awakening

Strength of the eternal Spirit (childhood, sickness and death)

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 3 Comments

I will be staying with my mother for a few days from early tomorrow until Wednesday afternoon. I feel very anxious about the visit for several reasons. It is always strange going back to the home I lived in for a brief time as a teenager; that is, before going to university and moving out for good. But this visit has extra complications and emotions attached. It will most likely be the last time I stay in that house, where my mother has lived for almost 30 years, because she needs to move somewhere without stairs. Her health is deteriorating due to heart failure and lung fibrosis, so I’m not sure how much worse she will be since I last visited in early February. I speak to her a lot on Facetime and we text, but such mediums are limited for knowing how someone really is. Also, Mum is stoic and independent to a fault, and thinks she’s protecting people by not giving them the full picture. It is hard to know quite how well or otherwise she is until I see her. She has relatives nearby but we’re not a close family, so I don’t get much information from them, even though they visit my mum regularly.

In addition, my sister is driving us all (my mum, me and my niece) to the grave of my other niece who died of cancer in 2019, age 34, both to leave flowers for her and to scatter my dad’s ashes (he died in 2015). To make this extra surreal and potentially painful, my niece’s grave is where my mum’s final resting place will be, when she succumbes to the heart failure. We will all be aware of it but of course it will be left as the great unspoken. How on Earth does one even begin to make conversation along the lines of ‘one day we will be visiting you here’? You just don’t. But it will be on everyone’s minds all the same.

I know my mum won’t really be in the grave, just as my niece isn’t, and my dad is not the ashes that we will be scattering. Wherever their spirits are/will be, they’re not part of the Earth, just as none of us alive today are our physical bodies and the dust they are made from. We are the spirits that inhabit them. When our body returns to Earth, so does our Spirit return to the place from which it came. I can’t begin to rationalise that because the mind cannot understand it. It is the ‘peace that passes all understanding.’ We cannot think about it logically, we just KNOW, with deeper wisdom, that this is the case; our Spirit is eternal consciousness and will fly free, as it is our true nature.

Remembering such truth is of course far more tricky while in the presence of your childhood family. Was it Ram Dass who once said ‘if you think you’re awakened, go spend a week with your parents?’ There’s so much wisdom in that statement. Our parents trigger us, remind us how far we have to go, as well as, positively, how far we have come. Throw in old age, sickness, and death, and that’s about as triggered as you can get.

I am ready to go. I hope it will be a positive, precious experience, and a reminder of the fragility of this Earthly life as well as the enduring power of Love.

I will be back. Thank you for reading. Many blessings x

A personal awakening journey

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 7 Comments

Echkart Tolle explained how his spiritual awakening to his true nature beyond the mind occurred when his mental suffering became intolerable. He was severely depressed, suicidal, in total despair unable to see a way out and until he uttered the words ‘Who is this ‘I’ that I cannot live with?’ Then he paused, reflecting on the profound meaning of his words. He had discovered the inner witness that some may call the soul, who lies beyond the mind, aware of every experience, thought and emotion, yet untouched by it all. This realisation changed Tolle’s life. He woke up from the dream of identifying with his mental state and went on to (eventually) write several books and become a spiritual teacher. As far as I know he has never fallen back into unconsciousness.

His dramatic awakening is unusual in its completeness; a clear boundary between ‘before’ and ‘after.’ For most people it doesn’t work like that. The path to becoming more conscious tends to follow a rugged trajectory of peaks and troughs, consisting of periods of heightened awareness before falling back into the grip of identifying with one’s conditioned self and then, at some point, emerges the realisation of being lost in the dream of mind. Ideally, the conscious periods will lengthen and the tendency to get lost will lessen over time. However, sometimes the unconscious periods intensify as the conditioned self/ego senses it is losing its hold and will hang on to whatever it can to save itself. Eventually, for those destined to awaken in this lifetime, the ego can no longer resist the force of the soul’s desire to know itself, and it begins to dissolve. Far from being a wonderful process, it is often completely horrible. This is what is known as the ‘dark night of the soul’

My own journey has definitely followed the latter trajectory. Looking back, my awakening journey probably first started when I walked away from my marriage with an narcissist, struggling with a relapse of my physical health condition, and a profoundly disabled child in tow. Until that point I was living out my life in a state of trauma as the result of my childhood and becoming seriously unwell at university. I had improved, gone to work and had a baby, only to fall very ill again. I was sensitive, empathetic, but highly insecure and lacking in self esteem, so it was not surprising I found myself attracted to my ex’s highly magnetic stage personality. After several years of mental cruelty, I finally realised that I was worth more. I don’t know how I found the courage to leave under the circumstances, but the little girl inside me had not lost her connection to the Divine despite everything. She reminded me that I was strong and would be okay, like she had been.

