NATURE BASED SPIRITUAL PATH
I am happy to announce the release of the latest project in collaboration with Cortney Cameron, whose wonderful idea and beautifully designed images materialised in this invaluable resource. It has been my absolute pleasure contributing to this project. Enjoy!
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.
Beltain this year has been anticipated, which is very in contrast to my usually triggered time associated with the festival. This year everything is newly born, all is different and surrounded and supported by an overarching signature of love and devotion. It has been a truly beautiful energy to immerse in and integrate it as a permanent knowing of what is possible. My usual rejection of the masculine instead turned into curiosity, invitation, some risk taking even and exploration this year.
In my dream the other night multiple memories popped up around various encounters that span throughout my life and I have seen a side of myself, which had long been buried, suppressed, yet this year it is all coming out around this divine timing. I was equally shocked, revived and marvelled at material that jumped out of my unconscious – a wild, fearless, playful, seductive and very relation part of myself stood right in front of me in a kaleidoscope of engagements with the masculine. My sense is now that once again she feels safe in the current union and secure in herself to come out in the open. I also know that the male would very much welcome her in a dance of a deep and passionate connection. She does have passion in buckets.
Love, sex, passion, commitment, tenderness, togetherness, attentive engagement and deeper understanding. Receiving, not rejecting. Compassionate, not cruel. Silently wise, not abusive and loud. Showing and guiding, not expecting. These are vibrations that are present in the current feminine signature of today’s Beltain for me.
In the whole elemental confusion and sorting there is clarify. In recent weeks a lot happened that led me to an even deeper connection to the masculine in my life. I used to say I’d take my soul connection to the land over my commitment to a man. I felt disconnected, resentful, in a place of my wounded Maiden, my scarred May queen. But when the ring I used in ‘a descent to the underworld’ ceremony a few year ago when I ‘married’ the land of my soul, got ruined in water (profound), it felt significant and worth noticing.
When away in Cornwall early last month and not feeling in alignment with the place I also clearly saw my man’s connection to it and it made me re-think both, my commitment to the land of my soul and to him. For the first time in years he came first. I felt and knew it. What I came to realise that letting him be is something unquestionable and all I can do is find another way to say in connection to the land and get that rooted nourishment I crave so often, but not sacrificing what I have in other areas. This lessons had been a long time coming and now it is grounded.
My engagement ring went back on my finger today, before Beltain fires are lit and it now feels right once again. Looking at the ring it is as if seeing it for the first time with a renewed wisdom of its meaning. It has four corners, complete and simple, it signifies my renewed union.
In your Beltain dance of Firy love and passion tonight let things unfold and be. Set yourself and your man free and, perhaps, through releasing and letting things ‘grow and germinate naturally’ a flow of something else will join the river of what is life as it is right now for your both, forever open and inviting to the energies of nature. As above, so below, as within so is out!
Blessed Beltain!
previous years’ posts
With hair smelling of earth and aching leg muscles I feel like I can fly. Air element is strongly present since calendar spring began. Identification with flying, birds and wings propels me into areas I would not have visited before or even considered. There is space, openness, possibilities and opportunities. Ultimately freedom. Elemental change has been quite sudden and quick this year just as one day we had snow and the next all the flowers were out. From Water I stepped into Air, or rather flew into it.
My pace changed from gentle quietness of winter to a very busy mind full of ideas, engaging with a lot of research and literary feeling like I was going to take off any minute and fly. My views expanded hugely. I didn’t just begin to step outside my comfort zone and think outside the box I threw the box away. I also experienced my clients having breakthroughs in their process one after another. There was an opening of some sort, which again invited us all, it seems, into being something different. This all feels like a big change overnight.
What I am working on now is bringing myself back into balance and what is needed is Earth, so I walk a lot. I wash my hair (crown chakra) with clay and mud and exercise my body so I can feel every muscle and joint to connect me to the physical. It is grounding. On my walk today I encountered a heron bird I often see and even though it was a bird, a lot of them in my awareness right now, Heron is a wise old crone, which warns against haste and too much speed. I hear her and I slow down standing next to the bird.
Experience is exhilarating and again different. What I notice most of all is lack of fear. Courage is all around me. I feel like I can fly and not just that, but I also know how to. I am in touch with my skills and inner wisdom more than ever and what also comes in strongly is trust, which overrides doubt every day. It feels incredible and liberating to a point of ‘jumping’ off the cliff and being ok. As many doors remain closed or get shut in my face I find my ‘wings’ grow bigger. I find my way, I manoeuvre life and people with greater confidence and skill. I think things through and able to step away when I feel I have overdone it. Too much thinking is never good, hence bringing in balancing elements is important to keep the overall effect positive and yourself intact and healthy.
