Something major has shifted. Suddenly, the thick defences I built long ago have changed fundamentally. I now no longer see them as walls, but as a living, breathing, flowering and flourishing hedge. It feels like coming alive.

For ages I have dreamed of a life of connection with the spirits who share my life. And by spirits I simply mean the conscious, living aspects of everyday things like plants, animals, and soil; of work tools and materials; of houses and rooms and places. All of us are part of an endless web, giving and receiving what we need to live.

The first incarnations of this quest were a conscious attempt to get away from looking at myself and my woundedness, my personal challenges. I thought it was time to start looking outward and engage with the world around me more.

And to an extent that was good and interesting. But soon I discovered that it didn’t quite work. However hard I tried, I kept coming up against blocks and resistance. I kept bouncing into that thick wall of defence. It was built to protect me against feelings of helplessness when I was bullied at school and when my dad’s abilities declined through my childhood. And for most of my life it has also cut me off from feeling much of the world around me.

I’m OK when I try. When I consciously engage with tools to alter my consciousness, I do quite well at that and get useful results. But on a day-to-day basis, I tend to resist and hide. Nothing much passes those walls. It leaves me longing for more life in my relationships with the world around me.

So here I am, back again where I started. Looking at old feelings and how I safely keep them behind those walls. Over the last couple of weeks, my guiding spirits (during times of conscious practice) have encouraged me to look at those old feelings. And then two things happened.

First of all, I noticed that those walls were made out of feelings. The hard shell I surround myself with is made out of the very feelings I am hiding from. And there are held in the tissues of my body. I have kind of known that for a long time, but it’s never been quite this clear.

Secondly, as I practised my everyday creativity, I was told to imagine the flowers and leaves I was colouring in my book growing on the outside of those defensive walls. As I did so, the walls came alive with greenery and colour. I could feel the vines putting suckers between the stones of the walls and loosening them.

I made a shamanic journey to ask my guiding spirits how to deal with those solidified emotions. In that journey, the leaves and flowers started to grow in and through my body tissues. My muscles became vines dripping with flowers. My bones became stems. And the wall of defence I had carried with me for so long became a beautiful, tick hedge full of life.

The hedge is alive. Its leaves and flowers have their own ways of sensing and relating to the outside world. I still feel safe inside that boundary of protection, but less enclosed, less restricted. It feels like, for the first time in a long time, I can breathe.

And that is what I’m doing. I’m breathing the rare days of sunshine, and the dance of the fire. I’m breathing the fresh outside air and the flow of emotions.

It’s still quite new and unfamiliar. And again, I forget. But I know that something significant has changed. And I am looking forward to the next step on the quest.

Image by Gutachter-Kail on Pixabay