I was drowning in confusionclimategriefpowerlessnessfurybeingafalliblehuman.

My life-raft would be made of words. Just a few: the perfect ones, the ones I would orient my writing, my work and my rest around. Words that would guide me like Jesus’s star.

The problem was, there were so many good ones! I gather words around me like a bowerbird gathers beauty. Beloved essays, reams of copied-out quotes, books, books, books. So much wisdom. So many different windows to look at the world through.

I came across a sutra saying that just as we recognise seawater by the taste of salt, we can recognise Dharma by ‘the taste of freedom’. This phrase jumped out and landed in my cupped hands. Yes! - I thought. That’s it! The taste of freedom will be my star.

But later I thought about how that didn’t say anything about truth, or curiosity. And what about the necessity of gentleness? And then what about love?

Words kept leaping out at me, from whatever I was reading. Islands of sanity1. Vast joy2. The spark.3 Agents of healing and wholeness4. A sweetness appears5. A religion of grass.6 I held them all for a while in my palms. They glowed, and then glimmered, and then slowly faded away.

I was still in the roiling water, my head dipping under, coming up for breath. Searching, searching.

I asked for guidance. None of these words were wrong, I heard. Any of them would do. And also, I heard: wait.

I waited.

Finally, weeks later, another phrase found me.

These two words felt different. They were sitting quietly in an introduction to Howard Thurman’s Meditations of the Heart, which I found after following a crumb in Cole Arthur Riley’s beautiful book of liturgy. They were ordinary. They were plain.

Thurman offers a prophetic eschatological vision in which God’s justice and mercy are accessible “not for some future day when I am more worthy and more prepared to know and understand” but are available “this day”.

Justice and mercy - available this day.

These two words took me by the hand and brought me back from imagined apocalyptic futures.

They showed me that the terrible weight of my oughts could be reduced to a small compassionate action or two, between now and bedtime.

They reminded me that the Buddha loves and accepts me - not just when I’ve improved a few things about myself, but right now.

They pointed at the solid ground underneath me and at the beauty haloing me.

They brought me back into my body.

They led to a long, sad, slow, relieved exhale.

I pulled myself from the bitter, swirling water. I tested the words with my weight.

They held.

They held, and they are holding me.

They are asking me to write around them. They are asking me to live into them. I will.

I hope they might help to hold you too.

Love, Satya <3

A note to my regular readers: Hello & a triple hurray for you. After finishing my year of Moving Towards Love pieces, I’m going to write for a while on the theme of living well through these times of trouble/opportunity. I will focus on how we can do good work and suck the joy from this day. I’ll write a mix of pieces for free & paid-only subscribers. I’m happy to have you here.

A note to those who don’t know me: Good to meet you. I’m Satya and I’ve been wearing three hats for decades: writer, therapist, spiritual seeker. I work with the magic of Internal Family Systems and am a Buddhist minister at Bright Earth. The things that are important to me are: going gently, truth-telling, green spaces, accountability, acknowledgement of fallibility, making offerings and good chocolate.

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This is one of those ‘you in thirty years’ photos I created in an app, before AI was a thing. It still feels very strange to look at it - as if I’m spying on future-me. I look into her eyes and ask, how am I?

If I am lucky enough to live to a ripe old age, who knows what shape the world will be in by then. I’m going to write more about that in September. She looks happy though, doesn’t she? I hope she is. I hope you will be too.

One of the things that helps me to Be More Happy is by asking myself how free I am feeling. How much choice do I feel I have in the way I am spending my days?

A couple of months ago I reached a point in my Substack writing where I started to feel constricted. My responsibility to my beautiful paid subscribers was just beginning to weigh on me, leading me to ‘oughts’ and ‘striving’ - the kind of stuff I’ve worked hard to leave behind. It was feeling a little less like ‘good work’ and I was worried that this feeling of disconnect would increase over time.

I solved it by throwing it all away. I wrote to all these lovely folk and said, ‘I’m not promising you anything extra for your money from here-on-in. Please do unsubscribe if you’d like to.’ A few did, which I totally get, but not many.

It was a great gift, because it enabled me to think with a clear, free head. I’d pre-scheduled my posts over the last couple of months and so was able to take some time off. Do I want to carry on writing at all? What if there was no money, and only a few people reading my words? If I did feel free to carry on, then why would I be doing it?

