Tag: authenticity

Animals and Nature, Authenticity, Awakening

How a Spider Woke me up to This Powerful, Essential Truth

ravenhearthealing

This past summer I was lucky to able to spend some time on the shores of a small mountain lake in British Columbia.  One hot afternoon, as I paddled my kayak past the dock and out into open water, I discovered that I had a stowaway on board.  It was a spider.

I do not generally find spiders alarming, and so I observed what unfolded next with a sense of bemused curiosity.

I quietly watched her make her way up the paddle, and onto my hand. She then crawled up my arm and onto my shoulder and then along my neck, and that was when I started to find her distracting.  I confess that I did contemplate dropping her into the lake, where she would surely have drowned, but something made me hesitate.  She was so small and fragile after all.  So instead I gently moved her to the front of the kayak.

She stayed there for only a moment and then she headed back towards me. I watched her crawl along the side of the boat, onto the paddle and up my arm back to my shoulder, as if to say “pay attention.” She then moved purposefully down my torso and onto my leg and stopped at my knee.  And there, between my bent knees, she started making a web!

As often happens when I have an unexpected encounter with an insect or animal, I laughed.

And then, as you do, when kayaking with a spider, I closed my eyes and listened.

Floating on that quiet lake with the spider, I had a flash of insight.  In the silence I heard: “I am here at your knees because you are giving birth – to yourself.  And you need to tell the story of your rebirth — to write about it.”  And I remembered that for many people spider is a symbol of creativity, especially in the areas of writing and drawing, and also an ancient symbol of death and rebirth.

It has taken me these past months to fully understand what this encounter with spider was teaching me.

A spider woke me up to a powerful, essential truth

At that time, I had just left my full-time job and was working on building the structure of my new business and my new life – so I truly was birthing a new way of being for myself in the world and struggling to find my voice and vision.  And, just as I had tried to lay the spider aside and had even considered drowning her, so too had I attempted to lay aside and drown out my own desire to write.

I yearned for creative expression and yet I had been casting about looking for an outlet, bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t paint or play the piano when all along the answer was sitting right on my shoulder whispering “hello…writing”.

And it wasn’t just the recent avoiding of writing for my website or blog that I was faced with…it was the fact that I had been putting off writing for YEARS.

It took this most gentle and tenacious of creatures to crack open the door I had closed on the creative fire inside me, to remind me that in the call to be ourselves we must give our creative gifts expression, we must let our story and our voice be heard.

To be ourselves we must make space for creative expression. We must let our story and our voice be heard.

For a long time, I didn’t think my story mattered that much.  I didn’t think anyone would want to hear it or read about it.  Mine was an average life, my struggles too trivial or certainly too private to share. My writing surely only mediocre.

What spider showed me was that we are in fact every moment giving birth to our story. And it matters.

Ted Andrews asserts that “The spider awakens creative sensibilities and reminds us that the world is woven around us and through us… just as we are the keepers and the writers of our own thoughts, so too are we the keepers and writers of our own destiny”.

Inspiration longs to come through us, in all creative forms, to allow us to weave our story into the immense design of things.  It’s a way of marking our place in the world, and each and every story and the expression of that story is important.

If you can, take the advice of a small but mighty spider:  write, draw, dance your way into the creative rhythm of nature, weave the story of your life, step into your untapped creative powers and give birth to your future.

Do you hear the small yet persistent voice of your creative force calling you? Is it time to birth a new chapter of your life full of vibrancy and meaning but you’re not sure how or where to start? Would you like to better understand the messages that nature offers you every day?

Schedule a free call with me –  I am here to help and I look forward to hearing your story!

Shona

Animals and Nature, Authenticity, Awakening, Women's Work

Quiet the Voice of Fear

ravenhearthealing

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear” George Addair

This week I have been a true student of procrastination.

