GET OUT OF YOUR MIND AND INTO YOUR LIFE..... REALLY??????

It has been a while since I have felt that impulse to write and to share a blog post.... the past year has largely been about retreating, being in nature, grounding and learning (not always successfully) to embody and feel how it is to 'be' present to both that which is around me and to myself.

I was implored to write this evening as I have just spent another four days immersed in Animal Communication Studies and delving, very consciously and lightly, into Shamanic practice. It has been yet another beautifully orchestrated few days, largely by powers outside of ourselves.....

One piece that has struck me deeply these past few days has been working with the element of Air - associated with our mind - the mental body. And what has struck me is that we are more often than not encouraged to get out of our heads and into our bodies. To get out of our head and into our hearts. To approach the world from a heart centred place. To listen to the seat of our intuition - arising from the gut or solar plexus. And I would not disagree. 

However, what I realised beyond doubt was that in an effort to do just that I have been negating my mind completely. It became clear that I have become so frustrated with my mind even being involved in my life, that at times it has felt like a dark and heavy cloud that I am carrying around with me, wishing that I could shut it off completely. In a concerted effort to get into my heart - I have considered a frontal lobotomy..... (not literally) but at times it has felt that desperate.

This weekend.... I had something of a revelation... a beautiful insight into the beauty of the mind. In thinking about it being linked to the element of Air, I realised that our minds are in fact incredibly fluid and if allowed the mind can actually create the flow between things - to be the orchestrator of the 'flow' in our lives. 

Our Elders taught us the sacredness of Air and the Beauty of our Minds

As the evening beckons, we are called to sit and share our stories, with the Elders and Medicine men and women of our Tribe. Called to share our mysteries with those able to hear and willing to listen. As we recall our tales of the element of Air, there is a palpable sacredness to the words that we use; a magic to the energy that emits from our beings.  For as we gather in ceremonial storytelling, we are aware that we speak not only for ourselves but give voice to the elements of water, earth, air and fire.

My story this evening is how the sacred element of Air gave rise to my mind feeling fluid and free. 

Earlier on that morning I had sat in serenity and sovereignty on the prairie listening to the breeze and awakening my senses and my imagination. As I chanced to look up an Eagle was soaring high above me. The majesty of its wings and presence felt through the reverberations of the air that passed between it and me. My mind able to grasp the deliciousness of the experience by allowing it to permeate my very being. 

I marvelled with my mind that Air is the flow between all things, it fills each space, just as my mind has an ability to flow, if I allow it, between the space of all thoughts, sensations and experiences.

I walked into a nearby glade, and closed my eyes, as I listened to the air making music between the branches and the leaves on the trees. My mind able to create sweet music or a more harmful discordant noise. Like the Air, the choice to move in any direction, to settle or to move freely along. No judgement, just an awareness of everything that it touches. A beautiful play of interconnectedness, just as the air moved through the long grasses on the prairie earlier that day. 

In my imagination I had encountered fallen trees knowing, like my mind, that it has the capacity to lift you up and to soar with the eagle, or to destroy and lay bereft and bare, awaiting the natural cycle of all to take place. With its coolness and warmth the air has its own beautiful balance and free flow - and so too, our minds.

The Elders smiled in acquiescence when I spoke of the power of the mind to create and to destroy, to free flow or to falter, but that there is always a beautiful balance to be found - you just have to want to feel it and to know it. Our minds, like air, perhaps the least tangible force of nature but a force to be reckoned with and held sacred within the entirety of our human being-ness.  

GET OUT OF  YOUR MIND AND INTO YOUR LIFE

PLEASE stop asking me to negate my mind completely. Yes, at times, there is a stillness or a quietening that may be required. Just as there is a beautiful balance when my mind becomes fired up with ideas and creativity and can deliver in words or orchestrate actions for my passion. 

My mind is as exquisite and a delicious a part of me as my heart and soul and limbs and all my other organs.... it is a part of the whole of ME. 

Let your mind free to be what it wants to be.... let it be fluid, let it soar with eagle, let it free fall, let it be the space between all things.... honour it, respect it, love it and it will do the very same for you in return.

With love and blessings,

Nikola