Shining jewels in the darkness

This last week for me has been an unexpected turbulent one in a period of about sixteen months that began with a profound realisation and calling in February 2025. It seemed to come out of nowhere but perhaps was just waiting to emerge from the murky depths to show me what was ready for me to more fully embody.

As you may have seen in previous posts here, last year was one of intense shedding that saw me abruptly change direction from what seemed to be up ahead. By the summer, my beloved hubby and I had unwillingly filed for divorce, as it had become abundantly clear that our paths were diverging, as painful as that was and continues to be. This decision required us to leave the home we had shared for close to 2 decades, and I chose to also move on from the city and country where I had spent the longest period of my adult life. You may imagine what that required of me and how it felt.

I knew I had to follow my heart and intuition, facets of the feminine in me that have always been how I have navigated through life and loved, yet I have found hard to trust and live by. A true inner conflict arises when we are pulled in different directions by parts of ourselves, then worry inside that we have got it all wrong, the mind, education, family and social conditioning…unconsciously kicking in so that we fit into what is around us. I knew what I had been called to in February and I still do, even as the world around me looks quite the opposite.

I moved back to the city where I grew up, needing to take care of practicalities - ongoing - and deal with what happens when we go back to our roots. All within the container of a deep process of accelerated spiritual transfiguration, a powerful alchemical crucible that takes no prisoners, at least not this one. The actors within that space are also all growing, identities unravelling as we more fully hold the current of Unity and unconditional love, with all that brings up for everyone. A veritable cauldron of all sorts that this week proved I need to leave behind.

Suffice it to say deep stuff got stirred there in all of us, including the one stewarding the container. Having held deep collective process, I know that it takes profound personal integration to do so alone, and that group holding is often very advantageous. That requires me as the steward to be humble, and weave a container that is open, inclusive and equal, otherwise I will only attract followers, students, devotees. That is of course my free choice and arises from what I know to be true at any time. We are all works in progress.

When we trigger one another in our depths, responses tend to come out explosively that are not from the most mature parts of ourselves, the voices of ancient survival patterns and defence mechanisms that mask profound pain we would all prefer to ignore, and cloud our capacity for real intimacy and love. Somehow it seems much easier to intellectualise and spiritually bypass that pain rather than really feel and transmute it. It tends to knock us for six.

This last week has brought startling clarity to those depths for myself. Back in 2011, I spent a week in a Vision Quest at Joshua Tree in the Mojave Desert. It was my first extended experience of Unity. I emerged from the desert as wide and endless as the universe, no separation from all around me. It was the most blissful time of this life so far, I never wanted it to end. I was as bright and radiant as the sun, my consciousness without boundaries, clairvoyant…it felt quite mad. Coming back into 3D everyday life was a different story. I felt very constrained at every turn but life brought me a highly-attuned and capable intuitive to help. She has ‘read’ for me consistently since then, especially when I feel too off centre to trust my own sensitivity and intuition. Her insights and guidance have proven to always be 100% accurate, albeit often not welcome and therefore ignored. When I don’t pay attention, the timelines she has picked up manifest anyway, just taking longer and a bumpier ride for me. She foresaw the ending of my marriage and how it would come about in late 2018. It took me another six and a half years to let that happen, when the right catalyst came into my life and the unravelling of my previous sense of self that was already underway picked up great speed and intensity.

The last threads of that disappearing identity are needing teachers and community to be part of, watching with horror as life as I knew it fell apart. A complex dance began in that particular container, the depths mentioned above touched, those survival patterns unconsciously (?) activated to protect self and the world created as we organise around that sense of self. A gifted psychotherapist has been helping me to disentangle the complexity of recent dynamics, see what belongs where, heal what is asking for that self-care and love, amidst the chaos in my life and my entrenched resistance to all of it. The rage, grief and fear of sudden, unexpected divorce and the upending of everything. Then the associated shame, guilt and unworthiness. All the way down through the karmic storehouse of my inner world, while the outer one simultaneously holds money worries, the need to bring new work alive in the complex entanglement of the ‘reality’ today in our organisations and wider society, family concerns and resulting tensions. Quite frankly, a shitshow…

Yet, and this is the golden nugget in all, there are astonishing, most unexpected gifts amidst all this apparent chaos. The intuitive has also been supporting me throughout this time, more regularly than she normally does. A few months ago, she told me I no longer need her support because my own clear sight is honed enough now that I can truly trust and navigate by it. Today I can clearly see the unconscious programming that has been handed down across the generations of my family and how I am here to heal those bloodlines. Violence and abuse of the feminine by the men in my mother’s lineage, the denial of that violence by their women who have long operated from the resulting unresolved trauma they carry in their bodies, fearful and full of rage towards the world that did not keep them safe and therefore needs to be held at bay. Their embodiment of the wounded masculine. Emotional unavailability and neglect in the men of my father’s lineage, dedicated to work or Dharma to compensate for the inconstancy of mother’s love, seeking partners to complete them, strangely enough embodying the wounded feminine.

