It’s 3 years since I’ve written in this blog and like the character in the Paul Coelho book The Alchemist, I feel like I’ve been on a big and sometimes challenging journey and ended up back where I started, however altered and wiser for it. I’ve worked through various challenges and step by step I’ve been re-shaping my life to create more space for creating.
I’ve recently completed writing a chapter for a friend’s book about creating equality at work for women and men. My chapter is on the historical context and what I believe underpins our current patriarchal world and what we need to do to restore balance personally and planetarily. I’m about to share some photographs in a Brisbane exhibition titled ‘Restore: Re-enchanting Connection’ at Kepk Gallery in Brisbane 3rd-9th December. Both of these led me back to this blog and the importance of connection and ‘listening to the whispers’ is a key part of that.
‘Listening to the Whispers’ is a phrase that came to me many years ago, when I was writing about how to come back into balance and wellness both personally and planetarily as part of a Masters degree in Social Ecology, having recently left a corporate career that felt unhealthy, unsatisfying, and unsustainable.
Whilst sitting quietly in nature one day asking for clarity, I was guided to ‘listen to the whispers’, the quiet, wise voice inside us all that is connected to the source of all things. It shines a light on my circumstances when I access it by quietening my mind, asking a question and then listening and by that I mean being in a receptive state. When I ask for guidance or clarity about my current circumstances or challenges the answers I hear sometimes surprise me and always feels supportive.
I made a decision over 25 years ago to not only listen but to act on the knowing I receive.
I quickly learned that listening to my feelings and acting on my intuition meant embracing uncertainty, letting go of perceived control whilst acknowledging but not catering to my fears. It required an act of faith to listen and then act, no matter what. I chose to, as Susan Jeffers advises in her book of the same name, “feel the fear and do it anyway”. David Whyte says, “that the price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears, that the price of our passion and commitment involves the shattering of deep personal illusions of immunity and safety.” I learned that life can be a dance between receiving and acting.
A brief synopsis of what happened for me personally as I took one intuitive, committed step at a time, was every aspect of my life changed and I continue to be led to more authenticity, creativity and connection. I naturally moved toward connection to community, in a regional area rather than a city, connecting to the earth through regular time in nature and these both led to a deeper felt sense of spiritual connection, a direct experience of being connected to an intelligence greater than my own.
An unexpected outcome was that I became more conscious of the way I, and we humans collectively, are impacting the health of the planet and began modifying my consumer choices to reduce my consumption of resources. It was organic and visceral, I began to feel discomfort in my solar plexus if I reached to buy something in plastic packaging. The process continues to lead me toward a life that is more balanced, fulfilled and sustainable.
I say I was ‘led’ as I began to see a wisdom at play that inspired my choices with unexpected outcomes far superior to anything I could have or would have created through my limited understanding or logic alone. Quietening my busy and sometimes anxious mind and listening for inspiration became my mode of operating. My logical mind was now in healthy and supportive partnership with my intuitive knowing. I learned that my emotions when acknowledged and released in a healthy way, freed up this path of internal communication and connected me to my internal compass.
I believe the key to healing our societal and ecological issues is for individuals to foster a healthy relationship with their inner world; valuing and developing emotional intelligence, listening to and validating feelings and intuitions and acting wholistically from that internally connected place. Like the natural world the soul is not controllable, however there is wisdom and wholeness to be found there, as I discovered when I made a commitment to listen to mine.
Everyone has access to their inner knowing, the quiet voice that speaks often with simple, yet clear directions on the path or action to take, the trick is to quieten our busy minds to hear it. I often hear mine when on walks in nature or engrossed in mundane tasks. We often ignore this voice because of a fear of the unknown. I have learned in living this way that often only the next step becomes clear and I have to take it faithfully without knowing what the step after that is to be. It requires trust that there is a greater and benevolent wisdom at play beyond my limited understanding.
