Patience, patience, patience, and faith

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea. Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Ah the sea! Such a great teacher. If only I could be more like the sea. And herein lies my problem with life. I don’t wait patiently, openly, I’m always grasping, searching. I’m rarely choiceless. I almost always know exactly what I want, and what everyone else should want too, if I could just get my way, everything would be perfect.

I have never been ‘empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.’ I am always digging, wanting more, cutting open the goose that laid the golden egg.

Someone who resides deep in my heart called me on this behaviour during the week.- giving me great cause for reflection. And although it is always hard to be shown one’s shortcomings, I am grateful.

You see, I finally understand where I go wrong with the things I love. Not just with people, but with everything.

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I haven’t seen the gifts in my life as gifts from the sea, as serendipitous presents washed upon my shore. I have seen them as a Christmas present to be opened and devoured in one sitting. And even then found wanting and greedily exchanged for more stuff at the Boxing Day sales.

I haven’t just allowed things to unfold to me in their own time and way, I have always cajoled, pushed, pulled, manipulated, controlled, forced, or tried to anyway.

I’m like the proverbial kid in a candy store. Shovelling in as much as I can. There’s no savouring or appreciation of the bounty. There’s no faith that it will be there if I slow down and appreciate it, and that I don’t need to be so greedy.

But I am glad of the lesson, of truly seeing how my problem is, not so much in manifesting gifts in my life, it’s the lack of respect and faith I show them once they do appear.

I would like to say I’ll be different now, but it’s too soon for that. All I can hope is that I’ll be more aware, more conscious.

Don’t wish me happiness
I don’t expect to be happy all the time…
It’s gotten beyond that somehow.
Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
I will need them all. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

As I reviewed my last post, through another’s eyes, I saw this greed and grasping. It wasn’t pretty. Here I was commanding that the universe must deliver my intentions, in my way, on my timeline or I would, what? Lose faith, give up?

In the face of a year that has brought gift after gift after gift, my arrogance, my lack of respect and appreciation, was astounding to me.

And in the past I would have beaten up on myself, but that too is not appreciating the gift. This insight, this perspective into my subconscious driving forces is a huge gift. And I won’t disrespect it. I won’t expect it to flood me and change me overnight into some more spiritual version of myself – whatever that means.

I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can’t really call being alive. Mary Oliver

Even as I write there is the awareness that in a month, or a year, or an hour, this realisation will again shift and break apart into infinite drops of seaspray and become something else. And at some point I’ll hold on too tight to it, I’ll decide it could be improved somewhat, if it was more like this, less like that. And then it will slip through my fingers, like trying to hold onto water. But that’s okay too.

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me. Mary Oliver

Scott Alexander King writes that spiritual knowledge, and the power that comes with it, must be approached with a committed, objective mindset. We cannot learn true wisdom in a weekend workshop, or a degree course. He says, “Before questing for spiritual attainment we must first dedicate ourselves to becoming a whole person; a process that involves surrendering our familiar self to Spirit, so our authentic self, hidden deep within, can emerge reborn.”

I think this is the real learning I am receiving from this year of intentions. I have been set on a course, but of course I was never going to reach my destination in this year. So rather than trying to tick off the boxes of my intentions, a greater gift is to see where those intentions have pointed me in new directions, where they have allowed my heart and mind to open to new and wonderful experiences, to where I have been fundamentally altered as a human being.

True wisdom must be deserved. It must be gathered over a lifetime of study and embraced as a way of life.  It must become a path of the heart explored with absolute devotion. We must be prepared to face our fears and conquer them and turn our weaknesses into strengths and our darkest hours into gifts of power.  Scott Alexander King

This week in our shamanic community, we have been journeying to connect with an element of nature. As I saw myself stepping outside onto my balcony, in my mind’s eye, a great tidal wave of water rushed toward me.

