I know how the darkness beckons you sometimes,
How you turn your back on the light.
I know how you walk down paths you know you shouldn't,
How you lose yourself in labyrinths of grief and despair.
I know you see your well-trodden habits and want to change them,
How you're done with reliving these painful patterns,
How you're oh so weary of your worn-out ways of being.
HTWE
I know you feel empty at times, like you exist in a void,
With life twirling around you, always just out of reach.
I know you wallow too long in pools of fear and shame,
Stuck in the abyss between who you currently think you are,
And the deeper truth of whom you know yourself to be.
I know there are parts of you that you don't love,
That have plundered your joy as you exiled them away.
I know too that you've felt the kiss of Grace ignite inside you,
How you've soaked in the abundance of trust and love that reside within,
I know you can believe yourself full, rise-up out of this darkness,
For you are not flawed, damaged or failing in feeling this pain.
When fear debilitates, loneliness blinds, despair dampens,
You are being blessed with a divine invitation to love Grace more,
To replace self-judgement with His most gentle and loving embrace.
Welcome these dark, banished corners of yourself,
Listen, comfort, forgive, re-member and restore His love within,
Feel how this awakens all the cells in your body as they vibrate in jubilation and awe,
So you can dance more gracefully and play more joyfully with all the richness of life.
The dark, the light; the fear, the courage; the resistance, the acceptance-
Rise above all of it, a taste of heaven as you regain your divinity,
Where the shadows pulling at your feet, are mere tickles at your toes.
Dearest One, everything is just fine. It's all a practice in liberation.
Deep in a frozen pond of murky water,
Encased in hard packed layers of glittering ice,
Under the constant chill of a dark wintery sky,
Lies my greatest burden,
And most precious treasure.
Valeriy Boyarskiy
I've skirted around it a million times,
Distracting myself with life's adventures.
I've sat at its shore a million more,
Tapping its impenetrable shell,
Lamenting a wound too frozen to weep.
Once a mud puddle of confusion,
Flooded by pain and frustration,
Darkened by misunderstanding and self-judgement,
It became an ever growing well of grief and shame,
Iced over in mistaken self-protection.
Today, in the still silence of mid-winter,
Under a soft blanket of freshly falling snow,
I heed my Lover's call from deep within,
Feel His warm glow in the touch of each snowflake,
And clear the white powder from the ice.
On this frosty pane, I find in my reflection,
His beaming face smiling back at me.
A thousand suns shine through His eyes,
Illuminating this pit of arctic desolation,
Into a treasure trove of revelations.
Each frozen layer became a monument,
To the myriad ways we learn to leave ourselves.
Now the coverings melt in tears of humble recognition,
Long held tensions released in gratitude,
As this hardened warrior begins to weep.
He takes my hand and we dive down,
Through the grit and grime of past existence,
His light making visible the teaching behind the pain,
The iron shackles and golden chains,
All distractions from His embrace.
Until, in the depths of this same pond,
Under the countless veils of illusion,
He reveals the magnificence of my essence.
Together, we shine truth and clarity in scintillating radiance,
And step into the omnipresence of Grace.
This great unburdening of the clouds,
As they release their torrents of rain,
This mass disencumbering of the trees,
As they shed their myriad leaves,
I feel it too. This overwhelming need,
To just let go.
Matt Gibson
Hold my hand, Beloved, rise up within,
Let this burgeoning river of truth and purity,
Coarse through each cell in my body,
Scour the deep dark trammels of my mind,
Dredging up old sediment, hard held concepts,
To set me free,
The shame, anger, despair, I buried so deep,
My old friend, pain, who clings to me still,
You bring them all up in a holy mess,
Of muddy trenches, and trampled leaves,
A stinking swamp of my own making,
And smile,
Knee deep in muck, I see the part I play,
Within the grit and grime of each experience,
It weighs heavy on my being,
A dark storm cloud, full to bursting,
With bounteous drops,
Of understanding.
An Autumn tree laden with glorious leaves,
A kaleidoscope of realisations,
Awaiting liberation.
I hold your gaze and the flood gates open,
The raw power of your Radiance,
Surges through every fibre of my being,
Emptying me out of everything,
I thought to be true,
A tree stripped bare for winter,
The vast calm openness of the sky after a storm.
