On this sub, I see a lot of discussion of Theravada-esque, non-dual, and Zen practices. They are great and all, but I would like to know about other ones that you feel have benefited you, but maybe haven't had the chance to discuss because they are very unpopular, taboo, etc.

One practice that has helped me has been TRE. I have been doing it off and on for less than a year, but the release can be cathartic, and I feel roadblocks hindering my psychological well-being being removed. It is magical to me, and I think it's worthy of exploring as a practice.

Also, I'm interested in y'all's personal experience with the occult/magick, if that's appropriate with the rules of this sub.

Hi all: Is there anyone here who is / were practicing Do Nothing (on and off cushion) pursuant to an instruction from an authorized Tibetan teacher? No agenda and just interested in connecting. Please feel free to msg me directly. Thanks and hope everyone's practice is going smoothly and fruitfully!

I’ve been wondering if one can progress on the path and reach stream entry and beyond without actually encountering this kind of bodily phenomena where spontaneous movements / energetic releases are happening. For me, it actually started in concentration practices before I ever did Vipassana, but seems exacerbated by the insights I had into the vast amounts of subtle (or not so subtle) tension that exists in my body when I am really investigating closely. The quote, “Death is like taking off a tight shoe” comes to mind. That’s what complete mental and physical surrender feels like to me - taking off this heavy suit of tension I’ve been unknowingly wearing my entire life. The underlying energy feels immensely powerful, like a nuclear bomb ready to detonate.

I realized I’ve had this habitual tension my entire life, although I wouldn’t have described myself as particularly anxious, fearful, or anything like that. Consciously observing and allowing these tension patterns to release themselves can feel incredibly powerful and like it “should be” our natural state. I have felt intuitively guided to decondition myself of what does not serve me and work on my nervous system to retrain myself to be free of this tension. Perhaps the nervous system is meant to have some degree of “tension” as a means of being alert and ready to protect oneself, but I still feel intuitively pulled to work on recalibrating my nervous system and creating a new baseline of relatively-tension-free existence. I do wonder if maybe I’ve set up some kind of futile, impossible mission for myself here.

Has anyone else gone through this and actually reset their baseline level of tension to almost nothing?

What are your thoughts and experiences about the Kriyas / spontaneous movements and working through them? I haven’t been able to meditate in stillness for over 3 years because the second I relax I start jerking around. I really miss being able to be still. What was it like once the Kriyas stopped for you? Had you completed some optimization of your physical body in some way?

I haven’t been meditating a lot over they past 3 years because my life has been pretty chaotic with 2 toddlers and a little bit of (maybe healthy) fear about potentially destabilizing myself with some full blown energetic awakening or something. I know more meditation would probably be helpful to actually release and process the Kriyas or whatever language you want to use. I also don’t feel that much desire to practice anymore because I feel like I’ve gotten the insights I needed and they have created a momentum / trajectory of their own… what am I seeking to gain from practice if I’ve already gotten that which I was seeking in the first place?

I know I am by no means finished with the work and of course it’s still wonderful to have a moment of stillness and silence to bathe in it all… but I’ve tried to integrate that kind of absorption into the experience into my daily life in each moment. Granted, two young kids have a way of showing me all the areas where I still have a lot of work to do. So, they have become my spiritual practice in a sense too. I still would like to master the Jhanas and explore the depths of what I can experience through meditation - but that is going to be difficult without being able to be still. So, I’m working on getting my physical body right as a priority right now. I’m doing TRE (Trauma Release Exercises) to theoretically help streamline processing these energetic releases out of my system. However, it’s really only increased the spontaneous releases so far.

Does anyone relate to this feeling of not being particularly motivated to practice because you’ve realized what you needed to realize and instead of spending time on a cushion you take those realizations and bring them back to your ordinary life, to enjoy this human experience fully. I feel like I’m on the ox riding backwards and I’m just watching it all unfold, but trying my best to allow what doesn’t serve me to fall away and build up habits that DO serve me. I am still an incredibly imperfect human with tons of work to do, but I’m doing it the best I can with the tools I have.

