Bloganuary Prompt: How Are You Brave

2nd January 2023

How am I brave?

That’s an interesting question. We rarely think about how brave we are – some of us may think a lot of how fearful we are. Fearful of so many different things.

When I was a little girl, my world was turned upside down and I became very aware of how things can change so fast and so irrevocably.

I hadn’t realised that there would be strategies put into place by my unconscious mind to ‘protect’ me. This protection has kept itself intact for many years.

I would never have put the label ‘brave’ on the things I have done, chosen, become, probably due to the remarks and comments of those in authority over me: those decision makers who were only thinking of my own good… in reality it was the most accommodating for them.

There was something in my character, something I have come to call my Maverick Self, my Mother called it dumb defiance.

Although I may not have been totally sure in Primary School what I wanted to do, most of the time it was staying in the cupboard under the stairs (yes, it happened for real) reading my ‘Tell Me Why’ magazine and playing with my desk and chalkboard: I wasn’t really welcome in the bedroom I shared with my elder Sister, she being 10 years my senior. There were many reasons we didn’t get on, the most valid of which I didn’t get to hear about it until a few years ago.

I have just followed my gut to a certain extent. Though the word ‘compulsion’ does come into it somewhere.

Not sure about the consequences, not really paying attention to them, I lived in the moment more often than not. It was in my early childhood I learned the craft of dissociation. The understanding that things could happen and my consciousness would not be there was an acceptable thing.

I use it a lot for pain management these days. It also allows the process of journeying – I am used to ‘leaving’ so it was easy for me to go into a trance… at the beginning though it wasn’t so easy to figure out where I was supposed to be going; that took practice.

There have been many Caves I have been reticent to go into. It was the knowing that the answers lay within that was the push I needed to get me in there.

So many secrets, so many Caves.

In Shamanic Practice there are Guides, Spirit Animal also known as Power Animals. Each of these comes to connect with us throughout our lives, some will be known as Totem animals and they are the mainstay, others come for specific issues, adventures… Caves.

You may already know about the Wolf being a mystical, magical force and this is very true in this belief system.

Wolf is known as ‘The Pathfinder’ in the real world the Wolf travels in both night and day, they cross the ‘tween times (a very magical time and space) they are family oriented, but also can be lone nomads without Pack.

The Pathfinder will guide us to the ‘roads less travelled’ they will show us the way to the Cave we seek; and even though we may not be aware of their existance we somehow all ways know to seek the Cave.

We are all brave in different ways, we are not consciously aware of it most of the time… if we thought about it, we might not push through the challenges that are coming our way.

Due, I suppose to all the Caves I have been into when dis-ease came I mobilised my defences. Everything I had learned through travelling those Paths, all of my training in Veterinary work and in Shamanic work was brought to the fore.

I made conscious choices and took my Husband with me in those decisions.

Each day was it’s own, it would come and what came with it would be done by bedtime

I refused to identify with it – it would never be spoken or thought of as ‘my dis-ease’

I researched as much as I could on the mind / matter field and found Huna

Only the people who HAD to know about it were told and they were few and far between.

All the resources and allies I could muster were brought on board.

I got through it all, there were some lasting side effects of the medical treatment, these were helped by all that was brought during the challenges we faced, my Husband was with me throughout, supporting me by letting me do what I had to do and be the way I needed to be.

I came to realise that I had been preparing for this all of my life. All the Caves were holding the resources that came into their own at the time they were most needed.

How am I brave?

I am brave due to the belief that I have the will and the power to overcome those challenges that come my way. I am brave by using the knowledge I have gained in life or seeking out that which I do not have yet. I am brave as I know that pain passes, I understand that we are all stronger than we are taught to think we are.

I am a Pathfinder by nature. I have that energy. I will go into the Cave because I can and I know that what is in there be it Bear or other, that Cave is there for me, to teach me how to go forward in this World.

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A Path with Heart

How Do We Find A Path With Heart?

