I want to write more personally this month in the hope that certain themes of my own journey resonate with you in some way.
As I start each day, those early minutes after waking are key for me. In those gentle and open moments I ask of Spirit a simple question – what is the sweetest path for me today?
I dowse or feel into the answers I receive and use them as a base for planning the hours ahead. What I sense is rarely grandiose, more the ideal balance of work, rest and play for the day and how that might look. This is key if I am to honour my own rhythms and those of the world around me.
Part of this guidance comes through my body wisdom. My body shows me very clearly where I am out of balance. This is particularly true of foods. I am now a slightly reluctant vegan. I have been vegetarian for 11 years and find that easy, but recently my body has been reacting to diary products too and even animal products like wool on my jumpers.
Being fully vegan is the right choice for me but it does come at a cost. My sense is that, for me, veganism separates me from the journey and processing of farmed animals, but we must each work out our own position on this.
Speaking of which, my family run a very small animal sanctuary for a few rescued farm animals. Although the sheep, pigs and goats live beautiful lives, I feel that one of the greatest gifts we give them is the right to die on their own terms. There is a grace and sacredness to an animal dying naturally that seems to hold a light in the darkness of global commercial farming.
This is not as easy as it may sound. By excluding large predators, we deny the wounded or poorly animal the natural death of predation and so sometimes we have to make difficult decisions around when to intervene to ease suffering.
Our immediate neighbour is an ancient mediaeval priory and the land here has held a spiritual presence for at least a thousand years. The spiritual elders of those days were perhaps better connected to the energies of the land than most of us are today. When they chose a site for their worship, they did so carefully.
I love how this special land holds the space for all my remote sessions, the group healing and the making of the resonators. Each resonator is imbued with the connection to this particular part of Gaia and the sacred energy it represents.
I also use nature as a mirror to my state of balance. The symbolic presence of animals guides me and acts as an alchemical influence on my life. For example, last month I found a beautiful sparrow hawk trapped in netting.
I released it and the bird flew away to its freedom, perhaps symbolising my own freedom at some level. For me in the west of the UK, the sparrow hawk, kestrel, and buzzard all hold the space of the East on the medicine wheel, where we have the perspective of life beyond our individual soul journeys, where we see the threads that join us together in a bigger picture. If my newsletters are to have any wider value, I must write in a way that has meaning for many of us, and helps connect with this higher journey that we can all align with…
…which brings me to an issue with my last newsletter, where I missed an essential aspsect of that higher perspective. In writing about cultural and religious dogmas around sex I didn’t directly mention the depth of judgement that exists around same sex relationships. It should have stood at number one on the list and my apologies to those I excluded. I will try to fly higher in the future.
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Here are some questions I invite you to sit with:
1. Do you drift into each day ahead or ask for inspiration to help you find the sweetest path through it?
2. If you do look for inspiration and support, who do you ask?
3. How and where in your body do you receive any answers?
4. How does your body speak to you through sensitivities, symptoms, energy levels etc. What is it trying to show you?
5. What reflections does nature have for you?
6. Why are you here today? What is the sacred and unique gift you bring to creation today?
Finally, I want to invite you to suggest topics for future newsletters. In particular, I feel drawn to shamanically journey to various different parts of nature to see what they want to share with us, perhaps the antarctic ice fields, the rainforests, the mountains etc. Does this appeal to anyone? If so, please do send me your ideas and I’ll see what emerges.
With love
Andrew