Have You Got The Sense That All Is Not Well? The reason why you are here (reading this blog) is because you know you are different. You know something that others don’t, or they're too scared to admit to.
The ship that we have decided to board to take us to our desired destination in life is not going to get us there, it's ill fated, not all of us will make it. You may well have questioned this boat’s viability as soon as you stepped on to the gang-plank or it may have only dawned on you the further that we have sailed away from port. Not that you may have had any choice in the matter, your parents may well have bullied you into making this voyage by buying you your ticket well in advance, or society may well have reserved you your berth as soon as you emerged onto the planet. You yourself may well have believed initially this was the only way to travel in the 21st century and willingly put the money down for your fare out of your own hard earned coffers, that’s if your peers didn’t actively persuade you to take the passage with them, thinking there was no real alternative. This however is a huge wrought iron ship with four funnels. It has engines that burn away day and night, hungrily eating up all the fossil fuels onboard. It scythes through the ocean like there is no tomorrow notching up the highest of speeds on this its maiden voyage with no thought to the wildlife that it leaves behind in its wake that choke on its fumes and feed on the litter being dropped over the railings from high above. This is the capitalist good ship RMS Titanic, it is deemed unsinkable and is due in New York in record time in a matter of days, it is just a case of continuing to stoke the boilers and we will be there in good time, no problem. Call it being psychic or what I don’t know, but you've just got this feeling that not all is going to go to plan on this voyage. Maybe you are concerned about the speed in which we are travelling, how much smoke continues to pour from the chimney stacks creating the smog above the vessel? Maybe you wonder whether the lookout in the Crows Nest can see the waves breaking on the bergs ahead moving as fast as we are? There is less of them now due to climate change but there is still enough of a risk. You wonder what safety measures are in place, how many lifeboats there are on deck for the millions of people onboard and if there is any back up plan or other ships sailing in the vicinity to the route we are heading on? You feel an urgent wish to wail at the officers in charge upon the bridge just to slow down, pay attention, take it easy, conserve energy and look to the horizon, steady as she goes. You lie awake at night listening to the sound of the propellor churning away at the back of the boat, concerned that it will be still rotating come morning as we hurtle away into the dead of the night. Not that others haven’t raised concerns before, they have, they have just been reassured by the captain that all is OK, all is well and everything is on schedule. Those people have left their question in the question pile and gone back to partying at the captain’s table, fine dining in the restaurant, gathering around the piano, listening to the orchestra out on the deck, locking away their insecurities deep into their psyche, forgetting about what their instincts have been telling them all along. I am onboard too and I share your sentiments exactly, I’ve not felt at home on this vessel from the start, I’ve searched high and low for a way off this ship but it is just too darn big and the drop to the sea level too much of a jump on one’s own. If there was anything ever to happen to this boat, some major collaboration would have to take place in order to get as many survivors off this vessel as is possible. These are the thoughts that pass through our minds, as our eyelids begin to close and we go off to sleep once again. And then it happens, the juddering in the darkness we have all feared, of bolts and girders buckling and water spraying everywhere. We’ve hit something, be it peak oil, a rise of 2 degrees centigrade in global temperature, the 8 billionth person to be born upon the planet, the loss of the Northern White Rhino or the outbreak of Covid - 19. There is panic in the midships and the captain cries out from the bridge ‘All Stop!’ An immediate reconnaissance is carried out aboard ship to assess the damage, temptation is to restart the engines again almost immediately and to plough on regardless, but enough of us now know the real fate of this vessel and it is time to plan our exit if we are to have any chance of a more meaningful life at all. Fortunately for us there are some skilled seamen and women aboard, capable of piloting a lifeboat with the intentional communities, sustainable development centres and Transition Towns that we already have in place across the planet but we realistically need an entire new vessel to be able to save this amount of people and a mayday has only just been raised to the RMS Carpathia some miles away. Can that boat possibly reach us in time? Is there anything that we can do to save ourselves and keep ourselves afloat before then? Is there another outcome to this story? Perhaps we can change the way that we look at life before it is all too late? That is why it is imperative that we overcome any bullying we have encountered in our own lifetime to date, so that we can make the right choice as regards to what vessel we wish to be traveling on, finding our true identity in the process because such circumstances depict that we all need to be operating to the best of our ability now and going forwards if we are to transition from one boat to another. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.