And so my journey really started. I sought therapy, tried alternative treatments, focused on my life with my son. Of course it was far from easy. In many ways my life actually worsened. Like Tolle, I fell into a bad depression. I remember sitting on my back doorstep, staring at the horse chestnut tree in my then-garden, tears slipping down my face, not even having the energy to wipe them away. Someone knocked at the door wanting access to the drain in my garden, can’t remember why, but I just remember the desperation I felt for them to see me, notice my pain, take away the desperate loneliness in my heart. The overriding theme of my life and particularly at that time was loneliness. I had lost my spiritual connection. I was barely surviving. My son’s behaviour was so challenging that it took everything I had. I had little support from family and no compassion or understanding from my ex. I had carers to help with my son, and emotional support from a therapist, but I still felt very alone.

A few years later, when my son was 9, I started reading a lot of spiritual books and meditating intensely. I had dipped in and out of this over the years, but not with any serious intent. This really kickstarted the next stage of my journey. It is hard to explain exactly what happened, but I ‘opened up.’ I suddenly felt more connected to spirit than I ever had before. My dreams became more intense, often containing Christian or Buddhist imagery. I saw and felt things during meditation – lights, sensations. I no longer felt alone. This was a relief because my life was spiralling further out of control. I ended up in hospital with my illness and my son’s dad started to have our son more. It took a few more years and a court case before my son went to his dad’s full time but at that point I could finally breathe. I could find myself.

My journey has been one of coming home to myself. I realise now that there was no other way things could have gone. I could not have ‘awoken’ IN the situation I was in, but THROUGH it. I was lost in the grip of trying so hard to do the impossible – be a superhuman parent to a challenging child, while I was sick. I made a difficult decision, had to overcome a lot of hatred thrown in my direction, in order to realise that who I am goes beyond the roles that I play. I began to realise that there is something within me – in all of us – that is stronger and more real than anything in this life. Moreover, I understood the true meaning of Love: I loved my son deeply; I disliked his behaviour a lot of the time, but I loved him, and I wanted him to be where he would be cared for and safe. To love him meant making sure of that, even though many people could not understand. Also, Love meant recognising my own limits and trusting my intuition, not society’s view on what I should or shouldn’t be doing.

My spiritual journey continues. Last year was particularly tough with my son. I notice when I’m lost in thoughts about being a bad mother or even just wishing things were different. I’m only human. Spiritual perfectionism is definitely a thing, but the key is to notice – notice what’s happening, notice the resistance to what is. Tolle talks about acceptance because it’s the only thing we can do but it’s often the hardest thing to do because part of us wants to fight against what we don’t want, instinctively so. I believe I have gone through my ‘dark night of the soul’ because so much has been stripped away, yet what is real remains: the connection to my soul or to the Divine, whichever way you want to look at it, which has always existed. I may not have had an ‘eureka’ moment but in my own way I understand what Tolle was experiencing with ‘Who is this ‘I’?’ Who, indeed? All I know is that I am on my way home.

A dream of quartz: clarity, cleansing, Divine connection

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 4 Comments

I had a beautiful dream during the night in which I awoke from a bed in a little cabin somewhere in the woods. I thought to myself that I have ‘let go.’ I went outside and put my hand into a hole inside a tree trunk and found it full of crystals and other beautiful things. I saw a tiny blue heart and realised it was a sign from Spirit. However, I was searching for two things in particular: clear quartz and celestial quartz. It did not take long before I found them. At this point the dream changed and I was in a room walking towards a large mirror carrying the crystals. I could feel immense spiritual power around me and I knew that the crystals were magnifying my connection to the Divine. I also knew that I needed to start working with crystals. The dream then ended.

