wisdom – Soul Reflection

Christ Returns – of maybe not!

It’s not often I slate a book but I couldn’t even bring myself to finish this one, so full of human ignorance presented as spiritual doctrine.

I had loved the idea of reading this because I adore the Conversations with God series by Neale Donald Walsch. Channelling wisdom, whether from our innate being or from other realms, texts like these often carry so many nuggets of gold, encouragement and faith.

This, however, was a travesty of that principle. Whoever the ‘Recorder’ is seems to have imagined the story of Jesus based solely on their own interpretation and spiritual belief, I can’t for one moment believe that there is any true channelling or even connection to inner truth. Contradictions run through all the pages: ‘thank goodness Jesus was a rebel as it opened his heart to look outside of the religious doctrine of the day but if you rebel against absorbing the doctrine of this book you will bring hardship on yourself, despite the fact that god isn’t punishing.’ To précis just a fraction of the mess!

Added to this, having personally been fascinated by the idea of Jesus as a human being and having looked into the historical evidence of his existence, it is clear the ‘Recorder’ hasn’t bothered with any of that and just states their own belief of the version of events because they claim they are speaking on behalf of Christ. It’s quite laughable except when it becomes antisemitic and explains that Jews have brought all that has befallen them on themselves because of the way they practice their religion, under the guise of ‘law of attraction’.

That’s when I stopped reading.

I thought of not bothering to write up this book, best just to ignore and not give energy to, but actually I think it’s important to acknowledge how easy it can be to present work as facts and information rather than owning that it is just a personal belief. I could readily accept this book as someone’s ideas, I might reject it or just cherry pick the worthwhile elements but pretending this comes from Jesus’s spirit is quite another level!

A great reminder to stick to ‘I’ statements. Speaking on behalf of someone else only brings confusion! LOL.

First published on social media on 20th July 2023

Whatever Arises Love That

I picked this book off the top of my pile in January, read two pages of the introduction and put it down again. I did not want to love whatever arises because what had just arisen the previous month was painful and upsetting. So I went back to my fiction pile and read four in a row!

And then I picked it up again last week… I begin with ambivalence, moved onto passionately loving it, decided I wasn’t quite sure about it, back to ambivalence and then ending with a fondness and appreciation. I can well imagine that if Matt Kahn reads this blog he will giggle as he recognises my ego poking out to resistance and creating this pattern.

There is a lot of permission in this book to not have to spirituality override the tough feelings and I like that a lot because…. Human.

And yet I still felt the pressure of gracious non-reacting to challenges (and yes, I know love that feeling too!) as my ultimate spiritual goal. Which of course it is, but also maybe when I’m 90. The truth is I don’t know whether I believe our human life is about achieving this state or whether that’s just my ego in resistance again. I personally feel like our human experience is raw and real and we get to be godly and gracious a lot in between lives and whilst I wholly agree in loving all the feelings, most especially the messy and unwanted ones, I don’t think I’m going to make it to zen master in the next 40 years. Can I sit still and listen with love when someone is telling me that it’s cool to jab kids with experimental poison? Nah! Part of my purpose in this world is to speak up, to challenge, to confront. Can I learn to do it better? One thousand percent. And with that, there are tonnes of wonderful guides and pointers that this book offers. (The photos show just a snippet.)

Do I think we are awakening to a new consciousness? Absolutely! Though will it be all high vibe? I’m not so sure. For me, humanness is about opposing forces, leaning about the Ying and Yang, experiencing the polarities to deepen our universal wisdom and understanding. I love books, like this, that help me meet all of those with the best possible energy and I also resist the intention to end up passively loving ALL that arises.

In toto, full of delights and insights, and whatever your view on our human experience, there’s never any harm in leaning how to love better. Thanks Matt for a beautifully confronting read.

First published on social media on 23rd February 2023

It’s beginning to look a lot like Teen-mas

Six months in and I cannot deny the teen era is upon me. I’m actually finding it, mostly, delightful; watching my child expand into the world, explore, grow, stretch and return.

I was the archetypal ‘terrible teen’, lots of deception, no strong parental attachment, peer focused, crashing into adulthood with despair and desperate hope. So there is a part of me that thinks I’ve got this covered, I know what NOT to do. But I don’t want to be naive either, society is influencing powerfully and my children do not have the same impacting factors that I had. So when I saw this book, ‘Untangled’ by Lisa Damour, I thought it would be good for me to have a read.