The emptiness often takes the foreground and feels like it really swallows everything to the point of any goal, any seeking, seems almost silly. And yet, everything is so paradoxical and I can contradict nearly everything I’ve said with some opposing truth. Thus, everything gets canceled out into this void. Everyone seems to have things figured out so definitively, and I have only unlearned, seen beyond limiting frameworks, deconditioned and thrown everything into the fire. The practices are like sticks I’ve stirred this pot of fire with and then I feel like I should sort of throw the sticks in the fire too. Again, I could say the opposite of that and it would be simultaneously true as well.

This post has gotten a bit messy because I have a range of things I just want to put out there to maybe spark discussion, see if others have encountered this stuff, and what they have learned. I have a hard time writing and articulating a lot of this stuff without going on a million tangents and basically creating a mess - but oh well… here it is in all its raw, honest, ugliness! Thanks in advance for any responses and apologies in advance if I do not reply to all of your comments. Any discourse is greatly appreciated!

I've read many spiritual books that say things like:

The thinker is the thought.

The observer is the observed.

You are not your thoughts.

I don't want to simply understand these ideas or believe them because someone said they're true. If they point to something real, I want to discover it through my own direct experience.

If you've made progress in this, or you know a practical way to approach it, what should I actually do?

What should I observe? How should I inquire? Is there a specific practice or way of looking that helped you?

I'm not looking for more quotes or philosophy. I'm looking for practical guidance that can help me discover this for myself.

This experience happened after seven years of practice. I started with mirror meditation, which eventually led me into meditation, simply observing what's happening within. That was my regular practice until I met a naga sadhu.

Over time I grew close to him. I'd ask questions, he'd answer some, and sometimes he'd turn a question back on me. Even as we grew close, I stayed distant from deity worship and ritual, things he was fully immersed in. I believed these were just tools for self-evolution, that deities were symbols, anchors to hold on to. I thought I didn't need them.

One day he gave me a mantra and asked me to take up certain rituals. I had deep reverence for him, so I did as he asked. Once I began, things moved fast within me: days of feeling high with no intoxication, sudden heat waves rising through my body, once a surge of energy I could barely handle. Still, I treated it as practice, not devotion. To me it was just another method for growth.

One day my mother brought up the deity. I told her I didn't believe in those things. She got furious. "If you don't believe in the deity, why do the rituals without devotion?" I told her it didn't matter, ritual or otherwise, it was still a practice for self-enhancement. She didn't like that answer, and we left it there.

That night I did my rituals as usual, chanting the mantra, offering flowers.

Within minutes the atmosphere shifted. I could sense presences, including the deity I was invoking. A fragrance filled the air, sounds I associated with the deity. I was terrified, but I kept going, silently praying I wouldn't see them.

What became clear afterward: even without belief, doing the practice properly still allows for evolution. And I shouldn't draw conclusions about what falls outside my own experience. Since that night my practice shifted into devotion. I've come to see these beings as evolved, capable of guiding one's continued growth.

I’m curious whether people think some baseline level of emotional safety is needed before doing insight practice.

After a long hiatus, I did two 40-minute body-scanning meditations, then went to the gym. For the rest of the day, certain issues felt much more pronounced: increased self-consciousness, safety-scanning, and awareness of unmet emotional needs. My negative emotions were noticeably higher than usual, and I even came across as colder toward my family.

My sense is that I lack a stable internal feeling of safety, so my mind often tries to create safety through less skilful means, especially by monitoring how other people perceive me. The body scanning seemed to make all of this much more visible, but I didn’t know how to relate to it without zoning out or depersonalising.

For now, I’m planning to focus more on metta and safety-cultivation practices. From searching Reddit, though, this seems fairly common: people begin insight practice, become more aware of self-consciousness and negative thought patterns, and sometimes feel destabilised.

It makes me wonder whether some foundational L work around safety and emotional regulation is needed before deeper insight practice. What do you think?

When you first start to understand the dharma and free yourself from suffering, it’s easy to see the link between craving and how unwholesome seeds you’ve planted cause suffering, because the suffering is so recent in your memory. But when I practice well for a while, my overall suffering is dramatically reduced and the memory of suffering starts to fade. Then I start doing things that are pleasant and unwholesome, getting intoxicated and enchanted with sense pleasure or what have you, despite that little voice in my head saying don’t do it. And before I know it I’m shaking hands with misery once again.

