Letting go with a burning bowl ceremony.

Today we held the yoga class to let go of 2019, followed by a burning bowl ceremony.

I was introduced to the burning bowl ceremony back in 2005 when I was in the middle of my Reiki training and I was part of a lovely group of Reiki students who met once a week with our teacher, Dr Alyssa Burns-Hill, for meditation and angel cards. I loved this hour, each Thursday evening, 6-7pm, on the way home for work. Not least because we got to sit and meditate together, Ally often leading us through guided meditations, and enjoying angel cards and the insight they provided, but because, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I belonged.

I was relatively new to this world back then, the holistic one, with angels and chakras and crystals, but there was something about the energy of all this, the way it felt then, that just, well, felt right. The people were friendly and welcoming, and despite my naivety, I never felt judged or out of place. We’ve all gone in our own direction since Ally left the Island and I wouldn’t probably recognise many of them now, but I’ve always been extremely grateful for this very light fuelled time of my life.

One of the ladies was an American who has since moved back to America, and it was her who suggested one night that we do a burning bowl ceremony. i don’t remember the ceremony itself, but I do remember feeling a huge sense of relief that there was this opportunity to let go of things. Until that point in my life - I was approximately 29 years old then - I had no idea that we could let go of things that were no longer serving us. Mind you, there was lots I didn’t realise we could do back then, I was only just beginning to recognise that we create our own reality and that our thoughts create this. I was only just awakening.

So the burning bowl ceremony had quite a profound effect on me and I have done one every year since. Often these were with one of my best friend’s Hayley, with whom I spent a number fo new year’s eves. I’ll never forget on new year where we burned our letters in a saucepan and the whole thing was in flames and there as a complete panic that we ere abut to set the house on fire! How we laughed! Clearly we had a lot to let go of that year, but actually we did every year, and I’m never sure that back in those days the cava helped much!

One year, maybe when I was 34 though, my cousin, Yolande, and I were joined by my friend Samata, and we conducted our burning bowl ceremony at the fairy ring here in Guernsey, one wild afternoon when we were all sober! It was a blustery day and it was a challenge, it has to be said, to get the flame going, but Yo got it going and with that up into the air went all the things we wanted to let go of - I have a feeling that smoking was high on my list of priorities back then, to give up that is. That year, 2010 I did. I recognised that sober burning bowl ceremonies were best!

Burning bowl ceremonies are powerful. Potentially. I should caveat that. As I said to students this morning, you have to really feel it. No point writing down that you are going to let go of things that you know that you have no intention of truly letting go of from your life. Or after too much cava so that it becomes more of a wish list with ‘not drinking so much cava’ top of it, ha ha. You have to feel ready, as if there may be some possibility, with a little help from the angels and the universe generally.

Letting go is an interesting concept. I’ve worked a lot with it over the years, and this year I have been working with it a lot. What I’ve noticed is how difficult it is to let go! Even though we might think we want to let go of some childhood trauma, or some hurt that happened to us with maybe an ex-boyfriend, or whatever it may be, when we truly look at it, we realise that we’re holding onto it because on some conscious, some crazy level, we want to be pained! I know it makes no sense when you read that, but think about it. We’re all holding onto something. Some hurt, some pain something that stops us being totally free of suffering. I’ll be surprised if I’m wrong about that.

So what stops us letting go then? I suppose in many respects we form our current reality based on what’s happened to us in then past, so if we let go of some aspect of our past, well then that has the potential to change our current reality, and as much as we might want that, well it can be scary because it’s new and unwritten and we don’t know what it might feel or look like. Better to keep things under control, the way they’ve always been…only that deep down we know that hat isn’t serving us either. It’s a dilemma.

It’s like smoking. What good comes from continuing to smoke? And yet when we’re a smoker, so much of our identity is tied up in being a smoker. What will happen if we want a time out? What about our friends who smoke and our relationship with them if we don’t go fo sneaky fags together? And all that sneaking around? What happens when we just start being a ‘normal’ non-smoking human being, you know one who doesn’t feel crappy for smoking, who isn’t rebelling against parents, society, whatever it might be. Or if we’re smoking the wacky backy, what happens when we stop numbing out!

