Its been such an energetic week, we’ve been travelling through a high-speed solar wind with extraordinarily high levels of geomagnetic activity plotted like massive skyscrapers of bright oranges and reds on the spaceweather websites (just landing back into the greens now) and no let-up day or night over the weekend. When this happens, I feel it in my body…I mean REALLY feel it as both charging me up and exhausting me all at once; and I’m not the only one. Other family members joined me in noting the effects this time, from racing heartbeats to unexplained nausea, bolts of tooth pain and lying awake feeling “electric” in the middle of the night. My dog certainly feels it when it happens, registering it as upset tummies and spooked behaviour that has him jumping up at his own shadow or pacing the floor at night. Friends all over the place, even across the other side of the world, have mentioned the week’s high-intensity vibe to me this week, telling me they can’t seem to think or settle to anything, that they feel worn out without doing anything or like they are plugged into the electricity mains. I think, in general, more and more of us are picking up on the fairly obvious reality that we don’t live in a glass bubble separate to everything…we’re literally part of space!

When we’re on a ride like this, one of the first things I have to do is significantly reduce my use of technology, acting (as it does) as the straw that breaks the camel’s back of my extreme electro-sensitivity. There have been days when I’ve kept the wi-fi router and even unnecessary household appliances switched off so that I can cope with the intense “buzz” in my cells this last week and I’ve made sure to kick off those shoes and ground myself outdoors. To read more about all that (the symptoms, ways of coping, even positives), hop over to my health blog where you can find this week’s post “Living with electro-sensitivity“.

However, what is so interesting is that, as the energies peak or…often…in what turns out to be the finale of a long and intense wave of solar energy, I almost can’t resist the OCD urge to get back on technology for a few hours…usually to research something, to get my teeth into the kind of multi-faceted, fast-thinking, incredibly detailed and therefore extremely juicy project that involves sorting-through, eliminating and honing piles of data towards a desired “conclusion”. In short, I geek out on something; usually a project I had no idea I was going to start until I did and then I make it my obsessive and single-focused life’s mission (for a day or so) to complete it!

Looking back, I know that there have been times (before I even recognised I had electro-sensitivity) that I would turn that obsessive urge inward by researching projects with a negative focus or over-thinking things that didn’t serve me. There’s something about the sheer intensity of a pulsing wave of energy direct from the sun that fires up the cells so much it must be run with and, if not consciously directed, will take the compulsively self-destructive route and agitate you in all the least helpful ways until you’re spent with emotional exhaustion or physical malaise. If I stayed on technology throughout the wave, I could find myself (in the “old days”) watching rubbish TV or geeking out on questions like “what’s wrong with me?”

What I notice, these days, is that – as long as I disconnect from technology for long enough to ground myself first – there’s a trend of researching holiday destinations and really left-field yet positive aspirations for the future during these high-energy times. In fact, looking back, I see clearly how some of the best trips of my life were planned on the tail-winds of such high-intensity cosmic energies that I started the “project” as a means of distracting myself from the pain I was in. Our most recent holiday to Scandinavia was researched, wrapped-up and booked during one of the most intense bursts of cosmic energy of last year; a day I was in so much fist-clenching pain and intense inward-focus that I couldn’t cope with anything outside of myself including interactions with other people  (it was on a Sunday and we had a house-full of chattering people) so I just sat there in my PJs and obsessed about this very sudden idea I had that we should first go to Denmark and then, from there, to Sweden, places I had never even considered before. By the end of that day I had nine-tenths of the holiday mapped out and reserved and it turned out to be one of the best trips of my life….as they always do!!

During this last week of high-intensity, I largely kept off the computer but, when I was on there, I wrote on subjects I’ve been wanting to talk about for some time (the post above being a point in case) or on topics that newly-occured to me out of the blue and with an intensity that matched the solar current. Since then, I worked on plans for a couple of trips this year and next, including one to the Pembrokeshire coast that I didn’t see coming and which is now all booked and so perfectly-formed that I feel like it was just handed to me tied with a bow. When I first considered the destination (which began as somewhere else entirely…but Pembrokeshire kept suggesting itself), I set out to find something super-modern and architectural inside yet in a tranquil and remote place near the sea with starry skies and, of-course, dog-friendly; which turned out to be a near-impossible brief to myself. In the same way as I seem to have cleared away so much nostalgia for “the past”, I seem to have had quite enough of low ceilings and quaint, old-fashioned, cobwebby interiors and chintz these days…but garish floral patterns and terribly dated interiors still rule supreme in the world of holiday rentals and there were such a lot of so-called options fitting those descriptions to be trawled though. What I found – and knew was “mine” instantly –  was more perfect than I could have hoped for; Griff Rhys Jones’ architect’s dream of a barn refurbishment (subject of a TV documentary…though I don’t watch TV so I wouldn’t know) in a stunningly remote spot under the stars by the sea. I’m so thrilled! I feel like I was led there by a thread of golden impulses that I got better and better at interpreting as I turned up my research dial to wharp speed.

