Category: soul home

The land’s awaiting…

.Reading time 3 minutes.

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…

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Answering the ‘call’

.Reading time 3 minutes.

 

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Isle of Mull, Scotland 2017

I heard the call back in 2013 when stepping upon the earth of the soul land my heart exploded. I was tossed and turned inside out with internal screaming bursting into tears of joy and confusion. I was stuck by sheer magic and meaning of what it was like to belong to a place I never knew existed.

It took me a few years to work out what happened back then when I first visited Scotland and every year since then I couldn’t bare be parted from it. It hasn’t been easy going back and stepping into the land that knew my soul so well again and again and having to leave it behind every time with a feeling of deep grief within.

I am still in that place of neither here nor there, desperately wanting to go and needing to stay, having to live the life I have here, which is glorious in many ways. I am content yet yearning never leaves me for the place that stole my utter being and grabbed hold of me so tightly.

With each passing year the pull of the land hasn’t stopped, in fact, it has intensified with each summer when I would make the same journey and every winter when my heart would pine for it. I fought against it and even tried to convince myself it wasn’t real or happening just to test yet the answer was always the same. It is in my bones so deep I can’t be separated from it physically or spiritually.

I lived there before a long time ago and died a gruesome death with my blood spilling directly on the earth and penetrating its cells. I was of the land like a native animal that recognised smells, sounds and colours of every season the land had dressed itself in. I am still of that land, I am still that animal. I can taste it and its distinctive smell never leaves my senses. It is a particular sensation instantly recognisable by me. I can reach it at any moment yet physical separation remains too much to bear.

I live with my heart open and always listen carefully and intentionally to what the next step might be…

 

The energy of ‘new’ continues…

.Reading time 5 minutes.

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I am loving this year of totally new and different, inwards and outward recovery, re-learning back to the original state, simplifying, clearing and emptying a space that is pure and light, zooming in on intention and conscious awareness more so that it feels even more natural, effortless.

This ‘new’ is so different this year with a vibration of solid knowing and that original signature that lays so firmly underneath all the layers within us all. When it came this year it was instantly recognisable and very welcomed. Things fall away with ease and transformation is quick and natural. As a space is created new things flow in. So far winter and spring for me have been redefined completely. Previous wounding seems to have crumbled into a glorious material of new building material.

‘Recovery’ this spring is a prominent theme on many levels. This recovery covers our identification with the societal, with the old way of doing things, what ‘we should be doing’ and not ‘what we would like to’. The message is to get back to the original, to our soul purpose. It also applies to a physical recovery inviting us to focus on our health and vitality. Emptying the mind and our surroundings of the ‘non-essential’ and leaving only what truly matter, which mostly transpires to be what we already have within and nothing from outside.

Every year in spring without a fail I get some mysterious physical disturbances and it hit me in the face the other day the meaning of what it is all about. It is needing to recover, but not only that, allow time to recover without judgement, wanting it to be gone instantly and never come back. This instant gratification culture and want for things, events and changes are so deeply rooted within the society that it has become a natural default, it seeped into every area of our life, yet it is not working. Layer after layer, behaviour after behaviour have been dropping off with clearer vision and awareness this spring and I have learnt to be humble with pain and love my physicality and fragility even more. It speaks of impermanence of things very loudly and the more we embrace the concept of things ending, life ending the more we will engage with life now. This is so simple yet so true and it is encouraging to see changes all around that call for a ‘new’ way of looking at life amidst all the insanity of the world.

As we approach summer this year, my next challenge, as it is the darkest time for me, I actually feel I am activating my Fire element again in a very different way this year. Fire element has always been my winter element, but this year I was luxuriating in Water all through winter and summer is calling my good Fire. The opposites are taking place. I feel focused, motivated, passionate, productive, purposeful and decisive, which are normally qualities of my winters. Things are riping into being, as I go about my days. I can feel the rise of manifesting energy, as small seedlings grow higher on my land. I am also so far less rejecting of the hot weather and finding such pleasure in early mornings and evenings, which are truly beautiful near and during summer. Nature wonderfully supports this new inner blooming every day as serves as a container of all the richness we carry within.

