What's the particular window that needs to be opened? What's the particular vulnerability you're afraid to reveal?

There are always forces beyond our control that call us to change. To embrace change is to take what we need for the next part of our journey, and to leave everything else behind to burn. What words will we leave behind? What new ways of listening and speaking will we need to learn?

Join Michael for the debut of his new performance, Good Pain: The Art of Being Hurt on January 8, 2022 at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. Visit albertarosetheatre.com for tickets.

Hallways offers a kind of sanctuary or invisibility—a room between rooms where no one thinks to look for you. The psychological space of a poem creates an intimate space that is both a passage to somewhere, as well as no place at all—a place where no one can find you.

Join Michael for the debut of his new performance, Good Pain: The Art of Being Hurt on January 8, 2022 at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. Visit albertarosetheatre.com for tickets.

Change calls us to let what we have outgrown to burn away in the heat of transformation. When we sit in the fire of change, we enrich the ground we stand on and make space for new creative powers to emerge. 

The pain of loneliness is an essential aspect of being human. In order to feel the fullness of love and belonging in the world, we must first experience its opposite—the isolation of being completely alone and in the dark. Once you articulate the painful details of your loneliness, you’re on your way to healing and to understanding how you belong in the world.

This is the place of allowing. This is the place where you surrender your need to control and where you become open to witnessing the deepest aspects of yourself.

The greatest courage is to keep your heart open, no matter what you’re feeling.

This meditation guides you into honoring your pain as a way to heal your wounds, to reconnect you to the truth of your belonging, and to open yourself to beauty. Your pain wants to show you how to live a life of courage, a life of deeper meaning, a life that you create. In becoming aware of pain, you open yourself to receive its gifts.