A Thousand Small Moments a Day

The influx of intensity in our world seems nonstop now. To fully be present with the level of intensity in our world and in our full lives can feel like it requires tremendous fortitude and presence. It is a lot to be with.

I was blessed to go on retreat this spring, and I took the opportunity to dive as deeply as I could into practice and stillness, allowing the container of retreat to transform and guide me as fully as possible. Deep revelations and inner shifts occurred.

But then integration into daily life must also happen, and as a modern-day householder, that is often difficult. I came back from retreat to an incredibly full life with little downtime or spaciousness: mothering two children (and a beloved doodle dog), running a household, connecting with community and the wider world, and holding space for many people in many different roles and contexts. It is a lot for any nervous system, even under the best of circumstances.

I have noticed in myself numerous times since retreat a quiet internal grief — that the spaciousness and luminous presence I can abide in so fully on retreat can feel difficult to sustain in ordinary life. I no longer have the “I had it, I lost it” experience of my earlier years on the spiritual path, when it seemed the luminosity itself had disappeared. I now know, fundamentally, that this awake presence and spacious awareness is always and irrevocably here. The moment I return to it, it is instantly available, right at the core of my own experience.

And yet, the capacity to marinate in it, to fully Be it — to allow it to open and expand me as it does so palpably on retreat — does not always feel as accessible in the midst of daily life. As my attention returns to the ten thousand things calling on me each day, this most precious thing no longer remains in the foreground. And to the devoted practitioner in me, the one who longs so deeply to unite with and live from the Divine, and to the spiritual perfectionist that still quietly lives within me that wants to do it so well, this can feel like failure, or like a painful missing.

I find myself caught again in the pull of duality: the silence and spaciousness retreat life offers, and the cacophony of responsibility, duty, and distraction that householder life so often brings. My sense of self can feel suspended somewhere between the two.

And in those moments, the pointer from the great teacher Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche comes as a life raft, again and again:

“Small moments, many times a day.”

This is the practice: to come back again and again to awareness and presence, right in the middle of the small but potent moments woven between the endless movements of past and future, hope and fear, striving and collapse.

To come back.
To come home.
To awareness, to presence, to breath, to the anchors of the heart and the central channel.

There is a refuge in the heart that does not require the meditative cave or the spacious retreat my mind craves. It is here. Always here. You are already here.

This is how we remain present. This is how we weave awareness into actual lived life, here in the world.

I take refuge in this knowing, and in the understanding that this practice is a potent, direct, and deeply human way to live as a modern-day mystic, householder, and citizen of the world. To awaken from the dream my mind and conditioning endlessly create, and return again to Now. A thousand times a day.

The presence of awareness is always already here, closer than your own breath.

You can always come home.

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Share Seeds of Light Elizabeth Astor

The ability to come back to presence quickly and repeatedly is greatly enhanced by taking time to abide in stillness and silence, and in practice that help to reconnect deeply to the inner realms of the heart. I would love to practice alongside you.

Here are some upcoming opportunities to gather and practice together:

Sunday, August 16, 2026 | 9:30am- 5:30pm MT

In the middle of a spinning world, there is ground. This daylong retreat offers practices for protecting your nervous system, tending your inner life, and awakening.

Location: The Mother’s Center, 271 Sky Trail Road, Boulder, CO 80304. A beautiful, quiet refuge in the mountains just 10 minutes outside Boulder. Also on Zoom.

Email essentialwellbeingboulder@gmail.com to register

*Available in-person and on Zoom

$215 in person / $145 on Zoom | Sliding scale available

Register Now

December 3–7, 2026 | Crestone, Colorado

You were never meant to carry this life alone. Beneath the surface of everything, there is a current — a living intelligence that can move through you and illuminate your life.

What would it feel like to be genuinely fed from the inside? Not sustained by effort or willpower, but nourished by your body’s quiet wisdom, the warmth of an open heart, and the steady refuge of presence.

This retreat explores what it means to let the Divine move through your full humanity — grounded in the body, open in the heart, moved by something greater than yourself.

Come rest in what cannot be shaken. Come let it move through you.

Location: Vajra Vidya Retreat Center, 3203 Camino Baca Grande, Crestone, CO, USA

*Available in-person and on Zoom

$895-$935 4-Night Stay / $715 Commuter / $225 on Zoom

Register Now

Elizabeth now offers two different monthly groups. Connecting with community and practicing and training together on a regular basis is a powerful support on the path:

3rd Tuesday of Each Month | 2pm MT on Zoom

This monthly group is a space where we practice the skills of staying present in the world, with a strong spine and open heart, and working with the waves of life’s challenges and opportunities with presence and skill. We gather for an hour on zoom the 3rd Tuesday of each month, 2pm MT.

Register Now

Monthly, July - December | Tuesdays 6:00-7:30pm MT

This circle grew out of a closed group for graduates of a program I offered, and I am now opening it more widely to those who feel the calling. It is for people devoted to bringing light into ordinary life — those with deep sensitivity, a heart for service, and a longing to walk the bodhisattva path with skill and groundedness. We gather monthly as a sangha: teaching, embodied practice, inquiry, and real companionship with kindred practitioners.

Email essentialwellbeingboulder@gmail.com to register

*Available in-person and on Zoom. Recordings provided.

$30-75/month| Sliding scale available

Register Now

My heart grew teeth,
so I took it to see the flowers.
I let it rest in the tall grass and feel
the mosquito-sting, the blood-swell.
I let it inhale the wind-lick, the tree-song.
I let the sun soften its brittle growl
until it cracked down the middle,
tender and open and undefeated.