Sherreme asked me this question last week when I posted some of my favourite memes on relationships and shadow. For those of you who have known me for a loooong time, you know Pete and I have always been mirrors for each other. Our love has always had flame and fire. We've been in relationship for 14 years and we can still be awful at communicating.

I feel very lucky that I get to call these intelligent, hilarious, kind, devoted, mystical and magical humans my friends. They are both graduates of the Samāveśa School and they bring great heart and wisdom to the community.

I recently listened to a wonderful conversation between Krista Tippet and Ada Limón, the US poet laureate. I fell in love with her words and decided it was high time I did a poetry drop for you guys. Many of you know that I am a big fan of Gwendolyn Ren and she leads a module on the Samāveśa 250hr called Deep Rest and Poetry as Meditation. I often share excerpts from her epic narrative poem, Motherlands and, as I have recently shared the full poem with some of my Portuguese retreat family, I thought I would also share some Gwen with you today. Here is an excerpt ...

I'd literally hit send on the letter yesterday and I received words from Cat so I am just following up with those below and also details of the cleanse I shared about last week. Many of you asked about it so I have included here and I decided to share the Lakshmi satsang and sādhanā. The energies of the practices have been a beautiful and potent medicine, when combined with the cleanse.
Enjoy.

In perfect synchronicity, this morning a came across Brené Brown explaining the etymology of the word courage. Tara Judelle shared this with me in my first teacher training in 2014 and it has been forever inscribed on my soul. Many of you will have heard the teaching.

This is a great time for cleansing and getting our house in order, tying up loose ends and setting the space for a season change. For some of you that might feel inspiring but some of you might feel very far away from wanting to do any of those things. Either way, I hope you find sources of nourishment and pockets of space to feed your heart and soften into.

I remember my Dad telling me I needed walls to kick against. I thoroughly rejected the idea at the time but he was trying to educate me on boundaries. Just not in a language I understood or, quite frankly, cared for at 16.

As most of you know, I regard Samāveśa as a living being. She is the Deity and I am in service of her. It’s felt like this since 2020 when I really submitted to what was being asked of me. I received a download for the online training and ever since, she has never been ‘mine’.

As I sat by the lake this morning, my wiser self suggested we meditate. I closed my eyes and soon felt a very strong magnetic pull through my sacrum and coccyx. Body was attuning to land. To home. It was happening without my trying ‘to ground’. There was the strong pull of the earth, a surrender of effort, which we might also call ego, and then came the stillness of the stones. An eternal peace, or nitya, in Sanskrit, which is also another name for the Goddess Durga. My body was remembering the land and as I surrendered to the process, my being remembered the primordial peace at the centre of the Self.

This past week has far exceeded expectation, as 19 of us gathered in Portugal for the Samāveśa Graduates retreat. It was an invite-only affair for students from the last 3 years of online trainings - many I had not met in person - and so you can imagine there was a lot of love in the air.

I have done huge amounts of healing work, thanks to people like Chris Skidmore, my first therapist Nicola, my teachers Leila, Bridget, Tara, Scott, Sianna, Hareesh, craniosacral therapists like Joanna Jones, vortex healers like Daisy Nokes. I have allowed myself to be held by many, I have received so much kindness, I have experienced Bowen, Vortex, Reiki, Cranio, Ayurvedic massage, Thai massage, crystal therapy, chakra healing, Chinese methods, all the yoga, meditation, mantra, breathwork, sound, astrology, shamanic journeying. I lose track.

The story of lack, of not enoughness, of not being rich enough, thin enough, smart enough, productive enough. Of not having enough medals, awards, targets and goals. All spiritual traditions, masters of consciousness (I realise the paradox in that phrase), philosophy teachers and wisdom keepers point to the same thing.

I’ve been experiencing a slow dawn recently, as I’m starting to see how massive Samāveśa has become. She is throbbing with potential and until recently I was still viewing the School as my side gig. You know, just something I do on Sundays.

We all have resistance. And we all know that if we stay in resistance then realisation doesn’t get realised. The changes we want to make remain out of reach. The person we know we can be and all the potential that is simmering beneath the surface stays right there. Simmering, yearning, longing to be known.

It was something like early 2020 late 2019 and I had to be all over social media ‘selling’ the 2020 training. I hated it. Didn’t want to do it. I was in total resistance. Why can’t people just come? I don’t want to be on social media. Who the hell wants to listen to what I have to say. My life isn’t interesting. It’s narcissistic. I don’t want to play.

On the last day of this nourishing break with my badass bike gang girls, I decided to carry out a solo mushroom ceremony. It was an existential, diamond skied psychedelic ride that ended with me building an epic fire and chanting to Kali for quite a long time. Let’s just say that a whole lot of familiarity, safety, self images and ways of seeing have been thrown in the fire, as requested, and it’s been wild, intense, dark and revelatory.

These seedlings would never grow if I didn’t make space, turn the soil, feed the soil, plant them in the soil. And so, of course, I looked at this seemingly ordinary task through the lens of soul because I just can’t help myself.

The Tantrikas were absolute fucking wizards at this game. Because they knew it was a game. Whatever identity, self image or story you are currently attached to is, in some way, limiting you. In order to believe your stories or perform your roles you have to exclude all the others. But all the others are still there to be played with.

As we transition into eclipse season, I am tuning into these themes of old doors closing so new ones can open. And I am not surprised by the synchronicity of our monthly New Moon refuge, Hush, which launches on April 21st, the day after eclipse season begins.