2021: Orientating in the here and now.
I find it interesting that we ended 2020 with a Cancer full moon, having begun the year with a Cancer full moon too! As a Cancerian myself I am well aware that Cancer brings with it a focus on the home and family – rather fitting then, given that the majority have had little choice this year but to spend their time at home with family! It was a beautiful moon and I feel like it really has ushered in more of the new.
I know it’s been a terribly tricky year for many, but each year brings its fair share of challenges. This, I’m afraid, is the reality of being human; everything is subject to change, including us, thank goodness. Admittedly 2020 has highlighted this more than other years; that life is always uncertain and unknown, at least if we are truly living. However, this brings with it fear, which has been a central theme during 2020.
As Krishnamurti writes: “I lead a certain kind of life; I think in certain patterns; I have certain beliefs and dogmas and I don’t want those patterns of existence to be disturbed because I have my roots in them. I don’t want them to be disturbed because the disturbance produces a state of unknowing and I dislike that. If I am torn away from everything I know and believe, I want to be reasonably certain of the state of things to which I am going. So the brain cells have created a pattern and those brain cells refuse to create another pattern which may be uncertain. The movement from certainty to uncertainty is what I call fear.”
We have all in some way been asked to face some of our fears this year, and to pay attention, noticing how we are living and whether this is serving us. We have also been asked to consider our relationship with death, not only in relation to the death of our body in this lifetime and the fear that Covid-19 brought up around this, but also the death of the life that we once lived, and the death of those parts of ourselves that we now need to let go, and the fears that prevent us from doing so.
We are all afraid of something, and while fear can be translated as ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’, it can feel very real, preventing us truly living in each moment, either tied to the past through fear of change, or clinging to the future through fear of being truly present to what is happening in each moment, imagining instead a life ahead, rather than appreciating the one we are actually living. Our fears are huge, obstacles some might say, not only creating much of our suffering but preventing us truly living in the present and settling into the uncertainty of change as it happens moment to moment.
2020 found me exploring my fears as I questioned the way that I was living. Perhaps it was coincidence or just meant to be, but I spent much of the year editing and re-editing my third book, From Darkness Comes Light. This asked me to dig deep to identify my inherent fears and to notice the way in which these were preventing me from letting go of my past, almost binding me to it through the certainty of that which had already been lived, and how those same fears were preventing me settling into the uncertainty of that which might lay ahead.
At times it was challenging, as I had to be deeply honest with myself, noticing emotional resonance to past events that were still playing out in my current reality, albeit unconsciously, such is the nature of the shadow. I was surprised to find that I was still informed by core beliefs around fear of loss of safety/security and fear of not being good enough, two central themes weaving their way through much of my earlier life, and continuing to play out in my present reality in the decisions I made and the way I was relating to self and therefore living my life.
I began to notice that in my quest to heal wounds and let go of threads from my past no longer serving me, I was continuously caught up in it, and identified with it, to the extent that it was difficult to be truly present to this moment. This fascinated me. I began seeing this play out with students too, especially those studying Reiki - how in our quest to heal, we can lose ourselves in our stories of harm and hurt and loss of wellbeing, even though we are trying our best to move on from them.
I also noticed the manner in which we continue to play out the victim role and lay blame, even though we are trying our very best not to do either. I noticed this in my own life too and it made me curious. What was preventing me from letting go of my victimhood and blame hood? I began to realise that both had fed my identity and sense of self to the extent that letting go meant letting go of a part of myself, a part of me then having to die to this world.
Furthermore, I recognised that in the process of letting go of identifying with my past hurts and wounds, I would also have to look deeper at my inherent fears and the escape routes I had created to avoid feeling them. In the process, I became increasingly aware that our identification and attachment to what has been, is the cause of much of our suffering. This to the extent that our over-identification with our wounds and harm-done can actually become an obstacle to our healing and orientation in the here and now.
E and I have been watching Virgin River on Netflix these last few evenings and there is a story within it about an older couple who split-up 20 years previously because of the husband’s brief affair with another woman. The wife was understandably broken hearted and the relationship ended albeit they remained the best of friends. Twenty years on and the wife finally asks for a divorce, she decides she finally needs to draw a line in the sand. The husband is surprised and initially resists her request, apologising again for what happened and stressing that it happened 20 years now and he has apologised countless times over the years!
The wife won’t give him a break though, she keeps going on and on about what he did and how it has affected her. He apologises again, saying it’s crazy, what more can he do, it’s been twenty years, will she ever move on from it? This really interested me, I appreciate it is fiction, but it really highlighted the manner in which we create our own suffering by holding onto the past, to the pain done, so that it’s lived over and over again, allowing ourselves to become a victim of it, blaming others for our misfortune and sticking us in time because a part of us never moves on.
