A reminder for the aching chest, the uneasy stomach, the heavy feet, and the looping mind: this low is equidistant to your highest high. Don’t believe a word that comes from this place because they are all lies that have been doused in the kerosene of doubt and fear that live down here in this particular divot of hell. All of your faculties and senses are therefore being distorted and not to be trusted.

So, what do you do then? While you are here…? Notice. Notice the lies. Notice the anger, disillusion, sadness, dissatisfaction and all their equally unwelcome cousins. Notice that before your eyes even open in the morning your mind has started to chew again without asking permission. Notice while you are here how the world appears and treat it like a low budget B movie that you are being forced to watch. Like someone taped your eyes open and you have to watch it. Breathe them all in and push nothing away knowing that they are as real as Santa Claus sliding down chimneys. Notice too, how even though you understand this isn’t true on an intellectual level, still, something in you believes what is being said. Something in you also believes that if you just stay with it and think think think that you will in fact find a release in the thought at the very end. There is no “end”. The thinking is like the Santa Ana winds on your already burning blaze. You know this, and will fall for it anyway, and that is ok. When you can, name the force that is fueling the thinking. Is it anger? Say angry. Is it grief. Say grieving. Is it injustice? Is it betrayal? Is it sadness? What is it?

This fire and brimstone isn’t here solely to torture you, it is here to show you something else. Something you won’t be able to see until you are out of this soulless pit. Nothing in nature is pointless. Fire clears the forest floor and enriches the soil. But fawns, foxes, and turtles get consumed by it too. There are dangers here, so don’t fall asleep to the lie and believe it’s true.

Don’t fall asleep to the lie and believe it’s true.

Don’t fall asleep to the lie and believe it’s true.

It hurts and it sucks down here, I know. Tend to yourself even grudgingly if that is all you can muster. Take a shower, brush your teeth, drink water, stretch, walk, lift some weights - even those little 2 pound ones count. Get your woo woo on and ask your angels and guides to intervene on your behalf, and surround you with protection and love and then tell them to look out for your people too. Pay attention. You are in the trenches and nothing here is a waste. Every breath that reaches behind your heart and into your belly is a victory. Every engagement with your life matters. Follow the formula of moderation in work, rest, eating, movement, and spiritual practice. The blanket, the pillow, and kind words to yourself are more here. Their softness is the Great Mothers embrace. You are held, you are safe, and you are loved.

Now, open the drawer and read the letter you wrote to yourself that time you weren’t in the highest high or this lowest low. The one you wrote when you were in wise center of the Venn diagram of emotion and logic.

In this letter you reminded yourself of what is true about your life. The intimate details of the strength, courage, intelligence, beauty, generosity, creativity, playfulness, and love that zing, pulse, glow, puddle, drip and sparkle at the center of YOU. The aspects of your life that inspire you to keep growing and learning.

From this place of clarity you understand that every time you’ve entered the treacherous depths and darkness of the underworld, you’ve been mining for treasure and in this letter you list the insights you’ve come back with so far. You tell yourself how confident you are that you can and will love yourself through anything. You’ve done it before and you will do it again. You no longer seek an escape from life as it is now, but you are under no illusions it can’t suck sometimes.

You are stronger and more compassionate as a result of being with and learning from your own pain and pain you have brought to others. Every mistake, every outburst, every moment of shame, or exposed insecurity holds their opposite counterpart on the other side of feeling them. Life sends you winks and nudges and you are learning her secret language. You aren’t getting out of this alive but your sense of humor and appreciation are growing so wild and big that these escapades into the depths feel less and less serious. Once they are over of course. A key point is that you do notice when they are over.

This is your chance. This is your miracle.

Gumption, grit, and fortitude come to mind. YOU are strong, and you can do this.

I love you all the way to your bones,

Nicole

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The dilapidated grey conference room carpet can’t help but silently absorb the years of cigarette smoke, spilled coffee, burrito drippings, and dirt trekked in from its visitors’ shoes. The door to this room has been shut for who knows how long, allowing the odors to stew and thicken. The air has been robbed of all freshness and is now dusty, stale, and a little rank. A mix of unpleasantness and disgust pulls your nose, mouth, and forehead into a wrinkled pucker, and you attempt to hold your breath. To avoid the smell, you allow yourself only an occasional shallow mouth breath. A sudden panic to get out sets in. When you turn around to find the exit, you’re horrified to discover that there is no door.

Somehow, without meaning to, you keep finding yourself stumbling into this place.

You’ll be walking through the dining room with an armful of loose dirty laundry that threatens to drop a rogue sock or underwear with every step. Or you’ll be putting groceries away, or wiping a counter, or grabbing a new paper towel roll from the hallway closet. Suddenly, you find yourself locked in the stale room.

Usually, a thought tries to explain the feeling of this place. Fragments of a memory pop in. Or a quiet tally of everything you haven’t gotten to yet. Or a comparison to someone else’s life that seems to be further along than yours. But most often it’s the same thought every time, one that has haunted you since high school and really ramped up after a particular chapter of your life ended: what am I doing with my life?

Along with feeling trapped, there is a distinct and haunting feeling of missing something very important.

For so long, the repugnant and dank qualities of this place brought on such a sense of disgust and panic that you believed it was related entirely to the story your thoughts were spinning: it had to do with the trajectory of your career, with something you hadn’t done yet, or some idea waiting in the wings, if only you could find it.

You had so much faith in these thoughts that you never doubted what their urgency meant: that there was a problem, completely unrelated to whatever you were actually doing in the moment, and that this problem was important enough to demand your attention. You also unconsciously believed that if you worried about it and thought about it hard enough, a solution would eventually present itself.

It’s quite shocking to discover that you’ve been walking into this room over and over for your entire adult life, and only now have you become aware that it isn’t a “problem.” It is, in fact, a place in your psyche. Instead of holding your breath, and avoiding the unpleasantness, and getting lost, as you usually do, in believing there is a problem at hand — a curiosity creeps in. You start to intentionally breathe the air so you can figure out what’s happening. Why does the air itself suddenly feel so sullied? That’s when you identify it: the staleness.

Once you become aware of this place, the next time you find yourself there, you can start to stroll around like a detective with your fingers loosely clasped behind your back. Along with the poor air quality, you notice the temperature of the room, stifling, and the wildlife photo of wolves in the snow, in a frame that is much too small for the wall. You can sit down on one of the stiff metal chairs from the circle set up for a group of some kind, and feel it creak slightly under your weight. You can turn around, hugging your arm across the chair’s cool metal back, and squint at the long, thin, horizontal windows… Why are they so high? Is this a basement, or just a poorly designed modernist building?

Your version of this room might look nothing like mine (maybe it isn’t a conference room at all), but it has its own details once you stop to look. Maybe this room has been here all along, tucked behind a web of thoughts, waiting until you were ready to see it. Either way, the recognition feels life-altering, because you no longer have to run from it, or believe it has something to do with the story your thoughts are weaving, or some deep-seated flaw you came into the world with.

This isn’t about having no problems. It’s about seeing there’s more happening than the problem itself. The thoughts are actually a signal that you’ve entered a territory of aliveness you normally avoid because it’s unpleasant. Curiosity feels different in the body than panic does: where panic tightens and searches for the exit, curiosity has room in it, almost a kind of play. That difference, small as it is, is what lets you stay in the room a little longer each time instead of fleeing it.

There is no magical point where this place becomes comfortable. But the thoughts start to loosen their grip. And then, without ceremony, you’re gone from it, back at the counter, cloth in hand, the room already receding behind you like a door swinging shut on its own. No urgent problem left to solve. Just the gardenia-tinted summer breeze, sweeping through the kitchen window, cool against your face, moving through your hair.

With Love,

Nicole

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In January, I made a promise to report from the messy middle of waking up to who I truly am. I shared the gritty and intimate details and progression of how I got to my current state here. Then…I got very very cold feet around sharing in that way again.

When the mask is taken off, there is a feeling of exposure. Like one of those dreams where you are walking your high school hallways without a shirt or a bra.

Without meaning to there was a stepping back in what I wrote about. I stayed where it was safe (ish) by avoiding personal reporting and just sharing practices I found valuable.

What held me back was the usual fear of judgement and exposure, but also my own harsh judgements around sharing personal experiences and ideas about what an audience wanted (never a great approach to creative ventures).

Though I had heard and read about the inner critic before, it wasn’t until I made the investment of hiring an ‘action oriented’ coach - to help me get out of the pattern of putting off building my career - That I really discovered the impact this internal judge was having on my daily life and creative process.

My coach Andrea Dewitt helped me uncover this character that lurked and slunk beneath the surface. I started to recognize that he had a certain flavor or feeling - like a cloud of self-doubt, harsh judgment, gas lighting, minimizing and cynicism, that would creep in like tendrils of early morning fog and eventually fill not only my body but the room I was in.

As children, we take in and internalize the voices, phrases, attitudes, and judgments of our parents first, and later those of other influential adults such as teachers, coaches, family members, and peers, as well as broader societal norms and values. This structure in our psyche developed initially as a way to keep us safe. As little sponges we would absorb the messages, and the inner judge formed along with beliefs about ourselves and the world (some of them are pre-verbal), and the judge would help us modify our behavior so that we could ensure we were cared for.

For instance, if our father got angry with us for being expressive, loud and playful in a restaurant, as children we don’t have the discernment to recognize that there isn’t something fundamentally bad or wrong about “who we are”, or even what we are doing. We can’t see that what’s actually happening, is that our father is likely feeling embarrassed, angry, and afraid of being judged by strangers as a bad parent who has unruly children. Instead, the fathers anger towards us is experienced as a loss of love and safety, and our child mind believes that something is inherently wrong and bad about us.

As children we truly believe the messages we are receiving from adults and culture and this voice develops to try and save us from experiencing the rejection and loss of connection from the figures we are dependent upon for survival.

The intellectual understanding of the origins of the inner critic is helpful, however, uncovering the real live structure as it parades through our lives is the opposite of intellectual. The faulty beliefs are nestled intimately into our sense of identity, so exposing the inner critic can feel dangerous and upsetting. Additionally, since this is a structure that has legs in our deep unconscious, it can respond unpredictably. It truly believes it’s job and therefore existence, is necessary for our survival, because at one point it was crucial.

In my case, as I unearthed this figure two things began to happen. First, a sense of lightness and freedom from disidentifying with this harsh voice. Now, I could witness by feeling the visceral sense of ick and limitation and hearing the unnecessarily cruel and cutting commentary. I learned that my critic had developed to keep me small and inconsequential. If I stayed off of everyone’s radar, even my own, I would be safe. He would say things like “who do you think you are?”, “who would listen to you?”, “you don’t know what you are talking about”. He would criticize my writing and say “no-one wants to read this”. I would say he was on par or worse than an internet troll. His Dorito dusted keyboard warrior fingers had no boundaries to what he could criticize. My body, face, memory, intellect, creativity, parenting, taste, and overall quality as a human being, were all subject to his cutting comments. There was only one thing he couldn’t comment on - the mysterious and luminous sensations of presence and bliss that sprinkled throughout my body, and blanketed across my chest and belly. Even though this presence moved within and under my very own skin, “That is not you” is all he could say.

The second thing that happened was that he got sneakier. The initial feeling of liberation resulted in my taking action despite his commentary and learning that his effects were temporary. Instead of falling into a dark abyss as he warned me would happen if I let myself be seen and took risks, it felt more like walking through a thick scratchy polyester curtain that billowed in the wind. It was uncomfortable and inconvenient, but not very substantial or lasting. As a result, he began to change tactics, less internet troll, and more polished and intellectual. His warnings were more subtle and disguised. Instead of saying “No-one cares”, he would say, “Lets look at the self absorbed qualities of this writing. What is the motivation for sharing this?”, “If you weren’t so emotionally immature then you could handle this.” Or, he would present advice aimed at losing weight (a lifelong job he has dedicated himself towards - thank you Western culture) as if it was entirely new and fresh as I ran my errands “You should go on a juice cleanse!”, “You should eat only fresh and unprocessed foods from now on.” , “ Don’t eat past 6pm anymore and everything will be better.”

It took me a while to catch on, it was the familiar flavor or feeling of doubt and horribleness that gave him away. I noticed that being under his influence was in a way exposing a deep sense of insecurity that has always been there. I had to ask myself, what is so dangerous in admitting there in insecurity present in my experience?

