ripening into harvest’s fullness

Our bodysouls are always doing their best to move toward their fullest, wholeness in any moment.

Even when we get pneumonia unexpectedly, when our bodies have pain we don’t understand, when we feel exhausted…

In the Diamond Approach, we call this the optimization of Being–Being is always moving to evolve, to be as fully expressed as possible through us, through these fragile, earthly, human bodysouls.

We can choose how much to participate in this flow, in this optimization, by how we live our lives.

Call it life force, kundalini, chi, ki, spirit, shakti, or prana,
it is the unimpeded circulation of energy that gives us
health and satisfaction…Life [Being] is generous;
it wants to flow through us amply and freely.
~ Maurine & Roche, in Meditation Secrets for Women, p. 91

So, how do we allow and cooperate with this natural, ample, free-flowing movement of life?

It’s about more than physical movement. Yes, finding enjoyable movement that strengthens, aligns, and creates flexibility and resilience in your physical body is important.

And, it’s about more than what and how we eat, though being aware that EVERYTHING you put in your mouth becomes your bodysoul–your tissues, bones, blood, emotions, and thoughts–might help you to choose food that supports your wholeness.

It also includes your psycho-spiritual practices–how you are in relationship with your bodysoul: sensations, emotions, thoughts, and soul.

Full expression of the pulsing movement of life includes listening to and responding to the body’s sensations.
Free-flowing optimization means paying attention to and working with ALL emotions to undo blocked energy (stuck patterns) from your history and personality.
Natural, free circulation means mindfulness of the monkey mind and learning not to believe everything you think.
And all of this affects the wholeness and ripening of your soul.

The secret is to cooperate with the process and provide
the right environment. Staying physically and emotionally
fluid is key, and awareness is the magic ingredient.
~ Maurine & Roche, Meditation Secrets for Women, p. 92

And it includes being curious and open to exploring our edges so we don’t simply stay in our comfortable, cozy nest where we don’t need to challenge our way of being, but rather ripen into our fullest harvest of wholeness.

The way I’ve been doing this recently is by
exploring my voice!

Even though I’ve always sung and have learned to love my pretty, pure tone, in the last few years, it’s become clear how attached I’ve been to singing in this one way. My voice–sung and spoken–has been another way of keeping me in a familiar, comfortable way of being, in my Enneagram type One personality.

In January 2017, I started exploring how to reclaim more of my voice–originally due to a really difficult situation I was going through (read more). I didn’t know that I would be challenging my tried and true way of singing, too! This journey continues to be an amazing one, opening me to not only fuller range in my singing and speaking, but also in my whole bodysoul.

Because I’ve been loving the work so much, I’m training to include Full Voice Coaching as part of my coaching work–so I can share this beautiful, life-transforming, ripening-into-fullness work with others.

there always, something sings

“…in the muck, in the scum of things, there always, something sings.”

~ Michelle Isaac from her song Something Sings

I spent July 15th – 20th in the hospital in Ithaca, New York.

A monthlong on-again, off-again headcold was brewing into pneumonia unbeknownst to me, and the pleurisy that abruptly awakened me at 5:30 am on Sunday the 15th was so painful and gripping my left upper chest and back that I feared I was having a heart attack. Various complications, including fevers spiking daily, kept me in the hospital longer than usual for pneumonia…

After the initial fear for my life–not a heart attack, not a clot on my lung, and later, not MRSA…, I found myself settling into an amazing experience of holy refuge and practical, hands-on love everywhere–through the ongoing expressions of support, care, blessing, and prayer from facebook when I posted to my friends that I was in need, and through the daily, attuned attention and ministrations of the nurses, aides, and doctors on 4 North, where I was convalescing.

the singing

I felt so much gratitude and appreciation for all the care I was receiving. Even in the depth of pain on every breath, even in the fear of the unknown, even in the sadness of this happening–without any effort on my part, love brimmed over like a waterfall from my heart, flowing over me and over others.

