are you a drop in the ocean? or the ocean in a drop?

One of the virtues of being in charge of my own time, mostly, has been the opportunity to reflect on some of the deeper questions on life. This is not new for me. As a child I remember asking "what is the meaning of life?" with the rather cute response being "to find the meaning". For a little nipper, that is pretty wise and deep...

I'm fascinated by philosophy. Love to get poetic and metaphoric with spirit and science. I get called a 'hippy' on a regular basis. Which still bugs me a little but I am learning to embrace it. I don't know what qualifies me as a hippy... But nevertheless as a 'bonafide hippy' there's one idea I work to advocate and that is the shortcut key of 'Peace & Love'. I've got there a few times. Of completely 100% embodying this place but then like a burning fire on a relentless mission to purify the soul, something will come up and I'll be put back to work again. That's the inside practice.

What I often fall in to duality with is the 'inside-outside' world. I have written a lot on some of the madness our world faces and there have been times when I have walked around and felt disturbed by the world around me. Just the other day I walked around Times Square and being wide open to everything felt like I was taking a huge over excited moving screen hit of neon that was injected directly in to my adrenal gland. People everywhere. Lights everywhere. Messages. Buy, buy, buy... Eurgh. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Then I teleport back to walking through a small market town in the Himalayan region of India and seeing a beautiful grubby girl holding a plastic bag full of empty bottles. I loved that child. She was doing such a service by collecting that recyclable waste instead of allowing it all to toxify the lands in the area. But her society saw her as a low caste, an 'untouchable'. When I held her hand and we walked through the street together, my Indian friend Ganesh explained that people were pointing and expressing their disgust at this girl and I for being in contact. How cruel to think there exists a world where a child cannot be held because of the caste she was born in to.

There's a shamanic principle that suggests one 'has acceptance for all'. A wonderful non-dualistic concept; learning to appreciate the darkness to appreciate the light. Or something like that. But stepping aside from this enlightened place of 'everything's meant to be' I still struggle to come to terms with some of the terrible things that are happening on this planet.

A decision I felt forced to make in 2011 was to get dark, deep and gritty with my stuff. To delve within. And after many a self-righteous rant about all this is wrong with the world; the environment, poverty, sexism, inequality and a whole plethora of issues that need to be addressed besides the fact that media is brainwashing us with fear and subscribing us to tow a line that may not be in service of good at all ie. war... After all this ranting, I very quickly realised that inside me also exists shadow dimensions of pain, anger, fear, sadness and turmoil. Some inherited genetics, most psychologically conditioned reactions and resistances from Earth school grit.

I hadn't previously realised how much the past was still replaying in my present. What emerged were psychological wounds and vulnerable feelings of a misunderstood and very sensitive child. I recall reading about a polar bear that died in the local zoo due to the heat wave and I just broke down in tears. I began psychologically studying myself, got angry a lot, I practiced mindfulness and therapeutic practices. In an act of self-care, I hired a hut in the Caribbean and spent most afternoons doing yoga and meditation on the beach. In my shack I worked on integrating, writing, photo editing, creating beautiful things out of the resources I had and I danced. It was transformational and it was painful and at times I felt very sorry for myself. I found the key to mindful awareness was to develop a secure frame that could contain any feeling; no matter how painful, to allow it to to be received with grace.

I share this because I want to get real here and I know what it is like to be going it alone and feeling vulnerable. Things happen in life, the ocean gets choppy, we swallow too much salt water and we may struggle to keep afloat. There are times when the life boat feels like it is sinking and safety feels a long way away. I learned that safety needed to be something I could create for myself amidst any kind of chaos and pain. An inner trust and sense of safety. With a tightly gripped hand we cannot hold water, it falls between our fingers. But with our hands we can cup it. When I came home to this place again, I realised it had never gone, I was always held by mother nature. But I'd got swept up in a big rip, held on too tightly and needed to improve my breaststroke and breathe a lot deeper. I needed to surrender and allow myself to be present with life no matter how painful. The chemical soap burn scene in Fight Club encapsulates that feeling; no power animal, no visualisation techniques, no mantras, just 100% there with the feeling.

The thing's that plague our society still make me dream it better and have had me in tears but I am grateful to feel. In the West we have built up a strange notion that feelings are a weakness not a strength. And there's a lot in this world that is heartbreakingly destructive or darn right insane. But thankfully there's also a lot on this planet that is so so stunningly beautiful, inspiring and kind. 

If we want to be shining beacons for peace, it starts - in my humble opinion - with being ok with oneself; to respond to one's authenticity with presence and acceptance (and compassion) even when the ocean's rough. And we need to have the courage to allow for change, as life inevitably is.

