Hi Everyone 👋 I wrote this poem for a dear friend who has been fighting with addiction and going through rehab. It's a message from her soul... and a response from her own heartfelt poem, which I won't share here, but maybe she will decide to share it with you, as it is so powerful, written from her heart and bearing her soul to the demons she's been so courageous in fighting ❤️ I keep reading the part where you say I refuse to give up fighting and I think that’s the whole thing right there not the falling but the getting back up again and again until your hands are raw until your head is quiet for one breath then another I don’t know that fight the way you do but I know you before the drugs inside the drugs now in the hard middle of it and you’re still here still writing it down still saying I refuse that’s not a person who lost that’s a person who’s still in the ring bleeding but swinging your son won’t remember the math of how many days he’ll remember you came back he’ll remember you kept trying and that’s the love that’s the whole love so keep refusing keep writing the ugly truth keep showing up to the page and the meeting and the next morning and the next I’m here not to fix it just to sit beside you in the wreckage and say I see you fighting and I’m not going anywhere With Love from your Soul ❤️

The activity of this ancient oak has been translated to sound. It is beyond soothing. I've posted the sound of a very different tree in my community. But this one seems to me to belong here. I know there are tree people here. There are beautiful messages printed on the video as it progresses. Perhaps you'll choose to watch it the first time and then meditate with it. Or vice versa. Mother nature is perfect and can do no wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlWINFfZf6Y

Hi Everyone 👋 Ummm....🤔 You know what's funny? We talk a lot about loving-kindness toward others, but here's the part nobody admits.... Sometimes I don't want to be kind to myself. Sometimes the voice in my head says "you should be doing better" and part of me agrees with it. Like being hard on myself is the only thing keeping me from falling apart. And when someone says "just be compassionate with yourself"....honestly? That makes me want to roll my eyes and make me want to say (...k o..) Because it sounds nice, but it doesn't feel true to how I actually operate and live my life. So here's what I'm wondering today… What if loving kindness isn't about being soft and sweet? What if it's actually fierce? What if real compassion looks like... "I see you messing up again, and I'm not leaving. Deal with it." Not indulgent. Not fake-positive....... Just… staying 😊 Because the people I've actually learned from, the ones whose presence changed me, they didn't give me easy answers. They didn't walk away when I was being ...just.. ,me! So here's my messy question for you... Is there anyone in your life, including yourself, that you've stayed with, even when they weren't being lovable? Not because you had to. Because you chose to. I'd love to hear about that. The real version...... Not the Instagram version 🤣 With Love ❤️ Always Mark

From a mystic's perspective, it doesn't serve anyone, least of all ourselves, to cling to the riverbanks (and to our beliefs about how things should be, and to the need to be right). Allowing the current to take us to a new place is easier, less fatiguing, and more elevating and freeing. What moments in your life would you like to share when you were either clinging to the riverbank or when you were releasing your grip? For me, what's coming forward, to my surprise, is something out of the box. I'm feeling I have been clinging to my old identity and to playing small. And only recently began to release that. I'd love to know your story if you'd like to share it.

In a recent interview, Braden, who often seems to be a walking encyclopedia, said that when he is asked "How do you remember everything--you present without notes," he says "It's about becoming empty." It reminded me of the story of the two monks that was posted as a birthday gift for Mark. One monk was empty. The other was definitely not empty.