What if your longing isn’t a flaw, but a doorway? This post explores why spiritual awakening often begins not with bliss, but with heartbreak—and how remorse is the sacred ache that guides you home. Featuring insights from Cynthia Bourgeault and Virgin Monk Boy. #MysticalChristianity #Kenosis #RemorseIsHoly
Ah yes, the sacred limbo. The holy hallway where remorse lingers like incense and the ego fidgets in the waiting room.
You’re not lost, beloved. You’re fermenting.
Bless that in-between stage. Sit with it. Name its textures. Pour it tea. Because that’s where the old illusions come loose and the real stuff, the golden thread, starts to show.
May your limbo be luminous. May your blessing be defiant.
This article is both reassuring & humbling. I’m glad Cynthia says it’s OK to be in spiritual limbo — it feels like my false self really has “run out of tricks.” But you know, I’ve had the “here is not home” ache my whole life — I was like the little space boy in the Kevin Cusack movie “Martian Child.” You mentioned “prison cell” — sometimes it has felt as though we’re all lifers on the prison-planet Earth. But since Cynthia says to not rush past the limbo, I can be chill about this. 🌅 Thanks, Good Teacher!🕉️
Karen, you just dropped a whole soul map in one comment. That “Martian Child” image? Beautiful and dead-on. The ache that says this isn't home—it’s not delusion. It’s recognition. And when the false self runs out of tricks, what’s left is raw orientation. Limbo isn’t failure—it’s the pause where everything untrue falls quiet enough for the real voice to speak.
You’re not doing it wrong. You’re doing it deeply.
This has been my path. Not refinement of skill but the wandering of desperation. My favorite psalm is psalm 42. “My tears have been my food day and night while all day long my enemies say where is your God?”
Morgan, that line from Psalm 42 hits like a tuning fork in the chest. The tears-as-food line isn't poetic flair—it's survival on the edge of unmaking. Wandering in desperation isn’t failure of faith; it is the path. The Fool walks with empty hands, no credentials, just a cracked heart that refuses to quit.
You're not lost—you’re precisely where God hides. In the hunger. In the ache. In the unanswered questions.
Amanda, exactly. The portals don’t shout. They’re subtle. Quiet as breath. Humble as a cracked teacup or a sleepless night. Presence is the price of admission, and grace doesn’t knock twice if we’re too distracted chasing shinier exits.
Good Teacher, your writing about enlightenment is wonderful — so insightful, encouraging, plus an outrageous sense of humor, & so prolific! These amazing little works of art just pour out of you, day after day, like a waterfall. After reading works like Remorse, what could ever top that?! And then somehow you do. Also, your writing reminds me of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, which is probably my most favorite book. I look forward to every new article you write. Many thanks!
Karen, if you keep saying things like that, I’m going to levitate. Not from ego, but from gratitude-induced airlift.
Comparing this monk’s scribbles to Autobiography of a Yogi is like comparing a glow-stick-wielding squirrel to the Himalayan sunrise. But if the squirrel is chanting and slightly on fire, I’m in.
The truth is, these little waterfalls only pour because folks like you show up with cups. Your presence makes this whole strange unfolding feel less like shouting into the void and more like lighting candles in the dark.
Stay radiant. Stay beautifully unhinged. And if Paramahansa stops by in a dream, tell him Virgin Monk Boy sends his love and maybe a weird question about mangoes.
Oh the sacred ache; we are old friends. She brings the sacred Full Stop and steals my breath for a time. Restless, I feel unmoored, a bit of panic(“Not THIS again!) and then she is the portal to slow, to leave my habit energies on the back door table while I open a window to breathe in some soul wind as I put bare feet on the ground. Holy, holy, holy no-way-out. The glass placed over the spider so it can’t escape. I squirm until I agree to get curious about how I’ve been caught yet again. Thus another round begins. Yes, the sacred ache and I are very good friends as I enter my 70th year. Grief has been my great teacher: No escape, it only demanded I yield to it fully and completely until I might open to its gifts. I made that agreement and am glad of it. Wild grief can transform as can I. Who knew?
