If I were brave enough, I’d tell you how my heart
has raged for love, stretched thin as a high wire.
If I were brave enough, I’d tell you
how my body has been fighting to stay upright
on every precipitous downhill the city
throws at it. If I were brave enough,
I’d climb into your lap and weep with longing.
All I can say is that any attempt at beauty and hope
is land-mined with failure.
And so the dangerous track-making begins.
Wending our way through,
there are possible clutches at sunlight, at windows, at yes.
We are each of us inches from death.
We are each of us inches from life.
We are each of us inches from each other.

by Maya Stein

What does it mean, make an alliance with anguish? Making it your ally? Or even: to ally with it? That definitely sounds counterintuitive at first, yet it immediately makes me curious. What would happen if I tried more of that, rather than the habitual wrestling with anguish, trying to avoid or somehow conquer it?

Poet, writing guide and adventuress Maya Stein talks about what she would do if she were brave enough – daring to be more truthful, more vulnerable, risking the many varieties of failure. It inspired me to make my own list: if I were brave enough, I would… and yes, if I didn’t mind anguish as much, more choices would open up and I might inch my way closer to beauty and hope, to life and the important others in it…

But then of course, the question of how arises. How do I make an alliance with anguish? I guess that’s where the dangerous track-making begins, one step and one moment at the time, aware of the risk of the landmines of failure. And: maybe failure isn’t the end of everything, maybe that would just mean some more anguish which I can also be with, breathe with…

Although mindfulness is usually associated with becoming more calm and peaceful, it definitely also supports me towards living more courageously. Sitting undilutedly with myself, especially for longer periods in a retreat context, has undoubtedly required and further grown my braveness. Chogyam Trungpa said that “ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.” So here is to more practice!

PS. I love reading about brave and inspiring people, as if their courage and ability to think out of the box could be contageous somehow. Reading a bit about Maya’s adventures was definitely inspiring, and it made me wonder what adventures I could provide for myself…
And if you feel ready for an adventure in mindfulness and discovering what that can bring you, we have a four level pathway plus a number of themed courses to choose from!

Photo by Valentina Stanoaie on Unsplash

by Nadia Colburn

This poem by poet and teacher Nadia Colburn is one of those where there is not much narrative or content to hold on to, but that has quite a profound effect on me when I let it percolate. I recognise myself as having complications in my heart, taking a long time to begin learning to love my body and frequently mistaking the world for a task – ouch! But even so, I too can listen to the aliveness of the moment…

It brings to mind the story of the Buddha gathering his students for one of his many Dharma talks. Instead of speaking, he held up a lotus flower – like this… It’s said that most of his students were trying to figure out what he meant, yet one of them smiled. I picture that smile, dawning slowly on his (or her!) face in radiant recognition, again no words needed…

Likewise, this poem invites me into the space beyond the words, where listening to the voices both outside and within myself is the way to bear witness and take part in life. What do you hear?

PS. Opening fully to the moment is both wordlessly simple and not necessarily easy, and a tried and tested pathway to travel with others and supported by someone who knows the terrain can be helpful! There’s a new Level 1 course starting soon…

Photo by Antoine Pouligny on Unsplash

by Dawna Markova

Happy New Year dear readers! This poem by Dawna Markova encapsulates elegantly what I feel a wholesome new year aspiration is for me. It has all the important components – the wish to open in spite of it all, the power to consciously choose, the resolve to not be stopped by fear, the power of the ‘will not’ and the tenacious commitment to living fully, the wish to be present in my days moment to moment, to ‘risk our significance’, the heart’s bid for freedom and finally the wish for who I am and who I am becoming, to be of benefit to others.

Having not yet done my annual new year’s vision board, I don’t know what the particular flavour of my new year’s contemplations will be this year, but I feel the promise! I can feel a quickening of creative life force in my body – is it ready to take wing, or become a torch? Or maybe – and this feels right as I write – it’s ready to put down roots.

Often at new year we focus on a concrete resolution that can feel like a should or a pressure that sets you up for ‘failure’. What if your new year’s aspiration was a feeling or an impulse or energy stirring within you? What feel does it have? Where does it want to flow or grow or settle down to? Does it have a colour or a metaphor to help you know its wisdom? And after bringing your curiosity to it, can it become a message of aspiration in words?

New years resolutions are often made from the rational thinking mind that has a story about how in this or that way we aren’t doing well enough and this year will be the year where we push ourselves hard enough to finally get beyond it and be better. No wonder they don’t last long! Let this year’s new year’s resolution come from the inside out, like a fountain, or a flower fragrance or a golden egg cracking to reveal new life.

More beautiful metaphors from Dawna Markova:

May you let loving unfurl you
then give you away.
May you remember
you are nest,
harbor,
garden.

All the best for 2026!

Ps. If you’d like to enter into this year with the intention to live your own precious life more fully in it’s uniqueness in this moment and the next, in the ups and downs and joys and sorrows, and alongside fellow practitioners of mindfulness, please join our Wonder of the Everyday course which starts on 14th January.

Photo by Jared Erondu on Unsplash

No longer trying to make sense of pain,
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.

These are the irritations that rub into a pearl

So we can talk awhile
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea

And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions down,
and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone. but seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it is a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather
into the surf that human shells
call god.

by Mark Nepo

Ah, this poem from Mark Nepo’s collection ‘The Way Under the Way’ moves me in so many ways, and I’m not the only one who feels it. I found a beautiful short video inspired by it, and when I read it out to others recently, I loved hearing how people were touched by different elements of it.

