The last post ‘Journey’ had a second layer of magic to it. I decided to save that layer until now.

At the concert I had the tell tale signs of a virus coming on. Trying to hold in a sneeze during a quiet piece of music turned into the loudest nose explosion/implosion. I woke up the next day ill and spent the day at work feeling like a run over slug, oozing everywhere, eyes and nose streaming.

I thought I’d have to come home to cook after a long suffering day but was more than surprised to find my house mate had done the most wonderful roast dinner. Her frozen shoulder had finally found relief and she was no longer disabled. Miracle! She commented on how fortunate we were to be able to take it in turns to be ill. She’d picked the perfect day to be able to cook, that was for sure.

I ate, shivering, as she sweated due to the fact I’d cranked the heating to Jamaican settings. As she washed up I put my feet on the radiator and slumped. I had nothing left to give that day.

Inside I was gently leaning on the oneness I’ve spoken about, knowing if things were meant to shift they would. I also knew not to believe too much in what I saw (my cold) and that truth has many layers, some you can’t see. That’s where faith comes in. Either way, my body was exhausted.

Suddenly I had the feeling to look for a book. The last thing I felt like doing was reading but an urge was there that didn’t feel like mine. As I walked into the next room one book stood out. It was my house mates story book. As I touched it the number 178 flew into my mind. I opened it randomly to page 178. I knew this was a magical moment. Going back to my seat I read a sentence. My mouth fell open. A conversation was being had and someone said “I came to thank you for teaching me that life is an act of faith and that I am worthy of the search. That has helped me enormously on the path I have chosen”.

It felt like it was written for me, to remind me that life requires faith and I can be worthy of that faith and of life. I realised that so often we moan when given a challenge, but what if we can see it as a chance to be worthy of that challenge. I knew I needed to believe in the healing more than the cold, despite the exhaustion, snot and shivering.

In that moment my housemate shouted from the kitchen “did you spin the snowman?” We had a festive candleholder on the table with propellers above the candle flame that were supposed to spin. They never did. We had done everything to make them spin. Fiddled for days, twiddling with propellers, snowman and the candle, all to no avail. Yet in that exact moment the snowman candle holder was spinning, fast. Once again I had the feeling that this was a magical moment and decided to take a step of faith. Having faith and acting on it are two different things.

My step was to go to a music gig down the road with my housemate. She was so surprised when I got changed and dragged my weary, snot filled, coughing body out with her, but it was my humble step of believing. Once at the bar I ordered a glass of red wine. I used to love wine back then. I took a few sips and the man next to me commented on how good I looked. I thought he must already be drunk or desperate as I was sure I looked like a dressed up snotty slug. I suddenly noticed that I wasn’t snotty. My eyes weren’t running. No cough. Shortly later my housemate noticed and commented that the wine must be good here. What else can you say? It wasn’t like the moment in the restaurant where the cold was 100% gone, but it was 95% gone at least.

When I went to work the next day my manager couldn’t believe her eyes. She’d had the same virus and it had lasted weeks. Mine was gone in a day. I sneezed 4 or 5 times over the space of the day but that was it. Other than that I was well. She said I must have a very good immune system. Again, what can you say?

I was learning about how to be a channel for healing. I was finding out it’s an honour to be worthy of rather than moan when set a challenge. During the challenges we learn the rules of the game with it’s skills. It also felt incredibly friendly. The snowman spinning was a nice touch. The gig. The fact that as soon as the wine touched my lips something happened. I’d danced all night and had so much fun. Some peoples idea of irreverent, but this voice I heard was not boxed in. It was free. It wanted me to be free. It seemed to place equal importance on living a love filled, full life as it did on learning my lessons. If church was like this voice then I knew it would be packed. It’s because of these experiences that I don’t enjoy church. This voice in my heart, guiding me on, wants me to be wild, free to explore, unafraid.

The journey unfolded, revealing more and more layers to working with healing. I started to see that healing is actually a journey. Some are quick, like popping to the corner shop, others are monumental, passing through many different types of terrain. Whatever the circumstance, I simply knew that I was not meant to walk alone. I was meant to be intimately connected to Spirit the whole way. If healing did not occur, or if it took time, that was not an indication of distance or divide in any way. Stay close.

