,i was listening to this podcast about the world's smartest animals

it was funny and thought provoking.

One of the contestants, and eventual winners, was the sperm whale.  

Sperm whale won on the basis of being thought to have a "we consciousness," which meant that they thought and felt as a unit. If one sperm whale was suffering they felt that suffering and responded collectively.

I started to think what it might be like to live in a community where we truly felt as a we.

How difficult it would be to experience your fellow human's distress and humiliation, as if it were your own?

Would it be so easy to hurt each other?  To incarcerate children on the border? Leave them to suffer indignity and humiliation? 

And what about the planet? Imagine if we could feel we-ness with the earth. With the air's pollution, the river's choking, the fire's burning, 

If we felt the we-ness of this place, I imagine things would be very different.

I wonder if part of us remembers being inextricably linked with each other, with our surroundings. I wonder if that is either our default setting; something that we knew in the days when we began to hunt and had ritual to engage with gratitude for the spirit of the deer that we were about to kill. 

I wonder if that part of us knew just how to treat the land and the water we depended on because we were in relation with it. We had a "We consciousness".

I wonder if that part of us was selected out as we became more aggressive with each other, more territorial?  If we began to lose the we consciousness as a defense against feeling too much when we got greedy or murderous with our neighbours?

I wonder if we are living in a we-consciousness deficit?

If our systems are struggling to cope with the lack of connection and belonging we are experiencing?

If the world around us is showing the result of this lack of we?

Is that why so many of us are living in a state of constant fight or flight? Why anxiety is rampant?

I wonder if that is why children are coming into this world in neurodiverse ways?  Is the presence of young ones so averse to the noise and busyness, the harshness of chemicals and pollutants a readjustment to our we-ness?

Are we so biologically far from what it looks like to live in connection with our life support system - the planet and each other - that our systems are sounding the alarm?

I wonder if we are beginning to experience the end of the I-ness?

It's been a while.

Instead, I find myself furiously posting on Facebook in an effort to call out the Emperor's new clothes.  It feels like trying to shout into a hurricane.

But it's one of the ways shout anyway.

And part of my shouting out is in doing my own inner work.

In turning towards my own contribution to the harmmaking in the world and doing what i can, being responsible for my part, I  become the change agent in my own life and in this way changing what i contribute to the world. 

A big part of that is my commitment to shadow work.

I have been doing shadow work for about six years now.

Facing the Minotaur is the biggest body of work i have completed and something i am immensely proud of.

My immersion in shadow work leads me to see the world through the lense of shadow, which is particularly helpful at this time where so much unbelievable destruction and dissension is becoming common place.

In a world where we are now so desensitised by a barrage of bizzare and harmful things that we watch in stunned horror at the Amazonian rainforest and its people being destroyed, the Sonoran desert being irrevocably harmed for a wall that will do nothing, the English economy tank, the American economy be 'ordered" to invent new markets... and that's just this week.

So i look at shadow.

In shadow work we understand that we have a persona or a face we present to the world. This usually, in a effort for us to succeed in the world, to find love and belonging, persona is a mixture of "good" qualities like friendliness, hard working, family oriented, kind, ambitious and a few "bad" qualities  greed, selfishness, meanness.  

Usually the "good" outweigh the "bad". Usually we think we are pretty good people. 

This persona is brittle. It's often easily cracked in defensiveness or stress and through these cracks, the other contents of our being come through.  Often these contents are likely to be "bad"; rage, viciousness, destructiveness etc and they come pouring out through the cracks and cause havoc.

Often we blame the "other" for the presence of these "ugly" things - we find ways to quickly disown them, find some scapegoat or some one "less" than us to be the owner of these disgusting traits.

But the truth is we are like the ocean.  The surface of the ocean is vast and we can think we see the ocean; we watch it change from glassy smooth to storm whipped waves and we can think we know it.  But underneath is a huge and complex ecosystem that contains huge life force. We can't afford to dismiss this in knowing the ocean of self.  The leviathans and predators that live there will "get us" if we ignore them and are unwilling to take them into account when we are out swimming around.

We have to understand the hidden and alive aspects of the self and we have to do it in a hurry.

