About Me

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I wondered if I had, at some point on my walk, died and failed to notice.

Big, intrepid crows were landing and slowly beginning to appear around me, speckling the ground like a parachute regiment massing around its objective. The thought occurred to me I may have become carrion without realising. Self begins to fade in strange ways, and here were trees and hills gently letting me know my presence did not really belong to me.

Everything talks, and real spiritual practice is being open to becoming more sensitive to this. Beforehand I had known bliss in a transcendent way, feeling oneness and the sense that manifest reality is an illusion. Nothing was illusory here, everything was alive and aware. Aware of me and talking to me. I listened and my experience permanently shifted. I became the context and have loved the contrasts of life ever since. 

I'm on no plateau of bliss and that is perfect. I have no desire for it. The slings and arrows cause pain but not suffering. My life fell into pieces across the pandemic and that was hard. Hard but not wrong, not an injustice, just fierce grace manifesting as needed. Now I feel a tremor of awe through my body when a flock of birds flies past. 

My practice is Tantra, a full engagement with life and understanding of everything as vibration. All may be one but this can only be known by experiencing variety and contrast. So I set goals, have ambitions and do things. I love stretching my awareness with boldness, shifting identity to show I don’t have one.

Years before I started talking to trees I had a powerful awakening experience, then became stuck. Sitting meditation was not working and I found conventional spiritual groups too dry, too reverent, not imaginative enough.

 A curiosity and realisation that all process is play broke me out of the rut and into true meditation. I sat in a park and just listened to the sounds; I became the birdsong, the wind, the running water. That was the real initiation for me and nature was often at the centre of my practice after that. I began meditating and hiking barefoot, complementing this with indoor practice based on yoga postures, bodily awareness and breathing practices. Orchestrating these various instruments is pure music. 

And I dove with increasing courage into healing. Accessing the dusty map peppered with guilt I somehow picked up in childhood. Removing the cobwebs in body and mind, moving on with conscious direction, no longer shaped by old paths I could hardly see. 

Eckhart Tolle said it best; 'You don't have a life, you are life'. The path in all forms is expanding these eight words from thought to experience to expression.