Let’s get wild

We need the tonic of wildness… At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. Henry David Thoreau

There’s a half-written blog post languishing in my drafts folder, intended for this week, but as often happens, some thing burns a hole in my soul and I just have to write about it instead.

The soul-burning issue this week is self-restraint.

Now I’m a fan of self-restraint to a degree. I accept that we learn to keep our hands out of the fire and to not blindly walk across the road in the face of a Mack truck. Not to mention the restraint of pen and tongue that is so vital to peace in relations between family, neighbours, and nations.

However, when self-restraint tips over into stifling our wild nature, well, I have a little something to say about that.

As I resume teaching Chakradance for the New Year, I have been fielding lots of queries from interested people. And there is a disturbing trend emerging. Now I want to make it clear that this post is not based on any one individual, but on what seems to be an overwhelming reaction to the idea of dancing without inhibitions.

The refrain I keep hearing is that you would love to do Chakradance but…

You think you can’t dance

You think you’ll look foolish

You’re feel insecure and self-conscious about your body

You are worried what will people think of you

After one gorgeous person after another laid these concerns on me, I began to feel really sad. I mean it’s possible that these are excuses, that they really don’t want to do Chakradance, and that’s fine. I’m not trying to evangelise here!

But you see, I know they’re not just excuses, because I have had them too.

For years, I was a party animal, I would get drunk or high and dance the night away. When I gave up all that, I felt like I had lost the ‘fun’ button. I didn’t know how to relax into my body, how to move freely. When I danced, I feel like I had wooden legs.

And the irony is that the only cure for these inhibitions and insecurities – for me – was to dance in spite of them. To dance harder in the face of them, to thumb my nose and stick my bum out and wiggle my hips at them.

You see, they are a barrier to my wildness, and once I opened the door to my wildness, she came and whooped those fears right away.

Wild child full of grace
Saviour of the human race. Natural child, terrible child
Not your mother’s or your father’s child
You’re our child, screamin’ wild. The Doors

The idea of me being a Chakrdance teacher seemed ludicrous to me. I mean, I’m the one always turning the wrong way in dance class, I stumble a lot. I don’t look like a dancer…

So many mental barriers.

Writing this blog has given me the freedom to follow my wildness. Because, you see, my heart wanted me to dance. And maybe I thought, I can encourage other people who would love to express themselves in some wild and creative way, but hold themselves back for fear they don’t fit the bill.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver

As I practice for the Chakradance Journeying classes, I dance to the themes of the Earth, trees, and animals. These are dances that focus on connecting with your wildness, your deepest primal nature. Dances that transport you into the ancient energy of your ancestors and the spirit of the land.

I connected with a wolf spirit in the power animal dance, and afterwards I was drawn to pick up an old, favourite book, Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women who run with the Wolves.

I was given my copy of this transformative book 17 years ago by my first husband. He often lamented how uptight and restrained I was, he could see there was a wild woman in there just itching to get out, if I’d only just let her free.

Over the years I’ve re-read parts and the entirety of the book and it always has great wisdom for me.

I’ve also been drawn recently to books and stories of women who literally go into the wild, like Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Robyn Davidson’s Tracks and Nomads.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.John Muir

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating a wholesale Thoreau-esque return to nature here.

In his book on the ecology of Celtic spirituality, The Salmon in the Spring, Jason Kirkey writes of the need for integration. We know our technological life is inherently lacking in spirit, and yet who of us wants to live without electricity and running water – only a small few.

The goal then is to integrate our technological advances with a renewed spiritual connection with the wilderness. Intrinsic to our soul is a deep need for this connection and only by honouring this can we bring the vision of a truly modern world – one that respects science, technology, nature and spirit – into being. Kirkey argues that evolution is the key, we cannot go backwards to a more primitive life, nor should we.

The mantle bestowed on humans in collective evolution is our ability for self-reflective awareness. This is not ‘our’ intelligence per se, but rather the evolutionary process has blessed us with this capacity to be a “particular expression of an intelligence and subjectivity” present in the cosmos from the beginning. In the scheme of things, of nature, humans got the job of self-reflection.

Our purpose now is to integrate this reflective consciousness into a mode of living that is in harmony with the evolutionary functions of all life – and not contrary to it.

It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way. Cheryl Strayed

Sandra Ingerman says, from the shamanic perspective, we dream our world into being, and we can’t keep dreaming the old dream, we need a new one. I keep thinking of Robert A Johnson who writes in The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden: Understanding the Wounded Feeling Function in Masculine and Feminine Psychology, that the feminine psyche tends to solve problems by focusing on reducing the differences between opposing sides – mediating and peace-making – rather than in out and out battle.

In some ways this has lent itself to the feminine being always accommodating to her own detriment. But wildness is not synonymous with aggression. We can be wild and let our wildness shine and radiate its effects on those around us, without any force or aggression.

Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us. Robert Macfarlane

Think of the Mother bear archetype. I remember after years of trying to advocate for my son with autism, and being consistently made to feel that I didn’t know what was best, because I was a mother not an expert, my maternal ire rose up in me and I started being a mother bear. When something was against my maternal instinct, I stood my ground.

This internal shift has made me a much better mother, as I now have a steady internal compass for my parenting. I am not always looking to others to tell me what I should do.

Wildness in parenting, in any aspect of life and relationships means using instinctual intelligence – trusting our gut. Doing what we know is right even though the ‘powers that be’ – both internal and external – may not approve.

We may have to step out of the dynamic of being good and polite and nice. Perhaps like me, you had these qualities drummed into you as a child, as virtues. Perhaps being polite has also left you defenceless and vulnerable in dangerous situations. Situations your instinct would have warned you from, if you had been brought up to be attentive to it. Situations where sometimes the only way out with your life was to give up a piece of your soul. And bit by bit these woundings deplete our wildness. But the wild spirit is regenerative. The soul wants to heal and it will, given the space to.

Though the gifts of the wildish nature come to us at birth, society’s attempt to “civilize” us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure, and muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. Without Wild Woman, we become over-domesticated, fearful, uncreative, trapped. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Chakradance is described as a dance practice for the soul. The intention is reconnect to our true essence or self – to tune into that deeper part of us and hear what it has to say.

In our forests
part divine
and makes her heart palpitate
wild and tame are one. What a delicious Sound! John Cage

These days there is an epidemic of challenging symptoms in our modern lives – depression, anxiety, addictions, compulsive behaviours – the list goes on. In traditional shamanic cultures, it is believed that these symptoms arise from loss of connection to the soul.

Oh, I’m burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free… and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? Why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. Open the window again wide: fasten it open! Emily Brontë

Fortunately, the soul has a natural instinct to heal. It communicates with us through our bodies, our feelings, our relationships, our dreams, our art. And once we listen to our souls language, we find the path to wholeness, we align our inner and outer lives.

Chakradance workshops are a journey inwards. But they are by no means the only way to make this connection.

We can reconnect with our nature self, our primal self, our wild self, by reconnecting with mother earth, and the elements of water, air, sunshine, moonlight, starlight. This can be as simple as:

Walking on the earth with bare feet

Singing with all your heart

Dancing with abandon

Standing beneath the moon and the starry night sky

Sitting in silent solitude

We can model wildness for future generations as the way to integrate modern life with our inner instinctual selves. A balanced way of life for both the natural ecology and the internal ecology – toward an individuated and balanced psyche. For a balanced person will want to protect what it loves, the wilderness within and without.

What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another. Mahatma Gandhi

Root Chakra Affirmations from Chakra Anatomy 

I feel deeply rooted.

I am connected to my body.

I feel safe and secure.

Just like a tree or a star, I have a right to be here.

I stand for my values, for truth, and for justice.

I have what I need.

I am grounded, stable, and standing on my own two feet.

I nurture my body with healthy food, clean water, exercise, relaxation, and connection with nature.

I am open to possibilities.

I am grateful for all the challenges that helped me to grow and transform.

I trust in the goodness of life.

I make choice that are healthy and good for me.

I trust myself.

I love life.

Bless!

Images:

Anita Anti & Margarita Kareva

For more information on Chakradance

The spirit that lives in all things

Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born. Jack Kerouac

Ah! I needed to read that. Thanks Jack.

Last post I put some serious intentions ‘out there’ for my year. And now I’m back in ‘reality’ – pfffft! Whatever that means. And I feel like I’m stuck between worlds. The world of jobs and bills and traffic and the world of nature and spirit. How on earth do I practice these intentions in a life chock-full of distractions?

Was I being a little rash? I mean those intentions popped into my head, literally seconds before I wrote them down and raced to the beach, between violent thunderstorms, to do a ritual – out with the old, in with the new. Whooosh.

It was all rather spontaneous and spur of the moment. It was my last night at the beach. A night of the full moon, all dark and stormy, and I just had this urge to harness all that wild, electric energy to make my new year’s resolutions.

Later, after re-reading my intentions I thought, hmmm… I’m not sure where all that came from. Obviously, I was on a bit of a nature love-buzz.

But you know what? I’m just going with it. Those intentions came to me for a reason and I am going to just let that unfold. Even if it turns out the reason is to teach me to put some forethought into my rituals…

To refresh your memory here are my intentions as they spilled out of my pen that fateful night… (Drum roll please)

Love myself
Love the (super)natural world
Love animals
Love people
Love my work
Love my space
Love my spirit

So there’s nothing too outrageous. I didn’t commit to chasing down Johnny Depp or becoming a bestselling author or bringing about world peace or anything.

