There is a glass heart that vibrates to the storms outside. Hi atop a mountain island locked in a tower, this heart holds the flame of possibility.

Who will understand it? What will free it?

As storms rage on, and waves crash against the shore, the heart fears its own fragility. What will become of the flame if the heart breaks?

Seeing this image in meditation, sensing its meaning to unfathomable beyonds, all the hurt places begin to relax.

The heart wobbles in response to uncertainty. The flame flickers. A crimson drop falls on each wound of vulnerability, anointing it with delicate grace.

Bowing to this image, she senses there is still more to create/discover.
 
*****
 
There are other hearts. Hi atop a mountain island locked in their own towers, these hearts also hold the flame of possibility.

She senses the distance between them. Sometimes the distance feels insurmountable;  sometimes they are so close. Their hearts also quiver to the vulnerability of opening, of breaking, uncertain if their flames can withstand the wind and rain of circumstance.

She gasps in quiet recognition. Perceptions of abandonment can seclude her from a loving, connected world.

As storms rage on, and waves crash against the shore, she takes the exquisite risk of opening, breathing into her own heart to brighten the flame of possibility. Sensing the flame in others, near and far, the exchange of warmth is like a sacred diya connecting all and strengthening divinities within.

​emptying the space 
of preconception 
new ways of looking
​are possible 


When things change, I get scared. Expending more energy on what class I can attend, what book I should read, or who I should talk to, I forget the invitation to just rest in uncertainty.

There is also tremendous compassion for how hard it is to feel windy thoughts jarring the mind, waves of painful emotions crashing against the shores of a tender heart.

A few days ago I was driving home from work. Heavy winds howled like banshees shaking the small electric car to the core of vulnerability. I thought I was going to die.

Arriving home in one physical piece, but many psycho-spiritual pieces, I tried releasing the visceral threat through words and tears in the arms of my loving, attentive partner.

I still felt broken.

I had no control over so many things: the body changing in perimenopause, friends and colleagues having meaningful plans that did not include me, miscommunication with my mom and teenager, patients and families who were not heeding my recommendations.

Yet, the following images arising in different meditations have offered some  comfort and clues along the way.


1.) An image of mysterious eyes crying colorful streaks of tears that veil the face. Allowing rivulets of difficult emotions to flow through the heart space can be beautiful and meaningful.

2.) An image of a woman placing hands on belly and heart, as if the body were a stringed instrument. Her hands feel the vibrations of sacred music from within, her fingers strumming along to create/discover more.

3.) An image of wind and waves threatening to break a protective structure shaped like a rib cage encasing a multifaceted jeweled heart. Sensations of fear and doubt arising as the jeweled heart smashes against its protective walls. As I grant autonomy to the heart, reverence and trust arise in the process, as well as wisdom and courage to love and be loved.

4.) An image of a mind cluttered with preconceived ideas of past experience. I wonder what it might be like to perceive experience with humility, soft and elastic edges, with the enthusiasm and wonder of a child trusting in benevolence. New ways of looking are possible.


****
​

When things change, I get scared. Sometimes I even want to hold onto this writing, these images…as if they are a talisman to protect me from uncertainty. 

Then I remember the true nature of trust. As self, other, and world change, so will words and images. The deepest letting go is letting go of it all, trusting the next words, the next image, the next stepping stone to appear when it feels impossible to cross the floods. 

be gentle, be loving
patient and proud
of the wind and tears
that carved a goddess
from suffering

Kwan Yin’s kindred spirit
is learning to listen
to the cries of the world
and stay till there is ease
as she listens to her own body

the dance of sensations
ok as she is
a caged heart
trusting her wingspan
to fly beyond the bounds
of fear and unmet expectations

she is still exploring
she is still unfinished

(Listen to audio version here)

(If you would like to listen to the audio version of this talk, click on the link above.)
​
​The picture changes. Have you noticed this? People, places, things I’ve loved and wanted to hold on to are no longer the same. Family pictures that we took when my daughter was a baby are different now. She’s no longer a cute little cherub, but a tall, lanky teenager complete with acne and attitude.

