Neither her or she.

but a principle of LIFE that anchors in the core of the heart stretching down to the smallest molecule and up to the cosmic sea.

Magdalena is the capacity to hold all existence as love within us; a staunch determination to not fall into the allurement of duality, polarity or separation.

The bridge to all worlds, all kingdoms

Magdalena is the column of light erecting our spine with the remembering of who we and where our life is sourced.

It is the exuberant vibration of colour, texture and tone dancing around this light. A humming, throbbing, pulsing stream of living electricity relating with all worlds.

From crown to base

from sun to earth

Magdalena is the marriage of Christ and Mary inside US. It is our own crucifixion, resurrection AND descension.

Magdalena is a gaze that cracks open the heart in grief for all the times we forgot

That we are this love. It is the healthy shame of our own amnesia.

Magdalena is the eternal embrace for the moments we failed love. It is the soothing whispers of forgiveness before anything ever began.

Magdalena is the stillness between all movement, the interval.

It is the moment of choice as LIFE enters as a seed of vastness and is kneaded into form by our own hands.

It is the event horizon between expansion and contraction. The death between each breath. and our choice to inhale again and again.

It is the surrender to the principle of grace and love fiercely and with a loyal WILL that extends in all directions.

It is the willingness to walk around with our hearts on the outside of us

Magdalena is the knitting together of our human and cosmic soul as the ONE rose.

It is the embrace of our most intimate experience.

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer.

Woody Allen

Relationships, in my humble view, are the great frontier of both our deepest longing and our most intense suffering. If there were instructions for our souls prior to incarnating on earth school, warning labels should be stamped on the romantic heart: Beware. The territory of relationship is fraught with the best and worst of humankind. We’re pulled toward it by our longing for union, and a strong dose of biology (damn that pesky biology) and at the same time, repelled by what we inevitably encounter once we’re truly in its throes.

Ourselves.

Why does the universe conspire to make us crave union with another human being, drawing us toward it with such a powerful biological charge?

I confess that I am a romantic (gulp).

Since I can remember, the longing for love, union, and a quality of merging has threaded through my inner world. All my life I have carried a searchlight for an outer reflection of a possibility I always sensed within me, that I could truly give myself to another.

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Body, Heart, and Soul.

I was so afraid that this inner dream would never materialise that I built an acute armour around myself- the independent woman who needed no one. But beneath was something far more tender: a part of me that really, really, really wanted to love and be loved in the depths of romance.

I have just spent time in a monastery, on a form of solo retreat, and what was reflected back to me through that experience was an aspect of myself deeply touched by devotion. It was beautiful to witness the rhythmic devotion of the monks in their daily lives, the fullness of their presence directed toward union with God.

It struck me that this, too, was a form of romance.

Robert Johnson, author of We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, writes that romantic love has always been inseparable from spiritual aspiration. So despite my shyness in naming my own romantic longings, there is nothing here to be ashamed of.

Perhaps the deepest bruising the heart experiences in romance, however, comes when we reach for something more than human through our longing, asking another person to meet or fulfil something that no human being could possibly contain.

When we awaken to this, we can hit disappointment, sometimes even resentment or dismay. The threads of our heart projection onto that human unravel, we dust off our expectations and either resume the search for the ‘right person’ (the optimist path) or retreat into a kind of self-imposed monasticism that does not involve love or relationship (the renunciant path).

This cycle can repeat over and over throughout our entire lives. So the question that arises for me is: What is the bloody point of it all?

I took this question into contemplation during my time at the monastery, and these are some of what emerged:

1. The purpose of relationship is not to fulfil the human self (though that can be a very delightful byproduct), but to wake us up to the possibility that the romantic heart is ultimately seeking its Maker, the place where the deepest possible union already is. Perhaps the very momentum of romance is what keeps us searching, until we begin to recognise what it is we are truly searching for.

2. The sense of unfulfillment we might encounter in relationship is not necessarily a sign that we have chosen the “wrong person.” They may instead be revealing something that has become attached to our projection of the human being as God.

3. There is no perfect human being. Only God is perfect.

   I want to share a lengthy but powerful blurb from Robert Johnson that encapsulates what in my lived experience is the journey of the maturation of the romantic heart.

To put his soul in the cathedral and stop trying to live it though a woman means that a man removes an entire dimension of his life from his human relationship and re-establishes it elsewhere, on another level of himself—a level that he can’t live outwardly, that he must live by himself. To his ego it feels as though he is impoverishing his human relationship or cheating himself. At first he feels that half the thrills, excitement, fun, and intensity is taken out of human relationship. With time he learns that his soul-life never really belonged there and that his human relationship is actually thriving better without it; but for a time, it feels dismal.

I confess I have had some grievances with the universe from the part that wants someone to fully meet me in my romantic longings. I want the Bella Swan and Edward Cullen scenario, minus the vampire thing, obviously. I WANT it to be with an embodied human being, one that exemplifies the quality of love, devotion and merging that propels my heart. I am reluctantly waking up to the reality this can only ever be true in moments of time because whoever I am relating to is also human.

At times, VERY human

and thus I have come to the realisation that unfulfillment is important.

My longing was never sized for a finite object in the first place, and instead of churning in the tension between glimpses of union and the human reality of life, I am attempting to direct my arrow toward the Creator instead of the Creation. I am not extinguishing my romantic heart, but reorienting it

I have experienced what Robert Johnson speaks to in the redirection of the romantic gaze: a feeling of boredom, dullness, and at times even resentment toward the simplicity (is this really enough?). I have had breakout moments of inciting friction, or longing for radical excitement, which feel good momentarily but its effect fades quickly.

Underneath the wrestle, however, I can sense a polishing, a forging of my heart, and in some moments I feel very close to the purity of devotion that I recognise in the monks.

And circling back to the warning label for incoming souls, maybe it shouldn’t say Beware.

Maybe it should say: Be Aware.

To be continued…. no doubt

Longing is the core of mystery. Longing itself brings the cure. The only rule is, suffer the pain. Your desires must be disciplined, and what you want to happen in time, sacrificed. Rumi

I grew up with Catholicism, attended Church with my family, and went to a Catholic girls’ school, which honestly was painful to my child self. The only resonance I felt at mass was shaking the hands of strangers during the offering of peace and drinking the wine, which made me feel pleasantly tipsy (sadly, no longer on offer in most services these days).

As a teenager with budding feminist shoots, I found the services isolating and unrepresentative of the woman I saw myself growing into. The only feminine image offered was a virgin mother and whispers of a whore, standing beside a male God serving male authority. I turned my back on the Church and sought out Lilith instead, who became a fierce idol for me, a reflection of liberation, power and sexual freedom, though not without her own shadow: feminine resentment and rage among them.

