Can you let go?
Of all you have known.
Of all you have been?
Of all the stories you thought you were here to live.
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The days of everything working out according to our plans appear to be over.
The times we are living in are defined by what my friends in the sustainability world would describe as VUCA.
Volatile
Uncertain
Chaotic and
Ambiguous
Just when we think we might be able to see a clear way ahead, it feels as if the Universe then comes and drop kicks that ‘plan’ into oblivion and we are left once again in the void of not knowing.
The light is fading.
As we approach the time of deep Winter in the Northern hemisphere, we are cocooned in darkness.
But darkness is not what we once thought it was.
As a new perspective on life emerges between us in these times of challenge where seeming polarities are fusing.
We are starting to see that what we once defined as ‘bad’ or ‘good’, ‘light’ or ‘dark’ are simply two sides of the same coin.
We cannot separate things as we once did.
This is the gift of chaos.
Can you feel something changing?
Can you?
Can you smell something new on the wind?
Have you stopped to notice?
Change is a Universal Law.
So is harmony.
Radical rebellion in times of massive social transformation is often unseen.
It stems from subtle actions that form the fabric of a new way of being.
It goes without saying that we have been living through intense times of stress and change.
Yet humans have always needed this pressure to force evolution.
This week I offer a prayer that flows from the heart of the waters of our planet.
I offer a prayer in honour of the water that flows through our human bodies as blood.
I offer a prayer to the element of flow that facilitates evolution in our Universe.
I offer a prayer to the waters of life
When was the last time you had a ‘private’ conversation with yourself?
You know – the secret ones that you would never wish to share with anyone else.
The ones where you stand naked in front of your inner mirror and admit all the things that you think inside but deny even to yourself?
These are the dialogues that change your world.
Cyclical.
Rhythmic.
Eternal.
Life itself is a spiral.
One that we dance around again and again.
The same lessons romance us into relatedness with the elements of transformation that appear in the form of people, places, projects, dreams.
All so that we can experience our inner worlds reflected in the outer mirror.
The Earth School.
Life as the curriculum.
This morning I woke up before the sun.
Darkness covered the land, and the night creatures were still going about their business.
Moving quietly so as not to disturb, I found my way to a special place in our garden where I could watch the sun rise over the hills.
We seem to be surrounded by death right now.
Death of people.
Death of social systems.
Death of environments.
Truly, the death of stories in so many ways.
Yet as we all know, death is an intimate and essential part of life on Earth.
Change is another word for death.
This week I have been offline adventuring with my husband.
He is a master in this art – as am I.
It is one of the things that brings us closer every time we embark off into the unknown together.
Adventure is an art.
If you were to take a guess for a moment of how much of your life story (and therefore experiences) were created by your mind, what would you say?
Trick here – it’s your mind that will give you the first answer.
Laughable really.
Now stop.
Take a deep breath.
In fact, take as many as you need to relax (this may take a lot longer than you would expect).
Now ask that question again and this time notice how you feel.
Yes FEEL.
In times of massive transition, I have come to recognise the voice of my body as an integral guide.
It is a voice we often ignore or drown out in distraction.
It speaks in feelings, dis-comfort, dis-ease and erratic sleeping patterns.
It also tells us when we are ‘on track’ by manifesting synchronicity, joy and miracles.
The voice of my body is ancient and carries within it the wisdom and lessons of my ancestors.
It carries in its DNA and cell’s the potential of my future ones.
My body is an incredible instrument of divine will.
I am a day late writing this.
This week has been a whirlpool of work, outer world noise and stories all clamouring for my attention.
Yesterday, I felt all the competing deadlines swirling around me like currents in the every changing trajectory of the global river.
And yet still managed to keep my head above the water.
In fact it was actually exhilarating (for the most part).
A bit like rafting on rapids.
Years ago I spent my first ever day alone on the land at Sacred Ground.
I have written many times about this special place, and you can find out more here (https://www.sacredgroundintl.org/).
During this day, I was met by many beings of many races.
The Coyote tribe came to visit me, dancing past where I was meditating and stopping within a few meters for a moment to greet me as I smiled right back.
The Eagle beings flew over my head throughout the day as I passed the hours in contemplation of my life and soul commitment on Earth.
The Buffalo family came to see me, whilst staying half an acre distant so as not to alarm me with their numbers and the force of their love.
My Pine siblings gathered in circle with me and our Aspen cousins, offering the embrace of their leafy arms to shield me from the burning radiance of the midday sun.
I was one with the ecosystem of Earth and I felt in harmony.
That was until the sun started to set.
Do you believe in fate?
What about destiny?
Or freewill?
All tricky concepts in the world right now when so much in our outer sphere’s appear to be spiralling ‘out of our control’.
Or are they?
Today, I broke camp in the wilds of Wales where I have been playing with my family for a week. It has been a joy sleeping on the land for 7 nights and allowing my body, mind, and soul to adjust to the natural rhythms of the elements of life.
