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!

How Do You Feel When You Look At The Stars?

In the Night Sky I see Connection

How does anyone feel when we can see a night sky? Diamond bright pinpoints of light; some older than our own planet, wink and twinkle suspended above us, as we marvel and endeavour to make sense of what and why it is all happening.

That is, if we take time to notice at all.

At the time of my birth, the Plough, or the Great Bear [Ursa Major] was in the Sky. Little Bear following on [Ursa Minor] has since become an inspiration to me for a story of how a Mother and Cub became constellations. It intrigues me as to how any Constellations formed.

Chaos. That was the state of play at the time of the Big Bang; was it not?

It is said the Greeks first looked at the Sky and tracked the ‘wandering lights’ calling them ‘Planets’ they may have in the Western Hemisphere, it is however just as possible that the Mayans were tracking those stars too, even earlier in time. We have less evidence for that since the data on that was destroyed by Conquistadors and the Priesthood sent from Spain to relieve the Natives of their Gold and replace it with something less than was evidently good for them.

We are not the only beings that look to the night skies, the Wolf sings to the Moon, letting the other members of the Pack they are there. The lone Wolf also sings to the Moon and the Stars.

Birds and even Butterflies and Moths, Cetaceans and so many other creatures are mindful of the night skies.

It is only at certain phases of the moon, in certain seasons that the seas become a massive nursery of new life.

How do they know? How do they calculate the right time, the right phase? It’s as if they have an inner clock that is energetically wired to the changes happening around them.

We had that.

We still have that, we just find it hard to find it and release it from the cubby hole of gunk and stuff and technology and stresses. If we bother to look for it at all.

Even though it’s muffled chimes ring on, under it all.

We don’t look up.

We don’t see anything beyond a rectangle of technology, that is our world now.

Shall we one day, instead raise our eyes to the Sky again and wonder at it’s magnificence? Will we still know the mythology of the constellations? Shall we understand the dying light of stars long dead, shines still as it traverses distances that we cannot conceive?

Shall we look up and know that is where we began?

What is it to understand that we are the stuff of Stars? How does that translate to mundane tasks like paying the Taxman, paying rent, paying….and working in order to pay…?

When we dream are we dreaming on beams of Starlight? Is it memory? The being in the deepest of darks, our way lit only by those pin spots, themselves now only the stuff of dreams, since never discovered, never charted we can only see an impression of what and where they were; their existance shown by the beacon of bright energy diminishing as it travels to the ends of the Universe.

How is it, to conceive of that? The magnitude of it all?

How do I feel when I look at the Stars? Humbled, connected, a part of and apart from, small, a speck of dust from one, the only evidence of it’s existance… Powerful that this element is within me. Consciously aware of the knowledge that I am, here, now, a being who is all of this and more.

Purposeful and joyful and sad all at once.

I seek the moon, I seek the Plough, I breathe in the night air, I open my throat and I HOWL ! I celebrate the night Sky I celebrate being. I call upon any with the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the heart to love and the will to walk forward.

Such a feeling is that.

Singing The Song Of The Soul

How Are You Changing The World?

How am I changing the World?

Think about it. The question today is, ‘How are you changing the World?

I am thinking that there are many of us who have no clue that what they do everyday has any effect on the bigger picture at all. Also that there are too many things to be worrying about than the ‘bigger picture’.

We are in an interesting position at the moment. Globally we have the same issues.

How we are adressing those issues is not the same.

Individually, culturally and economically we are not seeing the same things the same way.

At the moment we are seeing the need for survival. It’s what we are being shown, globally. What we are not shown is what is deemed okay to put on the back burner for the forseeable future; while we deal with this issue in front of us.

Just because it’s on the ‘back burner’ doesn’t mean it’s not going to burn!

