Who we fundamentally are as open awake awareness remains untouched by our conditioning, regardless of the hardships we have endured. This has been repeatedly verified in my in-depth therapy and spiritual mentoring work with individuals over many decades. Certainly we can lose touch with our native innocence, sense of purity, and natural openness, as it lays buried or dormant, forgotten by the conscious mind. Yet we can and do have glimpses and intuitions of our wholeness in any moment. If our conditioning has been especially challenging, we may need to calm and stabilize the nervous system, before we can have easy conscious access to this underlying wholeness. Yet it is always here, unscathed.

As important as it is stay open to and to discover our natural wholeness, it is also important to acknowledge the limits and flaws of our conditioned body/mind. We don’t need to identify with these limitations, but we also don’t need to deny them. In fact, the more that we can recognize our native wholeness, the easier it is to accept our conditioning as it is and to lean into it with affectionate curiosity – not to change it but, rather, to be intimate with it.

This willingness to fully be with our experience – to fully feel difficult feelings, sense uncomfortable sensations, and to question core beliefs – provides an optimal inner environment for our conditioned body/minds to flower and become increasingly more translucent vehicles for the expression of our true nature.

Published here with permission from John Prendergast, with many thanks!

I recently had occasion to look back into the video from one of the sessions of the very first Healing and Awakening retreat in 2013. I was amazed by what I heard -- so much of this is still fresh and true. The reflections I'm sharing is mostly about healing, more specifically about healing and Love, but I also get to how awakening comes into the picture towards the end of the talk, which is about 20 mins, the rest is Q&A. It's rather slow-paced -- it was part of a meditation session -- but still worth watching if the topic calls you. In the video, I refer to research about the healing power of Love, which I published on a separate website: www.heartoflovehealing.ca. Enjoy!  Blessings to you, grace

As of late, the theme of depression has come up often: in speaking with people who were interested in the Healing and Awakening online group, in working with people in spiritual mentoring and counseling, as well as in questions people ask during non-dual spiritual events and satsangs. The more 'inner' and spiritually aware and sensitive people are, the more, it seems, they are also likely to be dealing with depression. This includes myself, as there has been depression in my life's unfolding. The depression lifted increasingly as I was willing to inquire into it, instead of being afraid of it when I felt well or suffering through bouts of it when it showed up again. One of my break-through moments of inquiry is captured in the poem below.

As I see it now, from both a psychological and spiritual perspective, the emptiness and lifelessness of depression call us to discover true emptiness, which is also what is truly alive in all of us. Most psychological and therapeutic perspectives will look at ways of filling the emptiness and finding aliveness at the level of the personality, or suggest anti-depressants. For spiritual people, this will invariably not feel quite right, not quite to the point. And you are right! Depression ultimately calls you to find your own light, the truth of yourSelf: that which animates even the depression. It is a wake-up call in the truest sense of the word.

So I've decided to offer an online group program that is dedicated to loving inquiry into depression. In this inquiry, you will be guided to follow the call of depression by opening into the depths of the emptiness, darkness, pain, and lifelessness that it faces you with. The invitation is to dive in and bring simple, open awareness to it instead of trying to get away from it. This is counter-intuitive, but ultimately the only way to find what is truly alive beyond the personality which always wants to control, escape, fight or fix depression. In this way, depression comes to be a doorway into awakening.

Since this is the first time I'm offering this group, I'm happy to keep it financially accessible. The fee for 5 group meetings will be $90 (USD), with a sliding scale possible for those who cannot afford the full fee. The group will start on Tuesday, 30 May 2017, and run until 27 June (11am PDT, 2pm EDT, 7pm UK, 8pm Europe).

On a more personal note, I am always profoundly touched and moved by the sacred, intimate space that arises through coming together as a small online group in this way, and by the powerful transformations that happen as a result. It is a deep joy for me to offer and guide these groups. You'll find more details about the group program HERE. You can also get in touch by e-mail if you have further questions.

With love and gratitude,
grace

PS: Also read another blog, Depression -- a fresh look, where I share more of my personal history of depression.

And here is the poem that describes my break-through moment of inquiry:

Dark night of the soul

All the lights have gone out.
Even the Sun has lost its radiance
behind the clouds of un-knowing.
The trees have fallen silent,
no more life visible in them.

There's not much life force left
in this body,
nor is there any power
in this mind.

The heart is empty,
nothing connects.
Bleakness,
no meaning
in anything.

Surprising
how vast
and still
the darkness is
as being surrenders
to it without resistance.

The dark side of life
no different from the light,
really no difference,
both a doorway
to stillness.

So many beautiful, deep, insightful moments during the Healing and Awakening retreat last December! If you have found out about this retreat after it was over, or you would like to revisit some of the sessions, you can do so by going to the 2016 Retreat Program and Videos page under the Retreats tab, or simply CLICK HERE. In case the videos are slow to load on that page, I have also created a Healing and Awakening Retreat YouTube playlist. Enjoy!