I love the fact I ‘woke up’ within the dream itself. This is always highly symbolic and can be a common feature in lucid dreams (when one becomes aware that they are dreaming) although this dream was not lucid. It shows that I am, indeed, ‘waking up’ akas becoming more conscious in my daily life and no longer falling so readily into unconscious thoughts and emotions. The wood is deeply indicative of a myth, played out in fairy tales, whereby representing the journey into the unknown that every soul must take in this life. There are fears and challenges to be faced, as seen in stories such as ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘Red Riding Hood’ to name but two. Thankfully, my dream carried an atmosphere of safety, so I was free to explore without anxiety. The hole in the tree truck may point to the tree of life; connected to Mother Earth, yet reaching for the Heavens. I found the treasure within it; namely the little blue heart, symbolising communication with Spirit in the name of Love, which is always within me. And then I searched for the quartz.

I found this fascinating because while I own some crystals, I don’t really use them, or think about them especially. I have a large rose quartz and citrine on my window sill and plenty of smaller crystals in a bag, but I don’t often handle them. The fact I was searching for the two types of quartz in my dream led me to look into the properties of both, and I found that they support greater clarity of mind, healing/cleansing, and increased connection to the Divine. This dream follows the post I made yesterday about intending to avoid checking my emails until after I have meditated in the morning. It is a message from my unconscious reinforcing the decision I have made and – perhaps – giving it greater power and manifestation. The mirror shows that I am aware of myself and what I am perceiving, as well as what I am projecting in the world – the illusions.

On waking this morning I immediately had in mind to hunt for a clear quartz and celestial quartz and carry them around with me. Now I’m not particularly knowledgeable about crystals, so I may be wrong, but I picked out from my bag what I believed were the two. You can see them in the photo. It feels good to hold them and connect them to my dream. And this morning started on a good note; taking my dog out, eating breakfast, meditating, reading inspiring works, and only then checking my emails! I will start as I (hopefully!) mean to go on.

The treasure trove within

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 8 Comments

I’ve spent much of my life trying to chase a particular kind of experience, such as a relationship, owning a car, having a child, studying for a degree, carving out a career, going on holiday.

I believed that each of those would bring me joy and satisfaction. And while each of those things have value and brought me good times, they never satisfied the inner longing.

It has taken me almost to my mid forties before I could truly take in that I am what I seek.

I’ve heard it so many times. Most of us have by now. For some, it’s almost irritating, triggering a defensive response. It did for me on occasions. I felt like it was saying I shouldn’t WANT or NEED anything because it all exists within me. Not a hugely helpful thing to say to someone in distress.

Now I realise it isn’t saying that. Instead it is saying the following: By all means go out in the world and have fun. Enjoy the experiences that come your way. Seek refuge and healing in those beautiful people who want to help. Find a purpose, if you like, whether that’s self betterment or self service. Do what feels important to you.

Just don’t lose yourself in any of it. Realise that life is a gift, not an obligation. And at those times when it all falls apart, know that your joy or healing was never dependent on that one person or situation. The treasure trove has always been within you. You’ve been chasing a feeling, but a feeling can never exist externally, it can only be realised within. That can’t be taken away, even in the face of loss, even when it gets covered up, temporarily, by the shadows of fear or grief.

Yes, what I’ve been chasing all these years is my own joy, my own peace, my own self. I didn’t find them anywhere else because I was never supposed to; they were never there! I lost myself in the mirror. I thought I was in the world; the world is in me.

To anyone struggling with deep emotional pain right now, please take heart. You might not be able to see or experience it but one day the clouds will lift and you’ll realise that there is joy to be found even right in the thick of despair. It exists because it’s from Spirit and Spirit lies within you, it IS you.

The message of the dragonfly

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 16 Comments

On this morning’s walk with my dog I was delighted when a dragonfly flew in my path. It reminded me of the last time I saw one down that road, around 4 and a half years ago: I was returning from taking my dead guinea pig’s body to the vet to be cremated and was immersed in sadness. Melody had lived an amazingly long life despite considerable struggles – an open infected wound, a limp, brain seizures. A vet even advised me to have her put to sleep as the wound was so deep. But while I didn’t want her suffering, I believed she deserved one chance. Melody took it and ran with it. Her wound healed with treatment and she stayed strong for another two years until seizures began to weaken her resolve and soon afterwards she developed cheyne stokes breathing and passed away. She was 7 years old.

