Category Archives: Holiday destinations

The joy of finding tribe

When you find “tribe” your relative uniqueness can flip from being a weakness to becoming your very power-point…that which unites you and makes you more determined to be the difference together. Deep familiarity sweeps you over for the fact that it is so typically absent when you are amongst other people…and suddenly you are all lit up, laughing at all the ironies that once floored you, ignited with enthusiasm, passion, innovation and determination whilst eagerly gobbling up all the resources you can pool together. Its a powerful thing and all the more so when its been absent from your life for so long you had all but convinced yourself you were destined to travel this road alone.
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Memories from the stones

Sometimes its as though the stones of a place speak to us; sometimes its a feeling of a place that takes us back in time…reminding us of something important, like a memo to ourselves. Continue reading

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Good years without end

I’d watched this film over and over again for many years; and it was only when I recognised another story layered into it that I got its deeper message. Reappraising A Good Year; deeper than it looks. Continue reading

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Amsterdam – where left meets right

There’s something crystalline about places that formed along strictly organised lines masterminded by great architects…and then softened over time. It’s not the history of the places that draws me per se but the process of succumbing and melding with something more fluid, after the event of their creation, that beguiles me; it’s where they are at now that appeals. Like a cup overspilling, the colour and creativity of human life that they burst with – now – is like that liquid I refer to, although it’s not; its more energetic in nature, it’s a feeling that manifests as beauty…. Revisiting Amsterdam, having some epiphanies about what creates the unique energy of a place along the way. Continue reading

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Glass butterflies

I noticed something very distinct about Amsterdam and that was how the layout of its main canals, in a layered horse-shoe shape, divided by roads and intersecting canals that fanned it out like a turkey-tail, reminded me of an inverted tree of life or rather, a tree of life labyrinth. I have talked about my labyrinthine experiences walking around the streets of various towns many times before and here was another example showing up in my experience. The labyrinth can be an extremely powerful way of encountering portals at the points where energies intersect and seems to invite multi-faceted experience into your awareness through these portals; which serve as an axis-point between other dimensions (you could think of such a portal as the truck of a tree connecting dimensional “branches”). So, in effect, you can find yourself standing in an ordinary physical “place” when suddenly your three-dimensional “reality” (which starts to take on symbolic significance in ways you didn’t notice before; these everyday things are now”clues” to make you sit up and take notice) seems to intersect more fluidly than ever with other dimensions that you can now perceive.These power nodes train you in multi-dimensional awareness and so you familiarise yourself with its potential in ways that you get to take with you through other walks of life. When you encounter these power-portals, you feel riveted to the spot as coincidences of circumstance “speak” to you in a multitude of ways, offering new layers of deeper meaning and understanding to what you ordinarily encounter with your five senses. Continue reading

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Catching onto the coat-tails of the cosmos

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.
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Leading me up the garden path

The weather that delivered on the day of our long-planned visit to Charleston turned out to be nothing like what I had painted in my head; the sky was tipping water by the bucket-full. But then, of course, everything glistened; the fruit, especially, glistened as though freshly varnished and the petals hugged droplets of water like glass teardrops perfectly poised. We got to marvel at the way the bees knew how to line up with their backs to the wind and hang upside down beneath the flower heads – one on each bloom – until the rainshower was over. We got that kind of light that is clear and crisp, not washed-out and without subtlety as on a typical summer’s day. The velvet reds “zinged” and the greens looked like freshly squeezed life-zest personified; vibrant and rejuvenating to receive with all the senses. One of the gifts was the unexpected juxtaposition of a dripping-wet female form peeking out through vivid wet leaves and abundantly ripe fruit;her wet face had something to tell me and it was nothing at all about tears…”I sleep; I do not weep” were words that came boomeranging back at me later that same weekend in yet another stunning garden and the journey in between turned out to be a labyrinth of self-discovery through a landscape of universal themes. Continue reading

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Walking the labyrinth

Yes, life is a labyrinth yet I came to realise the true magic and the alchemy taking place in my world happened because of the blind and unexpected corners, the surrender to the unknown instead of demanding that life have a plan. In walking St Catherine’s labyrinth, I saw that, however overgrown and confusing that route had become at ground level, there was always a higher design to everything and, really, no room for accidents or mishaps when taken one step at a time following the clue right in front of you. As in my own life, the more bends and unexpected twists or turns I encountered, the more my overall perspective softened, returning me towards a wholeness that welcomed me in and delivered a reunion with all the fragmented parts of everything, including of myself. Around some of those sharpest of corners, we find all the multidimensional aspects of ourselves come together and stack up one above the other, like stepping on an axis point between our many layers that explodes us into a broader reality that holds the potential to blast us out of the most pervasive cul-de-sacs of our experience as seen at ground level. These heightened moments…the kinds you can never plan to have…shift us through walls that may once have seemed impenetrable and show us a completely different landscape on the other side. Continue reading

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Graceful journey: a Scandinavian experience

When grace happens to you, it is like a moment of poise that you just know is exactly where you were destined to be; one you will never forget and will continue to draw upon at times when life drags you back into its slip streams. Like portals between layers of space and time that tell us we are unfailingly on track, can’t even be off-track if we tried, these appointments with our own self-created destiny are powerful nodes of experience that communicate back and forth across time and space and make life feel unimaginably coherent, even in the midst of the most tragic or unexpected things happening around us. Nothing can truly shake us out of this sense of coherence once we plug into this personal journey of the heart. There is true power and strength to be found around so many unlikely street corners on such a journey through life; one which takes us far closer to the true epicentre of our own heart-maze than anything we could experience from following somebody else’s guidance on where we should be going, what we should be doing. Listen to the advice, yes…but the listen to your own inner guidance first; and take some of those detours down less trodden streets and be amazed at what shows up in some unexpected places. That’s when we realise that grace is, ultimately, an inside job and entirely portable, wherever we happen to be. From that space, we realise, place is just a matter of perspective; that the inner work is where it all happens and that, through the attitudes we adopt, we really are the true architects of our world, the creators of our own skyline view and (when we allow life to unfold for us) we are always, unfailingly, in the right place at the right time. Continue reading

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The Lady Falls…and then she stands back up again

It was undoubtably a stunning waterfall, many feet high; tall and elegant like a woman’s robes tumbling down into a serene pool of softly flowing liquid coloured brownish-red by the earth she carries with her. She could have been a goddess standing there in the water, the sun in her hair but, this time, a little aloof like she had been bothered by people before and so turned her back and withdrawn….Sharing a visit to a waterfall that felt very different to all the others we had visited but which (it turned out) had just as much to show me, with some much-needed comedy injected into it all… Continue reading

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