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Running about the garden, with my little yellow net.
Tottering in and out of borders, wondering what life I’d met. Chasing fellow brethren, through flowers and the veg. Pulling wings off Cabbage White, avenging atrocities of the dead. Then one moment that did change, you appeared above the hedge. A power came to greet me, placing love in heart, in wedge. So vibrant in your colour, yellow, magenta, cyan, black. Shining well beyond that of mine, I could never now look back. What pleasure had you brought to me, in one mere fleeting glimpse. Little did I know then, how long before meeting hence. Three decades flew by, plus a year or two besides. Travel needed to foreign lands, different times and tides. But there again you were, in garden, bobbing through the bush. My pulse began a racing, to a beat I could hardly hush. For here you brought an energy, like which I had never felt. Throbbing up my vertebrae, my body began to melt. A tingle and a rush of blood, my head was all a swoon. Giddy with delight on seeing you, one moment not too soon. All ablaze in sunshine, of daffodil in hue. A dream to be together again, just that of me and you. But what about the purpose, connection thirty years apart. A thought I must just ponder on, not knowing where to start. And so a journey then began, of peak and then of trough. Of looking for my life and path, before spirit cried enough. A dozen dances of the wheel, had come and gone by then. Camped within Druid valley, awash with poetry and of pen. Nights spent under canvas, daytime in and out of lodge. A training in completion, no false identity to dodge. Here I was in element, to nature in just keeping. Touched so deeply by the land, tears continued on the weeping. And so it was upon the vale, where swallows kept a coming. Swooping low and fast, bringing messages of becoming. Darting here and darting there, a gilding and a sail. A flish, a flash, a loop or two, one glorious coloured tail. Whispering ever so quietly, each one they said the same. My mirror that of Swallowtail, I’d found my medicine name. By Simon Blackler Copyright © Simon Blackler 2020 If you care to comment on this poem at all please feel free to do so below. Why The Caterpillar Dominates Our World At This Time! We as human beings, at this moment in time, seem to hold dominion over nature. With each day that passes so the imbalance between our own population and the rest of the species upon the planet becomes ever more extreme.
Both through the continual building of our own numbers and the way that we choose to live, we impact on the rest of our ecosystem. This is proving to be detrimental not only to those other creatures that live alongside us but to ourselves now too. We can visibly see the influence we are having on the world around us with the melting ice caps and deforestation visible from space, as well as the plastic pollution that can be witnessed within our oceans first hand. We are a species out of control, out of alignment with the rest of the Earth. When Coronavirus came along, regardless of whether it was man made or came from nature itself, during lockdown, the rest of the planet was able to gain some temporary relief from our continual onslaught. Both the waters and the airs around the globe began to become clear again and the animals of the land and the sea started to venture out of the depths of the wilderness to reclaim their natural territory. It was like as if an electric shock was being administered to Mother Earth to pump new life back into her body and to help her fight back. Yet in this time of societal upheaval, if human activity was being restricted and we were less evident as a species on the surface of the planet, we were still growing within our own households, out of sight of everything else, the world over. In 2020, as a population, up to the time of writing we have birthed another 79 million people on to the planet, where only 33 million have departed in the same time span (a mere 644,000 of them being attributed to Covid - 19). That means we have created a net population increase of 46 million since the turn of the year. All those people need to be housed, fed, clothed and watered. This is space that is needed for the human being at the expense of nature. We are bullying the rest of the planet into submission with our continued expansion and consequent consumption. I believe there are some simple reasons behind this phenomenon. What lies at the heart of it all is a feeling of lack and fear deep within us, of people not being whole and fulfilled, always wanting more, be that stuff or children, in order to fill a massive void within us. This feeling of lack stems from our family upbringing, childhood, playground activity and reaffirmed society values, where we are bullied into a life determined by others whilst we remain unaware of who we truly are and our authentic place within the natural world. There is no rite of passage any more that encourages us