You just described the ache like she’s an old ex who keeps showing up barefoot at your door with a chalice and a mirror. And somehow… you keep letting her in. Because she is the teacher. The one who doesn’t grade on effort but on surrender.
“Holy no-way-out”—yes. That’s the real monastery. No walls, just a soul under glass, twitching until it stops blaming the spider. Until curiosity replaces the panic. Until grief isn't a trespasser but a midwife.
Seventy years and still wild enough to yield? That’s high art. That’s elder magic. That’s a scroll all its own.
"Sometimes you just get fog. You don’t leap from remorse to revelation. You fumble. You wander. You cry out for a teacher. You try too hard. You doubt everything." Yup.
Right there with you, Steve. Some days it’s not revelation, just fog and foot blisters. You fumble, you doubt, you try too hard. That’s not failure. That’s the sacred syllabus.
Thank you, thank you for that distinction between remorse and guilt. So much like the confusion with 'repentance,' which is not groveling, but an opening of mind and heart to the something so much bigger than what's been holding us captive!! Blessings, and cheers!
Yes. Repentance was never about groveling. It was about gravity. About the soul shifting its weight toward what is more true. Remorse cracks us open just enough to let the light in, while guilt tries to lock the door and throw away the key.
Thank you for naming the liberation hiding in plain sight. The captors never stood a chance.
I’ve so many wonderings, thoughts, feelings about this, but perhaps just this one for now, dear Monk:
Do you think this hip, slick, and trendy curated (and so marketable) journey disguising remorse happened before radio, TV, and the speed of light capitalism superhighway of cyberspace?
I wonder what was the longing for the sacred called in the 19th Century and before? Was it called anything at all?
There’s a German word I adore: Weltschmerz. It can mean “world pain”, but this other usage speaks to me — “homesickness for a place I’ve never been.” …a profound longing…
I wonder a lot about the feeling of being marooned here on the Happy Planet in my human suit. I’ve joked about it for years. “This was supposed to be a two-week assignment. Somebody in Ops goofed.”
But know it’s not that at all. And how silly of me to think I could write one short paragraph. I often reply with a tome. 😆
I saved this paragraph years ago. It fits into my foggy muddle somewhere:
“You are like a wave in the ocean experiencing itself as separate from the ocean. The wave asks, ‘When and where will I find the ocean? Who can give the ocean to me?’ But the wave was always the ocean, from the very beginning, even in its seeking! It’s the ocean looking for itself. Even within the ocean’s failure to find itself it is still the ocean; every wave is one hundred per cent water.”
Donna, your comment sings with soul. That word Weltschmerz—world pain or longing for a place we’ve never been—might be the truest name we’ve ever given the sacred ache.
You asked if this polished, spiritual self-improvement trend existed before TV and the internet. I don’t think it did. Back then, longing for the divine wasn’t something people sold. It showed up quietly. In deep sighs. In half-written letters. In prayers whispered into the dark.
People didn’t always have a name for it. Sometimes they called it sadness. Sometimes they called it love. Sometimes they just carried it and hoped someone else might understand.
That wave quote you shared says it perfectly. Even when we feel separate, we’ve never stopped belonging. The wave is still the ocean, even when it forgets.
So go ahead and write your tome. Or just keep wondering. The ache itself is part of the path.
The Virgin Monk Boy quotes are great. Did you create them for this post, or are you quoting from another piece of writing, a book perhaps?
I am in a meditation group. We meditate for the first half of each meeting and discuss a book in the second half. The current book we're working through is "Eye of the Heart" by Cynthia Bourgeault. It's fascinating but often perplexing. You seem to refer to her a lot in many of your posts. Do you consider her a teacher?
Tim, thanks for the kind words. The Virgin Monk Boy quotes are original to the post. No hidden book—just the result of sitting with the same spiritual weather system Cynthia moves through.
