Dear Peace:

Thank you so much for your appreciation and kindness 🙂

“The guilt I feel for speaking badly about them, without knowing the full story, really triggers me. I want to make things right, but I feel like the only way to do that is by carrying this heavy burden.”-

Is your Guilt saying to you: (1) Let’s look at what you did wrong, if you did wrong, and then make it right?

Or is it saying to you: (2) I want you to suffer, you deserve to suffer, so there..(delivering the pan)..?

* If it’s saying the 1st thing, let’s look at what you did wrong, if you did wrong: you spoke badly about them.. did your words hurt them, caused them pain? Are your words about them shared here, in your thread.. which they have never read?

If your words did reach them and caused them pain, there are ways for you to do all you can to correct, to make amends with them, to apologize etc.

* If it’s saying the 2nd thing: what would be the point of you suffering when you either did no wrong in this case, of if you did, but corrected it, made amends, etc.?

“I’m also curious to understand better — what childhood guilt are you referring to when you mentioned your own experiences?”-

I felt very guilty for making my mother’s life miserable (she told me so).. Unlike your mother who didn’t say much, my mother said a whole lot, shaming and guilt-tripping me. I believed her and suffered terrible guilt for decades.

I suffered a lot and non of my suffering made me a better person. Quite the opposite, it made me a worse person as far as my actions went.

Suffering from guilt needs to be limited and lead to correcting wrongdoing, or wrong saying. Once that’s done, suffering guilt is counter productive to mental health. It’s harmful.

With gratitude back to you, Peace, a pleasure speaking with you!

🤍 Anita

Dear James:

I am the wave AND the ocean, am I not?

I mean, the ocean (the Source, Love) is many little waves, all temporary, but still.. waves (individual people like me and you).

We are the ocean and we are waves, James-wave, Anita-wave, Peter-wave. This is why we sound different: different styles of expressing, different intensities.. different waves..?

🌊 and 🌅 Anita

Dear Peace: I read your post and see how distressed you are. I want to reread parts of our communication in regard to your family and get back to you within the next hour or two.

Dear Peter:

I will process your post from yesterday (quoting your words, responding, then reading the next part, responding, etc.), and then your post from today.

“I read your message slowly, as if we were sitting together in the quiet of early morning, letting the words rise and return.”-

I am sensing the difference between hearing or reading people’s words and seeing them as fixed, often threatening AND letting them “rise and return”. It’s a softening, a relaxing of the Fight or Flight response to perceived danger, danger perceived even in typed words.

“Presence.. (is) an experience that arises when thought returns to silence and stillness. This Presence doesn’t intervene or shield. It doesn’t rescue. It holds. Not with indifference, but with a stillness that remains even when everything else falls away.”-

Presence= Silence & Stillness (S&S).

When distressed, to not rush to intervene or shield or rescue (outward action), but to rest in S&S.

My inner monk is always meditating.”- one with Presence, silent, still.

“You asked if I would retroactively suggest transcending the ego to your younger self. No. I wouldn’t offer advice to her. I would sit beside her. I would listen. I would let her know her cry was heard.”-

Not rushing to intervene, shield, or rescue, but offer her your presence, showing/ modeling S&S.

“I want to pause and acknowledge something: I hear how deeply you’ve wrestled with silence, especially in moments of pain. I understand how that silence can feel like absence. And I’m not asking you to forget those moments, or to bypass them with spiritual language. They matter. You matter.

“When I speak of Presence, I’m not offering a solution or a fix. I’m pointing to something that doesn’t make it not so, but that holds what is. It’s not a God who intervenes in some magical way, but a stillness that remains. Not indifferent, but spacious. Not absent if quiet.

“It is in this space that something new might be born.. perhaps a something that transcends the past..”-

I want this Silence, this kind of silence.

“It’s not meant to be grasped by the mind, but remembered by the heart. And only when the heart is ready.”-

Ready to transcend the Fight or Flight lifestyle (ways of thinking, ways of reacting), to transcend that inside running in my brain/ body.. running and running with nowhere to go (thoughts, tics)

“… All I can offer is to sit beside you, in silence, and say: I hear you. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough for now. Warmly, Peter

“I will not fix, nor mend the ache, but sit beside it, as morning breaks.

No answers come, no rescue calls, just breath between what stands and falls.

A silence not of absence made, but presence deep, where pain is laid.

So let the heart, when it is ready, remember what was always steady.

And if no words can ease the now, then let this hush be enough somehow.”-

My newly found inner nun is meditating on this.

I see now why you’ve been emphasizing going inward in many of your posts (different threads). That’s where you become one with Presence, Silence, Stillness, Source.. the ocean.

Today’s message:

“That was quite beautiful, Anita. A gentle rhythm of arising and return.”- Thank you. Gentle rhythm is new to me.

“Non-duality isn’t something to understand, it’s just a word pointing to what you’ve already felt. You surrendered not to an idea, but to the truth that the wave is never apart from the ocean. In that softening, there’s no need to define or divide. There’s only presence. Only flow. And in that flow, you can rest.”-

Resisting the flow.. the frenzied activity of the mind afraid, seeking solutions, offering solutions/ advice that wasn’t asked.. that’s the wave thinking it’s all there is, sad and alone and desperate.

“Your words yesterday stirred an image that visited me again last night: a memory, like yours, only of a young boy walking alone beneath the stars, whispering into the vastness, ‘Help me. PLEASE help me!’ And the silence answered with nothing. An old song that has never quite left.

“It wasn’t an ego’s plea, but the raw ache of loneliness and grief. That little boy had been taught that God was a noun, a fixed point, separate and distant, which only deepened the grief.

“But now, when such sorrow rises like the tide the prayer has softened. ‘G_d’ has become a verb, a rhythm I’m learning to move with. Not separate or distant, but a motion — present.

“Isn’t it strange how a shift so small, from noun to verb, can change everything. Language doesn’t just describe; it builds the walls and windows we look through. And most days, we don’t notice.

“Today, when the wave reaches shore or when it crashes into the rocks, I remember the invitation to return, again and again, to the ocean. A flow that has become home and prayer: Let me move with the rhythm, not grasping, not resisting. Let me be held, even when I forget the Ocean.

“And I rest, not as God, not as Devil but as a wave returning.

“Warmly, Peter”-

The old me would rush to fix the sorrow that rises like the tide, when it does, to fix the young boy walking alone beneath the stars.. perceiving the boy to be a separate wave out there and myself a wave a distance away.

The new me (the becoming part), all I can offer is to sit beside you, in silence, and say: I hear you. And you matter 🌅.

“PS – You were and are never an ‘only’ this or that. 🙂 The Sphinx spoke only once, and the Sphinx said, ‘A grain of sand is a desert, and a desert is a grain of sand; and now let us all be silent again’. – Kahlil Gibran”-

The inner nun is meditating on this 🙂. Thank you so much, Peter 🙏 🙏 🙏

Warmly, Anita

“The separate self is like a wave forgetting it’s part of the ocean.”-

And the Ocean/ Source/ Presence/ Canvas is a no-label place, no good or bad.. it just flows

And in that flow.. in that flow, there is place for compassion, only it’s held loosely, allowing flow- not blocking it with definitions, rules & regulations

Softening, relaxing, surrendering to the ocean.

A surrender.. I feel the bit of it.

I am only a wave, I am not, not God = Ego.

Only a wave.. a relief. I can rest now..?

Not God, not Devil.. Just a wave.. Am I understanding non-duality, your non-duality, Peter?