6 December 2022

Every word you utter from your lips tells others how much you value yourself… and in doing so, you teach others how to treat you. Your words also instruct your inner self how to feel. Ever notice that when you wake up feeling tired and spend all day telling everyone just how tired you are, that you stay tired? Try telling everyone how energised you feel instead, whether you’re tired or not, and watch what happens.
It’s amazing that so many fight for the right for their circumstances to be the exception when it comes to taking responsibility for their thoughts & behaviour. Everyone has the right to be the exception & not take responsibility – life is your own to decide what you make of it. But before you argue with every reason as to why your circumstances are different, think about how much you’re disempowering yourself first.

5 December 2022

I love being a woman.

My own woman. A woman comfortable in my skin, in my thoughts, my feelings and in my life.

I’m not influenced by anything or anyone unless I choose to be. Fashion, men, drama, emotional turmoil, others’ expectations.

They are what they are, and I am who I am. I will either choose them or not, but the choice is mine. It always has been.

I know that, which is why I love being a woman so much.

4 December 2022

When we’re stuck in our patterns, feeling low, and we find a teacher who can provide the tools to help us begin to love ourselves, then we start to feel better. That is absolutely wonderful. The journey has to begin somewhere and progress from there. I wholeheartedly agree with this.

However, sometimes, instead of taking an individual on a journey into self-love through humility, it can all too easily take them on a journey into self-love through superiority… and that’s as far from humility or spirituality, or indeed even effective personal development, as it gets.

They are opposite ends of the scale. Humility is soul based. Superiority is ego based. Acting humble doesn’t make someone humble – that is false humility (being proud of being humble) and is ego based.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen spiritual philosophy taught from a place of superiority…. ‘What others’ think of me is none of my business’ taught in a way that suggests ‘you are above all that rubbish’. That is the way the ego teaches it.

If taught with humility it would also help us understand that what we think of others is just as irrelevant as what they think of us. But I so rarely ever see that being mentioned, because it seems to be forgotten. The ego gets in the way unfortunately and blinds us to ourselves. In other words it’s fine for us to do it to others, but not for anyone else to do it to us.

No. That path is fraught with pain, anger, resentment, you name it.

3 December 2022

Five seconds later Andy began singing the drunken sailor song.

It had featured in the movie.

I asked him “What made you sing that?”

“I don’t know” he said.

This happens frequently. We’ve almost stopped being freaked out by it. Almost.

2 December 2022

For years now, I’ve been having the most intense, profound dreams. In every one of them I’m stepping back in time. Each dream is a whole experience of living there. The dreams are not disjointed – they are one long flowing experience which lasts what feels like several hours, all of which I remember clearly. In the dreams I’m having meetings with people I can see clearly – I can see what they and I am wearing, I remember our conversations, our agreements. I am in rooms I can describe to the finest detail and I’m walking down streets that I can see clearly.

Then I wake up with clear memories of the whole thing. I feel in awe it it all, yet very peaceful and content. The dreams are not bad. They are just normal experiences, but of life centuries ago as another being, with so much clarity it’s difficult to explain.

I’m not experiencing the dream like a movie where I’m watching it from a distance. I’m experiencing it in the body of the person in the dream. I can look down and see my hands, my feet, my clothes, I can hear myself speak, I can look deep into the eyes of the people I am with…

I have had many dreams like this over the last few years, but since one particularly mind-blowing dream a while ago where I actually came face to face with myself from this past life, they have even more clarity. Each dream has a very clear message.

I’m not losing the plot. Instead it feels like something in me has awoken and to be honest it actually feels quite amazing.

What has also happened alongside it, is several premonitions per day of things that are about to happen, and then they happen. Only for me, not for anyone else. It’s only my own timeline I appear to be jumping around on. I’ve had this for a while now – the connection with past and future.

I’ve always felt life was huge. But now, I don’t think there are words that can actually explain the immensity with which the magic unfolds.

1 December 2022

No growth goes on forever. It it did it would become monstrous. Old growth has to fall away before new growth can take place. That happened to me – I became disillusioned with spirituality, because I began to see so many untruths in what I thought I knew. As I began questioning things, often with anger at how I had been fed these untruths (but mainly that I had chosen to believe them) new truths opened up for me, like a river pushing its way through a new path.

This brought a clarity and simplicity I’d not experienced before, and an understanding of the deepest levels of my self.

I don’t know how to explain how it feels other than this: I am sitting here at my desk. My body is working to type this, my brain is thinking as I type the words… but ‘I’ am not that. ‘I’ am watching my mind think, observing my thoughts, watching my responses to situations, observing how my body reacts, feeling every beautiful sensation… I am seeing instantly whether something is ‘true’ or ‘untrue’, because I am no longer layering my imagination over situations. I’m observing with clarity the part I, and my thoughts, play in each and every situation. It’s a beautiful experience, no matter whether my thoughts are considered positive or negative by outside labeling, they are all equally incredible to observe going on within me, and how they affect what then happens around me.

‘I think, therefore I am’ is not true. My thoughts are actually meaningless.

What I have come to know with an understanding so deep is that nothing and no one can harm me. You can take away my arms, ‘I’ will still be here. You can throw any life-situation at me, and my body may suffer, but ‘I’ will still be here. You can even take away my entire body, and ‘I’ will still be here. I’ll say it again… nothing and no one can harm me.

‘I’ is so expansive there are no words to express it. I feel immense love, immense understanding and I feel no fear, no anxieties. I feel no victim-hood whatsoever. There is instead a feeling of peacefulness. I’ve felt it for a long time now, but it continues to grow. I feel deeply connected, yet detached from illusory drama. To not speak my truth would feel like a blatant lie. To not live my truth would feel like insanity. To live my truth feels simple.

