It’s been a while since I last wrote as there has been quite a bit of change and transition in my life. I experienced the impact of climate change up close and personally with the southern CA wild fires and mudslides. There was both deep sorrow and deep grace surrounding these events.
Grief and loss have a way of stopping us and bringing us back to what’s real like nothing else. For myself, I can no longer deny the pain of what is happening to our precious planet, the very thing that sustains us. Yet I know we are not powerless in the face of climate change, even though it can feel overwhelming.
Climate change has the potential to unite as a species, overriding all that divides us. We each affect the whole and when we truly realize this, it empowers us to live with more intention, balance and peace.
Honoring our grief can be deeply nourishing and life affirming in how it brings us back to our heart. The deep mysteries of grief and death are not something we culturally embrace but in my own experience, they are realms that open us directly to the miraculous nature of life and love. Here are some further thoughts for those interested.
I have been contemplating the power of holding opposites equally quite a bit lately. Yoga is a practice that teaches this equanimity, how to honor both the light and dark. Simply staying still and receptive for a few moments with uncomfortable emotions and sensations opens the way to selfcompassion.
This, more then perhaps any other practice, softens the pain of judgement and resistance. It moves us toward the place that Rumi speaks of, ‘Beyond ideas of right and wrong, there is a field, I’ll meet you there’.
Life has a way of bringing us to this place sooner or later but we can learn to help it along. Whether we find it or it finds us, there is a place of peace and acceptance in us, beyond what the mind can understand. This is the place that trusts and surrenders to the whole of life, the light and the dark, the masculine and the feminine, all of the places within and without where we experience conflict and resistance. I am grateful for the moments I am able to rest here.
