PART II: Enlightenment under the Jigal tree.
Before I start today’s post — I just want to reflect that these last few posts have been bigger ones. Perhaps it’s just that I’m starting to wane into my anxious Autumn week in my womanly cycle and I’m feeling that old “you’re too intense, tone it down a little” wound in my vulnerability.
Perhaps it’s just that whilst the words I’ve been writing have been the necessary words I’ve needed to write, they are actually quite far from the joy of simply playing with my children, my Dad (who’s visiting), my husband and friends, in the sunshine that I’m also experiencing.
The joy and peace of nothingness.
But I’ve also come to realise - that when I integrate stories from the past, and write with a lot of “weight” in the past, my writing gets heavier, denser and longer.
When I incorporate my experiences of the bigger “everything-ness” that my life was previously, the nothingness is crammed to take up less space.
Stories of Sunyata, have so far been everything from me making sour cream pudding one morning, to the discomfort of sitting on a couch doing nothing, to learning to sing solo, and to these bigger, denser ones that explore some pretty dense topics.
Thank you for witnessing them all.
I feel the words of these last 2-3 posts in particular have been deeply cathartic in releasing and reconciling big events from the last decade of my life.
They have been words many years awaiting their expression, especially as I return to these lands. Reflecting on a cycle completed. A new cycle beginning.
Tomorrow also marks the Spring Equinox here in the Southern Hemisphere. A time of rebirth, awakening from our slumber, growth + new beginnings.
So I’m going to have a break from writing next week.
I seem to have a pattern where I can’t write whilst I’m bleeding. So I will take some intentional space where I don’t feel any hint of “should”. Allow the integration of my nothingness, once more. Return to writing when I’m back in the South West and different words will flow once again. I suspect I’ll return to my simpler, punchier, shorter writing then.
Thanks for being here through the iterations.
I’ll begin x
* * *
At the end of our trip last year, as we literally pulled into my mother’s driveway in Perth, I got a call from the University of Western Australia whilst I was still in the car. “Did you get our email?”. No, I hadn’t seen it, but I was urged to respond to it as soon as I could.
The few days prior, as we travelled down the coast (this time we took about a week instead of two days, as our children were still only 1 and 3), I was in a daydream of reflection. Pondering on who I was when I first graduated from my undergrad, to a moment sitting under a 500+ year old Jigal tree at the Goolarabooloo Indigenous Community up here, and then how I got there, to that moment, sitting in the car with my kids.
The tree was a sacred tree.
Many of the Elders and Law Bosses sat under that tree for meetings and decisions in previous generations.
These days it was dancing around a Tamarind Tree that was stronger, faster growing and taking over. It was no longer a meeting place.
Jigal, means mother-in-law and refers to the paired little leaves, which turn away from each other, as in Aboriginal customary law, where mother-in-law and son-in-law may not face or interact with one another.
Before we had kids, I’d sit under that Jigal tree most afternoons. Read a book. Play cards. Have long conversations. Listen to the anger and frustration as the mob had their lands tactfully taken away from them, White Mans Law at a time.
This was a time of my life I was deep in the environmental activism space.
I had been “fighting” the years prior in a big campaign to save “James Price Point” or Walmadan from being destroyed in an attempt to build the World’s largest gas hub, on arguably some of Australia’s most sacred lands.
Walmadan is an important song line site along the Lurujarri Heritage Trail. There are ancient rainforests, sacred burial grounds, endemic plant and animal species, the worlds largest humpback whale nursery, some of Australia’s most prolific and oldest dinosaur footprints. This list hasn’t even touched the surface of the depth of its importance.
Most importantly, though, it was part of Country to Traditional Custodians that lived and breathed 60,000 years of unbroken Indigenous culture.
One of the last remaining, truly practicing their Law and Culture on the planet.
Fast forward to the end of a long fight that started nearly a decade before.
We won.
We managed to get the Oil and Gas companies to pull out. We won law suits against them, showing the illegality and corruption of it.