I write because it helps me to find patterns in my internal, glorious chaos. I write because I want to share how special it was to watch that robin yesterday, wading into our pond and joyfully splashing around. I write because I want to share out some of the wisdom I’ve been given, like good cake.

Of course there are many elements to my own (and probably your) life that I don’t really get to choose. I need to earn a living, clean the kitchen sink, offer support to my family, brush my teeth.

Even with the tasks I feel the most obligation to, I can still ask myself this question - why am I choosing to do this? What would the alternative be? How can I remind myself that I might not like it sometimes, but that I am making a decision to do these things for excellent reasons, and with complete freedom?

How might you find more freedom in your daily tasks? What might it be time to let go of? How could you release yourself from obligations that are not strictly necessary, and then play around with the results?

It feels really good to be here. How lucky I am. Onwards!

Love, Satya <3

Who is ‘Love, Satya’ for? Anyone who wants to get closer to things-as-they-really-are. Anyone who is rapaciously curious. Anyone who wants to be more themselves. Anyone who is in need of balm for their suffering. Anyone who could be kinder to themselves. Anyone who wants to magnify their joys. Anyone who wants to make offerings. Anyone who wants to take refuge in nature and/or in Something Bigger.

Why am I here? Because I have received amazing glittering things and I want to share them with you. Because writing helps me to untangle my tangles and to remember my blessings. Because I want to hear from you.

What will you hear about? Stories like mirrors. The magic of Internal Family Systems. Paying attention. The discipline of deep self-honesty. Living through the metacrisis. The joy of ponds. Spiritual succour. Speaking up. Two little dogs.

Who am I? My name is Satya (she/her) and I live in Malvern Wells, the UK, with my lovely spouse Kaspa (they/them). I’ve written a dozen books, I co-founded and ran a Buddhist temple for a decade, I have a (usually full) IFS psychotherapy practice, and I’ve been involved in eco-activism projects.

I have been blessed with decades of wisdom from books, nature, teachers, therapy, various spiritual traditions, 12 steps, and Internal Family Systems theory. I am a recovering do-a-holic and I still get plenty of things done but these days my striving parts are more chilled.

I am interested in my own system, in other beings and in the world, and writing is one of the places where I find new things out. I’m hoping you’ll find things out alongside me.

What I offer. ‘Love, Satya’ is sent out by email and then stored here. If you’d like to receive my newsletter in your inbox, click below.

⭐ Free subscribers receive pieces on the themes that light me up.

⭐ Paid subscribers receive extra pieces that are sometimes more personal.

If you’d like to receive the extra pieces but you can’t afford it right now, read about low cost subscriptions.

We live in information-rich times. If you spend time with one of my pieces a year and find it helpful or beautiful, that will make me very happy.

Love, Satya <3

May I trust in the
long slow work of love.

Our last month of Moving Towards Love! I am so glad that you have travelled with me over the year - even if you’ve just read fragments here or there. How are you doing?

In this last month we will be returning to where we started - leaning into love, and trusting that it is also reaching out towards us. We will be exploring how it is to trust in love.

Find my pieces from the whole year so far here.

Here are this month’s three invitations.

1. Every day, recite this couplet from my Opening Prayer at least once:

   May I trust in the
   long slow work of love.

   You might also want to say the Opening Prayer in its entirety (here). Which are your favourite couplets? Which did you learn the most from? Which do you still struggle with? Which would you like to revisit? Which ones would you like to take forwards with you?

2. Read this poem once a day

   This month’s couplet is a re-writing of Teilhard de Chardin’s famous quote: “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”
   I’ve added the word ‘long’ as a way of emphasising how slow this work sometimes is and how patient we might need to be. I’ve also substituted ‘God’ for ‘Love’.

   I find the poem deeply wise, and I’m inviting you to read it once every day during the month. If you want to use the word God please do, or you can substitute Love, The Divine, Buddha - anything that is bigger and wiser than you.

   Patient Trust

   Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
   We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
   We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
   We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

   And yet it is the law of all progress
   that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
   and that it may take a very long time.

   And so I think it is with you;
   your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
   let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
   Don’t try to force them on,
   as though you could be today what time
   (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
   will make of you tomorrow.