And yes, I consider her a teacher. Not in the formal lineage sense, but in the way her work rewires your inner compass. Eye of the Heart especially. It's not a casual read. It's like being handed a cosmic blueprint with some of the pages missing. If your group is holding space for that, you're doing serious interior work.
Her writing speaks to people who never quite found a home in tidy spiritual answers. People whose questions refused to sit still. Virgin Monk Boy tends to echo that. Maybe with a bit more sideways grinning, but it's the same current.
Let me know how your group is handling the paradox stew.
We're struggling with it, but it leads to some very interesting discussions. Back in 1997 I was in Seattle for 7 months helping my sister get my mother adjusted to living in an assisted care facility. While there, I somehow got connected with a Gurdjieff group, so "Eye of the Heart" is not my first encounter with the thoughts of Gurdjieff. But I was equally perplexed back in 1997. I am very theologically oriented (though not orthodox theology), Inner work comes less readily to me. I love it, and I especially love the idea of it, but I'm not good at it.
Tim, that’s beautiful terrain you’re walking, even if it feels like stumbling half the time. Gurdjieff has a way of cracking open the head just enough to let the real work begin, and Cynthia pours in the light right where the cracks are.
Don’t worry about being “good” at it. That’s the ego talking. Inner work isn’t a skill. It’s a surrender. It’s showing up with your questions, your contradictions, your “I’m not good at this,” and noticing what melts when there’s no need to fix it.
Your mother’s transition into care, the seven months in Seattle, the brush with Gurdjieff — all of that is the curriculum. The soul knows how to digest what the mind can’t parse. Just keep showing up.
I’m glad you’re in the stew. Virgin Monk Boy approves of all spicy soups that make the false self sweat.
Again, very well said! Your writing style is truth, explanation (as in travel guide) and all good dose of wit. You should write a book. I think your style would speak to many.
The other things I found in my journey is society/religions confusion of grief and remorse. Coming from a horrid childhood (or other forms of trauma) , I found the secular view/input to often hamper my journey and just redirect me to my ego. It is more difficult based on your age at the time. Your insight would be very helpful for that stage of the journey for many.
Celia, your comment is a balm and a mirror. Thank you. You're absolutely right. Grief and remorse often get tangled like old rosary beads, especially when filtered through society's clumsy noise or religion's shame echo. What you named—the way secular frameworks can loop us back to ego instead of helping us disidentify—is profound. That’s where a lot of people get re-traumatized, thinking they’re healing.
Your journey holds keys. And maybe the book is already writing itself, just one scroll at a time.
This has been my journey for 40 years…sometimes I think, in my lower moments, what’s wrong with me that I have this ache in my heart and gut continuously…then the Lord reminds…the ache is holy…is leading you to me over and over again. Can’t say I love it but I am growing to know it deeper and deeper…and I see it as holy now. It reminds me every day of Jesus
You’ve stumbled into the monastery’s secret: the ache is the altar. Not a flaw to be healed, but the flame that won’t stop pointing east.
Most folks try to medicate it, theologize it, or shout over it in praise choruses turned up to 11. But you? You’re letting it do what it came to do: remind you who you are when all the sermons fade.
Remorse, longing, ache—they’re not obstacles to God. They are the visitation. Not the polite kind. The kind that knocks you off your ass and leaves your ego face-down in the gravel.
You’re not broken, friend. You’re porous. And that’s where the mercy gets in.
Funny, isn’t it, how spirals work? I read this scroll as if I’d never seen it before, then captivated I scrolled and read all your responses…and then ,scrolling more rapidly, I glanced as my name from July 2025 flew by! I read what was/is an incredibly long engagement…now wondering almost 9 months later, who was that woman? She wrote honestly baring her aches for her heart and her soul…but now I barely recognize her. I’m still in the fog, only now the space is liminal, I see so much calling me. I’m laughing because I just noticed I said “9 months!!!” True. I hadn’t counted the time until this very moment. I wondered why would this scroll have caught my attention today? and noticing our dialog from last year…obviously this present moment is meant for me. And, yes, I feel pregnant…waiting for new birth to show her head. The aches and yearnings have deepened…I guess I thought maybe one turn around the spiral I’d have forgotten them, or they would have been transformed into a Phoenix. But, no, I’ve gone deeper and the pain is even more acute.