The dragonfly’s appearance that day reminded me that we are never alone in how we feel, even when we most feel it, in fact especially when we most feel it. I was travelling on my scooter down the street when out of nowhere it flew alongside me, kept up for a good few metres, then disappeared as quickly as it came. In Native American culture, dragonflies are a sign of deceased loved ones, so maybe Melody had been paying me a visit in a new form? I will never know. It was enough to recognise its significance and feel intense gratitude that I had a sign from spirit that day.

This morning’s dragonfly flew directly at me, went in a semi-circle, then headed for a brick wall where it flew over and disappeared. Once again I am grateful and awed by its beauty and timing. I was awake for quite a while during the night thinking about my mother and her ailing health, saddened by the thought that one day in the not too distant future she’ll be gone, at least from this physical form. And then there’s my dog, who is doing well on an increased dose of phenobarbital for her epilepsy, but is getting older and the thought of not having her around is deeply distressing. The fragility and impermanence of this life is playing heavily on my mind at this time.

However, this is where dragonfly symbolism provides immense comfort to me beyond any ideas about what form each dragonfly may or may not be assuming. Dragonflies are bringers of light. They represent Spirit and higher consciousness. Ultimately, they are a reminder that everyone is on a journey of transformation, change and rebirth, whether that happens in this lifetime or in some other way. They are translucent, showing that this physical form is ultimately illusionary because everything dissolves and goes back to its source, which is Divine love. While it’s natural to become attached to various physical forms, they are temporary; they get sick, old and die, but what is real never dies.

The message of the dragonfly is that all is well. Nothing is to be feared, including death. Each of us is on a journey and that journey does not end.

A dream of waking up: A blooded fish finger, white hand grenade

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 3 Comments

Early this morning I had a fascinating dream. It was in two parts. First, I was cooking a fish finger for my son’s dinner. On examination it wasn’t cooked properly as the centre of the finger was brimming with blood. I told my son that it wasn’t ready and needed to go in the oven longer. My son went ballistic, picked up the keyboard attached to my laptop and threw it down a flight of stairs. As I picked it up I thought to myself ‘This is PTSD from parenting.’

The second part of the dream was very different. I was in some kind of building and there was a sense of urgency. Someone told me that I had to come this way. A flight of stairs was ahead of me. Instead of walking up, I forced myself to elevate higher and higher, until I reached the top. A balcony was in front of me, hundreds of people gathered below. I held a white coloured grenade in my hand. As I threw it into the crowd, one person looked up and saw me. I found myself at the bottom of the stairs again. I thought to myself ‘there will be an explosion and I’m going to wake up and find myself in it.’

At this point I woke up, thankfully to the silence of my bedroom.

I believe this dream is significant but I haven’t yet figured out exactly how. While the two parts are different, there are obvious parallels and themes. In the first, my son throws something (a laptop) DOWN the stairs; in the second I throw something (a grenade) after going UP the stairs. In both, there is a massive disturbance, but in the first I am not in control, whereas in the second I am the cause.

The fish is also very interesting. Fish in dreams tend to symbolise the unconscious, the giver of life, since they live in the ocean from which we came. As such fish can also symbolise the true self, or the Christ. If I consider the latter, the blood takes on even greater significance. It symbolises my wounded self. The dream mentions PTSD, the effect of coping for many years with my son’s tendency to throw items and furniture with little or no warning, exactly as portrayed here, and the screaming at all hours of the day and night, sometimes the violence. My son could be absolutely lovely, but he was unpredictable, and sadly my ill health suffered further. Here, I am serving up a well intentioned but wounded self to my son. Unsurprisingly, he rejected it. Maybe, too, this is about me ‘pointing the finger’ akas assigning blame to the situation and seeing myself as a victim of it. A bloodied finger is a particularly gruesome image, since our fingers are an essential part of our anatomy; we need them to communicate, hold, throw.