to voyage out into nature to be able to gain the knowledge we require as to what our true identity is all about. Bill Plotkin states in his book 'Nature And The Human Soul' that we now live within a 'Patho-Adolescent Society'. My personal interpretation of this is that we live in a permanent state of adolescence without ever truly growing up. As many of our leaders exist in this state too, not ever having had any real affinity with nature themselves, we are being led down a cul-de-sac with nowhere to go except oblivion. Bill would say that 'in current Western and Westernised societies, in addition to the scarcity of true maturity, many people of adult age suffer from a variety of adolescent psychopathologies - incapacitating social insecurity, identity confusion, extremely low self esteem, few social skills, narcissism, relentless greed, arrested moral development, recurrent physical violence, materialistic obsessions, little or no capacity for intimacy or empathy, substance addictions and emotional numbness'. Any amount of this is brought on through bullying, criticism, control and abuse and the consequent trauma that happens to us as a result of all this. In effect what we are talking about here is what I class as a caterpillar way of being. Where we continue to eat up the world, consuming all the while, unaware of our true potential that lies within us, the ability to transform into the butterfly we are all capable of being. We have a whole mode of communication that connects us to the caterpillar growth model in existence every day that encourages us to compete at the expense of others, knocking people down and bullying them into submission so they are unable to do that to us. We need to be aware however that there is another way of relating that is more collaborative, supportive, encouraging and indeed loving that will take us closer to evolving into the more aspirational flighty form of ourselves that we ultimately desire, one capable of creating everyone as winners. If we are to heal the world and bring it back into alignment we must first heal ourselves, then change, develop and evolve into the more complete human beings we are capable of becoming. That way we can help nature do likewise but we first have to stop and take responsibility for ourselves again. For if we do not then Mother Earth will surely strike back more strongly than ever before, if not through another pandemic then famine, drought, flood or other extreme weathers and circumstances designed to test the survival spirit of the human being to the limit. We have a choice now to change and make long lasting amendments to the way that we have been living to bring us back into balance with the rest of the Earth. I suggest that we take this opportunity now before it is too late and the world is too far gone. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. Can One Moment In History Do Enough To Shift Consciousness? Little did Derek Chauvin know when kneeling upon George Floyd's neck what the next 9 minutes would bring for himself, George, the black population, and humanity as a whole, I would imagine.
Racism, is in effect bullying. Bullying of a group of people purely because the colour of their skin is deemed to be somewhat different to what we might experience ourselves. We see the other person as separate from us, where the human connection and commonality between us has been lost. Maybe the person comes from a separate neighbourhood, a different country, a contrasting part of the world, experiencing a varying culture and set of life circumstances to us. Instead of seeking to understand and begin to know that individual, extending the hand of love towards them, we choose to concentrate on the separateness, the fear and feeling threatened by the other person. We end up punishing them for not being like us. I speak from personal experience, my life path is one of being bullied. Ironically experiencing the flip side of the coin, as a privileged white male, certainly within my own peer group, in contrast to other caucasian youths that lived within my own neighbourhood. I was seen to be different. I seemingly had more than others, a bigger house, larger amount of wealth, more loving parents and these guys were envious of my upbringing and lifestyle. I actually ended up having a similar experience to George. Years of bullying by my own tyrants, two individuals in particular, led to a pivotal moment, a crescendo, where one of the protagonists placed his arm around my neck, playfully demonstrating to his counterpart of what it would take to strangle somebody. Unfortunately for him, and for me for that matter also, he pulled his arm a little too tight around my windpipe and I blacked out and fell to the ground. Just like George, I was able to offer up little resistance to what was happening at the time, almost accepting it as the norm. That was, until immediately after the event where I realised the ramifications of what had just happened. Fortunately I was able to get back