Nigel Lott

Seattle

For all those seeking solace in teachings of wisdom and compassion may you find a safe haven here. everyone has a story and anyone can lose their way

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Articles

Jalal al-Din Rumi

1 week ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

TEA AND ZEN is a sacred space creating pathways for lasting healing that touch the very essence of our soul. Thank you for showing up. TEA AND ZEN is a sacred space creating pathways for lasting healing that touch the very essence of our soul. Thank you for showing up.
Where Change Truly Begins

1 week ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

Knowledge can tell us what needs to change. It offers the facts, the reasons, the clarity. It can show us what’s broken—and even suggest what might be better. But knowing something… doesn’t mean we’ve changed. Real change—the kind that reshapes a life, the kind that moves us from the inside out—comes not from the mind, but from the heart. You can understand a thing a thousand times in your head and still not take a single step in your being.
The Silence That Holds Us

2 weeks ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -2:30Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. For those who have been holding sacred space for Antoine —he slipped gently through the veil in the quiet of the night. Breathless, but not gone. Silent, but not absent. Simply… deeper in the mystery now. Thank you. — NigelDiscussion about this episodeTEA AND ZEN is a sacred space creating pathways for lasting healing that touch the very essence of our soul. Thank you for showing up.
HOPE

2 weeks ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

I HOPE this inspires. In the depths of despair, when the weight of the world seems unbearable, the concept of hope can feel distant…..perhaps like a flickering flame in a storm. Yet, from a spiritual perspective, hope is not just a fleeting emotion; it is a vital force that with courage can transcend our circumstances, a divine gift that connects us to a higher purpose. Hope, in its purest form, is not about wishful thinking or naive optimism.
The Field Where We Meet

2 weeks ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

There are words that do not merely speak,they remember. This is not metaphor. This is the soul’s geography. I have stood in that field— not with my body, but with my being. It is the stillness behind all sound, the light behind all appearances. A place untouched by division, where love no longer needs a reason. For in that sacred resting, language dissolves into presence. And the heart, freed from its fences, recognizes everything as itself. There is no other. Only the One, reflected endlessly in form.
No One Dies Alone: A Vigil for Antoine

2 weeks ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

Part of the volunteer work I do is this: on occasion I am called to sit with souls who are nearing the threshold of this life— those who are dying. They are in their final hours, and they have no family. The hospital where I volunteer is cultivating a beautiful, human policy:And so, when there is someone with no family present, I go. I pull up a chair beside them. There is nothing to do, really—sometimes I may gently read softly. But mostly, I just sit. Be still. Be awake. Be present.
When the Heart Outgrows What It Once Held Close.

2 weeks ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

There is a kind of grief that doesn’t get spoken of much. It isn’t always the grief that comes with death, though many of us have known that sorrow too. This is a different kind of parting—a quieter, more interior loss. It happens when we begin to outgrow those we’ve loved. When something within shifts, and the old ways of connecting no longer quite fit. It’s not something we choose. Often, it unfolds slowly. Over time. Through years of surrender, of silence, of tending to the deeper truth within us.
You Cannot Heal by Harming Another Life

2 weeks ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

Every time you harm another life — any life — you harm yourself tenfold. I’ve shared this truth before, and it bears repeating. You cannot escape your pain by passing it on to another. We are all one — all beings, all forms — woven from the same living fabric, born of the same Source: Love. There is only One of us, in all truth. Any thought of separation is pure illusion. You can try to deny this. You can consciously — or unconsciously — harm another being.
TEA AND ZEN LIBRARY

2 weeks ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

Dear Friends,As many of you know, this path of Tea & Zen — and of my life — has been one of long unfolding. For many years I have shared reflections, poems, teachings, and spoken offerings — born from the deep river of lived experience: thirty-nine years of sobriety, decades of walking through trauma and healing, and a life surrendered ever more fully to the Great Love that carries us all.
Thirty-Nine Years Sober: A River of Grace

3 weeks ago | teaandzen.substack.com | Nigel Lott

It seems such a long-ago time now — June of 1986. Another life, another self, another dream. So much water has passed beneath the bridge. A lifetime of tides, eddies, and unseen depths. Today marks thirty-nine years of sobriety — thirty-nine years since I first laid down the bottle, not yet knowing what it would mean, or where this path would lead. For beneath the drink, beneath the numbness, there lay an ocean of sorrow — reams of trauma woven into the marrow of my being. Ancestral wounds.