Photo by J. Scott Bovitz

I've been feeling so open and vulnerable to life, so ready to sit with the darkness here, the disease, the discord--close my eyes, and let it swirl around me, no more fear, or at least the willingness to open to the fear, to not run from it. In this practice there is increased acceptance of all of it, and the stability that comes from being able to face the darkness, by challenging all the while, that you actually have any understanding of what anything is, what anything really means.

What this looks like, is moving so slowly. Taking deliberate steps and letting your feet fully flatten out onto the ground, keeping your breath deep, relaxing into the moment, before there is ever any reaction or thought pattern that is allowed to take over. You let goodness bubble up within you which keeps you from being constricted by your thoughts, feeling yourself open to the possibility that everything you've ever thought to matter was pointing you away from yourself, …

Photo Credit J. Scott Bovitz

Center of my being, brought here by turbulent moments that have continued to end in peace. Buoyed up by hope. Held in place by the measure of faith equal to the manifestation of goodness.

World continues to spin out around me, but when I stop to focus on each point of light, it slows down. I am still. I've always been still. I am grounded by a force holding much more dimension to it than gravity. A nurturing force, keeping my heart open and peace feeling real.

Cradling softness, encircling everyone and everything, and I need only sit back and watch in wonder; watching light emerging everywhere, looking more like it is being dusted off, and revealing what has always been streaming through each of us, like giant suns at the center of our beings.

It is life at the same time it gives life. It is love at the same time it gives love. No other choice exists in this place.

So incredibly gentle.

It leads me sink into my being, into silence, and shows me how to move …

When we don't have something to fight against, when there is no longer any blame in us to project outside of us, we end up in the real fight, which is with ourselves.

I am truly learning that part of making peace is learning to step out of the battles. I am no longer feeling interested in providing myself as a distraction to keeping others from their own work.

As I find less to fight against, I find myself approaching the root of this pain that exists in each of us. I am feeling less afraid of it.

Without the mystery to what this pain contains, without the fear that makes it seem like something going bump in the night, I can look at it face to face and not feel the need to run.

Without the scary music and devilish masks, it is simply this: separation. A deep divide generating discomfort that exists and manifests itself in our lives in all ways. You will find it at the root of hate and love. And we are not free until we are no longer afraid of it, as it is what drives our every actio…

Classic!

Peace is real. Peace is always possible. Peace is a choice. When you extend peace, especially when it feels impossible, you move into another realm of being in this world. You begin to be the peace that you seek, and you see it in the reflection of the world. You see that you lose nothing by choosing differently in the moment, and you gain everything as a result.

It is our coffer of debilitating and useless stories in the moment that keep us from peace.

Stories can be let go in any moment. Stories can be gotten back in the next moment if you miss them. Stories of others having stories can be let go too. Hallelujah!

Here is a list of questions that I came up with for myself to keep in my conscious awareness, especially in those moments when I am tightly wound up in runaway emotions, and my stories of suffering, or in the stories of others suffering, or in the wanting of others to move past their stories.

Peace begins with me. Peace is a practice. Peace leads the practice. Let these questio…

There is nothing more beautiful than seeing all of these people I love coming home to themselves. I am in awe of how many ways there are to move toward living from the heart. The possibilities are infinite.

I was telling my friend today how amazed I am at my relationship with my older daughter. My heart is overflowing with joy as I reflect upon just how far we've come together.

I just can't believe it, because there was a moment in time when I wasn't very certain our relationship could overcome all its difficulty.

One day, I just decided to put the breaks on all the stock stories and fears about my daughter and our relationship together. I decided that they were too painful. I was tired of all the space they were taking up in my life. I was tired of never getting to the moments of play with her, so busy trying to make her into, well, the truth of it? Into someone who made me feel safe. Someone like me, or at least someone who related like me. Someone cautious, and polite, and…

Yesterday I went with my five-year-old to her first meeting with her Kindergarten teacher. The teacher sent me out of the room with a questionnaire while she spent time in the classroom getting to know my daughter.

After filling out various responses to various questions I came to this:

What would you like your daughter to learn during her Kindergarten year?

I found myself writing my answer without any hesitation. It went something like this:

I want her to learn to feel safe in this world. I want her to play and discover her world, and to feel that what she contributes is valuable. I want her to feel accepted where she is in the process of her learning. I want this time to be magical for her. I want her to learn that she can make friends easily. I want her to feel loved, so that she has room to shine.

When I finished writing, I realized that it was very different from what I would have written a few years ago on an academic questionnaire. Before I might have mentioned something about build…

Okay, I found my voice. It was hidden in the darnedest of places. It was squelched way down into my belly. It was cowering down there, afraid to come out. I'm not sure what spooked it into hiding. In fact I didn't know it was gone until I showed up to write again. And then it was MIA for days.

When I finally found it, I had to sit with my voice for a long while in the darkness before it would come out and show its face, so, that we could talk and all. I tried to coax it out, but to no avail. When I'd almost given up hope, it finally began to creep out into light, its body low to the ground, vigilant, like a scaredy-cat, as if it believed that if only it appeared smaller, it wouldn't become an obvious target. But at the sound of some violent stomping and the shaking of a disembodied finger pointing in the air, my voice shrank back into hiding again, and I along with it. Some scary shit. Together we listened to the booming echos of an archaic phrase, grave and serious.

Muc…