I was shown how water has always been with me, in childhood dreams I would lift a latch door in my bedroom floor which led me to the ocean, I would swim and meet water beings. I have many dreams of tsunami waves, of being engulfed, claimed by the sea.

This wave took me to the ocean where I swam with fish and sea turtles, and then to a river where I splashed and played with a group of otters. It was a very loving, healing, energy. The message from this water elemental is to be light and flow and play.

Water does not resist. Water flows. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does. Margaret Atwood

I had a similar message from my upper world guide, who is a light being who took me to the farthest star in the universe. He took me to a crystal cave where there was a pool of water that was swirling in emerald green and azure blue healing waters.  The light being had me swim in the healing waters and told me to play, so I somersaulted and played with other light beings. It was so refreshing to my spirit!

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence. Kahil Gibran

Spirit is telling me to lighten up, to be the light I want to see in the world, to play and laugh and be joyful. There is a time to be serious and solemn, but there is also the need for light heartedness.

In a subsequent journey with water. Water again came up onto my balcony and sucked me into it’s undertow. This time I became water. From water I evaporated into the sky. Raining down into a river, then emptied into the sea. Moving fast this time, I felt a little fearful of the power of water in full force.

Deep and rough ocean waves, huge and gray-green with dark depths beneath, crashed around me. Fear arose strongly in me, and as if in response to my fear, I was washed up on a beach where I sat and talked with water spirit/deity.

They communicated to me that there was no more fear to be felt in rough waves than calm waters. Water doesn’t fear the deep ocean more than the tranquil bay. Ego, attachment to form creates fear. Water has no attachment to form. It flows. It lets go. It trusts. I went back into deep ocean with this sense of trust. The experience became more excitement than anxiety. Deep, dark ocean depths roiled beneath me, and I sensed my unconscious there – there was much more of myself, of life, to explore. I felt a fear of my deepest darkest depths, and yet sensed its untapped power.

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you. Mary Oliver

The weekend heralded the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. Solstice literally means ‘standstill’ and for three days the sun appears to rise at the exact same point on the horizon. This week leading to the Summer Solstice has been overwhelming for many. A reminder that the powerful solar fire energy can be harnessed for good or evil.

The idea of a standstill is a powerful one. So often, and particularly at this time of year, life becomes so busy and so focused on getting through the end of the year. and surviving Christmas, that we forget to slow down, to breathe, to check in with our emotional state. If the traffic on the roads are any indicator of this, we are all being thoughtless, impulsive and selfish.

The Solstice is a time when the energies of nature, of the otherworld are closest in communion to our ordinary reality. As such it is a wonderful time to commune with nature. In this way we can stop and stand still and breathe. We can experience that there is more to life than our fabricated sense of reality.

All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better. Mary Oliver

I celebrated the Solstice with a dance ritual on the Friday, Chakradance on Saturday and a druid ritual on Sunday.

We met at the grassy plain atop a cliff overlooking the ocean. Communing with the sun, earth, air and water we honoured the elements, the nature spirits and our own divinity, we made vows for the year to come. Then we feasted and swam in the ocean. It was a beautiful celebration of life’s rich bounty.

Coming home I took a bath and a deep sadness overwhelmed me. “Oh for God’s sake, when will I be free of this grief?” I exclaimed to the water.

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

My heart is opening. What greater gift could love bring me?

Affirmations for healing your heart chakra by Natalie Southgate, founder of Chakradance

I am open to love and kindness.
I give and receive love freely.
My heart is full.
I forgive myself….
I have so much to be grateful for.
The love that I give comes back to me many times over.
I am connected with other human beings.
I am at peace.

Affirmations are positive messages for our inner self. It is always best to make affirmations personal, so use the affirmations above which really resonate with your inner self or create some of your own. Spend some time each day, either silently or out loud, saying and feeling these positive messages for your heart. Natalie Southgate

Bless!

