Glastonbury done differently!

All this is certainly a different experience of Glastonbury for me; one of hanging, jumping, running and umm, wand connecting!

Eben loves to hang.

Yep, and one handed.

And do pull ups

And jump

He’s wanted a pendulum and a wand like Elijah for a while now and he chose this beautiful red wand made by a local druid-ess. I had eyed them up a while ago thinking my niece might like one, I just anticipated we’d get Eben an oak one, but no, red is his thing and he has carried this wand everywhere today, showing it to anyone who will entertain him. He was slightly disappointed that it didn’t behave like Harry Potter’s and do things for him. I have impressed on him the need to connect with his wand and show it some respect and work to focus energy…let’s see.

As for the pendulum, he chose citrine, on a red cord, and has gone to sleep wearing it tonight…

It was certainly not a leisurely shop, but in fairness I did have a few shops to visit, they have some fab charity shops in Glastonbury and of course all those crystals, eek, and the tree resins, another eek, and all those shops displaying oracle cards for you to try and then the Goddess Temple…in fairness Eben chilled totally in the resin shop and Goddess Temple, proving to me that small does indeed make a difference, let alone the ambiance one creates, I love the Goddess temple, it has such a lovely feel to it and an opportunity for a candle offering and more oracle cards!

Then on to the White Spring and a run up the Tor…

A quick moment of spell making wand action on the top of the Tor with a stone I’d bought from Guernsey…

And a quick dowse to find the power spot…

And a quick photo with mummy

And then a run back down the Tor…

And a quick rolly polly too!

And then back to the White Spring, one of my most favourite places ever, I cannot tell you why, I have always loved it in there and feel invigorated and cleansed by a naked dip in it…that alone, getting your clothes off and wandering in public nude is just really liberating, but there’s something about the place, and this was before I discovered that the St Michael’s ley line goes right through it. I managed three dips within an hour and even Eben followed me into the shallow pool. You are discouraged from taking photos in there due to people bathing naked, but here’s an innocent one of Eben giving an offering to the Goddess (otherwise known as playing with the candles, he was determined he wanted to out one out and inevitably he did!)…

And outside, collecting the red iron water from Chalice Wells…

And the white calcium water from the White Spring…

And a rather tired mummy and Edie outside the entrance to the White Spring…

And then back to hanging…

And more hanging…

And yet more hanging, one handed too…

It gets hot all this hanging…

And after then, a quick shop and off for a much needed a quiet moment over dinner, never have I been more grateful for the iPad and headphones, entertaining him, while I could zone out and process the day…phew, non-stop since 6am and I didn’t even mention the swim at Street’s public swimming pool, or the various running races…or for that matter the amount of treats that have been consumed, all in all keeping his energy high until he crashed at 8!

Love from Glastonbury.

xx

Springs, stones and playgrounds!

Travelling with my manic ball of energy called Eben is certainly an interesting experience. It has been non-stop since we arrived in Southampton and headed up to Marlborough, first stop the Alton Springs.

We were challenged by a number of diversions but I would not be defeated and we did eventually find All Saints at Alton Priors, a beautiful twelfth-century church with a yew tree in the churchyard which is said to be 1,700 years old! The hollow trunk has been divided into two but it is still healthy, it’s rather amazing and well worth the visit. The whole place is magical, they found an old Sarsen stone with a hole in it (indicating its importance) buried in the church, an attempt had been made to break it in two, reminding me of my beloved Goddess menhir in Guernsey.

We were also here to see the springs that bubble up from greensand in this magical woodland between Alton Priors and Alton Barnes, just incredible, I’ve never seen anything like to before. There wasn't a huge amount of time to enjoy the healing potential of these springs as Eben was by then trying to chop the greenery with his pretend sword, which always drives me slightly mad because it seems such a waste of nature, to just destroy it like that. I did manage to get a video and take in the general ambience, it’s definitely a place to return and hang out - it’s one of several headwaters of the River Avon, which flows south to Durrington and Stonehenge, so it’s a special place historically.

We got to see the Alton Barnes white horse too, which is pretty cool, and the whole area is stunning, five miles south of Avebury in the Vale of Pwesey. This is village and thatch territory and the landscape itself was awash with the bright yellow of rapeseed making quite a tantalising scene for the eyes, even Eben thought it was pretty cool!

