My heart is opening again.

I’ve become accustomed to this ever deepening, ever tender movement.

And yet I’m always astounded (all over again) that there’s more. Which is ridiculous because I teach that existence is limitless. Further evidence we are only ever students teaching ourselves.

These openings never fail to feel like a mix of raw astonishment, tender free-fall and fish-knives to arteries when I’m in the middle of them.

I remember those boys at school who used to turn their eyelids inside out and chase me around with their arms out screaming like the boogie man. The tender pink flesh from inside their eyes…outside.
My whole system feels like that during these heart opening phases.
The tender pink flesh of me exposed – to the seasons and the elements.
It’s as if every piercing drop of dew lands right in the centre of me, in slow motion…and with the impact of a sweet bullet.

my heart
is stretch marked
and strong

Yet when I go through these phases of deeper and deeper heart-opening, it’s no exaggeration to say that every breath feels like it could undo me.
And when I say undo, I mean exquisite unravelling. Which is at times foreign, strange.

All existence enters deeper and deeper inside this space – this me/not me/we.
And can the vessel tolerate this level of openness? This level of intimacy with everything? I don’t know. I simply have to choose to keep opening. Each breath tells me I’m still “here.”

I sit in stillness that feels like loudness.
Hours feel like minutes.
Birds and ether and wind and the way a tree bends toward light.
The Standing Silent Nations – all around me. Rocks, trees, creatures.
The way light reminds us we are all full spectrum.

In these moments God is my body and I am that.
Everything falls to such deep stillness and silence it’s almost terrifying except that it’s nothing. It feels like longing…for nothing.
Longing that has no wish to be satiated.
It doesn’t make sense.
It’s not about sense.
Sense becomes irrelevant. Laughable.
Madness, so sensible.

My heart is on the rack. Being stretched wider and wider still by the hand of God.
The only pulse, existence. Which enters through my guts, my forehead, my chest – and becomes it.
Can I walk as this?
With nerve endings out and veins opened and atom/particle/wave – splayed?
I think I can.
All it needs is the next step.

“Take this flesh, open it wider still. Use it for your will.”

When someone we love dies, we are allowed to grieve.

People understand this process, it makes sense to them. They wouldn’t dream of asking us not to feel – at least overtly. It can be demanded subtly.

And yet each of us endures many deaths, over and over throughout these magical – and sometimes deeply tender or outrightly shocking – lives.

Versions of ourselves die. Facets of existence that we once held solid, sacred and so very dear – fall away completely.

And for some of us, every reference point for any self is completely dissolved.

Death is perfect, sacred process.

Natures priority is not our comfort, it’s our emergence.

We are asked to burn into being in the fires of our lives – now.

Otherwise, we cannot birth the new expression of existence that wants to dance through us.

It’s not enough to have deep realisations about true nature. We are asked to embody that truth. After all, we can only give what we embody.

And as we embody what we have realised – what is now true for us – often there is attrition. Loss.
Except it’s not loss, it’s realignment.

Change – to bring us into deep resonance across our relationships, careers, homes, creativity. Every aspect of life is called into truth.

This realignment is as big, or as small, as the gap between how far from our truest expression we were before this emergence.

We talk a lot about the joy of awakening, about the bliss, deep sense of “all-is-well-ness” and the objectless, subject-less love that arises when we open and shift in these ways. But we don’t often talk about the grief. We deem it unenlightened or uncontained.

And yet wholeness includes all.

Oneness/non-duality – call it by any name – includes all by its very nature. Nothing is othered.

Love is the fabric of existence – and love includes all.

Yet we can be terrified of wholeness. The mind wants a “right” and a “wrong” that it can follow. So it knows it’s on the side of “okay, safe, right” – because it’s so afraid of not being enough, not being worthy or being left behind.

Wholeness is paradox. It cannot be shoehorned into any one way or another. Wholeness is “this AND that”

not “this OR that.”