Why not see the good in everyone and be kind? I was feeling so supported, so I kept letting people know how much I appreciated their kindness. This created a beautiful reciprocity of kindness meeting kindness.

After many meals, I spontaneously wrote a thank you note on the slip of paper that had my order on it. Each day, I got a menu to choose from for the next day, and on the back was the typical “My Plate” diagram from the US government about healthy meal proportions. One day, I wrote a note and drew an arrow to the “My Plate” and said I wasn’t able to fulfill my need for vegetables at breakfast. Within a half an hour of taking my tray, someone from the kitchen came up and asked me what I’d like and from then on, I had a salad with every breakfast! Kindness meets kindness.

I was able to truly receive the care offered to me–-all the little things that the nursing staff did as a matter of course to care for me, and all the things I asked for. I let them care for me in ways that in the past I would have apologized for. I would have maybe not even asked for fear of being needy. But by asking, I got to receive their care and love.

Food is healing! As I ate my very simple, mostly protein- and veggie-based meals, I felt their life-giving power. How chewing made the vitality of the food accessible to my body. How eating slowly and reverently helped me receive the bounty of each bite. How I never felt like I had to be a “clean-plate clubber” and eat it all, so I could listen to what was the perfect amount in the moment for my healing.

The view of the lake. I was so lucky to get a room that had a view of the lake and to be in the bed by the window so I could see it! As soon as I could, I asked my care team to turn my bed so that, instead of the TV, I had a view of Lake Cayuga. The “leaping greenly spirit of trees and the blue true dream of sky” along with the water saved me (e.e. cummings)! I could feel their life force blessing and healing me. It was so odd–they said no-one had ever asked for this before!

Grief. Yes, grief is part of the gift, too. Since I was sick in my lungs, I realized grief might be a component. In addition to grieving being so sick, and missing not only my family gathered for the wedding, but also the concert I was supposed to sing and all my friends I was going to see that week in the Hudson River Valley, I found a well of grief that still needed to be felt about losing my brother in 2016. I let myself grieve his loss–that we could not save him, that he was so unhappy, that this was how turned out. The tears, the deep feelings helped me release another layer of this painful loss.

People, relationships, connections matter more than work! Joy matters! Singing! Laughter! Time for pleasure! Work is not the most important thing to prioritize in the day. This was so evident while I was lying around healing, receiving all the love from facebook friends, from the Unit, from my family and friends. It’s the heart-full connections that were healing. I barely touched the book I had with me that was related to work. I instinctively reached for the connection…

Asking sincere questions creates real connection. I loved learning about the lives of my caregivers–the nurses, aides, and Brendalee, who was in charge of the meals and kept coming to check in with me.

I found out Brendalee keeps chickens, pigs, and rabbits for her grandchildren so they will have a chance to have animals in their lives. In her home, there’s a basket by the door and everyone puts their cell phone in when they enter in order to have a chance at real contact. Her love of cooking is passed along to her 4 yro granddaughter through cooking together in the kitchen and through her service at the hospital. What a gift to feel the heart connection of so many common values and desire to be of service under our very different exteriors. We both felt filled by this connection.

Spaciousness around everything. Nowhere to go. “Nothing to do or undo, nothing to force, nothing to want, nothing is missing” (Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche). There was so much time for rest. I saw how all the things I love and all the ways I want to live create stuff to do and track and manage–they take up time. I want time in my life–to rest, to connect with friends, to sit with tea and take in beauty, to sing, to pray, to heal, to journal… to be. And NOT just in the hospital! 🙂

Singing gives me life. Even when I was sick, in pain, and had almost no breath from the pneumonia, humming or lightly singing a healing song carried me. The tune and words lifted me, bringing conscious intention for my mind, attuned contact with my heart–whether grief or joy or longing, and holy vibration to my body. Singing accompanied, companioned, and inspired me, surrounded me with the healing life force of my bodysoul. The primary song I sang as I did my “rounds,” (walking around the unit) was originally a birthing song, and I changed some words to birth my healing:

I am trusting my body to carry me through carrying you to me, I am trusting.
My body wide open, the veil lifts, my heart is filled, my mind it empties.
Wide open, I am wide open.
Welcome breath into my lungs, welcome flow into my muscles, welcome joy into my organs, welcome qi into my cells.