Last year I started a journey of devotion and study with the Sufi tradition, which honestly restored my faith in wisdom streams: the completeness of the teachings, the inclusion of the natural world as holy, the teachings of beauty, devotion and ecstatic praise. In many ways it carried me back toward the Church, as Sufism gave me a framework I could surrender to without feeling I was betraying the wholeness of my humanity.

So returning to the Abbey has been a beautiful experience: to sit in a space where centuries of prayer have been whispered into ancient stone walls. I have been moved by the Benedictine monks, and by how profound it is to give one's life to prayer and to the many rituals of Church life: service, eucharist, daily chanting. I was also grateful, in a way, that I didn't understand the homily, spoken in French, and so was spared some of the more dogmatic Old Testament verses. I don't resonate fully with the institution, but I can now appreciate what was hidden behind my own casting out. I can appreciate the perfections within the imperfections. What I do want to share though is the postcards of beauty, the moments where I was touched by my time here.

Meeting a young woman who does not own a phone and relies on strangers to help her find her way through the world.

It wasn't that long ago that none of us had phones, and we too followed our instinctive, adventurous guidance in the world. I remember walking the streets of Athens at 21 years old without even a guidebook, following some inner compass that led me into the full spectrum of life, not one that I selected or controlled through google reviews. This woman shared that not having a phone opens up a sense of childlike adventure and possibility, unlike the program of probability most of us are slaves to these days, from having access to everything known.

I honestly miss the art of being lost. When you don't know where you are, you have to look up, take note of your surroundings, that tree, that decrepit building. You have to speak to a stranger, which means letting yourself be seen needing something, and trusting them to decide to help. In that small exchange, a thread of trust gets spun between two people who would otherwise have passed each other by, unmet. Being lost invites a slowing down and an acute presence, and through this we come into contact with an unknown world and find our relationship within it.

This woman is spending ten days here in prayer, and yesterday I had a beautiful moment in the corner of the crypt, cloaked in darkness, witnessing her in prayer. The beauty and joy that passed over her face, the wonder pouring from her as she gazed into the candles lit around the entombed relics of St Benedict. Something in my heart was so touched by the simple wisdom of her presence and childlike grace.

A pigeon burial ceremony

I had brought some red roses to the monastery as an offering for Lammas, and within minutes of arriving they were part of a funeral for a pigeon. Outside the door of the sleeping quarters was a beautiful pigeon, its wings slightly splayed, patches of multicoloured feathers glistening in the light. Although it was dead, it was beautiful. I bent down to offer it some rose petals, and a man emerged from the building, speaking to me in French and pointing at the bird. As usual I stammered "no français," and in broken English he told me he had witnessed the bird being shot, and had brought it to the monastery. He was crying, sharing how he could not believe someone could kill a bird from the sky. Together we dug a hole in the little garden and filled it with his tears and my rose petals. It felt beautiful to honour this creature and its death, and to share a moment with this man. His grief and distress felt bigger than this one small death, his tears seemed to contain a multitude of unexpressed moments in this life, which opened up a place of compassion within me. There was something holy in simply being there for it.

Witnessing the monks sing to Mary

One evening I was strolling the fields around the monastery, watching the swirling glow of the sunset paint the sky, when I felt the impulse to go into the Abbey. By the time I entered, the prayer service had ended, and as I opened the door, the lights went out. Many people were leaving, but I slipped in and watched the monks walk into a small prayer area dedicated to Mother Mary. There were around twenty monks and five of us who were not. Candles were lit around her statue, the rest of the Abbey sank into darkness, and they began to sing to her. Silent tears rolled down my face as I witnessed the beauty of their devotion, and I felt years of built up armour toward the Church in relationship to the feminine, begin to melt in that moment. One of the monks sprinkled holy water over our heads, and it merged with my own tears.

The Beauty inside the Crypt

I spent many hours in the crypt over these days, sitting in a darkened and hidden corner, and so was privy to many pilgrims coming to light candles to Saint Benedict and pray. He is a saint people often come to for protection against temptation, but also for a gentle death, it is said his own death came while he stood in prayer.

I witnessed the beauty of humans when they come into contact with what they feel to be sacred and holy, when they turn to their maker. The silent and muffled tears, the whispering of prayers, the rosary beads rolling inside palms, the calls for help, the joy and the awe.

It is beautiful.

Returning to the simple celebrations of the spiralling of the earth and sun is a very important anchor for me. The simple truth of the cosmic path is a relief to my heart, which is a little scathed.

The past year has been rough around the edges, dismantling what feels like a previous incarnation. My resistance to the shedding, in ways subtle and not, at times turns my world into an unnecessary death roll. Anyone else relate?

A diagnosis of cancer one year ago began the spiral of monumental changes. Firstly, the utter shock that I was so unaware of the growths in my body (seven of them). How removed I had been from my physicality, the warning signs that were there, and my choice to ignore what others around me were telling me,

to slow down, rest, and eat.

The ending of my seven year relationship and a completion of my ties to the community and teachings that shaped it. The unravelling of seven years of beauty but also of places of hurt, and most importantly an unveiling of what was blind to me while I was so close to the core of the community: the unhealthy power dynamics, the ‘othering’ of the world, the glamour and some seriously cult like virtues, and how utterly opposed I felt toward anyone who suggested this to me while I was deep inside it.

Waking up is painfully humbling.

So I walked away from the fields that teach neo-spirituality and neo-tantra, with gratitude for all that I received and experienced but also a healthy dose of misgiving. For some time I was scared that I was now heading into the born again territory like others before me who have been deep in these communities and made their way to other pastures.

Jesus does feel pretty compelling in some moments.

The most challenging part of all this was coming down from the thrill of eros, money, and power, which these fields are fuelled by. Returning to being just another human walking the streets of the world, just one of the eight billion of us. Not special or significant, not a teacher who initiates others or leads people into the new civilisation that awaits those special enough to know it.

Just a nondescript human.

Letting it all go has been a process of sitting in the darkness at times, not knowing who I am now the bells and whistles have been actively self removed. When we consciously shed the clothes of identity, those we adopt for ourselves and those the world drapes over us, what do we do while waiting for the next threads to be woven?Just remain a nobody?

I hear a chuckle from somewhere in the cosmos.

As my outer world of purpose narrowed so drastically, both through circumstance and by conscious choice, what did remain, like debris, are the virtues I have cultivated over these years. Some are beautiful; others are difficult, even hellish at times.

If the purpose of my life is to simply love the people and non human beings around me, to be present to the journey they are making,

That is worthy of being somebody.

