Category Archives: Group Inner Constellations

The Greening Promise of Summer Solstice

Group Inner Constellations, Reflections

As summer solstice approaches and we witness nature blooming all around, we might chance to be blessed by a similar stirring within our own bodies. Life’s abundant promise rises in our midst once again as winter’s dormancy tranforms into glorious green canopies and flowering blossoms— endless in their variety, shape, and colour. Once again, nature reminds us of the miraculous universal intelligence from which we are inseparable—even in Ukraine summer’s greening continues.

How then to navigate the stark contrast between human destruction and life’s abundance? How to realize our true place within the radiant miracle of life while traumatizing atrocities abound? Here is precisely where the “rubber” of our spiritual practice meets the “road” of our incarnation. Slowing down to presence and feel the intergenerational trauma unconsciously stored within the nervous system of our own body can be as radically restorative as the lush greening of a dried winter branch. Our latent spiritual potential arrives as an awakened nervous system and a heart pulsing with the promise of a new humanity. Throughout history, this timeless inner-greening potential has brought mystics and saints to their knees in gratitude, wonder, and service.*

An embodied spiritual response to trauma is one of slowing down so that trauma symptoms no longer need to be “managed,” but find their place in a consciously engaged relational process. Acting out trauma symptoms through projecting or numbing is a collective habit. It causes us to build our lives on top of trauma rather than in relationship to it. We learn to take this way of living as “normal.” A spacious awareness, on the other hand, reveals where our inner-greening potential is damaged.

Summer’s greening potential needs the soil of our individual, ancestral, and cultural blueprints. Greening takes all of us, including the unconscious exiled parts that continue to show destructive symptoms. The life that has contracted from trauma becomes the rich soil of embodied spirituality. With considerable humility, we discover that our trauma belongs here as a “vital ingredient” on an embodied spiritual path— and not an obstacle “in our way.” As we encounter the radical grace of inner-greening a universal intelligence begins to pulse within our own hearts and nervous system.

Instead of being many, splintered, we unify into the one body of the world. We create peace. Thomas Hübl

Pause for just a moment … reflecting on what resonates in you as you read these words. I encourage you to slow down and sit with your embodied (felt) perception. Do the words open an inner-space in you? Does your mind argue with them? Are you left unmoved by them? Confused by them? Invited by them? More important than our cognitive assessment of whether these words are true or false is our felt sense of them. How do these words inform the subtle nature of your perceiving and understanding of yourself and the world you live in?

Many paradoxes swim together in the stream of our spiritual embodiment: in emptiness, we are filled; in being intimate with the darkness of fear, a light begins to glow; in not-knowing, a deep transpersonal knowing begins flowing through our nervous system. The promise of summer solstice is an invitation towards relaxing and enjoying the abundant life-presence in this moment. “Trust me,” the greening whispers … “trust me because I am your deepest nature.” As the heart awakens to this compellingly intimate, ancient, yet ungraspable promise, it is as though a wind passes through our heartstrings, releasing harmonious notes of blessing and peace. Where do you sit in relation to the glory of your true nature as summer solstice approaches? How does the greening potential show up in your life?

The promise mirrored in nature’s beauty is already within us. As we practice breathing life into our trauma contractions—just as they are—we are also opening ourselves to the eternal greening promise of summer. Conscious presence is the activation energy of a timeless promise that invites our greening potential into every moment. Our deepest purpose is revealed through our courageous relationship with life and mirrored back to us each year in the greening promise of summer’s solstice.

* (For more about “greening,” see Greening Moon-Coherence in a Sun-Seared World at https://lauramadsen.ca/phd-research/)

A Spring Birth

Group Inner Constellations

Painting by Keira Madsen at vaedderstudio.com

We are not in a birth process we are a birthing process. This may sound like picky semantics, but it is much more than that. The awakening consciousness and its emergent spring nature is our very own nature birthing itself. This may sound all too Zen for some of you, but if you feel into the energy behind these words they take you somewhere. 