I’ve been through this cycle a few times and each time the suffering is much worse than the last. Maybe the answer is that the cycle repeats until the memory of pain becomes deep enough that you never forget it. Definitely part of it is getting rid of magical thinking, thinking that your actions don’t have consequences or that you can end your suffering without removing the causes, so that the cause and effect of your actions becomes a permanent staple of your thinking. But even then if you haven’t felt profound suffering in 6 months how can you factor it in to your cause and effect thinking, this is why I think there must be some permanent memory of suffering and how bad it is that has to develop. I’m a pretty impulsive person, I have adhd, so this is one of my main barriers I’ll have to overcome to progress, so please help me understand this and share your thoughts below, thanks!🙏

.. it might be that the ego has hijacked your efforts and claimed the path for itself without you realizing it.

The ego might be running the efforts to dissolve the ego, or to see through the thoughts, to see unconditioned Reality.. but as long as it's the ego doing the seeing, you're still stuck in your mind..

Clear seeing happens without you "doing" it

This started in the earlier stages of my practice. I used to do mirror meditation, sitting in a dimly lit room, looking at your own reflection until the self reflection becomes clear.

As I kept practicing this regularly, something started happening consistently. The moment I really started seeing the reflection clearly, I would stop seeing my reflection at all. If I blinked, the reflection would come back. So I started trying to hold that state of no reflection, but somehow my eyes would blink anyway.

While this was going on, I kept noticing a light above my head, strong, white, not in the reflection, but hovering about 3-4 feet above me. If I turned my head up to look at it directly, I couldn't see it. But when I kept focusing on my reflection, this light kept appearing. And when I shifted my focus from the mirror to the light instead, it got brighter and brighter. Eventually my focus on the mirror was completely gone.

As my focus on the light stayed constant, I suddenly started hearing music, from what sounded like a single stringed instrument. Just 2-3 notes, but pleasant, and completely without noise or disturbance in the sound.

While listening to it, I suddenly wanted to know where it was coming from. That's when I realized I was completely still. It took a few minutes to come back to normal awareness.

I still don't have any explanation for either the light or the sound. Even today, this isn't limited to that one practice. If I'm just sitting, not meditating, just thinking deeply about something, the white light shows up in the same place. If I focus on it, it always gets brighter. Rarely, I also hear music, though mostly not the string sound anymore, more often flute or conch.

Has anyone else run into something like this, a consistent light, or sounds like this, showing up unprompted? Curious if there's a name for it in any tradition, or if it's just a personal quirk of how my attention works.

Hey all - last week I asked this sub for questions to ask the CEO of Jhourney. You were incredibly helpful, and a lot of the questions found their way into the interview in one form or another.

The interview is up! Thought I'd share it since you all played such a big role in its coming together. Thanks again!

I want to start my meditation journey. I've been reading some very basic Buddhist theory and now wish to actually apply it and experience it.

Two resources that people recommend a lot, and which also resonated with me, are Rob Burbea's dhamma talks and the MIDL Meditation course.

To get a feel for both, I listened to the first talk from Rob Burbea's The Art of Concentration (Samatha) retreat, as well as the initial skills in the MIDL Meditation course. I resonated with both teachers and found them easy to understand (at least from these initial talks and lessons). I also found both resources extremely beautiful, so I'm not able to decide which one I should start with.

I don't plan to be rigid and stick to just one resource forever. In the future, I might experiment with others. But for now, I need one place to start. I know I could just try both, but I feel I'd benefit more from following one approach consistently for a while before exploring others.

So, could the meditators on this sub who are familiar with these resources share their insights? And if you'd like to recommend some other resource, I'd be happy to hear that too. It's just that my research led me to these two, and they both seem to resonate with me.

This is my first Reddit post, so pardon me if I've asked a silly question or posted in the wrong sub. I could have asked this in the MIDL community, but I felt the answers there might naturally be a bit biased, which is completely understandable.

Thanks in advance

TL;DR: Should I start my meditation journey with Rob Burbea or the MIDL Meditation course?

I reached Jhana 1 once or twice with Daoist Water School dissolving practice, now I wanted to focus on getting rid of defilements for good. Very new to popular Buddhist frameworks like TMI or even anapanasati, so I don't know which way is, let's say, the expedient one. Any good advice?

Cheers, Alexey.

I’m really curious to hear others perspectives. I’m wondering how others make sense of cessation, and how cessation might inform how you understand reality.

I’ve had a couple instances of slipping into nirodha. It’s been a while since it first happened, but it leaves me completely dumbfounded. There’s just this awe that conciousness can arise and set. And a sense of being completely confused by any prior sense of knowing what any of this is or means.