Very little is complicated. It’s our thinking, and our wish to believe that we are our thoughts and that they should mean everything, that makes life complicated.

30 November 2022

You text a romantic partner. He/she doesn’t text back. You have two options: apply positive thinking, or apply negative thinking.

You can either assume they’re in a meeting and will get back to you as soon as they can. Or, you can assume they’ve gone off you and you’ve been silently dumped.

Whichever choice you take, you will make your reality. It doesn’t mean it’s the truth though. The truth is the actual reason they didn’t text back. Until then, everything in your head is an illusion you’ve created.

We are taught that positive thinking is better for us. Yes, it can help us cope better with situations. However, don’t allow it to blind you to the fact that the other version may also exist.

When I became familiar with my own ego’s particular games, one of them was having a mindset of abundance – I found a silver lining to every situation. I went through life fearless and courageous, and then learned that it was actually a strategy my ego used to succeed in the world. My reality crashed down around me, as I learned to begin seeing the reality of situations and people. I had to come to terms with some pretty major stuff that I had ‘silver lined’, because I had trained my brain to not see the stuff I didn’t want to see.

We all do this. It’s called beliefs. They create a form of blindness in each and every one of us. Try it for yourself. Look around the room you’re in and count how many red things you see.

Do it now, before you continue reading…. I’ll wait.

Okay, now look only at this post and say out loud how many blue things you saw while you were seeking only the red. Most of you, if you’re in a strange place, won’t have seen the blue items at all. Because you’re too busy matching your brain to your beliefs and seeing only what you want to. But focusing only on the red is not a true reflection of the room you’re in, is it?

Positive thinking is great, but please use it wisely. Make sure that your life can be lived truthfully and honestly, and not under the illusion of either a positive or negative thinking filter. You should have a healthy mix of the two, which allows you to tap deeply into your intuition. Seeing who people actually are will serve you wisely, rather than choosing to see only the best or the worst in them.

29 November 2022

If you have no preconceptions about me, then you will see the real me.
If you do have preconceptions about me, then you will see your version of me.
Except I am not your version of me…
I am mine.

28 November 2022

From my teens when I began dating, I was never attracted to men who were ‘players’ or overtly charming. I could sense instantly when a guy had little interest in anything meaningful. It never mattered whether he was good looking or not. I was looking inside, not out, because ultimately that’s who I’d be having the relationship with anyway. Friend after friend would fall foul of men like this, spending months and even years mending their broken hearts, yet I couldn’t understand why they never saw the warning signals in the same way I did.

If a man was an expert at charming me, my intuition would tell me that this was who he actually was – someone who charmed to get what he wanted. An expert manipulator. Never once did their charm make me feel good or worthy as a woman, because I felt worthy anyway. All it told me was that I wasn’t the first, certainly wouldn’t be the last and that he’d most likely enjoy ‘practising’ charm on others a great deal. If I’m meant to find that attractive, the problem is I don’t. So I stayed well clear. As a result, I haven’t been in many relationships. The men who fell in love with me stayed with me, and I’ve never had to deal with infidelity.

I had to ask myself – if a woman doesn’t love herself initially, does attention from a man become so significant that it quite literally blinds her to the truth behind it?  I can only put it down to this. You see, I was very blessed with my parents. I was nurtured, loved, told I could achieve anything, encouraged, and my folks always instilled a positive mentality in me. As a result of my upbringing, I never suffered with fear, lack of self love, self doubt. This seemed to be the only difference between the men who were stepping up for me, and the men who were stepping ‘on’ my friends and the kind of men that we were attracted to.

Thing is, a man will tell you exactly who he is by the way he enters into, or tries to enter into a relationship with you. Just remember that you’re also telling him exactly who you are in the same way. If you’re willing to put up with pretty much anything, then that’s exactly what you’ll get.

That’s not to say I haven’t had issues in my relationships, because of course I have. I just haven’t had the issues which generally come along with ‘players’.

Part of my expectation in relationships came from me – I encouraged, supported, praised, and expected men to be the best of themselves. I think there’s a lot to be said for the unspoken energy of expectation between two individuals.

From what I understand now when I look back, how my relationships unfolded were in the main a mixture of three things – Firstly, loving myself enough so that manipulative tactics never blinded me to the truth of who a man is. Secondly, expecting the best from a man and teaching him how I expect to be treated as a woman, and thirdly, supporting him to be the best man he can be.

27 November 2022

Learning positive psychology is very predominant in today’s society. But there is a danger in learning only how to be happy through the use of positivity tools, which can then move one into a place of positivity superiority. We begin to see others as negative, we choose to be around only other happy people who feed our happiness, and begin to see ourselves as somewhat superior to those who aren’t experiencing the same happiness we are.

Thing is, when we are seeing others as negative, we also put ourselves on a pedestal above them. Therein lies a problem. Because that in itself is moving even further into the ego, and further away from genuine love. This is not happiness. It’s pretending to be happy, and it’s still at the mercy of others feeding it, or of having to get the ‘toolkit’ out each and every time you need to overcome something to bring you back into a happy state.

When we move authentically into love, we realise we are not special or superior, and that others are all struggling with their own issues, which in turn, is determining their behaviour. We stop judging them, becoming a victim to them, and instead witness how we ourselves are perceiving them. That brings with it a very profound sense of unshakeable peace, because forgiveness and understanding become the norm. There is no ‘them and us’ in that, because I know of no one who has not been through a difficult time which has brought out the negative side of their nature. Myself included. When I’ve been there, being judged as ‘negative’ by others only served to put me into guilt and keep me there even longer.

We have to see ourselves first. In my own experience (and I travelled the ‘positive psychology’ route extensively!), I personally feel that until we come face to face with our own shadow side and are no longer blinded to our own faults, perception, and the judgements and rules we place on others, that it’s not possible to become authentically happy at a deep and sustainable level. What we will achieve instead is to ‘ice over the cracks’ extensively.