up onto my own two feet again. On doing so I felt immediately empowered to go and get help to start to bring about some sort of change. This I think is what is happening now, the black population is getting back up on its own two feet again on behalf of George and for their own sake too. They have been suppressed for far too long and this is perhaps the moment that has come to trigger a whole race into action and bring about lasting transformation. We of course have been living in an unprecedented time of late, the Coronavirus lockdown has placed restrictions on society across the planet like never before. If there has been any feeling of unrest going on behind closed doors then this scenario will only have exacerbated the situation. A pressure cooker of ill feeling could well have been building up in households across nations not necessarily related to racism, just in experiencing what it is to be a human living through this time with our own unsatisfactory set of life circumstances playing out within our own mind. Under such a situation it only takes a tiny spark to explode a powder keg of emotion that has been pent up for decades, centuries, millennia even, and rightly so too. It may well prove to be the instance that brings a great deal of things to a head within the world that need to be healed within our own society and then moved on from. What the black race will have to do now, if my own circumstances are anything to go by is to seek to make themselves stronger in whatever shape or form is deemed possible, not by way of further conflict, but by way of questioning their oppressors and enquiring into how a more even society can be experienced and parity formed. For when I was being bullied, I didn't realise that I was the type of person that could be bullied, or would be bullied. So when one oppressor left, it was only a matter of time before another oppressor arrived because I hadn't done anything to change myself and my own way of being. I realised I had to change my own behaviour, the way I conversed with people. I needed to find myself, get in touch with my own belief system, be sure of my own abilities, worthiness and purpose, to create a tougher core that was not to be pushed around any more so I was more able to stand my ground. This took many years of investigating and experimentation before the right path, teachings and tenets started to present themselves to me through my own personal development and eventually finding The Shamanic Path. If we resort to rebellion at any time and seek to become the oppressors ourselves, to retaliate through more violence, then we are no better than what we have experienced first hand ourselves. Sometimes, I grant, this is a necessary process if our oppressor won't listen to us or is not prepared to enter into a negotiation with us, but ultimately there are only losers in this scenario. If we are to follow Dr Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis, where we realise that the only options open to us, by way of communicating with one another, are through being a parent, adult or child, then when we become the oppressor or are the oppressed we are acting out the parent / child scenario. Here we can only bring heartache and pain to our world. Our challenge or invitation is to try and shift that emphasis into the realm of the adult. Here, a more supportive space of enquiry exists in a place of love, not one of fear. Here we can bring peace to ourselves, others, our community and our planet for the benefit of everyone in the future. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. On rousing, she snook in beside me.
A thief, at work in the night. She’s come, to steal all my virtue. With weapons, of fear and delight. Femme fatale, she is in the making. Fine scented, and soft to the touch. Luxurious legs, and great bosom. You’ld never, imagine as much. I say, I’m up early this morning. No time, to dwindle and play. She winks, and breathes ever closer. Then whispers, wait awhile, stay. I fiddle, with corner of cover. Well, what’s one more turn or a toss. I shrug, my shoulder at fortune. My stone, will gather more moss. For now, I am back in the rapture. My beloved, has snagged me once more. One hour, or three go by now. No richer, I’m left with the poor. I’m beaten, my mind unforgiving. Opportunity, has come and just gone. I’m staring, long into lunchtime. Those minutes, hustled away, a con. Depression, she’s so very clever. Just preying, on buttons of weak. Pulling me, back to the pillow. My purpose, I continue to seek. By Simon Blackler Copyright © Simon Blackler 2020 If you care to comment on this poem at all please feel free to do so below. Overcoming Bullying To Discover My True Identity. At 33 I sought counselling for the first time, I discovered that up to that point I had been letting other people rule my life. I had been brow beaten from birth, I had a difficult childhood and was severely bullied at school, this continued right through college and into the workplace.