We saved it.
I was in Melbourne at a conference when I got the call, on my way to a wedding later that night.
I can still remember the emotion of that moment.
We won.
I was only a tiny part in this enormous campaign. There were people, including the Elders, who camped permanently for more than two years at “The Blockade” on the road up to Walmadan. Using great initiative, determination and commitment to resist machinery from passing the roads to start the destruction.
There were people in town, who’d send messages through the coconut wireless when the police where ordering up big at Subway, so we knew they were heading out for a big day trying to dismantle protestors.
It was an enormously sophisticated and well-orchestrated campaign, that had the relentless commitment from so many, locally, nationally and globally.
After the campaign was won, some of the Law Bosses and many of the Elders died.
They surrendered
But they didn’t die in peace.
They died with another fight rising.
The government trying to take away their lands. For round 2, no doubt.
Now we are seeing Round 2 again here in the Kimberly, but this time with Fracking, Irrigation and no doubt soon to be Lithium extraction, as well as a complex legal battle between Language Groups and so forth.
I stayed on campaigning and community organising around environmental issues for a year or two after this. But I could feel the burnout starting.
After a visit to country this weekend, to the Communities visiting old friends, a friend that we brought with us, who is from Denmark down south and has been helping with the Surf Program, was in tears at one point. As we were leaving, she asked me - are you not angry? How do you not feel so angry?
I said, no. I’m not angry. Not anymore. But I used to be.
And I was.
I was angry and I had been angry for some time during those campaigning years.
There were so many things to be angry about.
The realisation of what was (still) happening to our Indigenous Peoples and their Country. Our Country. Our culture. Our history. It felt like an unseen war, that everyone just “carried on” and ignored for their own convenience. For their own jobs and pleasure.
I started to feel isolated in the world I lived in. Yet united in a different way.
But in my passion, I was losing compassion.
I had glasses on, that only enabled me to see what was wrong with the World and all the ways people were blind and ignorant (willingly or unwillingly) and were unmotivated to do anything about it.
Injustice. Righteousness.
They became common experiences of mine. And I had been feeling this way for even many years prior, in the early Climate Change movement that I was part of as a Scientist, when I was still younger and even more fiery in my motivation.
But I knew that I was not a “fighter” deep down.
I think people that I worked with could see I had a different way. I was deeply committed to creating “positive” change, and inspiring social movements using the tactics of the great social justice movements before - Martin Luther King Jr, Ghandi, etc. Which was resisting in some ways. But really it was about igniting.
Later that year, I was diagnosed with aggressive pre-cancerous cells on my cervix. On the way to the operation to have them removed, I tripped and fell and broke my foot (another one of those - stop, you’re going in the wrong direction signs from the Universe - I told you I’d had a few of them). So I had to postpone the operation as they wouldn’t put me under with a cast (deep vein thrombosis and all that). There was some urgency to the operation, but the surgeon was away on holidays. I got shingles from the stress. I developed severe Endometriosis. And when I finally had the operation, it got infected and I was in and out of hospital on the most insane amount of antibiotics. I developed Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
All in the space of about 8 weeks.
I spent a long summer laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Instead of travelling Baja, Mexico and Hawaii as originally planned.
It was also the summer that all the Senior staff at the non-profit I worked at had taken their first vacation in many years and I was the only Senior staffer left, meant to be holding down the fort until they got back.
Yet I couldn’t get out of bed.
I believed that the sky would fall if I didn’t show up to work.
I literally believed that the most terrible things in the world would happen if I didn’t show up.
But I couldn’t show up.
And the sky didn’t fall.
It was another turning point for me. My body was screaming at me. I had to listen.
I didn’t know at that point what the next steps for my life were but before I was into all the personal development quantum manifesting stuff, I just knew what it was going to feel like.
And it was not full of this stress and anger.
I was tangled up in a lot of commitments (I was overcommitted, as usual), so I decided to put my head down for 6 months to finish them all up with the energy and commitment that I started them with.
