And we gather here so that we can rest our hearts so that we can take a deep breath. So I’m going to start today’s Gathering Room, which is about how to stop spinning, with a meditation that is kind of like the Space, Stillness, and Silence thing, but the new consciousness is not a consciousness of stasis. It’s very fluid, it moves, it changes, it doesn’t really have any rigidity, rigid rules. So I thought, “I’ll just go with the meditation that comes up for me on a given day.”

So I was sort of in communion with my soul. I was feeling all of us spinning or being kicked by so many things that seemed to want us to spin. And then I had this image come up. So if you wouldn’t mind joining me in this, get your body relaxed. Let the tension go for half an hour. Take a deep breath in and way out, all the way. And again, let your nervous system start to regulate inward.

And as you begin to become more still inside, you might want to close your eyes or half close them or look at the floor in front of you or a blank wall and get your imagination going. So continue to breathe deeply and freely and imagine that you’re standing in a wide open field. There’s no roads, there’s no signs. It’s just sky and ground and air and you’re holding a compass in your hand and the compass needle is spinning. You don’t know where to go. But with each breath, you get more still. With each breath, you find more space inside you. And your attention shifts from matter to space with its stillness and its calm and its vibrancy. And you hear the silence under the sounds. You can even use the trigger cue: Can I imagine the distance between my eyes?

And let that pull you into the stillness, the silence, and the space. And as that happens, the spinning compass needle slows down. It begins to get really slow and easy, and then it swings back and forth a few times, and then it stops and it points straight into your chest.

Now feel the spot inside you that has pulled the compass needle to that orientation. It’s still. It’s not rigid, but it’s still because there’s such a magnetic point in you. And that’s a point that doesn’t flinch when the world gets loud. It doesn’t worry or question. It doesn’t have any questions because it already knows. Let your breath settle there right in the center of that stillness.

So you realize then: There’s no place to walk. You don’t have to go anywhere, just arrive here. Just let yourself arrive right here. This is not a pause between destinations. This is the destination. This is the direction you’re going: inward into the stillness. Feel that.

Whatever you’re dealing with, there is no need for you to worry. There is no need for you to plan. There is only, well not even that, there’s no need to do anything. There is literally no need for you to do anything to be enough to arrive at the place you were meant to be because the universe has delivered you here.

The thing I always quote, “A hundred years before you were born, God drew a circle around the space where you’re sitting right now.” You’re right on time, you’re perfectly oriented, and you have this infallible compass because your North Star—true north—is in the center of your own soul, infinitely deep.

Now breathing with that stillness, staying within the stillness, allow yourself to lightly, gently let the circumstances of your life rise into your mind. What are you going to do about the insurance? Oh dear. What are you going to do about fascism? Oh dear. What are you going to do about aging? What are you going to do about your family members who are having such a rough time? What do you do? And you feel the spin? Go back to the visualization. Look at the beautiful, beautiful compass. It’s made of crystal and gold and it points straight into your heart and says, “Be here now.” The answers are in you. 

The answers may be unformed, but you don’t need to force them and you don’t need to craft them. You need to allow them to arise from the deep magnetic center of your being, which, weirdly and paradoxically, is also the deep magnetic center of the universe. Yes, in each of us. I said it was paradoxical. Don’t ask me for explanations. So allow answers or ideas to gently bubble up to the surface. But if they don’t, you don’t have to worry. The source of all the answers is in this still center of you. It has been bringing through the answers to all your questions your whole life. But in the roar and buzz of the world, you haven’t been able to hear it.

And I think that’s why so many people ask me to repeat the Silence, Stillness, and Space meditation every single Gathering Room. I think that’s the greatest value of us getting together like this. And it’s always to the same place.

And I have only just begun to realize how when you center in that place and when you allow it to be enough, the answers to your questions about the most trivial things and the most immense things will come without effort into your consciousness. There is an intelligence and a love so great for you that hears you in your confusion. And here’s the terrifying cacophony of this world. And in the New Testament, Jesus tells people, “I stand at the door and knock.” It’s knocking. It’s your Higher Self saying, “Be still and trust and allow me to speak to you. And I will, I will.”

We were driving through, Ro and I took Lila yesterday to Central Park Zoo. This is something I’ve been wanting to do with her. I did this with my first child and now I’ve been waiting to do it with Lila for ages, four and a half years, as it happens. And we managed to do it, and it was pandemonium in New York City yesterday. Not only was it a Sunday at the zoo with all the crowding and the screaming kids and everything, right next to the zoo was Greek Independence Day, the Greek Independence Day parade. It was very loud, it was very dense, it was crowded. And here we are, the three of us, me, Ro, Lila, we all have more sensitive than normal nervous systems, and we’re trying to navigate this weirdness. There’s a grizzly bear, there’s the Greek independence Day parade. There’s a crowd. It was bedlam.

