Earth Yearning - Spiritual Direction w/Jon Gottsegen

09/02/2026

https://youtu.be/X4aMV_SdDUc

We are deep in the Hebrew/lunar month of preceding the holidays of and , We just had a full moon , so it's a potent time of year.

In this month we do the work of return ( in Hebrew). Many people think of this time as a time of atonement (many spiritual types like to say at-one-ment) where we review what we've done over the last year and make amends for things we've done wrong.

We do that so we can heal ruptures in relationships and improve where we've missed the mark. It's important to be honest with ourselves, but atonment can be overly self-judging or self-flagellating.

Teshuva means return, return to our higher, best and Divine selves and return to Spirit. In , Elul is the time of great closeness to the Divine, the Beloved.

So the teshuva process during this month should be immersed in love. We should enter into it as gift for ourselves. How would it be different to do this review all in love for oursleves and in great joy.

08/20/2026

Recent thoughts partly motivated by the of and by just, you know, life. What if, rather than trying to fix something broken in us, we treat all this , or as a recognition of our and as a gift of love to ourselves.

Our wholeness includes the wounds, the cracks, the foibles. In fact, we aren't whole without them.

If we stepped into this work with this perspective, wouldn't we be able to wear it more lightly (as one of my directees says) and be a little more joyful about it?

I'm often reminding people of this wholeness bizness when I work with folks.

08/17/2026

08/17/2026

Starting some posts (abbreviated blogs) motivated by recent (Torah portion) readings. The most recent was , which contains the line "Humans are like a tree in the field."

What does that mean? For me and my work, it's a reflection of our . We go down and in to connect with our roots, our soul and all that our soul is connected to.

This drives much of my work in companioning, , walks (I call my particular version a and prayer fasts or quest, what I call soul-o.

07/31/2026

The land speaks in many ways. When we go out on the land, whether in soul-o or other times, we listen with all of our being. It's like spiritual companioning with the land, and we're both being companioned, the land and ourselves.

The words are from my soul-o last year; the images are from our recent trip to northern Colorado. Man, I'm lucky to live here.

This land speaks
in hushed tones.
This land speaks
in the breeze blowing
up the canyon.
This land speaks
in the Raven's wing
flapping overhead.
This land speaks
in grandiosity.
In the sun shining
on Brother Stones
holding vigil
serving sentry
over the land.
This land speaks
the language
of surprise.
A butterfly answers
a prayer.
This land can speak fiercely.
Thunder, rain, hail.
All yelling her ferocity
G!d's bigness.

Why all the yelling?
Who's debating?

Sitting in the humbleness
to hear the soft, sweet sounds
of the Great Communication.

07/08/2026

Death on the Land 2 walk.

It was lovely being there in the evening. Once again, I only grabbed a photo or two as an afterthought. I took the video because I felt like Moses in the cleft in the rock as G!d passes by. In my case it was just a little thrush.

The deer almost joined us for the tea ceremony at the end.

And I admit I saw the cow elk when I was checking out the land a few days before.

06/16/2026

We have been reincarnated ( in Hebrew)! 😂

After our first encounter with death on the land, we'll be doing another in the evening, the more appropriate time for .

We'll start with some intentional nature awareness practice and then wander into exploration of death and dying and life and living.

The great Mary Oliver captures it beautifully (as usual):

When Death Comes - Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;...
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

06/15/2026

06/08/2026

Death on the Land walk.

If I had any sense of marketing, I'd remember to take pictures and have a pro follow us to capture some polished shots like you see in other posts (are those really theirs?).

But I don't think about marketing, I just love guiding these walks and holding space for what arises for people. I love the Ponderosa Pine forests of this park and the raven that sat above us and kept us company as we stopped to open our vision. I love bringing in the wise words of poets and sages to help people deepen in their journey, like the selection in the last pic.

Some people got a vision of a beautiful death. Some received some new perspective on the path of their life. Some recognized the dying and rebirthing that we're always doing.

All walked away more open and attuned.