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.” - Gandhi

Reference: The Role of Grief on the Spiritual Path (Huffington Post)

sorry, I'm sorry, you're sorry

Stepping out of shame is very, very, tough in this day and age. We live in a world that perpetually reminds us of something we need to apologise for or feel sorry about.

As a half-British lady who spent her youth growing up in the UK before emigrating 6 years ago, certain conditionings have been engrained in to my subconscious. British-isms such as lots of apologising along with talking a lot about the weather, and thankfully, a sense of humour.

Shame is quite a dark emotion. Self-pity feels like a prison. It's like being a victim of circumstance and brings other people in to the prison to share in the sadness to release the pressure and loneliness.

The difference between self-pity and being stuck in a rut is whether you have the power to change the situation. If you don't like where you are; you have the power to change it.

Self pity can take you to a place where you were a victim (like a glass cage of emotion here). It has taken me a while to find the shame which was buried in a place when I was 8 years old during my parents divorce while I was getting bullied at a new school. Blur's The Great Escape along with my black and white cat, Mollie, were my saving graces at the time. I was just a child and hence, bless my socks, had little power to do anything.

As an adult, one does have a choice. We have the power to say "No I don't want that" and to do something to change what's in the space causing us to suffer. This extends beyond personal power but, I believe, collectively too. It is incredibly scary doing so. It means taking a stand. Facing the music. Perhaps compromising a personality that is 'always nice'. It doesn't feel nice stepping out of self-pity but its great once you do.

At some point the shame picks at you, frustrates you or in my case (before traveling) starts to make you numb and withdrawn. That is when one might ask, without sounding so dramatic; "Do I want change or do I want to die?" That's when you can find your feet and walk. 

Act with power. Walk with purpose. Be authentic.

If one chooses to remain in self-pity others can help, but they're not your feet that you stand up with.

That's when you bring back your power and do something. It may require you to get angry at the past, honour it and act, or cry about the past, honour it and act. Unfortunately the tears and anger of a victim repeat over and over. Anger with power changes something (e.g. No means "NO"). Tears with power opens something. Then its finite it will fade away and you can make a fool out of yourself all you want with funky chicken dance moves in public or trying to save the world.

I found myself stepping out and doing the things I thought I could never do. I became real and a little less fearful and averse to new experiences like eating bananas and mushrooms. Personally this was the hardest emotional part of my lovely little journey thus far and I do believe it was the power behind a lot of the volunteer campaigns I worked on where I was motivated to "Be the change you want to see in the world" because I found the power to act. To just plant a seed, water it and see if it grows.

Eventually I had to ask myself "Am I really alone?" and my answer was "Yes girlfriend.", I'm alone with lots of other awesome people who are also alone, united ironically by our collective aloneness and appreciation of how that feels. A much lighter feeling than feeling sorry for my very existence because of a story from the past or a story that's conditioned in to me by my thank-you-please-sorry-sir upbringing. I hope I am not going to deep here... because some people are sorry about being sorry for being sorry and it is a word that carries a lot of weight despite it being so often used in the British customs.

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean. - Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

So amongst my random ponderings, I suppose what I am saying is, I hope we get beyond shame, move beyond it so can can focus on the things we truly care about by standing on our own two feet. While I was in Australia the government created a National Sorry Day for the gross mistreatment caused to the Aboriginals in the past. This is just one example of the many human devastations that have happened in the past (by the Brits too no less) and continue happening now in the present day. But sorry doesn't change anything unless there is action and the slate is wiped clean, one moves on and we learn to start again.

Otherwise, will we continue life long wars while technology advances and we face the shaky grounds of economical instability? Will we end up bombing one another arguing over who started it until we experience Hiroshima again?

Which is a really, really sad place.

That's the only museum I've been moved to tears by. A harrowing example of the insanity in this world.

Our culture doesn't really offer a healthy container to deal with the sense of loss and sorrow but hopefully through a more united consciousness we can heal and breathe through the dark stuff and smash some glass cages of emotions feeling a sense of freedom and aliveness with our power to do something awesome and perhaps even a little remarkable in our lives.

why i'm not asking jesus for answers

In response to your BIG, DEEP, HEAVY question about why you feel I am not asking Jesus aka "The One" for answers...

(This video is of the Everest region of Nepal which is Tibetan Buddhist with a Hindu soundtrack of worship to Shiva)

Your question is an incredibly valid one and I am grateful to you to have bravely - despite anonymously - brought it to my attention. As you can imagine on my travels I come across many different codes of conduct; Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Shamanism, Naturists, etc. And just the other day I sat chatting on the train to Exeter with a lovely gentleman/academic who was a writing paper on Muslim philosophy which was so fascinating.