Otherwise we run the risk of not taking responsibility for the things that we can change.  We will get drawn into the seductive power of following someone who let's us off the hook by blaming "the other" for our woes.  We will be righteous in defense of our own blamelessness and perfection and this, in its most vicious form, gives us permission to destroy.

We have to learn to abandon our defense of persona in favour of understanding our own hidden and harmful characteristics. 

We can reclaim our own drive to destruction in order to stop it being expressed outside ourselves.

But we have to do it now.

Stop believing it's all "their" fault. 

Start seeing our full selves; the sharklike self and the glorious dolphin - we need to SEA ourselves into responsible action.

I have been thinking about justice and fairness most of my life.

I think being raised in New Zealand implants the idea of fairness as part of your basic understanding of right.  Well maybe it's having a working class coalminer Grandfather, but i understand the New Zealand psyche as having a deep connection to a sense of fairness. Our socialist style of governance has been taking a battering over the last decade or so but it's an underpinning principle of our country.

One day, when i was working as a nurse in the surgical ward with a wonderful woman i sat on her bed, at the end of the day with tears in my eyes.  We had gotten to know each other.  I used to steal her out of the ward in my lunch break and wheel her down to sit in the sun with me.  We'd talk about life and laugh and sunbathe with our uniform and nightie respectively hiked up.
She had a painful and hideous condition that wasn't going to get better.  And the day i sat on her bed was one where i had had to perform a very painful dressing change on her.  She saw the tears and said "What's wrong?"  I said "It's not fair.  You are a good person and this (waving my hands at her failing body), is just unfair."

She got a steely look in her eye and jabbed her finger through the air in my direction.  'The sooner you realise, my girl, that life is not fair and that no one promised you it would be the happier you will be."

I have never forgotten that conversation but i find myself veering into the it's not fair lane more often than perhaps i would like.  Ok i would like never to veer into that lane.  Whining about things not being fair never gets me anywhere.

And yet i do.

There are situations, i have come to see and know intimately, that fairness will not be possible.

I am in one of those situations right now.  

I feel a deep yawning chasm of fairness in me and i often stand and look into it with longing... wishing it could be filled.

But it won't be filled in the way i want.

The fairness will never come.

I can mourn that and i can complain about that.  i can get angry about the loss and the injustice.  i can try to pretend it doesn't matter to me and it's all good (actually i can't do that very well because it feels like such complete bullshit to be so avoidant.  it does matter. No question)

But i cannot get the fairness from the place i am longing for it to come from.

So i prayed over it and what i got this morning from prayer was

"Justice is mine to create."

That's it.

I get to supply the justice i need. i get to supply the fairness for myself.  i get to tend to the things that do and don't. 

I get to make it fair with my own tools, my own understandings,  my own understandings, my own values, my own capacity, my own desires.

I don't have to outsource justice.  

I get to provide it.

Instead of being hungry looking in the window at the food i wish i could have and will never be invited to share, i can walk away and create my own feast.  I will do this with good grace and in ways that really meet me where i need to be met.

I will create my own justice and it will nourish me deeply.

Tell me what justice you need to create.  Let me make a blessing for you - just leave a comment below and i will make a blessing to meet you in your justice needs.

with love


j

When we are hurt our first reaction is to draw away.

This is the kind of wisdom that has kept us here on the planet (for better or worse). It makes evolutionary sense to know when we must learn that something is dangerous or potentially so.  

When we feel pain we get a chance to withdraw and make a better decision.  We get to choose another action, another path.

We may learn the lesson for ourselves, and pass it on to those we love.

"Don't touch the flame you will get burned."  "That is sharp, be careful".  "Those are poisonous. Don't eat them"

There are times though, when our instincts either don't serve us or we over-ride them - both causing more harm than we need to endure.. 

There are versions of hurt; a broken heart for example, where our instincts tell us to run.  We want to run from the pain, distract ourselves, avoid the suffering.  This means that our hurt is buried out of sight and we are blinded to the root cause or to any potential we have to learn from it.

Couple that with situations of psychological harm, emotional harm, where our instincts tell us to run away and our hurt is so overwhelming that we get frozen.  We stay when we should run.  Or we avoid looking at what is really happening because the cost of discovering what is really happening is too great. 