It occurred to me late last year that my intentions, and the whole theme of ‘putting it out there,’ was rather outcome focused. It was all about bringing stuff in, manifesting great things in my life. And yes, it worked, undoubtably. But it also tapped into a part of my personality that is a little, ahem, shall we say, insatiable.

As the buddhists tell us, the greatest source of pain in our lives is the state of dissatisfaction that comes from our attachment to desire.

So when I came to the end of last year, despite its many great blessings, in a state of grief and pain, I knew I had to go within and see its source.

Now I do believe that pain has its purpose. Grief breaks my heart open, promotes compassion for other’s pain, highlights thought patterns that no longer serve me, and is a release of held emotion from my body. I don’t think we can or should avoid grief. I think we can certainly learn from its expression though.

Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance. Osho

On the night of my ritual to the ocean, I was driven by this pain to let go of my attachments, especially in relation to the ideals of romantic love and home. This was motivated by a nagging sense that somehow my intentions ‘hadn’t worked’ in these areas of my life just because I didn’t get the house or the man I wanted.

As soon as these ideas were articulated in my heart and mind, I realised the source of my pain. Being single and renting my gorgeous little place is not painful. It is the attachment to the idea that things should be different that creates pain. Of course, there was also some legitimate heart-ache and grief thrown in there too, but while those emotions will shift and move, attachments stay stuck and often become so embedded, like a veruca burrowing deep, down inside, causing more and more pain.

So I wrote out my list of letting go, my commitments to practice, and some new intentions.

Originally my intentions were going to be very specific. Like a shopping list of desires. “I want to go to Bali and study shamanism” “I want to go to Ireland and see the sacred sites” “I want to study celtic tradition and herb lore and sound therapy and tarot and …”

First it was becoming a long and exhausting (and rather whiney) list, second I could see I was setting myself up for disappointment again.

What if these things didn’t eventuate? Would that leave me with a sense of failure and disappointment? Would I become so fixated on these attachments that I would miss the appreciation of the gifts that did come my way? I suspected, yes.

As a student of druidry and shamanism, the consistent message that comes through these traditional practices is a reverence for the wisdom of the natural and spirit world, or what I have come to call the (super)natural world. Studying these traditions, we learn there is not a clear distinction between these worlds. Nature is inherently imbued with spirit and spirits. All things have the ‘spirit that lives in all things’ and nature is rife with the ‘hidden folk’ sprites, faeries, and other elemental spirits.

When I get attached to physical outcomes, I lose sight of this nuance and numinosity, that is such a gift in my life. Even in my grief and pain of the past few weeks, I was acutely aware of how the ocean held me, and the presence of spirit all around me in the rocks and sand and sea-plants and animals. As I hummed an Ani DeFranco song about heartbreak, suddenly the tune was alive with spirit and the words came – and I had my soul-song or power-song, a great gift in shamanic practice. This is a song I sing to connect with my power and spirit for the purpose of healing myself and all living things.

All this became a cacophony of voices reminding me of, possibly the key principle of all spiritual practice, “practice not outcomes.” The practice itself IS the point. The gifts are in the practice itself. Intentions are the focal points for my practice, not means of searching for goodies from the universe. Although great blessings do come from this practice, that should not be the incentive. I saw I had the cart before the horse.

So I am sticking with these intentions that came to me so intuitively. This time with the focus on the means, not the end. They are a commitment to practice. I want to reconnect with my study of the subtle energy bodies, the chakras, and the chakradance journey as a practice for integrating all that I am learning in my druid and shamanic studies.

This year I intend to take a slightly different process in exploring my intentions. Last year I aligned each intention with a chakra and examined them independently. This year I intend – who knows what will actually happen, or what wonderful tangents this will take me on – to look at my seven intentions through the perspective of a different chakra each week.

I intend to look at each intention through lens of the seven chakras. As well as developing my sense – which I touched upon last year – of the correlation between the chakras other energy systems, in native Australian indigenous practice and the probable Celtic energy system of the ‘cauldrons’.

The cauldron is a great analogy for this blog, as this will be the melting and magic pot where all my practices come together.

These are my intentions, but spirit will guide me so it’s a fabulous journey of discovery, let’s see where it goes!

I am rediscovering the beauty of spontaneous ritual in working with nature instead of imposing our will and structure on nature. While there needs to be a basic structure to ensure practice and intentions, and a reasonably informed approach, there is always room for interaction and spontaneity. This is where the majority of my guidance comes from. A spark of inspiration in meditation and then I follow up with research.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. e. e. Cummings

So, we find ourselves back at the Base or Root chakra – Muladhara. Intricately linked to our survival, our instincts and our primal, tribal nature. This chakra holds our ancestral memory bank. Our base chakra influences feelings of grounding and being supported. Most children, by the age of seven, have decided whether the world is a safe place, and this informs our vitality in the base chakra. However, we can strengthen our sense of security through energy work and affirming living practices.

The base chakra energies are earthy, dense, physical. Feelings of being grounded and supported, like the roots of a tree… How does that manifest in my intentions? What can I do this week to bring the earthy, grounded energy of the root chakra into my intentions?

It feels to me as if there is a lot of shadow work to be done in this chakra. Inherited behaviours, thought patterns, beliefs, ancestral patterns encoded in our DNA that often lurk in the darkness of the soil beneath our roots. There is also the sense of a great unearthed ancestral wisdom of both our familial lines and the ancestry of the land itself.

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses. Friedrich Nietzsche

In Chakradance we also draw inspiration from the natural movements found in the animal kingdom. Animal dances are deeply entrenched in shamanic ritual. Shamans believe that each animal can teach us the power of their instinctual energy through dance. Dancing the base chakra you may encourage a tiger, a snake, a dragon, or a bear, to join you.

As you intuitively choose an animal and begin to move along to the Chakradance tribal beats, an incredible spontaneity of movement is unleashed. As I danced the Base chakra journeying dance, a wolf came to me. I thought “how on earth do I dance like a wolf?” Through letting go of my judging, rational mind, I simply moved to the music as I imagined wolves in the wild.

Soon I found myself laughing and moving on all fours, then dancing with wild abandon. Wildness, that was the wolf’s message to me. To tap into that wildness that gets so repressed in our society of conformity and restriction of our instinctual natures.

Dancing into my roots, another part of the Base Chakradance practice, allows me to connect with the imagery and energy of the tree. Trees are a powerful symbol of the dimensions of life used in many cultures. In celtic druidry the ogham is a communication and divination system of tree symbols, based on the nature of specific trees. I intend to learn more about traditional druidic sacred plants and trees, but to also link in with local practitioners to learn and study our native Australian power plants.

Dancing the base chakra brings a sense of wildness and strength, but also a sense of support and groundedness. I intend to bring a sense of groundedness into my work-life – I will be mindful, stable and practical at work. I will bring a plant to work to enhance the work environment.

I will create harmony in my space through decluttering and letting go of what I no longer need, handing them on for others to use. I will declutter the space through energy cleansing rituals.

Sandra Ingerman, a shamanic practitioner and teacher suggests that rather than viewing shamanism as a set of complicated practices to achieve personal spiritual advances, it is quite simply a practice based on an authentic desire and attempt to commune with nature and the non-physical world. The ultimate end in this, is that we can become of service to the planet and all the life interwoven with it.

And the beauty is, the practice is a simple as sitting under a tree, taking a deep breath of air, drinking fresh, clean water, enjoying an open camp-fire or candle flame, swimming in a river or ocean. Bringing our selves, as nature beings, to nature without any need to get or change anything. Just being. And then the change happens. We become a little more aligned with the heartbeat of the earth. We walk a little lighter on her belly, with our feet bare and our hearts full.

Tree Meditation by Natalie Southgate:
Begin by standing with your feet in line with shoulders, close your eyes and gently straighten your spine. Take a few moments to focus on your breathing…

Imagine you are in a tropical jungle. You are standing under a canopy of lush foliage; you can smell the moist, rich earth. Sink your feet down into the wet earth. Imagine the bottoms of your feet are gently opening and beginning to grow roots like a tree. Push your feet into the ground and imagine the roots travelling down deeper and deeper, reaching for the red core of the earth. Breathe in through your body, and down through the layers of the earth. You feel secure; grounded to the earth.

After a few minutes of grounding through your roots, begin to draw the pulsing energy from the earth up through the layers of rock and soil, up through your feet and legs and into your base chakra. Fill your base chakra with the red vibrant energy from the earth. You feel secure, grounded and energised.

Affirmations by Chakra Anatomy:

I feel deeply rooted.
I am connected to my body.
I feel safe and secure.
I am grounded, stable, and standing on my own two feet.
I nurture my body with healthy food, clean water, exercise, relaxation, and connection with nature.
I am open to possibilities.
I am grateful for all the challenges that helped me to grow and transform.
I trust myself.

Bless!

Images by Severine Pineaux

Love and letting go

I’ve been love-bombing nature.

After two magical weeks spent by the sea, walking in the national park, collecting stones and shells. Lying under the dappled shade of a gum tree reading, my love for nature became irrepressible. So I expressed it, all over the place. Messages of love to nature in nature.

The last two weeks have been unspeakably beautiful. I have lived in the ocean’s echo, woken to bird-sounds and waves and sunshine.

I have walked through forests of ti-tree to the ocean shore where I swam and crashed with the waves and the ocean inspired me to sing my own special soul-song.

This year of intentions has come full circle. It all began on my annual beach holiday last January. I reflected on all that has happened in this year – such a wild and wonderful journey. I reviewed my list of intentions and decided that they have all taught me something, some things to aspire to and some to let go of.