Carlos Castaneda told us all about taking the ‘Path with Heart’ he also said that if you were already on a Path that you found had no Heart, then there would be no shame in leaving it and taking another route.

How many times have we found ourselves on a Path that we know has no meaning for us any more, even if it did in the first place?

There are so many occasions that we find ourselves saying yes when we really want to say no, and just to be clear this is where you recognise the feeling of a no Heart Path!

What Castaneda was saying was about enthusiasm, inspiration, joyful anticipation, and there being so much of all of that, that we carry on immune to the pains of being the first to make that route through all those obstacles.

We are so wrapped up in the bundle of aspirational, energetic flow of the dream about to come true that we can’t hear naysayers! Those mountains are molehills, those figures and facts are for other’s businesses not ours.

It may not even be a business it can be anything. A new look for our life. A new outlook on life. A different belief about who we are in this life. Anything at all.

Understanding it is there waiting for us, is one thing.

Reaching out, taking action and making it happen is another….yet another is sustaining that change and making it our own and be identifiable as the person who now is….

For many of us, our lives were mapped out via someone else’s expectation of who we should be. Historically this would happen

To Know Where You’re Going, Remember Where You’ve Been

Not saying at all that other’s ideas of what we should be doing and where we could be going with that thing we do is wrong…at least it’s not wrong for them… but is it right for the individual they are making decisions for?

It is ultimately our choice to either live our lives on the back of someone else’s expectations and desires or our own.

The thing is, it’s all about the consequences of choosing to go our own way.

When we do there will be many nay sayers who will so enjoy ‘I told you So!’ They may well be super smug at the news of an apparent failure or setback that ‘could be seen’ as a failure but isn’t necessarily so…

Come on. Did you really think that even if you had gone out and done what others expected of you, it would be all plain sailing?

It can be more daunting to go out on a limb, to go your own way, to take the plunge etc. etc. etc. that doesn’t mean that you can’t change tack and look in other directions to make life work for you, the way you want it to be.

We can, you can, they can. Even when things are set in stone, they can be ‘weathered out’

We don’t really want to wait that long though.

The one thing that may help with your decision to do what you want as opposed to what you perceive is being expected of you is to ask the question.

‘Am I doing this for me, for my wants and needs or am I placating, easing, allowing someone else’s ideas and expectations to be mine?

You tell me which is going to be the more fulfilling and inspiring.

do your thing

When we are doing what we really want to do, something we have passion and drive for; we become more at ease in ourselves. We become content. We are also inspired daily to see what we do as something wonderful and fulfilling.

There is always at least one Maverick in a family, why not be the one in yours…. I know I am the Maverick in mine!

The Salve of Solitude

solitude and the sea

Solitude is a state of mind and being for me.

I can be in a space with anything from one other to 500 or more and still be in a state of solitude. I believe that we are in that state naturally. It is a sense of Self, not of being alone or overlooked. That is not solitude that is loneliness – as I see it.

The mind is a Universe of solitude. For some it becomes filled with fast moving thoughts and ideas, inspirational blasts of energy spark off, firework like, and they find it nigh on impossible to close the door on those intrusions.

Yes, the mind is our Universe, our very own.

We can travel light years in the time it takes to have the notion. Somewhere on the other side of the Universe, the mirror of that reflects the very same notion.

We have such power, such a wealth of Resource and yet we actively, voluntarily chain ourselves to dogma. Dogma that is not even our own, but handed down in whispers each keeper adding or subtracting from the original so there is nought but the skeleton of the message left for us to make some kind of sense.

Therefore I travel within my Universe. I will look for and sometimes find another Universe that is at one with my own, not the same, similar in it’s make up.

I suspect that there have been many who have discovered the solitude of the mind lately. It has been recorded that this cessation of constant chatter, for some has caused distress. They have forgotten to remember the natural state of solitude in the womb, even when there are multiples, each one is its own Being. Each one nourished by one umbilical cord to the Source.

