Do you know how you can feel stunted by pure hatred and ignorance. What does ignorance taste like? Bile, of yellow and beige, I think. The same vibe as jealousy. Well, being stunted is not like being in shock, but more like losing all of your senses, but feeing. No matter what you do, you can not stop feeling and you cannot get other senses back.
This happened in 2022. However, as I have discovered over the course of my life, in every tricky situation there is a blessing, a learning and even a transformation. And here I am, having spent the whole year stuck in a place of intense feeling, yet frozen and devoid of imagination and creative sparkle and that freeing sense of flow, I am claiming it all back. What I have felt through the emptiness and the ugliness of the physical and human was the beauty of the spirit. It’s defiance, strength, unwavering loyalty and an unshakable sense of purpose. This year will always stay with me as a year marking my homecoming in the most profound way. There might be and will be, no doubt, more of these periods coming, yet for today, I am here, sitting fully back with myself, writing again with all my senses back together in perfect partnership.
Life is ugly and stunningly beautiful. It is cruel and violent yet filled with tenderness and grace. It is challenging and complex yet profoundly simple. As one great writer once said ‘do not look closely at life’ meaning the beauty is in simplicity, life itself, day-to-day sparks of joy and just being alive. From tragedy come revelations. A brush with death can release and propel us into living harder.
Let us all remember to appreciate the journey and trust ourselves to know the right way forward even though quite often it is simply one day at a time, one step at a time, and when one day an expansive landscape opens up in front of us and we know we belong and feel that God within us like it’s our own heart, that’s what we all thrive for.
Grab that joy with both hands and run with it until our legs are exhausted in satisfaction of being able to feel the earth underneath us and our face hurts from smiling too much and all that light within is a feeling one can never explain only that it tastes sweet and it is pure like heaven on earth.
The key to that heaven is within us all. It is up to us to unlock our own unique way of relating to life in what would feel blissful to us. It will be different for everyone depending on how one relates to all, processes information and what senses and functions dominate in one on an intellectual, emotional, psychical and metaphysical levels. It will also depend where you are at currently in life. Self-reflecting, e.g., as one of the most popular tools in recent psychological history, can actually create hooks, triggers and mental pitfalls that will drag us down further into a place where we eventually would become it. What if we tried to drop reflections, at least for a while. This is a new way of doing things that hopefully can create a strong enough anomaly that would allow you evolve in a new way.
What if we emptied instead of consolidate; cleared ourselves ready not to receive but to learn to just be before we do decide to let things in again. This will apply to all aspects of the emotional spectrum, negative and positive, but before we learn how we discern individually, as it will be different, we need to learn to empty or in other words ‘detach’ from it all.
Think of it as air, a space of light where there’s no density of any kind. It is see-through and intangible. Energy. With practice aligning with the energy of nothingness, so to speak, can produce a highly pleasable sensations to all forms within us – mental, emotional and physical. You might refer to those moments as blissful and heavenly.
As we work ‘backwards’ from emptying to learning to receive rather than react to everything and everyone, as we are used to doing, we create a completely different way of being.
If you are a feeling type, sensitive to all energies and also an intellectual/academic type this might work. Shutting down thoughts in a way of non-engagement, as thoughts create feelings and then behaviours, will create that sense of being light and empty. This is what I have engaged with naturally over the last few weeks post a very heavy period of overwhelm and thinking.
Another aspect I found useful that I think might help going forward, and a part of an ‘emptying’ process is focusing on one thing at a time and doing that for some time, for up to a year. Not engaging in more than one goal, one intention, one task. You need to stick with it too and see if it somewhat aligns things in a positive way long-term. Experiment and play with it. Playfulness and freedom are important factors in this way of engagement.
For example, you might decide to focus on just your family, or just one goal or ambition without letting anything else interfere. You might decide to do this for a week, a month or a year, like I am doing. Make your world small in other words. When in nature, for example, try focusing on the detail rather than on the overall surroundings/whole environment. It does something on the inside that feels cosy and grounding and, therefore, safe. We can all do with feeling more safe. Condense and consolidate in ways that will feel protective and self-contained rather than overwhelming.
Most things that do overwhelm us are actually out of our control and when we focus in that way and essentially disperse ourselves and lose all boundaries it creates a lack of meaning and a feeling of being lost as a result.
Kinder Scout – The Peak District National Park, UK
In May this year I went on a solo road trip leaving home and all that anchors me into the responsibility side of life behind. I decided to experiment, as I had been feeling cooped up and stuck for some time, like so many during the last year.
