1. Truth: I can only know and do what is right for me. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between sharing your truth as a “big T, capital T, universal Truth” (which so many religions, lifestyle influencers, teachers, gurus, coaches, etc. do) and “hey, this worked for me so I wanted to share in case it might make sense for you too, but don’t take my word for it, try it out for yourself.” The first one can be not just problematic but actually harmful, and yet right in line with how our culture works — weakening our trust in ourselves so we can be sold on a new process, program, product, or person. Even when I determine all I can know about what’s true for me, there are causes and conditions I can’t possibly know, so the most I can do is make my best guess about “truth” and even when I think I know, realizing I don’t and staying aware, open, and curious.

2. Truth: I’ve lost touch with my truth, my intuition. I’ve spent so many years trying to accommodate other, to follow the rules, to be “good” and in that way hopefully earn the right to joy and love, the right to be here, to exist and take up space. I not only looked outside myself to know what to do and how I should be, but I internalized those expectations so that now “the call is coming from inside the house.” It has clouded my judgment and all but severed my connection to my inner wisdom, and even when I sense it, I don’t always trust it. This is no way to live.

3. Truth: Clear the table and sit with the emptiness. I was telling Calyx yesterday how when I clean off my writing desk or a drawer or even a whole room, rather than organizing as I go, I have to take everything off/out, start with a clean slate. Another dear friend and I were talking the other day about how when you get so overwhelmed and confused and disconnected that you shut down, the thing to do is take all the “stuff” that has piled up on the table, all the junk and the dust and the undone, and sweep the surface clear, reset to nothing, and then sit with that emptiness. A similar practice is the Zen notion of “only don’t know.”

One wish: May you rest and find comfort in not knowing, and may wisdom arise from your trust in the emptiness and your own basic goodness.  As the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Tilopa offered in his “Six Words of Advice”, a simple six word teaching that translates to:

Don’t recall: Let go of what has passed.
Don’t imagine: Let go of what may come.
Don’t think: Let go of what is happening now.
Don’t examine: Don’t try to figure anything out.
Don’t control: Don’t try to make anything happen.
Rest: Relax, right now, and rest.

1. Truth: There’s a lot more to writing a book than just the writing. It won’t go the way you planned, expected, or hoped. It will absolutely test your patience, your ability to stay with something even though it seems like you aren’t getting anywhere. One part of the not writing for me right now is the realization that other aspects of my experience need tended, nourished, supported, and honored, and it won’t work to ask them to wait. Life keeps coming at you and has to be attended to and things will absolutely get in the way, require you to redirect your effort. A simple example for me right now is I sprained a ligament in one of my fingers and have to wear a splint for the next six weeks, which means that finger doesn’t bend and is making typing very slow and messy.

2. Truth: The last three years have been A LOT. I retired, I was (am) burnt out, menopause, COVID-19, losing my teaching gigs because of the necessary and reasonable restrictions and precautions of living in a global pandemic, losing my sangha, the death cult that is the USA and all the various ways it manifests, the climate crisis, losing Sam and Angela, ETC. Like I said in a text to my mom the other day, “life is tough, and there is no easy way out.” And yet, I am very lucky, privileged to have a core group of smart and funny people who REALLY love me, access to healthcare and medication and vaccines, a nutritionist (HAES), a therapist, multiple practices that help me to be soft enough to stay open and strong enough to stay, good books and podcasts, a supportive gym community, movement practices that bring me joy and make me feel good, ETC.

3. Truth: Being human is hard; don’t give up. It seems to be that simple, and that impossible. There’s no denying how difficult this is, how much grief and suffering exists, how much harm we do even when we are trying so hard not to, AND it is also so beautiful to be alive, to love, to experience a sunrise or cuddle a dog or plant a garden or make someone laugh. As Andrew Boyd says in this book Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the The Universe, “You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.” Not easy.

One wish: May whatever support you need to keep going find its way to you, quickly and without effort, and linger as long as you need it.