Is it that which we seek so ardently? Are we always seeking that one Source? The solitude, peace and comfort, the fertile dark of the womb, do we look at Space and wonder how we connect to Source without a physical umbilical cord? Is that why people feel disconnected and lost now?

Source has always been manifested in the physical, but has all ways been metaphysical. The transferance of our Universal minds to a gadget, a search engine, has physicalised the miracle of the mind’s ability to seek out information and store it. There is now and has been for some time; outwardly focussed validation of Self, of identity. Solitude has not been sought for many as they see it as a vacuum. Perhaps a desert of being with just themselves. It makes no sense really to be afraid of oneself, and yet we are many of us, strangers to ourselves.

I go inside for solitude, and in that state I perceive and understand many wonderful things. I meditate on these and when I feel that I can take the hustle and bustle and noise of the other’s chaos of having to be seen to be popular and right and frenzied, then I will bring myself back to the party, oft times to hear someone say to me, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’ a vapid platitude to which I have been known to answer, ‘It just did’.

A Dream That Became…

The Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet.

When I was about 5 years old, something happened that has had a lasting effect on me.

I was awakened by an unfamiliar voice. It was a gentle voice. It did not however, belong in my house.

I was not afraid, more curious. I have always been just that; curious, and as Alice would say this was indeed, ‘curiouser and curiouser.

I lay, listening for movement, any indication of another person in the room or next door in my Parent’s room.

All was quiet.

I whispered, ‘Mum’ and waited. She had bat like hearing and I can tell you it was impressive; what that woman could hear when we didn’t particularly want it heard, and with only one ear! The other, well she burned that ear drum out with peroxide when she tried to dye her hair as a teenager.  This night however, this night she must have been sleeping with her ‘good ear’ on the pillow, and Dad was snoring. I was alone with the disembodied voice.

As I believe most children of this age do when confronted with situations that are not entirely ‘usual’ and there are no Parental guides; I looked for instances where I knew there would be a ‘how to react’ and I didn’t have one really, so I did what I have done since in these situations. I decided to ‘wing it’!

I sat up in bed, in the dark and I waited. The voice hadn’t seemed at all menacing, it actually sounded like someone does when they are trying to stir one from sleep in the morning. He’d said my name three times in increasing volume and intensity. There was no shouting, just an increase in the volume and that kind of importance factor. The ‘you really have to wake up now’, tone.

As I waited and my eyes adjusted to the dark; it never occurred to me to turn on the bedside lamp, it seemed like it wasn’t really so dark at all. In fact it was quite light really. Then a tiny speck of bright light pierced into my awareness. There at the end of my bed a couple of feet off the floor, something was happening.

The bright thing looked like a tiny square tile, and it was glowing golden yellow. It sort of flipped open like a book and became another tile of light, and another and another. These were not all golden yellow, these others were blues and greens, a mosaic of tiny tiles of light in my room; not just randomly there but coalescing into a form.

As the form took shape there was, I realised more happening, there was sound! No, not the voice that had awakened me, but a tonal sing-song kind of chant and a deep long bass tone. I had never heard such a sound before…then how could it be so familiar?

Being 5 or so, I didn’t dwell. After all there was this truly wonderous sight in front of me sitting, suspended, somehow at the end of my bed. He was beautiful. He was peaceful, he was entrancing.  He was made up of these greeny blue, turquoise tiles and the golden yellow light. He sat legs crossed with something in his left hand and his right was held up as if in greeting. At least that is how it looked to me at the time. He was exotic-bright. He was in my room. I was woken up to see him. I wanted so much to go with him, I remember leaning more and more toward him.

And then he was gone.

From that time onwards, when I was in distress, emotionally, mentally, physically I would have a dream. It was also after the ‘visitation’ that I became fascinated with Tibet and everything about it.

