self

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Food for Thought

food_for_thoughtWe’ve all heard the term, “you are what you eat”. We know that if we put bad things into our bodies, we’ll end up feeling pretty poorly. Equally, if we put good, wholesome, nourishing food into our bodies, we will feel much better. How much different is it to take this idea over to our thinking minds?

Our minds need nourishment too. All too often, we overload it with media and television, with constant thinking, worrying and getting stuck in our emotions. These things also help us to distract ourselves from our true self, from our true or “pure” thinking and emotions. We can get so wrapped up in them that we can’t see the forest for the trees, so to speak.

We all have things like fear and anger within our minds and within our bodies. The key is to not nourish these things, but instead nourish more positive things like compassion and love. This isn’t a rejection of our anger or our fear – they will always be there. It’s only human. We simply don’t have to engage with them, dance with them so much in order to live our lives fully. If I am angry, sitting with that anger, meditating with it helps me to see the underlying cause of it. I can see that the root cause of anger lies within me, and not another being that has ’caused’ it. Often it is through past experiences that we relate the anger to the present moment. If I can let my anger go, if I truly experience it and then let it go, what am I left with? The same can be said of fear. Fear is pretty much always based on change, and once we realise that all life is impermanent, the fear no longer lies within us and simply falls away. We will have to sit with these emotions time after time, but as long as we are practicing with them, we will get better at understanding them both within ourselves and others.

If we feed fear or anger, they will only get bigger and bigger. Have you ever punched your pillow? Did it make you feel better? Have you ever crawled under the duvet and feared coming out? Did this make anything better? Most likely not – acting on the anger and misplacing it on your pillow solves nothing, and also means that you have acted out aggressively and with violence to a mere pillow. If we keep feeding this sort of behaviour, how long until we act that out on another human being? Equally so with fear, if we constantly act on our fears they do not go away, but rather take control of our lives until we become so tied up within them we cannot move.

It’s not just a case of switching over to ‘positive thinking’ either. Thinking only good thoughts will not make the bad ones go away – they will be there. We have to acknowledge them first and then deal with them. Sitting with them helps us to understand them. Then we can nourish more positive thoughts. If we see that fear is keeping us immobile, if the root of our fear lies in past relationships and experiences, we can then look at it objectively and apply that reasoning to our current situation, in the present moment. We might fear that we will lose our job, but fear lies in change, something that we humans hate. We seek stability and reassurance constantly, it’s our nature. If we look outside ourselves, however we see that in nature nothing is ever constant, things are ever flowing and changing, never the same twice. Every morning we wake up a different person.

We will always have fear, we will always have anger. How we engage with them is what is most important. Friends might say something that sets off anger within ourselves, but if we sit with it and look at it, we often realise that this is based on how we think they should behave. People are never going to behave exactly as we want or expect them to – they are their own person, with their own experiences. We cannot get inside their head. All we can do is see that they share the same sufferings along the path of human existence as we do, and can see also where we have failed. When we see that, we don’t have these expectations of others, and we don’t have the anger when the expectations aren’t met, or the fear that things are changing.

Find what nourishes you most, and work with those thoughts while being in touch with those that don’t nourish. Try not to engage with the thoughts that don’t nourish – simply notice them and be aware of them within yourself. Nourishing things like love, compassion, creativity and acceptance will make the road of life a lot easier to manage.

Take a look at your food for thought. What is nourishing you?

Awen blessings. x

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Reblog: The Winter Solstice – No Birth, No Death

This is a reblog from my site, Druidheart, at SageWoman’s channel on Witches and Pagans. To read the whole post, click HERE.

With the Winter Solstice approaching, and in the cold dark months of the year, we have an excellent opportunity to reflect upon the deeper parts of our existence, those shadowy elements that seem to fade away so easily in the heat of the midday sun, those thoughts that require darkness and the teaching that it can bring. Thoughts such as life and death, darkness and light and the cyclical nature of existence are all excellent themes to meditate on at this time of year, with a natural introspective element to this season allowing us to perhaps go further, deeper than we could or would in the warmer, more outwardly focusing half of the year.