Allow the stillness of your contemplative mind to come on-line. It creates a pulsing and a streaming sensation in the body that simply knows this is true. The contemplative mind can validate a more wholesome consciousness than the calculative mind, which is burdened by conditioned limitations. It is the calculative mind that creates a great heaviness and darkness in the world. The root of our individual and collective suffering is the pain caused by separating ourselves: from life, from nature, from other groups, even from our so-called intimate relationships. 

When we begin to see this habit working in our individual and collective lives it can be shocking. I have found it so. The calculative mind habit is not the fault of one person or one group. We all easily default to finding the problem out there. When we do this, we forsake our true belonging here. We forsake the grace and beauty of our Soul as soon as the finger points outside of ourselves. Our news is full of this fault finding. This is not to say there isn’t a lot in the world to be changed, but pushing against it and making it wrong only adds fuel to the division.

For many of us leaving our calculative dualistic mind is very challenging. And it is a mistake to resist it and make it wrong. When we practice, especially in groups that hold a place for higher resonances, we expand our awareness of our “othering,” our habits of right and wrong. We begin to trust something entirely new—an inner birth or awakening that has been there waiting all along! 

We become free even while our conditioned self also circulates in our nervous system. We are never free from anything … we are free with everything.

I hope you will join the spring equinox practice on Wednesday, March 23. We create much hope and beauty in the world when we attune to the possibilities of our inner spring. Aligned with nature as our bodies are,  this is a fortuitous time of year. Awakening to the light even as the darkness is all around us, that is what our evolution is. The manifest or created world has never been free from darkness. This darkness also lives within our nervous system and thought habits, through our lineage and collective influences …  but … the biggest “but” of our lifetime, nothing can ever destroy our inner light. The eternal nature of our being lives within the universality of our heart. Every spiritual teaching reminds us of this. It is not wishful thinking but an emergent joy and timeless blessing.

May the joy and blessing of your universal heart bring you and yours joy and comfort as we experience the rebirth of spring.

Life’s Valentine to You

Group Inner Constellations
LIFE’S VALENTINE TO YOU

How can we possibly receive a Valentine from Life when increasingly we take issue with how life is? We should not be destroying our remaining old growth forest, my mother should have been more available for me, my father not such a tyrant, Russia should not be threatening to invade Ukraine, vaccines should/shouldn’t be mandatory … the list goes on and on. Our distrust of how life presents keeps many in a constant state of judgement, fear, and condemnation. Hardened social fields begin to collude with life’s perceived injustices and more division is created. Life feels pressured, and seems to be forcing us to take sides, and to push against.

Divided, confused, and entangled, humanity has created a collective impasse—a crisis calling out for attention on every level of life. We have no inner peace because our resistance and “pushing against” creates division in our own heart.

We are life though. Are we not? Are we really so separate from the chaos and the crisis of life evolving itself in the form of you and me? Aren’t we also agents of the life we are condemning? Our collective resistance to seeing and feeling life’s wounds is strangling life and her evolution. Each individual “no” to feeling life’s shadow grows a little more shadow, swept under the proverbial shadow-mat of our collective. Until finally, it appears that life itself is teetering.

Denying life keeps us life-victims rather than life-agents. How do we transition from one to the other. Do any of us consciously choose to be a victim?

One small ray of light at a time, the tender eyes and arms of individual consciousness shine a light on shadow’s dark recesses. Each moment we engage in aware contact with the ignored/exiled parts of our ancestry and collective, our heart learns to trust life’s unfolding, rather than resist and push against. The broken heart of received and acknowledged pain becomes a tender heart that is not afraid to feel, to be available. There is another life just beyond fear’s desire to control or numb from life. Mystics and saints throughout time have whispered encouragement from this place. They have willingly received Life’s Valentine and it changed them irrevocably.

Life’s Valentine calls us from across the great divide of our wounded separation. Her beauty is waiting discovery just beyond the tangled web of our wounded habits—for centuries swept under the unstable shadow-carpet of our collective. Life looks scary like this for a hardened heart; for a heart broken open, life is evolving.

