Being on the spot, even if it hurts, is preferable to avoiding. As we practice moving into the present moment this way, we become more familiar with groundlessness, a fresh state of being that is available to us on an ongoing basis. This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted, and shaky—that’s calle

This koan has always encouraged me to trust the difficulties I run up against and the slowness with which I work with them. It is as if an impasse has its own journey built into it, a journey that belongs only to that impasse and which is a unique path to freedom. Each step in the dark turns out in the end to have been on course after all.