The Deepest Resource

My teacher says that the whole spiritual path boils down to four words:

Being with what is.

Four simple words.

Living them is another matter entirely.

Being with what is can feel profoundly difficult. It can bring up an immense amount of emotion, overwhelm, or resistance. We don’t always feel resourced or centered enough to truly meet what life is asking of us.

So what gives us the capacity to remain present? What actually supports us when life becomes overwhelming?

So much of the work I do is simply helping people soften enough to discover that they don’t have to hold it all by themselves.

As our practice deepens, something beautiful begins to reveal itself. We discover that the deepest resource isn’t outside of us at all. It is Presence itself—the awareness that has always been here, quietly holding every experience. It is our Divine nature, our deepest Self.

As awakening unfolds, we begin to recognize that we have never been separate from this Presence. It is no longer something we reach for in moments of difficulty. It becomes the ground we stand on, the refuge we return to, the quiet light that is always here.

Yet even this grace asks something of us: our willingness to receive it.

Again and again, we are invited to open our hands and let ourselves be met.

We keep handing over our fears, our grief, our striving, our uncertainty, our gifts, and our hopes—allowing Life, with a capital L, to move through us in ways we could never orchestrate on our own.

Of course, letting go is rarely as easy as it sounds.

Spiritual teachings often tell us to “just surrender” or “just let go,” yet when our nervous system is overwhelmed, those words can feel almost impossible to embody.

I’ve found that the capacity to let go grows naturally as we become more deeply resourced.

From that place, surrender becomes less like giving something up and more like allowing ourselves to be carried.

Until this becomes a lived reality, we need skillful ways to remember.

The steady presence of the earth beneath our feet. Prayer. Meditation. Teachings. Awareness of the breath. Our higher self. A Divine image. An angel. A felt sense of goodness, beauty, or love.

None of these are separate from the resource itself. They are portals. They help us soften, open, and remember what has been here all along.

There are a thousand ways to remember what has never left us.

There are a thousand portals into grace, but they all open into the same vastness.

There are a thousand paths into Presence because there is only one Presence.

I encourage each person to discover what feels true within their own heart and worldview. I don’t believe there is one right doorway. But I do believe it is essential that we have a way of opening beyond our contracted mind and conditioned responses, so that when life asks more of us than we feel we can carry, we remember that we are already held by something infinitely larger than our small self.

And over time, reaching toward Presence quietly becomes the recognition that Presence is what we are.

Beneath the busy mind, beneath the frightened self that believes it has to manage and carry everything, there is an awareness that is already free. Spacious. Unmoving. Luminous. It has never been wounded, and it has never been separate from Life itself.

This is the deepest refuge I know.

Awakening is not becoming someone different. It is recognizing the limitless Presence that has been here all along and learning, again and again, to rest there.

The more we learn to relax into that vastness, the less life depends upon our small self holding everything together. We begin to discover that we are not separate from the intelligence, love, and aliveness that moves through all things. We are an expression of it.

There is a light at the center of your being that cannot be diminished by circumstances. It can guide you, sustain you, comfort you, and steadily illuminate the next step.

Some people know that Presence as their own Divine nature. Others know it as Christ consciousness, their intuition, Mother Mary, Kuan Yin, Spirit, or simply Love itself.

The names matter far less than the direct experience.

You have never been separate from this.

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

You can always come home.

If there is one thing I hope for you, it is that you come to trust this more and more—not merely as a comforting belief, but as the deepest truth of who you are.

If you enjoy these newsletters or know of someone who might benefit from my work, please share this with them! Thank you!

Share Seeds of Light Elizabeth Astor

In my experience, we have to train in how to live in relationship with this Presence. We cultivate the capacity to receive it, to recognize it, and to rest in it more and more fully. The offerings below are invitations to do exactly that—in the company of a kind and supportive community.

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, 2026 | Tuesdays 6:00-7:30pm MT

Registration closes this week.

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

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
~ Rumi