I dreamt that I was with a group of people and we were travelling in Tibet. We found ourselves in the mountains and there was a monastery. We went through these fantastically painted doors and there was a long room, banked up on each side behind rows of butter lamps were monks. Their robes red and orange, their faces serene, they chanted a sing-song chant I remembered. At the end of the room there was a stone dias, upon which a lectern stood. There was a single long window just above and behind the lectern and on the lectern was a great tome of a book.

Each of us in the party took it in turn to ascend to this lectern and as we approached the book a monk appeared from one side with a circlet made of iron. This was placed on our heads as we read a page of the book. As we read the light spilled from the window behind us and illuminated the pages of the book. To me as I waited my turn it looked like they were being bathed in the light. Their faces shone in some otherworldly way.

My turn.

I was suddenly there, at the lectern. The book was the grandest, most unique thing I have ever seen. The binding was what looked like wolf skin, I had my hands there and there was that energy, it was red, from what I could see of the edges, but it was what was written on the pages… before the Monk placed the circlet on my head I could see some kind of language there, it made no sense to me. Once the circlet was on my head, everything changed. The light was so bright, it cold burned my eyes. They were not what I was using to read. There was something else going on. It was indescribable. What I remember is, this was the relating of the journey of my Soul through time. This one set of passages in this book was the story of me. There was the future there also, it was there, I read it.

They took the circlet from my head and I was no longer able to remember the information. It seems the future will unfold as it is written and not to be ‘edited’ by me. Though, I have an idea that there is a way to do it.

I dreamed that dream for years.

Then in January of 2019 I received word of a pension I ‘forgot’ I had. I also saw that my friend and Teacher, a Nepalese Shaman was taking people on pilgramage to Mt Kailash. I immediately knew I was going on that trip.

I was 60 years old. I finally got to Tibet.

I finally saw the butter lamps and heard the chanting and most amazingly I heard the bass tone of the Tibetan Horn the way I remembered it. I had heard it on the film Kundun by Martin Scorsese and recognised it. I had seen one in a shop window on Glastonbury High Street, but when I was in Tibet, so high, the atmosphere, the energy, the knowledge that a whole culture was being quietly and incrementally erased brought that visitation sharply into focus.

I have never dreamed that dream again. It stopped shortly before going to Tibet. The one thing that I brought back with me though, the one thing that made my heart and Soul sing when I found him in the deep dark belly of a shop in Kathmandu… my visitor, with his robes made of shiny turquoise tiles…

my visitor

 

 

Shifting The Shape of Success

What does success mean to you?

Ikagi: a Japanese concept to show meaning of life and…

What is success to you? Is it the culmination of years of work and effort to the expense of all else? The idea of the Japanese concept of Ikagi is about understanding and making meaning of purpose; our purpose in life.

Each of those circles represents some part of our lives: That which we love, that which is our passion, that which we deem our mission, our profession and our vocation. Last but very much not least; that for which we would be paid.

The circles are all linked, and they all intersect to reveal one space where Ikagai is found. The fulcrum. The one distinct but intangible thing that glues it all together. The concept that is the meaning maker of it all.

Perhaps the Ikagai is the key to our connection with Spirit.

As it encompasses all the psychological aspects of duty, care, passion, drive and the twin ideals of vocation and mission, all that is left is the inner Divinity of a Higher Self perhaps?

In Hawaiian Shamanism the Huna idea of the Aumakua, which is also deemed an Ancestral Soul part that is carried by us through reincarnation; it knows all, it has experience and knowledge we could never have access to other than when we connect with it fully.

There are many times we put success down to intuition, just some idea that came from nowhere… know where… Think on that for a moment.

To know where to think so that the answer may be found.

We have a train of thought; therefore we have stations, platforms where knowledge can alight and board that train of thought: there are ocasions where missing the train or derailment can be variables in this metaphorical journey.

Where are the limits of your imagination?

Have you spent time thinking and mithering over ways to become successful in a venture? Did the thought ever occur that this venture was not what you really wanted; deep down you were less than invested in the idea of it?