Wholeness is wisdom – and wisdom is not knowing. The mind tries to “know” – the being understands.

Wisdom is sensed and experienced. Its Petri dish, is the ability to dwell in the mystery.

When we’re looking to know, what we’re really looking for is control. And we cannot control our way to peace and freedom.

When we traverse these deep portals of emergence – the foundations of all we are, and all we have learned to “know” about existence, ourselves and “other” are challenged.

Simply put – when the light comes, it spares nothing.

It asks us to meet, let go of, and clear anything in our lives that is not aligned with our deepest truth. Anything within us that is not yet free. Not yet true.

This is sacred process. It happens on its own. Just like a foetus becomes a baby without us “doing” it.

Our role is to open, make deep love with life, support growth with nutrients – but it grows, it becomes, of its own alchemy.

So too, our emergence. As our being shifts, form rearranges outside of us to reflect the changes inside of us. As within, so without.

Very often, the being is moving and the mind is frantically trying to catch up, to understand what is happening to it.

The intelligence required here, is love.

Holding the personality, compassionately as it moves through these places.

We are more than human.

AND we are also human.

It’s all true, all at once.

The ultimate self can tend the human in its suffering (and its joy). Supporting the personality to open and fall back into all the ways Grace is wanting to move through us – now.

The human grieves the different deaths it is traversing. Deep compassion and holding is needed here, to shepherd it through and help it let go into the sacred process it is undergoing.

The perpetual wink of the deep heart, belly laughs. It knows ALL is always well.

But the personality can grieve deeply, that which is falling away. This needs, and deserves deep care.

Like all of life, awakening contains everything.

Revelation, yes. Incredible awe and joy, freedom previously unthinkable – and also grief, shock, confusion. These are proportionate reactions of a perfectly functioning human system, that is being undone. Not a broken one.

This IS the path.

Spiritual maturity is becoming deeply human – through being more than human. Not discarding any part of existence, or denying any layer of reality.

We learn to pull spirit ever more deeply through flesh, that it may express here, lighting the world with its might.

We stop knowing if we are the dancers of “our lives” or simply being deeply deeply danced.

I’ve become interested lately in how our idea of healing can be a subtle form of self-hatred.

The orientation of transformation being to finally become enough. OK- in the eyes of myself, other, god. Whatever our particular yard stick is, today.

The hustle.

We are all tender, delicate creatures deep inside. We are also mighty and endlessly powerful.

We are deeply special, and completely unspecial – all at once.

We contain everything, and we are all the same.

We want desperately to know, that we are okay, lovable, safe – not messing everything up completely.

We try so hard – to be okay.

But this is where healing, transforming, spiritual growth, meeting goals (however it’s packaged), the perfect asana, the perfect body, the perfect career, the perfect transcendent state, the perfect embodied scream – whatever – can be just self-loathing, dressed up.

When it’s not coming from an energy of loving ourselves so much we want to treat ourselves well. To expand into our deepest potential. Which is powerful.

But instead coming from an energy of discontent and wound.

The energy and intention behind our actions informs the outcome and the way it all feels in our body.

I had a call with a woman in America a few months ago. Out of the blue she said “you have so many attainments.”

To be honest I wasn’t sure what she meant. I had a sense, but I thought it might be some fancy Zen language I didn’t understand.

So I googled it after our call.

And I wanted to call back and say “No! No! No!”

There is no trophy cabinet.

Imagine all the energy you’d have to spend just to dust the fucking things, polish the trophies, guard the trophies- point people in their direction for admiration. (Hey? You noticed the big, shiny one, just sayin?)

Healing, growth, transformation- in my experience- is not about adding. It’s often about subtracting, to reveal the wholeness we already are.

It isn’t about adorning ourselves, like Christmas tree’s.

It’s not about adding artificial light.

Feeling we have to fix – or fix-up – ourselves and others, is exactly the fear that leaves us separate from ourselves and others.

And whatever we’re afraid of, owns us.

