I wrote this short poem last year, at one of the peaks of despair after my relationship broke up. It yielded a massive break-through, though I had to go into the pain fully to experience it before it broke on the shores of truth.
CRISIS
The cry of darkness, the call of the wild, burning from my heart into yours. Shadows; dancing and chasing themselves into endless knots of stupidity in my mind. How can it be that I did not know?
Chasms open up into pain engulfing my very consciousness reminding me of my mortality and screaming like a banshee in a high wind. I cry NO! there is no me that is threatened here!
………
He, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever known, because she had ventured so far into emotion with him and had abandoned herself to it.―Anaïs Nin
It was one thing to be attacked by someone you hated, but this was something else. This was the kind of hurt that could only be inflicted by someone you loved, who you thought loved you. It was sort of like being stabbed from the inside out. —Ethan Wate, “Beautiful Darkness”
The highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with one’s own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation. —C.G. Jung
A Dark Night is . . . a mental and emotional state of despair that arises when something is so painful that it blots out all other considerations and makes carrying on as usual out of the question. —Susan Piver
I’m a very visual person, especially when it comes to media like movies or images on the computer. I find hours can disappear fast as water down the plug-hole as I become totally immersed in looking through photos and artwork on the internet. Ask me to find an image on a theme I like and I’m kept entertained for hours, especially if it’s nature! That’s what happened when I had decided I needed a new website for my tantra work, One Heart Tantra. I was currently using a theme of a woman holding a red rose but wanted a change whilst still using a floral theme. I had settled on Orchids as my main theme, as I find them so exquisitely beautiful.
I LOVE nature and am constantly inspired by what I see, feel and interact with, whether that be trees, rocks, pieces of dead wood, stones, plants, water, animals, insects and of course, flowers. My task for the site was to find several orchid pictures. I’d already located the main picture, but I needed these for the 8-10 individual pages on the website.
So here I was, trawling through Google searches for Orchid photographs for hours over a three-day period. I knew it was obsessive behaviour; I could have been far more efficient with my time but I was totally hooked on these orchids. Continue reading →
“If your flame of awareness is burning bright, you will know that sex is not just sex. Sex is the outermost layer; deep inside is love, and even deeper is prayer, and deepest is God himself. Sex can become a cosmic experience; then it is tantra.” – Osho
Beyond our mind-made labels of who we think we are as sexual or spiritual entities, beyond our concepts of sexuality of straight, bi, gay or any other identification we have, is Love. Osho knew this and elegantly shared it in the quote above.
To know thyself as Love, both as an individual and as the One, is the realisation we long for, even we do not yet know it.
It takes a lot of self-trust and courage to really let go into ecstasy – and someone to hold their own heart-space as they give unconditionally to you. Continue reading →
In July 2004 I was staying on Bainbridge Island, WA as part of a 2 week trip I was making to be with my new partner Isaac. My mother had shortly passed and this trip had been postponed a couple of weeks so I could go to her funeral. It was my first time on Bainbridge and we stayed a couple of nights with a dear friend of Isaac’s, Sara, who he had met in serendipitous circumstances. They hadn’t long known each other and yet were old soul friends who felt a familiar and loving connection with each other at a far deeper level than the few times they had spent together would normally suggest. Between Sara and I there was a deep connection too which beyond the personality level that I was open to knowing more about. Continue reading →
The weekend brought me to a new depth of understanding about living an authentic life; the absolute necessity of conscious NON CONFORMITY. Not that this is news to me, far from it as for years I’ve been breaking free of societal and imprinting and cultural programming. But this is now at a whole new level of understanding which is coursing through my body from the Earth itself.
I’ve been feeling like I’m encrusted in a shell of restrictive beliefs and imprinting that is making me feel both very angry and enlivened at times. Other times I feel the radiance of the Infinite Love within shining through, breaking up that false mantle of the self that comes quite with literally with the ‘turf’ of having a body. Continue reading →
“There is a fountain inside you. Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.”