I find after a time of still-standing not only I need to move physically, I also need to explore and rediscover myself psychologically and spiritually, otherwise I begin to feel weighed down by life. I need a change and a challenge.
The trip turned out to be very insightful, for which I am very grateful, as it fulfilled my desire for diving deeper into understanding some of the things I had been going through internally for many yearly cycles now. It was important for me to see if this time I could attempt to break those cycles again and unleash myself from being stuck in a place that became emptied of a sense of personal freedom and joy.
One of the main things I found out was that I liked being ‘by myself’, but not ‘with myself’. Two different things. It exposed a side to self-exploration that sometimes can become toxic and overbearing. I suspected this might have been the case for many years and consciously moved away from inner work during certain points and when it started to impact on everything negatively. Yes, that can happen. Too much of one thing at the wrong time can have the opposite effect to what one might be wanting to do. It got me thinking in terms of long-term healing and short-term solution/action-based types of personal therapy, as my point of reference. Is a long-term exploration good for us, or is it better undertaken in manageable/digestible chunks? I suspect the later is true, for me anyway.
So, I wanted to define for myself the difference between being ‘by yourself’ and being ‘with yourself’? Those two differ, and here is my definition and understanding of each.
Being ‘by yourself’ means being solitary, in solitude. It is not being lonely, isolated, or abandoned. I really enjoy being by myself; being quiet and alone in a way that nothing and no one can interfere or interrupt my chosen flow and I am in control of what happens in each moment. It is being removed from burdens and responsibilities of day-to-day life. This type of solitude is intentional and conscious. To me it is something I can not be without. It is the ultimate manifestation of my personal freedom, which I value above all.
Being ‘with yourself’ means being aware of your internal processes and for me that is not necessarily good all the time especially when I choose to be by myself. One can be deeply unconscious and one is chosen. When that happens a conflict can arise. Being ‘with yourself’ can involve thoughts going round and round and you are able to hear them, engage with, act upon, or become overwhelmed. It can be feeling more, as there is no external noise or distractions that require your attention. Overall, it means you are more present with yourself and everything that you carry within you. This is something that I find difficult, as my mind becomes very loud and my thoughts can take me places I do not want to go especially when I am being consciously and wanting to be ‘by myself’. My purpose of choosing to be by myself is, in fact, the opposite. I do it to quieten everything to a soft pace or at the very least gain clarity. Having said that this only relates to my ‘head’, my thinking. I would never aim to quieten my feelings and instincts. Those, to me, are the essence of being and mechanisms that keep me in touch with myself in a positive, useful way, not disruptive and overwhelming. Those ‘feeling’ functions of myself are my creativity, my soothing tools and something that makes me flourish be it bringing ideas into being or directing me towards where I need to go. I tell you intuition in the mountains, I called it ‘follow your nose and gut’, is a very useful tool. Something I experimented with, as I use intuition in all areas of my life.
What I realised again is that the way for me not to be with myself in a negative way I need to do something. There is a time and a place for ‘being with myself’, I found, and it really does depend on what I do with my time ‘being by myself’ whether ‘being with myself’ would impact me negatively.
In this case my trip was planned and intentional and hiking is an activity that always works for the benefit of my mind. For that to work I do need a plan, a route, in this case, a goal, a destination, some focus that benefits my physical, mental, and spiritual selves. It has to be something physical, something that will use your body. When I walk, I am aware of just walking, taking in the scenery and being aware of my feet making progress reflected in the distance I have done around me and on the map route. There is something reassuring about putting one foot in front of the other and the metaphor for getting through something really comes alive in this activity. If thoughts come in on a hike, they are easier to discern, i.e. not getting tangled up, they are less threatening or deep somehow. I find they clarify and disperse quicker and answers come more naturally.
I thought many might relate to this hiking/thinking pattern scenario and seeking relief in nature, as well as, looking at healing from your own perspective and what works for you as an individual. These days I am into analysing less and being more. One of the way to bring that into being is for me to write blogs again rather than processing things using my journal, which has become one of those suffocating tools that can really take me places I never intended to go. Something to do with concise nature and being in the present/external rather than internal, which links back again to a long-term/short-term way of healing.
I hope you found this interesting and might relate to some of the things I discuss.
My book Intuitive Magic Practice discusses the subject of intuition in life in general and in a spiritual practice, if you wish to delve further into it.
Nature is the original intelligence, life-force, evolution and transformative realm that just is. I like working with nature as the most primary source of all intelligence grounded in the body, clarity of thinking and depth of feeling. Most of all it doesn’t seek to enslave, manipulate or control. It is of free will and choice and in not wanting anything from you essentially encourages sovereignty and that is priceless. It demonstrates and shows how things can unfold naturally when one is allowed to be and grow in a way one chooses. I admire all things nature for that.
