Most of us think we know what self-abandonment is. We think it’s not speaking up, not setting boundaries, saying yes when we mean no. It often looks like kindness. It looks like being understanding, letting something slide, staying quiet so we don’t create friction. On the surface, it appears loving. Yet below the surface, this behaviour slowly erodes our relationship with others and ourselves. The moment we override our direct experience we move away from ourselves and the o

A couple of years ago I was in a relationship where, from the outside, it looked like everything was being fulfilled. The best restaurants several times a week. Great wine, nice clothes, vacations. The kind of attention and affection I had always wanted. The kind of life that should feel deeply satisfying. Yet, I became painfully aware of a void inside myself. It seemed like the more luxury that was had, the more noticeable the void was. Eventually I was hit with the realizat

When awakening opens through the head, there’s a sense of specialness that comes from seeing. Clarity, insight, understanding. Life feels significant because it’s known. There’s a subtle orientation around being the one who sees. Big epiphanies can come with energy, and that energy can feel intoxicating. When awakening opens through the heart, specialness comes through feeling. Love is vivid. Emotion is alive. Experience feels meaningful because it’s felt so deeply. There’s i

A while back, I wrote a post about the grief of oneness. At the time, I didn’t realize this was the gut coming online. The oneness that’s felt through the gut is different from the head or the heart. It isn’t the clear, spacious understanding that often comes with a head awakening, and it isn’t the sense of interconnected love that opens through the heart. It feels more like being stripped of everything personal. Like the absence of a separate self. A felt sense of non-existe

The deeper I go into this experience, the more I feel like a calm, emotionally neutral mother. From this place, I’m witnessing and emotionally attuning to different parts of myself. These parts have space to be seen as the body feels safe, the mind quiets, and identification loosens. What’s interesting is that I’ve never really explored parts work, yet I see it very clearly. Wounded parts from specific ages step in to take charge when certain emotions are triggered. I’m now a

Recently I’ve been noticing something interesting. Any time I build a story, meaning, or judgement with a pull, if I look at it closely it begins to lose its substance. This seems to unfold naturally. A conclusion forms, and as soon as it’s seen, an opposing story or interpretation arises. Then another, and another. With enough perspectives available, none of them can hold. They all begin to feel empty. What becomes clear is that our stories, meanings, and judgements are shap

Yesterday I turned 41 and took a picture of myself. I loved the way my wrinkles showed my age. It felt honest and dynamic. After I made the image my profile picture on Facebook, something changed. I became aware how Facebook is almost an anti-wrinkle container. I rarely see women my age posting pictures like mine. I was surprised by how it landed in my body. Even though I’ve moved through many layers of caring about how I’m perceived, I felt an internal dissonance emerge. I w

Identification is like a thick cloud that prevents us from seeing clearly. It obscures the view beyond our ego structure. Most of us are moving through life in a fog. For some the fog is thick and constant. For others, it comes and goes. Here’s a common example of being in the fog. You accidentally cut someone off on the highway. They start honking at you. Immediately, a wave of shame arises. That shame hooks into a thought “I’m a fuckup” and the mind begins to spiral. On the

Most of us carry a deep desire to be seen, understood, and mirrored. When life feels disorienting, it’s natural to look outside ourselves for grounding (or numb out). We often long for someone who can reflect us back into coherence. A juicy desire to be held by someone who can truly see and meet us. Yet how often are we genuinely doing this for ourselves? There are moments when we reach out and find no amount of reassurance, understanding, or presence from another can fully s

There is a grief that lives deep within my heart. It aches with beauty. This grief lives in a groundless ocean, slowly sinking into a bottomless void. Within the void lives radiance, the loving beauty held inside the grief. At times it shines so brightly it’s almost too much to look at. It overwhelms the heart and the soul. A radiance that brings tears without a story. Within this beautiful radiance grief still lives as an aching pain. The pain of a vulnerable heart. The pain

When we find a place of stillness within the mind, body, and soul, insight can move freely through the whole system, integrating naturally as it’s both understood and felt. As resistance softens, the system is able to flow on its own. This is where true transformation occurs, without effort. Insight arrives cleanly, the body trusts, and from that trust, embodiment unfolds. We can’t force the body to believe what the mind is saying. The body requires safety, and the whole syst

The other day I saw through my need to be understood. Historically this desire has been rooted in a somatic sense of threat. Over explaining provided me with a false sense of safety. The safety stems from wanting to control a false narrative, or what I believe to be a false narrative. It’s as if a false narrative somehow threatens my very existence. As if I’ve somehow become trapped and identified with the version of myself that lives in someone else’s mind. This is a misper

For most of my life, I carried a quiet belief that something was fundamentally wrong with me. Before we had language for neurodiversity and learning disabilities weren't as easy to identify, all I had was shame, comparison, and the feeling of being “found out”. What I didn’t know then was that the very thing I feared would one day become a doorway into authenticity, self-acceptance, and freedom. All through school, it felt as if I had to hide a shameful secret, that I was de

At the end of the spiritual process, things become surprisingly simple. Layer after layer falls away until what’s left is soft, innocent, and effortless. Kind of like returning to a state of being newly born into life. People talk a lot about seeing behind the veil, accessing hidden realms, or gaining mystical abilities. Those things can arise along the way, and they can feel exhilarating. I remember that phase. The chaos, the psychic openings, the speed of everything. The eg

Everything we experience is arising and falling within our field of awareness. A thought appears and disappears. A sound comes and goes. A tree sways, a feeling moves through the body, a memory flashes for a moment. All of it is just experience passing through. Coming and going. The past is already gone, it doesn’t exist anymore except as a memory. It’s already come and gone. The future hasn’t arrived yet, so it doesn’t exist either. It’s just imagination. What’s real is only

What stories and meanings have you been attaching to people, places, yourself, and every event of your life? Are those same stories quietly shaping the meaning you assign to every experience you’re having now? What if each time you attached a meaning to something, you stopped to examine several other equally viable interpretations? Would the original story begin to lose its solidity? Would its truth soften? In that softening would you start to see through the illusion of all

If we learn how to authentically and genuinely foster true compassion and unconditional love for all, there’s no more need for self righteous morals or rigid ethics. When compassion and unconditional love are real, we’re naturally moved toward what serves the greatest good, even while accepting everything exactly as it is. It’s like a loving mother who fully accepts her child as they are, yet still offers warmth, connection, and presence. She sees that struggle is necessary f

The last thread dissolves when the ability to believe in the stories and meaning attached to anything fall away. Yesterday, while walking down the street, it occurred to me that I no longer exist. I’ve experienced this in various settings before, but this was different, this felt like the new natural state of being instead of an experience. It occurred to me in this moment that I no longer believe in any story, meaning or belief that could tie an experience to myself, my life

I’ve recently started taking some basic non-dual classes. A few questions seem to come up over and over again, yet the responses I’ve heard often feel like talking in circles. So I thought it might be helpful to talk about them in a simpler way. The first theme is around feeling emotions. In this process we’re called to feel everything fully, but not feed it. Let’s say you’ve had a complicated relationship with a relative and a lifetime of not being able to express how you r

As this whole concept of a mind, heart, and gut awakening settles in, I’m beginning to see how each stage has shaped my experience of relationships and my role within them. The mind awakening came first. It felt vast and open, almost limitless in its clarity. Non-duality made perfect sense on a conceptual level, and the world appeared translucent, almost dreamlike. But it also created a kind of emotional distance. If someone shared something deeply painful, like losing a love