A Wider Intelligence

Dear Ones,

Warm greetings to you all. As 2008 hastens to a close and we reflect on this remarkable year, we find ourselves increasingly mindful of the fact of impermanence. We’ve been discovering that not only are there many challenges as well as blessings, but there is also an art to aging. We’re certainly not artists yet; but we’re finding that, in learning to navigate these changes with poise and calm—our bodies, with more aches and pains, no longer capable of what they once were; memory not as sharp; economic and other uncertainties and ambiguities—our lives are becoming richer and more focused. As we learn to move with the changes that mark our waning years, we’re increasingly aware that all we know and love will pass away.

And we have never been happier. Our many years of study and exploration have coalesced into a body of work that pulls together the various threads that have long been important to us. We call this work Somatic Meditative Inquiry, and both of us feel that it continues to grow out of, as well as deepen, our experience and contemplation of aging and impermanence.

As we enter into a new year, our wish and prayer for each of you, and for ourselves as well, is that whatever circumstances we encounter, wanted and unwanted, pleasurable and painful, that each be felt as an occasion to become more awake, alive and free.

With much love, and wishing many blessings to each of you,

Cynthia & Mike Flowers