On this Valentine’s Day allow your heart to receive Life’s Valentine by being with life as it shows up in you one breath at at time. That is all it takes. Nothing could be more simple–or challenging. Paradoxically, staying with life creates room for life. Something magic happens as life begins to evolve and take shape within us in new ways. We discover hope and love where fear and contraction once lived.

Accepting Life’s Valentine is like receiving a divine heart-kiss. It turns a fearful heart into a grateful heart as we experience the joy of life evolving through us, within us, as us! By receiving Life’s Valentine we discover that we actually belong to life just as it is. In this place and with this deep understanding, we gratefully find room to breathe right where we are.

Happy Valentines!

An Inner-Spring

Group Inner Constellations, Reflections
AN INNER SPRING

An inner-spring is arriving: a rebirth of beauty, an experience of knowing our true nature from this grace-filled place. Can you feel it moving in your nervous system and heart? My sense is that this abundant beauty lives within us all the time, but the spring season helps it arrive more viscerally.

This spring feels different as we enter the second year of Covid-19 lock-down.  It feels like the “pause” time is birthing something new–a gestation. A new way, a new sensitivity, a new relating, a new me, a new you, a new us. If together, we discover a spiritual beauty that stays with, that befriends, that understands, and “stands under” that which is challenging to presence within ourselves, we become  containers of bold sensitivity, ushering in new possibilities.

These possibilities help to stabilize the emerging inner-spring that sees and keeps track of exiled trauma pain with heart-eyes  of compassion. The simple recognition that there is nothing to fix, and that our willingness to be in relationship with discomfort is love, and the most effective of trauma remedies. A better future calls us home to our “now”; a future of spiritual embodiment where good, kind, whole and connected become the norm. It will take groups of like-minded/hearted people to land the beauty of our inner-spring. Just two letters rearranged, and we move from “scared” (in) isolation to “sacred” connection. In that vital relational movement to see and feel, the world becomes a brighter more friendly place because we are in relationship.

We touch life and each other differently when trauma has been befriended. Experiencing ourselves and others more authentically reveals the beauty of our Soul. Tibetan Buddhists long ago foresaw the arrival of Warriors of Compassion and Discernment. However fragmented our inner and outer worlds may seem, we walk this evolutionary journey together. As we begin enjoying the beauty of Spring 2021, I wish you the blessings of befriending the challenging places and feeling the warmth of connection.

A Timeless Citrine-Dream

Group Inner Constellations

Last night I had a dream about “us” (a collective of spiritual seekers) …

We were traveling … many of us … on a road less travelled … the spiritual path.

We were all there … in that same forested path meandering slowly up a hill at first. 

Teachers past and present, friends & groups of journeyers, all winding our way through a dense canopy of Forest..

And then I came to a Place in the Forest.

It was a “Here” sort of place … 

… so I just stand Still … here … in increasingly magnetized depth.

My eyes fall upon a partially uprooted tree, its few exposed roots in the foreground close to where I stand … the roots Speak in a Language my Heart Knows well. It is so easy to be Still here … thoughts of anywhere else evaporate.

And then … suddenly … the tree completely uproots itself, exposing a massive Citrine-faceted Gemstone boulder five times my size. It seems to perch there for a little time its Glow reflected in my heart, before beginning to roll its massive sparkling-golden-self down the hill into the ravine below …

… coming to rest there on her back side, exposing an unfathomable splendour of  Light … a shining beauty reflecting the heaven of everything good … 

… beyond measure in beauty, but seeming now the size of the palm of my hand as it rests in the valley below.

“Waking thoughts” landed lightly, like timeless pearls:

“The meek shall inherit the earth”  echoes like a fragrance in this timeless dream.
Depth in the simplicity of Here:  Freely given … golden ….glowing in the Naked Now.
My waking body is overcome with transparency and the unveiling of forest-beauty.

