White Pine: Response Ability

November 17, 2023 1 Comment

As we witness the horrors of war intensify in the world I am made aware of all the ways I still hold separation, polarization and division within myself. 

We all contribute to the energetic soup we live in. There is only one collective consciousness. And so looking within and taking responsibility for what we find is our individual and collective work right now and the most powerful way to contribute to the healing, the wholing, of our beloved world.

I’ve been mentored, loved and guided by White Pine over the last lunar cycle and I am not ready to let her go. We all need her right now and I am holding the intention that her medicine finds your heart and soul. 

I’ve had so many headaches over the past few weeks. 

Just when I think I am through an episode I wake in the night with throbbing pain again. I am not intending on sharing my experience with this currently, or the myriad ways I am materially, actively attempting to mitigate them, I only wish to say that I understand on a deep level that my headaches are absolutely my body’s way of communicating with me. 

Take a breath and let that sink in. 

Perhaps take a moment to consider how your body communicates with you? And how does the Earth communicate with you?

This Soulflower journey began with me exploring, deep diving, with the wisdom of my symptoms and over the many years of introspection and self-reflection, I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my headaches are asking me to stop what I am DOing and thinking and move to a state of receptivity and BEing and flow—and I guess until I get that down they may continue to manifest...  

Anyway I am holding the intention that I can be gentle and patient with myself and not push myself to return to my regular levels of activity and creativity until my body says it’s time.

Resting is my most uncomfortable state! And I know that this is true for so many others as we unwind generations and generations of productivity programming, fear, lack and separation stories that definitely are ready to be transformed… but rest is essential for healing. 

And White Pine is here, patiently and majestically holding space for all of us as we move through the “shatter” that is manifesting in, around and through all the world. The degree of anger and pain being released/unleashed is impossible to ignore.

As I tuned in to the initial invitation from White Pine, what I felt was two fold: 

Firstly, a call to tend to our own physical, mental and emotional containers as if we are all exquisitely rare orchids and, secondly, that our capacity to be grounded and centered and able to hold a space which allows for the energy of peace and healing to manifest (within and without) depends on this level of personal care.

(Did your inner critic just pop in with a reminder about not being selfish? Or lazy? Or worse…?)

A person who can hold their center, who can hold peace and compassion in the middle of the shit storm, who doesn’t react but instead chooses to be a sacred witness, can initiate a ripple of calm that can touch another’s heart simply with their presence. 

I’ve felt it. 

Have you ever stood under a White Pine tree, leaned on her trunk, felt her presence? 

White Pine says, “Do not underestimate the power of your ability to choose how you respond to what is happening whilst also remembering that your choices are the source of your inner power. Even when it feels like you have no power, you absolutely do.”

It is my understanding that, at the very least, holding a frequency of peace, consciously calling for and creating peace within, allows your wise body to become a field through which anger, which may have no other place to go, to at least be mellowed and then expressed in the outer world as a powerful change agent rather than a violent, destructive force. 

White Pine is asking each of us to stop, rest, so we can hold a field of peace, like great trees, which allows space for new perspectives and new solutions to flow in, to be seeded in the collective and to take root… so we can slowly, at Nature’s pace, grow something different. Something we all actually desire.

And, from the higher/wider vantage point that White Pine offers we are also able to see a different path, more options and new perspectives so we can consciously choose our next aligned action, one baby step at a time, rather than remaining in the thick of a cycle of reaction and blame that has plagued humanity for eons whilst waiting for someone else to rescue us from our suffering.

This is how we have to navigate the dark. And this is what it means to be a non-judgmental, sacred witness. 

There is no bypassing in witnessing. 

Instead we can see (and absolutely feel) the pain of the collective creation but then we get to choose to no longer create from it. 

There are so many souls in survival mode right now, programmed to look for all the dangers, weapons at the ready to take down, control, eradicate all that we judge as bad. Stay safe we say, over and over again… 

Sometimes we can’t see the wood for the trees, so to speak. Sometimes, our bodies, (and the Earth’s body), have to scream loudly for us to stop charging ahead, fighting, battling… feeling the need to do something, anything to make the pain go away. 

Fight or flight.

This is where we hear things, we see things and we immediately react rather than taking a breath, a step back, and taking an opportunity to reflect, research and respond from a place of wisdom and compassion rather than raw emotion.

Ask yourself how you feel about those who hold a different set of beliefs? Political, religious, spiritual, whatever. How do you react when confronted with someone or something that you don’t agree with? 

Start there. 

May we remember that we all come with different beliefs and stories but our hearts’ all desire the same things—peace, security, love, belonging, joy—this is where we need to place our attention. On our shared humanity. 

This is not easy work. But if my heart's deepest desire is peace, then I must acknowledge where in myself there is not peace. 

This is my work—growing my response ability to the world around me—so that I can contribute and support the whole from a place rooted in wisdom, love and unity consciousness, rather than from a place of reaction, guilt and unexpressed pain. Having a place of sanctuary and calm within may make all the difference for peace to prevail in the world.

Wishing you peace this Holiday season.

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