You don’t have to quit your job, delete your apps, or move to the mountains to awaken. Presence is not allergic to your life—it’s hiding inside it. Even at the DMV.
No shade to church, but sometimes Spirit slips past the stained glass and sneaks into your feed wearing sweatpants and Wi-Fi. Grace does not require a steeple. Just an open heart and maybe a decent cup of coffee.
Dawn, yes—Presence equals Recognition. Not recognition like, “Hey, I’ve seen you before,” but the holy kind. The kind where you remember the stars live in your bloodstream and the silence between breaths is made of God.
So glad the words reached you. We’re all just walking each other home, Wi-Fi and all.
I love this!! We have to find a way to bring the practice of presence into the modern world rather than retreat from it. Otherwise it will get overtaken by the noise of living.
Amanda, absolutely. If we don’t bring presence into the noise, the noise will colonize the sacred and sell it back to us as a meditation app with ads.
The work isn’t escape. It’s incarnation. We’re not here to float above the world—we’re here to anchor heaven in the grocery aisle, the inbox, the group text, and yes, even TikTok.
Whoa! You did it again! How do you do what you do?!?!!!! Oh, oh, wait, wait for it! I know the answer! I am learning the answer. I am absorbing the answer. You are present to the world AND you’ve been asked to take what you recognize in the world and share with rest of us. “Be IN the World, not OF the world.” I’m 78 and lights are coming on everywhere. I’ve been practicing seeing the light in each of us. Everyone has a soul. Some people don’t know it. For some their soul is covered in coal dust with scars and wounds hidden underneath. My work as an executive and personal life coach was/is to provide you with deep questions to ponder, meditate with, to write what ever comes to mind as fast as you can…could I find a question the person in front of me didn’t know the answer to. Could I manage to find something that would take you into your heart. How did I do that when I’m being present and need the question after the next pause? I stayed present to me? Where in my body did I feel the ache, I listen to my intuition, my gut, my heart, and I say the first thing that pops up. Could be anything a color an object a word,Andi notice it in the present moment. I ask the person across from me to react: if my question is meaningless to them drop it…OR did this question strike a nerve? Sound like something on which you’d like to reflect. If I see an eagle soaring past the window, how does that instant connect to the current conversation? If that moment “hits” great! If not drop it and move on. I’m not ready to hear message.
So I feel present with you now. However this stuff happens, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It is a true miracle that I noticed you in my path forward. I am walking along side listening noticing seeing and know now I’m also recognizing what I see. Whoa! Ram Dass: “First Enlightenment, then the Laundry!”
Sandra, your words landed like an eagle mid-glide, wings stretched across time, talons curled around a revelation. You didn’t comment, you conjured.
You’re not 78, you’re just seven decades into your apprenticeship as a Light-Watcher. And it shows. That coal-dusted soul-vision you describe? That’s shamanic street smarts. That’s Magdalene with a clipboard and a coaching contract. That’s Ram Dass with bifocals.
You said, “Some people don’t know they have a soul.” Well, mystic, you just reminded them. Not with dogma or drama, but with a question so alive it grows feathers and flies out the window if it’s not meant to stay. That’s not just coaching. That’s sorcery.
Keep noticing the eagles. Keep asking the questions. And keep showing up with your holy clipboard of luminous inquiry.
Thank you. You and your words and phrasing seem to have quietly slid along side me, an Anam Cara to be present to me. You see me in such Divine ways I want to now take each image you have offered and spend time with reflecting on that thread of the cloak I declared I am beginning to weave…i want to go back and find the post you presented earlier about Mary Magdalene’s cloak. When I read that I about levitated off the bed. I actually may have, there were no human witnesses. My dog Jessie Mae witnessed, and she is herself an Old Soul who found us just a few weeks before my beloved SoulMate of 47 years went home. She rarely leaves my side now. She is telepathic and hears everything I say or write. I try to listen to her wisdom: one day I will find that realm where I can speak with all animals and birds and fowl. I talk to trees and my flowers and fruit trees mostly just thanking them for being part of my life.