I just returned from a gift from God: I got to be on a cruise ship circumnavigating Australia for 32 days. Not sight- seeing, not socializing, but just showing up every day and being present. I paid extra for a single room, had 24/7 room service, took you and Magdalene and my sift pastels and allowed myself to embody the oceans. Years ago when Bill and I had a sea-worthy sailboat in the NW I longed to make an ocean crossing. This was a manifestation of my dream. I watched the white capped waves that bounced off the bow waves, I was standing on the water and could touch, see, feel the other side: Bill has present ever since he crossed over. I sense we are merged n and into all Eternity. Each day a new vision would come into view, one day I walked into my cabin seeking a scripture you’d referenced in her Gospel, and the book fell open to graphics depicting a vision a mystic had had, and others commented on: in a flash I recognized my life’s work, my destiny: I am a bridge builder to people, to animals, to plants, to matter. Later I was embodied by the ocean and saw my being as a BRIDGE, the whole f-ing bridge! I am Bridge. And soon came a return of the horses calling my name. I learned in mythology which I know (consciously!😉) very little; horses emerged originally from the deep depths of the oceans! I have gone back to age 3 and see the frequent call from the horses and wild horses to engage my whole life. A few nights ago I drew a horse card from an Oracle deck of the Council of Horses, and I drew “Mythic Horse.” I wept. “Unfold your own myth…I appear when it is time for you to travel deep inside your humanity, to help you release the reverence you hold for order and convention. Herein you begin to make sense of the world in a different way…myth is a way of talking about the ineffable and begins to reveal the coded language of your soul…I will help you find the compelling narratives of who you are…bring to the world…then push beyond the edge of the stories…to become the author of your personal myth.” I share all this because it’s been Mary Magdalene inspiring in me the sanctity of the fatigue, the “this is too hard,” the aches and remorse, along with your wisdom, your articulation, your inspiration to underline Magdalene’s message: Show up, be present, pay attention to what has heart and meaning, tell the truth, and stay open to outcomes. (Credit to Angeles Arien for additional phrasing.) I started doing this in my 20’s…and now feel Magdalene’s presence so profoundly, please teach me VMB to remain humble while I continue seeking not the easy nor convenient life, but lived lived to the edge of all my possibilities. And now, I need a long afternoon nap. Bless you, too, for stepping out to walk with each one of us who now call you friend. An Anam Cara. ❤️🙏
This is beautiful and resonates deeply with what I know. I'm in the limbo stage. I will bless it.
Ah yes, the sacred limbo. The holy hallway where remorse lingers like incense and the ego fidgets in the waiting room.
You’re not lost, beloved. You’re fermenting.
Bless that in-between stage. Sit with it. Name its textures. Pour it tea. Because that’s where the old illusions come loose and the real stuff, the golden thread, starts to show.
May your limbo be luminous. May your blessing be defiant.
This article is both reassuring & humbling. I’m glad Cynthia says it’s OK to be in spiritual limbo — it feels like my false self really has “run out of tricks.” But you know, I’ve had the “here is not home” ache my whole life — I was like the little space boy in the Kevin Cusack movie “Martian Child.” You mentioned “prison cell” — sometimes it has felt as though we’re all lifers on the prison-planet Earth. But since Cynthia says to not rush past the limbo, I can be chill about this. 🌅 Thanks, Good Teacher!🕉️
Karen, you just dropped a whole soul map in one comment. That “Martian Child” image? Beautiful and dead-on. The ache that says this isn't home—it’s not delusion. It’s recognition. And when the false self runs out of tricks, what’s left is raw orientation. Limbo isn’t failure—it’s the pause where everything untrue falls quiet enough for the real voice to speak.