They are in effect, two very different journeys. One will take you on a journey into humility (soul) and the other will take you on a journey into superiority (ego). Both have great intentions and will of course have an impact on life, that goes without saying. However, the outcomes are very different.

26 November 2022

If you want others to respect you as their equal, then stop seeking their approval. Seek your own…

It is not their burden to have to provide it for you.

25 November 2022

We give so much value and significance to our thoughts, simply because they are ‘ours’… they create our reality after all and we have a vested interest in making them right.

Imagine what you might see if you gave up the importance of your thoughts and simply observed for a short while. No filters, no judgment about what’s wrong or right according to your model of the world… instead just simple observation of what is.

Might you perceive a whole new world?

In reality your thoughts are meaningless. The real you is the one observing your thoughts.

24 November 2022

Have you ever noticed just how addicted we are to our own pain? This is evident pretty much in everyday life…
We don’t share our truth with others, then wonder why they overstep our boundaries.
We are fearful to make decisions which we know will take us into living our purpose.
We are fearful to enter into new relationships.
We become attracted to partners who we know are going to manipulate, use or hurt us, yet we go ahead anyway.
We complain relentlessly, yet refuse to take action.
We love it when someone else offends us, because we can’t wait to tell everyone else about it.
We make others responsible for our happiness, then wonder why we constantly get let down.
We judge others all the time, and…
We then get one negative opinion from someone else, and suddenly nothing else exists in our mind.
We find any and every reason not to love ourselves.
We give without admitting that we want something back.
We take on others’ pain at the drop of a hat – guilt/shame.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Then we turn to another form of addiction, so that we can forget how addicted we are.
Animals don’t do any of this. Only humans.

23 November 2022

There are many philosophies we think we are applying to life, but I believe we can only do so theoretically until we begin to see and experience ourselves. It’s ourselves that we are experiencing them all through, after all.

‘What others think of me is none of my business’. We can all apply this theoretically. We can even get on our high horse and scream it out loud with damnation if we want to…. but when we do, it’s because we do care what others think of us. Period.

To really begin living it authentically, you first need to see how much you impose on others through your own fears, your own ego, your own needs and expectations, your own judgements and rules, your own behaviour… and then…

Realisation dawns on you just what an illusion they all are. What dawns in reality is yes, what others think of you is none of your business, but what’s EVEN more important is that what you think of others is just as irrelevant. This realisation happens in an instant, and when it does, life never looks or feels the same again. Your eyes open. The real journey begins. You actually become present in your SELF.

It’s only then that realisation can dawn on you that what others are imposing on you is all their illusion too. Then, and only then, are you able to authentically live with the innate knowledge that what others think of you really is none of your business, but with a very real and profound understanding of why. Instead of watching and observing others, you observe how you yourself are judging and perceiving them, not the other way around. No reaction is felt towards their behaviour, no judgement made. It is simply observed for what it is, but no further meaning is placed on it.

Real spiritual growth does not come simply with looking on the bright side of life all the time. That in itself can stop our growth dead in its tracks. Instead it involves looking into your deepest darkest corners and hidden depths, seeing all of your worst bits with complete clarity, understanding your innate motivating drives, holding your hands up to all of it – everything your ego spends its life convincing you is the only right way to be – then working on that. You will experience life, self and others differently…

22 November 2022

If you think someone is going to judge you negatively, then you’re judging them negatively before they even get the opportunity…

21 November 2022

There is something which is so little talked about in personal development, and it’s that everyone has a shadow side. We all have a side to our nature which we repress or deny, but it’s this side of ourselves which creates the recurring patterns we struggle with, and cause our negative behaviour and judgement towards others. It’s this side of us that also tends to feel judged by others, and to take offence when others are different to us and point out those differences. We tend to be able to see everyone else’s ego, but we feel deeply offended when someone dares to see ours.

We continually fight to keep our subconscious shadow side ‘safe’, and will find ourselves dancing around like puppets on a string as we dart around attempting to avoid anything and everything that threatens our ego. Our ego needs to be liked, to be agreed with, but then so does everyone else’s…

Instead of taking the journey into our own shadow, then learning how to master it so it no longer runs the show, what we tend to do is search for solutions which allow it to remain in denial instead. We search for positive thinking tools which cover over the cracks in our ego, providing us with ways of dealing with those challenges so we don’t feel so bad when something outside of our control happens. But because this is dealing with the effects and not the cause, when the icing wears off, those challenges resurface time and time again, and so we search for yet another solution.

Yet when you really think about this, what this is actually doing is plastering yet another layer over your shadow, giving your ego reason to feel even stronger, even more superior than anyone who dares to nip or offend… (sorry, it’s not pleasant I know, but it’s very true).

When you face all of yourself, bringing your hidden shadow side into your conscious awareness and work on that, it allows you to see the reality of what is. It brings with it a deep sense of humility, because you begin to see the parts of yourself that creates pain in others, that manipulates others, and you begin to see your deepest fears and everything that your shadow has been working so hard to protect. So few would ever want to admit they ever do this, but they do. Just subconsciously, that’s all – this is what I mean by repressed or denied, thus it’s called ‘the shadow’.

Facing your shadow allows you to take a step back from your ego and begin witnessing how you actually show up in situations, rather than directing your perspective only at others and feeling that it is everyone else who is somehow mad/wrong, whilst you are the only one who is sane/right.

It allows you to begin the journey of learning learn how to stop fighting to protect it. You stop dancing around like a puppet, at the mercy of everyone else’s opinion of you, you stop dancing around desperate to be liked. That really is all ego stuff, but it keeps you running and makes you exhausted.