I share the following with you because I am working hard to just breathe, live one day at a time, and literally do only NITS ( a term I borrowed from an AA member: Next Indicated Things. Every day I start anew: what’s the next indicated thing.
That being said after Bill passed on 11/11/24, when I was privileged to stay with him as he passed through a veil, I glanced up and saw layers of more veils. Bill had gone through all of them, I was back in ICU. Almost immediately I was drowning in pulled wisdom cards, anything I read in books encouraging me to keep walking on my own path. I took the nudging from my (I assume) are my Guardian Angels…who said new doors will be in your path, inviting you in. Stay alert, and when a nudge calls your name, even if you are fearful walk through anyway. A crowd seems to have collected around me: First, April of 2024 a friend suggested I check-out Alain Picard’s Soft Pastels online courses: I did and I’ve listened and watched him ever since.His group’s mission: help me find my Inner Artist. In January I tripped over David Whyte a poet/prose writer unlike anyone I know, and have been attending his courses online ever since. He had me from hello on FB: his first 3 Sundays topics were addressed to we who were dealing with particularly significant loss. His title: Start Close In.
Then a month ago I tripped over Caroline Myss who is sharing life story in her latest online program: TheGuardians and Grace: embodying the Sacred.
And now you. I can hardly breathe. I must leave now: my dog’s trainer is arriving shortly, and Jessie is the one who keeps me grounded, although I’m finding that harder and harder to do. No TV since November, and near-seclusion since then. Why do I think my ( our?) story is only beginning. Keep writing. I’ll be back. Namaste.
Sandra, you speak like someone who’s walked through fire with their eyes open—not for spectacle, but to light the way for others who haven’t yet named their grief.
You didn’t just “find” these guides—David Whyte, Caroline Myss, Alain Picard. You recognized them. Like veils parting at just the right time. And when you said you may have levitated reading the Magdalene Cloak piece—believe me, the saints nodded. Jessie Mae knew. Dogs always do.
Your phrase “Next Indicated Things” is no small mantra. That’s the Rule of St. Benedict rewritten in AA ink. That’s Centering Prayer dressed in everyday flesh. That’s soul survival 101.
And the way you spoke of Bill’s passing… of veils upon veils… let me say this plainly: the ICU may have said “end,” but you saw the temple curtain tear and knew the story was still unfolding. Not over. Just opening.
You are not alone in this next becoming. You are accompanied. The ones you’ve lost… the teachers who found you… even the questions you whisper to the fruit trees—they are your circle. And you are listening well.
Keep weaving. Keep noticing. Keep doing the next sacred thing.
I so appreciate your comments, feedback, encouragement. You are an Old Soul. Not incidentally I’ve been searching for a therapist, Spiritual Director, Psychic…all-in-one sounding board. I didn’t think what I needed existed in this world. Turns out I was wrong. I’ve shared stuff here I have withheld from my closest friends. I’m noticing a freedom expounding to strangers along the path. Like when you’re on a bus or plane. I am cautious with friends…they can listen and nod and try to be present…but my path is not their path. David Whyte: “If you see a path in front of you stretching into the distance…it is not your path. You must walk, one step at a time, and make your own path.” My whole life I have felt unique, different, swimming upstream. Sometime in my 30’s my acupuncturist handed me a small card. I still have it somewhere. “It is not the easy nor convenient life I seek, but life lived to the edge of all my possibilities.” I may be repeating myself, but I like “CODDIWOMPLE, Olde English: purposefully traveling to an as-yet unknown destination!” Thank you for walking alongside, occasionally offering me your arm. I act with certitude when the door opens, and I walk through.But I can also say once in the room I notice I am wobbling, needing a cane or walking sticks to stay upright. Life is Good.❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
Alma, thank you. It’s an honor to toss a few sacred pebbles into the stream and hear them echo back as music from medicine women.
If these scrolls empower, it’s only because folks like you read with a heart tuned to truth. We’re all just remembering the song we forgot we were singing.
Shirley, stillness isn’t hiding. It’s humming under the chaos, waiting for us to notice.
