Click below to hear the meditation.

This hilarious video invites us to look at our own stories and what keeps us from being heard.

What a moving video captured during Patrick Stewart talking about his childhood experiences of violence against women. Then he shares what he learned later in life about his father’s PTSD and the effect on the family. He says now he works for Refugee (a safe house for women) for his mother and combat stress for his father.

Getting free from the debris of a trauma and attachment history requires a rather extreme re-orientation. We have to shift our habitual orientation of looking outside of ourselves for the answer, for ways to fill ourselves up.

The answers out there, right?

So many of us have been trained to think that if someone out there validates us, or loves us enough, or approves of us enough we’ll be able to get through whatever hardship.

What happens, though, when despite everything we’ve done nothing seems to turn out right? Those people whose approval you’re wanting so much can’t give you what you long for? Or what if you’ve tried and tried for years, really and truly done everything, and still feeling pain after all the years of trying?

When we look for the answer outside it is so easy to miss the all-important turn off the road. Being so oriented to finding “it” “out there” we missed the instruction to pick up the new map, the better map, new and improved.

Or maybe it was that when we picked up the guide and saw the  title “Finding The Answers In Your Heart” we just rolled our eyes and kept on going, looking outside, grabbing at someone, anyone, anything to change the experience inside.     

Yet that map, that one about the heart, that’s the one that is based on thousands of years of experience done by thousands of expert navigators.

The collective data from all those traditions says that if we water the buried seeds of our true nature we will flourish.

Period.

End of story.

The other stuff, the looking outside us stuff is at times fun but ultimately a pure distraction from getting content, happy, joyful, serene.

The world outside has many wonderful answers and perks for a good life.   But when the chips are down we need ourselves. We need to be able to be grounded, centered, solid in our own hearts, minds, bodies.

Learning to listen to the frequency of the heart the map, which really only comes in a braille like version, means we are almost always operating in the dark.

When we learn the language of the heart the map unfolds and begins to reveal itself. If we take the time to attend to the heart the frequency becomes loud and clear, beaming a signal so strong and powerful it’s hard to miss. We’re the ones that occlude that signal, filtering out the frequencies that orient to a better life. We’re the ones that make it hard to hear and see the map guiding us home to our own hearts.

Probably the most important key to shifting the dynamic from outward grasping to inner confidence takes learning to soften and receive life, learning to be vulnerable to its vicissitudes, opening to the yuckiness of it all. I know that doesn’t sound that appealing.

Our fear is that if we do this we’ll be stuck there.

Not so, say the sacred texts of meditation, yoga, or psychotherapy. Not so, say the many thousands and hundreds of thousands who have walked this path before you.

If we see through the pristine lens the teachings give us we see the soul’s landscape come clear, vibrant, alive. Whereas before there was nothing, now we see the baby steps to take, the pauses to breath into, the people to turn toward and those to turn away from.

Try living from your heart. Instead of looking at life, at others with your mind. Look with your heart. Let it guide you. Expect to be delighted.

Being with the people on the last workshop I led I was once again reminded and inspired about what is possible.  Here’s what I know and see with each person I interact with:

The  healing path is wide.

• There’s  room for everyone, no matter how despairing or lost or stuck.

• The  journey is simple and yet to go on that journey we need each other.  It entails going inside of all the nocks and crannies in our inner world.  For that we definitely need each other.   I imagine  we all have some horror of going into uncharted territory.  Yet, when  we do we find, oddly enough, that we are deeply connected to others around  us.

• The sacred  teachings and the illuminating psychological teachings have always  invited us to know that love is the foundation of all, it’s the glue that permeates all things, all people, everywhere.

• The ancient teachings as adapted to our contemporary world are the hand we  hold in the swinging, uncertain, and often terrifying inner world that is the by product of trauma and attachment wounding.

• We  hold onto this sure hand by cultivating a compassionate approach to life in which we find it is safe to be fully embodied, alive, and contributing to the world in a way that feels uniquely and  individually right for us.

• When we deliberately choose to practice a nourishing way of life we change our lives, moment by moment by moment until the defensive structures  naturally ease away and we find ourselves open, fresh, astounded at the possibilities of living a fuller life.

• Consistent  practice, moment by moment by moment in small and often tiny ways, allows      us to first test the new path and then with greater confidence walk  confidently on this new path toward a greater wholeness.

• With practice in cultivating positive states of compassion and love we water the ground of our inner world softening the coping strategies and defenses that kept us artificially safe.

