A willingness to BE human and to open to receiving the love that is always here can be learned. A willingness to nurture your tender child aliveness, love the woundedness in the little boy or the little girl in you and equally nurture and express the extraordinary, shimmering, creative child spirit in you and live him/her too!
What we uncover in the circle is our shared humanity and as our heart opens in compassion for the sufferings of others so our heart opens more to our own wounding, so that we do not deny it and yet ultimately we come to embrace ourselves, all of our being, so tenderly that the separation and limitations dissolve. We do not construct an identity out of them any longer.
We have all been wounded. A wound that we cannot bear to be with (that we feel we have to shed, or process away, or that we feel we shouldn’t have been given by whoever we think gave it to us) is much more dangerous than a wound held tenderly, with consciousness, with gratitude even for its hidden gifts. And, with a choosing to be happy ANYWAY even when life is impossible and your heart is breaking.
Being friendly with our fear gives us courage to act and choose. Fully acknowledging our anger allows forgiveness. Welcoming sadness we open to surrender to life and its wisdom. Joy embraced is naturally generous. Finding compassion allows us to love and serve highest potential in our being, life or another.
In this way we can learn to skilfully parent ourselves on our journey and find connection and intimacy along the way. We learn how safe it is to open, and to love to be full-bodied, to breathe, and to feel and to make mistakes. Spirituality is otherwise a tool for the ego to avoid dealing with these wounds, a way to judge others and separate.
This is truly the way to materialize the spiritual, to integrate body and soul. Acknowledge the past and be more and more fully present, here, now, alive in this body, this man, this woman that we are. You learn that your simplicity, your humanity, is enough, that fighting yourself is not required, that deep self-honesty is helpful. You learn how to treasure and care for those who enter your life and see the gifts.
Life is no longer frightening or lonely or tragic or a chore. Thus we grow, integrate, deepen our capacity for joy, openness, health, passion, fulfilment even on a very ordinary day! And our beings, our radiance and positivity, our deep sense of life’s safety, and exquisite beauty, is there in service for creation to use as is required.
A Secret Garden circle is intended and held as a very strong satsang field. It is so often a blessed oasis, a cosy refuge, a beautiful blossoming of life’s joy and creativity. And sometimes it may be scary in its unpredictability. And dark when old wounds or limits or judgements come strongly into awareness. So is life sometimes. The circle raises awareness and allows more opening and freedom and trust in ordinary life, more friendship with all that is in existence.
Sometimes you may need to move deeply into your body and your volcanic sexual energy in order to increase the energy available to you, sometimes you need to feel more deeply the feelings and sensations of your woundedness, sometimes you need an intellectual context to understand your human nature more deeply, sometimes the need is deep diving into the past to loosen its grip and the automatic responses you go into when threatened, sometimes you need to constellate an old family situation in order to resolve it inside us, sometimes you need to be held and nurtured, seen and heard in a way you have never received before.
Sometimes you may need different elements of your nature to be in freer dialogue with each other, sometimes need arises to pay attention to what works in life and achieve mastery over emotional wounds, sometimes see that the story and identity you have invested in isn’t really true at all in the realm beyond duality. Over and over the circle finds its way into love and truth.
The openings and love that unfold for you in a circle can be awesome. These can be grounded in moment by moment choices in ordinary life. So that soul is looked after. It would appear that some things work to create lives that nourish soul and some things don’t work or serve soul. Unconditional life doesnt mind either way. The circle supports you during the sometimes arduous task of becoming light in aliveness.
We don’t learn about our light and innocence. We are Love and Light and innocence. That is why some of your true learning can feel painful, hard, feel impossible to the personality. Because destruction and death is part of the letting go of who we believe ourselves to be. Layer after layer of what we believe life should be like. These conditioned layers of protection are to be honoured…and SEEN for what they are so that you can let go into the spaciousness, wholeness and freedom that is your true nature and truly enjoy your natural beingness. This alchemical work is easier with a guide and with friends.
So I thank and pay my respects to the circles which have been and will be, beautiful, strong, mature, passionate and generous as they are. How wonderful to sit with beings who are willing to live life this awake, this focused, this generous, this simple! What a deep pleasure it is to be with those who choose to gather in these timeless circles of being. What we sometimes speak of and explore is the core problem of human existence and its beautifully simple solution. The problem can underly, even determine, all the apparent complexity of our lives – that is, dislocation from essence, from aliveness, from life, from nature. To simply choose to do nothing about this is to move through life feeling separate, contracted and afraid. Such forgetting and self –ishness is the core cause of all dissatisfaction and unhappiness in this world. It does not have to be this way.
Deeper than our thoughts, our emotions, our struggles, the roles we play in life, is a ground of being that is love and truth, still and silent. Out of circle work, a resting in this universal solvent and the the healing and opening can arise so that we are freer, happier, more whole, less inclined to believe in stories and patterns and obligations and conditioned responses and rules. Then we live with authenticity, integrity and – most of the time, though not all the time- peace.
The unfolding life of a circle, its absolute coherence and intentionality to support consciousness is an awesome mystery. What a gift to be able to be so friendly with all the life in ourselves and others that everything is simply an invitation into awareness, wholeness, joy, interconnection and presence ! I look forward to the next circle!
Aloha, Joy
Circle Work
For deep in their hearts……They yearned for the spirit’s freedom that would teach man to rejoice with his neighbour at the light of the sun and the wonder of living
Kahil Gibran
the best thing about this retreat was the wonder and beauty of the circle and how I constantly see aspects of myself in many of the people in it.
Susan Coyne, Lancs