Images by Kathy Morton-Stanion

Lost in connection

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Albert Camus

So it’s Sunday night. And I haven’t yet written a post this week. Not even a word. I had intended to. I even gave it a half-hearted try, but no words came.

Probably if I have nothing to say, I should just be quiet. But it scares me. The thought that this blog might just fall away. Of falling back into the silent, isolated abyss.

It’s nearly been a year of weekly writing for me. I’ve published over fifty posts. At an average of 1500-2000 words – that’s a decent sized book in anyone’s language.

There’s been over 12,000 views of my blog. Wow! This from a girl who wouldn’t even show her writing to one person, prior to that.

So what? Well, I’ve always wanted to be a writer and I kind of feel like I am now. I feel like I have connected with an audience, and that’s very special. So I don’t want to let it slide.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. John Lennon

Because that’s what I do. In my pursuit of one thing I get distracted by the next thing and well, as my dear dad says, I lack ‘stickability’.

I mean I can’t tell you how many things I have started and not finished. Crafts? Do not go there! There’s half-knitted scarves, half-sewn dresses, a bag full of items that need to be ‘mended’. AND I’m twice divorced…

I guess with my last relationship ending and other things in my life seeming less that satisfactory, not to mention the growing ‘to be continued’ hobby pile, I need some evidence that I’m not a total flake.

So I made myself think, what do I want to write about?

I am spoilt for choice at the moment – I’m practising chakradance, studying druidry and doing an online course in shamanic journeying.

It’s hard to know where to start with all the things that are happening.

As well as practicing these three disciplines, I’m also working full-time, teaching Chakradance out of hours and and raising a teenager.

This week my normally manageable child went a little off the rails and I was left – alone – to do some pretty serious parenting.

It got me thinking about all these seemingly disparate things. My lack of stickability, my failed relationships, my aversion to serious parenting. As well as my fascination with all things other-worldly.

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Here I am desperately wanting to connect with non-ordinary reality, whilst wanting to give ordinary reality a wide berth.

If it’s all about connection, why is it I prefer to connect with nature and spirit guides to the flesh and blood people in my life?

If it’s guidance I seek from the spirit world, shouldn’t I be carrying this across to my real life? Shouldn’t I be more connected to the world, to the people I love?

Connection is at the heart of all my intentions. A desire to be connected to a place called home, to be connected through community to like-minded people, to be connected to life through meaningful purpose, connection to my body in vibrant health, connection to the flow of life through abundance and joy, and the big kahuna, love, which is the ultimate connective tissue, really.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness. Albert Schweitzer

At the heart of longing for anything is it’s opposite. So this blog came from a deep sense of disconnection to all these things. A disconnectness so deep I was struggling to even hold onto life itself.

It has been hugely inspiring for me to hear shamanic practitioner and teacher Sandra Ingerman talk about her recovery from chronic depression as a reconnection with the beauty of life. She says that it is not that her depression has been cured or has gone away through shamanic practice, but the practice has opened her up to the inherent beauty and wisdom in all things, depression included.

We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep. William James

I found myself feeling a bit panicky, I mean it’s nearly twelve months since I started this blog and I still have no home of my own, nor a loving partner. As I have said my inspiration for this blog was Noelle Oxenhandler’s wonderful book, The Wishing Year, and she got all her wishes by the end of the year.

This prompted me to feel a little desperate in regards to finding a love, funny how the home thing I’m happy to let unfold, but the tick-tock of time brings me great panic in the love stakes.

I say to spirit “You know these are the best years of my life, I’m pretty comfortable in my skin, I’m still kind of attractive, I don’t want to waste them!”

Spirit just laughs.

The funny thing is when I’m truly connected to spirit I don’t feel this need. So that suggests to me that it’s an attachment of the ego. Which is probably not a good basis to approach love from, so I chase my tail around a few times and then give it up. Whatevs universe, whatevs!

No, I am being flippant. When really, my heart deeply yearns for someone to connect with at that truly intimate level. I yearn for someone to share my life with. To share my love with. To love out my days with.