This season, with the increasing darkness and the lack of light here in the UK brings more sharply into focus thoughts of death and dying. It is often said in Western Paganism that the Sun God dies at Samhain and is reborn at Yule, when the days begin to lengthen and the light in our lives is increased. However, lately my thoughts have abandoned the concept of death, as well as birth, into a more Zen-like “No Birth, No Death” frame of mind.

Having meditated on this for a couple of months now, and seeing it reflected in nature around me, as a Druid this is how I internalise the teachings. For me, nature is the greatest teacher. I look to no other authority other than nature. It is the core of my religion, the core of my being. Having looked deeply into the nature of death and dying, of birth and living the concept of no death, no birth makes a lot more sense to me right now. Let me explain…

To read the full post, click HERE.

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Lucid dreaming

sleep flyingLately I’ve been getting pretty good at flying.

Once a month, or every couple of months, I have a flying dream. Lately they’ve been intentional, as just before I fall asleep, or when I awaken into another sleeping pattern in the middle of the night or early morning, I say to myself “I really fancy another flying dream”. Starting to take control of your dreams is often termed “lucid dreaming”, usually best experienced in lighter stages of sleep than in deep or exhausted sleep. I’ve done this various times, to turn around dreams that have gotten out of hand, situations that are getting ugly, and lately in order to experience true joy and freedom.

My last flying dream a couple of days ago was very interesting. In the previous flying dream, I restricted myself to an abandoned house that my sister was going to buy, so that I could practice flying without anyone knowing. For some reason, it was important to keep this a secret, and not let anyone know of my special power. In the latest dream, I took it outside, and didn’t really care who saw me flying around. It was freedom in every sense.

Feeling a bit homesick, I decided to go and visit my childhood home in flight mode, and then I was flying up my parents’ street, seeing the house and the hills and miles of forest behind. I thought “Wouldn’t it be cool to see my hills and forest from the air? I’ve never seen them from that vantage point. It would be great to see home from a bird’s eye view.” I swooped past the house and rose up high into the air, past the ridge letting the vast expanse opened out before me.

Only it wasn’t home. Or at least, it wasn’t the home of my childhood.

Spreading out before me was the gently rolling hills, fields, hedgerows and landscape of England. I shook my head and went back down for another swoosh up, telling myself that this time I would see home. Again, the same thing happened.

I slowly came out of the dream, exhilarated by all that flying. But I pondered the meaning of my semi-lucid state. I wasn’t able to see what I wanted to see. Or was I?

I have lived in Britain for over 15 years now. This dream has confirmed that this is my home now. While a large part of me will always remain in the hills and valleys, rivers and lakes of my home where I grew up, this is where I do my work, live my life, work with the ancestors and the gods. It was a beautiful affirmation of home, and freedom.

In what I suppose became a semi-lucid state, my sub-conscious helped me to realise and take to heart something that I had only considered in my head. Now I was able to feel it wholly, truly, in my entire being. I feel lucky and blessed.

May you all fly free!

 

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Perception, assumption and suffering

How much of our lives are based around incorrect perceptions? How often does our emotional state and relationship with others fall apart based on incorrect perceptions? And just what is perception?

Perception is how we interpret the world, through our own subjectivity. We have a store consciousness built on our past experiences and those experiences related to us by others. We use this store consciousness to help inform us on our view of the world. It helps us to survive. We know that fire burns, so we don’t touch it. We know that cougars are dangerous, so we don’t approach. We look both ways (hopefully) before crossing the street. However, as our perception of the world is so subjective, how often do we get it wrong?

This is not to say that we should throw out all useful perception and experience. What we need to do is to become aware of our perceptions, and to see if we are making assumptions that aren’t based on actual fact. So much of our lives are built upon this, which is a rather shaky foundation.

Incorrect perception can lead to all sorts of problems and can create a huge amount of suffering. We might have the incorrect assumption that we are alone, which gives us the false perception that we are completely isolated from the rest of the world. We may react to a situation based on what we think someone said, rather than what they actually said, and thereby create a false perception of the actual event. We may assume from past experience that all politicians lie, and create a false perception that we cannot trust anyone, much less bother to vote. We might get angry at someone for their behaviour, without seeing the root causes behind it. Changing your perception leads to understanding, which is the essence of compassion.

We will still make mistakes, however. We have habits, ingrained learned behaviour that is difficult to overcome if we are not aware of it. However, once we see the patterns formed in learned behaviour, we can unlearn it. We can break free of negative, destructive cycles, beginning to heal ourselves and then work towards healing our community, our world.

