I found a beautiful sacred place that is my new sitting spot. I call it my hidden waterfall because even though I have lived here for nearly 40 years I just recently found this stunning place.
We were out walking this Spring, trudging up a hill through sodden,squelchy ground. As we reached the top, I heard the distinct sound of a waterfall. Like a bee to nectar, I followed the scent until I came across this cascading waterfall in a glen.
Pure delight.
I determined to come back another time, alone, and sit. When I came back, I clambered down into the gorge to sit atits base and smell its sweet pure air. As I was leaving, I was telling myself that clambering up and down slippery leaf littered slopes wasn’t the wisest move and then I saw another little trail. I followed it and there was an opening to the top of the waterfall. Gated by two trees as an entrance. Some other lover of waterfalls has fashioned a bench made of stone at the top.
The path here has been an avenue of buttercups and berry blossomsand knee-high grasses. Yesterday, I arrived and someone had mowed the avenue – better for tick management but a loss for beauty. A snake and I met each other on the avenue – shared a moment and moved on and then the first of the mosquitoes arrived at the glen. I wish I was one of the people that they ignore,
but no, my father and I are the sweet tasting ones.
The first time I came here, I came with an agenda – to recorda transmission to start a ‘Wisdom of the Waterfalls’ series. But I was told ‘No, come back every day this week and then we shall see.’ And so, I did.
I’ve been frequenting this spot, coming here to share whatis on my heart, offer my love, a little gift. Each day I would bring flowers from the avenue or one day a sprig of fuchsia from my planters. I offered songs from my limited memorized repertoire – Seasons of Love … how do we measure ayear in the life, how about love?, the Prayer of St Francis … make me aninstrument of thy peace, where there is hatred let me sow love, In the Bleak Mid-Winter ‘what can I give him… give him my heart.’
Over the weeks the waterfall has gone from gushing with spring rains to dry and now puddles and drips falling fall through the mosses. It tells me to wait, the water will surely flow, it is made by the water for the water for it to flow through, just as we are made for spirit to flow through us.
So today, I come here and someone is doing target practice in the trees just beyond. Bang, crash, silence, drip, drip, drip, bang crash. If I were a wise man, I would do my part, but what can I give him, give my heart.
I bring a cherubim that I bought back from Avebury in Wiltshire– from one home of the soul to another. The shooting has stopped, the bang of a car door and they are gone and now I’m left with the thrushes, the distant noises of plane overhead. How few places we can go and only hear the sounds of nature – the deep quiet – and space to discern the deepest whisper.
I’ve always recoiled from the idea of spiritual strata –levels of enlightenment, shamanic realms etc.. I also have no interest in leaving family and children and everyday life to sit in a monastery for 20
years.
But the tension for people like us is to both live connected to everyday 21st century Western life AND stay in tune with Spirit.
I revere sinking into the depths, tuning in with the birds, feeling the thrum of the earth, the whistle
of the wind in the trees, spiraling down deeper and deeper into the dark, expansive stillness.
To others it may look like I am distant and in some waysthat is true but I’m going deep into myself and the deeper that I go, the less energy that I have for everyday conversation and interaction. I’m tuning into a different language, different frequency – one that is peaceful and powerful for
me.
Intuition doesn’t shout, it whispers. The deeper we sink the more delicate the whisper that we can hear.
When I'm sinking down, I feel it like a gravitational pull.I feel it most strongly around the solstices and the equinoxes and recently I went into a very deep place as I was healing from surgery and radiation. As I feel myself circling down for weeks its like being pulled into a vortex or into a galaxy that's spinning.
My partner says that it looks like I'm sad or low energy,but I'm really not on the inside. On the inside it's exquisite. It's just like this beautiful quietness, and I can feel the pull in, and my body wants to slow and sink into it. I have less interest in vigorous exercise. Life is asking me
to still so I can pay attention. I’m feeding the space, feeding the spirit, tending the quiet.
Intuition is not a machine to be turned on but a space to be tended.
While I can feel itin my body, I also notice things on the radio, or pick up on something someone says, or I may read a poem, and it all begins to coalesce and come together. Sometimes,
an idea will spring up, or a piece of writing like this, or a creative impulse.
Sometimes, it’s the beginning of a pull into a retreat. I feel all the pieces gathering and I know that the last ones will fall into place. I can just trust that at the right time, the elements will just come
together, the right people will gather, and a deep portal will open.
This also happens when I'm channeling. When someone signs upfor a portal session, the energies start to entwine. I can feel it coming for days and weeks. I may have dreams leading into it that are relevant. Sometimes I will feel things that are not characteristic of me, and I’ll notice it and
wonder. And sure enough, when the session rolls around it all makes sense. Or I just happened to run across a poem that is just the perfect poem for this person. So, it's this beautiful symbiosis. And so, when the session comes, we've already been sinking down into sacred space for days and days, weeks, sometimes months. By the time we open the portal and get present to what wants to come through all the pieces are gathered in my life and your life.
Then just as beautifully what comes through the portal unfurls in your life just as slowly, just as perfectly, in the right time and in the right way, and in the right place and circumstances. I also trust that the right people come to me for a portal session when the time and circumstances are
right – and often that’s not when their intellect says it’s the right time.
Creatively, when I feel something coming, or gestating, or gurgling, just underneaththe surface I can't just go and mine it like a machine. I can't take it. I have to wait for it to bubble up to the surface.
So, while that's happening, I'll do other things that thatdon't drain me creatively or energetically but allow for the gurgling to happen.
When I was working on grants, I would work on things that didn't require any sort of creativity - likethe budget or the evaluation section or fill out forms - and meanwhile I could feel the grant taking its form. I could feel what form the project wanted to be born into the world – it’s essence.
When writing one of these musings, I hear the rumble thatsomething wants to be written and come through into the world. I begin to kind of sniff it, feel it, and I'm kind of circling around and around and around as a dog does before it does its business!
Almost always I circle around way more than my Type A wouldlike to. I just have to wait and create space for it to emerge. My best grant writing ideas always came when I was walking the dog or taking a shower or puttering in the garden. It might look like I'm not doing anything, but I'm listening, and I'm getting quieter and quieter and quieter.
If I have to throw myself into something that requires mental concentration such as taxes or accounting, then it disrupt the flow, and then I have to reset. It works much better for me to have days of spaciousness or weeks of spaciousness, and then it'll gurgle up, take shape and come through.
When it finally does, I know it's a truth that wants to be spoken here into this moment through me into this place and into this time. What you have just read has been gestating in me since mid-winter – and finally now has found its form.
I hope that it’s a medicine that comes at the right time and speaks to your heart.
So, my whole life is organized around tending to the quiet so that I can hear the whisper.
It requires that I eat well, get enough sleep, make plentyof time for mediation and time at the waterfalls, be careful about exposing myself to loud and chaotic environments or too many traumatic world events – while still honoring that I am here now in this.
It demands devotion, one that I am honored to devote my life to.
And what a gift that these times call for us all to be the truest versions of ourselves. Remember to true yourself, remember to align yourself. We need people who are aligned, we need people who are true to themselves, because when we are, incredible magical gifts shimmer through for each other.
With love,
Jana
P.S. If this resonates with you, consider joining me on a 4-dayretreat over Fall Equinox called Sinking into the Earth, Hearing the Whisper.