Assertiveness training, creative dreams, & near-death experiences
Our most-read Kindred Letters from 2024
Q: What do assertiveness training, near-death experiences, creative dreams, and grandfatherly wisdom have to do with each other?
A: All these subjects, and more, were featured in our most-read Kindred Letters of 2024.
Here are those letters, currently unlocked (if you’re not yet a subscriber) for you to read! I hope you enjoy them. And I wish you a new year of quiet, depth, and beauty.
Love - Susan
*
*
*
*
*I’m curious to know whether you read each of these the first time they were sent, or are you seeing some of these for the first time?
*If you have read them before, are you finding something new in these letters, the second time around?
*Which is your favorite?
Dear Susan, and lovers of quiet beauty. Lamplighters all! My actual re-read and favorite, both in the book Quiet, and now your letter, is the story of your ham-del, your Grandfather. How I missed active grand-parenting by those alive, yet absent to actively relating with their next generational off-springs, mercifully due to their limitations. Therefore, your early memory's that still feed, nourish and light-up your soul-heartedness about Grandfather is cause for activating our dreams of never-to-be-forgotten ideals lighting the path to an honorable life-purpose. I shine that conscious awareness and loving kind light on the shrouds of darkness we are afraid to penetrate, yet summon the courage to activate and revive my curiosity...the invitation as we say, to move into the darkness with that spark of "what is this" we ask utilizing methods of insight meditation. Is this true? repeatedly, is this perception the only one I can cling to? And then, the gradual emotionally intelligent un-layering into the ultimate questions...who would I be without that thought? hmmmm. Not too quiet, or too verbose, perhaps, but as you encourage in these letters at the deepest level, I will sit stand walk and lie down with the confidence of serving both sides to the degree I am able. And look what happens? We live in that curiosity and calm as if entering maturing wisdom; as if wondrous magical children returning to ourSelves as if for the very first time...at 94, Ham-dels, in a wheel chair, still discovering the wonder of refuge in the community, the truth, the possibility of grace. Oh, and I love your value for polite and considerate company. After all, a tree offers us this naturally if we but attune. Without that attunement, the fearful me clings to fear of moving toward what I love and is beauty. When recognizing even a glimmer of decorum ("oh noble ones" buddha) in myself, in society and all generations, while still speaking clearly from reason and logic, about our shared vulnerability to the most unscrupulous secrets, denials, lies. I am inspired to keep bettering my confusion about the qualities of darkness which have a spectrum from despicable to the most sublime! We must keep speaking to our discoveries regarding emotionally intelligent efforts coupled with logic and reason. Often referred to as the Sacred Marriage of Yin and Yang within. This is a response to your curiosity and invitation, Susan. With deep respect and gratitude and love to everyone, and to recognizable moments of grace in 2025.
I read all the letters as they were published. In 2025, the second letter is most meaningful because I do have a “big” goal/dream and it is very difficult. And I’m pushing 64 and I have 1 1/2 - 2 years left in “the Wakeup.” There’s the what next? And how then shall I live issue? questions to work through and that’s also difficult.
There’s also a great affirmation in your letter about dreams. The Artist’s Way talks about “Art” and “art” and it’s the latter that makes all the difference..