Whether it is the rabbit that sits at my feet as I type this, the cedar trees I spent hours beneath today, those whose lives I currently orbit and who orbit mine.

And there are voices that wrestle with this notion, broadcasting their displeasure through my psyche:

“But I have something unique to offer this world, books to write, art to make!”

“I have a sacred purpose to fulfil, a reason for being here beyond this ordinariness!”

Then I think about the other 7.9999 billion humans who no doubt carry the same voices and longings, and I feed the rabbit another lettuce leaf instead.

Circling back to the first words I penned, what anchors me in this current transition is the simple reality of life. The wondrousness that every month the sun and moon stand opposite each other, perfectly and precisely. Or the fact that today the sun is halfway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox.

Of offering rose petals to the trees that have witnessed these passages of time longer than our lifetime or the lifetimes of the bones resting around their roots. That my human story is small and insignificant and that is perfectly accurate. And my greatness is in the generosity of my heart and love alone.

And this simplicity is enough,

more than enough.

Memories of the souls who’ve woven themselves into my story, kneading my heart into the shape it holds today.

Time has turned those moments into memories, leaving only the smile lines on my face as proof of their existence.

So instead, I’ve created a thousand timelines, living a thousand lives at once. Each memory of love stretches into a life where it never ended, where the moments of each encounter with a thousand souls replay again and again.

I look back now and know that I called in Lilith during this time as a protection and as a response to the awakening of my own sexuality. Lilith in the oldest Sumerian and Hebrew traditions is the part of the feminine that will not be assigned a role, will not lie beneath, will not be domesticated. She arrived at the moment my own body became an object of desire to others.

She was the refusal of that reduction.

The most potent encounter I had with Lilith was at the very end of a Vipassana retreat, where she appeared during the final meditation as a powerful and visceral energy that rose up from my base, moved through my spine, and cascaded out through my head, surrounding my entire field of energy. The following year I dreamed about her regularly and felt her presence with me during meditation. I particularly felt the suffering of her exile, and her vilification as a demonic baby-eater. What she revealed to me was that she holds everything the human psyche casts out; she nurses the energies that have been excluded, including the sacredness of our bodies beyond any objectification. Herein lies her split: one aspect demands to be free of the objectification of her form, while the other asserts her right to express the full seduction of her sexual power.

I felt this split inside me too.

Magdalene first appeared to me in Ireland (years later) as I was walking up to a mountain-top lake said to host a witch who could drown anyone who entered it (local mythology). At the end of the path stood a statue of Mary, the Mother and it was there, standing before it, that I met Magdalene inside me. It is hard to put into words the transformation that happened over the following years, except to say that she was a mirror to the softness of my own heart. Her grace melted the raw edges of my own outcast self. She continued to find me through bodies of water: rivers, seas and streams. I would feel her in the undulations and currents; she would wrap herself around me as grace kneading away my armour, restoring a sense of childlike delight within me.

During one of my Magdalene Retreats I encountered Mary again in meditation and she shape shifted herself into Lilith, which collapsed within me the polarity of light and dark feminine.

Another training she revealed herself as Yeshua (Jesus Christ) and I began dismantling my relationship with the form of a woman entirely, meeting ‘her’ instead as a principle of Grace itself.

Although these days I still refer to ‘Her’ or ‘The Goddess,’ these are just veils for something I experience as a living frequency of Grace, a field of intelligence. It does not separate the sacred from the outcast, the Magdalene from the Lilith. It simply meets everything with the same luminous attention of love.

This, to me, is the Goddess, and the heart of my relationship with what could be called the Feminine. Existing behind all archetypes, behind all names and stories and yet sometimes we need the stories to find our way in. Sometimes we need a face, a myth in order to eventually connect with the current of love that is ultimately nameless. When I am most connected to Her, I experience a gaze that sees pure radiance in all life, in all form as a subtle, ecstatic joy that pulses quietly inside my heart. When I am distanced from Her, I find myself back in the form of her story and mostly it is Lilith who returns raw and sometimes raging. I am learning not to resist these moments because after all, she was the first who found me.

The Thunder, Perfect Mind" is an ancient Gnostic poem discovered among the Nag Hammadi texts in Egypt in 1945. It's one of the most extraordinary pieces of sacred feminine writing ever found. Here are my favourite excerpts:

I was sent forth from the power,

and I have come to those who reflect upon me,

and I have been found among those who seek after me.

Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,

and you hearers, hear me.

You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.

And do not banish me from your sight. And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.

Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!

Do not be ignorant of me.

For I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin.

I am shame and boldness.

I am shameless;

I am ashamed.

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

Give heed to me.

I am the substance and the one who has no substance.

The irony is that when I am in touch my deep inner self, I feel ecstatic.

I connect with a place within that is so in love with life, spellbound by this reality, its beauty and grace touch me so deeply. But this self is often be veiled by a sense of lack, a feeling that something is deeply missing, and I sense the familiar imprisonment of a fearful mind.

Last night in my Feminine Mentorship Journey we touched on the subtle power of ecstasy, an experience I have easily accessed in my life: a sense of boundarilessness between the livingness of my own being and the livingness of the world, a sunset, a tree, a star.

This state feels like home to me and yet I so easily forget and lose this thread.

In these moments of amnesia I hold tightly to this teaching by Eckhart Tolle: when we are not in joy, we are not in our soul.

The soul in its essence is joy.

Sometimes I need a ladder to lift myself out of this state and sometimes I even forget that I actually NEED a ladder.

This morning I read a text by Hazrat Inayat Khan, which was a balm to my heart on the freedom of the soul and the human condition:

“The soul is able to expand further than any man can journey. The soul is able to reach higher than man can reach by any means. Its life is freedom, it knows nothing but joy and sees nothing but beauty. Its own nature is peace, its nature is not human but divine. It is for this reason that the soul feels limitation continually all through life — as a fish would feel when it is out of water, and a bird when its wings are clipped.”

I do fall into the suffering of my human limitations and long, absolutely long for the ecstatic nature of my soul to find me again. In this place I experience an utter aloneness and a helplessness that cannot be comforted from the outside, though I reach so desperately for something external to soothe me.

Do you also know this place?

Andrea Gibson, a poet I hold close to my heart, who died last year, wrote this, which I is another balm for my heart:

Why did I go so long believing I owed the world my disappointment? Why did I want to take the world by storm when I could have taken it by sunshine, by rosewater, by the cactus flowers on the side of the road where I broke down?

Their last words before they died: “I loved my life.”

Their existence touches me so deeply and is one of my ladders.

I was reminded this week that another ladder out of suffering is the recognition of gratitude and the cultivation of it as a practice.

So this, too, is my confession: of how much I loved my life, as I reach behind the veils of illusion to find myself again.

