Safety Without Separation - The Wild Intimacy Of True Refuge

Imagine meeting your last breath, and feeling utterly, truly safe...

This meditation explores the difference between conceptual safety and the felt safety that arises when we stop separating ourselves from our emotions. It guides you out of the mind’s protective shelters and back into the raw, honest intelligence of the body, where fear, grief, and uncertainty can finally be met without resistance.

Through embodied inquiry, you learn to dissolve the imagined distance between “you” and your sensations, revealing that even anxiety and instability can become safe when fully felt. This practice helps you rediscover undivided presence as the only real refuge. It’s an invitation to return to the wild, grounded aliveness that has always held you — the safety of simply being here.

Thank you for being here with me and for exploring the deeper truths - without negating the body. I have lots of poetry to share with you in the new year, and I very much look forward to staying in touch.

Transcript

Beloved,

Imagine with your last breath feeling truly safe.

Not because you were free of pain,

Not because you had managed to solve the riddles of your life,

But because you knew without a doubt that safety was a way of being in this moment,

Without separation,

Even as the lights went out.

We have deeply misunderstood safety.

We believe it is a fortress that can be built,

A distance that must be maintained.

We tighten the muscles of the body to hold our protective shape against change,

Loss and uncertainty,

As if we could be sheltered by the brittle architecture of thought.

Our sense of security is often derived from concept,

Rather than felt presence.

We believe we are safe when we think things are familiar,

Constant and unfolding in a predictable way,

But the opposite is not true either,

In the way we then try to conceptualise the unknown,

Or spiritualise life's fluidity and impermanence.

What if this was just another attempt to create safety through thought,

Equally futile,

Equally estranged from the unconditional well-being that is right here and now.

The body is blind,

It does not perceive threat,

It can only respond in its raw and honest way to the stories we tell ourselves,

And because we are so often taught as children to suppress our emotions,

We often unconsciously mistake the body,

This tender vessel,

As the source of danger.

Whereas in truth,

It is our belief and identification with thought itself that gives rise to all fears,

The deepest fear we have isn't actually being unsafe,

But in feeling unsafe.

Because that's what our thoughts are trying to protect us from,

Not the world itself.

True safety is not the absence of threat,

It is the absence of separation from our emotions.

It is the ability to feel the trembling of this body creature,

The terror,

The fragility of the moment,

And to relearn that this feeling,

However it's being expressed,

Is safety itself.

If you look closely,

At any fear you may be holding,

You'll notice that what feels unsafe isn't what might happen,

But how you imagine you'll respond to it.

The real fear is not the event itself,

But your emotional response,

And the responses of others.

This is radical,

It means that even anxiety,

Loss,

Death,

Illness,

Can become safe the moment we allow ourselves to feel what they stir in us,

Without splitting off from their present expression.

So let's make this real right now,

Let's take a moment to descend into the only place true safety can be found,

Here,

In the wild,

Unmanaged dark of the body.

I'd like you to close your eyes and sink your weight into the earth,

Let your spine rise from the ground,

Flexible and steady.

Gravity is always here,

Even when we forget it,

Always hugging us into itself.

Feel it in your body,

Earth's magnetism,

Assuring,

Constant,

And yet invisible.

Feel the temperature of the air around you,

This wild air cycled through the lungs of wolves and lichen.

Your true nature is not a concept,

Not a thought,

Not an identity.

You are the very real,

Yet ungraspable presence,

Always here,

Just like gravity.

Take a conscious breath,

Staying with the physical sensations of it as much as you can.

I'd like you to imagine that this life is a vast and varied landscape,

From ice-capped mountains to lush meadows,

Swamplands and bodies of water.

Consider for a moment how you've tried to keep yourself safe in this life,

In what feels like a wild territory full of hidden unknowns.

What shelter have you built to protect yourself from those unseeable beasts beyond the ridgeline?

That unknown future beyond the horizon?

Just imagine for a moment what this protective shelter might look like.

Don't struggle to create it,

Just be open to any image that shows up.

Maybe it's a perfect fortress,

With every detail in place.

