Mindful Mourning

I enter mindfulness. At first it feels like a denial of the depression that’s begun to float above my head since my husband and I separated six weeks ago. I would call that time between ending a marriage and actually living separate lives ‘the end of the end’. The end of the end for us unfolded perfectly in synch with nature’s slowing down. A few days after Samhain, just beyond the harvest as the Earth begins to swallow her energy to turn inward and while the extravagant burning that is bonfire night illuminates all in early November, our marriage ended. And then he moved out as life began to bud again in February. When you find yourself in your home as the only adult living at that particular address, the tone shifts into something more final. You graduate into the unpopular point known as ‘the end’. Except it is also, and as much, a beginning. This is a time between times. A liminal space where the wheel pauses and hasn’t yet begun to spin again. It’s a void. A place we all desperately avoid. The only choice we’re left with in that middle-of-the-night darkness is to begin a new cycle. You realise that whatever human plant your identity had grown into, has now died. And yet, you also find that you are now deep in the ground buried as a seed. You can’t help it, this is happening. You find yourself in a new life that you never planned but which has spontaneously arisen and opened with possibility. Much like that first daffodil who bravely journeys out of the darkness with its audacious bright yellow face, opening under an overcast and still cold sky at the end of winter, here you are. Except of course it’s not just the end of winter. It’s also the beginning of spring.

And now it’s spring and the story of this separation has been a dark cloud following me around, making me believe it’s still winter. Occasionally it rains and I cry my eyes out but then it parts like a curtain to reveal the sun, warm on my salty cheek which has been so hungry for that special kind of sun-kiss that only spring can offer. Often I find far underneath that cloud, in the depths of my being, is a joy that wants to rise like a spring gushing out of the ground, unapologetically excited to be alive. 

To enter mindfulness, we must first remember that the present is right here - a state of peace and acceptance lives at our fingertips. At first this remembering feels like I’m forgetting all my problems. It feels like an escape. The cloud whispers in my ear as I attempt to shift my awareness onto the beautiful colours of the room I stand in. It says how dare I. How dare I find peace in the middle of all this. The cloud descends a little to hug my head forming a misty crown, dropping thoughts directly into my consciousness - but what about me? How can you be peaceful while a storm is over your head? How dare you. This is all well and fine until I begin to believe what that cloud is telling me. When I don’t believe the cloud, it’s just a cloud. It all begins to become clearer here in the mindful space. The cloud gathers its power from my attachment to the past. There is grief here, yes, and I can tend to it with as much care as I’m giving to this page. I breathe. 

A full conscious breath arrives in the depths of my belly and then it goes again. If I were to hold that breath for fear of it leaving me, I’d suffer and soon be starving for oxygen. But I have learned, through the forty years that this body has been breathed, a breath will always come and a breath will always go. That is simply the nature of breathing. Breaths are no different to waves kissing the shore and then leaving her for the ocean. The shore surrenders to the process like the body surrenders. Surrendering is precisely what I’d like my mind to do too.

Paying attention to the glorious pink mug next to my journal (which is more of a ceramic bowl with a handle), is surrender. Another breath arrives. Belly full. And then the easy contraction follows, belly and lungs now empty. 

The pink cup contains coffee. The most holy of the holy waters. That first sip on any given day is an experience of heaven. 

I feel the weight of the full cup in my hand, holding focus there on that sensation and not on the goal of getting it to my mouth. I watch as my arm knows what to do, gracefully executing a slow movement, pivoting at the elbow. The cup is coming closer to my face. I feel my lips parting in anticipation - they act free and untamed, operating without instruction to do what they’re now doing. 

The creamy coffee, dressed in a fine garment of oat milk, arrives at the gates of my mouth. The warmth of it flowing to every crevice, its movement bringing my awareness to the caverns and tributaries of this mouth that tastes. Now the throat swallows the coffee and I witness a brief tightness giving way to a warmth that spreads down across the width of my chest. It seems to hold my heart briefly, offering a softness in its passing before it moves again through the rolling landscape of my body. This coffee is a hot river of pure life-force.