The picture of who I wanted to be as a mother was so radically different than who I actually was. Instead of having my shit together and nursing my daughter lovingly, I looked like I hadn’t slept for days, felt irritable all the time, blamed anyone and anything in my way (especially myself), and couldn’t breastfeed beyond about 6 weeks.

For those of you who have ever been first time parents, you know it’s challenging. Even if you haven’t been a parent, anything you take on that is new and unfamiliar can be difficult: adopting a pet, starting a new job or school, caring for an aging family member, losing a job, moving to a new place, a new medical or psychological diagnosis in you or a loved one, and so on.

But stress, discomfort, dis-ease, is not just about meeting moments of difficulty in life. We all face challenges. What makes certain ones more stressful than others? 

2600 years ago, the Buddha had a word for stress. In Pali, the language spoken by the Buddha in India at the time, the word is dukkha. Just living this human life, we know that pain is inevitable.  But the added stress is optional. There’s a saying that illustrates this point well: pain x resistance = stress. If pain is inevitable, then what adds to the stress?

It’s our resistance to what’s happening moment to moment. The desire to hold on to the way my body used to be in less discomfort and able to do certain yoga poses, the aversion to burning, searing, aching, throbbing sensations in my left gluteal muscles, sacroiliac joint and right shoulder, the delusion that none of this should be happening, that I should be able to fix it, that this experience of pain is unique to Moi and no one else has ever felt this way.

What are you currently holding on to in your life? What are you pushing away? How are you daydreaming or misunderstanding a current situation? It may help to place a hand on your heart or a part of the body that is hurting, breathing into any discomfort with as much tenderness and compassion as you can muster. If that feels awkward, then imagine a comforting presence here with you now, breathing with you, understanding you, loving you just as you are. 

With our body’s, our circumstances, the people and things in our lives ‘forever’ rotating through like a slideshow, what can we come to rely on that is real, that will provide some measure of robust comfort when the picture is always changing? How can mindful awareness frame the experience in curiosity, kindness, and remain intimately connected regardless of whether we like, dislike, or believe what we are seeing?

There’s a song that I love from high school called ‘Pictures of You’ by an 80’s band called The Cure. The lyrics start out:

I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures
Are all I can feel
 
I realize now that expectations I had of myself as a new mother, as a person with this current body, even of my daughter as they are now, are all rooted in past or future stories of what could have been, what should have been.

This moment, right here, right now can be so exquisite, unburdened by past blame or future worry. For me, The Cure for stress is to identify more with the picture frame, and not the changing picture. Easier said than done, right? It’s hard to believe this when there are constant messages and advertising of the perfect picture, the perfect body, the perfect life on Facebook, Instagram, the media and beyond.

Mindfulness practice trains us to notice when we are lost in a story that isn’t true, when emotions feel like weather systems that will last forever and are actually changing all the time, when sensations define who we are and don’t need to be taken so personally. 

Learning to identify more with the picture frame, the frame of mindful loving awareness rather than the picture of changing circumstances takes time. If you are fairly new to mindfulness practice, you may uncover thought patterns and old habits you haven’t seen before. Things can feel worse before they feel better.

Know that you aren’t crazy or doing anything wrong. This is completely normal. In firefighting, the term backdraft is used to describe the sudden introduction of air into a fire that has depleted most of the available oxygen in a room or building. Similarly, when you bring attention to patterns of desire, aversion, and delusion, they can initially feel more intense.

This is when it’s helpful to practice with the support of others- a trusted teacher or therapists, wise, loving spiritual community. I’ve also found it useful to bring a spirit of creativity, adventure, and play to these practices. Like learning to cook a dish, play an instrument, grasp a new language, ride a bike, or train yourself in any unfamiliar skill, it can feel so cumbersome if approached with rigidity or expectations of immediate results. Yuck! Who wants to do that?