I was a sensitive, highly intuitive child who became the wounded healer of the family long before I had language or could describe any of this. I am now 56 and only just learning how I coped by abandoning myself, trying to heal the emotional hole in both parents to get their love. The smart little girl who became good at everything, apple of her Asian father’s eye, loyal helper and comforter of traumatised Mummy. My ‘operating system’ hid the inner emptiness in my depths, as I increasingly forgot myself and to love her. Well-trained guards developed at the castle walls of my tender heart, ready to defend that hole by getting out their trusted swords to chop up unwelcome dangers, so that I swung unconsciously between a wounded feminine response of collapse - I need you to complete me - and a wounded masculine one of f"*!k you - sever connection when love of any kind is not readily available to me. The number of times I have stomped righteously out of (mainly work) situations or pushed real intimacy and love away by wanting someone to rescue me…It has taken deep excavation and loving support to bring that dynamic to the Light.

These last months I have unwittingly been resorting to both of these extremes in the confusion caused by trying to trust my heart and intuition - what I have been called to - and examining how I am contributing to what is currently possible in daily life, which is SO far away from that timeline. There was a beautifully karmic meeting at the start of the year with a tantric priest on the sacred mountain of Arunachala in Tamil Nadu in southern India. His consequent support has been a lifesaver. He has shown me directly from the Light he holds where the resistance to that initial calling will emerge. The intuitive and other souls with similar capacity who have popped up along the way have done the same by tuning into my energy field as it fills with Light, and the Akashic records. In the priest’s radiant presence, I feel unconditionally seen, held, supported and loved, without ever having to leave myself for that connection. He is grounded, embodied love loving itself, warm like the sun, fiercely cutting illusions, no pleasing involved. He has taught me what it means to feel spontaneous, boundless devotion and Guru Love. It is immense.

At the same time, I have learned the hard way that fields and structural dynamics in which I feel squashed, my voice and feelings silenced, my intuition and wisdom disregarded and dismissed as fantasy and projection, are not safe or empowering of my growth, whatever good intentions may be there. I am learning every day what I am projecting into those dynamics through my own inner confusion and old patterns of interaction. I feel what is held in the depths which keeps that all in place because I have it too, see what gets triggered and the defence mechanisms at play. It’s far easier to distance the trigger of one’s own unwelcome vulnerability, the associated shame and fear that protect it, than to sit with them in the same room, and really feel it all. To lay responsibility at the feet of the other to clean up their own energetics while you run your masterful show. To have those close to you show the disruptive trigger that they need to show up differently so that you feel safe to approach, open up and be loved. I’ve been there, done it myself, on the other end of the interaction. We can all be powerful mirrors for one another.

I’ve learned to be wiser about what I share where, and how. To soothe myself instead of looking to another to do it for me. That all feelings are welcome in another’s container until they trigger unwanted reactions in self, particularly in front of a crowd or in personal space. What I want to spend money on to support my own process, who actually helps me to go deeper and heal. That I want a life on my terms, without dictating those to anyone. And as I do, that I attract more beautiful things into my life and leave some beloved dance partners behind. I do not need to be a more integrated woman so that wounded men can feel they are loved, not judged. Dynamics are created by all involved, the agency and responsibility for raising frequency lies with everyone, not just those in a female body, or the most vulnerable, whose power is inevitably diminished in those relationships. Love without pleasing is a two-way street.

Photo by Aditya Wardhana on Unsplash

Difficult dynamics are also our greatest teachers. This one has helped to burn everything away in my life that had been organised around that fragile, wounded sense of self. The Asha of today is much lighter and unburdened than the one who entered that particular field 16 months ago. I have begun a new chapter of life, with a new home, friends, work and interests. I am still regenerating from the inside out. I have outgrown my unconscious attraction to emotionally unavailable men dedicated to their Dharma because of the holes within them created by the lack of mother’s constant love and mirroring, trying to get them to reciprocate my love or needing them to complete me. Hallelujah! I am finally marrying the Divine Feminine and Masculine within myself, trusting my heart and intuition, living and loving as I see fit, holding and supporting myself through all, uplifting others through my work in the world.

So as much as I loved and already miss the community I was walking with, the path we have been on and the deep work we have been doing together, I have freed myself from constraining containment that I experienced only as greater and greater control. I have spoken what is true for me, seen through the defensive structures of the status quo, preferring to walk away rather than align with the collective consciousness that creates it. I now fully trust myself.

As a result of this alchemical crucible, I can find my way through huge complexity, in grand part because I am free of my old patterns around love and intimacy, see myself far more clearly, am evolving from self to Soul, ready to support others to find clarity, new life-force and direction in their own lives. This stance also frees up those around me to be true to where they are in their own evolution, to create whatever structural dynamics they wish, to live as they wish. I leave with love in my heart. Their process has nothing to do with me.

Imho, it takes groundedness, curiosity, openness, the willingness to question everything and a heart full of love to reinvent ourselves. With a good dose of courage, clarity, patience, humility and humour. And good support around us. The current timeline is at a lower frequency than the one I have been repeatedly guided to. But I am no longer waiting, seeking to convince or coerce anyone into anything. The intuitive has said all along that I might simply not have the patience for others’ limitations and pace of expansion. The priest tells me weekly that his prayers for the accelerated burning of karma are working perfectly.

The future is open and I am free. What a relief it is to return to myself.

~~~

We may well be all increasingly called to regenerating from the inside out in the coming years.

If you would like to explore your own developmental edges or walk alongside an experienced, loving guide as you navigate an important threshold in your life or as a team, please look at how we might support you through RegenB.

We are indeed all works in progress. May that always be so.

Jai Maa.

Om.