Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Intimacy with our neurosis


Buried inside even our deepest neuroses are the raw materials of love. In the tantric and alchemical traditions, those less-than-awakened thoughts, feelings, emotions, impulses, and raw sensations are the prima materia for us to work with. The shit, the piss, the dirt, the darkness, the failures, the disappointment, the deflation: this is the sacred material we have to work with as alchemists of our own lives.

Rather than becoming consumed with some mythical journey in order to get from “here” to “there,” where we get rid of the darkness, we turn it all upside down and travel inside it with courage, compassion, and creativity. No longer organized around “here to there,” but how will “there” erupt into form, how is it that we will become a transparent vessel in which love can come pouring in here to the world of time and space?

Yes, it will often be quite messy, utterly contradictory, and unbearably confusing at times… and so very human. But the invitation is to enter into intimacy with our neurosis, explore its color, texture, fragrance, and underlying energy, because we care so much, and want to know what is most true.

And what we discover is something quite luminous, that this material we have come to identify as “my life” is pure and sacred as it is, and inseparable from love itself. It is love in disguise, appearing in whatever form it must in order to reach you.


The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now 

New book – The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – to be released in April