I watch as the grace brings the cup away from my face now, slowly moving it through space. It lands on the white desk, next to a lit candle. My eyes fix onto the flame and then follow a trail of tiny brown letters printed around the curved glass beneath the miniature fire:

Everyday a soul remembers the stillness
somewhere becoming present in the now
secret place with flowing energy all around

This is a secret place. One must surrender thought and bring awareness to the reality of things as they are. And then without a key, without a door or threshold of any kind, mysteriously the secret place opens to receive you. It’s revealed to you. Right where you are, wherever you are. Just as you are, exactly and however you are. The secret place opens and wraps its arms around you and you arrive in the truest home you never knew you were missing.

And the cloud - it lifts. Without being rejected or resisted but rather through an invitation of acceptance and a simple surrender to what is. All on its own, just like the breath and the waves - its gone. And if it should come again, your feet will be planted in the ground of Being. You will be anchored to this stable home of the secret place. And you will have the grace to welcome the cloud, to say hello, to ask what whispers it wants to share. And you will hear all of its messages but you will know better than to believe them. You will practice deep listening. You might even wrap your arms to receive it, offering it a sense of belonging. You may allow its rain to trickle out of your beautiful eyes. And you will feel it all, all those feelings that want nothing more than to be felt. All of them belonging to this moment as much as you belong. As much as life belongs. And when the moment unfurls again in its endless coiled dance between death and birth, from coming and going, you will see life so perfect as it is, possessing nothing but its own grace as it flows through you and around you. And because it knows that nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to it. When you know this too, the world also belongs to you.

I place my palms together in front of my heart, and I smile to the flame. I smile to the great mystery that contains the light of a billion suns. I smile to the mystery that holds me here. I smile to life. I breathe.

*Image is part of the series “Stellar” by Ignacio Torres.

The Return

I’ve been looking deeply into the reasons people come and see me (as clients and students of Reiki) so I can offer a more potent, specific medicine to greet them with. It surprised me to distill the many reasons down into a single core motivation - to reconnect with the Self. When we are disconnected, this reflects to us through all of our relationships, through our mental health, our decisions, our habitual behaviours, and through our emotions. Our need to please and make others happy first. Our inability to speak up for ourselves. Our tolerance of unfulfilling roles that we feel obliged to play out. Our niggle that something isn’t right but we can’t quite put our finger on it. All of these little ways we betray ourselves become metal for the cage we place our truth in. 

When people come to see me they are usually right on the verge, walking tenderly along this edge between what was and what will be. They are standing at the exit of the cage and wondering what might be on the other side. The unfamiliar has a way of being rather terrifying. The familiar is often a betrayal of the self in service to others. Why is this? We’ve been conditioned to place our value in how we serve others. Our self-worth hasn’t been nurtured. We’ve sought to find our worth from how the world perceives us. A great win for patriarchy has been this adopted pattern amongst most women. When our eyes open, we realise that we haven’t needed an other - we have needed the Self (with a capital S). What follows often is a mourning period. Deep reflection and illumination. Realisation and an invitation towards integration. On the other side of that exposed wounding, a new vow may be expressed. One to the Self, to the heart, to the deeper wisdom as the north star. The cage door is open. The question is, will we let our wild soul run free?

Can you relate to this, beauty? I share from having been there (I’m still there). I recognise these deeply ingrained patterns and my work here is to unravel them. I do this mostly with women who are just like me. I wonder how many of you reading this can resonate with living in service to others before serving yourself?

My life mission isn’t to teach Reiki. It’s not to connect others to some great cosmic force. It is to illuminate all the ways I have betrayed my own heart, and to come back home. My mission is The Return. The great return back to Self. This is how every heroic journey ends. First the hero departs her ordinary world into separation. She learns, she suffers, she grows wise. And then she goes home, able to offer her treasures to others. Reiki just happens to be my bridge in, my Guide out. The challenge is to express the truth of that mighty Self fearlessly and to face my true north again and again, no matter how dizzy others unconsciousness might make me. I return. And then I light a torch. I hold this torch as a reminder to myself, and it draws in others who have been lost as well. They light their torch and our flames join. The light we hold grows brighter. We are calling each other home with the light of our awareness. How bright the collective illumination shines for all who look to find it. 