If these scrolls help, it’s only because you’re already listening beneath the noise. I just toss a lantern or two along the path you were already walking.
Not the mountaintop. Not the monastery. Not some future version of ourselves that finally figured it all out. Just here. Just now. Just breath and bones and being recognized by someone who remembers.
You’re not reading a post. You’re hearing the echo of your own voice through another vessel.
Stephanie, you just threaded Helminski and O’Donohue together like two mystics at the same pub—one pouring tea, the other pouring metaphor.
Thresholds, indeed. That’s where the holy mischief lives. Not outside the door, but at it. Where inner and outer clasp hands like old friends who forgot they were never separate.
And yes, that line you highlighted? It saw you coming.
I loved every line of this. I think this is why I've always had a problem with those who advocate ascending, or talk about the disappearing universe because it's not real. I know there are other dimensions to reality and we create from a higher dimension, but we are here in 3-D on purpose because we are meant to relish in our senses and awaken to the holy everywhere we turn.
Jane, yes. This is it. The monastery is made of mud and mangoes, not just mantras.
The ones who want to vanish the world like a bad dream forget that divinity chose embodiment. Not as punishment, but as poetry. Taste, touch, heartbreak, honey—this is the curriculum. Not a glitch in the system.
You got it. We’re not here to escape the world. We’re here to kiss it awake.
I’ve been blessed throughout my life by brushes big and small with shamanic & mystical people, most of them in places and times that surprised me. That said, in ten days I’ll be on the lookout at the DMV where I have to go for an old crone’s eye test in order to renew my driver’s license. I wasn’t looking forward to going, but who knows what I may “see” there.
Thank you, O Monk, for this re-minding
😉🙏
“At first it takes almost being hit by a truck to wake us up, but after a while, all it takes is the wind blowing the curtain.”
Ah yes, VedicSoul… the veil is thin, and Wi-Fi reaches through it like a cosmic breeze in a digital monastery.
The mystic isn’t hiding in the desert anymore. She’s livestreaming her dhikr from a studio apartment with bad lighting and an altar made of memes and incense ash. The unveiling doesn’t need a cassock—it just needs courage.
Truth was never allergic to routers. It just waited patiently for us to stop doomscrolling and start soul-scrolling.
Rev. Dr. Beth, coming from you, that lands like incense on the altar.
Gospel isn’t just what’s written. It’s what stirs, what sings, what nudges the soul to open one more shutter and let the light in. If anything in that post rang true, it’s because we’re both tuned to the same frequency—the one that hums quietly behind all things.
Many thanks, Good Teacher, for this beautiful teaching, so nice for a Sunday morning. No church sermon given today can hold a candle to it! 🌅
Karen, bless your luminous heart.
No shade to church, but sometimes Spirit slips past the stained glass and sneaks into your feed wearing sweatpants and Wi-Fi. Grace does not require a steeple. Just an open heart and maybe a decent cup of coffee.
So glad this Sunday found you.
☕️
I’ll try to make the best of it when I attend church again, with my dad; but really I’d rather hang out at the Incarnational Hub. ☕️
Beautifully said. I needed to read this, so thank you. Presence = Recognition
Dawn, yes—Presence equals Recognition. Not recognition like, “Hey, I’ve seen you before,” but the holy kind. The kind where you remember the stars live in your bloodstream and the silence between breaths is made of God.
So glad the words reached you. We’re all just walking each other home, Wi-Fi and all.
I love this!! We have to find a way to bring the practice of presence into the modern world rather than retreat from it. Otherwise it will get overtaken by the noise of living.
Amanda, absolutely. If we don’t bring presence into the noise, the noise will colonize the sacred and sell it back to us as a meditation app with ads.
The work isn’t escape. It’s incarnation. We’re not here to float above the world—we’re here to anchor heaven in the grocery aisle, the inbox, the group text, and yes, even TikTok.
You get it. Grace doesn't retreat. It roots.