Up to Avebury next for a whistle stop tour. I was on a mission to find Devil’s Den, a wonderful dolmen set amongst the Marlborough Downs. I did ask for directions from a helpful family but I was struggling to find parking so ended up walking up a huge hill in the bright sunshine with Eben on my back, knowing I was going in the wrong direction, but hoping to bump into someone who might set me right. Alas not. I ended up calling E back home in Guernsey for directions but he wasn’t able to immediately help and it was only after I turned around and started walking down the hill, this time on the phone to my Mum as I had accidentally called her, that I spotted the dolmen in the distance and this jubilant feeling overtook me because it just stood out so majestically, albeit I now had another thirty minutes of walking to get to it.

Alas, I literally abandoned the car in the gateway of a field and traipsed with Eben still on my back in the warm morning sunshine along a bridle path out to the dolmen. It was well worth the walk and the sore feet that I have today, let alone the sunburn and the general sweatiness that ensued, the things we do for neolithic stones. But look at it! What a joy. What an incredible dolmen, like a two fingers up to the world; look what we did, we just balanced a huge stone on two others, just like that. I’m told it’s full of faeries at night, but that experience will have to wait for another time.

People don’t always believe me, because all they see is a bunch of stones in a field. But stones have a consciousness to them. Anyone who dowses will know this. You can literally dowse their aura and if you rest against a stone it will literally talk to you. I didn’t have a hue amount of time to converse with the dolmen, because dolmens send Eben totally crazy and he was maniacally running around it and jumping on me and it, and then a couple turned up so I accepted my fate and we carried along our way.

We stopped at the Sanctuary where the Michael and Mary ley lines are said to meet and I lay in the centre while Eben looked on from the car, he’s certainly not my little neolithic explorer like Elijah, this one is all lazy legs and car-side viewing if possible. I could feel the energy. It’s a big thing for me this Mary and Michael line, they are said to meet and form a chalice at the top of Glastonbury Tor, the sacred marriage and union, Tantra in the land…I’m kind of following the Michael line, which is aligned with Beltane, coming up soon on 1 May.

From there the Avenue at Avebury, Eben stayed in the car again as I sprinted, within view, to the initial stones, just to touch them and do some energy work, and then we were off again, driving through Avebury, how it pains me, but alas there is a sacrifice to be made and it was that, this isn’t just my trip…I did debate that I would just have to leave it at that, but then Adam and Eve, the cove, caught my eye and I am a sucker for coves, LOVE coves, so I drove out to them, parked up and sprinted again, in full view of Eben, out to those marvellous stones to say hi.

Then it was Silbury Hill, once again a massive sprint to the base of the hill and then that was it, Avebury done in super speedy time, which sums up Eben, everything is done super speedy…

Off to Bowood House, or at least the grounds of Bowood House, that were landscaped by Capability Brown back in the day, grade 1 too. Despite the landscaping they are amazing, there’s a huge amount of incredible mature trees and shurbs, and just this wonderful feel to the place. Not that we were there to enjoy the gardens so much as the adventure place ground, the best one in Wiltshire I’l have you know.

We’ve been here a few times previously, because back in the day it was home to Tractor Ted world, and Elijah was mad about Tractor Ted for a while. We used to visit the day after my Glastonbury retreat finished and I have a mix of memories of morning sickness when carrying Eben in utero and just needing to lie under the trees, to bringing him as a baby to the Big Machines open day and Elijah hanging out in an enormous combine harvester and meeting Les, from the videos, we have a photo of him somewhere, how we loved Les!

Nowadays there is no Tractor Ted world and the indoor soft play has gone but the adventure playground is amazing with this near vertical slide which the older children love, but was a step too far for Eben, no doubt his time will come as he was up amongst the trees on the various roped-walk ways. I went up once and that was enough for me! We managed to spend 3.5 hours pottering here in the sunshine with the many other families enjoying the holidays and the amazing weather.

Then it was the drive to Glastonbury, Eben fell asleep and I got to enjoy some peace and quiet! Now here we are, in Glastonbury, with the Tor and the Spring ahead, and lots of Glastonbury fun to be had…

xx

Recalibration and reorientation

Well it seems to me as if we are currently going through a period of recalibration and reorientation, not sure which way is up or down, or which direction to turn next.

The run up of bank holidays ahead doesn’t help, because the flow keeps getting broken, not that this is a bad thing, because there is also a desire to move beyond the pressures of time, but just it adds to the general mishmash of not knowing.

What is clear to me though, is we are all being encouraged on some level to connect with our pleasure and joy and let that be our guide for now. Life has become so serious, the uncertainty has made people tired and routine driven - to find some sense of normality in a world that is ever changing. Yet this can be stressful, the constant pressure and tension and it’s time now to let that go and settle into the dance of spring, as we approach Beltane and the fun and frivolity and indeed fertility this brings.

