“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

On August 1, 2006, I left the certainty of my small-town life in Germany for the possibility of a new and better life in the US.

I had been sitting with the question of moving to the US for a couple of years after learning about meditation through a book when I was 13. Intuitively, I would sit cross-legged on the thick blue carpet in my childhood bedroom and drop the question into my mind again and again. I felt myself expanding and contracting between deep fear of leaving all I knew (no matter how difficult) and the possibility of freedom and thriving. With time, the answer became clearer and more urgent. So I mustered all my courage to make the move right after my freshman year of high school.

Every year since, I've been honoring the day of my "rebirth" and celebrating that life-giving choice. It started a journey of deep inner work, healing, and coming home to myself. While life has its ups and downs, I never imagined my life could be this full of love, joy, wellbeing, community, contribution, and possibility.

I've continued my practice of living and holding big questions which has been informing my choices. It feels like collectively we are in a process of sensemaking and living the questions as we find our way forward amidst uncertainty.

What have been some of the defining choices in your life? How are you honoring them?

What big questions are you currently living?

Below are a few resources to support you.

With love,

Sarah-Marie

Resources  

Poem

The Open Door from Root to Bloom by Danna Faulds

A door opens. Maybe I’ve

been standing here shuffling

my weight from foot to fot

for decades, or maybe I only

knocked once. In truth, it

doesn’t matter. A door opens

and I walk through without a

backward glance. This is it,

then, the moment of truth in

a lifetime of truth: a choice

made, a path taken, the

gravitational pull of Spirit

too compelling to ignore any

longer. I am received by

something far too vast to see.

It has roots in antiquity but

speaks clearly in the present

tense. “Be” the vastness says.

“Be without adverbs, descriptors,

or qualities.” Be so alive that

awareness bares itself

uncloaked and unadorned.

Then go forth to give what you

alone can give, awake to love

and suffering, unburdened by

the weight of expectations.

go forth to see and be seen,

blossoming, always blossoming

into your magnificence.”

Guided Meditations 

• RAIN of Self-Compassion [16:34] to work with difficult emotions and cultivate self-compassion 

• Self-Compassion Break [10:42] to work with a difficulty in your life

• Coming Home to Presence [16:59] 

• Lovingkindness for Self & Others [19:51] to cultivate kindness toward yourself and others.

• Cultivating Compassion for Others [10:56]  to practice cultivating compassion for others who are struggling.