Buddha is actualized when our human striving, desires, ambitions don’t work anymore. The times when I have borne witness to such parts of myself as hopelessness and loss were the moments of deepest self-acceptance.
—Katherine Thanas, The Truth of This Life
Thank you to all who joined our Second Sunday last weekend, with special guest Elena Brower. Below is the replay and notes. Our next session will be on Sunday, September 13.
First:
I’m teaching my writing and meditation course, The Practice this fall, Sept. 8 - Oct. 20. Take this course if you're in transition, wrestling with a big decision, moving through fear, or craving a meditation and journaling practice you can actually stick with. Zero writing experience necessary; the work we do is personal journaling. Registration opens August 18. Learn more and get on the waitlist to get a discount (note: paid subscribers here will get a code for 15% off).
Join me for cowriting tomorrow and every Thursday from 1-2 pm ET. Link to join will be dropped in the chat a couple of hours before.
Open to all paid subscribers.
Theme of the day: “What is real?” Staying in direct, continuous contact with your life (body, breath, this moment) rather than the mind’s stories, predictions, and rumination.
Elena’s core teaching — “staying with the situation”: not fixing, controlling, or figuring things out, but remaining fiercely and intimately present with what’s happening, no matter what. She connected this to relinquishing control, which she noted lands as especially scary for women raised in volatile households
In meditation, the mind “unspools”: Elena’s practical approach: let the mind’s material (to-do lists, worries) run itself out at the start of a sit rather than fighting it; eventually it “runs out of gas” and settles, like silt sinking to the bottom.
Micro-moments count as practice: You don’t always need a long formal sit. Noticing a tree, breathing at the kitchen window, or any brief return to the body is real practice too. Natalie’s teacher’s line: “body time is 7 beats slower than mind time.”
Building sit-time gradually: Elena’s guidance for beginners is to start at 10 minutes, build to 20 for a month or two, then 30–40, since ~20 minutes is often where the mental “unspooling” starts to settle.
On comparing yourself to others’ practice: Elena reassured Sukie that you don’t need 7 hours of meditation a day. The real work at any duration is letting stillness interrupt the usual internal dialogue, the same way sobriety interrupts destructive patterns.
Hospice work as practice: Elena described her hospice volunteering as a place where “staying with the situation” is the whole job. You can’t have an agenda, there’s no fixing, just presence.
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