Parinama

I am surprised by what inspires me during the darker seasons in life.  During those times of heightened anxiety, grief, overwhelm, when it hard to get your bearings, joy can seem so distant.  The air and light so far away, when I am so deep under the waters of loss and despair.  So when I feel inspired to be alive and in love again with life, however brief, I am startled and so very grateful.   With this inspiring, I am unexpectedly and suddenly filled with the long deep breath that I am yearn for and with it the belonging to life that the grief disrupted.  In a dark time, the inspiration often comes from the most subtle of things, sometimes so easy and quiet that I would have missed it if I were happier.  Like yesterday at the lake where I go to swim each evening in the summer and ran into the friend who pays attention to things I hardly ever notice and lives into them so fully. She knows where to find the sweetest fruits of the season, and which farm...

In difficulty, the times of loss, illness, pain, we enter into the darkness.  We loose the ground upon which we were standing, supporting ourselves and others, and enter into the free fall of uncertainty.  There is overwhelm, dread, a lack of hope, and so much despair.  We enter what the spiritual teachers and mystics call "A dark night of the soul" when what we depended on for our belovedness, our belonging, our sense security has fallen away.  For believers, there may be little solace from spiritual practices, community, or God. And yet, all of our great spiritual wisdom points a finger to the holiness of this dark place as the very threshold through which the divine through the soul comes into its aliveness.  Leaning into the darkness, we can mysteriously find a deep source of comfort, presence, and love to help sustain us through our difficulty.  And this experiences helps us to know what is alive in us beyond the material things of life.  This con...