Filling me up with light and clarity,
You whisper: All is for Love.
Leave your boots at the door, my friend.
The dirt from past roads travelled is not needed here.
Toss your hat to the wind,
And all those thoughts in your head,
The heavy ones you dwell on too often,
And those earthly desires that hook you in.
BluebackIMAGE
Hang up your coat on that peg.
Cast aside your cloaks of identity.
That shabby jacket of unworthiness,
Or the sharp suit of vanity.
Neither one is truly you.
The fire inside will bring warmth enough.
Put down those bags you clutch so close,
Burdened with grief, bursting with misplaced loves,
Even that small pouch of shame you tuck away.
Let’s go through them together, the pain and mistaken joy.
Allow me to help you leave them be,
You will feel lighter without them.
This is the threshold you cross,
Where you shed all you thought you were,
And become what you truly are.
Free your feet and your soul, my dearest one.
Take my hand. Let us listen only to the music of love.
Enter my house and dance.
If this post resonates with you, I’d love to hear, do comment.
Why were we told that success is outside of us?
A mountain of achievements to be climbed.
To thrive at school, in a career, a relationship, as a parent, in life,
Is to strive, through hard-earned effort,
To reach for an ever more distant star.
Stock Photo
Why were we told that accomplishment is a series of accolades?
An amassing of things; a job, a house, a family, a status, an identity,
To swaddle around ourselves, like pretty coverings of shiny gift wrap,
Glittering baubles and eye-catching bows,
To better present ourselves to the world.
Why were we told that God is outside of us?
A man in the clouds, gazing down on His creation.
That to reach Him is through penance or prayer,
A following of rites and rituals, led by others with others, for others,
In a church, a temple, an ashram, built to commune with this Other.
Only to discover that these are all dead ends, avenues of hope to exhaust,
Purposefully placed to bring us to our knees,
So we feel the despair of not finding our raison d’etre,
The bewilderment of having nowhere left to turn.
For only now, in this dark pit of desperation, are we ready to heed the Call.
A murmur in our consciousness suggests the secret lies inside,
That true wealth is in the realisation of this journey.
These layers of gift wrap are just gaudy distractions,
This Path one of detaching from all we hold dear,
Divesting oneself of beliefs and concepts of what and how life should be.
Gone is the tidy road of dos and don’ts.
This is no clear, well-trodden track we walk with others.
It’s a sprawling tangled mass, in which lifetimes have been invested in its spread.
Vines of desire, thorns of anger, sweet flowers of attachment are to be slashed away.
It’s an individual overgrown jungle trail, leading to one’s true self.
When I stop to listen to the sweet whispers of divinity within,
A beacon radiating waves of truth and love descends.
I stand still in the darkest parts of this tangled mess of me,
Shine light on my sharpest thorns of pain, my deepest roots of regret,
And welcome Love in here. This moment, this Love becomes my prize.
In gifts of revelations, new depths of understanding, forgiveness, humility,
The next knot to be untangled, weed to be uprooted, becomes clear.
My torch, my inner fire, burns brighter, heart aglow with new-found resolve.
The shedding of all I thought I was, gives way to growing realisations of who I am.
This inner Path of becoming Love Divine, is truly my richest reward.
If this post resonates with you, I’d love to hear, do comment.
On this path of living my truth,
I bump into all the times I’ve been untrue:
The job endured because I felt I should,
The countless times I’ve said yes to please another,
When every cell in my body was screaming no.
Image: dugdax
The relationship severed and lost,
Because I lacked the courage to speak up,
Or spoke too freely, without discernment,
Of import, of kindness, of truth.
Each misstep, a bruise, a welt, a cut I carry still.
The heavy sandbags of grief, shame and despair,
The concepts I hold, built on values of family, society,
Of how life should be, form solid walls,
A prison cell around my true self.
They bar my freedom, block my light.
I touch these tender purple lesions,
Soft abrasions, rubbed raw through time,
Deep gashes still bleeding hurt,
Untended wounds, too painful to clean,
And hold each one up to His loving gaze.
I thank each blunder for the blessing it bears,
The insight, the wisdom, the truth of what I am not.
The barricades begin to dissolve,
The bleeding stems, aches recede, and wounds start to heal,
Each scar a testament to this sacred road travelled.
If this post resonated with you, I’d love to hear, do comment.
