to stop? Right there. Middle of the road. Middle of the breath. Just pause, and speak the truth that aligns with your suffering. This is not how I want to be any longer. I am suffering because this ride is taking me from here to there, and I want to get from there, to here. Right here. And we breathe. And we receive. And we release. And we forgive.

Simple.

Then Hafiz goes next into a bit more brash bar-dad advice:

Find a Better Job Hafiz Now That All your worry Has proved such an Unlucrative Business, Why Not Find a better Job.

That’s it. Just to find your dharma, your path, your way, and to do the work that that is asking of you. That is how we flip the switch of awareness. By first stumbling in a darkened room, fumbling for the light. When we find it, it really is as simple as flipping it. The practice is both hands feeling their way along the walls.

All In Love,

Michael

This morning I had the best teminder to say Thank You; my own suffering. Met with a barrage of small challenges to the way I think things should be going, I was coming further and further away from my breath. It’s too cold, resistance. It’s too early, resistance. This shouldn’t be here, resistance. I don’t have time, resistance. And amidst all of this resistance in my mind, my body was storing the capacity to deal with the inevitable central nervous system response: fight, flight, freeze, or faun.

I was fighting myself. I was fearing myself. I was struggling with myself. And I forgot that I can stop. Just stop. As I sat to put on my shoes without ceremony, just another obstacle in my morning to overcome, I started to feel my way in. I looked out and saw the cherry tree, still in it’s spring outfit, fluttering sweetly as if to tell me to shut up, and cut it out because people are trying to work here and I am cluttering up this place with all of my insistence on struggling. I looked to my desk and saw Ross Gay reminding me to say Thank You. It took some time for my body to settle into the breath, and it eventually did. And eventually, I was able to hear it when I spoke it. And eventually, I was able to believe it.

Thank You to Myrna at Expedition Press, a letterpress making some of my favorite print pieces these days, for making this beautiful piece of art of this beautiful piece of art from Ross Gay.

Step into Thank You with us this morning.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

When we open ourselves to the quieter voices of our grief, our regret, we find shadow puppet sorrows that cast large monsters from tiny hands; we can begin to see just how differently they may be from our myths around them. Opening to this place in our body can be daunting, scary, and seemingly impossible, though. It is as if there a tidal wave of emotional monsters just waiting to attack us.

This, however, is not true. The beliefs we carry of our terrifying self, of the low worth, or the chronic fail artist, they were not put into our being by large, looming monsters of our former selves. Many of them, if not most of them were placed there when we were only children.

That’s right. That big scary, mean voice that tells you to fear judgment, or predicts abandonment, or is never satisfied with your body, or your hair, or your mind…that is the voice of child you. It is the seven years old who learned not to talk about pain or they would make mommy sad, or the 11 year old who learned that fat kids aren’t supposed to ask for girlfriends, or that 9 year old who was taught secrets keep the family stronger. Those are childrens voices you hear when you speak to yourself from fear, from pain, from anger, or from rage. There is nothing to afraid of from these voices. There is an asking for healing. A quest for comforting. A begging for belonging.

The poet and pastor Drew Jackson reminds us to look upon the tyranical empires of the past to see that the myths only hold power if we don’t see them in perspective. When we see the fears of the monsters we have hidden away in our untouchable grief, we can see the giants thhey seem to be in myth’s lense, and also the smallness they are with the lense of loving acceptance.

As you go deeper into the practice of awareness of your bodies; your emotional body, your thought body, your touch body, your body of memory, you will find yourself ready to open to these voices. This is a gift of the practice.

I see the lines Drew Jackson is threading clearly, and then there are also the ways in which I see what I need to see to meet the need that I cannot express so clearly, and this poem does both for me. Thanks, Mr. Jackson.

I would love to hear your thoughts, experiences, questions, and comments on this sit today!

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity

Good morning, Loves! Today we ask the question: What does Love ask of me, today?

How can I show up, in the way that moves love through my body and through your body and through the collective body, freely? Liberated? Whole?

It begins in stopping. Stopping what you are thinking, what you are doing, what you are feeling, and just being. Just for a moment. A buffer between the ego and the eros.

Ross Gay goives a moment of what that may look like, on any given day.

Thank you, Ross Gay . Please head over and subscribe to his work, as he is often found showing up for what love asks of him, and sharing that with the world.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

We bring attention to our bodies not to fix or to change, but to love, and to offer devotion to “the soft animal of our body” that Mary Oliver reminds to allow to love what it loves. This devotional practice is an awareness of the sacredness of everything. There is nothing unholy, with the proper attention we are welcome to see this.

Wendell Berry offers a way for us to try this, to sit and to be still with the trees, and with that which is afraid of us, and that which we fear, and to be at sacred peace.

Sabbaths 1979 I by Wendell Berry I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle. Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight. What it fears in me leaves me, and the fear of me leaves it. It sings, and I hear its song. Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it, and the fear of it leaves me. It sings, and I hear its song. After days of labor, mute in my consternations, I hear my song at last, and I sing it. As we sing, the day turns, the trees move.

We will be back on Monday with another live sit, and I do hope to see you, and to share ideas with you. Commenting here and joining the chat are two great ways to reach beyond the boundaries of isolation, and to create these moments together.

All In Love,

Michael

One step closer to having our technology issues improved! And, of course, another meditation bell to bring awareness. The audio is not ideal here, as I forgot to engage the microphone in the streaming service today. However, this sit is meaningful to me today, and I think some of you will find a place of refuge in the unfolding as well.

I forget things. I dissociate from feelings. I ignore my physical body. These are all clever ways I have developed to avoid my suffering. However, much the way we forget to remember, our feelings swell up and spill out, and our body screams when we do not hear it whisper, our suffering avoided is only the way it grows. And it comes back, hard.

The practice of breathing mindfully allows us the moment to remember, to re-associate, to bring loving and kind attention to our bodies. In doing this, we find more room. We become aware of our spaciousness. This allows us the space to invite in whatever we are experiencing without feeling cramped and suffocated, or pushed out by our own body. Have you felt pushed out of your body before? Your thoughts? Your feelings?

When we are inviting in the subtle voice, we become familiar with the parts of us that we are always carrying, but rarely acknowledging. When we are acknowledged, we are loved. This is a practice of love. Pure love. Ugly love. Invisible love. Scared love. Grieving love. Abandoned love. Mistaken love. Stolen love. Abused love. Harmed love. Wounded love. Sorrowful love.

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Is there anything simpler and truer than to forgive ourselves this suffering? Does our love include all of that pain, sorrow, and failure? It does, and it has to. Mary Oliver really laid that bare in a handful of lines.

This morning, before pausing in my cannonball motions, I picked up this poem from a Jan Zwicky collection, and it set a certain pace for my day, which led to my breath opening a quiver in my chin.

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Thanks for sharing in this practice and bringing love into our world today.

All In Love,

Michael

We are figuring this thing out. Working our way into where the boundaries lie, and rubbing up against them to slough off our old skins. This is how we learn to love, to see where we are strongly present, what we are carrying with us, and to find where our awareness needs to have the light shone a bit more. This is what it is to be in love in the moment. Learning to let go of the end result allows for the moments as they pass to be wholly lived.

Enriching the Earth by Wendell Berry To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds of winter grains and various legumes, their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth. I have stirred into the ground the offal and the decay of the growth of past seasons and so mended the earth and made its yield increase. All this serves the dark. Against the shadow of veiled possibility my workdays stand in a most asking light. I am slowly falling into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth, not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness and a delight to the air, and my days do not wholly pass. It is the mind's service, for when the will fails so do the hands and one lives at the expense of life. After death, willing or not, the body serves, entering the earth. And so what was heaviest and most mute is at last raised up into song.

How many moments of joy and love have I lost to my fear of the end? It requires us to sift our thoughts, wheat from chaff, to hold onto the focus of our dharma, which must in some way be to love.

All In Love,

Michael

It is with great optimism that we meditate upon death at the beginning of a new journey. Because it is this hope that its temporary nature will be with us until our end, or theirs. This is a devotional practice, if I know any.

We read from the last published work of the great poet Michael Spring, and a sangha member shares a story of their recent explosive awakening with Kundalini.

All In Love,

Michael

We are coming today from our in-person hall, Beside, A Community Meditation Center. This is a goal that I have had and so many hands have helped to build over the years. It is a joyous and affirming occasion that gives me chills and purpose. Gratitude is the word of the day.

Meditation is long associated, and to our detriment, I believe, with isolationism and solo pursuits. Coming together in person is a way that we can collect our awareness in a dynamic and often surprising fashion. Joining in this sangha, whether in the room or on the screen, we are participating in a collective unfolding. I am so pleased to be stepping into this next room of possibilities.

All In Love,

Michael

This morning, I looked out onto the first sun’s glow, braggadociously projected into the yard by the now giant cherry blossoms, which just two days prior were small hints of Spring’s arrival. I was reminded that what I think from the information of my perception may or may not have been “true”, and also has shifted. The shift is both the changingness of “the thing” and also the changingness of my self. There was no disappointment or resentment toward the tree for its growth. So why, then, do we hold those resentments for ourselves and others? Because we are leaping from awareness to awareness, and in doing so, narrowly missing the gradual art of the shift.

I share a poem by Jan Zwicky, a poet I was introduced to by my friend Dot. Dot Fisher Smith can be met in this short piece by Reflections of Life on Youtube. I trust Dot in all things poem, and many other things as well, and you would do yourself a treat by clicking that link and watching her dance you through a few minutes of your day.