There is nothing now that needs to be done. This is a time of inaction, of simply being and allowing the recalibration and reorientation and just getting on with getting on, whatever that might mean. The heart will make it clear when the time is right to make a decision and this moment will not be missed, so don’t worry about that. If it is meant to come to you then it will, there is no need to go searching or grasping for it.

These are new times and the old ways won’t work so well now. We’re heading towards eclipse season (first one 16th May), this is a time to tie up loose ends and complete what still needs to be completed, to let go and release that which is no longer required, that talks of the old you, not the new you, that you are becoming. It’s a time of spring cleaning in many respects, of getting the affairs in order and letting the rest take care of itself.

Following the joy and pleasure will help enormously - what does make you feel alive? Whatever it is, prioritise it, know that you are worth it, and got for it, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says, this is not about them, it’s about you and if you can fill yourself up then you’ll have more to give to help fill others up too.

Happy letting go on the wane! Eben and I are off to Glastonbury on another pilgrimage.

Love Emma x

Finding our way

Well the benefit of having Covid again, was it brought me back to dark chocolate, which I had stopped eating in a quest for better sleep. I love chocolate and especially Booja Booja chocolate and it was a joy to taste that yummy loveliness again, in an attempt to ground myself, which is one of the many benefits of dark chocolate for me at least.

Covid aside, it’s also part of following the joy, one of my current explorations. It feels to me that life is far to short to not follow the joy, regardless of what others think. It’s been an interesting exploration as there are times when I realise that I am up against myself, and my mental imprinting and conditioning around being ‘selfish’. It’s a theme that pops up from time to time, because, like everyone else, I have been conditioned to be a certain way in this world, and being ‘selfish’ is not a quality that has been encouraged.

Still, in my world, being selfish is actually essential. If we’re not there for our self who else will be? And really, what is the point in continuously denying ourselves what makes us joyful and happy. Plus, we’re inherently selfish anyway, some might say they’re not, that they put others first, and they may well put others first, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a selfish motivation to their actions of putting others first. We all want to gain something from our life experiences, even if it is just a sit down with a cup of tea in front of the television.

That’s one thing I don’t do actually. I did attempt to watch a Channel 4 documentary last night on sex and healing of all things, as my mum had mentioned that there was a clip on Tantra (which is another joy), but the whole thing was just too painful for me to watch, when I don’t usually watch such things. I just cannot watch TV, it does something weird to me. So it was back to reading about ancient trackways instead, and dowsing, which is another of my big joys.

The other night, once the boys had finally gone to sleep (another joy after a long day!), I decided to go for a walk with my rods and so out I went, asking them to take me to the nearest neolithic stone of spiritual significance, and they took me on a convoluted journey through a couple of fields and around the back of a deserted farmhouse. It was dusk by then and I walked around in circles for a bit doubting the direction the rods were pointing, and then an owl flew out of a tree in that very direction, so I knew it to be true, and set off through more undergrowth and out onto a private lane, and alas, there ahead of me as I reached the roadway, was a neolithic stone in the gateway opposite chattering away.

Yes, stones talk. They have a consciousness, just like you and I. Spending time with stones can shoot ou consciousness, and let’s face it, they’ve been around a long time so there’s lots we can learn from them. This is one of the reasons I love stones so much, they have a lot to teach us. Stone circles are my favourite, there’s something about how they move energy that I find especially exciting. Not that I understand sacred geometry just yet, but the stones are teaching me bit by bit. I’m intending to start working the geometry of my moon garden, just waiting for the quartz points to arrive first.

This is the way in so much as we are shown the way, bit by bit, when the time is right. Often it involves a selfishness to it though, because it is about our self opposed to everyone else. Only our self knows it’s own journey here on Planet Earth, and this journey may not be what is expected of us, or fit into conventional thinking or societal conditioning. I don’t fit in, that’s for sure, but I have found a way to be here that allows more of who I am without it mattering whether I fit in or not.

It’s not easy though, to continuously feel as if you are going against the grain, but if there is one thing I learned on the full moon (and there were many gifts the moon brought with her) is that the way reveals itself in each moment, it cannot be planned. Even my trip to Glastonbury with Eben cannot be planned, not really, sure I have a sense of where I might go, but even that’s changing the closer I get to departure date but I know that the way will reveal itself eventually.

