Summer Solstice, 2017

My body, my physical expression, all that I am as a complex, emotional, thinking and feeling human being, I love you so much. I know I haven’t said it nearly enough. I relied on it being “obvious”, as we tend to do; did I really have to spell it out? All those little gestures when I directed you at the cross-roads, helped you to intuit what  best served you, dropped clues of synchronicity, showed you all those sunsets, flooded your heart with inexplicable joy, inspired you over and over and over again; these all spoke of love without the need for words. But if you still need me to say it, to point out all the ways that I love you, then I’m saying it now.

When did we drift apart; why was it that you stopped listening? Or, more like, became suspicious of me like we had different agendas. We used to sing to the same tune and then you started to believe all those ideas being flung at you; thought that you hated the shape you are, the way you looked, that you were odd and didn’t fit in. Oh my body, those were just a reflection of how you were being taught to think about yourself; none of it was real except that you made it so by believing in it. If you’d only listened to me…but, that wasn’t what we had planned was it? You needed to learn these things all for yourself. And so you turned to your intellect, you put so much effort into that; you could say, you made your mind up, you were always so determined, stubborn even. But how exhausting, to have to feel you were the one driving everything with your decisions. Life became so complicated when it could have been far easier with me by your side in equal partnership; you became a control freak, you felt responsible for absolutely everything and with responsibility came blame, so much blame if things didn’t go your way. It drove you nearly mad with over-thinking and you weren’t even an adult yet; so you loaded your plate so high with those rocks you insisted on carrying. I watched you do it and I tried to drop you clues (sometimes, if you thought they were your own idea, you would cautiously pick them up…) but I had to allow you your freedom and, after all, it was all still an experience for me, either way. But it could have been so much easier for you. I had to admire you for the challenge you took on, to grow yourself and others by taking the harder route, the long winding road. That took such courage; do you know how courageous you are?

Really, you always knew I was there; but you didn’t always want to know about it. There are times when I vibe so high it frightens you, even now. It used to excite you, when you were little; it would make you pirouette around and be into everything, to touch things in nature and feel so much joy from everything life had to offer; simple things without strings. But then it alarmed you because it made you feel different to be like this, so exuberant and uncool, so you hid me away deep inside. Once you learned about the world, some of its scary stuff, the excitement of feeling me switched-on in you sometimes felt too much like fear…all that energy, pouring through you; like it would burn you, destroy you, take you closer to the edge than you wanted. Or you felt like the calm I gave you made you into a horrible person, in denial about all the fear people kept telling you that you should be feeling; like you were cold and lacked feeling. So you tried to suppress me away with alcohol, all that rubbish that you ate, those people you used to hang out with who told you were nothing because that was what they believed about themselves. You tried to bring the feelings I gave you crashing back down to earth with all those layers of toxic experience but I wouldn’t let you. So we played tug of war for a very long time but I kept coming back. In your darkest moments, I would always do that and you would lean your head on me, knowing where you stood with me when all else failed. You would never have relinquished me back then, not really; I was your safeguard, your hidden truth.

We maintained such a bizarre partnership, like terribly different twins joined at the heart; the outgoing one and the one who was increasingly afraid of her own shadow. We cared so very deeply for each other and yet it was like we didn’t know how to talk to each other at all any more; we lost our easy parlance when you moved away from home, from the safety of the nest. You could say, we got out of touch like once close friends who had drifted…which was only possible because you made life feel conditional and I no longer fit with that. You made it all feel like that; life all one giant trade-off, tit for tat. You had to turn down all your own dials to believe in all that nonsense, to be like other people, which you thought you had to do to survive. When your father died on the Summer Solstice, just as you turned twenty (still a child pretending to be adult), half way through studying for the degree that he had thought was too much for you…being a girl, you didn’t know how to react to your first close brush with death so you pushed it inside, denying so many uncomfortable feelings. You really thought at some level that it was your fault somehow; another trade off you had accidentally set in motion because of all the hurt thoughts you harboured about him and your guilt that you and he had drifted apart. It was like you still understood your immense power but you had forgotten about love and that you can do no harm to anyone from this place. It unnerved you about the nature of misplaced thoughts and intentions, about unruly sadness turned to venom, and it made you pull inside even more as though you were too dangerous to let out. You felt horribly unsure of yourself and you looked for your father in unlikely people, seeking answers from “men”; ones who only let you down.

