In her book “The Listening Path” author Julia Cameron wrote the beautiful note:
“As we practice listening, we come to sense a benevolent something that touches our consciousness with a feeling of belonging.”
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It is something I have come closer and closer to the more I soften into being.
Being exactly who I am.
Being here.
Being peaceful.
Being true.
Being tender.
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When I immerse myself into the lake and notice the light shifting and glistening, I feel it.
When I practice deep listening to a friend without searching for the next question, or contracting in the space between her tears, I feel it.
When I invite my body to rest in openness and wait for life to arise as it is happening, (rather than reaching for something to make life happen), I feel it.
And in this place, I am reminded: “Oh yes, this is how I want to be—tender.”
It’s an innate feeling, like a remembering: a softness beneath the protective armour.
It’s where the true and beautiful connection with yourself, others and the whole of your life lives.
You can teach yourself how to soften, how to listen to silence.
Listen to how the emotions feel inside your body—what the tightness in your jaw, shoulders, and chest is trying to tell you.
Everything about you is tenderness waiting for you to remember.
It is not lost.
But it is, perhaps, buried beneath fragments of life you may not have fully digested.
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Nearly all of our wounding was created because life happened too fast, too soon and in ways that were too overwhelming for us to process.
We didn’t receive the safe, attuned connection we needed. We weren’t able to digest everything that happened to us: the emotions, the feelings, the beliefs about ourselves and life. We didn’t feel accepted for who we were in our entirety.
Being ourselves: soft, delicate, alive, felt unsafe.
So we adapted.
But this leaves us with undigested life in our bodies: contracted, unprocessed energy that carries a heavy vibration. It’s an energy that blocks our innate sense of presence and triggers a mechanism of trying to reach a destination that feels like home.
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It took me many, many trips around the sun and battles with physical and mental illness before I realised that it was the feeling of the intense, internal charge that I was attempting to escape from.
When I lost the charge, processed everything I needed to and learned, over the years, the art of softening back into myself, I saw that life is not in the distance.
It is rising to meet you in every single moment, every breath, every blink of an eye.
But there are times when I forget, times when I have to remember the texture beneath the “doer” inside me, the thing which always appears to be reaching for a painless place.
So when stillness feels too hidden beneath the noise, I move deeper. I ask myself the same question again and again:
What did I turn to in my younger years; where did I find solace?
I got out my journal. I found peace in silence. I lived in my own world.
In remembering what you turned to for safety as a child, you return to who you were before the world got to you.
You come home to yourself.
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Re-reading Osho:
“Learn silence. And at least with your friends, with your lovers, with your family, with your fellow travelers here, sit in silence sometimes. Don’t go on gossiping, don’t go on talking. Stop talking, and not only on the outside - stop the inner talk. Be in an interval. Just sit, doing nothing, just being presences to each other. And soon you will start finding a new way to communicate. And that is the right way.”
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Returning to tenderness
Allow a richer life to touch you in the interval, in the space of softness—no longer waiting, no longer reaching. Just being.
In this space, between the speed of life, social media, comparison, fear, you will find out what matters the most to you.
In this space, there is always an invitation to rest in presence:
What would happen if I closed my eyes and placed my hand on my heart for a moment?
How is my heart?
What will something in the distance give me on the inside that I don’t already have?
What does joy look like for me in this moment?
The answer lies in the small, embodied actions that will increase your capacity to love yourself and your life more meaningfully, deeply, fully.
What you are looking for is the stillness within yourself. What you are looking for is the discovery that nothing out there can complete you because you are already whole.
Tender Reminder
Allowing yourself to feel all of your feelings without judgement, (without labeling them ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ and without the story behind them, in front of them, and around them) is an act of self-love and acceptance.
You are held. The sensations, feelings, inner parts of you are being held.
Give yourself permission to rest in a safe space where you can begin to notice this.
A quote for you
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
― Henry David Thoreau
A lesson I’ve been reflecting on
Sometimes, something will pull the earth from under you by a fraction (why a daily ritual is so important).
It could be a sense of not enough-ness, the future, life passing by, or something I call distraction and not attraction—something or someone unaligned that literally takes you away from yourself.
Each time it happens to me, I am reminded of this: you are always brought back to where you are—altered: more healed, with more wisdom, more expression, and more gratitude for what you already have.
You are always exactly where you need to be.
Monet Lake
Beautiful. Cold. Atmospheric. Life changing.
Make more art
Remembering where my journey of writing, creativity, ritual (aka healing, self-love, acceptance) started, and immersing myself deeper as I create my upcoming course: “Going Within: a 5 module course for cultivating deep healing, self-love and acceptance.”
Re-reading Julia Cameron, and taking myself on more field trips and artist dates.
Creating my concertina sketch / quote book.
Focusing on recycling the small and beautiful: my morning pages, paper bags—all that has already been created and made with love.
My course Going Within: a 5 module course for cultivating deep healing, self-love, and acceptance” starts on Monday 4th to Friday 22nd December. For more information, see here. The course is valued at £222 but if you are paid subscriber, (£5 a month, or £50 for the year) you will have free access to it. Learn how to heal deeply, manage your emotions, and use the power of embodied writing, creativity and energy work to create more presence and joy.
There will also be a live zoom call a week after the course where we will do a meditation and talk about any parts of the course you have questions or reflections on.
Within is a weekly (news) letter. Please feel free to share parts of the letter that connect with you on social media, or send to someone you love. If you enjoy and benefit from my work, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. This is a reader-supported offering and I’m so grateful for your presence here. To find out more about my books and my healing work, visit my website.
‘life is not in the distance’ such a perfect statement for practicing mindfulness, being fully present in the here & now. These behaviors did not come naturally to me but once practiced are such a beautiful recipe for living. ❤️❤️❤️