When our patterning, our cultural mores, our understanding of what is ok, colludes with harm making - a good woman is compliant and makes the peace is a good example, we are bound to the harm making in ways that set us up, if not for diminishment then for deep wounding.

It takes a step out of both our cultural paradigms and our instinct to avoid hurt to come face to face with the harm making we are experiencing.

If you have a broken heart there may be some things that will help you tend to the harm without making you feel like you have been smashed by it.


"When i look into my heart what do i believe?"
"Whose voice does that remind me of?"
"Where can i turn for insight and wisdom on this ?"
"How can i be kinder to myself in order to allow the shy truth to reveal itself?"

When you are hurt the last thing you need is to hurt more with an unkind internal voice, all you are doing is colluding with the harm maker.

Find a way to speak to yourself kindly, take responsibility for your part in things and take action to mend.

Turning towards your pain is a way of ensuring the future will be different.  Turning away will make the same lessons more insistent. 

If you are interested in doing work that will help you turn towards yourself in suffering you might like Facing the Minotaur. Please go here to find out more about it.

with love
j

This quote fills me with hope.

When i first began my enquiry into the world of shadow i was shitting myself and in truth, hope-less.

I knew that i was a hideous person - a martyr, a weakling, a liar, avoidant and o so much more.  I sure as hell didn't want to engage with any of that shit more than i had to.

Give me the shiny and the sweet any day.

But i knew, at the bottom of my sinking heart, that i had to look at those things in order to resolve the struggle i was constantly finding myself in - the seemingly unending ways my arseholery would turn up and leap into the spotlight.  

I knew it was underneath my exhaustion.  I knew it was underneath my imposter syndrome, my self sabotage, my volatile relationships.  I knew that underneath all that was growing heavier by the day, were my failings and faults. Holding them down was becoming more and more arduous and I felt that if i kept dragging them around as i tried to walk in the world i would fall.  Maybe for good.

I'm telling you this because i want to tell you i understand how shadow work can feel like the last bloody thing you want to do.  When trying to hold onto the light is like a lifeline into the world you want to have, into the space where you are able to breathe, not drowning in the hard stuff.

It's my experience though that clinging onto the light, it gets more and more brittle.  It's like the pressure of the unexpressed shadow robs the strength out of the experience of the light.  It's like osteoporosis of the soul.  The strength of your light is leached by unexpressed shadow and it is more and more easily fractured.

That's why this quote gave me so much hope.  

If by approaching shadow "it becomes softer, more pliable, more gentle", then perhaps i too will become softer, more pliable, more gentle?

Although i didn't believe it, i began the work which has become Facing The Minotaur.  This work, the gleanings of a 5 year process of enquiry, intuition, experimentation, learning and practice, has proven the veracity of this quote.

What once scared me shitless is now the ground for my recovery, my strength and my growth.

It is not a quick fix and is a dedication to wholeness that will call on your courage and commitment and it has changed my life.  I am truly honoured to share it with you and if you have any questions or thoughts about shadow or about Facing the Minotaur i would love to connect with you about it.

With love and gratitude

​Jane

Chris Zydel is a gift to the entire planet.  She is the Grand High Priestess of Creative Juices Arts,  an expressive arts maestra, an astrology wizard, a fountain of love, wisdom and bawdiness and one of my favourite people.    Chris has been a soul sister since i connected with her online and then in person... it was like a homecoming meeting with her.

In these times of darkness she is not the flimsy "just turn to the light" kind of heroine but a gutsy truth-teller who is committed to wholeness, realness and the truth of what love and being human is all about.  

How better then to help me usher in my new work Facing the Minotaur but to chat with Chris in her home in San Francisco while i sat in my bed in Whangarei?  

Join us for this loving chat about shadow <3

Photo by Marie-Louise Myburgh.

 wh The other day I was driving back home after a meeting that was both sweet and heart-wrenching.  I was full of emotions and trying to listen to what was stirring in my heart, that i might discern just what was mine and what was not, just where i wanted to head and what i needed to be alert to.  I was trying to listen to the quiet voice inside me that knows but that is so often lost in the clamour of what i am seeing and dealing with that I miss it's instruction.