It takes courage, strength, compassion and humility to forgive, yet forgiveness is the only thing that will ultimately set us free, that will allow us to let go of our stories and change the narrative. I too had to find the courage this year to forgive those who I felt at some point in time had harmed me, and to forgive myself too, for all the harm done through decisions made. I had to step up and take responsibility, change my own narrative, let go of old identifications, and in the process, let go of outdated core beliefs, though patterns and fears too – rewrite my past in many respects as you can read in my book when it’s published.
At the same time, I also became aware that our fears not only keep us trapped in the past, but can also cause us to orientate our attention too much into the future as well. I had known for a while that the trend in the spiritually-orientated world towards vision boards, The Secret and moon manifesting was not settling well with me, this to the extent that I stopped using any of these techniques, but I still noticed a tendency to project into the future, always planning, and expending a lot of energy trying to make my dreams come true and constantly comparing my current reality to some future imagined reality instead.
I started to recognise that this was also driven by fear. While my inherent fear around loss of safety/security, caused me to cling to the past because it was safe, secure and known, I also noticed a tendency towards over planning into the future to bring some certainty to it, making it safe and secure too. This further fed a motivation to earn money as a form of security (an illusion) and resulted in a pattern of over work and exhaustion.
I also allowed my fear of not being good enough to keep me stuck in the past and all that is known, looking outside of myself for external validation of my worth in this world through various identities. This made it difficult for me to let go of the various identities, because my sense of self-worth and feelings of being good enough were both precariously tied up in these identities and in my feelings around security, and earning potential!
I have become increasingly aware that it is important we actually look at fear, not what we are afraid of, but what underlays even this. Our fears are underpinned by the unknown and the uncertain, so we cling to what is known and certain through fear. We consider how this prevents us living in the present moment, how we live in the past or the future instead, clinging on to what is known or to a false notion of who we might one day become.
It became clearer to me that this flip-flopping from the past to the future was exhausting and making it increasingly challenging for me to orientate myself in the here and now. This fed a story of being inherently flawed and needing to be continuously healed, as much as it fed a story that in the future, if I only managed to realise my dreams, then everything would be OK. But what about now?
Well it’s easy to overlook this moment because life is messy and we reject messiness, craving something clearer, something with greater certainty, something known, something more perfect instead. But what could be more perfect than this exact moment - so why keep rejecting it? Why do we always reject what is, in pursuit of something else? In doing so we are continuously rejecting ourselves, saying that in this moment, this version of ourselves is not good enough.
As Krishnamurti writes: “One of the major causes of fear is that we do not want to face ourselves as we are. So, as well as the fears themselves, we have to examine the network of escapes we have developed to rid ourselves of them. If the mind, in which is included the brain, tries to overcome fear, to suppress it, discipline it, control it, translate it into terms of something else, there is friction, there is conflict, and that conflict is a waste of energy.”
Working with this, I began to recognise the network of escapes that I had created in my own life, one of literally running away from this moment, always needing to be somewhere else in physical space, but also disappearing into the future in my mind and to an imagined world giving me the peace and contentment that I sought. I saw how my attempts at ignoring my fears, was creating inner conflict because of my inability to be truly present to who I am now, in this moment, with all my vulnerabilities and foibles.
As Krishnamurti also writes: “To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love is or what freedom is.” Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it means to live”
I realised that I had no choice, I needed to die to everything of yesterday and I also had to let go of trying to control the outcome of my life. The process was messy and uncomfortable because I had no idea who I would become and how my life would unfold because it was not known, not certain, but this was necessary, because I had to learn to trust and have faith in life as it unfolds, of being OK with moment to moment uncertainty.
This didn’t mean that I gave up on my dreams, but that I finally stopped using them as an escape route from being here now. Further, I saw clearly how my fears had stuck me in my comfort zone as I made life certain, and that it was time to step into a more authentic and aligned version of myself, yet to be defined. I became aware that as we move from where we’ve been to the person we are becoming, we need to be with whatever life is offering, rather than trying to control it.
This was not easy. The tendency to want to control to make life certain and known is deeply ingrained, it’s a survival mechanism, but when it rules our life and prevents us growing, creating inner conflict and binding us to our fears, then we know we have little choice. Gill Edwards writes, “Whereas love is the accelerator which gets us moving, fear is the brake which prevents us going in the wrong direction. It can help us to steer a steady course through life. But if we react too strongly to fear, the brake is applied so hard that we come to a standstill, and fail to grow – which means a wasted lifetime”.
It is the moment by moment existence that unfolds when we live in the now, no longer a victim of our memories, our imaginings and our inherent fears, that will bring us the contentment and peace that we seek. When we start to accept the messiness of daily life as the moment, then we stop looking outside of ourselves and this moment for life to change. It is in this moment that it can change. Right now. And each moment that follows, but we have to let go and settle into the unknown, as so brilliantly explained by Krishnamurti:
“We would rather cling to the known than face the unknown - the known being our house, our furniture, our family, our character, our work, our knowledge, our fame, our loneliness, our gods - that little thing that moves around incessantly within itself, with its own limited pattern of embittered existence…to live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness, there must be a dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love is or what freedom is.”