What is so fascinating is watching how dynamically I whip through all the available information on whatever I happen to be researching during these kind of energies. When I’m in that kind of a current, I flip through mountains of data but seem to know instinctively where to pause and apply the weight of my attention. I might slow down to look at other worthy contenders but something in my gut tells me immediately that they are not quite right, even when all the information and countless glossy images or raving reviews suggest otherwise. I feel into what I’m seeing, following subtle clues and diving down rabbit holes that turn into shortcuts that appear to guide me back up to the surface at just the right place and time to find what I was really looking for, even if I didn’t know that I was. And I’m remarkably fast doing all of this – even though I’m sifting through a potential mindfield of mistakes (not knowing the area well enough from personal experience to take leaps in the dark, you might think…and yet, somehow, I know I’m safely on track). This speed makes it seem like I’m not looking at things very thoroughly at all…only I am, though not exclusively with my eyes.  When it comes to finding what is best for me and mine (which is what we are all world specialists in, after all) this method never lets me down and when we are in a slip-stream of cosmic energies, I only seem to get better at it; carried along on a wave of intuitive genius.

What these energies seem to particularly hook you up to…if you are open to being hooked…is the energy of pure “future potential”. You get “shown” little go-ahead lights that say, quite adamantly, “come this way” (or not) and…if you trust them…you get there all the sooner; in fact, time seems to morph into whole new shapes and rhythms using synchronicity and flow as its markers in lieu of clock-hands. Plans orchestrate together with remarkable ease, you sense you are working with the universe as your personal assistant by your side and the feeling of being on a golden trail lit up by a pathway of personal markers and clues is quite addictive, like a natural “high” that has you electrically fizzing but in such a good way. In fact, everything you do feels inspired and (in my case) is relatable to following the most creative surges of inspiration when I’m painting; those that take me somewhere new and exciting in my work. In moments of hesitation, you learn, the answer is probably “no” but perhaps you also need to step away and boil the kettle, walk the dog, take a moment in the garden. Once you feel clear again, you just know which way you are going, which “thing” is calling you to it. Its usually the one seems to asserts itself in a whole different way to all the other choices on the table (like it is literally “lit up” in your mental pictures of all the options) and even when logistical niggles and left-brained considerations try to make themselves heard (such as the thing you are most drawn to “costs more” than the one you feel you ought to choose) you sense strongly that this isn’t important and should be over-ridden; that it will all come right in unforeseen ways if you go with the “golden choice” and that this is is clearly the one with your name on it.

Looking back, this method of choosing has been with me forever and its never disappointed. It was a family joke years, many years ago, that this was always how I chose restaurants. On one trip to Rome when the kids were very young, I marched the hungry family past countless over-full restaurants, shaking my head “no” to them all, before taking a handful of sharp turnings down a maze of narrow back streets (though I’d never been here before; well, not in this lifetime anyway) and walked us all straight to a beautiful table just inside the doorway of a vine-clad restaurant in a tucked-away courtyard, one of the most unforgettable places we have ever eaten; and, oh, how we made memories that night. Using this resource is how I chose to take some of the biggest, scariest – and most fruitful – gambles of my life; the ones that see me happily married and circumstantially blessed in more ways than I can count whilst keenly aware of just how near I came to missing all those most-important junctions. I have used this skill set to wonderful advantage – but haven’t always used it with such conscious appreciation and TRUST – and I believe it is a skill that is fully available to all of us, in every moment (and sometimes just a little more super-powered than others). Its here right now; you can feel it when you fully open to its potential.

Planning holidays might seem a very trivial thing to apply this skill set to yet these trips invariably provide me with some of the most earth-shattering inspiration and moments of personal breakthrough of my year; the kind that break open old paradigms and feed my greatest leaps of evolution (not to mention my next wave of painting and creating). And, I only realise now, every holiday of the last half decade was inspired by the swirling, whirling tail winds of energies like these!

Whatever these bursts of comic energy bring to us (I tripped upon a wonderful reference to them it the book I’m currently reading*, which describes this energy as “galactic nectar”) and challenging though they can seem physically, they are not, in my opinion, this malevolent thing that people tend to assume they are, as though we are being bombarded with radiation and victimised by our galactic environment. Its, rather, a case that when we block the natural influx with our other, more limited, preoccupations and the constant buzz of man-made electrical equipment, we don’t “hear” what it has to tell us and so it has to keep knocking at our door….so why not open to it, welcome it in. By turning off all those other things for long enough to attune to the natural frequencies that desire to communicate with us, we get onto their  wavelength (or, you could say, we get back onto ours). Its then that we get to run with the universe, to ride with it and jump on board its unlimited impulses, like riding a surfboard on the crest of a wave….exhilerated beyond words and trusting it to take us where it will; which we may not be able to plan for but we can guarantee it will be somewhere perfectly wonderful.

* Quote referred to “the nectar from the Galactic Center incites us to remember our connections with ancient wisdom” –  from Barbara Hand Clow “Awakening the Planetary Mind: Beyond the Trauma of the Past to a New Era of Creativity”