Obfuscation

The way the media works in the 21st Century, is a bit like a spider’s web. It’s complex, it has it’s own beauty, it feeds its builder and it traps prey. Once caught in the sticky threads the food source is sent into a coma; it is then exsanguinated at the Spider’s leisure. The dish of the day had no inkling that what it was getting into was going to have such a consequence, but now there are so many other cocoons, cut aways, discards; deftly sliced out of the web and left dessicated, finished with. Old News. The dish of the day was only looking for new sources of food itself, bright shiny new things to consume…

some are aware and awake

There are some, some who are aware and awake to what is on the ‘back burner’ and they do their best to give it a stir, put the gas on a peep, look after the sustanence for the Diners who wait to be fed… there is a menu, and that menu is written by those who are in charge of the Kitchen. Those who will decide how the food is sourced. The quality, how it will be prepared and if it can be replaced by something similar but not quite as good. After all those Diners, they don’t know the difference and so the top tables will be given the meat and the others will get the offal. The menu is not the same for all, but the idea is.

The awake and aware Sous Chefs are trying hard to make sure that the food that goes out is as good quality and well cooked across the board. They don’t have access to the ordering of the ingredients. They don’t have the contacts to the buyers, they are not ‘qualified’ to be in that strata. They themselves have to eat the offal even thought they prep the meat. They themselves know where the ingredients are coming from and how they have been treated, but they don’t believe they have a voice. They are so few…

Don’t drop the ball

One ingredient, one idea, doesn’t fill the bellies of all Cultures. There are many wonderful ingredients to be found in many different Cultures. Many menu setters are just leaving them off the menu entirely so that the Diners have no clue that their choices are being funnelled into one main dish of the day. There are many ‘food critics’ who wax lyrical about the ‘dish of the day’ in whichever of the main restaraunts they frequent. They can tell everyone how good this diet is, how wonderfully sustaining and appetising it is. How it will keep them healthy, happy and rich. At the top table at least, for they are the ones writing the menues. They are not the ones eating stuff they serve.

The main foodstuff is fast food. For those not at the top table (those who sell it, but won’t actually eat it) it is readily available all over the World, almost. For those other tables and the Kitchen porters, they are the ones whose livelihoods depend on those who write the menues. They are the ones who are told they must give up their own cuisine and only eat THIS from now on. They must stop being who they are, leave their wonderful recipes behind, see them destroyed and the source of their ingredients taken and destroyed also. The Source of the food, the Source of the sustenance, the Source of our being is tossed around from Top table to Top table….

Complete co-operation, equal,sustained & inclusive of Cultures which remain undisturbed by dogma

There are voices coming from those ‘kitchens’. There are some changes on menues available in parts of the World that we are getting to hear about; a soupcon here and there. There are some of the ‘old ways’ being brought back into our conscious awareness. The increase of some appetites are being shown to be gluttony personified.

We are not just not seeing the demise of freedoms we are not seeing the demise of indigenous cultures and many of them have been subsumed by dogmatic ideals that have deemed them ineffective as they don’t fit the factory fodder of fast food, ideological meal deal chains.

One of the definitions of the word Shaman, is ‘the one with eyes to see in the Dark’ well the lights in the restaurant are dimming… many Shamanic Cultures have been shown the door, many have been sent to prison and starved of their sustenance… a food that can feed and aid the World, as every Culture in the World has known the recipies themselves.

How am I changing the World? I have begun with myself. How I think, how I perceive that my individual choices gather together with others and become an avalanche of ‘stuff’. Each of us makes choices daily, on what we buy, where it comes from and how ‘convenient’ or cheap it is for us. We make choices on what we are told we ‘need’ not on what we actually require to live. That’s what we see. We as Human beings are all near sighted in that respect. We are kept that way so we keep the Top Table full and replete at every meal.

A while ago in the UK there was an advert for a Union. Whether you agree with Unions or not is not the point here. What they showed there; is.

This is the ad, https://youtu.be/iewSJ6nTEv4 Everyone has a voice, everyone has a choice, everyone can be ignored as a individual. When we pay attention and we get more voices to join us….

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?

Cows & Beans

 

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Leaving the Past Behind Us

I saw a quote today, one of many that are in the same vein. ‘Your journey will be much lighter and easier if you don’t carry your past with you.’ Brigitte Nicole.

Now, I don’t know about you but I find this is a big sticking point with people who come to us looking for answers. Those who would like to go forward and have been ‘trying everything they can think of’, to get out from under.