By nature I judge everything – it’s simply a part of my personality. While it’s worth having to some extent, it’s also a detriment. What I have had to learn is how to judge without being judgemental. It may not sound like that great a difference, but really it is the foundation of trying to understand the human being.

Daily meditation helps with this on so many levels. Practising awareness for 10 to 20 mins a day in mindful meditation begins to seep into every aspect of your life. Once you become aware of your thought patterns and behavioural patterns, you can then learn to break free of these in order to live with more intention. Everyone can meditate to some extent – you just have to want to. You have to want to spend time with yourself, and thereby doing some pretty deep examination, coming to terms with the less than glowing aspects of your self, as well as embracing those parts of your self that nourish and bring peace. It’s very simple and sometimes very difficult. However, if you want to get off that treadmill of constant running, out of that vicious cycle you feel trapped in, it’s well worth the effort.

Next time you are angry, depressed or sad, take the time to look deeply into your perceptions. If you find that they are based on incorrect or unsubstantiated views, perhaps they are not perceptions but assumptions. You will have to let go of the anger, depression or sadness as well as the ego in order to fully see – things we like to cling on to for various reasons, ie. because we know we are right, because we know we are not good enough, etc. This knowledge is not true knowledge, but assumption based on false perception.

Doing this work can lead to a life filled with less suffering, and in doing so even bring more joy into the world. May we do the work with a peaceful heart and with pure intention.

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The Curse of Self-Awareness

As homo sapien sapiens, the beings that are aware that we are aware, we have a great gift in terms of our species title (though personally I’m not sure that this is pertinent only to human beings). We also suffer from a great curse: the curse of self-awareness.

Being self-aware can help us to achieve wonderful, beautiful things, striving towards peace and harmony with all creatures with pure intention, awake and aware of how you respond to situations and seeing where you “fit”. It can also lead down the slippery slope of becoming drowned in your own sense of self and of not being able to see beyond that. We can get lost in our heads in a made-up world instead of actually being in reality. We can create situations, linger on emotions and situations that are no longer relevant, and simply be too self-focused, missing out on the beauty, wonder and magic that life can offer us at any given moment.

Much of Paganism and Druidry begins by looking at the self, of finding where we fit within nature. Locating that sense of self is important. However, it shouldn’t end there – we must look outwards as well, otherwise we are missing out on everything that nature is communicating with us in relationship. Druidry is, after all, all about relationship, a two-way flow of energy.

Lift the curse of self-awareness, and look beyond the self to be inspired by the beauty and wonder of the world around you. Finding where you fit, and then listening and being inspired by others, in whatever form they may be – that is the greatest gift.

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Reblog: Reclaiming the word discipline and living with intention

This is a reblog from my blog, DruidHeart, at Sagewoman Magazine’s channel on Witches and Pagans.

 

discipline

ˈdɪsɪplɪn/

noun

noun: discipline

1.    the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behaviour, using punishment to correct disobedience.

“a lack of proper parental and school discipline”

2.    a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education.

“sociology is a fairly new discipline”

 

Wow. No wonder people hate the word discipline. It’s often equated with punishment, correcting a perceived disobedience. We are free people, we should be able to do what we want, when we want, so long as it harms none. Life is for living, right?

Of course, I would agree with the above, that we are free, that life is for living. However, I’m also here to reclaim the word discipline into something that is positive.

We live in a world filled with instant gratification. We have IPhones and tablets that can “connect” us with people anywhere, anytime, so that we never have to be alone (even in a crowd of people). We have hundreds upon hundreds of television channels that tempt us into thinking that something better than the current moment we are living in is on the tube. We have internet to answer all questions at the push of a button. We have access to food 24/7 (most of us) – we’re usually never too far away from our larders or a shop. We love to “treat” ourselves. Marketing has told us that “we’re worth it”, or making us feel that we’re not good enough, and with their product we will be. Problems solved, instantly.

Now, this isn’t a blog post about self-denial, asceticism or anything similar. It is about truly seeing and understanding our needs versus our desires. Our modern world has twisted our desires into needs, and it is up to us to rebalance, to rejig our way of thinking in order to live a life filled with more intention.