An Ode To Bali

Walking this humid, traffic-filled road and opening to the joy of this moment.

The swallows write their invisible mantras, swooping and circling above my head, tracing codes of beauty in the air that only the sky can read.

I hold gratitude for the rain in this monsoonal time. In the claps of thunder that wake me in shock and exhilaration, God clapping her hands above my head calling me to attention.

The downpours from the heavens. The endless streaming waterfall from the skies washing and purifying day after day, filling the streets like rivers, soaking the ground in life.

Every night from the temples, the chaotic, frantic, devotional music of the Balinese preparing for the new year, crafting statues to the gods as offerings, to the evil spirits, that they may be appeased. Their drums and bells across the rice fields. This longing to know those mysteries more deeply, but accepting the role of the outsider, peering in.

Altars and offerings everywhere I look, to gods of light and darkness. Tobacco and flowers and incense and food, as frequent as breath.

My partner’s laughter. His mischievousness shaking up the heaviness of my mind. Card games over dinner. Night explorations to temples and bowing before the grace of bodhi trees. The sacred in the mundane.

And the animals who found us.

A tiny kitten at a temple, who we nursed and then left had to leave, a painful choice, a prayer that she will be cared for offered as incense and rose petals.

A puppy who followed us home, and the prayer that some human family would claim her, answered days later when our neighbour put a collar round her neck.

The joy inside the eyes of children at the night market, how their open wonder calls something forth in me, reaches in and finds it.

And the motorbikes, overcoming my fear of them, discovering the pleasure of the wind on my skin, gazing into a horizon of monsoonal moodiness, feeling what it is to not be afraid.

One year ago, I had her formally diagnosed with autism after holding off on any external intervention. Maybe that was too late, because the diagnosis propelled her into a space of such confidence. Finally, she had something to anchor her sense of difference to. She had autism. When she called my family to tell them, of course they said, “We already know.”

Of course we always knew.

Her response to me was another moment of deep appreciation a blunt text message:
“Mum, I have autism. I feel special.” (Minus any punctuation.)

I was a single parent from the time Arjala (who has since renamed herself Solstice) was eight weeks old, so for most of our lives it was just the two of us. I began noticing small differences from a very young age. She would not look people in the eye and did not properly speak until she was three, even though specialists insisted she could. We were asked to leave multiple group classes (yoga, dance) because she would not follow instructions and simply did whatever she wanted which, if I’m honest, I often found hilarious. While the other children were doing downward dog, she would roll herself up like a hot dog inside her yoga mat.

At school, we began to see that she struggled to pay attention or comprehend what was happening around her. Yet all the while she held such a profound inner world singing to herself, creating characters, speaking to invisible mythological beings. She attended a beautiful Steiner school and was held by the same teacher throughout her entire primary education. In many ways, this was a blessing. Bernice could see the small but significant areas of growth. On the other hand, it meant she went somewhat under the radar, protected within the womb of one class for seven years.

By high school, it became obvious she was far behind her peers and unable to meet the basic expectations of a structured schedule. Even her getting a bus on her own to school propelled her into intense anxiety. I made the decision to pull her out entirely and begin unschooling her.

I write about this journey because I want to share the teachings that came from this unique human.

She taught me about the conditionality of my love. She exposed the sensitivity of my emotional body, her bluntness was brutal at times. I remember the first day I took her to daycare when she was one. I picked her up a few hours later, missing her terribly, tearful, only to be met with a gaze that seemed to say,

“Oh, you again… what do you want?”

Her autism means she does not overlay the usual social lubrication that makes interactions feel comfortable offering comfort when someone is upset, or even responding automatically when greeted. She responds on her own terms, always. And I was left to meet the sensitivity and discomfort that arose within when I reached for connection and received either blunt rejection or simple indifference. I laugh now at how many times I had to hold my own small, tender heart in relation to her. It was its own forging an inner strengthening I could never have orchestrated for myself.

She has also taught me about acceptance. I believed I was open-minded, yet so many times I tried to squeeze her into a box of being more acceptable making eye contact, being less weird, more normal. Those attempts to change her failed, because she cannot be anything other than who she is. She taught me the power of truth and authenticity. She showed me how trapped I still was in how others perceived us as mother, as daughter. She could do nothing but defy those expectations, and it was a humbling lesson that took years of surrender.

Can I accept her exactly as she is, even if the world judges her or us?
Can I see beyond her difficulty participating in what comes so easily to others, and hold her worth steady in my own heart?

Perhaps the greatest challenge for me has been confronting the conditioning I carry around contribution and productivity. Who knew this lived so quietly inside me? I have always seen myself as a hippie, in rebellion against society’s constructs yet there it was, an inner wrestle when I realised it might take her an entire lifetime to take on a job or pursue formal study (if at all).

I had to ask myself questions I didn’t want to face.

Is her worth simply in being who she is writing her stories, wandering through rose gardens, watching movies, doing puzzles?

Is that enough for a life?

Can I accept that this, in itself, is a beautiful contribution? That she is enough simply as she is without external accomplishments, without full participation in what society deems valuable?

That this human being, existing on this earth is itself a gift

Just as ours is- existence itself being the point and the gift.

I remember a beautiful friend, a homeschool teacher, once telling her:

“Don’t go anywhere. Don’t try to fit in. We are going to come to you.”

He saw that she held something equally valuable, even if it was not widely valued. It still moves me to remember.

I want to complete this homage with a few quotes directly from the source of this magical human being.

………………………………………………………………………………….

When asking her today about what it means to be 13 she told me "I am now going to live the teenage dream, I am wiser and I can still believe in dragons.. I am going to swear more and I can think whatever I want."

…………………………………………………………………………………….

Parenting challenge number 3418: When your child uses your words against you. Conversing with my daughter about honouring her yoni and holding mindfulness around who she lets near this part of her body. My daughter’s retaliation when angry weeks later

“I am going to let everyone touch my yoni. Peter can touch it, Jeremy can touch it, Sarah can touch it, Rosa can touch it.. etc etc until she reeled off the list of fellow class mates, childhood friends whom she hasn’t seen since she was 3 and random names of people she doesn’t know.

………………………………………………………………………………………..

Mum now I have autism so I will be cleaning less

………………………………………………………………………………………….

These thresholds of ‘becoming’ arise at many stages: a girl’s first blood, the awakening of the erotic body, the journey through pregnancy and birth, and the later years of a woman’s life menopause, the role of the elder, and ultimately the threshold of our own death. Between these major biological markers are the transformative passages of life: union and loss, betrayal and heartbreak, crisis and awakening each forging us in unique ways.