As for Covid, well that weaved its magic in my life and showed me another way, for which I shall always be grateful, coinciding with me finishing the Tantra course which revealed more of the way too. The moon also reveals a way, and life is changing, does change, moment to moment, as long as we can stay true, regardless of what others think or the opinions they hold of us - this too will always change.

Enjoy the bank holiday Monday.

Love Emma x

The full moon and its cosmic joking

Well there I was, writing about being careful about what you think…and there I was thinking how much I needed a break, my soul has been craving peace and tranquility, a few days free from the clock and time, to just be gently, pottering, in nature and around the garden and…my thoughts manifested into reality with another minor bout of Covid!

I did laugh out loud at the cosmic joke before bowing down to powers that be with deep gratitude for the opportunity to pause, rest and reset. Life had got busy, out of balance, too much rushing and giving and not enough time to let things be. I see the pattern. This is exactly what was happening when I got Covid the first time around at Christmas, and here we are at Easter…I work myself to the holidays and then don’t schedule a break…so Covid comes in to create one instead. I’m conscious of the pattern now, thank you Covid, and will try to schedule a break next time!

Covid itself is quite kind to me. I did get the aches and the shakes which alerted me to the fact I probably had Covid again, but after sleep and a lot of Reiki and she Ayurevdic remedies that quickly abated and while yes, we are requested to stay at home, I need the sea on my skin to feel alive, and so I’ve been in the sea, even managed a surf, which is something else that has joyfully returned in my life (thank you Tantric course for opening me up to deeper pleasure in my life) and this all coincided with menstruation, so I’ve been able to rest more fully into that and the blood wisdom that accompanies it…do the things that bring joy, and rest, when needed.

I’ve found myself drawn to the moon garden again, preparing it for the full moon on Saturday, I’m keen to better work the space this summer, I’m not quite sure how just yet, but I’m drawn to working more deeply with earth energy and sacred geometry. I have a plethora of new seedlings growing in my parents green house, new healing plants this time, well actually, a whole heap of calendula and echinacea again, but also milk thistle, Tulsi and clary sage to name a few. It was good to get my hands in the earth again, the moon rising, sun beginning to set.

As my Ayurvedic doctor said this morning, “things always come to us at the right time and in the best way”. She’s right. There’s been a few things coming at the right time and in the best way and Covid is definitely one of them. It’s a genius virus because it truly changes things, I suppose the fact it’s a ‘corona’virus says it all really, for it awakens more of the crown and for me anyway, it seems to allow me to see more clearly where I am out of balance in my life and what might need adjusting, I suppose it makes me more conscious of that which I have been trying to ignore - there was some significant adjustments after the first dose.

I know from others that this full moon is working this magic in other lives too, making us very well aware of some of our patterning and also the ways in which we distract ourself from being with ourselves, externalising much of our need to be wanted and needed, when really all that is wanted and needed is a deeper connection with self. In honouring this deeper connection with self we find the love that we often try to seek from outside of ourselves. And when we find that deeper love for self then we have much less need of others’ love for the sake of it, and much more love for others in a non-grasping, non-needy and unconditional way too. It’s genius. Thank you Covid. Thank you moon.

As I post this, I am now testing negative. That was a quick round but I wonder if its always quicker the second time around as the body already has natural immunity. Plus I knew how to be with it this time and could more easily see some of the lessons it was bringing. This is the first Easter I have had off from working in years and it feels amazing - sorry to those of you I cancelled, but if I’d have listened to my intuition, I shouldn't have scheduled working anyway…we live and learn!

Love to you all.

Enjoy the full moon!

x

Be careful what you think...

Recently, I have been noticing how many people create their own suffering through their tendency to catastrophise. This means that they imagine the worst possible outcome of an action or event, thinking about it as being a catastrophe or having a potentially catastrophic outcome, without having any concrete evidence to suggest that this is the reality of a situation.

This is often what feeds our anxiety - worrying about things that haven’t actually happened, but we imagine might happen, and we will seek evidence to suggest that these things will happen, whatever they are, in the future, that will somehow cause us pain and suffering. It’s kind of ironic because we create our pain and suffering simply by catastrophising and by thinking in a way that promotes anxiety and negativity (that is, believing our thoughts are real).

I’ve seen this in action, clients self-sabotaging new relationships because they catastrophise about what could happen, so stop themselves going there in the first place. I’ve also seen students completely ungrounded and destabilised because of reading too much material about ‘end of the world’ conspiracy stuff, without any actual evidence to suggest that what is being suggested is actually going to take place.