I have found that I slept more deeply and fully.
I ate less and enjoyed my food more.
My emotions have settled into a smooth tempo where the crests and dips of the waves are rolling and flowing naturally – never getting stuck nor heavy. Like the waves of the ocean at play.
Natural rhythm, natural law.
I stand here in the kitchen of what has been my home for the last 9 years (on and off).
When I came to Avebury, I assumed I would live here for the rest of my days, as magical and ancient as it is.
Yet the Universe had other plans for me.
The Universe always does.
Does anyone else feel like they are living in a hall of mirrors lately?
In fact, over the last year, it has become increasingly obvious to me that the Universe around us is reflecting back in the molecular structure of our lives the very beliefs, stories and thinking that we are consciously or unconsciously allowing to exist in our fields.
What is it that you most long for in your life?
I wonder if it’s the same as me.
The same as most beings actually.
Connection.
Love.
Belonging.
What are you currently held back by?
I can guarantee it’s a story of your own making.
But when did you make it a reality lens for you?
In the past?
Right.
This week I have been walking in one of the most powerful places of truth teaching in the world. It asks us to enter here with respect for ourselves and all of life. The essence energy demands nothing less than a complete surrender to our soul and our journey.
There is no running away
There is no hiding
Anything that is not complete love must fall away
And it is here that we come to rest in the very place that most of us have longed to return to most of our lives.
Here I sit, located in time.
Fingertips brushing the stone beneath me as I contemplate the mountain of which they are a part. Of which I am a part.
The stones beneath me hold within their bodies the memory of Earth.
Of her passing cycles and her transformations.
Of her creations and her destructions.
This week I am a little late writing this.
Primarily because of its topic but also because a deep magic is at play.
A week or so ago my sister asked me a profound question.
And I answered it perhaps a bit too quickly.
A bit too tritely.
So I have been contemplating it ever since.
She asked me
“Gen – who is the beloved?”
Harmony: the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole
This is one of the dictionary definitions of harmony.
The word that jumped out to me was ‘pleasing’.
This week I have been extremely busy with clients before I jump on a plane and head to the US for a few weeks of work. At times, my days have felt chaotic, overwhelming and crazy yet they were in harmony.
Why?
Because they were ‘pleasing’ to me.
‘Ecosystem’ is one of my favourite words.
The etymology of the word ‘eco’ comes from the Greek oikos, meaning ‘home’.
Home is where our family reside.
And family can and do take many forms.
This week has delivered to me some huge lessons in humility.
Why?
Because each time conflict or challenging emotions have arisen in my space, I have seen that I am the source.
Me.
Sounds odd I know, but it’s far too easy these days to look outside of ourselves at the person, place or situation and blame them for our inner turmoil or dissatisfaction.
Humans do it all the time.
Because we have been taught to defend ourselves (and therefore our stories) against ‘external threats’.
But why do we feel the need to defend in the first place?
It is the time of year where birth becomes a daily occurrence.
Following the resurrection times of Easter, we enter into longer days of light, the springing forth of green shoots and leaves and the beginning of warmer winds that herald the stripping off of winter layers.
In the North of England I am surrounded by the birth of lambs in the fields, the rising of early flowers on the hills and the co-creation of new ways of living as the pandemic restrictions we have been under for over a year are starting to lift.
Yet birth is often a struggle.
When was the last time you died?
Might sound like an odd question if you are sat at your computer or phone reading this feeling very much ‘alive’ in order to do so.
But how would you define living?
“Alive or just breathing?”
A tad cliché but worth considering.
Every awakening involves a death.
The death of old social ideals, stories or identities.
To die means to journey into the underworld and re-emerge new and clean.
Between darkness and light there is a magic place
It is a place of harmony and fusion
Of alchemy and compassion
Between darkness and light is peace
We are at an exciting time on the planet.
Yes I say that a lot – but I do truly believe that to be the case.
Most of my life (excluding a brief foray into archaeology) I have worked in business.
Whether that’s for large corporations, smaller SME’s or in the last 11 years since I have been running Beyond Human Stories, a wide array of limited companies, multi-nationals, community interest companies and social enterprise. I have also worked with educational institutions and multiple not for profits, many of which are now run like businesses due to the way funding streams are structured and allocated.
Yet in the last year during a global pandemic, the world of ‘business’ has been able to stop, catch our collective breath, and take a good long look at what is truly important.
The last few days have started with a storm.
It seems this is pervading the energy fields of the planet right now. Whether it’s solar radiation, fluctuations in the Schumann resonance or simply the astrology, the prevalent frequencies seem to wish to distract.
Years ago when I was learning NLP, I was taught a neat storyhacking trick for creating our future.
It was called, ‘standing in the future’.
The trick goes like this.
What is your relationship to the primal energy under this seemingly simple word?
Is it in your vocabulary?
In your life practice?
Perhaps not.
Forgiveness is neither easy to say nor do.
