Grief is a landscape that can feel overwhelming, yet it’s also a deeply human experience woven into the fabric of our existence. While many approaches to mourning have developed over time, traditions rooted in animistic and ancestral practices remind us that grief need not be carried alone or suppressed. Instead, it can be worked with and transformed through simple, heartfelt rituals.

What if our innate spirituality was the antidote to the escalating rates of mental health issues in the world? Dr. Lisa Miller, a Columbia University professor, studies the profound interplay between spirituality and mental health. She argues that our modern obsession with achievement has led to neglect of our spiritual side, contributing to increased depression and despair.

To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. ”

― Thich Nhat Hanh

“As always in the modern west, what gets sidelined first is... the animate itself. There are textures and depths to the way that traditional systems understand relationality with the larger animate world that get lost when seen through the modalities that have arisen out of individualism. And in traditional animate systems, we find visions of consciousness, animacy, and relationality that make us deeply rethink psychological visions of trauma, safety, agency, and alterity. Listen on a good sound system, at a time when you can devote your full attention.”

Psychedelic therapy is on its way to becoming a mainstream medical treatment in mental health care. In 2020 and 2022, residents of Oregon and Colorado voted to legalize the use of psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms, and the Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve it and MDMA, or Ecstasy, to treat depression and post-traumatic stress disorder by 2024.

Beyond all polarities, I am
Let the judgments and opinions of the mind
Be judgments and opinions of the mind
And you exist behind that

Ah so, ah so
It's really time for you to see through
The absurdity of your own predicament
You aren't who you thought you were
You just aren't that person

“In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.”

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return. Speak to it as you would to a beloved child. Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Dissolving into the cosmos, remembering all knowledge I had forgotten. Know!

Or surrender

I enter a deep vipassana and watch the constructs form. I am trying to let go of all concepts and constructs.

Surrender

Time is stubbornly nonlinear. There is no past and future. There is only one moment, there has only ever been one moment, and there will only ever be one moment.

To integrate water, one has to invoke air.

To integrate earth, one has to invoke water.

To integrate fire, one has to invoke earth.

To integrate air, one has to invoke fire.

An Alan Watts lecture on trusting the universe and understanding the essence of the Tao.

“When there is no more separation between ‘this’ and ‘that,’ it is called the still-point of the Tao. At the still point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.”

In Dzogchen you “train with awareness” and in Mahamudra you “train with appearances.” The meaning of training with appearances is not inhibiting any experience.

The festive heart knows that

it is always possible to do more

of what you must do

and to do it better, always

When Mingus says

he is going to play

the truth of what he is

he is not playing games

I took to surfing like an obsession. Nellie and I would make egg and jam sandwiches and head out to Bolinas at 7 am every Saturday. I was terrible at surfing — a kook. I had no idea what I was doing, but I couldn't stop myself from heading out into waves no matter what the weather, the air temperature, the number of people in the water.

When the sun and moon embrace each other

And when the sky and earth kiss each other

They perform the sacred ritual of the spontaneous union

Of body, speech, and mind.

Even though The Magician is numbered one in the Major Arcana, it is not the first card. There is no first card, in the traditional sense, because the Tarot is non-linear in equal parts to it being linear. The Major Arcana can be read in one direction, or "backward" in the other.

Tarot is a twilight language, which utilizes numbers, the elements, symbols, linear and non-linear paths, archetypes, conscious and unconscious energies, hierarchical and holistic structures, and is multi-dimensional.

At its essence, it is the language of paradox, atemporality, and inner wisdom.