It doesn’t help that much of the spiritualism conspiracy movement is currently obsessed about the soul being taken away or controlled by the new world order, and yet the irony being that many of the people buying into this notion are creating their own soul separation and are caught in the mind and all its various imaginings.

In essence we are just soul. But we are mostly ignorant to it and mainly identify with the mind instead. The soul is eternal, it cannot be taken away from us or controlled. but as for the mind? Sure, we can be brainwashed, I mean look how brainwashed we are by media, let alone conventional thinking and societal, educational and cultural conditioning. We can easily lose our mind to all this.

We have to be careful how we create our anxiety. My yoga teacher always says, if something is agitating the mind, it is best to stay away from it. So it is with media or conspiracy theory or anyone’s opinions or notions or imaginings that somehow agitate us. We should know this from Covid, the panic and drama that accompanied this, always worst case scenario to the extent that some people stopped living as their fear was so great.

I don’t really look at the news, not because I don’t care, but because me reading it and getting upset about say the suffering in Ukraine is not going to positively change things, it’s just going to agitate me and put me into a more negative spin, which will have a negative effect on all those around me, and because I’ll be in a more negative spin, I’ll attract more of it into my life that day, by he very nature of the law of attraction.

And this is what concerns me about all this catastrophising and conspiracy theorising especially if its done in the name of the soul, because it’s really helping no one, which seems completely at odds with soul expansion and heart opening. You see we create our reality based on the thoughts we think and if too many people are thinking negative ‘end of world, soul being take thoughts’ then they will collectively create more of that in the world.

As Freddy Silva writes, “As one note in the chorus of creation, the human being is special. Its thoughts become sounds, sounds become words, words generate actions, and coupled with intent, actions manifest all manner of consequences. This makes every one of us responsible and accountable for what we manifest. Fifteen centuries of European history teaches us that if a greater mass of people hold an overly pessimistic image of the future, chances are that image will manifest as reality. Apocalypses are seldom the result of predictions and more the release of pathological behaviour in society which creates the situation in the end (Wall and Ferguson 1998). Humanity’s war record of teh twentieth century alone is reason enough to want to change, but to achieve it we must first overcome the cultural illusion that we are somehow separate from the Creative Spirit.

For more than six thousand years, Eastern and pagan mysticism have shown that we cannot connect with Spirit through our very own antenna, the human body. Through the simple act of pressing the palms together, fingertip to fingertip, we adopt the pose in countless sculptures of figures frozen in the act of praying, a ritual instinctively practiced a billion times every day throughout the world, without many of its participants being aware that it is an action far beyond a call to prayer: By pressing the palms you are activating an electronic system which connects you with teh Onesness of creation and allows you, as a part of that Oneness, to intercede upon your own behalf through your thoughts. As the saying goes, “You have the whole world in your hands”.

I really wish that we would remember this. That every moment we have a choice about how we relate to Spirit and to soul and often it is not that anyone is taking that away from us, but we are limiting ourselves in our connection to it by filling our minds with triviality and media litter. We have a choice about how we spend our time and the environment in which we rest our mind - online or in nature? It’s always a choice.

We’re often repeating the same narrative fed to us by media, whether that be mainstream or alternative. I’ve been reading a book about the secrets of the fields and the mysticism of crop circles, and in there appeared this wonderful quote which you might think was written now…

“Preceding these energy shifts and changes are times of confusion and apparent self-destruction, and few will doubt that we are now living in turbulent times. Gregg Braden sees this as one indicator of a vibratory shift:

“Some individuals feel it rippling throughout every cell in their body, perceiving that time, and their lives, are speeding up. Others are experiencing a new kind of confusion, as if nothing in their lives fits any longer…the systems that provide the infrastructure to life and society, inclusive of personal systems such as health, read cycle or not, one fact remains. Within a relatively short period of human historfinance and relationships, are in a state of dynamic flux. …Whether you believe in the near-term close of a great cycle or not, one fact remains. Within a relatively short period of human history, regardless of your age, you have witnessed events that rocked the very foundations of who and what you believe your world is about” (Braden 1993) as quoted from Secrets in the Field by Freddy Silva.

Yes, that’s right! That quote was from 1993! But reading it we could think it was just yesterday. And this is partly what I mean. We’re constantly saying the same thing, because we seem to forget that life on Planet Earth is in a constant state of dynamic flux. Always we are trying to make it certain and known, but by its very nature it simply can’t be. But nonetheless we put in all these societal structures and ways of being to make us feel as if it is constant and known. Then say Covid-19 comes in, or a natural disaster and we’re thrown into disarray and try to make sense of it, to understand how it is that we lost the stability of life on Planet Earth, without appreciating that this is how it is - we never really know what’s going to come next, despite our best efforts.