In studying how personality develops for my Enneagram coaching practice, every single human beings ego centers around a feeling of lack and insufficiency. I am no different from anyone else in that regard, and admitting this and owning it does something surprising. If I can see insecurity, acknowledge it, feel it when its present and even admit it - then the consequences of someone else spotting it doesn’t feel scary at all. It’s like someone seeing that my eyes are blue. It’s a neutral observation. Yes, I have insecurities. Yes, I have an internal voice that is harsh and critical to myself and others that chimes in uninvited. And yes, when I am under the influence of insecurity it feels gross…but it seems to be part and parcel of being a human being and owning it allows me the freedom to move away from the dependence of needing desperately to be seen or experienced a certain way by others.

So far, awareness of my inner critic has inspired the recognition that it isn’t necessarily up to “me” to abolish him. The agency I have is to plod forward even when he warns me not to do the thing. Continue to foster an inner friendliness through meditation practice, therapy, and personal reflection, that can hold me if and when he or someone else’s critic attacks. And lastly, to acknowledge that his presence is not indicative of a secret and insurmountable inner flaw but a vestige of a childhood survival strategy.

Carl Jung’s quote “We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning.”, comes to mind as I reflect on the process of continuing to grow up in adulthood. My savvy critic of course likes to chime in at this point and remind me of the mistakes I made with my own children - that I was living the program of life’s morning and got angry and harsh and made mistakes with my sweet beautiful boys. The afternoon program however, says — Yes, you made plenty of mistakes, and there is shame, regret, and sadness present around that. While you can’t go back, you can show up more honestly now — and if they EVER want validation around the loss, the fear, the anger, and the sadness they felt as a result of things I said or did — the opportunity to do that would and will be a gift.

With Deep Respect, Love, and a smidgen of exposure,

Nicole

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Share Wild Meditations By Nicole Harrow

The energy of spring turning herself over to summer is both intoxicating and inspiring. I’m riding the momentum of this wave and offering something close to my heart — an in person half day Enneagram & Yoga Retreat at the most enchanting Yoga Barn Big Magic Village — located in the rolling Briones Hills in Martinez, CA on Sunday May 17th from 10:30am — 1:30pm. Email me at nicole.harrow@gmail.com if you would like to register.

Incorporating the Enneagram into my personal practice has had a profound and transformational effect on my life.

The Enneagram connected directly to the spiritual teachings I studied in yoga, bridging the inner ego-personality with the deeper Self—the ground of Being yogic texts describe as beyond personality.

For over a decade, I was a hungry seeker, pouring over yogic and spiritual texts, trying to understand the “how” of liberation. I interpreted the ego, to be a nefarious, self-obsessed entity that had to be destroyed and overcome. It wasn’t until I discovered the Enneagram that my understanding, and my attitude towards the ego, began to shift dramatically.

Now, I see our personality as the ego itself. The issue isn’t having a personality or needing to get rid of it to find freedom. Our suffering arises from the belief that we are our personality. When in truth, we are so so so so so much more.

The Enneagram exposes what feels like your secret inner world—your fears, desires, motivations, and self-images—plainly and clearly. At first, this can be shocking, but if you are ripe for insight and understanding, it quickly becomes a tool for objective self-exploration where before it felt too personal or sensitive.

As you learn about the nine different strategies, a natural compassion and curiosity toward yourself and others begins to open.

Self-study is an integral part of the eight-limbed yogic path, and the Enneagram’s grounding in both Western psychology and spirituality makes it a relatable, accessible tool for those of us approaching yoga from the West.

Exploring your Enneagram type alongside your yoga practice gives you essential tools for emotional and psychological balance. It helps you step out of reactive patterns and opens the way to grounded inner support and steadiness, allowing the full eight limbs of yoga to become a lived experience, not just theory.

I’ll be offering the above workshop on May 17th and I’d love to see you there. Additionally, I’m working one on one with clients who are in a place where they are ready to look inward and deepen their self-understanding, supporting them to gently uncover and transform the patterns that keep them stuck; opening the door to greater freedom, presence, and joy in everyday life. Presently I have two spots available, if you’d like to learn more and schedule a free consultation email me at nicole.harrow@gmail.com

With Love, Nicole

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Whether it’s a recognition of a complete lack of control, a natural curiosity, some kind of profound shock, or loss, or sudden realization, or maybe a combination of all of the above. Something leads us to begin to inquire into places where previously, it never occurred for us to look and explore.

Today, we are going to stand right on the edge of a threshold that comes right out of the 1980’s movie Labyrinth. At first, it will seem as if we are staring at an impenetrable wall…but if we listen to the little British worm with the blue hair and red scarf, casually sitting on a ledge who says, “ Well you just ain’t looking right! It’s just full of openings, you just ain’t seeing em.” We will find an unexpected entry point through an exploratory practice around two habitual unconscious patterns within our minds.

The following insights and exploration are inspired by the book Dimensions of Mind, by the Tibetan Buddhist lama Tarthang Tulku.

The first, is the pattern of resistance - we just don’t want to know, or don’t want to make some particular change. If and when this pattern shows up, usually our attention will just shift away. If that is the case, we will lose interest and our exploration will stop.

The second, is the pattern of misunderstanding - we may be clear about what’s going on at one level, but at another level, we may not understand at all. A very simplified example of this can be the observation “The sky is blue”. On one level it is obvious the conceptual categories of “sky” and “blue” are familiar and we know what they are. However, on another level there is something we can not fully capture about our experience of the blue sky…something ineffable is present too and we don’t quite understand what that is - this is the level where misunderstanding is present. Now imagine how much more profound the not understanding can be in our interpretations of emotionally charged situations!

Tulku notes that the pattern of not understanding/misunderstanding can be deliberate - a kind of “defense mechanism against seeing or understanding something we would rather not acknowledge”. — What could we be defending against not knowing? If we start to open past the defenses, what will we find? Why is it threatening? (if you have a theory, I’d love to hear about it in the comments :)

The patterns of resistance and misunderstanding are not “problems” at all. Quite the contrary, when we inevitably come across them, they can bring our attention to a fruitful place that typically stays off of our radar. Additionally, by relating to these patterns with a more exploratory attitude we are learning a completely new way of engaging with the contents of our lives.

We are used to looking for solutions on the level of ideas. As we saw with the example of the blue sky, ideas can only take us so far; there is another level we can explore. When we approach our experiences with an open ended curiosity however, we lose the rigidity of the inherent assumptions of the cause and effect each idea comes with. This attitude allows us to loosen our grip around the specific meaning we tend to assign to events in our lives (a side effect of this loosening is a sense of relaxation and freedom).

Both resistance and not understanding have a unique flavor and a feeling that we can tap into especially if we relate to them as something we don’t have to solve or overcome. It does feel a little counter intuitive to stop and be in the feeling though, and knowing that can help us identify when we are there. That moment when the mind starts to look for a label or answer, but can’t find one. That feeling is the one we can breathe in and stretch our awareness into.

Resistance is something that occurs all throughout the day - while engaged in a conversation with someone, our eyes momentarily flit to the side, and without necessarily deciding to do so; our minds move somewhere else and we exit the conversation. For some reason we no longer want to know what they are saying…why? If we give the answer that we got bored, that doesn’t really explain what is happening. Boredom is just a description of what happened, so there is something worthy of looking into there. What does resistance feel like? How often do we unconsciously decide we no longer want to know or change? What motivates the resistance? A pure kind of curiosity without criticism or defense can lead us to a fresh perspective.

Inevitably, when we explore resistance (or anything else) we will encounter the pattern of not understanding. This feeling is incredibly interesting to sink our little mind teeth into. We don’t even have to spend hours in this sensation, just training the mind to titrate itself slowly into the experience of not understanding here and there has the potential to be transformative.

As our little labyrinth worm friend says, “Things are not always what they seem in this place.” Our minds have fascinating patterns and ways of shaping how we interpret and engage with our lives. When we start to look in this direction we can discover what all of the ancient wisdom teachings have been patiently imparting over the years. There is more. It is not what you think. And it is absolutely miraculous.

With Love,

Nicole

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How can we investigate our experience in a way that ends our constant postponement of experiencing freedom?

On a fundamental level we can all sense that freedom as a state of being is available. In fact, whether you meditate, pray, abstain from temptations, or whatever other religious and spiritual recipes there are to help us realize freedom, each of us get to experience moments of complete and total liberation regardless of “practice”. These moments are threaded throughout our waking hours, and even coarsely and obviously when the grippiest and most stubborn aspects of our minds surrender completely to the blissful void of deep sleep.

Infuriatingly the recognition and inner sensing of our own freedom is held just out of arms reach, and the obstacle for many of us lies in the way our minds are used to grasping/understanding things.

Luckily, there are tools available that can mysteriously soften as well as lighten the obscuring influence of thoughts just enough to let the felt experience of freedom in.

***However, releasing the need for our experience of freedom to be a pleasant one, can be extremely helpful!

The following exercise is a contemplation designed to explore the nature of freedom as an inherent state, as opposed to an outcome or result. Often times what gets initially exposed in this exercise is the obstacle or barrier to the experience of freedom. The mind is trained to think of this obstacle as a “problem” but in this case, we are in more of a curious and exploratory place that allows this supposed barrier to participate in the experience too.

Instead of shunning or repressing thoughts, we allow them to be there in the same way the sounds of crows cawing, leaves rustling, and distant traffic are allowed as we putter in the yard, or walk out to our cars. However, the contemplation is not designed to be a thought experiment. Instead, it is designed to take us directly into the intelligence of our bodies - the visceral and physical sensations - and our main focus is in exploring this information. As Adyashanti says “Focus on the direct, unmediated feeling of being alive in this moment, rather than conceptualizing about it.”

Part 1

Find a comfortable place to sit, with your back supported. After taking a few deep and full breaths, close your eyes (or soften your gaze downward and open your periphery) and in your mind say:

Everything is not OK, and that is OK.

Notice any thoughts that respond to the statement, and do your best not to suppress or control the thoughts. Then hone in on how the body responds. Where you feel it, what kinds of sensations you feel, and then follow and explore. See if you can breathe in a way that allows the belly to relax.

If possible, encourage your body to open and relax in a way that allows you to listen/feel for what is alive and present now.

If you get distracted, simply repeat the statement and explore again. Instead of having an agenda to experience a particular feeling, use this exercise as an opportunity to explore what is actually here for 2 to 5 minutes (you can explore as long as you want).

Part 2

Still in a comfortable and supported seat, we are going to explore the next variation of the contemplation. This time however, say:

Everything is OK.

Again, there is space for the thoughts to move, but the focus is on what comes up in the body as we explore. Notice if/how/when/where the sensations move. Notice how you may interpret sensations as pleasant/unpleasant, good/bad, or right/wrong. Explore for 2- 5 minutes (or longer).

What did you notice about how your mind responded to the statement in Part 1, and Part 2?

How did your body respond to Part 1 versus Part 2? Did you experience differences?

Reply in the comments if you want to share!

The sense of Freedom can show up as the freedom from, the freedom to, as well as a subtle and sacred spaciousness.

Sometimes time itself feels inexplicably generous and still, and the invisible dogs have suddenly stopped nipping at your heals. A lightness, a joy, and a sense of possibility open.

Other times a subtle sense of pressure or weight lifts and choices present themselves like an enticing buffet.

Freedom can reveal itself subtly and simply as a rippling aliveness of the space between you and the kitchen table, the art on the walls, the presence of a breeze that flows through an open window and across your foot or past the roots of your hair.

Inherently we understand that freedom is real and we want to know it on a deep level. There is though a bit of an unnatural or counterintuitive place that most of us must traverse in order to really get it. This place may have been exposed in your contemplation exercise. It is important that we approach what gets exposed with patience, love, and care.

Resistance can show up as loud thoughts that want to argue against anything being “OK” - what happens if you don’t try to argue with the thoughts?

Discomfort can show up as a heavy or nervous pit in your stomach, a weight on your shoulders, a scratchy uncomfortable lump in your throat that stretches to the roof of your mouth. — All of these sensations are valuable and worthy of your attention. Most of us have been trained to avoid them, but what happens when you don’t avoid them? Where do they go? What do they do?

With Love,

Nicole

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The sun is asleep and something unpleasant is here.

Only moments ago, you were immersed in the strange and non-linear rhythms of the dream world. In this unguarded, foggy, and slightly disoriented place; you feel the tug — Just as a spider feels the vibrations of her freshly caught prey.

Before you know it, you find yourself careening towards the center, the stickiest part of the web, with the intent to devour.

An unresolved tension in your life is the meal. Rumination promises it can deliver you a kindness, but instead, you find yourself in a violent battle involving painful memories and imaginary conversations that are fueled by rejection, insecurity, unfairness, and emotions like anger, sadness, fear, and desire.

Somehow you become your own prey, and you watch as you helplessly thrash and writhe against the webs of your own construction.