I do think what this eleven months of intentional living has given me, more than a house or a man to love, is insight.

…A way to bring their suffering into a context in which healing could occur at a level that was soul deep. That kind of healing can only happen in a world that is both numinous and immanent. That is a world in which the presence of the sacred is available for intimate contact. Timothy Flynn

And it is the kind of insight that Sandra talks about, the ability to see the beauty in what is, as well as what has been, and feel a sense of peace about it all. Well, mostly…

This insight reminds me that I am part of this great web of life, I am neither incredibly important, nor irrelevant, I’m part of it, just as every living thing is. And it is only by recognising this great connectedness to all that is, that I see my purpose as so far beyond what I do, think or feel. My purpose is embedded in my very existence and the way that interweaves with others, people, animals, rocks and waters.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibres, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects. Herman Melville

I love the concept of journeying. It has this interconnectedness as its essence. It has emerged for me in Chakradance – which is a dance journey through the seven chakras. In druidry and shamanism, which both base their wisdom on both learning from human knowledge, but also connecting with spirit in various forms by journeying to the otherworld of non-ordinary reality.

Journeying works both as a practice, the actual journey we make with the music or drumming and the visualizing and the use of senses beyond the perceptive space of ordinary reality. It also works as a philosophy. To view life as a journey, as an experiential learning and growing exercise.

The terms “ordinary reality” and “non-ordinary reality” come from Carlos Casteneda. Ordinary reality is the reality that we all perceive together. It’s the reality in which we can all agree that there is a clock on the wall. Non-ordinary reality is the reality that is associated with the shamanic state of consciousness; that is, when the consciousness has been altered and you’re able to see what you normally don’t see in an ordinary state of consciousness. Michael Harner

When I view life this way, in the journey through life, all is meant to be. My great traumas, which resulted in great fragmentation of my soul and soul loss allowed my soul to learn, to return to me enhanced by the journey. Experience has made me compassionate, non-judgemental, and open-hearted. Recovering from suicidal depression has given me a great reverence for life.

As I said, the Chakradance practice is a journey. It is a wonderful practice for integrating and connecting all life experience. As I delve into these other realms, I find myself dancing it out. Unfolding in a space of movement and sound. Using rattles and clap sticks has deepened my dance – into a multi-sensory and extra-sensory experience.

In an attempt to keep up with daily practice of the three disciplines I am following, I have attempted some integration, for my personal use, of course, when I teach I am very clear to stay true to the Chakradance structure. It is important to learn the original structure of a discipline before we can incorporate our own personal spiritual journey within that, as these personalised practices may only be meaningful for us alone, in the same way each journey we undertake is personal to us.

I begin with a druidic and shamanic blessing of the space – there’s much overlap between the practices, then I practice energy work sometimes with some chanting, I go into my internal sacred space and meditate. Finishing up with chakradancing, chanting and playing my slapsticks and rattles. It’s busy and eclectic, but I’m settling into something that really works for me on all levels.

I have learned the importance of intention, so last night I set the intention for healing and guidance, particularly with some issues that have arisen with my teenage son.

As I danced through the chakras and made lots of noise with my instruments, I entered that state where the boundaries between the worlds blur.

With my eyes closed, I danced and made noise and began to interact with spirit.

At the base chakra I encountered mother bear, who showed me the power of protective love. At the sacral chakras a water turtle showed me to go slow, be patient and steadfast, allow things to emerge over time. At the solar plexus chakra a young wolf showed me community and masculine power.

The heart chakra was the realm of angelic love and healing. At the throat chakra the reverent and peaceful blue-hooded priestesses imbued me with calm and peaceful communication. The third eye chakra took me to the realm of my upper world guide. A being of light who takes me to the furthest star to swim in a crystal pool of the bluest and greenest water where I somersault like a baby seal.