How can we witness one another as we navigate the roadmap of our humanity, clothed in these female bodies that cycle with the tides and the moon, spiraling through chaos and wisdom?

How can we recognise these thresholds, pause, breathe, and attune to what life is asking of us?

How can we simply light a candle for the experience of death and rebirth that is interwoven throughout our lives in small and grand moments?

This, to me, is the power of the Magdalena trainings. For an entire week, we pause, return to thresholds that may have gone unacknowledged, and co-create alchemical spaces through ritual.

We also work deeply with the heart and with our innate capacity to love—love that transcends any notion of form, a devotion that for many lies dormant, waiting for something or someone to give it to. In this work, we turn the powers of our heart toward Magdalene, or the divine feminine, as our muse.

This week is also a profound rewiring of what sisterhood can be—deeply nourishing and supportive of each other’s power and radiance.

It will be held in the south of Turkey, on sacred lands believed to have sheltered Mother Mary.

Ancient Anatolia is one of the earliest homes of goddess culture, carrying over 9,000 years of devotion to the Divine Feminine.

Now, the invitation is open.
Come journey with us.

www.winterjade.net/magdalena

I am presently clear of cancer.

The discovery was, and still is profound to me on many levels. The fact that the cancer had not spread throughout my body. The fact that a beautiful sister, who lovingly offering me a facial, noticed a swelling in my neck and encouraged me to inquire further.

The fact that I am still here, inside this body, breathing and typing.

I find this utterly profound.

Many areas in my life were also cut away with the tumours.

The deepest incision was not physical, but conceptual: the largest growth was the idea I carried that I hold a purpose outside of the pure state of living.

For years, I lived inside a mission oriented toward some distant future of civilisational change and transformation. I believed I was part of a movement sweeping the world, contributing to the changes I longed to see the rising of the temples of today, whatever that ultimately meant.

Cancer brought me into a state of profound humility, where all that mattered was the moment-by-moment experience of being present with my body. My grandiosity was obsolete in the face of my own mortality. I was forced into recovery not just physical, but from an identity rooted in external significance. At my worst, simplicity and humility were all that remained available to me.

This week I watched a beautiful video in which Zach Bush describes humanity as the only species to imagine itself outside of natural law. From this imagined separation, he says we have built an abstract reality with complex systems to uphold it systems that require us to bear a burden foreign to the natural order, being the inherent rhythm by which life organises itself

I had burdened myself with the notion that I possess a sacred purpose that my value must be fulfilled through some great undertaking that only I am here to accomplish. This is what Zach refers to as abstract reality, and my identity was firmly anchored within it. My reality primarily revolved around this and I subsequently overrode the natural rhythms of life, including observing the law of Winter (ironic really) through dormancy, rest and silence.

I recall a message my partner sent me at the time before my diagnosis when I was very sick

“If you were to do nothing else on this earth but breathe.. “

“You are crazy because despite how tired you are, you are driven by forces that burn you as fuel for the sake of things that aren’t but mirages of illusions when compared to the value of the essence of your silent being”.

Even his words were not enough to break my abstract reality.

I needed to be told I had cancer.

My diagnosis forced me to confront the value I had placed on my own purpose, mission, and destiny. I had to sit with the deep discomfort during recovery (back in my parents spare bedroom) where ‘life’ seemed to be moving on without me. I felt I was falling behind my own life.

There I began the rehabilitation process of knowing that my livingness is enough. Being alive IS the purpose.

When I walk through the forest, I feel the godliness of the trees—the absolute enoughness of these majestic beings simply radiating life through leaves, bark and root.

Why would I be any different to this?

What if my purpose is to meet everything that arises in each day of my existence?

What if my purpose is to say yes to every challenge, obstacle, gift, and offering that each day provides?

What if my purpose is to meet each day with an open heart, in connection with the livingness of my own existence?

And whatever abstract title that takes, teacher, barista, writer, shopkeeper like my body itself what if these are merely the wrappings of something way more important and in harmony with life. What if the roles of our lives were just like leaves on a tree, cyclical and impermanent just like the natural order, the ever changing seasons.

I believe the creation of an abstract reality separates us from the pure livingness of the world, and in doing so, we have lost the sense that life itself is inherently sacred and that the smallest and most simple things hold importance.

I love Sophie Strand and recall a moment when she speaks of her upbringing and how her parents taught her that we are always in collaboration with the natural world that we are side characters in the stories and quests of oceans, trees, and animals. Together, we are co-becoming and it requires humility and curiosity.

This deeply touched me, especially the idea that I am not the main character. That humans are not the story-makers but the collaborators within a natural order of life.

I cannot say I rest in humility all the time and there are moments when agitation arises that demands a greater life than mere simplicity. Where I daydream about some grand undertaking where I am a central character and provide some value or meaning to others and the world. I am learning to recognise that the smallest acts toward love, inclusivity, and aliveness are my sacred story each day. I am saying yes more often to the unfolding that life presents without the overlay of my abstract human mind deciding what it all means or how important I am.

I am slowly releasing the need to be something other than another tree in the forest breathing in life and sharing it through the mycelium of all that touches me.

Last year, I was fortunate to encounter the teachings of the Sufis, and what touched me most deeply were their insights on beauty. Since that encounter, I have been gently unraveling the history of self-abuse I carried through my teens and twenties, especially in relation to my body and my sense of beauty. This journey has awakened within me a profound longing to know beauty more intimately and to be shaped by its divine wisdom.

To live as beauty.

It is said that beauty is the illumination of the soul, and wherever we find beauty, we find God or Goddess. When something is beautiful, it is in tune, harmonious- both inwardly and outwardly.

We are naturally drawn to beauty because we come from harmony.

Beauty reminds us of our true home.

For the past months, I have been absorbed in the ecstasy of roses, drinking rose tea, drying rose petals, anointing myself with rose oils. There is something that honestly feels like home when I connect with the fragrance and colour, the way each petal folds into its curved heart. My daughter describes the scent as “heavenly,” and she is right. It is a gift from heaven.

It is harmony. It is home.

“A rose blooms not for itself, but for the joy of the world.”

In Sufism, there is a word for beauty, the beauty of God: Ya Jamil.

Ya Jamil is the invocation of divine beauty, the remembrance that invites us to see the world, and ourselves, through the lens of God’s harmony. It teaches that divine beauty is reflected in all creation, and that through repeating this name, we purify the heart and align ourselves with this truth.

The paradox of life is that behind everything, the source of everything is inherently harmonious, radiant with divine beauty. Yet our gaze upon life determines whether we connect with this ultimate truth.