Fear of the unknown and a lack of faith in the benevolence of life cuts us off from the very medicine we need; to listen to and act on our individual and collective inner wisdom and collaborate and enter into real partnership with each other and also with the natural world.
What supports you to access your inner knowing?
By 1pm I had ticked 6 things off my list and even though there was more to do I was getting hungry. The water in the Brunswick river looked crystal clear and inviting but instead of a swim I headed home to make lunch so I could keep going.
ps me from seeing it, feeling it, knowing it. Sometimes I think I have to ‘do’ life, that I have to work out what to do. That is the illusion.
after over 3 months of working part-time from home. My paid work is now a day by day proposition as I finalise the handover.
stops and I find them a perfect time to review what I’ve achieved in the year that has just gone and think about what I want to create in the year ahead. On reflection I realise I’ve achieved a great deal in the year I was 50, including caring for myself well by taking a sabbatical and turning my health around, reconnecting with myself in a deeper way, with the natural world and my passions and finally getting this blog started.
making a positive difference in the world and which inspires me. I’d like to be contributing both my skills and ideas and the great people I work with pay me well. In my vision I absolutely love and enjoy what I’m doing and I have a manageable workload that means I’ve time in my life to write and develop my blog, to walk and spend time in nature, spend time with my friends and family and if a lovely man is part of that then that will be a bonus. I dance, sing, play, create, laugh and relax deeply. I love and care and am connected to and support my community. I make choices for the benefit of all and combine with others to remind our politicians about what is important and vital for our grandchildren’s grandchildren and the most vulnerable in society.
I’m gradually retraining myself.
er two hour classes are about deep release and relaxation, switching off the nervous system, to help release old patterns of holding that we may have carried for a lifetime. I found myself in the first class thinking impatiently, ‘well there’s not much going on, we’re just laying here, and I am paying for this and how many people are in the room? That means….!’. Of course stopping was the point, physically and mentally and I eventually got there.
prefer it that way. Having weight on top of you in the form of blankets also helps your nervous system relax, so lay some folded blankets over you.
r than what I might have thought was urgent. Many years ago I wrote a poem about this topic unsurprisingly called Stop!. The last stanza says:
hings and it is not easy to take in all in one go. Our life support system, our ecosystem has been and is being altered by us humans.
part of. An anthropocentric world view, the belief that human beings are the central or most significant species on the planet, has driven unrestrained human development and is based on the illusion that we are somehow in control of nature. The people who introduced a handful of toxic cane toads to Northern Queensland probably thought they were in control, yet 200 million cane toads prove otherwise.
herself and to listen. I once attended a workshop run by Joanna Macy, whose work centres around needing to feel our feelings about the damage to the earth, to fuel and inspire action, rather than being overwhelmed and immobilised.
nd I went outside and lay on the earth under a huge fig tree, under the gaze of Mt Warning and cried for them, for the poisoned earth, for us all. After a while I began to feel soothed. I am not a religious person and as I lay there some words from a long ago psalm came into my mind. ” He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he restoreth my soul. ” As I lay there I felt a deep sense of being connected to something much greater than myself.
e soil. I saw new shoots beginning their journey upward to the light. The whole cycle of life and death right there. I listened, bells birds calling and responding, taking me back to my childhood and a drive in the family car through another forest. I looked up into the canopy of gumtrees, a grey sky filtering through. I love the grandeur of gumtrees, their majesty.
What I did not expect was that three months later I would still be working as a contractor for the same employer, on reduced hours three days a week from home. It has been a day by day proposition that is continuing until a permanent replacement is found. This temporary work will end in the next few weeks and my employment future is then uncertain. What next? I don’t know. The only thing I know is that I need to stay faithful and allow the process I am in full expression. The in between place between endings and new beginnings was once named for me by my dear friend Georgie as the ‘fertile void’. The place of all possibilities where there is no certainty and where everything is possible. It is the place out of which everything is born. The place between endings and beginnings can be rich, mysterious, soulful and sometimes uncomfortable and challenging. It is a place where we have an opportunity to reconnect with ourselves on a deeper level, a place to call back lost parts of ourselves. Barbara Ann Brennan identified this phase for me many years ago in her book ‘Light Emerging’.
