New Beginnings Courses
Participant Manual
Our intention with this program is to create a safe community where discussions about death and dying, spirituality, and anything else that is important to members is supported and welcomed.
Courses Schedule
Videos
Week 2 - It's not what you think
Week 3 - Remembering the truth of who you are
Week 4 - The Second Arrow
Week 5 - Surrender, letting go
Soul Light Meditation
Poems
A wise man gave me this poem, translated from an ancient stone 3500 years old
This prayer is offered for you, wonderful child of the universe,
as you embark on the most joyful journey you have ever taken
filled with wondrous surprises.
A journey into the greatest happiness you have ever known,
and the grandest experience you will ever have.
Know, for a certainty that when you leave here
you will be again with all those who have held a place in your heart and have gone before you.
And do not worry about those you leave behind, for you will see them too
again and again through all eternity, and even in the present moment.
For there can be no separation.
Where there is love uniqueness and difference, yes, but no separation and no waiting where there is only now.
Smile then, at the joyful anticipation of what is in store.
These gifts have been laid up for you and God has only been waiting for you to return to receive them.
Peace, joy, and love are yours now and always
So it is, and so it shall be forever, and ever.
Amen
Start Close In
Start close in, don’t take the second step, or the third,
start with the first thing close in,
the step you don’t want to take.
Start with the ground you know,
the pale ground beneath your feet,
your own way to begin the conversation.
Start with your own question,
give up on other people’s questions,
don’t let them smother something simple.
To hear another’s voice,
follow your own voice,
wait until that voice
becomes an intimate private ear
that can really listen to another.
Start right now, take a small step
you can call your own,
don’t follow someone else’s heroics,
be humble and focused,
start close in, don’t mistake
that other for your own.
Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third,
start with the first thing close in,
the step you don’t want to take.
by David Whyte
Enough
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
We have refused again and again
Until now.
Until now.
By: David Whyte
Farewell Letter
She wrote me a letter after her death,
and I remember a kind of happy light
as I sat by the rose tree on her old bench by the back door
so surprised to receive it
wondering what she would say
looking up before I could open it
and laughing to myself in silent expectation.
Dear son
it is time for me to leave you
the words you are used to hearing, are no longer mine to give.
You can only hear those words of motherly affection now from your own mouth and only for those who stand motherless before you.
As for me
I must forsake adulthood
and be bound gladly to a new childhood.
You must understand this apprenticeship demands of me an elemental innocence from everything I have ever held in my hands.
I know your generous soul is well able to let me go
You will in the end be happy to know my God was true and that after so many years of loving you so long
I find myself in the wide, infinite mercy of being mothered myself.
P.S. All of your intuitions were true.
David Whyte
Sweet Darkness
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness to learn
anything or anyone that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
By: David Whyte
Go in and in
Go in and in.
Be the space between two cells,
the vast, resounding
silence in which
spirit dwells.
Be sugar dissolving
on the tongue of life.
Dive in and in,
as deep as you can dive.
Be infinite, ecstatic truth.
Be love conceived and born in union.
Be exactly what you seek,
the Beloved, singing Yes,
tasting Yes, embracing Yes,
until there is only essence;
the All of Everything
expressing through you
as you. Go in and in
and turn away from
nothing that you find.
Danna Faulds
Maybe Not
Begin somewhere.
Take one deep breath and dive.
Plunge into the core of your most persistent fear, or your greatest joy.
Grow comfortable with the act of exploration.
Well, maybe not comfortable, but confident of your ability to be sure footed on slick rocks, steady while the winds gust.
Well, maybe not entirely confident, but willing to set out despite persistent doubts, breathing your way into whatever you are facing.
Well, maybe not even all that willing, but you take it anyway, that first step into the unknown.
Courage is starting where there is no secure outcome, no sure result.
The secret is you can begin again at any time.
Take one deep breath and dive.
Danna Faulds
Let Go
Let go of the ways you thought life
would unfold; the holding of plans
or dreams or expectations – Let it
all go. Save your strength to swim
with the tide.
The choice to fight what is here before
you now will only result in struggle,
fear, and desperate attempts to flee
from the very energy you long for.
Let go. Let it all go and flow with the
grace that washes through your days
whether you receive it gently or
with all your quills raised to defend
against invaders.
Take this on faith: the mind may never
find the explanations that it seeks, but
you will move forward nonetheless.
Let go, and the wave’s crest will carry
you to unknown shores, beyond your
wildest dreams or destinations. Let it
all go and find the place of rest and
peace, and certain transformation.
Danna Faulds
Allow
There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado.
Dam a stream and it will create a new
channel.
Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground.
The only safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes
By: Danna Faulds
Please Call Me by my True Name
Do not say that I will depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch
to be a tiny bird, with wings still so fragile
learning to sing in my new nest
to be a caterpillar in the heart of flower
to be a jewel hiding itself in stone
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of the pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who,
approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the 12 year old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labour camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
By: Thich Nhat Hanh
The Welcoming Prayer
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today, and everything in my lodge, Because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, Situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, Approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, Condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of Spirit and Spirit’s action within.
Always
This dying in living but not so
Obvious as it is now with the too much
Of cancer, this not so silent marauder
Making its way, having its way,
inside me. And me, seemingly defenseless
against it. And I will not rail or shout
against it. I will not call it this autumn
or maybe already winter robbing me
Of spring or summer. I will not call
memory a wound, a reminder of when
Death was more a curiosity, a place
in a country far away. Now, this reality
I am called to visit. But what gift, what
holiness will I bring? What bright diamond
From this darkness, not a darkness,
If I choose to tell death, clearly, my name?
by Richard Osler