…has happened since I last wrote in mid-June. The sameness of life (which inspired a friend to call each day of the week ‘blursday’) under the heavy blanket of a global pandemic, coupled by the multitude of emotions (same friend calls this ‘corona-coaster’) sets up a strange paradox in daily life for me. I’ve simply …
I’ve shared on this blog a number of times my journey with anxiety: once out of my awareness (covered up with strategies and false appearance of strength), uncovered and fought against (like a foe), and now something of a companion (from whom I get to learn and grow). Many of us will have experienced emotions …
Read more “Fearlessness and courage: a need to distinguish?”
Week 13 of my personal lockdown, and I seem to be moving through a new phase in this consistently morphing experience of COVID-19. Or probably more accurately, COVID-19 is an amplifier to processes going on below the radar of my normal experiencing of being a human being. Constantly in movement. Thoughts, feelings, moods, behaviours – …
As I sat on the garden bench at the front of my house this morning (flanked by my two tree friends), I was able to tune in to a deeper sense of contentment; this has been somewhat out of reach for me recently. I, like many of those I spoke to last week, felt the …
I’ve taken to asking people I meet online – friends, family, students, supervisees – the question “what are you learning about yourself in all of this?” I’m intrigued by the ‘growth’ aspects that the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing. As a relative newbie to the Vajrayana path, I am appreciative of the View – that the …
When I re-read my last blog post, I actually feel a little naive…given the experience of “stay-treat” and how I have come to view it in my rearview mirror. I’m reading a lot of Jung right now, and his explanations of individuation as alchemy has relevance for me: the intentions with which I entered my …
As I sit here at my desk, I realise how fortunate I am to be in a position of ‘retreating’. As a nation, as a global community we face a huge and unprecedented situation; and I am still able to put aside time and space for myself to practice and to do some writing. I …
Here we all are, amidst an extraordinary situation. Even as the Covid-19 virus hit China at the end of last year; even as it started to make bigger and bigger headlines in January, I think very few of us would believe we would be in the situation as we are now. For a few days …
It might not be a surprise that I have been reflecting on anger given last week’s disclosure of recent losses in my life. Anger is considered a normal reaction to loss and part of the ‘moving through’ process of grief. Anger is a territory that I don’t know well; certainly not like I know the …
I sit here in the early phase of bereavement. Just hours ago I found out a friend had died. It isn’t a shock – it’s been on the horizon since his cancer diagnosis nearly three years ago, and its turn toward a terminal condition some two years ago. On one level, I had been preparing. …