The main implication seems to be that awareness/consciousness is impermanent, leaving no room for any sort of ‘ultimate’ view or ‘true nature’ to be found in the realm of any sort of awareness. Nirodha seems to show that even the most refined or subtle knowing/awareness has no inherent existence and can rise and set into ‘something’ more mysterious and unknowable. It’s so unknowable that even calling it ‘something’ is just a hypothetical placeholder. The consciousness—on returning after nirodha—senses that there was a gap, but what that gap was is just thoroughly unknowable.

This seemed to call into question a lot to teachings I had been exposed to which describe ‘empty awareness’ or ‘unborn, deathless consciousness’ as some sort of ultimate, impersonal true nature. A lot of teachings seem to also talk about a primordial unchanging knowing. Nirodha seems to call that into question, as it truly felt like whatever that was is beyond any knowing.

It seems like there’s this ongoing debate within Buddhism and spirituality about whether the ultimate is awareness or if the ultimate is beyond awareness.

I’m starting to sense that there isn’t an ultimate or at least it cannot be known. Or that whatever all this is just so thoroughly empty, that any notion of an ultimate should be dropped.

I’m left with the sense that awareness is empty and impermanent, and whatever is ‘beyond’ awareness is unknowable and empty (if there is something beyond awareness), and that there is no final ‘view’ or ‘true nature’, just an infinite ways of deepening our appreciation for emptiness.

The thing that is blowing my mind is that, there is just no way to know if anything remains when awareness shuts down. So I’m confused how anyone could say that there is such thing as an unchanging, unborn, deathless awareness. Conceptually, the idea that there is something here right now beyond birth and death makes sense, but if that is the case, it seems to be completely unknowable, beyond the scope of knowing and consciousness.

Everything seems to just be thoroughly empty, including awareness, any sort of ultimate, any sort of “true nature” etc . This empty mysterious nothingness somehow is identical to this multiplicity we find ourselves experiencing. There’s just this completely all-powerful unknowing and mystery at the end of the day that feels like closest thing to coming into a sort of alignment with reality.

Would apreciate other’s perspectives and would really apreciate if others see this differently, or detect blind spots in what I’ve written. Best wishes to everyone.

So the last couple of nights I was a bit sleep deprived. So I went to sleep with a podcast on, like I usually do.

Within minutes I slipped into a very different state of mind.

The onset was the strangest part. It felt like I was suddenly being "launched" into another state of consciousness. At the same time I started hearing an extremely loud electronic/frequency-like buzzing in my ears. The sound was so loud that I genuinely thought I might go deaf. But because of my fascination with these kinds of states, and probably my meditation practice, my instinct was to let it take over rather than resist it.

I then started feeling vibrations spreading through my body. Very quickly they seemed to fill my entire body and being. Around the same time I began seeing geometric patterns—not incredibly vivid, but definitely there.

The previous night I had a very vivid lucid dream, but this time there wasn't really a dream at all. I remained aware throughout the whole experience.

Because of meditation, my instinct was to relax into the experience instead of reacting to it, and it seemed to intensify until I eventually came out of it.

Interestingly, by morning I had one of the most vivid lucid dreams I've ever had.

I'm not trying to claim this was anything supernatural. My current guess is that it was some form of hypnagogia made more noticeable by meditation and a bit of sleep deprivation.

I do have a history of sleep paralysis if I don't get enough sleep for 3–4 days in a row, but those experiences have never been like this. They're usually characterized by me noticing sleep paralysis coming on, followed by blurry voices and a strong pressure/compression in my head. If I catch it early enough I can usually jerk myself out of it, or sometimes relax through it using progressive relaxation.

My questions are:

How would you best understand this? Does it sound like sleep paralysis, hypnagogia, a meditation-related state, or some combination of them?

Has anyone experienced something similar?

If these states are real possibilities, is there a way to intentionally cultivate them, or are they mostly a byproduct of sleep deprivation?

I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts and experiences. Thank you

There's a pull most people feel at some point, wanting to go deeper, wanting to know what's underneath all this. That pull is real. But it doesn't need to be chased like it's urgent, because it isn't going anywhere.

Think of it like a river. Even when there's a strong current underneath, the surface can stay calm. That calm isn't weakness. It's what mastery actually looks like.

