If you aren’t sure how you’ll keep going this month, if staying in bed and pulling the covers over your head is tempting, then this particular meditation is for you. In a safe, accessible way, we are pulling up our big kid pants, and stepping out in each moment of our life with eyes wide open and hearts blazing. Join me for this brief mini-meditation and keep going - Tender, Messy, Awake. We got this!

As we muddle through this long-awaited election, we are tangling with some fierce emotions, and while I could teach some lovely, feel-the-peace type meditations {and I’m sure I will} it feels to me crucial that we use this time to engage with the fierce and the not-so-beautiful side of the human experience. 

Within our meditation practice, there are times when we feel quite deep and internal, and there are times when we feel more ‘on the surface’ and external. This flow from depth to surface and back again is a normal and healthy part of our practice. Mark Nepo refers to this ever-moving flow as “persistent drift”. 

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about cycles. Cycles within our own lives, our relationships and within our meditation practice. Have you noticed that your meditation practice ebbs and flows? Sometimes in consistency, yes. But more so, what I mean here is in the times you feel depth, and the times you feel surface.

In many meditation teaching traditions, there is an unbroken lineage of teachers. This means that each teacher can trace back to the teacher before her all the way back to the original Guru of the lineage. And, within this unbroken lineage there is a power of transmission. The Guru energy is carried through each teacher in the lineage in its own way and passed through to its students. In essence, this means you have direct contact with Guru energy assuming you study within an unbroken lineage.