When nature divas play...we grow instalment 1 of 3

I have struggled once again this week to write this blog. Initially, I berated myself for what I supposed was a lack of discipline, but now I understand that my absence has been more about lack of personal clarity around the events of my life, rather than any kind of reluctance on my part to write. 

Since the last time I connected here, I have encountered a whirlwind of experience that has triggered feelings of deep polarity. Some of what has surfaced I haven’t wanted to look at, some of it has ignited my passion and some (perhaps the most disturbing of all) I am deliberately pulling in from the past so I can soak in old pain like some kind of masochist. I have been buffeted between resistance, longing and self-sabotage and the resultant groundlessness has been quite difficult to embrace and stay present with. 

Amid these shifts and changes there has been one level of consistency that has undoubtedly emerged and that is the rapid speed at which energy now moves through my reality. Movement is so quick that it is difficult to hold anything long enough to embody it so it can then be crystalised it into writing. Just when I get a handle on it … it’s gone. But today… today the absolute impermanence of physical life has never been so present in my awareness, hammered home by an astonishing event that rocked my world…but more on that later. 

To communicate this message I’ll have to set the scene of the past weeks that have been characterised by my struggle to find clarity. I will write this blog in instalments, just like they sometimes do on Humans of New York…I can only hope to be equally interesting so that perhaps you’ll stay tuned.

It began a week or so ago when I was taking one of my regular morning walks along our beautiful Hervey Bay beaches. It’s a good time to contemplate spirit and I was using my love of nature to open my heart and hopefully intuit inspiration for this blog. I’ve had some pretty huge milestone physical events over the past month (not that I’m blaming them for my scattered energy; as any YBLer will tell you – the feelings give rise to the events, not the other way round) but I will share some to illustrate where my focus and confusion has been sourced. 

Susie and I are on the threshold of exciting new opportunities for our book Your Beautiful Life (YBL) and the dream that we have nurtured for 15 years appears to be tantalisingly within reach. My eldest daughter finished year 12 completing a beautiful evolution in our relationship that began a few years ago. Thoughts around my health are a near constant shadow that can easily drag me into dark places and I recently turned 50 (the celebrations were as fabulous as my friends). Also, like many people, I have been confronted by the sobering events of global violence. Those events have been made all the more poignant due to the ‘divine justice’ focus our guides gave us in the November newsletter. While these events might have occurred  thousands of miles away, there can be no doubt that they impact our heart and soul and I was grappling with what it was showing me about my reality and what seeds my responses might be planting – but in the early days, I had nothing much more than sadness.

My own mortality, my response to my aging body, my changing family circumstances and the bewilderment in contemplating the taking of life for any reason let alone for an idea, all crowded my mind as I walked and swam that morning. I couldn’t find my common ground in feeling and I wanted, no needed; a sign. I walked up the rise of the beach to the treed reserve and picked up my towel to find a large grey crab underneath it, comfortably nestled on top of one of my thongs. I have never seen crabs so far from the water before and he didn’t run when I exposed him, but instead merely raised a claw as though he was shielding his eyes from the sun. Having spent several years in shaman circles I am always delighted, humbled and grateful when the animal or elemental kingdom make themselves known in the physical. I went straight home to read and contemplate the medicine of crab.

Crab is all about emotions, water and the moon. It assists to manifest the heart’s desire (bingo). It clears patterning that prevents us from feeling safe (pow). It delves deep in to the emotions to create alchemical changes to create physical balance and healing (whack). It pulls up old emotions so we can clear self destructive tendencies (okay that’s four for four). I’m really listening now! 

Of course the message from crab didn’t miraculously clear my energy and angst. In fact, if anything it opened the door for more dark ooze to rise. What I took from crab was the awareness and acceptance that I was working in the emotional plane, hence all my neurosis were coming from a depth of self that I should allow and honour so they could be released. Further I understood that any projection would thwart the process and dam the flow. I stopped being so hard on myself and allowed my stuff to rise, in thought and action; the good, the bad and the ugly. I became curious about it, witnessed my patterns rather than judged them and waited on the will of heaven. 

When nature is working with you via manifesting encounters as signals, it is easy to accept that you are on the threshold of a major shift in consciousness and the best thing you can do in those times is stay out of your own way. I knew I was in the middle of ‘something’ and that trying to understand it was futile and so writing about it pointless. At times like this, I feel like a cat on a hot tin roof as I struggle to be patient, willing and open while waiting on the will of heaven . It is seriously shaky ground for me. Thanks to the powers that be for red wine huh?

