I love doing water colors, but I’m not an artist and my water color skills are not all that good. You can see for yourself in this extract from a water color that I did recently. It’s a goldfinch sitting on a tulip leaf looking at a tulip… but it sure doesn’t look like a goldfinch! The shape isn’t quite right, and the blue from the sky bled into the beautiful yellow of the bird.

When I looked at it, it struck me that this image captures the nature of our human existence very fittingly. When we come into life we’re pure light, untainted, and when we leave we merge back into this purity. But as we’re living, our life circumstances bleed into us, becoming part of who we are. We are conditioned in so many ways, by our families, the culture around us, the collective human psyche. Trauma and pain cause defensive patterns that become part of our psyche. Our light gets obscured, our shape distorted.

The spiritual search leads us back to where we come from, the purity of our original nature. The question is: how do we understand and live the darker forces, the mess that human life tends to be and create? Knowing that we are indeed goldfinches, how do we respond? By rejecting and trying to escape everything that is not light-filled? By claiming that’s not really us? Or are we open to finding out what this human mess is all about? Are we willing to experience it for what it is, fully, completely, without any disclaimer? What gold could be found in that?

Dear ones,

The theme of support has been on my mind a lot over the last few days. Partly, it's because the spiritual support groups are starting this week and I'm reflecting on how people can be best supported in both their human experience and life and in their spiritual opening (not that these are truly separate). Partly, though, it's also an eternal theme, as old as humankind.

Spiritually, it's important because one of the main ways that we close off from spiritual opening is through contracting into a sense of separation and relying on personality and ego strength alone. We've all learnt this as children because we were told we had to 'get our act together', control ourselves or our impulses, or do or achieve what was demanded of us. In that we were left alone and had to cope by ourselves. As a result, the deeper the discomfort or pain, the more it tends to be closed off from any possibility of asking for help or support.

That's why the experience of sharing something and receiving support is so healing. That's how we open to the reality of Love in a very human way, how we can experience it directly and let it transform us. In that, the heart opens and separation gives way to a sense of connection or even oneness.

I’ve been reflecting recently on why I feel including the very personal aspects of our experience and lives is so important, especially for spiritual people who yearn to awaken to true Being. I don’t feel I have any ultimate answers, but I have some sense of the pitfalls that can be avoided.

For the longest time, I thought that the personal aspect that stood most in the way of my awakening was the mind. I hated my mind for being so incessantly noisy. All I wanted was for it to shut up. Which it did only very rarely, in exquisite moments of bliss or emptiness during retreats or meditation. It calmed down over time, for sure, but it never really stopped. Even when I was inquiring into who I was, the mind wasn’t always empty, even if I had an increasingly solid and unquestionable sense of who I am. (If you are more of an emotional type you can substitute emotions for the mind).
 
We all have ideas of what awakening means. None of them are true,

Some of you have written to ask when the online spiritual support group would start up again, but the time zones and availabilities involved couldn't easily be combined. So I'm now offering two possible times, hoping that all who want to participate will find a time that works for them. The times and starting dates are as follows:

• Wednesdays, 11am PST, 2pm EST, 7pm UK, 8pm MET; starting on Wednesday 10 March.
• Saturdays, 10am PST, 1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm MET; starting on Saturday 13 March.

There is some flexibility in terms of the timing (an hour earlier or later). The spiritual support groups are for those of you who feel alone and isolated in their interest in non-dual spiritual teachings, and who are looking for support and companionship in living these teachings in a very concrete, day-to-day way. To find out more about them go to the Online spiritual support groups page. If you'd like to join one of the groups get in touch as soon as possible with the information requested on that page.