Last night the bright moon
left its presence
on my windowsill.

I opened my hands.
Nothing fell into them.
But still, they were full.

Perhaps gratitude begins like this
not with knowing
what we have been given,
but with the trembling
recognition that we
have been given anything at all.

This breath.
This body.
This astonishment of being here
in this incarnation, this body,
here and now.

Even sorrow has left gifts
at my door.
Some wrapped in endings.
Some wore the face
of someone leaving.
Some entered like winter
and stayed so long
I forgot the scent of rain.

I did not thank them then.
But time has strange hands.
It turns wounds toward the light.
It makes windows
where there once were walls.
And sometimes what once broke us
becomes the hollow through which
the sacred enters.

So today I am grateful
for what I understand,
and more grateful still
for what I do not.

For the invisible thread that
carried me through places
I could not see beyond.
For every mystery
that refused to explain itself.

For the heart that kept beating
while I was elsewhere.
For the earth holding me
without asking my name.
For this strange life
that keeps undressing me
of everything I thought I needed.

Until perhaps one day
there will be nothing left
but wonder.

The moon.
An open hand.
And the softest whisper
from somewhere I cannot name.
You were never empty.

And suddenly,
without really knowing
who I am thanking,
I bow.

I have always been entranced
by the embers of a fire.

Those tiny points of light glowing
against the darkness of a woodsy landscape.
They seem almost insignificant, and yet
they hold my attention completely.
There is something mesmerizing
about the warmth and light
they continue to carry.

Gratitude
feels something like that
to me.

As I became a full-fledged adult,
life became fuller, busier, and
more complicated.

There were things to navigate
that could alter my livelihood, my comfort,
and my sense of certainty.

And gratitude became
a beacon of light for me,
a place I could return to
when life felt uncertain.

I have learned that gratitude
doesn’t always come first.

Sometimes there is confusion,
hurt, disappointment,
and grief.

Sometimes I need to 
move through all of that first 
before I can find my way back.

I find gratitude now in things I once overlooked – 
an open stretch of time, a day without an agenda,
the freedom to read, create, and wander.

I used to feel an urgency,
as if I always needed to complete things, 
as if my productivity would allow me 
to fully access my expression, 
feeling, and experience of gratitude.

There is something
freeing about allowing a day
to unfold without needing
to fill every moment.

This is what has changed most for me.

Gratitude has become
less about having the life I imagined,
and more about recognizing
the life that is here.
Right now, in this present moment.

I still wonder why I sometimes have to move
through so much before I can feel a semblance of
gratitude for the life I’ve made for myself.

Maybe I don’t need to know.

Maybe it is enough to
notice the embers, to recognize the light when I find it.

And to feel grateful that it is still glowing.

Many years ago when I was a child dreaming up my future life,
I used to imagine my perfect fairytale home,
nestled amongst the trees, on a hillside by a blue ocean,
with fruit trees and gardens and flowers and birds.
Good people around me.
Happy children.
Music everywhere.

But life took me down other paths
I couldn’t have imagined, and for many years
that dream became a distant memory
of a time when I believed
in fairytales.

Many years and four children
into the adventures and challenges of
my uncharted journey through life,
I found myself homeless for six months.
I had no home, no job, no money.
Just the canvas walls of my tent,
a car, my violin –
and my breastfeeding baby,
my toddler,
my two older children.

Princes and ratbags had come and gone.
Rental houses and jobs had come and gone.
I’d been scrambling for stability
as an unwilling urban nomad,
yearning for a place to call home,
struggling and grieving
for lost dreams and the life
I longed for.

Yet my heart was still beating music.
I was still loving.
I was exhausted but not broken.

Somehow amidst all of
the uncertainty, I realised:
if home is where the heart is,
maybe I didn’t need to find my home,
maybe I could create it
right there.
I might not have the life I’d dreamed of,
but what if I could create
my dreams with what I had?
Something quietly began growing in me,
a sense of possibility and
appreciation for what
I did have.

My cup might not be brimming over,
but it was half full, not half empty!
Perhaps gratitude wasn’t simply
a response to good things happening,
but could be a way of seeing things,
a choice in how we meet life.

With growing excitement,
I went out and bought myself some
fruit trees and big ceramic pots
to plant them in.

I didn’t have a place
to put my roots down, but life
is too short to wait to grow fruit!