Music's Breath Sorrow, I raise my hands to you. So little we understand! I was idling there among the carved woods and the scented boxes, and I know that it was love saw me. But when it spoke, it was your voice that said my name. from Robinson's Crossing by Jan Zwicky

What a wonderful teacher this poem can be! The crisis crossing of emotions is the weaving of the container that is us. We cannot be one thing, one thought, one emotion, because we are not made of one thing. When I say I love you, that is the you made of the thousands of ways you were loved before. The hundreds of hurts, the dozens of mistakes. We are not one thing, and cannot feel one thing. But we often can only comprehend one thing without the practice of compassion and acceptance. This practice is inherent in our ability to be vast.

All In Love,

Michael

Okay, first, some clean-up. Tomorrow is NOT Good Friday, that is next week. And second; I am unsure on the pronunciation of Marie Charon’s name. I am, however, sure of her immense skill and the offering that I shared today.

I did not bloom to be seen. I bloomed because it was time. from Marie Charon https://substack.com/@mariecharon

I do hope that Marie does not mind so much that I shared her work here.

I also share a poem from Mary Oliver this morning:

Work, Sometimes I was sad all day, and why not. There I was, books piled on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words falling off my tongue. The robins had been a long time singing, and now it was beginning to rain. What are we sure of? Happiness isn’t a town on a map, or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work ongoing. Which is not likely to be the trifling around with a poem. Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard were full of lively fragrance. You have had days like this, no doubt. And wasn’t it wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a moment! As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.

Mary Oliver offers always a moment of wisdom for my day, no matter the season or time of my life, and I am deeply grateful for her voice this morning.

See you tomorrow.

All In Love,

Michael

This morning, I found a slew of things that just did not go as planned. With this, I left the microphone button on mute in my streaming software, so I had to add the audio “in post,” as the cool movie kids would say. Well, here is the Frankenversion of this morning’s sit.

All In Love,

Michael

I found a teacher in the toaster at a hostel last week. Moving through my morning like I was on rails, I was barely pausing, let alone stopping. I stepped into the food line, and, without much thought at all, filled a plate with all of the options I could eat. A few orange wedges, cut bananas, a scoop of peanut butter, and some bread. I was on a sort of automatic mode because it was not breakfast on my mind, or in my body at all. I was miles away, living in a what-if world someplace else. I put the bread slices into the toaster and stood. I was not waiting. Waiting implies a level of patient understanding and intention. I was annoyed. I was ready to move through this experience in as utilitarian fashion as I could. A minute or two later, I reached out and forced the slider upward, ejecting my lukewarm bread, entirely untoasted.

I’d like to say I stopped, smiled at the absurdity of my unwarranted haste, but I did not. I pushed it down, frustrated and seething, and did it again. Stood for a minute or two, barely breathing, and threw up the slider to again find the undercooked bread, a symbol of my impatience. Then I began to laugh. Laugh at myself, with myself, and to myself. I figured it out that the problem was not the toaster, not the bread, not the celebrating youth in the hallways of the world until 3 am: the problem was not even me. The problem was not a problem at all. Simply a habitual way of behaving and reacting to my own set of beliefs.

What I learned from the toaster, to stop, to breath, is the greater lesson for all of my behaviors of fearful control and pretextual inner violence.

To allow the world to be as it is, is to allow myself to be as I am.

All In Love,

Michael

Today I return from my trip. What a lovely thing it is to be able to go home, to find that connection to who you are from the umbilical cord of your understandings. To see the ways in which you have grown to accommodate more and in doing so, made more room for yourselves, and all of your loves. This is the practice.

Today I share a poem by Padraig O’ Tuama called:

Mother Brendan's Opening Words at Ash Wednesday Mass Darlings, look around. Nest to you's the nurse, the cleaner, the doctor, the child- minder, the waiting, the hoping, the barely surviving, the can't-get-out-of-bed-can't-sleep-can't-cope. There's the teacher out of work, the disaffected priest, the taxid driver, the shopkeeper, broke shareholder, tourists, retirees, waitresses, bankers, administrators, the tired and committed, the excited and the stressed. I know you expect me to bless you in the mysteries of God, but I prefer the strangeness of each other, darlings. Look around. In the name of whatever reason brings you here. In the name of anything that works. In the name of nothing. Are you burning yet? You will be. Take this cup and drown your sorrows. Take this bread and butter it. Lick it. Taste the salt. Nothing made you come here. Nothing stops you going.

Talk about dynamic. This poem is everything I ever wanted to hear in church, but I just simply could not—not from the place I was sitting. And maybe it was never really spoken, but I think it was, and it is spoken in subtle ways. The poet is amplifying that voice through Mother Brendan, and thanks to the breath, the silence, the forgiveness, the kindnesses, the boundaries, the distance, and the closeness, I can hear it well.

I want to write more today, and I have to keep my obligations and be mindful of the time to do so right now. The last two lines of the poem really seal the deal for me. I am here, because this is where I want, maybe need, to be.

Dear Reader: Where are you? What made you come to there? What stops you going?

All In Love,

Michael

Today’s poem is by Kate Baer, and is called Advice for Former Selves:

Today, I share what it is for me to have panic. I am curious if this is similar to what you may experience when your entire central nervous system launches into a coughing fit, seemingly out of nowhere, rendering all of your usual copes or dissociation techniques absolutely useless. The flood of emotional overload takes over.

This morning, I had this very experience, and the trigger? A potent and quite serious concoction of a cluttered table and a missing credit card. Haha, now THAT’S serious. Right? Well, at that moment, it sure was because at that moment, and now, it was NEVER about the clutter, the credit card, the this or that. It was always about me.

I was spilling what I was carrying, and in the case of panic, what we are carrying is a lot. Too much even. This is the nature of panic: to be far too much to carry and too much to handle when it spills out. It is a torrent. A flood of insecurities, abandonments, rejections, attacks, offenses, mockeries, impotencies, and shame. It is our muscle memory of failure. It is the magnum opus of the ego. At that moment, Ego Uber Alles. There is nothing more self-important than a flood of being attacked by our own identities that we so carefully craft and hone, measuring it out in coffee spoons. We are the center, and we are besieged on all sides, from the top and bottom, and from within. A perfect war.

This is the flood that we need—the cleansing, the releasing of the stores, and the watering of our garden of awareness. I appreciate the presence of water in this metaphorical journey. Often, panic feels like a raging fire, but the shift to the way of water in this case helps me see its form and formlessness as congruent.

The levee is broken and the waters have risen, and then there we are, treading water or marooned on the rooftop of our home, that centered place that didn’t allow us to be completely washed away. Then the shame.

We are embarrassed. How could simply dropping a credit card unknowingly and not being able to find it bring so much internal insecurity to the front? Most of your identity does not care about a credit card in the slightest. You could rationalize it a thousand ways, and still, you know it is not that important. So, then, what does that mean? It means that the trigger is not the bullet. That ordeal was simply the one place you forgot to build fortified armor against the walls of your avoidance. It is the pretext.

Years ago, maybe lifetimes ago, I was in a band. Angela was also in this band, along with about eight other young, fuming anarchists poised to change the world, one naked mosh pit at a time. There were fifteen of us on tour together, all in one converted school bus. We were traveling through the US through the spring and summer, putting us into New Orleans at the end of June. Sweltering torturous heat with waterboarding levels of humidity, mosquitoes and biting flies, and no A/C to comfort our suffering souls. You can imagine that the smells and the proximity to one another took it’s toll more than a few times. Coffee was the currency of sanity on those mornings, and if it wasn’t made to someone’s standards, or if there wasn’t any saved for the person sleeping two hours later than everyone else, there was an eruption. The morning fights got to be so problematic that we insisted those fighting acquire their own personal instant coffee to act as a liferaft. This worked, but only so much as the fighting wasn’t really about the coffee.

Not at all. It was about our personal discomforts and lack of ability to associate how we feel in our bodies with how we feel emotionally, and vice versa. We were discharging our ramped-up systems onto one another. It was ineffective, to say the least. Only years later have I begun to do the deeper work on myself to mostly release the pretext. Mostly. There are still days when some good old-fashioned blame and shame is just what the body ordered. This morning was one of those days. Until it wasn’t.

What is the shape of your avoidance?

What happens when that shape cracks open and it all comes tumbling out?

Let us know in the comments, and get the conversation going!

All in Love,

Michael

If you can picture your life, your body, home, city, continent, planet, and existence as a self-recycling wheel, you will begin to understand how eternal we are. Imagine a wheel spinning down the road, and as it spins, it collects all that was and turns it into all that will be. Meanwhile, you are right in the center of this recycling, which is what we call life. We call it now. We call it here. To Be. So ‘be here now’ in this sense is a repetition of three.

Now, maybe that existence is made of memory so that puts here and now on a timeline that we can measure only by our understanding. How far back then are we going? 10,000 years to the first planter we know of? 100,000 to the beginnings of our diasporic journey to consume the earth? 2,000,000 to the time, consciousness may have begun to split into what will become ‘us.’ We can go back as far as we would like here, and it really doesn’t change the metaphor.

We are recycled.

We are what was to be and will be what was.

My body stuff and your body stuff are made of the same old stuff that everything has been made from for a very long time. So what are we? If you can keep the visual of the wheel moving along, you can see us in the hamster's place of nowness, treading the wheel as it turns. Those who came before walked this place, and their footfalls made impressions time and again. These imprints in the clay of existence is what we now appear to be.

Nothing but the emptiness in the shape of the foot of our ancestors.

