Solstice adventures - Avalon

Happy solstice! I hope you’ve had a good one. We’ve had an amazing solstice adventure beginning Sunday…

Sitting here writing this from a really comfortable bed in a yurt on the land of Avalon, looking through the open door, I can see the Tor in the distance, I think I might well have died and gone to heaven.

All the obstacles and challenges that the path of heart creates are more than worth it in these moments. I had a few other moments yesterday too, in Glastonbury itself, of synchronicities, coincidence, ‘aha’ and magical moments. Some things just suddenly made sense and with that a perspective shift.

I had forgotten how amazing it is here in the yurts at Lower Coxbridge. I used to run yoga retreats here, hiring the main house and the barn too, but the house and barn are now rented out long term, so the yurts are the only bits now available and what a joy they are. We had the log burning stove going all night to keep us cosy and warm, and enjoyed seeing sunset as the sun set beyond the Tor, and not long after then a rainbow filled the sky, it’s a magical place here alright.

This morning the sun is rising to my right, and over behind me, in the left, the moon is half full, on her wane. Today we head away from Glastonbury on another adventure ending up at Stonehenge for sunset…excited to see what the day offers, and hopefully be on the land that little bit more…

Yesterday we did a lot of walking, up and around the Tor, back down a different way through Dod’s lane which is an ancient track linking Glastonbury and Stonehenge. I had read about it only the night before, but now we stumbled across it as we headed into the town to visit the Godess Temple. There is something profoundly magical about the land on and around the Tor.

We spent time at Chalice Wells too, my soul craved the quietness and healing and this too is a potent place, the land talks and you can more clearly hear your own inner guidance. It’s just next to the White Spring and we visited her a few times, lit candles, dunked in the spring, I even sang a little bit, joining in with other women finding their voice in the darkness of the cavern, it was a moment I shan’t forget, how energy finds energy and music begins.

We didn’t shop like we might have done previously, after all, there’s only so many crystals that one needs! We left time for hanging out here at the yurt, and I’m pleased we did. No WIFI is bliss for me, not so for Elijah, but it’s so wonderful to tread the earth and just be absolutely surrounded by nature, with very few other sounds, just bleating sheep and the birds.

Sometimes we don’t realise how much our environment impacts on us until we step away from it.   How much the same thoughts can consume us until we make a conscious decision to let them go, remembering that we are not our thoughts, any more than we are our feelings, they come and go, there is no consistency to them.

It’s stability though that I’m working with, a complete lack of it actually, and trying to be OK with that, to let that go as a concept that has underpinned so much of my life and see if I can still find my peace without it. It’s a work in progress, as is so much, but being here on the land, one realises that this is enough, this connection, the land. If only we can find space away from WIFI and noise and activity, never easy in a place like Guernsey!

The funny thing is, there was a time when the idea of no WIFI spun me out. When coming here and staying in the yurts was wonderful bar the lack of effective phone signal, let alone access to internet, it was an issue and I’d find myself hovering around the back of the main house trying to connect in, trying to stay connected, feeling it essential somehow. Not now. Now I try not to go online unless I need to, which drives friends and family mad, especially as I’m no longer attached to a phone. Funny how much we’ve come to expect 24/7 response time to our messages and emails.

xxx

Sitting here on my mat, the sun rising one side and the moon the other, the Tor ahead, it dawns on me how THIS is the stability I seek. It’s here. Every day. It crossed my mind yesterday but I can feel it and see it so clearly today. It is the land. It has a consciousness and it holds us well, if we allow it. I hear myself telling others this and I know I lean into it, but have I truly learned to trust it?

Today I trust it. Yesterday I trusted it too. I felt it at Chalice Wells closing in on me and hugging me close. I felt it up the Tor and as we walked down the back way into town. Today there is a knowing that was once just an idea forming in my head, now I know it deep within me, now I know that this is the only stability in our lives and to try to create greater stability is to waste our energy because everything changes, nothing is certain, not really, even the run and moon have their cycles so they are not one constant. There is no consistency. We live in a dynamic universe, it is chaos mainly.

So perhaps the lesson is not to try to control this and make it something it isn’t, so that we may rest easily into it, but to accept and embrace that everything changes, including us, and just go with the flow of this. I mean I know this. But to truly live it, beyond the concept, to absolutely let go of the various societal constructs we have created to make things stable, well, it’s not easy, because once again there is a going against the mainstream flow of ‘this being the way it is’. No. There are many ways. But to find yourself going against the grain. Well you have to dig deep. But, but, but, the land holds you when you do.  

 More to follow…onwards to stones, playgrounds and Stonehenge…