Transformation – healing – doesn’t come from cutting and pasting our personalities and lives into some idealised version of self.

This is where our neurosis come from.

The trick is not adding artificial light, but removing the blocks to reveal our inherent light.

Throughout our lives we build walls, protection around our hearts, beings, bodies – when we’re afraid or hurt.

Someone breaks our heart – up goes a wall, we’re criticised by our parents – we erect a fort.

Culture tells us to be more.
Ads tell us to add more.
Even spiritual teachers can tell us to be nothing or everything, depending on their flavour.

We fear we’re not enough so we start to contort what is true for us, into what we think is expected of us instead

We create barriers and blocks between what we truly are, and life – not because we are bad, but in an effort to keep us safe and accepted.

And these attempts at staying safe, actually keep us separate.

The walls we build to keep others out, end up keeping life out. Out of our bodies, out of our hearts, out of our experience.

Then we wonder why we secretly feel lonely, despairing, anxious.

Because all the light that we inherently are, is blocked by things we ourselves erected.

So we start adding to, and adorning ourselves to try to be enough, or feel good enough.

Because maybe this will be the trophy in my cabinet that finally makes me whole…gets me recognition…brings peace.

And we look at everyone else’s carefully curated and projected decorations and think they have their shit together.

Here’s a secret: they don’t. No one does.

Healing isn’t building a perfect self.

It’s about seeing, shifting or dissolving the walls and blocks to revealing our true self.

This is a different expression for everyone. There is no prescription. Only what is deeply true for me and can I let it shine?

So let’s burn the trophy cabinet!

Nobody’s looking anyway. They’re too concerned with their own reflection in its door.

Burn it, and then dance around it. Not for performance but for the pleasure of granting ourselves the permission to write the playbook for our lives.

Healing, transformation – is an inside job.

There’s no bikini shot for Instagram that could ever trump it. No “public figure” job description. No business card. No trophy. And certainly no state or spiritual experience.

We cannot control our way to peace.

We cannot lasso freedom.

But we can come in to such deep inner rest, such deep acceptance of all the things that we are, and that are here, now, our utter magnificence, and complete ordinariness. Nothing desperately sought, and nothing avoided either.

Everything, homed.

In this place, the “shoulds” fall away. And this is what is meant by liberation.

We allow ourselves our hilarious, beautiful humanity. To be flawed, completely clumsy and imperfect.

From this base of deep acceptance- transformation and healing can’t be stopped. It simply unfolds.

We are all in the same human bodies. We can breathe, and allow our humanity. We can see it is a portal to the divinity we already are.

We can see the most exquisite sameness (and simultaneous uniqueness) – everywhere, in everyone.

From this place, trophies, accolades and additions are no more than heavy things to be carried.

It feels so damn good, to put them down.

Love is often far more terrifying to receive for humans, than criticism or rage.

Often, we only accept the love we think we deserve.

A client raised a dynamic with me that she’s going through, and it also came up at a recent retreat I was at. It comes up a lot, for many.

When we enter these authentic states of expansion, there’s a lot of very natural objectless, subjectless love that arises.

Very genuine joy that bubbles from within and cannot be stopped.

We are lit, from the inside.

There’s a radiance we don’t own, couldn’t fake and can’t take away.

Others can assume this makes our lives easy. That we are some kind of beaming bliss-ball.

This is rarely true – but a very real lens we can be seen through all the same.

In my experience it is not the easy option to choose to be loving in a world that often equates love with one-dimensional weakness, bullshit falsity or plain saccharine foolishness.

Choosing to authentically shine can be the hardest decision we will ever make and maintain.

It takes an iron will and deep strength.

It requires a robust dedication to living what is true for us, despite the impact of that. It takes love that is so strong, it must be what it is.

Because light burns, as well as illuminates, no one is going to give us permission to be this free. To have the audacity, to love.

We give permission to ourselves.

Love, brings up everything in all of us that is not love, for release. And that can be confronting or even terrifying to be on the receiving end of.

