TEA AND ZEN - THREADS

The Morning Poem

There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts from books and from what the teacher says,collecting information from the traditional sciencesas well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.You get ranked ahead or behind othersin regard to your competence in retaininginformation. You stroll with this intelligencein and out of fields of knowledge, getting always moremarks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you.A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest. This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,and it doesn’t move from outside to inside through the conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out. Rumi
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE

ETERNAL

In essence, the heart cannot close.It is eternal.It is open by nature.It is only the mind ….our thoughts, our defenses, our stories …..that create the illusion of distance from the boundless grace that lives within us.Nigel Lott teaandzen.orgThis reflection is freely given as part of a sacred offering. If it nourishes your spirit and you feel moved to help sustain this work, you’re warmly invited to support it through donation or by becoming a paid subscriber—not as a transaction, but as a gesture of shared devotion. Thank You.Meditation Sans Frontieres is a 501(c)(3) non profit charitable organization; contributions are tax-deductible as permitted by law.EIN is 81-3411835 Get full access to Tea and Zen - Threads at teaandzen.substack.com/subscribe
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE

Love Remembers You

There is a field within you….not metaphor, not fantasy, but a real and living field of consciousness.Some have called it Spirit, Soul, or Divine Presence. Physicists glimpse its echo in quantum fields….in the strange and beautiful truth that beneath what we call “matter,” everything is relationship, everything is entangled, everything is alive.Long may your awareness of this Love abide….for it is not separate from you. It is what you are made of.Your body, your thoughts, your breath…. are not things in isolation, but temporary expressions of a vast and connected reality in which everything influences everything else.In the quantum view, even a particle unobserved still responds to the presence of awareness. Your attention matters. Your being matters…..literally and cosmically.This is what the mystics have always known. That we are never apart from Love. That what we call God is not elsewhere, but the very fabric of being itself.So when you feel lost or broken, when you fall into forgetting—know this:Love has not forgotten you.Just as an entangled particle still “knows” its twin across galaxies of space, so too does the Source remember you even when you cannot remember yourself.You are not separate. Not from the Divine. Not from the whole. Not from Love.You are entangled with all that is holy, and no distance….geographical, emotional, or spiritual…..can undo that truth.The field remembers you. Love remembers you. Reality itself is holding you, even now.The dance of atoms and the unfolding of grace are not so different. Both emerge from a vast intelligence that we cannot name, but which sings through every heartbeat, every longing, every sacred return.You are not forgotten. You never were. Because at the most fundamental level—you are not separate from anything.You are already home. Love is not elsewhere.Love is the field.And it remembers.This reflection is freely given as part of a sacred offering. If it nourishes your spirit and you feel moved to help sustain this work, you’re warmly invited to support it through donation or by becoming a subscriber—not as a transaction, but as a gesture of shared devotion. Get full access to Tea and Zen - Threads at teaandzen.substack.com/subscribe
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE

A Mother’s Day Blessing

Today we take a moment to honor the presence of the Mother….in all the ways she shows up in this life.To everyone who’s ever given life, or cared for it… who’s held someone through pain, offered love without needing to be asked, listened deeply, or simply stayed close in the hard moments…..thank you. To the mothers of children. To those holding families or communities together.To the quiet ones whose presence is a kind of medicine. To those who mother in ways that go unnoticed, and to those who have carried grief or loss with strength that often goes unseen… we see you. we honor you. we thank you.And to the first Mother…..the Earth beneath our feet….who gives so much and asks so little… may we start to remember Her not just when it’s convenient or beautiful, but in how we live and what we choose every day.And we honor the mothering spirit in each of us too….that part of us that knows how to care, how to protect, how to love what’s fragile and sacred.May this day be a blessing. May we walk a little softer. Speak a little more kindly.And do what we can to live in a way that honors all mothers…and the great Mother we all come from.Nigel Lott teaandzen.org Get full access to Tea and Zen - Threads at teaandzen.substack.com/subscribe
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE

On the Other Side of a Black Hole.

If I speak from the heart….and in all truth, how else could I speak?….and in the language of metaphor, a black hole…the great void, the collapse of everything we think we know… feels to me like the passage through ego death, deep suffering, or the surrender into the unknown.I have touched that place before…..many times. The silence where meaning dissolves. Where even light seems to vanish. And yet… something remains.What lies on the other side?I believe, with all that I am, that if anything endures beyond the breaking of form, and it does, I know…..it is Love. Not love as sentiment, nor as passing emotion…..but Love as the first and final truth. The primal intelligence. The living field that gives birth to stars… and to silence.It is the Source of all things. The ground beneath what we call God. It needs no name….yet it calls us by ours. And in the end… or perhaps even here, in this breath… it is where we are returning. And in that return, we remember:We never left.Nigel Lott teaandzen.org Get full access to Tea and Zen - Threads at teaandzen.substack.com/subscribe
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE

A Blessing

May you love and be loved, and know eternal peace in your heart forevermore.Nigel Lott teaandzen.orgMeditation Sans Frontieres is a 501(c)(3) non profit charitable organization; contributions are tax-deductible as permitted by law. EIN is 81-3411835 Get full access to Tea and Zen - Threads at teaandzen.substack.com/subscribe
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE

