The Spiritual Principles

Four years ago, I started writing a book about the spiritual principles and practices that had crystalized for me over my 10+ years of studying and teaching.

Re-reading the principles today was painful in a life-affirming way. They are so true I feel them in my bones; truth aching all the way to the marrow:

Existence is cyclical. We have been through this before, and we will go through it again. This knowledge is both heavy and freeing.

As I watch the shock and disruption of WNC, I remember hazy bits and pieces of my own disasters. There are great clouds over my memories of Katrina — the wisdom of a brain that does not set down memories of things that would only hurt me later. Except for a few things that are seared in my brain like a branding: the rejection, revulsion, devastation scarred as if by hot steel.

But because I still carry those marks, because they now identify me for as long as I carry this body, I can be proof for someone else: You will make it. You will survive. It might feel like you can’t, or don’t want to — I know, because: me too.

And the cyclical nature of time means that it feels like it’s happening again, to me, right now. As if no time has passed I am kidnapped by the viceral memories of the smells, the sorrow, the insanity.

But then the Paradox rises up. I do no trust a spiritual teaching that does not emphasize paradox. Because I am strangely jealous of the folks in Swannanoa and Asheville and Black Mountain and Lake Lure right now. I am aching for their loss as much as I ache to be back there: the crystal clear knowing of what matters and how much doesn’t. The brotherhood of loss, and the family and connection and understanding of everyone else out there, knee-deep in the muck.

I cannot explain to you the feeling of fulfillment that comes from working together to rebuild something after a loss like this. Of knowing you are one of many, who are being pushed to their limits, learning everything they didn’t know about themselves yet. We do not see who we are until we are tested, and this kind of devastation is a litmus that everyone passes.

And that takes me to another key principle: You already have everything you need. It’s been here the whole time.

Every experience, every friendship, every ritual, every earwig, every dirty joke — you have everthing you need, right now, to get where you’re going. Our spiritual paths are not about finding or becoming someone new. They are about revealing who’s been here all the time.

Giving us the fortitude to sit with what is. To accept reality, just as it is, and to sit with it. To hold an entire world of devastation and hope in our hearts. And to do that, we don’t need more — we let go of more. We make more space. We drop the things that are unnecessary, over and over, breath by breath.

Pain and suffering are essential. There is no way out of this life without deep, heart-wrenching, gut slashing pain. Whether you are experiencing the wrenching yourself, or feeling it because of the pain of others near or far.

Pain is our call to awakening. Nothing less. If we were always comfortable, we would never go searching for meaning, or for something else that mattered.

And watching pain in others is so unbearable for most of us that we are compelled to do something about it. The number of people in the wake of Helene, and now in preparation for Milton, who are sacrificing their own hard-earned cash, disrupting their own lives, and are doing anything and everything they can to reduce the suffering of folks they will likely never meet… this is what pain and suffering do.

They draw us to each other.

It is the ultimate of paradoxes — the thing we want the least magnetizes us to what we need the most.

We need each other. That is the most important principle to me so far: You cannot go it alone.

We want to believe we are fiercely independent. We praise the lone wolf who can survive in the forest with a bowie knife, compass, and some chewing gum.

But we were not made to go alone. Isolation is a form of torture because our brains and nervous systems are wired to each other. Sometimes I think, “There’s only one of us.”

This is why when people say to me, after lamenting how sad or overwhelmed or angry they are at the state of the world, that “this isn’t my disaster,” I remind them: yes it is. Yes, It is your tragedy. Yes, it is your pain. Yes, it is your suffering and hunger and fear and confusion and numbness.

You are feeling the truth that we are all connected to each other. We only exist for each other.

Do not shy away from your pain right now — because it is a call to connection. It is a balm that only community can give.

We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again, and it’s happening in the past, and the present, and the future all in this one breath: And I’m right here, with you, the whole time.

My College Essay

I was cleaning up old files the other day, and I came across this file name: ‘college essay.’

It was in such an old word format, I had to open it as a text file.

I have no idea what the question was, but I was clearly trying to persuade the folks in admissions that I was worthy of entry to their elite school.

I was trying to impress them and be humble at the same time.

I was trying to demonstrate my worthiness without being “too much.”

I was seventeen when I wrote this. I was a baby when I went to college.

I’ll be honest: It’s hard not to eye roll at my 17-year old self.

How to Survive the Worst Year of Your Life

August 2018 to February 2019 will go down in history as the worst six months of my life.