My house mate at the time had a frozen shoulder. This in itself is agonising enough. The added issue was that she was also pregnant, due to give birth in a few months. Practioners took on her case urgently. The concept of giving birth and not leaning on your arm or shoulder at all is not a good thought, never mind experience. Nothing shifted it. She had been in and out of a tumultuous relationship, which seemed to trigger the shoulder in the first place. In her agony she finally drew the line and ended the relationship, but her shoulder still refused to heal. I had to do her hair for her, cut her bread slices, do up her zips, be her arms. She was disabled.

Every day I prayed for her. My idea of praying may be different to most. I simply felt. I would close my eyes and feel into the situation. I hated the idea of prayer just hopefully chucking a load of words out, being completely insensitive. Humans are too loud as it is. I wanted to work WITH energy, not barrage it. So I listened, and every day it simply felt like my nose was against a wall. There was no point uttering a word. The path to healing was blocked. So I walked away and tried again the next day.

One day, as I shut my eyes, the wall shifted. I felt the literal space. I didn’t utter a word I just smiled. Felt elated and waited to see what would happen. She had booked for us to see a concert that evening. Before we left a prayer popped out from what felt like my depths. I asked to know the Oneness. My Oneness with God.

The concert was beautiful. It was classical and a first for me. Listening to the harmony of the many varied instruments I marvelled at how they flowed together so seamlessly. One minute I was gazing at the musicians in wonder, the next I was gazing at a huge O superimposed over them with my inner eye. A circle without beinning or end. I felt the breathtaking beauty of being a part of something so intrinsically that you cannot tell where you end and other begins. You are one. I felt such a rush of energy. It was like heaven on earth.

The next evening I arrived home from work to a roast dinner. I couldn’t believe my eyes. For months she had not been able to lift a pan or cut a slice of bread. She was smiling and simply said that for some reason her arm was just about healed. Overnight! I knew. I absolutely knew I’d felt the shift the day before. Why then? Why not months earlier? Who knows? The energy had flowed so strongly the night before. We are One. We are always One. Attached to that infinite creative power, always. But we are also on a journey. There are walls and blockages. When you really know your unbreakable connection to Spirit there is no fear in blockage, just perfect union. If things are meant to shift they will shift. I want to live in that place.

So many people make their whole spiritual life about receiving healing. That, to me, is like spending your whole relationship to Spirit about staring at a wall, when you could be holding hands and living, experiencing intoxicating love and incredible adventures. Friendship like you’ve never known. I’m not there yet but I see the horizon.

There’s endless variables as to whether or when the energy will flow, but why not marvel at the centre of the story, that we are home. Right now, we are in perfect union, to the most incredible, wise, loving, stupendously powerful force. When you know that, and I mean REALLY KNOW that, you almost don’t care about the blockages. You just want to bathe in the love. I have moments of not fearing walls, and at other times they loom so large. It’s a journey, it will never end and I have a long way to go.

These stories, for me, are about how much Spirit loves to allow powerful flow. What if you don’t need to worry about healing blockages. What if it’s all in hand. What would it feel like for your heart to know it was loved this much? What if survival mode melted into something far more glorious, light and mesmerising.

I’m so looking forward to sharing these stories with you, wishing us all the enlightenment of knowing we are utterly loved as we are, and that we are home. One.

Strange things started to happen as I learned to trust I was connected to God (The Universe or whatever name you prefer). It became joyful, conversational and light. I felt like a child held by the hand and shown the wild possibilities of what this oneness actually meant.

One day I was cleaning the restaurant I used to manage. I had a stinking cold and every time I bent over I felt my head would explode as my nose streamed and I sneezed over and over again. I’d been playing with my oneness to God enough that I was now comfortably able to allow healing to flow to me. I’d often just utter a single sentence such as “this cold will be gone by tomorrow” and low and behold it would. It was like a dream. I couldn’t believe it could be that effortless. I think it’s because there was no fear involved with colds. A bigger diagnosis with emotional baggage would have been a different story with bigger resistence, but for now I was having fun.