The mistake of believing that engaging in the vicious loop of rumination can provide some kind of relief or answer, is universally human. It is a trap we all get mired in from time to time.

When we sustain a physical injury like a broken bone, the pain lingers for weeks after the initial impact. As we heal, we experience sharp twinges and stabbing pains, along with a constant dull internal ache that tend to be hardest to ignore at night.

Sustaining an emotional injury is similar, and naturally it can take time for the body/mind to heal and digest the impact. Unfortunately, excess rumination can slow and even hinder our healing all together. Especially if we decide to believe the thoughts that come out of this process.

Luckily for us, there is an opportunity to learn how to navigate our own minds more skillfully when this kind of emotional pain presents itself.

In fact something intelligent is trying to make its way through.

Spiders have two main failsafes to navigate their own webs so they don’t get caught. The first is in the structure of the web itself; there are non sticky strands for the spider to follow out. The second failsafe is in the spiders body; her feet have tiny hair like structures that help her not get stuck in the adhesive strands, along with an oil-like non-stick coating.

The structure of the web is akin to the structures of the thoughts themselves. There are both sticky and non-sticky strands available in our thinking. If we look to the wisdom teachings it is specifically the thoughts that have the quality of attachment to the small self that are sticky.1 Conversely, the non sticky strands will be composed of the kind of thoughts that connect us to our higher or Self with the capital S.

Our small self (aka personality) is an identity composed of a Frankenstein like patchwork that is held together by memory and a sense of lack, doubt, and separation. When you start to get curious and look closely at what you are desperately trying to defend and protect, you will invariably discover a foundation of tender lies you had to believe from a young age to secure the love of your parents and society. Most of these lies are hidden deeply in our unconscious mind, and center around themes of believing we are inherently flawed, unworthy, or not “enough”. These hidden influences tend to slip out especially when we are feeling vulnerable. This article by Harvard Health describes rumination as “essentially negative self-talk—a drag on your self-esteem shaped by constantly feeding yourself negative messages about your life and your ability to cope.” In this description one can’t help but see the sense of lack that coats these sticky strands of thoughts.

We can ask:

• Where is the I that is stuck right now? (and listen and feel for this I)

• What am I mistakenly believing, that is connected to something being bad or wrong about me? What does that feel like?

• Can I sense how dense and heavy it feels the more I think and think?

  ---

Our daily spiritual practices like meditation (TM is my favorite), prayer, inquiry, contemplation, gratitude, service, and study, can help us strengthen our connection to the non-sticky strands (spiders are also meticulous cleaners and keep up on removing dirt and debris from their legs).

Additionally, we can use the wisdom teachings as a guide to the non-sticky threads that connect us directly to architect of the web; the big Self. Love, wholeness, trust, generosity, abundance, freedom, potential, and creativity are all associated with the big Self, as such, can we mine for these qualities in our experience.

We can ask:

• How can I move through this situation from love as opposed to fear?

• If Life is designed to help me grow into the best version of myself, what am I learning that is helping me grow?

• If I release my grip on needing a particular outcome, how can I open to trust and creativity?

  ---

The tiny structures on the spiders feet are a great reminder that the body itself is an alchemical tool.

The emotions that are driving the rumination are living in the body and are trying to get our attention. The timing of when to connect to your emotions is entirely personal and intuitive (for me, often the 2am time is a little too sharp and mired in sleepy motivations to “fix” the situation - to access my emotions with clarity). The simple act of breathing in and out and relaxing into emotional sensations without trying to get rid of or change them(even for just a few breaths if the intensity is extreme), can be surprisingly powerful. It can act like a tiny release valve that slowly relieves the tension over time, or a larger more cathartic experience that helps usher the anger and sadness out.

Behind the tug toward rumination is an emotion we may not want to feel, and by avoiding the feeling we end up prolonging our pain and tendency toward ruminations.

We can ask:

• Can I trace the thoughts back to an emotion I don’t want to feel right now? Is it disappointment, anger, shame, embarrassment, sadness, grief, fear, inadequacy, loneliness?

• What happens if I let myself feel it? Where in the body do I feel it?

• What happens when I breathe into the sensations and accept them as they come? (make sure to be loving towards yourself in this space - messages like “I have you”, “I’m with you”, “It’s ok to feel”, and comforting gestures like rubbing your arms, smoothing your hair, or hugging a pillow)

  ---

Rumination is not a sign that you are flawed; it is a signal. Beneath the looping stories is an emotion asking to be felt, a belief asking to be questioned, a deeper Self asking to be remembered. When we meet our pain with curiosity, trust, breath, and compassion, we learn to navigate it more skillfully, and open to new and fresh possibilities.

As we strengthen our connection to the threads of love, trust, and wholeness, we begin to sense what has always been true. In doing so, every triumph and challenge becomes a rich and meaningful adventure.

With Love, Nicole

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P.S. A few extra tips I found in my research on rumination

• When the thought pattern is particularly heavy and dense it can be helpful to immediately interrupt the pattern. Suggestions such as getting out of bed and moving to another location for a little while, or turning on a sleep story - sleepy cat meditations has some great ones

• During the day exercises like lifting weights and cardio can help the body burn and process difficult emotions

“According to Tantric philosophy, believing any existential untruth makes us suffer, and this suffering is optional in the sense that it need not continue past the point when you realize it is optional.” — Christopher Wallis

There is an unmistakable freedom that floods into your life when you realize you’ve been operating within the confinements of a mistaken belief.

The door we are walking through today is exposing the existential untruth of the belief that “it could have been different than it was”.

The above sentiment is so pervasive that you can hear evidence of it everywhere: in the neighboring tables conversation at a restaurant, in your own daily self talk, and in most criticism from partners, friends and coworkers.

To illustrate, here is an example from a comment I overheard at my son’s swim meet a few years ago:

Girl: “If my foot hadn’t slipped on my flip turn, I would have beaten my time.”

In this instance, the girl I overheard is imagining that if she had executed her flip turn without her foot slipping, that she would have performed better than she did. However, her foot did slip, and the time she received is indisputable. In believing the counterfactual story she is telling herself and her friend, and in treating this thought as real as opposed to a hypothetical scenario, she will likely prolong her own pain of disappointment, regret, self criticism and judgement.

Another way this can show up is if you have spent your time doing something you label as “unproductive”1 . Say you spend 3 hours scrolling on your phone, watching tv, or on a phone call. The sneaky way the belief of “it could have been different” comes in is when we say to ourselves “Dammit! I just wasted my time, I should have been working on a project, or doing my taxes, or gone to the grocery store.”

When reflecting on how you spent your time, it is perfectly reasonable to assess whether it aligns with your goals and values and then use that information to help you make decisions in the future. Also, sometimes what we are experiencing is a momentary disappointment in our choices, and that disappointment can overshadow what was actually valuable in your 3 hours of “unproductiveness”. However, when we truly believe that what happened should have and could have been different, we perpetuate a stance of judgment and criticism of ourselves and how we used our time. Naturally, if this is how we judge ourselves, we will also believe this is true for other people too.

Can you identify when this sneaky belief has crept in about something today or yesterday?

How does really believing that it could have been different limit your access to compassion, acceptance and understanding for yourself and others?

What would happen if you took the stance of “I/they could not have done it differently, because I/they didn’t? Watch how the mind may try to say you are making excuses for yourself or them —this can be how the belief contorts itself to stay in judgement. How can you be in acceptance and curiosity regarding what happened without condemning or judging yourself or the other person? What feeling is asking for your attention?

Believing that something from the past could have somehow turned out differently from how it did, is a real life illustration of Seneca’s sentiment “We suffer more in imagination than reality”.

Often, this belief prevents us from moving through and digesting the temporary experience of challenging emotions such as disappointment, regret, or sadness.

The beauty is that when we start to uncover this sneaky lie we tell ourselves, we no longer have to operate within its confinements.

Just like that. We incrementally increase our own freedom by removing harsh judgements. Naturally, what follows is a stance of acceptance, compassion and more space to enjoy our lives.

With Love, Nicole

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Each of us are naturally drawn towards the pursuit of wholeness and love for a reason. Something inside of us knows that we are not here to just live, but enjoy our lives.

For a long time it can seem like the obstacle to fully enjoying our lives is on the outside. If we had more money, people who really loved and accepted us, different circumstances, or opportunities then we could really enjoy our lives.

Eventually, we see that while the challenges inherent in our lives can be difficult and uncomfortable, the obstacle to fully embracing and enjoying our experience resides on the inside. We discover that we have an unconscious psychological program that has rigid rules of conduct, and limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world. All of which stem from something we had to develop as children to survive in our families and the world: our personality.

Our personalities feel like who we are on a deep level and it can be immensely tricky to shift, grow and expand our view of ourselves. However, the very impulse to grow is an indication that evolution is not only possible, but is naturally wired into every cell of our bodies.

Lucky for us, there are clues etched into the patterns of nature that when recognized, can be harnessed specifically for the purposes of our evolution.

The door we are walking through today is based in the discovery of what George Ivanovich Gurdjieff calls a “fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language” which appears to have ancient roots dating back to Pythagorean mathematics, Babylonian geometry, Greek mythology, and multiple ancient mystic spiritual traditions. This nine-pointed geometric diagram is called the Enneagram.

In the last century, this diagram has been applied and developed by philosophers and psychologists into what is now recognized as the Enneagram personality system.

The Enneagram personality system regards personality as a strategy that developed out of the necessity to adapt to our parents, and delineates the 9 strategies/points/ways of looking at the world as a human being. Each of us have access to all 9 strategies, however we choose a dominant strategy and this the number that feels like “us”.

The Enneagram differs from any other personality system because it is based on internal motivation as opposed to observable behavior. Instead of describing what we do, it explains why we do it. Each of our personalities formed around an experience of an unmet need in childhood that created a core fear - which we try to avoid at all costs - and a desire to pursue the safety or love that was missing.

Learning about our personality as a strategy for coping as a child opens the door for compassion towards ourselves and everyone else. Additionally, understanding that our personality is not who we are, but rather a strategy for moving through and seeing the world, allows us to step into the role of a curious observer and gain insight into to the patterns governing our inner workings.

In this exploration, we start to see the automatic and robotic quality of our personality and how limiting and constricting it feels. We notice how the strategy hinders our ability to grow, our personal effectiveness, and perpetuates inauthenticity in relationships. We see that this strategy is based on conclusions that were made in childhood, but is running our adult life. Lastly, it reveals so plainly that our personality without growth and reflection is a completely unoriginal program.

The Enneagram offers a map for integration through self-awareness and action through strengthening our connection to other enneagram strategies. This is where the evolution we are wired for takes flight and we can begin to access the true originality we came in with.

When we start to inhabit this originality — that — is when the enjoyment we sensed was possible floods in.

Last year I received my accreditation to work with iEQ9 — an enneagram assessment tool that predicts your type with a 95% accuracy. If you are interested in learning about your Enneagram number and working on the path towards integration, I am offering one one coaching sessions via zoom.

Currently I’m offering an introductory 3 session (One 90 min session and two 60 min sessions )coaching package for $450.

If you are interested in working together, email me at nicole.harrow@gmail.com

With Love, Nicole

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“The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become” — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

The door we are walking though today looks unappealing from the outside. It is framed by overgrown thorny brambles, and to make matters worse, territorial ground wasps are flying in their zig zag patterns in front of the threshold. There is however, one detail that intrigues the passerby; the door knob is a faceted ruby red crystal.

It is tempting to just walk by this door, and most of us do, until it dawns on us that the doors uninviting guardians are there to protect something valuable. Even then, we pace in front of it, walk around it, and try to find a different entrance. In a way, there is no point in opening the door until we are willing to risk the sting of a few scratches and bites.

When the courage is finally mustered to step over the underground nest, sidle past and through the sharp thorns, and turn the knob, you do in fact endure some scrapes, and venomous stings. Yet, surprisingly it is precisely these sharp sensations that enable you to perceive the treasure hiding in plain sight.

The electric and raw zing of your injuries funnel all of your attention to this exact moment, which in turn, causes you to hone in on a pair of glasses that glint and shimmer among the many objects behind the door.

As you reach for them you hear a familiar voice, your own, excitedly exclaiming “Yes! I’ve been looking for these!”, as you put them on.

Intuitively you understand that these glasses reveal cognitive distortions that normally slip past your radar and ultimately cause unnecessarily painful errors in thinking. In being able to name and see these distortions you are less likely to fall under the spell of the emotions that are leading you to believe that certain thoughts are “true”. Unfortunately, when we aren’t aware of these distorting filters, we engage in behaviors that end up having negative consequences in our relationships with ourselves, and others.

