The summer low-down
Ok, so keeping the blog up to date didn’t quite go as planned.
And to be honest I’m going to use this as a great example of something a lot of us tend to do. We procrastinate the things we truly enjoy. We avoid the things we love, for various fears and even excuses of lack of time. My excuse? I had been struggling with being in and out of flares… and then when I started to recover I’ve been enjoying festivals, singing and being present with my people and the sunshine. I basically just didn’t show up for my blog and couldn’t face writing some of this stuff down.
Like any other cyclically moving entity we go through phases like seasons, and I’ve existed over the summer months as a little more hermit-like. Burrowing away, surrendering to rest and figuring things out softly with an ebb and flow with the tides of change. And sometimes that requires the grace of privacy, sometimes not… either way my blog slipped by the wayside, but not due to any lack of love for it.
More like, if the energy is still running on reserves, I’d rather not post anything than post something half-hearted.
BUT it’s time to tap back into my newly restocked-refreshed-rejuvenated energies and hit the keyboard.
Let’s kick the blog back off this week with a rambling over a few of my key takeaways from this Summer. Today is an Aries full moon after all, so feels a potent time to share some reflections and lessons learned or wisdoms remembered.
Surrender cannot be forced. We need to create safe spaces to allow it to naturally occur. When we overly theorise the idea of surrender, we often are still doing the opposite because it’s forced. As we ease into softness, stillness, rest, hibernation… we create space for healing, for integration and gentle rumination or reflection. In my own experience of chasing surrender I could intellectually understand it and yet lacked the ability to embody it, for I was still operating from a stress-state. And that’s why surrender is an embodied shift away from the mind and into the heart. Surrender is all about being heart-felt, heart-led and open-hearted. Surrender is a trusted, love state like retreating into the womb of yourself.
Humanity is all about the heart. Our heart is the largest living magnet we have inside of us, not the brain. And it is our heart energy that causes people to be magnetic. The more we feed our heart, our love, and operate from this space… the more magnetic we become. And I don’t mean in a linx-advert-people-running-along-the-beaches-towards-a-pounding-heart… I think when you experience these heart-led people you will just know. The heart is also inextricably linked to fire. As we gather in a circle around a literal or metaphorical fire, we are fed by the energy and the cataclysm of it. There is a heat and passion that drives us all, we find it fascinating. When we humans gather in a circle there is an anticipation, something will happen in the centre which will guide the group as a catalystic flame to us… the dancing moths. We will waft dangling arms, the energetic antennae of our hearts… pumping this love state our through our finger tips and reading the room just the same.
Sound needs movement. Ok, so others might be like… errrr yeah duhhhhh Autumn! But I’ve been taught to sound and sing, I’ve been taught to move and train. Aside from tap dancing, I haven’t really spent much time integrating my sound or my singing as an embodied practice involving movement. But of course! Our body IS our instrument. Our movement is transmission, it is a means of amplification! We create sound and SEND IT, we direct it, transmute it and channel it through our movement. We can also spread it like a heart-felt wild fire amongst others by combining such a potent mechanism of transmission such as sound with movement. Is there anything better than embodying sound with movement? Literally… LITERALLY the definition of embodiment. (Watch this space, a firm return to music is happening)
Time is a healer, the space of wisdom and keeper of the quiet. In the quiet space that time provides we can listen to the universe, listen to our innate inner wisdom and also just be. We are, after all, human beings and not human doings. When we are so busy as human doings we can lose sight of ourselves, our path or direction. We become distracted, disconnected and can eventually become dis-eased. Of course this is not to say everyone who is busy must be sick, but when we operate from this doing space, the yang, the masculine 24/7 we will become out of balance. At some point the energy bailiffs will come knocking and you’ll be forced to pay up with extended rest. When we create space- physical, mental, emotional or metaphysical- we also create a vacuum in which something else can enter… what’s the saying? “you cannot pour from an empty cup”… well you can’t add more to one that’s already full.
If I were to try an summarise all the many, many, MANY lessons learned over the summer… I would say that I have acquired a new depth of embodiment, instead of knowing what that means intellectually… I finally tapped into some deep dark felt intuitive embodiment. And it feels womb-like. The deeper I dive the more irresistibly-alluring-slightly-discombobulating-am-I-slightly-crazy-yet-comforting the process is. As we connect deeper into our bodies and sit more comfortably within our Self, we become more authentic. We operate from one space, rather than several disjointed ideas of our “Self”. Over the summer I learned what it means to integrate.
Do you wanna know something else?
I mean, it might be obvious to you but this has been such a visceral re-realisation but… the intuition is a hella chaos. BUT only for the thinking mind. The more we fight the intuition, the more likely we will end up suffering. When I sit to ask for my own wisdom, when I sit and ask for advice from my ancestors, the first voice that speaks is my intuition. Sometimes she gives me answers I have no reason to follow…
But the more I practice listening to her, the more miracles life provides.
The more miracles life provides, the more I trust, I love and I believe.
You should try it,
A