Cliff’s Notes: Dog Died, Mom Got Cancer, Relationship Ended, Dad Died.

It was a lot.

I’ve read and studied so much about grief in the past few years — at the time, I thought it was to help my clients. Because grief is part of any major life change.

Little did I know, I was preparing to survive the worst year ever.

In some ways, I was prepared. And in other ways: it is impossible to prepare.

These are a handful of tools that helped me survive the worst year of my life.

Hopefully, they will help you in your hour of deepest need.

Just like anything, practice makes better. (I don’t believe in perfect anymore.) After each loss, I got better at each of these. I am so grateful I had many of them in place before my dog Bodhi died — because without them, I would likely be in corner somewhere, drinking cheap box wine and eating ice cream straight from the container.

Without further ado:

How to survive the worst year of your life, in advance:

Why Money Is Part of My Meditation

Many of us have a kinda weird relationship with money. Me too.

I’ve ranged from penny pincher — clipping coupons, checking my budget multiple times a day — to completely reckless — not looking at my balances for months on end. Hoping if I ignore it, maybe it would just go away. (Newsflash: it did. But not the way I’d hoped.)

Sometimes my behavior was related to how much money I was making, and sometimes it wasn’t.

In 2018, I promised myself I would take the bull by the horns and do whatever it took to heal this relationship. My theme for 2018 would be “Easy Money.”

Because until now, Money had been anything but easy.

Why Change Feels Like Torture and Acts Like Paradox

How often do we pray for change?

“Dear God, I’ll do anything, just get me out of here.”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Why does my hair always do this same weird thing?”
“I just can’t do this anymore.”

We think, “any change at all!” How great if our new job doubles our take-home, a boyfriend who understands how to take care of us (it’s so simple, after all!), for our mother to stop asking when she’ll be a grandmother (or for her to actually be a grandmother!)

Coffee and Change

The heat of the summer brings madness. Heat so heavy it seems inescapable. Pressure so intense it’s suffocating.

This summer is no different. The world is a little upside down lately. The political situation in the US is the most watched reality show in history. The Brexit vote signaled a dismantling of the European Union, based entirely on ignorance and xenophobia. And truly unfathomable acts of violence have torn spirits from Orlando to Minneapolis, Turkey to Taipei, Bangladesh to South Sudan.

 

I love coffee.

Iced, drip, cappuccino, latte, mocha, cortado. I’ll drink it brewed with dishwater, tamped into espresso machines that cost more than fine cars, or cold brewed overnight. I love coffee so much that even when I give up caffeine, I still drink decaf. There’s something about the warm, nutty flavor of coffee, subtle bitterness, coating of crema, slight buzz — it makes me feel like myself again.

Coffee beans are seeds that grow inside a cherry-like berry. They grow on the sides of mountains in subtropical climates. The berries are hand-picked, seeds separated and soaked, then dried. The beans are roasted, rested, ground, tamped, heated, soaked, steamed, brewed.

It takes a lot of hot, hard work to make me feel like myself again.

Perhaps the heat of summer is bringing us to a boiling point. Perhaps this steam is whistling to us as shouts of “Black Lives Matter,” “Obama can’t take my guns,” and “No Bigots, No Borders.” Perhaps the pressure of violence is pushing us closer to each other. Perhaps we’re about to be transformed into ourselves again.

Compassion and empathy ask us to see ourselves in others. It asks us to see ourselves in young men so angry they take the innocent lives of 48. To feel the overflowing frustration of an Army vet whom snipers men in blue. To feel the fear of men in uniform, facing violence every day, make assumptions based on the color of someone’s skin. To witness the ill-advised votes of people so afraid of someone encroaching on our homes.

We are all angry. We all make assumptions. We are all afraid.

Until we see our own anger, until we humble our assumptions, until we can sit with our own fear, nothing will change. If we can’t see ourselves in the faces of others, hear our voices in their shouts for justice, feel their hearts breaking inside our own chests: we will never be transformed.

The heat of this summer is bringing us to a boiling point: heat rises, bringing everything to the surface. Under the right heat and the right pressure, we transform simple green seeds into rich coffee beans, tiny beans to grounds rich like soil, add heat and pressure: coffee.

The heat of this summer – the pressure in our system – has the potential to transform us. With wisdom, with patience, and with artistry — let’s use the heat of this summer to make something beautiful. Let’s become ourselves again.