Not only our long-dead forebearers of DNA but also those in our lives who have left those tiny footfalls all over our personalities. The way we laugh. The way we prefer toast over bread or salty over sweet, all finely crafted little footprints of those who impressed upon us something we call “me.” We are actually made of all that we experience, and maybe that is because all that we experience comes from within us, from that spark of consciousness that sends and receives the transmission. Maybe. Or, we are simply creatures of habit, and when we learn anything, we stick to it out of an impossible laziness. Maybe.

Either way, we know this: we EXPERIENCE LOSS. We can KNOW all day an idea of “nothing leaves” or “all is one,” sure, but then someone steps away, and we say Hey! Wait A Good Godamn Minute! You weren’t supposed to go! That is the reality of our sensational being. We FEEL things, and we feel them DEEPLY. So deeply that they are the impressions that leave tracks in the path. We become apparent by our losses because of what we once had. This is where our meaning lives. On one plane, I am part of something meaningful and like it. My mind likes it. My sense of justice likes it. My ‘I told you so’ loves it. And, on another level, I am unimpressed by any bit of it.

This is where we are, at any moment, in the liminal spaces between drama and calmer, between coming and going, breathing in and breathing out. We can exist on all of these planes simultaneously and still be only the lily breaking the surface of the water. Maybe we are the water in this analogy. I really don’t know from moment to moment where I am swimming or if it is swimming in me. I do think, though, that it is a lovely way to spend a day, to sit and ponder the ripples in the pond that a moment of movement can make. And this brings us to today’s poem:

The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water Mary Oliver Inside that mud-hive, that gas-sponge, that reeking leaf-yard, that rippling dream-bowl, the leeches' flecked and swirling broth of life, as rich as Babylon, the fists crack open and the wands of the lilies quicken, they rise like pale poles with their wrapped beaks of lace; one day they tear the surface, the next they break open over the dark water. And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea - some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild”they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.

Thanks for reading, and sharing, and commenting, and all of the ways that you, too, are burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

All In Love,

Michael

So much of our shared culture in the United States seems predicated on blame. Our punitive notion of community and accountability cultivates a more profound culture of imprisonment. The belief of "the other" imprisons us, and in such a prison, our ability to be inward with our awareness becomes stifled at best.

The poem today is by Kim Stafford: A Chair By The Creek Someone spoke twisted words to hurt you, control you, tarnish your name. Good thing you have this chair out under the cottonwoods where leaves swivel trouble away. A nosey neighbor shouts across the property line — something about your right to be. Good thing those words were swallowed by the friendly rattle and chuckle of the creek. Settled in your chair, enchanted by the moving water, your thoughts turn green, your heart fills with slanted sunlight, whisper of aspen. You put all words of envy, anger, and greed into the sound of moving water, and listen as they flow away.

The practice of going inward with the breath is a gentle way to bring our minds and bodies together to begin a practice of wholeness.

All In Love,

Michael

Have you ever just felt like you had no capacity for anything more? Most of us have. The feeling of being ‘fed up’ is a really wonderful reminder for us to release. I tend to use metaphors a lot for the way my abstract brain tends to understand this world, and for me, this one works well. Think of you triggers as backup warnings in a vehicle. Our family recently found ourselves needing a vehicle. The one we decided upon came with some bells and whistles, and this I mean literally. When one is reversing, there is a shield of digital nuisances telling you exactly how far you have until disaster. This annoying beep is similar to my bared patience triggers that I sometimes have. They are both letting me know that it is time to pay more attention, and probably to just stop. Stop driving towards that light pole, or stop cannonballing yourself through the day with a total lack of awareness of your own needs and emotional state.

Dissociation is the cruelest defense. That moment of near spilling over of my resentment, my anger, my anxiety, my disappointment, what have you, is my backup warning, imploring me to just STOP! It is my practice to listen to both of those signals. In the case of my personal tolerance levels, this has been crucial to returning me to healthier ways of relating to those in my life. I am more often conscious of what I am ‘filled up’ with, therefore giving me agency to focus on releasing myself of the belief that I must carry this any further.

Sometimes it is very easy. Get cut off in traffic, cut in line at the bank, choose the bathroom stall with no TP? voice frustration, then simply let it go and get back to your day.

Sometimes it is very difficult. Communicate with a person you have built an alligator-filled mote of resentments towards in a way that releases your perceived need to be right and find intimacy in the forgiveness while also taking full responsibility to yourself for dissociating from your own body, thereby ignoring your own needs.

Wherever I am in the day will somewhat predetermine my capacity for release. Truth is, though, when I take those few breaths, relax my belief system, stop doing something, and just sit there…well…there is a much higher likelihood of my ability to do right by myself and the world around me. This is THE PRACTICE!

All in Love,

Michael

I am in a place that is not unfamiliar but somewhat new. It is a place between what I once was and what I am now. But even this is not true, as I am this and that. I am not apart from anything I have ever been and am not becoming anything I am not already. I don’t think that is how this whole trip works, really. We are not accumulating badges for completed tasks. My rebellious youth badge, my addiction badge, my recovery badge, my throwing a fit over not having it the way I think I need it badge. The experiences that make me at any moment run in all directions from my center, including spiraling.

So, when I am facing massive social adversity in the form of degradation of values and dehumanizing people I care deeply for, including myself, I am spiraled into a place within that was built by the anger and rage of another time. A time when that anger and rage was the vehicle I needed to get from there to here. Now I am feeling very much ‘there’ again. I awake each day to the same world as everyone else, and I do not understand how so many are so captivated by fit-throwing bullying and intentional harm being wrought upon one another. It triggers within my great sense of injustice taking place, and I am drawn to protect those being harmed, and part of me wants to hurt those causing it. There is a part of my resistance to accept my place in the whole of it, including the terrible, the painful, the abhorrent, that would choose violence. It is an active practice to not be controlled by the voice of reaction.

The poem today by Mary Oliver touches on this place of not knowing how to receive, or how to honor the thing coming in. In the case of the poem Mary Oliver is encountering this fantastic beautiful beast coming to her, and does not what she will do. Will she reduce the beauty into a few lines, or will she disappear entirely into the romance of the moment?

The Swan

Mary Oliver

Across the wide waterssomething comesfloating–a slimand delicateship, filledwith white flowers–and it moveson its miraculous musclesas though time didn't existas though bringing such giftsto the dry shorewas a happinessalmost beyond bearing.And now it turns its dark eyes,it rearrangesthe clouds of its wings,it trailsan elaborate webbed foot,the color of charcoal.Soon it will be here.Oh, what shall I dowhen that poppy-colored beakrests in my hand?

Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

I miss my husband's company–he is so oftenin paradise.Of course! the path to heavendoesn't lie down in flat miles.It's in the imaginationwith which you perceivethis world,and the gestureswith which you honor it.Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when those white wingstouch the shore?

It is easy to think of what my training tells me to do, and who to be, etc. But when I do not know who I am in any moment, I am actually on the precipice of growth. To not know my automatic response, means I am opening to becoming larger than I think.

Thanks for joining here today. You input would be quite helpful, as would your engagement with the like and share features. I am trying to make this offering to more people, so that we can have more perspectives on the practice.

All In Love,

Michael

Taking a lesson from a morning read of Mary Oliver, and recalling from it a life-lesson that I have carried since age 12, I am reminded that a small shift leads to great changes. Think of how a small shift in steering your vehicle may lead you to an entirely different place on the road. This is true as well with small changes in how we sit, how we hold our body upright or slouched, how we breathe, or even how we think about something. The slight shift in thought will eventually lead to a shift in beliefs, and a shift in a way of being. This is true whether it is intentional or not, so keeping this in mind allows us to either have agency or to feel like a victim of circumstance.

In the poem “How Would You Live Then?” we are charged with considering how a slight change in thought or perspective would change our view of what is valuable in our world. It is a worthy challenge to rise to.

How Would You Live Then?

What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaksflew in circles around your head? What ifthe mockingbird came into the house with you andbecame your advisor? What ifthe bees filled your walls with honey and allyou needed to do was ask them and they would fillthe bowl? What if the brook slid downhill justpast your bedroom window so you could listento its slow prayers as you fell asleep? What ifthe stars began to shout their names, or to runthis way and that way above the clouds? What ifyou painted a picture of a tree, and the leavesbegan to rustle, and a bird cheerfully sangfrom its painted branches? What if you suddenly sawthat the silver of water was brighter than the silver of money? What if you finally sawthat the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all dayand every day – who knows how, but they do it – weremore precious, more meaningful than gold?

Mary Oliver ‘Blue Iris: Poems and Essays’ Penguin Random House, 2006

The poet here asks us to consider that what we have been taught to be of value may not be as valuable to you as what you can experience in this moment, even when that moment may be a flit into imagination. How would this shift change the entire way you live? Just think of the possibilities if you were to practice that level of presence!

I recall an experience I had doing this work in the past for another employer. This was the first time I had been doing the work I love under the authority of another organization. I have been doing this type of work in my life for some time, so I knew I was comfortable with many things that may make others uncomfortable, and in the work of deep listening and compassionate companioning, being able to sit with the uncomfortable is key. So I excelled at this work in the eyes of my supervisors. In short time I was working with many people each day, both in individual sessions and in groups. I began receiving accolades from management as well as co-workers and participants. It felt really good. Then an external shift occurred that I was not expecting, and my resistance arrived with force.

