Be sure to check out my upcoming events, including a weekend retreat at Canyon Ranch in Woodside, CA; a weeklong retreat in Spain next month (just one room left) with my buddy David Gandelman; and a weeklong retreat in Bali next May, also with David.

And as a reminder, you have until August 2nd to join the launch team for my upcoming book, Enough as You Are, and will be able to read it in August, two months before it’s released in October. Go HERE for details.

Hi Friends,

Let’s start this missive with some heart-focused breathing. Place one or both hands over your heart, and with each of the following breaths, imagine that you’re breathing in and out through your heart, rather than your lungs. Inhale through your heart for five seconds, hold for one second, and then exhale through your heart for five seconds. Let’s do it again. Inhale through your heart for five seconds, hold for one, and exhale through your heart for five seconds. Do this three more times, for a total of five heart-focused breaths, and see how you feel on the other side of it.

Don’t feel that you have to limit yourself to five breaths, either. Spend as much time with this breath as you like. Heart-focused breathing can be extremely effective at creating calm in your body. And because it connects us to the energy of our hearts, I often find this breath helps me feel more centered in love. How did it feel for you?

I read a beautiful essay a couple day ago, in which someone I admire shared about what’s happening in his life right now. He offered rich insights on many subjects and a depth of self-reflection and honesty that still seems rare, even in this time of ready vulnerability. I felt some envy for his ability to express himself so eloquently, but mostly appreciated the clarity and openness with which he reflected. I saw myself in his words.

The reason I’m not sharing his name or essay with you is because of what I’m about to write: the entire thing also felt like whiny, self-obsessed noise. But that’s because, as of late, most everything I read, and most everything I write, feels like whiny self-obsessed noise. Even the stuff I love. Even the pieces that provoke the deepest hell yeses, and the ones that make me cry, and the ones that encourage me to shift my thinking. It all feels like noise, because it all feels like it’s in service to our minds. And my mind is hella noisy. (That may be the first time I’ve used hella in my writing, but it kind of felt good so it may not be my last.)

I had a guru long ago who was an eloquent speaker and could express in simple terms spiritual concepts that might have otherwise been complicated to understand. As I listened to him teach I often felt many an aha moment. I also often felt, for lack of a less woo woo way of putting it, an energetic opening in my body. Almost like being high. He told us, his students, that all of his talking was just a way to distract our minds, and that the energy exchange from his heart to ours was what really mattered. The love was what really mattered.

So much energy goes into distracting our minds. At least that’s how I feel lately: that whatever I’m writing and reading, all these words and insights and vulnerable shares and meaningful revelations, are all so very mental. As in, by the mind and for the mind. It feels exhausting. Even sad. My heart doesn’t need any of these words. It’s very clear with its no matter what: just love. My soul doesn’t need any of these words either. It never strays from it’s all okay.

I get that much of the noise I and others are sharing is with the intention of getting us out of our minds and into our hearts, souls and bodies, into that deep understanding within us that we are okay and that we are love. I also get that it’s helpful for writers and readers alike to give energy to ideas that reflect inner peace and love. Sometimes, however, like now, it just feels like we’re all on a hamster wheel running in circles, creating more and more and more energy for our indefatigable minds. The process can feel so repetitive and tiring I wonder how much energy we all have to actually internalize these messages we love so much. To actually live into them. If these aha moments were truly sinking in, would we continue to need, pray for, be desperate for more of them all the time?

Even the distinction between mind, heart and soul feels like it’s for my mind to be able to grasp different energy centers in a way that makes sense to it. Only my mind needs to make sense of my humanity, and of our world, and if that’s not an invitation for suffering I don’t know what is. There’s no sense to be made here. Not really. And yet, we’re all compulsively trying to understand ourselves, and each other, and this human experience, to, I guess, keep from feeling as insane about it all. How’s that working for ya? Me: I still feel generally and genuinely insane. Often.

As I’m writing this, I’m aware that I’m contributing to the noise of which I speak. That these words will, should you allow them, serve as something more for your mind to ponder. And to what end? Like, what’s the point here, Scott?

I don’t have a point really, and certainly no solution to all the noise. I guess what I keep reminding myself is that this is the experience of being human. Everything we think and feel and desire and reject and need and believe is all human. When I can reflect on this truth with greater acceptance, and stay connected to the absurdity of it all with more humor and curiosity, I tend to feel much lighter. Then there are times like this, when the absurdity of our humanity feels a bit heavier, a bit more insane. Or, I feel a bit heavier and more insane within it.

So much comes back to perspective, and to where we are emotionally in terms of how we experience what’s before us. Had I read that beautiful essay a week ago, I suspect I would have experienced it only as vulnerable and insightful and even profound. I don’t think whiny and self-obsessed would have crossed my mind, because my mind wasn’t focused on this idea that every non-fiction writer on the planet is whiny and self-obsessed. One hundred people will read the same thing and have one hundred different experiences of it based in great part on who they are and how they’re feeling in the moment. As Anaïs Nin said, We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

I put on some moody music last night and did some writing. Here’s a taste of where that writing went:

i get scared sometimes that this sadness i feel so often will continue to show up even more.

and

nothing feels true. it’s all a performance. everyone a puppet. a few pulling strings. how does one find joy here when there’s little that feels real?

and

i can’t seem to help feeling lost, as ungrounded as i’ve felt in a bit, spinning through the same cycles, not seeming to get clearer, not seeming to be changing

and

i want to to cry about too many things too many times a day.

I looked at what I wrote last night, all of which were variations on what I just shared with you, and I thought to myself, Wait a minute, am I depressed? Is that what my writing is showing me?

No. I’m not feeling depressed. I just felt sad last night (and feel sad often). And when I choose to write while I’m feeling sad, the sadness will make its way into my writing. And into how I see the world. And into how I feel about myself. And into everything.

We bring our feelings into everything. That’s the human way. And, as Rilke wrote, Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

No feeling is final. That feels like a good way to end this essay. I’ll add to it my favorite, This too shall pass. They’re essentially saying the same thing. And that thing — no feeling is final and this too shall pass — is what I hold onto most committedly when I can’t seem to get out of my mind’s spin cycle, when what I understand to be true, that at my core I am peace and I am love (as is everyone else), feels like an impossible reality to behold.

Of course, it’s only impossible for my human mind. My heart is smiling, repeating to me again and again its one mandate: no matter what, just love. And my soul continues to bear witness with its ever-present, gentle reminder: hey you, it’s all okay. Which is to say, there is a place inside me, inside all of us, that exists beyond all this mental struggle. Beyond all the noise. My deep prayer for all of us is that we may live in this place more and more often, and be so gentle with ourselves when we’re unable to.

With so much love,

Scott

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Upcoming Events:

Join me at Canyon Ranch in Woodside, CA, for Live with a Wide-Open Heart. This retreat center sits among a 16-acre Redwood forest and is out of this world beautiful. Details HERE.

It’s not too late to join me and David Gandelman in Spain next month, from August 31st to September 6th, for our Live Your Truth retreat. There’s one room left, and it has your name on it. Details HERE.

David Gandelman and I just announced our Sacred Bali retreat for next May. Spend a week with us in Bali, in the jungle outside of Ubud, where we’ll meditate, write, do breathwork and explore the extraordinary land around Ubud. Details HERE.

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