We walk away with our newfound treasure, almost excited to catch ourselves in the next inevitable event of an emotional mindset that distorts our thoughts. Not only do these glasses allow us to see more clearly, but they subtly shift our relationship to challenging moments; we see them as opportunities to grow and learn.

If you are human and experience emotions, these distortions will effect you.

What do the glasses we found reveal?

The following are some common cognitive distortions that every single one of us encounters — often several times a day! (gathered directly from the DBT workbook for dummies by Gillian Galen & Blaise Aguirre)

All-or-nothing thinking: This type of thinking is absolute; It is not nuanced — It is one thing or the other. This is a very sticky kind of thinking (in other words, it is easy to get stuck in this type of thinking and have a hard time challenging it or seeing any other perspectives or options). Example: If I don’t win the competition, then I have to quit my sport.

Jumping to conclusions: When you jump to conclusions, you do not take into account all of the facts of the situation, and you draw a conclusion based on some of the information, often your own negative interpretations. Example: I only got the promotion because they felt bad for me.

Overgeneralization: This happens when you take one negative experience and generalize it into a never-ending pattern of loss, defeat, or negative outcomes. Keep a lookout for words like always, never, everything, and nothing as a signal you may be falling into overgeneralization. Example: You answer a question in class wrong or make a suggestion at work that colleagues don’t agree with, and you think, no one values what I have to say; I am never speaking up again.

Mind reading: This is when you decide what someone is feeling (usually negatively toward you) without evidence to support it. Example: I feel like she hates me, so she must hate me.

Disqualifying the positive: You believe that the positive experiences don’t count, so you reject them to maintain the negative. Example: If you receive a compliment from someone you think, they only said it to be nice; they don’t really know me.

Catastrophizing: This is very common when people are anxious. This is when you jump to the worst-case scenario or the worst possible outcome, despite how unlikely it is. Keep an eye out for “what if” lines of thinking as a red flag for catastrophizing. Example: What if this relationship doesn’t work out? What if I am alone forever and no one will love me.

Personalization: This leads you to believe you are responsible for something that you are not and often leads to feelings of guilt or self loathing. Example: It is my fault that you didn’t succeed.

Fortune Telling: You worry that things may turn out badly and you treat this worry or assumption as fact. Example: I know that I won’t ever find a relationship, so I am not going to date.

Emotional reasoning: This leads you to believe that the way you feel is reality. If you feel it, it must be true. Example: If I don’t feel like a competent person then I will never be successful.

I’d love to hear from anyone who can give examples of how one or more of these distortions have shown up for you. I’ve found that the more we can relate them to real life experiences, the more we can spot them in our own thinking.

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“You have grievously misunderstood yourself; to understand rightly, investigate.”

— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The door we are walking through today is deceptive in its ordinariness. It is going to seem like a benign suggestion — repeat a phrase — and relax — but the simplicity of this phrase is so foundational that it has the power to transport you beyond thought into a direct and intimate encounter with your own Being.

Due to the potency of this particular practice, I want to highlight that it is best advised to approach it with a sense of reverence that is supported by both patience and a matter of fact conviction. If you feel any rigidity or forcefulness creep into your exploration it is recommended that you stop, and come back later when you are feeling more relaxed.

Whether an experience unfolds or not isn’t necessarily the point either. Instead of expectations we let a kind of innocent curiosity guide us — we are dealing with mystery after all, so there is absolutely no way to anticipate it. Just registering the potency of this practice is enough.

This practice is inspired by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s teachings transcribed in the book I AM THAT. A common theme in this text is that unnecessary mental and emotional suffering can be traced back to the mistaken and uninvestigated assumption that we are just the body.

“It is enough if you do not imagine yourself to be the body. It is the “I am the body” idea that is so calamitous. It blinds you completely to your real nature. Even for a moment do not think that you are the body. Give yourself no name, no shape. In the darkness and the silence, reality is found.”

“The idea “I am not the body” is merely an antidote to the idea “ I am the body,” which is false. What is that “I am”? Unless you know yourself, what else can you know?”

By no means is Nisargadatta claiming that we don’t have a body or that our bodies are not real. Instead, the notion of “I am not the body” is an antidote to the limiting assumption that our Being ends at the edge of our skin.

Finally, I want to mention that the practice I’m sharing is not one I was “taught”, but was taken directly from the above quotes and incorporated into my own daily practice. I can attest to the power of this, however, I do want to be clear in that I’m sharing this from one student to another. Whether you choose to open this particular door is completely up to you.

The Practice: I am not the body

Instructions are simple.

Resting in a comfortable position, encourage your body to relax with a few deep breaths, then begin repeating the phrase “I am not the body” in the mind.

As mentioned above, we repeat the phrase with reverence, patience, and a simple matter of factness. You say it the way you would about something you feel confident about, like, “the sky is blue” or “cats are amazing”.

Notice if any tension creeps into your experience, and if it does, encourage the body to relax - especially along the centerline - head (back of head, eyes, jaw), neck, chest, belly, and base of the pelvis.

There are a few particularly potent times to choose from —

1. Right after meditation (practice for 2-5 min)

2. As you are falling asleep

3. If you find yourself awake in the middle of the night and are heading back to sleep

** For suggestions 2&3 - Nisargadatta’s mention of reality being found in “the darkness and silence” for me, relates to the very real and mysterious powers found in the twilight hours. In my experience, I often end up just falling asleep while repeating the phrase (added bonus repeating the phrase interrupts the habit of rumination). However, in the instance of the middle of the night, I’ve had mixed results - sometimes its relaxing and I fall back asleep, and other times it is stimulating and can wake me up.

Naturally, if you try this, or have anything to add, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

With Love, Nicole

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Self-Trickery is an inevitable and continuous occurrence as we navigate the inner territory of Self discovery.

While it is irksome and deflating at times, it is incredibly valuable to start out and continually return to the understanding that any insights about our own psychological biases involve a trap. The trap is believing that because we know about our biases, somehow we’ve inoculated ourselves from them, and that we will no longer be affected by them.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

A simplistic way to demonstrate this is Freud's metaphorical iceberg theory used to represents the mind's three levels: the conscious (visible tip of the iceberg), the preconscious (just below the surface), and the unconscious (vast submerged portion).

The layer our biases resides in is in the vast submerged portion, whereas our intellectual understanding of the biases resides in the small visible tip of the iceberg.

The very fact that we are aware of a bias or a behavior or a deep seated belief is not enough to resolve it to the point that it doesn’t have an influence over us anymore.

Pride can be sneaky sneaky sneaky. As our capacity for self awareness grows, our ego’s will naturally feel good about it. And while there is nothing “wrong” at all with this, it will at times obscure our ability to see ourselves and the situation clearly.

Expecting to frequently fall into the trap of being overconfident regarding an intellectual understanding of our inner world, is akin to having a wise and benevolent being whispering universal truth’s in our ear. It keeps us open, receptive and compassionate toward our own defenses and complexities.

While there are many ways we can get stuck, there are two common places we will find ourselves trapped in. First, a horribly critical and judgmental stance of “ I know better than this! And a slew of self berating and defeating comments. The second place is one of bypassing where we adamantly deny we are doing it because we are self aware, and we tell ourselves and others something like “we are doing our very best - so cut us some slack!”. Both stuck stances keep us circling in criticism and defense.

What are we defending against?

For some reason the sentiment — what feels painful for the ego, is liberating for the soul — brings this lesson home for me personally. Just being willing to endure the experience of little humbling zaps here and there, in the interest of opening to the precious inner space and freedom of the soul.

A Short Exploratory Practice:

As someone who is interested in personal growth, self discovery, and inner freedom, what are some biases, beliefs, and/or behaviors you’ve uncovered in yourself? Try writing a list of a few things you have realized that used to operate completely unconsciously but now you are aware of.

Next, notice how you relate to these discoveries when you witness them play out.

Finally, next time you catch yourself - in real time - witnessing an old pattern play out. What happens if you give yourself some time to feel the inevitable and visceral sting that comes from it, with the attitude of “of course this is here…just because I’m aware of it, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s resolved.” What happens with this attitude?

An example of this would be: Maybe you’ve noticed you have a tendency to procrastinate when you are overwhelmed. While this awareness can help you nip the bud when you are about to fall back into the pattern, at other times you find yourself helplessly watching the pattern play out. — What do you do when it happens again? Do you go to self judgement and criticism? Do you justify and defend yourself to yourself or others? Do you feel apathetic and helpless? Do you have a sense of humor about it? As if you are a scientist documenting and observing, just notice how you relate to the belief and/or behavior playing out. Then, be on the lookout for the next time you find yourself procrastinating what happens when you slow down and sense what is happening in your body? Taking special care to breathe into any discomfort that is present and acknowledge that “ah, yes, here it is…understanding that it is something I do, doesn’t mean I will never do it.”

With Love, Nicole

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Happy Sunday Everyone!

Welcome to Small Doors, In

Each Sunday I’ll share a small but potent practice that can help remove the obscurations that prevent us from feeling, sensing, and appreciating the vibrant aliveness inside and all around us.

While these practices are complimentary for the path of personal growth and increasing creativity. Their aim is not to make you better, but instead, to help clear the noise, grime, mistaken beliefs, and doubts that prevent you from experiencing yourself as you truly are - right now.

The articles in this series will be brief and digestible. I’ll be drawing inspiration from the field of psychology, therapeutic approaches, yogic texts, wisdom teachings, and mythology — while also making space for the playful, creative, and imaginal realms. I’m not above New Age inspiration or a little “woo-woo”; in fact, I welcome whatever sparks curiosity, inspiration, support, and trust in ourselves and life.

I’m excited for our journey together here! See you next Sunday, with our first practice together :)

But before I go, I can’t leave you without a teeny tiny offering:

Numbers are familiar symbols that infiltrate our lives. They are not only a practical tool, but playful ones too. Today is 1/11 and you are receiving this at 1:11pm PST by design. In numerology the number 1 represents starts and when we have three 1’s in a row this amplifies the sense of beginning.

With a playful and lighthearted attitude, what happens if you let yourself explore the signal that today there is a new journey, project, or path opening up before you? Additionally, is there any attitude or energy you would like to infuse into this new phase? If so, it can be helpful to write or journal about this beginning and how you can support it. Alternatively, you can simply reflect and take a few deep breaths to acknowledge and feel the freshness of this new path on this very special 111 of a kind day.

With Love, Nicole

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P.S. In July, I wrote about The Cloak of Normal and this new series is my commitment to providing ways to lift the veil and let the mystery through.

I have a few updates to share regarding my plans for this Substack. I’m feeling more ambitious for 2026 and want to grow my writing and audience! If you enjoy my writing, please share it with anyone you think will resonate with it.

As usual, at the beginning of every month I will be sending out a newsletter detailing some account of my own gritty Self discovery. After you read today’s letter, you will understand more about why I’m doing this.

Additionally, I have a new offering. I don’t have a catchy name for it yet, but each Sunday I want to share something brief and thought provoking for your own life and practice. I’ll be pulling from what I’m studying, learning and practicing.

In addition to writing I’m also offering one on one Enneagram coaching sessions via zoom. I’ve been quietly working behind the scenes for a year now with clients after getting accredited to use the iEQ9 assessment. The Enneagram is a powerful tool for self discovery and it has been extremely fulfilling and illuminating to work with people in this part of their journey. If you are interested in pricing and working with me, feel free to respond to this email or reach out to me at nicole.harrow@gmail.com.

Thank you to each of you being here with me.

And a special thank you to Lucinda, Troy, Lynn, Daniel and Lisa for being paid subscribers to my Substack. Your financial support means more than the dollars themselves, and I am genuinely grateful.

If any of you are interested in upgrading to paid, here is the link:

Also, if you find my writing beneficial and life affirming in any way, help me grow my Substack by sending it to friends and family. Here is the link for that:

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For the past year, this story has tried to bubble out countless times. Each time it did, the words would spread across the page and eventually I would say…No.. it’s too much. It’s too personal. I understand all too well that once I put something out into the world it will become something else in the readers mind. Naturally, what I’m afraid of is judgement, not only from those reading, but from myself too. However, risk is part of the territory of engaging with life, and judgement is only one of many ways my sharing will be received. I’m here as me, with you, on this blue planet in the middle of outer space for just a little while, and for whatever reason I am drawn to spending a considerable amount of time writing about it.

The story doesn’t read like a story exactly, it’s more like an account of some significant moments that have led me to what I want to offer here and why.