I was tasked with opening a new facility, and in doing so lost the ability to sit in one-to-one sessions. This means I was not receiving daily accolades and getting that fix of being “the helper”. Of course I didn’t recognize at first that the feelings of resentment which were brewing inside were 100% my ego being deprived of its daily hit. Instead, I told myself that “this isn’t the job I signed up for”, and “they are really wasting a valuable employee” by putting me into this position. It was them that were the problem. They were in the wrong. Quickly I found it difficult to do the work I was assigned, and began to feel sick more often, too tired to be joyful at work, and calling out more frequently. I went from “finding my calling” to “just not fitting in here” in a matter of a few short weeks. All of this, by the way, occurred internally and was uninformed by anyone else, had no outside perspective by which to shift, and was entirely the workings of my addiction to being perceived as what I thought made me worthy of love. This was no one else’s doing. There was no them. Just me and my unchecked emotional dysregulation.

Then I stopped for a moment. All it took was stopping my thought storm for just a few breaths in my car on the drive to work. In a moment I was feeling into the immense discomfort in my body, the tightness in my belly, the inability to release my breath in my chest, the clenching of my jaw, and I understood that all of this anger, this resentment, this vitriol, was coming from within. I was the them. I was torturing myself with a set of beliefs. I had placed all of my self-worth in the hands of others praising me, believing myself to be worthless when I could not perform. It was an aha moment and led to a massive shift in my life that began as a small shift in the awareness of my breath. By the time I arrived at work, I had found that joy that was so present in me in the first months of working this job, and I sat alone in an office where no one would praise me, and I was happy to be there.

I eventually left that organization to work with an organization that aligns well with my values, and to build Journey Home Support Services, from where I am sitting and writing this post.

Small shifts at the center create massive change along the path.

All In Love,

Michael

Today I remember the importance of three breaths. Just three quiet breaths in the beginning of anything can invite a rich experience of presence. Wendell Berry takes us into the teaching a bit more with a Sabbath poem:

From this place, we can begin to accommodate all levels of being. We do not need to place our layers of existence in a hierarchy of worth, we can simply enjoy that we have so many of them.

Thanks for joining today. I would love to hear your feedback.

All In Love,

Michael

Today I take inspiration for this contemplation from an acquaintance of mine, Roger McKeever. Roger is a yoga instructor, poetry enthusiast, writer, and caregiver who tends a blog named “Calling the Birds Home”. Recently Roger created a post which contained a lesson that has stayed with me for days. I have shared this with my highschool students, and with some others in my work, and want to share it here now with you:

This is a fantastic lesson in understanding wrong thinking. The notion that I believe I should somehow be able to “do this on my own” is inherently flawed and is fundamental in the teaching of the Buddha, among many other teachers, to why we must move beyond individualism and understand our collective self.

The session this morning was cut a bit short due to an obligation I had previously committed to. Please let me know your thoughts on the topic!

All In Love,

Michael

Hari Om.

We are of the nature to die. This is a staple teaching of the Buddha, often cited in the “5 Remembrances”. This is knowledge. How, though, do we reckon what is known, how we grasp a concept; and what is felt, the feelings we cannot easily accommodate?

When we are meditating on the impermanence of life, do we really sit with the death of all we know? All whom we love? All whom we do not know? This is the work, I think, in learning to love everybody. To see them go, and to be taught how we too are going, by these great teachers of the dying.

Hash, Josh Heath, was a dearly loved person by so many. Just as Taylor Heywood was loved, Just as you and I and everyone here is, was, and will be loved. Take a moment to allow this love to be in front of anything else. In front of any other thought, memory, belief, fear. Just love, for a moment.

All In Love,

Michael

This morning, our audio quality is diminished, and the backing music tracks are not patched in. However, the content is still here, and in it I find some value. I offer it to you, and perhaps you will find value in it as well.

I talk about the in which an awful clearcut has become one of my teachers for understanding how vast opening can become.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

What part of all do you not accommodate? What part of your being is rejected, abandoned, feared, ignored, mocked, despised, hidden, or couched in shame? This part of you is part of your all, and you are part of the greater all. When we can understand that on a real, material, and engaged level, we can begin to accommodate “even that.”

Loving Everybody is not difficult because Loving Everybody is not the work. The work is learning how to love yourself. All of it. Every last part. The result is Loving Everybody.

Thanks for listening. Please engage with this project by emailing or leaving comments, questions, or suggestions here.

Always in Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

A simple practice can be a boon to a complex life.

To use the breath as your central practice, you do not need to purchase complicated programs or perform feats of great athleticism. Your breath, as it is, is the key to understanding what you may be experiencing that is just out of reach of your awareness. Taking a few moments to share intimacy with your spiritual practice will have profound effects on the relationship you are developing with the parts of yourself that have become fragmented by guilt, shame, and dissociation, which is to say ‘unawareness.’ Take these few minutes to share in the practice of mindful breathing.

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Hari Om

What we practice is what we become proficient in doing. This includes the things we do mindlessly as well as mindfully. When we experience discomfort or pain, we may have the tendency to avoid or dissociate from the experience, and this is most likely occurring unconsciously. As we do so habitually, we form this dissociated relationship as a way of being with ourselves and, of course, with those to whom we are in relation. Our family relationships, work relationships, and romantic relationships all suffer the loss of connection that we have created in our primary relationship: our relationship with ourselves.

There is no shortage of programs to purchase, gadgets for sale, and commodified religious and spiritual items to adorn ourselves with to “reconnect to our spiritual self,” but none of these are necessary. The most vital tool we have is to become aware of the breath and use this awareness as a teacher for what we need and how to provide for those things to ourselves, apart or together. The practice is simple, which is not always easy. It takes repetition, failures, experimentation, and, most of all, vulnerability to really form a strong and informed relationship with our own breath. It is not heroic actions that form this bond, but rather consistency and trustworthiness. You don’t need to take workshops that charge thousands of dollars to learn to become more intuitive with your own body; you only need to begin showing up and sustain your presence.

Simply begin to feel your breath, restricting it as needed, and pay closer attention to the smallest of details. These details are the quieter voices of your being, starting to come forward. Take heed.

All In Love,

Michael

Let me know what your experiences are in the comments, or message me privately.

What we practice is what we become proficient in doing. This includes the things we do mindlessly as well as mindfully. When we experience discomfort or pain, we may have the tendency to avoid or dissociate from the experience, and this is most likely occurring unconsciously. As we do so habitually, we form this dissociated relationship as a way of being with ourselves and, of course, with those to whom we are in relation. Our family relationships, work relationships, and romantic relationships all suffer the loss of connection that we have created in our primary relationship: our relationship with ourselves.

There is no shortage of programs to purchase, gadgets for sale, and commodified religious and spiritual items to adorn ourselves with to “reconnect to our spiritual self,” but none of these are necessary. The most vital tool we have is to become aware of the breath and use this awareness as a teacher for what we need and how to provide for those things to ourselves, apart or together. The practice is simple, which is not always easy. It takes repetition, failures, experimentation, and, most of all, vulnerability to really form a strong and informed relationship with our own breath. It is not heroic actions that form this bond, but rather consistency and trustworthiness. You don’t need to take workshops that charge thousands of dollars to learn to become more intuitive with your own body; you only need to begin showing up and sustain your presence.

Simply begin to feel your breath, restricting it as needed, and pay closer attention to the smallest of details. These details are the quieter voices of your being, starting to come forward. Take heed.

All In Love,

Michael

Sabbath Poems: X 1979

Whatever is foreseen in joy Must be lived out from day to day. Vision held open in the dark By our ten thousand days of work. Harvest will fill the barn; for that The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled By work of ours; the field is tilled And left to grace. That we may reap, Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood Rests on our day, and finds it good.

What could it truly mean to release our expectations, and even so much as to release, completely, our attachments to a result? Krishna tells Arjun to do the dharma as it is given and release the fruits entirely to him. In the Bhagavad Gita’s second chapter, Krishna instructs Arjun to focus on his duty and release expectations not because he wants to gain the fruits for himself but because Krishna is telling us that working with expectation is a recipe for feelings of low self-worth, for scarcity, and for resentments. It is also the way in which we create meritocracy that lends itself to our greater separation from one another and, in the case of a religious person, from God. The duty we have is not necessarily the same as our job. Our duty is that thing we must do. We must seek food, water, and air, and it is our duty as well to protect the sources of these things. Likewise, we must cultivate love, affection, and relationships with both that which sustains us all and with one another. We are interdependent for our survival and for the joy of being so!

At times, doing what we think is our job, we will forgo the duties we have to these very basic things: clean water and air, food for all, shelter for all in need, and loving kindness. Just Doing My Job is the epitaph of humanity. This all points to us needing to have a deepened relationship to rest. Holy, sacred rest. The kind of letting go where can feel our bodies spark into life with the level of release we are allowing. This is more important than just ourselves feeling better. Feeling better is good, and it comes from being better at feeling. Chasing pleasure is not the same as this. We must abandon the chase and learn to allow the coming of joy, in all of our ways. This relaxed, restful joy is a path into interdependence and respect, and a way towards a celebration of our togetherness.

What could it truly mean to release our expectations, and even so much as to release, completely, our attachments to a result? Krishna tells Arjun to do the dharma as it is given and release the fruits entirely to him. In the Bhagavad Gita’s second chapter, Krishna instructs Arjun to focus on his duty and release expectations not because he wants to gain the fruits for himself but because Krishna is telling us that working with expectation is a recipe for feelings of low self-worth, for scarcity, and for resentments. It is also the way in which we create meritocracy that lends itself to our greater separation from one another and, in the case of a religious person, from God. The duty we have is not necessarily the same as our job. Our duty is that thing we must do. We must seek food, water, and air, and it is our duty as well to protect the sources of these things. Likewise, we must cultivate love, affection, and relationships with both that which sustains us all and with one another. We are interdependent for our survival and for the joy of being so!