I have been blissfully happy at times, lost in the moment, absorbed fully in a ray of sunshine or floating on an ocean wave.

And yet, the waves of sadness and grief at times have had me standing by the ocean’s roiling dark depths wanting to surrender my body to that force, to be done with these lessons of human existence.

I have been angry for my sadness, my grief, my sensitivity. “When, oh when, will it be done?”

I want to be past it. I want to be hard and strong. I judge these emotions as undesirable, not spiritual. As self-pity and self-indulgence.

And yet here they are. Even amidst such beauty.

As I read more about the celtic spirit wheel, I realise everything can be seen as a gift. Even my sensitivity is a gift.

Ah! So here I am desperately wishing away my true gift. I am sensitive, painfully sensitive, but it’s not something to be rid of, or to be waiting to pass. It is the same sensitivity that allows me to hear the trees and the oceans, to feel the touch of the air like a lover’s caress.

It allows me to feel the pain of others, all of life, the birds, rocks, trees and the humans.

It is a gift to honour, to hone, to respect. To attend to. When I feel that pain, not to berate myself for being overly sensitive but to ask “what is your message for me?”

I am what I am being right now. The only way to shift is through the doorway of complete acceptance.

In some traditional cultures there are special people, usually women, who are so sensitive and empathetic, that they are brought in after a great loss to tell the story of the loss in a way to make the community cry. Their role is to bring the healing tears.

My sadness and sensitivity feel like a gateway, a place I must walk into to claim my unique power. It feels like an initiation into my shamanic powers. These are not the gifts I would have chosen for myself, so I know they are real.

Knowing that the sadness will pass in its own time, like the seasons, allows a space of being in the energy of sadness. Instead of judging it and trying to be rid of it, I practice experiencing the sadness. How does it feel? Like a heavy stone in my heart and chest. It tugs and constricts at my solar plexus, heart and throat. I want to cry, but I don’t want anyone to see me cry, hence the tightness when I hold it in.

So I am full of water and stone. What better place to be assimiliated than in the ocean. Lying in its rock pools with its powerful waves of water washing over me, kneading me, pushing and pulling at me until the dam bursts and the tears flow.

The ocean is seductive at times of grief. It pulls at me, I know it would carry me away from all this pain, and in its depths I would be at peace. But what would be the lesson in that? Am I not here to experience this precise experience right now? Am I not here to open to this moment and be washed clean of all that blocks me from being myself?

So another instinct makes me hang on tight to the rocks and not be swept away. For the sea has no judgment on such things, it would carry me away and thrash my body against the rocks, or drown me in its waves. I am just a part of the ebb and flow of life. Like the coloured glass that washes up on the shore, smoothed and buffed by the pounding on the ocean’s floor and the rocks. Ground into sand to be made again into more glass.

We are all made of the same ingredients as the rocks, the sea and the stars. The web of life that binds us all in a flow and exchange of energy and matter cares not whether I am a living human or shark food. There is no judgement here, only a sense that when my time comes, it will come and not by my own hand.

So each day I make the commitment to the living.

I commune with nature, sing to the waves and the moon, touch the leaves and trunks of her trees, express love and gratitude for the air I breathe and the bountiful sustenance I reap from her soil.

I express love to my family and friends, I cook, I wash, I laugh, I talk, I care. I spend time with my son, coaxing him to come for walks and swim in the sea with me, but also engaging in his world, of games and movies and sport.

Observing nature’s cycles helps me to see how all living things exist in a cyclical way. There is give and take, love and loss, joy and sadness. I try to ride these waves and bend myself to them, instead of my want to bend thing to suit my needs.

And yet each day I awake with this stone in my chest. Sometimes it grows into a sword that gets twisted and yanked by people, and the things they say, and the pain becomes excruciating. But I don’t want to lash out anymore – its not them causing the pain, the pain is in me.

It’s so overwhelming I just want to scream and shout, it’s too big for my body, its uncontainable.

So I go to the sea, go to the forest. In the wildness something changes. As I trek through the forest to the ocean there is an expanse of sky, there are trees and stones, then sand and sea. I lie on the rocks covered in spongey, air-filled seaweed as if it’s a bed made for me.

The waves wash over me, they push and pull with force but the brunt of the ocean’s power is broken by the rock ledges between the wild ocean and the rock pools I lie in. I know the sea would take me, churn me up in its wild machinations. This is not a friendly place, it is a wild place. And in its wildness my emotions are diluted. The wildness in me is literally a mere drop in the ocean. Its not that my pain is taken away, it just finds its proper container, a container big enough, spacious enough for it to roam unconstrained. It finds its home.

Tonight I took my anger to the beach. To experience again this release. But there were too many people. Everywhere I looked for wildness there were people on jet-skis and boats, drinking and playing loud music. I felt affronted. “This is MY wilderness!” I wanted to scream.

I see how my sadness and my emotions propel me. In this way they are a gift, they drive me to find solace and comfort. This drive has led me to a consistent spirutal seeking for that past 15 years, it has led me to Chakradance, shamanism and druidry. What I need now is to deepen my practice and understand these pathways take time, a lifetime to unfold.

When I walk to the National park there is a sign that says we acknowledge the traditional land owners. I think of them. I imagine this place before white man came. The sea is still full of fish after years of plundering, but back then, with the sustainable living of the koories, it would have been paradise. Forest meets seas full of fish and shellfish, abalone, mussels, scallops, crabs. Kangaroos and plenty of bush tucker. The air was fresh and filled with the sound of birds and wind and sea.

I wonder how to reconcile these two extremes. I long for wilderness and solitude, yet I know all this is not worth its salt if I can’t integrate it into my human life. Somehow I have to fall in love with humans as part of nature, somehow I see them as separate things, and yet we are nature too.

On my last night I decided to honour the full circle of this year of Seven Intentions by holding a releasing and intention ritual under the moonlight at the beach.

It was a stormy night, pitch black bar the flashes of lightning. I sang my power song, shook my rattle and chimes, called in the elements and spirits. I had spontaneously written out my list of letting go, commitments, and intentions.

At the beach ceremony I consecrated the page with fire, earth, air and water and surrendered it to the sea. There was an almighty fork of lighting and a large wave that sprayed my body with salty, cleansing water. And it was done.

Seven Intentions of 2015

I release my attachment to ‘romantic love’. I release my attachment to ‘outcomes’. I release my attachment to ‘home’.

I commit to not loving anyone more than myself. I commit to honouring and respecting myself as part of the beauty of nature. I commit to love as my driving, creative force.

Love myself
Love the (super)natural world
Love animals
Love people
Love my work
Love my space
Love my spirit

They are still a bit rough, a work in progress. Just like me.

Bless!

 

(Images by Me)

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

Let it be

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be experienced. Joseph Campbell

It’s always fascinating for me to sit and ponder the many – seemingly diverse – thoughts, insights, experiences and conversations I have had across the week, only to find a lovely synchronicity emerging when I sit down to write.

Last week I spoke of my realisation that I tend to be very grasping in my approach to spirituality – amongst other things, well, everything really.

This week I have seen an impatience, alongside this tenacity, I want it all and I want it now. Move over Veruca Salt…

To experience a synchronistic event is to necessarily be changed at our core. Paul Levy

My friend came over on Saturday night, we are both studying druidry and we had a lovely meditation ritual together. After a robust discussion of all aspects of life, the universe and everything, he said something that resonated with me.

Interestingly I know he has said this to me before, but I never really got it until he said it that night.

He talked about how easy it is to misconstrue spirituality and emotionality. Emotionality is all about feel-goods. Don’t feel good? White-light that sucker, affirm it away, have an exorcism…

I mean I’m being silly to demonstrate a point, but there is certainly an element of this thinking in many New Age practices. Only love and light are acceptable, all other experience must be ‘cleansed’ away.

True spirituality, he argued, makes no value distinction between light/dark, good/bad feelings. All experience is honoured, all aspects of life are a reflection of the nature of existence and it is the value judgements on these aspects as good/bad, light/dark, and the ego-based reactions to these judgements that are the issue, not the experience itself.

I haven’t done justice to his words, but hopefully you get the gist.

Life is cyclical, death/rebirth, growth/decay, day/night, summer/winter – all cycle round in their perfect balance and order.

No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. C. G. Jung

I was listening to a spiritual podcast last night, the host is lovely and very earnest and interviews some really interesting people. Last night it was Anita Moorjani who has an amazing story of spontaneous healing after a near-death experience.

The energy produced by the interview and the callers asking questions was palpable. Both the interviewer and interviewee were in tears by the end.

I felt very moved and then I thought “Aha! Emotion!”

Synchronicities by their very nature demand our active participation, as they are not something we can just passively watch and remain unaffected by. Paul Levy

So I think while an emotional reaction to hearing a story or watching a powerful ocean break waves on the shore, or standing in a sunny verdant glade at dawn, can be an ‘in’ to connecting with spirit, it can’t be the be all and end all.

After this initial ‘in’, to the heart, there must be some substance. And this substance for me, comes from a practice. In the same way a romantic relationship starts on emotion, but needs to develop into something more substantial than feelings for it to last.

And I am the first to admit I am a real sucker for the emotion-bursting experience. Yet I also see that if that is the sum total of my spiritual practice, well, it’s pretty meaningless.

Synchronicity’s inherent revelatory nature is ultimately offering us the realization that we are playing an active, participatory and hence, co-creative role in the unfoldment of the universe. Paul Levy

As such I am in training to be a druid. I know, I know, it brings up old images of Doctor Who and hooded cults at Stonehenge, but when I read more about it, it is actually a beautiful nature-venerating practice, that honours all the things I believe in.