At the crown chakra, the beautiful druidess meets me and guides me to the energy that is the source of all things. Is she me? A higher version of self? I’m not sure.

Are these real spirit guides? Are they archetypes of my unconscious? Are they imagined? I don’t know. They come, they interact with me, they give me peace and guidance. They empower me. As Sandra Ingerman says, the only real evidence for shamanic healing is the results it brings in ordinary reality over time.

I might say something about spirits, because it’s a strange word to people. What is a spirit? In 1961, when I was with the Conibo Indians in eastern Peru in the Amazon, I was training using ayahuasca with a shaman, and we were working with the various nature spirits every night. I worked with the anaconda spirit, the black panther spirit, the fresh-water dolphin spirit, various tree spirits, and so on. They would come, we would see them, and so on. I came to realize that anything that you see in complete darkness or with your eyes closed is technically a spirit. That makes it sound like it’s just an image in the air, but shamans find out which spirits have power and which don’t. They discover what spirits can help in what ways. It’s very important to recognize that whatever you contact in nonordinary reality is technically a spirit. It’s a spiritual reality. Michael Harner

The benefit of connectedness goes beyond spiritual and mental wellbeing. Medical evidence now shows that a feeling of connectedness is a major contributing factor in both disease prevention and recovery.

According to Dr Vijay Sharma, women who say they feel isolated are three-and-a half times as likely to die of breast, ovarian, or uterine cancer over a 17-year period.  In another study, the single most important factor in a cancer patient’s history was not exposure to a chemical, pollutant, or carcinogen, but the loss of a loved one within five years of the onset of cancer.

Men who say that their wives don’t show them love suffer 50% more angina over a five year period than those who feel their wives do. Male medical students who felt close to their parents were less likely to develop cancer or mental illness in later years.

Among heart patients, those who felt the least loved had fifty percent more arterial damage than those who felt the most loved.  That is as close a medical connection between love and heart as you can get.

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. Thomas Merton

Writing itself is a kind of connection. I had nothing when I sat down to write this. Then one idea came, and the words to connect that idea to writing, interconnecting with each other. I read other people’s words and connect to them, and then this great stream of interconnectedness pours out.

So with all the benefits of connectedness, why would we hold back from each other?

For me the fear of true authentic connection comes from the risk involved in opening my heart, in being vulnerable and reliant on other people. Risk. Vulnerability. Heart opening. Sometimes it seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

So when my love tried to hold my hand and be heartfelt with me, to tell me things I didn’t want to hear, I wanted to pull away. When the time came to sit down with my son and have a difficult conversation, I felt a huge level of anxiety about it. Even thought it was difficult, I feel a new sense of closeness with him. He seems happier knowing that I’m a solid foundational presence in his life.

That’s the thing about taking risks, we can avoid them to save ourselves pain, but we can equally be denying ourselves the richness of a life built on connection.

Tonight as I finished this post. I acknowledged this interconnectedness by performing a peace ritual. My son came out to my studio, and the dog. It was a little chaotic, but real life is like that. Messy. Imperfect. My son lit candles while I blessed the space and called in the elemental forces. We said some prayers for peace. He did his first journey. When we came back inside he checked social media and said “Mum! they’re negotiating with the gunman.” “See.” I said “Prayer works.”

When we woke up this morning two hostages and the gunman were dead, may they rest in peace. May the souls of those affected by this event be restored to peace. I still believe prayer works, but the web of life is not a simplistic thing. When you have forces running contrary to one another, prayer can uplift the energy, and transform the actions of people, but so can fear and hatred have an opposing effect.

The important element is the way in which all things are connected. Every thought and action sends shivers of energy into the world around us, which affects all creation. Perceiving the world as a web of connectedness helps us to overcome the feelings of separation that hold us back and cloud our vision. This connection with all life increases our sense of responsibility for every move, every attitude, allowing us to see clearly that each soul does indeed make a difference to the whole. Emma Restall Orr

Affirmations on connection by Louise Hay:

I am connected to all of life.