With a mind that loves philosophy and having been an avid wanderer in my time (as you so rightly called out) I’ll say what I feel is the best way to answer this question at this present moment; although I would like to caveat that like much of the essence of ‘knowing’, is still subject to change like seemingly everything in my life; “Wisest is she who knows she does not know” as some wise guy said. I'll back that.

From my own experience, I can’t say I follow or believe in one religion over another now. I have very much connected with Buddhism in the past and have a tattoo of a Tibetan mantra on my foot from a special trek I did in Nepal 2011 that represents compassion and I like the idea of non-clinging and Karma Yoga. And each faith has its merits in teaching us all to be better conditioned people after being beautifully damaged or psychologically disturbed by the histories of family, genetics, society, the world around us blah blah blah and thus can inspire in us a love, devotion and forgiveness for another, for abandoning us for example, that sometimes; if it were not for faith would be hard to come by.

I believe in ONE-ness. The unity consciousness. The One Love that Bob Marley sings about. The ying-yang that creates the virtuous circle and unity between the dualities of perceived dark and light, the good and bad. The realisation that one might not know one without the other. I believe that God’s essence or Jesus as you might say (who to me represents joy and love) is within us all and by serving the greater good of mankind we are in turn serving ‘oneself’.

On a very conditioned and amusing level I can explain why I have avoided - to some extent - Jesus Christ the Superstar. When I was 14, my mother became a "Born Again Christian". She’s Venezuelan, has Catholic roots and now believes that she is her own temple. Her name's Eglee which translates to 'Church' in French so it was all pretty obvious and she got there in the end. Brilliant. However, back then, she relentlessly pressured me to go to this concrete place of worship because her fellow Born Again village friends saw it as good behaviour. This pissed me off no end. Firstly, I didn’t want to get up early on a Sunday and secondly the day she did persuade me to attend in order to make her look like a good Christian; was also the day that the man at the alter started spieling stuff about how “Gays are unnatural” and as you have read - I don't subscribe to this view and thankfully nature has proven this to be an incorrect perspective (many animals have same sex or at least try to - perhaps those Greek Gods were right!), but I didn’t like this at all. In fact, I recall my school friend Fliss and I walking out as ‘nature called’. Meanwhile someone in the church started having a divinely inspired praise the lord moment, which was like a scene out of The Exorcist. For 14 year old me - that was just weird and scary.

So the following Sunday when mum tried to get me to go to church again; I sat on the ledge of my windowsill, quite dramatically, crying in my hormonal state and threatened her that I would jump out my window and kill myself (or badly damage myself) if she forced me to go.  It took that much persuasion to have her let me lie in and respect my views. The church did however succeed in persuading my Mum to marry her boyfriend that she wasn’t ready to commit her whole life to as otherwise she was having to sneak him in to the house in case the church-goers living opposite saw. So now she’s twice divorced and in those circles might be made to feel ashamed of it. Pity because she’s more awesome than ever.

As you probably know Anon; keeping a life-long promise is no walk in the park and people need to learn in their own time, not through peer pressure, when to make that kind of commitment to their word. So essentially she was being made to feel ashamed for her love in that 'organised religion' and that's just as common in other religions too. So that's my Christian connection. But there's a lot I do like about Christianity. I especially love church bells. They’re like giant healing singing bowls and I think the idea of a high building to remind everyone that “God is watching” is a nice reminder to have. My version was to get my mates phone, change my name on it to GOD and text the very same "I can see you" much to both our amusement. I really like the beautiful 'crafted with devotional love' steeples. Perhaps that's why I love La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Visited 3 times. Still not bored.

I suppose with me, right now, I believe in spirit. The power of inspiration. The genius. But that is something one can only see through experience. What many might term a ‘spiritual experience’. Something that words can only point to but if you are unfortunately as inquisitive as I am and want to appease an inner “But Whhhhhhyyyy?” most the time you might be able to get to the roots of. Exhausting work. If only I listened to Lennon and just 'let it be'. When this spiritual experience happens you might want to humbly attribute it to a God or perhaps, as in my case 'freak out' before eventually doing what Carl Jung or a Yogi might say and “surrender” to the unconscious. Like that Jesus on the cross moment “Forgive me father for they know not what they do” or in my case “Forgive me folks for I knew not what I was doing” because people are unconsciously behaving a certain way. We all do it and it sucks but we need to learn right?

My "God" is what the tribes too remote for organised religion have: my heart and I am learning to have faith in this big bad-ass heart of mine although admittedly its hard when it takes a battering or two. There are some cruel things happening in this world right now, its like self-harm(!) and I am a big softy under the bad-ass "I am fine alone" exterior.

