For almost 20 years, my friend Jenny Douglas and I have met up to do a practice called Love Letter from Your Inner Wise Self.
No matter what is swirling around in our lives, we set a timer for ten minutes and we tune into our inner wise selves and let them write to us.
Try it!
Even after all these years, it’s always a surprise that when I tune in, the inner wise self is there and ready to be a loving witness and support.
I just stumbled across this love letter, written about a year after Erik’s death, at a meditation retreat Jenny and I attended where the practice was sky-gazing:
My precious Amelia-mou,
You’re a bit empty and lumpy these days. A bit quiet. How perfect you have this practice of not-doing, of untangling, of simply gazing at the sky. The sky — one thing that you have in abundance.
I know this time feels like too much sky and too little ground. But now you know you can settle into your own body — ground — feel your breath and open to the vast expanse.
The sky so like your life — empty and changing. So little to hold on to. But also vast and luminous. A great canvas for imagination and feeling. A place where anything can arise.
So little is fixed right now. So little is certain. And so — again — what a blessing to sit in the vast spacious expanse of uncertainty, to make a home there.
And to remember that inside, you are also expansive and luminous. There is a light, a consciousness, a mirroring of something intelligent and real.
It’s enough. Let the next thing arise. Don’t force it. Let the next things be a form of play — not just experimentation — but a play of consciousness. What will consciousness birth into being? What does that vast luminous space want to birth through you?
You keep thinking you have to create a new life. But for now this is the new life — just a play of clouds and reflections in the vast sky. Let them come, let them fall away. Let yourself be birthed and fall away and birthed again.
This is a time of change and gentleness. A soft playing, soft observing, soft heart, soft mind, soft landing back into life.
Be gentle. Be sweet. Be a great space of compassion for yourself and others.
You are not fixed. Nothing is fixed. Everything is fluid.
Come and participate in the dance of change. Do not fear it. Do not cling to it. Let it move you. And when you need to rest, rest.
All is ultimately well, dear one.
You can’t know that in your bones now.
But over time, you will know - with everything in you - that all is well.
I love you. I’m proud of you. I’m always with you.
-Inner Wise Self
Comments