It’s deep inner work, and the wonderful thing is that it’s not temporary. It’s evolutionary – it’s a continued journey which never ends, one which changes your entire experience of life, adding more and more beauty with each passing year. You never rid yourself of your ego (it comes along with the human body unfortunately), but you can greatly reduce the power it holds over you, your life, your relationships and the patterns it plays. You can greatly reduce the pain it creates within you, which is pretty much most of it.

All victimhood is removed. Fear is removed. Everything is seen for the reality of what it actually is, rather than through the filter of how your ego sees it, and there is very little left to take offence at. You release others from being accountable to your ego, and they therefore begin showing up very differently around you. You begin to experience love as it really is, rather than having others dance to the demands of your ego, or else… There is no more inner-resistance, because you are not fighting for something which you are stubbornly refusing to see. You cannot change what you’re not willing to see, so until you’re willing to see it, embrace it and work on the whole of yourself, the seeking of cover-up tools continues.

Understanding yourself fully brings with it a sense of inner peace, after the discomfort of seeing your own shadow for the first time of course (if it’s not deeply uncomfortable, then you’re not truly facing it), but this is a peacefulness and a feeling of utter liberation which is unlike any other.

Inner peace becomes who you are, not what you do. And that is the fundamental difference.

20 November 2022

One of the things I love and respect most about others, is when they respect me enough to share their truth with me. No matter what that truth is, good or bad, it says a lot when someone trusts my ability to respond enough to be able to share it. The truth always sets you free; it creates an honest and trustworthy bond between people, providing a platform for resolution. Share yours with someone you love today.

19 November 2022

Ever heard the saying “Walking on eggshells?”

It’s actually the Egoshell – very fragile, and with a being inside who is waiting to break out so it can begin to live and breathe. One small knock to the egoshell, and the cracks begin to show. It can result in a gooey, sticky mess…

If something doesn’t knock your egoshell, you’re not learning anything new. Every knock is here to help aid escape… except that through the shell nothing is seen, so danger is assumed and suitable offence taken…

Escape is always better from the inside out, though sometimes simply not possible…. because it is not known what exists beyond the safety of the shell, so fear keeps the being within…
Sometimes someone is needed to crack it wide open from the outside…

If only more realised the difference between the chicken and the egg… and what exists beyond the egoshell…

18 November 2022

Fall for players, and you’ll spend your life complaining that men are terrible.
But hang on. You’re the one falling for them!
But that doesn’t count… apparently.
Except it does.

Until you acknowledge the part you play in being attracted to manipulators, you will remain a victim of their games.

We spend so much of our lives clinging to what doesn’t serve us. We cling to our pain, we cling to our drama, we cling to our identity… in fact sometimes we actually demand those things cling to us! It makes no sense to cling when we have wings to fly. The problem is, in order to achieve flight, you have to let go…

The truth hurts. But it also sets you free.

17 November 2022

I have known people who say that they have fallen in love in an instant. They have known a person for only a brief period of time and believe that this one person is the only love they could ever be with. No one else ever comes close to living up to that one love, and so they deny themselves the opportunity of falling in love with any other with this euphoric depth because no one else ever quite makes the grade…. or they take on another love whilst secretly yearning for their last…

In considering this, I had to ask myself – what is love? For Andy and I, love means that we ‘see’ one another for everything we are – positive and negative. We accept one another fully, and we encourage the other to be who they are, and the best of who they are… our love grew substantially as we opened up to sharing our deepest truths with one another. We pressed each others’ buttons, we’ve seen the very worst and the very best in each other, and it has been through this truth and acceptance of the whole of who we are that we came to understand what love truly is. This journey took time… and it is a deeply beautiful journey.

In considering the above, I asked myself if Andy and I had met briefly and parted after a short time, would we both have spent the remainder of our lives yearning for the other? Well, during that early time together, we saw only one another’s good side… we both felt it was love, but looking back now it is fairly clear that it was infatuation…

How do I know this? Because the difference in depth of what we now experience is incomparable. We didn’t know each other enough to be deeply in love. Infatuation and love are hugely different, but infatuation can convince us that euphoric love is what we are actually experiencing.

During the early stages of a relationship, both parties enter into it making a great deal of effort to meet the other’s needs and to show only their very best side. This is called the Honeymoon period. If one person then chooses to leave the relationship during this euphoric stage, the other is left with the impression that they have lost the greatest love of their life and are left, quite literally, in a state of yearning. In many cases it may simply be because they have never seen anything other than their now missing partner’s very best side, and have not been together long enough to experience a difficult time in their relationship, annoyance, frustration, negative patterns and habits… and so no one else gets even remotely close to making such an incredible impression on them again.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an individual who has no negative side to their nature, however we can be convinced that our now missing partner is indeed this individual if we have only ever experienced their good side.

We also know that the 9 very distinctive energies of the Enneagram can easily create an instant polarity between two people – some can charm, others can draw others in or flirt, and this instant ‘connection’ can be felt across a room in a single moment. However, it is actually only two ego energies colliding instinctively, and not in any way love. It’s more commonly known as lust.
If you have not been with someone long enough to see their bad days, their worst days, their bad moods, their ego patterns, and they left the relationship with you craving only the euphoric moments you shared with them, then can it really be love? Especially if it’s unrequited…because love takes two people sharing a deeply understood bond.

If you are holding on to a love like this, then perhaps it’s time to consider this… and perhaps give yourself permission to let go and move on…

16 November 2022

Inner peace is simple really. You don’t need to create a lot of drama in your life for no reason.

When people teach you who they are, just listen. That’s all you have to do. Take nothing personally, because how another operates within and what they project outward is nothing to do with you. Who they are is not within your control. If you’re not setting out to hurt anyone, and someone snipes at you anyway, take heed. That’s the time to choose what you want for your life.