In this moment, my desire for understanding is so voracious, I wish I could just pour knowledge into me. Instead, I have to settle for the slow drip process of practicing, studying, and living. At any given time I have a stack of at least five books piled on every small table in my home about depth psychology, developmental psychology, the Enneagram and its applications, Yogic texts, Buddhist texts, The Tao, Non Dual Shaiva Tantra, poetry, and a wide selection of modern spiritual books, and of course a novel to rinse my palate.

This passion for learning about and engaging in the great mystery of being alive in this world grows of its own accord and I am helplessly obsessed and in love with it.

I got through most of my adult life relying heavily on a penchant for joy, beauty, and enchantment which allowed me to create and live in a comfortable little bubble that protected me from the more harsh and unforgiving elements of being alive such as despair, hideousness, and hopelessness. Of course I saw ugliness, but I managed to somehow stay aloofly apart from it. I also experienced moments of dissatisfaction and anger and emotional challenges, but the moment the sense of conflict and discontent was over, it was like an amnesia took over, and I couldn’t remember what I was ever so upset about. As long as the people around me seemed ok and content, I too felt….ok.

On some level however, I knew that I was missing something vital. Inevitably reality would slip through the cracks of my protective armor and I sensed a hollowness on the inside. Efforts to fill the emptiness with approval and being liked by others, with clothes and home improvements, chasing external success and validation, and the idea I had been force fed since childhood, that romantic love was a cure for all of life’s shortcomings - worked only temporarily. I felt like I was in a perpetual and predictable cycle of dreaming and chasing, and sometimes the clouds would part and the angels would sing and I would “get” the thing or feeling I was pining for. Then the cycle would begin anew.

Eventually, I learned that I was on a hamster wheel, but it took a while to see that. Getting off the hamster wheel proved to be a very different process and experience than I could have ever anticipated or imagined.

In the beginning, yoga practice was a compliment to my life. I would go to class and feel a little lighter and inspired afterwards. The image of a modern yogi really appealed to me too. Walking around in flowy pants, flip flops, and carrying my yoga mat around felt good. It wasn’t that I consciously thought these things aloud, more that these internal self images served as a positive reinforcement of an identity I liked. The first yoga teacher training I took in 2007 was in all honesty for the vanity of my “practice”. I wanted to learn arm balances, and really really wanted to be able to do the splits (spoiler**I still can’t do the splits). In the teacher training, part of the curriculum was to study Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and I payed cursory attention to the philosophy.

I was pregnant with our first son during my teacher training and was offered a class at the studio I had been working at as a front desk assistant. This was also a turning point in my life when my partner and I looked at the cost of childcare made the decision that I would quit my job working with autistic children and stay home to raise our family. Sixteen months after having our first son, I gave birth to our second son.

Being a yoga instructor became a lifeline to the outside world. Motherhood in the suburbs turned out to be pretty isolating, but a few times a week I schlepped my two toddlers to the gyms childcare and connected with other adults.

In 2014 I attended another yoga teacher training, and this time my inspiration for taking it was my teacher Lakshmi. Yes, I coveted her muscular arms and she had acrobatic abilities, but it was more than that. She embodied a grounded strength and when she taught yogic philosophy it felt applicable to my daily life struggles.

Lakshmi taught me that yoga was not just a class you attended at a studio, but a tool for Self Realization. She inspired me to start a meditation practice, and to learn more about the spiritual path on my own.

Naturally, everything I did and read was seen through the filter of beauty and joy. It seemed to me that Self Realization or Enlightenment was a pursuit that would reveal the most wondrous and exalted life possible. I slowly began to swap my desire for external validation, success, and millions of dollars in the bank for an inner state that would be so satisfying it wouldn’t matter what would happen on the outside. It seemed like a brilliant plan really.

In the undeniably transformative year of 2020 when the fragility of the daily rhythms of the world were exposed by the pandemic, along with the civil rights movement of Black Lives Matter, and discovering that my personality was not unique to me but a strategy who’s blueprints were laid out plainly and clearly in the Enneagram. Something in me clicked, and I made a deliberate decision inspired by Yoga Sutra 1.14 “Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break, and with enthusiasm.” and Sutra 1.21. “To the keen and intent practitioner this samadhi comes very quickly.” I decided that I would pursue Enlightenment in this one wild and precious life of mine. The texts seemed to say that it was possible, and I liked the idea of it coming quickly.

Pain, discomfort, ignorance, and the Self with a capital S are mentioned quite a bit in the Yoga Sutras. All of these concepts were drenched in the flowery perfume of my personalities protective filters. I had no clue I had gotten on a train who’s tracks were going to abruptly end and catapult me off the edge of a cliff and into what felt like a desolate and unfamiliar landscape full of venomous and sharp clawed creatures.

Clearly I hadn’t seen Adyashanti’s description of the direction I hinged my happiness and fulfillment on: “Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense.”

When my Mom was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer it was as if gasoline had been poured onto my resolve to hurry up and get enlightened. It was at this point that I entered an extreme stage my friend Kelli named “The Spiritual X Games.”

I experimented with psilocybin which was actually inspired by Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 4.1 “ Siddhis (extraordinary yogic powers)are born of practices performed in previous births, or by herbs, mantra repetition, asceticism or samadhi.” It wasn’t that I thought the text was recommending I take drugs, I just saw the potential for using a chemical as a short cut to spiritual insights. The documentary’s How to Change Your Mind and Fantastic Fungi, also served as inspiration to try mushrooms. I understood that any insights I experienced under the influence of an herb would be temporary, but I was desperate to know.

I had some profound experiences and insights through psilocybin, that helped me contact a powerful and mysterious love inside of me. But in the two instances I took larger doses the experiences had a level of intensity that felt harmful and destabilizing. Especially the last one I took when I was alone.

Last year, I wrote and shared about an experience I had of ego death with psilocybin. In retrospect, I can see that it was the women I was with that lended me the strength and support to surrender to what I was being shown. It was not pretty or smooth and it is shocking no neighbors called 911 with the level of unabashed wailing and crying I did. But I was surrounded by four incredible women that held me, rubbed my back, and told me how brave I was. Even so, it took me a good week to feel normal-ish again, and I was haunted for a long time by the guilt of being willing to die and leave my children for a desire to know the secrets of life.

The last time I took psilocybin it was the same kind of mushroom I took the very first time (the yeti mushroom)with my friends, and since I never bothered to figure out dosage, I took 3 tablets instead of 5, thinking it would be more manageable. It wasn’t. Within the first 40 minutes I felt the familiar stripping away of everything as I knew it, which led to the feeling of dying. This time though, I said “no” and fought it. A harsh voice that wasn’t an actual voice echoed in my mind saying “You have never been born and you will never die!” I felt crippled by the weight of grief for my Mom’s illness and her inevitable death, and by the recognition of the temporary nature of life in a body. My dog Bear, barked incessantly at my bedroom door while I sobbed uncontrollably. And I felt nauseous the whole time again. While there were indescribably beautiful moments too, and a few insights that stayed with me. Ultimately, the experience felt like I was violating something sacred and forcing my body into knowledge it wasn’t ready to hold.

My meditation practice by then had moved past the irritable boredom stage and was starting to produce lovely and supportive sensations. So I decided meditation felt safer and chose to double down on it. I would sometimes sit for 3 hours at a time. On top of that I consciously chose to immerse myself in wisdom teachings. I watched Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on YouTube, listened to audio books about Zen Buddhist awakenings known as satori, read books on philosophy and spiritual awakenings, and attended a class every two weeks to learn about the Bhagavad Gita.

Instead of feeling better and more grounded, my sense of impatience and despair grew and grew.

Then one night, something undeniable happened. I felt the Self. It was the visceral feeling of me in my stomach and it grew upwards. The feeling was so strong it felt like bricks were being piled on the inside on my chest and I found it difficult to breathe, and had to take slow deliberate breaths through my mouth. My heart began to emphatically jump and thump like an animal caught in a cage. This was real in my body and directed by something more powerful and beyond anything I knew. Eventually, it calmed down in intensity, and as I fell asleep I got an unexpected slideshow - like it was on an old projector - Flashes of numbers, letters, scenes from life, and of all things a platypus. I was delighted and afraid - it was happening!!!

At this point I sent an email to my teacher to ask about my experience. He asked me how much was I meditating, and pointed out that meditation was a prescription of only 20 min in the morning and 20 min in the afternoon. Then, when I went to meet with my him a week later, he cautioned me with the words “slow down” ,“be in the world” and mentioned something about half baked Nietzsche and the dark night of the soul. I left his office feeling conflicted. My zeal for enlightenment didn’t want to be dampened. That night though, I had a terrifying dream that bled into my waking life and I decided to heed his advice and slow the fuck down and went back to the recommended sit times of 20 min two times a day.

To my surprise, in the weeks that followed this experience, the physical sense that the bottom was falling out was so persistent I was awoken every night with it. During the day it felt like something cold and uncomfortable was yoyo-ing unpredictably up and down my body. It was almost insufferable. After weeks of this, one night I woke up to the horrible falling feeling again, and resigned myself to the sensation silently sending a prayer to the Beloved (the name that resonates the most to me for Divine). The only way to describe what happened next was the descent of grace. My hands were resting on my stomach, and I felt from 3 perspectives at one time, like I could both see and feel my hands from the outside and the inside. Then, the boundaries of my body were gone and I was the air and the trees and the bed, the creatures, and the cosmos - not only was I everything, but a sparkling and golden elixir poured out of my heart in my chest and I understood that I was always safe and held because there was no separation. I could move and it didn’t go away, and there was no sense of time or clinging to it either. I just reveled and nestled on my side and fell so comfortably and sweetly into much needed sleep.

As far as I knew, the decent of grace was supposed to be the end. I realized and felt who I was right? But no, it was only the beginning. From that day forward, the physical sensation of the divine awoke in my body. The sensation of bliss, that sparkly golden elixir, spontaneously sprouts and drips continues to grow and spread. But all of the things I spent a lifetime protecting myself from…the suppressed anger and rage and grief and self abandonment and the foundation of faulty beliefs, and identities, and odd social contracts and the ugliness and pain and terror of the world and life all began to make their way in too.

This territory of the Self is just as the wisdom teachings claim, it is unfathomable and beyond concepts. Instead of the Self turning me into a spiritual person, it is doing the opposite, and giving me the strength and courage to inhabit my messy and flawed humanness.

Everything is different and counterintuitive here. If I want to run away, it is an indication to do the opposite and stay. If I want to fight I have to slow down and ask “What exactly am I fighting?” Up is down and down is up. It’s messy, and gritty and non linear. I’m alone in this, but also, not alone. The felt sense that has awoken in my body feels like a benevolent friend that is patiently guiding me into who I came here to be in this exact moment. And as I learn to trust life itself I can see so clearly the support and guidance that makes its way in through all of the people and creatures in my life.

I no longer believe in recklessly pursuing a fantasy end point, or final enlightenment. I’m relieved to have survived my venture into the spiritual x games with my faculties and mind in tact. I feel enthusiastic and thankful for the brave humans of our past and present for navigating the inner territory and assuring us that it is in fact worth it. I see this place I am now - the messy middle - as the fertile ground for living in fulfillment. But, this inner landscape can be treacherous and terrifying and there are fields of quicksand to get mired in, or hellish holes to stumble into. I’m under no illusions that I’ve figured it all out, quite the opposite! I have no idea what will happen next. This is what I want to write about; my first hand messy ass account of the crumbling of my own illusions so that I can be who I truly am - now.

Integrating the pain and suffering along with the joy and beauty of becoming fully myself is ultimately a life affirming and supportive venture. My deepest desire is to add my voice to the chorus that sings to wholeheartedly trust life.

With Love,

Nicole

Human beings do not find their essence through fulfillment or eventual arrival but by staying close to the way they like to travel

To the way they hold the conversations between the ground on which they stand and the horizon to which they go — David Whyte

There is in fact a precipice. The edge of everything is on the inside. Solid ground appears under our feet. Yet, we can sense the open and endless void before us. Sometimes this sense manifests as the feeling of raw exhilaration; of possibility. At other times it shows up as variations of an open ended or bottomless sensation; we call it anxiety.

Often when the familiar uneasy and open feeling presents itself, we tend to automatically assume the feeling is evidence of an immediate problem. We conclude our discomfort has to do with the content of our current experience. We can assign the feeling to a conflict we are having, the current state of the world, the triggering of an insecurity, an unpredictable situation, or a looming difficult decision.

The significance of the raw bodily sensations tend to be overridden by our stories and interpretations around why we are feeling it. If we are in a safe place, and not in danger, there is a very interesting question we can experiment with: What if these momentary blips of open ended uncertainty are an inevitable and natural part of being alive in a human body? What would happen if we accepted these feelings as a phenomena that was going to come and go for the rest of our lives, as opposed to something we need to get rid of?