It also brings up everything in us that cannot accept or receive love or does not feel worthy of love.

For example – if someone is loving us, but deep down we believe we are not worthy of love, we’ll hate their love. It’ll feel like vomit in our mouths. Completely uncomfortable. Foreign. Bullshit.

It’ll be read as either misguided and unintelligent (how could you possibly love me when I’m not loveable?), fake or insincere (you’re full of shit because I’m not loveable), foolish (you must be an idiot to love the unloveable) saccharine and immature (you’re only capable of love and light privileged pop spirituality – therefore I’ll deem you unlovable) or weak and un-nuanced (you’re bypassing the gritty parts of you because how could you love like this if you weren’t in some place of denial?).

All of this could be true, and it also might not be true. Depending on the being in front of us.

And even if any one facet of this is true, we can choose to love that too. It’s sacred process. And everyone’s process is to be honoured. We’re all rookies here.

After all, we can’t rip a caterpillar out of its cocoon early and get angry when it won’t turn into a butterfly. We stopped it’s process. And likely killed it. Every step in someone’s journey is sacred.

To shun light, simply for being light, is just as limited as shunning dark, simply for being dark.

Only when all of us is homed, is there wholeness in the system.

When we disavow any part of us – we are living in an internal duality that has to manifest “outside” of us.

Full spectrum living contains all.

Love is the fabric of existence – and love contains all.

Not a fluffy, giggly, saccharine love, but a deeply homed powerful love – able to move mountains and stand for armies if required.

We only shun darkness outside of us, when on some level we’re shunning darkness inside of us

Equally, we only shun light outside of us, when on some level we’re shunning light inside of us

We talk a lot in spirituality about the importance of owning our dark these days.

But many also struggle to own their light.

It’s no longer fashionable to love unapologetically, or to shine too brightly – give it a decade, it’ll come back around…but for now…

There’s deep fear in wholeness. Because we grow up with “right/wrong” paradigms from culture, wounded parents, teachers, etc.
And to live with allowing all – can feel like shaky ground to a system (psyche, physical, energetic body) that has learnt to scan for the “right” way to be. And needs to live within those imposed limitations in order to feel safe and accepted.

No matter which gaze it’s trying to gain acceptance by (tribe, friend group, parent, boss, culture, lover) or what end of the light spectrum that particular view favours.

People have such a fear of truly being all they are. Fear of seeming like “bliss ninny’s” as I heard it called when I lived in Ireland almost 20 years ago. Or not seeming intelligent enough if they shine.

Or fear of seeming not enlightened enough if they are in grief or rage or actually feeling.

It’s all the same dynamic – with a different coat on. Pushing away a part of ourselves, and the equal part in “other”

But what if we held a new paradigm? One where we loved ourselves enough to be able to be all that we are – and to receive another’s lived expression of love as deeply genuine?

One where instead of overcompensating for the extremes of traditional spirituality – which wanted to dwell in transcendence, love and light and bypass the body, mud and emotion –  by going to the opposite extreme of refusing to shine – we could see easily that any extreme, any bypassing, is destructive.

There’s a deep intelligence, in dwelling in both places.

The middle place is where wholeness, equanimity, potency, alive presence and deep freedom exists.

Where all is welcomed, all allowed.

Where we’ve dropped judgment and censoring of others – no matter what they are – because we’ve dropped it in ourselves.

Ironically, love is the intelligence required to do this.

A very important aspect of this is being able to deeply let go of how we are seen by others, which has been important for me on this journey.

Until we give everyone the freedom to see us however they see us – we are not free ourselves.

Fixating on the gap between who we know ourselves to be, and who we are seen as – imprisons us.

There’s a freedom then, in simply letting go. Knowing who we are, ourselves. Living it deeply and courageously, regardless of the impact.

Regardless of whether our natural expression is beaming, sepia toned, dark, light, grey…or neon.

To be wholly, honestly, fearlessly – us. It’s the work of lifetimes, and the only real job there will ever be.

