Dear Reader, On September 30, a flydubai passenger plane was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv with 174 passengers and eight crew on board. Partway through the flight, the co-pilot turned on the captain, struck him on the head with a crash axe, and tried to hijack the plane. The captain, Smit Machchhar, an Indian pilot with 17 years of flying experience, collapsed on the cockpit floor with his head split open and bleeding, as the plane began to plunge. Picture him there, powerless and in pain,...
8 days ago • 4 min read
Dear Reader, This past week, I facilitated the last Path of the Heart seminar of the year here in Granada, with participants from the US and the UK. I've been facilitating this seminar for more than 10 years, and this was possibly the seminar where I played the most music. Again and again, a song took us where words couldn't. I want to share the lyrics of one of the songs, The Sacred Way: You have to lose your mind to find your heart.You have to lose yourself to find your way.Who looks...
15 days ago • 3 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, Have you ever wondered why it is often easier to meditate with a group of people than alone? Why stillness comes sooner, why you drop deeper, and why the experience can feel more profound than the same practice by yourself on your living room floor? Something is happening in that room beyond posture or technique. When two or more people gather with a shared, sincere intention, forces begin to move between them. Jesus pointed toward this when he...
29 days ago • 17 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, This past Wednesday, I opened our Sacred Heart Meditation Circle, part of the Heart Mastery Community, by singing a new song I received this week. The song is called “The Sacred Way,” and it’s about returning to the spiritual heart. Throughout the performance, my knees were shaking, and my voice cracked more than once. You’d think that after years of singing in ceremonies and circles, there would be no shaking left in me by now. No cracking...
about 1 month ago • 13 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, Dolly Parton died earlier this week. She had just turned eighty after a short fight with cancer, the same kind of short, sudden fight my sister and my mother each had with cancer of their own. The news landed hard even on people who never owned one of her records or could hum one of her songs. What stayed with me wasn’t the headline. It was learning what she’d actually given her life to: the foundation she built, and more than that, the care she...
about 2 months ago • 12 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, The older I get, the more I notice it. What I think is happening is usually not what’s happening. A friend goes quiet. I fill in the blanks. They’re ghosting me. I said something wrong. Someone’s tone changes and my body decides it knows why. Can you relate? Six years ago, just before lockdown, I watched this pattern take over at a ceremony in Austria. What happened that night became the story behind a song I later wrote called “Flesh and Blood.”...
about 2 months ago • 12 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, Have you ever found yourself living two separate lives? In one, you’re the version of you that shows up for people, steady, present, someone others come to for help. In the other, alone, you’re doing the thing you swore last time was the last time, and some part of you starts wondering which one of those two people is real. That gap doesn’t close on its own. Left alone, it just widens, quietly, until you’re managing two entire versions of...
2 months ago • 12 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, Have you ever noticed what happens in your body when you hear the word Jesus? For some people, the heart opens. There is warmth, devotion, and a sense of being held by something larger. For others, the body contracts before the mind can explain why: the chest tightens, the jaw braces, the belly pulls in. Something inside says, not safe. That reaction is worth paying attention to, because what looks like disbelief is often something else: the body...
2 months ago • 14 min read
Read this on GabrielGonsalves.com Dear Reader, For most of my life, there was one verse in the Bible that never sat right with me. It became the doorway into my own understanding of Christ Consciousness, the I AM Presence, and Jesus’s core teachings. John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” I grew up Catholic, and I always heard those words interpreted in only one way. This man. This name. This religion. Or the door stays shut. If you...
3 months ago • 13 min read