The Glorious Both/And

One of my favorite spiritual practices now, portals to presence and wonder actually involves tuning into the past! looking back to experience the now more deeply, in the light of Beings' journey of  becoming, (be)coming all the way to THIS nowness and right hereness  😱 the ground of Being has a past, and a quite extraordinarily EPIC one at that! S hining a light on it reveals the splendor of this moment it has become... can bring you to feeling astonished and deeply moved by the present... looking back to the beginning of the universe, feeling into, visualizing what it ONCE WAS, those early days of the ground of Being beginning its' journey of becoming... becoming cells, atoms, molecules, water and earth, chickens and eggs, mountains and lakes, becoming....HUMAN...becoming ME...my god, the o ne becoming MANY to see what it has become, what it is right NOW, a dimly lit room, dancing and drumming, strangers drawn together to celebrate the staggering mystery of our coinciding li...

"We can keep our dignity even within our imperfections and failures by having a high regard for our own struggle . When we develop this attitude, we begin to experience other people in an entirely new way. Our life and their lives intersect and touch in the most intimate way. We become more human." - Jason Shulman Having a high regard for our struggle is not self-pity, clinging to victimhood or obsessing over what's wrong. It is something very different. It is self-compassion. And most importantly, it is not abandoning ourselves in our suffering. It is turning towards our pain, whatever it may be made of, and whatever it's source is. Resistance, guilt, shame, agony, depression, you name it. It is practicing not always resorting to turning way, to rising above, to illusorizing, to going stoic with a radical attitude of neutrality and zooming out into an overly detached witnessing so as to look at it, but be unphased. It is no longer resorting to only mechanizing our ...