At the centre of the circle is where we find peace. We walk and work the edges, sometimes moving inwards towards the centre, sometimes finding ourselves on the outskirts. Walking a beautiful turf labyrinth today, and doing ritual in a wonderful tree henge, the lessons of finding the centre have been deep and utterly soul-awakening. May we be peace, may we find the stillness of the centre. xoxo
The end of another calendar year, and a time to reflect. What a fabulous year it has been. The ups as well as the downs, all of it has been a great experience. Life certainly is the best teacher.
So, what are the plans for next year? Well, I shall be continuing to write, a much longer book than those of the Pagan Portals series for Moon Books. This new project is called “Hedge Druidry”, and is basically an extension of The Awen Alone: Walking the Path of the Solitary Druid.
I also plan to start a much bigger vegetable garden next year, and go on a mushrooming course so that I am able to identify more mushrooms than just the parasol ones we munch on here that grow in the beautiful sandy soil.
I also have a wonderful new project that will hopefully start up in the autumn of 2015, but I can’t tell you about that just yet – I will hopefully have news for you very shortly! Hint – it’s about learning Druidry…
Lastly, I aim to simplify even more. This year I already reduced the time spent on social media, cleared the clutter in my house and spent even more time in meditation. I hope to continue on this path, making more time for the people that I love, the places that I love and the things that I really love doing.
In this time of reflection, don’t feel bad about the things you didn’t accomplish. Instead, reaffirm your resolve to try again, and persevere with a good heart and a pure mind. Make resolutions for the New Year, but for yourself and not for anyone else. If you want to lose weight, that’s great – but do it for your own health, with a doctor’s or nutritionist’s advice. Don’t do it to make yourself more beautiful – you already are beautiful. Likewise, quitting bad habits such as smoking or drinking are equally good resolutions to make, as long as you are truly willing to go the distance, for your own health and well-being. If we can do such things for ourselves, then we see that we can serve others as well. We have to take care of ourselves as well as each other.
And so I wish you a very Happy New Year. May you love one another, may peace fill your hearts. Love and peace are there, seeds waiting to be nourished by you and only you, not anyone else. Give them the attention that they need, and watch them bloom. Only you can do this.
With peace and love, and many thanks for following me down the forest path,
Jo. x
I feel the anger within me. Sometimes he is purposefully trying to upset me and others around him, other times he doesn’t know that he is doing it – it is simply habitual energy. I feel the anger as a tightness in my chest with his sarcasm, his passive aggressive behaviour. Little flames shoot out, provoking a fire within. It takes much mindfulness not to feed the fire, not to fan the flames of anger within. Acting out in anger will not solve anything. I will find another way to relate to him when he is sunk deep in his suffering, acting it out on everyone around him.
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A friend was involved in a car accident which totalled his car. In his recounting of the tale, there was no anger at the young woman who hit him from behind, only remorse at the four pairs of shoes that had been ruined. I smiled and know that I will hold his lesson close to my heart.
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Today there is news of the massacre in Pakistan, where around 150 children were murdered by the Taliban in a school shooting. My first response was not anger, but such a deep and silent sadness at the conditions that brought about people who bring about such suffering on the world. I could be one of the children, I could be one of the attackers, had the conditions been right to bring about a manifestation of the person I am in that situation. My heart goes out to everyone in Pakistan, the families who suffer the loss of their children, and to the attackers whose suffering lashes out at innocent children.
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Sitting silently in the darkness before dawn, a lone candle and some incense burning, I pay attention to my breath, and the darkness around me slowly lifts as the sun rises unseen behind a canopy of grey sleety skies. May there be peace in the North. May there be peace in the East. May there be peace in the South. May there be peace in the West. May there be peace in our hearts and minds and towards all fellow beings.
This little gem came as a great reminder today, when the suffering of the world threatened to overwhelm me. Bursting into tears as I watched on the BBC news children’s toys scattered in the rubble of the Gaza bombings,, their bodies being loaded together into the mortuary. Rude people at the village shop blocking other people’s cars, and making them wait until they finish shopping to move their car, even after the person has asked them to politely to move. Loud, overbearing people in the bays next to you at the driving range. The obnoxious amount of money spent on the World Cup Football in Brazil while people starve in the streets.
