It’s ok to go a lil crazy. It’s all a little crazy right now!

There’s a part in Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, when Liz, having finally given in to her love, Felipe, finds herself once more seeking Ketut’s advice (The Balinese beautiful hearted medicine man that Liz befriends). This time, she is sharing how she keeps swinging between the balance of her deep and rooting meditation practices, and, well basically, the chaos, and free-falling, of falling in love. Ketut simply responds with joy, and a huge smile of delight, telling Liz that ‘sometimes, to lose balance for love, is part of living (a) balanced life’.

Why am I telling you this? Is that rather beside the point as we spin around axes that are no longer there, the pole suddenly vanquishing the dancer!?

But, it may be, that we are being invited, nay, pulled, yanked, forced, into falling into love. Into love’s arms. Into something irrevocably bigger than who we are, what we are, and what we believe we know about love. Love is a free fall, a surrender into. We are being asked to surrender. Like it or not. (And believe me, there are plenty of moments recently where hell, I haven’t liked it one iota!!!) Can you feel it? Or can you feel the resistance to it instead? Maybe it’s a cocktail (Sigh! Someone mention cocktails?!!), of both!

We are being blasted into love right now. And anything, and everything, that isn’t love, is being brought up to the surface, like shit, to bob like a jewel, though it looks anything but! A jewel of shit. The Buddhists know. The lotus flower rising out from the mud. God is a trickster. I’ve been saying this for a good few years now. And life is a paradox. Ditto.

Now, let me be clear actually, and refine, and re-define, something that I’ve just myself written! It’s all love. Everything is love. Nothing is outside of our heart. The jewel and the shit. (The lady, and the tramp!!)

Yeah yeah yeah, you say. Shut it with the spiritual bullcrap right now!! You know what my dear?! I sooo fuckin’ hear you!!

You see, I’m watching myself behave like I’m on a metaphorical, and existential rollercoaster the last few weeks. All Sukkha, and Dukkha, up and down. Actually, fuck that, I’m the whole bloody theme park! Some days I’m riding the bucking bronco frantically trying to hold on, stay in the game, chaffing my inner thighs in the process!! Or, I’m pinned to the sides unable to even move my arms as it all rushes by, frozen in place (my home!), and time (what the fuck is time!!??), by the world spinning by. Hmmmm. That’s just made me recall that Beatles song ‘Fool on the hill’. Excuse me a moment whilst I play this right now on Spotify…

How’s your concentration levels these days??!

Brain fog anyone??!!

No? Just me?! I highly doubt it. It’s just occurring to me that my Vata levels are way out of balance. In fact, tis the case, that I’m waltzer-ing on this global pirate ship, lurching from dizzying heights to feet firmly on the ground.

Balance.

But, let’s back up a little. Back to love.

And, specifically, what is in our way of being shattered into love shards, all psychedelic holographs and prisms of the absolute!

The destination might be, love train central, but the only way we get to get there is to meet and go through what’s in the way. All the station stops beforehand. Maybe, just maybe, we are being shown what’s in the way. The way of simply BEING love itself.

Earlier this year I chose my words for 2020. Well, in fact, as always, they chose me. These are my equivalent to New Year resolutions. The words vibrate within me at a profoundly deeper level than my logical, hopeful, wishful, little mind! As a writer, and a spell-crafter, I know the power of words. As human beings, I think we all do. I give no credence to that old, strangely macabre, playground chant, ‘sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you’. I disagree. Words can both wound and destroy us. Or they can lift us up in wonder and love. Choose wisely your words. Especially more so in these turvy topsy times!

That includes those inner ones my loves.

One of my words for this year is ‘Radical Honesty’ (Yes. That’s two. Shut up!). It’s like an anchor that sits still and solid in the centre of my chest. It’s rooted in such truth and clarity that it’s almost a superpower! However, when I chose this word, with full intention and attention, as one of my compass points of alignment for this year, I was surprised to be shown, almost immediately, everything that was in the way of living as it, as radical honesty itself.

It felt like all of the lights had been turned down and in the darkness, in what seemed like lil phosphorescent lights coating the velvet black ocean, were all of the places in my life where I am not honest. Where I am a liar. It appears, that in one way or another, I have been lying a lot!