I bought colourful cushions
and good food.
A friend built me a fire-bath,
and connected a hose
to an outdoor sink.

I turned that chapter of homelessness
into an adventure full of
fun and freedom, picnics outside on the grass,
laughter with my babies, and growing gratitude
for the simple joys of my life:
hot baths under the stars, healthy children,
a beautiful and peaceful place to camp,
and the good food on our tin plates.

And somehow, the more I practiced gratitude
for what I already had, the less I felt like
I was waiting for something else.
I began to see beauty
and richness everywhere. Home began to feel
less like a distant dream, and more like
a state of being: delighting in
the small magics of life, like the call of a bird,
a child’s laughter, a full belly.

Life had given me some
lemons for sure, but I was learning how
to make some really great lemonade!

Soon after that, miracles began to happen.
An empty house appeared on a hillside
in a forest by a blue ocean surrounded by
trees and flowers and good people
in a village known locally as
the village of the birds.
Someone asked if I was interested
in living there and even though
I didn’t have the means and there seemed to be
100 reasons why it was impossible,
I said yes.

Because sometimes, all you can do
is say yes to life –
and trust.

This has been my home now for several years!

I planted my fruit trees in the ground.
My children thrive.
Birds eat out of our hands.
Flowers grow and
music is everywhere.

Of course, there are still
challenges too sometimes,
life is life and
we are all human.

But every single day I wake up
and, for a moment,
wonder if I’m dreaming!
Every day I’m swept up in waves
of heartfelt gratitude for the magic
that brought me home, not just for the extraordinary magic
that brought me to my house in the forest,
but to the deeper magic that
happened along the way.

Because home, I learned,
is not simply a place we
finally arrive at.
It’s what we create along the way,
even with very little.
It’s the courage to plant a fruit tree,
even if we don’t know
where we will be next.

And sometimes, after searching for
home all our lives, we find it’s
been here all along, in our own making of it,
in gratitude for the simple joys
of this life, in the home of the heart.

Reflecting on gratitude,
I noticed that there were
many, many, many, many, many, many, many times
in my life when it seemed wise
to not be authentic,
many times when it seemed wise
to get along and not rock the boat.

It seemed like a really good and
important choice to make.
And how many times when
authenticity seemed problematic.

What’s that have to do with gratitude?

Well, to really feel gratitude,
you have to know what you’re grateful for,
know what you like, and
know what you value, and things
of that nature, and be willing
to feel yourself, willing to be vulnerable to
not just the joy of having or being,
but the pain of losing,
the grief of losing something.

So gratitude
becomes this invitation to
be open to feeling what’s here
and available to feel,
even if it’s sad or mad
or anything, turns out.

And for me, my quest
has been communion and
connection and authenticity.
And my conditioning has been:
keep it on the down low.
Keep your head down.
Don’t make eye contact.

Keep your thoughts to yourself.
Keep your hands to yourself.
Find out what is wanted and conform to that.

Over the years of inquiry
and inquiry and inquiry,
the layers of conditioning come up
and wash away, and there are moments
of deep and powerful gratitude
to just be here, how I am,
without trying to do it any different
inside or outside.

So that’s how it is.

So feeling that now with you,
right now, that seems like the greatest
treasure that I can find, to just be myself,
even if it’s fill in the blank.

Just be myself.

What a gift.
What a great starting place.
What a great baseline.

Maybe you can dance to it.

Much love.

I once believed gratitude depended on what life placed in my hands;
that somehow it was an exchange for the cards I was dealt.

Now, I practice gratitude
because I refuse to allow the difficult parts of my life
to have the final word on what it means to be alive.

Feeling gratitude is the moment that suffering loosens its grip on my belief
that life must become different before it is fully received.

When I choose to feel gratitude –
not think it,
not speak it,
not search for reasons to justify it –
but simply feel it, I stop living as though existence is something to earn.

Gratitude does not demand certainty.
It does not wait for success,
for healing,
for a winning lottery ticket,
for something to change in my life.
It is not a response to an external miracle;
it is the way the miracle of life feels inside me.

There are mornings when my body wakes carrying stones,
when uncertainty sits at my table,
before the sun’s rays have even crossed my window.

In these moments when I choose gratitude,
it reveals its true strength.
Not because the world has changed,
but because something within me has remembered that
I am larger than the conditions surrounding me.

