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Defiant

By Janine Shepherd

I have spent most of my life trying to hide the extent of my disability. By sharing my story in Defiant, at long last, it feels like I have ‘come out’ as a spinal patient and it is liberating. I now embrace the word ‘disability’ with pride as I consider how far I have come and what I have achieved since my accident.

I spent almost six months in the spinal ward after a near fatal accident in 1986 left me with life-threatening injuries, including multiple fractures to my neck and back. I still remember the day my father drove me out of the hospital gates, my wheelchair in the back of the car, my emaciated body wrapped in a full plaster body cast to protect my newly repaired back. Life as I knew it would never be the same. In many ways I was fortunate, and in other ways, not so.

Although I was initially told that it was unlikely I would walk again, or have children, or do the things I had done before in my days as an elite athlete, I was determined to defy the grim prognosis. I would eventually go on to learn to walk again, albeit with a limping gait that would lead to many other complications.

My remarkable recovery from wheelchair bound to walking paraplegic was a combined effort on the part of many caregivers. And the great lesson I’m privileged to share with you, in my new memoir, is that I’ve learned that I’m not my body and you, dear reader, aren’t yours.

An outpouring of love stories

Perhaps love is not something you need to seek any longer. That it is not something you will finally get more of one day, just as soon as you pray enough, meditate in the right way, forgive better, accept more deeply, finally ‘let it all go’, rest as the ‘witness,’ stay in the ‘now’, and become a perfect spiritual person.

Friend, you will never find more love, for love is what you are. It is what your organs, your nervous system, and the cells of your heart are crafted of. It is forming as your arms when you hold another, as your words when you speak kindness, and as your tongue as you taste the honey-nectar of the beloved as it arrives by way of your sweet lover.

Allow yourself to receive the benediction of pure presence, for it is your birthright. It is wired inside you and longing to erupt from your totally out of control heart. For when it does, an avalanche of grace is unleashed, sending love stories, wild music, and sweet poetry into the stars and supernovas, seeding the galaxies with your unique light.

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Dr. Andrew Weil on “cooking” meditation

In many contemplative traditions, it is said that we can practice meditation during the most ordinary activities, such as taking a walk, washing the dishes, or even in the midst of a busy day of emails. Here, our friend and Sounds True author Dr. Andrew Weil shows how the simple art of cooking – when engaged in a present, mindful, and open way – can offer a gateway into the experience of meditation.

We’d love to hear from you on how cooking and other so-called “ordinary” activities offer you a portal into deeper love, awakening, and aliveness in the present moment.

Deconstructing Yourself: Mindfulness Meditation for Mo...

Friends, we wanted to make sure you knew about Deconstructing Yourself, a cutting edge, super informative, and provocative website on the nature and application of mindfulness in the modern world. It is run by Sounds True author and former editorial director, Michael W. Taft, who is currently editor-in-chief of Being Human, an organization exploring what evolution, neuroscience, biology, psychology, archeology, and technology can tell us about the human condition.

Michael created Deconstructing Yourself as a way to share the life changing force that is meditation (he’s been at it for over three decades). He and his colleagues strive to extend beyond any particular religion or technique in order to welcome anyone into their community. Their original articles are written with honesty and curiosity, in hopes of encouraging and inspiring your meditation practice. They cover issues that affect us all: heartbreak, death, love, sex, religion, art, and how meditation can help to enliven and transform them.

We hope you enjoy this wonderful portal for all things mindfulness, and wish you the very best with your own practice, wherever it takes you.

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Embodied Vulnerability and Non-Division

Recorded live in our Boulder studios for the Self-Acceptance Project, Bruce shares with Tami (and viewers around the world) the importance of both psychological and spiritual approaches to the journey of freedom, love, and awareness. In my experience, Bruce is one of the most gifted and innovative therapists out there and someone I feel honored to call a friend and mentor.

As part of our free, 12-week video event series, I invited 23 psychologists, psychotherapists, neuroscientists, and spiritual teachers to speak with my friend and longtime colleague, Tami Simon, to ask the tough questions, and to explore the the relationship between self-acceptance and the larger spiritual journey.

All episodes of the Self-Acceptance Project are now posted and can be accessed as video or audio downloads, or can be streamed at no cost from the comfort of your own home. Our deep gratitude to the 35,000+ of you who registered for the series; we hope you enjoyed and benefited from it.

It is our intention to bring you more high-quality content in this area over the months and years to come. Our next series will focus on Deepening Intimacy, launching in the new year.

http://youtu.be/453_hzuzZ0I

 

Washed out by grace…

We can be so hard on ourselves in so many ways: why did I choose the same kind of partner yet again, why am I not able to find more meaningful work, why am I acting just like my mother/ father, why have I not become awakened yet, why am I not truly loveable by another. Recent research and clinical reports in the fields of attachment and interpersonal neurobiology have shown us that the way we’ve come to see ourselves, others, and relationships was formed in the extended nervous system prior to the acquisition of language. As little ones, we lived in a non-verbal world, shaping our models of self and other according to our deeply wired need to survive, to receive love, and to be mirrored empathically.

Fortunately, the realities of neuroplasticity have shown that it is possible to reorganize the way we see ourselves, conceive of this sacred reality, and interact in close relationships. By some unknown grace, it seems that we are wired for love; somehow we are supported by the unseen world to allow love to restructure our lives. While this journey is simple, we know it is not easy. We sense that it demands everything – and this can be scary. But through compassionate self-inquiry, authentic contemplative practice, somatically-alive psychotherapy, and especially through that ever-fiery crucible that is attuned, intimate relationship, the opportunity is there to give ourselves fully to this life and to receive the fruits of a wide open heart, a body and senses that are an offering of love, and an the clear wisdom of an intuitively-guided mind.

It does seem that one thing is required though, and that is tremendous kindness to ourselves – an unconditional friendliness to who and what we are, and a deep respect for the journey from fear to love, for it requires everything we have – and more. Let us nurture and hold ourselves in kindness today, and to appreciate the difficulties and challenges in living a life beyond belief. Let us set aside the spiritual superego, our desperate need to be something other than what we are, and to allow the grace that is always and already here to wash down throughout this sacred body, pouring through these precious senses. And let us behold the miracle of this life as it is, seeing how lucky most of us truly are, and how we could only ever be in the exact right place, to take the perfectly-designed next step into love.

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