Then I would seek to release them.
My definition of success in career has always been - when something can run without me, it’s successful.
My work has never been about me.
I’ve always felt it’s about me, then I am not living in success, no matter what tangible results I achieve.
At the time of my bodily-mind-soul perils and breakdown, I was working full time at an environmental NGO, I was running a local clean-beaches non-profit, running weekly volunteer community events (like Fluro Friday surfing for mental health), sitting on the board of a national marine conservation NGO and writing my final dissertation for my Masters.
I trained up others and handed over leadership of the local projects, I resigned from the Board, I went down to part-time at my work, hired two new staffers to replace me (because I was doing the work of two) and I managed to miraculously compete my Masters with First Class Distinction.
I slept 4 hours a night, and worked from 4am to Midnight every day until things slowly started to drop away as I transitioned them away from “me”.
At the end of this, I went and did a Vipassana.
Which was ironic, because my now-husband and I were “on a break” and had to sit in silence across the room from each other for 10 days, which really didn’t add any peace to my experience. It was true torment.
Of course, as the Ox he is, he was unaffected.
But I knew that the last thing I wanted to do, the thing that would push me straight into the highest level of discomfort (growth) was sitting in stillness from 6am to 9pm every day after the insane busy-ness that my life had been before that.
I knew that was the necessary next step.
When I came out the other side, I was told I had missed the awards ceremony where I was awarded the Young Environmentalist of the Year.
That moment was another symbolic turning point of this journey.
The journey from Everything to Nothing.
For the first time, in a long time, I felt both purpose and peace.
I started to realise, that the latter was actually more important.
Without peace, the purpose is in vain.
* * *
The following year, we launched the social enterprise The Sandwell Movement, which is the non-profit that we run the surf programs up here with, and have done many interesting projects with locally and internationally since.
Before the moment of entering the “social entrepreneurship” space, I had sort of seen money as an enemy.
I saw the relationship of Business vs. Impact at opposite ends of the spectrum. Social Enterprise was the first time I could see how they could be truly merged. Although, I was still sceptical in some ways.
Before that, I saw money as a means, or an incidental, but not a relevant or important necessity to which someone should value or strive for. Especially in a career sense.
A bottom line in which profit or success was measured in money to me was of the most evil.
Greenwashing bottom lines with social and environmental outcomes did not inspire me either.
I had turned down 6 figure jobs fresh out of undergrad because they were not “true” enough to my mission. The extremely high-paying mining jobs everyone else was snapping up, were naturally not even on the table for me.
At one point, just before heading off to Brazil after my undergrad, I took a waitressing job (which was shocking for all my University professors at the time). But I didn’t want to have any serious commitments before I left, I just wanted to be on the beach, be around people, come and go on my own terms, and ultimately I needed “a rest” from my relentless pursuing in the years, 17-20, prior. I needed to let loose a little and feel young for a moment in time. Something I missed out on in many ways.
Seriousness. I had been busy being serious.
Even then, in regards to money, I lived devout to the motto:
It is not the poor man that does not have, it is the poor man that does not give.
In this waitressing job, I’d personally be tipped $100 from a table, and I would never even think to keep it for myself. I’d go and put it in the communal jar, so everyone could receive. I had no desire or inkling that I wanted it all to myself.
The energy of profit felt greedy and selfish to me. I innately couldn’t stomach it in my field.
But I was always “abundant”, regardless.
It is not the poor man that does not have, it is the poor man that does not give.
Despite growing up with a single mother where we had to count out toilet paper squares and receive food donations, on occasion, I never felt that I went without. This was partly because of her and my grandparents generosity (of mostly love and presence). She chose to live off less, rather than to sacrifice “me” through work. She chose to survive off the pension, so she didn’t have to put me in daycare. She was (still is) a big supporter of Socialist and Communist models. They were her choices, and in turn they shaped me. They also played a part in shaping my own beliefs around money. That and many other things.