Times of Transition

Group Inner Constellations

In these gathering times of trauma and Light I hope you are finding the support to be gentle with the changes taking place within and around you. We are blessed to be living in these transitional times of harvesting all that we have sewn collectively.

Feeling blessed or receiving blessings has nothing to do with life being easy or with wishful thinking. In times of transition we are pressured to become more than who we have been conditioned to “think” we are, and to bear inner-fruit that we didn’t even know we had.

Finding supportive groups is vital in these times — groups that both challenge and support. Challenge rattles the cage of our conditioning, and support strengthens our ability to trust in the unknown dynamics of our evolutionary leap.

This is no longer about an isolated “personal” spiritual path that protects an individuated belief system, but an embodied path that draws our deepest and truest selves into the collective in fresh ways. Our present era is not about protecting old structures, but learning how to align with new ones — and letting the old “snake skin” fall away. 

Two years ago, in May 2018, a new group paradigm emerged for me in the form of the Inner Constellation Mobile. This emergence followed 8 years of facilitating inner silence and stillness. The Inner Constellation (ICM) reveals a relational field that brings our personal evolution into relationship with the world around us.

I find this immensely exciting and liberating. As my spiritual teacher Thomas Hübl reminds us, we are not separate from the world we are trying to change. A deep experience of this truth changes our relationship to everything in our life. Our habits of “othering” and making the problem “out there” are put into perspective. We become wiser and kinder because relating to the world around us is not separate form how we relate to ourselves.

We are an aspect of a larger whole that calls us to become that wholeness. This calling is our greatest blessing. It makes everything possible because we are both the problem and the solution. Holding the deep truth of this dynamic dualism is the friction that polishes our inner-diamond.

Finding support in these challenging times matures us into the embodied truth that our transition points us toward. With practice we learn that challenge and grace are two sides of the same coin. This is very good news indeed.

Presencing Our Human Conditioning

Group Inner Constellations, , ,
Keira Madsen at vaedder.com

There is tremendous pressure on the separate self these days as we learn that we are not separate: from ourselves, from the earth, and from the movement of life. While we can know this as a mental concept, if it is not an embodied knowing it too easily remains a confused ideal or abstraction that actually further separates us. Here we can become frustrated with lots of good ideas that don’t really alter feelings of separation.

What does seem to initiate powerful change is doing exactly the opposite of what most of us would like to do: develop an engaged and authentic relationship with human conditioning. I have no doubt that our separated/traumatized human conditioning will continue to run the planet until it is seen, energetically met, and integrated into our nervous systems. It may be surprising to read, but we are designed to do exactly this. While our nervous system is conditioned by hundreds of thousands of years of human conditioning, it is — first and foremost — an untapped spiritual vehicle with unlimited potential.

Slowing down to be with — and to feel — life just as it is actually cultivates awareness of the spiritual consciousness running through our nervous system. Our nervous system is designed for this level of connection to life. From here, we begin to learn what life is. This is life on its terms, not as we would like it to be or imagine it to be. These two ways of relating to life reflect different levels of awareness within us: the conditioned fear-based contraction that pulls away from life and the wholehearted trusting connection that engages in life. The former is limited and contracted, and the other liberated and life-infused.

I can assure you that we all have both within us. I believe that we learn to trust in, and live from, the more liberated version most effectively with other people. Practicing within a group that actually has us energetically “wear” the consciousness of connection — especially to the conditioned aspects of participants — grounds us in ways that a solo practice simply cannot do. Conditioned aspects are accustomed to hiding in the shadows, not showing up and being validated as it is, without fixing or shaming. Herein lies the most promising aspect of the Group Inner Constellation work: we heal through presence and attunement, not through fixing or “trying” to change. Of course, learning to presence that which we have designed our life around avoiding, also makes ICM work challenging at times!