Click the link below for the song.
It is meant to be sung as a round.
Listen below for the separate parts I sang to save my life.

I Am Trusting My Body

(A birthing song, learned from Kathar Grant, who learned it at the gathering, Singing Alive. I changed the words to make it a birthing-my-healing song while in the hospital with pneumonia.)

Grounding–yin or yang?

Exploring and deepening my connection to the earth has been a big part of my journey over the years.

I’ve always felt grounded. People have commented on my solidity, my steadiness, my ease with the physical world. Partners have found my presence stabilizing and gravitated toward me for this. Clients, too.

And I have always felt relatively steady under stress.

I get stressed like anyone else, but it doesn’t usually unground me in the same way—I don’t get flighty, distracted, or visibly anxious. I tend to just buckle down and take care of business, perhaps clenching my teeth a bit or tightening up my jaw and shoulders…

My feet are very wide and ground into the earth. I go barefoot a lot in all seasons but winter.

I love the feeling of my feet and my hands in the earth.

I’ve always been more in touch with the physicality of living—with wood and stone, food and drink, paper and pencil—than with feeling energy or stepping out of my body. I haven’t wanted to. I like being in earth in my body. I feel real.

Nonetheless, I seem to have been invited to a next round of grounding exploration, to a deepening of my embodied presence.

And I’m trying to understand how it relates to my inner experience of already feeling grounded.

I’m wondering if there are two types of feeling grounded—a more yin and a more yang grounding.

If I think of it this way, then what I am cultivating is yin grounding.

I know how to be steady, solid, and stable in my doing and support of others. What I don’t know how to do very well is to release, sink, surrender, drop into the ground, and just be.

For the first time in 30+ years, I was drawn last year to engage in some vocal coaching, in order to access more of my voice, in particular, the more earthy qualities.

As I explore what it means to bring more grounded presence to my voice, I find it is the yin ground that is missing. I can’t open the low part of my range without relaxing and releasing. The vocal folds need to, literally, be more relaxed to vibrate more slowly and access the lower tones!

My body has also let me know, through a series of aches, pains, and minor ailments, that I need to learn to find yin ground in my pelvis as well. I am learning to sink, to drop down, to release held tension in the exercises my PT gives me and in the holistic pelvic care I have recently embarked on. It seems I need to learn more about presence here, too, in order to release pelvic tension and realign my pelvis and keep my pelvic floor healthy, flexible, and resilient.

Unfortunately, I can’t make yin ground happen. Heaven knows, I’ve tried!!

And it seems my yang ground
can’t create yin ground.

So, I practice.

Exhaling to release held tension in pelvis, pelvic floor, hips, throat, shoulders, voice…

Dropping my awareness into pelvis, legs, feet, fully supported by the earth, so that I can release the tensions that hold my pelvis and vocal folds in a certain configuration.

Consciously relaxing my jaw and my pelvic floor at the same time. (Bodymind psychotherapist Susan Aposhyan says there is a vital connection between pelvic floor and mouth—they are the two ends of the alimentary canal. Explore moving your lips and/or jaw gently open and closed and see if you can feel your pelvic floor, including your genitals and anus, respond.)

Squatting, lying, resting on the earth, surrendering my body to her holding.

Creating soulcollage cards with images to accompany and guide my bodysoul transforming (like those in this post).

Receiving massage, bodywork, and coaching.

And in all my practice, letting it be simple, a return, a non-efforting, a non-striving, a letting be and letting go.

This is the yin ground
I am learning to cultivate.

I’m struck with how both the voice work and my holistic pelvic care refer to presence. Cultivating yin ground enhances my vocal presence and my pelvic presence, both of which make me more complete and whole, more present as a human being.

