a trip to the snow
I’m sitting in a cafe in Jindabyne wiping croissant crumbs from my lap. I’m supposedly working. Cafes aren’t my most productive writing environment but they do have coffee and good cakes. I’ve got earphones and ’study music’ playing. At the next table a little girl in a bright yellow tutu and French braids is dancing at the feet of her maybe Dad who’s come out from the kitchen, heavily tattooed in the baggiest pants I’ve ever seen. I wonder how he can work in those pants. Then I wonder when I got so boring. Then I stare at my computer again.
I have countless projects to finish before we fly to England on Monday but in my typical way I’m leaving everything until the last minute, until the choice is taken out of my hands. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. At high school we’d be given months to complete our essays. Do a little bit every day the teachers would say. I would do exactly nothing every day and then set my alarm for 3am the morning before and cram months of work into a couple of hours. I cant say I enjoy this style of doing things, but it works.
The boys are snowboarding. They tried to convince me to come with them but I have an aversion to all sports, especially anything involving a board so I politely declined. This morning as we were getting breakfast Kane said ‘I wish you were coming so we could all be together’ Very closely followed by ‘I’m so happy you’re not coming because I can sit in the front seat!’.
I’m not surprised he moans about sitting in the back. The seats in the back of the ute are tiny and bolt upright. All of our bedding and bags are packed into one side leaving him a tiny sliver of space. He feels car sick so I end up swapping with him most of the way. I fold my legs underneath me and look directly forward remembering car tripswhen I was little when we’d leave in the night and sleep in the back.
We drive the back way to ‘Jindy’ on mostly unsealed roads so Rod can show me the Australian bush, or as I would call it the ‘countryside’. it’s dry out here. Very dry. It hasn’t rained all year and everything is covered with a thin layer of yellow dust. in a stark contrast to the luscious green of last year every creek bed is dry and every piece of grassland is brown. I never thought I’d miss the rain so much. We all do. I can feel the undercurrent of fear in the air. I know that fear won’t bring the rain, and we can talk all day about the rain and it won’t make any difference and maybe this is just how it is so I get on with the task at hand, which is to love and say thank you.
I spoke to Mum the other day, it’s drizzling in England she says. In Australia it never drizzles. It’s torrential or nothing. The country of extremes. As we continue to drive a dark cloud starts to build and I think maybe this is it, but after a couple of drops the cloud passes and the sky is big and blue again.
On Monday we fly to the other side of the world, to my birthplace ~ the land of Marmite and oak trees and 2000 year old churches. It’s the first time Rod has been to England, or the northern hemisphere. ‘The stars are the other way round’ I tell him. It’s 4:30am and I’m throwing open the sliding doors to see Orions Belt. He murmurs something like ‘dont let the cat in’.
Last night the full moon turned the whole bedroom silver. I’ve been gradually taking down all the curtains, even though it’s freezing without them. We’ve been cleaning years of ‘stuff’ from the house and adding more plants. We’ve had many discussions about chairs and couches and the general consensus is, people like them, so they’re staying. Every night we eat dinner and light candles and I ask them what they’re grateful for. It feels different and novel and beautiful to eat my meals at a table. I spend the afternoons chopping vegetables so fine they disappear. I gather sticks. I build the fire. I complain about clothes left in the bathroom. In the fading light I’ve been walking up the hill behind the property and watching as the world turns gold. It’s so quiet up here. A secret forgotten world. There’s a dam at the bottom of the gully and I dream of digging it out and planting lotus flowers. I have plans for a little cabin in the trees where it’s still and quiet and I can write and meditate and chant my kundalini kriyas as loud as I want at 4am without waking the house.
A year ago I was preparing to leave for England and everything was different. I feel like I’ve lived 10 years in 12 months. So much has changed. My whole reality has shifted. I never could have dreamed I’d be moving in with someone, on land, with a child, saying goodbye to my little Broulee heaven, being in so in love that I cant bear to be away from him. I spent most of my life wanting to be by myself, so it’s a strange adjustment. I could write for days about all the things I love about him, but the maybe the thing I love most is he tells me how it is.
I have this thing about lighting. I’m sure it’s pretty common but I cannot stand bright lights at night time. He seems completely unfazed by them and the house is full of overhead white lights. Every time I walk into the bedroom I turn the lights off and light candles. The other night I walked into the bedroom and the light was on. He was sitting on the bed working out his jobs for the next day. Like me, he has a crazy amount of work to get through before we leave I put my hands over my eyes and scrunch up my face as if the light is burning me. ‘My circadian rhythm’ I cry.
He laughs. You know you could just say ‘ can you turn the light off, you dont need the theatrics’. For about a mili-second I feel a bit put out and then I laugh because of course he’s right and how bloody amazing is it that he can pick me up on this stuff and I can be an adult about it, and we can get on with the job at hand which is to love each other.
