Dreaming a new dream

Change is a funny old thing. There has been a lot of change these last two years, more than I’ve ever known in my life time, in terms of how we are living and the questioning of that on a personal and collective basis.

Here my life has been turned upside down as I know it has for so many. When I reflect back to then person I was two years ago, when Covid was only just being talked about, I was a very different person to the one I am now. I remember Rebecca Shaman writing about this ‘corona’ virus and how it was coming in to shift things and spiritually transform us, corona representing the ‘crown’ and this of course the top chakra, opening us up to greater faith and unity and now I can see more clearly that this is exactly the process that has taken place.

But it’s not just the crown that has been affected, it’s our whole being. For example, our roots have been well and truly shaken as we have been forced to look at the supposed structures in our personal life and in society that have been put in place to try to create a sense of security and safety in our lives. Many of us already know that there can be no certainty in life despite our attempts to make it so, but it is one thing intellectualising it and quite another living it.

My roots were definitely uprooted and I have been forced to look at the myriad of ways that I have tried to create feelings of safety in my life to counter the feeling of loss of safety that I, like everyone, experienced at some point during childhood - incarnation itself is enough! Just going to school and being separated from our mother’s for the first time can create an emotional response and set in motion a pattern around safety. For me a huge trigger was going to university and out into the big and bad old world on my own.

It was here I lay patterns around numbing out to not have to feel the intensity of separation and loss of safety, disappearing into a world of wine and cannabis smoking, anything to reduce the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’d already been exploring this when Covid hit but it gave me a wonderful opportunity to dig deeper and see the many ways in which I created and responded to stress in my life which was more often than not triggered around feelings of being out of control, which is what Covid triggered in all of us…life was no longer in our control. Not that it ever was, this of course the illusion.

Control is huge though and it was an uncomfortable exploration at times, noticing the many ways I try to control myself and my environment, let alone outcome. In many respects this was the hugest shift, moving away from the emphasis on outcome, achievement and results (power and money as a representation of success), which underpins our patriarchal approach to life and our need to prove our worth in the world, and strip away the layers that I was unconsciously conforming to this. I am sure there are many more layers to go, such is the nature of consciousness!

The real work though in the root was one of trust, never easy if our roots have been shaken, because we have to dig deeper still and we have to cultivate greater faith, taking us up to the crown again. The chakras can not really be looked at in isolation, they weave together to form the bigger picture that is our life here on Planet Earth, albeit our soul incarnate, the subtle body travels with us through life times.

The root work took me straight to the solar plexus though and the will and power and control that resides here. It’s been a rough ride in there at times but I am aware that things have changed considerably just by tightening boundaries, let alone the re-orientation to centre over and over again, and noticing the many ways we give power away and take it from others. We all have the capacity to manipulate and control, some use more subtle tactics than others but essentially it’s about getting our needs met - if we’re meeting our own needs, we don’t need to play the games to get them met in crafty and sneaky ways.

Physically this has freed more of the diaphragm so I can breathe more easily and taken me - wham - into a deeper relationship to heart. At some point, maybe back in 2004 I decided to follow a path of heart. It’s not been easy and I have questioned this lately. I am always surprised the depth of our feeling in heart if we can access it. I’ve said it before but one of Marie’s greatest gifts to me on her passing was the way it ripped into my heart and opened it up so I’ve felt like never before and this without my old numbing techniques (cannabis dropped away a long time ago, alcohol and disordered and emotional eating have also slowly dropped away) and with an awareness of self destructive tendencies of old. The last five months have been some of the toughest I have had to navigate for some time and there has been a need for deeper honesty with self.

This has taken me into my throat and to my voice and greater authenticity. This has made me look at the many ways I restrict what I say or write, or express myself in the world through fear of being censored and judged by others, and how much I then limit myself because of this, because I care of what others think of me. What I have learned is that everyone thinks differently. We have our perception of who we are, just as we had a perception of other people, but it is merely that, a myriad of thoughts that can change over time depending on our perspective, where we are in our life and where we are in relation to that other person.

We can never truly know what another is thinking, even thought we assume that they must be thinking the same way as us, but of course they never can be, their experience of life will be unique to them and this will cloud how they see the world, and us in it. But it takes a certain courage to not care what others think and yet there is so much freedom that comes with this. I noticed how much I clung to my titles and academic qualifications to define me almost like something to hide behind and keep me safe while simultaneously proving my worth to the world.

