Morning love,

I've been establishing a new daily writing practice and, in and amongst the fragments of poetry and prose, I've written this piece for dear Simone's print publication that I wanted to share. It speaks to the non-dual view of reality and everyday devotion, which is at the heart of everything we offer at the school ♥️

What if the holy grail is right here. What if all that seeking and all that searching and all that swooping higher to map the territory and get the lay of the land - what if the path was always spiralling you back to the beginning, which is this moment.

It’s what you have in your hands, beneath your feet, lingering in your mouth as a warm drink coats your esophagus. Start with where you are right now and that is where you will find God. Because your life is nowhere else but in this moment and yet we keep searching outside of ourselves and digging deeper into ourselves when God is whispering to us in the closeness of our clothes.

God lives in my bad posture, as I hunch over the screen, reminding me of the infinite intelligence that sleeps in my spine, the small critical voice telling me this isn’t good enough reminds me that I am more than this part of myself. God pointing to Herself in the cracks and the concealments, if I soften my seeing and loosen my grip, if I stop trying to understand and stop trying to find a way, the way will open. This is what it means to me to be undone.To be done by.

Start close in, as David Whyte reminds us. Go to the darkest part of the forest where there is no path. Enter here, which is to say that the present moment is continuous and pathless. We can’t see what will happen next, if we are just where we are. But if we stay, and we trust, we will simply brighten towards the clearest direction. This is the play of Karma and Dharma. The invitation to accept and meet what is right in front of us, though it might seem dark and we can’t see the way. Enter here.

If we keep following the well worn landscape of our neuroses and our neural pathways then we will keep walking over the same old stories. If we stopped and listened and waited then life might point us in a completely different direction. One that is dharmic, rather than karmic. One that is born of aligned action, rather than conditioned response. In the Tantric Tradition, spiritual practice is called Upāsana, which means to sit close to. To sit close to life, to the felt sense of the moment and to make your whole life your practice.
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This is really the secret of a devotional life. To include it all. To let it all be path. To slip into presence, again and again, and find life quietly waiting for us beneath the surface. And to remember, when we forget, that there are doorways everywhere. Immerse yourself in what is most ordinary and the extraordinary will wink in recognition.

With love,

Collette 🌹
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​P.S. We are still calling folks in for Scotland so if you want to return to the extraordinary and the beginning through meditation, silence and movement, come. There are a few spaces left​

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