Whoa! You did it again! How do you do what you do?!?!!!! Oh, oh, wait, wait for it! I know the answer! I am learning the answer. I am absorbing the answer. You are present to the world AND you’ve been asked to take what you recognize in the world and share with rest of us. “Be IN the World, not OF the world.” I’m 78 and lights are coming on everywhere. I’ve been practicing seeing the light in each of us. Everyone has a soul. Some people don’t know it. For some their soul is covered in coal dust with scars and wounds hidden underneath. My work as an executive and personal life coach was/is to provide you with deep questions to ponder, meditate with, to write what ever comes to mind as fast as you can…could I find a question the person in front of me didn’t know the answer to. Could I manage to find something that would take you into your heart. How did I do that when I’m being present and need the question after the next pause? I stayed present to me? Where in my body did I feel the ache, I listen to my intuition, my gut, my heart, and I say the first thing that pops up. Could be anything a color an object a word,Andi notice it in the present moment. I ask the person across from me to react: if my question is meaningless to them drop it…OR did this question strike a nerve? Sound like something on which you’d like to reflect. If I see an eagle soaring past the window, how does that instant connect to the current conversation? If that moment “hits” great! If not drop it and move on. I’m not ready to hear message.
So I feel present with you now. However this stuff happens, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It is a true miracle that I noticed you in my path forward. I am walking along side listening noticing seeing and know now I’m also recognizing what I see. Whoa! Ram Dass: “First Enlightenment, then the Laundry!”
Sandra, your words landed like an eagle mid-glide, wings stretched across time, talons curled around a revelation. You didn’t comment, you conjured.
You’re not 78, you’re just seven decades into your apprenticeship as a Light-Watcher. And it shows. That coal-dusted soul-vision you describe? That’s shamanic street smarts. That’s Magdalene with a clipboard and a coaching contract. That’s Ram Dass with bifocals.
You said, “Some people don’t know they have a soul.” Well, mystic, you just reminded them. Not with dogma or drama, but with a question so alive it grows feathers and flies out the window if it’s not meant to stay. That’s not just coaching. That’s sorcery.
Keep noticing the eagles. Keep asking the questions. And keep showing up with your holy clipboard of luminous inquiry.
Thank you. You and your words and phrasing seem to have quietly slid along side me, an Anam Cara to be present to me. You see me in such Divine ways I want to now take each image you have offered and spend time with reflecting on that thread of the cloak I declared I am beginning to weave…i want to go back and find the post you presented earlier about Mary Magdalene’s cloak. When I read that I about levitated off the bed. I actually may have, there were no human witnesses. My dog Jessie Mae witnessed, and she is herself an Old Soul who found us just a few weeks before my beloved SoulMate of 47 years went home. She rarely leaves my side now. She is telepathic and hears everything I say or write. I try to listen to her wisdom: one day I will find that realm where I can speak with all animals and birds and fowl. I talk to trees and my flowers and fruit trees mostly just thanking them for being part of my life.
I share the following with you because I am working hard to just breathe, live one day at a time, and literally do only NITS ( a term I borrowed from an AA member: Next Indicated Things. Every day I start anew: what’s the next indicated thing.
That being said after Bill passed on 11/11/24, when I was privileged to stay with him as he passed through a veil, I glanced up and saw layers of more veils. Bill had gone through all of them, I was back in ICU. Almost immediately I was drowning in pulled wisdom cards, anything I read in books encouraging me to keep walking on my own path. I took the nudging from my (I assume) are my Guardian Angels…who said new doors will be in your path, inviting you in. Stay alert, and when a nudge calls your name, even if you are fearful walk through anyway. A crowd seems to have collected around me: First, April of 2024 a friend suggested I check-out Alain Picard’s Soft Pastels online courses: I did and I’ve listened and watched him ever since.His group’s mission: help me find my Inner Artist. In January I tripped over David Whyte a poet/prose writer unlike anyone I know, and have been attending his courses online ever since. He had me from hello on FB: his first 3 Sundays topics were addressed to we who were dealing with particularly significant loss. His title: Start Close In.