I work three jobs, alongside my work as a Druid priest. Time can be in pretty hard demand sometimes, but planning makes it all work. It takes effort, but that is what discipline is: effort made in order to improve a situation, to live a life of intention, to learn more about integration and compassion.

This is only an excerpt – to read the full article, click HERE.

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Letting Go

Taking inspiration from nature, many Pagans see this season as a time of letting go. Even as leaves fall from the tree, we let go of things in our lives that no longer nourish us. In the letting go, we allow new manifestations to feed our creativity and inspire us in our journey, even as the fallen leaves feed the soil around the tree.

There are many different kinds of things we let go – ideas, relationships, emotions, material possessions. They key here is that if they are no longer nourishing, then we can softly let them go into the lengthening nights, thinking deeply about our lives and carrying within us new seeds for the coming year. They might be the vegetable garden that didn’t work, the friendship that no longer feels right, grief or anger that we have experienced or even just clutter in our houses.

We can also learn from the letting go – we can try and plant a vegetable garden in a different spot, grow different vegetables. We can focus on the relationships that we have that make our souls sing, and open ourselves to new possibilities. We remember those who have passed away, or who are struggling in the shared human journey. We learn to cherish and make space in our homes and in our lives for things that bring us joy.

The tree does not mourn the falling leaf, nor does the leaf mourn the tree. In the letting go, we simply allow for new manifestations to occur.

Blessings of Samhain.

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Reblog: The Love of the Darkness

This a reblog from my channel, DruidHeart at Witches and Pagans, on SageWoman’s channel:

 

The still centre.

Outside, in the dark, the air is finally still. Like rich swathes of fabric, the darkness hangs around me, enfolding me, wrapping me in its exquisite embrace. I sit, breathing in the night air, the smell of cedar and dew wet grass filling me with pure awen. The last of the crickets are singing in the remnant of summer’s growth, owls hooting softly in the distance and underneath the beech tree near Caia’s grave I let the songs of the night wash over me in waves of indigo and black.

The quiet is shattered by the call of a stag just on the other side of the hedge. Calling to the does, he is in full rut, looking for the ladies in the shelter of the night. He is maybe four feet away, and his bark and rumbles excite me with the power that he is emanating in following his soul’s truth. I can hear the slight shuffle of leaves and grass beneath his hooves as he paces up the track and then back down towards the nature reserve and farmer’s fields.

Overhead, a few stars are shining between the cloud cover, and the moon has not yet risen. My muscles have become fluid, my sense of self sliding into the darkness until there is no separation. There is no I am to compare with: I cannot even say “I am one with this land”, for there is no I. No me. Just life and death, a cycle and spiral mirrored in the galaxy that we perch upon the edge of, in the vastness of space and time.

But eventually I come back; there is an “I” once again. An “I” to speak from this still centre, to make sense of the experience. Sometimes I loathe that “I”, wanting to remain forever in the embrace of the darkness, boundless and floating, no edges and completely open, sharing with everything on this planet in the beautiful, soundless dance in the round of existence. The “I” always returns however, a little smaller, a little less sure of itself, and for this I am glad.

Deep within the depths of the stillness, the songs of the universe can be heard. Beyond the sense of self is all existence.

The love of the darkness, where there is nothing but potential.

 

To see the original post, click HERE.

 

 

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Daily Meditation

Meditation (source unknown)Meditation is a very important part of my spiritual path. I remember when I was a student with Bobcat (Emma Restall Orr) back in 2007, and the amount of meditation that she suggested was the minimum we do each day – it had seemed like a lot at the time (I had only begun to delve in Zen meditation at this point). She said that we should spend more time at our altars, at least with two twenty minute sessions per day. At first it was hard to get into, but then became easier at it became part of my life, part of my daily routine.

I took the sessions to longer periods of time, two thirty minute sessions. It meant getting up earlier and finding time when I came home from work before cooking dinner, or if that wasn’t possible finding time in the evening whenever it could fit in. There was great value in spending time before my altar, sitting in silence and communing with the gods, the ancestors and the spirits of place. It is often said that prayer is talking, and meditation is listening.