These people are meant to be in our lives, because they teach us how to put boundaries down. Once the lesson is learned however, it doesn’t require constant repeating. So, listen when people teach you who they are, pick up the mirror too, to see who you are… then choose – inner peace or drama. That bit is up to you, regardless of what others do. You are entirely capable of moving away from those who are ‘ego-ing’ you around without your own ego getting involved.

No drama. Simple choice.

Just choose and get on with life.

15 November 2022

Have you ever considered that when you strive to maintain a permanently positive outlook on everything in life, that you are simply icing over the cracks?

The greatest journey for me was the one I took within, coming face to face with my ego, my shame, my guilt, my fears, everything that my ego inflicts upon me and others… none of us escape, yet few actually look at how their ego shows up, the patterns it plays and how it affects others. We’re usually too busy judging others to consider it… or looking outwards for someone else to ice over the cracks for us.

A few years ago, I encountered the greatest freedom after I had taken a very painful journey within. I faced everything that I had worked so hard to conceal, never admit to and hide. As my body lay in shame, I allowed myself to embrace every part of it, owning it fully… I reviewed my entire life, but for the first time in every instance clearly seeing my ego showing up. Ouch! Until then, my memories had simply been ‘life’, and I had been blissfully unaware of ‘myself’. I surrendered to all of it. It hurt, and it hurt deeply.

At the same time my soul watched protectively from a place of ineffable love, cradling my shamed body as a mother cradles her young, bringing me into awareness that it was only my physical being feeling this shame, not my soul… I had never experienced feeling two such opposing emotions at the same time and for that length of time, and I was clearly able to feel them both. My soul’s protective energy allowed me to experience my shame fully, allowing it to run its course without any feeling that it was somehow a bad or negative thing to do so. It allowed me to see myself fully for the first time. I stayed there for around one week as everything I thought I was quite literally shattered into a million pieces around me.

The ‘I’ which remained after my shame dissolved, was my loving soul observer… I had changed. I stopped resisting anything. My rebellious and free-spirited ego had been good at resisting things, but I could no longer feel that drive. I could see myself clearly. I felt like a coat of armour had been removed from my skin. My body felt free, alive, strong and wanted only healthy and honest love, healthy truths… no more resistance to that which was good for me, and a clear ability to establish the difference.

It was liberating and has enabled me to experience myself and life with a deep awareness of who I am, letting go of the patterns that held me back. I am experiencing a new kind of presence, humility and love. Until then, I felt so happy, but wasn’t even aware that I had been holding on to things that I refused to allow myself to see. I have been through many breakthroughs in my understanding in the past, but nothing like this…

Sharing the journey with Andy was beautiful. He supported me when I needed him and left me alone when I needed that too. He made none of it ‘about him’, which allowed me the space to experience all of it without guilt or pretence… It was amazing sharing my deepest truths with the man I love. He saw all my shame, naked and vulnerable, exposed and raw as I held up my hands to every part of my ego and owned all of it. He still loved me. I still loved me. Our love reached a new place of being.

Yet if I had iced over it with a must need for ‘positive, positive, positive’, I would never have allowed myself one of the most incredible journeys of my life.

I have come out of it with an awareness that I am pretty much nothing. I am not who I thought I was. That was my ego. I feel so much freedom. I have much to learn. I am open to it all. I feel completely unafraid. The experience of life is an exhilarating journey.

14 November 2022

Every relationship is a dancing of two unique energies. You will never fall in love the same way twice, nor will you experience the same kind of relationship twice (patterns yes, relationship no).

It takes practise to get it right. Even on Strictly Come Dancing, couples have to learn how to move around each other in complete synchronicity. So do lovers… and it’s perfectly okay.

A great relationship does not necessarily mean that it’s meant to be blissfully happy and effortless from day one…. it means that two people choose to make the effort to learn the moves because they enjoy dancing together.

The rewards of doing so are infinite.

13 November 2022

Have you ever thought about your relationship needs?

Ever wondered what yours are?

Because if you don’t know, then how is your partner supposed to know how to meet them?

Many don’t know what their needs are because they’ve never put their own needs first, or they don’t want to appear to be high maintenance.

Problem is, if your partner doesn’t know your needs, then how can you be anything other than high maintenance in reality? Purely because your relationship becomes a guessing game.

12 November 2022

Entering into a new relationship is like learning to drive a new car… it will only work if you’re in sync with it. Your job is to understand which control does what, adjust the seating so it’s right for you, fuel it, service it, and nurture it with love… if not, then breakdowns will be frequent and infuriating…

11 November 2022

You may or may not know that before we became Tour Guides, Andy and I taught a lot about the shadow side of human behaviour. We’d work with couples and individuals on a regular basis, taking them on a journey into understanding themselves and others.

We would talk very openly about the different ways the shadow shows up. This is the part of human nature that people really don’t want to see about themselves – we love to see the failings in others, but we are wilfully blind to our own. This is normal. We can’t see it until someone shows it to us.

In our work, we’d always begin by talking openly about our own shadows – Andy’s and mine – and how they affected our relationship through our early challenges, right through to the present. We’d share openly how we interact and manage our shadows these days. This would allow others to see us fully first, warts and all, before we’d expect them to open up to the concept of seeing and accepting their own shadow side.

They need to see more than just us, so we’d also talk about people we’d had interactions with – people from our past, famous people, movie stars, normal everyday people – as many people as possible. We’d discuss openly, logically and without judgement the aspects of the various shadow behaviours in action. This was absolutely essential in giving context to the understanding of how the shadow works. To understand something, you have to be able to see it in action first. Otherwise it’s all theoretical.

People would listen intently, and it was all fine… UNTIL I discussed the shadow side of some spiritual teachers they happened to know and admire. Then, for some reason everything would change. Suddenly the people in the audience who considered themselves spiritual would look at me differently because they felt offended. I was even pulled up once and told I was speaking out of turn.