The above experiment is a suggestion for addressing the tendency to over exaggerate the interpretations we have regarding the visceral experience of anxiety. I’m not suggesting that we completely throw our interpretations out the window, but that we give the physical sensations without interpretation attention as well.

Recently, I tried this experiment myself and I was amused, amazed and dismayed to discover that the sense of having an urgent problem never really resolved itself, it just kind of reassigned itself. For instance, for most of my adult life the conundrum of “what am I supposed to do for my career?” would insert itself impatiently throughout my days. I felt like I was constantly on the edge of having to make a life changing and important decision. Wrapped up in this decision was a search for meaning and making some kind of mark or feeling valuable in the world. Last year, I experienced a sense of relief around this particular issue (this relief was like a million ton boulder being taken off my shoulders). As a result, I was able to pick a direction to move towards, and commit to taking steady action towards it. Naturally, because I was actively addressing the concern, it faded.

Just last month however, I recognized that the same sense of a problem which impatiently insisted a difficult decision was at hand, reassigned itself to challenges I was having in some of my relationships. Every little hiccup, or momentary discomfort, or beautiful moment, felt like a decision point - Is this going to work? Yes? No? Again, I found myself in a position of feeling like I have to make a life changing and important decision on and off throughout the day. On top of this, I then experienced intense judgement and conflict towards myself for experiencing indecision and turmoil — it was eerie to notice how the feelings were the same in intensity and frequency, but the dilemma presented itself as a new one.

The realization that struck me was, that it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t matter if you are 30 or 86, there will be some degree of emotional discomfort in your life. While this was a bit of a depressing realization, it was also a liberating one.

I had to stew for a bit in a whirl of disappointment and dissatisfaction. I had been sold a bill of goods, I think we all have. The belief that relief resided somewhere else in the near or distant future kept me striving, hoping, scheming, and wishing. This “fantasy of resolution” allowed me to bypass my own subtle rejection towards how my life actually is right now. Something bright and shiny was always just around the corner! And when I finally admitted that it wasn’t, yikes, that was/is sobering.

The wisdom teachings all mention that freedom is only here and now, so I thought I would give it a try and sit with the momentary blips of open ended uncertainty with the new orientation that this feeling really is an inevitable and natural part of being alive in a human body. The stories of why I felt uncomfortable told familiar tales of insufficiency, insecurity, and fear. But instead of immediately buying into the stories, I was able to feel the raw, raggedy sensation and let my breath stretch into it. The sensation didn’t magically go away or transform itself into a sublime experience, but without the investment in the thoughts and pressure to make it go away, an entirely new thing started to happen. I could feel the sensation shift, move, and eventually dissipate. The typical sense of urgency like there was a serious problem that I have to solve right now - didn’t follow as often either.

It’s important to note that these questions and realizations regarding anxiety were significantly influenced by both reading, and listening to the audio book Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path to Liberation, by Bruce Tift. I’ve found this book to be so valuable that I’ve listened to the audio version multiple times. Bruce’s pragmatic and compassionate approach is weaving its way into my own thinking and relating.

It honestly never occurred to me that it would be more liberating to acknowledge, be friendly with, and inhabit my own dissatisfaction, confusion, fear, or insecurity than to subtly but perpetually wish my life was different in some way.

It doesn’t matter if an individual is particularly interested in the spiritual and philosophical nature of life, we can all sense the void, or point of all creation. There is something very mysterious at play and both the sensations and stories of our lives are places of discovery. A quote Bruce Tift likes to share from his teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: “The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.“

With Love, Nicole

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Stop it.

Stop trying to make it fit

Like a toddler who is given only triangles

You keep trying shove them

One after the other

Into a circle

Even at two years old you know - this doesn’t fit

So stop.

And look carefully at what is in your hand

Now look at what is in front of you

What do you do now?

Toss the plastic toy and let the dog chase after it

Fill the hole with sticks and mud and a couple of leaves and call it art

Place it in the center of the kitchen table

Nuzzle your face into the kitty’s belly

Feel the solar systems orbit on the inside

Feel the cold and vast emptiness

Admit it, you are mad, sad, jealous, selfish, bitter, dissatisfied

Then give yourself a hug, and touch your face with your Mothers hands “It’s ok baby”

The story continues

It matters as much as it doesn’t matter.

Fantasies of the future decompose along with the squirrel who died on the road this morning

The chase has lost its allure

This is unexpected….what to do now?

What does this mean for the future?

Nothing. That’s why you gave it to the dog.

You’ve spent most of your life on the run from this creature; unaware that there was another way….

Then, one fated day, you found a book titled How To Kill Your Beast. This, you decided was the answer. And the tables turned. You would no longer remain indentured to the escape — now, it was you who would do the hunting.

You spent years tracking your Beast; learning all about her patterns, habits, and preferred resting places.

All the while, you remained resolute in the belief that your freedom lies in her destruction.

And finally, your moment comes — when you meet your beast nose to nose.

She snarls and curls her lip, exposing long sharp fangs. The fur around her muzzle is stained from a recent kill. And, as she rises to her full height, the whole world stops and falls silent. Even the crickets understand, that now, is not the time to sing.

You — involuntarily gasp at the sight of her, shocked by her fierceness, strength and palpable wildness. Your legs begin to wobble and shake, and before you lose the nerve, you sink the sword you are holding into her belly. The visceral quality of the violence is both sickening and satisfying. As she staggers slightly backwards, you try valiantly to retrieve your weapon so you can strike again. It is a battle to the death, after all, and you do NOT want to lose.

She moves quicker than you expect, and with a swipe of her paw the sword (that might as well have been a toothpick) flies into the air, and you watch helplessly as it skips across the stone and falls over the edge of the cliff. Her roar is deafening, and you feel her hot breath and bits of spittle land on your face. You cover your ears and crumple to the ground in defeat.

As expected, when she descends on you — it hurts — a lot.

Once she realizes that you are no longer fighting, she loses interest and ambles back into the inky darkness of her cave. You do not see the Beasts expression as she turns back momentarily to look at your battered body.

Next time, you think, I’ll bring a better weapon.

However, with each next time, she manages to outwit and outperform you at every turn. Her unpredictability is as infinite as the imagination itself. As such, you discover that the odds are stacked ever in the favor of your Beast.

The pain and fear endured with each battle however, reverberates through all realms of life and experience; yours, the Beasts, and beyond.

The fruitless battles have a wearing effect that lead you into a spiral of hopelessness and futility. The fears, frustrations, and pain you had hoped to escape by facing and conquering your Beast were getting worse as opposed to better. The confidence and determination you once felt, leaves you abruptly and without ceremony.

With no hope of outrunning her, or defeating her, you find yourself wandering barefoot and weaponless into the Beasts’ lair. You are unfazed as you walk by the piles of bones to the right, and you find her asleep on her back with her belly exposed. Her paws and face are relaxed and innocently twitch in response to a dream. With daylight streaming in, you notice thick bands of scar tissue crisscrossing her belly and side. Then you spot a more recent wound, still healing, just below her neck.

What have I done?

The sudden remorse leads to a keening quality of grief that grips your heart, causes your knees to buckle into the warm soil, and tears to effortlessly spring, fall, then drip past your nose, lips, and chin. You place your hands over your face.

I’m so sorry - you choke out.

You hear a soft snort in response.

When you bring your hands down, you find her nose inches from yours.

Unfortunately, most of us have to learn the hard way that the strategies of brutality, violence, force, insensitivity, and lack of respect are not only ineffective, but damaging, in any relationship or worthwhile pursuit.

It may even come as a surprise to discover that we can find violence hidden in our efforts to grow and evolve into better versions of ourselves, and even in attempts to help those we love grow or see something.

Eventually, through trial and error, outer guidance, and/or witnessing it modeled in others, we discover a technique within us that so natural, and so obvious in its simplicity, we wonder how we missed it.

The messages of self love and fierce kindness are plastered all over social media, and we hear wise women, men, elders and teachers, purport these strategies. But, often the lens of unconditional kindness doesn’t fully become available until we have exhausted many of our self destructive and violent approaches.

Once we see that we truly can’t escape our flaws and humanness by way of force, we find within ourselves a capacity for an unparalleled kindness; one that doesn’t have its sights on a benefit or reward. This is not the bypassing kind of kindness that defends against the recognition of painful and regressive patterns of behavior by saying, thats just who I am, or assigns blame to other people and outer circumstances. Instead, this kindness springs from the very place we’ve organized ourselves around avoiding - anger, sadness, shame, abandonment, alienation, hopelessness, fear, and anxiety. This kindness has a courageous quality to it and it allows us the spaciousness required to hold the visceral experience of discomfort without the compulsion or need for interpretation.

The discovery of this quality of kindness acts as a soothing balm, that allows us to inhabit the sensitive places within ourselves, and in others; just a little longer than before, and just enough that we start to relate to perceived weaknesses and flaws with curiosity as opposed to distain or resistance. It gives us permission to meet life exactly as it is unfolding - whether we like it or not.

I would even venture to say that this kindness is a direct line to the essence, or the ground of who we truly are. What’s interesting is that to experience our true nature directly, we have to examine our ideas of what it means to be a spiritual or good or worthy person. Many times we will discover some violence or non acceptance of ourselves - as we are now - hidden within them. We will likely have to abandon our previous definitions to find what is true.

Every single person in our lives has the freedom to come and go. The one person we cannot escape for better or for worse; is ourselves. I can attest, life feels much more manageable, interesting, fresh, entertaining, and cosmic; when unconditional kindness makes its way into the personal strategy.

The story of the Beast is yours - and I am so curious how it is interpreted by YOU.

Is the Beast our Ego? Does she represent the inescapability of our creature nature? Why does she chase us, and why, when given the opportunity, does she not kill us? What does the Beast want? What are the unexamined beliefs that lead to the two strategies of running away or fighting her? What is your grief about upon seeing her scars about? What happens when you surrender the fight? What does the Beast do next?

I’m grateful to be on this journey with you.

With Love,

Nicole

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It’s 3am, and again my eyes are open and I’m trying to breathe into the hollow wriggling sensation in my stomach. I move into every position imaginable - left side, right side, stomach, back to the right, then back again. I count breaths, I encourage my belly to relax, and I try to describe to myself the temperature, the boundaries and shapes of the sensations I’m experiencing. I’m curious about it, but also find there is a part of me actively resisting the intensity and wanting it to just go away. Eventually, around 5am, I descend into a sequence of dreams that features snakes; two snakes snout to snout on a hiking trail, and then later, a venomous snake in a pet store that gets out of its cage and hunts me and bites my hand (my dream provided graphic a gruesome details of this first bite), and when I get free of that, it lunges at my ankle. I wake up with the dream store attendants apathetic response of ,“you came at a bad time”, fresh in my memory.

While I’d much rather present myself as the kind of person who is gliding easily and effortlessly through the adversities of life, the truth is… I’m not. The shame and embarrassment that ride the heels of the categorically unpleasant emotions like anxiety, fear and insecurity - previously would have been something I suppressed and denied (a pattern that is rife in our culture), but now, I just want to be honest with myself. I don’t want to add to the chorus of denial and avoidance. Instead, I want to honor that these uncomfortable emotions - though they may seem uninspiring, are valuable in their own right. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be happening.

The truth is, I am presently inhabiting a murky disillusioned place. This place is deeply and viscerally uncomfortable for the most part, and I find myself not only unable to escape the discomfort, but not even wanting to try. I’m finding the strategies I used to avoid discomfort in the past are pretty unsatisfying. For instance, a few years ago if I was having a hard time with my husband, or a friend, or a situation - I would reflexively daydream about an entirely different scenario taking place. Or, I would use positive reframing to reorganize what was happening in my mind so I found it more comfortable and acceptable. But now, if I try that, the daydream and thoughts just evaporate. They are not real, and I know it.

Part of disillusionment is feeling the disappointment that life as I saw it, is not as wonderful, or perfect, or ideal in the way I initially believed. My Mom got cancer, and she suffered in a way I didn’t know existed, and then I watched her die. This devastation was sobering and knocked the rose colored glasses right off my face.