Did that Dastardly Sabateur, the deeper ensconced Opponent, rise up and whisper in the dark ‘do you really think you will do well here?’

Sabotaged Trains of Thought

Let’s talk about limitations for a moment.

When you talk of what you want to do; what you want to be successful doing, do you ever hear yourself put a limit on that?

Any time there is a ‘but’ in the sentence there’s a place to start. It might be that you don’t want to be seen as arrogant? This is someone’s opinion and not a fact. Arrogance is all about the energy behind the action. The word is the descriptor of that energy. So listen to the limiting descriptors YOU say, not what others gift to you.

Limitations are ubiquitous in life. We get them from our parents and Grandparents, we then progress to our peers when we go to nursery school and onwards. There is always some ‘A’ type personality, which may even have been you yourself, saying ‘you can’t do that because…’ and whatever goes at the end of what they say, it really should be ‘because I don’t believe I could do, like, be that, so don’t you dare make me look weak by doing it instead.’

Somewhere along the line though they evolve from remembered phrases to thoughts riding on the great horses of emotion and then they become edicts we live by, that we now believe to be true.

I invite you to be Limitless this year. I invite you to seek out connection to your Aumakua or Ikagai or your Higher Self, whichever floats your boat.

Find out how limitless you can be by learning to Journey to the Drum. We are holding Shamanic Journeying taster sessions for beginners the first is on the 26th of January https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/237520659687 come and have some fun. Reconnect with your inner Child and your SuperPowers!

Remember when you could do ANYTHING?

Seeking Shangri la

Since the age of about 6 years old I have had more than just a hankering to visit Tibet. At the age of 60 years old, I got there.

It brings to mind the old sayings of ‘Spirit takes it’s own time to bring your dreams to light; and the very old ‘be careful what you ask for’. Why you may ask, since I have had my dream come true?

Dreams and wishes are the stuff that make our Shangri la’s are they not? That place that exists in a space between worlds.

I never stopped believing that one day I would get to Lhasa. Why? Well I had a ‘happening’ when I was very young. I would have been around the age of 6.

From that moment on I had the desire to get to Tibet. I learned all I could about it. Later I would learn about the Book of the Dead and their medicine. The role of the Shaman in their belief system, and one more thing… I was gifted a dream.

It was that dream that I connected with the Spirit of Shangri La. I was very aware of the turbulence happening in Tibet, what is deemed by the occupying country as the liberation of the Tibetan people. Though they were not actually given a choice. The Spirit is still there, the people are curious, ever smiling and hospitable always.

A blessing from a Lady in the Potala Palace, former residence of Dalai Lama

Tibet is a vast and unique space. There is so much there that is in two planes of being. The earthly plane and the Spiritual. It comes down to energy in the end. It is all ways energy. A great deal of it will be required to redress the balance. Not just here but elsewhere too.

We could almost kiss the sky, yes Jimi Hendrix jumped straight into my head. The sky did seem so close, close enough to touch and I caught myself on occasion thinking of Chicken-licken – perhaps it was the altitude.

mount Kailash

We were there to circumnambulate Mt. kailash. It is such a sight to see, and the prayer flags fluttering in the morning breezes made it all the more magical and sacred. Kailash is already a Sacred place, there are a few ways to get up and around. The first way is to walk, but you better be really fit. The other ways are by pony or by Yak. Our kit bags were taken up by Yaks. This is a dying mode of transport. The Yak is being edged out of it’s place in the Tibetan culture. There are now incommers of European breeds of cattle being farmed. The Yak is a nomads beast you see. Nomadic life is it seems is to be something that used to be.

A great pity. A great pity indeed. Like the Reindeer People of Siberia & Mongolia one idea has supplanted a whole way of life. A whole way of understanding how to be of and with the land and animals living there.

I am indeed grateful to have been able to be there now before the wealth of wonder and magic and culture disapears.

The Monks debating & chanting Mantras