And, it takes a certain amount of gentle discipline, curiosity, kindness, patience, trust, determination, care, compassion, joy, beauty, resilience, and forgivingness to keep practicing, at least in my recipe book. Your healing journey may need similar or different ingredients. You won’t know till you try, keep showing up, adding a little more of this, taking out a little bit of that.

After 15 years of practice, I still identify with the picture, and sometimes forget about the picture frame. What’s changing is the capacity of this heart-mind to notice sooner, rather than later what’s needed to frame every experience in some aspect of love. It doesn’t matter how long it takes me. What matters most is my willingness to try. I’d like to share a poem that I think speaks to this "Cure for It All" by Julia Fehrenbacher.
 
This life isn’t what I expected. This practice isn’t what I expected. And it’s inspired such a radical honesty in me to try and see things as they are. Nothing more. Nothing less.  Anything else just doesn’t make sense.

Burning gluteal muscles, stabbing shoulders
hives when exposed to heat or stress.
Is it Long COVID or just a coincidence?
I never tested positive, had antibodies before the vaccine.
So easy to give into despair like bleak
landscape after a nuclear explosion,
waiting for something to grow,
to give meaning to this pain.
When the evening news, the internet, work emails
and patient messages all beg for better days,
I turn to gratitude practice for solace.

I’m grateful for physical and osteopathic therapy,
for medications that help ease the pain
when another pandemic surge feels overwhelming.
I’m grateful for family holding me
with humor and household help,
for colleagues and medical staff
as smiling crescent moons
in the darkness of a sobering reality.
I’m grateful for teachers, friends, a practice
inspiring the framing of all phenomena
in beauty, wholeness and healing love.

Covid-19: you think you’re so smart,
the best magic show around with variants
evading immune systems and vaccines.
You can invade, inflame, and injure,
but you cannot insist I believe you.
Let me be a source of healing
first internally then externally--
clear water mirroring a sunrise hope
in others clouded by doubt,
beginning again and again
till their last breath or my own.

​In meditation, it's possible to let the limiting sense of self settle, and allow the larger space of self to emerge.
​

​Pain can be a pathway to suffering, or a poetic prescription for healing.

If you could only take a few people, a few things with you on a long trip, who or what would you take? I’m not talking about some exotic trip away from home, but the trip that you live every day from the moment your eyes open to the minute you fall asleep, and the cycle you repeat each day till you breathe your last breath.

What really matters to you? Who or what do you trust to carry you to the destination you seek? Do you travel with rigidity, considering the journey a failure if you don’t land where expected? Or do you course correct with wisdom and still love yourself when you miss the mark?

I’ve contemplated these questions for some time. Blown around by the eight worldly winds: pleasure/pain, gain/loss, success/failure, praise/blame, I’m tired of packing people and things along for the ride that shake things up unnecessarily without purpose.

 
El Capitan

sitting like a mountain
massive in this moment
no thoughts can blow me away

 
So I made a list of what supports faith in the journey, and what hinders it.
​

Supports to Faith:

- meditation (simple healing breath, heart-mind framing each moment in wisdom and care)
-pausing, waiting for what’s shaken up to settle so that speech, action can be more skillful
-Dhamma mentoring, classes, retreats, talks
-spiritual friends who mirror my True Nature
-family and patient challenges reminding me of Bodhisattva vow (on your way enlightenment, will you take us with you?)
-seeing how I’ve met challenging situations before, inspires trust that I can do it again
-Nature, unconditional loving Mother who nurtures calm, beauty, patience, wisdom, understanding, and trust
-writing strengthens the whispers of inner champion who takes inner critics’s concerns and transforms them into healing, wise words
-inspiration from music, movies, reading
-heart connections with family, friends, patients, clients, strangers
-embodied, grounded presence
-deleting Facebook account (cultivating contentment, simplicity over comparing mind, creating space in my calendar, my life)…ok, so I’m back on Facebook, and I need to remember aspiration over expectation
 
 
Hindrances to Faith:
 