My default, survival strategy had been to absorb and collapse, making myself as small as possible in order to disappear and go unnoticed. I was a good boy, quiet, timid and shy. I had no voice. Consequently, by the time I reached adolescence, I had little confidence when it came to women and it felt impossible to speak to the girls I really liked. I had a lot of shame around my sexuality and I felt emasculated. It took me until the age of 30 before I had any meaningful relationship with a woman and then ended up being with more maternal types that liked me more than I did them. Adopting a nodding dog style of communication, giving away my power to others, I also made poor career choices, not right for me. I was creative, and my tutors advised me to follow a textile design route when I really wanted to do graphic design. It took me 9 years to get back to where I wanted to be in the first place. By the time I had been made redundant from my second textile job in 1995 I had lost all faith in the system and decided that I would take responsibility for my own learning and development in the future. My counsellor showed me an alternative way to live. I received my first tools in order to try and create change in my life and I began to realise the true power of personal development. It was more difficult than I first thought however and the Universe needed to intervene to get me back on track. I had a car crash. I came across a farm boy going Mach 3 with his hair on fire in the back lanes of Liskeard and there was nothing I could do but watch him hurtle at 60 mph right towards me. Fortunately I had the foresight to let the handbrake off so my car was able to absorb some of the impact, but it was a write off and I had the effects of whiplash for 2 years afterward. This was enough to make me think about how I was living my life and whether it was truly rewarding enough for me. I still felt as if I was being bullied, in a way, because I wasn’t being paid well, even within my graphic design career. But then, I didn’t really know my true worth or where I was heading then so how could I expect anyone else to know that either? In a dark night of the soul moment I reached out to my network and a marketing lady I knew asked me if I was aware of the work of Neil Crofts. He was a life coach, who had written a book called ‘Authentic - How To Make A Living By Being Yourself’. His was the first book I had ever read that spoke to me as if I’d written it myself. He used nature based techniques in his teachings and I took a Medicine Walk with him one day out in nature and discovered that I was to become a spiritual guide. I followed him to Majorca to attend a transformation course he was running out there but even before the course had started I encountered a beautiful butterfly in the garden, the like of which I had not seen since my early childhood, a swallowtail. It was a truly magical moment as I glimpsed a reflection of my own identity I thought and I was filled with a spiritual energy like I had never encountered before, an explosion of heat was released from my lower spine right up over my head as if I was being touched by god. I was experiencing a kundalini (spiritual) awakening. This prompted me to become a life coach too. As a result, I started to care more about nature and the planet. I joined environmental organisations like the Transition Town Network where I was able to sit in circles and begin to speak my truth. In time I headed up my own initiative and started more formal public speaking. I started to take on a number of coaching clients too and I helped people feel less anxious about their life, increased their confidence, gave them permission to be themselves and helped them establish their own life purpose, my own confidence soared also as a result. Personally though, I was still struggling to share my heart with those with whom I liked the most. A seven year journey of unrequited love ended in disaster and I rather naively made mistakes with other women too. I had an affair with a coach of mine and a relationship with an ex-client too. Neither ended well even though I never wished either of them anything but love. I realised I had to work on my boundaries! At this point I began to question my own ability to be a life coach and I withdrew from the profession. I felt as though a rug was being pulled from beneath me and I was devastated. I chose to take time out to properly heal. I went to work in a finance department and even followed my passion for sailing for a while. Finally, I saved enough money to complete three years of training to become a Shamanic Practitioner with Northern Drum and a one year training to become a qualified Accredited Flower Essence Practitioner with The Chalice Well too. It feels like I have been blessed, I am thankful for it all, even the bullying! I continue to learn about our true allies of nature; the flora and fauna around us. I have found my masculinity, my true self and my medicine name, ‘Swallowtail.’ Best of all, I am now ready to help others to overcome similar issues to that I have encountered myself and I have launched my own flower essence and shamanic practice, Allies Of Nature, which incorporates a range of flower essences too. I work with my clients, in nature, to help them overcome the effects of bullying to discover their true identity, using nature as an ally to move them from a place of fear to one of love, helping them to live their lives more in harmony with the rest of the planet. We engage in transformational conversations and sessions together which take place in all kinds of natural locations: on a hill-top, by a river, at the beach or in a forest. Our natural surroundings help us to go deep and discover the way to heal. The flower essences are here to assist us in that process, proving to be magnificent teachers in their own right bringing their own individual restorative qualities via each flower essence in the range in order to help everyone come back into a state of balance and become the best they can be through improved emotional wellbeing. When you’re ready to discover your own true identity and become an ally of nature yourself, I’ll be here to help you with my flower essence and shamanic practice to guide you towards fulfilling your greatest potential. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. A Virus Is A Part Of Nature Just Like You And I. With so much fear apparent within society at the moment concerning the advancement of Coronavirus across the globe, I feel it is time to give it a bit more of a positive spin and approach the subject with an element of love, dealing with it from a more spiritual perspective perhaps.