Without warning, from the left hand side of the road came a Kotare or Kingfisher and it flew straight into the car.  I heard the thud as it hit and looked to see it tumble, lifeless, into the middle of the road.  

When it was safe to do so i turned around and went back to it, stopped and got out to retrieve it from the road. If it had stayed there it would have got ground into the tarseal and i could take it home and bury it with kindness instead, it was the least i could do.

Glorious in its shimmers of blue and green, buttery gold and cream the limp little bird fitted easily into my hand, its black eyes wide open, it seemed so recently dead that life had not left it.

I gently placed it on my lap and covered it with a soft cloth bag which was in the front seat and i said a little prayer to say sorry. I drove off, turning off the radio to make it quiet and soft in the car. With my hand gently on the bird i could feel its warmth and suppleness and after a few minutes was amazed to feel it begin to wriggle a little.

It was still alive.  I thought it must have been very damaged by the impact and although i would usually take it to the amazing Bird Recovery Centre this time i decided to take it to a quiet area close by with trees and ready supplies of water.  It wouldn't be too far from its territory if it by some miracle recovered.

I talked gently to the bird until i got to the safe spot and carried it bag and all out to some shade under big totara trees.  I quietly removed the bag from its head and propped it up, rearranging its wings and smoothing its feathers.  I didn't want to stress it anymore so walked away wishing it well and headed to town to pick up my girl.

When i told Isla she was happy to go and check so half an hour after dropping it off i stopped the car and made my way back to the totara.  There was the bag but no Kotare.  The bird had recovered enough to fly away.

The blessing of this in the midst of this tumultuous time made me rapturous and because i believe that "life is oracular" to quote Fabeku Fantumise , I began to mine this gift of life for messages.  

Although hit, it might not be the end.
Moving away from imminent danger gives us a chance.
Rest and waiting can be powerful medicine.

I also understand the Kotare is the holder of the quality of vigilance in the Wisdom of the Four Winds cards which i highly recommend.  

Some of us are made with hearts that are full of hope.

They are able to return again to barren spaces with seeds and watering can, trusting that of course there can be new growth, of course there will be spring.

Those hearts are precious and to be emboldened by a living and hopeful heart is one of the greatest gifts of my life.

A wise woman i know recently said that without hope there would be no life, no reason for life.  We need to, in our darkest moments have a sense of hope that things will get better.  Knowing the cycle of life (and to extend the garden metaphor) there is a season of burgeoning growth and fruiting and there is a season of decay.  When we are in decay we must trust in the fruiting that will follow.

I am also coming to see how there is a special brand of hope that my Pollyanna tendencies were not prepared for.  I have labelled that toxic hope.

Toxic hope is the kind of hope that keeps you standing in shit with your forehead bloodied from banging on the same wall over and over again, hoping that you'll break through to the clean clothes, shower and soft bed you trust is on the other side.

Toxic hope keeps you in a situation, keeps you manipulating the truth in your own mind, so that you will be able to turn up again to something that is hurting so badly, in the hope that this time it will change, or in three more times it will change or next year or....

Toxic hope is the kind of hope that drains your tank and asks you for more, that does not nourish anything inside you to flourish but only keeps that weedy hope alive to the detriment of most of the other things in your garden.

Toxic hope changes the soil conditions of your life so little else will grow inside you.

Toxic hope is turning up to a nuclear waste ground and expecting to grow some veges that will feed your family.

How do you recognise it?  You are diminished by your hope.  You are kept in a situation that takes and takes and takes and yet you make no discernible progress.  You are shifting your own goalposts for what you would like your life to be.

How do you change it? You have to change yourself.  Toxic hope is your issue.  The person/situation/problem/relationship etc etc you are hoping to change will either do so or not.  You cannot hold them accountable for what you hope. Yep, it's sucky and hard and it is your work alone. You have to change your boundaries.  You have to change your hope so that you put it in the light. You have to look honestly (not through your toxic hope goggles) and carefully at just what is in front of you.

