Big Choices from Little Actions As Told Through the Fruit Juice Carton

I believe that big changes can come from little actions. I have seen this repeated again and again in my life. One small decision especially one that steps outside the box, can trigger a chain of events that literally changes my life. Much of my life has followed a string of these microcosm to macrocosm decisions.

The other day I was walking and a young man was walking a bit ahead. Someone had left a fruit juice carton on the pavement. The man walked by it and then kicked it.

I thought: “How funny!  What a good analogy of how energy attracts like energy.” The person who left it there did something careless, something that showed a disregard, big or not, for the place they live and the people around.

Another person walked by and the carton acted as a signal to awaken and draw to itself a similar energy. It was another energy of carelessness and disregard, sparked with a touch of anger. Small things and not seemingly significant, but I saw how one attracted the other.

I noted it and was about to go into my house. Then I stopped. I realised that by noting it and internally laughing about it I was superiorly gloating in my own way. What else could I do?

If it was an energy that was “negative” and drawing to itself more of its kind, could I add something else to it? I turned back and picked up the spilt carton. I brought it in and put it in the bin. I felt humbled in the act.

I consciously imagined that just by touching this carton I was contributing something to its energetic manifestation, adding to it a contrasting energy to what it had just experienced. I was energetically shifting the balance.

What is the world I wish to be creating and contributing to? I know what it feels like and it is a feeling, a sense I connect to in meditation and in my inner quiet. But in order for it to move from the place of quiet meditation I need to take it into action.

I don’t know if any big changes externally came from my little action. But it underlined for me my commitment to what I am working on and the multiple ways I am given opportunities to express and manifest it.

It also led me to the knowing sense that I can “do” something. Energetically I can reach out, and with intent, add another dimension, another possibility to what is currently existing.

I was once told that the more conscious we become, the less we are afforded the luxury of mindlessly not doing anything. We are presented with choices and we have to choose. We can choose to do nothing but we do that consciously now.

It can seem trying and a bit exhausting at times, but I also see it as freeing. It adds a whole other magical component to my life. Minute events, can thus take on great significance when I turn my conscious mind to them. There seems to be no limit to the depth that can be explored from each moment. 

Changing Beliefs Through Tracking Conscious Thought

For over a year I have been actively working with the idea that my beliefs create my reality. But in order to do this I have first to discover what my beliefs are. According to Seth in ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ (Jane Roberts), one way to go about discovering this is to become aware of your conscious mind. What is going through your head every day? What are the thoughts passing through?

I suffered from depression for years when I was younger and it was characterised by a deep self-hatred. I would look in the mirror and literally spit out “I hate you,” with all the disgusted ferocity in me.

I have come a very long way since then, but as I became more and more aware of what goes through my conscious mind I was very surprised. Often when I look in a mirror I find fault. I pick on something, some bit of my tummy sticks out that it shouldn’t, meaning I need to do more exercise or eat less, which I jump to admonishment over. Or maybe my hair is wrong. Maybe I have a tiny spot on my chin. Maybe I simply don’t look good.

I have become so used to doing this that it flashes through my head without me even being aware of what I am thinking. But what is the message I reinforce to myself throughout the day in these flashes? Basically I am repeatedly telling myself that there is something wrong with me, that I am not good enough.

This lead me to the belief I hold that I am not good enough. I have been aware of this for a while, but I hadn’t been aware of how I was reinforcing it and actively seeking out data to consolidate it. I can’t shift this belief overnight, but through exploring its roots and working to act differently in waking life, I can begin to work through it.

Now, when I look in a mirror the thoughts still flash, but they give rise to other thoughts too. Through my thoughts I am gently trying to rebalance the picture. I try to look at myself with love and acceptance and send that to myself as well.

In the film ‘What the Bleep Do You Know?’ there is a scene of a woman, who having been angry and self-hating for so long, makes her peace. She draws beautiful and loving messages all over her body. I haven’t got that far, but I try to think them!