As we approached the end of the year, I was increasingly drawn into the heart, to absolve myself of residual hurts, of threads still tying me to the past. I threw myself into SHEN and could feel the threads pinging apart, releasing me from more of my past, as I later sobbed out. I was surprised though when I also noticed a significant ball of anger and sadness over broken dreams and the disappointment that I felt because of an imagined future that never realised itself.
This amazed me actually because until that moment I had not appreciated the manner in which our broken dreams create so much of our suffering and our inability to be present. It is as if a part of us clings on to the slightest possibility of realising the dream (imagined), even though another part of us knows that we’re done, that we need to move on. We can feel significant disappointment to the extent that we see life through a negative lense. We can feel anger too, to the universe, God, ourselves, to all of this and more.
In the process, our spirit flags, our faith wavers and we close down our connection to heart and soul. It’s not intentional, but we lose our grounding too. We also feel disempowered. It reminded me though that we cannot control outcome. Some of the greatest spiritual texts such as the Bhagavad Gita tell us this. We should not get attached to the fruits of our labour. We have to trust that what happens is meant to happen, that this is the journey our soul has chosen in this lifetime and that love, peace, joy and contentment are available to each of us in each moment if only we can shift our perspective into something more positive.
This awareness created an energetic and perspective shift for me as I recognised that the more I can settle into the moment, the more I accept it, the more I do notice the beauty and loveliness of it – how can it be anything other than this? As the year ended, I felt much more positive in myself than I have done in a long time. Rather than finding fault with each moment, I have instead felt a renewed sense of gratitude and a deepening connection to that which cannot be named or seen, the holy spirit, a presence, whatever it is, but there is deeper trust and faith.
2020 has been a gift in many respects because it has offered a perspective shift. Not everyone will have seen it like this though and many will be stuck, waiting for things to ‘get back to normal’. But this is the normal! This is life. This moment, and the next. There is no going back to normal, but there is the possibility that many will continue to live in the past, reminiscing and clinging because of their fears of the unknown ahead and of death, which will one day become a reality for every single one of us as much as we might try and pretend otherwise.
We are reminded that death is as much a part of living as birth. We are in a constant cycle. Each new day brings with it the opportunity for death of everything that was known yesterday, and the beginning again of all that is new. We are a micro of the macro. Nature lives in cycle, from one season to the next, the sun rising and setting, the moon waning and waxing, the breath inhaling and exhaling, and we too, women especially, cyclical in nature through the menstrual cycle and our transition from one way of being to another, from maiden to motherhood and onwards.
The moon, the eclipses, the planetary shifts and the stars, all have helped to move us on, change things. By chance, I watched Forrest Gump while ruminating over this post, and it reminded me how sometimes things happen and life will never be lived again, this with reference to the peace movement of the 1960s which ushered in significant change, the heart and freedom, it brought a huge shift for humanity. Here too, 2020, and onwards into 2021, life can never be lived the same again and more fool anyone for trying.
Thus, individually and collectively, 2020 asked us to re-write the way that we are living as a humanity here on planet earth. We are being asked to transition from a place of fear to a place of greater love, we are being asked to die to all of yesterday, all of that which is known and yet not serving us, of dreams that will never be realised, and to create a different reality, one not yet known. We have been gifted a pause, a time to retreat inwards, to connect and reconnect with family and home, to be stiller, even here in Guernsey where we might not be in lockdown but we can’t travel so easily, we can’t keep escaping, we have to be present to our lives lived here now.
So while 2020 was messy, really it was messy, it was also absolutely necessary. And there has been change. For the first time in many, many years, I am not making any resolutions or intentions. Instead I shall try to be open to each moment as it unfolds, dying to the moment that came previously, and appreciating the peace, joy, love and contentment in each moment lived; lessening the binds of fear and opening more to heart.
I shall leave you with this beautiful extract from Emmanuel’s Book II, The Choice for Love:
“What does the voice of fear
whisper to you?
Fear speaks to you
In logic and reason.
It assumes the language
Of love itself.
Fear tells you,
“I want to make you safe”
Love says
“you are safe”.
Fear says,
“Give me symbols.
Give me frozen images.
Give me something
I can rely on.”
Loving truth says
“Only give me
this moment.”
Fear would walk you
On a narrow path
Promising to take you
Where you want to go.
Love says
“Open your arms
and fly with me.”
Every moment of your life
You are offered the opportunity
To choose –
Love or fear,
To tread the Earth
Or to soar the heavens.”