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Thoughts from the
Nativerse |
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Grateful for companies and people that have had my back and kindly kept paying me through all this, through me going at maybe max 30 hour a week pace, as opposed to the usual 60-70 hour a week pace I’d been going at for years. So I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty damn grateful for Covid, for having given me the room I wouldn’t give myself, trying to get back to where I was, or rather to some new version of having it all. Grateful for the voice that said just put it all down and let it all go. It’s not meant to happen that way. Stop and surrender. Stop and listen deeper. Like you’ve done before. There are 4 past moments of insight that have been forefront in my head this last little bit, relating to trust and maintaining higher perspective in challenging times. One was the kind of insight and perspective you develop standing at the end of the bed of a loved one, 5 minutes after they’ve died. Staring at the lifeless biological machine that once housed the energy, the personality, the soul of someone you loved so intensely, it is never so obvious to you how little any of this material “stuff” or the thousand little and big dramas we’re constantly creating and doing our heads in over in life, even matter. All the money and power and influence in the world won’t bring them back and it certainly won’t fill the void where they and their gorgeous energy once was. Such times show us what really matters most inside our hearts. On the flip side of the equation, being told you might be the one in trouble, they remind us what’s truly worth living and loving for. But then life goes on, the world goes on. Do we remember, or do we get caught up in how things are, and forget? I remember the time my 20’s when I was engaged and we were buying country houses closer to our families, after living in Brighton East in Melbourne with our 2 SUV’s and 2 dogs, talking about our future kids. Never mind the steaming piles of mental health stuff we we side stepping amidst family histories and sporting injuries that ended careers and drinking problems, while we were trying to measure up to our parents visions for us verses our visions of having it all. Maybe if we just went on another trip interstate, or a weekend away to Daylesford, or he bought me love in the form of a Ralph Lauren t-shirt (when I was just happy with one a quarter of the price from anywhere, that was flattering) or I him in the form of some new hoodie or work shirt or new bottle of wine, or if we built a permaculture veggie garden, or a fence, or I picked a colour scheme for my home office and healing studio, maybe one of us would finally feel better and the chemistry would mysteriously come back from damn near flat-lining. Moral of the story, no amount of stuff or trying to be enough or trying to give the other what they want can succeed in filling the void where your own passion and purpose, doing what you love and being of service, should be. Find that, be that, share that and you get the magic, or the magic back. Not to mention the resilience of the relational container, while the wounding starts to fall away. Money might afford you a different kind of experience or opportunity. Giving it might be a form of love. But it is no substitute for the MAGIC that starts in the heart. The third and fourth were the things you learn in the moments in life where you feel like you’re losing it all, yet find yourself. For the 6 months after I left that relationship (and was healing and transitioning back from full time studying Transpersonal Art Therapy, to trying to get back into another Community Service job part time, while trying to get my private practice off the ground, in a new location, seemingly for a bit, absolutely nothing I did worked. NO amount of interviews lead to the kind of Peer Support roles I THOUGHT in that moment would be an ideal way to take all my past “life crisis” plus professional experience so far and turn it into mentoring others to successfully navigate their own experience worked. The thought of going back to temping in corporate literally gave me panic attacks and Christmas came and went with me on Centrelink, trying to get myself unstuck from ghosts of failed relationships’ and drunk violence past. Until, In February, a very neo shamanic older male friend of mine, happened to be coming back from through Victoria from Queensland, rang me, told me he was on his way back, then headed to Alice Springs for work and life and he asked me if I wanted to come. I volunteered my car and said yes. I’d always wanted to go and what the hell, what else was I doing with my time? At worst, If it didn’t work out, I could come back in a week or two and resume dysfunction as normal. So, it being the start of 2011 and not long having just read Eat Pray love, I said a prayer about surrendering to divine will and finding myself and my deeper purpose and off we went. And from the moment we set out, things just started to flow. Not just figuratively, but quite literally. In SA, the first evening, I put my hands in an estuary, made a wish about getting back in flow, closed my eyes, some bright light flashed and a few seconds later, water started trickling through the sand bar at the entrance nearby. On the way there, in the middle of nowhere, we seemingly got half a tank of fuel out of a 10L fuel can, one of my tyres went flat, but only right outside a tyre place in Coober Peedie, right across from where we stayed. People on the streets in Alice from the moment we got there kept answering questions we hadn’t yet asked out loud and I got a Community Services job working with Indigenous people with disabilities within 2 hours of arriving there. More than that, 2 days after we got to Alice Springs and got settled, it flooded. We could be here for at least 3 chapters if I tell you more about the little vision quests and intuitive initiations we found ourselves going on in the middle of the outback the whole time. That whole trip though, was basically one long complete initiation into a new level of trust; in the divine order of all things, trust in the way it and exactly what we need at any given time shows up through others and, maybe most importantly, trust in me. Was that the end of all moments of doubt? No. I had a lot of magical things and opportunities explode into life during that time and since, that I have a lot to be grateful for. But in 2015/2016 I had another challenging moment, where seemingly no matter