   Only God could say what this new spirit
   gradually forming within you will be.
   Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
   that his hand is leading you,
   and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
   in suspense and incomplete.

   ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

3. Seek out a spark of love
   Sometimes - especially in difficult times - it is very hard to trust that we are held in love, or that there is a long term unfolding that leads us in the direction of love.

   To help you with your investigation, see if you can find at least one spark of unexpected love every day. You might want to write it down at the end of each day.

   This might be the waggy tail of a stranger’s dog greeting you on a walk, or seeing a broken old tree that has green shoots again. It might be a text from a friend or a story in a book or on the television. It might be the softness of your new silk shirt against your skin.

   Do make space for your skepticism, for your disagreement, for your despair. They are understandable, and they are welcome. I am not asking you to blindly trust me on this. I am inviting you to be open to the possibility that there is love underneath everything (sometimes buried very, very deep), and to seek evidence for yourself.

Enjoy your last month of invitations xxx

Love, Satya <3

Dear Beloved,

This week I had the job of supporting an online therapy training.

I was RUBBISH at concentrating. I had the responsibility of leading some small groups and this was different and easy and actually really beautiful, but at other times my attention drifted from the screen to my phone as if it was a lump of butter sliding off a piece of hot toast. Flllllooeoorprppp.

Previous versions of me would have reacted to this state of affairs in the following ways:

🧠 “I must fix this about myself immediately.”

🧠 “What a terrible sloppy-minded person I am. Gurggh.”

🧠 “Hey, do lots more online training so you can get better at this!”

This 51-year-old version of me said:

💗 “Well, this is useful information to have about myself. I tell you what, I’ll pull out of that online training I’d provisionally signed up for, and do some in-person training instead. I’ll do my best to concentrate for the duration of this training, whilst also accepting that my brain will probably carry on flitting about a fair bit. You’re excellent at some things aren’t you, my love, and really rubbish at others. That’s how it is to be human, eh?”

It felt very, very good.

What are you rubbish at? How would it be to accept this thing about you and work with it/alongside it/make different choices rather than trying to fix it or feeling bad about it? If you are feeling brave, you can tell me what it is in the comments.

If you need it, offering you some of the fondness I had for myself. What fallible, awesome, unique, impossible, gorgeous creatures we are.

Love, Satya <3

Here’s the link to register for my ‘How to live a meaningful life’ course again - I’m running it f2f in Malvern later in August.

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(I’m definitely going to disappear for the rest of August now, unless you’re one of my paid subcribers. See you in September!)

I am offering something a bit different and I’m telling you about it because I think you might just like it. Over three weeks I’ll be sharing stories from my life, proposals and suggested remedies in a small group on Zoom - first ‘why it’s not easy to be human’, then ‘leaning into good things’ and finally ‘how to live a meaningful life’.

The course utilises Buddhist and Internal Family System concepts amongst others but I won’t use the language of either very much and so it’s suitable for everyone. Instead we’ll focus on what is true and what we can do about it - going gently all the way.

If you’re interested you can read more here and book your place. I’m looking forward to it!

Happy August (unless you’re still with me for our year of moving towards love in which case I’ll see you soon). I’m brewing new ideas, and looking forward to writing again.

Love, Satya <3

Dear Beloved,

Our little dog Aiko was scanned after of a nasty bout of pancreatitis. The vet phoned us with the news - her pancreas was slightly enlarged, nothing to worry about, but the scan had revealed several large stones in her bladder.

Rock hard, sharp crystals - that had caused polyps all over her bladder lining, that would have been causing her pain and an increased urge to urinate for years.

Suddenly, I was looking through a new window at her past behaviour.

When she insisted on going out in the middle of the night but then only had a short wee, I thought she was using it as an excuse to get us up, to have a sniff around the garden at 1am when she was restless and bored.

I had labelled her as ‘naughty’.

We often don’t see the ‘bladder stones’ behind the behaviour of those around us. We leap to conclusions about why a person is doing something annoying or disrespectful or unwise - they are ‘lazy’ or ‘have no morals’ or are ‘cruel’ or ‘stupid’.

Understanding the reasons behind behaviour doesn’t mean letting people off the hook. I believe that people should always take responsibility for their unskilful actions, whatever the precipitating factors are. And, when we learn more about the person we’re judging (or even remember to suspend our judgement and be curious) it can shift our view of them as dramatically as my view of Aiko shifted.

