I spent three days and night immersed in the cosmic playground of nature’s beauty on a plant medicine retreat. This experience came at a potent time, one of transition and spaciousness. Finally, I have the space for myself.
Nature’s Opulence: A vision that came through in a recent ceremony and made on Midjourney (AI art)
I came in with an intention to ask for guidance for my career transition, my relationship to service, how I should be thinking about the concept of home at this time in my life and the most sticky, what is the root of my unworthiness when it comes to receiving romantic love.
Intention matters when we are exploring the self. To me it is my driving force, the reason why I am somewhere. It’s clarity about where I want to put my attention.
It is very important in life to know where to put your attention.
What followed was a vast and wide dive into my soul, my essence and who I am. The exploration I want to share with you here, is the part of the journey where I had the pleasure of communing with the spirit of my business.
I first heard this concept from my creative partner,
and then I dove a little deeper with this listening to a free meditation from Sam Garcia, the author of Regenerative Business. [one of my fave books of 2023]The Spirit of your Business is the essence of what fuels your entrepreneurial journey. The fuel is what you are pouring on your work and what keeps it alive.
I call this the blood, the spark, the ignition of the business.
In the last year, I’ve found it hard to connect to the Spirit of my Business. The fuel. The passion. The spark. It’s not that I’m lacking in fuel, passion or spark. I can usually find that from somewhere in most moments.
What I’ve felt like I couldn’t feel was my business’s fuel. The real fuel. The integral fuel. The “right” fuel. Ultimately, the sustainable kind.
What I could feel was that the fuel in my engine was somewhat contaminated with fuel that wasn’t the right fit or coming from a healthy clean source. I needed a full clean out and a full break.
I wrote a few weeks ago about Letting the Soil of my Soul Rest [read here] and taking a sacred pause (sabbatical) from holding clients and creating online programmes. Essentially, I closed the doors to my online school and let go of about 90% of my income.
This has been a fear-filled choice. Letting go of the large majority of my livelihood is inconvenient. I held off doing this due to being afraid of being broke, unable to pay my bills and a little harder on the ego, giving up elements to my lifestyle that I believed I couldn’t live without. Humbly, I’m finding that I can in fact live without many things and laying low for a while is exactly what I need.
What’s hard for the ego, is nourishing for the soul.
Everything is under review.
All my group programmes and live classes have completed. I’m having a lot of private integration conversations with my clients and listening to their journey’s. I’m trying to ask the right questions that allow me to see and celebrate them and receive valuable feedback about the way my work has impacted them.
My body of work, all my curriculum and writing is sat inside of what I like to call my “sacred temple” and I’m going through it with a loving comb.
I feel like a loving mother actively digesting my creative process and every slither of work I’ve had the privilege to bring through into the world thus far.
Daily mantra: I am the gatekeeper of my life’s work and it is my duty to honour it.
I’m also living a simple life with my family, in my childhood home, in the British countryside. Three meals a day, a few snacks and a lot of rest. Plus walks, a lot of walks. My daily visit to swan lake is one of the deepest pleasure of life right now.
I’ve also been able to give up a huge chunk of my personal bills for this period of time, not everything. But just enough to make it through for a few months.
Last year during an episode on my podcast JUICY! (created last year with my sis
) we talked about Endings. I shared how my life last year had been a living prayer to the questions we ask ourselves.Essentially, my belief is your life is the answer to the questions you ask yourself. If you don’t like the answer, ask richer, deeper questions. If you’re interested to hear more about this, you can listen below.
My starting point when I first started this process was far away from myself. The questions weren’t giving me high quality deep answers but I had to start somewhere. An example would have been “What do I truly desire?”.
I asked that over and over again until I could hear a resonant answer that had enough guidance and wisdom within that I could start shifting in a new direction. The answers that came led me to keep letting go. And more letting go. Until I have ended up here. Now I’m asking questions like this:
What happens when you actually have the time to digest your life?
My life is the current answer to that question. It has entered me into a process that most of us yearn for as entrepreneurs / artists / medicine workers / mentors. Space, rest, down time, active time off. Maybe one day it comes, but if my process is anything to go by, you have to actively choose this.
From this space, I can feel that this is true for me:
Letting the soil rest is a revolutionary act in a hungry world where we’re excellent at doing and chasing and not so excellent at the times when this is nothing new to do and nothing to chase. But spend time with everything we’ve already done. Because that is where the wisdom of our spirit and soul of what we are creating is living.
I believe this deeply.
Unless you’re someone brilliant enough to bake in seasons of pause and resting from outputs in your creative life in a meaningful way already.
If that’s you, well done. I have a lot to learn from you. You are already so beautifully letting the rhythms of nature lead the way. Please feel free to share with your experiences of this. I’d love to hear from you.