For arguments sake, I am going to assume at this moment in time that this virus has come into being purely through some act of nature. It is my belief that the conditions upon the planet at this moment in time, be it through global warming or some other factor, have provided the perfect environment for its creation. I also believe that everything in our evolvement as a species upon the planet is indeed always perfect, we experience perfection every day, even in the worst case scenarios, in order to experience what we need to do to move ourselves forward as individuals or as a collective in alignment with the planet. The fact that this virus is here now, in the long term could be considered a gift from nature, a herald, to how we need to be, a call for us to adventure and find our own leadership and to do what is needed. Sure, what is being presented to ourselves at this moment in time is difficult to grasp, as we are being urged to stop what we are doing in no uncertain terms. It may indeed cause a lot of heartache and pain, death and illness even, especially to the elderly and infirm. However, it looks to all intents and purposes to have been sent to make us think differently about how we lead our lives and what is fundamentally wrong with our existence, what is our pain and what we need to do to heal ourselves. My work with my range of flower essences would only point further towards this notion. I am about to create the Primrose Flower Essence this very weekend from my Allies Of Nature range of flower essences, an essence I believe that is very much about 'renewal'. There is no doubt that our society is looking at renewal now. A new way of doing things, perhaps a new way of being and existing. We of course will have our own concerns at this moment in time, I have got my own worries too, as to what will become of us, our houses, our jobs, our businesses, relationships, food, social interactions, all elements of community. However, I believe also that we are being asked to look again, to see what lies within ourselves once we stop. What are our true values? What do we really care about? How will we be towards our neighbour? Will we think only of ourselves in this crisis and stock pile or will we naturally start to think of others and the planet as a whole? In one way shape or form we are being asked to trust the process and see where this journey takes us, knowing that for the majority of us we will be OK. I believe creatively I will need to adjust the way that I do business very quickly and it is almost as if I am being encouraged to do this just now for the benefit of the long term, there are notions and ideas coming to me in this period that perhaps would not have come had this virus not arrived. I am being asked to step up in another way, to evolve and be more resourceful, to write blogs, post videos, do Facebook lives, to help engage more people perhaps for what happens after the storm has passed. In Italy I believe, due to a lack of humanity and busy-ness the once murky waters of Venice are now running clean. The skies and roads are now empty of transport too, our carbon emissions have plummeted overnight. Nature is trying to restore itself in our absence to a more natural way of being. We as a species have abused our position upon the planet and raped and pillaged the Earth for all it is worth. We have polluted the air, the water and the ground, fires now rage across the planet too. All the elements are out of balance, life has lost its equilibrium and it is almost as if this virus has been sent to tell us something, that nature ultimately is in control of our existence if we step out of line. It would seem as if it is not too far removed from the plagues of Egypt what we are experiencing now, i.e. natural phenomenon being sent to change our way of thinking, or just make us think, floods, fire, wind, disease, you name it really. In shamanism it is believed that spirit is a part of every living, breathing thing therefore spirit must be a part of Coronavirus, it must have a purpose, it maybe impossible to eradicate it if it has such a purpose, trying to slow it down or stop it spreading so widely is one thing, but if it is meant to be here, ultimately we might just have to learn to live with it. I believe it has its own essence, its own consciousness, its own medicine power, it may well indeed be acting for the greater good of the planet as a whole, in whatever way is deemed fit. For something so very small it seems to have done a pretty good job in stopping us in our tracks just at the minute. With no natural predator for us, maybe it takes a tiny little micro-organism to put up nature's best fight to make us wonder at just how it is to be human in the here and now and start to act in a different way. We may find that this is one of the most creative times in our collective history as we are invited to find new solutions for ourselves the further this isolation and containment goes on. It maybe that come the end of it all our perspective on things has changed significantly. Maybe at home alone we will start to pay more attention to nature and the the flora and fauna around us and begin to love it again and really treasure it for all it is worth and start to place it at the centre of our lives once more now that we have time to experience it more fully. Maybe, just maybe, our lives will be better for it, maybe our businesses, our houses, our family life will improve because of it as we are encouraged to go inward and reconnect with ourselves, our significant others and Mother Earth herself. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. Suicide Is The Biggest Killer Of Men Under 45 In The UK. Once upon a time we all lived as members of the same tribe immersed within nature. If we trace our soul or ancestral families back far enough this is where they ultimately end up, as part of one clan, of the same origin.
