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!

If Music Be The Food Of Love

The top of my top list of albums

The prompt for today is Music and the question is ‘what’s on your playlist?’

Being an older personage and having an eclectic taste in music there is more off my playlist than on it. That is not to say that what is not on it is not favoured…more that the storage capacity of my phone just can’t handle the list!

From Beethoven to the Beatles, from Jim Croce to Eddison Lighthouse, from A – Z from the 1920’s all the way to now there are songs and memories attached to those songs and pieces of music. I remember Mozart’s 40th symphony getting into the charts when I was still quite young, 1971 as it happens. The year before All Things Must Pass, was released, though my introduction to it took a wee bit longer to occur.

Music can be an all consuming passion. It certainly manages to transport us TARDIS like as within the notes, lyrics and melodies are the hooks to faces, places, times, events, loves found and loves lost. Bitter Sweet Symphonies indeed. There is so much of our lives in the music, like touchstones, each song is a memory, a feeling, a place in Space and Time.

All Things Must Pass is a treasured box of memories. It is also a good thing to remember. Impermanence, even now I wonder how many songs are not on my list that hold pieces of my life’s experience.

Shall I seek them out, or wait to be surprised while listening to a radio show sometime?

For me there is less music that is new. The compulsion to have everything, all the time, in a gadget does not fill me with glee.

I would rather dance myself into trance with James Asher’s Shaman’s Drums than listen to ads with musical interludes.

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 Spectrum of States

Spectrum: Definition: A spectrum is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colours in visible light after passing through a prism. wikipedia

We have many spectrums in life. Two of which for example would be light as stated above and the Spectrum of Autism which is a specific set of variable behaviours across the continuum of ‘perceived normality’.

Consciousness is on a spectrum. We have various levels and states of consciousness. It is known now that we are always in one state or another there is no real, stark awake and aware state; it is all a spectrum consciousness that we move along via oscillating waves.

As with any oscillating wave they are made up of amplitude and frequency modes, our brain waves operate in KHz

Frequency band	Frequency	Brain states
Gamma	>35 Hz	Concentration
Beta	12–35 Hz	Anxiety dominant, active, external attention, relaxed
Alpha	8–12 Hz	Very relaxed, passive attention
Theta	4–8 Hz	Deeply relaxed, inward focused
Delta	0.5–4 Hz	Sleep

Sciencedirect.com

As shown the oscillation frequency changes show different activity in the brain. Gamma: Concentration, problem solving is in the high frequencies however Beta is a myriad of activity and at its peak anxiety dominated; here you would have stage fright or butterflies, paying attention to external stimulus. An example of this might be when we are going somewhere for the first time and we are ‘mapping’ our journey, thinking of the possibility of being lost or late or both, so we make a point of noting places and signs. Once we have been there however we relax more, we are still paying attention but we are comfortable as we recognise the route

Alpha is almost cruise control, here you will find the sometimes elusive ‘zone’ this is the state of being in flow. A resourceful state for creativity, a space of deep knowing and being at the same time. Connection. So connected are we in this state that we can do some insightful work seemingly without effort. We are calm, Zen like and we are at a peak learning capacity as we passively absorb information.

Theta; this is the state of being both inside and outside of the recognised trance state. Here we are almost but not quite in sleep mode, we drift just above the Delta wave and here we have some very interesting things that can happen. Meditative, entranced, deeply relaxed we can be inwardly focussed.

The saying that ‘where the mind goes the energy flows’ is absolutely correct, even physiologically speaking. While dominating the activity of the brain there are brief burst of activity known as ‘sleep spindles’. A peppering of these higher frequency bursts of brain waves may be important for learning and memory (Fogel & Smith 2011; Poe, Walsh, & Bjorness, 2010)

It is this oscillation amplitude and frequency that is the focus of Binaural Beats. This idea of stimulating and accessing the Theta state is not new; our Ancestors were doing it from very early times and still today using a percussive sound wave for example a drum, rattle, a Didgeridoo. Though the didgeridoo is a wind instrument it has a percussive wave that will ‘hit’ some people (as will the drum) reverberating through the chest cavity.

The people who knew how to make this happen an epoch or so ago, they were Shamans. The word comes from the Tunguska/Evenki people of Siberia and my favourite explanation of it is ‘the one with eyes to see in the dark’. The Dark; those recesses in the mind that are as the depths of Oceans. Today we can access those deep recesses and take a peek behind the curtain.

The rhythmic element is key to attuning the brainwaves to the external soundwaves. In order to reach Theta, the beats of a drum or shake of the rattle has to emulate the natural oscillation of our brainwaves. There is also of course the modern equivalent, Binaural Beats. These are an external dial if you like, that we can operate to change our brainwaves and allow us to access Theta at will.

In this state we have what might be linked to lucid dreaming. It’s called an ecstatic state from the Greek ‘Ekstasis’ which of course is the root of the word ecstasy, and means ‘to stand outside or to transcend oneself’.

Within this particular oscillation is another state, an accessible state; a state which in and of itself provides a rich and deeply resourceful cornucopia of connection to collective consciousness. This is the state that Einstein could well have been accessing when he ‘dreamed his theory of relativity’. It is known that he would purposefully access a different state within which he would allow his thoughts to coalesce, settle and to become clear.

The high frequency sleep spindles firing off as active waves inside the Theta wave could well be the dendrites sparking information at the synapses at deeper levels, which I would posit would be a split second of inspirational information.

We also know this as an altered state of being. As is Delta – sleep, more levels, spectrums within spectrums of consciousness. Here we dream, and then we go to the deepest state of sleep and we lose all awareness, or at least most of ourselves do. One part of us is all ways conscious. This part keeps us breathing among many other things.

Writers and other creative people are often asked how they come up with their ideas, the concepts of their work. Some will say it just happened, others may say they dreamt it, a few like Aldous Huxley seek the state of being where it comes from; some have utilised hallucinogenic drugs to do so, either not having knowledge of or caring to use the natural way.

All were looking, seeking through the spectrum of states for the ultimate connection. As a Hypnotherapist I see and experience these states and help others to induce them in themselves to heal.

By utilising those ancient techniques, I also help people access the Theta state; where they can find inspirations, answers, resources and relaxation. A Shamanic trance state is a natural state we all have the ability to find; maddeningly it can be quicksilver in its way. We have to record the information Dreams disappear from our awareness with the morning light, melting like fog in the Sun.

However when we know how to access our states of awareness and to actively find within them that which we seek. That is a prize beyond measure.

Dreams are there. Dreams are a necessary part of our wellbeing. The capability of accessing states of relaxation and getting into that zone purposefully… ask yourself, what could you do to make your life better by being able to do that?

There are upcoming taster events for beginners and the more experienced journeyers. These tasters lead into a series of monthly Circles to deepen your practice if you wish.

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