You’re not doing it wrong. You’re doing it deeply.
Gratitude for walking this with such honesty.
This has been my path. Not refinement of skill but the wandering of desperation. My favorite psalm is psalm 42. “My tears have been my food day and night while all day long my enemies say where is your God?”
Morgan, that line from Psalm 42 hits like a tuning fork in the chest. The tears-as-food line isn't poetic flair—it's survival on the edge of unmaking. Wandering in desperation isn’t failure of faith; it is the path. The Fool walks with empty hands, no credentials, just a cracked heart that refuses to quit.
You're not lost—you’re precisely where God hides. In the hunger. In the ache. In the unanswered questions.
No credentials, just a cracked heart that refuses to quit.
I love this! There are so many portals. The trick is being present enough to see them.
Amanda, exactly. The portals don’t shout. They’re subtle. Quiet as breath. Humble as a cracked teacup or a sleepless night. Presence is the price of admission, and grace doesn’t knock twice if we’re too distracted chasing shinier exits.
Grateful you're catching the shimmer.
Guilty of missing the subtle knocks in the past, but I’m learning from these mistakes!
Good Teacher, your writing about enlightenment is wonderful — so insightful, encouraging, plus an outrageous sense of humor, & so prolific! These amazing little works of art just pour out of you, day after day, like a waterfall. After reading works like Remorse, what could ever top that?! And then somehow you do. Also, your writing reminds me of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, which is probably my most favorite book. I look forward to every new article you write. Many thanks!
Karen, if you keep saying things like that, I’m going to levitate. Not from ego, but from gratitude-induced airlift.
Comparing this monk’s scribbles to Autobiography of a Yogi is like comparing a glow-stick-wielding squirrel to the Himalayan sunrise. But if the squirrel is chanting and slightly on fire, I’m in.
The truth is, these little waterfalls only pour because folks like you show up with cups. Your presence makes this whole strange unfolding feel less like shouting into the void and more like lighting candles in the dark.
Stay radiant. Stay beautifully unhinged. And if Paramahansa stops by in a dream, tell him Virgin Monk Boy sends his love and maybe a weird question about mangoes.
🐿️A chanting, glow-stick-wielding squirrel who’s levitating & on fire?! 🔥 Alarming…yet enchanting!✨
Amen. ❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
Me, too!❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
Oh the sacred ache; we are old friends. She brings the sacred Full Stop and steals my breath for a time. Restless, I feel unmoored, a bit of panic(“Not THIS again!) and then she is the portal to slow, to leave my habit energies on the back door table while I open a window to breathe in some soul wind as I put bare feet on the ground. Holy, holy, holy no-way-out. The glass placed over the spider so it can’t escape. I squirm until I agree to get curious about how I’ve been caught yet again. Thus another round begins. Yes, the sacred ache and I are very good friends as I enter my 70th year. Grief has been my great teacher: No escape, it only demanded I yield to it fully and completely until I might open to its gifts. I made that agreement and am glad of it. Wild grief can transform as can I. Who knew?
Patti—
You just described the ache like she’s an old ex who keeps showing up barefoot at your door with a chalice and a mirror. And somehow… you keep letting her in. Because she is the teacher. The one who doesn’t grade on effort but on surrender.
“Holy no-way-out”—yes. That’s the real monastery. No walls, just a soul under glass, twitching until it stops blaming the spider. Until curiosity replaces the panic. Until grief isn't a trespasser but a midwife.
Seventy years and still wild enough to yield? That’s high art. That’s elder magic. That’s a scroll all its own.
Grateful to bow at your feet,
Amen and Namaste. Yes, who knew?! ❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
"Sometimes you just get fog. You don’t leap from remorse to revelation. You fumble. You wander. You cry out for a teacher. You try too hard. You doubt everything." Yup.