Gratitude doesn’t erase my challenges,
it simply refuses to let challenges become my whole landscape.

Feeling gratitude turns me towards what remains.
The breath that keeps returning.
The body that keeps its patient work.
Birds continuing to sing their verses.
Hands that still hold and hugs that still embrace.
The boundless flow of love and joy from our 4-legged companions.

Gratitude is what remains when I stop meeting life as a problem to solve
and begin meeting it as a mystery to inhabit.

When I choose gratitude,
I am not looking away from what is broken and what hurts.
It is me refusing the lonely illusion that
brokenness and hurt is all there is.

I choose to return to gratitude, again and again,
not to escape my life and not to reach for certainty,
but to remember that in every moment,
my life is worthy of my wholehearted thanks.

Nothing
asked the dawn
to arrive.
Still,
the pale golden light
slipped through the darkness
and found its way
through my window.

Nothing
asked the rose
to open,
yet petal by petal
she loosened herself
into the morning:
soft, fragrant, unguarded.

Nothing
asked the rain
to fall,
yet sometime in the night
it came quietly,
leaving tiny silver jewels
on the grass.

Nothing
asked my heart
to keep beating
in the darkness.

Nothing
asked my breath
to stay with me
through the long night,
yet it kept returning
soft as a tide,
entering, leaving,
entering again,
without being called.
And the earth held me
while I slept.

Nothing
Asked the moon to cross the sky
without needing anyone
to notice.

Nothing
asked a seed
To split open
in the dark soil,
and began its silent journey
towards the sun
as a tree.

How much of life
comes to us this way
quietly, faithfully,
without even asking?

Perhaps gratitude
is not something
we say.
Perhaps it is
the moment
we begin to become still
enough to see
that we are standing
in the middle
of a thousand miracles.

Perhaps gratitude
is simply
opening our hands
and noticing
how much has already
been placed
inside them.

Thank you for the gift of consciousness
For open-mindedness
For clarity of intention
For the release of the old
And the willingness to embrace, now,
Our limitless potential

Thank you for the gift of vision
That we may see and appreciate and contribute to
The beauty of this wonderous creation

Thank you for the gift of speech
That through our words we may offer
Comfort, kindness, truth and inspiration

Thank you for the gift of Love
That we may share and receive
The sweet, authentic, tenderness of Being

Thank you for the gift of realization
That we may intimately know and fully integrate
The truth of our Divinity

Thank you for the gift of knowledge
That we may have the wisdom
To learn from our mistakes
And the possibility to intelligently and mindfully co-create

Thank you for the gift of life
For vitality and healing
That we may Be and give
The very best of ourselves
And wholeheartedly accept the entirety of our Being.

With Gratitude, Love and acceptance
So Be It
Amen

Everything that exists is support and resource.

I am the empty space that births it All,
moves through it All,
is held by it All.
It’s a mutually perfectly balanced existence
with no identity.

Other than the relationship itself
of Gratitude and Love.

Yet, even in saying that,
any ideas or preconceptions about what
Gratitude and Love is or feels like,
is not really quite it.

Because, even though it’s a very high frequency state,
it doesn’t feel elevated or “altered”
and not even personal.
It just feels:
clean,
and clear,
and powerfully ordinary.

Bringing more of my experiential awareness into it
made me sense how inverted our default perception
of existence and life is.

Typically, I walk in my life
wired into thinking
that the physical world,
the manifest world,
the structural world,
is a hindrance
to my spiritual capacity.
Is a barrier or challenge
to my eternal nature.
Is a heavier, denser expression
that slows down
knowing and power and insight.

But this experience of truth
was turned inside out
in comparison to that.

When the personal self is no longer there,
the true self, empty space,
is directly held,
and is an equal partner
to the structural world,
whose only service and purpose
is to one thousand percent support
and be a resource
for the
empty space
experiencing itself
as Light.

So, everything is feeding itself
exactly what it needs
at all times –
if it wasn’t,
it would collapse in on itself.

Yet, there’s a fullness here.
An expansiveness.

So the feeling is:
I’m not a person here in this big world
seeking purpose and service;
instead,
the world in its entirety
just is.

And in this “is-ness,”
there’s not one part of the equation
that comes first –
it’s an arising of simultaneity.

There is a fluid intelligent structure that is
**so incredibly exact**
that it is actually physical and
there is empty space.