What kind of care did they receive growing up? What was modelled? What pockets of trauma are their systems struggling to accommodate? How do the young, vulnerable parts of them feel about themselves? How much shame is swishing about, threatening to rise up?

There are always causes and conditions - there are always bladder stones. Often the folk we’re judging have less control over their behaviour than we may think. Like Aiko, they feel an unbearable urge to protect themselves or to self-soothe in particular ways. There is something sharp digging into them, and they are seeking relief from the pain above anything else.

Even just trusting that there will be some reasons behind folk’s ugly behaviour can help us to curb our unskilful reactions, to have a little more patience with them, and maybe even to feel a little compassion for them. This should always go alongside setting appropriate boundaries and speaking up against injustice. And, although it’s not always easy, at least we’re not adding so much to the volume of hate in the world.

A few days after that first scan, Aiko was restless at 3am. She wasn’t disturbing me or asking me to go out with her usual whines, but I caught her eye in the dark of the bedroom. I whispered to her: ‘toilet?’.

She looked so grateful.

As we went downstairs together I felt so different about my sleep being disturbed. She was in discomfort, and a short wee might help her to feel better and then to get back to sleep again. I felt so much love for her.

Aiko is now recovered from an operation to remove the stones - they can’t get them out any other way. She’s on a special diet which she’ll stay on for the rest of her life, and hopefully this will stop the stones from reoccurring.

She has more energy than she’s had for years and is doing zoomies on walks again. She is happy.

So am I.

Love, Satya <3

A question to carry: Who are you judging at the moment and how might it be to get curious about why they might be acting as they are?

‘Dear Beloved’ is a free newsletter that will nudge you towards love at the start of every week. It is written by Satya Robyn (she/her) - an IFS therapist and Buddhist minister who lives happily at the feet of the Malvern hills in the UK. She lives with her spouse Kaspa (they/them) and their two little dogs, Aiko and Ralph. Her main site is here.

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This morning I forgot to look out of our bedroom window at the astonishing carpet of clematis, held up by our pergola, pink mouths open to the sun.

I only half-listened to Kaspa as they told me about their dreams (sorry). I fed the dogs on automatic - measuring out the biscuits, crushing Aiko’s pill with the side of the wrench, mixing in a little fresh rice.

I had the thought: most of my life is pretty unexciting. I don’t always pay attention. I miss good things. I mildly disassociate from not-so-good things. I live most of my life in a sea of mild aches, distracted worries and necessary-but-boring-chores.

This isn’t what I usually share here, beloved. I usually choose my peak experiences to write about, like picking the rare freeze-dried cherries from tasteless granola. Bursts of joy, grief that sticks to my ribs, insights that slice through the dross like a freshly sharpened kitchen knife.

Today I am bringing you my dross. My unexceptionality. My everydayness.

Without it, I would fall back exhausted by emotion at the end of every day. Without it, the laundry wouldn’t get put away and the new pea shoots wouldn’t get tied to their supports. Without it, the shining moments would have nothing to light up.

Here’s to the hours of feeling tired, of everso-mild depression. Here’s to the days of sleepwalking through, or of leaving the non-essential to-dos to another day.

Praise unexceptional ground. Praise boring sludge. Praise ordinaryland.

Love, Satya <3

A question to carry: Can you be kind towards all the ordinariness in your own life?

‘Dear Beloved’ is a free newsletter that will nudge you towards love at the start of every week. It is written by Satya Robyn (she/her) - an IFS therapist and Buddhist minister who lives happily at the feet of the Malvern hills in the UK. She lives with her spouse Kaspa (they/them) and their two little dogs, Aiko and Ralph. Her main site is here.

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Whilst chanting nembutsu this morning, I thought of you.

I wondered how much we have in common - you and me.

We are both human.

How do our bodies compare? Do you have a squishy layer of fat around your bones like I do? Do cats find your lap bountiful? Or are your beautiful bones more visible? Are you taller or shorter? Is your skin freckled or wrinkled or blessed by melanin?

How do our histories compare? Were your parents good enough, or did they excel, or did they leave you with deep pockets of sharp hurt? Maybe all three, like mine? How much privilege were you born into and do you share any of mine? How have systems of power crushed you?

