Drawing on my personal journey as well as my work with others as a therapist and guide, I wrote The Path Is Everywhere with the intention that it serve as a provocative, alive, and compassionate invitation to re-enchant our ideas about healing and spiritual awakening in the modern world. Weaving together the wisdom streams of contemplative spirituality, relational and somatic psychotherapy, and the poetic imagination, The Path Is Everywhere reminds us that the depth and magic of the sacred world is always already here, buried in our emotions, bodies, relationships, and in the natural world itself. Many have grown weary from a long search, exhausted from an endless quest to improve, hold it all together, heal all their wounds, and complete some mythical spiritual journey. But you are not a project to be solved. You are a mystery coming into form, and you have the raw materials that you need, right now, to live a life of profound depth, purpose, and meaning. We hear much about spiritual awakening and the deep joy, clarity, and peace that are its promised fruits. Often ignored, however, are the disappointments of awakening and the ways it can shatter our hearts, breaking us open to the reality of the crucifixion, resurrection, and transfiguration we are likely to encounter along the way. In the rush to convert the negative to the positive, manifest everything we believe we want, and manage our lives into some permanent state of “happiness,” we lose contact with the reality that there is no transfiguration without embodiment to the dark cross within. The journey of becoming a true human person is messy by nature, as it emerges directly out of the unknown and requires compassionate confrontation with the entirety of what we are. As we journey together as fellow travelers, let us commit to embracing both the joy and the heartbreak of the path, and bear witness to the wisdom shining out of our immediate experience, whether it appears as sadness, bliss, despair, or great joy. Grace will appear in both sweet and fierce forms but it is still grace, sent from beyond to open us to the radiant fullness of being.