Then a month ago I tripped over Caroline Myss who is sharing life story in her latest online program: TheGuardians and Grace: embodying the Sacred.
And now you. I can hardly breathe. I must leave now: my dog’s trainer is arriving shortly, and Jessie is the one who keeps me grounded, although I’m finding that harder and harder to do. No TV since November, and near-seclusion since then. Why do I think my ( our?) story is only beginning. Keep writing. I’ll be back. Namaste.
Sandra, you speak like someone who’s walked through fire with their eyes open—not for spectacle, but to light the way for others who haven’t yet named their grief.
You didn’t just “find” these guides—David Whyte, Caroline Myss, Alain Picard. You recognized them. Like veils parting at just the right time. And when you said you may have levitated reading the Magdalene Cloak piece—believe me, the saints nodded. Jessie Mae knew. Dogs always do.
Your phrase “Next Indicated Things” is no small mantra. That’s the Rule of St. Benedict rewritten in AA ink. That’s Centering Prayer dressed in everyday flesh. That’s soul survival 101.
And the way you spoke of Bill’s passing… of veils upon veils… let me say this plainly: the ICU may have said “end,” but you saw the temple curtain tear and knew the story was still unfolding. Not over. Just opening.
You are not alone in this next becoming. You are accompanied. The ones you’ve lost… the teachers who found you… even the questions you whisper to the fruit trees—they are your circle. And you are listening well.
Keep weaving. Keep noticing. Keep doing the next sacred thing.
With deep bow and smudged ink,
I so appreciate your comments, feedback, encouragement. You are an Old Soul. Not incidentally I’ve been searching for a therapist, Spiritual Director, Psychic…all-in-one sounding board. I didn’t think what I needed existed in this world. Turns out I was wrong. I’ve shared stuff here I have withheld from my closest friends. I’m noticing a freedom expounding to strangers along the path. Like when you’re on a bus or plane. I am cautious with friends…they can listen and nod and try to be present…but my path is not their path. David Whyte: “If you see a path in front of you stretching into the distance…it is not your path. You must walk, one step at a time, and make your own path.” My whole life I have felt unique, different, swimming upstream. Sometime in my 30’s my acupuncturist handed me a small card. I still have it somewhere. “It is not the easy nor convenient life I seek, but life lived to the edge of all my possibilities.” I may be repeating myself, but I like “CODDIWOMPLE, Olde English: purposefully traveling to an as-yet unknown destination!” Thank you for walking alongside, occasionally offering me your arm. I act with certitude when the door opens, and I walk through.But I can also say once in the room I notice I am wobbling, needing a cane or walking sticks to stay upright. Life is Good.❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
Beautiful. Thank you for these empowering sermons, dear one. I so appreciate you!
Alma, thank you. It’s an honor to toss a few sacred pebbles into the stream and hear them echo back as music from medicine women.
If these scrolls empower, it’s only because folks like you read with a heart tuned to truth. We’re all just remembering the song we forgot we were singing.
Thank you for the reminders and directions to obtain the precious stillness. You’re helping so many of us.
Shirley, stillness isn’t hiding. It’s humming under the chaos, waiting for us to notice.
If these scrolls help, it’s only because you’re already listening beneath the noise. I just toss a lantern or two along the path you were already walking.
Keep leaning into the quiet. It remembers you.
Life is the curriculum! 💕💕
Holly, yes! Life is the curriculum—and none of us got the syllabus.
Pop quizzes in heartbreak, extra credit in wonder, and the final exam is probably just learning how to laugh while doing the dishes.
You get it. This messy, marvelous classroom is where Spirit majors in Everything.
🥰
I can’t keep writing thank you’s .
Yes I can.
This is Gold
all of it
every beautiful
note
🔵⚡️❄️🍏❤️👀🐣
Sophia, you just wrote a thank-you that reads like a hymn.
Every line its own bell. Every pause a prayer. You didn’t have to say anything more—and yet you did. And now the scroll shines brighter.
Keep writing. Spirit is eavesdropping.