We live this reality daily, because it is reflective of the battle between the head and the heart. The head wants everything known and certain, so it bases its analysis on what has happened previously, keeping us therefore trapped in the past and what’s been…parents will often raise their children as they were raised because they know that that kept them safe, even if it stifled their soul in some way and does the same to their children, but they don’t question it, because, well, it’s known, it’s what’s done, it’s conventional thinking in action.

The heart however isn’t beholden to the same need for safety as the mind. The heart likes adventure and taking us into unknown territory, of possibility, beyond the limitations of the mind. There is no certainty when we follow the heart, only a sense that if we don’t, well the heart will be suppressed, depressed, unhappy somehow and we will never be able to rest easily, not really, we might convince ourselves that life can be lived easily without the input of the heart, but we tend to have to numb ourselves somehow from the pain of separation that this creates.

This then brings us all the way back to the thoughts we think. Our reality is exactly a reflection of this. And that’s what I love yoga and Reiki, because they help to expand our mind so that we see things differently and think differently in the process, so that we let go of outdated ways of thinking or negative patterning that keeps us limited and trapped in conventional thinking. It’s not easy. The mind and it’s ego identification does not like being slowly annihilated so that the mind can be opened and expanded, but of course the mind needs to let go to be able to expand into new territory. The break down is not always pleasant, but a necessary process for our spiritual growth.

But what kind of world are we trying to create? As love is the foundation of the universe, it seems to me that if we could all drop deeper into love for Self then we might start to create more of this vibration in the outer world too. Imagine a world of love! Like the ancients we too can learn a lot from nature. Nature nows only unconditional love. Look how it gifts us the breath for free, all we have to do is receive it. Yet we have a very tricky time living unconditionally. We are always at odds, trying to pop in conditions, just in case…

It’s one to ponder, not only how we relate to our Self but how we relate to others. Also to watch our thoughts and our tendency towards negativity and neutralising anything positive. And as for catastophising, it’s worth watching that too. Seeing how we’re all individually adding to the collective dream around end of world and end of soul neurosis. maybe then we might ease the collective anxiety that seems to be pervading our society, as if this too, anxiety, has become a pandemic all of its own and this…because we struggle with the transitory and dynamic flux nature of life on Planet Earth.

The key is to keep going within and connecting with our centre and our own nature and appreciating that all is in flux and being able to flow with this, noticing our thoughts and the manner in which these create our suffering. It helps enormously to connect with nature too, to get outside, amongst the trees and bathing in their energy and consciousness, or on the beach, anywhere that brings us back to earth and calms our entire system. And really we also need to shift from being egocentric to cosmocentric - creating a vision of reality that places the emphasis in the universe or nature, as opposed to the view that focuses on humankind as the most important element of existence. Maybe then we’ll realise more of the eternal nature of the soul.

Coming home to ourselves

There is something afoot, the energy is really unsettled and the anxiety and general pain of humanity can be felt in the air. I feel like we’re being squeezed again as we wax to the full moon next week, and eclipse season ahead next month.

It’s about love, because it’s always about love, because we’re here to learn more about love, to experience greater love, to be love. But obviously there’s an opposite to that, and it’s very easy to close our heart to the pain of the world because, well, it’s painful.

We’ve just gone through two years of a pandemic that has caused so many to close their hearts to those they previously loved, simply because they held different opinions and perspectives on say vaccination or lock-down or whatever it might have been. Friendships have ended, siblings have fallen out, families have been split, people haven’t felt they could speak their truth, at least not without being judged for it. The heart beat of the world dimmed.

And now we have a war and the media is filled with accounts and photos of acute suffering, of people killing people, because they were born in a different country, have a different perspective, don’t speak the same way, whatever it is that motivates one to kill another for some cause they truly believe in. It’s yet more separation and division, yet more closing of the heart, yet more us and them, yet more buying into the notion of good and bad, yet more ego-fuelled living that further closes the heart.

It would be easy to lose hope, to flounder in the pain of it all, the anxiety and the feelings of helplessness and despondency, but this serves no one either, not really. Sure we may feel it. I am very aware that the energy of anxiety is very much felt by many and this general tiredness and weariness because we’ve been through so much already, lives have been significantly changed the last few years and there’s no respite, not period of integration, nothing stable and certain. But we can’t. Because of all this gives a wonderful opportunity to find more heart.