Truth expressed beautifully.
Yet I notice that we don’t actually walk around with an empty bucket, for that is far too painful for most people to do. In fact, we so hate that feeling of emptiness we will do anything to avoid it. We find anything and everything to fill ourselves up with – and if we can’t find something that works, we will invent it! How creative we are at a-void-dance!
Addictions are birthed from this compulsion to fill ourselves up, to avoid feeling the void we believe is within us. Yet rarely does it feel good for long; that portion of chips on the side used to fulfill us for far longer… that new phone should have made us feel much happier … now we are like spoiled children at Christmas or birthdays and our gratification is very short lived.
Gratification is not as gratifying as it used to be!
Life experience!
We have begun to realise that our buckets have a hole in them and no amount of effort to fill from outside will provide lasting fullness (fulfillment). We are facing a hopeless situation as no matter how we try to fix things we find we are thwarted at every move. Eventually we begin to understand that there is no real workable solution to this ‘problem’ – there’s a song that describes this well.
“There’s a Hole in My Bucket” is a children’s song. The song is based on a dialogue about a leaky bucket between two characters, Henry and Liza. The song describes a deadlock situation: Henry has got a leaky bucket, and Liza tells him to repair it. But to fix the leaky bucket, he needs straw. To cut the straw, he needs a knife. To sharpen the knife, he needs to wet the sharpening stone. To wet the stone, he needs water. However, when Henry asks how to get the water, Liza’s answer is “in a bucket”. It is implied that only one bucket is available — the leaky one, which, if it could carry water, would not need repairing in the first place (from Wikipedia).
Sooner or later the pain of hopelessness will dawn upon us and the frustration of trying to fill the bucket will cause us to stop and take account of what is happening in our lives; we find ourselves in a place of not knowing, of surrender to the situation and circumstances of life that we are unable to change by our own mechanisms. Without this pain we are rarely motivated to look inside. Unless we feel it deeply we continue to look outside ourselves for salvation, be in relationship with another, food, more toys or a better place to live… etcetera, and to the point of ad nauseum! This is the point where we can choose though – we can choose to turn our gaze inwards and look within to fill the need for that gratification. It’s not a quick fix though – we won’t find any instant gratification because that is the realm of the subtle and imaginal so it will take some adjustment and process to appreciate the gifts here. It’s like having tabasco chili sauce on all your food and then stopping and eating your food without it. In the beginning you are not going to taste much and it will take a while for your taste buds to appreciate the natural flavour of food. Or having fireworks in the sky every night and then one day the fireworks stop and we are left with nothing but natural sounds and sights. It would feel strange and empty but sooner or later your ears and eyes would begin to notice things we couldn’t hear or see before and that increases day by day – we would soon notice that even those sounds and sights you thought were subtle and gross and you become aware of finer and finer sounds and experiences in the still quietude.
It’s the same when we turn our gaze away from the distractions. It is a deep alchemical process of self-care; – a journey into the unknown, through which we begin to understand and know ourselves as our own saviour. Many times we will circle around and make this journey and each time we go deeper into ourselves we find our blocks and patterns repeating themselves and have to let go again and again, and usually this process is not pain-free but because the pain of resisting is now greater, we choose the sensible option and become sensitive to our self. Interestingly, the Italian word for’ sensitive’ is ‘sensible’. Language reveals so much if we just look at it from a slightly different slant.
All this looking outside and looking inside can be exhausting! We are swinging from one extreme to the other as balance will happen. It can help to make the swings shorter so that the balancing act does not create so many wild roller coaster experiences. Developing a daily practice of taking time for relaxing, for being quiet, meditation or time alone is essential. Remember, meditation does not have to look like the traditional way of sitting down and trying to still the mind (something I’ve struggled with for years). Meditation can be active and this would be far more effective than getting frustrated with failure at lotus position ‘I’m so peaceful’ type of thing when you clearly aren’t. Try breath exercises if you are like this.