And then so we finished with the park and we’re like, Lila was like a mad thing just running from place to place in the zoo, yelling, “Speed! Power!” and then disappearing. It was not good. It was good. It was so good, but it didn’t feel very still—except stillness is always there. So we finally got in the car again and we’re both exhausted, Ro and I, because we hadn’t slept at all the night before because Lila was busy bouncing off the walls, and we put her in her car seat and we’re leaving and she asked for her window to be rolled down because it was warm finally. So we rolled down her window and there’s the Greek Independence [noise]. And then we went past, we went out of that zone and we passed a crowd of Hare Krishna worshipers singing and chanting and dancing.

And then we got into another part of New York City and there was a band playing and Lila’s just completely exhausted. And I think she was high on fumes because let me tell you, especially downtown New York is made of pot. There is such a strong smell of weed in every part of that city that I’m sure everyone there is baked all the time. So Lila’s sitting back in her car seat and listening to all these clashing, bashing, roaring things and she goes, she said to us, “There’s a lot of music in this town, girls.” And then she went conk and fell sound asleep. 

There’s a lot of music in this town right now, girls and boys and those who have no declared gender or other genders, all of us, there’s a lot of music in this town right now. It can be chaotic, it can be frightening. A lot of it looks absolutely terrifying, but that’s only when we let ourselves spin. This is the time when we need to learn to just ground in to space, silence, and stillness and stand in the huge wide plain where there is no track and no road and no one but you and the grasses of the prairie and the sky and your compass that is pointing straight into your own being. Your presence is the portal that is opening to the instructions for what you need to do next in your life. You will be fine. Yes, you will.

All right, so I am now going to answer questions if anyone has them. Here they go, question—we’ve stopped doing names because I garbled them so badly—”How do you get rid of the fear of losing control?”

Well, you don’t get rid of it. You love it until it calms down. It’s not like a swarm of ants, it’s not like a pestilence you want to get rid of. It’s just a frightened animal in your own brain. So the left hemisphere of your brain, as I said in my latest book, is always telling you that you can only stop being afraid if you have total control, which makes people horrified and creates endless suffering. 

But if you can say to that part of yourself, “I get that you’re afraid and you get to be afraid. And I’m standing here on a field of dreams with no track and no trail and my own North Star is in the center of my own being and there is no need to control anything. Moreover, sweetheart, there is nothing you can control.” As I said in the book, I’ve never been able to control anything with my thoughts, including my thoughts. And as for my physical efforts, they’re ridiculous. They never work. So you love the part of you that wants control and you tell it, “Sweetheart, you can’t have control. How about we just open a portal to stillness and we have some fun together?”

Question: “As an artist, how do you embrace making ugly things without losing confidence and without worry? It’s paralyzing.”

I know, I got stuck in that recently, and I’ve been making a bunch of really ugly paintings. And then after our trip to New York to the zoo, it was such a chaotic day that I came in, I looked at this painting, I’m like, “That’s really freaking ugly. So I’m going to mess with it for a while. It’s a mess. So I’m going to mess with it. I’m going to just do whatever.” And I started just messing around with a painting that was already, I don’t love it. I don’t think I’m ever going to love it. 

And then you don’t need confidence. And you don’t worry because you’re out of the left hemisphere of your brain, which does anxiety, you’re not trying to control anymore. You’re actually just moving your hands and looking with your eyes and saying, “Huh, that worked. That didn’t work. That’s cool. That’s not.” And it really is about painting. It’s not about the painting. It’s not about the dish you’re cooking. It’s about the cooking. I once grew a garden. We never got anything out of that garden, but it was about the gardening. Okay, so yeah, see if you can get there.Try the meditation with the compass, see if it works and have fun.

Another question, “I was listening to a Tim Ferris pod with Craig Mod, who does long walks. He was talking about the one in the Cotswolds. Was that your one?”

That’s Craig, and that’s Tim. And they’re beautiful men. I love them. Craig is—okay. I love Craig. That’s enough. This is about the Gathering Room. Anyway, thanks for shouting out.

Question: “How do I quiet the ongoing daily crises in order to create?”

You don’t quiet the crises. You create right in the freaking middle. That’s another thing. I used to get up at five and paint for a few hours, and that was great. And that was its time and a season. And now I’m like, “I’ve got 10 minutes, I’m just going to throw something at the paper or the canvas,” or whatever. And I don’t quiet the chaos. I let it be. And I throw in a few minutes here and there. And that’s part of being present. That’s part of opening the portal to the infinite to say, “It’s okay that I’m too busy to do set hours of, well, whatever, I’m just going to have to work in the middle of the ongoing crisis and see what happens.” 