It is a perfect example of how context is everything. If my values centred around fulfilling the perception of modern society, that high grades, top university and money-pumping careers are the be all and end all of life, then this would be the book to guide my teens through. It shockingly includes a suggestion of bribing your teen to achieve their grades.

There are some solid foundation notes, like having family meals together, knowing who the friends are etc but these are not rocket science and says much about our society when having a family meal together is something to implement for the teens under the assumption that it’s not been happening before. Am I living in an alternate universe?

Are families so disconnected that they need just the basics to bring back some form of connection and communication? Are our children so undervalued that they are being left to flounder through the initiation into adulthood without parental and mentor guidance?

This book made me achingly sad for all of those it is aimed at, parents and teens alike. To be existing together without feeling loved and held and cherished and to be thinking that this is just how life goes, how painful! Damour is doing her best in the context of this world but I wanted something much deeper, richer, more intense. I wanted a call for heart connection, for initiation, for handing down wisdom, learning from the vibrant young, healing ancestral blockages.

The teens is a transition, there is no doubt about that, but in that is the most beautiful opportunity, offered over and over again for years and years. Forget the grades and the careers. Find the passion and the joy and the spirit and the love and the conversation and the connection.

This is the moment your child moves into the blessing of a companion adult. Not too quickly, not until they’re ready. They still need their boundaries and circling, but that is the goal to hold onto. Staying in connection, understanding and love.

First published on social media on 18th December 2022

Story Time

We can all make up stories about other people: why they declined our invitation, why they smiled strangely last week, why they stopped a conversation just as we approached.

But how often are they true? Knowing when they are and when they are simply a projection of our own insecurities is a subtle art of intuition, experience and wisdom. Certainly I know if I’m annoyed with someone my stories will, more likely be a manifestation of those feelings I’m trying to deny rather than a clear interpretation of events. However when I am in observation mode, more detached from an engaged emotion, I can often see someone’s true actions as easily as if they had described them to me themselves. Knowing the difference is a skill to master.

This past week I realised someone had been holding a lot of stories about me and spiralling into a bigger and bigger picture, one story feeding the next. Reflecting on that, I was looking back at various scenarios: family, work, landlords, friends and realising how often this happens. One made up projection beginning the cycle of feeding the next until a whole personality perspective has been created that perhaps is light years from the true spirit of the person. And I am as guilty of this as the next person but perhaps at least aware of it.

It also crossed my mind and I wondered, are some people more susceptible than others to become the focus of stories? Do some people attract the projections of others? Or are they pretty evenly spread across the population. Do we all do it to each other, at varying levels, all of the time?

My husband certainly thinks I attract more than my fair share and I’m certainly aware of many that come my way but is that a natural consequence of my personality or something a little broken that needs exploration and perhaps healing or boundaries?

Is there something in my energy that inspires a person to imagine a negative motivation for my actions? Could it be as simple as a RBF (Resting Bitch Face)? I have a neighbour with one of those and I have to confess I imagine that she is pretty miserable and jealous, none of which I know to be true. Or is it deeper? My tendency to err on the side of blunt, curious and straightforward rather than cautionary or diplomatic, does culturally that make me an easy target. British vagueness fail. Am I too transparent with my non verbal reactions that cause others to see my subtle judgments or feelings that perhaps I’m not even conscious of?

Or is it absolutely nothing to do with me and entirely a tendency within the projector? Am I just able to recognise them quite easily and so notice how often they fly past my orbit?

A combination of all perhaps. Certainly I will reflect further on my contribution to these experiences, how much I can limit them or energetically boundary them but also allow each person their own journey, their own stories and know that even if I am the protagonist within their tales, it’s got very little to do with me. I am just a mirror for them to see their own reflection, except when it jars and I recognise myself in the glass too.

First published on social media on 29th November 2022

The Zahir

Paulo Coehlo is probably the most significant inspiration for the creation of my writing passion. I adore reading across genre but Coehlo’s work has always spoken directly to me, not always comfortably but necessarily, and how he imparts wisdom and induces questioning is what I aspire to in my own work.

The Zahir is no exception. It has come to me twice, desperate to be read, waiting patiently to rise to the top of my pile. And here I am, with the spiritual space (bar the near constant requests from the kids!) on our first overseas holiday, after two years of guarding and protecting our freedoms, where I can breathe those anxieties away and reflect on what needs shifting within.

