On my most recent newsletter (link on the top right of this page) I talked about being available to awe.

I believe that the world is full of incredible and deeply precious magic.  And i believe it is everywhere.  On the hard days it can be more tricky to find it but mostly we just have to make ourselves available so it can turn up and floor us.

In the newsletter I suggested that people might like to go through their days making themselves available to awe and let me know how it went... over the next couple of posts i will share their responses.

This response is from the beautiful Monica Herald whom i have met online and learned to value for her deep kindness, her insight and wisdom and her very tangible warmth - it is in everything i have seen
her do.

I think you will agree with me by looking at these photos that the awe she found was rich and i found some of these made me tear up - the quality of connection and softness was beautiful.

​Here's where I've found awe this week: 

 




​at the beach 

 

​my cousins and my great-aunt (who's 94!) 

 

There is something so loving and soft about these images for me.  I notice the wide attention and the truth that miracles are everywhere - in the extraordinary (a seahorse!!! new life!!!  heartshaped stones!!!) and the seemingly ordinary (family gatherings and snuggling cats and yet as i write this i remember how remarkable it is to have family and that another animal learns to turst us enough to sleep and love in our presence)  How we nourish ourselves by noticing can change our hearts - mine feels better for just seeing these images..  

Thank you Monica!

If you would like to get some more Monica in your life her website is here and she has a freebees page with an amazing book here

 Working as i do with one eye in the world and one eyein the other world gifts from the unconscious or synchronicities are especially important to me.  They let me know when I am on the right track, they remind me of when i need to turn or return.  They give me the feeling that my work is being acknowledged.  They are gifts, celebrations and signposts in my life.

One such gift fluttered at my feet this morning as i went on my walk with Billy, our poodle

It was a Puriri moth.  Nocturnal and shy I had only ever seen a photo of one of these before but they are unmistakable, New Zealand's largest moth and other worldly.

It felt like a gift.  It felt significant and as i took it back towards the trees I remembered why it felt significant.

The second ever time i tended my own story, one of the metaphors i used was about the Puriri Moth.  Their silence and otherworldly magic held the energy i wanted to bring in to my story, into my life with this new story.

This process of tending to your story is called Reframing and it was with this Puriri Moth story that i began the work that is one of my favourite ways to tend to others in the world.  A process i have called Reframing Your Story this work is around listening with my auditory ears and my heart ears to what you hold and what is asking to be born from you and writing the story for you with new possibilities and new windows through which you can see your own life.

This process launches our coracle hearts into the imaginal realm and uses the magic and language of the unconscious through image and metaphor to begin to open pathways in our hearts.

I believe in the power of reframing deeply. And in that vein i would like to share with you my very personal story in which the Puriri moth starred.  

The appearance of this messenger today tells me it is time and so i ask that you make space in your heart for something very sacred to me - A Flotilla of Puriri Moths.
​
And if this calls to you and you like the idea of creating a new story, being joined in your life by metaphors that will sustain and transform, images that will hold you strong and lash you to the mast when life is full of sirens then contact me here  about Reframing Your Story.

i wonder if you could take a moment to imagine that you are a tiny tiny bead of light.

for many of us imagining that we are tiny is not a problem - there are times when it has been hard for me to imagine i was anything other than insignificant- but if you could just play with the idea of being a tiny bead of light for a moment it would be great

Look out beyond yourself into the darkness around you... out there are other beads of light  you might know their names or just be able to feel them - friends, family, mentors

Some of them might be bigger or smaller, some of them might be brighter...

Imagine that you as a bead of light are connected to those other beads...

those connections might seem faint or strong, just see if you can see them, start to follow them with your eye, see where they reach, see if you can see where some end and see where others disappear off into the darkness.

Now see if you can notice your light

I want you to think about something that you have recently experienced that might have been difficult, an argument, a loss, a scary experience, notice what that does to your light.

Then thing about something good you experienced, it may be a physical experience like having your feet in the ocean, smelling your favourite perfume being held lovingly or it may be something successful you have completed, something you are building  what does that do to your light

While you are experiencing that look out along the web of connection and see what that does can you see how your good experience lights up along your web.

Can you see how people are nourished the web is strenghtened when you are doing things tht light you up?

Can you see how holding up the web, is done by transmission of light.  

When we have a difficult experience we are able to use the web and our connection to others to move through the hard stuff and our responsibility is to strengthen the web with the things that nourish us.

For me it might be painting, oraying, walking on the beach hanging with my girls, for you it might be dancing or cooking or writing or gardening 

WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WEB, for feeding ourselves and the connections we have by doing what we love.  Deny ourselves and we deny the web.  Rob ourselves of the experience of tending lovingly to ourselves and we rob everyone.  It is there for us to lean on when we need it and it is also our job to charge it up as much as we can.  

Love ourselves and the world benefits.  Go strengthen the web  My light needs your light.

The other day i wrote a newsletter about the power of listening - about how we have to have the courage to be vulnerable when we listen.. it might be painful, we might have to change but listening is the only thing that will change us; open our hearts, remind us of the truth.

Being immersed in the listening of  course raises the shadow of listening and that is Defendedness.

I am wondering about being defended and how that stops us from reaching into vulnerability and having an open heart.  I see people all around me and in my scared moments i become one myself, who defend their right to be right over everything else.

Years ago i had the brainwave to call it The Tyranny of Right.

Wanting to be right over learning, over growing, over listening, over tending to someone i care about

Being defended against anything that threatens what i know and believe to be true, is what keeps me small and disengaged from the world.

I facetiously wrote that not listening was like a monkey in a cage flinging poo at passersby.  It might feel good temporarily to have flung the poo, hell your cage might even be less smelly at the end of it all, but after a while you realise you are still in the cage.

Being defended is like that.  We sit in our well barricaded ideas of what is right and how things should be and we deploy all kinds of missiles - harsh words, judgment, meanness, sarcasm, sneering - which help us feel safe and keep the "others" at bay.

At the end of it all however we are still in a cage.

What will get us out of the cage?

By realising there might be another way.  By understanding that in order for life to be any different we have to make changes. We can't wait for the "others" to change.  It's up to our sorry monkey selves to do something.  It might require something more of us which can be hard and scary and the thought can be tiring as hell when you are already exhausted from flinging poo.  But unless you like the poo flinging more than you like the idea of not being in a cage we monkeys have to do something different.

We have to pay attention to the "others".  We have to learn about them.  We have to notice the ways they do things, change our own behaviour and one day we will find the way to take the key and set ourselves free.

Oh i may be stretching the metaphor but i think we humans have a much greater capacity for understanding than many of us, me included, allow ourselves to believe.

Does it mean that when we listen we have to adopt the attitudes and beliefs of the "others"?

No the monkey doesn't have to start wearing clothes and taking photos, once out of the cage the monkey is free to monkey on but won't ever learn what truly works, what suits them, what is their natural state without first learning from the "others".

I wonder how many cages i can learn my way out of.  What about you?