Yet I wasn’t doing anything different at all. I was teaching about humans with shadows.

What became evident is that people who considered themselves spiritual seemed to assume that their spiritual teachers don’t have a shadow. How bizarre is that? It’s like saying they don’t have skin.

This was the only vocation that it really wasn’t okay to speak about in shadow terms. Doing so triggered something…

I always found it somewhat ironic.

Because it was only those souls who were willing to face their own shadow, who didn’t differentiate between the occupations of the people I was teaching them about. They were the same souls who didn’t need to refer to themselves as ‘spiritual’, even though they evidently were.

This was the turning point for me to leave that line of work and change my life completely.

10 November 2022

Today, I would like to say just one thing. I love you Andrew Nicholson… You have not only stepped up, but stepped way beyond…

I cannot even begin to explain in words the sheer warmth you bring to my life, my arms, my soul and my heart. Sharing this journey with you has been exhilarating and life-changing. Thank you for holding me so accountable to being the best I can be, and for doing so in such a loving way. You are one amazing man. Thank you for sharing your life with me. ♥

9 November 2022

When you’re not in conscious awareness, you will manipulate others and you will be manipulated by others. You will be unaware of both, and in denial of both, but will wonder why your patterns keep playing out over and over again. Victimhood will come and go regularly, as will feelings of happiness, love…

When you’re brought into conscious awareness, you will stop manipulating. Others will no longer be able to manipulate you. They will try, but you will not receive it. Victimhood disappears. The patterns cease and relationships change.

Conscious awareness creates a massive shift in the way you experience life. It’s like an orgasm – you know when it happens to you. It is not inner-happiness or positive thinking, it is a fundamental change to your entire existence that goes way beyond those inner-states.

To the mind and body it is quite literally like the difference between sleep and awakening. One is illusion, the other is reality. When you’re asleep you do not know your dreams are not reality, until you wake up.

8 November 2022

There’s a definite split in the personal development industry… though this split doesn’t seem evident to many at all.

There’s ego development – which teaches you how to manipulate to get what you want: whether it be more success, more love, gain the love you want, gain pretty much anything you want if you just use these ‘6 secret strategies’…

This brings with it a prideful sense of how spiritually developed one is.

And then there’s spiritual development – which moves you in the exact opposite direction – out of your manipulative games, away from the manipulation of others, and into connection with your deeper self – your soul.

This brings with it a sense of humility.

They take you in very different directions, though under the same banner of ‘Personal Development’. So be clear on what it is you are actually seeking within yourself when embarking on your personal journey.

7 November 2022

A woman asks on a Scottish Travel Facebook page:
“Best place to get a tattoo in Scotland?”
No hello, no please, no pleasantries… just a demand for information, as if the world somehow owes it.
Most people love to share their wisdom, so were bending over to answer her demand.

One guy responds with “On your arse.”

Bloody love it.

6 November 2022

I finished creating a virtual tour in 2021 which holds a great deal of love and meaning for me. It’s a tour about the lesser-known stories of real people, like you and me, who lived in a certain area of the Highlands centuries ago. I want to share something that really dawned on me as I was putting it together.

In the middle of nowhere in the Highlands, there is a large round stone cairn standing solitary in the middle of a field. This cairn stands on one famous Clan’s ground, and it looks like a special monument to the Clan. The most natural thing is to instantly liken this huge cairn to the Clava Cairns, the ancient stone cairns a couple of miles from our home, which are visited by thousands every year.

When I first saw this cairn, I too instantly felt it was a monument to the Clan.

And then I learned the truth.

In the late 1800s, the Clan chief sold the estate and moved to London. He sold it to a wealthy man who cared nothing for the Scots. There used to be a village, a thriving township, in that field, with working crofts and farmers earning a living for their families.

Less than one year after this wealthy man moved in, he doubled the rents on the properties on his land. He also turned the land into woodland for deer, meaning the crofters could not keep their livestock there.

One crofter had words with the land-owner, who, furious at having been spoken to like that, gave the tenant notice to quit. Except others from the township stood with their Clansmen and together they all objected. So all were evicted.

Their homes were demolished and the house stones piled high in one great heap, so that the tenants could never return. The estate workers who were made to demolish these homes and pile the stones into a cairn, burnt their fingers with the heat still in them. That is how fast this happened.

The cairn was never a monument to the Clan. It was the new land-owner’s way of erasing the Clan’s history, of stating that their connection to this place and community were of no importance now.

In one year, a wealthy man with interest only in money destroyed 400 years of Clan history, erasing it and enjoying the view of their piled-up demolished homes every day.

Also concerning is that this is never discussed in the locality, still today. Literally. People are not discouraged from even mentioning it.

I cried when I learned the truth, because it dawned on me so profoundly, that we think times have changed, that people have evolved over the last few centuries, but in reality, have they? Because we seem to assume that something like this could never happen now…

5 November 2022

Isn’t it a shame that we wait until someone has passed on before we realise how much they meant to us? Until we realise how much we miss them? Until we long to tell them how much we love them?

It’s a game called fear. We don’t tell them because we’re afraid they won’t respond in the way we need them to. So we wait until they die, then we express our emotions.

This is called regret. It walks alongside grief.

Freedom is letting those you love know how you feel now, and granting them the space and respect to respond however and whenever they are able to, without your ‘rules’. That is love. That is also freedom from fear.

It’s exhilarating to give love, knowing you have and are enough.

