Butterfly Moment

One thing that fascinates me about spiritual work and the consciousness that I have begun to develop is the awareness of being in the moment. Of how through being present, one moment radiates outwards and unfolds into a vast pattern. It can be envisioned as a mandala in which one moment is the central point and through exploring it, resting in awareness at that point an amazing creation begins to unfurl. Later when looking at the whole it seems astounding that these vibrant, dynamic forms all had their root in that small point. It shows the potential that is always present, but often beyond our vision, in every moment we live.

This summer was a case in point for me. I injured my leg and had a cast and thus was more immobile than usual. I knew it happened for a reason, but I did not know what that reason was. So I tried to stay open to see what would come to light. I was often in nature and butterflies began to catch my attention. So I began to look up their significance. The butterfly is one of the most transformational of all creatures:

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly.” – Proverb

I knew it held relevance for me and for the emotional and physical place I was currently in. Speaking to a friend who is very involved in this work, I asked her if she had any good information on the symbolism of the butterfly and dragonfly and she instantly sent something on. One of the articles that I liked a great deal was written by Sandra Ingerman. I was not familiar with her and so looked her up www.sandraingerman.com  In doing so I saw that she gave courses at an online university, but it wasn’t clear which one. I did a search and two different universities came up, the first one was the University of Metaphysical Sciences, www.umsonline.org

I began to look through their courses and I liked what I read, but I couldn’t find her listed as a teacher. I then found her in another university, www.intermetu.com , but when I compared them, the first one seemed to resonate more with me. I hadn’t thought of studying for a degree, but suddenly it started to add up. I have been wanting to do a course for a while now and looking up various ones here and there and making enquiries, though only with a weekend in my mind. I had put out the call for a teacher in my meditations, but one person alone never seemed to fit into my vision.

The university was offering a BA, MA and Ph.D, one step along what I had in my mind. But the more I felt it out the more it seemed to fit. I sensed how I had been wanting to quiet down for a while now, to study and dedicate to that, to give more time and above all peace to my inner work. I felt it out for a few days and then signed up. I had been driving myself into outward projects and, without having consciously registered it, I was yearning to slow down. It felt right. More and more that seems to be my barometer of whether I should do something or not.

I saw how events had come together, because I had hurt my leg I had the time on my hands to look up these different symbolisms and where they lead. I had the time to feel them out and then once I had signed up, I had the time to begin the course. Had I not hurt my leg I would have been rushing round with the children all day long. My body had stopped me, I was tired, I knew that, but I needed a time to stop and tap into the feeling of what I really wanted and the pace I wanted to go at. The butterflies and dragonflies were a key to catch my attention. They were the inner world made outer, to lead me inward again.

It is not so remarkable. I think this happens all the time and every day. Our moments unfurl into further moments, which in turn hold the potential for other moments and all of it is ultimately interrelated. It is a wonderful criss-crossing, inter-weaving and expanding and it is a joy to be present in this process.

Magical Reality

When I was younger I yearned for different realms, I wanted to journey, to experience, to live in magical worlds. There was a component of escapism to this, but there was also the strong feeling that how things were being portrayed to me did not match my inner knowing. I didn’t feel that the world should be portrayed as so 2-dimensional. It was all flattened and called “realistic”.  But it was hollow.

So I read books that transported me to worlds far more in resonance with me than the one I currently inhabited. I dreamed dreams where I would travel to far away places, meet magical and fantastical beings, some terrifying, and I hoped beyond hope that I could experience the touch of those worlds on this one.

When I was about eight, I went to play at a classmate’s house. She was Hungarian. She told me she had a magic train that would take us into other worlds. I believed her. But when she wanted to go on this train, I said I had to leave. I so desperately wanted to go on this train and I did not want to find out that it wasn’t real. Perhaps it was, but I couldn’t cope with more disappointment if it wasn’t. This way I got to always hold the potential open for that magical train.

I then spent many years escaping, trying to find the magic and the “more” that I sought of this reality, in places where it seemed to be, but actually were illusory. I ended up running away from myself and from the world. Sometimes I wanted to run so much that I yearned to cease to exist. They were not happy years at the time, but they are an intrinsic part of me for which I give thanks. I am more able to unpack the gifts that lay within those times now.

When I discovered guided meditations and visualisations I reconnected with the magic that I sought as a child. I began to journey again. But I was no longer journeying to escape - I had it clear that this was not my intention. I was journeying to bring something back, to anchor it back here in this time with the aim to change my life and help me grow as I am in this moment.

I love the freedom of the communication received in these kinds of meditations. When I ask for guidance from my Full Self or guides, for example, and I am given a flower, or a particular tree branch, a stone, a word, a symbol, it may seem random, but it has the power to change. When I bring it back and make it real, by reading on it, writing on it, I am amazed at how wise and how incredibly pertinent it is.