Right there with you, Steve. Some days it’s not revelation, just fog and foot blisters. You fumble, you doubt, you try too hard. That’s not failure. That’s the sacred syllabus.
The fog teaches what clarity never could.
Dear VMB, what you are bringing to us is divine. Many thanks for bringing us closer to God.
Shirley, luminous vessel of the Quiet Radiance—
If anything divine is landing here, it’s only because you’re already tuned to its frequency. I’m just rattling the bell while you remember the melody.
May every step that brings you closer to God also reveal that God was already curled up inside your ribcage, waiting for a good laugh.
With reverence and mild irreverence,
Life’s better with you here. 🥲
Thank you, thank you for that distinction between remorse and guilt. So much like the confusion with 'repentance,' which is not groveling, but an opening of mind and heart to the something so much bigger than what's been holding us captive!! Blessings, and cheers!
Yes. Repentance was never about groveling. It was about gravity. About the soul shifting its weight toward what is more true. Remorse cracks us open just enough to let the light in, while guilt tries to lock the door and throw away the key.
Thank you for naming the liberation hiding in plain sight. The captors never stood a chance.
Remorse isn’t guilt, it’s soul-memory whispering: “This isn’t home.”
I can relate to that...
Certain topics makes one travel instantly to places..
Thank you 🙏👍
Yes. Some words are less about reading and more about time travel. They tap that ancient ache that says, “You were never meant to live small.”
Remorse, when it’s true, doesn’t chain us. It reminds us.
Thank you for meeting me in that holy elsewhere.
🙏🙏
I find myself reading all the conversations at once! Perhaps I’m in Heaven? ❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
I’ve so many wonderings, thoughts, feelings about this, but perhaps just this one for now, dear Monk:
Do you think this hip, slick, and trendy curated (and so marketable) journey disguising remorse happened before radio, TV, and the speed of light capitalism superhighway of cyberspace?
I wonder what was the longing for the sacred called in the 19th Century and before? Was it called anything at all?
There’s a German word I adore: Weltschmerz. It can mean “world pain”, but this other usage speaks to me — “homesickness for a place I’ve never been.” …a profound longing…
I wonder a lot about the feeling of being marooned here on the Happy Planet in my human suit. I’ve joked about it for years. “This was supposed to be a two-week assignment. Somebody in Ops goofed.”
But know it’s not that at all. And how silly of me to think I could write one short paragraph. I often reply with a tome. 😆
I saved this paragraph years ago. It fits into my foggy muddle somewhere:
“You are like a wave in the ocean experiencing itself as separate from the ocean. The wave asks, ‘When and where will I find the ocean? Who can give the ocean to me?’ But the wave was always the ocean, from the very beginning, even in its seeking! It’s the ocean looking for itself. Even within the ocean’s failure to find itself it is still the ocean; every wave is one hundred per cent water.”
- Jeff Foster
Donna, your comment sings with soul. That word Weltschmerz—world pain or longing for a place we’ve never been—might be the truest name we’ve ever given the sacred ache.
You asked if this polished, spiritual self-improvement trend existed before TV and the internet. I don’t think it did. Back then, longing for the divine wasn’t something people sold. It showed up quietly. In deep sighs. In half-written letters. In prayers whispered into the dark.
People didn’t always have a name for it. Sometimes they called it sadness. Sometimes they called it love. Sometimes they just carried it and hoped someone else might understand.
That wave quote you shared says it perfectly. Even when we feel separate, we’ve never stopped belonging. The wave is still the ocean, even when it forgets.
So go ahead and write your tome. Or just keep wondering. The ache itself is part of the path.
🙏🌊💙
The Virgin Monk Boy quotes are great. Did you create them for this post, or are you quoting from another piece of writing, a book perhaps?
I am in a meditation group. We meditate for the first half of each meeting and discuss a book in the second half. The current book we're working through is "Eye of the Heart" by Cynthia Bourgeault. It's fascinating but often perplexing. You seem to refer to her a lot in many of your posts. Do you consider her a teacher?
