The week before last, when I got home from a trip to the City, I made a declaration. I declared that I needed a reset. Within 24 hours I was knocked sideways with a horrid flu. Despite the agony that ensued with it, I did, indeed, get my reset. Perhaps I should have been more specific…
It made me reflect deeply on what happens when we are out of alignment in our life in somehow. Or, perhaps, when we are out of alignment as a society on a global scale.
Nature always has a remarkable ability to naturally course correct.
In my case, I had felt myself slowly slipping into old behaviours that weren’t serving me. How I slept, how I used tech, how I was eating, how I was relating. I was too cluttered, too fast, too reactive. I had lost touch with the feeling of stillness and the simple expansion that comes with that. I had lost touch with the feeling of being free… being nothing.
It was months in the making with a lot of big personal life movement and subsequent tension.
So I made my declaration, seeing an opportunity, but I didn’t change anything. I didn’t make any actual decisions. I just set a vapid intention and carried on the same path.
Within 24 hours I could feel my body starting to unravel. The Universe essentially said, Right, well if you aren’t going to do it, I will do it for you.
Tension released from my body, from my hips, from the top of my neck. As the aches and pains simultaneously flooded.
It was many days before I was coherent again. I went into a vortex of deliriousness and pain. I couldn’t eat, sleep, use screens, have conversations. There was no where to go but inward. To find and sit in the emptiness, beyond the stories of suffering.
It was all pretty hectic. Then my children came down one by one. Like the little energetic mirrors they are. My husband held it together until the kids spell broke, and then it was his turn. Which naturally increased the hecticness.
2 weeks later, we are all still recovering. The process is completing as we receive the downloads, awareness, inspiration that we need from this experience.
The biggest question that arose repeatedly from the darkness for me was, how can we be so sick?
It just doesn’t feel natural.
In my mind, it is not a matter of externalising my power. Oh “viruses are just getting stronger”. No. That’s a cop out. Nature isn’t malicious and she doesn’t make mistakes. She is ALWAYS working for harmony and balance.
So what’s happening on the human level, individually and societally, to land us here? Why have we allowed ourselves, as a society, to get so sick?
We know that the way we live is not sustainable - environmentally, physically, socially, emotionally, psychologically… spiritually. But we continue anyway.
Why do we continue? Why did I continue?
Why didn’t I willingly make the changes that I needed to course correct in my individual life and circumstance when I had full awareness that I needed to?
Why don’t we as a society willingly make the changes we need to course correct on a larger scale when we have full awareness that we need to?
These aren’t simple answers. The are imbued in complexity. But whilst I was bed-bound I finished a book as part of the Sovereign Mamas Co. Community App Book Club, which gave me a lot of insight into this. There were two quotes / ideas that hit hard for this experience —
“During the 2019 Bushfires people sat in their buildings in silence with their smoke alarms turned off, because there was so much smoke. The very thing that was meant to warn and protect us at an individual level was rendered useless because we had failed as a society to warn and protect ourselves from the greater calamities of climate change.” (paraphrased)
And then there was this one… Oomph.
“Every time you try to put your phone down, there is a room full of a thousand engineers trying to make you pick it right back up again” (paraphrased) — Stolen Focus (book), Johann Hari
The same goes for being programmed before birth to eat highly processed foods, or programmed to feel powerless when you’re sick that the solution lies in a drug. There are forces at play, that we don’t see or even recognise, that are impacting us every minute of our every day. They’ve become our defaults. Our normal.
The words that come to mind are - informed consent and free will. To what degree do we actually have either? And to what degree are the other forces overriding?
During the last few months of challenge in my life, I had tried to stay in my centre throughout it all.
To certain degree I did, with what felt like powerful currents pulling me otherwise. But it also felt easier to “surrender” to the circumstances.
It felt like the most free and aligned path was to “relax” on my fairly devout commitment to living simply, organically and purely. So I did. I felt that the benefits of this outweighed the likely consequences. And they did, up until a point. Up until the consequences came in hard and fast.
Before this, I was on a path of deep cleansing - physically and spiritually. As part of the journey, I even undertook a month long liquid fast. I was committed to the other extreme of decluttering my life. Decluttering my mind, my physical body and my soul.
The major observation during this time though, was that I felt “untouchable” both by society and by sickness. I was running the show. No one else’s energy or frequency. Not even the Collectives.
I went willingly.
I was calling the shots of my life, listening in tune with Nature’s changes and dancing with her, holding strong boundaries with how I was managing my energy. I felt really, really good.
When everyone else was getting sick during this time, I wasn’t. It felt clear to me, it was because I was voluntarily cleansing, I was voluntarily resetting, I was voluntarily creating a new template for a conscious, connected and healthier way of living, playing and relating.
I sit here now, flipped to the other extreme, and I reflect.
There is no sweet spot to land in between these experiences. There is no place to “get to”. There only is. Both of these experiences were necessary in their own way.
There was my experience of life that went willingly, and there was my experience of life that went unwillingly.
And I think, at the end of the day, our soul is here to do what it is here to do. It will unfold. The evolution of our time will unfold. These things are certain.
I think, however, it is slightly more enjoyable to go willingly… As whilst I have made the most of this recent dis-ease, I never wish to experience such a thing again…
So as it is every day that the sun rises, I am faced with choices.
What am I choosing for this day, and my experience of life? Perhaps I cannot control much else, but I know that I have the free will to go willingly, and at least choose that.
P.S. Don’t mind the brain fog sewn into these musings. You’ll get me back to full, in time xx
Goodness, I related to every bit of this. I experience the same thing just two weeks ago. It was awful. I struggle with chronic illnesses, so my body was forced to rest and sit in discomfort having ADHD, and being autistic to can make it a struggle at times because on the days that I do feel good, I over exert myself, and end up in a world of pain. It makes it difficult for me to find balance. Your stories bring so much healing and relatedness that is much needed. Feeling seen and heard over the last few months when I found your page as helped me get through some really dark times as I left a 12 year domestic violence relationship in January, I am still pushing through the mud and I just truly want to tell you how grateful I am for your words ❤️ Keep being a light
Sorry to hear that you’ve all been unwell, but glad you have found the positive. I often think we need the darkness to find the light and am always uneasy when things are a little too calm as I know that things will swing the other way to create some balance.
I love receiving these stories in my inbox. It almost feels like I’ve received a handwritten letter in my mailbox xxx