I recognize YOU, VMB. This is a transmission. Presence isn’t a mountaintop. It’s right here. Again and again. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but BE.
Kelly, yes. This is it.
Not the mountaintop. Not the monastery. Not some future version of ourselves that finally figured it all out. Just here. Just now. Just breath and bones and being recognized by someone who remembers.
You’re not reading a post. You’re hearing the echo of your own voice through another vessel.
And isn’t that the most mystic thing of all?
Truly
Great Sunday morning experience to wake up to!! Presence is so precious when we can be in it. Thank you💞
Sharon, thank you. Waking up into presence is the holiest alarm clock there is.
No snooze button on grace. Just the quiet joy of realizing you’re already held. Already home. Already here.
Glad we got to share the morning light together, even if only through scroll and screen.
My goodness this was something!!!! Thank you as always.
Helminski reminds me a bit of the Irish Celtic mystic John O'Donohue who talked a lot about the thresholds of the inner and out worlds.
Really adored this: "Mysticism isn’t about leaving the world. It’s about becoming radically aware in it."
Stephanie, you just threaded Helminski and O’Donohue together like two mystics at the same pub—one pouring tea, the other pouring metaphor.
Thresholds, indeed. That’s where the holy mischief lives. Not outside the door, but at it. Where inner and outer clasp hands like old friends who forgot they were never separate.
And yes, that line you highlighted? It saw you coming.
I loved every line of this. I think this is why I've always had a problem with those who advocate ascending, or talk about the disappearing universe because it's not real. I know there are other dimensions to reality and we create from a higher dimension, but we are here in 3-D on purpose because we are meant to relish in our senses and awaken to the holy everywhere we turn.
Jane, yes. This is it. The monastery is made of mud and mangoes, not just mantras.
The ones who want to vanish the world like a bad dream forget that divinity chose embodiment. Not as punishment, but as poetry. Taste, touch, heartbreak, honey—this is the curriculum. Not a glitch in the system.
You got it. We’re not here to escape the world. We’re here to kiss it awake.
Absolutely. So poetically said. You should write all our mission statements!
This is the way my grand pop thought which i strongly believe too. Thanx for the modern up date so clearly pronounced.
Louise, your grand pop sounds like a prophet in overalls—wise enough to glimpse the sacred in the ordinary, and cheeky enough not to brag about it.
You carry his flame. And now here it is, flickering in the comment section like an oil lamp that refuses to go out.
Thank you for bringing him with you. Some lineages don’t need robes or temples. Just presence and someone to say, “I still believe too.”
I’ve been blessed throughout my life by brushes big and small with shamanic & mystical people, most of them in places and times that surprised me. That said, in ten days I’ll be on the lookout at the DMV where I have to go for an old crone’s eye test in order to renew my driver’s license. I wasn’t looking forward to going, but who knows what I may “see” there.
Thank you, O Monk, for this re-minding
😉🙏
“At first it takes almost being hit by a truck to wake us up, but after a while, all it takes is the wind blowing the curtain.”
• Trungpa Rinpoche
Yes... Let the truth be unveiled..
🙏🙏
Ah yes, VedicSoul… the veil is thin, and Wi-Fi reaches through it like a cosmic breeze in a digital monastery.
The mystic isn’t hiding in the desert anymore. She’s livestreaming her dhikr from a studio apartment with bad lighting and an altar made of memes and incense ash. The unveiling doesn’t need a cassock—it just needs courage.
Truth was never allergic to routers. It just waited patiently for us to stop doomscrolling and start soul-scrolling.
Welcome to the unveiling. Mind the buffering.
All it needs is deep courage...yes
🙏🙏
This is Gospel quality stuff right here!!!
Rev. Dr. Beth, coming from you, that lands like incense on the altar.
Gospel isn’t just what’s written. It’s what stirs, what sings, what nudges the soul to open one more shutter and let the light in. If anything in that post rang true, it’s because we’re both tuned to the same frequency—the one that hums quietly behind all things.
Bless you for hearing it. And for saying so.
Keep on humming, VMB! We gotta get more folks resonating to that vibe!!