After discovering I'd been heading in the wrong direction with my life's work for the longest time, I was lost. I decided to write daily, without any preconception of what to write, in the hope it would become a map for me, revealing a path forward in real-time. I hope these little pieces of writing, are solace and support to anyone who is lost or flying on a trajectory they no longer want to be on.
16) Unwell
I'm unwell today. My body works flawlessly and impeccably to bring me back to homeostasis.
I know this, but I feel sorry for myself, wanting it to be over, bored of being ill when it's only been 24 hours.
I'm hot with a temperature and, after spending most of the day drifting in and out of blessed sleep, I wake up and am restless.
It's sunset, so grabbing my fluffy blanket I sit outside our hilltop house to bathe myself in it.
The sky here is incredible, you can see and experience it as a dome arching above in all directions, crowded with so many different shapes and sizes of clouds, each reflecting the light in their own unique way.
Often, here, I feel held and encircled by the sky, a comforting and yet transformative and uplifting feeling as I melt into its embrace, any resistance to life tempered by the joy of connection.
Tonight, I watch the miracle of colours painted across it and feel melancholy, disconnected, a longing to feel akin to the sky, for it to permeate into my bones.
I wonder at the human capacity to drift in and out of focus.
As I watch a parade of crows fly across the muted light I see that I love nature so much for its clarity.
Trees, flowers, insects, and animals do not seem to think about what they must do to thrive, they just take the energy of actualisation they were created with and alchemise whatever is around them to become the best they can be.
There seems no filter, no barrier between them and their Creator.
We carry so many filters between us and the Divine.
I mourn that and the longing in me to lose what stands between me and my Divinity is strong.
And yet that grieving is what keeps me from it.
Any thoughts that I am not Divine are the ones that keep me separated from it.
And not that I ever could be separated, I just think I am.
I want to cry with frustration at my own innate ability to uncouple myself from Love.
17) Oaks Poem
Ancient, reaching, leaning
Flowing to the light,
With the light,
In the light,
Fed by light.
I envy your silence,
Sit with you in awe,
Calmed by your unerring self.
Fingers blessed to touch, to feel your cracked skin,
Body consecrated by breathing the air you refine and give back pure.
Longing fills me, a sweet relief from all the tangled thoughts that routinely cram my mind.
And as the blue sky sears my eyes with hope,
My soul touched and no longer alone,
I rest in your flowing clarity, your absolute goodness.
18) Invocation
Invocation def:
1)the action of invoking someone or something.
2)an incantation used to invoke a deity or the supernatural.
3)(in the Christian Church) a form of words such as ‘In the name of the Father’ introducing a prayer, sermon, etc.
A word for me that connects 'priestess', 'sacred rites' and 'devotional writing', makes sense of them, makes them congruent, makes them confluent.
Invocation. To invoke the feeling of my own Divinity. A piece of art, a melody, a fragment of a conversation gleaned, that reminds me of the places where my wings are still folded. That resonates with my Spiritual essence and recalls me into my intrinsic Presence - more wholly than previously recognised.
The sacred rite - sacred writing - of devotional aspiration. The longing to communicate the holy reverence I have for the miracle of Being, just for the sake of it.
Not for others, not to anoint or transfer or bless. But for the Divine’s own sake.
Writing to invoke, to evoke, to light up my own wings. To make hallowed what I see within.
An Oak is a benediction on the land. As its being unfolds out of Life right before my humbled and hungry eyes, it conjures wisdom and connection I had forgotten that I am.
An Oak is not solid but a flowing, ever-changing, manifestation of luminescent life, as am I. Never still, constantly in flux and response. Simultaneously form and formless.
No wonder there is no need for fear or worry! How astounding is it to realise that none of it is in my hands!
Not in the hands of the tentative human vessel, who has learned so well to adapt and survive in this necessary social container we have developed for ourselves.
As my life is created in front of me, as I walk, fingers grazing branches which spring to life in my conscious awareness, I'm stunned and beatific to see that this vista only exists because I lay eyes on it.
Everything I sense around me, only ever experienced inside me.
I am the within.
19) Wyrd
* I apologise in advance for any mispronunciation of the sacred Norse words I used!
Still on wobbly legs from my illness, I allow myself the indulgence of walking out along the farm track.
An aureate morning, the strong breeze inciting the tree shadows to openly cavort with and caress the ground.
Everything is Autumn hued now, those wealthy colours - gold, coppers, oxides- and the low sun a glittering strobe behind the billowing Ash.
I return home engorged with the sheer joy of it.
I met a different Oak today, a wyrd Oak, somehow more wild and self-knowing (or maybe that's just me).
Partly clothed in a gilded mantle of mature Ivy flowers -their globe-like, pollen-encrusted clusters a bee's happy dream - this Oak understands its place in the complex and tangled web it stands at the centre of.
For the first time, it seems, I stand at its root slightly trembling and disconcerted by its power.
When I was 11 years old, somehow I got a copy of The Divided Self by R D Laing, a treatise on schizophrenia. I remember trying so hard to understand it, catching tantalising glimpses of understanding in the carefully constructed words.
I was just a little girl trying to heal herself. Trying to understand why life often felt so painful and ill-fitting.
I realised yesterday, I've spent nearly half a century in service to that sweet child's longing. So many say that they have realised they learned their healing modality - therapist, energy healer, body worker - in order to heal themselves. And then go on to work to help others.
But, for me, I see it was never actually about that. It was all a misdirection of my mind.
I wasn't searching for healing, but instead the very root of it - wholeness. Making The Divided Self a poignant title.
For me, the search is over and all the impetus behind it, all the momentum can drop away.
It's strange without it, lighter, and yet it feels a little bewildering still, to be so unburdened.
It's not normal in the society I live in to be unburdened. We are glorified and sainted by the media, by our families and friends for suffering. To walk through life without problems? Hardships? Pain? Anguish? Unacceptable!
How unseemly to be whole whilst others are broken!
And yet how can someone remember their wholeness if they can't see another with it?
Wyrd is an Anglo-Saxon word for fate, destiny, becoming.
The Oak I met today had become, fully cognisant of its wyrd in a way that maybe others I have met haven't. More temple than cathedral, more Yssdragil than a casual survivor of humanity's war on trees.
Yssdragil is the world tree in Norse culture, wherein all the worlds exist.
The Norns, mythical beings who care for Yssdragil remind me of the three stages of Oak growth if it is left to grow itself.
The names of the trio of Norns are Urðr, which means “what once was”, Verðandi “what is coming into being”, and Skuld “what shall be”.
'What shall be'- the acorn, complete with its cosmic blueprint for life.
'What is coming into being' - the tree in its middle 300 years, providing maximum life and nourishment to itself and those around it.
'What once was' - the tree in its veneration stage, 300 years to die.
I see how the wyrd Oak contains all that in them at once and so do I. The cycle of birth, death, and rebirth a pure constant even as my thoughts create my world.
In some ways, Oak and I are not so different after all.
The previous instalment of this series can be found here: