Inspirations

I live within a context. A particular time in history within an external environment that has an inevitable impact upon me. The timespan between my birth and death is not a blank canvas upon which I paint my life. It’s a story that I’ve been born into. Somehow, I need to make sense and meaning of my life within that story. I exist at the centre of a multitude of circles. Family, friends, skin colour, ethnicity, gender, country, political leanings, intellectual prowess, physical ability, postcode, hobbies, interests… endless categories that I belong to and identify with to varying degrees. Each [...]

...my quest is for wholeness, to become all of who I am, not just be a by-product of my environment. To know the essential worth I share with all others, my non-separation

That was how the phone was answered when I rang to follow up about a specialist appointment. Ouch! It felt like a punch in the gut. I stammered a little, but managed to absorb the arrangements that had been made for my MRI and appointment with the neurologist. Shush, don't talk about that I do feel a little self-absorbed as I write this, but I recognise that there are so many people experiencing frightening health scares, the anxiety of waiting for results and further information. So it might be of interest to some. I don’t think it would usually be [...]

Nothing to get rid of As a spiritual seeker I’ve long wrestled with “getting rid of my ego”. I’ve not really known exactly what that means. But, there has definitely been an acceptance that being overly concerned about myself is not conducive to my spiritual progress. Therein has lain a snare of subtly condemning and not valuing my own experience, my own unique worth and value. A tyranny of ‘shoulds’ rising up to keep me aligned to some ill-defined notion of what it means to be selfless or egoless. I’m passionate about spiritual progress, so I’ve taken these directions very [...]

I was asked this International Women’s Day about the woman who has most inspired me? I am going to break the rules in answering this question because I couldn’t possibly narrow down the field to a single individual. At the age of 56, I grew up in a patriarchal society. I learned the rules, how to play the game. I was good at performing. I was competitive and wanted to win, be the best. As a woman I wanted to be an object of desire for men. A list of inspirational women First on my list of inspiring women is [...]

This is by no means an academic piece of writing, just my ponderings and ramblings. I’ve been wondering about how power, the abuse thereof most obviously, is intimately linked to trauma. So much of my reading about trauma recognises the loss of control, or being over-powered as a key cause of trauma. There are some obvious examples; rape, child abuse, torture. I’m wondering whether power or a sense of control is in some way a factor in all trauma. In my own case, I have not been exposed to physical threat or domination. Rather, my loss of control had to [...]

Mindfulness offers the gift of radical self-acceptance so that bit by bit we can welcome home all our lost and abandoned parts to find the fullness of who we are. Neither refusing or getting hi-jacked by whatever we’re experiencing. Rather, finding some friendly middle ground where it is all ok and recognising that trying to change what is, always fails. The ‘what is’ applies as much to our internal environment as it does to our external circumstances.

Sometimes, people who we love are suffering. And, all we want to do is take away their pain. It’s such a desperate feeling. There must be some way I can resolve the problem, offer some relief, do something! It’s been one of the hardest and most cherished lessons of my life, that at these times all I can offer is my spacious presence. That there may in fact, be nothing I CAN do. It’s so tempting to want to fix, to make it better. But to slow right down, to allow things as they are. Not completely passively, but slow [...]

Yoga acknowledges four distinct stages of life. Roughly 25 years each; first youth, then the householder stage (with the key concern being gathering stuff, doing things and finding a means of survival), the third stage, sometimes referred to as the ‘forest dweller’ stage, is where I’m at. I think something happens when the number of days in front of you is undeniably less than the number of days behind you. And, it’s a beautiful thing. That ‘golden butterfly’ I’ve always been going to become sometime in the future, this ideal that I’ve been chasing, when one day I’ll be fully [...]

We begin life inevitably conditioned by duality. It’s the simplest aspect of our consciousness; determining differences – right/wrong, good/bad, happy/sad. In the process we learn to bury or deny a whole bunch of ‘stuff’. A whole, contains darkness and light, good and bad, happy and sad. A choice to move towards wholeness inevitably involves encounters with this buried ‘stuff’. The mainstream Dominant cultural ideals create a mainstream (which will be different depending on our subjective experience and geographic location in the world). There is a massive pull towards conforming to this broad stream, the dominant view that informs our conditioning [...]