About how they might find a sense of aliveness, potency, joy, connection.

I understand this longing completely – it’s tender, honest. We all share it.

It rises at different times in our lives – we are all the same. Plants reach for light, and so do we. It’s an organic impulse.

Light is our birth right. Not mine, nor owned. I’m certainly not an authority on it. Despite this, I am happy to share what I’ve noticed.

For me, the brightest light is always in deep intimacy with the dark.

In many ways.

The acceptance of the dark within us, and the cultivating of a powerful dark-light that is strong enough to insist on shining in a world that often tries to dim it.

Dark and light are not binary. They exist within one another, one, sacred thing.

We all have our melodies and maladies.

The greatest secret is acceptance of this.

Of holding sacred, the power of both the dark and the light to fuel us, drive us, open us, deepen us and push us all forward – to ignite and enliven us into an existence so rich, we can’t help but let life dance us – all the way – whether in suffering, or in joy.

We can cultivate this.

Potency, for me, is about how we sit inside ourselves, imbibe ourselves, feel toward ourselves.

It’s not about what we’re doing, or wearing.

It’s not about that curated Instagram shot.

It’s about – what is my unique truth and who am I being, as I move through the world?

It’s about releasing being defined through another’s eyes, and instead defining ourselves through our inner eye. “Do I approve of me?”

Returning deeply to ourselves, over and over, deeply to our own truth and living it courageously.

Questions might be, am I here to have people like me? Approve of me? Look sexy? Or am I here to be what I truly am, and so be free to celebrate life, myself and others too, in all our juicy differences.

Can I let myself be the powerful force that I am? Can I go toward all the murky blackness and the sweetness in me? Or will I shut down these energy currents and so become tighter, sadder, less alive?

It begins, and ends, within us.

As we move toward the dark in us, it is finally homed. Our bodies and systems relax in ease, no longer pushing against parts of ourselves – and this is what allows light to flow through us freely.

Our song is our art. Our song is our work. We are tethered to the energy that we cultivate within ourselves and we will always move and create from that energy.

We will always be animated by that energy.

It cannot be, any other way.

If that energy is chaos and unacknowledged weights – darkness we push away – we will lead our lives from turmoil and inner division, and much of what we touch will produce dysfunctional results.

We often push pain away or avoid it because we don’t want it to overwhelm or run us. And by pushing it away and not allowing it to be felt, it does run us because it remains, a deep discordant hum underneath everything we run to.

If we have cultivated acceptance, power, equanimity, love, in our bodies then we move from there, and all we touch benefits from that.

The undepleatable source of our flow, alignment and love is our own connection with ALL of who we are.

This, is the intelligence required.

Our connection to deep-light, is simply the connection to ourselves. Which is also the connection to God, source, infinite intelligence, whatever you want to call it. It’s all the same thing.

The only undepleatable, truly luminous energy source – is within us.

That is where we can turn again and again and again to be filled, lightened, animated and imbued with true power, wisdom, might, security and the richest connection we could imagine.

Instead, we tend to reach for energy injections (we could call this false light) outside of us – food, a new crush, people pleasing, another pair of parted legs, scrolling, gambling, drugs, booze, shopping, whatever.

Those energy injections always run out and we find ourselves depleted again, reaching like addicts, again.

We always feel insecure from this place because we are puppets on strings to those things.

Instead, being totally available to the rich source of energy within ourselves optimises everything outside of ourselves. So this work is the best thing we can do for everyone around us, our families, our communities.

We might ask – what energy currents am I sitting in as a human? What am I too afraid to see that I am? Where do I home myself, and place my power? How can I raise, raise, RAISE this energy that I find within – in the body. Perhaps in a whisper now, but always there.

How can I host this juicy, incredible light, more permanently through the body? How can I then weld that consciousness in the world?