In my experience, it was like my awareness
was nested or enfolded
in or as the empty space,
and what made it all the more real
and humbling
and ordinarily awe-inspiring
is that the sense of “form”
didn’t at all come from the structure
of the physical world.

And definitely not from identifying as the body.

Yet, the sense of form
is what emanates from the love
that the structural world
exists for.

It’s entire purpose
is to serve this empty space
of light and awareness.

And a big reversal in that for me was:
it’s not my individual ‘mission’ to be ‘in service’
or ‘in my purpose’…

It’s more as if service and purpose
is what the Universe is made of.

Service and purpose
is what’s feeding the
Light I Am.

Feeding the empty space.

This morning
the sun slipped across the prairie
like a lover’s hand
across bare skin.

Soft. Unhurried. Sweet.

The grasses leaned toward it.
The wildflowers opened.
And the earth was willing
to receive.

I watched from the porch,
coffee warm on my hands,
heart resting in its
own silence.

And suddenly,
there was no distance
between the light touching the fields
and the light touching me.

For years I chased illumination.
On a high mountaintop.
A zen teacher.
A revelation.
Some golden key that would open
the hidden door.

Instead,
the door disappeared.
The light was already here,
breathing through my lungs,
looking through my eyes,
warming my face
on an ordinary
morning.

The cottonwoods shimmered.
The creek carried fragments of sky.
A breeze moved across the prairie
and I felt it move
through me
as well.

One breath.
One body.
One vast belonging.

The world is endlessly beautiful
when nothing is being grasped.

The curve of a hillside,
lavender blooming,
the laughter of a child,
the warmth of
another hand
in yours.

Light everywhere.
Not separate.
Not divided.
Not inside or outside.
Just this radiant
intimacy
with all things.

The sun touching the earth.
Awareness touching the heart.
Life loving itself through
every form.

And for one timeless moment,
I could not tell
where I ended
and the light
began.

With Love, right now
Breathing in and breathing out
Accepting and releasing
Embracing and letting go
Trusting it to unfold
Allowing the story that wants to be told

Gracefully walking through every moment
Within my physical being, I am gently present
Dancing my dance and singing my song
Finding my way to here, where I belong

Breaking free from the mold
The expectations that we hold
Let my heart reveal the light
May the true path be ever bright

Fear and doubts they melt away
With curiosity, we start to play
Celebrating the reality of our connection
That we glimpse in every reflection

With humility and gratitude
I witness that all is imbued
With the electrical pulse of inspiration

From the Source of creation
Weaving waves of frequencies
Presenting endless possibilities
With the faith we cannot lose
We have simply to choose

With Love, right now

The contemporary hero’s journey isn’t fought on battlefields,
but is often an inner journey through a long dark stormy night.

This is my own tale of my soul’s initiation through the storm.

I share this story in the spirit of openness and for anyone
walking through something similar, you are not alone.

Many years ago, I went through a life-altering collapse
that became ultimately a journey of transformation.

It began quietly, a slow unraveling from the inside
after years of avoiding feeling my feelings
and isolating myself in all sorts of ways.

I didn’t notice how exhaustion and stress accompanied
every waking hour until everything in me started to crumble.

Sleep vanished, anxiety and panic became constant companions.

I lost the will to eat and my psyche became
an unfamiliar place, haunted by fear and confusion.

Eventually, my body also gave in and I hit rock bottom.

I remember shaking, trembling, so very weak,
unable to function and full of mind-scrambling fear.

As I descended to that rock bottom place,
I lost ordinary consciousness and entered into a vision:

I was running backwards from the most terrifying, shadowy, overwhelming storm
full of disembodied voices and threats of total annihilation.

I backed myself into a corner. There was nowhere else to run, nowhere to hide.

Then a gentle and kind voice spoke clearly in my vision and told me,
“Walk through the storm, there will be sunshine on the other side.”

My consciousness swam back up into the waking world
to see my dear carers with tears in their eyes, readying to take me to hospital.

But I stood up, shakily, and holding the arm of my partner, I took a few steps.
I imagined each step as a step through the storm.

Each day I took one small step, eating a little,
walking a few meters, watching the sun rise,
listening to the wind in the trees and the humming of the bees.

Each step a huge and, at times exhausting, effort of willpower,
but each step a commitment to life.

So, I began to ascend and I walked through my storm.