There have been periods in my life where I cannot see the beauty of this world. I still have days and moments when my focus is on what is missing in my life and in the world. I have been heartbroken again and again by what has felt like the absence of harmony in humanity since I was a teenager. Even today reading about Iran and what is happening there, it takes a lot of effort to not fall into despair.

“Beauty is not in the things you see, but in the mind that sees them.”

I once read that beauty is not decoration, but revelation. If God’s beauty is reflected in all creation, how do I shift my mind to become one that truly sees it? It is easy to recognize beauty in a rose an object that radiates perfection but can I also perceive beauty in places that do not immediately hold this form? Can I sense the same essence in myself and in others, even when outer appearances seem to veil it?

I am discovering that the gaze of beauty is a choice, we choose what we perceive. I have observed that when I am in a state of sensing the world in its beauty, I experience a subtle ecstasy of the heart, It feels like a delicate rapture.

Have you felt this too?

When I am in the perception of what is not beautiful, when my focus rests on the harshness of the world, the lack of grace, I notice that I feel separate and disconnected from a nourishment that I long to rest in.

“When harmony is absent from our sight, it is not life that is veiled it is our vision.”

Beauty refines the heart as It cultivates gentleness, sensitivity, and compassion. A love of beauty naturally leads to a love of goodness. We cannot be cruel or hardened when we truly perceive the beauty of life. It awakens reverence for life, for others, for existence itself.

The Mirage of Beauty

I watched a video recently of a woman in her sixties speaking about the cosmetic industry and in particular the pressure women face in needing to maintain a youthful body and appearance.

“What if every wrinkle was valued as beautiful a testimony to every smile that has passed over us through a lifetime? Look at the majesty of the ancient trees in our forests, this is the beauty of life revealing, every fold and twist in her roots a legacy of love.”

I have experienced firsthand the entrapment of modern culture's illusion of beauty, where my worth and attractiveness were judged solely by the shape of my body and my outward appearance. This relentless pressure led to years of anorexia and body dysmorphia, as I desperately tried to ‘correct’ my body to fit an impossible standard of what was considered beautiful.

It is difficult to see just how deep the roots of our collective obsession with appearance run, how insidious it is. This fixation with outward form is not harmless it distorts perception, fosters shame, and keeps us disconnected from the light of our own souls. It is one of the greatest harms perpetuated by forces that enslave us, convincing us that our worth is contingent on fleeting images of beauty rather than the eternal radiance of who we are. We are veiled from the gaze of God, and we veil ourselves from seeing God in one another.

The other day, I discovered a series of videos by a man in the UK who approaches strangers and offers them flowers. Most were elderly people, primarily women. When he told them, “You are beautiful,” and placed the flowers in their hands, an extraordinary radiance poured forth. Their souls shone through their eyes, and the youth of their spirit ignited. It was a breathtaking display of harmony a living reminder that the soul is beautiful beyond all form.

So

I invite you to hold out your hands,
and receive the bouquet of magenta roses I delicately place in them.
Their fragrance is nothing short of heavenly.

Ya Jamil.

You are beautiful.

and If I’m being fully honest here…

By a man.

This part of me feels like an ancient, primal memory, perhaps from a time when women relied on men for protection, when survival depended on their strength. When I tune into this place within, she is in a state of suspended waiting, as if I am living my life fully on the surface, but some part of me is quietly observing, scanning the horizon for masculine reinforcement.

I have wondered if this experience reflects a recognition of the gender divide, incarnating in a female body, while some part of my soul, beyond gender, searches for the counterpart to feel whole. I am still pondering this possibility.

During my Magdalene trainings, I have asked women: “What is your greatest fear?” One of the most common answers is the fear of dying alone, of facing the end of life without companionship. There are many places within my psyche that need my constant and conscious awareness, it is so easy to fall into the longing of the romantic dream, the longing to be cared for or for someone to lead my life for me.

I have had many moments of telling these parts

Nobody is coming.
Nobody on the outside is coming to save you.

Gosh, this was hard to digest. I met walls of grief, ancient grief, when I allowed this truth to sink in. There is something profoundly tender about having a womb and about the deep receptivity woven into us. The feminine body and psyche are attuned to a frequency of openness, gestation and receptivity, far beyond the literal experience of pregnancy. The womb is also a site of immense potency, a centre of creation, transformation, and generative energy. But the tenderness I speak of is something more subtle: it is the part within us that, like the full-bodied, pregnant Empress in the Tarot, that longs to rest with the seed of life growing quietly inside. It is the deep, instinctual desire to turn inward, to draw all energy toward the fertile darkness, to tend to the hidden, unfolding life within.

To fully inhabit this place, we need support. We need someone or some container to hold the outer world so that we can surrender safely. tending the fire, providing resources, and maintaining safety. I feel this may be the deeper layer beneath our longing to be saved. It is the longing to be allowed to sink inward,
into the womb space of myself, To retreat into the depths without worrying that something outside will collapse if I let go. There is a part of me that wish someone could create that space for me, someone who stands at the edges of my world, guarding the perimeter and the practicalities.
“Go. Rest. I’ve got everything out here.” But I also cannot expect any outer masculine presence to save me from my own patterns of over-functioning, over-responsibility, and inner overdrive.

So the journey I am currently making is one where I am becoming my own guardian and truly deciding that I have myself.

I am attempting to be the one who watches my own edges stay in tune with the ebbs and flows of my own cyclical nature and prioritising the space of my inner life.

Love, Winter

My first initiation into death came with the sudden passing of Aunty Grace (a friend’s great-aunt), with whom I was living in Scotland. I went out clubbing one night and returned to discover she had died. Only hours before, I had kissed her goodnight as she sat on the couch, cigarette in her mouth, ash falling onto her chest, teasing me not to get into trouble. The next time I saw her body, she was no longer in it and that was my greatest shock and first true teaching about the soul. Her body seemed unrecognizable because her spirit had left; she was gone, even though her form remained. She didn’t look asleep, she looked gone.

The second death that touched me deeply was my grandmother’s. We shared a profound bond. She saw me deeply, and whenever we were together we’d talk late into the night about the beauty and grief of life. Her soul was precious to me. As she neared the end of her life, I pestered her to promise she would show me she was still around after she passed. We agreed she would appear as a horse or a whale (she’d get so annoyed when I insisted on a specific animal!). I trusted our souls would remain connected even after her death. I never saw a horse or whale, but many times I woke to her voice whispering my name “Becky” and I could feel her beautiful spirit in the room. I’ve dreamt of her often, and those dreams felt like true visitations I’d wake up weeping at the beauty of her soul and the ache of missing her in this realm.