I do believe, though that just sending positive messages doesn’t change the whole picture. My experience to date tells me that I need to work through things. I need to feel them, accept them, discover where they come from, hold open another possibility and only then do I get to move through and on.

If I just try to override it with intention without acceptance and exploration I basically come into direct conflict with what I hold. But it is a fine line. My tendency has often been to go more into exploration, which can sometimes lead to compounding the issue I’m dealing with, by overly focusing on it.

So I think it would be safe for me to say that in order to work through things, first I have to accept what I feel. Then I have to explore what the beliefs I hold are and where they come from. If I want to change them I can use my imagination to sense out what the other possibilities are. I can start to feel the opening and by holding that, I create a new space for myself to walk into.

An example of discovering beliefs through tracking thoughts comes to mind. A while ago I realised that when I was with my children, I constantly had thoughts going through my head that I wanted to be doing something else. I wanted to be writing, I wanted to be reading or studying. But I was so used to these thoughts, I didn’t even realise I was having them and had never stopped to look at them.

What did they mean and what did they say? I realised that what they were saying was that being with my children was not enough. Why was that? Why did I feel it was better to be writing, than being with my children?

In meditation it came to me. Since small my mother always told me to be financially independent, to work, not to be dependent as she was. There was great fear involved in this too, if I didn’t do this, I would end up being at the mercy of others. Behind this also, was the lack of value in the role of the mother.

In the end I never really became financially independent through work and that has tormented me. I never got a proper career and that tormented me too. I have always written but I have no external commendations to justify that to myself within my beliefs of what a proper career should be.

As I meditated I understood that what was arising was my belief that being a mother was not good enough. This was the reason that when I was with them, I was mentally trying to seek another form of work. My thoughts were saying: “I do (I am) more than this and I probably should be doing it.”

And so it was preventing me from being present with my children. It was creating a conflict that gave rise to irritability and frustration, which if manifested, would in turn give rise to guilt, and so it went on.

As I understood what was happening I also understood that I had a choice. Was being a mother good enough for me? The answer was yes. This does not mean that being a mother is all that makes me up, but when I am present as a mother then I can be that without seeking to be elsewhere.

I understood how this had blocked me. I loved my children and wanted to be with them. I knew in my heart that being with them was good enough. I did not have to carry something any more that was no longer mine. I felt much freer and my relationship with them changed. I became more present and I think they felt it. I, for the most part, laid down that inner silent back and forth conflict.  

As with many beliefs they do not stand alone. This belief about motherhood as I touched on it, relates to my concept of self and self worth through my beliefs about work. As stated, I believed that to hold my head up high to others I had to be able to define what it was that I do. I somehow yearned for a “real” job, which others could understand and ultimately put a salary on. The fact I didn’t have this, for many years, made me feel lesser.

I became increasingly more aware of this belief in recent years. I have been working very hard in exploring self and where the opportunity arises sharing it with the aim to help. But the inner exploration has been work. I spend a lot of time and energy on this. But I could not define it as “work,” in the career-sense.

Someone once mentioned to me that I wouldn’t think of a Tibetan monk who dedicates to prayer and meditation as not doing anything. That was true. Also true that I wasn’t a Tibetan monk! But I started to see that I was unfairly judging myself.

The more I opened to the realisation that I am “doing” something. I am actively working and working hard on a daily basis. But it is so off the scale of what is usually acceptable. I am working through thinking. I am working through meditation. I am working in dreams. I am working through connecting with another energy, opening to it, grounding it and having it come through my daily life. But if people ask me what I do, what do I say?

Over time by being aware of the belief and my intention to change it, the need to externally define myself is lessening. The more I work on myself, the more settled, solid, strong and sure I become.

At times I felt it unfair that I couldn’t get recognition for this work. But I know now that this is part of the journey I have chosen. It is to become strong enough in myself to hold my own certainty.

