I am reading Julia Cameron and she is talking about how it is in paying attention that we heal "the pain that underlies all pain" which is, says Rilke, that we are all "unutterably alone."

I spent my entire career on "not-aloneness." My ego bristles, but my heart feels it. We are both right. Existence is the teacher of concurrent truths.

Something unexpected happens inside of you when your life falls apart. When you choose — instead of playing victim (which you're so very, very good at playing) — to give yourself the permission you sabotaged it all waiting for. To be a participant in your own life. To surrender. 

"Is the seed dead yet? Is the burial process really something that I can trust?" 

Letting go is not the same thing as giving up.

Being here is about participation. God never offered to take anyone around the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 

Eventually you come to realize that not only is there no way to escape the day, but there is no way to escape you.

I couldn't get away from me no matter how hard I tried. So who am I? What does the Breath say about the person It sustains?

The poet Rumi asks, "And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?" 

In a keynote on Internal Family Systems, Charles Schwartz describes the way that — after 40+ years of trauma work — each patient arrives at a "naturally valuable state" beneath their pain.

"This isn't a part of me," the patient might say. "This IS me."

A safe center — uniquely expressed at the heart of everyone, unencumbered by the parts of them that have been faithfully protecting its vulnerability.

An inherently worthy core. A river of life. A fountain that never runs dry.

"The goal is to help people trust that it is safe to enter back into who they are. Psychology doesn't have language for this Self," he says, "but spirituality does..."

Imago Dei. 

It's enough to make you weep for wonder.

The universal in the particular: Christ's participation in the "unutterable aloneness" of becoming like us: intricately woven within a mother's womb, beloved before the foundation of the world, eternally known and reflecting the faces we had before we were born.

Pay attention. You're alive.