Do you see a difference between yin and yang grounding in your life?

What is your relationship with your vocal and pelvic presence?

Smile into Spring

Smile.

Yes, right now, just try it on your face.

Notice how you feel right now.

For me it’s instantly softer, more joyous, more at ease. Right. Now.

As we teach in Laughter Yoga, just the simple act of intentional smiling and laughter sparks the feel-good neuro-transmitters in the brain. You immediately feel more connected, happy, and pleasured.

Who doesn’t want more of that?

Spring Equinox is here today,
Tuesday March 20th, 2018
at 11:15 am CT.

Especially in the northern climes, like Minnesota where I live, spring helps us smile again!

On Sunday, I hosted a Tea & Poetry Gathering. Just hearing the spring-themed poems that welcomed “rushing rain,” “wild spring,” “this earth is our heaven,” “buds bursting on the trees,” “the encouragement of light,” the “frolic,” and the invitation to the heart to “rave on” helped my bodysoul “step into spring.”

Spring always invites us to start fresh, to begin again, to welcome the new green life awakening deep within.

Why not use this natural, seasonal impulse to re-fresh and re-source our lives instead of waiting for a crisis to do it for us?

We can re-orient in so many different ways. Today, I offer just a few:

Try my new gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free Breakfast Muffins recipe for a simple, healthy start to your day.
Try on the Smiling Practice below, that you can do anytime in your day, to choose new, fresh, yummy life!

Smiling Practice

“Sometimes your joy is the source
of your smile, and sometimes your smile
is the source of your joy.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

For more awareness, close your eyes, but this can be done with them open or closed.

Let a smile start on your lips–draw the corners of your lips up toward your ears slowly. Notice how, if you let it, the smile naturally broadens and widens, taking up more of your face. Feel how it resets and refreshes your brain. Take a few breaths here, sensing your body.

Now smile into your heart–start at the center of your chest and imagine the smile spreading out from there, up toward your breasts (or pecs) and all the way to your shoulders, filling your chest with this joyful, easeful energy. Breathe in and out, sensing and feeling.

Now smile into your belly–from your pubic bone, let the smile widen out and up toward your hip bones. Imagine bathing all of your lower belly organs in this goodness and well-being. Breathe, feel, and sense…

Breathe into all three Centers–Belly, Heart, and Head, starting in the center–pubic bone, center of chest, lips–and let the breath spread the smile in each Center, filling you up with yumminess. On the inbreath, breathe the smile into being, on the outbreath, release any efforting. Stay here, smiling, breathing, sensing, and feeling as long as you choose, and then bring this sweet moment of awakening to your true nature back into your day.

with roots, we rise

magnificent trees, their root structure spreading
horizontally twice their height.

icebergs, 90% of their mass underwater.

deep sleep, providing the substrate for your body
to integrate, heal, and grow.

real, nourishing food, feeding your cells, cre
ating your bodies, emotions, and thoughts.

movement, pumping blood and air,
forming flesh and bone.

inner practice, deepening your connection
to your whole bodysoul.

These are the roots you need
to rise up and live your life.

Winter is the time to nourish your roots:

Listen to a grounding meditation to deepen your inner roots.

Try my Parsnip-Burdock Breakfast Bowl to feed your belly roots.

Join me at Wild Church!

Are you self-full?

Woman in Center: Russian Painting, Artist unknown

At an Enneagram presentation a year or so ago, a question came up about being selfish.

Selfish is such a buzzword–especially for those of us who grew up as women in this culture, over the age of 30 or so…

We were taught that to be selfish–to be concerned about ourselves–was wrong. Our presence was valued when we were selfless–when our concern was for others.

Of course, this has not been true for most men. Men who focus on themselves and who talk about their accomplishments are most often seen as successful and strong.

Well, this woman shared a distinction she had heard, which I have been considering and sharing with my clients ever since.

Instead of worrying about what it means to be selfish, let’s consider being self-full.