The material world and its desires never felt that relevant to me. But it was also because I never saw barriers between me and opportunity.
If I wanted something. Anything. I would find a way to get it.
Not usually in a ruthless or hustling way. But more in a “lucky” and natural kind of way.
I was always prepared and motivated to take opportunities. And I always did. With commitment.
And in turn, I always received or achieved whatever I wanted or needed it.
Life was rich with experiences and opportunities.
Of course, there was some shadow aspects of my “money story” I unpacked later in life when I dove into the “Abundance and Freedom” coaching space rife in the digital world. But what I also came to understand from that unpacking was that right from my earliest years, I always understood the energetics of non-material abundance.
I’ve since learnt to understand money is just a frequency.
I’ve since learnt to understand that money always flows from one direction to another. It must keep moving. The key is in both the receiving and the giving.
Nowadays, I don’t have issues, guilt, shame, etc, of being on the receiving end of money.
But I am still mindful that of where that money is flowing from.
I definitely don’t have the same anger, dogma, righteousness around it like I used to. But my ancient Splenic Authority (my Human Design intuition), still knows deeply that money must flow from integrity.
It must not be received from the flowing from suffering of others or Country.
And because I don’t believe much in the integrity of current economical systems that underpin our times, I still have explorations I’m unpacking around the incongruences with receiving money through the system of most current business models. In addition, to how this all fits together with my own unique soul blueprint.
I guess, fundamentally, I just want to believe in a new form of currency. Exchange. That perhaps doesn’t yet exist. Or perhaps has always existed, we have just haven’t tapped into it in this dimension properly yet. If you’re into money, I’d love to hear your perspectives.
TBC another time.
Circling back to social enterprise and the Jigal tree.
I maintained my relationships in the Kimberley after the James Price Point campaign, and through a series of synchronicities we found ourselves reconnected to these lands - with a completely different frequency and intention than during my campaigning years.
One afternoon, sitting under the Jigal Tree, I was reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. Which puts the entire history of the world into perspective. Into geological time scale.
There was a chapter about the probability of a comet hitting Earth, and how we have some near misses every 6 months, but most of the time we only discover them as they are flying by. Less than a degree difference in their direction and the entire planet would be wiped out. And we probably wouldn’t even know about it until it was happening.
Huh.
I can’t pinpoint the culmination of specific moments that led to this moment. But I remember sitting there that afternoon, looking up at the vibrant leaves shining in the sun and realising that life was just not that important in the grand scheme of things.
I looked around at the battles and suffering of the mob.
The anger.
The loss and grief.
I realised that my body had actually been releasing it for some time, since that unfortunate bed-bound summer, and that in that moment something clicked and I felt peace.
A peace that has never left me since.
In a simpler explanation:
I realised that the guilt of using a plastic take-away cup was contributing a worse fate to our future than using the cup guilt-free.
Not to say we shouldn’t try and use Keep Cups where possible. It is still unfathomable to me we have created this throw-away society (and that I can so blindly participate in it sometimes). Let alone the impact of plastic in the ocean. Or just plastic in general.
We can still care. We can still act. We can still walk towards the future we want, leaving behind the one we don’t.
But we can do it with Peace.
World Peace (as cliche as it is - thanks Bono), is literally a State of Being.
The polarity of Love and Fear. Another cliche, that’s become one for a reason. It’s potent.
There are enough studies to show (see Heart Math Institute) of how frequency affects everything. We’re all just a bunch of bouncing electrons at the end of the day. Conscious evolution is a thing.
Anger is a perpetuation of all systems, models and ways of being that cause the destruction in the first place. A perpetuation of Fear.
Not a perpetuation of Love.
Sitting under the Jigal tree, I think for the first time, truly in my life, I gained perspective.
Perspective of the immeasurable complexity of our existence.
Of all existence.
That ever was, and ever will be.
