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who I am

emerge, writing, yes

Lost & Found: One Spiritual Practice

April 27, 2015

The soul can’t be explained or understood. Is it, after all, your divine Self, and divinity is wild, untamable – more vast and magnificent than our minds can grasp. Whatever idea or image you hold in your mind of the soul or the Divine is by definition too small. That’s why we feel so compelled to explore these fields of the soul. We long for the mystery. – Janet Conner

 

Meghan Genge writingThere were always all of these wonderful things I was going to do once I had time. I was going to walk more, and do more yoga, and meditate more, and eat better. I was going to do all of those things because somehow I thought that they would make me more spiritual. They would bring me closer to the Divine, to God, to that best part of me who was nice and made really good decisions and had a great attitude most of the time.

Insert giggle/snort here.

Turns out that when I packed for Costa Rica, I packed myself. I packed the me who gets grumpy, and wants to eat Nutella more than she wants carrots, and the me who has a lot of yoga to do before yoga makes her feel blissful (right now it makes me feel angry), and who is a little afraid of walking because walking is a bit scary. There are things lurking under the fallen leaves both in reality and in my imagination that want to nibble on me.

So until a few days ago I was getting really frustrated. I was wasting time. I hadn’t landed in Costa Rica and then morphed instantly into a glorious Blue Morpho. I was getting grumpier by the day, reading in great gulping novel-sized afternoons, and wishing that I could somehow be different.

And then it happened.

I got up on Friday morning, picked up my pen and a battered notebook, and I started to write. And within one sentence, I remembered: Writing is my spiritual practice. 

My simple connection had gotten lost in the sparkle on my Instagram feed, the gloss on my Pinterest pages, the bendy-holiness on Facebook, and my need to be different than I am. Yes, I will continue to meditate and do yoga – movement and stillness are as important to my growth as words – but for me, my doorway to that connection and my worship happens on the page.

When I arrive at the page, say a prayer, and pick up my pen, I slip easily into a conversation with my Soul, with The Mystery, with God, with whatever you think It is. And it is a conversation that is most definitely two-sided. We contemplate. We argue. We breathe. We bend. We talk. And I come out the other side different. Connected. Motivated. Altered. Writing doesn’t magically make me a shinier, nicer, better behaved version of myself, but instead I emerge a more grounded, honest, clear one. I’m the me that remembers that she is deeply, truly connected, so all of the rest of that ‘stuff’ can be seen with perspective and a lighter heart.

It’s magic. It’s a miracle.

How could I have forgotten? I was so busy comparing myself to other people’s spirituality, that I forgot about my own.

And so I will return to the page again and again, because writing is my practice.

It’s my holy.

It’s home.

xo

 

Alignment, emerge, Leap and the net will appear

now

March 22, 2015

No one has escaped this process of shake down and shake up. If your life is still essentially the same now as it was three years ago I suspect that you have been in a cryogenic deep freeze. Or perhaps you’ve been vacationing on another planet.Chris Zydel

 

fire move megThe past few days have apparently hosted a huge planetary dance: the end of something which began in 2012, the end of a 19-year cycle and the beginning of another.

No one can ever tell me ever again that the planets don’t have an effect on me.

“Make a powerful intention” the astrologers were saying as I handed in my notice and we decided to move to a different country.

“Let go”, the astrologers were saying as we sold/ gave away/ burned/ packed our belongings; reducing our ownership to the contents of a 5 x 5 x 7 foot crate.

“Everything is about to change” they said as I sat in my parents’ house, homeless, jobless, and in the space between one life and another.

They also say that on the new moon and the equinox, it is important to make a statement of intention – to put the coordinates into the GPS before you set off on a new month.

“The endings we face now, be they losses, disappointments or liberating closure, remind us of the need for deep and abiding alignment with the god-force from here on in, as it threads its way through our lives. – Sarah Varcas via Mystic Mama

These past few years and the past few months I have received proof again and again and again that there is more going on than I know. The support and the nudges and the help we’ve had as we’ve navigated these waters have been illuminating.

When you get a holy yes and you go with it, things won’t always be easy, but magic will happen.

So my intention on this day, as I sit on the edge of a new turn of the zodiac, a new 19 year cycle, a new lunar cycle and a new adventure?

Alignment. 

I intend to follow the nudges, the holy yes, the god-force in my life. To believe in the magic of the total unknown, and to have faith in those decisions.

Because going with the magic is so much better than believing it isn’t there.

xo

 


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Alignment, I AM, Mango Season, Place

On the Origins of Mango Season

November 20, 2014

The “hows” are the domain of the Universe. It always knows the shortest, quickest, fastest, most harmonious way between you and your dream. – Mike Dooley

 

costaricameghangengeTwo years ago, Mark and I were on holiday on the island of St. Vincent, and I was moaning about the lack of local fruit available. We could have strawberries and blueberries and apples – apples?! – but there wasn’t very much tropical fruit. Apparently the bulk of their customers wanted fruit that they knew. So rather than fill the buffet with local fruit, the company would ship fruit in from Mexico and the US.

Desperate for local fruit, I asked one of the locals where I could get some mangoes. She explained to me that while there was lots of other fruit available (which I quickly found and ate embarrassingly large amounts of) the mangoes weren’t currently in season. Thinking about mango season made her grin wickedly. She said that when mangoes are in season, they are everywhere! You can walk along the road and just pick them off of the tree.

She said that once she ate so many mangoes that she got Mango Boils.

I have never forgotten that smile and that image of unlimited, ripe, juicy, dripping, golden fruit.

It feels like abundance to me.

If I know one thing for sure it’s that we cannot dream big enough for ourselves. So when I think about what I want my life in Costa Rica to look like, I am deliberately casting my net wide. I will not be working with the hows. We are taking the leap and then following our hearts, because I know what I do want.

I want Mango Season.*

* We have invited as many people to stay as we have beds, and they have all come for rest and retreat and collaboration and community. They are all people whose art – whatever form it is – enchants or interests us, and the mixture is eclectic and delightful. The mornings begin with breakfast on the deck, Costa Rican coffee, and never-ending bowls of fruit. The days are filled with creativity and camaraderie and solitude and waterfalls and whale watching on the beach. The evenings begin around our enormous dinner table which is overflowing with delicious, local, seasonal food. The food and the wine and the laughter and the real, honest, open discussion flow through into the night. Everyone feels rich and juicy and replenished and abundant and connected. And sitting there, in the glow of lantern and candle light I know that I am exactly where I dreamed myself to be.

Mango Boils and all.

xo