If you are hoping for a better relationship for example, saying "I hope we can resolve this.  Are you willing to walk with me to take the next step and sort this out?"  is one step.  The next and crucial step is paying attention to the answer.  You will either get a yes or a no.  Your only way of rooting out toxic hope is to listen very carefully and act accordingly.  If they give you a yes and act on it you are golden.  If they give you a no then you have to act on it and you are golden (eventually).  If they give you a yes and do not act on it then you actually got a no and you have to act on it (and again you are golden, eventually).

How do you recover from it? When you see you have had toxic hope the first thing you might want to do is be kind to yourself. Toxic hope doesn't mean you have anything to be ashamed of or to be harsh with yourself about, in fact the richer your self care the less likely toxic hope is to reroot in your heart.  If you shame your lovely self you only make yourself more likely to turn to toxic hope when things get sticky the next time. My theory on this is if we are mean to ourselves we often hope (toxically) that someone else will love us more/better/deeper than we can love ourselves.  If we love ourselves generously that need to have someone else apply the love balm is not there. We can meet them replete and ready to give honestly and kindly. To turn away from a situation you have held in toxic hope requires an immense amount of patience with yourself - it's a deep groove (to quote Fabeku Fantumise) and you have a lot of digging to fill it back in.  Turn your capacity to hope onto something new. I hope, for example after my recent bout of toxic hope, to be present for rich and fulfilling friendships.  I am taking steps to hope that i can learn the skills, meet the people, practise the actions that will make this happen.

Toxic hope can kill people, it certainly maims hearts every day.  Please don't let it be you <3

If you have any experience with toxic hope i'd love to hear about it
with love
​j

ps if you would like kick start to self care that isn't about mani-pedis and shopping sprees you can try one of these.

Grief is something so personal i hesitate to write about mine.  It involves other people and i don't have their permission to write their story.  

And yet grief is also universal.  As much as our culture encourages us to run from grief, even going so far as to turn away from ageing women who are a reminder of the scythe of time swiping closer each day to the youth-is-all-there-is-that's-worth-aspiring to  myth.  Each of us are touched by grief.  Each of us shuffle a little closer to the end of the gang plank with each passing day.

This man, with his gentle hands and soft eyes was my Dad.  He died 5 weeks ago tomorrow and i am acquainted with grief the way we all secretly wish to avoid but can't.  Those we love will die.  There is nothing else really that we are promised.

We might feel like we are promised all kinds of other things - my big three are that if you try hard enough love will last forever, things are fair, and love will prevail.

Grief has shifted the first two of those to the not so true pile.  I have learned over the last 6 months that no matter how hard you try love may not last. I was taught years ago by a fierce and generous old woman that "Life is not fair my girl, no one ever promised that and the sooner you let go of that idea the better off you'll be."  She was right and yet i seemed to have a bulb of hope that sprouted after each winter in my heart , a flower that held fairness and hope in it's sepals.

I wanted so much, as i realised that Dad would die soon, to be able to love him Home.  To be able to put aside all of the detritus that had gathered in our path and return to the love that had me trust him so deeply. It was an imperative to me that i do that.  I had no map.  i had no idea what that would mean but i had to be with him in support as he found his way back.

It meant asking my separated husband to come back, leave his life and take over for an unspecified time.  It meant asking my girls to manage without me.  It meant being in a hospital, being with my birth family and all of the confusing and often difficult things that entailed.  But none of that seemed to matter as much as seeing Dad Home.  i had to trust my heart's urgency around this and do it.  I could have listened to the voices outside of myself and just gone and visit but my heart's insistence was strong. It was my Dad and it was all that really mattered.

Dad's circumstances had meant we hadn't been available to each other much over the last couple of years.  That was tough for both of us and i had begun grieving him long before, when the man i loved was no longer really "there".  But none of that mattered.

My family's circumstance meant that this time was hard on everyone in different ways.  That was tough but not in a way that really mattered.

So i continued to grieve while i turned up.  With my brothers we made a map of what we needed to do, how we needed to be, what worked.  We tended to Dad and to each other with kindness and care in a way that melted so much away.