... and if you'd like to find out about future online events, you can sign up to the Living from Love online newsletter on this page.

The theme of Healing and Awakening brings together two waves of consciousness unfolding: the Eastern and now also Western wave of non-dual spiritual teachings, and the Western wave of healing the pain of humanity through the development of ever new forms of therapy and healing. While traditional non-dual teachings stress the need to transcend the limited self that feels a need for healing, it is remarkable that many Western non-dual teachers are or have also been therapists and healers. When we look at the essence of healing, it is an intrinsic part of healing the psyche that awareness evolves by transcending its limitation by unquestioned conditioning and beliefs. So in healing there is a movement of consciousness out of limitation into the freedom of Being, of living life truly in the moment. In fact, in new forms of therapy inspired and informed by non-dual understanding, true Self, true Being, can be discovered, just as it can be discovered through non-dual spiritual teachings.

This retreat is an opportunity to come together from all over the world as a virtual sangha (community), to explore this fertile ground of Healing and Awakening in our own lives. It is also an opportunity to hear non-dual spiritual teachers, many of whom are or have also been therapists and healers, reflect on this topic and share their insights. And most of all, it is an opportunity to participate in satsang, a gathering for and in Truth. As we sit and inquire with teachers whose sharing arises from Truth, a potent field of awareness arises that has the power to transform and help us shift out of the limited perspective of the separate self. The unique expression of Truth, by each of the teachers, adds richness, variety, and depth to the inquiry throughout the weekend, like a bouquet of flowers compared to the unique beauty of a single one.

The wonder and gift of the internet is that it allows us to gather in satsang no matter where we are on this planet. It also gives you the opportunity to participate live by asking questions and interacting with the teachers. The typical format of the sessions will be a first part where I am in conversation with the teachers about the specific topic for the session, and a second part where you are invited in with your questions and comments (either by YouTube comment thread, or by coming onto the Google hangout directly).

I look forward to sharing this retreat with you! You can register for it right here:

It's been a while ... the winter has been extremely cold up here in the North of Montreal. This slows everything down, including the imagination, it seems!

But about two weeks ago, inspiration hit, and I had the idea of organizing a new retreat with the theme of 'Living from Love'. You'll find out everything about it on the website: www.living-from-love.com.

Go check it out, and I hope you will join us in this new adventure!

With much love

grace

People wrote such touching notes of appreciation and gratitude during and after the retreat that I decided to put up a new page with their comments. 

Check it out, it's the comments page!
 
And I'd like to use this opportunity to express my appreciation and gratitude to all of you, speakers and participants,  who have made this retreat possible. It was such an incredible experience, and it wouldn't have happened at all without you! 

Thank you, from my heart,

grace

Almost four weeks have passed already since the retreat. I needed some time to rest and let the experience settle. And then I found that the Healing and Awakening theme continued to be very alive for me. So I started revising the website and creating 'digest versions' of the meditation and sharing sessions. The idea is for the retreat to be more permanently available on the website.
 
So here is what you will find on the program page now:

• Videos of the conversations with the speakers
  
• Videos of the meditation and sharing sessions:
  

You will find YouTube links to the entire sessions, as well as 'video digest' versions focusing on the theme of the session. The video on 'What is healing?' is definitely very inspired! Have a look, it's the first video of the Sunday program.

• Mp3 links for listening and downloading
  

for all the conversations with the speakers as well as for the digest versions of the meditation and sharing sessions are now also available. Many thanks to Rick Archer for his help with converting and hosting the files! 

Living the retreat experience:
If you haven't been able to take time for the whole of the weekend, or you have friends who may be interested, you can still do so now. The program page gives you a time schedule that you can follow as you create your own retreat at home! It won't be the same as the live retreat, but who knows, it may be just right for a weekend or a day. You can even invite friends to share the retreat with you!

 What's ahead?
I have some ideas about how to continue the Healing and Awakening offering, and I will be in touch about these some time soon. Here's what's on my mind:

• An online day event in 2014: I'm thinking of re-inviting Jeff Foster and Anita Moorjani for this, and one or more others. Your suggestions are welcome!
• Online meditation and sharing sessions once a month, starting in January 2014.
• Healing and Awakening small groups (also online), in which we can look more individually at how healing and awakening intersect in our lives.

Last but not least: thank you...
... for your generosity in donating!
39 of you made a donation, anywhere between $2 and $100. The overall amount (after Paypal fee deductions) reached the sum of $1,115. This covers all actual expenses and leaves a very modest amount that goes towards the work that went into organizing the retreat as well as the website, video and mp3 work that I've been doing since.
If you haven't made a donation yet and feel moved to do so now, please go to the donate page. All contributions are appreciated.

With much love and gratitude,

grace

PS: ... and I'd like to thank Wendy Ayotte for all her help 'behind the scene' during the retreat! I expressed my thanks during the retreat, but I wanted to do it 'officially', too.