At times, doing what we think is our job, we will forgo the duties we have to these very basic things: clean water and air, food for all, shelter for all in need, and loving kindness. Just Doing My Job is the epitaph of humanity. This all points to us needing to have a deepened relationship to rest. Holy, sacred rest. The kind of letting go where can feel our bodies spark into life with the level of release we are allowing. This is more important than just ourselves feeling better. Feeling better is good, and it comes from being better at feeling. Chasing pleasure is not the same as this. We must abandon the chase and learn to allow the coming of joy, in all of our ways. This relaxed, restful joy is a path into interdependence and respect, and a way towards a celebration of our togetherness.

Hello Friends. I am happy to share this practice with you today. This one has more contemplation and a few short breaths together. There are times when just a few mindful breaths are all it takes to bring us home.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

You do not have to know. You are enough when you do not know as well as when you do. In fact, it is in the not knowing that we are free to expand who we thought we were.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Finding unexpected emotional expressions comes with myriad reality shifts. Insecurities, fears, resentments, and these uncomfortable feelings can take the forefront. The practice we hold will determine how we respond or react to this discomfort. We must become tender and be tenders to these emotional expressions.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Our Love must be brave to be free. If we are hiding, this is where the hurt, the anger, the rage, the disconnection will also hide.

All In Love,

Michael

How does what we practice on the cushion affect our practice off the cushion? We spend far more time in our lives outside of a disciplined exercise session. If we are practicing anger at ourselves, disappointment, judgment, or shame and guilt, then we are spending more time practicing punitive perfectionism than we do accepting our imperfections as the very thing that brought us into our practice in the first place!

ALL IN LOVE,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today, I found some understanding of one of my unconscious habits. I have a secret practice of stealing. I steal from myself, I steal from others, I steal from experiences, I steal from memories, and I steal from possibilities—all of this in the most seemingly innocent ways, by comparison. Through comparing my self or others, I am stealing the now-ness of the moment. The opportunity to be in love with what is is stolen away in an aggressive swap for what used to be or what should be.

Imagine being with a person who claims to love you, and all the while, they are telling you that you used to be better. Now imagine telling someone you love that they are lovely but not as lovely as another. If we were healthy in our relationships with ourselves, we would find an easy boundary against these things. Even so, this is the very relationship we maintain and sometimes even encourage in ourselves daily. We are the source of this suffering, and we are the ending of it as well. “The healing comes from the place where the hurt comes.”

So, what is the way through?

No spoilers, but it is practicing awareness.

As indicated through a spontaneous bout of lucidity this morning in the practice, awareness comes to us in many ways, and our ability to tap into it is strengthened greatly through daily practice. Turning what could be a session of woeful regrets and self-punishment into a time of reflection and fierce compassion allows us to see our behaviors not as abhorrent mistakes but rather as valiant and flawed attempts to motivate or soothe ourselves. We have learned that comparison is an option from the training we have received from the culture built upon never being enough. If you are never enough, you will be more likely to shop more, work more, pay more, sell more, more more more and on and on. Healthy people are sleeping at 1 a.m., not scrolling Temu for new and interesting ways to contribute to the landfill crisis. Those of us

who are chock full of regret and worry, self-doubt, and insecurity keep the world economy of suffering afloat. We are the ones sinking.

Allow your practice to pivot and utilize the awareness you are cultivating to bring a loving mind of shift and transform your relationship with yourself, which is to say, the world.

How often do we find ourselves turning adoration into resentment by simply bringing comparison into the relationship? Thousands-year-old teaching tells us that our ability to be in joy and in this moment is stolen when we compare ourselves to others or ourselves to ourselves. Perhaps we can practice non-comparison.]

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

This morning the best teacher I had was dog poop. This is not hyperbole, and this is not written for shock value. This is honest and true.

I jumped out of our bed to the sound of rain on our tin roof, a usually welcomed morning song, but not today. I knew the van windows were down from the evening before and was rushing down the stairs to put them up when I stepped into the darkened room below bare-footed into a fresh pile of dog poop. It was not how I wanted my morning to go, not at all. Cleaning my foot and fending off the distraction to immediately clean the floor, I continued to the van in nothing but shorts and a headlamp in the rain to find that the van battery was dead. When I finished jumping the van in my shorts and a headlamp in the rain, I returned indoors to find our home battery (we live off-grid) dangerously low and my headlamp blinking out. So there I am, cleaning dog poop by candlelight, just like the ancient ones!

With each of these inconveniences, I hardened myself against the discomforts of my day, making the succession of irritating things even more intolerable. I was in full defensiveness when my son came downstairs and asked me why the candles were all lit, and I snapped a quick and miserable answer in his general direction. I was toast. I knew it. I felt it. I needed to step back, tend to my irritation, and meet my needs. But what were my needs? It was simple when I stopped thinking about it. Soften myself. Breathe gently and soften myself. Accept and receive. So, that is what brought me from there to here. Listen or watch video for more.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

I am finding that the leftover resentments, fears, and pains from previous wounding or traumatic experiences are the unfinished work of the heart. When we allow the mind to be the only place of processing we engage in, we will often rationalize and justify beliefs and behaviors that are not healthy or helpful as a defense mechanism. Letting the heart have its space is a key to unlocking the stuck emotions and healing.

After recording this morning's sit, I was informed that a good friend and Journey Home Sangha member, Trice Knight, died in the early hours of this morning. Trice suffered for years from advanced COPD and struggled with his breathing. Even so, he joined us regularly for the morning practice and did what he could to find peace in his struggle with breath. We loved him and he will be missed. May he and all beings find peace.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

I am announcing that JHM will be leaving Facebook in the next month, and will be moving over to Substack, Youtube, and Podcasting formats following.

"If you want to feel better, you have to get better at feeling"

Let's explore where happiness and pleasure are not the same, and where the place for being with our bodies (mind body, touch body, emotional body) is a spacious place for allowing multiple things to be true.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomehomeditation@gmail.com

What is this insistence on working hard to heal? Let's talk about it.

All In Love,

Michael

Becoming aware of how our mind will become creative to avoid suffering is an amazing doorway into reliving the suffering we are trying to avoid.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

To Know the Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

by Wendell Berry

Today I explore what I mean by "unconscious driver". I tell a deeply personal story that includes some elements of abuse and childhood victimization.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Do not guard yourself against the world, guard your softness from your own fear.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Let us return to the fountains that feed us, give us real strength, and return us to our true selves.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

When we learn to be uncomfortable and not look away, we begin to sew the mending of the wounds.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

We are all in a lineage. Everyone of us is successive in a line of teachers, and the more we can become aware of how we carry these teachings, the more we will understand how we are teaching.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Are you hiding in your worry? Does it seem to fit a rationale of "to love is to worry"? What if we release the compulsion to fear and gently allow love? What then!

All In Love,

Michael

Journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Sometimes being here when you don't want to be here is EXACTLY why you came here. Let yourself do hard things, uncomfortable things, boring things. You are hiding in there somewhere, so settle in and become curious.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Let's talk about receiving and how we can learn to receive when we learn to let go of who we think we are.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

How did we get from here to there? and How do we return?

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Finding the connection in our emotional and physical pain is important.

All In Love

by Mary Oliver:

Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

Let yourself be fooled, again and again. It is the fool that gets to play the most.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

From the celebration of life booklet for John Ayers:

The kindly spirit of John Charles Ayers, born 15 April 1959, having given this world all he could, freed itself from the limitations of an earthly life on a beautiful spring day, 25 May 2024, at the merely ripened age of 65.

A man of vision, John was a premier poet, actor, director, composer, musician, master storyteller, teacher, craftsman, artist, and creative genius - he could blend the profound mysticism of Rumi with the regal beauty of Shakespeare, the down-to-earth folksiness of Dolly Parton, and the witty humor of Robin Williams, with a unique manner of expression that was purely John. And he did all this with extraordinary humility and a joyful generosity of spirit. The soul of a true poet does not merely pour its creativity into its work. John’s poetic brilliance and wit expressed itself in every aspect of his life, in every relationship, in his job with communications, even in the way he prepared his down-home gourmet-style meals, the way he dressed, and the delightfully playful way he decorated his home.

In the fall of 1980, still in his youth, John embraced the Teachings and practices of the Bahá’í Faith, which became the central theme of his life. His deeply profound and beautiful contributions to the programs and events of Baha’i community life, wherever he was, enhanced the standards of artistically delightful and spiritually meaningful programs. It was especially the children that would light up when John had prepared the devotions, or was about to sing or tell the stories. One of the great joys of John’s life was fulfilling his obligation to make his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in October/November 1985. There he paid homage at the sacred site holding the physical remains of the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, Bahá’u’lláh. While In Israel, he was shown great favor by Hand of the Cause of God, `Alí Akbar Furútan, who served as John’s pilgrimage guide, and who frequently and tenderly referred to him as “such a good boy.”

John was an elevator. He uplifted our hearts with the fire of the love of God that he carried in his. In one way or another, all who were touched by John’s magnanimity are now part of his living legacy. The world is so much more because he walked among us, and now feels so much less without his voice offering us one more unexpected jolt of humor, one more inspiring expression of devoted love for God, or one more magical encouragement that called out the strengths and the genius in everyone he met.

