If curiosity were a season, it would be spring.

​​It would be the wildflowers that bloom in spring.

How does it feel in your body when you look at wildflowers? Even just one, bursting up brightly through the earth, fearlessly and full of grace?

There are few things more delicious than the experience of being fully present.

​Can you recall how it feels in your body? Or maybe you’re fully present right now. What are the sense perceptions that arise?

​For me, it’s usually a beautiful spaciousness that doesn’t deny any of the contractions that the events of life are eliciting in my body. A spaciousness that’s inclusive and welcoming of the tightness in my jaw, the twinge of pain in my lower back and sciatic life nerve.

Yay, spring! The season of life bursting forth from under the ground, from the time of gestation + hibernation in the darkness of winter, up into the sunlight above the ground.

​This involves leaning into the discomfort of expanding our growing edges, much like saplings and seedlings leaning into the discomfort + mystery of the natural process of growth.

Less than a few a hundred years ago, wild buffalo - what we nowadays refer to as bison - roamed in their millions across the vastness of North America. They were revered as sacred by the diverse tribal nations across the continent, each people having their own ways of honoring, communicating and working with the animals.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a pretty resistant relationship to goals due to a number of reasons (including the garden variety fear of failure.) One of the more interesting reasons was that as a child of the 80s and 90s - the age of the insatiable, unchecked greed of the yuppie-corporatist - my young, contrarian free spirit associated goals as a portal into a dystopian pulverizing of humanity.

When was the first time you experienced inner conflict?

​I’m taking an educated guess that you don’t remember because it’s one of the earliest ways that most all of us learn to relate to ourselves. As we start to experience the world around us more acutely through our senses, we observe that being at war with ourselves is in fact one of the most “normal” ways to go through life.

There once was a woman who dreamed herself awake.

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As with any worthwhile endeavor, she had help. In her Dreamtime, she would be visited by snake, butterfly and stag.

This isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last time that I write to you about reclaiming your safety, specifically your felt-sense of safety.

On the Lunar New Year back in January, I was lying on the couch in a semi-altered state after indulging in some gentle daydreaming. The currents of the day called for it, not that any excuses are needed for daydreaming.

Slowly, these three words echoed in my ear:

​Trust your resilience.

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Yes. Of course, I thought. And tell me more.

True belonging - especially for those of us who have moved through life feeling like we don’t - begins with us.

One of my many favourite bits in C. G. Jung’s memoirs, Memories, Dreams, Reflections is his account of his visit with the Pueblo – the Indigenous people of New Mexico.

This was back in the 1920s. For the Swiss Jung, his travels revealed to him how he “was still caught up and imprisoned in the cultural consciousness of the white man.”

On Winter Solstice, we’ll begin a new adventure with one of the Grail legends, the tale of the Fisher King.

I wasn’t planning on writing today. But this dropped in and asked to be written as I was getting ready to go visit a dear, wise friend who lives way, way out in the desert wilderness, where cellphone signals are non-existent. It’s clear that the few people who live out there really don’t want to be bothered.

I write often about unhooking from aggressive, push-on-through (non)culture and the toxic glorification of busy-ness.
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Today, I want to briefly explore some of the nuances around this, namely around navigating this space in a way that’s radical, resilient and loving.

Back in 2010 when I still lived in London, I attended my first ten day silent Vipassana meditation retreat in the lovely rolling countryside of Herefordshire.

​Obviously no phones are allowed during these retreats, as well as no talking (both prospects I was enthusiastically looking forward to, curiously enough). Also, no paper and writing/drawing/painting tools to document your insights and aha moments. Nothing.

Unless you’ve been happily living under a rock, you’ll have noticed that the idea of staying safe has been gaining a lot of traction in the collective consciousness over the last couple of years.

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​From the perspective of the nervous system, this is interesting.

As I sit down and look at the blank page in front of me, a sense of panic bubbles up. The last few months have been a ride. Life has taken me apart, and is putting me back together. These days, I’m leaning into being + doing from someplace new, a place that’s still a Mystery to me, not unlike a blank page.

Every time I’ve sat in ceremony with plant medicine teachers, whether psychedelic or otherwise, the wisdom I’ve received is “Hey, human - remember you’re also this and something way, way, way more vast, mysterious and magnificent. Play around in this-here dimension of consciousness by all means, but please, by goddess, don’t forget what you are and get stuck here!”

One of my fondest memories of my very early years spent in India, where I was born, is of the annual Durga Puja at my mother’s ancestral home in the state of Bengal, north-east India.

The celebration at the family seat’s temple there dates back to the 16th century, and each autumn the victorious Goddess has been welcomed back “home” after defeating the buffalo-demon Mahishasura.

The roots of the word “wealth” can be found in the Old English wela and the Middle English weal meaning well-being.

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​This was also intimately connected with wholeness in terms of health and well-being. In fact, to heal essentially means to make whole.

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​A symbol of wholeness is the spiral- common to Indigenous traditions from around the world. The DNA molecule is also unmistakably spiral-shaped: we literally have wholeness coded into us.