Trusting the Gold (retreat talk)

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This talk looks at how our upbringing and culture lead us to mistrust who we are and become identified as a separate, deficient self.  We then explore the practices of presence and self-inquiry that turn us toward the openness, tenderness and wakefulness of our Being. Our trust grows as we increasingly glimpse, embody and live from our natural Being.

NOTE: This talk was given at the Spring 2019 IMCW 7-day Silent Retreat.

Adrift

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

~ Mark Nepo
From Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, (Sounds True, 2016)

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