These three weeks, the last two and then today we've been we're doing a considering kind

of a series that has to do with the middle section of True Refuge, the book that's coming

out. It's called the Gateway of Love. And on the first class we did was really how do we begin

to forgive ourselves and open our hearts to our own being when we've locked into being at war.

And the second class was how do we open that forgiving heart to others? And tonight is really on

this theme of how do we embrace our life? How do we really fall in love with life without holding

back our love in any way? And the underlying understanding is of love as a refuge that no matter what

comes up in our lives, no matter how much pain or how much beauty it's this heart when it's

open that has space for this living dying world. So the solstice is a powerful time of year to

explore what it means to open our hearts. I mean I think everybody has this notion of yes opening

hearts is good. And whether something and it's especially in around the northern hemisphere now,

the shortest day of the year and throughout the world there's these holidays that in some way

are honoring the reality that we go through these seasons of outer and inner periods where it gets dark.

And there are really two kinds of darkness if you reflect on it. And one of the darkness is what

you might sense the darkness of a kind of the fertile void. It's the winter where the seeds are

underground. We can't see what's there. There's a kind of silence and a stillness or seeming

lack of activity out of which arises new life. And it's a beautiful kind of a darkness and silence

and stillness. And there's something instinctual in us that kind of knows that there's a power

to getting more still and touching into that and letting then more of the creativity and truth

of what we are blossom into springtime. So that's one of the kinds of darkness and the other kind

of darkness which is also a very real part of our conditioning. Is the unconsciousness and the

ignorance that gives rise to violence, gives rise to greed, gives rise to hatred. And this is the

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