I am enjoying ‘my flight’ so far and excited to see what else this spring brings with it. In the next couple of week we will have Ostara and nature will burst into blooming picture of glory. I am ready!
My way is the Elemental way. I see the world through the five elements and work with them the most in my nature communication, magical weaving and spells and when relating to others. I have a power and a shadow element and the world makes sense to me in a way it is made of the elements all around me.
The season of winter has always been a Fire element season for me, full of creativity, drive, focus, enthusiasm and passion. It has always been a time when my inspiration would be present and my mind clear and full of ideas. I would complete a lot of projects during winter usually. Many writers report the same thing. This year it is different. This time it feels softer, smoother, slower accompanied by quiet, silence and a peaceful retreat into inner spaces.. In dreams I am met with a lot of shadow material and crying physical tears. The season feels closer to the element of Water. As water here doesn’t freeze in winter it is very much present, but in a state of quiet still standing. Perhaps, it depends on where we are at any given point and what our intentions are and currently my preferred state is of slow motion in silence and solitude with no need for many words or interactions. It is a very relaxed state of being with nothing to do and nowhere to go, quite the opposite energy of my usual winters. Water element is in this year’s signature I also feel regardless of what the season is now and yet to come, as we are in the feminine rising energy, but not for the first time. The archetypal flow is quite advanced this time and more powerful than ever. It is very consious and knowing ready to share its wisdom with us all. What would be interesting to explore this year is that contact with water whether we like it or not. Like for many water is my shadow element and a lot of us have grown up with supression of our emotional states (water energy). If we decide to engage with the element purposefully tt will sure take us on a transformational and insightful journey, no doubt about it. There is that opportunity this year in abundance. I am going to embrace it and put some water magic into my practice more. For the moment, stillness and calm are the energies of the month for me and it feels just how it should be.
What’s your element for the season of winter?
Key words, themes and affirmations to align with and do more of in the next cycle, as the Moon begins to wane from its fullness and disperses into the New Year, are:
This one is particularly relevant to women of our times and at this point it is becoming clearer and profoundly important to step into a vibration that is required to bring up the most of our potential. As we heal from inside out the light of consciousness will strengthen to support our own intentions and goals aimed at the whole world and everything around us.
For a long time we have been living in a state of suppressed feminine, shamed, required to be hidden and riddled with shame. Women have not been welcomed in their authentic expression and were expected not to be seen or heard. As a result women had learnt to sign up to a signature of self-hatred, feeling ashamed of their emotions and resent their physical bodies and continuously becoming more and more lost. Well, over the last few years women have been rising stronger and more confident, waking up to their abilities, powers and heart-centred purpose here on Earth.
In elemental terms when feminine is wounded continuously, a complex trauma is created in a female being to the extent that she becomes distorted. What arises in a way of defence and coping as a result is a distorted masculine, which is ruthless, aggressive and brutal in words, open in actions and behaviour devoid of grace, modesty and all softness. Feminine energy becomes frozen or dried up and the flow is interrupted, intuition is banished and is looked upon as weak and useless. Action, power and an overpowering voice of the masculine becomes predominant. Paradoxically this is exactly what had been wanted, women silenced and/or turned into ‘male’ versions. This is an element of Fire, but in its distorted position where passion is used to destroy another, determination is directed towards trampling over everything and everyone to reach goals. It is harsh and burning.
When we think of water (a natural element of the feminine), it is powerful too. It is flexible and adaptable. It fits into any shape and give life to things as it flows into various manifestations of itself. It is soothing, calming and gentle in its natural, healthy position. It is nourishing to the body and soul. It is open to reflection and contemplation and encouraging in creating new ways of being and flowing with the energy that is most natural. This what has been lost, however, more and more women are claiming their Water back and about time.
This coming year the signature and goal is not only physical health of the feminine and learning to love ourselves as we are, learning to honour our flow and shapes and dance in the knowing of our own beauty, the goal is also stepping back into softness and gentle handling of ourselves, others and all life around us. Kindness, intuition, wisdom, silence and deep soulful presence are all qualities women are called to awaken. Every woman possesses the power of Water and it is needed today more than ever before. Water calms Fire, soothes old wounds and encourages healing.
What comes up for me always and recently when I seek to align with the softness of the feminine is an archetype of a deer, a white delicate creature of the woods. It is not a big stag, but a soft female, which is my primary spirit animal. It is also in alignment with my 5th plane self and this is truly sacred to me. Whenever they come to me more often I know what is required and I feel it deep in my sacral and solar plexus chakras the forward movement that is needed for the overall benefit and good in the world.
Be kind, be soft, be silent in a way only a wise feminine knows how. Connect with the eternal power of intuition that resides within us all and rest assured internal light will lead us to a place of peace, joy and overall balance.