I am not alone in this. The more I open to the energy available in this kind of work, the more help and support I get. I am guided, taught and encouraged. Daily life is a mixture of signs that allow me to feel a wonderful sense of connection.

As my belief has begun to change about work, so has my experience. Avenues have opened up in myself and in the world around. Possibilities are arising that I would never have considered. This blog is one of them.

Had I stayed stuck in my belief about what work should be, I would have remained in conflict. Wanting something that didn’t resonate with me. It was clearly linked to the belief about what makes for success in life and though I didn’t agree with it I still held the belief.

This is opening now and I am realising that there are no external limitations to what I could do with my work for example. It does not have to follow conventional channels. It can find and create new ones, but only if I believe that can be so.

Looking and Shifting

This summer I began to develop an interest in crop circles. What are they? How do they get there and what do they mean? One answer that resonated with me is that they are put there by non-earth-based entities in order to help, exposing us to an image, a symbol that ultimately acts as a key. 

The image itself awakens, releases information, reactivating our potential with no effort or conscious rationalisation on our part. They are put there to help us in our shifting of consciousness and vibrational changes. Just by seeing them we become more open to another way of being and adapt better to the shifting frequencies, which are making up our reality. 

Whether it’s true or not, the thought of great help coming through and actively working to bring about a change in line with a heart based consciousness, comforts me. I like it and I think that is enough for it to bring about changes in my life. I do not seek proof but I receive inspiration, imagination and a willing excitement to explore.

I spent a few days going through pictures of crop circles and found them incredibly beautiful and interesting. One website I liked very much was the photography of Steve Alexander: www.temporarytemples.co.uk I had been working on mandalas and playing around with sacred geometry and it was exciting to see some of the same forms arising in the crop circles. 

It seems as though whatever I come across and appeals to me ends up drawing me into the feeling that there is an underlying Oneness to all things. (For another contrasting visual of this point, ‘Li: Dynamic Form in Nature’ by David Wade, is lovely to look at.)

It encouraged me to trace the path of my own exploration over the past couple of years with symbols. Over a year ago my visual perception began to change. Sometimes it seemed as if the world were made of pixels, tiny shadows of light and dark that undulate and vibrate. 

I could still see that the wall was a wall, but it had more to it than a clean-washed, two-dimensional smoothness. The air separating me from that wall was not empty either – it had depth and movement. Darkness seemed like television static. 

I was amazed. I started to see that the air was alive, there was no empty space and it was wonderful to begin to visually glimpse the depth of what might be out there. It began to open me to new possibilities. And despite it being new, it simultaneously felt very familiar.  

It wasn’t long afterwards that the air took on greater form. I started to see that there were faint shapes, lines, squiggles, eventually slightly more complex forms that floated through the air. They were of a different density, highlighted, some clear light, others greyish and silvery. I would catch them falling through my vision but whenever I tried to stare directly at them they would fall beyond my point of view. 

I have copied them and there is something enormously satisfying in translating the images onto paper. I think it links to what I have been told: that we can experience something, but to work in the energy, we have to ground it on the physical plane.

                                 

                                   

I asked about these falling shapes I saw and was given a variety of answers at different points. I was told that they were matrices that underpinned certain creations. They were the forms upon which sound (vibration) and light are hung to create physicality. At another point I was told that they were indicative of protective angelic presences. 

Each answer moved me in some way and excited me to seek something else out. The matrices led me towards sacred geometry, which led me to mandalas. Those in turn connected me to another kind of knowing.

In working on a mandala it is as though intuition kicks in. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing, but I have a feeling that the next move, the next erasure of a line, the choice of colour is the right one and that it is coming together. Whilst I do it, I really feel as though I am on a journey. It is as though beneath rationalisations, a deeper understanding is opening up. 

At the end of it, I feel changed and happy to have been a part of a process. And the process does not end there. I have an image that continues to work or better to say, radiate.