ing my health as I entered Chronic Fatigue, then losing my job and ability to work, then losing a child with a miscarriage, then my relationship ending, then the home I was renting being sold so that I became homeless. This series of endings culminated on Christmas Day, 2000, the day that my pregnancy had been due. I was literally and metaphorically on my knees and had absolutely nothing to hold onto. In that stripped bare state, I felt a very deep sense of surrender wash through me and carry me. I felt completely alone and yet held in loving hands by an unseen force. Carolyn Myss eloquently says that we need to call our spirits back and that is what I committed to do. When there is nothing external to hang onto the only way to go is in.
Gradually I have felt more comfortable and adventurous. I did have a break from walking there during the summer months after nearly stepping on a snake, a very long python that gave me a fright!
ent, considering my options before choosing one. Sometimes it leads nowhere and I backtrack, sometimes it opens up to something much more than I was expecting. I am enjoying this exploration of the forest, the bird calls a constant delight. A few days ago a friend asked to come with me as she had never been in the reserve and wanted to explore it too. I became her tour guide.
ur steps, that exploration awaits us on another day.
been feeling intimidated by a blank canvas or page, unsure of the ‘right’ thing to do.
d not respond to herbs as they normally would. Like piecing together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, I finally realised in April this year that the gradual deterioration I had been experiencing was due to breathing in toxic fumes off gassing from fumigated boxes imported from overseas. Can I prove it? No. Whilst my two co-workers did not appear to be affected I had to trust both my logic and more importantly I had to trust my intuition, which was giving me ever increasing insistent messages.
is year my deterioration accelerated and my alarm bells went off. In the midst of a massage, during which I had prayed to receive healing, the word ‘neurotoxin’ popped into my clear quiet mind. It was as if it was being whispered insistently into my ear. It got my attention. I began investigating the fumigation chemical Methyl Bromide and found it affects the nervous system, respiratory system and liver. Aha!
s, regular walks and time in nature, Kinesiology and Neuro Cranio Restructuring sessions to help soothe my stressed nervous system, deep rest yoga classes to teach my body how to relax and unwind, tapping on meridian points with EFT (emotional freedom technique), taking supplements; liver herbs, parasite herbs, vitamins, minerals and especially a detoxification product. Natural Cellular Defense, made from the mineral zeolite that helped me get well in 2006, oil pulling; swishing organic sesame oil in my mouth every morning for 20 minutes which helps detoxify the body, listening to meditation tapes, doing breathing exercises, rubbing neuro emotional points on my body, visiting Kiva Spa to relax and detoxify via the use of the sauna, dance classes to connect me to my life force, to my joy, as a release. Two months ago I was laying on the floor in the class crying because I felt so unwell, now I can not only complete a whole class, I feel uplifted by it.
We are all exposed to an increasing number of invisible toxins, heavy metals and chemicals, in our modern world and some of us are the ‘canaries’ signalling their presence. A doctor I saw who supported my decision to leave the workplace told me ‘it is hard to prove’ and yes if I am looking for scientific validation then it is. I have found that many doctors don’t understand the factors that contribute to chronic fatigue type illnesses or understand the impact of the increasing toxic load we are all accumulating and living with. Some of us are genetically pre-disposed to not excrete environmental toxins as well as others.
Joining Toastmasters led me to other experiences that I never would have dreamed of doing. Within three months of joining the club, still a very nervous and inexperienced speaker some friends started a monthly music event at a local hall called the Mullumbimby Folk Music club, a showcase of original music. They said ‘Great Megan, you do public speaking, so you can be the MC.” This was another moment when something unexpected was presented to me, it felt absolutely terrifying and yet I knew deep down that I needed to do it. With my pulse racing I agreed.
nal, revealing myself to me, as well as revealing me to others.
Listening To The Whispers 