the unknown

All living things are constantly changing.  Pin yourself to habit or personal agenda, and relationships flounder. This is true of  personal relationships, to organisations in a changing society or economy, and to humanity, the environment and its resources.

Yet certainty is a comfort. A place of rest. We all have our own version of certainty, one that’s often fiercely defended.  It might be reason, or one of many versions of the divine, or an unshakeable belief in our own judgement. We find others with similar certainties and substantiate each other’s view.

And yet we are curious, inventive, restless beings, delighting in the new. And where this wonderful energy is confined by fixed beliefs or practice, vitality dwindles.

I help people to make changes.

For each person, group or organisation this always means facing the unknown or the unfamiliar. I help to make this an adventure: enjoyable, exciting, creative.

the shaman

You will see from this site that I play many different parts. This is fundamental to shamanism. Of course it’s not all at the same time. In most of my roles I use wordless sound as a direct line to the core self, or to the heart of the matter. Language defines what we already know. The unrealised part of ourselves waits to be vibrated, and that might be nothing more than recognition, a wordless hello.

I didn’t go looking for this work. It repeatedly disturbed my life as a journalist and travel writer until I gave in. There followed many unusual internal and external events, including a close encounter with a thunderbolt and such a disintegration of “I” that at one point madness seemed likely.

In societies where the shaman has a part to play, such experiences are invited through hazardous rites of initiation. Mine occurred in the supermarket, on the school run and in moments of solitude between domestic chores and writing. I began to read around the subject, alternating between mystics and quantum physics.

Looking back, I see that I was constantly moving between left and right brain activity.  See vision >  Twenty years ago the word shaman rarely occurred in our culture. Now it has currency. My power tools – a certain presence, an improbable voice and the ability to see beyond or through the mundane – belong to what most of society would see as esoteric. But they all have an exoteric, very worldly application. I have become a polyglot, switching between different words or phrases according to the company in which I find myself.

the known

I experience one continuum, which is love. That’s not love as in “I love you”, but something like a never-ending ocean, without conditions and with intelligence.  My experience may begin, and end, as electrical and/or chemical activity in my brain. The words that are my best attempt at expressing those events are the same as mystics use worldwide and throughout time.

There are other certainties, which we all know. We all have a body, we are nothing without the next few breaths, and we depend upon the earth and other life on earth for the air, water and food that keeps us alive.

The known is the foundation for change. You’ll launch yourself more enthusiastically into the unknown or the innovative if you can always fall back into a familiar steady state. Try this…

 

how to feel good about yourself

It feels good to belong. We are all a part of the whole. Here’s how to deepen a sense of yourself in relation to the earth rather than other people. This is based upon the yoga posture savasana .

1. 1. Choose somewhere peaceful and comfortable, outside or inside, and lie down on your back. You can use cushions to support your head, neck, the small of your back or your knees. As this practice becomes familiar, your body will relax more deeply and you won’t need the cushions.
2. 2. Make sure that the back of the neck is extended so that the chin comes down. This relaxes the lower back.
3. 3. Turn the palms and forearms so that they face the sky. Give space to your armpits. Let your legs lie flat and straight, the feet naturally rolling outwards a little.
4. 4. Breathe normally through the nose. With each out breath offer the weight of your body to the support of the earth beneath you. Feel the symmetry of your bone structure, shoulder blades and pelvis spreading equally either side of your spine. Invite all the muscles that support you in the upright to soften on each exhalation. Rest.
5. 5. When it’s time to come up, bend both knees and breathing out, gently roll to one side before sitting. Go slowly.

Feeling all the parts of your body in relation to the earth helps you to meet more of you… even the bits you’d like to avoid. The earth does not judge.

None of us can exist in our familiar physical state without the earth’s cycles, nor without the sun too. Hello, thanks, goes down well on both sides of the relationship.