I have seen places, which I have then found months later on a walk. I have learnt techniques, which have changed my experience of daily life. I have explored blocked relations with people and had it completely shift my perspective. Often it is the act of embarking on the journey itself that has the power to change.

What I have discovered is that it is all real. Everything I felt as a child was real. There is real magic in this world and it can begin within. It is by going within that we can truly free ourselves. Then the within and the without become less distinctly separate.

But it is a delicate process and it helps to have someone to turn to from time to time. I have done it in a fairly solitary way, but I have needed people to open things up for me, to help me see things, blocks within myself that I am unable to see alone and the simple support that I am not the only one living this journey in this way.  

I want to end on a quote from one of my favourite books “The Thirteen Circles” www.the13circles.com

“…Magic is an opening between worldly reality and the unlimited realm of the soul, an acknowledgement that we exist simultaneously in both. Magic is an understanding that our reality can in an instant change, if one is of open heart and in connection to the Oneness, the whole that we all create.

            Yea, magic is love, wisdom and power in equal parts. Magic and life, they are one and the same.

            Learn this and use it wisely.”

The Difference Between a Peace Rally and an Anti-war Demonstration

I was recently given an ancient carved stone as a gift. I felt it to be a very powerful object and my instinct told me not to bring it into the house and so I left it in the garden so that it could cleanse and charge. But as the days went on the stone grew in my mind. I began to feel it to be malevolent.

Then one night I could not sleep, I felt it pulling at me and at the house and so I began to protect my home. I called in all forms of protection, it seemed like it went on for hours and it was exhausting. The next day I wanted it gone.

Mother Teresa once said that she would not attend an anti-war demonstration, but she would attend a pro-peace rally.

And this is in essence what I realised the following day. I had been focusing on the negativity, the fear and darkness that my mind had come to associate with the object. Even when I was trying to bring in another response, it was retaliatory, from within the same dialogue.

So that night I decided to focus primarily on love. I have written a book called “The Protection, An Invitation to Angels.” (www.vimeo.com/theprotection ) It began as a search to create an alternate response to my son’s fear when he was going through a very difficult phase. But it is something that derives clearly from my own spiritual practice. Much of it deals with transformation.

By using the words and the images from my book, but sculpted for this particular experience I was able to focus on a feeling of love and peacefulness. As I meditated whilst doing it I understood that no thing was purely good or purely bad. It is as in the symbol of Yin and Yang.

I understood that perhaps the stone had been used with what I sensed to be negative intentions, but that was not its totality. In its entire journey on this earth, from its formation underground to its journey to my garden table, it had been touched by many things and contained within it other possibilities.

My focus on its “darker side,” limited my experience of it to only one possibility. The minute I could shift focus and call for light and love to completely fill the space, it was no longer malevolent. But it couldn't be done in negation of the thing I feared, but rather through touching an alternate expression and expanding on that.

I believe that we are like alchemists with our life as the alchemist’s laboratory. I think of fear, challenging experience and their offshoots as the base metal that we work to transform into gold.

Unsticking the Narrative

It has been a long time since I last wrote and much has gone on. One key reason for my silence was that I needed to disengage myself from the thought process I had grown accustomed to. I began to realise how attached I was to my thoughts. They were directing my experience of living. Instead of just experiencing things, the instant I began experiencing, I realised that I began narrating.

I was tuning in more and more to the voice that was explaining what I was living and I was enjoying it. It was as though I had to sculpt everything into words in order to comprehend it and behind that there was a desire to put it out. There was much ego in it too, for in truth, I liked what I was preparing to impart. I was rehearsing through my life, but it was becoming performance.

I could sense myself growing frustrated and I knew that I was being nudged more and more to let go: to let go of the thinking. That was hard. “I think therefore I am,” it is a habitual relationship to self.

I believe we have a tendency to narrate, to create stories around our lives. Events unfold and we do not live them in fragments, as a moment-by-moment experience. We do not often allow each moment to unfurl and expand. We have an experience and we tend to rope it together with other experiences we believe we have lived, using as a gel the narrative we have created about our lives.

But this can be stifling, because our narratives are linked to our beliefs, they speak more to our perspective than to a stand apart truth. By fitting each moment into the narrative, we close the possibilities it could offer, if we were only able to keep the space open. The minute we fit it in, we have defined it and shut down alternate options.

It is really a shift in perspective. Instead of living and putting an established frame upon what is being lived, it is to try to wait in the space of the experience. Allow for the moment to naturally expand, to see what it draws to you rather than what you stamp on it.

It is like the dreamer who on waking tries to draw all recollected dream images into one storyline. It has happened to me often, when on writing my dreams, I notice a tendency to pull a fragment scene into another dream to have it make sense. But in letting it stand alone, as a moment in itself with all its infinite richness, can open up a greater potential for self realization. For the story, though it may delight, is likely to be something that I have already heard and spoken before.