Self-full. We can’t be self-full when we are being self-less!

We can’t develop the fullness of our voice and presence if we feel it’s wrong to be concerned with ourselves. (Thank us, women of the #metoo movement, for daring to share our voices.)

All the heroines and heros of our time have modeled being
self-full, not self-less.

They knew what they valued and loved. They knew what they needed–and they acted on it for themselves and for their greater communities.

We have to fill our own wells so we have water to share with others. This creates a self that is full, that over-brims with the water of life for all. This is being self-full, not self-less, or selfish!

From this place, we meet the world with greater presence, which means we are more able to show up with what’s needed in the moment: more grace, strength, ease, equanimity, joy, power, love, etc.

My primary Enneagram teacher, Russ Hudson, once responded to a question from one of the Christian students about presence by saying “Whose Presence do you think it is, anyway?”

How do you fill your well
to be self-full?

What does self-less look like
in your life?

making life meaningful

“We are often tired and imbalanced not because we are doing too much, but because we are doing too little of what is most real and meaningful.”
~ Marianne Williamson

Moving into the holidays, we do get tired and imbalanced.

Most often, we ARE doing too much—

Working hard to earn the money we need to not only survive, but to buy gifts for our loved ones,
Making time for more connections with those we care about,
Decorating and creating a home environment that will help us shift into the mood for the holy-days…

And even though all of this is true, what if the problem were not really the “too much,” but the fact that we are not engaging with what is “most real and meaningful”?

The poet David Whyte tells a story that illustrates this in his book Crossing the Unknown Sea. He was working for a cause he loved, doing work he was good at, and feeling driven to work hard and make a difference in the world. But he was burned out, exhausted, and feeling disconnected from himself all the time. Reading poetry together, a friend gently commented that he was not exhausted from overwork, but from not living a wholehearted life. In his case, he was ignoring the inner call to step into his vocation as a poet. The harder he worked, even though it was for a good cause, the less time he made for what had meaning to him, what was most real.

What is most real and meaningful for you
during the holy-days?

How can you live a more wholehearted life right now?

My life and work are about meeting life exactly as it is and finding ways to be more present and mindful right in the midst of it all, in the thick of it.

Here are some simple ways you can practice presence in the life you are living right now, so that you can feel more meaning, more enjoyment, and more depth:

Take a 3-5 minute Do Nothing Break
Do a 3-minute Heart Opening Practice (video)
Practice with each step
Try a Tea Ritual

Another focus of attention to help you feel more meaning and purpose in your life is to mindfully engage with rituals that create a sacred container for your life.

These might be seasonal rituals, like the Holidays—perhaps you attend services, decorate your home, or celebrate the waning and waxing of the light. (If you’re in St. Paul, please join me for a Winter Solstice Celebration on December 21st.)

Or they could be practices you consciously engage with to create a sense of the sacred in each day, like you can find in my free Welcoming the Sacred E-Book.

If you’d like to practice in community, I’ve created a free, online 5-day Practice Presence for Life Journey for you! Join me to get on the right foot in the New Year and set yourself up with meaningful practices to help you live a more wholehearted life, every day.

Practicing Gratefulness

I taught a class on practicing gratitude just before Thanksgiving.

We explored how we can’t just assume an “attitude of gratitude,” but we can practice to be present, to open our heart, mind, and body to more gratefulness.

When we brainstormed how gratefulness / gratitude feels, there were so many ways we experience it on the inside. We feel connected, warm, loving, kind, happy, open, excited, tingly, uplifted, grounded, centered, accepting, positive, and more…

What about you? How does gratefulness sense and feel to you?

These are all aspects of Who we truly are.

Of course we would want to be in touch with them! We can think about them as aspects of our Essence.

Your Essence is something that never goes away. It is an essential part of you, not changed by mood or anything that happens to you. It feels like home, like our birthright.

When we feel in touch with this, we can relax.

We know all will be well.

We make better decisions.

We trust life.