If you look, you will find it, deep inside you.
Keep coming back, through the fear, through the darkness, through the hollow parts of you, the orphaned parts of you, the hate-filled parts of you and eventually – welcoming all home – we find our truth, luminosity, peace, power.

We can discover and honour our ways of connecting to ourselves and source and never look back. Insisting on this time, this space to connect, no matter what shows up, inside or outside.

Eventually, a clear, powerful, dark-light settles in us. Immensely grounded. Incredibly precise. Fiercely intelligent.

Not a saccharine, fluffy love. A mighty, homed, clear-seeing love that can stand against armies if needed.

And it will be needed, from time to time.

Because no one is EVER going to give us permission to be this alive and free.

Light burns, as well as illuminates. If anything peoples instinct can be to criticise or try to shut it down, both in themselves and others. “How dare you…?”

If we want to radiate the true force that we are – the authentic fullness of ourselves – there’s a fierce dark-light needed to underpin it. A black, firm love, that says – “I choose this, for me. Nothing will stop me being all that I am.”

We are called, to give ourselves permission to shine, in many seemingly small moments, and some big ones.

We are called to claim ourselves. Deeply, truly, unapologetically.

Our connection to all the parts of ourselves is our connection to light, to god, to potency, to authentic power. It is deep living and from that alignment and balance – all impulses and guidance, joy and aliveness follow. We can trust the impulses that arise from this place.

It’s more than okay to have hard days. It’s more than okay to have hard years.

We bend, we break, we rise. We are all the same.

This isn’t failure, this is sacred process.

Rather than abandoning our real self to create an idealised one – a light filled one – we can aim to reveal, accept and nurture what is truly here – who we truly are – in our entirety. We find we are already light.

Reveal it… and then revel in it.

Not because someone has deemed us okay. Not because we’ve been granted permission or wholeness from outside or reached some spiritual or cultural peak – simply because we have decided to stop walking the rigid lines created for us, and by us, and let ourselves dance – fully, deeply, unapologetically.

We place, and draw our power from within.

In this place we cannot help but alight ever more deeply.

We stop knowing if we are even the dancers of our lives, or simply being deeply, deeply danced.

Thank you

I walked
a thousand blocks

with bleeding feet

for you to teach me
how to unlearn everything.

And in all those moments
when I was a refugee
from myself,

despair
blinding,

you stood quietly
green eyes firing

willing me through.

I suppose
letting you rewire me
was never gonna be easy

but
in the unraveling

a
sacred
rebuilding

you:
braided into me.

And all the distraction
the numbing, the

ceaseless running
of before:

given over (willingly or
forced)

to the quiet
that you require.

the laser-beam-present-moment focus
of watching a snail
inch along a path
for an hour,

together.

The subtle strength
of holding myself

still-fast enough for you

each day anew.

*

They say
parenting
is the fastest route

to enlightenment

if we can transcend
all the frightened

parts
of ourselves

but I was never
logics daughter

could never muster
lust, for any idea of a saviour

have always preferred
giving over to water

when the maelstroms come.

*

We are all haunted, grace-filled
beings

I was just trying to live
with the hauntings.

Wasn’t seeking,
anything.

But you brought me
to my knees

You broke me bodily
(the heart
was just the half of it)

you opened me

white flagged
the wars in me

my three-foot guru
in gumboot feet

*

When the light comes,
it spares nothing.

*

Rose
you were sent
to improve me

and I thank God
for your love

I thank God
I had the sense

to let you
undo me.

(For my daughter, Rose, on her 6th birthday.)

I lay awake for hours last night watching my daughter sleep – the night before Easter chocolates, she’s so excited.

I found myself asking God (call it consciousness, great spirit, Allah – whatever) “how can I ever possibly love her enough? You’ve set humans an impossible task.”

She’s so open and pure. Every parent knows, we always fall short of that. Our own beautiful, bumbling humanity gets in the way, no matter our hearts.

I think of God as my dearest friend. I found myself chatting away. “Who has been the human that has loved the most?” I wondered.