Then four years later, along came that time when you almost let me in again; this time you were flying so high on the midsummer vibe, feeling me switched on and remembering how good it felt when we are partners. You became so excited to feel me lifting you from beneath your wings that you just wanted to come with me again, to forget about everything else and we spiralled higher and higher that night…but then you had come to equate that feeling with alcohol and you also drank too much, thinking it was all the same feeling of exuberance but it wasn’t and you fell crashing back down to earth, into a deep sleep. When you woke up, everything had changed because something had happened, a liberty had been taken when you were off-guard and it was something you wouldn’t forgive yourself for; though really you wouldn’t forgive me. You felt that you had trusted me and that I was the one who had led you out of your body on a spiral of joy and left it lying there, vulnerable and exposed so you pummelled your fists on me though really you blamed yourself. Really, you didn’t know who to blame (perhaps both of us), though I didn’t think blame came into it. This was what made things worse in your mind; you knew that, at some level, I didn’t really care what had happened, I knew it was unimportant since nothing could sully what you are, not really (I tried to show you that but you weren’t ready to hear it). I already saw the much bigger picture, where this was a wake-up call of sorts, and I just wanted you to know it was out there (this other way of looking at things) but you slammed it in my face, felt such guilt for even acknowledging for a brief second that you were not damaged by what had happened. So you play-acted the deep deep crashing hurt to perfection, strapping the rock of it to your back since it was what was expected in such circumstances.

Then I provoked the same conflict of perspective when your mother died almost exactly four years later (how the summer solstice took such a beating). You didn’t know how to handle the grief of another lost parent, on the back of all this, yet when you came to me, I didn’t take you into the abject fear or deep mourning that you thought was appropriate. I showed you, didn’t I, that it was all perfect at some level; that it was by design and that you would survive, stronger and wiser for it and that your mother had even agreed to this but you weren’t ready for that; to hear and feel that death could be strangely unemotive, exciting even, for all parties seen from this higher perspective. You hated yourself for feeling these higher vibes even fleetingly, as you could for a mother with whom you had such a profound connection that you were able to sense that, where she was, she was more than alright, was already in a state of profound bliss and that she only wanted the same feeling for you too. She even came to you to tell you that; you felt her there in the unfamiliar dark room where you lay the night she died and you heard it straight from her but you didn’t want to know it yet; it made you feel too weird. So you kicked and pounded against this thrilling secret, you picked up your heavy rock of mourning and placed it deep in your heart and you slammed the door in my face, even more firmly than before, for even briefly allowing you to see this alternate perspective…so I gracefully withdrew. Your flame, that inner torch, really flickered around then….it felt like such a dark time for you but I could only come to you if I was welcome.

So you began to distrust heightened feelings more than ever before; they felt like the gateway to all your problems, your deepest guilt and self-abhorence, instead of the gateway to greater understanding and bliss. And, of course, you began to think I was cold-hearted, aloof and superior, a heartless know-it-all but, don’t you see, that’s what everything looks like where I reside. I don’t get drawn into all the emotions and learned behaviours, that’s the point – you do that for me, which is fascinating to watch, but I don’t have to. I have already reached my nirvana where there is no good or bad, no cycle of loss; in fact, I never left and I have brought you here with me, so many times but you began to pretend you had never seen it, this place where it is all perfectly fine and nothing is out-of-joint or a “mistake”. You’ve had access to this place all your life because I’ve always wanted you to know that, to cut to the chase, to ride high on its wave and feel its relief and its solace; it got you through so many experiences when you were bullied so relentlessly at school (when you were small and still prepared to listen to alternate realities without picking things apart) and, ever since, I’ve dropped you so many clues to get you back here…But then I see how it was in conflict with what you saw down there on the ground. It simply didn’t fit with how fear, possession, conflict and loss count for so much that is considered relatable in your world so you suppressed what you knew and hid it away like a guilty secret that you denied with all of your human effort.