I did go through a short-lived phase of preaching and I didn’t like myself very much; nor did my mates. I felt very inauthentic and this feeling of ‘holier than thou’ was stupid. Psychologists might call it co-dependency which is world endemic. A need to be needed or trying to fix others. It started to resemble a ‘spiritual arrogance’ like I was the Queen's Mother or something and I believe NOW that this takes away the biggest learning one could grasp from any true and loving religion or better termed in my world ‘inspiration’; that we are equal. That we “were made in his image”. That we are all special. This is very hard to deal with when you see people hurting themselves and your inner superhero wants to save them. You can't evidently.

As a rather open-minded spiritual tourist; I have connected with Jesus and the Virgin Mary a few times symbolically so you know. I actually met a guy who was having his born again moment and I felt like an abandoned mother. The same guy I fell in love with and experienced a sense of rejection from. I also went to an amazing gospel church in Antigua and was the only 'white person' there. The pastor said “who’s ready to surrender to whatever it is you are here on Earth to do?” – I was like “Yes. Please. Finally. Lets do this God!”. Next thing I know I am being hustled from the back row to stand at the front with a handful of others in a massive room of people. God has a marvellous sense of humour and loves a dramatic backdrop while also embarrassing the hell out of me in public. So I surrendered and the next thing I knew I was crying with a big beautiful black lady hugging me from behind. Always good to know a sister has my back. Wonderful little scene it was and the energy in that room was incredible. I was buzzing.

And so now I feel like I am living "Gods will" which is just being who I am. I am happy to be “a channel of his peace” and I always was. Don't we all wish for that deep down? I share love in my own way. I keep a blog for entertainment. I share my toys. I try to protect nature (she’s my version of Virgin Mary), I do massages, practice yoga and meditation and I pray for peace in the world. I am also not perfect. I can lose my way and I have learned to ask for help without feeling ashamed. I have said the 'wrong' thing many a time. I also love the mystery of life, flowers, alternative medicine and have a strong intuition which once upon a time, if a Christian knew, would have me burned at the stake and called a witch! Which in my opinion is not very equal and loving at all, especially if women are a representation of Mother Nature or like 'a man with a womb'. Come on people!

I also had the best trek with a fellow traveler to Everest Basecamp who had been brought up in an Evangelical Christian community and carried her heavy bible with her on the high altitude trail. The two best moments (beyond arriving at Basecamp and sharing Hobnobs of course) were when she was sharing passages out of the bible – I am a big fan of the ‘what is love’ verses -  as my Tibetan Buddhist monk friend, Pasang, sat there uncomfortably as though one were a threat to the other.

The second best moment was when we went to this beautiful bridge (above) aligned with prayer flags and both Krista and I tied flags on it making prayers for those we love so that the wind could blow those messages to ‘God’. We had just walked by a very commercial part of the trail and really craved Mars Bars but were on a tight a budget (no ATMs) so we couldn’t have overpriced Mars Bars. I said to Krista “this would’ve been the perfect spot to eat our Mars Bars” and pretended to eat one as a joke. We crossed the bridge. Then a very lovely guesthouse owner who had met us at high altitude on Krista’s birthday freezing cold and soaked in rain walked past us at super duper Nepali speed. As they do. We smiled, said “Namaste” (which translates to “I see God in you”) and moments later he spun round and gave us two Mars Bars. Now there my friend is Holiness. Krista laughed – “Well God certainly has a sense of humour” as we ceremoniously tucked in to our gifts, sat on a rock and admired the beautiful unspoilt nature around us.

I feel our beliefs have a very strong interpretation on our reality. It's a bit like advertising. And to see things truly I feel, we have to do a pretty good job at de-cluttering the space within and out. Kinda zen-like-present-moment-I-love-myself and let go of my past work. 

So I love The Universe, or God, or the world. Lets all be peaceful and awesome to each other and enjoy gifts in epic landscapes. More love and forgiveness of our 'stories' would go down pretty well right now whatever your colour, sexual orientation or religion.

I hope that's a fair and entertaining answer. The shortcut: Love is my religion and I express it through my actions aka. Karma. Not always perfectly but I'm always learning how to do it better.

And by the way, what a divinely timed question Anon. Next week I am doing a very special pilgrimage with my Mum: El Camino de Santiago in Spain. Stay tuuuuuuuuuned and thanks for reading me and pointing out the obvious... Big love to Jesus the Superstar... 

Along with all the other beautiful icons of worship... now try, the biggest challenge for me thus far, to love your reflection without conditions. 

Namaste Anon. Thanks again.