QUOTE : Your pain, your sorrow, your desperate seeking, it is energy, only energy. Sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce, sometimes even volcanic, but energy nonetheless. Strip away the secondhand words and concepts—fear, anger, depression, loneliness—and contact what is wordlessly alive in your body, not yesterday, not tomorrow, but now. Feel “sadness” before it is named. Feel the tightness in the chest, the tension in the throat. Feel “anger” before it is defined. Feel the burning in the belly, the pounding of the passionate heart. Feel the throb and pull of life, the vibration of it. Make space for all bodily sensations, the raw energy, the power, the electricity, the sound and the fury. It is life, only life, always life. Don’t judge the energy, or try to push it away, or ignore it, because then you split yourself into “good me” and “bad me,” “sick me” and “healthy me,” “spiritual me” and “ignorant me,” and the war begins. Go beyond the entire “me” story, and honor what is alive in your body, here and now, even if what is alive is intense, uncomfortable, or simply too unfamiliar to be named. Let the intensity of bodily sensation focus you. Let attention drop into the moment. Non-resistance to life, the absolute surrender to the living moment, no matter how much the moment deviates from our “perfect” image—this is the beginning of true healing. Divorce the dream and marry reality.