Category: transformation

Scotland – a way forward

.Reading time 4 minutes.

My relationship with Scotland has been profound over the years, as many of you will know. I have travelled north, south, through central parts and inner and outer isles and in each place I discovered a part of myself that showed me various truths about what life and love means to me, reminded me of profound grief and loss and soothes me into a sense of peace and quiet. Most of all nature understanding within and without is something I will always see as a priceless gift I was given in this lifetime.

This year things have broken down literary on this path of my relating to the land and lessons have been huge. I felt as if the land spat me out all ragged and wounded with a sense of self lost and disintegrated. My heart broke and I disconnected from everything and everyone as a result. I left the land exhausted and ill not wanting to look back.

Now the storm is over and I have grounded into the earthly quality of autumn once again I am beginning to reflect on my journey so far and clear a way forward in this profound connection I feel to the land and to myself subsequently. I am setting an intention to redefine this connection, fine-tune it. I am evaluating and comparing my experiences and looking at various sides of myself that have come forward as a result of my journey through the land. Where the wild North torn me to pieces and stripped me of the ground beneath my feet, isles got me in touch with a quiet of my internal possibilities and the central part always held me steady I am clearly defining places that I want to engage with going forward. It is almost like I am creating healthy boundaries for myself like with any other relationship. I know where to go and what not to engage with necessarily for my own peace and vitality as well as for maintaining balanced relationships with significant others in my life. In terms of the elements I know that woodland (Earth) vibrates on the closest level to what I am deep down, whereas the sea is quite far from my essence, although lakes and rivers (water but on a gentler scale) are singing the song my soul recognises. It’s natural. Mountains are incredibly supportive and holding to me and with their spaciousness (Air) I find the balance in my breath (this took time).

I now know that after surrendering to the utterly wild side of myself and the land where there is no mercy on soul or body I now seek balance, warmth and gentleness instead. I want to feel safe and contained. Those are the qualities I want to cultivate further and one particular place I feel can support me in that. Interestingly enough it is a place where I visited Scotland first. So I have come a full circle, one might say, and returned to the understanding of myself on a much deeper level and what truly matters to me in this life.

I am publishing my poetry collection Soul Land soon as a tribute to my spiritual love affair with the land over the last few years. Watch the space.

Much love

‘Help yourself’ magic

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Spring Equinox

There is nothing like spring coming back that invites us more into life. It calls for awakening from stillness and dreaming of dark winter. It pulls a body into a much needed stretch, into a new kind of movement and engagement with the world. It offers that space to hear a new song from within ourselves that had been hibernating and birthing in darkness.

It has been a tough winter for many in 2019 that made us stuck in chaos, confused and stalled, not much movement other than in dreams and other types of realities. The process had been necessary, as everything is always is, and the purpose of the ‘stuckness’ was to explore ourselves from a position of where we are and who we are, what are our realities and do they serve us. It has not been an easy download to understand and integrate, however, relying on intuition and instinct had been useful even those areas halted in space that invited asking help from outside. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with asking for help from outside when we are stuck and this can be particularly useful and necessary for those of us, who is not used to asking for help and instead there for everyone else. This was partly the work of this winter to get to know that pattern again from a perspective that actually it is absolutely ok to ask for that hand that we need to hold on to and it is ok not to lead once in a while. I also realised that when you do ask for help you then are able to help yourself better – an interesting insight, which manifested through some magical workings that also involved asking for help from the elementals. This is something I have not done before necessarily in this way, but, as always based on the intuitive knowing this is what came through.

I asked ‘Help me’ while in nature doing the work and two days later I got it. It came as a voice, a message, an insight that said ‘Help yourself’. It contained the energy of giving back to me the knowing and responsibility for my own healing. We are the best healers for ourselves without a doubt, but that does depend very much on our relationships with ourselves. Doing the ‘self’ work whether it is through a therapeutic relationship, spiritual practice, other activities, all of those together, will put you in touch with yourself like nothing else and that is the most important element to ensure one lives in a way that it ‘whole’, fulfilling and peaceful. Without a doubt the best gift of self work is you integrate back into what you were always meant to be with all your beautiful resources, qualities, unique gifts, resilience and potential intact. In order to get there we often need to ask for help, we need to learn to reach out and relate, connect without fear or judgement. We need to be vulnerable to become truly strong and grounded and we need courage and strength to be vulnerable when it is terrifying.

This spring feels already like a very nourished, turned over soil that is ready to share its bounty and wisdom with us if we are willing to be patient with our newly planted seeds, warm and kind with ourselves, accepting of all that we are, good and bad, twisted and glorious, strong and weak – all of that richness that is the soil of our bodies and the light of our souls. I am excited to see what is to come. It is all new again.