what I did, or how hard I worked at solving people’s problems and being of service, or how many hundreds of hours I spent applying for jobs, again, I felt like I was stuck and it wasn’t working again and the universal taps of abundance were turned off in my direction. Only this time, for the first time ever, I could only part pay the rent and I only had about $15 a week left for food. And for the first time ever, had to face ALL my biggest fears, about what would actually happen if there was no money left? I had to face all these secret fears that had been running my life for decades, about what people would think if I didn’t have it all together and if I let them down and couldn’t keep my promises, in the form of money. Let alone the pressure of contemplating what, shortly after, 20 K of Wellness Industry clients looking for a picture of success would think and do seeing where I was at, if or when they found out I’d risen and fallen. Being literally crucified and stoned in that moment might actually have felt preferable to the modern day social media version that I feared might come, if I didn’t get my shift sorted. Funnily enough, making all the necessary phone calls to real estates and the ones to family asking for help, where I KNEW some would lay the boot in when I already felt like absolute crap, telling friends and business partners, I DIDN’T actually die. I DID though, find myself surrendering to listening to some higher will again though. And then found myself walking up the street into town, feeling about the freest I had felt, EVER, on the other side of NOT dying from and shaking off the shackles of all those fears. Only to see some guy i knew driving through a roundabout in front of me. Who happened to be my a friend/an ex, who happened to have just been to the bank and got several K worth of refund he wasn’t expecting. Who I then just happened to tell where I was at and he just happened to loan me the just $250 I needed to get me through until the next few K of client payments came in, AGAIN, I had to gesture to the sky with a “touché universe, touché. We co-created that one well. Thanks for having my back”in that moment. A few months after, I surrendered again my little rental home of safety on the literal T-intersection of my metaphorical fork in the road in real life I was having and went off on the next leg of the journey of trust and faith and started on the next few years of house sitting, travelling and working (remotely and live) across the country. Yet another initiation into a new level of trust; in the divine order of all things, trust in the way it and exactly what we need at any given time shows up through others and trust in me. So as I and we start this week, no matter what version of any of the challenges within the above, any of you, or someone you know might be facing, remember, even though it might at times feel like it, the world won’t actually end over money and stuff and things that are seemingly falling away. Sometimes you DON’T just have to work and push or BE pushed harder. Sometimes you need to stop and breath and re-align, before you pick up your tools and start working again. Or try a new entry procedure, with what seems like a locked door. Maybe it's not even THIS door, maybe its the one NEXT door. If people you thought would stay or be there during such times didn’t, maybe you’re still right on the passion, right on the vision, but maybe slightly off on strategy or how you THINK the solution should look and when it should appear, who should be involved and what every body should do to bring it into being. As clever as our minds are, sometimes, some higher, wiser part of us. Has an even better plan and an even better means of bringing it about. How can we hear it though, if i mind is too busy trying to talk out a solution, when our higher self, the universe, whatever you want to call it, is trying to ring through a message. In a universe that’s always actually conspiring in our favour, there’s always A message waiting to download and at least 1 doorway, waiting open there. But we have to keep our eyes, our eyes, our senses open to receive it. Maybe it will come during that disciplined meditation or yoga practice, or standing amongst the trees. Or maybe it’s in the moment where you stop doing the thinking and start doing the dishes. Or during the crazy cat video, or while you get a hug from somebody at home. Maybe it’s that thought that then suddenly gets IN. Maybe it’s in the shape of a cloud out the window. Maybe it comes to you in the shower. Maybe via a friend. Maybe via some curious (or slightly ‘unique’) stranger on the street, on the way to where you’re going. Insight is never that far away, if we can just learn to recognise it for what it is and the many forms in which it shows up. And while the numbers and the achievements all count as A FORM of success and value and love, they’re not the ONLY form of our value that defines us, their fleeting highs are not our only means of fulfilment or the only currency or language in which we can give and receive. Are they really the only reason we ever got into all of this or to be where we are now? What WAS the reason? What about that still lights you up now? Or what else now does as well? Or instead? These can be important questions for such times. On a planet, where, if you think about it, in the context of this solar system, this galaxy we live within, it is rather miraculous that this planet of ours even exists in it’s Goldilocks zone of biological existence, there is a whole lot to be grateful for and a whole lot to be passionate about. And a whole lot to be created and experienced, in ways that they have not yet been created before. On the other side of whatever we're being asked to let go of attachment to, in it's current form, in order for it to get in. Are the goals you once set and the things you once wanted or hoped to achieve, still REALLY what you want now, in your deepest heart of hearts? Or is what's happening on the outside, trying to show you something else? What lights you up, what is it that you REALLY want now? These can be important questions for such times. And i promise you, the answers are there. They're coming. You better than anyone, will know them when they come. May your world be absolutely full of new magic for you this week. New messages, new perspective and new reasons to trust. Nat xx |
WriterIn a world in which we've got too busy for meaningful human connection, Nat talks about the ways we can bring it back. Archives
September 2024
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