If you can get to the point of presence and everything gets quiet, then you can have humor and delight and joy and creativity in between bouts of crying hysterically because the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It’s all good. It’s all good. The still point at your center will tell you, “Sweetheart, this is what you came for. It’s all good.”

So next question: “How to figure out what to do next when you suddenly get laid off in this very uncertain economy?”

Wow, there are a lot of people facing this right now, and I do want to stop and say I have so much compassion and empathy for that. That is terrifying. And I think before you jump to another job, you have to come into presence. Because here’s the thing, the old economy isn’t just shifting the place that it employs people, it’s breaking, it’s disintegrating. There is never going to be the job your father and grandfather and maybe your mother had—not your grandmother because it’s moved so fast that women weren’t getting jobs in your grandmother’s time. But what we’re moving on to is something much more fulfilling to the human soul, to your soul, or you wouldn’t be here here at the Gathering Room.

So how do you get income? I don’t know what your next step is going to be outwardly, but I know that first you have to step inward. You have to go to the still point that is not afraid of being unemployed right now. And I know that sounds almost impossible. And in our culture it is impossible. In the left hemispheres of our brains it may be impossible. But if you go to the part of you that makes things, the part of you that loves beauty and goes to see animals just because you love animals and says, “There’s a lot of music in this town, girls,” if you go into that space, it will give you your next step.

It has helped me find ways to make money when I was crippled and broken and unemployed and fired for being a morally reprehensible person after my book about Mormonism came out. Woo, I got some firing. It’s going to be okay. And you’ll find that inside you.Not inside me, but I’m here for you. I’m holding the frequency for you and you will find something. It’s going to be okay.

Next question: “Dearest Martha, I’m just crying so hard during the meditation because despite all the spinning last year, the universe did close all the doors. I got my answer. How do I make sure staying still is the answer?”

Staying still in your life isn’t the answer. Presence in each moment is the answer. So what does presence look like right now? You’re watching the Gathering Room, listening to it, whatever. Good. Be here now. Ro had a joke meme that had Evil Ram Dass saying, “Be somewhere else now.” You’ll get that if you’re a Ram Dass fan.

“Be here now” will never fail you. If you are in any point of your spin, if the doors seem to be closed, if too many doors look to be open, be present, be present, be present. The compass always points to your own still center, the center still point of the universe. You are the still point of the turning world.

We do Still Point Sessions in Wilder because just based on that poem of T.S. Elliot’s: “to be the still point of the turning world.” Become that over and over and you’ll find it easier and easier to go there. Your brain will wire up so that you can go there quickly. And you’ll be shown the next step, the next step. And some of those steps will not look like anything anyone else has ever done. And that’s the fun part. Trust yourself.

Okay, yeah. So if you ever want to come to a Still Point Session, we do them in our wild, our beautiful Wilder Community, which is wildercommunity.com. Okay, someone said to mention that.

Question: “How do you take next steps when you’re afraid they’ll hurt your family?”

Openness. Calm communication. If necessary, leadership. I’ll tell you one thing about being in a throuple, a three-person relationship. It doesn’t work without crystal-clear communication. And it doesn’t work if anyone has any secrets or any lies at all. It’s the best lesson in how you need to be together in finding your stillness, in following your instincts, in grounding yourself, in becoming present. 

When Karen and Ro and I are making big decisions—and we have been making big decisions lately—everyone shows up as herself. We don’t show up for the others. We show up as ourselves. And this strange and beautiful thing, and it’s so much easier to trust, in a weird way, when there are three people than when there are two because it’s so statistically unlikely, is that it always turns out to be a win-win. We each have our own reasons for wanting something, and yet we always end up choosing the same thing from our different perspectives. And that’s impossible. My social science mindset: “You’re making that up. That can’t be.” It’s been 10 years and it only always works.

So be a still point for your family. Don’t expect them to pull you into resonance. Come into resonance yourself and say, “Troubled? Then stay with me for I am not. And here’s what’s coming from my still center. Can you find the center of yourself and speak to me from there?” 

And then the family moves forward together or the community moves forward together. This is all about a new consciousness rising where we communicate everything that is our truth to everyone who’s affected by it. And when everyone’s in the truth, everything fits. It’s crazy. It’s nothing like the society you were raised in where different people have different angles, they’re taking from each other, for one person to win, another person has to lose. It’s the opposite. It’s this wild thing. It is wild. That’s why we call our community Wilder. It is like the forest where every part of the ecosystem is working for itself and for the whole. And there’s no contradiction between those things. And when you go to the still center and you stop the spin, you will feel and then see that that is true.