Coehlo’s characters manage to exemplify those portals into my being which I simultaneously yearn and reject. This book looks at how we carry love through our lives, how we let it stagnate, dwindle or die in ourselves and our relationships, and it pulled me up sharp on numerous occasions.

I have, by choice, let go of so much of what sparked my soul whilst the dive into parenting set me alive in different ways. But I recognise now that the time has come to rejuvenate those embers, remember who I am outside of meals and school runs and hugs and awe. I want my children to see me alive in ALL ways, I want to model that for them but most of all I need to do that for myself.

In my mid twenties, pre marriage, pre kids, I can remember so clearly those moments of absolute connection to divine love; holding wide the doors of new opportunities & adventures and recognising the signs and messages from God.

That has never fully left me, but so many layers of extra have piled on top, most wonderful but plenty unnecessary and stifling too. The Zahir has reminded me of everything important and everything unimportant wrapped up in disguise.

Love is everything. Letting it flow through me unhampered, just as a baby without a lifetime of stories hindering the energy, that is my focus. Not an overnight transformation but a post-it on my forehead for the rest of my days.

First published on social media on 23rd August 2022

Sleep and Sleeplessness

One of the things I love about reading books from my father’s collection is how I reach back in time to thoughts and wisdom often now supplanted by modern theory. One of the elements that I find lacking in current scientific discourse is the spiritual and unknown aspects of life, whereas work from the early 1900’s so often has a greater holistic and curious perspective which feels much more aligned to reality to me.

This delightful book is chock full of wonderful nuggets of wisdom, particularly as both my daughter and I have a tendency for sleep disturbance and insomnia. (Though I might have to investigate further the theory that cucumbers are a potential cause of nightmares before I can concur on that one!)

It was also full of fascinating tales of premonitions or subconscious wisdom being imparted through dreams, from lost treasures found, to deaths felt before news had arrived. The sort of stories that utterly entrance me and are far too numerous and detailed to be able to be dismissed as mere coincidence.

And in conclusion, after much practical analysis, the author also highlights how important faith and prayer is for the peace of mind required for a good and restful night’s sleep. Now that is the kind of scientific ponderings that I can really relate to.

First published on social media on 14th August 2022

Toxic Silence

‘Send them to Coventry’ is a phrase that found gravitas within military circles but swiftly moved into the echelons of military families and typically boarding school’s bizarre peer on peer punishment regime.

Just reading any old Enid Blyton reflects how, not only accepted, but rated and applauded such exiles were. Someone does something you judge to be wrong and you stop speaking to them for a period of time (days, weeks or even months) and be sure to actively ignore them too if they try to approach you. This is a celebrated technique with certain sections of society and it was only the other day that I connected the dots between my family’s boarding school history and this form of punishment that is so frequently and unkindly used.

I have lost count of the number of times I have been exiled. I now no longer attempt repatriation in the way I used to. I know someday there will be contact and no mention of the exile, or the reasons for it, will take place. This is the acceptance I have had to reach if I want both to stay sane and also to remain at least distantly connected to certain family members.

It is no wonder that I ‘over talk’, I wish to resolve things even if that is uncomfortable and messy and sometimes difficult. I will stay up all night with you or have the conversation on repeat for endless days or, even if it is too hard, I will at least tell you that I need space or time or a break until we broach the issue again. What I won’t do is ignore you and when we finally speak again pretend it’s never happened. I have ghosted people in the past, habits were trained into me, but fundamentally if I love you, I will fight for us.

Silence of this kind is toxic.

When my father died nearly a decade ago, my kids were both under five. They heard me say I was going to view my father’s body and asked to come too. I didn’t know the best thing to do, would this be healthy or traumatic? So I phone the undertaker and asked their advice. They told me that as the children had asked, the should come. They sagely said, children will make up far worse things in their head, if they are told they can’t, than the actual reality.

Such great wisdom that I have carried across many life moments with my kids and is so pertinent here too. The silences I have endured from childhood on, have meant that I have imagined the worst of feelings being thought about me. The reality of a tough confrontation always ends with a deeper understanding of each other, often more compassion and a broader perspective. Toxic silence just leaves a chasm of darkness and imaginings that linger and swirl.

I think the patterns are too hard to break in my family but I’m grateful to recognise their origins and my reactions. I am sensitive to even brief withdrawals of friendship and affection, easily triggered from this conditioning, but awareness is everything and now I can talk myself through it more sanely.