The Grace of Surrender

I’m sharing this reflection today from lived experience.I have known what medicine calls adrenergic storms—states of intense sympathetic overdrive that feel like pure terror in the body. It’s been a long time since I’ve had one, but recently, an episode returned. This time, something was different.Instead of resisting, I surrendered.And what I found…..once the intense wave had passed….was not devastation, but Love, the only place it could return to.This piece arose from that experience. There is a moment, quiet and unassuming, when we surrender to fear…..not in defeat, but in stillness. When the endless struggle to resist, to control, to outrun what frightens us finally breaks, something remarkable happens. We see. Not with the eyes of judgment or the mind’s tangled reasoning, but with the clear gaze of the soul.Fear, like all illusion, thrives on resistance. It feeds on the stories we tell ourselves about danger and separation. But when we stop pushing against it, stop naming it as enemy, fear reveals its true nature: a doorway. A passage not into darkness, but back into the light we never truly left.This is the grace of surrender. Not giving up, but giving over…..our burdens, our defenses, our need to understand. In that letting go, we find what was always beneath the fear: love. Gentle, abiding, and vast beyond measure.As with all things, the illusion passes. The veil lifts. And what remains is not the terror we expected, but the truth that was waiting……patiently……for our return.Love was always there. It only needed to be remembered.Nigel Lott teaandzen.orgMeditation Sans Frontieres is a 501(c)(3) non profit charitable organization; contributions are tax-deductible as permitted by law. EIN is 81-3411835 Get full access to Tea and Zen - Threads at teaandzen.substack.com/subscribe
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE

The Illusion of Separation

There’s an illusion we carry in these bodies—one so ancient and persistent, we often forget it’s not real. It is the illusion of separation.And from that illusion, pain arises. A pain so deep and so human that we sometimes try to rid ourselves of it by handing it off to someone else.But the ache of believing ourselves to be separate—from life, from love, from each other, ultimately from whatever you call God—cannot be offloaded in that way. When we pass our pain to another through blame, anger, or judgment, we do not lighten the burden. We multiply it. Their suffering deepens, and so does ours. The wound of separation grows.If you’re hurting, release your pain—but not into the heart of another soul.Offer it instead to the great Presence that holds all things. Lay it down at the feet of awareness. Let it be received by the Divine flow, where everything is transformed in Love.There are always consequences—not as punishment, but as a natural return of energy. Everything we do, everything we speak, everything we feel… echoes. The universe is not cruel, but it is exquisitely precise. What we send out circles back, often in quiet, aching ways meant only to awaken us.And in time, we do awaken. We begin to see: the love we’ve been longing for has never been absent. It has always lived within us, silently waiting beneath the noise of forgetting.It has never been separate. Just unseen for a while.So when pain rises again—as it will, in moments of confusion or fear—meet it with gentleness. Take responsibility for it, not in shame, but in love. Tend to it. Let it soften you. Let it guide you home to your own center, where love still lives—whole, unbroken, untouched.Please, do not hand your pain to others. If you must offer something, let it be your compassion. Your quiet presence. Your love.Help each other remember. Care for one another. This is why we are here.Nigel Lott teaandzen.org Get full access to Tea and Zen - Threads at teaandzen.substack.com/subscribe
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE

THE TRUTH OF ANY MATTER

The facts of any matter, no matter how accurate, can never be the full truth if they are not rooted in loving-kindness and compassion.Truth is more than information — it is a presence, a way of being.If what we call “truth” lacks mercy, if it does not bring healing or open the heart, then we are dealing with something partial — perhaps even harmful — no matter how correct it seems.Real truth liberates. It softens us. It invites us into deeper connection with ourselves and each other.Let us remember:Truth without love is noise.Truth with compassion becomes wisdom.Nigel Lott teaandzen.orgMeditation Sans Frontieres is a 501(c)(3) non profit charitable organization; contributions are tax-deductible as permitted by law. EIN is 81-3411835 Get full access to Tea and Zen - Threads at teaandzen.substack.com/subscribe
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE

AN INVITATION

Here is a simple invitation I place before you — though its simplicity may be more profound than it first appears, and its pursuit more vast than any journey you have ever taken.I invite you to spend the rest of your life being in Love.Not loving merely as an act, nor seeking love as something to possess, but abiding as Love — becoming its quiet embodiment, its effortless witness, its joyful servant.And I ask you, with all the sincerity I can summon: Have you ever had anything better to do?In all your striving, in all your searching, have you found anything else that endures?In truth, there is no other work worth doing, no other treasure worth keeping, no other pilgrimage worth making.Everything you seek — peace, freedom, meaning, even God — is already contained within the life that is lived in Love.It is not elsewhere. It is not after some long preparation.It is here. Now. Always. The invitation is simple.The living of it will ask everything. But what it gives — is everything.Come, then. Come into Love.Nigel Lott teaandzen.orgMeditation Sans Frontieres is a 501(c)(3) non profit charitable organization; contributions are tax-deductible as permitted by law. EIN is 81-3411835 Get full access to Tea and Zen - Threads at teaandzen.substack.com/subscribe
In the quiet between heartbeats a whisper calls you home, you are not broken you are becoming. These threads of silence and sound are letters from the threshold, offerings from the edge of stillness. Nigel  TEA AND ZEN - MAIN LIBRARY                                                                                                                                                                  DONATE