The Sole Traveller

 

Once again, we find ourselves at the place of new beginnings. As Mother Earth reaches the Spring Equinox, with equal days and equal nights, we are invited to come back into balance, to reinvent ourselves and start afresh.

During these days, the sun appears to be at its fastest and it is easy to feel like the days are rushing ahead and everything is piling up on us with big to do lists.

As I said before, if we have ignored the wisdom she continues to offer, then we might already be feeling overwhelmed and worn out.

However, if we have listened, been still during the winter months and recuperated and rejuvenated our energy reserves, then we can step into this new year with a positive mindset and lots of energy.
Like Mother Earth, we can mirror her wonderful creative energy and be inspired to jump into life, just as the buds on the trees. There is no time for judgement or even time to think about what we are doing. We are just doing, creating, bursting into life again, on our personal journey.

This reflects our lifetime journey and we are the baby bursting from our mother’s womb. This month reflects only the birth itself and so only represents the first 3 months on our lifetime journey. It is a journey we make alone and reminds us however relational we are in this life process, we have to hold our personal integrity. Aries is the archetype that continually brings us back to self.

Personally, I like to see this as a wonderful opportunity, and chance to wipe the slate clean and make positive choices going forward. When I had my awakening, nearly 25 years ago, I was told we were going to be asked to choose between the shadow and the light. I soon learned that this wasn’t about an endgame, a single important choice, I began to see that this is all about the choices we make in our daily lives, the small but actually fairly significant choices. This keeps coming back to me.

As I look around and see the ever faster changes that appear in our society, I have to remind myself to look in every direction as it is easy to get caught up in the negative roads we take as a race. I know that in equal amounts we are making positive choices, but that these are easily dismissed and over looked.

While I don’t believe we can stop the vehicle that is taking humanity into an extremely dangerous place, I feel we can, as individuals, make individual choices that offer a parallel road, a road with different values and simpler ways of living on this earth. 

Watching Mother Earth display her simple vitality, her non-judgemental and free-spirited life force, inspires me to stop over complicating and remember what life is essentially for and I would invite you to do the same. Keeping our sanity in these challenging, hedonistic times calls for us to stay grounded, feet rooted firmly in the ground with our eyes, ears and hearts wide open. 

Let’s make this year a fully awake journey around the year. The more of us who make this choice, the more chance we have of hearing Mother Earth’s guidance through these tough, yet momentous times.

The Big Surrender

And as the year draws to a close, once more, we breathe out one more time before we prepare for Mother Earth to turn again and bring in the new seasonal year.

This is my time, I have five planets in Pisces and obviously I feel very comfortable here. It is a time of letting go, when we are being asked to shed the skin of the old year and surrender ourselves into the great oceanic waters of all that is. Here we recognise that all is one and we are the drop in the ocean, apart and yet a part of it all. We can immerse ourselves in the watery womb that is our aura as we complete the journey of the 12 months of the year and the journey through our chakras. This is where our ego is invited to see its limitations and open up to greater sense of who we are. As we expand our sense of self beyond the limits of our physical body, the soul becomes the mother to our childlike state of being human. There is no judgement here, no idea of one being better or lesser, it is just the journey we have chosen to come into this human body and forget how we got here. The invitation is to arrive at this point, expand our awareness and bring in the greater story, the truth, to surrender ourselves to it and remember. Just as the mother surrenders everything for the baby, we are given this opportunity once more as we prepare to step into the birth of  the new year, and the birth of the baby on the lifetime journey.

In this way, as I look around at what is happening the world I sense this idea of rebirth all around. As the old ways are being shown up to be the out of date mode of living on this earth, the new energy is beginning to emerge. These green shoots are small and certainly not revolutionary, but personally, I believe that is a far better way to bring about change. Evolution has always been my preferred route as revolution is too aggressive and usually ends up with the same issues that it has replaced. Evolution however, takes time and offers a chance to allow the new ways to find their way without collapsing the old. There is a natural flow which enables people to grow into the ideas by choosing them rather than being forced or simply remaining resistant for fear of change.

This is the way Mother Earth brings us in. Each year she turns, each year she offers the same lesson, like a wise teacher that knows the student will find their way when they are ready. Each year, although the lessons are the same we can find new depths in the teaching if we follow her lead, for though they are the same in principle, with each year we spiral further out each time, raising our vibration with every turn, giving us the opportunity to raise our understanding and ability to sense in to what is truly happening around us and within us.

I have been intrigued by the news recently. Whether we find solace in the knowledge that the BBC has been prepared to recognise its bias and change its stance on suspending sports presenter Gary Lineker, the solidarity that grew out of this question of freedom of expression is, I believe, more important than we can imagine. The fact that this had become so one-sided is something that has needed addressing and I feel that finally, this has begun.