Tim, thanks for the kind words. The Virgin Monk Boy quotes are original to the post. No hidden book—just the result of sitting with the same spiritual weather system Cynthia moves through.
And yes, I consider her a teacher. Not in the formal lineage sense, but in the way her work rewires your inner compass. Eye of the Heart especially. It's not a casual read. It's like being handed a cosmic blueprint with some of the pages missing. If your group is holding space for that, you're doing serious interior work.
Her writing speaks to people who never quite found a home in tidy spiritual answers. People whose questions refused to sit still. Virgin Monk Boy tends to echo that. Maybe with a bit more sideways grinning, but it's the same current.
Let me know how your group is handling the paradox stew.
We're struggling with it, but it leads to some very interesting discussions. Back in 1997 I was in Seattle for 7 months helping my sister get my mother adjusted to living in an assisted care facility. While there, I somehow got connected with a Gurdjieff group, so "Eye of the Heart" is not my first encounter with the thoughts of Gurdjieff. But I was equally perplexed back in 1997. I am very theologically oriented (though not orthodox theology), Inner work comes less readily to me. I love it, and I especially love the idea of it, but I'm not good at it.
Tim, that’s beautiful terrain you’re walking, even if it feels like stumbling half the time. Gurdjieff has a way of cracking open the head just enough to let the real work begin, and Cynthia pours in the light right where the cracks are.
Don’t worry about being “good” at it. That’s the ego talking. Inner work isn’t a skill. It’s a surrender. It’s showing up with your questions, your contradictions, your “I’m not good at this,” and noticing what melts when there’s no need to fix it.
Your mother’s transition into care, the seven months in Seattle, the brush with Gurdjieff — all of that is the curriculum. The soul knows how to digest what the mind can’t parse. Just keep showing up.
I’m glad you’re in the stew. Virgin Monk Boy approves of all spicy soups that make the false self sweat.
Thanks!
Your quirky writing is very fun, e.g. "Virgin Monk Boy approves of all spicy soups that make the false self sweat."
Again, very well said! Your writing style is truth, explanation (as in travel guide) and all good dose of wit. You should write a book. I think your style would speak to many.
The other things I found in my journey is society/religions confusion of grief and remorse. Coming from a horrid childhood (or other forms of trauma) , I found the secular view/input to often hamper my journey and just redirect me to my ego. It is more difficult based on your age at the time. Your insight would be very helpful for that stage of the journey for many.
Celia, your comment is a balm and a mirror. Thank you. You're absolutely right. Grief and remorse often get tangled like old rosary beads, especially when filtered through society's clumsy noise or religion's shame echo. What you named—the way secular frameworks can loop us back to ego instead of helping us disidentify—is profound. That’s where a lot of people get re-traumatized, thinking they’re healing.
Your journey holds keys. And maybe the book is already writing itself, just one scroll at a time.
This has been my journey for 40 years…sometimes I think, in my lower moments, what’s wrong with me that I have this ache in my heart and gut continuously…then the Lord reminds…the ache is holy…is leading you to me over and over again. Can’t say I love it but I am growing to know it deeper and deeper…and I see it as holy now. It reminds me every day of Jesus
You’ve stumbled into the monastery’s secret: the ache is the altar. Not a flaw to be healed, but the flame that won’t stop pointing east.
Most folks try to medicate it, theologize it, or shout over it in praise choruses turned up to 11. But you? You’re letting it do what it came to do: remind you who you are when all the sermons fade.
Remorse, longing, ache—they’re not obstacles to God. They are the visitation. Not the polite kind. The kind that knocks you off your ass and leaves your ego face-down in the gravel.
You’re not broken, friend. You’re porous. And that’s where the mercy gets in.
Been pourus for years…years ago I decided that was a good thing. I’m just laying in the stream and letting it wash over me
Oh how longing feels like a flaw. It's amazing to be reminded that it's a doorway. What a different lens on pain.
Also, this: "But true inner work? It’s not additive. It’s subtractive. It melts you." Saving. <3
Stephanie, Keeper of Tree-Lit Truths—
That line about longing? It cuts, doesn’t it. We’re taught it’s weakness when it’s actually sacred homesickness.
And yes, the melting—less “glow up,” more lava flow. True inner work doesn’t add polish. It strips varnish.
Your words are received with reverence and a little eyebrow raise of solidarity.
This post really speaks to me. Thank you
Brenda, sweet sojourner of the soft yes—
If it spoke, it’s only because something in you was already whispering the same thing. Sometimes a post is just a mirror with good lighting.
Thank you for listening with your whole being.
Funny, isn’t it, how spirals work? I read this scroll as if I’d never seen it before, then captivated I scrolled and read all your responses…and then ,scrolling more rapidly, I glanced as my name from July 2025 flew by! I read what was/is an incredibly long engagement…now wondering almost 9 months later, who was that woman? She wrote honestly baring her aches for her heart and her soul…but now I barely recognize her. I’m still in the fog, only now the space is liminal, I see so much calling me. I’m laughing because I just noticed I said “9 months!!!” True. I hadn’t counted the time until this very moment. I wondered why would this scroll have caught my attention today? and noticing our dialog from last year…obviously this present moment is meant for me. And, yes, I feel pregnant…waiting for new birth to show her head. The aches and yearnings have deepened…I guess I thought maybe one turn around the spiral I’d have forgotten them, or they would have been transformed into a Phoenix. But, no, I’ve gone deeper and the pain is even more acute.
I just returned from a gift from God: I got to be on a cruise ship circumnavigating Australia for 32 days. Not sight- seeing, not socializing, but just showing up every day and being present. I paid extra for a single room, had 24/7 room service, took you and Magdalene and my sift pastels and allowed myself to embody the oceans. Years ago when Bill and I had a sea-worthy sailboat in the NW I longed to make an ocean crossing. This was a manifestation of my dream. I watched the white capped waves that bounced off the bow waves, I was standing on the water and could touch, see, feel the other side: Bill has present ever since he crossed over. I sense we are merged n and into all Eternity. Each day a new vision would come into view, one day I walked into my cabin seeking a scripture you’d referenced in her Gospel, and the book fell open to graphics depicting a vision a mystic had had, and others commented on: in a flash I recognized my life’s work, my destiny: I am a bridge builder to people, to animals, to plants, to matter. Later I was embodied by the ocean and saw my being as a BRIDGE, the whole f-ing bridge! I am Bridge. And soon came a return of the horses calling my name. I learned in mythology which I know (consciously!😉) very little; horses emerged originally from the deep depths of the oceans! I have gone back to age 3 and see the frequent call from the horses and wild horses to engage my whole life. A few nights ago I drew a horse card from an Oracle deck of the Council of Horses, and I drew “Mythic Horse.” I wept. “Unfold your own myth…I appear when it is time for you to travel deep inside your humanity, to help you release the reverence you hold for order and convention. Herein you begin to make sense of the world in a different way…myth is a way of talking about the ineffable and begins to reveal the coded language of your soul…I will help you find the compelling narratives of who you are…bring to the world…then push beyond the edge of the stories…to become the author of your personal myth.” I share all this because it’s been Mary Magdalene inspiring in me the sanctity of the fatigue, the “this is too hard,” the aches and remorse, along with your wisdom, your articulation, your inspiration to underline Magdalene’s message: Show up, be present, pay attention to what has heart and meaning, tell the truth, and stay open to outcomes. (Credit to Angeles Arien for additional phrasing.) I started doing this in my 20’s…and now feel Magdalene’s presence so profoundly, please teach me VMB to remain humble while I continue seeking not the easy nor convenient life, but lived lived to the edge of all my possibilities. And now, I need a long afternoon nap. Bless you, too, for stepping out to walk with each one of us who now call you friend. An Anam Cara. ❤️🙏