Within that tribe we would have done everything for one another for free. We would have erected our shelter together, hunted and gathered for our food as one, cooked the meals within community and looked after one another's children. We would have met in circle and been able to speak our truth authentically and been listened to with an open heart. We would have had a close affinity with all that lay around us, a connection with all flora and fauna alike. We would have gone through our respective rites of passage together, all known our purpose and what our individual medicine power was that we brought to the community at large. As men and women we would have known what was expected of us within society. We would have been led by a council of elders, grandmothers, all acting in the best interests of the planet, making no decision that would harm any child of the next seven generations to come of any species. With the social breakdown that we are now faced with and the amount of suicides that now exist within our community it smacks to me as if we are living in a world gone wrong, of a society that has strayed way off course as to where it is meant to be, we are in effect 'the lost tribe'. Whether it is men under the age of 45, sport stars that are away from the football pitch or boxing ring or celebrities struggling to deal with the spotlight and its various angles, all are living with anxiety and depression and many are choosing to end their lives prematurely, unsure of the reason why they are here or who they have become. We have lost our connection to our roots, we have strayed far from that which would bring us home to ourselves, we have distanced ourselves from our Earth Mother and are unaware of our own true nature. That is why I am choosing to adopt the practices I am now with my fellow shamanic practitioners attempting to bring the old ways back, to arrange to meet people in circle, in nature, or even around a table, just to be able to help people reconnect with something beyond themselves, to relieve some of their mental angst. To form a connection and offer healing, coaching and guidance back to some degree of sanity. Speaking from personal experience when I too have got lost upon the path, and experienced my own anxiety and depression which I have done on many occasions, it is only nature that has managed to bring me back to where I have needed to be, my own centre. The nature based practices that I have adopted and managed to amalgamate into my own life have an incredible ability to heal, to start to bring wholeness back to ourselves. To reconnect to something greater than ourselves and then to reboot us. A wounded, fragmented soul has no chance of a happy life, it has been adapted, urbanised, made to fit into a culture that is unnatural for it, to conform to an assumed better quality of life in the city, but at some stage in our journey that facade cracks and falls apart because of our lack of connection to the wild around us or even the wild within us. It is only nature that can help to restore any balance. So it is proving through scientific research also. A recent study carried out by the Universities of Plymouth, Exeter and Derby along with Natural England too has found that 'physically and psychologically reconnecting with nature can be beneficial for human health and well-being, and at the same time encourages individuals to act in ways which protect the health of the planet.' More details of the study can be found out here. It is what native people have known all along. It is our task now to step out into nature and begin to come home to ourselves by using various shamanic practices. Answer The Call To Adventure now to find out how you can best begin to reconnect to nature yourself through the services that I can offer you through Allies Of Nature. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. The Swallowtail Butterfly I don't know when exactly it was that I first became aware of the true nature of butterflies, possibly when chasing them around the garden at home with my little yellow net, when I was barely able to walk, let alone run, at the age of two. When I felt free. When I was trying to catch the cabbage white, its lime green and black caterpillar having eaten up all of next door's greens. The adult butterfly having emerged from its chrysalis used to flock to our garden resting itself on our dahlia heads or rose bushes in our flower packed beds.