In same way, another story near to my heart, the protests in Israel at the moment, are shining a light on this. The move against the far right political stance taking hold is really important to me and I see the pull in each direction necessary as the shift in polarities are being shaken up. We need to find a state of balance before we can choose a better way.

We have been out of kilter for so long, for millennia, and this is our opportunity to step into a higher vantage point and rise out of the smallness, the lower perspective we find ourselves in. 

Listening to what Mother Earth has to offer this month has been a blessing for me and a way to find  how to navigate these increasingly choppy waters. I ask, what can we do to lift ourselves above the fear and resistance to change, that keeps us from moving forward. 

Change is a natural state of being and we are shown this by the I Ching (translates as the book of Changes) and Mother Earth’s journey around the year as being in a constant state of change. When we find ourselves stagnating in an inability to change we need to look around for inspiration. Nature is an obvious teacher and she offers all the love and nurturing qualities we could possibly need.

If we can embrace her wisdom and love ,whole-heartedly, and prepare ourselves for and surrender to the new year in this way, who knows what changes we might bring into our lives and the lives of those around us.

 

Bird's Eye View

This time of year can be one of the most challenging. It is often the bleakest moment, when the winter has already seemed long and yet spring seems so far away. Celebrating Imbolc is something we have, as a society, forgotten, in the busy bustle of modern life. But in these difficult times it is possibly the one ritual we need most if we are going to find our way out the darkness and learn to overcome our fear of it. Rekindling the light that we found at the Winter Solstice is an imperative when the news is overflowing with tragic events of war and disasters, and we can only see chaos and corruption within our institutions and those seemingly in power.

As I said in my last blog, this archetype and the previous one, Capricorn, are concerned with our structures within our society, and if we wish for change, we have to be aware that the old ways of ruling aren’t going to change by themselves, it is up to us, the people, to find new ways of working. 

The problems start when we cling to the belief that the people with power are the few,  those seemingly 'in control’. We miss the idea that they only have the power because we have given ours away and handed it on a plate to them. The moment we realise that this power is within each of us and what power we have as a collective, is when things will start to change.

The Aquarius archetype teaches us that we are each a unique individual, but that we only can shine (this is held by the opposition, the Leo archetype) when we come together as the best versions of ourselves to form a collective that brings all the positives together. This beautiful air sign, the last of the three enables to discover the best way to do this. Having saved our soul in Capricorn as an individual, we now know how to sort out our own problems and this means we can find the best solutions as a collective, and this is represented by the world of science.

One of the Aquarius symbols is the perfect mirror showing how we have got this wrong. 

If we see the image of the bird flying over head as the individual remaining aloof and choosing to feel separate from the world below, then this relates to how we are taught to believe we live on the earth; disconnected but feeling superior, 

How are we to break this misconception?

For many years I felt this image conveyed the shadow aspect of this air sign, leaving us stuck in our heads. 

The world of science (another symbol of Aquarius) gives us the potential to problem solve our way out of our crises. To me however, this was also part of the problem, because science was born out of our disconnection to earth. I am not implying that science is bad, but like everything humans discover, in the wrong hands - those disconnected from their hearts - it becomes corrupted.  

The world of science discovered the telescope and in the 1780s man saw Uranus for the first time. This planet is now the ruler of Aquarius, it has a revolutionary energy, and was discovered in the time of the French and  American revolutions. It was also the time that electricity was discovered, setting our world alight. This unseen planet, now revealed, set us on a path of discovery. One of the most imperative things it is asking us to discover, is our awareness of our collective unconscious. This would enable us to find the bonds that connect us all,  

The bird that is found in this archetypal story, and in the Glastonbury Zodiac (on the Tor itself), is the phoenix who has to die in order to rise out of the ashes. If we are to make the changes most people would like to see in our world, change war into harmony, impoverished communities into ones enjoying health and well-being, we have to come down from the skies and discover that we are of this world and not on it. One thing science is teaching us is the delicate balance of nature and how we are disrupting it to our detriment as much as any other living being in this world.

Our sense of superiority will be our undoing. 

However, as ever, there are always more ways to see this. What filled me with fascination is how a view can be flipped on its head. It was explained to me, that the idea of the bird flying overhead isn’t only a negative thing. It can be positive if we choose to see it as the archetype that takes the role of the witness. Part of our journey is about understanding that we are stuck in our heads, in our egos, and this has taken us on a road filled with pain and trauma that has been passed down over the centuries, over millennia. 