A tool for raising self-awareness

.Reading time 5 minutes.

In 2018 I have gone on a journey of tuning into myself, the world around me with nature continuing to be my sacred, supportive and grounding space on a month by month basis and it has been an incredible way of getting to know myself. I have not just been surprised but amazed at various things that I didn’t even know existed.

I took an approach of keeping a journal taking one month at a time, January, February, March, etc. Focusing my awareness of what happens within me at any given moment, things that arise when engaging with people and partaking in events or when being silent or walking in nature. Feelings that come up for me spontaneously and consciously, when in here and now, when asleep, dream observations, etc.

The main aim of the exercise was sharpening my awareness of myself in terms of qualities, strengths, weaker points, triggers, ways of relating, preferences in being, how well-balanced or unbalanced something was within and tuning into needs that were either always met or never met. These are just some examples of this practice.

Here’s a list of qualities I have discovered and zoomed in for each month as I became aware of those energies in me. Just to give you an example and yes, a lot of it surprised me and offered and opportunity for change.

Once we become aware of something we then are offered a choice automatically. We can choose what we do with that newly found information. That’s a beauty of making unconscious conscious. You can go as deep as you wish into what you discover, or observe it simply as it is or both.

January:

I have truly experienced myself as ‘nice’. This might sound strange, but I saw just how divorced I have been from myself in that sense. This time I felt it, really felt it and knew that to be true. I enjoyed that one. Beautiful sensation.

February:

I spent most of the month in a state of light and loving kindness. It was all about love, the pure kind, the transcendent kind. Another beautiful state. I was made aware that I am

able to go to that place a lot easier than I have given myself credit for in the past.

March:

I was able to transform my relationship with the physical pain and learnt to listen to it.

And so it goes… each month there will be a theme or a feeling that would centre around me and ask tor attention and I would journal around what came up. I have had an incredible year and partly that was due to my conscious choosing of being aware at all times and in tune with what arose without trying to fight it or change it. I observed myself and wrote about it.

At the end of the calendar year I was full of lessons and knowing more than I did last year. My experiment in active personal evolving has been very rewarding and highly interesting. I would recommend this self-awareness tool to everyone looking to dive deeper into finding out more about themselves including a much subtler layers of psyche, not just things that might be familiar or obvious. Super fun. Writing as a tool is generally transformative and healing. If you enjoy writing this one won’t disappoint.

This is something I think I will always continue doing in one form or another. It is now January and I find myself in a very different place to where I was this time last year and it grabs my attention and spikes curiosity. I am excited to enter into any new space that opens up in front of me. Remaining in wonder is an essential part of life to me and for as long as awareness, enchantment and tapping into potential is there, life is full of all things interesting.

Happy 2019, everyone!

Shadows at dawn

.Reading time 4 minutes.

The pull of a new calendar year is strong, as if something in me can’t wait for a clean sheet of paper to start writing another story. It yarns for the taste of spring, for fresh changes. This is very much in the collective at this time of year and I do have some resistance to being caught up in the collective yearly pattern, as I know there isn’t a need to be in that place, yet here I am. Have you noticed how pictures of bluebells begin to pop up here and there around this time? People post them everywhere. It pulls us out of here and now in an instant and we begin to wonder.

Anger is often present for me during this month, which is one of those months I wait to be done with. The cycle of holidays every year and all that comes with it brings a lot of ‘don’t want to be part of it’ feelings. It is quite uncomfortable with a bitter taste that needs to digest and integrate before a new something is seen and experienced. I guess what I refer to is some shadow elements of the psyche is brewing on the surface of my unconscious and, yes, I do recognise it. It needs expression, but also containment. It is angry, expressive, violence-like, impulsive. It needs attention and love, but it doesn’t mean it is a nice picture to look at. It is often not and it can be loud especially in dreams when I know how to parcify it during waking hours.

Very similar in nature if you notice in certain places, like the one I just came from, e.g. everything was grey and not just in a way of rainy skies, but the whole atmosphere was covered with colour grey, dull and feeling like it’s not enjoying it. I describe this energetically, but visually it looks like a wet, old rag, for example, that can do with a bit of whiteness injected or a dirty water that’s stagnated. It needs renewing, refreshing.

If I was to describe it as a feeling in the body that would be stress, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, ‘bags under eyes’ type of presentation. It is a sort of wanting to rest yet being restless as monsters are moving within in the dark, under the ground.

I know the ‘beast’ very well although I haven’t seen it or heard for sometime. With me the triggers are stress and being stretched or asked to do things I don’t want to do. These have been running for years. During this time I also pick it up from others easily and that overwhelms me a great deal. December is like the remains of something, like the last residue of some unpleasant drink or wet ashes post fire.

This year has all been about doing things differently and the above patterns have also run their course. Enough is enough I’d say. There’s got to be another way of expressing shadow material so that it doesn’t just have its needs’s met and go back into a state of being parcified, but it has a chance to transform into or balance with the opposing force. Something is needed immediately as these things arise. More transforming and less keeping in awareness I’d say. I will give it a go next.

Happy 2019! Let it offer more explorations and awareness. Further success and achievements, more joy and satisfaction.

Life is not about you

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Last night I had a dream where a message was written clearly out against a dark background

“Life is not about you”

It didn’t go unnoticed and I woke up with a sharp sense of “yes, that is so true”, feeling somewhat light and liberated. My thoughts then proceeded with further exploration of this message. The World is not about you, me, her or them. It is all about life and death and that bit in-between we need to figure out for ourselves. No one is nothing owes us.

Notice what this feels like to understand what life is about. Us humans with our consciousness and super brains, perhaps, as someone said, developed too much with our attachments, our traumas, cognitions that often go wrong, our inability to accept and emotions that go unacknowledged even though emotions came before thoughts in DNA memory. It is tough. I have been hearing again and again over the last few days that we are animals not fit for this age. The advances around us are not fit for the level of our tolerance/coping that we have. There’s some truth and evidence in that. Many are finding comfort in going back to basics and living in simplicity. The world is too much. It is filled daily with things we struggle to comprehend and learn to deal with either by convincing ourselves it is all normal and ok or we seek to escape and put fingers in our ears pretending it is not really happening, or at least not to us, not this time in any case. No wonder it is tough. It seems it is not really about the survival of the fittest, but about ones that accept reality as it is and seek simplicity in being in life. Yes, often that means away from it all and often doing what is only within your capacity and no more. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to move away from it all and, perhaps, that is a wise thing to do, something within us seeking to return to the origins of things. Understanding that the world is not about you and you are not the world but a fleeting moment in its history. Finding what makes that moment worthwhile for you is the thing, keeping yourself well, grounded and authentic, by which I mean staying realistic with what is happening around and either choosing to get swallowed by it or not.

Life is not about you, but more often than not we are offered a choice and that’s a plus of the existence. It is freedom to a degree to take a certain direction that might throw light on what your life is really about.

When we go into nature and stand in a forest trees don’t go ‘I am here, notice me’. Flowers and birds don’t pretend to know more than they do or performed harder than they know how and their sheer individual beauty is not in competition. Yet something within a human always has that ‘I am here’. Dissatisfaction comes from a place of never fulfilling that ‘I am here, notice me’ cry out, which doesn’t ultimately get answered on outside. It is only when stepping out of ourselves we can notice even though only for a minute how ‘unnoticeable’ we really are in the big picture of the world. It doesn’t happen easily though as I think that egotistic way of looking at the world is wired within our DNA, which is hard to separate from. It is liberating though when those moments do happen.

Looking ahead

.Reading time 3 minutes.

With Samhain and my birthday now past my new year has officially began. As always it has not been an easy transition in the weeks coming up to this week, to my ‘birth’ and ‘re-birth’ but now things yet again and getting calm and settled and I very much look forward to things to come in my new form, now that I am here again.

On Samhain night I had the ‘big dream’. One of those dreams that come rarely and you know its effects as not only it feels big, it manifests in life big. The overall sense is of arrival, achievement and transformation at its heart.

Ahead there is winter, which I love. It’s the time of year when I come alive, my energy sores to high levels and my creativity explodes. I very much enjoy the chill and crispiness in the air and should we have snow, a lot of snow that would just be a complete blessing. Every winter I pray and wish for snow.

Today my mind turns to goals and dreams for next year. The signature for 2019 is yet to be revealed and that’s what I would normally follow from a collective, spiritual growth and evolution points of view. 2018 has been absolutely wonderful, so new, so fresh and transformative. Full of peace, love, understanding, learning and coming to a place of beautiful simplicity in all aspects. It has been about clearing, moving away from noise and zooming in even more on a few things that matter, feeding my soul and looking after my family.

All the way through the year I have been full of gratitude, relationships that truly matter and releasing the last remaining things unwanted and not needed. Simplifying, clarifying, decluttering and creative space for love, warmth and purity to come in. We have paid all our debts and have enjoyed the process of discovering and re-learning new financial ways and realising how little we all need to be content. I have loved the process so much and have felt lighter, brighter and very fulfilled. I feel I have perfectly aligned with the signature of 2018, which was clear.