 It is also the practice of my ancestors the Celts, and it has strong shamanic influences. It venerates music and storytelling, and nature worship, as key spiritual practices. It’s so me, it’s not funny.

Actually it is kind of funny. It makes me laugh. I’ve been searching my whole life for something, and it’s been here for thousands of years.

Druidry honours music and creativity very highly, so it fits in beautifully with my Chakradance practice.

One of the many beautiful aspects of Chakradance, is the influence of Jung’s archetypes on the imagery for the chakras. As such there is a focus on both light and shadow, which has made the practice incredibly powerful for me.

Honestly, as someone who after experiencing life as my own private hell, swung the pendulum way too far the other way and tried oh so hard to be oh so good for way to long. All this achieves, as my friend so eloquently reminded me is a larger shadow to deal with when it inevitably pops up. Which it will. It’s like Neo trying to fight Mr Smith in the matrix.

So any spirituality worth it’s salt will acknowledge and honour the shadow. Yin and Yang, night and day, light and shadow – where would we be without both? It’s like trying to paint with only bright colours, or listen to a piece of music with only the white notes.

Whenever I dance the throat chakra, I see images in my mind’s eye of women wearing blue robes. Sometimes they seem ancient Grecian or Roman, sometimes they are timeless, this week I saw only one woman, intend of three and I intuitively felt that she was the Mother Mary.

Being unmediated manifestations of the dreamlike nature of reality, we can interpret synchronicities just like we would interpret a dream. Paul Levy

Now for those of you who have not done much visualising it can be hard to describe what happens. Also it’s different for different people. Some people are all visual, others have other sensory input. I have some visuals, not very strong, almost like the reflection of light through a stained glass window, they are getting clearer with practice. My strongest sense is clair-sentience, it comes as an insight supported by a strong gut feeling.

So in this dance where I saw the Mother Mary, I visually saw the image and then I sensed that it was an image of the Mother Mary. So here’s where it can get tricky. This to me is an archetype, so what I’m experiencing is an image that the collective unconscious, as interpreted by my consciousness, associated with certain ideas.

Archetypes are the image-making factor in the psyche, informing and giving shape to the images in our mind and the dreams of our soul, and as such, they insist on being approached imaginatively. Paul Levy

Obviously Mother Mary is holy, revered, devoted, sacred, a loving mother and a universal image of compassion and truth. Also, in the last few weeks I find myself listening to the Beatles album Let it Be, and the title song with the soothing words of Mother Mary resonated deeply in me.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom ‘Let it Be’. The Beatles

Don’t force just let it be.

It is easy to think that synchronicity equates with simultaneously but it doesn’t always. Often what Jung talked about was that time spent considering a certain insight where suddenly it seemed that every conversation, every image, every occurrence has some relevance and meaning to this idea.

To quote Jung, “Synchronicity is no more baffling or mysterious than the discontinuities of physics.” It is the place where causality and non-causality overlap and become somewhat murky. It is only our ingrained beliefs in the nature of causality that creates ‘intellectual difficulties’ and makes it appear unthinkable that such events could exist and simultaneously be meaningful. “But if they do, then we must regard them as creative acts, as the continuous creation of a pattern that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not derivable from any known antecedents.”

Continuous creation is to be thought of not only as a series of successive acts of creation, but also as the eternal presence of the one creative act. C G Jung

This has been my experience in writing this blog. My focus on intention, my open and curious mindfulness to nature and the world around me, has created a perfect petri dish for synchronicity to flourish.

I will often have a few concepts floating around my mind and then these concepts will play out in the world, in my relationships, my interactions through art and reading, and of course, my Chakradance.

This week I had a conundrum. I am planning to run 9 week cycles of Chakradance next year. Saturdays really suit people but I work alternate Saturdays at my day job. At that rate the 9 week cycle was going to take about six months. It also clashed with me going to Bali in May for shamanic training.

I realised I couldn’t find a solution, so I waited for inspiration.

It came pretty quickly in the form of some discussion on the Chakradance facilitators forum on Facebook. A wonderful virtual community of teachers where people ask really helpful question and the group shares their experience. So one facilitator asks about the way people structure their courses and another responded that she run the cycle over 6 weeks, doing two chakras a week.

Now this is not earth shattering, I know. But it seems to be how things work, if I let them. I had an intention and it wasn’t working, I paused for reflection and guidance, and then the solution appeared.

Sometimes the wait is longer and these synchronous events occur slowly over time.

At the moment I am feeling a bit pressured, there’s lots happening in my life, and other areas of my life where I would like lots to be happening have slowed or stopped. The archetype of the blue ladies reminds me of peaceful silence, reverence, patience, temperance, compassion and trust.

And I see that sky blue of the throat chakra everywhere. It causes me to pause and reflect on these messages from my unconscious.

With a personality like mine, the complete opposite of the above, it’s no wonder they have to keep coming back, again and again!

Affirmations:

I acknowledge a world beyond my senses, a truth beyond my intellect, a wisdom beyond logic, a power beyond my limits, a serene design, despite any distressing display.

I open myself to every transformation that is ready to happen in and through me.

I understand that both negative and positive events can be synchronicity, and both are here to serve me.

I trust that the universe will allow what needs to come to me, when it needs to come to me

Even if I am changing and I cannot yet see the reality changing to match me, I know that everything is different, and will be, because I am different.

You can’t force synchronicity. It seems to only occur in the optimal conditions. It is only by allowing and trusting in the unfolding of life, the mindful attention to each moment and the open awareness and teachability to notice the symbols as they emerge, only then can it happen.

Bless!

Images by Stephen B Whatley 

Further reading:

Catching the Bug of Synchronicity by Paul levy

Sweet-talkin’ the universe

We are always daydreaming. It is time for us to focus our imaginations on what we do want to create versus the chaos we are using our imaginations to dream into existence. Sandra Ingerman

Ah! Take a deep breath and everybody say ‘Aaaah!’ with me.

Ah. The storm has passed.

If you read my last post – synopsis is lots of crying, wailing, gnashing of teeth, some of which took place in the romance section of a public library – you’ll remember I was in the midst of a watershed.

I’m pleased to report that the feedback I received from many of you, alongside further reading I did, confirmed that yes, releasing emotions is healthy and no, I was not losing my shizzle completely.

One of the many pieces I read was by Sandra Ingerman, a shamanic practitioner and psychotherapist, who talked about mastering the difference between ‘expressing’ emotion and ‘sending’ emotion.

As a shamanic practitioner she believes in the life or spirit in all things, and the interconnectivity between all of life, from us human folk to the animals, trees, waters and even rocks.

As such when we ‘send’ out emotions, particularly anger, we can be sending some pretty nasty stuff out into the web of life.

If you don’t buy this, just think of the last screaming match you had with someone. When they launched angry words at you with great emotional force, did you feel physically attacked? Like a kick in the guts, a stab in the heart? These are all sayings we use to describe the very real effect of emotional energy transference.

So how do you release emotion without ‘sending’ it to other people or the natural environment as toxic energy?

The trick is transmutation.

Trans-what now, you say? Transmutation is basically changing one thing into another. Like the old alchemists turning lead into gold, we can transmute our heavy, dark leaden energies into energetic gold.

And it’s so easy, because all it takes is intention.

And it’s not so easy, because let’s face it, when you’re in the midst of a good angry rant, who wants to stop and transmute their anger into love?

When you do find yourself reacting to others and to life make sure you express your feelings while at the same time transmuting and transforming the energy behind your emotions to light and love. Express don’t send. In this way we continue to feed the energy of love versus hate, suffering, and separation. Sandra Ingerman

All I can say is, suck it up princess. If you want to heal the world one action at a time, this is one of the most powerful practices you can engage in. It takes practice, but like all spiritual discipline, the intention combined with the attempt to practice has an effect way before perfection is achieved. Which is lucky, because I for one, am not going to be perfect at practising this in my lifetime!

Another development that emerged from my existential crisis last week was equally powerful.

As you will know from reading this blog, I have been actively engaged in a journey of manifesting my intentions for the past 11 months or so.

Two of the key practices that have emerged for me are chakra energy work and shamanic journeying. I had a profound realisation this week as I was ‘working’ on healing a physical condition of mine.

I was in the bath – I often practice in the bath with sea salts and essential oils, it’s incredibly healing. An awakening had been slowly dawning on me that when I practice energy work I have the demeanour of a greedy child. It’s always ‘heal me, fix this, shine your light here’. It felt like I was accessing the divine and then asking it to do stuff for me. It felt selfish and grasping.

As I read Sandra Ingerman and a truly wonderful book called The Celtic Way of Seeing by Frank MacEowen, I sensed the true depth of what a shaman told me months ago. She had said that when I was in that state of deep meditation and connection, my spirit would be naturally called in and healed.

This week I have begun to practise just being with the energies I work with. I haven’t asked for any particular healing or tried to ‘force’ the light to go anywhere in particular, I just let myself be in it. The change was palpable. I have felt as if I am literally pulsing with energy. I have also spontaneously wanted to share this energy outwards with others and nature.

The Taoist tradition, the second principle is called ‘wu wei,’ and in Chinese it means literally ‘not doing,’ but would be much better translated to give it the spirit of ‘not forcing’ or ‘not obstructing.’ This means that the activity of nature is not self-obstructive. it all works together as a unity and does not split apart from itself to do something to itself.