Simple things work best and you are far more likely to continue with them if they are not onerous. Taking 5 minutes to simply breathe and tune into your heart (Spirit) can be done anywhere, anytime, I find it helpful to do this when I get into my car and before driving off – even something so short will lead to a deeper and more peaceful existence. Connecting, walking in nature, especially around plants and trees has far more benefit than most people would give credit for. The effects are incremental and so if it doesn’t feel like you’re getting much benefit from it, try doing it for a few weeks and then stop and you will soon notice how less good you feel about yourself.
Nature is the best ways to remind us of our nature. Obvious really yet so many dismiss it because it doesn’t fill that void, it is too quiet and silent without enough distractions – maybe just plug the ears with music instead of feeling that emptiness! If we can just bear the discomfort for long enough we will become so much better at being human. We need to stop trying to avoid the un-comfortableness and just do something for ourselves – even 5-10 minutes makes a huge difference.
It is not what you do or how good you are at doing it. It is doing it that counts.
Seriously, a lot of folk get caught up with the perfection thing and give up in frustration because it’s not working the way they think it should. But that’s a common mistake because it’s not what or how well you can do your meditation or relaxation or breathwork that’s important as the most powerful part of doing it is the pure intention for self-care and carrying through with the physical doing-ness of it. That is by far the greatest part of any self-care practice. Once you start to practice self-care, the Universe shows up and creates more self-care and love for you, so it doesn’t matter in the slightest how perfect you now are at your breathwork exercises! The benefit is from your intention, and from your attention to whatever pulls you out of the present moment. Within this is the key to understanding our true nature, to knowing oneself.
There is also a deep wisdom to understanding that we do not need to repair our bucket, that we do not even need to fill it because we are never empty, we do not have a bucket, nor are we something to be filled, for it would be closer to the truth to say that we are simultaneously both the container and the water that fills it. We are not here to go with the flow, but to BE the flow. To know ourselves as the flow itself. There is not a moment when we are not the Source of All, so there cannot be a moment when we are empty of that – it just seems to be so sometimes. “There is a fountain inside of you” – well yes, because you are the fountain itself! Cease the activity of trying to fill up something that does not exist and you will know thyself to be the existence of All That Is.
I think we are meant to have a hole – we are holy (whole) exactly as we are.
As a dolphin once said to me “Turn yourself inside out Lynn”. We could not do this if we were not a hole. We are designed to be constantly turning inside out and outside in. There is nothing to fill. This is a source for contemplation, perhaps something to ponder on during a nice walk through the woods.
Be in peace, be in Love.
Blessings, Lynn.
A diagram of a tube torus – said to be the shape of consciousness itself. For more on that visit:
I’m currently taking a longish break away from home and at the moment I’m on Bainbridge Island which is one of the islands in the Puget Sound and close to Seattle, WA. It’s stunningly gorgeous here, a little gem of an island far removed from the usual mainland USA despite it being very close geographically. It’s a little sanctuary, and in fact, I was told it was only used by the native Indian women and men did not set foot upon the island as it was deemed to be the place where women would go for their menstruation periods, and other feminine transformational & transitional experiences.
Apparently the only time men would come upon this island was for their first sexual initiation, which was a sacred rite conducted by elder woman for the young men. How true any of this is I’m not sure, though I must say the island is certainly having an effect on me; I feel very held here and have deepened my appreciation and gratitude for our Mother and all the She represents to us.
Although this is not Eugene, he looks just like this.
As I’m writing this at 2pm on a sunny afternoon, there is a young male deer in the garden at the home I’m staying in – he seems quite unperturbed by my presence and I am able to go outside and just sit observing him. I’ve called him Eugene in honour of an animal totem vision I had many years ago in which I was approached by a young fawn, and on asking his name, he replied Eugene – which at the time I did think was rather unusual!