Go In Peace, John.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

This morning I intended to speak about singing a joyful song; a light-hearted opening to our day. However, something snuck up and out of my body relating anxieties and fears to the shared trauma of Covid that we all experienced these past four years. I see a lot of room for healing here, and I see no good reason to wait.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

What happens when our mind and our body are not working together? When belief overpowers experience? Suffering.

When we can be with our suffering, we can find the peace of letting it go.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

How do we relate to our experiences of feeling attacked, othered, or abandoned? Where is the truthful response under the passionate reaction? How does our thinking mind sometimes serve us and other times seem to betray us and our work?

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Song of the Builders 

by Mary Oliver

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

Reach out to me at: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Today I am happy to be here and happy to talk about why that is and what that means.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today was wrought with inconveniences! haha From having no audio in the video broadcast for the first 25 minutes or so to having the phones ring time and again, it would seem to be a honeypot of annoyances. For some reason, though, it was not. It really was just all part of it. Good teacher, that.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today we explore what it may mean to confront ourselves with layers of truth. We can confuse what was added to us through experience, through learning, through trials, etc. with being who WE ARE. Learning to meet those moments with ourselves with abrasion and without judgment can help to sluff off the old skins and clear the way for our meeting with our true selves.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

This practice must be a practice of radical inclusion, deep acceptance, and total love, as it all is right now if we are to heal truly.

All In Love,

Michael

Our internet in the hotel has been down since yesterday, so this is a stripped-down morning sit. Today we take on the final of The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz: Always do your best.

I take apart this simple statement and share how the effect of this agreement has changed my practice.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Don't Make Assumptions

This is the third of the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and one that I particularly love to be reminded of in my life. Somehow I was taught not to express a need and I agreed to that toxic trait. Now I am learning how to change my agreement and find a path forward into love.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Don't Take Anything Personally

This, the second of Ruiz's Four Agreements, is one of my favorite to work with because it is by far the most challenging for me. Fall into love with yourself and nothing will be fodder for rejection!

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Hari Om

Well, despite the intrusion of some people with a different kind of agenda in the Zoom of this morning's sit, I feel like the content of the practice and the contemplation conveyed my thoughts well enough this morning, so here is the audio, with the disruption removed so I don't get dinged for indecency!

All In Love,

Michael

Thanks for being a part of this practice with me. Today I share how we may tend to compartmentalize our practices, joys, needs, and desires in life, relegating only a few experiences to exist here or there. I share how this can be "a felling of brokenheartedness so profound that I was spellbound" in the words of bell hooks.

Reach out and connect journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Today we address some issues with individualism, addiction, separation, and reunification.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

This morning I take on the fears that I feel when I am stuck in the dilemma of making choices about my path. It is a feeling that is familiar to many of us. When I take the time to sit in stillness, breathe in stillness, still the mind, and still the body; I find that I am moving in harmonious flow.

Read: Kabir.

All In Love,

Michael

How often do you create? How often do you FEEL creative? Today I explore where I think I may have lost touch with knowing I am a creative being by nature, and resigned to the capitalist control of refined creative production over just singing with the rising sun.

All In Love,

Michael

Thank you for being here. Today I explore some of the shadow feelings, darkness, and low energy states that come to us all. We are joined by Cat Gina Cole, a friend of mine and an active writer, and teacher of various witchcraft and folk magic traditions.

Reach out! journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Today I talk about what "the practice" means to me. You hear me say "the practice" all of the time, but may not be sure of what I mean. I may not always be sure myself!

Reach out to me at: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Have you thought you were doing the work, but it turns out you were "doing your job"? How frustrating it can be to find ourselves judging others and disconnecting from our ability to relate with compassion. This frustration is our invitation to take a breath and remember our work, despite our job.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

email for the Zoom link to join us live!

Today I read a poem by Mary Oliver called The Reckless Poem. I share how it can be freeing to release the absolute knowledge of who "I am" to move into the temporality of it all.

reach out! journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

This morning we feature another Hafiz poem read by Daniel Sperry. www.danielaustinsperry.com @cellotroubadour on Instagram.

Thanks, Daniel!

I speak to separation and reunification with the soul, the self, and Beloved. Such an experience to become aware that you have felt such separation, and even in the bliss of reuniting, you know you will separate again.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Sometimes our beliefs require us to ignore what is true and allow us to paint over what is in front of us to be seen. This is true for all sorts of beliefs, be they beautiful or difficult things about our lives. Using the breath, we can move beyond belief into the place of awareness.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Some things take us away from this moment. Whether it is to a regret or a nostalgia for something in the past, or an anxiety or hope for the future, we can be taken from here to there in a moment. It is the breath that will bring us back from there, to here.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Day two of utilizing Zoom to share the morning sit. Today I share thoughts on Maya, the illusion of the material world, and how we can find a healthy relationship to it all by tending to and caring for one another.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today there is an eclipse occuring over Middle America. Many people seem to be sharing the same old "end-times prophecies" that we recycle anything there is an event that is larger than our individualism. It has been said that people can envision the end of the world before they can envision the end of capitalism. Something to think about.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Could your trigger sbe the most honest expression in the room? If you want to know your "authentic self" look directly into the eyes of your triggers and know they are yours to see, to feel, to love, and to heal. Let's work out how we can do this, together.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

What is this feeling in my body? What brings me into defensiveness? Isolation? Picking sides? Manipulation? Insecurity is a glowing symptom of something deeper and older and can be a tool to discover what is underneath. Let's share some of this work, sit with our breath, and dig deeper.

Today I share a poem by Wendell Berry that I have shared before. This poem really captures my feeling of what this work I am doing IS.

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

+ Wendell Berry

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Spring has sprung and I feel it! The customary folk magic practice of sweeping the hearth and home over the threshold and out of the door is upon us! As we clean in the material world, and make sweep for the new growth in our gardens, in our homes, and in our bodies, we can take this practice as a pure spiritual practice, and a jolt to unite our bodymindspirit experience.

Reach out to me at: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Today I continue exploring the ways in which we can understand meeting needs. Sometimes it is in seeing what needs are being expressed by others, and finding our places of dissociation or rejection of those needs as a way to separate from our own needs. It's a lot, and it can get messy, and mucky, and that is okay. We just come back to the breath and settle it all down, and shine an internal light on all of our little hiding places.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today's central topic is coming into relationship with our needs, under what we think we need, or desire, and digging through all of the ways in which we fail to meet needs with things, stuff, and even suffering. When we refuse pain, we suffer it. Sometimes the pain IS the medicine.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

To Be present with the here and now must INCLUDE our awareness of our history and what we are helping to cultivate for the future.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Thank you to Daniel Sperry www.danielaustinsperry.com for the use of his performance of Hafiz's Admit Something.

All In Love,

Michael journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

It is through movement, whether subtle or drastic, that we fully engage with what is. Even in Stillness, there is shift occurring, and catching onto this movement is a way we can find our place in this existence with health and well being.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today I address the notion of compassion fatigue. We are not finite in our love or our place of connection. What is called compassion fatigue is a shift of responsibility for external barriers to the self as a form of self judgement, instead of an indictment on the systems that lack compassion. Let us come together in practice of a comapssionate loving kindness, and connect through barriers that we did not place.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today I talk a bit about the foundations in my life for devotional practices. It is with practices of devotion that I find my sense of belonging.

All In Love,

Michael

This morning I was inspired into a practice by listening to Ray Raghunath Cappo's audio book version of his new memoir "From Punk to Monk". Very good audiobook, and I recommend to anyone interested in Bhakti Yoga, Krishna Consciousness, or Punk history. https://www.instagram.com/wisdom_of_the_sages/reel/CwIWj45KKjH/

Uplift the people in your life today, in your mind, words, and heart.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

When things are not going as you thought they should, allow this to be an invitation to awareness of the role you may be playing, and release into the moment of becoming the vehicle of the soul.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today, I share how a triggering event this past weekend helped bring into a deeper connection to a wound I have carried since childhood. Utilizing the skills gained in the practice, I was able to create a safe space for my self to go into the trauma and to bring healing into my life. I am ever grateful for this expanding.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Meditation today without music or recorded sound. Light guidance as we allow what is the world around us to move through us. We are not separate, we only haveto pretend we are for the sake of the game.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today we explore the different ways we find into love. Let me know your thoughts. journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

There is nothing wise ever spoken. Wisdom can only be received.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today we explore the sensations of the body, mind, and emotions and how they affect our actions. How do you experience pain? Joy? Numbness? What is your trained response to any feeling? How familiar can you become with the subtle sensations of the self?

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Happy Birthday Bob Marley!

Today we explore what it may mean to not worry about a thing and to have the faith of a mustard seed.

Thanks for joining us today. I appreciate you.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

We create perfectionism as a way to rationalize our self-loathing. We must move beyond this fear to relieve our lives of crisis addiction, and to find equanimous love with one another.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Finding our way into being of service is the key to keeping our connection that which is larger than our suffering. It is who we truly are, and that is a part of the whole.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

How often do we play with the roles that we craft? Don't just perform, DANCE! SING! PLAY! Become enamored with the game, but don't get stuck in it.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

May I be Happy.

May I be at Peace.

May I be Safe.

May I be Love.

May You be Happy.

May You be at Peace.

May You Be Safe.

May You be Love.

May They be Happy.

May They be at Peace.

May They be Safe.

May They be Love.

May All Beings be Happy.

May All Beings be at Peace.

May All Beings be Safe.

May All Beings be Love.

