Aisha Paris

It’s difficult to know where to start. I have to tell you first about the warmth that floods the room. I am searching to remember if the feeling was there from the first moment, and yes, it was. I recall it but I wasn’t opening fully to it. Blocking its path were my expectations, my need to take in information and make an energy/threat assessment. There was also my self-consciousness and my lack of courage, or perhaps more accurate would be to say my lack of trust. The warmth comes in part from the cosy setting – the blankets and comfortable multi-position chairs, low lighting, warm temperature, cuddly breakout spaces (a sofa and two sets of chairs), and the large communal table that invites you to gather in group as you walk in. The open plan layout of the room calms your nervous system as you see everything literally ‘out in the open’ and the amount of spaces permits you to spread out and make nest.

The warmth also comes from the sun, and our guiding light is Katie. Her gentleness, her light wit, and her devoted and expansive presence drawing us securely into the moment. We are swept along in grace, to the sound of poetry and through many sweet, curious smells. Her sweeping is thorough and at the end we are empty. There are no dirty corners hiding unseen. We learn to pour out from ourselves all that does not serve us, all that is not universally valid and of our superior nature. In time we become our own suns, the ever-brightening love of our own hearts shining out of each of us. 

After the warmth comes the cold. It is not a disturbing cold but rather the tough love of truth. The cold grounds us in our humanness and calls at us to send roots of compassion and wisdom deep into the foundation of our being. The cold is our uncovering of pain. We go where we daren’t let our mind go before. We remember what was real in our story of life and we share it. We share all of it.