As I step into this role with increasing domestic duties I’ve been reflecting on the attitude I bring to everything. Things need to be done. That’s part of life. Food needs to be bought. Vegetables need to be watered. Wood needs to be chopped (not by me, my axe skills are worse than my board skills). Dishes need to be washed. Clothes need to be hung out then put away again. Toilets need to be cleaned and floors swept. These things can either be done with resentment or gratitude. Every time I notice my rising resistance, usually at the supermarket when my hands hurt from carrying everything and there’s a huge line and my is brain saying ‘I could be at the beach right now’ I stop and ask myself a few questions.
Is anyone forcing you to do this?
Are you choosing to do this?
Why are you doing it?
What are you grateful for right now?
Then I remember, I want to do this. I’ve chosen to do this. I want to take care of the people I love, just like they take care of me. It brings me joy to take care of them. I want to work together in this team. Then I silently say thank you to all the people in the supermarket. I send love to the person in front of me with the screaming toddler. I say thank you to all the abundance that allows me to buy food, I say thank you to our beautiful Earth for providing all of this. I feel more peaceful.
The other day in class I was talking about how the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. There was a collective murmur and enthusiastic nodding.
A student stopped me. The thing is, she said. Very matter of fact. I have this mind. And it just talks all day, from 5am until I go to sleep. It just never turns off.
She looked at me. What am I supposed to do about it?
My mind does the same thing I said. My mind is always talking. I think what’s changed over the years is I’m not so invested in the stories it tells me. Sometimes my mind is very useful. When I’m intentionally thinking about something I use my mind. It’s my servant. I’m thinking about these words, I’m using my mind to write them.
The issue is the unintentional thinking. The blah blah thoughts as one teacher calls them. If you stop reading and close your eyes for a moment you’ll notice these unintentional thoughts. You dont mean to think them. They are just there. If you believe every one of these thoughts, the mind is the master. And that’s not often helpful. These unintentional thoughts tend to be focused on what might go wrong, where we are failing, what we have to do, why we’re not good enough, all these ridiculous false assumptions about what other people think of us. Sometimes the blah blah thoughts are neutral, what am I going to cook for dinner, but often they get embroiled with emotion and turn negative.
When we practice yoga we are directing the mind in a specific way. As my teacher Rachel says we are taking a U-Turn. Yoga is asking ‘are you ready to follow something else other than the mind?’. If following the mind has got us here are we are suffering, are we ready to follow something else? This something else is open to interpretation. It could be nature, or energy, or God, or the universe, or the unseen, or joy, or gratitude, or the heart, or the way the full moon lights up the river.
It doesn’t really matter what the something else is. The question is important - what am I following? What am I believing? Are these thoughts making me happy? Who would I be if I didn’t believe these thoughts?
I’ll leave you on this full moon day with an intention I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been reading this intention out loud to myself most mornings as part of my practice. Maybe you’ll feel inspired to write out your intention? For this full moon, for this day, for this life. I’d love to hear it.
With love, Clare
My intention is to stay connected to my peaceful loving nature so I can be the most clear channel to share and teach practices that empower others. I am dedicated to showing up in my business, my relationship and every area of my life with courage, integrity, compassion, presence and love. I do this by living with intention.
I live with intention by committing to my daily rituals of prayer, meditation, gratitude and nature connection.
I’m committed to having the challenging conversations even when I dont want to. I’m committed to facing the things I dont want to face. I’m committed to not putting things off because they’re ‘too hard’ or ‘too complicated’.
I’m committed to clear communication. If someone offers me something and I know it’s not for me, I tell the truth and say no, to open up the channel for the other person to work with someone truly aligned for them.
The people who are aligned for me are naturally drawn towards me.
I know that it’s natural to feel fear. I feel the fear but I do the thing anyway. When I experience self doubt, jealousy, comparison, lethargy, dullness, illness and injury, I call on the support of my highest self. I know these are natural human experiences. I turn to the wisdom of the ancient teachings of yoga for practices to cultivate more kindness to myself in these times.
I commit to feeling whatever I need to feel, rather than bypassing, or pretending I’m OK when I’m not. At the same time, I remember that it’s not about me. I commit to practices that remind me to get out of my own head, out of my own way and into a state of natural peace and gratitude for all that is.
My lifes work is to open the pathway for everyone to experience their own power, plug back into their own intuition, access their own happy hormones and live from the heart. My mission is to continually lift others up, then they in turn will lift others up and the vibration of joy, love and peace grows exponentially. I do this by trusting completely in source, which I am and will return to. I do this by trusting, even before the evidence is here. I do this with the support of my ancestors, mentors and source, whose energy runs through me constantly. I am here to serve the healing and remembering and awakening of all beings everywhere.