This is my second visit to Bainbridge Island, I was first here back in 2004 when I was over from Scotland visiting my beloved Isaac in July of that year. We were doing a road trip, meeting some dear friends of his that he wanted me to meet. One of those was Sara. We visited with her for a couple of days and on our departure day we were sitting having breakfast at the Streamliner diner in Winslow, the main town on Bainbridge.
After we had eaten, Isaac and Sara were chatting away and I allowed myself to drift off into a lovely soft state of consciousness (this was easy as I was almost constantly in a state of bliss the whole time on that that trip). My eyes settled on a photograph picture on the wall of an American bald eagle. The photo was a close up of the bird’s head and shoulders, in semi profile.
This picture here is similar in energy though the pose is different – the one in the diner showed more of it’s shoulders and that gave me a different perspective. I’ve always loved eagles and hawks, and whilst I see a fair number of hawks, my sightings of eagles have been limited to once or twice in Scotland where I’ve golden eagles, and also on a skiing trip in Nevada. I once saw a sea eagle which was amazing.
Awesome Bald Eagle!
The photo drew me in and I was totally absorbed. I began to feel that the bird was actually right there in the diner, and the sounds of the diner and that of Isaac and Sula chatting faded into the background. I began to experience myself as the bird. I could feel the haughty magnificence of the eagle, its detached attitude, or more like, its non-attached nature. I could feel the way my head moved on my neck, like stretching your head up and shoulders down and swivelling the head around. Not a human body awareness but an eagle’s. I felt the eagle’s strength and its ability to fly so powerfully and see from such a great distance. Again, I felt the non-attached sovereign regal haughtiness; not from it feeling superior to anything but simply its non-emotional nature, and it was not a cruel feeling. I could see from such a high perspective, so totally non-attached to the land, so far above it. I felt incredible power course through my body and felt my eyes shoot out intense lightning like energy that was so piercing in its crystal clear clarity.
At the same time, I was also observing my experience and was totally amazed at it all, it was so fascinating to be able to experience even a little of what it was to be an eagle. I was literally awestruck and as I came out of the experience I was not able to share it with Isaac and Sula so intense that it was. I had to take some time to myself in the washroom where I shed some tears at the sheer beauty of this bird and thanked the Source of Creation for my experience, and for gifting us the incredible diversity of Earth’s nature.
Eye of a young maleRegal attitude
I had another eagle experience later on that road trip whilst we were driving down from spending a few hours up Mt Shasta in California. I was on the look for chipmunks (my God, how cute are they – I want one) which we don’t have in the UK and so didn’t notice a golden eagle soaring above. It swooped down and flew right over our car; Isaac saw it and said it was no more than a few feet above us. Though I didn’t actually see it, I could feel it’s HUGE presence and looked up and over at Isaac and said in awe “What on earth was that?”
To this day, when I tune in or see eagles, I can still feel some of that ‘eagle-ness’ in my body. My understanding of what happened was that I ‘merged’ energetically with the eagle or spirit of eagle and that anyone can do this with practise and intention. It happened spontaneously for me at that time and has not happened since with eagles, though it has with other life intelligence, such as flowers, or animals, insects etc. and this has happened in various differing ways, but always from a sense of total absorption and love, of what I now call “Beholding the Beloved”. I wonder also if there was a memory of shape-shifting in this experience, and if you wish to know more about what I mean I invite you to read the next part of the story which happened as we travelled down the Interstate 5 to Oregon. Animals; Merging and Shape Shifting ~ July 2004 ~ Pacific North West USA
I’ve been away doing tantric sessions/massage with a friend who is also a trainee – something shifted in those few days… she got really ill on Sunday night and it looked like we might not be able to travel. It lifted long enough for us to get home, thank goodness, but it was a trial for both of us in our own ways. I got home and had a long bath chatting with my beloved. After I got out, I started trembling and shaking – I thought it was lack of food and low blood sugar – which it partly was, yet it continued even after I ate and drank, so I went upstairs to lie down. I “tuned in” and then again several times during the evening but all I got was something about ‘solar lions’. I also became aware that something much bigger than my own personal experience had happened during the time I was away and I can only describe it as our soul family had just gone through a major shamanic journey.