I pictured some obscure, simple man or woman in a hut or house just deeply, quietly being love.

Loving trees, loving water, loving birds, loving children, loving people. No fuss or fanfare. Walking so lightly on the earth that each step was thoughtful. Energy going toward not harming. Within community. Within family.

I wondered about their human struggles. Living alone, it’s easy to maintain equilibrium – if we’re really here, and we are really willing to be in close proximity to other humans, that’s where we meet our humanity most deeply.

“Spirituality” or “being love” has moved out of caves, off isolated hills, or ashrams and into the womb of us.

Can we do it here, in the streets? Even amidst a riot? (Think 6 year old jacked up on sugar all day).

Was Christ the most loving incarnation? I once read a channelling with Christ (and it’s very rare I read things like that) where Jesus spoke about “himself” and said that Christ was not his highest lifetime. But an unknown woman that lived “after” was.

What is it to love as deeply as possible? To let the love we are, move through us completely.

I turned these thoughts over.

Grace plays such an important role in love. She teaches that. Forgiveness. Of “other” and “ourselves.”

Giving over.

And so we walk on.

We rise in the morning. Brush teeth tenderly. Watch the window for dew and kingfishers. Make the porridge. Tend the flowers. Scrub the floors. Metaphorical and physical.

We listen. Let butterflies, moths and seasons teach us. We forgive ourselves our own humanity. While revering it deeply. Look to the sky, and wonder.

Perhaps the greatest act of love is truly finding joy in the sacred ordinary – not as a concept but an experience. Miraculous things that we mistake as simple things when we take them for granted.

Like grass all around us, growing. Or our children, eyes wide under the moon. Blood spilling between our parted legs, food growing under our careful hands. The person we loves deep familiar form pulling us in.

Dust and dew and the odd moment of true connection and understanding. Our breath misting cool air, the wintering of our own hearts – usually right before they burst into brighter spring.

Waking in a night to match my breathing with hers.

Pulling her to me. Trying again tomorrow.

The gift of each other. Dancing us more and more deeply into love.

I’ve had many conversations lately about how and why we choose to give. Or choose not to.

Most of us are good hearted people, doing our best to be of service to our families, communities, friends. But many are worn out and not sure when it is “ok” to say no or give to ourselves.

There are so many messages in the world about “selfless” giving.

How we serve, what we serve – who, when and why.

When is it “ok” to draw boundaries?

Where does the line between selflessness and selfishness blur?

As we’ve moved around these discussions I keep coming back to the same place – intention is everything.

If we are giving from a place of fear or need (“will they accept me, love me, keep me”) that energy imbues the act.

If we are carrying the “disease to please” or a martyr complex or myriad number of other imprints or patterns that can lead us to support people from a place of seeking (I want approval, I want validation, I want to earn my right to belong, I want to earn love, I want to be “good” or good enough) – basically “I want, I must, I should” – then our capacity to support authentically will be deeply limited. And we’ll be drained fast.

The person receiving will also feel the energy of fear or resentment or entitlement in the giving.

When I’m clear on my intention and give from a place of wanting to BE love, not get love – everything changes.

For the other, and myself. Because that intention also includes being loving to me.

We are each our own eco system – and every environment needs balance to thrive.

So we know to give deeply and unapologetically to ourselves when needed.

Then we give from overflow. And move in the world from overflow.

Then I’m very clear on my boundaries – my “no” is easy to find. And it’s the deep power and authenticity that lives inside my yes.

Discernment is key. As well as robust dedication to the truth of us.

Am I seeking or giving here?

Am I doing this to be love, or to be loved?

One letter makes all the difference and imbues our movements in the world with such clear open hearted no-strings-attached sober, yet full giving, that we all come away blessed.

When I’m giving from this powerful place of choice, my heart is open, love flows truly and freely – blessing both me (as it travels through my cells first before leaving my body) and the other.

From this place, it’s simply – me giving to me.

We become love moving, and what a joy it is to have that opportunity.

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