Scotland – isolated bliss
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Category: Scottish highlands
Isle of Mull 2018
My heart, my soul, my bones and blood
I honour and cherish and yearn when apart
My paradise
I am back in paradise and there is no despair, turmoil or overwhelm this time…
This year I only feel joy, pleasure and gratitude for being here. I am being very vocal in expressing my appreciation of the land. I admire a very full in red heavy berries rowan by the side of a lake and revel in beauty of purple flowers. Simple yet so exquisite in its perfection against the very green that is everywhere. Everything seems so much riper, bigger and more beautiful in comparison to other places. It reminds me of my birth place in many respects where nature had also been very rich in its presentation and a way of being. I look at the mountains and I feel still and content rather than torn and in deep yearning, which I could never explain. The smell of the land, that particular scent I can always summon wherever I am, is still here, it hasn’t changed and I am glad of that. I take pleasure in observing every little house, weed, animal, tree and wonder how people live here with curiosity. I do feel jealousy quite sharply this time for the life that I imagine goes on here in this place of beauty and such peace and quiet. Stillness of the land is intoxicating and, I believe, it is exactly this energy that I align with the most, this is what I crave. Peace, quiet, beauty and isolation.
Walking through a Celtic rainforest earlier today I can feel myself melting into its freshness and moulding into its trees’ bark, inhaling the air of the forest, breathing with it as one. Rain gently washing my face and hair brushed back I feel free. Assured, grounded and humbled, very grateful for being able to feel the way that I do when I am here in this land and in touch with all the elements. It is a true blessing in my life here on Earth.
As another day comes to an end here in paradise I am content, calm, pleasantly tired and completely in love with everything this land is and everything that is in and around me today.
In waiting…
Feel unrooted, between places, between worlds. A sense of keen belonging is yet to land, for now I feel suspended in anticipation. Can’t say I like it.
Uncertainty, expectation, increased longing for what I don’t know yet. Feeling without a home is not a pleasant one. I have one yet out there there’s another one that sticks itself into my skin like a thorn every year. I am faced with a choice, on one hand wanting to abandon my current position but yet to attach to another. I feel ungrounded and in that space I do lose myself a little. Restlessness within is not a smooth flow but rather jagged projection on to everything and everyone. There is also an element of not being in control and that’s unsettling too. Waiting is another vibration that can present challenges. Waiting for what? Knowing I am waiting for something but what I don’t know and in that waiting I detach from one but yet to attach to that unknown and will I want to? Like losing ground from under my feet without knowing if whatever it is I am waiting for would catch up. Patience in that state becomes difficult and impatience sats in, which again manifests in rough outbursts of emotions and cold energy projection. It can be a dark place to be even amidst the sunshine, it is also lonely as difficult to convey the feeling that goes with it. I find myself wishing the sun away and wanting rain but it doesn’t feel rational or logical or even intuitively right. Confusing, searching, lost…
I recognise that every year this occurs as I prepare to leave my home in search of a home yet to be.
Comparing lands’ signatures and emotional healing
North Wales, Snowdonia. So peaceful here. The land lulls you gently into comfort and quiet, soothingly singing a gentle tune. The land’s signature is of a simple life, uncomplicated by any depth of emotion or tragedy, I feel. It is an old land with ancient roots, no doubt, steeped in tradition, but it feels like whatever conflict there might have been it is resolved and the land enjoys a life of simple pleasures. Spirit here is pure and gentle of a colour white. It is felt all around, but ever so slightly. It is in the background and not at all overwhelming. Mostly in the mountains and rocks one would meet the land’s spirits and they are all of a vibration of support and nurture. They continuously tell a story, always talking and if you sit quietly you can clearly hear a narration, which again, like a lullaby, sends you to a place of peace and comfort.
In contrast Scotland’s spirit is rich and troubled, one might say. It carries the land’s history through its glens, mountains and lakes and the strength and power of it can’t be denied. It is in your face penetrating through skin. I am deeply affected emotionally and get sensory overwhelm every time I am in the land. It taps into my shadow signature of violence, loss, grief and bloodshed. Even madness, I’d say, is present in the mixture of what is the land’s spiritual heritage. It stands proudly in its stunning beauty, very protective and wary of strangers. It is anything, but peaceful.
Perhaps, I sometimes reflect it is not a place I ought to be as I align with my past pain addiction when there. I get thirsty for the sensation of attachment to all that the land’s spirit represents. Over the years I certainly understood why I feel the way I do when I am there and why my spiritual awakening had to occur in Scotland. I remember it vividly when all my senses shut down and a strange mixture of deep grief and pure ecstasy entered my awareness all at the same time. I was then given a task to start working it all out and an incredible process of awakening began.
Amidst Snowdonian mountains and forests I feel good. I always had in a way I never do when in Scotland. That place is hard to describe even now, it simply goes beyond me. There I don’t feel safe necessarily, well, perhaps only when on an Isle away from the main land (recent discovery). I feel on guard and bereft but also so incredibly touched and moved in a way I can’t put into words. I feel like my heart breaks when I am there and when I am away from it, both. You can read my other posts about my feelings for the land and my difficulties staying away from it.
