A Way through Darkness
It's been a lot.
It has been. The news, the relationships, the late-night spiral. The sense that the ground we trusted is no longer where we left it. We've spent so much energy bracing against what's coming that we've forgotten how to be here, where we already are.
When asked by her students for the tools that matter most for difficult times like this, Pema Chödrön returned to the four qualities her teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche called the dignities. Not as abstract teachings—as practices. Concrete, daily, portable. Things you can keep on an index card in your pocket.
In this new home retreat from Gampo Abbey, her home monastery on the cliffs of Nova Scotia, Pema offers four practices for being a steady, brave, tender heart amidst the noise. Friendly to yourself. Raise your lungta. Free from fixed mind. Dance with reality. Each one builds on the one before. Each one a tool for the moment you are in.
This is not a course that asks you to be different than you are. It is not a course that asks you to escape what is happening. It is a course about befriending what is already here—including the parts of you that are afraid, the parts of you that are angry, the parts of you that wonder if anyone else is feeling this too.
Through these teachings, Pema will guide you toward a kind of contentment that doesn't depend on the world being kinder than it is. A capacity to meet what arrives—fear, grief, surprise, joy—and to discover, as her own teacher used to say, that the only way out is through.
Four practices for the days that don't make sense. Whatever you encounter, you will be supported in turning toward it—learning to see whatever arises as a doorway to further awakening and connection.
