There are times when our regular spiritual practices – by which I mean practices that are personal, meaningful and help us connect to the calm center at our core amidst life’s uncertainties – are non-negotiable.

These might be times when we’ve received some hard news, like a diagnosis (either our own or someone we love).

It might be times when we’re stuck in the endless and torturous spin cycle of intrusive thoughts, whether about health, relationships, money, parenting.

It might be times when we’re taken down by the news in our world, and find ourselves falling down a dark hole of despair.

It’s at these times when we reach for help of every kind, including spiritual help.

When life is moving along smoothly, we’re not as likely to reach. Why bother taking the time to commit to regular practices when things are humming along?

The answer is that we take the time not only to help us navigate the daily bumps of life at its smoothest – which, for highly sensitive people, still includes a searing awareness of the passage of time, change, loss and death – but also so that the pillows of support are there for us when we need them most. It’s at these heightened times when life’s uncertainties grabs us by the throat that we long to find the sanctuary of calm that lives inside all of us.

 

A Sanctuary of Calm

Let me be clear: calm doesn’t mean happy.

Calm doesn’t mean Buddha in Zen meditation.

Calm doesn’t mean Pollyanna where we blindly trust that everything works out for the best.

Calm doesn’t mean that we’re lifted above fear, terror, or grief.

Calm means that there’s a still point around which the storms of life can swirl.

It’s the eye of the hurricane where, even in collapse, we’re not fully collapsed.

It’s the place that holds us up even while we’re falling apart. It’s the sense that we’re being accompanied through life’s challenges, and in the holding, the challenges are a bit more tolerable.

How to Find the Place Where It’s All Okay

There are reliable pathways to return to that place.

It’s a place that we have all touched at some point in our lives: walking in a grove of trees, sunlight dappling the leaves in gold; standing on a balcony staring in awe at a starry sky; sitting in church; singing in community; hands in the warm soil of the earth as you tend to a garden; dreaming about a departed ancestor and receiving a reassuring message; opening to gratitude and feeling the great goodness of a single moment in time; the wonder of words fluttering to the windowsill of soul and transcribing them into a poem.

Like the mycelium networks that connect the world underfoot, there are mycelium networks that connect the world above and all around. We might not be able to see them, but when we step onto our pathways of belonging, we can feel them. In those moments, love is greater than fear and light illuminates the dark. This is the place where all is well.

A Place We Have Forgotten

We likely tasted this place in childhood when we were close to source and center, when our rational minds hadn’t yet been inundated with the doubt, shame, apathy, and pessimism that pervade our culture.

Perhaps you played outside with fairies and other unseen beings.

Perhaps you would draw for hours, lost in time as you effortlessly connected to the flow of creativity, which is the flow of the world.

Perhaps you stared up at the clouds on a summer day and remembered yourself back into your rightful place of belonging in this vast universe.

Perhaps you looked into the eyes of your family dog and knew your intrinsic goodness – not because you earned a gold star but simply because you exist.

Pathways of Trust

As adults, we can easily lose touch with this place, but there are pathways that can help us find our way back to true home. The key is to find the practices that are in alignment for you: not something that has been handed down with fear or obligation – ie: “If you don’t say or do this in this exact way, something bad will happen.”

True spiritual practice is rooted in love, forgiveness, compassion, and an abiding sense of the benevolent force that informs our world. Most of all, it’s rooted in trust, for it’s when we can root down into and expand up toward the hammock of trust that we can arrive at the place where it’s all okay.

Remember: the opposite of uncertainty is not certainty, it’s trust.

I turn to my practices every day, and during times of heightened challenge, I turn to them more.

I turn to the earth, laying my body on her body as I open to her healing and wisdom.

I turn to the ancestors, praying and sometimes pleading for help and protection.

I turn to rituals, allowing them to hold and transform the fear and grief about the tenacity of life into trust.

I turn to loved ones, collapsing into reliable arms and ears when I need to.

I turn to grief, the holiness of tears reuniting me with original source and keeping me in the river of this uncertain life.

I turn to gratitude, the flow of reciprocity that keeps me buoyed in abundance even amidst times of loss.

You, too, have pathways that help you feel safe, held, loved, and worthy. Discovering or rediscovering these is what I teach in Grace Through Uncertainty.

From Health Anxiety to Relationship Anxiety to Global Anxiety

I created Grace Through Uncertainty on the heels of my own cancer scare in 2016, after which the course poured out of me. My deepest fears center around health: my own and my loved ones (including, of course, our dear kitty.)

For many people who find their way to my work, anxiety and uncertainty center around relationships.

And for most of us who are paying attention, there is worry about our planet.

Regardless of where worry constellates, it’s our practices that allow us to navigate this beautiful, harsh life with more grace.

I’ve been running Grace Through Uncertainty yearly since 2016, but this is the last time I’ll be running it live in the foreseeable future. If you’d like to hold hands as you learn and re-learn your own personal spiritual recipe to help you navigate the storms and uncertainties of life – from health anxiety to relationship anxiety, parenting and pet worries, and world anxiety – please join us. Our spiritual practices are the bedrock of our being, both for the worries of “what if” and the terrifying realities when something truly awful happens.

This next round will start on Saturday, November 9th, and I look forward to seeing you there. You can learn more and sign up here. 

Note: The live round includes a highly moderated forum and two live coaching calls with me. Only about 1/4 of the participants are able to attend the live calls, and you will receive a recording afterward. Here are the two call times:

Call 1: Tuesday, November 12 at 5pm ET
Call 2: Monday, November 25th at 6:15pm ET