So as I uttered the familiar sentence with a feeling of assurance that the energy would flow as I’d said, a voice jolted me out of my comfort zone. A literal voice. Inside my head but not me. It very simply said “Why not now?” That voice felt ancient, powerful but strangely personable. I replied without thinking “I don’t have the faith for now”. Another reply “The excellency of the power is of me unto you who believe”. It is a bible verse about the power that goes so far as to raise the dead. There it was again. A mirror saying I was having faith in my faith rather than faith in the Source. Subtle but with huge consequences. I was silenced.

The next bit is probably the wierdest bit of the story. Possibly even wierder than having someone talking to you in your head that isn’t you, and you reply. I absolutely completely and utterly forgot what just happened. As if I’d never heard a voice. I can’t explain it, but it was like nothing had just happened. I now know that temporary blank was a way of me offering no resistance to the words that were echoing through my being.

I continued to scrub the floor. Minutes later the owner of the resaurant entered the room from the kitchen and I stood up to talk to him. He had spoken to me that morning and seen me streaming and sneezing, wondering if I should just go to bed. His jaw dropped as I spoke. I had no cold. Not a tiny bit. Not even a sniffle. Nothing. I saw him do a double take and then what can you do except just acknowledge it and move on. I didn’t tell him what I’d just heard. The fact I’d somehow offered no resistance to God knows what and had been zapped by an immense creative healing power as I scrubbed the floor. I was utterly awe struck. Can you imagine how that felt? Like a door to the cosmos had just opened up and I’d accidentally wobbled through.

This happening has so many repurcussions when we think about modern day theories of the Law of Atrraction and any kind of spititual practice. What if we just woke up to the fact that we are already completely and utterly connected to the most immense power in the universe. What if we could stop looking at what we can do and instead look at the vast power we are attached to. What if ‘being still and knowing God’ blasts away all ideas of limits, that we really see that all things are possible. That we are attached to a Source that is both communing with us and full of humour, who knows how to guide and grow us like an incredible parent. What if this is enlightenment? I later learned that fear has a huge role to play in the fruit of such manifestations. If we only we had a pause button on our brain that we could push like the moment I had a complete blank. Maybe that’s the role of meditation?

This is one of many stories yet to come x Dream big because it’s closer than your heartbeat xx

A story of the Soul

She sat under the apple tree. Blossom falling like soft kisses. The promise of fruit. She was alone but never alone. Her every breath was counted. Every hair treasured. The brush of a feeling running through her was felt by her other. There were no barriers to this love. She was the beloved and the lover of her soul was Divine. Unseen. Everywhere and inside of her all at once. A mystery and yet so obvious that most missed it. They felt its truth in her ease. She was held.

With a love like this she was home. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. She was the centre and out of her flowed a living breeze, as sweet as the apple blossom. Prayer was like breathing. Her and her beloved were one. Her needs was felt before she had uttered a word.

They call it enlightenment, she smiled. They make it sound hard. One day the door of her mind just opened and she laughed that what she had been searching for all of her life was already here. Closer than her skin. There really was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Just lie under the apple blossom and let it kiss her skin.

I want to take you on a journey. A journey within and without, beyond and right here now.

https://mandacat1.wordpress.com

Some things are too big for our minds to understand. That’s where stories come in. They transcend the bounds of human rules and play with the limitlessness of the heart. A fox can speak and a canvas becomes a portal. My reality is often stranger than fiction. Synchronicities have been so magical that I need allegory to share them. From my heart to yours. Heart whispers.

Some of these stories will make sense to you. Others will trickle in over time, unfurling in your understanding. Others may never take seed. I open my heart to you. Roam freely. Tread softly, for you tread upon my heart.

This is a link to stories I’ve written for years. They aren’t necessarily about yoga. They were my way of making sense of the world.

https://mandacat1.wordpress.com

Very soon there’ll be a blog related to yoga. It’s being ruminated as I speak. The more my heart opens over the years, the more I see yoga everywhere. If yoga is yoking, or uniting, coming home to your true self, to your oneness with all of life, then the messages are everywhere you look. Little love letters from life strewn across your path. Every day is an adventure.

My most precious yoking is with the Divine force that weaves my very breath into the miracle of being. This union, more than any other, ignites my stories.