I open my heart to all of the beings on the planet.

I help create a world where it is safe for all of us to love each other.

What is true of me is true of everyone. We are all learning to look within ourselves to find the wisdom to live harmoniously.

Each person is part of the harmonious whole.

Bless!

Images:

One with nature

Ashes Snow Love

Connection

Black and white stones

Deeper Photos

Lunar Nature and the Moon

Boundless

Shell

Garnet Lake Thunderclouds

Open Mind

Longing is so very long

We can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. George Eliot

Longing can be rather pleasurable when it’s for something nice that is coming our way. For a lover out of town, for a holiday, for Christmas, or a birthday. We call that anticipation.

Longing for things lost or seemingly out of reach is usually painful, sometimes poignantly so, infused as it is with memories or desires of something desirable, something loved.

If some longing goes unmet, don’t be astonished. We call that life. Anna Freud

There is another kind of longing. A ceaseless nameless variety that lurks in your soul like a spectre. Invisible, unseen, but always active, whispering inaudible desires. It is the sense of waking from a dream, not remembering its substance, but knowing it affected you greatly. A knowing, just out of reach.

I would love to live

Like a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding. John O’Donohue

This longing is formless, nameless, seemingly for nothing in particular. And yet it comes in waves, crashing through your heart like the sense of a lost loved one. It is a deep yearning for something, as if the soul itself it crying out for what it so desperately needs.

They yearn
for a return
to the tender-heart
of earthy childhood loves;
of timeless days
dreaming within the lilacs,
soft toes touching
cold water flowing by. Frank MacEowen

Six weeks since my lover and I ended our relationship and I still wake most mornings with his phantom self nestled beside me in bed, cocooning by body, hands between my breasts. I have cried rivers over the longing I feel for him. Last week I thought I would drown in this emotional storm.

There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

And yet I wonder if I had my memory erased, would I still long for him? No. Surely it’s a mental construct, based on an attachment to a memory.

There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad. Homer

Or is it? The Irish are renowned for their poetic sense of longing. It seems to be embedded in our DNA. Where does this longing come from? Is it the mind only, or is there a deeper soul longing? And if so, what can we do about it? It’s driving me a little nuts…

Although surrendering to our sacred longings can sometimes be quite a painful soul-stretching and soul-tempting process…our longing, with its unique quality and energy, is also a magical state to befriend, for it is a trustworthy guide. Frank MacEowen

Frank MacEowen, author of the Celtic Way of Seeing and The Mist-Filled Path, writes that longing has ‘an ancient allegiance to the evolution of our souls’. And that in our modern, particularly Western world, so many of us our cut off, are ‘exiled’ from our ancestral spiritual practices that would allow this soul longing a voice.

Exile is that undeniable sensation of being cordoned off from what is most essential to our souls. For many of us a kind of exile may lie at the very heart of our lives. It is an exile many people feel in the twenty-first century. It may express itself as an exile from nature, from ancestral traditions, from cultural homelands, or from spiritual lineages. Sometimes these lineages and traditions appear to be lost forever without the potential of reclamation, so the exile feels even more poignant. Frank MacEowen

Longing can be a gateway into a new world, or even the Otherworld, the realm the Celts believe the hidden folk – the fairies, elves and nature spirits dwell in. The realm from which poets, seers, and dreamers receive their fantastic visions and while away time living life through their hearts and imaginations’  eye. It’s only there the Otherworld can be glimpsed.

There is an unprecedented spiritual hunger in our times. More and more people are awakening to the inner world. A thirst and hunger for the eternal is coming alive in their souls; this is a new form of consciousness. Yet one of the damaging aspects of this spiritual hunger is the way it sees everything in such a severe and insistent light. The light of modern consciousness is not gentle or reverent; it lacks graciousness in the presence of mystery….When the spiritual search is too intense and hungry, the soul stays hidden. The soul was never meant to be seen completely. John O’Donohue

I think for me, it’s about keeping the balance of longing in that lovely, dreamlike state of infinite possibility, but not allowing it to tip over too far into a grasping, desperate need.