I used to get into all sorts of trouble rushing about trying to catch these dull looking, elusive creatures, a plain white butterfly with the odd black spot on the tips of its wings. I would take swipe after swipe with my ready made trap as I pursued them across open grassland and vegetable patch, doing more damage to the poor flowers and growing harvest than the butterflies themselves had ever done in my attempts to avenge the atrocities their former selves had administered to the plants over the fence. My parents were far from pleased with my antics. One day, having pulled the wings off my umpteenth leaf and petal pest, suddenly something happened to change all that. A wonderful swallowtail butterfly fluttered over the top of the hedge from below our house and danced magically for a few moments throughout the shrubbery bringing with it a new felt warmth into the garden as if it carried with it the sunlight itself. Its brightly coloured coat of yellow, cyan, magenta and black held me in awe of its own unique identity, shining well beyond mine. I would not wish to capture such a creature but just watch it, let it pitch and glide and wonder at it blissfully, as it made its passage through my life and be thankful for the time it had graced me with its presence. In later life I was to learn that this was indeed a rare sight and this experience was well and truly special. Swallowtails are scarce, hardly ever being seen in South West England more commonly being witnessed on the European mainland, although inevitably in decline with habitat loss. Had this one got lost? I wondered. Were they more common at the time? It's hard to believe these days that I actually saw it. Maybe I dreamt it? It certainly left a lasting impression on me. Perhaps it had brought a subliminal message from spirit that I wouldn't truly know the meaning of until experiencing another synchronistic moment like it some 30 years later. This is what I have come to believe in any case. I realized instantly from seeing it, that it was high time I put my net down, no longer to be used as a weapon of mass destruction against my fellow creature. I would celebrate the winged one for all it was, even the cabbage white, who in hindsight I thought had done its level best to emerge from its own destructive past into a much higher being. Who was I to condemn it for that? No, that would be a lesson for me in later life, a teaching about my own ability to transform, one in which I now hope to help others with too, including yourself, in learning what it takes to become a butterfly or a true ally of nature. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. Guaranteed To Wake You Up In The Morning. Every morning the shamanic warrior stands with a choice before him or her. To take a risk and live this day in touch with the soul, to thrive, be zingy and full of energy by stepping into the cold shower first thing in the morning, or to remain governed within the comfort zone of the ego, surrounded by the luxury of the everyday and stick with the hot rinse.
For me this past week marks a threshold of 12 months of cold showers. It started on 27th September 2017 and give or take the odd day when it was impossible to have one, and there was no waterfall to use as an alternative, then I have been true to my choice, the decision that has stood before me daily beneath the shower head, to turn the tap to blue rather than red. The teaching stems from the First Nation people, when the grandmothers of the tribes took their young ones every day of the year to the river, the waterfall or the ocean, to have all the red blood cells race to the surface of the body and invigorate the whole being. When we are immersed beneath the ripples, the spray and the waves, it brings us to first attention and we feel fully present with all life around us. Today we don't have the rivers and oceans readily at our finger tips when making the commute to work so we have to make a compromise with the cold shower, but the effects can still be the same. Over a period of time we start to build up more healthy, brown, lean fat within ourselves as opposed to the white, fatty fat that otherwise will remain in existence. We blow the cobwebs away from the night or day before and are ready to greet the next 24 hours as if it were our first here on Earth. The way of the shaman is to choose to be on this edge, to go beyond the norm, because here is where the answers lie to one's life. So with the shower, so with every choice one is faced with in the day long journey as the Earth spins one full rotation dawn to dawn as we endeavour to move closer to our true selves. The cold shower can be seen as the first step along The Way Of The Warrior. It doesn't have to be this way of course there are other things that you can choose to do to take you into the mystery and soul of your being, through ceremony and ritual in other morning practices or indeed throughout the day, but for the sake of really moving into the now, there is arguably none better than this most obvious option. Of course we don't have to jump right in, we can start with warm water and switch to cold as we shower, as I have done in the past, but eventually comes the day when you just decide to embrace life more fully and take the plunge straight off. You will find that once you begin to shake the ego's thought that this isn't such a good idea, that cold actually isn't that cold after all. Water can't go below zero degrees because it would freeze, it will be warmer than what you might first imagine depending on where your shower exists in proximity to nature the length and breadth of the nation. It has other advantages too, saving you money, using less heat and electric within the household for the benefit of not only your pocket but that of climate change too. It is simply the notion of it that we have to get over, realising how strong our ego is that wants to keep us small, protected and well within our comfort zone, unfulfilled, stale and dead. Once we embrace the concept however, our energy levels start to rise, we are prepared to risk more and live a more fulfilled life, we become more vigorous and begin to thrive. We are then ready for the next choice towards a better life. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. |
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April 2023
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