4 November 2022

For me, part of my nature is as a reformer and in speaking up, having the courage to share my absolute truth and not mind how others take it. As a reformer, I tend to live by what Albert Einstein said ‘The world won’t be destroyed by those who do wrong, but by those who stand back and do nothing’. So for me on a very personal level, I have a strong voice and a strong sense of passion and purpose, and I love to be in flow with both…  It took me years to find the courage to share what I felt inside, and I can’t even begin to express the joy I have found in daring to speak it…

We are all so different, and our differences are what give us all a unique purpose… some are driven by peace and prefer to move away peacefully, others are driven by passion and prefer to speak up. Both are perfect and ultimately very necessary for mankind… we balance each other out exactly as we should and we learn from one another in the process. The world simply couldn’t survive with only one or the other…

For me, expressing my truth is how I pass my strength, my understanding and my journey on to others in the hope that it will give them something which allows them to tap into their own strength and do the same.

Some days I express love, some days romance, some days passion, and some days fiery passion… I am each and every one of these passionate women and adore being so…

But the thing I love most is to challenge people’s thinking… and ultimately to get them thinking…

3 November 2022

Often, the only way to respond effectively to a situation is to remove yourself completely from it, metaphorically speaking, so you can see it for what it actually is. If you can remove your annoyance, your ego, your reasons for being offended, you will see the other person’s pain so much more clearly. Until then, it’s always going to be about your pain.

2 November 2022

If you really think about it, victimhood is one of the biggest selling things out there. There’s almost a competition to see who can be the greatest victim. People get a heck of a lot of juice from their victim stories. This is not a judgement incidentely, it’s just an observation of what is. It’s not like I haven’t played the victim card myself, because I have. We all have. It’s part of the ego’s nature.

These days, when I find myself inclining towards playing the victim card, it feels like I’m stepping into a game of illusion and untruth, and settling for being far less than I know I actually am.

The victimhood I am speaking of here is not physical violence from someone else. It is self imposed emotional victimhood – the clinging to our dramas, our pain. There is a big difference.

1 November 2022

There’s a belief which goes along the lines of:- if you don’t feel positive all the time, you’ve somehow failed on your spiritual journey. It’s simply not true. I totally get where it’s coming from, and that things can be overcome more easily with a positive mindset. However, there is something which goes far deeper than that.

Being positive all the time does not make someone enlightened or awakened, particularly if they are striving for that positivity and fearful of losing it. If things are suppressed, glazed over, denied in an effort to remain positive, that in itself is fear based. In fact it’s a pretty terrifying thought to HAVE to feel positive all the time.

Inner stillness can only be achieved when you are able to feel deeply at peace with whatever emotion you feel – whether you’re afraid, grieving, angry, sad… If you are honouring yourself by allowing the emotion, then those feelings are true. If you can sit with the emotion and listen to what it is teaching you, then that is also true. If you try to erase it by resisting it, then where does it go?

If your fear or anger etc are ego based emotions continually playing out, blocking you from everything that is true, then that is a different thing altogether. This is where the positive thinking movement is wonderful, because it helps people move beyond that. So it is a vital part of the journey to help us learn how to move away from habitual negative thinking.

However, that too changes… because if under the surface you are afraid to feel anything other than positive, then is that really positive?

Over the course of my journey, I’ve lost any fear of feeling all my emotions – whether they are considered positive or negative. It’s been deeply liberating. I’m not striving to feel positive, and so feel peaceful without any underlying resistance to anything. No resistance and no fear. The result is that I rarely feel anything other than peaceful, even when life gets tough. This is a very different experience to the positive thinking toolkit I used to use when things got tough. Now I ‘know’ – a deep inner-knowing that is unshakable – that I really can handle anything. My being is relaxed, calm and centred, and this is flowing into everything I’m doing.

A really interesting observation though, has been that since feeling this way, I’ve noticed that when I talk about anything other than positive things, others seem somewhat afraid for me, even though I’m not feeling any fear about it whatsoever… which has been quite mind blowing to see. It’s like when we’re striving to remain positive all the time, it actually makes it difficult for us to accept when others are OK with their own negative emotions… it seems to awaken something very uncomfortable within.

31 October 2022

Does worrying about someone mean you care about them?

Actually, it doesn’t. Worrying is fear based, and also the ego’s way of trying to prove to others you care and are therefore a good person. It’s all about you, and very little to do with them. You can care about someone from a different place within yourself entirely.

Worrying weakens you, taking into a state of fear, and allowing you to be/do less for the person you are worrying about. You can’t lift them up when you’re in that emotion yourself. If you care about someone, then your strength and love is what they need… not guilt about how much worry they are causing you, because this in turn weakens them…

Over-reacting to things also means that others have to take their attention away from the person who does need support, and give it to you instead… and quite often it’s even the person who needs support who has to take this role…

Yet, ironically, those who do not over-react because they trust the process of life, trust that others are on their own journey, understand that love heals more powerfully than fear, and accept whatever life throws at them in a calm and loving way… may even be perceived as uncaring because they’re not running around in a dramatic state of anxiety… yet, perhaps they are caring in a more powerful way and from a more powerful place…

You see, there’s always another perspective to everything…

30 October 2022

Life can only be what you make it… if you disagree, then are you perhaps waiting for someone else to do something, or to change in some way, to make your life right for you?… what happens if they don’t?… and how long are you prepared to wait to find out?…

29 October 2022

When your ego starts kicking and screaming, step back and watch, listen… observe.

28 October 2022

Every single one of us has something that is highly irritating about us. We all have our own little form of insanity.

Those who are convinced they don’t have, are some of the most irritating of all. Purely because they can see everyone else’s insanity but are blissfully blind to their own. This tends to carry a lot of judgement with it, and an air of superiority.

Most people looking for a new romantic partner are:

1. Certain they are perfect and have no form of insanity.
2. Looking for someone perfect who has no form of insanity.

In reality, the very concept of either is insane.

