Tag: meaning

I wonder what would happen if one day you said, "Enough! It’s time for me! I am going to take time out to go in. I am going to make time to find and reconnect with myself and with what really matters!"

What would happen if—when the "nay saying voice of reason" came in and filled your head with all the justifiable reasons that you cannot possibly take the time, spend the money, or leave your family obligations for 3-4 days to retreat from the world and to reconnect with you—you consciously overrode that seeming logic and took the "Illogical leap of faith" to invest in yourself, in your spirit, in listening for life’s deepest meaning and purpose?

I prefer to work with clients who have undergone really, really tough challenges in life. Why? Because these are the people who go on to change the world.

The brightest stars I’ve ever known—those musicians who write songs that connect with millions, the leaders of movements who change society, the researcher who discovers a cure—they all have one thing in common: they’ve gone through some super tough shit in life and through it, became exhilarated.

When we get hit by loss and heartache, life turns upside down. The routine "normal" we’re used to disappears. Nothing is the quite the same.

We lay down at night and our minds spin. Sleep flees from us. When slumber finally comes, we wake frequently.

In times of grief and heartache, we might have dreams about those we’ve loved and lost. We naturally wonder what these nighttime, internal dramas mean.

I used to think I knew about courage. I would often write and talk about it as a defining attribute that allowed you to explore and wonder about your life. And referred to it as the backbone of what gives relationships the strength to evolve. Those things are true, but in a more fundamental way for more people than I probably ever recognized before this massive loss, our capacity for courage is actually proportional to our will to keep living.

One of the meditations that my spiritual teacher taught me to use during this time was the classic practice of Tonglen—except, using myself and Ian and all the mothers who have ever lost their children as the subjects… Visualizing and breathing in my own pain and the pain of my son is searing, and I am often at the reaches of my faith as I breathe out the felt sense of being held by the divine…