When we bought our first house as a family, our son Theo, then aged three, chose the colour of our front door: pink! I remember feeling really self-conscious about it at the time; I would have gone for a muted green to fit in with all the other mostly green/grey/blue doors on the small street of Georgian terraced houses in leafy south-west London. This year, eight years on, we decide to repaint the door and I (my mind) think, yes, I can have my muted green door at last. I mull over different shades of green, and a friend and painter, Neil, messages to say he can paint the door next week. I just need to confirm the paint colour.
The following day I invite Jill, my elderly neighbour, who lives opposite, over to see our beloved Ember’s puppies. As she walks through our doorway, she remarks on how lovely and cheery she finds the colour of our pink door. Well, this puts me in a spin. How can I tell her that I’m about to paint it green? Perhaps I shouldn’t. She, after all, living opposite me, sees my door as much as I do, if not more. Who am I to take away her cheer? But my mind has been so set on green.
I mention this dilemma to my Somatic movement client and Jill’s neighbour, Bev. She finds it hysterical and, after a good, shared giggle, assures me that Jill will cope with muted green (a similar colour to her door). Then our lovely friend and dog walker for many on the street, Marshall, pops round to see the pups and chuckles as I explain my predicament. He likes the pink, he says, but would go a slightly lighter shade. Or light blue. These lighter coloured doors are the ones that bring him most joy on his rounds. Green wouldn’t stand out as much with all the wisteria I have surrounding the door.
Oh goodness, what to do, and the deadline to choose the colour has been and gone. I message Neil, tell him of my conundrum. He finds it amusing and gives me another day. When Theo returns from school, I ask his opinion and he states green is boring, pink is ok, but how about gold or yellow! Wow, that could really brighten up Jill’s day! Gold feels too bold but yellow, perhaps this I should consider.
This seemingly minor dilemma is weighing heavy on my mind; Neil needs the paint colour to mix, so I must decide. The next morning, I ask my friend, Alice, who lives opposite, two doors down from Jill, if she could help me choose. Alice has a beautiful house and a good eye for colour. I explain my dilemma and she is surprised.
“But Chloe”, she says, “I’ve always seen your door as red!”
She tells me she had painted her door green. To me it looks blue. We laugh. Have I asked a colour-blind person to help me with this decision? We traipse up and down the street comparing shades of muted green and find one close to what I had been envisaging. She rules out yellow, thinks it won’t go with the cream colour of the house. I’m not sure but happy to let it go. We find a pink we like, the colour the door has faded to, slightly lighter than the original. I ask my husband, Tim, green or pink. He doesn’t mind. We choose pink to keep the most people happy. I’m relieved a decision has been made.
This door saga has been fun, and made a lot of neighbours laugh, even though my mind wasn’t happy with the play. Then, I look at the name of the colour on the paint chart: Blush. This makes me smile.
I see now what the Divine, this burgeoning feeling of Grace deep inside, is showing me here. In my life, self-consciousness has always been a huge barrier for me. From being the shy girl at school, the quiet daughter in a rowdy family, the student in muted coloured clothes or the employee reticent to speak out against a strong opinion, I’m not comfortable standing out in a crowd. This undue awareness of self has prevented me from speaking my truth to friends, family, colleagues, boyfriends, even at times my husband. Like a comforting fog I’ve unwittingly surrounded myself in, it’s smothered my inner glow, blinded me from owning my power and hindered me from fully stepping into life. Now is the time to let this go.
This saga has been such a blessing in reminding me that when I expand my point of view from what my ‘mind’ thinks is right and open up to the Divine in the moment, I create a wider channel for Grace. I imagine opening up to the Divine enough to Be Grace; transcending self-consciousness and other rigid barriers of my mind. Then, in bounteous reciprocation, the Divine would open the door to make this state of Grace my true home. Yay, what a relief it will be to drop this burden, this monkey mind, and let the true me shine through.
I now love the pink colour of our door and this saga raises a smile and a giggle from all involved. Jill, Alice and my next-door neighbour have all asked my lovely painter friend to do painting for them too.
To open to Grace in the moment is truly a gift—to be a vessel to channel this sacred flow of love and joy. Baraka Bashad!
Thank you for reading! If this story resonates with you, feel free to share in the comments.
Grace And Flow 