Another aspect is simplicity and inclusive sense of all belonging together and working together. It doesn’t try to be something it is not and has no concern for whether you are for it or against. To me it is the most perfect example of how to live. It is all consciousness and it doesn’t have labels. It has clear, purposeful, intentional cycles of life and death. In its inclusiveness it is perfection.
As an elemental and intuitive witch and all around nature-based spiritual practitioner, I have learnt from nature starting from the ground up with studying the nature elements and the qualities of each, which like a mirror reflected back to me what my qualities are; those that are weaker and those that are distorted and where I am most balanced. It taught me that listening to your own elemental self will never lead us astray. It just wouldn’t make sense for that not to be true.
Another thing that I can’t live without and is like breathing to me is beauty and where else one can experience things more beautiful than in nature. My belief has been for a long time that beauty will save the world. In nature it is not all butterflies and flowers, however, it is about survival and predation, violence and death yet even in those manifestations there’s immense beauty. One only has to experience a storm and the devastation it can cause or get in contact with the poisonous and dangerous species yet so stunning. I don’t believe it is always a disguise I believe it is meant to be beautiful in all forms. We only have to see it for what it is and not for what it is not depending on what our mind would tell us is good for us or our needs. Beauty is everywhere and it only takes one moment of immersion into something beautiful, however minute, allows a possibility of being pulled back into our own beauty, because we are one with that in our combined elemental nature. Nature brings enchantment back into our hearts and that enchantment can bring such changes to how we live.
Many treat nature as God and it is easy to see why and it is not wrong, but what I most appreciate is that it doesn’t see itself as either above or below. It just is, being, flowing and morphing from one manifestation to another without any concern for an external human or any other influence. It doesn’t have that need or awareness of that being necessary. It is sovereign and it encourages us all to be. It calls for us to get in touch with our souls and return to self, to the original.
To understand what I mean one only has to connect to something nature-based, anything of what you consider nature and in time a sight develops, things become clear, parallels are drawn and lessons learnt. There’s no greater teacher than our natural world and it will remain my religion, solace, happiness and peace.
Silence is a state where things do happen, but it is subtle. It appears in a natural order and flow of external and internal. It is not the absence of things, it is a different experience and a feeling of everything around.
Most of us know how pleasant silence can feel on outside. It is relaxing, soothing and spacious. We notice the silence around us especially when we seek it and our bodies welcome it. But external silence is useless if there’s an absence of silence within. To become silent from within is a real skill. It requires practice. When one masters internal silence and, by mastering I mean being able to come back to it over and over, not just experiencing it once, that’s where true pleasure and bliss is. Something I have been discovering over the years. When I am silent on the inside everything on outside slows down and softens. Triggers, hooks and reactions get muted somehow. They still happen but there is no noise or longevity to any of it. That state is truly and genuinely blissful. Body is relaxed in a real sense through the physical, not through mental visualisation of relaxation.
One of the first things I practiced when started exploring inner silence was to remain silent when on outside there was a situation that would ordinarily provoke a reaction or had a potential to trigger an emotion. I practiced not reacting and remaining silent and there it began to happen, the softening, the flow, the non-attachment. It felt freeing and like something new was entering my experience. It felt healing, delicate and utterly compassionate to myself and others. Inner silence is neutralising to any outside turmoil, external wars that we are presented with all the time in life. Furthermore, it appeared to neutralise my own historical wounds that would normally open and start to hurt. Instead it felt balm-like, a gentle stroke or a silky, most delicate feeling of pacifying everything. It didn’t feel false or forced, avoidant or resistant. Everything just was as it was only with the inner silence I remained intact and so did the world around me.
I have been on a life-long journey towards inner peace. Since I was a small child I knew that’s what was missing not just in me but in everyone around me. It’s no surprise for anyone with this physical reality and all we go through and finding peace amidst it all felt important. Remaining silent, taking a sacred pause was something that worked compared to all other methods that I now know came from a mental-state involvement. We simply can’t think ourselves peaceful. It has to be on a feeling level, on a physical body level, on a level that allows a different space to open up. We all have that space within but finding it takes a long time and it is so worth it when one does.
I am looking to further my experience and practice of inner silence and wonder what else can lead there. It needs and wants to be practiced on a collective level almost due to how it feels and effect it has on everything. I invite you to try finding your way of finding inner silence and truly feel it.
Raw Nature Spirit 
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