New Moon - New Beginnings - New story can now be written...

The build up to this new moon solar eclipse energy is intense, but in an exciting way, well for me at least. I can feel the shift that it is bringing towards greater freedom and simplicity, of the opportunity to shed what is no longer needed and re-identify in a more positive way with who we are at heart, beyond all the labels and woundings and traumas that hold us back and limit us from shining more brightly into the world.

I know many of you are feeling the squeeze, the discomfort of the not knowing and the uncertainty and the chaos that ensues, the challenges, the obstacles and just coming up against yourself over and over again. This my friends is LIFE. It is the NOW, and the now and the now. And as I am always reminded when I pick up the Yoga Sutras, the practice is for the NOW. NOW. With all its drudgery and suffering, all its confusion and discomfort. It is not for when everything is rosy and lovely and light fulled, because that would be to reject the NOW and to live in Disney world again.

Yes, beautiful beings, it is indeed a harsh day when we realise that so much of what we have been told about life here on Planet Earth is actually an illusion, that there is no happy ever after, no Prince Charming appearing after we kiss the frog (no Prince appearing when we buy new shoes that feel so right either for that matter), no gold under the rainbow and no finally, finally, finally, feeling that it all fits together and we can float on our cloud of love and light and beautiful radiant ever lasting harmony. Ha, ha, bloody ha.

I wanted to believe it, so badly. And I DID believe it for a good while. That was the problem. And I held myself up against the Disney ideal for too many miserable years of never quite making it and believing I must have it wrong, or be wrong, or not be good enough, or worthy enough, or just not be in favour with the universe. You know, the one you see in the movies, where everything is seemingly wonderful and perfect - the perfect marriage, the perfect family, the perfect home, the perfect body, the perfect job, the perfect blinking life. Companies make an absolute fortune feeding this illusion - it is the reality of capitalism.

Obviously I was disappointed. No happy ever after? No perfect, well anything? Because I had been sold it. I had bought into it. I did believe in it. Crickey, I even tried to live it - the perfect me, goodness, what an exhausting concept and even more exhausting reality, trying to make it so. It’s not surprising I aways felt so hopeless. New age spiritualism only complicated matters. This told me that if I just imagined it, visualised it, cut out images that represented it, thought only thoughts that allowed it, kept orientating to love and light, fixed myself a little bit more, then I’d make it so IN THE FUTURE. Ha, ha, ha. More of the illusion.

Nope my friends. This is IT. NOW. This messy and tricky moment, this squeeze, this uncertainty, this urghness, this coming up against ourselves. All of this, is IT. And it seems to me the sooner that we can accept this and stop rejecting it, or fighting it, or trying to avoid it, deny it, get any from it, or in any way try to make it different, the easier our ride will be. The way supports us. We’ve just got to get out of our way first. IT truly is about living in the PRESENT. It is a gift. Not what happened previously and not what might happen eventually.

In fact it is this ruminating, towards the future, our imaginings, when it might just come together, that screws us up the most, that feeds us an unrealistic expectation of what might happen when we have our shit together. WHEN WE MIGHT have made all the changes that we feel we need to make to make life easier than it is right now in this moment if only this hadn’t happened to us, or this person did this for us, or the weather didn’t get in the way of our plans.

We need to let go of our attachment to outcome, of believing it needs to look a certain way - this is without doubt one of our greatest sufferings. We need to let go of trying to control things, possibly one of the most difficult things in the world because so many of us are control freaks because of the fear of…well, being out of control of course…which arises because of our fear of….usually it’s around loss of feelings of security and safety, usually because we’ve experienced that feeling at some point in our life, maybe as children, and we do all we can to avoid feeling the feeling again…

Of course it’s the EGO. And yes, we need the ego, it’s our friend at times trying to keep us safe, but also our enemy at times too, keeping us limited because of its fear of repeating painful experiences from the past and therefore keeping us trapped in unhelpful patterns. It has this annoying tendency to believe itself to be right, and therefore makes the mind rigid which makes it hard to let go because the mind will do all it can to prove that it is right, and will give us a very hard time if we question it, until something happens and we finally surrender and feel lighter and freer for it, until we do it all over again, buying into the idea that there is a right/wrong, good/bad, black/white, fixing ourselves one way and having to prove it and generally trapping ourselves in the process.

It’s a perspective shift for sure, and a letting go of the conditioning too. We have been conditioned to believe that we can have it all. We can’t. It’s an illusion. Instead we take what we need and we leave the rest…simplicity is the way of ease, why overcomplicate things? But here we are again, conditioned to complicate things.

Conditioned too, by modern psychology, to ruminate indefinitely about our PAST. Which can cause us to get stuck there, over-identifying with what has happened to us. This has formed part of my enquiry of late, which arose on reading Gabor Mate’s new book about trauma. I noticed, having never really come across him previously, that he identifies very much with his childhood trauma story and it made me question whether we ever stop being defined by our past and our perceived trauma, or whether we constantly allow it to inform our present and therefore our future too - so that in effect we become our trauma/condition and reinforce it over and over again by our (over) identification with it.

It is my experience that we need to be careful here. It may just be words but words are powerful things. Is it MY depression or did I just suffer WITH depression? Because I suffered with depression, does that make me a depressive all my life, or was it just a momentary thing, an experience?

Personally, depression was not a part of me, I existed before depression and I existed after it. And yes, while I wrote a book about it, in a quest to process the story and share it in the hope it may help others, I do not want to be defined by it. I am so much more than that experience. The story has been told and I don’t now feel to re-live it, or be limited by it.

