The year of endings
Well I don’t know about you, but that super moon felt huge. Without doubt this is the year of endings and I felt as if this moon was encouraging us to pluck out limiting beliefs and conditioning's that are getting in the way of our greater freedom.
In my own life there was a certain discombobulation as some of my yogic and spiritual conditionings were thrown into question and I could see so clearly more of demonic mind and it’s, um, demonic patterns, let alone the way the mind self-sabotages, and creates such incredible stories that get in the way of us seeing the truth of reality.
I am blown away again and again how much these ‘spiritual’ practices - for me anyway, the Scaravelli-inspired yoga especially, because of taking me deeper into the body, but the Reiki too - help us to stop living so much from our programming and lower mind (think of this as a foreign installation put into us in our formative years) and therefore buying into pairs of opposites, and holding unhelpful opinions which keep us stuck in rigidity and more of the same. (We surely must all try to shift us from this patriarchal world!)
At some point we have to let go. At some point we will have to let go as the ultimate letting go is physical death itself. But ‘spiritual’ practices help us to keep letting go along the way, to find more ease, more stability and more freedom IN life, but helping us literally feel more alive.
And to experience this we have to be in the body. And this is where we have to be so careful with so called ‘spiritual’ practices, because they can cause us to be out the body, to be only interested only in the higher cosmos, as if we are always looking up and out of ourselves. This is a trap! To truly experience the cosmos we have to go deeper inside ourselves and deeper down into the Earth herself too. It is the opposite of what we are often led to believe and a reminder to be increasingly discerning about the practices we choose.
I am blown away how many people do practices because they are told to do so, without any awareness of the often negative impact it is having on them. And how rigid we can get, so that practice becomes a tick box exercise without true spirit, curiosity or indeed freedom. I have been there, I know that pattern well, and it liberating when we can step away from this paradigm of achievement and ‘success’ motivation.
So too when we realise that even in the ‘spiritual;’ world many are actually not living from spirit. It is very easy to kid ourlsves that we ‘are spiritual’ but what really does this mean? That we buy crystals and practice yoga? I really don’t feel that we can differentiate if we are living from a place of wholeness. And then we don’t have to label or identify with spirituality because we just are that.
Increasingly I see so called ‘spiritual people’ merely feeding more of our patriarchal conditioning by doing more of the same (consumerism, materialism) but under the guise of spiritualism. It’s so subtle. And until we know we don’t know. But truly, to change this world, to shift our collective consciousness, we really do have to find new ways of being that allow wholeness and true self-acceptance, not just the acceptance of parts of us on a good day, but ALL of us, even on the ‘can’t get out of bed’ days. This is ALL good.
We also have to be real. The only way we change the world is by changing ourselves, not trying to change other people, and rejecting them or society because they/it doesn’t look like we want them/it to look. Because otherwise we run the risk of just preaching and look what preaching has done to us as a collective. Increasing numbers are committing suicide or dying from neurological and degenerative conditions, to say nothing of cancer. We are not a well society, and something has to change, beginning with our relationship with ourself and indeed with nature (stop separating from nature, stop separating from parts of ourself).
One other thing I’m conscious of - how words can get in the way, make us too much in the mind, and this is tricky for someone who loves words and loves writing. So I’ll finish by saying that the endings don’t have to be a real death or a change in job etc., albeit that is happening to lots of people, but a change in perspective, a dying of the old, a letting go of unhelpful beliefs and habits so that this, just this, changes our entire destiny for ourselves and for the collective.
And while it is not easy, the letting go and the dying of some false and outdated version of ourselves (the depression and the loss of faith this brings), there is always a light to be found. And when that light re-appears you can be sure your faith and trust will have strengthened and your perspective elevated.
I’ll stop now (!) and leave you with this Buddhist teaching:
“Watch your thoughts – they become your beliefs
Watch your beliefs – they become your words
Watch your words – they become actions
Watch your actions – they become habits
Watch your habits – they become character
Watch your character – it becomes your destiny”
Love Emma x