However, I recognize that just because my previous filter omitted the horrific details of life doesn’t mean that the opposite of what I believed is true either. I don’t think life is singly ruthless, or cruel ,or pointless. What I used to think would satisfy me however, has changed. I see now how happiness - while it feels lovely - isn’t a sustainable state. Our bodies and minds are governed by the energies of nature herself, and as such, we will cycle through the still, silent, heavy darkness of the potent soil, the multidirectional movement of the seed bursting simultaneously upward to the sun, rooting deeper down, and outward into stems, and finally to the unfurled beauty and clarity of the flower. As creatures of this earth we will not only experience cycle after cycle after cycle, but we are run by these cycles. It is naive to think that I, or any life situation, can stay a flower the whole time. Also, it is a little sad to imagine that as the flower wilts and withers I would fight its natural path back to nourishing the dirt.

I picture my current state to be something just like the pedals of a flower falling back to the earth and being broken down and absorbed by the elements. It might not be the most beautiful or celebrated kind of experience, but, as the one living it - it isn’t devoid of curious sensations, details, and even brief experiences of comfort and bliss.

The murky disillusionment is teaching me to value truth for its own sake. There is a kind of satisfaction in the honest visceral quality of the present moment. It isn’t easy, or comfortable - I’ll say that for sure. I don’t know what’s coming. No one can save me from this uncertainty. Money isn’t going to fix this. Even the fantasy that the concept of enlightenment itself as some kind of rescue doesn’t work anymore.

I do however, have one very comforting line of thought; that all suffering is a result of misunderstanding. Therefore, if my present mood or thoughts or conclusions are creating misery, then there is something I don’t see clearly yet.

I realize that what I’m presenting may sound quite bleak to many of you. And I want to assure you it is…but also it isn’t. I feel really fortunate to be on this journey at a time where there are so many resources and access to information. I have an insatiable love and passion for psychology, spirituality and philosophy and I get to explore these fields and be guided by experts in them - my teacher, therapist, and close friends. When I find myself in a position of of doubt or fear and I discover that I’m white knuckling it again, I’m reminded by everything I’m learning that using love, tenderness, and compassion are indisputable in their effectiveness.

With Love,

Nicole

P.S. If you want to support my writing please feel free to share this or subscribe.

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A Brief Introduction to The Cloak of Normal

The cloak of normal drapes itself on the shoulders of the effulgent now. Sometimes its presence feels warm and familiar, like worn in sweatpants. It allows us to move through the day with a sense of surety. Calendar events effortlessly flow in their predicted blocks of time; like flipping the pages of a book. Even “mystery” has a name, so there is no need to investigate further. As a result, the subtle and continuous winds of change remain undetected.

Other times the cloak of normal dulls the sense of aliveness with a stale and salty ‘this again’; as if the world is made of, and even tastes like, unflavored oatmeal. This kind of normal feels unsatisfactory like biting into a bruised banana or putting on a scratchy sweater. We feel bored and even doomed by the overlay of familiar patterns. This staleness leads to a pervading carelessness in our speech and actions towards ourselves and with our loved ones. Because in this musty version of normal, we can’t see our own/their soul; we/they serve only as an idea in the mind, that is not meeting some other idea the mind has conjured up.

The cloak of normal veils the painless nature of bodily experience; the natural ease of breath, digestion, ability to move, drive, fold laundry, laugh, speak, and listen. As a result, the freedom in the body is obscured by sticky webs of beliefs, concepts, and a constant barrage of thoughts and their emotional counterparts. Ensnared, we wiggle and struggle with sincere desperation, and ask the spiders from the future and past to save us. They willingly oblige by wrapping us tighter with should, and shouldn’t have.

The familiarity of the cloak provides a sense of predictability and safety. We keep pulling it closer and closer until spontaneous movement is almost impossible. An opaqueness and rigidity sets in, and our sense of “I” is enveloped.

Yet… there are these moments sprinkled throughout what might otherwise be considered a Thursday; tiny gusts of wind that lift the cloak ever so slightly. A tingling sensation at the top of the head. The full moon shows her giant face, low in the horizon. A crows loud caw startles us. An apple crisp baking in the oven fills the home and our nostrils with cinnamon, sweetness, and something else? The clock strikes 2:22. Someone we were just thinking about calls. A book transports our imagination to a new place. The lightest hint of magic and mystery ruffles the cloak and a fresh aliveness temporarily enters our experience.

Of course, at some point we must be confronted with the change that has been brewing all along, all along, all along; and the cloak is torn violently from our shoulders. Death, or the threat of death — unapologetically reveals the unshakable truth, or lie, depending on how you look at it. The pang of grief, terror, horror and dismay is sharp in its honesty. Things are not as they seem, are they? The mortgage, the schedule, the goals, the to do list, the grievances, the resentments, the dissatisfactions, the hopes and the dreams - there is something more than the personal story isn’t there? Something greater, grander, more powerful and significant to our existence. It occurs to us in this open and vulnerable space that we haven’t truly and earnestly looked.

And when we look, really look, the most revolutionary recognition possible in a human life is revealed: unimaginable and visceral grace, timelessness, wholeness, and a complete absence of fear.

The cloak will come back. The only difference is that you know you’re wearing it.

Ideas For Ruffling The Cloak And Seeing Past It

1. If you don’t already have one, start a regular meditation practice. TM (Transcendental Meditation) is the easiest and most comprehensive program I’ve come across in my many years of meditating. I’m grateful that Tim Ferris loved talking about it on his podcast, and it was this interview with Jerry Seinfeld (of all people) that tipped the scales for me and led me to taking action to sign up to learn. — Choosing a method that you resonate with (have faith/trust in) and committing time each day WILL lift the cloak.

2. Thought experiment asking “how am I connected to everything?” There is plenty of evidence in our everyday experience that supports the notion that we are separate - and this exploration is not trying to disprove that - but what is the evidence in your experience that we are not separate? How is your body inseparable from the environment? Where can you find evidence that you are connected to other people, creatures, and nature? Is there anything in your experience that does not really have boundaries? — This particular question - just spending time with it on your own - in my experience, brings unexpected rewards. The first time I really looked into this question myself - researched it and thought about it - then brought it up as a discussion in class back in 2019 - I had a dream the same night like no other dream before - the dream had a visceral and divine theme (a message that I didn’t need to “do” anything to be worthy of love)and when I awoke - the sensation of safety and comfort remained warm in my belly and permeated my environment. The blanket on me rested in perfect balance of weight and softness. The cool November breeze blowing from outside drifted around me like a sweet and loving caress. Even the mattress beneath me felt like it was sinking and holding me just right - and the memory of the dream sat with me too. I felt filled with gratitude and delight. I’ve asked this question to groups since, and without fail, there is an unexpected reward every time. So naturally, I’m curious if the same happens for you. Google it, read articles, think about it, look for it, feel for it, bring it up at the dinner table — see what you find!! Of course, feel free to let me know what you discover, and also if you experience any unanticipated benefits - I want to hear about it!!

3. Talk to a recommended psychic, medium, or astrologist. There are individuals that have access to realms or information that are not in plain sight. When we engage with these people (trusted and recommended is key) we can get insights into the flow or mystery of our lives. Also, it feels novel and different and just exposes us to a facet that doesn’t feel normal or everyday (especially when our experience is obscured by the Cloak of Normal). — Last month I had the delight of experiencing an oracle session with Kara Potts. It was surprising how accurate her intuitions were, and what came up felt relevant and left me feeling inspired. What I appreciated most was the feeling of being engaged with Kara at threshold of normal everyday and the liminal creative space. I got this big reminder that life is enchanting which led to me developing a fun additional creative writing practice (and more). Something that Kara shared is that “the information definitely comes from somewhere (guides, angels, higher self) for that person at that time”. She has also observed that it is very common that something she shares in a session will have a ripple effect in her clients lives in ways she can’t predict; almost as if the information wanted to find its way to the person. If you have anyone you recommend and trust, feel free to leave their information in the comments!

I may have to write a part 2 or create a series because there are so many ways to connect, invite, and engage with the mystery and dynamic aliveness that tends to be covered by the Cloak of Normal.

With Love,

Nicole

***Tuesday June 3rd I’m teaching a vinyasa yoga class from 9:30am-11 at Big Magic Village (click the link to sign up)- a beautiful private yoga studio on over 100 acres in the Briones hills in Martinez. I loooove teaching in this space, it’s full of artistic novelties and lovingly put together. It feels like a mini retreat to take a yoga class here. As always, we will begin class with a group discussion, followed by an accessible practice that incorporates challenging and delightfully nourishing movements. I hope I can see some of you in person before I leave for my summer vacation.

*** I’m looking for 2 individuals who are on the inner journey, and are interested in learning more about the strategy and patterns of their personality. I am offering 3 complimentary 60-90 min sessions, however you would be responsible for the cost of the assessment which is $60. — Last fall I got accredited to work with the iEQ9 Assessment - this is an enneagram assessment that has a 95% accuracy in determining your enneagram number (basically the map to your ego). With this assessment comes an incredibly detailed report that describes the strategy of your personality; its strengths, limitations, as well as blindspots and much more. The enneagram has been instrumental in my own personal self discovery journey, and I have begun working with others in discovering their personality type and compassionately integrating this self knowledge/understanding. *** If you are interested in working together please email me at nicole.harrow@gmail.com

Have you ever had that ever so sneaky feeling that life is a game? This feeling is in a similar category as the ubiquitous and unpredictable deja vous and it asserts itself as a hint of brief and vague befuddlement— What is the game? What are the rules? Am I missing something? It comes at the oddest of times; when you are putting your socks on, taking a bite of something, rolling the trash out, or absently watching tree branches sway at a red light. It has an existential flavor to it of course, and depending on your current context it can be light and barely there, or strong and insistent.

Cultures across the world have created different interpretations of the governing rules and goals of the game: It centers around survival and most of us play accordingly. The western perspective has a strong capitalistic and patriarchal leaning who’s general prescription is — marriage, children, jobs and material gain/accumulation. Even religion, tradition, and spirituality seem to be celebrated by the masses in more of a superficial marketed way with prescribed holidays that we decorate for, gather, and celebrate.

Life is experienced and presented in a linear way. Each stage of life is given a predictable goal: Grow up, get an education, get a job and have a family, work/create a home/raise the family, get older then retire/stop working, get older and finally die. Obviously this is a very generalized summary and there are variations within it, but hopefully you get the idea.

For those of us who follow the Western cultures paradigm, and turn into grownups with responsibilities, bills, and desires — this little sneaky sense trickles in — this seems like the game, but it’s not the game is it?

Upon investigation, we discover that there is a LOT of information in the mainstream spiritual marketplace that can temporarily satisfy our existential itch. We have access to a multitude of religious and philosophical texts from Indigenous, Eastern, and Western cultures, and everything in between. We can glean some ideas and even establish some new beliefs, but still, that wild hair inside of us can’t be satisfied. It keeps springing up uninvited and unexpected. Quite unintentionally, some of us become seekers.

Inevitably life will hand us something so jarring, so confronting, so unfathomably and deeply uncomfortable that regardless of whether we were already wondering and looking, or not, an awareness that there is in fact something else, something mysterious at play, dawns. At this point we are at the foot of the bridge. Either we start to cross it, and a new perspective comes, or, as Don Oakley states, “we double down on what seemed to work in the past” and stay in the familiar.

I distinctly remember when I realized that there is a bridge and I could cross it — March 2023. I grabbed my notebook and wrote the world self (small s) and drew an arch to Self (big S), and wrote the word bridge over the arch. I was very clear that at that point I had not yet crossed the bridge. It wasn’t until I began attending a yoga philosophy study group led by my meditation teacher, that I realized enlightenment or Self Realization was not an obscure and unattainable state to be studied and puzzled over, but a real possibility. The other members in the group were having entirely different experiences than I was. Some were enjoying their meditations, and instead of asking the kind of grasping questions I had, such as “but what exactly am I supposed to do? - to which my teacher would answer with something like “keep meditating” - others that attended could see their own experience reflected in the text and shared how life felt more vibrant and synchronistic.

Eventually, it dawned on me that the concepts I had been really perplexed by because they made a kind of logical sense, but I couldn’t seem to access myself, such as - non attachment, renunciation, surrender and bliss - were not going to be accessible or understood by thinking about them. I learned that our consciousness/awareness itself grows. Just like childhood development there are stages of growth or maturity that can occur with a dedicated spiritual practice. The quote from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that my teacher shared often, “Reality, Knowledge, and Truth, are different in different states of consciousness.”, really helped me understand that if I didn’t get something, it was simply because I just wasn’t at the stage of growth that understands that particular phenomena yet.