I began to notice how much of my life was lived based on what was expected of me and not in accordance to my heart, how there were all these compromises, convincing myself I was living from the heart where really the ego was running the show, making choices based on fear around loss of safety, or like I said, what others thought of me, let alone my need to feel in control of things and essentially not truly trust, always a mental back up plan, just in case.

This took me deeper into my womb and sacral chakra, the seat of the self, and my relationship to my menstrual cycle has deepened as I have tried to listen in, not only finally clearing some long-held-onto more obvious wounding but also to notice more of the subtleties too, the way my body has been treated by the medical profession with various testing and procedures over the years, let alone the way I’ve treated my body with extended periods of self harm in all its many ways, some more subtle than others, and much of this due to societal perspective on say intimacy, relationship, image, sex and birth, and the loss of the sacred in all this.

Again I am brought back to crown and the faith and sanity of living more aligned to heart. The biggest change though has been the deepening into the third eye, to intuition, which has surprised me and delighted me too. On some level it makes sense, once we have a stronger sense of self worth and are not trying to control all outcome, when we are trusting in the earth, then this allows more of who we truly are to filter through and release us from karmic stuff around fear of our gifts, for we each have many, and the ability to ‘see’ may well be one of these. There are realms beyond the one we ordinarily see and I’m grateful to remember as I did a child and now know this to be true.

All of these changes on whichever level they are made, physical, mental, psychological, emotional and/or spiritual, will impact on all others in turn. We are whole. The greatest lesson really is to allow ALL of who we are, including those bits we have turned away from and shoved in the shadows, those parts of ourself we have labelled as bad such as our shame, guilt, anger and rage etc. I have realised how important it is to allow these feelings and to notice also how much they are created by our perception of things, by the way we think and that our holding onto them is the greatest harm we can do to ourselves really.

This brings us all the way around to judgment. I have also become increasingly aware that the more we judge ourselves the more we judge others and the more we judge others, the more we will be faced with those judgements so that we are encouraged to see that there is always another side to how we perceive things in any one moment. In many respects THIS has been the greatest healing. I am grateful to one of my soul friends who has highlighted this to me, by being everything I once judged and is a wonderful mirror for me.

As we change internally and let go of our stories and narrative and begin to allow more of our authentic self to be seen in the world, the more our outer life changes to reflect this. I mean you can change the outer world, but really the change has to come from within - we’ve probably all changed jobs at some point, for example, or relationships, as another example, hoping that things might be better this time, only to find that we end up in the same position all over again, simply because we haven’t shifted our internal patterns around say worth or control or whatever it might be.

So my outer world continues to change and will no doubt continue in this vain the more I deepen into practice and into trust and faith. The changes at Beinspired reflect this, let alone in my personal life. In both areas there have been some huge changes, maybe not visible to everyone else, but certainly in my relationship to them and the way that I live and be in the world. I am grateful for these changes however challenging they have been to navigate. But the reality is that at times we outgrow the life we have been living and we can continue living it, stifled, or we can find the strength of heart and the courage to make the necessary changes.

Once we start putting a foot in our new direction, tentatively at first, just a rumbling in the mind, and a deepening into the heart, then the universe undoubtably picks us up and carries us along, gives us a nod here and a sign there, and we slowly navigate our way, holding the wall for support at times, breaking down at others, being gentle at times and scared at others. It’s all OK. The universe has our back whichever way we look at it, we just have to rest deeper into trust and Self.

The pain comes though in letting go of the dreams now lived, and those that may never come to fruition But this is fine too, because there are always new dreams to be dreamt and always new ways to see the world and our place within it. We just have to let go, let go, let go and flow flow, flow and drop deeper into the heart and to love, which will always guide the way. It’s a cliche I know, but it is true. We get to put into practice all we have read and learned, and truly embody this time of big change, for the greater good (hopefully) of all of humanity.

Because this is one last thing. The dream we’re dreaming now, is the earth’s dream. We have to dream bigger than we’ve ever dreamt previously, for harmony, love and peace, for respect and reverence for the sacred both inside ourselves and within the world as a whole - we have to do this now, move away from our petty ego-concerns and dream into being a better world for our children and our children’s children. It’s time to turn scared into sacred, fear into love, hope into reality - we ALL have a role to play in this.

I hope at Beinspired we can help to support this process, the healing, the personal development and the return to increased simplicity. We don’t need much in this world and the path of heart highlights this. Spirituality is a constant letting go, and return to the things that really matter in this world, that cannot be bought or sold, cannot be stripped of its sacredness, and that is love.

Happy dreaming!