A friend in England texted me and said she had picked up something and asked if I was alright.
Later on, in bed, despite being extremely tired and not having slept well since I had left, I just couldn’t sleep and was still trembling and shaky (this often indicates to me that something is trying to come through and that I’m not allowing it to). I again asked and finally I got a ‘message’ to get my pad and write, so I turned the light on and noticed it was almost midnight, almost Beltane.
It came through very quickly; it had been waiting for this exact moment when the clock ticked into the next day which, even before Beltane was named, is a day that is energetically open and aligned with the merging of male/female principles.
“An initiation. A marriage within the joining of the two forces of nature destined to be made whole, into oneness – inevitable because they cannot stay apart as they attract each other, because they are already one. Yet, until you stopped looking outside of yourself these two inner forces could not meet because they were committed to another’s forces – their docking stations were already occupied.”
It continued…
“Solar Lion – will you marry yourself?” I answered “YES!” “Do you take yourself in full and whole Love?” Said I, “Yes I do, Yes I do. I Am whole and full of essence of unity of Love.”
“The Unity of Love
A Blessing given freely
To those of Faith
2012 is a year of Faith
Do not sway.”
How to do a ceremony – invite in Spirit: angels, elemental energies etc. Wear something nice and gift yourself something as a token of marking this initiation. It may be a bought thing or something given by nature. Bring some greenery into the house. Celebrate together.
It was also suggested that as I am already married that we look at our agreement and update it again because despite having done this previously, we are now different people – and do this prior to the inner marriage ceremony.
The word Beltane is thought to mean bright fire, white and shinning and fire is used to celebrate the waxing of the sun, giver of life.
As usual, I woke up this morning in fear. Actually, more accurately, what happens is that I awake, and then a few seconds later, I feel fearful. It’s not a huge, terrible fear; it’s a quiet, almost indiscernible fear. I’ve been aware of it for some years now and despite many attempts to root it out I still have it. Nowadays, I notice it more so because I get hot flashes due to menopausal symptoms – what happens with hot flashes for me is that if I have an anxious or fearful reaction to something, I then get a hot flash – it’s like a mild panic attack because the adrenaline is activated.
I used to think this morning fear was just fear at being here, on the planet and not feeling safe, not feeling at home here, so when I come out of sleep, awake and come back into my body, I then realise I am ‘here, and that’s enough to make me go into fear! Or so I thought. Recently though, I began to see that upon awakening, I am actually in my body and it is actually that realisation that causes me to feel fearful, and that’s what makes me to leave the body.
Quite an important distinction here as I had always thought we leave our body when we drop off to sleep. However that is not the whole story, and I think what really happens is that we have to fully come into our body in order to leave it! Not exactly sure how this works, but a theory would be that we have to fully ground into the body so that the part that leaves and merges can do so because it is still connected by the silver thread that has to be fully grounded.
Anyway, today was different because as I awoke in peace and moved into fear, I realised that the fear happens at the moment of realisation that I am separate … an individual person – because in sleep and for a few moments before I become aware, I must be knowing that I am not separate…otherwise, I would not have fear when I realise I am once again an individual.
This was a powerful realisation for me because whilst I have truly once or twice really known the words of Marianne Williamson, that we are in fear of our power, it was not something I had truly connected before. Here was another piece of the jigsaw puzzle falling into place. I feel fear because I am an individual. I dozed off again feeling content with this insight which nicely tied in with an experience I had last year about the power of fully individuating.
