Happy Ostara!
Well the Equinox has been and gone with a wonderful sunrise one direction and moon set the other, it was a rather marvellous moment of aliveness, reminding me of the balance of the masculine and feminine energies inherent in this world - moon is feminine and sun is masculine.
Now the sun gains in strength and what beautiful weather we have here on Guernsey as the light floods in. Mind you, I’m not sure we’re quite there on a spiritual flooding level just yet, despite what others may say. There are still a few challenges to overcome and a bit of squeezing going on. But at least we’ve more daylight to get out and enjoy ourselves, and make the most of the spring time energy of new beginnings, even if we’re not yet quite sure what that yet means.
The theme of balance stays in the air. We had a very wobbly balancing session at class on Monday, slightly better on Tuesday highlighting to me that collectively we’re still all a bit all over the place, so to speak. Maybe this is reflective of the new not yet come in and us not being sure which way to turn. It will become clearer. and I’m certainly looking forward to immersing myself in Sark’s energy this weekend and just getting away from it all so that it literally becomes clearer!
I did laugh to myself yesterday, about balance and how we perceive the world. I was cycling the boys home from the reservoir where we’d been playing around the bridge, this after a morning spent at the amazing Silbie nature reserve, and I was commenting on how joyful it felt to be on the bike breathing in the fresh air and all around us the spring flowers. Elijah, who was sitting behind me, pipped up with “Well I’d rather be in a Range Rover with my head in a screen”. I couldn’t help laughing. Here I am trying to promote a simple approach to life, with greater respect and reverence for Planet Earth and there he is car and screen mad!
It reminded me though that there is balance to everything, even that. Balance too in the way that we relate to ourselves and our inner commentary. I have been doing a Tantric course, which has been encouraging us attendees to notice the way that we talk to ourselves and this has been really interesting, sometimes we don’t realise the subtleties of how much we might talk negatively to ourselves, giving ourselves a hard time for our perceived short comings, and forgetting to congratulate ourselves for all our positive attributes and the way we have created our world.
Meanwhile I am trying to create greater balance in my world and I taught my last Monday class for about 10 years now. I don’t know where that time has gone! But what a change that class has seen over that time, building it up initially until there were over 40 people in the class for a while, to the extent that a few had to practice in the cupboard, this when I was massively into vinyasa yoga and my ego thrived on the attendance figures, and then Covid came and changed everything, especially my relationship to yoga, and I had to overcome so much of my insecurity to teach from my heart and not from ego demands of attendance figures validating my self worth, and/or monetary gain for various reasons.
I was studying the Bhagavad Gita yesterday with my philosophy teacher and it is interesting, because we’re at the third definition of yoga, which builds on the other two and so thus far we have:
Yoga is eveness/equanimity of mind, achieving a certain stability of mind.
2. Yoga is skilfulness in action, and this is dependant on the first definition.
3. Yoga is the renunciation of selfish purpose. This means that the actions are not motivated by selfish purpose.
I guess this is something we all learn with time. Re-orientating our motivation away from the need to fulfil some selfish gain, whether that be to feed our inherent insecurity or need for validation of worth, or for material gain for the sake of it, or greed, or to grasp onto something and to something much deeper, meaningful and magical than this. It’s never easy. We have to be very honest with ourselves and I have blogged about that recently too.
This is a continuous readjustment and recognition of where we are within ourselves and what it is we are trying to create and yet doing so without becoming attached to it, or grasping for it, or even wanting it, never easy. At the end of the day though, it becomes less about the superficial and what it looks like, but much more about how it feels on the inside, which is in contrast to our societal conditioning about outward appearances and the notion of success and happiness.
As with everything, we come back to balance and finding greater balance within ourselves, the dance of the divine masculine and feminine and embracing all aspects to self, including the parts we don’t like. So in many respects it is indeed a process of reclamation, reclaiming all our fragmented parts and becoming whole again. I write about this more in my new book, which is still in the proof reading stages, which I’m totally OK with now - years ago I would have been massively trying to control it, attached to the outcome, but now, well, it’s all part of the process and will find its own timing if it is indeed meant to be out in the world. Sometimes it’s enough just to create for the sake of creating…
Creating is truly in the air. Springtime. New beginnings. Ostara. Where all is vibrant. But we need to be gentle with ourselves. Playing with new ideas as they arise, watching where we cling to the past for security and safety and hear ourselves talking about going back…this is a time to spring forward, even time is springing forward this Sunday and so must we too, into more of who we truly are, beyond all the masks and social conditioning. It’s certainly a time to do away with the masks here on Guernsey and especially in schools, but maybe I’ll rant about that another time!
Enjoy all the newness and loveliness and if you do fancy a last minute break to Sark, then we do have a few places due to Covid casualties, so please do get in touch. Enjoy the sun!
Happy Ostara!
Love Emma x