And as with all of these dynamic challenges

I am grateful for the gifts they bring, everything I have suffered through brings me greater soul wisdom and deeper expansion of my understanding and compassion for other’s stories. I am a better human because if it all.

First published on social media on 9th August 2022

Brutal

Ageing is brutal. I am determined to age gracefully, I look at the effects of cosmetic procedures later down the line and I know I don’t want that aesthetically, even if I could consider stuffing all those poisons into my body, which I can’t.

But these middle-ground years, before all those procedures take their hideous effects, my social peers are looking decidedly smoother and perter and younger than me.

Twinned with the bloom of my soon to be teen daughter, flawless, lithe and utterly divine, I am super conscious of my need for good lighting and flattering angles to find a picture that resembles who I remember myself to be.

Because I was pretty, not head turning beautiful, but enough to walk confidently through a bar and feel appreciated. I also used it, it was a tool, a manipulation, sometimes even a weapon. Before I discovered my greater passions of motherhood, health and truth, my looks were my validity in the world.

And so ageing is brutal.

Even though I don’t value my beauty through the same lens, it was still part of my history and my arsenal and to see it shift and change with Father Time, to catch that glance in the mirror and double take, because in my head I’m still twenty something, it’s hard.

I’m not going to lie. I struggle with it. Especially in the context of our society with the anti-ageing terrifying cosmetics that are marketed so intensely. I don’t subscribe to the philosophy of them, but it’s hard to hold the faith and trust when all around are justifying the distortion of our features as empowering.

I know this is false, in fact it makes me cringe and laugh to hear these ‘feminists’ claim they are spending their money, time and body because they’re the ultimate version of empowerment. It’s all backwards and messed up. I know this.

And I used to be pretty, young and fresh. Even without this insane pressure, I think I would struggle to lose what was once my superpower. Superficial? Yes. But part of my trauma survival, part of the fabric that got me to today, yes. I can’t deny it, remove it, change it.

I can only keep learning to love each wrinkle, each saggy bit, each pigment change. I want my children to know that ageing is so much more than visual, that is brings experience and wisdom and compassion too. And I want to represent all of that in the lines on my face, the sadness, the laughter, the life well lived and loved. Because, honestly, when I see an elderly person with all of that, they are nothing short of beautiful.

In the meantime I have to ride out the transition. And I’m finding it a little brutal.

First published on social media on 3rd June 2022

The Four Fold Way

I’ve read many books on the various archetypes, their strengths, shadows and meanings but I have to say I think I’ve enjoyed this one the most. Super simple, very clear and engaging with simple techniques to bring awareness to our areas of work in order to find our balance.

Loved the quotes scattered throughout (always a winner to see #rudolfsteiner ‘s words on another pathway!) and really felt I absorbed more of the essence of archetype understanding than ever before.

On top of which #angelesarrien ‘s obvious respect for the indigenous cultures around the world and the wisdom they hold feels a lot like coming home. Ancestral and Elder wisdom is something I frequently crave and this book feels like I’m sitting at my grandparents knee soaking it all in.

Highly recommend, a super easy and accessible read, even tempted to pass it on to my near teen, though I might wait a couple more years… we’ll see.

First Published on social Media 20 November 2021

The Evolution of War

I can’t take credit for this photo or its title but it is how I see where we are at, right in this moment in time.

We are at war for our freedoms, like every war has been about – control vs freedom, power vs liberty.

Many of those that can’t see this are in a place I can understand: a denial and a want to imagine the best. Surely these are just mistakes, perhaps even incompetences? Some seek blame at the hands of those fighting for everyone’s freedoms, determined not to find fault with their current perspective. If they are even reading these words, they might dismiss me as hysterical, a CT* or doom merchant.

I wish I was. History has repeated itself for millennia, but so quickly we forget. We can’t imagine that such darkness can really exist, so it is relegated to the past, to something we must forget and bury under the guises of innovation and development. But power corrupts or should I be clearer, only the wounded seek power as validation. Shouldn’t we therefore consider anyone in such a role with natural caution?

Wisdom and power are not the same. A wise leader wishes to aid, heal and guide without remittance. It is time to learn the difference, to remember the difference, to teach the difference. Will this struggle be endless or will we one day truly allow freedom of spirit, mind, body and soul to be celebrated and embraced as our constant?

That ideal is worth fighting for, speaking up for and showing up for. I am here.

*conspiracy theorist aka critical thinker

First published on social media 4th November 2021