Partly it’s what opens itself within me when I’m wondering – what would it be like to search less and open more? to no longer try to make sense of pain? to listen the way rocks listen to the sea? to face my aloneness squarely enough to recognise it as a doorway into the sacred? I love it when poets name experiences that I recognise in ways that wouldn’t have occured to me, like the ‘endless breath that has no breather’ or the ‘surf that human shells call god’. That longing, do you have that too? Do you give it enough space to be able to face it, to realise it as a door?

Even in this moment, a songbird in the garden, life happening around me and the possibility of that doorway right here…

But the day is full with pre-planned Things-to-Do and while I will endeavour to face all that’s in my day squarely and kindly, I know that I benefit from the space that at this point in my life requires a formal meditation (or even better, a retreat) context. Whether it’s an hour or a practice day or a longer retreat in a special place, the gift of space to lay distractions down and watering every seed is priceless…

And, writing from the morning after the longest night of the northern hemisphere, may there be plenty of those gifts of space in the year to come!

PS if you’re longing for some practice or retreat space, there are free daily meditations and plenty retreats to choose from…

Photo by Andy Styn on Unsplash

But that’s not real, my mind demands,
trusting the seedless machine.
My mind repeats the newscaster’s
teleprompted panic. Repeats
the doctor’s doomsday speech.
There’s no time to not be real, it begs.

I point to my left lung–a satchel full
of tumors. Point to a pantry full of pills
that haven’t helped, a bed I have
hardly left for weeks.

Is this what you mean by real? I ask.

Yes! my mind screams, frantic
in its mission to make matter
all that matters.

But how
is that more real, I say,
than the first time I was breathless
from holding a stethoscope to my pain
and hearing the heartbeat of the whole world?

My mind argues like a seasoned lawyer,
all objection and rebuttals.
But I, an artist, stretch my heart out
into canvas, hand one brush
to joy and another brush to grief,
grinning as I watch them paint
the exact same rolling meadow
the same hue of emerald green.

That isn’t real, my mind insists
as I take off running through
the pasture, stopping only to do
a cartwheel beside a lonely windmill
who has always wanted a friend.

I fly up the solemn staircase
of a billionaire’s lifeless mansion
to replace the diamonds with raindrops
I found huddled on a leaf of a Birch
tree beside my home when
I was nine and a half years old.

It’s not real that you still have those!
my mind protests, as if everything
that ever was isn’t forever here.
As if I’m not still a giggling child
hiding in the place I know my mom will
look first, because I want to be found.

During my CT scan last week
I couldn’t find myself inside of myself
because my mind was louder than I was.
But then I gave up all control, unfurled
like the petals of a pen blooming
poems on the sterile walls,
for the next worried patient to water.

But that’s not real, my mind contends.
Real is provable. Googleable.

Then google this, I say, —

The chemo that kept me alive,
the chemo cold men in white coats
take credit for, is sourced from the bark
of the Pacific Yew tree and was first
discovered for its healing properties
by Two-Spirit Indigenous people
in the Pacific Northwest, who were guided
by the voices of moss and the mist.

Is that real? my mind asks.

I don’t see the point in answering
because my mind can’t hear the language
spoken by the moss, has never
picked the sweetest fruit from the saddest note
of a song and planted every seed
to feed the joy of those to come.

What’s the worst thing that ever happened
to you? my mind asked me long ago.

I said, Not believing in what I couldn’t yet see.

What’s the best thing that ever happened
to you? my mind asked me long ago.

I said, Learning that you are not me.

by Andrea Gibson

Sometimes words feel like an imposition, or a foregone failure. This poem (introduced here by the poet) gives me that feeling. How do I follow it? When I finish reading, I know I’ve received something essential, something precious. It feels like a blessing — one bestowed on my small, human self, which is just a fragment of all humanity. It lifts me into a glowing mixture of beauty and sorrow, swelling into what feels like heart-rending love. Thank you, Andrea Gibson.

Andrea Gibson died last week. That’s how I came across this poem at all. With their passing, their poetry, writing, and life stories have spread further and more swiftly, crossing boundaries and reaching me — and many others. They seem to have written from a place of desperate, beautiful truth-telling, from the insight of someone who knows how fully swept up in impermanence they really are. No space for denial, complacency, distraction, or anything inessential.

The poem also speaks, for me, as a teaching about the mind. One that Andrea seems to have felt compelled to speak urgently before they departed this earth. This is captured with striking clarity in the last lines, but also explored through the drama of their internal dialogue, making it deeply relatable. The lesson? That imagination is an extraordinary resource of wisdom — one we neglect and sideline to our peril. We need to bring it back. Let it speak. It may just save you, though probably not in the way you expect.

Finally, the poem also deepens this lesson by showing how materialistic thinking and behaviour pull us away from both our inner wisdom and the abundance of the wondrous world around us. Which are more precious, raindrops or diamonds?

Ps. Join me for the next Mindfulness Meets Mystical Poetry course beginning 30^th October 2025, to be introduced to a wide variety of poetry from many cultures and eras, that teaches us how to be deeply present and takes us beyond our small minds…

Photo by Pedro Netto on Unsplash