For so many years I kept smoking mainly because I liked to smoke the wacky backy. It was such a part of my identity and yet I hated smoking generally. But how to give up one and not the other. Impossible. I had to really look at that very honestly and come - in my own slow time - to recognise that while I may have thought I was having these wonderful spiritual experiences smoking cannabis, and somehow becoming more ‘spiritual’ (whatever the hell that means), I was actually just numbing out from life. I was self-medicating, in the same way that some might take anti-depressants or other ‘acceptable’ drugs.

It was difficult to let that go. You know what I mean? Who are we when we let go of whatever we are holding onto?

How about that childhood trauma (we’ve ALL got childhood trauma, it comes with being human), what happens if we just let that go? Gosh all of a sudden we get to take responsibility for our lives and our experience of it. Maybe we finally get to stand on our own two feet. Scary.

That hurt from those who took advantage of our kindness or who rejected us? Gosh, well then we have to accept the fact that actually it was us who put ourselves in that position and it is us, only us, who can really do any self-loving and who do a huge amount of the abandoning. We can’t keep blaming such and such for messing us up (even if he/she did…but we chose he/she in the first place). so all of a sudden we have to stop being the victim. Ouch.

I’ve been through all this. It’s the breath that really made me take note. A full breath in? Receiving all life can give? Am I worthy of that? The exhalation, letting go, truly…am I prepared to do that, who will I become?

I’ve been hauling my past around with me, like a heavy bag hung over my shoulders, weighing me down, making me play out unhelpful behaviour patterns all the time, attracting much of the same (crap) into my life despite the intentions and the affirmations and all the stuff I hope might change things.

You have to be ready. You have to get to a point where you’re done. I’m done. I no longer want to be defined by my past. There is only this moment and this moment can be whatever you want it to be. But for it to be unhindered by the past, tossed around, you need to let it go. It is not you. Just like the thoughts that run through your mind, day in and day out, are not you either. They’re thoughts. Your past is your past. In the past.

All the great spiritual teachers and masters teach one thing. Live in the present. You can’t live in the present when you’re carrying your past around with you, anymore than you can live in the present when you’re obsessed with the future.

But how do you let go? You just do. Like a hot potato. You just let it go. No need to analyse, to question, to write about it (ha!), justify it. None of that. Like forgiveness, you just feel it and you just do it.

A burning bowl ceremony helps enormously. Burn, burn, burn!

Today, lots of beautiful students wrote down the stuff they want to let go of from their lives and this evening E built a fire and burned the notes. I stood and watched, with a sliver of a new moon behind me, the sun having set and creating the most beautiful light on this unusually still and magical winter day, and I thought how wonderful, this letting go. In the flames. Fire to smoke and up into the air, transformed as we too, with our letting go are transformed (and eventually transformed from this body to spirit). Magic.

If there’s one thing I wish for all of you it is to transform, again and again and again, and I’m pretty certain that letting go of our past, of beginning anew and anew and anew is a fairly powerful way of doing this. Live in the present. Set the past down. Aside. Look back at it with LOVE.

That’s the key. My friend, Michelle Johansen reminded me of this recently. Look back at your past for the blessings it gave. That hurt, that betrayal, that trauma, that crappy thing that happened to you, look back with love. Say thank you, feel gratitude, know that helped to make you the most amazing human being that you are, helped you to awaken and heal, to take steps to heal, time and time again. It made you YOU. That’s worth celebrating huh?

So here’s to a new decade, a lighter one too, without that haul of the past weighing us down and continuously limiting our future.

Let go!

This is a most powerful power (in my humble opinion) about letting go, shared by my doula, Anita Davies, which has been really impactful on my life, through birth and beyond…

She Let Go

by Safire Rose

She let go.

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear.

She let go of the judgments.

She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.

She let go of the committee of indecision within her.

She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.

Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice.

She didn’t read a book on how to let go.

She didn’t search the scriptures.

She just let go.

She let go of all of the memories that held her back.

She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.

She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn’t promise to let go.

She didn’t journal about it.

She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer.

She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.

She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.

She just let go.

She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.

She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.

She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.

She didn’t call the prayer line.

She didn’t utter one word.

She just let go.

No one was around when it happened.

There was no applause or congratulations.

No one thanked her or praised her.

No one noticed a thing.

Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

There was no effort.

There was no struggle.

It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.

It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be.

A small smile came over her face.

A light breeze blew through her.

And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…

Love Emma xxx