ICM challenges our habits of resistance and/or making ourselves, life, or others wrong. Our deeper/higher connections to life manifest through the considerable pressure and discomfort of meeting this challenge, not in spite of it! Meeting life “as it is” grounds the innate spiritual nature within each of our nervous systems. Learning to stay with life “as it is” is a form of surrender or bowing down. This humble gesture changes everything about our relationship to life. It cultivates the ability to listen deeply beneath concepts and words. Surrender is not a collapsed state, but an available wholehearted state of being present with what is (the only way we can be present). We become available for an inner-guidance that allows us to “under-stand” (stand-under) life’s conditioning in new and creative ways.

With practice and time, we become vehicles for change in ways that we never thought possible. These changes seem to occur quite naturally, without effort. They can even feel miraculous. As we become more available for life, it’s natural vitality begins to flow through our nervous system more abundantly and change simply happens. Several years of Silence Practice facilitation has given me a deep respect for the timeless human gesture of surrender. The ICM way of working is a change I did not see coming and it continues to emerge and develop in seemingly limitless forms of expression in the nine-month Universal Heart Series.

What does it take to develop and sustain inner-stillness while living in the world? It takes everything we have and more. Short cuts are not an option because they rob us of the fiery inner-struggle that gives birth to presence! Connecting with the spaciousness of inner-stillness is an important beginning as I have discovered in the years facilitating Silence Practice groups. However, if meditation remains only an individual practice, we eventually miss out on the awkward toddler stage of discovering how to relate from inner-stillness in the world around us. This is where life becomes challenging and exciting! It is in our relationship to the world that our conditioned trauma (or patterns of contraction) show up. I recall the Buddhist story of a monk who meditated for twenty years in a cave in perfect peace. However, as he was making his descent down the mountain, the first person he came across did something to offend him and he flew into an uncontrollable rage!

An embodied spiritual practice is about living in the world with an alive and engaged spiritual intelligence. As this intelligence manifests in our nervous system, we naturally connect to the world differently. We are no longer using our energy to try to get away from difficulties because our body’s nervous system has learned to operate from a more spacious awareness. Through the engaged transparency of a group of available nervous systems, the trauma of our human conditioning loosens as it is seen and felt within others. Within this responsive container, we also begin to hear the higher-whispers of our soul’s emergence.

Lastly, it takes courage and willingness to engage in the world in ways we have not seen before. The immense pressures of our time are calling us beyond the conditioned habit of our separate self-identities. However, seeing and acknowledging our habits of separation and resistance from life are where we must begin. If we don’t begin where we are, we build our spiritual house on shifting sands that will not stand up in the storms of life that inevitably arrive. We are on a steep learning trajectory at this time in human history. Our habits of separation are reliably relentless teachers, neither wrong nor bad. Let’s gather and meet the challenge of past conditioning in creative new ways as we enter this pivotal decade. Investing energy in the myth of separation has been the default consciousness on the planet, but it is surely not the end of our collective human story.

The Universal Heart Within

Group Inner Constellations

The Universal Heart is experienced in the nervous system as a fluid movement of profound connection. It is grounded in an energy of abundance that transcends the known of our personal conditioning, while simultaneously including it. This influence can feel like a miracle as our nervous system experiences a more coherent (higher) intelligence flowing through it so naturally and easily.

A place of inner-stillness and increased clarity opens up within us. We find ourselves mysteriously held in an effortless state of transcendence in a seemingly ordinary and inclusive way. Our body feels alive and charged with the ineffable qualities of the Soul’s aliveness in God/Source.

From within the depths of the Universal Heart, our conditioned inner structures are held within an Inner Constellation of Spaciousness. No longer held in the prison of resistance and denial, our conditioned habits are simply held within awareness. We see them more clearly and more compassionately because resistance softens when we are connecting to these conditioned (wounded) Inner Constellations. Patterns of aversion, numbness, and judgement naturally soften as the Inner Constellations of our human conditioning are consciously received within our nervous system. 

Even as you read this, you may begin to feel a relaxing in the nervous system and a warm energy beginning to move in the heart centre. It is as though the resonance of spaciousness is contagious and—given the opportunity—can awaken within us. This is the transpersonal inclusivity of the Universal Heart’s energy. It belongs to everyone and to no-one. As it “lands” within us and between us, it becomes a transmission. When one or two people in a group are grounded and attuned to the Universal Heart, it becomes a perfume everyone can share in—although not everyone may be able to feel it. 