This summer I drew a mandala and I had a vague feeling for the colours I wanted. It was more like a calling. I began and I felt almost slightly frenzied. I knew I would not move until it was done, but I did not really know what it was I was doing. I mixed colours and often it did not seem at all to be something I was happy with, but by the end I was impressed. It was far more beautiful, the colours more potent than what I could have thought. It also made sense to me.

For some reason I thought of it as The Wheel of Karma, as if I knew this image, but I couldn’t think where. I kept it in my room and it drew me to it again. I don’t feel I originated it. It came through me and I helped it into being and it in turn helped me.

In some ways I had a similar experience with my falling shapes, as I like to think of them. I told a good friend about them in passing. The next time I saw him he gave me a book on the Petrogliphs (outside rock paintings/carvings) in Galicia (‘Los Petroglifos Gallegos, Antonio de la Pena Santos, J.M. Vazquez Varela). I looked through it in awe as it reminded me so much of the interior details of the forms I see, which are so small that I cannot put them down. 

The re-echoing of images and symbols through time and what they harken to is compelling for me. I have seen in myself that I link understanding, which is thought based, to words.  Communication, I only used to consider, in its verbal component. But the exploration of the image is opening that up for me. Symbols communicate, symbols can bring about understanding, but it is one that we, at least in this part of the world, are probably no longer used to.

At times when someone is telling me something, especially in channel, I feel as if a river of images is being conveyed to me. I have become aware that there are different things going on at those moments. There is the worded conversation and there is something akin to a transference which is definitely more image based.

Someone recently spoke to me about the rushes of energy they were experiencing. I feel them a great deal and have done so for a while now. I have so many ideas as to what they pertain to. Sometimes I feel it is just a shifting of energy within my body, perhaps an opening of blockages. 

But one thing that resonates with this piece, is that I feel them to be a transfer. I read the phrase somewhere, energy packets of information. To me it does seem like the reception of something that comes through energetically and is instantly absorbed physically as a sensational rush, shivers coursing through the body. It is like the first instant hit of what comes through. Then over time it gets translated, lived and thought out. I feel that they are helping me in raising my consciousness.

Yet it is as I began. In many ways it does not matter what any of this “means.” I used to feel that the symbols I saw had to have an intrinsic meaning in themselves that I, obviously wanted to know. But I am coming and being prodded to the realisation that that is not what is relevant. 

What is relevant is where it takes me. What does it open up for me, what becomes possible that wouldn’t have been before? How does it make me feel? If it brings me a sense of peace, how can I summon up that feeling at times when I feel peace-less, by using that image or experience as a reference?

Symbols are a part of my journey, but it is because they resonate with a language that I must be open to. It could be anything else for anyone else. But I believe that we can track the exploration and find beautiful patterns in all that we live and in all that our interests evoke. As we work to link and trace the patterns, we get to see that beneath it all is the underlying unity of all things. 

Who I Am and Bridging Into the Present

Who am I? It is a question I have been working on for a while now. How do I discover who I am? Since early on I naturally pushed against all the trappings that could comfortably define me. I have not had any particular profession that I could use to define me either. The role of mother, wife, social status, interests even, were not enough to define me. 

In short, I set myself up from early on to seek that answer within. But in the past two years it has taken on an entirely different dimension. As I began to awaken, I began to examine this in greater detail, indeed with more necessity. Who I thought I was no longer accounted for what I was experiencing and thinking. But how to go about connecting with the greater reality of my being? 

The first thing that was suggested to me was to rediscover what I liked as a child. It was about reclaiming parts of myself both wounded and joyous that I had ultimately left by the wayside. Both were powerful, but it was the joyous part that made me take the biggest steps out of the box. 

I began to remember how I used to play the piano. Simultaneously my son started piano lessons and at night I would practice from his book. I could only read simple tunes by then, but I repeated it again and again, deriving a sense of satisfaction, wholeness, a remembering that did not necessarily conjure up events, but rather feelings. 

I remembered how I used to love riding and then I lost my confidence after a few nasty falls. So one summer I took a couple of classes again. 