The lesson to embody is this: I am the guardian of the soul. I am the keeper of my energy. I am the mother to this body and the caretaker of this mind. My one and only is my heart. 

The Writing Journey OF The Reiki Way

The first seed that sprouted into my awareness, hatched on a walk. I’m almost always walking or bathing when soul seeds take root.

I was coming home from a psychic development circle on a sunny day in 2013. Midway through the estate that I crossed through to get home from Haggerston station, a divine knowing about a book entered my mind. The picture of it was such a different one then. I was still working as a photographer, and I had this deep spiritual awakening rising through my whole life. That first book was a collection of images and channelings - I wanted to call it Postcards From Spirit. This was that fascinating time of potential before instagram had made it big. The idea to pair images and spiritual writing felt new. I assembled this book over the next couple of years, asking friends and subscribers of my blog to share their questions, and then I’d channel the answers along with a piece of artwork. A little while later I received a newsletter from my dream publisher about an oracle deck by the same name, newly released by another author. I gave the book a new title then I’d slowly delete text and write new words, and then delete and add and so on, always opening the same document to recreate again.

A few years later and I live in Crystal Palace. In the park is a hill where I had sat with a stack of bright white paper on my lap, getting the next incarnation ready to submit to this same publisher. With a red pen, I made marks to the text while waiting for my mother to arrive, listening out for the familiar sound of her suitcase wheels rolling along the pavement. She’d help me with the final proofread before I hit send on the submission email. Between 2013 and 2017, I had lived a lot of life. I had also become a Reiki Teacher who was allowing herself to be on the outside what she was on the inside. The manuscript came back with lots of suggestions but not with an offer, and I put it aside for a little while, knowing it needed to die again before it could come back to life.

Early into lockdown (version 1) last year, I had this marvelous thought while brushing my teeth. “This is when I finish the book!” I had started writing like a writer during a significant visit to India. I wrote through my grief after a miscarriage, through another pregnancy, through my husband’s dark days of depression. I had written on countless park benches while my son slept in the buggy next to me. I wrote in the early days of my Reiki practice after the high of seeing a client, I wrote through loss and through epiphany and through every up and down of life. I wrote to heal and I wrote to return to myself. I wrote to connect to my truth and hear my soul. And then I wrote while the whole world went into lockdown. This book documented a journey of being human. It would just about survive the unforgiving edits I’d make once a year when chopping 30,000 words at a time. The slim material that remained was a skeleton of truth, revealing the essence of what it would become. Only a few sentences were left last spring when I decided to finish the book I had started seven years before. All in this same document, I watched this being grow into the truest and most beautiful version of itself. It finished where my journey began - with Reiki. It’s a book about consciousness - a book about being human - about being the whole embodied Self. The manuscript expanded and contracted like my soul’s womb. I was born as more of myself each time.

And here she is. In her welcomed completeness, alive and growing wings. She’s stepping out onto the branch away from the nest, closer to the wind that is calling her. She’s no longer mine.

When I return to writing a manuscript, it will be an entirely new document that I open. A blank white rectangle will appear instead of the familiar list of contents that had been waiting for me all those years before. For a moment I will pause to take in the totality of this unknown being. And I will step into the void to create something new. From the formless echo of that blinking cursor will come letters and dots that express my soul’s fire.

I can’t wait for The Reiki Way to arrive in your hands! As I type this, it’s less than three weeks away from the release date. If you order the book before it launches on April 28th, you’ll receive these gifts of gratitude (from my heart to yours):

An invitation to The Reiki Way book launch
Two guided meditations
Wallpaper of the Reiki Precepts for your phone, laptop, and desktop
A chance to win a free remote Reiki Session with me
A one-month free membership to the Soul Fire Collective which includes a monthly group mentoring call, a book club for The Reiki Way, and meditations to support your awakening

Thank you to everyone that already ordered the book and made it a bestseller in the Reiki category of Waterstones for a hot minute! I’m so grateful!

For more info and to pre-order and receive these gifts, click here. Yay.