Question: “How to subside the panic of current job and fear of not knowing what to do next?”

Oh my honey, you are speaking the language of the old consciousness, the one we’re still in, but the one that is collapsing. And let me tell you, it’s been 5,500 years of people who couldn’t subside the panic of the current job and the fear of not knowing what to do next. It is a fear-based, scarcity-based, cruel, driving culture. It is brutal. I just reread David Wengrow and David Graeber’s book, The Dawn of Everything. Fantastic. 

And it’s basically, they set out in 800 short pages to say, “Why the hell is everything so messed up?” And they kind of come up with the whole pyramid of the society, the forms of society that have led not only to late-stage capitalism, but also late-stage communism and late-stage pretty much everything all over the world. It’s a horrible system. And thank God it’s breaking. And yes, it’s absolutely freaking terrifying that we don’t yet see what we’ll be doing next.

But I can tell you something for sure: Your presence now is the portal to the answers for you. And they will be compassionate, not only for you, but for everything. Trust homecoming, trust stillness. Trust the infinitely deep center of your soul. Be in it and you will be guided. Yes.

“So stuck in avoiding my feelings all of my life, but now knowing it,” someone says, “Where to start to get out of these?”

Well, guess what? You’ve been trying to avoid your feelings, but you’ve never actually managed it. They’re still in there. Congratulations? Yeah. What you do is you relax and you let them come up and you find a way to get let them flow through you. Best way is journaling. I journaled infinite numbers of words for literally decades just to get the feelings out onto the page. And then I had therapy and I had coaches and I had friends, and I had my own self-coaching and I had spiritual teachers.

I let them flow and I did what I had to do to tolerate that. And let me give you one hint. If you can come to the still place, and if you can feel the community of the beautiful people that are listening to this right now, even if they’re listening to it at a later time—because there is no time—you’re going to see you can hold it. You can transmit the emotion through your flesh and out, and it will leave wisdom. And the still point will get calmer and bigger. So enjoy. Feelings are a package deal. The icky ones will come up and go through. And the beautiful ones, oh, you’re going to be so glad you let everything in. But it all comes together.

Three more questions. We’re right at the end. “How do you keep creating art when a part of you is saying you won’t ever finish it?”

You do it for the painting, not for the painting. You do it for the experience. Karen was moving some things around with Lila today, and they punched through a canvas that I had, of a painting that I’d spent, I don’t know, a hundred hours on. And I came downstairs and Karen was like, “Very bad news.” And I was like, “It was in a closet. I don’t even remember it.” And she’s like, “But you worked so hard on it.” And I was like, “Yes, and it changed me and I’m really grateful for that.” That’s what I carry. The painting was under the stairs. That’s all right. So don’t do it for the old consciousness reason of having something to show or sell or whatever. You don’t ever need to finish it. Just enjoy making stuff and the feelings and the guidance that come up when you do, when you open that part of your brain, woo!

Question, “What do you do with the interior anger and grief you’re feeling?”

I freaking feel it! I cry and I throw little tantrums and I write down angry words. I used to have something called Muffy’s Diary of Hate and Rage. This was like 30 years ago, but it was very healing. I wrote down every bad feeling. “Bad feeling.” There’s no such thing as a bad feeling. There’s only being dishonest or being true to yourself. And of course you don’t want to hurt anyone and you don’t want to be mean and you don’t want to do things you would be, you will later regret. But feelings, just expressing them is all you need to do. And they take you, they move you to a different place. They are important.

I realized today I had some anger and I was like, “Yum! This is really clearing up some points I had about justice and how it works.” So I’m going to let it cook me for a while. It’s not going to hurt me and I won’t let it hurt anyone else. So it’s all fine.

Okay, last question: “Hi, Martha. How does one finally just get to the thing that needs to be done when finding reasons and ways to not doing it is constantly seducing you?”

I don’t see a problem there. I mean, what really needs to be done? What, the laundry? We’re all going to die. I don’t care if your laundry’s done today. The one thing that needs to be done has already happened. You are present in your body, in your life on this ball of rock, in this corner of the universe, right at this time. Come home to presence. Open the portal. Go where that compass is pointing, and you’ll find a place that is never troubled. And actually opening that door, finding that place, is the one thing that has to be done.

So I’ll leave you with that. Much love. Welcome home to the home that is always here, and I’ll see you next time in the Gathering Room. Bye.