The key to all of this was that I did not dwell on what the purpose of all this was. Was I trying to play the piano again, was I to become brilliant at it? Of course I daydreamed, but I wasn’t really dedicated to it, it wasn’t something I intuitively felt was to become a constant part of my life and the same went for the riding. 

So my conditioning, my belief status leapt in with: “therefore there's no point in doing it! If you won’t be great at it, if there’s no reason behind it, why do it? “ But I was carried away just with the experiencing of it.

I have been told that we do not discover ourselves, learn so much through the process of earnest suffering (as I had previously believed!) as that of joy. By doing these things I reconnected with myself as a child, I get to play again and feel rather than know what motivates me, what animates me, what makes me feel truly alive. 

It was more about connecting with the feelings and enfolding my childish self and using her as a fount for further growth than anything else. And it worked.

I was told recently that we experience our lives’ through a particular aperture. Most have that aperture in a fixed, narrow and finite position and it is through this that we open to attenuate reality and draw our experiences to us. 

I see the Universe as an energetic soup and we, generating the frequency of our beliefs, are as magnets to that energy which then enters and manifests through our aperture in the images reflecting our beliefs. We will only meet what we believe. 

If I believe there to be greater dimensional realities beyond this, I will begin to have experiences that confirm and expand upon this. If I steadfastly believe that not to be the case then my experiences will match that too and I will have a wealth of data to back up my belief. 

The filter, however, what we attenuate, is not a reflection of the “world outside” so to speak. Rather it is a reflection of the world inside that acts as sculptor to the raw material that has the potential to take any form. 

I am reminded of the experiments in quantum physics, in which the atoms react to the scientific observer. It is impossible to remove the observer from the equation of the experiment. The observer in fact co-creates the outcome of the experiment whilst in themselves attempting to neutrally and detachedly observe an external reality. It is not possible to do so. 

We are all, down to the smallest sub-atomic particle and beyond, part of a whole and in constant conversation. The only limits we discover are really those that we hold within ourselves and within our beliefs. 

But there is no value judgement to any of this. It is not wrong to hold limiting beliefs, it is not better to believe in greater realities than what you tangibly have in front of you. I initially wanted it all quickly, I wanted my world to change overnight and thankfully that has not been the case though I have continued to move at a fairly brisk pace! 

But as with much of life it is the process, the journey that uncovers so much. If I had no limiting beliefs, I would not have the opportunity to grow in ways that have been necessary and very fulfilling. They then feed my creativity and so it is an on-going process. I need my limits and limitations if only to discover what they are. 

So ultimately the starting point for any great change, external or internal is within self. What beliefs do I hold that make me up? If I cannot access them, what do my experiences in the world tell me about my beliefs, treating them as a mirror to the world within? 

I remembered when I was a child how I set up a club about unseen spirits with a friend. They had access points into the earth that we could discover, we told stories about their motives, we searched the minutiae of daily life to discover the secret and on-going communication of an ethereal realm. This went on for years and I was happy with it, I dedicated time to it. 

But I never considered it much more than childish imagination. I later read it as dangerous escapism. But now I see it differently. If I reconnect with myself as a child, this was one reality I was spending time in and holding open. It is no wonder that after years of shutting the doors, sealing them tight, they would reopen onto that same, yet now different, magical world of my childhood.

What did we daydream about as children? What did we yearn for as children? Was there magic that we sought? Why should it not be in the here and now any more?

I am not suggesting that we all leap into a completely fantastical realm, I have not done that at all. I do not see things visually i.e. spiritual forces walking around, but I open to possibilities. I do not walk in the realm of spirits as in a science fiction film, but I walk in a world that is alive, which speaks to me through signs.

For example, this summer I went for a run on the beach. At one point I began thinking about why we are all here. How many people perhaps, are here now, working towards bringing to the fore a more archaic wisdom, a deeper sense of connection. I felt it coming through in the arts, in the books I read. I felt how it is seeping through into popular culture.  