It is one of those words that tends to grate up against all the parts of ourselves that we would rather not look at or even see.
Yet it’s power to liberate is unimaginable.
Yoga means union.
Union draws together all the disparate parts of our inner and outer worlds, weaving them into a coherent story and pattern so that we can once again feel ‘whole.
Years ago, I started to practice yoga.
“Let the words you speak be worthy of the silence they break”
Anon
This phrase was spoken into the silence of a circle I was a part of over a decade ago and they have stayed with me ever since.
As a reminder of the sort of deep presence that I seek to cultivate on a daily basis.
How do you feel about silence?
When it comes to the art of storyhacking, I have one word for you.
Trigger.
Storyhacking revolves around noticing what you are ‘triggered’ by and working with it in the heat of the emotional moment.
On this day of new life
I am grateful
In this moment of new breath
I am grateful
For the past and the lessons it has taught me
I am grateful
For the present and the presence, I AM cultivating
I am grateful
And for my dreams and visions of a beautiful future that keep me going
I am so grateful
Have you ever met someone by following the flow of synchronicity and suddenly ‘just knew’ that you would know them for the rest of your life? This is exactly what happened to me when natural magic led me to Lorna Howarth, my lifetime(s) friend and co-author of our new book baby, The Soulistic Journey.
These are the times of unravelling.
I have said it before, and I will no doubt say it again.
Unravelling is as easy or hard as we make it.
The stories we have clung to over the previous hundreds of years are fading away.
Our choice now is whether we will fade with them or embrace a phase in human evolution where we simply don’t yet know the answers.
This is akin to being lost.
Stop
Don’t rush
This is the moment of magic
The moment when you get to rest between choice and experience
Take a breath and
Listen
Allow everything outside to gently hush
And know that everything is really inside
Of you
In this ever-present eternal moment of silence
The pregnant catalyst of life
Can you hear it?
A new story is beginning to take form
Somewhere inside of you
As we approach the shortest day of the year on December 21st and the Winter Solstice, we are invited to step back from the stories that we live our lives by and find some deep peace and reflection space to rest and regenerate ourselves.
After the year that took us all by surprise, we are being asked to use the power of our conscious choice in new ways to create new personal and collective realities. One powerful technique to assist us in doing this is hibernation.
Yes – similar to the Bear tribe, we humans can also find our ‘cave’ and carve some ‘sacred time’ out of our day world to rest, enter into silence and care for our bodies, minds, emotions and dreams.
Taken directly from the December practices in The Soulistic Journey, the extract below invites you to withdraw from your conscious awareness or identity based stories for a period of time so you can discover the true gifts of the year that is passing.
“The real challenge to humanity at this time – and always – is that of distraction. Most of us are living within a story of ‘survival’ our entire lives. Our ancestors were also locked into the same story but often with a different context. And now, we find the whole global community facing a collective story of survival, from the triple-whammy impact of climate-change, global recession and Covid-19.
How do you respond to the multifaceted challenges of change? Do you feel a sense of relief that things are transforming or a sense of panic that they are out of control? Are you easily swayed into anxiety by those who preach fear and apocalypse, or can you rise above the fear and hold on to the light of potential opportunity? It is important to be aware of your responses because these emotions are the messengers of alchemical transformation.”
Excerpt from The Soulistic Journey
These are the times of inner and outer alchemy.
And the fire that fuels this is awareness.
“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
Mahatma Gandhi
We find ourselves living through the times of fire.
The fires of social, environmental and personal transformation are burning brightly and it’s up to us whether we harness them to transmute the old stories that are ready to die.
This month is one of the most fertile times of the wheel of the year on earth. Not because things are growing but because we are planting the seeds of our future stories deep in the soil of our lives.
We are able to sink into the inner realms of our imagination and harvest the lessons and blessings of the previous twelve months. This is the time of year when I draw a line in the sand and decide how I wish to co-create the next twelve months in harmony with Universal Law.
For the last two years I have been living a wonderful story.
A story that romanced my friend Lorna and I for a year or more before she allowed us to catch her and bring it into form.
This story is called The Soulistic Journey.
And I remember the exact moment that she told us her name.
This week I found myself reflecting.
This Wednesday was the 11th November 2020.
11.11.2020
If you are a student of numerology like my mother or astrology like several of my friends this was an important date for many reasons. Master numbers, planetary conjunctions, Universal forces coming into form. The story of potential was big.
And yet amongst all the bigness of what is undoubtedly happening in the world right now, I found myself reflecting on the journey of the last 9 year cycle for me (9 being the number of endings and beginnings).
We are all indigenous to Earth.
This is something I have spoken about frequently with many of the amazing elders who I am lucky enough to have in my life as teachers, guides and role models.
Humans are catalysed by stardust and yet made of Earth and clothed in her elements.
All our relations on this beautiful living planet are formed in similar yet different and diverse ways.
Our challenge is to return to a more integrated and interdependent way of living within the complex and intelligent ecosystem of Earth.