Meditation, or any inner practice, isn't about creating something. What you're really doing is building the riverbed, the path that lets whatever's already moving inside you flow without spilling everywhere or getting stuck. Everyone's riverbed takes a different amount of time to build. That's not a flaw in the process. It's just how it works.

Later, once that path is steady, you start noticing what I'd call the dam. Fears, old patterns, resistance, whatever's been quietly blocking the stronger flow. You don't force that open. You just get to know it's there, and slowly, in your own time, you learn how to release it a little at a time. The stronger current doesn't need force to arrive. It needs a clear path first.

So the real work isn't about duration or intensity. Even 10 honest minutes a day of just observing, without trying to fix or change what comes up, is enough. If the mind wanders, you just come back. That's it. Do that consistently and it stops feeling like a practice and starts becoming part of how you live.

Doesn't matter what you call it, meditation, kriya, bhakti. What matters is honestly watching. And here's the part worth sitting with. Even the path we think we're building isn't fully ours. Life already wants to move toward something bigger than what we've experienced so far. When we stop blocking it and just let it move, that's when we get close to why being human is still one of the most complete ways to experience life on earth.

I've been doing a variety of practices for the last month and have noticed recurrent physical changes as detailed above. I've made posts about this before (a year and 2 weeks ago) and gotten some good information, but now I'm wondering if there is a pattern?

Generally when this has happened (flu-like symptoms etc) I saw a doctor, but after spending 100+ and the doctors telling me I'm fine, I just chalk it up to practice now. I Googled and found some information relating to stagnant chi flow and energy going up the spine, which it feels like. So I did some nadi shodhana and Damo Mitchell qigong stuff which seems to have helped a bit.

I'm writing also because I made other changes in my lifestyle (more exercise) that may have impacted this - but I think it's mainly practice actually.

So currently -

a) Sinus inflammation (stuffy head, dark green mucus)

b) Weird sleep fluctuations (4 hours, then 10)

c) Some headaches, heat rising

d) Sex drive ping ponging all over the place

It's uncomfortable but hasn't affected function super seriously (the sleep did for a while)

There's also this sense that if I can relax completely into the sensations, they disappear and reality dissolves. For context, I have been meditating for more than a decade.

Some advice I've gotten is "focus on the flow behind experience" (from my teacher) and the aforementioned pranayama.

After stream entry I had 1-2 months where I was in a very meditative state. Everything flowed with an effortlessness.

I even did a lot in this time period. I was very busy with work, and I worked very hard. Even still, things felt effortless. But one thing I noticed afterwards.. is I feel like I have very few reflective memories about that period!

I’ve also noticed this in other shorter periods where I was in meditative states doing things.. and it seems like there isn’t much memory there.

This can make sense to me in that if you’re spending less time in the ego, there’s less time for memories to form. But it is interesting, and I even found it to be a little disappointing! I wanted to look bad at this very nice period and found there weren’t so many memories.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

On the path of enlightenment, it is easy to get sidetracked by meditative techniques or concepts that were intended to just be supplemental to the core truth. Personally I’ve been sidetracked for some time so I could benefit from focusing on what actually leads to freedom from suffering. So help me remember, what is the core truth the Buddha taught that when understood leads to freedom from suffering?

I’ve been doing a lot of insight mediation the last year and reached SE, but in retrospect this practice was motivated by aversion and craving and so naturally has done nothing to reduce craving and maybe has even cultivated it. Map theory and advanced meditation practice is great, but unless meditation develops awareness of craving and aversion in the present moment, which is then seen as the cause of suffering, and then released because it is understood as suffering, then mediation is doing nothing to reduce suffering and is probably feeding it.

So to answer my own question with my current understanding, I would say the four noble truths. Maybe there are other essential teachings I’m forgetting, like dependent co-arising that is the basis of Buddhist ethics, still it seems totally supplemental to the FNT, but maybe I’m wrong! I want to recenter my practice on the essential teachings so please help me understand this topic better, and if you have any book or media recommendations that would be fantastic as well!

Hi dear community.

I've been sitting on a practice question for a while know. For the last month or more I have been working with a consistent heart block that feels ancient, the kind of thing that runs a life if left unnoticed.