Maybe it's more a spiritual dwelling,

A hermitage.

Or maybe it's just a worn backpack,

Because constant movement feels like a shield.

Take a moment to imagine what your hiding place looks like in this wilderness,

And what it feels like to be inside it right now.

Have you ever felt truly protected in what you've built?

Does it ever feel lonely at all?

Have you ever felt truly at home in this enclosure?

The truth is not that you need to keep anything out of your shelter in order to be safe.

But gently see the exhaustion that this kind of protection offers.

See that no matter how much you have closed yourself away,

That the air still seeps in,

The walls wear down,

The grass grows wildly between the plants.

If you have to keep moving in order to be safe,

How truly safe are you when you get tired?

Or when you suddenly meet the large,

Raging river?

If we have ever spent a night in the wilderness,

We know that a tent is a psychological safety,

Not a real one.

It can be useful,

But nothing compared to being fully alive and present in the body.

So let's take this a little deeper,

And meet what we're really trying to keep ourselves safe from,

And that is our own feelings.

We never touch the safety of reality through thought.

We do not need to pay attention to them right now.

We just want to gently meet our raw sensory feelings in the flesh.

So just become present with the body as it is,

Without labelling anything.

Just notice what is here,

In the emotional body,

Just as physical sensation.

A knot,

A tightness,

An ache,

A warmth,

A chill,

It doesn't matter what it is,

Or why it is,

Only that it is.

However you feel right now,

Is how you need to feel.

It is not unspiritual,

Or spiritual,

It is beyond both,

It's reality just as it is,

As wild as wild can be.

If there is a sense of not being safe with what is here,

A subtle sense of separation has appeared,

A kind of false shelter the mind is trying to pitch in order to protect you.

So let's find the heart of true safety now,

By gently feeling into our sensations,

And ask ourselves this one question.

Where does this sensation end,

And I begin?

The I who is having this emotion,

Where are they?

Try and find the boundary between who you take yourself to be and this feeling.

Where does the tightness in the chest end and Kate begin?

Where does the burning in the belly end and James begin?

Where does this sensation end and you begin?

The deeper truth is that you do not feel your emotions,

They are simply arising and falling away like a flurry of wind through the valley of the body.

When you realise there is no one to stand apart from emotion,

There is no need to fight or protect yourself from them.

Like a wrestler who embraces her opponent so fully that there is no distance left for conflict.

You do not need to shelter yourself from life,

Because you are life.

You can step out into the unknown wild,

Because you are the wild.

Our fragile protective shelter is the thought made separate self.

You are the landscape that needs no protecting,

No borders,

No state lines.

Sense your feet right now,

The steady pull of gravity gently holding you.

Feel your whole alive body,

Your sense of simply being.

Safety is the only thing that is real,

It is our undivided presence with what is here.

Without thought made resistance,

The only resistance there is.

Truth feels very healing to our blind body.

Truth frees us.

Truth reveals that love has always called itself by our name.

We just forgot,

Because we momentarily believed we were something that could stand apart from love.

Take a deep breath,

Just see your fragile self-shelter once more with your mind's eye.

See that it is too included in your vast body,

That it doesn't need to be fixed or removed.

That the wild earth will grow around it,

Making it a smaller and smaller aspect of you.

And you can open your eyes when you're ready.

It has taken my body time to readjust,

To trust that the raw,

Present moment,

However it feels,

Is true safety.

Trauma-induced dissociation brought me to non-duality,

To inquire into the nature of self and reality.

At the beginning of my journey,

I used it simply as another way to escape,

But something felt off,

Like I wasn't quite home.

I learned that the nervous system doesn't know what non-duality is,

Doesn't know what emptiness is,

Or what the Heart Sutra says.

It only knows something far more ancient,

Breath,

Touch,

Sensation,

Intimacy,

Gravity.

When the body is grounded,

Felt in the present moment without resistance,

It becomes a doorway beyond all spiritual concepts,

No matter how profound they might be.

And this feels like freedom,

Feels like home.

As our capacity to feel expands,

The seemingly narrow confines of life widen with it.