" I don't just wish you rains, Beloved - I wish you the beauty of Storms" -- John Geddes 'A Familiar Rain'

Find kindness as a way into relationship within and without, and it will be easier to simply love.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Breathing in I am becoming, Breathing out I am going away. There is more to learn from focusing on three breaths than is taught by a hundred teachers. We are always going away. Embracing the play of identity is a way to embrace the human experience of temporariness.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today, let's not only speak of our feelings but feel them deeply, beyond the thoughts of judgment.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

What we meditate upon, we become. This is an old teaching with a value that is true and timeless. Be free in your mind and in your heart. You can LOVE it ALL.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

There are instructions in nearly every spiritual tradition as to what it means and how to love everybody. It is what we are made from. Make it your practice, please.

All In Love,

Michael

Bringing loving kindness into your world does not require a heroic feat. Just a small adjustment from within can make a great shift, like a ripple growing as it moves.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Our "spiritual practice" cannot be relegated simply to a few prescribed exercises that we do, separate from our lives. Please know that each step along the way is spiritual. We are not only alive for some moments in our day; as such, the gift of our awareness is there for us in each moment of life. Each breath, a practice.

All In Love,

Michael

In our endless chase for happiness, we can learn to be still and allow ourselves to carry all that we suffer to reject, and this is the invitation to a truer happiness than can ever be found outside of us.

All In Love,

Michael

The recognition of our place in everything, at any moment, is the basis of Spirituality. The breath is the word for spirit across sacred texts throughout time, and in its receiving and letting go, we have everything we need in a moment. Taking the lesson and moving this into our forgiveness, acceptance, goodbye, and love IS the practice.

Reach out: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Today is a rebroadcast of a brief practice, and a bit of commentary on what is happening in some ways now.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

When we experience clear roads or fog patches, we can simply become aware. The expansiveness of our being can release the focus on the thoughts that punish our minds.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Let us release our resistance to knowing we are not isolated experiencers, but sharing this moment of spirit.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Let's find the way into our pain and invite healing through loving acceptance, kindness, and compassion.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

We must return our focus of service to that which is closest to us, to our heart, our body, our breath; only then are we of service to that which is further.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Sometimes we carry tensions that we are unaware of, and this may lead us into aggressive or isolating behaviors. We can find deeper release in bringing our awareness to the tension, and in introducing compassionate tension into play. Let's begin a practice of this in our physical body, so that we may integrate the practice into other planes of consciousness.

When we understand our vastness, everything becomes no big deal, and we can carry it all. We are having an experience of being a person. That is all.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

How do you decorate the walls of your consciousness? Is it a temple to love? Bring yourself into the loving compassion we need with the smallest reminders, the in-breath, the out-breath, the spaces between. With your loving attention, you will bring yourself here in any situation.

All In Love,

Michael

How often do we allow our unconscious driver to take the wheel and steer us through a journey of fear, defensiveness, reaction, and rejection? Let's take three simple breaths to begin the journey inward to where the root of the fear actually lives.

All In Love,

Michael

Let's join the feast with all of who we are. Our pain, our joy, our suffering, our beauty; and let's be messy, and difficult, and fun, and celebrate that we are at this moment, and where we belong.

https://landback.org/

All In Love,

Michael

Let's take a moment to remember that we are not isolated incidents of existence, and understand more fully that we are deeply connected. That violence begins within one of our bodies, is a truth we must know so that we can begin to shift our belief towards our loving nature. We cannot look away from the pain, from the suffering, from the atrocities; but must look into the eyes of it all until we see ourselves within and love it.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

To be in the moment, in each breath, with anyone or any feeling is to be IN gratitude. It is not a feeling but being with feeling itself.

All In Love,

Michael

A bit of a meandering thought this morning, as I find my way into the moment, through all of the things I THINK I should be.

All In Love,

Michael

Connect, today, with your loving kindness and see yourself in everything; in every person. And, love it.

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

How are we being tender to our needs? How are you showing yourself attention, loving-kindness, or not? In what ways does this affect your relationships?

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Thanks for joining us today.

All In Love,

Michael

Let's Breathe.

All In Love,

Michael

Poem "Wild Geese" written and read by Mary Oliver.

Be born today, into every moment.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Please reach out to journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today I have been thinking about Matthew Perry, my own experience with addiction and subsequently being reduced to that identity in many ways, and how we can find our way into sitting WITH our pain instead of hiding, masking, or ignoring it.

All In Love,

Michael

reach out: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Let's join the table with the dead who brought us here, and know that we are only a small part of the ongoing thread of life.

All In Love,

Michael

When is there an end to the seeking we have? Must there be an answer to every question? Must there be a question?

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Thank you for joining us today as we practice seeking wholeness in love. Today we share in Nadi Shodhana, a pranayam vedic breathing technique of alternate nostril breathing. This practice is fantastic at helping us find our center, which is where the heart is.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Thanks for listening today.

All In Love,

Michael

Let's take a moment to sit, breathe, and find stillness.

All In Love,

Michael

Releasing our belief of control and letting ourselves be with the ride is a wonderful gift of witnessing the world change.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Let's share the practice of connection, and walking with wholeness.

All In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

In the mire of illusion, we can believe so easily that we are separate. We can buy into the division. We can forget, daily, who we truly are. Let us have our practice to Re-Member; I Am You.

Please reach out to me at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com with any comments or questions.

All In Love,

Michael

Understanding we are peace, we are love, we are connected means that these values are not ideals to strive for, but from from which we begin and spring forth their fruit.

All In Love,

Michael

Let us practice Love even in times of great strife, struggle, and sorrow.

Today we share a Metta Meditation as an answer to anxiety, fear, and resentment towards self.

Let's sit for a moment, and connect our physical body, mental body, and emotional body, simply by following the breath.

Thanks for joining us on the Journey Home. Reach to journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com and check out www.journeyhome.care

All In Love,

Michael Franklin

Today we cultivate curiosity and slow down time.

Thank you for joining me on the Journey Home. Please reach out to me at: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Thanks for joinign today. Memento Mori, let us remember our death today. Everything we know is always changing, shifting, transforming, and going away. This is always a good place to start.

Reach out to me at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All in Love,

Michael

Thank you for joining ont he Journey Home, today. Today I have been contemplating on how much energy we are putting into "healing". It seems that we are finding more ways to be anywhere but here, anytime but now. I am curious about this in myself. What do I need to become? What have I become that I need to avoid? How can I be present and in love?

Be Well,

Michael

Good morning friends. How often do we get to recognize that all of our compartmentalization is simply the layers of the same experience? There is one common demoninator in all of the roles, the costumes, the personas, the masks that we wear throughout our days: me. We are always the same I Am no matter the casting credits we attribute to ourselves. The idea that we can compartmentalize these things is an illness, I believe, and leads to more and more illnesses. Good thing we have a practice for that...

Thanks for joining on the Journey Home.

Reach out to journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All in Love,

Michael

Good morning. The seasons are in shift, and I feel invited in to the remembering that I, too, am a part of the constance of change. Everything I think I am, everything I think You are, and everything I have ever seen is going away. When I am healed, and whole, I am aware of this and it flows. When I am forgetful of my nature, I am stubborn, obstinate, and suffering the inability to be who I think I am in any moment. I enjoy this season the most.

Thank you for joining me on the Journey Home.

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Today we have a contemplation on how kindness is an act of connection, of abundance, and may be the cure for many of the crises we have today. This is a challenge to bring kindness into our day today, and to grow it tomorrow, and again, again. Even if we are not feeling connected, kindness can be the balm for that wound. Try it.

Thank you for joining me on the Journey Home.

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Be Kind,

Michael

Hello friends. Today we explore what it might mean to heal the relationships we have with the various expressions of our self. How do I relate to happiness? To pain? To lonliness? Sadness? and how do I relate to who I truly am through these expressions?

Thanks for joining on the Journey Home. Please reach out at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com or leave me a voice message through Spotify. I would love to have the conversation with you.

All In Love,

Michael

Today I go into what it is to feel a different expression of spirit than what you think you should be feeling. How can I show for love if I suppress the expression of spirit that is being co-created with my body? I am not sure I truly can, and this block leads me to feel symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other-ness. Let's breathe and open these blocks.

Thanks for joining on the Journey Home today. Please reach out to: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com with any comments, questions, or concerns. I would love to hear from you.

All In Love,

Michael

Hello Friends. Today I share a bit about the feeling of finding stillness within the rapid shifts as well as the boredom of a calm moment. Finding stillness can be confused for dissociation, but may be the very antidote for it. Finding who we truly are allows a presence that can weather any storm, or lack there-of. We are not the cup, but the tea.

Thanks for joining us today on the Journey Home.

Please reach out with any comments or questions; participation really helps this experience to deepen.

All in Love,

Michael

Be Well,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Layers and Layers and Layers, Then You.

We read from Ram Dass' Be Here Now, page 57. And talk through what it is to sit in the practice and not the outcome.

Thanks for listening, sharing, and commenting, it really helps more people to find us as well.

I appreciate you.

In Love,

Michael

journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Do I contradict myself? Very Well, I contradict myself. I am vast. I contain multitudes. - Walt Whitman

Kepp a little space in your heart for the unimaginable. - Mary Oliver

Lokah samasthah sukhino bhavantu.

A prayer today for those on Maui, and for those everythwere so that I can find a little space in my heart for everyone who suffers, including me.

In Love,

Michael

This morning I share thoughts on and bring intention into our practice surrounding the idea of bringing out meditation off of the seat, and our yoga out of the studio, and into our daily lives, inviting awareness into the "mundane" moments of our day. Seeing the sacred in the mundane is the antidote to the profane.