BACK TO THE CEREMONY
As I entered the ceremony I sat with the question, “What does my creative life want me to know?”
The clearest answer came to me.
I was basking in an exquisite real life moon bath, which also happened to be an actual real life full moon coming right down onto my bed. As I closed my eyes I could feel my whole body lit up by the direct moonlight. It was like my body was luminous.
From somewhere inside, I started communing with the spirit of my business. Finally I had access again.
The message coming through was that the spirit of my business was hungry for my attention and devotion.
She asked that I sit with her in ceremony and ritual more often, deeply listen and commit to the art of translating what she is.
The important message from the spirit:
What she is matters.
Your skill at translating what she is matters.
This resonated deeply with me. I do think that part of the gift of a medicine worker, somatic worker, guide and / or writer is translating what is often currently at at the time of hearing it untranslatable to other people.
They needed you to translate it with your work for them to finally get it for themselves. Your art was the conduit to the next level of healing.
I believe that….
Working with the body is translating sensation and energy with words and sounds.
Working with the spiritual realm is working with the unseen and intangible.
It is having faith in what you can’t see but you know, observe, trust and feel. Writing words, songs, poems, teachings is allowing creative energy and flow to move through you and out into the world.
I’m sure so many of you whether you are a practitioner or artist yourself can relate to the feeling of someone saying to you after they’ve experience your work “you’ve put words to somethings I’ve felt my whole life but I couldn’t explain it.”
Or, “I’ve been waiting to feel this my whole life. Everything is starting to make sense.”
It’s worth it to be good at translating “observations, truths and noticings” to others. It often impacts their lives in really meaningful ways.
So as I sat communing with this very generous spirit, she started to show and paint to me exactly what she is. Visuals came pertinently into my awareness.
The image was vast and stunning. A deep green forest, alive and vibrant, a potent moon piercing down, a family of Jaguar animals (my spirit and soul animal) and the most beautiful, opulent golden carriage full of wisdom and jewels.
I imagined my business as the vehicle for my life’s work which sits in a golden carriage, full of jewels and wisdom, surrounded in the abundance of nature with my spirit animal the jaguar nearby underneath the moon.
When I got home I got to work on Midjourney to see if I could bring what I saw to life using the help of AI. Here are 4 of what found their way to the cutting room floor with the #1 being the photo at the top of this piece. I’m in love with the final image. What a way to capture the “vehicle”.
I have called this [working title] “Nature’s Opulence” where your divinity meets your animalistic nature. When you climb in to work with me we are sitting in a golden carriage together full of lavish jewels of divine wisdom. You are shown the mirror to the most perfect, loving and abundant self. You are both the full embodiment of nature and completely and utterly held by nature.
I’ve long worked with the energy of Opulence in my work. In my recent nine month journey Le Coeur for women, the theme that was most transformational was the month we spent divine into Opulence. I’m continually amazed at how deeply talking about Opulence impacts a woman’s sense of innate worth.
I absolutely loved that this came around for a refinement. I have many more months and years of sitting with myself and the “Spirit of my Business”. This felt like the door opened to a treasure chest of wisdom.
So to bring this all home, when we slow down and give ourselves the space to digest our experiences, it’s so obvious to me that the abundant wisdom that we often deeply need is within us. What I’ve discovered through this process of reflection and connection with my inner spirit is that the process of ‘sitting with” and “deeply getting to know” is on the cards for my sabbatical.
How does the idea of "Nature's Opulence" resonate with you in your own life?
What would you discover about yourself if you took the time to digest your life?
What questions could you ask yourself to deepen your understanding of your own life's work and purpose?
Have you ever communed with the Spirit of your Business? What happened?
The deepest gratitude to you all my readers, whether you’ve joined me recently or are old friends. It is a great solace to come here and write. This piece took me many weeks to write, many edits, many additional pieces and like all good creative processes, I got what I needed along the way. I hope you did too.
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I love you,
Olivia
This was an excellent read! I especially resonated with that line about what’s hard for the ego is nourishing for the soul. Phew!! 😮💨
What I’ve discovered about myself since taking my own sabbatical is that I was using my business as a way to prove I have worth and value (which led to an unhealthy relationship with it when things didn’t go how I wanted). I’ve learned that I don’t need nearly half of what I thought I did to be at peace. Having half of what I want and everything I need is enough for me.
My favorite question lately to deepen my understanding has been “what are you pretending to not know?”. I’ve been surprised by the answers.
Thank you for a great read. I hope you have a beautiful day! 🌹✨
There is thread of this piece that has pierced me and is traveling through my body, like poking holes of light in my organs. Thank you. 🙏🏽