So that is the first instalment…an awareness that my emotions are stirring, from the vast beauty of joy to the dark recesses of fear. I am so grateful to crab for helping me hold it. I am also grateful to you for checking in...until next time.

Namaste

Sally.

www.yourbeautifullife.com.au 

The truth about the butterfly

My work has continued to keep me busy since I last wrote and this week I’ll raise you a house guest, my hubby overseas and a milestone birthday celebration, so it is no wonder I haven’t checked in for a while. As wonderful as these distractions have been, in truth the real reason I have been absent is that I don’t have a great deal going on that I can share. I’m actually really happy and very content and without some sort of pain pushing me inward, I’m a little lost for material to delve into.

Each morning I undertake a ritual that draws my energy to the present moment so that I can be mindful of my higher intent throughout the day. It always involves incense, a white candle, white grandfather sage and one of my many oracles. As I smudged and centred myself today, I didn’t even have a pressing concern to seek guidance on, so I simply opened to receive “what I most needed to know”. There was not even a hint of fear, trepidation, or even anticipation for that matter, just this open hearted calmness. For a person who has often found herself immersed in spiritual tests through ‘dark night of the soul’, transcending fear around anything spiritual is all very new to me. I drew the card ‘Butterfly’ which signals transformation and change. It is completely appropriate.

Nearly exactly one year ago I entered a process of dramatic change. Initially I resisted it, looking for a way out through spirit, grabbing at anything, my oracles, pendulum, healers and more.  I didn’t want to enter the darkness; I didn’t understand its beauty, its power or its unassailable link to the light.  It was only the runes that were honest with me and consistently reiterated that I had commenced a cycle of deep and dark initiation that would take one whole year. I didn’t want to know and resisted what was occurring until I found myself bound, gagged and completely on my knees.

The early stages of this initiation were worse than I could ever have imagined and it only relented when I surrendered to the chrysalis form and became one with the dark rest. Such death/rebirth sounds very romantic through the analogy of the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, but don’t be fooled, it is a passage of travail. In reality, the pain and limitation of the cocoon and the transformation that occurs within it, is dark, unyielding and without even a hint of the beauty that awaits in rebirth. For me, it was death on every level except physically, and even then, there were occasions when I would have welcomed even that.

In my experience, that time in isolation, where I lay in the darkness without foundation or hope opened me to face and release everything that I could not willingly let go but that no longer served me. Ironically, it was my painful patterns that I clung to -all those situations that still hurt me, that I couldn’t transcend, the torment and betrayal all coalesced back to my very own heart where I had to own it. There was no ‘them’ who did ‘this’; there was only the truth of my soul as creator of my experience. Without all the outward projection and justification I was left simply in the moment of my life – as it was. As I embraced it all in feeling, I responded in the moment and let go of what I no longer wanted to hold in my heart, even though it had to be wrenched away at times.

I had no vision of what I was to become and so no grand beauty to hope for, hence I had no road map to follow or idea of ‘right’ action. But I had my soul - it is all each of us needs. I floundered in the dark - my dark - for a year, but I was always seeking the light -my light. Within that intent my choices became clearer and my past came forward to be healed. I have been free of the cocoon for a few months or so, but I am only now noticing my wings. I think they are beautiful.

Everything has changed. With the release of my old patterns I have also set free those I love from what I thought were their patterns. In seeing my-self so differently, my perception of how others treat me has also radically altered. Conceptually, I have always known that we see the world the way we see ourselves. Today though, I am not merely contemplating that truth, but instead I am living it. It is utterly liberating. 

I am seeing all my relationships with new awareness and their sweetness is both intoxicating and revealing.  I understand life will continue to present challenges to my newfound peace and contentment. But for the first time, I feel as though I will be able to see them clearly from the balanced perspective of soul rather than my old narrow focus of conditioned, wounded ego responses. It is an interesting time of coming into conscious awareness of our greater truth and I look forward to what I might be able to learn from it.

More than 30 years ago, I was told by a spiritual reader that I had opted to get all my lessons over and done with in the first half of my life. I can’t deny that it has felt that way, with my journey being characterised by such deep unrelenting initiation and pain. I do feel as though my life has indeed been divided into before and after this year long initiation. Surprisingly, I have no attachment to the future, but instead an all-encompassing passion for the present. I would never have guessed that I could have transcended that…maybe I really have been reborn.

Namaste

Sally

www.yourbeautifullife.com.au