On the back of all those big hurts, one after another (and there were more around relationships that you formed believing you were so worthless), we stopped talking to each other around then, which is when you were nearly 30 and life seemed so stuck in this groove. You were so despairing and lost and, even if you remembered anything I had shown you, you didn’t know how to integrate this with what the world seemed to count as important for survival (and you were all about that in those years). It was a parting of the ways, of sorts…for a time. Until you got my attention back again with all those health problems cascading around your ears (it was a summons of sorts); since, without me, you really didn’t thrive, as though your inner light had almost gone out. Perhaps you were testing me…or did you think you were giving me what I really wanted; an opportunity to leave you behind, to drop the millstone of a human body and go back to where things are always lighter, less complicated than you seemed to make them. Well, I didn’t leave you, did I? I was straight by your side, tentatively at first (then one day, six years ago, I dared to stop tip-toeing and came back to take residence, like a golden ball of love light beneath your heart space) and we stuck it out together. Already (and you acknowledged it at last), I had stood by you through thick and thin, through the birth of a daughter, through the loss of almost everything material that you had amassed, through the loss of your health. Don’t you see yet, my love was always unconditional; not about how “good” an experience you were giving me but about having any experience at all. Perhaps its time to talk about all the things you have given me; to redress this one-sidedness you have always kidded yourself exists here. This has not all been all about me trying to give something to you (and you, out of stubbornness and hurt, refusing to accept it)…You have always given me so much in return, never stopping for a moment.

You see, without you, I wouldn’t get to feel a thing….not one thing. You allow me to feel the breeze on my skin, to hear bird song as more than what I register it as (a frequency but not a beautiful sound through the ears). To feel warmth and cold, laughter and longing. To hold a paintbrush, to create with my hands, to touch someone’s skin. To know food fresh from the plant, sand in toes, exhilaration and, yes, great stirrings of emotion, embraces, tears, deep sorrow. I wanted all of this and more; and there was no other way than through you. I chose you because you feel all the minutiae, you colour every feeling, you seem to know how to express all the nuances and make even more of them than they were before through the medium of yourself. All your senses cross over in great fluid waves creating a rich tapestry of almost indescribable experience and I get to ride that magic carpet with you, every single day. The super-sensitive that you are, that you think is all about pain, gives me the ride of many lifetimes; so I wouldn’t want to do this with anybody else but you, my partner and my beloved. I long for you to keep going, to prolong this particular ride, to keep putting coins in the slot to keep it turning. I want to have it go on for many moments, years, decades. Everything in me is focussed upon you thriving to make that wish possible and all I ask if that you focus that intention upon every cell and then switch it on like the elixir of love that wants only for you to heal from anything that risks compromising the time we have left together. Don’t you feel that? Its true; and its all yours, anytime you want it.

It’s not so very hard for us to come together now; to get to know what it feels like to walk as one. You already know me as your inspiration; that is how I was allowed back in the door…and then I was there for you in all your quiet moments of profound healing. We began to meet up again in designated places; when painting, in meditation, on the yoga mat, walking in nature…but really, you began to see, I am everywhere and we have become fast friends again, you and I. Like in childhood, only better. Yet there is still some part of you that denies me from coming all the way in and its time to let go of any reasons why that hesitation is necessary. You have come such a long way; there is no more fear left around those things that seemed to take you down and then allowed you to come fountaining back up into a new way of experiencing life. You have forgiven and sent compassion to everyone, accepted everything as the gifts that they really were, including yourself. How do you think you were able to do this, to heal on such a profound scale, if I was so absent? See, I never abandoned you; we were always right on track, guided by the message of love that I never allowed you to forget the feeling of, calling you home like a warm embrace. This is what wholeness feels like; outstretched arms and your essence filling them – you hold me and I hold you.

I AM love and you have held me inside of you and in a high-vibrating field all around you for as long as you have walked this earth. If you are honest now, you already know that, don’t you? So, step into me, allow this union, drop this idea that we are out of sync or want different things and we can do this thing. You see now, don’t you, that I was always on your side; not for a single moment did I ever leave you or work against you. It could only feel “off” for us to come together if we were vibrating at completely different frequencies; speaking, as it were, a completely different language but we don’t…at all. You know as much about love as I do; you have learned unconditionality through the very experiences of your life, the hard way (and I bow to you, for you have added so much more to what I understand about this, realised – as you have – where it is so much harder to achieve, from within the human field). You have shown me unconditionality and awe and wonder and joy and immense love and so many other things from within that complicated and messy field of experience, which is where these things truly hold sway. You think you have reverence for me, as though I am some sort of perfect version of you, a so-called “Higher” self who never gets anything wrong. Well, let me tell you, I have such reverence for you!