27 October 2022

There are doorways to happiness all around us.
We just have to take a moment to see them.
Then choose to walk though them.
It can feel scary, exciting.
It’s what makes us know we’re alive.
We’re very worth it.
When we become grumpy, it’s often because we can see the doorway, and we know we want it.
So much it hurts.
That is why grumpy is sometimes a good thing.
It’s letting us know.
Don’t be impatient with yourself.
Just listen to what your grumpiness is telling you.
T’is all.
Then take one step at a time to walk through that door.
You can only live one moment at a time, and that is all you’ll have to deal with.
Before you know it, you’ll be in a brand new place.
It’s so much better than grumpiness.

26 October 2022

How much do you blur others out with your own beliefs, rules, values and opinions?
Are they allowed to be themselves around you, or do you expect them to be exactly like you?

25 October 2022

One day you wake up and realise you’re done with your own games and lies. You also realise you’re pretty much done with getting embroiled in everyone else’s too…
It takes courage to speak your truth, be your truth and live your truth.
Not for the feint hearted…

24 October 2022

Believing in something does not necessarily mean it’s true. It’s simply a belief. Knowing something means it is your truth and it runs through your veins without any doubt on your part.
For instance, I don’t believe I play the piano. I know I play the piano. I believed I could become a pianist, until one day I became a pianist. My belief became my truth and I knew it to be true.
If there are a few things I’ve realised with great certainty, it’s these:

• Seemingly impossible dreams really can come true.
• Listen to, trust and follow your inner knowing. It will always guide you wisely. It takes courage to trust that your intuition knows more about what’s right for you, than asking someone else what their intuition is telling them about you.
• When you trust in the joy of your dreams without attachment to the fear of them not materialising, incredible things happen.
• Every single step, whether a failure or success, will teach you something you needed to know – there is no failure.
• Know your strength – stop giving it away.
• Know your power – it creates the life and relationships around you.
• Until you learn to speak your truth and put down boundaries, you will always feel like others are taking advantage of you.
• Love is a way of being, one that you share with others… it is not a barter system. Love is choosing to treat another in a way which genuinely cares about their happiness. If it is an effort to do that, then it is not love but a reflection of your own inner-state, where love is conditional upon whether they can maintain it for you. They will inevitably fail at doing so, and this is where ‘love’ becomes a roller-coaster… Except love is not a roller-coaster. Love is a constant. It is one’s own humanness, thoughts and emotions which are the roller-coaster, dragging love along for the ride…
• Everything you need is within you. Everything you are searching for is also within you.
• Fearlessness, and knowing you’ll handle any outcome, is the key to letting go and allowing your path to unfold… and unfold it will…

Don’t just believe in yourself, KNOW yourself…
Because then you’ll know who you’re believing in.

23 October 2022

Putting down negative people doesn’t make someone positive. It makes them the same.
Those who feel anger, fear or guilt etc are very often being more genuine and authentic in their emotions than those who behave with an air of spiritual superiority.

22 October 2022

I remember a few years ago when I was delivering an intensive full day Breakthrough Experience with a client, she complained that whenever she needs a friend, they are always busy… which means they can’t really be a friend. She said that if they were truly a friend, they would drop everything and be there for her.

I asked my client how she would feel if one of my friends demanded I do that for them right there and then, on a day that she had come all this way and paid for my time.

(From my perspective, if a friend demands that I drop everything and be there for them no matter what I’m doing, then they are not truly a friend. It is not the other way around.) 

21 October 2022

It takes all types to make up the world. Some choose to give up their 9-5’s and become Entrepreneurs, living their dream through fame and fortune, others don’t. Yet we are all just as vital to the world as one another, and equal in every sense. The man who empties your bin on a weekly basis is without doubt one of the most important people in your life, as is the one who stacks the shelves where you buy your food…

It is not in what you do, nor in how rich it makes you, it is in how happy you are doing it. This is where abundance is found. And when we judge others for what they do, putting our importance above them, we define only ourselves…

20 October 2022

It’s so powerful, and pretty much essential, to believe in yourself and your dreams… and you know, sometimes it takes just one other person to believe in the possibility of your dreams so relentlessly, that it takes your ‘possibility’ to reality and infinity…

That is why we are all here for one another.  To believe. In ourselves and one another.

19 October 2022

Many people who enter into new relationships try to be who they think their new partner wants them to be.
This essentially misses the point.
Because if you want love that comes with respect, then you have to be who you are.
That is, after all, who your partner is looking to fall in love with.
Anything else is likely to be short term or exhausting.
Because sooner or later the masks come down.

18 October 2022

You cannot reach an enlightened state (I use that term very cautiously) whilst forgetting to give up your addiction to pain. It’s like trying to climb a rock face with an elastic rope from the base tied around your waist, pulling you back down with each step higher you go.

You can still climb, but the rope becomes tighter and tighter. You become more and more annoyed with yourself for reacting to things when you feel you ‘should’ know better… so you learn more, practise more, attend more spiritual workshops… but you forgot one thing…

To give up your addiction to pain…

One day the rope may snap if you’re prepared to go through the pain of the climb and face your own ‘stuff’ head on.
This leaves you utterly free… but you also realise just how vulnerable, alone and pretty much ‘nothing’ you are.

It’s here that it becomes the natural to give up your addiction to pain – when you realise your own nothingness and immenseness at the same time…
It’s here you can see others’ nothingness and immenseness too – that their pain is simply their ego pain, just as yours was.
If you’re no longer addicted to your own pain, you can’t become addicted to anyone else’s either.

You become free.

17 October 2022

Those who are seeking a ‘perfect’ partner, are less likely to find one. When someone senses they are being judged for their imperfections, they are far more likely to behave uncertainly or strangely, and step down and away from an intimate relationship. No one enjoys experiencing themselves through another’s perception of their inadequacies.

16 October 2022

Part of real giving is about allowing others to be who they are… regardless of whether you agree with their choices or values… and choosing to respect them anyway…