As a humanity we really do have to dig deeper. We’re here to find more of our heart and we each have a responsibility towards that, if not for ourselves then for the future generations ahead. We are the micro of the macro, what we do influences everyone else around us. Take our aura, this extends out, or can extend out a metre or so depending on how healthy we are. If we’re feeling joyful and open hearted our aura will be strong and positively influence everyone around us. If we feel angry and annoyed, then our aura diminishes and we repel others away from us, separating and divining ourselves from others.

Our incessant need to define ourselves doesn’t help either. Always this need to separate and divide, to be someone other than everyone else, forgetting that we’re all human and all in this together, and really can’t we just all get along and move beyond all this obsessive labelling. Us humans have gone mad in our quest to be somehow different, the ‘me me me’ culture that we’re breeding. If only we could find more of our heart and open to it, beyond our fear of pain, of not knowing, of having no certainty, of being ok without it having to look a certain way, life, love, whatever it might be.

To love without putting up the barriers, without adding in conditions can be the hardest thing. Yet this is where a spiritual practice like yoga and Reiki takes us. To place where we can love unconditionally, which means being open hearted and living regardless of what comes back at us and being absolutely OK with that. So much easier said than done, and I talk from my own experience of observing this and the conditions I suddenly put in place because of my vulnerability and inherent fear of being rejected and/or experiencing pain.

Yet I’m very aware that pain is actually our friend. With pain we have something to work with, an opportunity to go deeper, to see more of our patterning and the manner in which we create our own suffering due to our mental constructs and conditioning and our need to avoid pain, this being the irony! To be truly vulnerable take great courage and strength of heart, takes knowing the Self on a deep level.

Always, always, always it has to come back to us each individually and how we are relating to ourselves and to others. It’s all very well looking outside of ourselves and moaning about the behaviour of others, of the atrocities of war, for example, but what about the atrocities in our own lives? What about the way we label good and bad, evil and pure, spiritual and non-spiritual overlooking that there is balance to everything, light and dark, all part of the greater whole, so why do we keep rejecting always half?

This takes deep honesty and yet more courage, because it is one thing recognising how badly we talk to ourselves, how much we give ourselves a hard time and loathe aspects of ourselves (how good or bad we are, sigh) and quite another to do something about it and find the strength to change it, to begin to love and accept ourselves, to forgive those we feel have harmed us and to stop the blame culture that always has us looking outside ourselves and that changes nothing in the long term, just keeps us locked in a pattern of blame and victimhood, of not taking responsibility.

Yes, we’ve all been harmed. Yes, we’ve all got wounds. Yes, we’ve all felt pain. But we have a choice. We can wallow in it allowing all of this to continue to define us, or we can do something about it, take responsibility throw ourselves into practice and into healing and go for it, make a real difference in this world, deepen our relationship to heart and truly open our heart to the world, love unconditionally come what may, positively shift our vibration, strengthen our aura and help to shift our perspective into something far more positive and heart-based in the process, lighter. Heck, we might even start to live more lightly on the earth in the process…

I could rant now about the traffic on Guernsey and the lack of consciousness and responsibility about living lightly, about this planet and our need for big cars on such a small island and all the identity issues tied in here around power and money and control and ego, but I shan’t, I’ll leave that for another day, but cars to me and the traffic just seem to highlight how far we still have to go to shift from ego to heart…from the unconscious to the conscious…and how much healing we still have to do individually and as a collective humanity…

I’ll leave you with this lovely quote by C JoyBell,

“Pain is a pesky part of being human, I've learned it feels like a stab wound to the heart, something I wish we could all do without, in our lives here. Pain is a sudden hurt that can't be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing. Pain feels like a fast stab wound to the heart. But then healing feels like the wind against your face when you are spreading your wings and flying through the air! We may not have wings growing out of our backs, but healing is the closest thing that will give us that wind against our faces.”

If you need some grounding and centring, some coming home to yourself, and you have a yoni then please come along to the Yoni Yoga fund-raiser on Saturday 4-5.30pm at St Martin’s Community Centre in aid of Bright Tights, in honour of my friend, Marie, who sadly passed from cancer of the vulva at the age of 41 last September. This is an opportunity to come home to ourselves, connecting heart and womb-space, the inner guide and inner wisdom, for healing and love and greater connecting to Self, our soul, essentially. No need to book. Thank you!

Love Emma xx

Following joy on the new moon.

So here we are on the dark night of the moon, where there is literally no light. It can be an empty space, unnerving for some, because the moon appears gone, like the sun on the winter solstice, will it ever return? And yet return it does, the new moon tomorrow and soon the beautiful sliver visible in a few days time and waxing all the way to the full moon on the 16th.