I was chatting with a friend at an Indigenous Community we visited on the weekend, who was explaining how they have 1 year left to appeal a Native Title Dispute and then, if they fail, 60,000 years of unbroken culture will essentially become unrecognised and the government will be able to overrule almost every aspect of their life and being. But the mob can’t fight in a White Mans court, because the oral nature of their culture means that most of their evidence (which there is an overwhelming amount and is completely obvious to even the simplest individual) is simply “hearsay” under White Mans Law. It’s not just a lost battle, it’s a lost war.
Talking to my friend, she was saying that the biggest problem she is facing though, is that her mob don’t understand “one year”. Because linear time is also a White Mans concept. Time doesn’t exist in a 60,000 year old culture.
Huh, again.
I don’t know what the outcome of their situation will be. I don’t know why all this is happened, and is happening in our conscious and collective global evolution right now. It feels so unnecessary. But I guess, it must be necessary in some way?
I do truly believe that all souls have Free Will when entering the Human Plane.
Choosing their path. Their time. Their blueprint. Their purpose. Their suffering. Their healing. Before they come.
I do truly believe that our human evolution is unfolding for the Higher, on a divine timeline we don’t necessarily understand.
But then what do my beliefs even matter?
I love learning about Australian Indigenous Culture - the first, second and third peoples.
Then I think about all the beliefs that exist. All the Indigenous Cultures and all that came after that — Jesus. Mohammed. Buddha. Ganesha. Thor. Isis + the other Egyptians dieties. Aztecs and Zapotecs, etc, Galactic Federation. Aliens. Mary Magdalene. Quantum physics… the Dreamtime.
Mine are no more or less true than anyone else’s?
It all feels so insignificant delineating it down to that.
All religion and spirituality is essentially just hearsay, or should I say heresy? Stories. His-story. History. Language. Perception. Interpretation. Someone’e experience, communicated (told, written, drawn, channelled) in whatever form of language existed for them. Language which in its own right, creates a particular reality and story. Which is then created. Shared. Passed on.
Perspective.
I guess one theme that I see united through all of these is this natural hierarchy — of something higher, something relating to the other, and then something relating to the Self.
In Indigenous Culture, it’s Country > Community > Individual.
From an old Christian American business mentor it was, God > Family > Business.
Perhaps the way I perceive it is, Wholeness > The Others > The Constructed Self.
* * *
At the end of our trip last year, as we literally pulled into my mother’s driveway in Perth, I got a call from the University of Western Australia whilst I was still in the car. “Did you get our email?”. No, I hadn’t seen it, but I was urged to respond to it as soon as I could.
The few days prior, as we travelled down the coast (this time we took about a week instead of two days as our children were still only 1 and 3), I was in a daydream of reflection. Pondering on who I was when I first graduated from my undergrad, to a moment sitting under a 500+ year old Jigal tree at the Goolarabooloo Indigenous Community up here, and then how I get there, to that moment.
The email / call from UWA was inviting me to give a Keynote Speech to their Graduating Science Students of 2021 in a few months time.
I said yes, instinctively.
Opportunities. It’s my default to take them.
I already knew exactly what I was going to talk about. I had been reflecting on it for the three days prior travelling in the car, and it was like the Universe said - here - it’s time to share this with Others.
My speech was written in my head before I’d even stepped out of the car.
Of course over the following months I went in a bunch of circles of Imposter Syndrome, and “why do I need to do this? I don’t have anything to prove to anyone anymore. It’s just unnecessary stress for my simple life in my happy little bubble”… until I got out of my own way, and realised that this wasn’t about me. It was never about me.
I had a message to share.
I had perspective to share.
I had come full circle. I was able to step back into the World that I had left behind, from a place of peace. No striving. No ambition. No anger. No desire for recognition. Nothing to prove. No seeking. No gaining.
It was really powerful to “go back” to the beginning.
Which was of course not the beginning, but my time at Universities were an esential part of my career, and the springboard into the rest of a World that I have since released.
The speech felt like an expression of all that I had unlocked that afternoon under the Jigal tree.
If you care to indulge xx