• With practice we encounter new ground inside ourselves in which we begin to  glimpse native goodness, kindness, and touch into the reservoirs of compassion that are our true nature.

• As practice continues we begin to trust this arising world and drink in its nectar allowing our lives to flourish and  – even better – for shame to release its deadly hold.

• When we hold onto the pure essence of the teachings, despite confusions  engendered by others not always interpreting the teachings in the purest  way, we find the way forward, one step at a time.  When we listen to  the true voice that resonates within us we find a path that walks each of us from feeling stuck, trapped, lost, and confused into remembering the      unique and true nature crystallized within us and sparkling around us.

This upcoming year I’m committing myself to taking what I’ve learned from these many forms of teachings to find ways to help you grow into the person you have always wanted to be.  I’ll be sending out an email in the next month about a Boston area in person group as well as a way to participate from afar.

As I deepen into the teachings – and as I listen more acutely to you –  I’ll share ways to train the mind, body, and heart to move from distress to active aliveness so that you can flourish in a way that’s uniquely true to you.

If you’re interested in the foundation of this material you can find it in the Embodied Practices home study course.  Listen to your heart.  If this is calling to you drop me a note and let me know what appeals to you.

When you are trying to find inspiration about living in this world take a look at this video of Zach Sobiech.

When you’re wondering about what living in a secure family would be like look at this family and see what qualities are there that create safety, comfort, belongingness.

after watching a did a search to find out more about Zach.  He had passed away an hour before. 

To help fund groundbreaking research support people like Zach go to www.childrenscancer.org/zach

I’m sending blessings to everyone everywhere who has lost someone they’ve loved.

photo by Tony Turvey           

I woke this morning to the horrible destruction that resulted from the Oklahoma tornadoes.  My heart bleed for people there, especially those still looking for the loved ones in the midst of the rubble.

Checking my email I received an email from a colleague in Scotland, Tony Turvey, who is an avid cyclist.  He took the picture above while out on a ride.  I felt the contrast between the rugged, peaceful beauty of Scotland and the suffering that’s going on for so many around the world.

I offer a prayer for all in pain nourished by the beauty Tony sent.

After the Boston Marathon bombings Susie N wanted to do something to balance out the horror and destruction that had just happened.  As a member of the Arlington Street Church she decided to cut up pieces of cloth and leave them with markers outside by the fence.  The brief handwritten “instruction” gave people permission to use the fence as a prayer wall.     (photos by Laura P)

One by one, people wrote a prayer, a blessing and left them tied to the wall.    

Finding an outlet to offer blessings and prayers for all touched by horror and grief the wall gained attention.

Now the wall, covered in prayer, stands full of love and compassion.

It’s amazing what one person can do and how we all contribute to bringing more compassion to the world.

Here’s a little girl with determination to change the experience of an 87 year of WWII vet.  Moving and heartfelt Leanna Morris, the 8 year old who gets Charles Mowbray his medals after sixty seven years reminds us what simple things we can do to bring more nourishment and care to our worlds.

In honor of one of my great teachers, the beautiful geranium in my office, I asked master gardener Amy Murphy who writes the blog Of Gardens to put together baby geraniums for the group to take with them.  I wanted them to have this extraordinary teacher right there with them all the time.

Unbeknownst to me, Amy has had a Geranium Project where she’s been giving away geraniums over the years.

It was after one of these experiences when the plant just did not die that I began to look at her differently. Perhaps she wasn’t common, splashy, or easy. Perhaps she was rare and unique. She was unique in my life being the only geranium I had ever owned. And her behavoir was certainly rare. She never complained, she suffered semi-constant abuse at my hands, but she always came back for more. Given just the barest modicum of TLC and she would bloom and grow and be so beautiful even calloused workmen who saw her in my kitchen commented on how beautiful she was. Who could ask for a better companion! I wanted others to experience the joy of owning such a plant. The Geranium Project was born.

 

The best part of this is you can be the beneficiary of your own geranium, courtesy of the Geranium Project.

To celebrate these events I would like to offer a geranium cutting to any reader who would like one. If you would like to participate in The Geranium Project by receiving and nurturing a geranium of your own (and perhaps one day of propagating them and spreading the joy), please tell me and I will send you a cutting.

Happy Mother’s Day. We can all be mothers of something, even if it is a geranium.

for more information and to request your own geranium go to the blog Of Gardens