Awakening about an hour later, I was aware of hearing myself talk to myself… or perhaps it was a dream without a picture… like a soundtrack. I said “I want to be veiled.” Wow! Did I really hear myself saying that? “I want to be veiled!” I’ve never had a program reveal itself to me in this way before, yet I’m pretty sure it was my sub-conscious talking! Immediately I realised the importance of this on not just an individual but collective scale too. We are frightened of the power of women and so we veil them. Physically this happens in some countries, but it also happens energetically in many others. On another level it happens in each of us, whether male or female, as we each have equal masculine and feminine (yin and yang) whether we are a woman or a man. It also applies to the veil of illusion of this 3D ‘reality’ we live in. That veil is often called ‘Maya’ and it is what keeps us from knowing that we are not separate, but are One with All That Is. People who have psychic powers are able to see through the veil more than others and those who have done a lot of clearing* find that this also thins and
eventually removes this veil.
We in the West can often be heard criticising those countries that force their women to cover up and we cannot easily understand why some women actually say they like to wear the veil because they feel safer. They have this pattern more prominently than we do and as such display it for all of us to see. Each nation carries a piece of the shadow puzzle of human consciousness, and just as each region does, each city, town or village and family also does. Indeed, it continues right down to each individual and beyond.
What would happen if we as a whole could see this reflection as collective issue instead of judging? What happens when we see all human behaviour as a reflection of the collective rather than blaming the person as a being or even as their individual issues? To me this is incredibly exciting thing to explore, because despite being a fairly aware individual and intellectually understand this principle, it is another matter entirely to embody and experience the direct knowing of this truth and then to see the programme that I was running without knowing it was amazing.
Of course, I still had the programme to delete which I did and it’s likely that I won’t have seen the end of it because usually clearing limiting beliefs is not a one-off event but an on-going process. Yet, that experience of hearing myself say “I want to be veiled” was powerful in helping me to see how the collective consciousness works in the individual.
Releasing the fear of being seen is the next step – I’ve done a LOT of work on this already, believe me! There used to be a time that I literally became sick at the thought of speaking in a group – even imagining talking about myself and giving my name was enough to have me shaking with fear… and it was worse when the time came too! These days I am not so bad and most folks would have no idea just how desperately insecure and shy I once was, and still can be from time to time. It has never totally gone away and as I said before, it’s a work in progress releasing it.
I am reminded that compassion for self and others is imperative when doing the ‘work of the self’ and as we do this work as individual, it affects the whole, the collective, and anything that has been done, can be undone.
If you’d like to know more about the clearing* work I do for myself or are interested in arranging a session please contact me for further information- it is my delight to share this work with others so we can enjoy simply being ourselves. You can find the tool I used on the “Tools” page (Deleting DNA/Matrix Programmes)
*clearing is how I refer to the practice of rooting out that which is not helpful for our spiritual growth…
For me it’s the deep heart connection where I feel the other, and can see my self reflected in their eyes. Losing myself in joyful, soulful, or sexy dancing. Delighting in nature and beautiful animals. Feeling Spirit fill and move me to the point of tears.
Sharing words, talking and seeing how people change when they see something new. Touch that creates waves of pleasure, touch that helps awaken the sleeper within, with its nurturing, loving presence.
Creating sacred space, slowing down and just being. Helping people to feel better about themselves, to gain some measure of relief from their pain and suffering, and to share tools that have helped me.
And also, just to share my journey, my story, and trust that it inspires others to know that they too can change.
What Makes Your Heart Sing?
2025 NOTE: This was originally written in 2011 and now in 2025 on doing a search, I have been told by AI that:
Some examples of things that can make your heart sing include:
Running barefoot in the grass
Watching a sunset
Climbing a mountain
Spending time with friends
Watching children or dogs play
Relaxing in a bath
I find this very interesting, that AI is telling me that what makes people’s hearts sing are all natural things to do. I mean, nature based. All of them. Not one mention of shopping or going away on holiday, or food…
Where Angels Fear to Tread? 