So, it’s the same right now. We are being pressed up against love’s kind face; love’s beating, bloodied, bruised heart; love’s fire and fierceness; love’s loss and grief; love’s impossibility and creativity; love’s hope and faith; love’s brutal chaos and unfathomable destruction; love’s icy finger of death; love’s thread of one heart pulsing live across the globe’s web! It’s all love. It’s all love. It’s all love.

The dualities that we are see-sawing with, with such vehemence and intensity right now (1000 different emotions in one day anyone?!), are our swinging human barometer. If we can remember that it’s all love, then this may help us to remain, or to invite in, a soupcon of kindness. What we don’t need right now is to add the critic to our behaviours and actions/non-actions at this time. We need kindness as a blanket whilst our compass spins out for a while, all navigation pointers and logical landmarks having been removed from our geographical ground!

I am finding myself swinging between aligning with what feels vital for my health right now, ie, soul writings, prayer, appreciation of beauty, embodiment practices, dance, pausing etc; and, my familiar, faux, ‘rock n’ roll’ patternings of late, late nights, way too much social media and digital times, drinking daily, smoking (I stopped last summer, fuck!), and a general ‘Fuck it!’ attitude, which can serve either as a point of freedom for me (if heart rooted), or as an actual act of nihilism (if not!).

I am aware.

I don’t need to add any extra judgement on how I should or ought to or could be. Shoulda, coulda, woulda can take a walk right now (as long as they keep their distance. Damn!!!).

I wonder if you know what’s in the way of love for you right now. What’s arising, like nausea, as you ride the Ferris wheel that you didn’t sign up for, and can’t get off? Is it your financial scarcity story? (That’s a familiar of mine too. I, as many, have no income right now. I’m with you.) Your fears of abandonment? The ache of missing out whilst many are showering the internet with their (so so welcomed) online gifts? Is it your lack of trust? Or is the grip of control in you going bonkers with its, erm, inability to have any control anymore?? Trust me, I know these all too well too darlings!

Maybe you’re raging, hula-hooping fire around your gut; maybe you’re drowning in deep grief, coming up for air, only to be pulled by the global current dragging you back deep beneath; or, maybe, you’re desperately clinging, by your fingernails, to something, someone, anything, to hold on to as the days go by. Or perhaps it’s lady loneliness that’s come to visit, setting up pride and place on your settee with tea and a gaping hole where her wholeness used to be. Or perhaps it’s simply fear, with its jangled nerves, clawing at you, a 24/7 ‘inner nails on blackboard’ nightmare piercing your every moment.

I’m not gonna tell you to let go. To surrender. Fuck that. Fucking fuck that. Hell no!

It’s all ok. All of the above. It’s all ok. Because it’s how it is, for you, for me, for us all. Even, and especially, our shadows. Which are the jewel shits. We’ve all got them, accessorising the fuck out of this apocalypse!!

It’s all love.

I find my way back through the fog, (and it does get pretty brain foggy doesn’t it?!) and just the reminder of beauty and dropping back down and in, and my heart comes alive, defrosts, once again. Sometimes it’s rather agonising. Especially if I’ve been gone too long. Yet it’s tender too. Real. Clarifying. Potent. Here lie all the feels. All the waves. The whole bleeding, brutal and beautiful, ocean.

And yet, as I swing between these two poles, spinning my compassed points wildly, there’s a place right in the centre of me, which is moving, just watching, the silent witness to it all playing out.

Grace. Love. Here. I. Am.

Balance and Imbalance. The ‘Fuck off!’ and the Tender heart aching vulnerability. The self-destruction, ‘rock n’ soul’, and the creation, the ultimate dance of Shiva and Shakti! Life and Death. Yes and No. Ok, and not ok. Craziness and sanity. The storm and the still point. The Human and the Divine.

There’s room for both. For it all. For it’s all love. It’s all love. It’s all love.

Sometimes, to lose balance for love, is part of living a balanced life. Especially, and particularly, in these unbalancing, and ground untethering, times.

Aho xxx