It’s an energetic month ahead, we have two new moons in the month which is really unusual and various planetary meetings that are definitely going to shift things up for us and no doubt highlight even more of he division in this world around how we want to live our life and our values inherent within that - love or fear, it’s going to keep testing us…

This is not helped (or perhaps it is, depending on one’s perspective!), by time speeding up, since the Equinox it’s getting faster, and losing an hour didn’t help so that this week has been a major catch pop for so many of us. There is an ungroundedness in the air to, most of my clients his week have had a noticeable imbalance in their root chakra, many up in heir heads trying to figure it all out and not quite down here in the body and on Planet Earth.

We have a terrible habit of doing that. Not just disassociating when things get tough, but of residing up in our heads trying to literally figure it all out. We can’t. We can try. but the magic is not to be found up there. The magic is in the body and down on Planet Earth. This is the paradox. To expand we ned to come all teh way down. The more we can go down with gravity, the more that will take us up. But in a freeing way. New age spiritualism has it all back to front and then practitioners wonder why their spiritual practices don’t seem to work.

We can’t bypass the body. We also can’t live without the Earth. Mind you, we could be excused for thinking that we can. As my cousin highlighted to me last week, isn’t it ridiculous that nature is now reduced to ‘reserves’, as if we should be delighted that we have reserved some nature. I mean nature used to be everywhere. But now we develop on every scrap of it and contain parts of it in our attempt to make it seem like we care, and all the while forgetting that without nature (WE ARE NATURE) that humanity cannot exist on Planet Earth. Stop the development!

As for the mind, we can never figure it all out. The mind likes everything to be known and certain but it can suffocate the heart and soul in the process. Many of us know this, we can feel it for ourselves, but it is very difficult to live in an empty way, without somehow trying to fix it or make it certain. We want assurance. We want to know that all will be well. But to live in alignment withe the divine, well we have to live in the emptiness of the present moment, of not knowing, so that there is space for expanded consciousness to enter, lightening us up in the process.

What has become increasingly apparent to me is the need to fill ourselves up with joy - to follow our joy and let this be our guide, let this be our healer, let this orientate us into the present moment where … all is well. I have been orientating in this direction and using it as an opportunity to enquire within, to see all the barriers I have set up around this, and noticing how our sense of well-worth (or lack in many cases) prevents us in opening to our joy - are we worth it? YES! Should we feel guilt? NO!

This set me off down a path of perspective, another theme this new moon is ushering in. Which perspective are we taking? Our perspective shifts our experience and how we interpret our experience will shift our perspective. I have become increasingly aware how so many catastrophes and see there cup as half empty rather than half full and making things much worse - in their minds - than they need to be and limit themselves and their experience of life in the process.

I am also increasingly aware how our relationship to ourselves shifts our perspective and the way that we interpret the world. If we have been taught to hate ourselves, as so many have (our society is so good at that, that we don’t even know we have become victim to it until we try to unpick it years later) then even when we are fed a positive comment, we will neutralise it or make it negative. This can make it very difficult for other people, who may feel they have complimented us and are helping to build our self-esteem but have no idea of how we may have interpreted it differently. It’s a reminder that we ALL internalise the world differently.

As for limitation, well there are many ways that we self limit ourselves, not quite taking responsibility for our own feelings or lack and projecting these onto others, blaming them. Only we can fill ourselves up. Only we can nurture ourselves. Only we can discover what brings us joy and fulfilment. And when we know, we should follow it, letting go of any of our crazy thoughts that tell us we are not worth it and that we have all these other things that need to be done. Jeez, we only get one chance on Planet Earth in this incarnation anyhow.

We should remember of course, to offer our gratitude to the universe. The universe wants nothing more than to fill us up with our joy, but it cannot do that unless we open to it and receive. We need to be empty too. Empty of how we think it should be, or look like, of trying to control outcome or make it the way we want it to be, of not grasping…instead we need to get the little mind out of the way and let it be filled with limitless abundance and love instead.

I’ve found it an enlivening wane, these last few days especially, helped by Sark no doubt, with greater awareness of my patterning around grasping and trying to make certain and instead following the joy and settling into the emptiness. Not easy, but interesting! We should soon pop out of this cold spell, ready to fully emerge into the fertility of spring and all we have ahead to create and bring in - joyful times ahead if we choose.

Love Emma x

P.S. Thank you for my beautiful roses my beautiful Russian friend, Natasha! xxx