Signatures of comfort, space, freedom and purpose are all present this spring and as we going into summer I am excited to see what it brings. All I seem to being asked to do is create space, exhale and open up my heart more than ever before and the rest will follow.

 

The winter of love

.Reading time 7 minutes.

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The next couple of posts are significant in recording my journey towards ‘home’, myself and wholeness this year. It was crystal clear towards the end of 2017 that 2018 was to be the year of doing things completely differently, stepping out of life as we know it, as we created it, looking outside the box and leaving your comfort zone. It makes me realise now how important it is to align with the yearly signatures, as when in the same flow and not resisting, avoiding or going against, it aids our progression. Often all that is needed is readiness to listen, to change and embrace all the qualities within us as facilitators on our journey. As Alfred Adler said that it is not about surrendering to your safety zone supported by safe guiding behaviours, i.e. not believing that you can change and keeping yourself blocked indefinitely using the same ways of being over and over, “withdrawing from the challenge of life”. It is about facing life head on, adopting a more courageous approach. We are capable of courageous behaviour provided we are willing to engage in it. This resonates with the process of psychotherapy, which is a journey one undertakes towards adopting and cultivating a more courageous, engaging approach to life, working towards changes that are needed for a more fulfilling life. Over and over I have witnessed clients stepping courageously into areas of great difficulty and facing life head on. It makes my job a very rewarding and humbling experience to bear witness to human resilience and strength of spirit.

So, 2018 is such year when the space is open for us to step into with an open heart and an attitude of something different. I have found this process extremely revealing about the potential within and one that puts you in touch with the whole of your personality. All that is needed is openness and willingness to engage.

My 2018 winter has been profoundly peaceful, calm and gentle time. For the first time in years it was very different. Usually it is a Fire element space for me when I am dynamic, energetic and very productive, a time I engage with various projects and manifest a lot. Not this year. I counsciously decided to stay ‘still’. It almost effortlessly unfolded into a process of me connecting to my heart centre and sides of myself I had not experienced for as long as I remember. I have not felt my own niceness or softness, e.g. for such a long time I forgot, therefore this feeling was new, different yet also imbedded in the knowledge that it was there all along within me. The book that I spent reading throughout winter sang to my heart gently and with each page I felt my being becoming lighter, more open, and softer and engaged with LOVE.

Freeing the Heart (2001) 

After seven years of painstakingly difficult process of opening my heart I felt I was finally there and I still am today. Throughout my life I went through experiencing transcendent love towards another, which stood the test of time. I also visited places completely devoid of love. I spent frequent days of terror not knowing if I was ever to come back from that place where love didn’t exist. Again and again I felt love abandoning me and literary forgetting what that was and feeling nothing for anyone for periods of time. I can truly say that was always one of the scariest experiences in my life, you see, I never knew if love would come back and that felt terrifying. My heart disappeared. Images that I went through in my journey was heart in a cage, bleeding, having a huge piece of glass wedged into it, shrunk heart, a stone and many more. You can read other posts on my blog about my work with connecting with the heart.

This winter I fell in love with my husband and my son all over again in a way I hadn’t felt before. There was deep sense of acceptance and compassion. It was a place where conditions didn’t exist and all I had was a beautiful flow of being present with love minute after minute, day after day. The world around me appeared the same yet my heart was lighter witnessing things much slower, which previously would have thrown me into places uninviting. Most of all I started to ‘fall in love’ with myself, more precisely becoming aware of my essential qualities, my ability to love, give and participate in life in a way that flows not blocks or rejects. It is difficult to put into words and I can only say that this was profound, new, transformative and beautiful. It was as if I was transforming, but actually I was merging back into the self I always was and meant to be.

I noticed how my mind calmed and as it did my heart began to grow open and it no longer felt scary or unsafe. It felt like I was home. In terms of the elements I would connect it to Water element most of all and this winter it was all about water element in its purest form. My opening of the heart was steady, slow, gentle like a bubbling brook in a forest or a small river gently flowing through land. It was not a forceful roar of the ocean or crashing waves of the sea. This makes sense to me. Water has been my shadow element for as long as I remember. It is also my birth element. Aligning and merging with my own Water element made the process of coming home even sweeter.