And little by little, light began to return.
Birdsong sounded like birdsong again.
The yellow of the wattle blossoms looked like sunshine rather than sorrow.

Healing wasn’t a straight line.
There were times of anger, grief, frustration.

But gradually, I stopped fighting the shadows.
I faced my fears and felt my feelings,
and when I turned towards them instead of running away,
and met them with compassion instead of fear, they softened.

I realized that what I had lived through was not just a breakdown, but an initiation.

The myths and fairy tales I loved as a child came back to life in me
because we are all heroes meeting the dragons, living our personal hero’s journeys.

If I had to choose, I’d still walk through that storm again
because it brought me home to myself.

It taught me courage, acceptance, compassion
and more gratitude for life than I could ever imagine.

So, to anyone finding their way through their own dark night, whatever the circumstances,
know there are treasures to be found in the caves of the long dark night, and the dawn always comes.

Let us meet beyond the story
In the field where we are free

I know naught a thing about thee
save that thee and me be

Find comfort in not knowing
with my vulnerability showing

To be real is to be free

I choose to be the real me

How to find the real me
beyond the image or the pressure
with no need to entertain or to maintain
an acquired name

Show me now the way to get there
through the veils of disenchantment

Beyond the realm of wishful thinking
through the mire of disappointment

Breath by breath
the way is cleared
when simplicity is revered

Acceptance calms the fear, 
pure intention draws us near

The layers gently they are peeled
Falling away as they are healed

The inner core of light revealed
All is connected within the field

The story of humanity, our story, is still forming.

No page already written, no script we are bound to follow.

We are not only witnesses to history,
we are its authors, shaping the sentences with each act of kindness,
each decision to extend compassion,
each act of love, each refusal
to let fear be the final word.

Peace does not arrive as a set narrative from the beyond.

Peace emerges when we choose to pause, to listen,
to meet ourselves and every person
with dignity and love.

Love does not wait at the end of the story,
but in every chapter we choose to write now,
with clear intention as the ink
and steady focus as the pen.

If enough of us commit to peace and love,
we will bend the arc of our shared narrative
towards healing, towards unity,
towards the simple truth that we belong to one another.

Then, the story of humanity will not be one
of fracture, loss, and separation,
but of awakening and reconnection.

The power to birth a new story has always been right here, right now,
in the intentions that I, you, we dare to hold; 
in the choices that I, you, we passionately make; 
in the courage to live into being a breathtaking, inspiring story
that is worthy of who we truly are.

For so long,
I believe peace waited for me,
after the struggle, after my end.

I imagined peace as a distant shore,
earned after leaving everything behind.

But I was mistaken.

I do not have to vanish to be free.
Peace is not hidden on the other side of my ending.

It is not waiting beyond my last breath,
or stitched into my passing.

Peace is not the reward for suffering.
It is not the mercy of the grave.

Peace did not ask me to vanish.
It did not demand my absence.
It waited quietly in the space
I had never thought to enter… within.

Not in escape, but in arrival.
Not in the falling away, but in being fully here.

When I stopped trying to disappear,
when I sat still enough to feel the breath
that keeps me tethered, there it was.

Everlasting peace was never elsewhere.
It had been breathing with me all along.

It lives now,
in the pause between thoughts,
in the warmth of my body,
in the way nature plays.

I do not need to escape this life
to find stillness.

I only need to stop running from myself,
to sit,
to notice,
to let the noise pass through without answering it.

Peace is not in death.

It is in presence.
And it is mine,
always here, always now.

Hear the cicadas sing their song
about the place where we belong.

They sing the song of Mother Earth
and share the notes of our new birth.

A gift to realign our body, heart, and mind.

The vibration tunes us in when we listen from within.

A special key that helps refine our inner recognition of divine.

Vibrating particles of being that opens up our seeing.

Such simplicity is found on the wave of pure sound.

“Ride it joyfully with me,” sings the earth in harmony.

Her delight at being heard is in the song of every bird. 

Every breeze a sweet caress that has me bursting in my chest,
creating beauty for my eyes, every glance a new surprise.

May we tend you with true care, blessed and grateful for all you share.

What is joy?

You know, that state of effervescent humming happiness
that permeates our whole being
and radiates out with a kind of
glowing brightness in times of delight?

What is it really?

Is it simply an emotional response
to good things happening in our lives?

But why then can many live
in a state of great fortune, great privilege,
but not always feel joy?