We talked about a lot of different ways to practice opening to gratefulness—from gratitude journals to thanking those who help you, from saying grace at meals to practicing random acts of kindness… The one I’m going to try on in the New Year is a Gratitude Jar!

There are so many ways to open! 🙂

Please join me in the simple 3-minute body practice below to invite more opening–to help release the habitual contraction we hold in our bodies so that we can make space for more gratefulness and be more present.

Gratitude is a Presence Practice.

When we want something, we find a way to get it or work toward it, to practice.

We have to prioritize practicing gratefulness!

Not to get it right.
Not to reach some ultimate gratitude high.
But to be more present, to open our hearts—for ourselves and for the world.

If you want an opportunity to practice with me for a week, join the
free online 5-Day Practice Presence for Life Journey,
starting in January.

Set yourself up with a sacred and mindful start to the New Year!

365 self-care!

Does lying in the backyard together watching the total solar eclipse count?

How about making sure I get some veggies in at every meal?

What about dancing wildly to feel my juicy aliveness?

Yes. It all counts.

Self-care is about listening to what your bodysoul (body, heart, mind, soul) really needs in any moment to be truly well.

Because of the way we’re programmed (or if we’re in an extreme circumstance of some sort), we can get kinda stuck on one track of self-care.

If my self-care is just about physical body stuff—enough sleep, healthy food, taking my supplements, exercising—it’s not enough.

SAY WHAT?

Yes, I stand by it!

Self-care is bigger than just taking care of your body’s self-preservation needs of what I call grounding and nesting!

We also have to consider our need to feel a sense of belonging and place (connecting), and our need to feel pleasure and turn-on (aliveness / radiance).

All three forms of self-care are innate, animal, instinctual needs that operate under the surface all the time.

Especially when we’re stressed, we pay A LOT Of attention to trying to get at least one of these needs met…

Which one do you habitually and perhaps subconsciously prioritize? (I focus most on my grounding / nesting needs.)

What are you neglecting? (I’ve had to learn to pay attention to my aliveness / radiance needs.)

I’m writing about this in my book Nourishing the Feminine, and I’ll also be teaching about it at my:

Looking forward to supporting you in your self-care needs–in whatever form that takes–classes, retreats, tea, coaching, connecting!

Save

Building Temples of Forgiveness

This is the final post in a 3-part series on Unfolding the Heart.
Find the first post here.

Let’s take this a little deeper.

Let’s look for the innocence.

This was a hard one for me in the forgiveness work I’ve been engaged in over the past year.

To protect others and not cause more harm, I’ll give you the general outlines to describe what I’ve been working with:

I worked for a spiritual organization for 14 years and when I decided to leave due to integrity issues last year, they didn’t pay me the $5,800 in back vacation pay and consulting fees they owed me. They said they only way I could be paid was to sign away that 14 years of my life—to never publicly claim I had worked there. And to top it off, they still won’t talk with me and tell me why. I went from being the most valued employee to this.***

For the first half-year, all I could do was suffer.

I judged them as wrong and bad and lived in fear.
I went over and over the situation in my mind to try to make sense of it and see my part, learn my lessons…
I mostly saw their guilt and wrongdoing. 😦

Then I found some work to help me with the F-Word, forgiveness.

And I saw how I was keeping my own suffering going by splitting off and separating myself from them:

I was good one, the wronged-one, the victim.
They were the bad ones, the wrong-ers, the perpetrators.
End. Of. Story.

As you can imagine, this view was not helping me find freedom or a way to move forward in my life!

So I decided to look for their innocence—and I found it.

I saw how they were not doing this to me on purpose. They were living out their own separation and splitting, their own fear, their own attempt to be happy. I just happened to be affected by the wake of their huge ocean waves.

When I looked deeper, I could imagine the suffering underneath their actions, what might be causing them to treat me this way…

And over time, my heart unfolded, becoming bigger and wider and more available to Love.

Do I agree with their actions? No.