If we are going to heal this hurt, which seems like an overwhelmingly huge challenge, we need to be able to step outside our sense of being just an individual, a limited human existence. This begins with learning how to be our own witness. Like a mother tends a child, we can tend and heal our own inner child by creating space around our sense of self. This gives room for our soul to enter the story and help us to grow into our true power. Once we have opened ourselves to this broader view, this bird’s eye view, we will begin to see how we are a community of beings and a collective so much greater than we think we are. 

I have faith that there will be a time when we stop giving away our power to the few and spread it evenly to all of the earthly beings who share this beautiful planet with us, 

Then we can choose a kinder way to live on this earth, a way of trusting, caring and loving our fellow humans, and all who inhabit this world. This is so much simpler that we believe, but until we take that higher path and are able to see a better way for ourselves we will continue live in the small version of our lives.

My friend, Chrissy Philp, the author of the book The Golden City, called this time, as we move into the age of Aquarius, the Cosmic Mind. I believe this encapsulates the times to come perfectly and beautifully. 

 

The Hardest Journey

Another year draws to a close and as we embark on a new year, the challenges do not  seem to be abating. However, it is vital that we stay aware of our relationship to the world we live in and how tough our journey may seem. The archetypal wisdom we are invited to consider this month offers an interesting perspective.

Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, begins at the Winter Solstice when the sun is at its lowest point in the sky. 3 days later the sun appears to turn around and begin its journey northwards; the coming of the light. This is celebrated as the saviour’s birth, as a reflection of the coming of the light within us all, and we are invited to climb the mountain to save our own souls.

Spending time with such long winter nights, we are encouraged to view the night sky. We see the Pole Star, approximately the centre of our galaxy, as it holds its position in the sky, while the rest of the galaxy spins around it. We mirror this in our Third Eye chakra. At the centre of our brain sits our Pineal gland, that offers us a sense of stillness, while our busy minds spin around this point. 

If we are willing to stay with this stillness we can access our own inner wisdom and the wisdom of the universe. 

This is, of course, not easy. The journey to achieving this state of stillness, especially in these challenging times, is a hard one. However, we have Saturn as our teacher and guide. He encourages us to take each step one at a time, learn each lesson without rushing ahead before we are ready, and most important of all, finding joy in each moment, This is the art of saving our soul, making the journey the thing, not the goal of reaching the top of the mountain.

I have spoken of this every year as it comes around and although it feels like I’m simply repeating myself, I find that each year the same truth holds a deeper resonance, a new way to process and learn from this wisdom. It’s like when we take the same walk each morning, some might find it boring and repetitive, while others can see that each time it is different. The subtleties, the changing weather and flora and fauna, make each visit seem like new. This, to me, is all part of the joy, all part of understanding how life is so much more nuanced than we imagine, and how we relate to it can change with each rustle of the wind, and flow of the tide. 

I have come to realise how I have blustered my way through my life, complaining how I cannot feel the subtleties of the aliveness of nature or of the higher vibrations and yet here is the answer right in front of me.

Over the last 2 years, since Lockdown, I have been incredibly privileged to have been able to turn my focus online, joining summits and communities where the wisdom of Somatics has been brought to my awareness. Somatics is about connecting to our body wisdom, which emphasises internal physical perception and experience. For me, it was time to learn how to tread gently, develop a new relationship with myself, how to feel what was going on in my internal world and how to be still enough to start this beautiful journey.

Looking at the archetypal wisdom, Capricorn and Aquarius both deal with the structures that our build our community. I have always struggled with the institutions and social structures we have created in our modern society, and always believed that there must be a better way. I feel that part of my reasoning behind becoming a musician was in some sense a desire to ‘drop out’ from what I saw in the world. 

Now this sense is being brought to the fore as our institutions, whether it is the NHS, our schools, care homes, prisons, the list goes on, are all in crisis. Of course the main crisis is an ecological one, as climate crisis is at last being recognised.

As we are being asked to deal with this at the eleventh hour, my feeling is that we are too late to turn this around on a physical level. We simply don’t have the resources or the will anymore as the society we have created has lost its way to such extent, fear is leading us forward rather than any sense of wisdom.

The more I delve into this somatic world, the more I believe we can find hope by going within and finding a whole new way of moving forward. It involves a completely new language, new senses and a change in the way we experience and see the world. I have loved every moment of this new journey and it fills me with hope to know that more and more people are coming aboard and that so many are way ahead having been working this way for years, decades and of course millennia. 

Join us, it’s not always easy, but the best journeys are always worth it because they are challenging. When we climb the mountain, reaching for the best we can be, and finding fellow travellers on the same path, together we can move mountains, not just climb them.