In May of 2023 in a way I could have never foreseen I felt the bridge of the big Self open within me. And of course, what started unfolding within me was in no way what I thought it would/could be. Based on everything I read and watched in the mainstream spiritual marketplace, I naively thought that enlightenment was an event - a final and complete realization and liberation. I had images of people in robes and mild smiles, talking about oneness and how they no longer experience anger. Um, no. Not for me anyways. For me, it was a visceral and intimate sensation of an intelligence/power/presence that my personality could not claim as “me”, but simultaneously felt more like “me” than anything ever had before. And instead of a mild smile and oneness, all of the emotions I had spent my life denying and suppressing showed up - rage along with every shade of anger, and a deep deep sorrow. The visceral feeling of the big Self illuminated that my personality was merely a strategy; not my identity. A slow and continuous process of identifying underlying assumptions and beliefs about myself and the world - a humbling deconstruction - began.

As I understand it now, enlightenment is not a final destination, but a growth of consciousness that extends beyond the three familiar states of waking, sleeping and dreaming. This maturation is natural and organic - just like learning how to walk and talk. So it can feel clunky and unfamiliar and hard but distinctly mystical and awe inspiring and everything in between. It is also intimately individual and it’s been my experience that as this new dimension of experience unfolds - it is not obvious from the outside AT ALL. For me, a huge lesson has been that wanting people to see and experience me in a particular way; inevitably causes pain. And the more I uncover in the strategy of my own personality and witness the tendency for projection, conditioned beliefs from my family and culture, self absorption, and neuroses - the less I believe that how others experience me has anything to do with me. However, I am definitely finding that how I listen and communicate does have some effect on how I am received.

At this point in my journey I’m convinced that This is the game. The playful hide and seek of awareness within awareness. I refuse to hang my hat here though, I’m learning its unwise to be too certain regarding the nature of the divine.

Learning that enlightenment/Self Realization is not just myth or theory or reserved for monks, and that there are mapped out stages of development felt crucial to my journey. Because the territory of the Self is beyond concepts it can be tricky to navigate without guidance (and wow am I grateful for having ongoing guidance). There is something so refreshing, validating and helpful in learning about the stages. There are recognizable perches to land on as well as descriptions about ways the world/you are often experienced within the stages. Of course, its not linear, but that is a way our minds like to organize things. The labels, language and vocabulary that both describe and explain these stages vary in accordance with the traditions and religions they come from which can make it hard to relate to if you are not involved in said tradition.

Recently, I came across a simplified explanation of what happens in each stage of consciousness by a non dual spiritual teacher named Don Oakley (who studied with Adyashanti). His language felt palatable to my mainstream suburban senses. He presents it as — The 8 Stages of Human Maturity.

What I especially enjoy about Don Oakley’s description of these 8 stages, is the grounded way he talks about the development of maturity. Additionally, he doesn’t try to sell it as a form spiritual salvation or some kind of attainment. Instead, he presents it as a natural expansion that is available to individuals through life’s inevitable challenges and heartbreak.

The following is what I wish was mainstream knowledge about enlightenment - taught in elementary school, high school, at home, in popular magazines, freeway billboards etc.

I transcribed the stages below from a talk Don gave:

Stage 1 - Non-Conceptual Awareness - As infants we can see, taste, touch, feel and experience but can’t think in concepts and don’t see ourselves as ‘separate’. We may be uncomfortable but don’t have the thought “when will someone change this diaper?”. We don’t have a sense of personal self — The baby is seeing the teddy bear, but not having the sense that “I am the one seeing the teddy bear.”

Stage 2 - Getting Programed - Body mind gets a unique set of conditioning due to the circumstances we grow up with. Conditioning may be useful, like learning to walk and talk, read and write, drive a car and tie our shoes. Or it may be dysfunctional like being shy, feeling anxious, fearing other people, being prideful, having a short fuse, or harboring a sense of unworthiness. We don’t take on this dysfunctional conditioning intentionally, it just happens growing up in the circumstances that we did. Our parents were thoroughly conditioned themselves.

Stage 3 - Normal Robotic Existence - We enter the job market, form relationships, buy appliances and do other adult things. We operate based on our programming. We may feel like we are making our own decisions. But those choices are heavily influenced by our childhood conditioning. Our adult life may be fulfilling or not, chaotic or orderly, but regardless, we are functioning quite unconsciously. The conditioning has become so familiar that we’ve grown to believe well, hey, this is just who I am. It’s not easy to notice the robotic character of this existence because, well, nearly everybody else is sleepwalking, also. This is about as far as most people get in their lifetime.

Stage 4 - A Turning Point - A shock is almost always required to break the trance. The shock may be the death of a loved one, loss of a career, a terminal diagnosis or the loss of a lover. It may also be a midlife crisis, regardless of what age, that occurs. When we rather suddenly realize that life is finite and much of it has slipped away already without yet finding true happiness. A question might arise: Is that all there is? We come to a fork in the road. Either we double down on what seemed to work in the past or we open up to the possibility of a new perspective.

Stage 5: Asking The Big Question - This is when we finally get around to addressing the elephant in the room, and ask; Who am I, really? If we’ve come this far, we can see that while our health and wealth, career, relationships and skills are related to who we are, they don’t define the entirety of what we are, nor do our opinions, goals, regrets, memories, and so on. If we ask the question with integrity, “Who am I?”, We’re left with the only honest answer; I don’t know. This may be shocking but it is the first step homeward.

Stage 6: Discovering What We’ve Always Been - With some deep investigation, and yes, a little courage, we may discover that there is this innate capacity, that’s true for all of us — to be aware of whatever may be happening. It’s the same awareness that we were born with. We just lost track of it as we were getting shoehorned into our adult roles. We don’t have to earn this awareness or be worthy of it. It’s already and always complete. As is. This awareness is sometimes called true nature or spirit, but regardless of what its’ called it is our essential being. Its’ an enormous relief to discover this most essential nature that we are; that it was never born, and therefore cannot die.

Stage 7: Stabilizing Our Discovery - We can recognize our true nature in an instant. But even after that momentous discovery, clarity may seem to come and go. This isn’t a mistake; its actually life teaching us how to find our way home, again and again, until we can function in the rough and tumble world of form without getting lost.

Stage 8: Coming Into Alignment With Life - The sense of a personal self apart from the rest of life, dissolves. And there’s the sense of being OK with what is, and doing the next obvious thing in service to life as a whole, not because its the spiritual thing to do, or to earn merit or heavenly brownie points but rather, because we have come into alignment with how life is unfolding, moment to moment. And there’s no end to that unfolding.

I was thrilled to find the above description of stages of maturity. However, I would not be so bold to proclaim that Don Oakley has completely nailed it with the above synopsis. There is so much more nuance that I’ve come across in my own practice and learning from different traditions like TM (Transcendental Meditation) along with Non Dual Shiva Tantra, Sankhya philosophy, Buddhism, Carl Jungs work, and psychology (this is the short list). There is A LOT of information out there, and how and what we learn regarding it, seems to me, to have an influence in how we experience our own unfolding.

Thank you for being here with me. Honestly, I’d love to know how this piece landed with you. I’m also always so curious to hear what you are experiencing in your own evolution. Feel free to respond to this, or share in the comments.

With Love,

Nicole

P.S. This monthly publication is the actualization of my own personal aspiration to be a published writer. I’m grateful to have you as a reader. And if you enjoy my writing and want to support it, please share it with friends and family, or press the little heart - like button, and consider becoming a paid subscriber if you enjoy my offerings — the two links to share or subscribe are below :)

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The sky and the sea are both soft, grey and calm. My feet dip in and out of the water as I ride on the back of a massive whale. We move effortlessly together in a large pod. The unusual, almost poetic nature of the moment — along with any sense of where we are going or what’s happening — is lost on me. Instead, I find myself preoccupied with the shark fins that thread periodically among us.

As long as I can remember I’ve had the great fortune of a vivid and imaginative dream life. Lately, I’m starting to see strikingly similar themes between my waking and dreaming states.

Firstly, the use of imagination — it seems quite obvious that dreams are made out of the fabric of complete fantasy. The rules of earthly physics, time, and logic are suspended, and the entire dreamscape — along with its characters and themes — are recognized and accepted by my waking self as a construction of my mind.

The last few years have really exposed how active my imagination is in my every day waking life. So much of what I took for reality has been exposed as subjective and imaginative assumptions. Anything to do with the future is an undeniable product of fantasy because, whatever I imagine might, or will happen, hasn’t actually happened. Recollections of the past are notoriously inaccurate (oh hello imagination filling in gaps)and seem to change ever so slightly with each remembering. Any interpretation of meaning (or lack of meaning) is a product of imagination as well, and the prevalence of this is shocking and varied. Someone may cock their head and say “huh” at the end of my sentence, and without asking them about it, I will more often than not, fully and completely believe I know what they meant by that “huh”. I’ve discovered that my days are rife with unspoken assumptions and projections.

When I first began to recognize the element of fantasy threaded throughout the day I felt truly shocked and honestly a little discouraged. Nowadays though, it has opened up the potential to be more playful and welcome a sense of humor. If I’m going to be honest with myself and note that my very subjective conclusions are not necessarily accurate, why not at least let them be entertaining and less…self flagellating. This particularly helpful insight was a gift from a dear friend. I was telling her about how I met someone at an event and spoke to him and his wife for an extended period of time. The next day, this individual held the door open for me, and when I looked at him and said “thank you” he didn’t make eye contact or acknowledge my thanks, and just stared, blank faced ahead. I shared with her, “ I think he doesn’t like me.” Her response was “Why is that your conclusion? It ‘s more likely he thinks you are gorgeous and it makes him uncomfortable to look at you!” It was a revelation to me that my imaginative assumptions could be flattering, and I now have a lot more fun assuming what people are thinking and feeling. I’ve found that the upside of this strategy is twofold; it doesn’t feed into insecurity (which for some reason my mind is more likely to buy into), and I can be completely transparent with myself that I don’t actually have insight into peoples minds (unless I ask them outright, and trust their answer).

The second similarity between my dreaming life and waking life is the tendency to lose sight of the jaw dropping miracle surrounding me because I’m preoccupied with safety, worry, fear and doubt. I WAS RIDING ON A WHALE!!!!!!!!!! And the absolute magical and delightful nature of this particular adventure was completely disregarded. Instead, my attention was focused on the threat of sharks, and if one might strike. There were like 30 other whales around, and maybe 2 sharks. I felt annoyed and disappointed when I woke up that I didn’t take better advantage of my nighttime adventure.

Of course, waking life is the same. Like Michael Singer (author of The Untethered Soul) loves to point out, “We are on a blue planet, spinning in the middle of outer space.” In a brief foray into life outside of the context of my personal story - life is…..beyond unimaginable in its scope of creativity. I mean…anteaters? The platypus? Pretty much any creature visible to the naked eye. Thoughts? What the heck are those? Where do they come from? Music? Why are sunrises and sunsets so beautiful? I could go on as there are endless wonders and questions. But so often, my mind loses sight of the jaw dropping phenomena of existing within a world. Instead, my focus falls into a narrow scope of doubt, worry, fear, anticipation, and trying to secure some semblance of control by avoiding the unpleasant, or trying to get what I want aka experience something pleasant.

The last similarity I see between the dream life and waking life is the potential for lucidity. One of my favorite experiences is realizing I’m dreaming. Without fail, when I become lucid in a dream I will see first if I can fly, and explore. Then, if there are characters other than me, I love to try and get insights and ask questions. Without fail though, even if I am lucid in my own dreamworld there are elements beyond my conscious control — what the other characters say and do, how fast or slow I move, even how I fly. Though lucid, I seem to be a visitor in the dream world.

Becoming lucid in waking life is similar. Just as inexplicably as waking up in the dream, I come out of the reverie of stories and thoughts and see the absolute and fantastic miracle all around me. I feel giddy and struck by the magnitude of being alive. Everything strikes me as wondrous, and just like the lucid dream, I still can’t seem to make things happen in a certain way. Instead, there is a familiar element of surrender to a greater imagination than my personal one. The temporary nature of living in a body, has me feeling like a visitor here too.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj uses the analogy of the dream to illustrate the illusory nature of the world and the small self. I’m starting to enjoy this metaphor (by regarding it as exactly that, a metaphor) and I want to close with a few of his thought provoking quotes:

"The very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory. Why go anywhere? Just realize that you are dreaming a dream you call the world, and stop looking for ways out."

"Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave."

"The dream is not your problem. Your problem is that you like one part of your dream and not another. Love all, or none of it, and stop complaining."

Sweet Dreams Lovely People!

Love Always, Nicole

P.S. Speaking of dreams…this monthly publication is the actualization of my own personal aspiration to be a published writer. I’m grateful to have you as a reader. And if you enjoy my writing and want to support it, please share it with friends and family, or press the little heart - like button, and consider becoming a paid subscriber if you have the means — the two links to share or subscribe are below :)