You have anchored love to this planet and everything about you mirrors love to everyone you meet. And I want you to know and acknowledge something else about yourself, one thing you have always denied – you are kind! You are kindness personified and yet, for one reason or another, you have judged yourself as unkind, emotionless (no, that was just me showing you that all was always well…), even selfish when really you were focussing on the area of your expertise, your own recovery. You have modelled this for all those who seek permission to do this for themselves. I see kindness in everything you do, the way you selflessly share your experiences from the heart, give of your time, reach out to others, take such care with how they are doing though they may be virtual strangers you have never met. Nearer home, you think you have been a terrible mother; I see the very opposite (what you confuse for this is your uniqueness as you model alternate ways of being a parent, allowing the child to feel and explore their own sovereignty, just as you got to play with yours all those years ago; in the end, it served you well). All this time, you see yourself as broken, as a let down, as not doing so well, but really you are being love in every moment; like a child riding a bicycle all on their own thinking they are still being held on to but they’re really not. You are doing it all without my help; all it takes is owning it to let the flood gates down and allow the tide of sameness to come rushing in across the breach of this commonality we share, the place where we both match through speaking the language of love. It won’t burn or destroy you; we are not so out of sync that anything I am would harm you in any way and, in any case, love could never destroy you (don’t you know that yet). Who knows, as one we might get to experience something neither of us has ever got to experience before. It could mark the completion of us both…

Twenty-five years ago this solstice dawn, I woke up on my own floor to face a circumstance that had come about while I was asleep and which rocked my world. It was not the definitive event of anything that I ever lived through (externally, I picked up and carried on the same and, as mentioned, there were several other “key events” that played a part) but it was certainly the one that sent the camel’s back buckling and dropping all its cargo in the slow-motion emotional and physical collapse of the following decade. It marked a parting of the ways of sorts, an estrangement between two equally important aspects of self; so that I was forced to either come back together in a whole new way or not be here at all. Like watching a dummy lurch forwards against a windscreen in one of those car crash videos, the rest is, as they say, (my) story and I own that story, consciously, as the very making of myself. In effect, I get to wake up all over again…this time on my own terms.

The last decade has been a self-righting, a sort of rescue operation and a slow-steady reunion of two aspects of myself that had become exaggeratedly fragmented (I know now) expressly so I could learn how to put myself back together again!

This powerful time of planetary poise, summer solstice (a time that was such a favourite in my childhood, when more light meant even more playtime and joy) became attached, through association, with a hurt which, in turn, became the very pivot-point of all my efforts to “return home” to myself this last quarter century. Perhaps this period of maximum light has made it all the more painful for me to see more of myself yet not like what I saw across all these years of the wound that I was harbouring being, as it were, spotlit by this anniversary. A stark contrast was set up and the rub of it became my very growing point; a navigation aid as I brought myself into better alignment with what truly felt like me, year-on-year. At the higher level, its as though I have been working with the summer solstice…and my task, now, to work powerfully with it in my favour as such a life-affirming time of the year, unconditional upon any associations I have ever formed around it. I see now how I have been working to redress an alleged moment of self-abandonment (although I never really did fragment or separate…not for one moment, though it may have seemed to be so); to both offer and receive the love that was never, in the first place, either refused or denied.

Last year, I surrendered the story of it by writing what had remained so hidden and putting it “out there” in my other blog Spinning the Light; this year, I claim the pure white glistening pearl that it always was as I lay it all to rest as my own profoundest healing potential. The story of it is no longer required since it has served its highest purpose, along with all those other stories about myself to date; neither discarded nor crystallised through further repeating but, actually, left there tenderly, suspended in a whole new place between substance and nothingness. This is what the meeting place of self and Highest Self feels like to me; like a quantum void out of which all potential births…we get to choose. I never felt more unconditional love fountaining and overflowing from within every cell and with love comes wholeness. So much love…so many tears…so much love…a sea of pain washing out of me, almost overwhelming me like a surprise wave that almost knocks me over, but I am sturdier than that and I won’t need to engage with it again…so much love…so much release…I AM the wave. Such moments are how we heal ourselves to heal the world.

Writing this letter to myself has been such a powerful instrument of healing. I hope to inspire others to do likewise; to let such a letter pretty-much write itself and see what comes out for you. You may well get to hear the words that you always longed to hear…

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