-physical, emotional pain
-losing someone or something dear
-when something breaks, looks unappealing, increases aversion
-disagreement, disconnection with those I am close to
-prolonged exposure to bad news
-relying on astrology for good news, things to look forward to
-scattered, thinking presence
-alarm going off in the middle of a disturbing dream
-too many choices, not trusting the future
 
Practicing with these contemplations this month, I’ve discovered a few things. I can cultivate an unconditional love for this body-heart-mind, no matter how it is feeling. Despite a medical system that requires so many competing components for attention, I can connect with patient stories and not just make it to the end of the day disconnected and depleted. The allure of technology does not need to eclipse the possibility of contentment found in each moment.
 
And, I’m still a being doing her best to course correct with wisdom, still learning to love herself when she misses the mark. May the labyrinth of life allow for a natural spiraling in, then circumambulating out, never knowing if the center is reached and still carrying its intention with each step.
 

2020 has been a year of many things. I won’t pretend to know what it has been like for you. I have heard from many that they wish to have a different 2021. But what does this mean exactly? Less suffering with no COVID, police brutality, political division, physical, emotional, social, and economic stress? More joy in gathering with others to commemorate the beginning and ending of life (and everything in between), travel, return to school and work, seeing the smiles of others?

I also wish for a different 2021. And I’m paying attention to where I plant seeds of loving intentions- where I’m forcing something to grow/change, where I’m slowly letting go, patiently waiting for something to take root.

On December 24, I received my first COVID vaccine with a mixture of dread and hope. Dread that I’d be one of the few cases who developed a serious adverse reaction.  Hope that this would be a positive step in the fight against COVID. I’m relieved that the only nuisance was a sore arm for a few days, and I’m still diligently tracking symptoms through Vsafe.

I realize that there is still so much uncertainty. Will I build immunity to COVID? How long will the antibodies last? Am I safe to be around patients? Are they safe with me? What does this vaccine mean for us all heading into 2021?

Recognizing the fear and doubt in these questions, I’m aware that these thoughts, emotions and the physical manifestations of uncertainty within are not alone. There is also awe at the timeline and sound scientific data supporting the vaccine’s efficacy, gratitude for meaningful work, incredible colleagues, loving family, health, abundant food, shelter, and so much more.

Most of all, there is a deep bow of reverence to the practices of mindfulness, lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity with meditation and writing carrying me through some of the darkest times of post-partum depression and anxiety, losing my aunt-mom to cancer, chronic sacro-iliac, gluteal muscle pain, and COVID-19. Though Western medicine and other modalities have been supportive, it is these practices that saved me from sacrificing this heart-mind-body to fear and doubt.

To this end, I’d like to support others in planting loving intentions for 2021. Will you join me here? However you choose to heal and support yourself in 2021, may you remember that love and wisdom are so much larger than fear and doubt. What you plant now affects everyone and everything around you for days, weeks, months, and years to come.

Nisargadatta Maharaj  said, “Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.”

May the idea of a separate self dissolve with the wisdom of shared journeys. May love connect you to all.

There is a key that I’ve found through these practices, unlocking mysteries, answering questions I’ve had over lifetimes. I’m so afraid to lose this key, guarding it sometimes to the detriment of my relationships with loved ones. What if I forget? What if I’m not perfect in practices, in life? Will I spiral down into the womb of bloody postpartum darkness where thoughts threaten connection and unwanted emotions signal abandonment? Who will love me then? Will I be strong enough alone? Can I remember these practices without the key?

Menstrual cycles are irregular. Moods shift like unpredictable weather patterns. Gripping the key tightly- identities of a meditator, writer, physician, healer, mother, wife, daughter, family member and friend, I don’t want the life I’ve so carefully constructed over the last fourteen years to change. If it does, I only want it to change for the better (whatever that means).

In meditation this morning, I heard the following words. Awareness that this practice is not about perfection or self-improvement, but trusting the heart without expectation. What if I toss the key into the ocean, allow the waves to swallow this house of sand?

Loving awareness is everywhere. It’s time to let go of the key…