Maybe it’s about relationships.

Is it being in love or having a
healthy bond with our families?
Having lots of good friends?

But why then can we have all of these things,
yet sometimes joy is still a stranger?

For me, joy is a choice,
a daily choice as any good relationship is.

And in order to tell you about
my committed chosen relationship with joy itself,
I need to first tell you that
it wasn’t always this way for me.

Many years ago, I struggled with depression.

This human life is a wild ride for so many of us,
and I felt that deeply, and fell headlong
into an overwhelming long dark night of the soul
that held me in a very low ebb with life itself
for some years as a young woman.

One day I was walking along the road in springtime,
feeling so very heavy with the weight of the world,
bearing me down too low to feel the springtime
all around me.

Then something called me to pause
at a tree with beautiful green leaves.

I stopped.
I looked at the tree.
I picked a leaf.
I turned it over and over.
I smelled it.
I held it up against the light,
and it lay there on my hand,
emerald green against my skin.

I was suddenly filled with the utmost wonder
and an unfamiliar rush of indescribable joy,
at the magic of a single leaf.

The colour of it, how the light illuminated it,
the veins running through it,
its qualities of photosynthesis,
and its service to the whole tree.

The incredible process of its growth,
how it grows from a tiny bud on a bare branch,
fed simply with sunshine, rain,
and the nutrients of the earth.

I looked up at the tree and then all around me,
seeing for the first time since I was a little child,
magic everywhere.

I saw an awe-inspiring miracle,
a constantly singing symphony of life.

I saw love shared in small ways and big.

I opened my eyes and my heart, and joy flooded in.

In that moment, I decided that
no matter how much pain and grief the world carries,
while there is even a single green leaf in my world,
I will choose to celebrate life.

Over time, my joy grew and it became more
than a conscious choice or a momentary experience.

It became a whole way of being,
a breathing in of the small magics every day
and a breathing out of my expression of joy
through music, art, dancing, love, friendships.

I am still a sensitive person.

I still feel the pain and suffering in the world.

I know what it is to feel upset, or sad, or angry,
and I stand up as an activist at times
to say no when needed too.

But joy itself is an act of radical revolution
in this human world today.

And I learnt that if I keep choosing joy,
keep choosing love,
I have the capacity to hold it all,
the whole human experience in all its colours,
with compassion.

We all do.

We are vast beyond our understanding.

So may we all choose
a moment of joy today, and every day,
for joy is vital medicine
for us all.

Hear the music of my soul

A symphony without a goal

Playing purely for the pleasure

Of sharing intimate treasure

Every note in its perfect place

Resonating a vibration of Grace

Within the depths of my Being

I am seen and I am seeing

Trust in the simple melody

Unfolding as it’s meant to be

Within the essence of my Being

I am heard and I am hearing

Without desire or agenda

From a place that’s truly tender

With a joy that laughter’s bringing

I am sung and I am singing

Thank you for this precious Grace

This unbounded loving space

It is filling and surrounding

‘Tis uplifting and it’s grounding

Now here we are right in the middle

Having finally solved the riddle

With the simplicity of Love

That together, We Are One.

I choose and I am chosen.

I enthuse and I am woven within the fabric of all being.
I am love and light receiving.

It is love unconditional.
It is will undismissible.

With intention clear and pure within my being, I am sure.

I call to thee and thou art here.

I am thine, thou art divine.

As one being, the elusive “how” finds expression in the now.

As one being all questions cease, all fear is able to release.

With joy and laughter, I embrace the realization of thy grace.

I am thee, I am that, I am thine, I am mine.

I choose to remind of a mind out of time,
of a heart broken open,
of a connection unbroken,

Light and love invigorating, peace and joy reverberating,
I infuse and am infused by the pleasure of creating.

Joy is mother earth –
the warmth of sunlight on your skin,
in the cool breath of morning air,
a day full of possibilities.

Joy is reunion –
in hands that find each other,
a voice on the phone that feels like home,
precious connections remembered.

Joy is our 4-legged furry companions-
bundles of unconditional love,
gleefully anticipating the next moment of play.

Joy is movement—
the steady rhythm of footsteps on a familiar path,
a body swaying to music with no thought, only feeling.

Joy is stillness—
a deep breath, a steady heartbeat,
the simple presence of being here, now.