In energy and shamanic practice, we can access this state of unity and of unified energy, and I’m realising that just allowing myself to be in that field is all that is required. I don’t need to suck it all in and fill myself up with energy or direct the energy to parts of my body, or any of that stuff. I just need to be open to my connection with this field of energy, this web of life.

Throughout history there have been cases of spontaneous healing which are believed to be a result of harnessing this energy.

Whilst this may seem trivial to many of you, I have had a particularly painful veruca on my foot for many years. It gust keep growing deeper into the tissue and many attempts to cut it and burn it out were to no avail.

A few months ago I set an intention for it to heal. And then I forgot about it. It hadn’t been painful and in truth the only time I though about it recently was when I was seated in a meditation group and I briefly worried that the person next to me would see it – it was an ugly thing.

Anyway, in my bath on the weekend I was massaging my feet and I thought ‘hold the phone!’ I couldn’t find the veruca, I searched one foot, then the other. It was completely gone. I mean so completely gone that I can’t be sure which foot it was on.

And in that moment I had this feeling that anything is possible. And yet I can’t MAKE it happen. I just turn up in the energetic space of non-ordinary reality and just, well, to sound all bumper stickerish about it, let the magic happen.

That said, intention is vital in journeying practice. So I’m not talking about blindly stumbling around in non-ordinary reality. What I’m finding is that my ego-mind has no function in non-ordinary reality. So I set an intention, for me at the moment it’s all about exploration and being guided, and then I let go into the experience.

This awakening has manifested in a beautiful way in my Chakradance practice.

I have been teaching for about six weeks now. Words can’t describe how much I love it, how I feel that I am home, that I am living my destiny when I teach in my beautiful studio.

When I dance with a class I need to hold the space, so I don’t journey to non-ordinary reality as I would if I was dancing alone. That’s not to say I don’t tap into that energy.

I have incorporated the shamanic practice of honouring the four directions, father sky and mother earth, and all the spirit helpers, before I welcome my class.

As such when I am running the class I often feel the presence of ancestral guides, both of the land – I call upon the traditional custodians of the land as part of this blessing of the space. And my participants have connected with the energy of loved ones who have passed on during their dances.

The energy of love created in a group of Chakradancers is profound and powerful. Although it’s not an explicit aim of the class, the nature of a group of people dancing into their spirit-selves, inviting their ancestors and guides to be with them, well, it just creates a powerhouse of loving energy.

As such I have taken to emphasising the practice in the dance of using our arms and hands to send this energy out into the world.

In my mind’s eye I visualise my family, my neighbours, the surrounding suburbs, then the city and the world and entire universe receiving these ripples of loving light energy that we are generating in the dance.

It probably sounds impossibly hippy-dippy to those who haven’t experienced it, but I tell you, I have some very grounded and sensible people who come to my classes who will testify to this experience.

Sandra Ingerman says when you feel power in you, it is meant to be used. Chakradance creates a lot of power, incorporated into the dance is the idea of releasing this power, emanating it into the world. 

In her book Medicine for the Earth, Sandra discusses how the transfiguration into light that occurs when we slip into states of non-ordinary consciousness heals both the participants and the environment. In her
water experiments, groups of people reduced the Ph level of water, but more significantly improved health conditions in participants so much so that the University of Michigan is now doing research on this phenomena.

The bottom line for me is that twelve months ago I couldn’t get out of bed. My body and spirit was so depleted that I just dragged myself through the days out of a sense of duty to my family.

Twelve months later I’m a dancing dervish, filled with vibrancy and passion for life, all life, not just mine, but everything that makes up this beautiful web of life we share.

There are some people who will tell you that Celtic shamanism is about power. I say it is an ancient way of falling in love with the world around you, and within you. Tom Cowan

In his book The Celtic Way of Seeing, Frank MacEowen talks about the healing power of ‘love-talking’ to nature. This is a practice that has come to me quite intuitively as I spend more and more time each day connecting with nature.

Ever since I read the evidence on the effect of grounding, walking barefoot on the ground, I have made a commitment to spend more time in communion with nature. Now it is a craving I feel, I can’t wait to get outside and get barefoot, I drive to waterways and forests just to feel that bliss of my body being restored to a natural state of rhythm and harmony.

The old Irish practice of geancannach – which roughly translates as ‘love-talk’ – it is both an ancient form of poetry called a ‘praise poem’ and a daily practice to express our love of life. Frank MacEowen writes that his mentor Tom Cowan suggests a practice of walking around in nature saying ‘Beautiful… and beautiful too…’

Beautiful is the sky at sunrise, beautiful too is the soft morning breeze. Beautiful the sound of swaying oak branches in the wind, beautiful too, is the sound of the chirping wren. Frank MacEowen

Again, this might sound vacuous to some of you. But I attended a library seminar this week where some very powerful evidence on the effect of words, particularly poetry on a variety of physical and mental illnesses was demonstrated.

Words have power. So why not try sweet talking the universe, for five minutes a day, and just see what happens?

Affirmations on sweet talking the universe from The Celtic Way of Seeing:

I observe the beauty all around me

I mindfully spend the day in love consciousness

I take the time to notice the natural world around me, be it a tree, a feather, a plant to an insect

I give myself permission to connect with the flowing music of nature

I see myself accompanied by the lineage of enlightened warriors behind me, supporting me to manifest my most bold, creative, and enlightened self

I learn to manage the abundant energy of the universe so that I may embody the spirit of prosperity, taking care of myself and others

Bless!

Images by Phill Petrovic

Ocean sized

Wish I was ocean size
They cannot move you
No one tries
No one pulls you
Out from your hole
Like a tooth aching in a jawbone… Jane’s Addiction

Last week I was a Chakradancing shaman-priestess of the Goddess. This week I am a librarian huddled in the Romance section of the library in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Why? Heartbreak, disappointment. You know, the usual suspects.

I thought, nay, I was dead-sure, that I was training in shamanic ways in Bali in February. It was all a happening thang until work said ‘no’ to me taking leave at that time. And then, I just lost the plot. I mean emotionally, I didn’t go postal and shoot up the library or anything. My rage is within.

As such, I really haven’t wanted to publish a post until I ‘felt better.’ I’ve been procrastinating, not wanting to write what I was feeling. I was in such a positive frame of mind last week. This week, not so much.

Feeling that I’d be contradicting my “I’m not broken” statement by, well, having a breakdown, I just wanted to hide away and not write anything.

But then the clouds cleared enough for me to realise that being unbroken is not the same as being unaffected by life. Of course disappointment and heartbreak will affect me deeply. Of course I feel devastated when things I have proclaimed to love and want don’t come to fruition for me.

That’s not broken, that’s the opposite of broken. That’s real.

It ain’t easy living…
I want to be
As deep
As the ocean
Mother ocean. Jane’s Addiction

So I realised this week that I have some odd ideas about how I ‘should’ be – and how I ‘should’ react to things. Just because a relationship isn’t working doesn’t mean I’m not devastated when it ends. People, many people, told me when my marriage ended that I was “better off without him.” And perhaps I was, didn’t mean it wasn’t the most painful experience of my life.

People also tend to say “it’s not meant to be” when we miss out on opportunities that we have set our hearts on. It may be true, but it doesn’t diminish the sharp stab of disappointment.

I was made with a heart of stone
To be broken
With one hard blow
I’ve seen the ocean
Break on the shore
Come together with no harm done… Jane’s Addiction

And if, like most people, you’ve weathered your fair share of loss, grief, and disappointment in your life, that latest hurt is inevitably going to feel like one more cut, along with the other thousand you are in the process of healing from.

So after beating myself up for crying at work, crying in the shower, crying in the car, listening to Adele very loudly, and crying some more, I finally gave myself a break.

Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us. Brian Jacques

And I thought, so what if you’re overreacting? So what if it’s not meant to be? So what if it’s not the right time for you to study shamanism in Bali with a man you love dearly? So what if there’s plenty of fish in the sea?

It hurts. It really hurts. So pump up Adele and sing along as loud and with as much tears and snot as you need to get through this and honour your feelings.

And what I found when I surrendered to the feelings of loss, sadness, disappointment, rage and grief was that they were like waves. They’d come in and ‘whoah!’ Whoosh off I’d go. It would feel intense, overwhelming, literally like I was dying of pain. And then. It would subside.

It reminded me of my dear friend, G. I reached out to her in solidarity in the late stages of my pregnancy. I knew her, but not very well. But I had no friends who had had babies and I was scared. She had traversed that magical, mystical rite of passage into motherhood with such grace.

When I asked her what labour was like, I think I said. “Is it painful?” And she laughed. She said. “It helped me to see that it came in waves. So I’d ride the wave and it would get really intense and then it would break and the next wave would build.” That made the pain manageable.

I am the wind which breathes upon the sea, I am the wave of the ocean. Amergin

I’ve used that analogy a lot since then. We also rang each other everyday during our divorces. On any given day, one of us would be an absolute cot-case and the other would be doing a bit better. That’s why friendship works, don’t you know, because we are not all crazy on the same day!

We were like wounded soldiers leaning against each other for support, staggering away from the battlefield. Sometimes we’d miss each other’s calls and just a simple text “the storm has passed” to let the other know we were okay.

I find it fascinating, these analogies of storms and waves. Jung believed water, particularly the I ocean was an archetype for the subconscious.

Nature is the only place I feel sane this week. I’m practicing being in nature with all my senses. Closing my eyes. Hearing the sounds. Feeling the breeze. Smelling the earth. Tasting the air.