I recently embraced minimalism and decided that before I can possibly be expected to sit down and write something meaningful the kitchen drawers must be de-cluttered.  The linen closet pared down (how many hand towels do we really need?!).  I asserted that a clear and uncluttered work space opens the door to clear and uncluttered thinking…yet I knew I was just avoiding the hard work of putting my butt in the chair and writing.

You could argue, as I did for all the hours I spent cleaning out my walk-in closet, that “this is good – I am making space for creative energy, I am letting things go so that new ideas and opportunities can enter into my life, my mind, my soul….so it must be ok then, right?”

What I was doing this week was in fact a mini version of what I have been doing for most of my life.

Working at jobs that seemed “good”, productive, especially when I worked for a not for profit, I told myself “I am doing good things, how can this be bad?”.  And yet all the while there was this nagging feeling, growing more and more powerful in me, that I was avoiding the real work that needed to be done.  Work that only I could do and yet it seemed so hard to turn myself to it.

If you listen to the voice of fear you’ll hide from the real work of your life and miss out on the challenges and the joy awaiting you, just on the other side of fear.

The work I’m talking about is this work, the work of embracing my true calling and helping other women to awaken to their own true life purposes.

The reason I clean and de-clutter is out of fear.  The fear of using my gifts, however humble.  The fear that no one will understand.  The fear of failing in my work AND the fear of succeeding.

Thanks to this week, my fear is now crystal clear, with a honed edge, it has become a weapon in my hands.  In the face of this fear, I have in fact been incredibly hard on myself, heaping criticism on myself, berating myself for a lack of commitment, lack of discipline, lack of work ethic and vision.

I am lazy.

I am a coward.

As I scoured and scrubbed the surfaces of my home, I left myself not one measly scrap of compassion.

Then, in a moment of quiet clarity, I was reminded of what Byron Katie says in her book Loving What Is: “No one can hurt me, that’s my job”.  I seem to be very good at this part of the job.

I suspect you are too.

No one has ever said to me out loud the hurtful things that I have told myself in my head. We are our own worst enemies – and so the house is clean, and I feel like a turd.

All around me though, if I remember to look, is the calm, grounding support of the natural world.  All week, in my yard (more de-cluttering) or on walks, I was joined by one or more raucous blue jays.  The blue jay is noisy and hard to ignore.

So finally, I listened.

Blue Jay presents the challenge of not showing up as your authentic self, or in fact of not showing up at all.  So the Blue Jay, with his blue crown of feathers, asks if we want to be a pretender to the throne, or to develop the innate royalty that was always, already ours.

Our “royalty” lies in the unique, divinely given gifts we each have and are asked to take up and gift back to the world.  That’s where our true power lies, in authenticity, and he reminds us of the proper use of our power.

He shows you that the choice is always yours to make.

For years I was a pretender and the sight of a Blue Jay would create a kind of anxiety in me…as if I could hear him loudly telling the world that I was an impostor in my own life.  This lasted only so long as I denied the true expression of who I was and stifled the desire to do the healing work I yearned to do.

There is always another closet to clean out, another pot to wash, another task that needs doing.

In stillness, and especially in nature, you can quiet the voice of fear and hear the call to awaken.

Hear the voice of love speaking to you in birdsong…asking you to bring forth your authentic power for all to see.

If you’d like to explore how self-criticism, doubt and compulsive de-cluttering may be keeping you from answering the deepest yearnings of your soul, I am here to help.  We can walk this path together, I’ve been there, and I’m ready when you are.

 

Blue Jay

Lend me your fearless flight, your confident power, your startling blue

Lend me wisdom to take on the responsibility that comes with walking a path with heart

The path that calls from a higher self, a divine wisdom

Lend me your laughing heart, your bounding joy as you soar from branch to branch with your brothers

Lend me your voice in blue to tell of the way

To tell of the one who will be crowned in all her glory at the end of the day

When the choice is made to take up the gifts we have been given and gift them back to the world

Our power made manifest in service to our souls

 

It’s time to quiet the voice of fear,

Shona