Energy Stewardship and the Quiet Life
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.”
Hello, dear ones. How are you all faring this mid-March?
I’ve come to check in, and say some things for those of us who need a little reminder about the big picture and what we are doing right now as a human collective….
I love the principle that our life is our masterpiece, and we get to edit it as ruthlessly as we like. To that end, I’ve taken down most of the pieces I wrote over the last two years, because I am going to do something else with them one day. For now, they are going into archive as I move into writing about what really moves me; which is the study of how energy moves inside the human soul, and catalyses growth, change, healing and development. I used to try and straddle the two worlds that I was born into, but I no longer have any interest whatsoever in translating into Empire language for those who are still trapped inside a violent and oppressive worldview in which only an elite few who have the magic words and correct symbols and holy scriptures can encounter Divine energy.
The more I learn about how to work skilfully with energy (and not against it) the more I realise that I will always stay in what the Buddhists call the ‘beginner’s mind’, and the more focused I become on learning how to stay connected to that openness to new things. When we want something, we will change our lives to make room for it to show up. And so, I have made some significant changes in the last 12 months, with more to come. I have always longed to be a proper hermit, to live in tune with the natural cycles of the earth and my own body in quiet and peace. It is time for me to make concrete steps toward this goal, and practice what I preach - which is the skilful stewardship of our own energy.
I am not actually interested in being connected to all the things all the time. And so, I have made conscious decisions to stop being connected to places, people and structures which end up draining my energy. As someone who holds a sacred and safe container for others in their own healing, growth and development, it is critical that I keep guards in place to prevent against burn out, compassion fatigue and all sorts of other afflictions that spiritually sensitive folks can pick up if we aren’t careful. I have already withdrawn from many points of connection that I used to have, and am slowly creating the quiet life that I always longed to have. This photo was taken on a day when I realised how far I had come, how much I had moved away from cycles of burnout and fatigue and over functioning, from running my central nervous system into the ground. I had my Hazel-pup at the beach, a hot coffee in one hand, and several lazy hours to kill. Exactly no-one knew where I was, and no-one was expecting me anywhere. I had no looming deadlines, no stress about projects and time and space to tune deeply into the flow of energy around me. I went home afterwards, showered, planted some seedlings in my herb garden then had a nap. That might sound lazy to you, but I have worked very, very hard to arrive at this place - it was a personal goal of mine. And so to me, it felt like peace. Just four short years ago, I was working 60-70 hour weeks, broke, perpetually exhausted, teetering on the brink of burn-out, reeling from un-healed trauma and trying to lead a team through a really difficult season in a world saturated in misogyny, where the sacred feminine energy was reviled, misunderstood, feared and even hated.
Sometimes its good to look back, and see how far we’ve come in our journey. Taking stock helps us re-orient, and re-form strategies for what we need to renovate, update, release and change next. I know I’m not alone in making significant shifts to the way I run my life, that’s what this period was always going to be about for so many of us. Radical change is happening both within and without. Hermetic wisdom teaches us that as above, so below, as within, so without. We are co-creating our shared reality every day, and I sometimes wonder how conscious we are of this? If we are taking that seriously…
There is a beautiful saying from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas which says ‘if you bring out what is within you, what is within you will save you. But if you do not bring out what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.’ That is such a powerful key to unlock our creative potential in this moment in time…
What is really within you?
How are you making room to bring it out and offer it back to the world which is waiting for it?
How might you be suffocating what is really within you? How have your own toxic narratives, shame cycles, trauma-wounds and oppressive dogmas been preventing you from bringing out what is really within you? And what are you willing to do about that?
I was raised to externalise authority. To elders, to others, to the wise ones, to the leaders and teachers. No-one ever sat with me and asked me ‘what does your own intuition tell you about this, Cate?’ It took me decades to work out that our deepest intuitive knowing is how Spirit shows up inside our energy fields. For the sacred feminine energy (no matter what body you are in), this is deeply linked to our intuition, creativity, sexuality and fluidity. It is the feminine’s part to hold the knowing, the wisdom, the connection to Spirit. For the sacred masculine energy (no matter what body you are in), connection to the feminine is essential, for the masculine cannot enact without the wisdom of the feminine. The two need each other. The masculine energy is linked to our capacity to enact, to anchor, to direct energy into the deliberate manifestation of the new thing. When the masculine energy enacts and builds without connection to the feminine wisdom and intuitive power, things become incoherent, rigid, impotent, unstable and sometimes even violent. We all carry both feminine and masculine energies within us, in varying degrees and combinations. For a long time, my own sacred feminine energy was bound and gagged, I was running purely on my own masculine energy. This is what fucked me up and then burned me out, ultimately. Connecting to, healing and bringing out my sacred feminine energy and offering it to the world has saved me. Keeping it locked down inside, destroyed me. I had to radically reshape my life in order to be able to make this happen. And I did.
And now I am doing it again.
Spiritual connection is our divine birthright, and my mission is to support as many people as possible to recover and heal their own deepest connection to their spiritual authority, power, identity and creative potential. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning, it is the most beautiful part of my work and I will never be done learning how to use new (ancient) tools to support people on this journey.
That is why I’m here.
That is why I’m still writing.
That is why I’ve unpublished so many pieces, and am starting again from scratch now.
The revolution is here, it is already well underway and the time is ripe for us now to birth an entirely new way of running energy on an individual and collective scale.
For the next three months, there is great fertility in the energetic template we are working with to seed and launch new projects, new ventures, new ideas, new relationships. I’m excited about that. I’ve earmarked some deeply transformative learning and growth that I plan on doing in the months ahead, and am lining up new spaces to work within, new opportunities for collaboration, new teachers and guides to work with and new fields to play in.
I look forward to offering the fruit of my new learning to you in this space as we journey along together.
Until next time,
Go gently.
Cate
(PS, thanks to those of you who have let me know my comments section isn’t working. I am onto it.)