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.” Sylvia Plath

Sensing removes me from thinking and brings my focus into the present moment. It’s also incredibly lovely. We miss so much when we are stuck in our heads, thinking, ruminating.

Nature is ever expansive. When we observe the horizon and the vastness beyond, when we listen to the sounds the go on infinitely beyond the audible. When the smell of flowers and leaves and salt-sea air fills our noses and mouths with scent and tastes that stir the deepest most ancient recesses within us. Everything expands. Our vision, our senses and our spirit.

In nature, our spirit pulses and resonates to this throb and thrum of life. The mental chatter becomes just a small part of a greater cacophony. Thoughts drift away. Emotions are soothed. Our bodies calm down into the steady, strong heartbeat of the earth.

The hard thing, I think. Is trying to decide what to do when my head starts hurting, and my emotions rage out of control. Take this Bali trip, for example. I was so sure it was ‘meant to be’.

There are many tangled threads of want, need and desire. I want to do shamanic training, Bali is the closest place to do the training I want to do. I’ve been wanting to go to Bali for years. I haven’t been away without children for 15 years. My ex has been to Asia at least 10 times in the last 5 years. The most recent time was for his honeymoon a few weeks ago.

My ex getting married rocked me more than I had anticipated. It was not the usual kind of jealousy – I don’t want to be with him. It was just the reminder that in the five and a half years we have been separated he has travelled extensively, bought a house, and gotten married. And I, well I haven’t.

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

My love was going to Bali with me. So it seemed like such a golden thing. Shamanism, love and Bali sunsets. So when work said no to leave, I was gutted. All these different disappointments came into play simultaneously.

I kind of lost the plot. I needed to cry and all I could do was crouch at the back of the library pretending to shelve the romance novels. And cry. Yep. Pretty pathetic.

I mean I thought, to myself, ‘you could quit your job.’ I really thought about it. I mean if this was my destiny, that would be the right thing to do. But I have a child. Taking those kind if risks seemed crazy. And what if it wasn’t my destiny? What if it was just my wilfulness?

There are no easy answers. My friend also says God’s will should be effortless. Meaning it should unfold without angst. Do I believe that? I used to. I’m not sure what I believe anymore.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on. Mary Oliver

So I didn’t get what I wanted. Instead I’m trying to get to a different shamanism course. I applied for a great role at work, and went to an interview. Because life goes on. It just does, so I may as well too.

And I’m teaching Chakradance! It is the most wonderful, nurturing experience. I really feel like I am a shaman when I lead a class.

Last night in the third eye Chakradance, where we dance our dreams into reality, I saw myself in a – fabulous feather outfit, complete with head-piece – leading a huge group of people in a dance journey, standing on a lush green hill. And I just couldn’t stop smiling. It’s okay. It’s all okay. It’s going to be okay.

Just now I received an email from the Shamanic teacher. He lives in Bali, he does courses there year-round.  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.’ Whispers the universe.

So why do I create such big waves in my life? Why can’t I just be calm? Why can’t the ocean be calm all the time? Because things need to be churned up sometimes, a good shake up allows the detritus to rise to the surface and be dumped on the shore. It’s part of the cycle.

Divinity is in it’s omniscience and omnipotence like a wheel, a circle, a whole, that can neither be understood, nor divided, nor begun nor ended. Hildegard of Bingen

It reminds me of that scene in the movie Parenthood. Steve Martin’s character has just discovered – after losing his job – that his wife is pregnant with their fourth child. He’s sitting at his kid’s school concert, which goes haywire, and he begins to feel as if he’s on a roller coaster. At first he’s panicked, but then he remembers his grandma saying “Life is like a roller coaster, just hang on and enjoy the ride.”

Surfing the waves is like being on a roller coaster, it’s out of control and terrifying but simultaneously exhilarating. A calm ocean is peaceful, but there’s no movement.

In this way, experiencing emotional suffering can be a healing opportunity. Events can trigger an emotional response, say sadness, anger and grief, these emotions may be stored in our subtle body, our energy meridians and even our physical body, and as they are stirred up by this fresh experience we can release them.

So re-feeling of the old pain of our lives is a vital opportunity to address old patterns, thinking and emotions and to let them go.

To do this we must honour the feelings, we must let go of judgement and criticism. For me this means not berating myself for being over-emotional, over-sensitive, and over-reactive.

The reality is I grew up in a home where expressing emotions was discouraged, then I spent the next twenty years suppressing my emotions in various ways, of course I have a surplus of emotion ‘stored’ in my system. I’m I the process of a massive emotional detox. The truth is, in our culture, if you have embarked on a spiritual path, most of us are.

Our culture doesn’t support emotional expression very well. We don’t have appropriate rituals and support for trauma. In traditional shamanic cultures, if someone suffered a loss or trauma, after three days the whole community would gather and the shaman would perform a healing and soul retrieval.

Can you imagine? Every car accident, assault, medical procedure, break-up, loss, grief, trauma you have suffered in your life, being acknowledged and healed at that time, so your body didn’t have to bear the accumulation of this pain.

But that’s okay. I don’t live in a shamanic culture, that doesn’t mean I can’t use their wisdom and practice to heal and release these emotional wounds.

As such I have been journeying this week, going into a state of non-ordinary reality to seek guidance on how best to work through the things that are coming up for me.

Gentle nurturing support is what I received. Guidance to take baths and ground myself in nature. The body and spirit will process this, given time and the space to do so. By honouring the work of my soul, by listening to what emerges for me in my life, I get to release off baggage and clear space for my true spirit to emerge.

This is what Frank MacEowen, in his book The Celtic Way of Seeing, calls “the conscious process of soul refinement.”

Affirmations about nature from bmindful.com and healingwithcrystals.net.au:

My spirit is nourished by spending time in nature
I am blessed to have the richness of nature around me.
When I commune with nature, my own blessed spirit is renewed.
Today I will spend time alone in nature.
I live naturally in all ways.
I live in harmony with all that is around me.
I am completely refreshed after communing with nature.
I accept, release, and allow space for the exchange of energy.
Natural diversity inspires wonder and awe in me.

Nature is always in flux. Waves crash on the shore. Leaves fall from trees. Nature always letting go and coming together anew. Let go. Rides the waves. It’s okay.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. e.e. cummings

Bless!

 

Art by Robin Mead Designs

Reflections on water

Throw your pain in the river
Leave your pain in the river
To be washed away slow. P J Harvey

After work I walked down by the river. Walking by water has assumed a mythical symbolism for me. Some of my most spiritual memories – times when I felt that surge of connectness and knowing my place in the world – have come walking beside a river.

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children. Rainer Maria Rilke

At times when I have felt most lost in life, the river has imbued me with a sense of life force. As a teenager wagging school taking refuge by the Yarra River. In Ireland, feeling lonely walking by the River Shannon. Walking by the Thames, feeling the weight of human history that has sailed that river.

Fresh out of rehab, riding a bike beside the Mississippi River in Minnesota, suddenly all the colour returned to my world. My vision changed from sepia-toned to vivid hues of blue and green, and yellow and brown. My heart bursting with life force after years of chemical anaesthesia.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It’s always our self we find in the sea. E.E. Cummings

So I was reflecting on water. Is it just me, or does everyone find water incredibly inspiring and soothing? I don’t think it’s just me. We are more than half water, it makes sense that at some level our beings just resonate to it, long to be near to it. Submerged in it.

Rivers have always reminded me of the magic of life. Sandra Ingerman

Ever since the earliest of recorded times, people around the world have been drawn to the therapeutic qualities of water to cleanse, heal, and relax the body. Water is crucial to life – humans, animals, and plants dry up and die when they do not have water.

Water is considered a purifier in most religions. In the Buddhist tradition, water symbolises serenity, purity, and clarity of thought.

The Ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles believed that water is one of the four classical elements along with fire, earth, and air, and regarded it as the ‘ylem’, or basic substance of the universe.

Our first relationship was with water. Sandra Ingerman

Nurtured in the watery world of the womb, it is easy to surrender to the subtle healing powers of water.

As Sandra Ingerman explains in her book, Medicine for the Earth, most of us receive comfort from water – who hasn’t been hypnotised by the rhythmic sounds of the ocean, or soothed by watching a river flow by? “Water stimulates the body’s natural ability to relax, and the only way a body can begin to heal is when it is in a relaxed state.”

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Margaret Atwood

The sound of water – waterfalls, babbling brooks, or ocean waves, soothes the binaural rhythms of the body.

Last weekend I went swimming in the ocean. The water was so cold that I splashed and shrieked and groaned and swore, and in making these spontaneous sounds felt a huge emotional release. It was so cold my whole body throbbed and tingled, making me feel invigorated and fully alive – every cell in my being singing out.

I swam around the cliff to a hidden cave I know of. I sat there and meditated for a while, supported by mother earth in the rock cavern, soothed by the sound of the water, and the blue of the sky.

I wish I had a river so long,
I would teach my feet to fly.
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on. Joni Mitchell

Water plays an important role in many legends and myths. There are stories of mythological water beings and gods, stories of heroes that feature water in some way, and even stories of isles and continents forever lost, submerged in water.

Water deities were especially sacred to the Celts as they were believed to control the essence of life itself. To the ancients, the movement and life-giving power of oceans, springs, rivers, and lakes represented the supernatural powers of the deities who lived within, and as such offerings to appease these deities were commonplace.

The Celts regarded rivers as bestowers of life, health, and plenty, and offered them rich gifts and sacrifices. J. A. MacCulloch

Water is the most primal of all archetypes. Across all cultures, water is seen as the element that drives creation.

Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious. The lake in the valley is the unconscious, which lies, as it were, underneath consciousness, so that it is often referred to as the ‘subconscious.’ Carl Jung

Jung believed the archetypal nature of water was a reflection of the emotions and the unconscious. Water represents the often unknowable depths of our inner life. It can both sustain life and be a threat to it when it rages out of control.

A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable. William Wordsworth

Like the duality of water itself, water gods and spirits could be benevolent or malevolent. Lakes and springs were often ruled over by gods of warmth and healing. Rivers, wells, and streams were often ruled by goddesses. Over time, the darker aspects of those deities became more prominent.

Morgan Le Fey, Nematona, and Nimue, are water deities associated with the legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail. The Lady of the Lake is a powerful deity of life, death, and regeneration who appears across British and Northern European folklore. She is the guardian and holder of the sacred sword Excalibur, which she gives to Arthur, and takes back at the end of the Arthurian and grail stories.

Her story exaggerates the archetypal aspects of the feminine: life-giver, nurturer, seductress, lover, manipulator, and destroyer. She represents the feminine nature of water – its fluidity, sensuousness, and seductive nature.

Moon river, wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way. Andy Hamilton

The Norse God Odin gained his great wisdom from a fountain known as Mimir’s Spring, ‘the fountain of all wit and wisdom’. Odin asked the old man who guarded it to let him have a drink. But Mimir, who well knew the value of the request (for his spring was considered the source of all wisdom and memory), refused unless Odin would consent to give one of his eyes in exchange. Which he did.

In “Brother and Sister,” a Grimms’ fairytale, a witch curses the streams of the forest so that anyone drinking from them will change into an animal –  with the aim of cursing her two stepchildren. The spring itself warns the children of the danger, so that they can avoid drinking from the cursed water.

For us modern folk, children of science, it may seem childish to give stock to such myths and legends, and to see spirits in nature. Yet as I practice Chakradance and teach it to others, as I read Jung, and become fascinated with shamanism and druidry and ancient nature-based religions, I keep returning to these archetypal beings, the spirits of the elements, of water and earth and sky.

There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky. Dejan Stojanovic

As a child I climbed trees and found solace there, nestled in strong branches, hidden by its leaves, this bridge between worlds, connecting earth and sky. In the ocean, and rivers, and lakes, I found nurture. My body suspended, free of the heaviness of gravity and the hard bitumen I played on at school. I could float, suspended, as if flying. Under water was another world, with the sounds of the ‘real world’ dulled and distorted by the breathing of the waves.

The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Stories, myths and legends hold great wisdom. Their words operate at a psychological and spiritual level. Storytelling was a way of both transmitting great truths, but also keeping the energy inherent in the story alive.

According to Stefan Stenudd, myths are the instruments to discover and utilise the collective unconscious. Jung’s collective unconscious is “an inherited part of the psyche, a fundamental driving force, a container of great truths, and the only trustworthy guide to self-realization.” The unconscious with all its wisdom is hidden in the depths of the mind, and it is myths and stories that hold the key to it’s discovery.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters. Norman Maclean

In Chakradance, the element of water comes through the sacral chakra. This is the feminine centre, a centre that holds the key to our emotional life, to our sensuality. In the dance we visualise stepping into a stream and being washed clean of any stress or tension. Then we dance from the hips, our bodies undulating like water. Stimulating the natural ebb and flow of our being.

Always be like a water. Float in the times of pain or dance like waves along the wind which touches its surface. Santosh Kalwar

Water soothes our emotions when they run over, tears flow and the water cleanses and purifies us. I have not cried this week. I know the tears will come, in their own time. Like the rains that fill the river, and the droughts that dry it up. Nature has her cycles.

Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I cried a river over you. Arthur Hamilton

Waterfall Relaxation Meditation by Buddhanet.net

A beautiful waterfall of white light is flowing down on you. It flows down on your head, helping your head to relax. You feel your head relaxing. It moves down over your neck and shoulders. Your neck and shoulders are relaxing. Now it flows down over your arms. You feel your arms relaxing. It flows down your back. Your back is letting go and relaxing. It flows over your chest and stomach, helping your chest and stomach relax. You feel your chest and stomach relax. It moves down over your legs and feet. You feel your legs and feet letting go and relaxing. The beautiful waterfall of white light is flowing over your whole body. You are very peaceful and relaxed.

Affirmations on water:

Dr Masaru Emoto, in his books “The Hidden Messages in Water” and and “The True Power of Water”, describes the effect of positive affirmations on water molecules. He suggest the most beneficial affirmations are those of love and gratitude, and who better to affirm those than Louise Hay, taken from her book, “You can heal your life.”

So get down to some water, and everytime you drink a glass of water, say something positive to it first. Maybe just say thank you in recognition that clean, drinking water is not a reality for everyone.

In the infinity of life where I am,
all is perfect, whole and complete.
I support myself and life supports me.
I see evidence of the Law working all around me
And in every area of my life.
I reinforce that which I learn in joyous ways.
My day begins with gratitude and joy.
I look forward with enthusiasm to the adventures of the day,
Knowing that in my life, “All is good.”
I love who I am and all that I do.
I am the living, loving, joyous expression of life.
All is well in my world.

Bless!

 

Sources:

Stefan Stenudd Myth

Celtic Gods and Goddesses

The Religion of the Ancient Celts

Water Spirits as Fairies

Medicine for the Earth: How to Transform Personal and Environmental Toxins by Sandra Ingerman (Three Rivers Press 2001)

A walk in an Enchanted Forest

 

The earth has music for those who listen. George Santayana

When life winds me up, oh so tense and tight, and I need to gently unfurl, this is where I go. To the prettiest place by the sea, which I have gone to forever. As a child, I loved to explore the myriad pathways through forests of ti-tree, gnarly and enchanted, to climb trees and survey the world from majestic heights, to play in the sand and sea, as a mighty warrior mer-queen.

And to be honest, as an adult, not much has changed.

So I drove down to my special place, knowing it would be all mine, not just the house, but the whole beach. Being Wintertime most people opt to sip lattes and eat wood-fired pizza by warm open fires instead, leaving the beach deserted and wild.

I love the beach in Winter. The ocean broods: all dark greys, deep greens, and murky depths. Chiaroscuro skies shift from dark into light in an instant. And this tree, in Winter on one side and Summer on the other – as if the tree itself is between two worlds.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. Walt Whitman

Indulging in long walks, reliving carefree childhood days, meandering through archways of entwined trees into grottos hidden in sea caves.

As a child I spent hours in ‘my tree’. I forget what kind of tree it was, except that it had those leaves that, folded in half and blown, could whistle really loud.

Atop that tree I had a cosy place to sit, to survey my surrounds, all the while, completely hidden from everyone by its dense foliage. Whenever I picture sanctuary, I think of how safe that tree made me feel.

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers “Grow, grow.” The Talmud

The Chakradance experience has led to a gentle unfolding of my psyche, featuring a powerful connection with trees. The tree concept has appeared in many of my Chakradance visions, from the tree roots sinking into the earth as a metaphor for Muladhara/root chakra, to the connection of earth and sky in Anahata/the heart and Vissudha/throat chakras. Reading up about the Celtic Ogham tradition –  which uses symbolic representations of particular trees as an intricate aspect of spiritual practice – has ignited in me a fully-fledged tree obsession. A fetish I indulged this weekend, by exploring, experiencing, and photographing hundreds of trees.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. John Muir

It is somewhat of a self-imposed tradition for me to go swimming in the Winter sea. So I donned my togs and in I went, quite fearlessly, I thought. The water was beyond freezing – and I have no desire to get literal on this point unless you try it yourself – I only lasted a few minutes each time – and yes, there was more than one!

On the last day I dived in and submerged my whole body in water – there is something so cleansing about ice-cold seawater.

Most of the the weekend was spent barefoot in the grass, sitting against a tree, or in the sand, and sea. Or chakradancing under the trees and stars by the light of the full moon. Fully immersed in the elements I felt so vitalised and connected to the natural world.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. Rachel Carson

Barely speaking to another human, I had my trusty dog, and plenty of magpies, ravens, kookaburras, rosellas, pink cockatoos, chatting away to me. Walking along the beach, pausing to sit and watch the ocean, the seagulls and an old albatross do their fishing, and the thought struck me that they don’t groan about life – well, possibly the seagull does – they just make the most out of it.

Under a blue, brilliant blue, sky, with the sounds of the sea and its birds around me, I wrote about the journey into the throat chakra – or Vissudha in sanskrit, meaning purification.

Vissudha has enlivened me to sound. This enhanced sensitivity was almost painful in the noise of the city, but away in nature it is blissful. Blue is the colour associated with this chakra, so I relished the wide open sky as a metaphor for the expansive, etheric nature of this energy centre.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god. Alan Watts

Vissudha is where you make the transition from the elements of form into the realm of ether, where Jung claimed the celestial chorus of angels could be heard.

During the focus on this chakra, I found myself humming a lot – a great way to balance Vissudha –  and reciting random lines from lyrical poetry like Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ or Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shallott’.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This chakra governs your relationship with vibrations and resonance. It is from the throat centre that you produce sound through vibration. As such it is incredibly susceptible to vibrational energy, and responsive to resonance of all kinds. Music and sound can be used extremely effectively to balance this chakra.