The next death that shook me was of a beautiful human whose photo sits before me now as I type, his name was James. His death was sudden and heartbreaking (a car accident perhaps suicide). He was an extraordinary soul, wandering the earth with his didgeridoo, carrying ancestral codes and teachings. He was a cherished guide for many. After his passing, I had a powerful experience for three days it was as if his teachings poured through me, available now that he was out of his body. I spent those days climbing trees, balancing on branches, my body attuning to the codes he had carried. It felt as if everything he had gathered in his life was accessible. I keep an altar with his image and light a candle each evening in honour of death, and in remembrance of the magic that experience revealed.

Earlier this year, I discovered Andrea Gibson and was deeply moved by their poetry in the months before their death. Their words felt touched by Grace as though they were already speaking from beyond the veil. One poem, written to their partner, struck me deeply:

“My love, I was so wrong.
Dying is the opposite of leaving.
When I left my body, I did not go away.
That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here.
I am more here than I ever was before.
I am more with you than I ever could have imagined.
Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive?

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I spent countless hours watching videos of people who had died and returned. I was fascinated by what might await me if it were my time to cross over. In every story, there was the same experience, that the world beyond death felt more real and more beautiful than this one. Most who returned said they hadn’t wanted to come back, even those with children. That astounded me, when this world can feel so vividly, tangibly real.

I contemplated the questions

If this is true of death then why do we cling to this life?

and still, how can I possibly imagine something even more beautiful than this world?

In many ways, being close to death our own or another’s can open our awareness to the mystery of life itself, and to Grace. My encounters with death across my life have felt like small awakenings glimpses into the true nature of reality, revealed through the passing of those whose lives were woven with mine. The threads of their light are still present with me; they remain close, and through them, so too do the worlds they now inhabit. Each death carried its own teaching, revealing another layer of the truth of life:

That I am a soul inhabiting a body

That life continues beyond this world even after the body dies

That all we gather and experience as souls remains accessible once we leave the body. All knowledge and wisdom is shared.

In the interview I shared with Katherine (video below), she spoke of the importance of tending the threads of awareness with those who have passed through ancestral altars and remembrance. One of my earliest teachers, a Japanese elder, would hold ceremonies for my ancestors. We would spend hours praying and chanting to them, offering food and beer. These practices not only nurtured reverence for those who had crossed over, but also kept open the doorway to the Grace that exists between worlds.

An invitation perhaps for you too.

I would love to hear your stories of death too if you wish to share.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,

Love, Winter x

What I see and love in this man.

I see his presence, the calm gravity of it, the quiet way it fills a room. I love the way he cloaks himself in silence and stillness.

I love his gaze, his depth, the way he absorbs life through all his senses. Taking in the world within and around him with such exquisite subtlety.

I see his wisdom, the knowledge his soul has acquired from lifetimes of testing, challenge, and growth. I love that he remembers who he always was.

I see the simple joy that lives in his heart,
the way he finds beauty in the smallest details
the curve of a leaf, the precision of a moment, the poetry of simplicity.

I see his love of this earthly world, his delight in food, in the season of autumn and a good aero press coffee,
I love his embodied connection to life.

I see his devotion to God, the way tears roll down his face when he opens his heart to Allah.
I love his union with the Divine.

I see the entrepreneur in him
the part that seeks to expand, to offer his work and his voice to the world,
to awaken the sleeping hearts and minds of humankind.

I see his many fascinations
whether its deadly snakes of Thailand, Magic Card Games,
or the artistry that wove a handmade rug in India.
I love his boundless curiosity,
the way he receives the world in all its colours and expressions.

I see his compassion for humanity
how deeply his heart is moved by suffering and injustice.
I admire his courage to speak truth,
to stand firmly against what is wrong in this world.
I love his heart activist

I see his storyteller, how he answers a question through an unfolding tale,
revealing layers of meaning in simple moments.
I love how much he cherishes the path someone took to arrive and
the details that shaped their way.

I love his words, his writing, how he translates
the language of his heart into mythology.
I hope the world will one day read him.

I love his music, the way he plays guitar with closed eyes,
head swaying gently, as if he lives inside the chords themselves.

I see his yearning, his devotion to the mystic path,
his relentless pursuit of awakening and return,
his longing to be close to the divine.

I see his adventurous nature, the intrepid traveller that awaits the world with joy and finds delight in the foreign landscapes of people and place.

I see his trickster, the cheeky and comical one that pokes fun at me. I love his laughter and the moments when I am blessed to be the one that invoked it. I love when he laughs with me.

I see his spaciousness, his surrender to life.
I am in awe of how gracefully he lets the current carry him,
how deeply he trusts the movement of being.

I love his touch, the way his embrace wraps around me, the soft kisses tracing my back as I sleep, his whispered je t’aime sinking into my skin. I love the stillness in his eyes when we make love and the depth that holds me there.

I see his willingness to express,
to share his heart openly, his love, his longing,
the permission he gives for love to move through him freely.

I see his worldliness, how he belongs everywhere and nowhere,
how each country he enters feels him as one of their own.
He shape-shifts through culture and language. I love his universal being.

I see his care.
How he makes me coffee and massages my feet.
The way he tends to my body, my health, my rest.
How he crossed oceans when I was sick,
held space for my healing,
and gently guided me toward peace.

I see his commitment, to love, to growth, to relationship.
I see his clarity, his steadiness of heart. I love that he calls me ‘my little wife’
I love that he dreams of growing old together
I love his vision of love being vast yet grounded. Simple yet true.

While this imagery does hold true in moments, it was slowly dismantled during my month-long stay as I entered further into the acutal reality of life here.

It began on the very first night we landed. We checked into our Airbnb to find it missing a toilet seat, a window, and sturdy walls. The place was crumbling. The furniture was different from the photos, something we later learned was common, as hosts often bring in furniture just for the pictures and then remove it afterward. Since we had booked an entire month, we decided to change plans.

Plan B was an emergency backup: a hotel around the corner. The next morning, I woke with a multitude of bedbug bites and swollen welts that made me look diseased (I’m allergic to them). The welts stayed for two weeks, followed by a bout of ringworm from petting street cats. I felt beautiful.

Plan C was another Airbnb, where we arrived to discover only one single bed.

Plan D was yet another Airbnb, described as a “Greek Apartment” (puzzlingly) with a caveat that the area was “run down and old.” We arrived to find a simple apartment with a cheap refit, once again missing much of the furniture, in a ghetto-like neighborhood. I contacted the host and demanded the rug and plants from the listing photos, and to my surprise, they were delivered the next day. We let go of the other missing features that were in the listing photo’s:

• Luxury bedding

• Cushions

• Wall artwork

• An extra ten square meters

And we settled into our Istanbul life.

