Aligning With What Is Essential

2025 was a lot. 

Not an easy year. 

It brought steep challenges, miraculous gifts and unexpected momentous change.

For so many havoc reached into daily life in ways unimaginable. When normally I might have been able to find words to console the daily onslaught of news left me speechless.

There is no easy way to sum up or address what feels like a breakdown of collective consciousness. A kind of existential crisis that touches the fabric of the way we perceive the world and slowly unravels it. 

The distress is no surprise. It may just be the eventual outcome of what has been in motion for quite some time. An inevitable result of things that are clearly not working, old systems coming apart, breaking down, revealing a need for better, different, something else. Yet what that will be remains to be seen.

Destruction is a weighty part of the creative process. It is a necessary part. 

Death an abiding force to life.

Change the only constant.

Instability has a way of directly testing our sense of purpose - of who we are and why we are here. Each person has a unique relationship to this question and there are no right or wrong answers. 

Collective questioning touches us all. We are reminded of the choices we have to make to uphold what matters deeply. When things come apart there is a realignment that becomes possible when we remember what is essential. Change happens in relationship, on a global scale or an individual level, and breakdown moments inevitably signal a chance to breakthrough.

But what are we breaking through to? As a collective, I’m not sure anyone has a concise answer. And yet we all feel some new potential aching to be realized.

2025 delivered horrendous blows to our sense of a democratic nation, but also to our common identity as a human people. Many feel changed and many are undergoing further transformation still. 

The question that helps me, that gets me back to my center, amidst all of it is: “What am I prioritizing in life?”

I think about what needs tending to. I feel into who matters deeply. I show up for my work. I make space for my spiritual practice. I notice what guides me. 

And in some small, but significant way, I am reminded of purpose - my sense of self and what I’m dedicated to. I am reminded of the devotion I feel, what I am taking a stand for, and I find my way back to clarity. I remember what I can do and actively tend to it.

I get to remember that what I choose to commit to is no small thing. That this quiet promise I make to myself every morning is everything. It touches everyone I come into contact with and changes things. 

It can be easy to get lost along the way, to get caught up in fixation, to lose yourself in the disarray…  

AND all of it is part of remembering what is your to tend to. All of it guides your way back home. 

We will have moments when we doubt every last effort. We may lose ourselves in moments of defeat. We can feel overwhelmed by what looms ahead of us. We may even sink back into old patterns of helplessness. 

And then there is a moment when we remember to ask ourselves: “Do I know my way back to presence with myself? Do I know my way back home?”

I believe you do.

I believe we all do.

We have incredible capacity to stretch ourselves.

We have the care and attention it takes to focus on where it matters deeply.

We are here now to meet the changes underway with much more depth, wisdom, and heart. 

When we stop to pause, maybe even feel how we’ve lost our way, and remember who we are right now we have the chance to see/receive ourselves deeply, to bolster ourselves, and meet one another with far more clarity and compassion. With this move towards powerful presence we hone the discernment and honesty we need to navigate times of unpredictability.

It is the understanding of every spiritual practice that when someone (the world) is ailing we have a responsibility to tend to this suffering - to look both within and without - to extract a balm. To do our inner work for the sake of contacting a much deeper resolve, and, perhaps, finding a new threshold of truth that exists at the core of our very being. This is universal understanding has its origins in the compassionate heart. It is what holds the confusion and heartbreak when times are unseemly dark.

There may be no simple answer here and yet we know deep down what a sane choice looks like. How we respond to life’s challenges shapes who we become.

Maybe the only thing that makes sense in a time of confusion is to start listening closely to the qualities that guide equanimity of mind and peace in the heart. To remember that your inner state is the source, an inner ballast, that supports your capacity for resilience and perseverance.

Whatever small thing causes separation and harm within the self inevitably fosters suffering outwardly. The value  in creating clear and healthy boundaries is to serve and protect what is life affirming. 

Everyone has a role. Even the people we disagree with play a role in our unfoldment.  We grow in relationship and there is no greater accelerator than adversity. When we can be truly seen, supported, and received we are invited to offer more of who we are. I can see no more important task than uncovering more of what that is for you.

Your life purpose(s), the principles that guide your life, arise out of knowing yourself deeply and letting everything else that is not you unwind and let go. The more you find yourself, and relax into this truth, the more you receive and will have to give.

Sometimes this looks so very different from what we originally intended or what our expectations had us believing, but there is still a path right there inviting you deeper into the life that is yours.

May you feel guided and encouraged, bolstered and supported in your own unfolding. May you carry on with self-awareness, clarity and patience. 

Yours for the journey,

Andrea