Happy New Year!
I hope you’ve found some peaceful moments amidst the festive season and I know how difficult Christmas time can be for so many people. Whether you’re on your own and long to be with others; you’re with family and suffering from unhealed family dynamics; you’re mourning the death of a loved one or feeling deprived at a time of abundance; this mid-winter festival tends to stir whatever is unresolved in our hearts. That is what love does after all. Love challenges us to move through and out of the shadows into the light and to be more of who we essentially are.
I’ve been focusing on inner peace. The state of inner peace is one of the most beautiful places to live and yet it can be elusive. You may visit for moments or hours and then peace evaporates like a good dream and you are tossed back into the turmoil of everyday life.
Attempting to hold on to inner peace is like catching a sunbeam or a butterfly in your cupped hands, the effort of trying sends peace dancing away.
And yet inner peace is not entirely an act of grace that descends unexpectedly. When we create the right conditions, we find peace has been inside us all along and we can consciously develop our relationship with it.
For me, inner peace is a state where nothing is missing, everything I need and want is here, in this moment, now. There is nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. I’m home. Contented, connected and fulfilled.
Nothing to do doesn’t mean I need to be still or sitting on my meditation cushion to experience inner peace. I can be at peace when scraping carrots, having a conversation, walking the clifftop path or applying myself to a new skill. Inner peace arises when I’m connected with my essential self, the natural system of autonomous self-regulation that maintains at its centre, balance, harmony and equilibrium – and which connects the individual self with All-That-Is.
What I’m saying is: peace, harmony, balance and equilibrium are our natural states and can be chosen, cultivated and nurtured.
Over the last nine years I’ve been exploring, and holding space for others to explore, the shadowy realms of grief, loss and death. For those of us on a conscious healing path the covid lockdown marked an initiation into this essential healing work which requires us to face into our grief and to embrace those parts of us that have been exiled and bring them all home into an extended community of Self. In 2024, I felt I had completed a stage of my healing work and yet there was still a need for integration and laying the foundations for the next new stage of consciousness. It was a year of facing into challenges and committing to detailed work. I turned my attention back to the process of transformation and especially to the stress of transformation. It seems to me that much of the devastation on Earth is caused by deep-rooted stress which in turn creates more stress. Stress is a symptom of the global transformation, of which we are each a part, and which is accelerating.
The challenge for us as conscious healers is how to live in peace and with open hearts in a world which is inflamed with stress and to be in the creative flow of spirit so that we can bring in the new as the old story is dying. I believe this is the mission we are being called to embrace.
Now, in 2025 I’ve set my intention to make inner peace my forever home and to spend much more of my time in my home. I’ve set out on an inquiry to become more aware what interrupts my inner peace and to develop the skills to nurture and maintain my sanctuary and to ripple out peace into all my relationships.
I’m inviting you to join me in this exploration, starting next Sunday 12th January at 11am GMT, with a conversation called, Sanctuary: Your Quest for Inner Peace and Belonging.
If you are experiencing a roller coaster ride in which joyful oases are followed by emotional turbulence, as many people are, this is an opportunity to deepen your understanding, open your awareness, connect with inner peace, remember the skills you already have and revive your power to bring about the changes you choose. After the event I will send you the first of three guidebooks I’ve written to support you to continue to build momentum: EMPOWERING YOUR TRANSFORMATIONAL JOURNEY, Part One: Your Quest for Inner Peace and Belonging.
This conversation is the first of three, the other two are: Being Whole in a Fragmenting World on Sunday February 2nd and Empowering Your Process of Transformation on Sunday February 16. You are welcome to participate in one or in all three. After that, I will invite any of you who are interested to a conversation with me in which I will share my plans to create a Tribe in Transition Transformational Learning Community and I’ll be consulting with you about your needs and wants and how I might best support you.
Meanwhile to find out more, you may want to read or watch these posts:
Sanctuary, Your Quest for Inner Peace and Belonging
When the Veils Between the Worlds are Thin