Joy is in me –

in this moment and every moment,

always present and always available,

an open invitation to its infinite faces.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

The Great Way isn’t difficult
for those who are unattached to their preferences.
Let go of longing and aversion,
and everything will be perfectly clear.

When you cling to a hairbreadth of distinction,
heaven and earth are set apart.
If you want to realize the truth,
don’t be for or against.
The struggle between good and evil
is the primal disease of the mind.
Not grasping the deeper meaning,
you just trouble your mind’s serenity.

As vast as infinite space,
it is perfect and lacks nothing.
But because you select and reject,
you can’t perceive its true nature.

Don’t get entangled in the world;
don’t lose yourself in emptiness.
Be at peace in the oneness of things,
and all errors will disappear by themselves.

If you don’t live the Tao,
you fall into assertion or denial.
Asserting that the world is real,
you are blind to its deeper reality;
denying that the world is real,
you are blind to the selflessness of all things.

The more you think about these matters,
the farther you are from the truth.
Step aside from all thinking,
and there is nowhere you can’t go.

Returning to the root, you find the meaning;
chasing appearances, you lose their source.
At the moment of profound insight,
you transcend both appearance and emptiness.
Don’t keep searching for the truth;
just let go of your opinions.

For the mind in harmony with the Tao,
all selfishness disappears.
With not even a trace of self-doubt,
you can trust the universe completely.
All at once you are free,
with nothing left to hold on to.
All is empty, brilliant,
perfect in its own being.
In the world of things as they are,
there is no self, no non-self.

If you want to describe its essence,
the best you can say is “Not-two.”
In this “Not-two” nothing is separate,
and nothing in the world is excluded.
The enlightened of all times and places
have entered into this truth.
In it there is no gain or loss;
one instant is ten thousand years.
There is no here, no there;
infinity is right before your eyes.

The tiny is as large as the vast
when objective boundaries have vanished;
the vast is as small as the tiny
when you don’t have external limits.
Being is an aspect of non-being;
non-being is no different from being.
Until you understand this truth,
you won’t see anything clearly.

One is all; all are one.
When you realize this,
what reason for holiness or wisdom?
The mind of absolute trust
is beyond all thought, all striving,
is perfectly at peace, for in it
there is no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow.

Morning and evening meet as equals,

balanced between what was and what will be.

Light and shadow stretch evenly,

across fields, across communities, across oceans.

In the north, buds vibrate,

ready to burst into green.

In the south, leaves release their hold,

drifting in the wind.

Feet press into earth,

some warmed by the first touch of spring,

others cooled by the breath of autumn.

Different seasons, same planet

Joy rises in waves,

from hands lifted to the sun,

to eyes tracing the arc of stars.

Different seasons, same sky.

For this Equinox moment,

the world breathes in unison.

A quiet knowing between hemispheres –

a perfect pause – this balance, this turning, this joy!

Different seasons, one humanity.

Joy is not a thing you can see.
It is what you feel when you watch waves breaking,
Or when you peer through a net of woven violet stems
In Spring grass.
It is not sunlight, not moonlight,
But a separate shining.
Joy lives behind people’s eyes.

Breathe, and let your essence flow,
where time dissolves in quiet glow.
No need to grasp, no need to fight,
all exists in endless light.

Be the river, deep and wide,
the stone, the wind, the changing tide.
Release your story, dissolve your form,
be the calm within the storm.

In emptiness, the whole unfolds,
in letting go, the All takes hold.
You are the sky, so vast and free,
the grain of sand, the boundless sea.

No self to claim, no path to trace,
just silence wrapped in endless space.
Surrender now, and be set free,
you are nothing, yet infinity.

Since I didn’t die,
I wake to birdsong as if it were prophecy.
I savor water like it’s communion.
I touch each day-
raw, radiant, real,
and call it grace.

Since I didn’t die,
the world feels tender and wild again,
a meadow reborn after fire.
I walk slower now,
but every step is a hallelujah.

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

I wonder why the grass is green,
And why else wind is never seen;

Who taught the birds to build a nest,
And told the trees to take a rest?

Or, when the moon is not quite round,
Where can the missing bit be found?

Who lights the stars, when they blow out,
And makes the lightning flash about?

Who paints the rainbow in the sky,
And hangs the fluffy clouds so high?

Why is it now, do you suppose,
That Dad won’t tell me, if he knows.