As the non-dual consciousness of the Universal Heart begins to infuse our relationship with this moment, we discover that there is nothing within or without that needs to be fixed or changed. This is the “resting nature” or faith-state of the Universal Heart. As we choose to attune to it, we may (suddenly or gradually) experience an inner-spaciousness that responds to life in a more fluid and engaged manner. This is the “responsive nature” or compassionate response of the Universal Heart: and there is nothing in life that it cannot connect with.

What is the connection between Silence Practice and the Inner Constellations? The core of both practices lies in the heart centre. In the stillness of our heart we know ourselves in God—whatever name we give to this life-changing relationship with the higher resonances within. Discovering again and again that the Universal Heart resides within and that we can choose to align with it—even in the midst of the noise of our personal and collective conditioning. (Please see https://lauramadsen.ca/inner-constellations/ for more information on the transition from Silence Practice to the Inner Constellation Mobile.)

Why is Sound Healing included in the Inner Constellation Mobile?  When we experience the Universal Heart within, we engage in life through a different consciousness or resonant field. We literally sense, feel, and perceive a grounded open potential that is always available within us. Specific vocal sounds help us to “hear” or “align with” the uplifting (faster) frequencies of the Universal Heart. Vocal sound resonance can also be directed towards contracted energy patterns and help them to relax. Their gently supportive frequency is a way of connecting to pain-patterns in the nervous system that may be unconscious. Connecting through the resonance of Sound is gentle and respectful and fosters an inner-spaciousness that is self-regulating and healing. (Please see https://lauramadsen.ca/sound-energy-healing/ for more information.)

From Silence Practice to Inner Constellations & Sound

Group Inner Constellations

(This Chart may only be used with prior permission from Laura Madsen)

Silence Practice classes have increasingly focused on refining our capacity for inner-awareness through deep listening and attunement. As this function stabilizes in the group dynamic, subtle energy-movements in our nervous system become palpable and increasingly conscious. The Inner Constellation Mobile (ICM) below emerged in the most recent Silence Practice series as a map of the sacred territory of our inner life. The ICM is a simple map of the movement of two basic energy-systems within our nervous system. With a willing awareness, these movements are physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually perceptible.

There are two basic nervous systems in the body that constantly inform us: the conditioned nervous system (through Inner-Constellations of culture, family, and human history); and the unconditioned potential  of the Soul’s movement through the Inner-Constellations of spaciousness and listening.

Both of these movements are experiential when we learn to slow down thinking and become energetically-attuned through deep listening. Both experiences “feel real.” When the conditioned nervous system is experienced as energy rather than an unconscious impulse, our nervous system experiences increased spaciousness.  This movement opens us to the uncondtioned potential as new insights, generous/uplifting emotions, and/or trusting/open sensations in the body.

Many of our life-experiences are grounded in the conditioned nervous system, and are therefore habitual. Initially, slowing down to actually feel these can be disarming and uncomfortable. As a culture we are habituated to turn away from inner-discomfort, however subtle. This makes it difficult to sustain the unconditioned potential of the “Soul’s” movement within culture. Our success in this regard depends upon our ability to consciously “be with” conditioned aspects, and to listen (pray, open) to the higher dimensions of our Soul. In order to facilitate the integration of these energy-upgrades, indiviual and group Sound vibrations are an implicit part of the PhD research thesis.

The traditional word for the coherent movement of the ICM is Grace. It is where we experience “problems” as no longer being in the way because we experience them in relationship to a larger whole (of the Soul’s movement in God/Source). It is this movement that allows us to move beyond conditioning in a compassionate and spacious way.  When we no longer reject the pain of our human conditioning (in self or other), we become increasingly available for the movement of our Soul.