We begin to see our true power was never in arranging life so we could be protected.

But in meeting it fully,

Feeling it just as it is without division,

Allowing even the hardest moments to become moments of true refuge.

I hope this offers you a way to meet the day ahead,

From the ever-present body.

Whenever you feel yourself afraid or thinking protective thoughts,

Pause,

Take a breath,

And step back into the body.

Ask yourself where your emotions end and you begin.

Rest as the loving,

Vast,

Mysterious landscape you are.

That includes it all without want of change.

And you will begin to feel at home in the world,

As the world.

This meditation flows with a similar theme in part two of my wholeness course.

If you feel called towards remembering your inherent wholeness,

You are warmly invited to join us.

Thank you for your shares and thank you for taking the time to comment and be here.

I read all your words and I take them to heart.

Reviews

This meditation taught me embodiment. There was a weight of calmness in my body by the end of this meditation. This was happening after a long phase of restlessness. It was as if I was able to become the container that holds all of my emotions, all of my light and all of my darkness with equanimity in that moment. Thankyou thankyou thankyou for your wisdom and guidance. Your powerfully soft voice, sound of the wolves and the humming in the background held me in the present in the most beautiful of ways. Extremely grateful for your beauty and being 🙏🏼🌸🪶🌌✨

Sez your words and music and pacing are always a balm for the soul. Deep gratitude. 🙏

Thank you

The primal within me stirs as your words awaken it. Thank you.

Stepping toward and becoming familiar with my fears as a way to be safe sounds right. My past experiences thinks it is foolish and dangerous. Such a fierce battle is playing out. It is a different understanding of courage and safety.

Sessions that invite internal reflection through enquiry impact the journey differently. It plants seeds that can grow into insights, rather than simply sharing an insight which is later forgotten. Even if it never develops into anything further, it's a simple blessing to the nervous system. A reprieve from constant bracing. Thank you for another colorful journey 💕

A death/life meditation 🧘
Thank you for your reflection on safety and presence. I spent a few weeks on the Appalachian trail and it felt like a dialogue with safety and fear.

Dearest Sez, your insights are once again hitting home for me. I found myself deep into the boreal forest of Québec where I grew up and where I am about to go for a visit. Winter in a forest covered with snow. That familiar feeling from my youth, from my ancestors too, of being in a forest knee deep into the snow. That place, that landscape being the shelter, the security I experienced within my body that I can experience again and again in the now. No need for me to create a safe shelter in my mind. The reality of my true nature, the experience of non-duality, becomes real when I am present in my body. Just like my body produced enough warmth for me to be perfectly fine in the winters of my youth, in awe at the peaceful snowscape surrounding me. I am so grateful for that feeling of true security experienced in reality. Thank you so much for always finding the right words to help me sit and be present.

💜💜💜

Deeply moved by this offering. The body recognizes it’s wisdom. 🙏🏼❣️

Truly beautiful. Thank you. I'll revisit this often and head for your wholeness course too. 😊💛🙏

Thank you, that was so beautiful and needed. Forever grateful 💚✨🙏🏽

Hearing your words cracks my heart wide open, to reflect and receive. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and gifts. 💐🌞

Wow

Great insight and perspective as I navigate divorce, b ing a single parent for my two kids, and also seeking my own fulfillment in life. Thanks for this perspective..and another reason for self acceptance and gratitude for all I have

How beautifully you choose every word, and how lovingly you weave them together. Every talk, every guided meditation of yours is a gift to this world. Thank you dear Sez.

So helpful, as always dear Sez. Thank you 🙏🏼💝🌟

Thank you for your soothing voice, your wise knowing and your timely sharing during a time of what feels like pure chaos.
I will feel the chaos, I won’t run or hide from it anymore.
In fact, I will walk towards it and with it.
With your words like balm on my delicate skin.

Beautiful, Sez... thank you.🌟

Wonderful thank you 🙏

Wow! Thank you Sez for not only an amazing meditation but a wonderful insight. Just when I needed it. Blessed be 🙏⭐