What blessings do you carry? Good work, friends, access to trees, enough to eat, animals that love you? What burdens? Ill health, weighty caring responsibilities, mental unrest, financial wobbliness, despair about the state of the world?

Whilst chanting nembutsu, I thought: the only thing I can be sure of is that you were born and you will die.

Me too.

Right now, the thought of death doesn’t unnerve me. It feels far away.

Sometimes - when I’m shocked at how much a celebrity has aged, when our dog Aiko is sick, when I do a count of the number of years I might have left - it sidles closer.

Death serves me best when it accompanies me as a child might, gleefully running ahead of me as we walk by the sea. I can see her smiling back at me. I know I will catch her up one day, or she’ll come to me. For now, she helps me to enjoy the twinkling of the waves, the crude cries of seagulls, the prospect of ice-cream. She puts my problems into perspective. She lights the way ahead.

We all have this in common - however extreme our differences. Whatever our beliefs, our obsessions, our foibles. Even those with the most cruel and violent self-protective mechanisms know that they will die. It places vulnerability at the very heart of them.

It seems strange that this girl I am imagining would offer me love, even as she guarantees my finitude. And yet I can see that she does. She is telling me that love runs through everything, even if it is hidden for a long time. She is showing me how it streams through her own body: pulses of light and good dark. She is telling me that I shouldn’t be afraid, that I shouldn’t be afraid.

She wants me to pass on a message to you.

What unites us is death, but around and underneath and all through that is love.

Love, Satya <3

A question to carry: How might death light your day today?

‘Dear Beloved’ are letters that will nudge you towards love. They are written by Satya Robyn (she/her) - an IFS therapist and Buddhist minister who lives happily at the feet of the Malvern hills in the UK. She lives with her spouse Kaspa (they/them) and their two little dogs, Aiko and Ralph. Her main site is here.

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I was killing scores of them before breakfast, and they were driving me up the wall.

They were fungus gnats - small black flies that arrived in shop-bought compost and infected our house plants. They laid their eggs in the soil - each female laying between 100 and 300. They become larvae and then pupae before erupting as fresh flies, ready to lay another few hundred eggs.

I searched online for advice.

‘Don’t overwater’ - okay. ‘Use sticky fly traps’ - okay, done. I meticulously washed the plant’s roots and repotted them. Just more fungus gnats.

Eventually, after a long search, I read about ‘mosquito bits’ - a biological insecticide - people swore by them. I found a very expensive, very small bag of them - shipped over from France. I measured the stuff out, soaked it for half an hour and then poured the mosquito-bit-soup all over the plants. It was guaranteed to kill the larvae. Hurray!

It did not.

I couldn’t discern a difference - even after repeated doses, even after doubling and tripling the concentration. The goddamn flies were still erupting from the soil, each one containing the potential for thousands more.

I imagined them multiplying in an exponential way. I sought them out whenever I entered our bathroom (full of house plants) or our kitchen, chasing them down and squishing them. I felt like a bad Buddhist, apologising to each one as I snuffed out its little life, and cursing them at the same time.

How does this story end? Maybe I found a stronger, more effective insecticide? Maybe I got rid of all the house plants?

Well - after a good long while my anger and obsession just… wore away. I stopped sweeping rooms for gnats when I entered them - my eyes like search beams. I stopped caring so much about their presence.

Maybe it was because the weather changed, but this change of heart coincided with an easing in new gnats. We still have them - I still kill at least a few every day (I just got one!) but they don’t take up any space in my head any more. We have - to my shock - learned to co-exist.

‘What you resist persists’. I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with this piece of advice - surely we have good reasons to resist things? Surely the Universe can’t be so mean as to track us down until we surrender?

Or maybe, just maybe, the Universe is trying to show us something that will help us?

Love, Satya <3

A question to carry: What are you resisting right now and how is it persisting?

(I also speak about the fungus gnats in a talk I did for a colleague Buddhist teacher about the precepts - here it is. Gratitude to the fungus gnats - they did teach me something and I am continuing to learn!)

‘Dear Beloved’ is a free newsletter that will nudge you towards love at the start of every week. It is written by Satya Robyn (she/her) - an IFS therapist and Buddhist minister who lives happily at the feet of the Malvern hills in the UK. She lives with her spouse Kaspa (they/them) and their two little dogs, Aiko and Ralph. Her main site is here.

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