And then we have part two, when I seemingly decide to bomb an entire room. Seen on one level, it could be about anger and revenge, but I don’t FEEL it’s that. Instead, there is a sense of higher purpose and understanding. I am elevating to a new level. I can see chaos already below but there is something I have to do. The grenade has its own meaning. It is white, the colour of purity and spirit. As I throw it, someone below sees me and understands what I’m doing. Part of my personality is awake. I am then back downstairs, knowing more chaos will ensue and I will come to be in the midst of it, but who I am in THAT moment – the spiritual self, the soul – is detached yet deeply involved, separate yet witnessing everything. Other aspects of my personality need a stronger wake up call. That’s what the grenade is about.

I don’t know if the second part of the dream explains the first. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But I feel, deep down, that they are saying all of it makes sense. I have felt more at peace around my son and the way he is for a little while but I know from past experience that my unconscious will roam around to find exactly what is still festering there and make me very aware of it. And of course, it is a process; the pain probably won’t ever go away completely, but as with any life experience, we can awaken through it.

Waking up (Time Warp)

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 3 Comments

The other day a random thought popped up: What if I suddenly woke up and my entire life had never really happened? What if it was…just a dream.

This is not a new idea of course. As the song goes ‘life is but a dream.’ Even Shakespeare said ‘All the world’s a stage. And all the men and women are merely players.’

But truth has great timing and I felt its presence in my heart as the thought swirled around my head.

It was a reminder that the past has gone and only the memories exist in my mind.

It showed me that I create my life in this moment because I am awake.

When I was asleep, well that’s fair enough, no one can be expected to take charge when they are unconscious. How could they? I couldn’t. Jesus said; ‘They know not what they do.’

And yes, I go back to sleep from time to time, as most of us do, I recognise that and hold compassion for my sleeping self.

I also know my story IS important because it is the unique circumstances through which my soul incarnated to experience this life and ultimately awaken from.

My experiences matter because they provide the journey and the wisdom and the bridge to other people.

My life has not gone the way I wished and I hold compassion for that pain. To devalue it would be an act against the self.

But I am here. Life is now. It isn’t thirty years ago, a decade ago or even five minutes ago. Time is not an objective reality.

The night after having that profound thought I woke up from a dream with the song ‘Time Warp’ in my head. As most people probably know, it comes from the opera ‘Rocky Horror Show.’

How ironic! I could say my life has been its own kind of horror show. Some people would feel that modern society, or even life on this planet, is the same. Suffering is abound. No one can escape it….or can they?

It is so often said that the power is in the present. It doesn’t mean any past or present suffering suddenly disappears, although in some cases it does, especially if the suffering is internal rather than the result of external circumstances.

But on waking up, suffering is less, even if pain is more. There is no longer the clinging onto memories or perceptions as a way of being in the world. Instead it’s about being present to what is happening now, even if emotions or circumstances or both are utterly awful, and knowing all that exists is now and what needs dealing with is now.

That thought came into my head as a reminder that every single day I can wake up and know the past is done. Yes it hurt. I value what WAS, but it don’t allow it to change what IS.

*Image from quotefancy.com

My pathless path

/ sarahlissyjenkins / 2 Comments
yesofcorsa.com

I’ve realised that I’m never more at peace than when I’m not trying to fit into any one way of being or belief system.

The path is me: there is no other and there never has been.

As a young child I knew this; I talked to God, journaled, prayed, but walked my own unique path, always aligned with my heart.

There are tools, teachings, guides, but ultimately everything leads back to where I started from: myself.

For a time I thought this egotistical, but then I realised this is the very point:

God/spirit has planted the seed within me and my journey is about connecting with it, trusting it, and allowing it to flower and bloom.

Life circumstances, by pure chance or design, have meant that my inner journey has always been the most important one of my life. In fact, the ONLY one. People and situations have only sought to show me that.

There is no outer path beyond where experiences take me. When I try to find one, I suffer. When I try to fit in the world and crave things that weren’t meant to be, it causes me pain.

The Sun is shining through the fog once again. My soul has awakened. And yet the grief, the desperation, the search, it’s all part of the rich tapestry of what it means to be here.