We spent the next month surrounded by piles of rubbish, stray cats, crumbling buildings, gypsy weddings that took over the streets until 2 a.m. with excruciatingly loud house music, and a neighbor who spent eighteen hours a day screaming at his elderly mother (who screamed back, don’t worry).

Below our apartment, a cat had just given birth to a litter of kittens. I saw this as a sign, the grace of new life. I bought them a little house, fed them and loved them every day. These tiny beings became the focus of my longing to find beauty in the not-so-beautiful, to embrace the unexpected Istanbul that was unfolding before us.

On Sundays, the streets transformed from rubbish-strewn into a vibrant market filled with colorful stalls selling cheeses, spices, pickles, and sweets. It felt like walking through a whole new neighborhood, one of abundance, artistry and the wealth of fresh food.

The next day the streets would return to their usual chaotic mess.

Leaving the apartment each morning I would notice that our alleyway always seemed changed, traces of the previous night scattered on the ground: a new piece of litter, fish bones tossed to the cats, a piece of clothing. To me, it felt like a living record of what had unfolded while we slept, a constantly changing landscape.

We lived an ordinary life in that little ghetto, working online, joining a gym, discovering a local kebab merchant who became our daily meal planner. We merged with the rhythm of this city that never truly sleeps, wandering the streets at 2 a.m., sipping tea, finding late-night hamams, and, of course, eating kebabs.

We bought prayer mats and visited the local mosque, letting the ezan, the call to prayer that echoes across the city five times a day draw us into moments of stillness and presence. Every call touched me deeply; I never tired of hearing it, even the 5 a.m. call that woke me from sleep.

We explored the bazaars, sneaking free samples of Turkish delight, baklava, and perfumes whenever we could. I was constantly awed by the Ottoman architecture, the devotion etched into every door and wall, the striking contrast between the womb-like domes and the phallic minarets stretching toward the sky.

We would pause to admire bursts of bougainvillea climbing the grey, weathered walls. Each night we returned to our apartment, waiting for the inevitable evening chaos, a party, a wedding, some new eruption of life in the streets below. We woke each morning to a changed alleyway, littered with fresh traces of the night before.

By our third week, we faced something profoundly disturbing.

One of the kittens we had cared for was killed, its tiny body covered in blood, lying lifeless in the street. A few days earlier, a man had taken one of them in front of us. He sat around the corner, holding it in his hands. Something in his energy unsettled me, I felt certain, almost afraid, that he would harm it. We didn’t confront him. I still carry that thought: maybe we could have approached him, used Google Translate to speak with him, or taken the kitten from his hands. We didn’t see it again after that moment and two days later, its lifeless body appeared.

Integrating that brutality was difficult, as was resisting the waves of hatred and disgust that rose inside me, the fear that its death had been torturous. We created a small altar around the body, scattering herbs and petals, lighting incense. Alexandre wrote a note in Turkish:

“A being from Allah, whose life was deliberately taken.”

We prayed as locals looked on. One gypsy woman approached, shaking her head and spoke in Turkish to the locals that were around the street but mostly people just ignored us. We created a small shrine of stones draped in green vines and leaves, something to make people notice. We wanted its life to be recognised, its death to not go unseen, its body to not be treated as just another piece of rubbish dumped on the street.

Then came the process of integrating the experience, finding a place for it within the living mythology of our time in Istanbul, working with the heart to make sense of it all.

In many ways, the ghetto is a type of jail for those living here, which we had the luxury of leaving. Many people living in these streets would never be able to leave, take a holiday nor do they have the power to even change their circumstances. This was especially true for the gypsy community here: their living rooms were street corners, their children wandering the streets into the early hours of the night trying to sell flowers to survive, some as young as four.

Poverty is cruel.

That was the gift my time here offered: to work with my heart’s capacity for compassion, to expand what is right or wrong into a broader understanding of suffering.

It was my call to prayer.

Now, as I write these words from the airport, I am acutely aware of the privilege of my departure.

I am grateful for my time in this city, for every fleeting, ordinary moment.

I am grateful for how Istanbul held a mirror to both beauty and hardship and for how its complexity unfolded within me.

Istanbul dismantled the romantic visions I carried, yet revealed a deeper kind of beauty one found through rubbish and rubble, through the living ecosystem of a small alleyway that reflected, so profoundly, the cycles of life and death continually shaping these streets.

and the language of the sensuous beckons.

I yearn to hear a silent, circular chord that encompasses everything in existence.

One long note—

a sound, a cry,

a hum

an echo

How I long to return to a time before words were etched,

before straight lines were drawn.

I wish to speak through circles and spirals,

to transmit the vibration of my heart through a cyclical soundscape

with no beginning,

middle, or end.

I want to remember my illiteracy

and celebrate my forgetfulness.

I want to burn all books and erase the minds that carry the deep horrors unleashed when we confined timelessness within full stops and paragraphs.

I want to awaken my ears to the silent roar of every moment that has ever existed—the language of LIFE,

Registered through the wings of a bird

and the cosmic echo of a black hole merging with itself as a bellowing singularity.

I long to whisper in color and cry in hues,

to activate my sonar self that feels the chatter of vibratory symphonies dancing between all forms.

I want to converse with the ancient voice of this world,

to speak with the one whose name is existence,

in a dialect sourced from within my body

and spoken as a spiral inside my unschooled heart.

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I have been yours since my first cosmic breath

was exhaled inside the primordial waters of your dark womb.

You my love have caressed my many faces with your southerly wind fingertips.

Your sacred waters have bathed my many forms across oceans and timeless rivers.

You my love are the millions of flowers that have reached my gaze

You are the endless chorus of birds that have serenaded the fabric of my hearing

Each note the call of your devotion

You my love are the resplendent hues that I forget until I remember

You are the hundred shades of green

You are lime, jade, olive and emerald.

Beloved your arms have embraced me with moss and twigs

your ancient roots have carried my secrets into underground cathedrals

I have planted my dreams inside your soil

I have seeded my longings into your terracotta womb

over and over

and each time I return to you I forget the eternal love we have already shared

I forget our history together

Our beginnings of time

I forget that every happening

And all unfoldment is engraved upon your landscape

I forget that you are a record for my many hearts

For the multitude of skins and bodies that have sheathed me.

You are a keeper of the countless

My endless births and deaths

Failings and transformations

for the billions of memories that I no longer recall

You hold them all for me inside rock, bark and clay.

Underneath roots and waves

Between petals

Ours is an eternal love.

Dancing is not just Getting up painlessly Life a leaf Blown on the wind.

Dancing is when you Tear your heart out

And Rise out of your body.

To hang suspended. Between worlds

Rumi

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After many years of working with the soul, I am now choosing to focus on the aspects of my human experience that I’ve historically avo…

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