Thich’s words were a welcome reminder to find the beauty, and to nourish ourselves in order to better serve the world, in a world filled with suffering – not to be overwhelmed by it, but to find the beauty to carry on regardless. To find a community as well, of like-minded souls, who can inspire you on your journey through life. To be out in nature, and to see the wonder and live with the awe of a child again.
Then, you will be better able to serve the world, instead of submitting to the suffering and the grief, the rage and the injustice. Returning to the centre, finding peace and being peace is all that matters.
This is a reblog from my latest post at SageWoman Magazine’s channel, on Witches and Pagans: for the full article click HERE
This past week I have had to hold my tongue. Sometimes it felt like I was holding my tongue so hard all I could taste was blood.
A few people have told me that I should have spoken up, said my piece right there and then, never holding back. However, what I have learned in my own life experience and in my Druid path is that there is time to speak up, and a time to hold your tongue. It all relates to one word – peace.
It has often been said that the Druids were not only the political advisors and religious authority to the Celts, but that they were also the peacemakers within society. They had the power to walk between the battle lines without being harmed, such was their honouring of the notion of peace and their own personal authority and control. As a student of Zen Buddhism as well as Druidry, I have come to know the concept of peace from another worldview that blends in beautifully with what I hold to be true in my path.
Peace is when there is no need. Peace is when we are able to step outside of our ego and relate to the world with loving kindness. Peace is when we are able to find compassion, both for ourselves and for others.
Peace and truth are inexorably entwined within the Druid tradition. Only when we have discovered the nature of truth are we able to find peace. Truth is our natural place in the world, in its cycles and rhythms, the flow of life itself. It is in the riding of the currents of awen that we come to know truth in all its forms. When we know truth, we find peace…
Continued HERE
Further exploring the nature of peace, what leads me to understand the fundamental precept behind achieving peace is through compassion. But what is compassion?
Dictionary definitions say that it is a state of sympathy with someone who is suffering, and yet that doesn’t adequately describe compassion in my mind, in either the Zen or the Druid tradition. Two words in Sanskrit delve a little closer, such as karuna, a gentle affection and a willingness to bear others’ pain, or metta, often described now as loving kindness, acting for the benefit of all living things with a selfless attitude.
The Dalai Lama stated “Genuine compassion must have both wisdom and lovingkindness. That is to say, one must understand the nature of the suffering from which we wish to free others (this is wisdom), and one must experience deep intimacy and empathy with other sentient beings (this is lovingkindness)” – (The Essence of the Heart Sutra).
For me, compassion is all about relationship, about an integration with the world, with the universe. As the native American saying goes – “We are all related”. (Not just humanity, but essentially go far enough back and see that we are all star stuff.) In order for this integration to occur, we have to learn how to lose that sense of self, for is there is a separate self, there can be no true integration, only the state of sympathy. There is someone observing someone else’s suffering, and helping to alleviate their suffering but still retaining a sense of Us and Them. In Buddhism, wisdom, or prajna, is most often found through the teachings of No Self, or attana.
In my studies in Zen Buddhism, we are taught to help wherever we can, as selflessly as is possible, which is true compassion. If you help someone and then expect a reward, there is still a separate self expecting reward from a separate person. We have to learn to drop all expectations. The Tibetan practice of Lojong’s final slogan is brilliant in this regard – Do Not Expect Applause. Only then, there is there an integration of everyone involved.
In Druidry, this integration is often termed as relationship – but again, words fail to describe the enormity of the meaning behind it all. Druidry also uses the word, awen, a Welsh word with several interpretations: poetic inspiration and flowing spirit to name a few. For me, awen is the life “force” itself, in its myriad expressions, in constant change and flux.
To find true peace, one must release into this, into awen, losing that sense of separateness, and in doing so discovering the nature of compassion in soul to soul relationship.
Down the Forest Path 