Perhaps, I thought this time round while in Snowdonia is that I am aligning more and more these days with the signature of light and peace without needing or wanting to be anywhere else emotionally or spiritually. Perhaps, my light is no longer in the shadow and I have found and settled into the oasis that I had always sought – inner peace.
I can see myself returning to Wales over and over again just to be what I am when I am there, living in the moment with no rush of any kind and a slower way of being in peace and tranquility.
Perhaps, Scotland will remain a mystery for a little while longer and the role of it in my life will become clearer as I continue my exploration and relationship with the land…
The land’s awaiting…
Eagerly anticipated trip to the Isle of Mull, Scotland, where spaciousness and quiet are of the sacred quality. You notice the space through the senses of transpersonal as if your heart expands to beyond possible. It is very quiet there. Each sound is sharp and defined, momentary and fleeting and then silence clear and pure. Each movement of the wind is felt on the skin like it’s meant to be there, like your body knows it, recognises it. A sense of merging with the land takes your breath away and for a moment you can’t imagine ever living apart from it. Intoxicating, yes, incredibly natural, yes like the flow of water whether it’s the sea, a loch or a small brook amidst trees belongs to your blood. It is as one with everything you are and the world beyond its shores seems non-existent. You are unreachable, a place to be wild and raw just like the land. It is free and itself at all times. The land makes one feel like otherworldly thoughts are as part of you as your soul’s calling. It knows you and you know it intimately. The place felt incredibly safe to me from the first sight as the ferry approached its shores and as I stepped on the island again I felt like I arrived. I really arrived and slotted into a comfortable, supportive vessel that I knew would gently lull me into falling in love with it all over again. It is more than love though, trust and faith are possible here, effortless even. Listening and being still is natural here. It is innate.
Scotland is a very spiritual place and in different ways depending on where one goes there. Each area visited brings its own joy, transformations and experiences. The land allows you to explore the whole you by talking the language my soul understands. The land is alive and one can’t help but be touched by it. It is overwhelming and all-consuming, raw and unspoilt that makes you feel like you are born again or rather having lived a life in glory that is achieved through merging with the land. Divinity within is reflected by the divine beauty of the place and how can it be otherwise as in the moment of merging all is revealed and all is possible and the land and I are one entity seeking ecstasy of being. Leaving the land is heartbreaking, truly… every time…
Summer – the time for wilderness, the time for releasing your beast
Anger, physicality, sensate expression of instincts, body merging with the earth in its full expression – that’s what June is all about as we are building up to Litha. Swimming, walking barefoot, lying on mountain tops, communing with wildlife, beasts, bugs and plants alike are all the activities that feed the body and awake the soul.
There’s danger, however, when summer is fully alive in its wilderness. Night and day both carry life within and it can feel unsafe. This resonate with my overwhelm of the forest and feeling apprehensive about venturing out during the explosion of life in the land during summer. I tend to withdraw, hence I like the quietness and sleepiness of winter. It is safer. However, by withdrawing a part of me remains enclosed, hidden and that’s what needs to change this year.
Wild-self calls and roars pushing boundaries of a self-created seclusion. It needs expressing and breathing with the rhythms of the season.
A safe place for wild spirit for me is the Highlands of Scotland. There my wild-self is contented, it is allowed to be in its full majesty. It scares me always yet I thirst for it at the same time. There my whole aligns with the wild nature around me. I eagerly drink it into my cells, I merge with it like it is home and my spirit sours into endless skies daily and consumes my whole being with a sense of raw, complete, real and natural. It often manifests with anger, emotional cries and outward expression of raw things. It is unable to hide and sit still. It needs to run, fly, crawl and swim all at the same time. It can feel and look scary and crazy uncontainable and vicious, but it all makes sense and, perhaps, in embracing and allowing that for myself a bit more will also relax others in joining me and not being afraid of a strong bite and a loud screech that it often comes with.
Summer is truly a time for letting go and letting be. It is a time to fly higher and swimming further. Last summer I remember wanting to go on the water in a kayak and the fear that gripped me was so irrational yet it immobilized me. Someone said to me ‘go for it, we only live once, might as well’ and so I did. The freedom of releasing the urge to glide through vast waters released the excitement I had ever felt before. With each push across the lake I went further and further and with each minute I wanted to do more and more.
When I am faced with the mountains of the Highlands I can hear the scream within me telling me to run, scream, be in its fullest. The impulse in me to merge with the land is so strong that I know if I don’t I could easily just stagnate and die through my own fear and a loss of the potentially ecstatic experience. It is like choosing to drink poison and staying in a position of never knowing what it’s like to live fully. When I step on that mountain trail my heart and spirit sour, I want to run and cry and scream, the feeling I have of being as one with the land, a place I never want to leave for as long as I live.
I break my heart every time I have to leave the wilderness behind, because it means my wild-self has to go back into a safe enclosure of my other life, which is managed, contained and often unexciting.