I can't explain how it felt to be in that funny little room, it not really mattering if it was night or day.  Not really mattering if we washed or ate or slept.  I can't tell you all the things that happened in that liminal space but i can tell you what rose up and what sustained us was love.

So much love in fact that i think Dad stayed around a lot longer than the grim reaper wanted him to... he was bathing in that love, soaking it up.  Too bad if the dude with the scythe was tapping his toes and looking at his watch, Dad received and received and received.

I read somewhere that a Buddhist teaching says that we take our state of mind with us when we go and i believe that those last few days Dad had here in this body, meant that he went on with love. Replete with Love, his own and ours and i can't tell you what that means to me this side of it all.

And that brings me to the regret piece,  So often we regret what we don't do.  I wanted to write this because i have been aware that had i carried any regret about what happened for Dad, this grief would be intolerable.  

The gift of turning up for him full bore, nothing held back, in my true loving power has gifted me a clean grief.  Hell yes i miss him.  I wish i could hear him say "Love you" and feel the truth in those words one last time.  But i can turn to him and know he experienced our love for him clean and true and that regret-less state holds me up.

I know i am lucky to have had the chance to farewell him that way but it makes me think about the other griefs i have.  Things that are hard to carry and hard to lose.  If i can tend to myself and my life without regret i know, from my experience with Dad that anything that comes on the other side of that will be cleaner and easier to carry.  

I want to continue to live like that.  To love clean.  To turn up true.  To be alive to what my heart tells me and to act on that faithfully.  That regret-less life is not about being reckless but rather gifting myself the clean river of love that moves through me without the silt of "i should have.." that has clogged my heart for so long.

I miss you Dad and i don't regret a minute of loving you.

Once Upon a Time i went to see a Naturopath.  This man was calm and used a very soft voice with long pauses between his sentences.  He sat, still and considered, in his chair.  He moved slowly when he wrote or reached out to show me something.

I don't know what his prescription was or what i even went to him about but i do remember something he said

"If you do this, this and this, you will be calm like me."

That sat badly with me for reasons the younger me couldn't really articulate.

I think about it now in the light of so much i see on the internet being about being peaceful and forgiving and Marie Kondo-ing not only the interior of our drawers but our lives with a minimalist broom sweeping all the fuzzy and unfinished things out of the way.

I think about it as i tend to my soul and her shadow and her magnificence and i want to go back to that man in that room in Hamilton and say;

"But i don't want to be like you.  I want to be like me.  I want to be wonky and scattered sometimes, i want to be confused and worried sometimes, i want to be exuberant and loud other times.  i want to be me."

i have been learning so much about the subtle pressure applied to us to be something other than what we are as a form of control from the remarkable Kelly Diels,  www.facebook.com/kellydiels, particularly in her facebook group  "How to sell to women without selling them out."   

Kelly talks about Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand (or FLEB for short) that encourages us to aspire to white, thin, cis-gender, heteronormative, ableist tropes without our conscious participation.  It is a patriarchal bind that women seem to dive into (me included ) without a second thought.  I mean we all want success and to be seen as valuable, to be desired and seen as worthy right?  Through Kelly i am learning about how very narrow the definition of that is.  How very dangerous it is to aspire to be a thin white hetero ablebodied woman at all costs, about the carnage and the division that creates in the hearts of good humans.  I am waking up to the truth that i am outside that gate and that to aspire to that is to pour my energy down the bloody drain.  I am not every going to be all of those things anymore in one acceptable package, ever.
I am other than that.  And i realise now that doesn't make me wrong.  It makes me real.

I want everyone in the world who cares about their inner life to be able to be accepting of who they are in all their wonky glory. No comparison or measuring or judging themselves based on cultural paradigms that have little to do with them.  Look, i am sure Buddha was a stand up guy but i don't live hundreds of years ago in Asia, i grew up in Kamo in a moderately dysfunctional family and am making my way the best i can. i am not willing to perpetuate a system that is designed to divide us as humans, make us comply and shrink in order to fit.  

No siree. 
​
I don't want to be like anyone else.  I don't want anyone else to be anything other than what and who they are.  When that is clean we get to connect more fully and more richly.  When we own who we are we are free.

And that, Mr Naturopath, is fine by me.