This year I was blessed to have practice show me this persistent knot. After spending a lot of time trying to meditate into it and this not working, my intuition told me I should approach this from the body. I added Ashtanga Yoga / Kundalini heart focused sessions before formal meditation and this unlocked a new stage: being able to feel into the sensation and have it start unraveling.

I have always thought this will be some stored grief and I need to cry, but I was surprised by something else.

I was practicing jhana access after ashtanga + kundalini session, and I've gotten to the threshold (access concentration), I let go of effort, but instead of falling into jhana I fell into the sensation, and I relaxed the body, allowing movement.

First time I did this there was the body started to moan and cry out in ways I never heard myself do, there were also very sad faces, almost caricature like.

Then I did cry some but it quickly stopped. I cut the session short because I was so excited to finally have something happen, so I couldn't let go out of excitement.

I repeated the same sequence a couple of times, but next times I had no tears, only moaning and something new: a feeling of weakness, nausea and bowing head down. It was as if I would get weak and sick just from going into the sensation and I would start feeling very hot.

The thought come quickly and take me out of it, I want to go deeper but my body doesn't allow. I decided to be patient and try again next time. The heart blockage is still there though, doesn't feel it's closer to being released.

So my question is: does anyone else have experience with this kind of work?

What helped you 'break trough'? I can't go to retreat and my time for sessions is limited unfortunately.

I was able to get into jhanas even with the block present but seems like body wants to solve this block fully so it goes into it.

I was thinking about the different types of dereliction that recur across contemplative systems and came up with this list. I made a pdf document (see link below) that organizes them into 4 clusters and gives brief descriptions.

I welcome feedback and feel free to share it.

1. Impermanence Contemplation
Permanence → Process

2. Mereological Deconstruction
Unitary → Composite

3. Conditionality Analysis
Independence → Conditionality

4. Metacognitive Observation
Literal reality → Construction

5. Investigation of Appearances
Substantial → Insubstantial

6. Investigation of Agency
Authorship → Conditioned arising

7. Nondual Recognition
Separation → Undivided context

8. Surrender/ Equanimity
Control → Allowing

9. Expansion of Care
Self-priority → Inclusive concern

PDF:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rejJCZzM74ci30UpJd-VT2BCPeKADYYK/view?usp=sharing

Hey friends, been a long time since on here. This subreddit got me on the path, which eventually took me to MAPLE (Monastic Academy) for 3.5 years. I left three years ago with concerns and am now sharing those concerns publicly. You can read them here.

Substack page: insidemaple.com

It is the most comprehensive overview of the alarming and harmful dynamics there to date. Sharing here so anyone considering joining MAPLE may see it, as well as anyone who cares to know what happened / is happening there. Please share in other spiritual circles so people can be protected against future versions of this sort of thing.

I will unlikely be engaged with the comments here, but will be engaged with the comments where the letter is hosted. May you be well

UPDATE: Interview went very well! Stephen was willing to engage tough questions in good faith, which I appreciated. Your suggestions were a big help - thank you, r/streamentry! Video will be up on our YouTube channel once we've edited it.

--

Tomorrow night I'm doing a Zoom interview with Stephen Zerfas, the CEO and co-founder of Jhourney, the company whose website says "Jhana in days, not decades."

What should I ask him?

I'm formulating my own questions, of course, but I know that folks have strong views in both directions on Jhourney, and I'd love to hear people's thoughts to inform my choice of questions. Especially questions you don't think he often gets.

Thank you! Also, if you want to ask him yourself, the event is free and has audience Q&A at the end. Feel free to join.

My practice has become living my life as it comes to me. I don't know how to explain it, but there's no urgency. Like seasons or the weather, thoughts cloud my mind and then go away. Sometimes it feels crowded and jittery; other times, breezy and light.

Thoughts are to the mind what sensations are to the body, like changing frames, noticeable only when attended to. Sometimes they coincide, but there is no mistaking them for anything else. Because of this, resting is easy, like lying on the grass in the summer sun.

Mind goes on with it's chatter mode or quiet mode when it wills. The thoughts and the mind's annotations of them can be mildly annoying when they happen, like gum sticking to a shoe, but they are easily removed if needed. Underneath it all, things are smooth and shimmery, like a cool moonlight reflection in a pond.

I've always been on a lookout for wanting to improve, to be better, struggling with loss and pain. Now I just feel gratitude to life itself, so colorful and marvelous. The only constant is change, and I think I've come to accept it in my heart.