inner journey

Our world is full of stimulations, and our minds mimic our surroundings. As we busy ourselves constantly, so is that business occurring in our minds. And the momentum created from our days carries on also in the moments in which we are not busy. When we are driving, sitting on the toilet, going for a walk, our mind continues to be busy, simply because thought, like matter, has momentum. As we drive our thoughts forward, they will not of themselves just stop. In our day to day, the constant humming of our thoughts is sometimes quite functional, as we think about our work or talk with others. Unfortunately, the thinking faculty consumes power and, like a fire consuming wood, it does not stop when it is no longer needed. The larger the flame, the more it consumes. The trouble with this self-driving engine only appears when we want to stop it, and discover that we cannot. When we want to change our lives, change our emotions, change the direction of our thoughts, we find that the though...

It stretches through me. I never began. It moves through me. I will never end. A moment is everything I ever was. Infinity awaits beyond my chest I must not miss a beat To expand to all that I knew To remember all that I will know To flow on the perfect current Washing over the universe Carrying me To me

Fear protects us. Just like immune cells isolate foreign bodies by surrounding them in fatty membranes, so does fear surround pain, enveloping it from every side, identifying it as harmful to us. When we touch fear we know to turn away. Fear tells us that there is something harmful inside, and so we naturally avoid it. But like the vesicles in which foreign bodies are encapsulated, the content of the fear envelope is not meant to remain in us forever. It is meant to be opened, broken down and absorbed. And like in our bodies, this process must be done under the right conditions. The condition for embracing fear is inner readiness. Inner readiness is above all the will to grow, regardless of the suffering that may be involved. It is the will to walk into the dark. Does my light need to be bright enough in order to walk into the dark? Certainly light must be there, because the darkness has strong currents, and they can carry us away. But I believe the question of brightness is of less...

My past is alive in every moment. Parts that were left behind remain present but detached. The pain that could not be integrated coagulates like blood and becomes isolated. Feelings that a child cannot even fully experience acquire a life of their own, demanding to be felt but having no one that is truly present to feel them, to acknowledge them, to accept them. And so they remain. And now I am an adult or so it seems. But so many ghosts haunt me from my childhood. They are the me's that I could not assimilate, the pains that could not be suffered. Put away for a later that never comes. Because they are the dark. We all know the dark. Shall I write Dark? It is so alive and so personal and so intimate, it seems to deserve to be named. The Dark takes form in our dreams. We fear it, we run from it. It seems to chase us, it wants to destroy us.We call them nightmares and we try to avoid them. And also in life, we avoid it, the Dark, though its form is fleeting, hard to grasp. It tak...

I am nearly 40 years old. When I was a teenager and deep in depression I believed one day healing would come. I believed that if one has faith, eventually God comes along and says "well, I think you've suffered enough now. Good job." and then healing comes and you move on to the next phase of your life. I didn't just hang around waiting, but somewhere inside, while I worked on the outside, somewhere inside I was waiting. Now it's been a couple of decades. I still believe in healing, but I'm not so sure it comes to everyone. For more than 20 years I have tried every possible trail that seemed could lead out of the darkness and into the light. But each trail faded back into the impenetrable forest of gloom, leaving me always feeling as though I had gone somewhere but that that somewhere was more of the same as the previous somewhere. That is to say, I had gone nowhere. I suppose it is human nature to keep on. Perhaps this will be the pattern of my life unti...