I love it so much it hurts

.Reading time 4 minutes.

I love it so much it hurts. The land welcomes me this time with open arms and I feel nothing but warmth and nurture. I feel at home and I instantly recognise that familiar smell of the land, which I know well. It is raining and I am in my element of gentle water standing on a lake shore watching gentle giants mountains hugging the shore. I touch the water, it is clear and crispy cold and through my body pure joy spreads. It is a dance of recognition, which I feel a lot stronger this time round. While my husband looks nostalgic for hot weather and home, I am home. I tell him that most of my happiest memories took place either in rain or snow and I acknowledge that link and it makes sense.

Isle of Mull – lush and green with landscape showing off its mountains, valleys, lochs, forests and sea. It is such a mixture of the elements that makes it so rich. It is incredibly peaceful here like nowhere else I had felt in Scotland so far; well, perhaps, only the first time in Perthshire where my love for the land first stuck me. We are staying in the middle of nowhere and it feels so safe to me here. It feels like no one and nothing would find me here and if I was to stay I would be happy for the rest of my days. My heart begins to ache along with joy I cry inside for wanting to merge with the land forever. It hurts in my chest and with each breath I can’t seem to get enough. That feeling of safety is a new one, as previously while in Scotland I have always felt conflicted and often anxious, even scared. Not this time. Here I have come into myself somehow and the land here is so gentle in comparison with Northern Highlands or the Isle of Skye, e.g. Those places activated my shadow material and threw me into an emotional turmoil amidst some deeply spiritual experiences. The land there is fierce, wild, unforgiving and untouchable in its stunning beauty. It is majestic and independent. Here I am held, firmly and I can hear the land speaking to me. It is gentle and soothing. Vibration is of softness and it touches on places within me much lighter and happier. This reflects in our relational dynamics between the boys and me. Our trip was very different this time round like we all tapped into a gentler way of being with one another, there is less conflict and more recognition and acknowledgment of needs all around.

Standing in the garden I witness deer coming in closer grazing on lush green vegetation surrounding the house. It is a beautiful sight and they stop and stare at me in silent pause. God it is so peaceful here! Even deer is different here compared to imposing huge stags of the Highlands. These deer are gentler and smaller and devoid of antler crowns. My response to them is also strikingly different, less of knee shaking awe and worship-like way of witnessing them, it is quieter, softer and more ‘homely’ somewhat. As I lie in bed looking out of the window with views to die for I feel my heart beating with such love. It is intense and aching, as I already know how hard it will be leaving this land in a few days.

The Land’s calling

.Reading time 3 minutes.

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It is the time of my soul’s bleeding with deep connection to the land, which is calling again and again. It is such a powerful pull that it feels painful and pleasurable at the same time. It is a deep yearning within me that calls me to walk the land’s high hills and smell the soil of the old, moist, fresh wind-swept landscape my soul craves. My heart begins to ache in the feeling of missing my other home, the place that doesn’t let go off me when I am not around. It calls, it sings to me and my bones feel its essence. I miss it so much. I want to see stags gallantly walking the forests and hills and standing still staring, undecided whether to run or continue with their curiosity. They are such beautiful creatures, strong yet vulnerable. I yearn to see them in the land’s autumn dress with trees and grass changing colour and air slowly turning cool with a promise of winter. I wish I could stand at the top of a mountain screaming with delight for I am there, I am alive and the land around me embraces me in its vastness.

Every year it seems I bear the separation with hardly breathing and unable to hold my excitement when I am finally released into the land of my soul. I cry, I ache and spend long hours imagining, smelling, walking the hills and forests in my dreams. At times it is unbearable and I cry uncontrollably and I feel like putting on my boots and running towards the land however far. It feels impulsive with no reason existing in that moment of deep wanting to merge with the landscape, immerse my face into a cold water of a Loch and drink the fresh air of pine forest. The wind, oh how I wish to be swept with it and my face blasted with its force waking me up to my core, shaking all the cobwebs out of my being.

Another year, another period of waiting with a heart that aches and loves oh so deep…