It’s the same with the life experiences and perceived trauma that contributed to the depression. I am aware that it is very easy to get caught up in these, to lay blame and hold onto stubborn unforgiveness. I have worked hard to overcome this in my own life, to accept that life happens for us, not to us and t find peace with this and forgiveness too. Forgiveness sets us free but is one of the most difficult things in the world, when we feel we have been harmed in some way and harbour anger about this. At some point we have to find the strength to let this go too - more often than not the hardest bit is forgiving ourselves and letting of the related defensive patterns that thread and weave their way through our various energy centres like invisible thread.

The trouble is, unless we do find some peace, then we allow ourselves to keep re-living the pattern, because there will be triggers and our mentality will be thus affected and it is easy to drop into a pattern of negativity all over again. We have to realise that this too is a choice. Our mindset is a choice. It was a revelation to me the moment I realised this and noticed my tendency towards the negative. It takes effort to change this, one has to gently cultivate a more positive mindset, it doesn’t just arise easily, we have to witness our thoughts and notice our patterning and question it and consciously change it.

Always there is the opportunity for change. And changing our story is entirely possible, when we change our mindset and decide to move on, let go, move on and begin again. Personally I have no interest in perpetuating old stories. I look back at old photos and there was a time I was really down about these, about the way I behaved, about the person I was back then, because I was so unhappy and often drunk (at least in the photos) and I noticed how my spirit flagged, almost giving myself a hard time NOW for what happened THEN.

I decided to set myself free. We can only work with our level of consciousness in any one moment. I was not conscious back then. I was suffering. In the midst of eating disorder, hating and loathing myself on a daily basis. I found solace in drinking alcohol, it number me from my pain. I didn’t know another way back then. But the way found me. And many of you will know this from reading my book. There is always another way. And I took it. And while it’s not been easy at times, I know there is no going back. That there is another story, always another story, not yet written.

I am happy to make peace with that part of me that knew no better. What is the point in perpetuating my suffering by giving myself a hard time about it? Only we can truly set ourselves free. And we have this moment to do it. NOW. I’ve had an amazing life thus far and I’m grateful for all the crazy experiences, even those very drunken ones, they were fun! But I didn’t want that story to be the only one.

The trouble is, people love their stories to the extent that they can get trapped by them, boring the pants off others with their re-telling and over-identification, frustrating others too, because of the manner in which it prevents them living in the PRESENT.

But letting go is tricky. Who are we without these stories?

For me, it’s very EXCITING when we reach this moment. When we realise that we don’t need to be burdened by our past anymore. That we can let go and write a new story now.

And this is what is exciting about this new moon because it is gifting us the opportunity to be more than how we have labelled, defined and limited ourselves from our PAST experience. We are being given the chance to break free. NOW is the time to change the story.

Remember, life happens for us, not to us. Our higher self draws in experiences to help us realise more of itself in this lifetime. We are never given more than we can handle. And we are always supported. We are never alone. There is always a WAY. We just have to keep surrendering moment to moment because life will rarely turn out the way we expect, or want it to. BUT it will always give us what we need - helping us to let go of trying to control outcome, of being able to rest more easily into the flow, of being able to find a greater depth to our love than we could have ever possibly imagined…

The moment we think we’ve got it, made it, found it, is the moment we probably haven’t, and is the moment the universe will usher in another challenge or experience or obstacle for us to navigate, to bring us deeper into the PRESENT.

It’s an illusion to believe that only love and light exists. It doesn’t. This is to deny the shadow. We all have shadows. Usually they’re being mirrored back at us. The moment we are triggered by another, is the moment to pay greater attention, because that other will be mirroring back to us the aspect within ourselves that we have rejected and/or not integrated, that in some way annoys us about ourself to the extent that we deny it…

When we find ourselves blaming others for our experience, take note. It is ALWAYS about US. Not someone else. Take responsibility for each experience and truly own it. You are NOT being punished. You ARE enough. You have ALL you need within you. Switch off, switch IN.

We each have the choice each day, to close to fear and the negative or to open to love and the positive.

The mind can be both our greatest enemy, and our greatest liberator. It is a choice.

This is the reason I love yoga because it is all about containing the mind. It is only in containing the mind that we can realise more of our eternal self, the part of us that doesn’t need stories or labels or false identifications. Not to say that those stories and labels and identifications don’t help us access more of our eternal self - our soul - because they can, only that we have to make sure that we, at some point, let them go…

It is about FREEDOM.

Celebrate your differences.

Being completely selfish. After all, who really wants to be selfless? I mean what is the point in that? I’ve never understood why we celebrate selflessness. At core, we are Self. Why give our Self away to others?

This new moon is gifting us freedom. Freedom to choose again. Freedom to write new stories. Freedom to let go of all those responsibilities and burdens we have been carrying that are holding us back, all those old stories and labels and identifications that keep us tied to the past. Freedom to let go of ANYTHING that is holding us back. Freedom to just BE…positive…loving…trusting.

Ultimately it always comes down to trust, faith and love. Trust in the self. Trust in the path. Trust in the practice. Trust in the Earth. Trust in spirit, Trust in Source.

But trusting has to be cultivated. Faith has to be cultivated. Love has to be allowed to flow.

Acceptance of what is happening NOW is truly helpful. Not projecting to a future when it all works out. This is IT.

So really there is nothing that needs to be DONE. Instead we have to undo the doing and the trying to be anything more than our unique and wonderful and beautiful selves, each a drop of God, radiating out into the world…and this brings us back to simplicity and to this MOMENT and to our HEART.

Sometimes we just have to trust…and pay attention…listen to our heart…and try not to buy into the ILLUSION.

Happy new moon solar eclipse, may it bring you exactly what you most need to write a new story now of what happens next.

Love Emma x