We are in the middle of a very powerful time, as we approach the Solstice.  I’m noticing that something potent and challenging is happening with a great many people right now. We are being pushed to our edge, right up against our deepest patterns and core conditioning. The abundance of light on an outer level corresponds to an abundance of awareness that is awakening on an inner level. So we have an opportunity to see many things about our patterns and the way we live, that we may never have seen before, or even wanted to!

How to respond to such an opportunity? It’s crucial that we align with a deep willingness to take full responsibility for our lives, our conditioning, and for the power of awareness to illuminate and dissolve what is obstructing and limiting us.

There are 2 key questions that we can use for self-inquiry, very simple questions that we can take with us into our daily lives.

1)Am I willing to give up the right to be a victim to both outer and inner circumstances? Am I willing to give up the right to be a victim to the moods and thoughts that arise in the field of my awareness?
2)Am I willing to give up the right to not take care of myself? Or to put it another way: Am I willing to do what I need to do to create a good environment for myself, one that really nourishes and sustains me?

If we are really willing to work with these questions, we can tap into the fluidity of this time, the power that all this light has to liberate us from outmoded structures of thought, belief, and behaviour.

May we all find ways to support ourselves and each other in healing, transforming and awakening.

love
Shayla

Sometimes, when I’m speaking or working with a group of people, I fall into a deep bodily sense of being held by a current of energy. This current is not like anything I could imagine with my mind. It’s not just flowing in one direction—it seems to be muti-directional, so that everyone in the group is giving and receiving all at once. And the more I am able to allow this energy to flow, the more I feel the circle of giving and receiving expand and open.

I know this is true in my writing work. When I am doing any kind of writing or ‘ written inquiry’ work with people, there is a often a sense that once a certain amount has been written, there is no more left to write. My experience is that the exact opposite is true. The more I write, the more there is to write. I have seen this again and again in my workshops. The unhindered flow of the writing opens a deep space inside, and out of that space, things emerge, with less and less effort. Sometimes it feels like a well—the more water you draw out, the more the deep pure spring water bubbles up from below. The conditioned mind has no idea what wants to come forth. It is living in a very narrow realm, cut off from the natural abundance of this source, this ground, that belongs to us all.

This is why it’s so important not to hold back, to let ourselves be naturally generous, and expressive. If we have not been encouraged and supported in this direction, we need help. Everyone needs this kind of help in their lives, at certain times. We hit walls of self-doubt-- fear and trembling take us over, and we can’t find the confidence to be fully ourselves, to speak up, to find our voice, our natural way of being in the world.

At these times it really seems like we are lacking, that we have nothing to give, that we are powerless and deficient. How suprising to discover that when we stop holding back, when we reconnect with the flow of our own being, none of this is true. “Everyone has inside them, what can I call it? A piece of good news.” (Ugo Betti)

love
Shayla