Category: soul land

Dreaming alive

.Reading time 4 minutes.

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When it is no longer a dream, which had haunted you again again for many months, years, you can breathe with new vigour and steady rhythm. It feels unreal yet it is a reality standing in front of you in its raw state and the most stunning presentation that the soul no longer wants to fly with desperation towards it, but rests quietly in its soothing embrace.

Standing on the shore of Loch Tay earlier today I felt as one with the land in a fully physical sense yet it hardly seemed real I was there. I was there, however, I am here now and there is nowhere else I want to be more. I am here and my heart is full with contented calmness and a true familiar feeling of belonging. What this connection is about no longer matters, the searching is over. It is just here, in this place and time where the land and I are one. I feel such deep genuine love for this place that I could never imagine possible to feel for anything other than another human being. The land is a being, breathing and living and of that I have been convinced of for many years now. It breathes, speaks, feels, expresses and touches me in ways I know this as love. My breath is becoming more and more even as I inhale the land’s essence and as inside feels of the same material as outside my heart is no longer in despair of separation, it is at peace of knowing the love I feel, all consuming, forever…

Magical energy is subtle in this place like a lyrical romantic Celtic tune that penetrates you with its singing and invites you in its dance of harmony and rest. Gentle, something you have to learn to listen to in places and join in when invited to.

I dreamt of white animals last night after arriving hereand as a white swan (swans has been a real symbolic thing this year for me) swam in front of me in that lake of sheer beauty next it appeared right next me stretching its long neck in a sort of recognition and curiosity I felt humbled once more. The gratitude I feel in the last two days is beyond description. I realise that as I continue to love deeply I must also be loved by many, who is making this possible for me to be here. So many hours I have spent looking at pictures of this place over and over again dreaming of the time of our meeting, never thinking it close enough or possible enough to reach and I finally made it here myself. I am happy and here I am as real as it gets. Separation often is only in the mind and bridging the gap feels impossible when so many voices tell you it is not possible, it is too far, too tiring, too something… Who is really to say something is impossible? No one and nothing can ever stop you from doing something that your heart truly desires and if that something is all that occupies your energy then go for it. When you love something or someone, as I love this land, you have got to go after it. This is no longer a dream, it is constantly alive in my mind, heart and soul and when it calls I will come and be with it, as to me it is clear that this is essential as the air I breathe.

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Scotland – isolated bliss

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Home land

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Earlier this summer I sat with my father looking at the map of Scotland, as I explained to him our travel plans, and suddenly he started going over each area naming it, as if it was a map of Russia, specifically Siberia. He gets it, ‘I thought’, and it meant so much to me. Some deep felt understanding between us, even when often unspoken, always produces a connection, which holds answers and links to what we are together, separate and where we come from. He knows what I mean when I talk about the land. He knows the feeling I speak so much of as if he feels it too and, I think, he does, in his own way, as we both had separated from our land a long time ago yet the yearning had never gone away. Does it ever leave you? Not if it is part of your soul’s tapestry.

Only this morning looking at pictures of Siberian nature it really landed for me that Scotland is as close to my ‘home land’ as I am ever going to get. I feel so at ease and comfortable there. I have called it home on many occasions and there are things that just make sense to me when I am there. Love makes sense, intense grief makes sense and tears of sorrow and joy that come every time I arrive and leave make sense. Within me there had always been a sense of separation from home, although well-hidden, which when young had not been processed and felt and this is what I have been feeling for the last few years. It is not simply a case of loving visiting a place, it is a case of ‘this is where I want to live and die’. There is nowhere else for me. It feels like an obligation to my soul and I now get what many immigrants had felt before me and many still do. I get what I have been doing the last few years in awakening my connection to a home once lost and never to be regained. My deep love for Scotland is my love for home.

Here are some pictures of Siberian nature. Perhaps, you can see what I see. It has always been about lakes and pine forests for me, deer, mountains and rivers, small villages and community living. As I write this, my heart aches. Ever since I came back to my house in the South, I have been in physical and emotional turmoil. It hurts being here and the feeling is so real like a culture shock and a need to acclimatise and fit back into the order of things that is here and not where I belong. I am left once again bereft, confused and heartbroken that gets harder to bare each year.

 

In waiting…

.Reading time 2 minutes.

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.

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…

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…