What Sustains Me: A mindful exploration of what matters

A question for you: “What sustains you?”

Like a Zen koan, a question that doesn’t have an automatic answer is an invitation to pause, to check inside, to sense what emerges, and to mindfully explore what comes up.

We want to stay grounded in felt experience – – which is the key word here. We are not trying to describe a specific path, a ‘right way’ to do things, or a ‘correct’ narrative of how it all works out. To the contrary. We are coming at it from different approaches. And we value the ‘unfinished’ quality that comes from describing these issues while we are in the midst of grappling with them, not knowing how things will turn out. Actually, an implicit assumption of this project is that depth of experience is related to our ability to tolerate the ‘not knowing’.


what sustains me

This question has led us to having wonderful conversations. A great number of the conversations we have had did not lead to written pieces. You can access all recorded conversations on the Active Pause site: What Sustains Me conversations.

Several of these conversations have led to writing first-person essays. Later this year, the essays will be gathered in a book, What Sustains Me. Meanwhile, you can read each individual chapter as a formatted PDF. See  What Sustains Me chapters.


What Sustains Me is edited by Serge Prengel.