That was quite beautiful, Anita. A gentle rhythm of arising and return.

Anita, in the space you’ve just touched in surrendering, the question of non-duality begins to fade. 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.

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

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

You asked about the Presence. And I’m not sure I can answer… at least not in the way answers are usually given. It’s 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.

This kind of holding is, I believe, one reason one might meditate. (My inner monk is always meditating.) And in that stillness, I think of your question.

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.

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 suspect what I’ve been trying to share may not have landed as an invitation and wonder if it felt like a concept, or even a contradiction. Understandable, because it’s not meant to be grasped by the mind, but remembered by the heart. And only when the heart is ready.

You’ve written about those moments of the heart in your posts, though perhaps forgotten, when the ache was still there, but something in you softened. Something let go. Something was held. That’s the Presence I mean. Not a noun, not a rescuer, but a rhythm, a breath, a holding.

I don’t want to offer more words than are needed. 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.

Hi Everyone

It seems to me that one of the subtle errors we make when engaging with wisdom traditions is that we believe that to arrive at Love, Nirvana, or Heaven… we must follow the rules and or practice as if the practice itself were the path. We treat the forms as formulas, the rituals as requirements. Only the source is not reached through what comes from it.

The following is a reflection: The Quiet Error

It is easy to chase the changing – the light and the dark, the thought and the deed – believing that by following their paths, we might arrive at the source. But the river does not return to its spring by flowing forward.

This is a quiet error we often make when entering wisdom traditions: we treat the practices as prescriptions, the teachings as tasks. We follow the forms as if they were formulas, believing that if we just get it right, meditate enough, love enough, surrender enough, we will earn our way into grace.

But grace is not earned. It is remembered.

It is not the practice that leads to remembrance it is remembrance that gives rise to true practice. When we rest in what is already whole, compassion arises as a natural fragrance, not as a commandment. And from that compassion, a deeper law reveals itself, not imposed from above, but unfolding from within. Not a rulebook, but a rhythm. A rhythm that when we forget we codify and fall into the error.

The sacred does not demand perfection. It waits in the stillness beneath all striving. It is the silence behind the sound, the breath between the breaths, the presence that was never absent.

We do not reach the source by effort. We return to it by stopping. By softening. By remembering.

Dear Anita,
You ask how it feels… I wonder what is “feeling” when there is no “I” to feel?

So I pause, because the space I speak of isn’t felt in the usual way. It isn’t measured in minutes or held in sensation. It doesn’t soothe the body like a calming substance might, nor does it silence the storm. It is not the embrace that calms the nervous system, but the one that holds even the un-calmed. Not the silence that erases pain, but the silence that listens to it without needing to fix it. A embrace that is both nowhere and everywhere, both felt and unfelt, both known and unknowable.

Perhaps the embrace isn’t something we feel into the body, but something that gently holds the body, even when it cannot feel being held. That, too, is part of the mystery. Maybe this embrace isn’t something we arrive at, but something we remember. Not with the mind, but with something deeper, older, quieter. A kind of contemplative remembering, not of a moment past, but of a truth that’s always present.

I recall a story Richard Rohr shared, about looking into his dog’s eyes… he describes how gazing into her eyes helped him experience the divine presence in all living beings. At first, I didn’t understand why he included the story in a book about spiritual transformation. But the image stayed with me as a something I “knew” but couldn’t name… A memory arises of a sad young boy returning from school, sitting with the family dog Duke, in silence, and feeling held… I wonder if Rohr included the story as it was a moment of experiencing the embrace I speak of. Not through dramatic insight or relief, but through presence. A quiet recognition. A softening. No words, no measure, just being met.

So, if you cannot feel it, Anita, know this: you are not outside the embrace. You are already within it and always have and will be.

You said the warm embrace caught your eye… what if you leaned into it… A invitation to feel the embrace in ways you may not yet have imagined. In the eyes of a dog. In the hush before a thought. In the way a tree stands without needing to be seen. In the breath that comes unbidden. In the silence that holds even the ache.

The valley spirt never dies.
Call it the mystery, the woman.

The mystery, the Door of the Woman
is the root of earth and heaven.

Forever this endures, forever.
and all its uses are easy – Tao Te Ching

A Breath held in the Stillness
In the hush before the breath, where no wind stirs, no word is said,
the valley waits, void not empty, full of becoming.

From silence, the question rises, a cry from morning earth.
No answer comes, only quiet spinning in stillness.

The seeker kneels, aching for comfort, but finds only the hush.
Until the hush becomes the comfort, questions held, the ache resolves.

Nothing is born here, yet all things arise.
Nothing dies here, yet all things return.

Held in the stillness, the world turns without effort.
Held in the silence, the heart remembers its source.

Forever this endures. Forever it flows.
And all its uses are easy.