Elizabeth (Bette) Hicks (née Dobson)
(beloved mother, died August 31/23 at 101 years of age)

Being with my sweet and well-loved mother as she passed was a heart-opening mystical gift that I never anticipated. As with any mystical thinning-of the-veil, I will be integrating its heart-opening (and shattering) affect for a long while. As the woman I knew as “Mom” gracefully transitioned upward out of her body, my heart recognized the eternal grace of our embodiment. The air was electric with a timeless love in which I could also feel/hear the welcoming song of our ancestors. Tears of gratitude continue as I write this.

The mysterious veil between birth and death thinned as I found myself feeling joy for Mom’s arrival and moments later sobbing at her departure. The macro and the micro co-existed and neither were wrong. We are reminded of a similar death cycle in the Fall Equinox as summer’s bloom disappears and fall leaves  begin to fall. As part of nature, our bodies carry a death-wisdom and — although this may sound strange — our bodies thrive on this deep connection to embodied truth.

I understand our embodiment as a part of the living truth that our soul carries — a generational record-keeping of light and shadow that is individual, collective, and ancestral. If our spiritual practice includes turning towards the light and the darkened wounds of our embodiment, then our bodies begin to serve as the spiritual ground of our practice. The alchemy of spirit into matter begins as our lives and spiritual practice walk with increasing synchronicity and harmony.

The crisis of our time reflects how we have failed to walk spirit and matter together. While we can name this division in several ways — feminine/masculine, right brain/left brain, heart/head —  restoration begins when we begin to reclaim our inner-relationship with our soul and walk that spacious presence back into our life. Whatever our station in life, this blessed walk has 360 degree benefits. 

The benefits are wide and deep because spacious presence cultivates a living conversation between spirit and matter where light enters our awareness organically and in the right timing. As we learn to trust in a movement beyond our own contingency plans, we also open to the light’s deep-listening … and then … we just see what happens because we trust life. 

Healing has an inherent rhythm and flow. As our nervous system learns to relax and trust this flow, an unconditional and uplifting sense of well-being may surface. Soul’s light informs the body through a nature-attuned intelligence that respects life’s inherent rhythms and cycles: “(1) For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: (2) A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up … (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

As our bodies learn to trust in a Silence beyond time, we learn to embody life in new and surprising ways. No longer revolving solely around ongoing patterns of wounding, we experience occasional inner-glimpses of the expanded nature of the Universal Heart.

When we give space for inner-learning, the miracle of timeless healing begins. What has been disconnected, abandoned, and made numb comes to life as presence, beauty, and trust. As we practice with like-hearted/minded others, we begin to understand that our spiritual nature and our embodiment are not two: and that our body is a unique and “perfectly imperfect”* vessel for the sacred ground of our embodiment.

The 6-month zoom-hosted Universal Heart series (October 2023 to March 2024); free zoom-hosted Universal Heart Quarterlies (Wednesdays Sept. 20 & Dec. 20); and the recently introduced in-person Nature-informed Silence Practice Days (Saturdays Sept. 30 & Dec. 23) are all designed for the blessing of our embodied remembrance — that life is sacred and we are here to walk that generous reality into our everyday lives. 

* A Tao phrase