I felt how I have been here before and have been at these junctures before. I felt so happy to be here on earth again at this time now and it was so strong and tinged with a sadness too that I began to cry. I felt how I was not at all alone and many are working towards the same thing both of the earth and beyond it. 

I felt the absence of judgement. It did not mean that the process of separation and disconnection were bad or what I wished to bring in was better. I just felt it was all as it should be and that made me cry. I really began to sob. I looked at the sun, at the waves, the sky, the gulls, the sand and I felt with it all. 

Through my tears something caught my eye on the wet sand. It was a tiny yellowish stone in the shape of a heart. I bent down and picked it up and it was translucent, part crystal. I held it and I felt so taken care of. 

The message I felt was one of thanks, I was being thanked for being here and reminded of the love that surrounds me at all times. If I have my eyes open I will always be communicated with and the Universe will give me stones or whatever it can, whatever it thinks me most amenable to at any given point, to pass on its message. I shifted immediately at that reception.

But all of this has the tendency to veer off on the overly spiritual. Much of my greatest epiphanies have come from more “normal” daily life, living the tasks and responsibilities that make up my existence. I have three small children and so the majority of my day is made up more of very grounded elements than spiritually ecstatic ones. But even as I write this, I am reminded how there is no real distinction. 

My children get me to work on my beliefs like nothing else. They keep me grounded and that is why I am here. I am not here to experience more and more expansive moments in meditation to the point that I practically fly away. 

It is about discovering this and bringing it back, letting it settle and inform the fabric of my daily life, of incorporating this so that it flows and expands my experience in the quotidian world. It has been hard. It is hard to sit and look at trees, feel their energy, feel almost sublime and joyous, utterly connected and then come straight back to three screaming, fighting children, homework to do, dinner to prepare.

Part of the difficulty was in not being able to bridge this. Again it was an issue of separation. My more meditative, spiritually expansive experiences were separate to what I saw to be my responsibilities and living of my other life. 

I guarded it as uniquely mine and the "me" in daily life as something else. I needed to do this for a time in order to continue to discover who I was. But now I need more to bridge it, to bring it more into the present. 

Now when I “go off” I send that energy and the light to those I love, I think of making a bridge with it, to bring them into where I am and to send where I am to where they currently are. By doing this it is not so jarring. It is starting to flow.

I was told that it is about bringing more of who I am into my present space, but first I have to go off quietly and find out who I am. Once that begins to consolidate then I am able to bring it in, mostly with no premeditation or planning. It takes on its own natural rhythm.

Over the past couple of years I have felt the need to go away, to be with myself. I have loved the feeling of starting out, sometimes for a few hours and sometimes for a few days and knowing that the time is my own and not knowing where it will take me. I love the feeling of taking a step into an adventure. 

But this has been mine, it is not something I wished or even considered sharing. The other day I got the idea to take my children on a day trip, an adventure. I hadn’t previously even considered this to be possible. But once I opened to it, I realised how much one could do, with a car and a picnic, you can transform a day, you can go anywhere, explore anything, the world became vast. 

It turned into a real adventure, I had a vague concept of where I wanted to go, but none of it was as I had foreseen. The roads were far harder to drive, pitted dirt roads, mountain passes, often vertiginous, the landscape was thrilling and breathtaking, the children were on the verge of vomiting! 

But we enjoyed it, we went for walks, had a picnic, discovered ruins, made up stories, climbed up mountains (tiny hillocks!). We went to a lake with no way down to it and thanked God or the Sky Spirits as they called them, for the shocking downpour which was a gift for our very brave attempts to find a path to swim and having been thwarted. We scrambled over rocks, sat in the natural dips of stones like thrones and ate wild blackberries. 

We had an amazing day. We had an adventure and it was the natural extension of myself. It was what I seek in my own time away from everyone, but I no longer had to be so separated. I was able to draw more of me into my present and we could communally take off on the adventure of which we are already a part.