The ICM Map emerged at the end of the Spring 2018 Silence Practice series. I have experienced this Group Constellation practice as deceptively simple and powerfully transformative. As with all the previous Silence Practice series, I look forward to exploring this recent emergence with you. See lauramadsen.ca for the upcoming Class description.
with love,
Laura
For contact: Please leave a comment below or call 1(604) 222-4111

Entanglement & Spaciousness: The Delicate Dance of Embodiment

Group Inner Constellations

Painting by Keira Madsen

Much has percolated both personally and as a facilitator following the recent Fall Silence Practice series, “Restoring Structures in Consciousness.”

Firstly, I am grateful for the structure of exploration that each Silence Practice series seems to provide for myself and for other willing “pioneers.” The most sacred gift we can give each other lies in our courage and willingness to explore together “beyond habits of the known.”

What makes this gift sacred? Because it lies within the Mystery of our innate (known/ experienced) belonging in God/Source. Why are courage and willingness required? Because this gift also comes with the most rigorous challenge of all – the challenge of “meeting ourselves” exactly where we are.

What is challenging about “meeting ourselves” exactly where we are you might ask? After all, I am a nice person, my relationships are good, and I am happy most of the time. I rather like myself the way I am and others seem to as well … except, maybe sometimes … something deep within me surfaces that … mmmm … ????

That questioning is the entry-point for the timeless spiritual question: “Who Am I”?Indian saint Ramana Maharshi offered this inquiry to his disciples as a foundational practice.

Within this wholehearted spiritual question lies the opening to the spaciousness of an authentic inner Journey. This is where our willingness and courage emerge from a previously unknown source within us, and begins to grow. As Jesus said, it only takes a “mustard seed” (a small opening/beginning) to grow Faith (and Faith exists beyond the known).

Silence Practice is always a movement towards an already-present spaciousness within. If this spacious experience is one we wish to live our life through, then we begin to engage in an “embodied spiritual practice.” Only within the rigour of an embodied spiritual practice do we begin “meeting ourselves” exactly where we are. Here we experience the inevitable entanglements of the “conditioned” or “identified” self, and how much they are at play in our life. This is the land of “shadow” (Carl Young), the unconscious, the unseen aspects of the conditioned self, all the places where we have become entangled.

In a deeper spaciousness where embodiment is also a priority, we begin to see and experience patterns of energetic entanglement that we have been participating in unconsciously. Compounding our ability to see this level of unconscious participation, is our determined identification with these entanglements as us. So the letting-go nature of Silence Practice can feel like a death-practice, depending upon where our identification is focused.

This delicate dance between entanglement and spaciousness is the razor’s edge of an embodied practice. It requires a willingness to practice in the face of fear and resistance. If we do not face this, we are likely to choose a less embodied form of practice where we do not “meet ourselves,” but rather “escape ourselves.” It has been my experience that many people who speak about spiritual practice are referring to the latter.

If I do not understand and experience that the foundation of my entangled-self is a young place of self-preservation-at-all-cost, than I may also be unaware of its endless antics of camouflage and obfuscation when faced with the naked vulnerability of inner-spaciousness.

In order to restore these entangled structures, we must first meet them and touch them exactly where they are. This becomes possible with the natural relaxation of the nervous system and increased consciousness that spaciousness provides. Only within the generosity of inner-spaciousness does the delicate and beautiful dance of embodiment begin to unfold. It can feel miraculous.

I have learned again and again, in the past 7+ years of facilitation, that this is the reason that an embodied (grounded in and through the body) spiritual practice — by its very nature — is one of deep humility and surrender. These two fundamental gate-posts of embodied spiritual practice, draw from us a willingness and courage that we didn’t know we had.

The delicate dance between entanglement and spaciousness has only one certitude: it will surprise, challenge, and delight you again and again — in increasingly new and subtle ways. In a very real sense, I am most own best student of Silence Practice. To use Richard Bach’s quote, “we teach best what we most need to learn.”

This fills my heart with gratitude. Namaste.

Please comment in the section below if you feel drawn to do so. An embodied practice is strengthened by engaging with others who share the same interest.

with love, Laura