Hi Everyone 👋 Please help me welcome @Zeno Zauss to our lovely community 🙏🏻

Ahhhhh, technology ☹️ My Mac has frozen again right in the middle of writing today’s learning post . An hour or so of writing lost to the Fizen Technology Gods 🥲 My very old Mac is gone into a forced meditation so I’m reverting to my equally outdated iPhone to try to post today. I need to walk away, to breathe, to get out in nature with my grandson and build a bamboo roof for the treehouse I made for him 😊 Here are some photos from our beach day yesterday and the treehouse 😊

Hi Everyone, please help me welcome @Sujata Awade to our lovely community 🙏

Hi Everyone 👋 We have journeyed through the fire, released the ancient vows, walked through the triggers, and forgiven the unforgivable. Now, my dear friends, we arrive at the destination that was always the starting point... the full, unapologetic embodiment of who you truly are. Over these past days, we have done the heavy lifting. We have sat with discomfort, faced our shadows, and made peace with the past. But now I want to speak to you about something that is rarely discussed in spiritual circles, and yet it is the very thing that transforms a seeker into a master.... The radical act of claiming your sovereign self. There is a subtle but deadly trap that awaits us on the spiritual path. It is the trap of spiritual bypassing—the tendency to use spiritual practices to avoid our humanity, to float above our pain, to pretend we are above the messy, visceral realities of being human. I have seen it countless times. Someone will say "I am at peace" while their body is screaming with tension. They will say "I am enlightened" while their relationships are in ruins. This is not awakening; this is dissociation dressed in spiritual clothing. The sovereign self is not the self that has transcended the world; it is the self that has fully arrived in the world. It is the self that can hold its own suffering with one hand and the suffering of others with the other. It is the self that can be deeply triggered and still choose love. It is the self that can weep at the beauty of a sunset and rage at the injustice of the world, all without losing its centre. In Buddhism, we speak of Bodhicitta—the awakened heart-mind. It is the state of being where compassion and wisdom are inseparable. It is the understanding that your liberation and the liberation of all beings are one and the same. You cannot truly heal yourself without healing your relationship to the world, and you cannot truly heal the world without healing yourself. In Daoism, we speak of Ziran—naturalness, spontaneity, the uncarved block. It is the state of being so fully yourself that you no longer need to perform, to prove, or to pretend. You simply are. And in that being, you become a force of nature. You become the river that flows effortlessly around obstacles, the tree that bends without breaking, the mountain that stands unshaken through every storm.

Hi Everyone, Please help me welcome two new members to our wonderful community @Bruce Macintosh @Sebastion Brown 🥳