What is shared in Secret Garden is uncompromising and infinitely tender. True spirituality is not about seeking a future enlightenment, nor about avoiding suffering. Doing a spiritual practice to attain anything in the future negates the very premise of God or Love or Truth or Being (whatever you like to call the mystery) right now.
We cannot control ourselves, others or the world in order to experience openness on demand, but at any moment we can simply allow a present moment revelation of openness to all there is.
This is the beauty, the innocence, the wonder of life that cannot be captured, can only be pointed to in words. This resonace is shared energetically in retreats. there is no agenda to change anyone, all is seen as magnificent!
We are not here to transform the world and create love on earth. In truth, ‘we’ aren’t here. Though feelings of being limited may arise, though we apparently exist in the world of duality and paradox, in being there are no questions, no solutions. As ’we’ fully experience all the wonder and pain of being human, without fight, we are openness, we are love. Investment in a process or path or ‘spiritual journey’ is a denial of the perfection of what is, here, now. The ‘me’ that does this, seeks this, is not only on a hiding to nothing, but inevitably suffers in separation, misses the miracle of being. when the apparent sense of being separate collapses, whetehr permanently or for a moment or a few weeks, all there is is the extraordinary, ordinary miracle of being. Which simply cannot be spoken of. any story of personal problems becomes meaningless.
And it can be good to be with those who love this! The day circles and retreats give you space, away from the demands and busy-ness of everyday life, time to strengthen, rest, nourish soul, rediscover the perfection here now, let go – for good- of any baggage you might be carrying, embrace change and envision a heartfelt reality for the future, and to connect and get reflection from others. Deep and lasting friendships may happen too. And nobody is doing anything! These courses give approaches that are compassionate and honest and create spaces where trust, challenge, acceptance and an appreciation of the simple and sacred in life can be experienced, that point to the enough-ness of life, awake and embodied, naturally.
What inspires me is to see those I work with find their aliveness, the power and peace of presence, and the natural flow of feelings, in ordinary life and in the retreats and ongoing groups that I have the privilege of facilitating. I love to see people shed the masks, armour and uniforms required in so much of worldly activity, and come more and more to trust themselves, their feelings, their honest truth, and be led through and by these to the stillpoint, the silence the openness, the vastness of being.
This Secret Garden work enables your deep integration between body, heart and being. Full presence enables an embrace of insecurity, challenge, death, the darkness, as part of the human of life, as well as the light, the bliss and joy. The more we do this, mysteriously the more the magic, love and beauty that we would choose by preference unfolds in our lives!
In Huna, a very balanced and powerfully healing modality, spirit is only realised through the unconscious, through the depth of soul and its endless rediscovering -our feelings, or those of another, is the path to the divine. It is the way to become deeply happy. Without our joy, tears, exuberance, tenderness and sexual passion we are less alive, less healthy, less available and less playful. To keep being here right now with whatever is touched in us or a partner or a colleague, however uncomfortable, however exquisite, is the only way freedom and happiness is tasted. Beingness cannot be sought, grasped, owned.
The art of living happily is a surrendering to what is greater than or beyond our own individual demand or expectation or story. This, and this. Aloha – the recognition of the life and love in another and in existence – sounds simple and is an energetic shift as subtle as a butterfly’s wings, and yet in the worldly realm of cause and effect it can ‘appear’ that such a shift becomes easier as a result of rigorous inner work, total responsibility and self-honesty which brings soul growth. We then may choose to live our lives through power and presence, rather than force and control. We learn to take back our projections, let go of blame, tread lightly on our abundant, generous and strained to the limit planet, to be more intimate with ourselves and others and recognize our ordinariness and our magnificence both. Whenever we focus on living and circumstance, rather than life itself, we are confronted with paradox and yet there is always the miracle of letting go and dying to all we think we know so that being is released from the apparent opposites, duality, contradiction in the dream of life.
Community, connection, presence, being, peace, intimacy, vulnerability, love, surrender…. these I value above all, these are the qualities I enjoy in the playshop of my own life. My passion is an empowering of presence, awakeness, essence, from which comes natural power, joy, love and abundance. In early childhood through to early adulthood ‘I’ experienced a series of spontaneous awakenings that radically transformed my experience of living on this beautiful planet The integration of the openings into ordinary life was a process that apparently happpened in time. I only discuss this if asked – spiritual experiences are simply that, experiences. What is, here, now, is ever changing and new and the stories are not the essence. As a result of that old ‘story’ ‘I’ was drawn to mystical and spiritual teachings since early childhood and I am very grateful to have worked with extraordinary teachers, indigenous and western, which grounded what is here and gave ways in which what is here could be offered in a grounded way .
A group leader and therapist for 18 years, I run transformational weekend, day and week-long retreats and evening groups in Gloucestershire, Bristol, Bath, Somerset, Andalucia, Italy, the Greek islands and the Hawaiian islands. I work as a ‘spiritual’ facilitator with groups, in ongoing trainings and in one to one and couple sessions, creating a space for celebration of being, for movement through stuckness, sharing clarity of reflection and strategies of self-inquiry and tools which can facilitate a deeper realization of Love and Truth. I use skills accumulated through years of study in Jungian psychotherapy, coaching, Huna shamanic healing, (Huna means hidden knowledge and includes ancient lineage healing (the ancient root of family constellations work), Circle Work, Self-Inquiry, Releasing, Time Line Therapy, astrology and NLP, combined with insights from those deeply transformational life experiences and clear seeing of life, which began with childhood awakenings. Life is constant miracle and wonder, whatever arises, and yes life is very happy in a quiet way!
I send gratitude to all my teachers, to all those who have joined me as participants in this work and to all those who will. I acknowledge with great love the lineages of teaching to which I belong, and those behind me and those in front of me. I give thanks for all the love I receive and all the love I give. Whatever your place within the web of Oneness that connects us all, I wish you clarity, wonder and joy.
Aloha, Joy