The throat chakra carries the energies of truth, integrity, honesty, and communication. It also governs the ability to listen, both to the words of others and your own internal dialogue within your body. Paramount to Vissudha, is the expression of self through speech and creativity.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou

Abundance is my fifth intention, married to this fifth chakra. Observing nature in action, provided me with somewhat of an epiphany about abundance.

The natural law is to only take what you need to live on a daily basis, trusting that there is an abundance of what you need for tomorrow. Indigenous societies have lived in this wisdom for millennia.

Sometimes I fall into the very Western cultural trap of thinking abundance means ‘more (and more and more) of the good stuff’ – and forget the simple practice of saying thank you for what I have.

Realising that a little doubt and negativity, a little grasping and hoarding, had crept back into my thinking – an anathema to manifesting abundance – I made the intention to eliminate negative thinking, just for three days to start with. The additional bonus, according to Pam Grout, author of E-Squared, is that blessing everything, including your food, with positive energy is the key to weight loss. Stay tuned on that one!

As an affirmation of positive thinking, I love this prayer by Chris Cade:

Thank you for the wind and rain…

Thank you for the sun.

Thank you for what I have now…

And all the good things to come.

Every morning when I wake…

Before I start my day.

I think of all the good things…

That will come my way.

Nature inspires me, and immersed in her energies, my mind and body settle into the creative flow. As such I wrote 5000 words of my novel sitting by the sea for a couple of hours. Enlivened, vibrant, invigorated, creative, and blissfully happy – what’s not to love about communing with nature, of the expansion of mind and spirit, as vast as the sky.

One touch of nature, makes the whole world kin. William Shakespeare

Nature, like the chakras, contains the colours, and corresponding energy and vibration, of the full spectrum of light. Verdant green trees, infinite blue sky, vast indigo sea. Red, orange, yellow, flowers, sand, stones, earth. The variety of sensations of the different elements: the density of earth itself, and the flowers and trees that spring from it, the way trees become lighter and less dense as they move from trunk to leaves, reaching out into the air, swaying in the wind, a bridge between earth and sky. The ethereal blue of the daytime sky, and the vastness of the night sky, interspersed with light and matter, of stars and moon, and planets.

The Vissudha chakradance was a place of contemplation, calm, peace, divinity, and deep reverence for me. The dance involves repeating a sound or mantra, and allowing the body to move with this harmony from within. As reciting the mantra became more and more powerful, I reached a state where the resonance from within me and the movement of the dance just flowed in effortless accord, and I was transported into the etheric state of sound vibration.

In my mind’s eye, there were angels singing celestial songs, and the tree of life reaching its branches to the blue sky. Visualising myself in white robes, near three sacred pillars: a priestess with a powerful energy for the world.

Later that day I was looking at documentaries on the Celts and I saw those exact columns! I was a little disappointed to see they were modern, but built in recognition of a Viking king in Norway from the 9th Century.

The lesson from the dance is to go within, to uncover my truth. It was a very calm, but also sacred space, which I am being told to honour. I need to communicate from my truth, not as a reaction to how others ‘make’ me feel.

The shadow archetype of the throat chakra is the Silent Child. This archetype represses its feelings and does not show hurt, pain or anger. The lesson of the Silent Child  archetype is to make herself heard and to feel that what she says has value.

The archetype of Vissudha in balance, is the Communicator. This archetype is dependant on clear and direct communication, including artistic creativity and expression. Speaking its heart and mind openly and responsibly.

I previously wrote about the throat chakra here. It was a melancholy post after a dear friend died. She loved angels too, I think she would enjoy this one.

He looked at his own Soul with a telescope. What seemed all irregular, he saw and showed to be beautiful constellations, and he added to the consciousness hidden worlds within worlds. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Growing up with an Irish mother, my fairy tales were Irish folklore, stories of fairies, forest sprites, leprechauns, banshees and the like. As such, I still cannot look at a tree or forest without thinking there are little beings scurrying out of sight at the sound of my big human footfalls.

Piling the sheaves in furrows airy,
Beneath the moon, the reaper weary
Listening whispers, ‘ ‘Tis the fairy,
Lady of Shalott.’ Alfred Lord Tennyson

My interest in Irish folklore has rekindled and I was astonished to find the work of Dr Jenny Butler, who has a PhD in folklore, how cool is that? Her work on paganism and the fairy faith in Ireland is fascinating.

In Australia, outside of indigenous communities, talking about these kinds of beings will wind you up in the loony bin, but in Europe and in indigenous cultures the world over, there is a long tradition of belief in elemental beings.

Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame. William Butler Yeats

After four days of dancing under the moonlight and stars, and cavorting with trees, it was not surprising to me that, on the walk back from the little cove I discovered, as I took yet more photos of trees, a beautiful angelic light spread across the screen.

Check out the photo – isn’t it something? Now, I know you skeptics will talk to me of prisms of light, and that’s fine for you. I call it angelic, because to my mind, fairies are of the earth and angels are of the air. And that’s all there is to it.

Fairies are invisible and inaudible like angels. But their magic sparkles in nature. Lynn Holland

With an imagination like mine, primed since early childhood, angels not a stretch for me. I have been reading Doreen Virtue’s book Angel Therapy Handbook. This is a result of following strong intuitive guidance, even when my intellect questions my thinking.

It has became apparent to me that while I have been very open about my experiences with the chakras and my passion for chakradance, I have been very quiet on the subject of my other passion and intuitive source of inspiration, angels.

Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The motivation for this is obvious, intellectual pride. The chakras, although not universally accepted, are kind of cool and based on a long tradition that informs many respected fields of holistic medicine.

Angels, on the other hand, sound either Christian or New Age, both of which have an image problem for me.

However, I made this blog about intentions, with the intention that I would put it ALL out there. So suppressing this aspect of my journey seems dishonest. And to be honest, if I have to choose between intellectual pride and healing, well that’s a no brainer.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now? John Lennon

Plus, I really have reached an age where I care a lot less about how I appear and a lot more about how I am. The fact is I have loved Doreen’s writing ever since I read her book about Indigo Children when my son was diagnosed with autism.

It’s not surprising that when faced with the complete powerlessness over a condition affecting your child, you become very open-minded.

Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted. J.R.R. Tolkien

That said the experience with my son showed me he responded miraculously to various kinds of energy healings. And I spent many evenings praying to Archangel Michael to clear him of negative energy, fill him with light and love, and allow him to sleep after particularly upsetting emotional meltdowns. This certainly calmed me down, which would have helped him, but that fact that he now asks for angelic help himself, suggests to me that he feels some direct benefit from this too.

So all this is just a long-winded explanation for me coming out as a believer in angels, and faeries. Now I don’t mean I see things flying round with wings, although that would be cool, rather that I intuitively feel their energy around me.

We call them faerie. We don’t believe in them. Our loss. Charles de Lint

Jung would probably say that angels are my perception of the collective unconscious. I am happy to accept that there is a degree of archetypal wisdom at work here that I don’t fully understand.

I do know that all my life I have been called ‘angel’ by various people, or described as ‘sparkly’ and ‘ethereal’. My first perfume was ‘Angel’ by Thierry Mugler. And I loved wearing angel wings when dressing up. I have had an imaginary friend called Rosie, who I don’t see and hear as I did as a child, but I feel the presence of a warm, soothing force around me at times. If my son had been a girl the names I would have given him were Angelica or Angelina.

These things may sound trivial, but Caroline Myss talks about listening to the things we say about ourselves, and others say about us, and to observe the patterns in our lives, as these are the way our archetypes illuminate themselves to us.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. Michelangelo

Reading Doreen’s book, she talked about her reticence to come out with her angelic guidance. She was a professional counselor and yet she knew she couldn’t grow in her abilities to help people if she kept it hidden.

So I made the same decision, I don’t understand this stuff, but I want to, and keeping it locked away is not the way to do that. Besides, if angelic guidance is what inspires me, I intend to listen whole-heartedly!

It takes courage to walk this path and not retreat in fear from the unknown. Courage comes from the french word ‘coeur’ meaning heart. My heart tells me I am being true to myself. That the only world that could ever hold vision and depth for me is one that allows a myriad of existence beyond that experienced by the skeptical eye.

The throat chakra ideally communicates the true message of the heart, these two chakras, as all the chakras, are intricately connected. To suppress one, is to create disorder throughout the energy system. I’m done with suppressing and repressing!

So I am putting my angelic intentions out there!

I think that people who can’t believe in fairies aren’t worth knowing. Tori Amos

Try this beautiful meditation to connect with your angelic guides:

 

And try this beautiful throat chakra sound meditation – you’ll be transported…

Affirmations for vissudha by Chakra Anatomy:

I am open, clear, and honest in my communication.
I have a right to speak my truth.
I communicate my feelings with ease.
I express myself creatively through speech, writing, or art.
I have a strong will that lets me resolve my challenges.
I nourish my spirit through creativity.
I live an authentic life.
I have integrity.
I love to share my experiences and wisdom.
I know when it is time to listen.
I express my gratitude towards life.
I listen to my body and my feelings to know what my truth is.
I take good care of my physical body.
I am at peace.

Bless!

 

Check out this site for great info on the chakras and their related archetypes

http://www.askclaudia.com/throat-chakra.htm

Check out this great blog for more information  on healing the throat chakra

http://kaymayoga.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/vissudha-the-throat/

You can find Dr Jenny Butler here and listen to an interview about Faerie research in Ireland here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnDlZLkralU

 

Images:

Title: Forest fairies 

Ophelia by imagine studios

Fairy Forest by Phatpuppyart

Deep Forest Fairy Tale