But I no longer judge them as bad or wrong because I can see underneath the rocky waves to the ocean of Oneness that connects us:

the ocean of innocence,
the ocean of groundlessness,
the ocean of Love.

And I invite you to do the same.

Whether you are working with forgiving yourself or an “other,” you can always look for the innocence underneath the actions.

You can see that underneath it all, there is an innocent, small childlike place that is just trying to be happy, to feel OK, even to survive.

We can’t force anything. We can’t force our hearts or the heart of the “other” to unfold. It has its own timing and process of growth.

But we can look for the innocence. And notice how our body, heart, and mind respond.

Make this practice your own. Forgiveness is usually a long process, and it can’t be rushed.

I found that I needed to fully feel my own suffering before I was willing to see their suffering and innocence.

And after that, I needed to keep turning my perspective toward innocence, toward a willingness to see with fresh eyes. Every time the feeling of being wronged arose, I tried to reorient to the Oneness with an intention or prayer.

May I see their innocence.
Open my mind to a deeper truth.
I am willing to see Love. Show me.

I let my heart yearn for this opening.

Research shows that those who practice forgiveness—and it is a lifelong practice—are healthier and happier.

In one Stanford University experiment, people reported fewer backaches, headaches, muscle pains, stomach upsets, and other common physical signs of stress. They also reported higher levels of optimism, hope, and self-confidence.

In a study at University College of London, they found that those who didn’t practice forgiveness suffer from a 55% higher risk of serious heart disease.

The negative emotions of injustice, anger, bitterness, vengeance, unfairness, and more cause biochemical changes in your body that damage your physical health.

And setting the physical health risks aside, who wants to live in the constant state of negativity that unforgiveness creates?

Contrary to popular belief, we are not stuck here just because something “bad” happened that we had little or no control over. We have a choice—a choice to do our own work and practice forgiveness, over and over and over again.

Forgiveness is an act of the heart, a movement to let go of the pain, the resentment, the outrage.

And as Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield says so simply: Letting go begins with letting be.

That’s why the first step is to stay with our suffering—we let it be, we acknowledge it, we allow it, without judging, but with gentle holding and compassion. (You can read more on that in the 2nd part of this series.)

By opening to the pain we are trying to push away, we clear a space for something new, fresh, and alive to awaken in our hearts, for a return to Love.

Forgiveness is about accepting what happened (letting it be) and finding a way to release it so that you can live now, regardless of what happened in the past.

It’s about releasing the attempt to control the outcome and letting your heart and your life unfold in the present.
It’s about allowing healing without knowing or controlling how that will happen or look.
It’s a return to an open body, heart, and mind, softened by the healing power of Love.

One last practice, this one from Rob Eller-Isaacs, one of our ministers at Unity Church Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I invite you to close your eyes again and bring your grievance to mind, heart, and body once more.

Think about it, and then sense and feel how it affects you.
Let these things be as they are, without trying to change them, opening to the truth of your feelings and sensations in the moment.
If you have a sense of your or the other’s innocence, bring that to body, heart, and mind—if not, no worries.

Now place one hand on your Heart Center and one on your Belly Center, below your belly button. Let them be kind, loving, allowing hands. Accepting you just as you are, like a loving mother would.

And repeat silently:

I forgive myself.
I forgive you. (Perhaps this is said to a part of yourself.)
We begin again in Love.
[Repeat this 3x]

And say it once outloud as if we were saying it all together, to feel the solidarity and possibility in this common intention for our lives:

I forgive myself.
I forgive you.
We begin again in Love.

I end with a quote from Jack Kornfield that encourages us to take on the sacred work of forgiveness:

If only we could help each other build temples of forgiveness
instead of prisons. We can. In our own hearts.

** Jack Kornfield quotes from The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace

*** Note: On August 8th, 2017, I received financial payment in full without having to sign my affiliation away, after over a year of spiritual work on my own. (With support of friends and teachers!) It happened after I had fully released any expectation of payment and had focused on my own work and ways I could make amends.