Signatures normally come into my awareness towards Yule or just after and I will be talking about that just as soon as I know. For now we are in the period of things behind us and things ahead of us, like dusk or dawn, beautiful spaces in-between filled with potential.

Many blessings!

“Do something different” – 2018 signature

.Reading time 8 minutes.

leap of faith to change your life

What seems to be happening this year, of course, as planned always, is more challenges in terms of ‘do things differently from now on’. Its call is deep and it is not messing about. Instead it feels authentic and with a meaningful purpose behind it. The voice of ‘new’ tells me to close my ears to the old, conditioned and ‘the norm’ and look outside of the comfort zone or rather outside of the box we have put ourselves in. Having been in a box for most of our lives makes sense. That’s what everyone had always done and many will continue to do, but what it is about this year that asks us to step up on a different ladder, take a different turn? Just try and see, what have you got to lose, yet we hold on, fear comes over, doubt sets in and we retreat into our shell, which is effectively a self-constructed prison.

The thing is we all know that there is this place within us that now and again calls us to do things differently. It is there nudging us gently, ‘go on, go on’, but we are very good at ignoring that voice, as other voices, e.g. judgement, criticism and doubt are so much louder we are more likely to surrender to those. It is just how things have been created for most of us throughout our lives. At some point we come to a conclusion, or rather convince ourselves, that there is not much point in changing anything, why do it, it is all ok as it is, too much hassle. What it is too much of essentially is fear. We are scared. No one likes what we perceive as failure, how would we recover, oh no, but how do we live without trying and failing, how else would we know what works and what doesn’t? This is not easy and I am right there with you.

This process of un-knowing, un-conditioning, un-becoming seems like, on one hand, an unattainable goal, too hard, potentially filled with pain and disappointment, but, on the other hand, it is exciting, liberating, ‘not giving a damn’ type of brave and all-embracing life just as it is. It is true, essential core living, fully present in life and focused with eyes and heart wide open.

transformation

This is exactly the process I am talking about. Many do take this path and they do fail, but the thing is what we don’t realise is that we have all the potential to get back up again. We’ve all been there, done that, we know we can go through the toughest challenges and survive and all of us have plenty of life examples to support it. It is not a myth, it is real-life experiences that we can draw upon when fear strikes. We can fail again and again, but we would have lived something different, something alive and uncertain and had a chance to shape something into a thing of beauty and confidence. Yes, nothing is easy, but why would we want it to be?

I feel like a young part of me is writing this, the one that had never had a voice and being silent for so long produced internal fire ready to come out. Luckily these days my voice and internal fire are in good balance providing a good foundation for taking a leap into something new and freeing.

Air element has taken over my spring so far, it seems, and I can see why exactly. Whenever we are presented with a challenge or a dilemma one of the defences is to use our head more, fly into the mind and identify with everything it has to say. The mind is not always right, however, and learning to decipher mind messages is a useful thing to learn. It is also important to get to know your mind generally and what it tends to do in various situations. There has been days when I was aware of my mind working overtime it was making me exhausted, but I let it. It had to work things out and not all of it was bad, I must admit, but I had to bring it back into my heart and my body eventually, as we cannot function in the Air, in the mind alone indefinitely. I tried to balance out the mental defence with tapping into the feeling body and align with the Water element and also Fire when I felt some passion was needed to support my ‘good’ thoughts.

The whole thing needs to ground now and this is what I am still working on. I need that Earth and waiting for the moment when I can dig my hands into it again to start planting seeds for real and allowing my whole being to balance out. Waiting for warmth to come in and root me back into the earth. I think that will help greatly. There is still doubt that comes in now and again, but I no longer feel fear. A large part of me is trusting the process and my inner knowing and allowing for the chance to decide and manifest whatever is needed. I know I will be ok whatever happens, as when I hear ‘oh no, you won’t be’, I know this is only my mind talking, which is often supported by what we are conditioned to hear by a society, a family system that is not functioning well or simply fear that is present in the collective on so many levels. It is that prison calling ‘come back, come back’, as it is also scared to be left behind empty and meaningless.

This spring why not start dismantling our prisons brick by brick through engaging with one, two, three new ideas and implementing them, trying them out to see how they feel. Do something different this year. Why wouldn’t we want a different experience, which often is actually more in alignment with our inner calling than we realise. What we are experiencing is a call back home, which is what it is all about. We are called to do that full circle of un-becoming, un-learning and coming back to the way we were born to be.