Thanks for joining today on the Journey Home. Please reach out to journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com with questions, comments, and inquiries.

Always Love,

Michael Franklin

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who made the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even,

themiserable and the crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens to be

where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light

–good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the dayin happiness, in kindness.

― Mary Oliver

Let's move into bearing the weight of kindness, today. The weight that balances the things from which we move away. journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com send comments, questions, or inquiries here!

Welcome, friends, to the morning sit. We have done this so many times, and always it is new. Each breath a renewal, each exhale a cleansing of th epalette of our awareness. Today we share a poem by John Roedel (johnroedel.com)

my brain and
heart divorced

a decade ago

over who was

to blame about
how big of a mess
I have become

eventually,

they couldn’t be
in the same room
with each other

now my head and heart
share custody of me

stay with my brain
during the week

and my heart
gets me on weekends
they never speak to one another

– instead, they give me
the same note to pass
to each other every week

and their notes they
send to one another always
says the same thing:

“This is all your fault’

on Sundays

my heart complains
about how my

head has let me down
in the past

and on Wednesday
my head lists all
of the times my
heart has screwed
things up for me
in the future

they blame each
other for the

state of my life

there’s been a lot
of yelling – and crying

SO,
lately, I’ve been
spending a lot of

time with my gut

who serves as my
unofficial therapist

most nights, sneak out of the
window in my ribcage

and slide down my spine
and collapse on my

gut’s plush leather chair
that’s always open for me

~ and just sit sit sit sit
until the sun comes up

last evening,

my gut asked me

if was having a hard
time being caught
between my heart
and my head

nodded

said didn’t know
if could live with
either of them anymore
“my heart is always sad about

something that happened yesterday

while my head is always worried

about something that may happen tomorrow,
lamented

my gut squeezed my hand

‘just can’t live with

my mistakes of the past

or my anxiety about the future,’
sighed

my gut smiled and said:
‘in that case,

you should

go stay with your

lungs for a while,’

was confused
– the look on my face gave it away

“if you are exhausted about

your heart’s obsession with

the fixed past and your mind’s focus
on the uncertain future

your lungs are the perfect place for you

there is no yesterday in your lungs
there is no tomorrow there either

there is only now

there is only inhale

there is only exhale

there is only this moment

there is only breath
and in that breath

you can rest while your
heart and head work
their relationship out.’

this morning,
while my brain
was busy reading
tea leaves

and while my
heart was staring
at old photographs

packed a little
bag and walked
to the door of
my lungs

before could even knock
she opened the door

with a smile and as

a gust of air embraced me
she said
“what took you so long?’

by John Roedel

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. Reach out and connect: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All in Love,

Michael

Good morning, friends. We are back form a long break from broadcasting Journey Home in digital format. It feels right today to be here, sharing this breath with you. 

I share a Wendell Berry poem from A Timbered Choir - The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997.

I go among trees and sit still.

All my stirring becomes quiet

around me like circles on water.

My tasks lie in their places

where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes

and lives a while in my sight.

What it fears in me leaves me,

and the fear of me leaves it.

It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.

I live for a while in its sight.

What I fear in it leaves it,

and the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,

mute in my consternations,

I hear my song at last,

and I sing it. As we sing,

the day turns, the trees move.

+ Wendell Berry

I think this says it well. 

Thank you for joing me on the Journey Home.

Thank you to our brother in love, Benjy Wertheimer for the beautiful music with his track Devotion from his album Voice of the Esraj, today. 

In devotion, we rise to meet our beloved, and we fall before our beloved. This practice of raising our arms, and bring our heart forward, and surrendering our bodies in gentle collapse at the feet of our beloved is a practice of devotion. As our bodies rise to meet our breath, and fall in surrender as we breathe out, we are devotees to spirit, to life, and as we meet our lives with awareness, we become devotees to that one thing that moves through all: love.

Thank you for joing me on this Journey Home Meditation. journeyhomemedtiation@gmail.com

ALl In Love,

Michael

We hear much about "living authentically", but what could that really mean? Is authenticity a prescribed way of being? How could it be? Only what is in this moemnt, right now, is a product of all of it's being, and that is the authentic moment. The moment lived in timelessness; in full presence. 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation.

All In Love,

Michael

Be with yourself with no exectation, no judgement, no memory, and just hold what is with total adoration, and you can begin presence with everything, everywhere.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. Reach me at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Today we continue to work through Be Here Now by Ram Dass, treating it as a book of sutras, or simple sacred teachings. I bring int he notion of Jung's shadow archetype into the discussion and bring up the concept of orginal shame and wholeness. Dig in!

Thank you for joinign me on this Journey Home Meditation, Reach out to me at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

I Am Receiving. I Am Letting Go. This is everything we really need to know. 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation.

All In Love,

Michael

We are always a breath away. A breath away from from dying, a breath away from being born. In just one conscious breath lies the beginning of a new perspective, and the end of suffering a stuck pattern. Just one conscious breath. 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. Reach out to journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com with any questions, comments, suggestions, or requests.

All In Love,

Michael

Good morning friends, and thank you for being here today. Let's go inward, into the expansive places of nowhere, and begin to seek understanding, and understand seeking. We can find ourselves locked into a fearful place of individualism amongst the greatness of the outer world, and in this fear, we can find our way out of it and return to that place of no separation. Bring this love you find inside into your experience of the outside and you will find there has never been a separation, only the illusion.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation.

All In Love,

Michael

We sit in stillness and welcome in silence, and with silence we hear the roar of a thousand tiny voices. This morning, we welcome those tiny voices to move their way out of the confines of unawareness and let ourselves begin to flow. We find our gratitude in realizing that whatever we may have, we have enough to give, in any moment. 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. Reach out: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love, 

Michael

This is a practice. This is a practice. This is a practice. This mantra can ring through the hills and valleys of our days and never cease to be untruth. If we can maintain the breath, and be with the simpleness of balance, we are in the practice. When we forget to do this, we are in the practice. What we practice, we perfect. 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation.

All In Love,

Michael

Today we have a brief few moments together. We take this time to feel into our body, and to explore the space we create with opening awareness. We sit, like leaves breathing in the spring green, and breathing out the autumn gold, and we know we are breathing, in and out.

Thank you for joing me on this Journey Home Meditation. reach out to me, Michael, at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. Reach out to me at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Today we bring ourselves right into the middle of the entire busy-ness of being still, and silent, and present with each moment of each moment. Here, we are far to busy to attach old stories, or new expectations. We only have enough time to marvel in this awareness, and to love.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation.

All In Love,

Michael

Today we sit with the subtle. The sound of rain on my roof. The soft purr of sleep in the background. The gentle rhythm of the breath moving in and out, lifting and falling of the body, the whistle and cool in the nose. This space of small things is where we live in full awareness. The subtle hints of god is in the tiniest of sparks. We are a series of small moments, the cataclysm of small crashes, the canvas of the tiniest of brush strokes, and to reject any of it would be living in unawareness that the wholeness is simply the smallness, together. 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. reach out at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

(sm)All in Love,

Michael 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. reach out at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com anytime.

All In Love,

Michael

Today, as we enter the threshold of the light season into the dark season, and as the veil is thin between the worlds, we welcome in the light. Before we go into dark places, best to bring a light within, and to know who we truly are. So, that even in the darkness, we are unafraid, and unashamed, and know the light, and the dark. Honor who we have thought we were, and who we think we are now, and rest again in the light of who we truly are.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation.

All In Love,

Michael

Good morning, friends. Today we come together to recognize the sacred-ness of this moment. There is a timeless quality when we can be present with now, and be here in mind, body, and breath. No matter who or what we are encountering, there is not another way that God could be in this very moment. This menas that you and all of your you-ness are exactly how God can be expressed with wholeness. From Wholeness, we know what is Holy. Be present with you and with me and with I at any time and you can glimpse the Holy space of our existence.

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. Be in contact with me at: journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

Also, don't forget our live, in-person sessions! Tuesday nights at Club Northwest in Grants Pass, and Sunday mornings at Healthy U in Cave Junction.

All In Love,

Michael

Oh, the lengths we go to in creating our carefully crafted worlds! We put so much detail into every thing. The things we create to take us from here to there, here to there, here to there; anywhere but here. Today, we use our body vehicles to bring us from THERE to HERE. 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. Message me at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All Is Love,

Michael

Some times, at any time really, any moment, we can simply bring awareness into our breath. This shift in our focus from external to internal, is enough to give pause to the constant script that seems to be running in the roles we take up each day. Father, Sister, Friend, Spiritual Adventurer, Vegan, Adversary, Atheist...whichever costume we are donning, and whichever part we are claiming in the play, we can step back, inward, and observe the beautiful theater we have created. This passion play of our lives is a string of moments in which we can become gorgeous expressions of spirit. Taking a few breaths to marvel at ourselves is highly recommended. 10/10, would marvel again. 

Thank you for joining me on this Journey Home Meditation. Be in touch at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com.

All IS Love,

Michael

We are forever sitting in the perfection of the moment, and still we tend towards "anything but here, anytime but now" as we live and relive the moments we hid away into our bodies, forever being thrust from emotion to emotion with no understanding as to what we are feeling, and alway stuck in the "why". Take just a moment to feel what is there, waiting to arise; open yourself to the grand gesture of mindful presence now. 

Thank you for joing me on this Journey Home Meditation. Email me at journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com with questions, comments, suggestions; I really love your notes!