Naked ‘truths’

No one thinks about you as half as you think they do (everyone is pre-occupied with working out their ways around life)

Emotions are not the same as thoughts (emotions are more primal and instinctual, therefore more valuable in many respects)

Life is not about you (nature is not concerned if you are here or not, it just is)

If something you desire doesn’t happen it is not meant to be (something better will come long meant just for you)

Dreams do come true (both dreaming and action are required)

Worry is a waste of energy (things that not happened yet and mostly unlikely to happen)

You can do it all. Just need to work out what that ALL is for you (it might be less than you think if you really zoom in on essentials)

Giving to yourself is far from being selfish (we are all here steering our own boat in search of a meaning, which does include helping and caring for others, but it is not everyone’s purpose)

Kids are wiser than adults (yet untouched by absurdities of life and living the magic of what life is)

Nature is the source of all life, all divinity, mystery, science and majesty!

Have a lovely weekend

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Life is not about you

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.

Summer – the time for wilderness, the time for releasing your beast

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.

Present moment surrender

Trusting the universe, all in good time, hard work and patience pay off. We all heard these sayings, but how good are we with a state of surrendering to the present moment really?

I have experienced this year in particular ‘a run away’ with my thoughts and emotions, that often threw me into a state of panic and anxiety and pulled me right out of the present moment. It is so very felt when I am not in the present moment these days. I feel like not just I am not living, but almost I am not breathing, loving, experiencing or feeling. The awareness in me is strong, however, thoughts are also powerful at times and push me into a turmoil of ‘what if’ rather than ‘what is’. I believe being with what is and really grounding in the present moment is one of the most important lessons again for this year. What is happening is that our awareness is becoming sharper and we are shown what we are potentially missing out on if we avoid, resist to what is currently happening to us and wanting to fast forward. It is also more difficult to do this year than before. That contrast in sharp awareness and increased difficulty in holding that present moment vibration is necessary. Things are highlighted so we really see what we need to see and also go beyond just seeing and understanding, but really feeling it with every sense. For example, my body is sharply aware of continual stress I am putting on it in the last two months, so I am physically feeling not great and problems manifest more and more yet I find it difficult to stop. When on holiday I was hit with sadness and grief when I realised I was not being with what was surrounding me and enjoying it, so my emotions were heightened as a result and as a way to show me that what I was being or doing didn’t serve what I could potentially experience if only I let go off resistance.

Today I am making a conscious decision to stop the run around, purposefully slow down, not to rush and allow the universe bring what is meant for me. I am putting my focus into surrendering, as it is so needed right now. One way of doing that, I feel intuitively, is creating a beautiful space around myself and sit in its energy for a while. Elements that ground me today and help me focus on what I am feeling in the body are soothing Celtic music, burning eucalyptus oil, which allows my airways to open up and take some deep breaths, as well as textures that I can explore with various crystals. When one is in touch with visual, smell, touch and auditory senses, I find it is beneficial to experiencing what is in the moment. We can also use words that we say out loud, a prayer, a poem or even a song, so we connect to the vibration of our own voice and really listen.

Blessings!

Shedding with the season

 As I pull out remaining weeds and dried out reminder of flowers and vegetables once blooming on my allotment I reflect on the play between holding on and letting go.

Weeds are still green with roots deep in the soil resist my pull and I find pleasure in clearing space for the next year’s growth.

I am brutal with weeds, but over the last few years I became more mindful and reflective on the process of wanting to stay and needing to go. 

It explains why I love autumn and winter even more. My thinking becomes clearer. My goals become crystallised and the path in front of me stretches ahead. In summer when woods are overgrown and taken over by brambles and ferns I feel confused. I feel enclosed and my thinking and creativity are not sharp. In the second part of the year I can breathe once again and start the process of deciding what to keep and what to let go off. The emptiness is inviting and exciting to me.

I sweep, clean and dust ‘the old’ and create space within and around me for the season of reflection and new beginnings. 

What are you holding on to at this point? What are you not wanting to let go off?