Learning more and more about meditation in its various forms, I realised that it could be done anytime, anywhere really – it didn’t have to be in front of the altar in a seated position. Seated meditation is still, for me, the best form, as quieting our bodies and our minds allows us a chance to get beyond our talking selves and into a space of pure being, where in stillness we settle even as the dusk falls upon the land. Like mud being churned in a pond, if we allow it to settle things become clear.

However, meditation could be taken out of that space and into the wider world. If I was away from home, and had no altar, I could take a walk and do some walking meditation. Lying in a bath, I could meditate there, fully aware of the water against my skin, the sounds and scents. In essence, meditation is simply giving your full attention to something, whether it is a stillness of the mind, the working through of a problem, walking down the street or paying attention to your breath. Work can become meditation – washing the dishes is meditation for me, as are other house chores. They are much more pleasant that way.

Riding my bike, driving my car, paddling my canoe – all these can be meditation. With meditation, if you are doing mindfulness meditation, you are not “zoning out” so to speak – you are fully aware of everything, allowing the illusion of the self to fade away in order to hear the wider world around you. Stopping the incessant internal dialogue, we step beyond our selves, allowing us a break from our egos. The more we do this, the more we are not ruled by our egos, living a life that is not reactive but completely and fully active: lived with intention.

Meditation is not all about sitting on a cushion chanting Om. It is living with full awareness, using techniques such as seated meditation to help you begin your journey. I would always advise seated meditation first, and then take that into other aspects of your life. Pretty soon you will find that you are living with much more awareness, much more mindfully. It’s not difficult to do.

Often people say that with the raising of a family they do not have the time to meditate. What I would suggest is that raising your family becomes a meditation. Pay attention to cooking the meals, when your children are speaking, when you are reading them a bedtime story. Be fully present with them and you are meditating. Be aware of your actions and reactions and you are meditating. Be aware of your breathing and you are meditating. You can do it.

Explore the many ways you can meditate. From finding that still centre, explore journeying, guided meditation, trancework and so on, keeping coming back to the simpler forms and the still centre. It will be well worth it.

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Gods of Humanity

Often we relegate things like love and lust, rage and compassion, anger and fear into emotions. If we think of them as just emotions, we may not work with them on a level that is appropriate. In fact, if we do not give them the respect that they deserve, they can sneak up on us when we least expect it and give us a good kick up the arse.

My teacher, Bobcat told us students many years ago that we should regard them as gods. It took me a while to understand what she meant, and only after the experience of years since does it all seem clear to me now. We often have to stumble and fall before we actually pay attention to the ground we are walking upon. The idea of the gods of human tides took a good few years to sink in, but they now sit comfortably within my framework of ethics, living in honourable relationship.

Gods often demand respect. Not because they are seeking power over us and have something to prove, but rather that if we do not respect them we could be swept away on their currents of energy. It is often said that in Druidry we do not sublimate to the gods, but rather work to create a relationship with them that is rich and sustainable, as we do with all things.

The gods of the human tides are treated with the same respect as the gods of thunder and lightning, the sea and sun, the winter’s howling and the spring’s blooming. We must look carefully into our anger, our lust, our greed, our compassion, our generosity in order to understand the intention behind them better. If we are not careful, we can get swept away with them all too quickly. If we do not stand our ground we can jeopardise our entire existence, all that we have worked for, all our dreams and schemes, our morals and our ethics.

It requires a willingness to be soul naked and bare, to look inside the self and see the constructs of it in order to better understand why it works the way it does. It requires utter honesty. How many of us are completely honest with ourselves? Very few, if any.

I am not an exception. I have fallen before the gods of humanity, swept away on various currents and seeing the destruction that is wrought by the giving in to their powerful surge. It has led me to look deeper within myself to find the root causes of why I allowed that to happen, and in doing so ensuring that it doesn’t happen in the future. Creating a relationship with these gods means that I understand them better, and myself more, therefore acting with intention instead of simple reaction. Great doubt and insecurity, great fear and anger all lie within our souls. Facing these requires great courage and strength, great faith in ourselves and in the world around us.

None of us are perfect. But we learn from our mistakes, the tripping up awakening us, making us pay attention to the footsteps we take along life’s journey. Then each step is walked with honour, respect and integrity. Do not dwell on past mistakes, but do not let them happen again. Awake and aware, we walk forward, deeper into the heart of the forest and the wisdom of the oak.