At one stage last week, as I was putting away clothes and saw the dress I wore for my love’s birthday, I dissolved into yet another bout of weeping and I said to myself – you’re turning into DuckFace! You know, the character Hen from Four Weddings and a Funeral? Hugh Grant’s ex who dissolves into tears and remonstrations every time she sees him or someone mentions his name. Not really the vibe I was going for!

The soul is not in the body, the body is in the soul. This is not easy to understand or to live. But we must try. If we don’t, we circumscribe our life and greatly reduce the ways we know our souls, we strengthen the Great Split between us and creation. Tom Cowan 

I confessed to my love that I was feeling this anguish and longing. His practice is to offer his pain and hardship to the goddess as an offering, as an acknowledgement that we owe a great debt of life, for life itself, and this can be our sacrifice to that debt of gratitude.

This really resonated with me. I didn’t want to wail and moan like a child who didn’t get her way. I want to navigate life with this kind of grace and dignity and acknowledgement of being a part of the Great Song, and only ever getting glimpses of my part in this, but having faith nonetheless.

In the initiation to the Bardic Grade of the Druidic Order, we are asked if we accept both life’s hardships and suffering and life’s blessings.

Holding my suffering out to the Gods as an offering felt noble and honourable. It feels that I was honouring the work of the soul, to be expansive and allowing of life.

Following our soul-longing deep into the underworld is the path of seeking a vision of our dán (soul-gift), and opening ourselves to more expansive and conscious ways of life, rooted in the mysteries of soul. Jason Kirkey

Many heart meditations later, the grief shifted and even though my phantom lover is still with me, the hurt and suffering has lessened considerably.

Dancing the Heart Chakradance is a beautiful release of this love-longing energy.

The dance unites the masculine sky energy with the feminine earth energy, uniting through the bridge of our human form, in the heart chakra. I believe the soul expresses itself through our heart, well, through our whole energetic system, but I feel the longing of the soul manifests in the heart.

Louise Hay says “your longing is your calling.” My longing has called me to write this blog, to publish seven intentions I long for:

 

1. Home

2. Community

3. Purpose

4. Vibrant health

5. Abundance

6. Joy

7. Love

 

And this journey to follow these intentions has brought a multitude of blessings into my life. A sense of place and purpose, a community (or two!), health and vitality, abundance, joy, and love. My longing propelled me to discover Chakradance, shamanism, druidry. To experience the sovereignty of self that is only found journeying to the soul.

The soul possesses an ineffable intelligence that cannot be controlled. Like the mist, the soul, we might say, has a mind of its own. It cannot be forced, directed, or squeezed into a box where it does not belong. It cannot even be fully seen or perceived, for the soul is a timeless, feathered thing that flies in more worlds than one. Frank MacEowen

My soul called to me through my longing to reconnect with my love. Yes, we are no longer romantically involved, but we have a beautiful and rich friendship that nurtures and sustains us both.

So instead of gnashing my teeth and wailing in the face of this longing, I embrace it. I climb aboard that boat on the mist-filled river and let it take me where it needs to go.

So come to the pond,

or the river of your imagination,
or the harbour of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life. Mary Oliver

Affirmations on longing by Dee Walters:

I give thanks that:
I am fulfilling my longing for spiritual attainment
I am fulfilling my longing for a healthier existence with exercise and a good diet
I am living in the present moment and I shall not waste it on the days gone by

End your affirmation by saying:

“I give thanks that this or something better is in the Divine
flow of my life and is manifesting perfectly for me now
according to the Divine will of [the Universe].” by KG Stiles

Bless!

 

Images:

The Mists of Avalon by prairiekittin

Paintings by Herbert James Draper