Sitting on the side of the mountain after climbing the Buddhist temple, I had slowly emerged out of another deep meditation when I realized leaves had been falling on my head. As I looked above me, there sat, ate and played a large group of black with white rimmed eyed, monkeys. Not at all concerned with me being there, they only began to move away slightly once I stood to leave and enter back into the mountain for the long stairway journey to the bottom.
During the year and a half before hand, I had been going into longer and longer periods of far away meditations lasting hours at a time, reaching beyond the body and beyond the mind. The wild monkeys in Malaysia were not afraid of me or disturbed by my presence because essentially ‘I’ was not there. My consciousness had merged with the mountain’s. Later the temple caretakers were very surprised to hear that the monkeys had come to me, saying that the black monkeys did not like humans and rarely showed themselves. After going to this temple daily for a month it was the first time I had ever seen them.
I had by this time, tuned into an unbelievably profound sense of peace, awareness of all that was going on in the world, clarity of what laid ahead, both in and out of a meditative state and an immense amount of love for everything. I often explain that during these years I had ‘left this world’ but eventually I needed to came back. My new life ahead awaited me and I was ready to face it’s new challenges but from a whole new perspective. It wasn’t always like this though….. Continue reading “A Journey of Healing and Awareness”→
In a time of global healing and Souls shifting from fear into love, I also understand that the transition into self-love can often be unclear and challenging. There is often a misguided perception of self-love being only soft and a weak manifestation in the physical world or an ego-ness of selfishness and greed. Many associate love with kindness, patience, compassion, happiness, surrender and turning the other cheek but love, above all of these, is strength, self-respect, discipline, courage, will power, boundaries, emotional connection and depth. Choosing a love based life is never about sacrificing yourself for another, it is about choosing yourself for another. Becoming a martyr in an act of love only drains yourself and the one you love. Empowering your light opens your heart and with it the ability to love another. How we treat ourselves is a long combination of what we have learnt, dreamed of, feared, experienced and seen throughout our whole life and from many others. For years I went through my own turbulent relationships. Always the same situation, I would meet a man, become attracted to who he was, always seeing his good but feeling the need to ‘fix’ his problems for him. I was a glutton for punishment until a powerful realization came forth during one of my most abusive relationships. The relationship had progressed from emotional abuse to verbal abuse and had begun the terrible cycle of physical abuse. I was walking down the road to get us both lunch when a thought just popped in from the back of my mind, it said ‘suck it up Catherine, this is love.’ I stopped in my tracks and said immediately to myself, ‘No it is not love!’ From there I began to release this old belief and create a new understanding about love. A week later I left this relationship and went on to a two year journey of healing and self-love. I then met my beautiful partner who is now the father of our beautiful little girl.
Sometimes in life, we just need to breathe and let go…..
The need to hang onto the reins and to control things, is just another way of us trying to find security in what we are doing and what is happening in our lives. It’s when that sneaking inner anxiety and fear about the future is slowly making it’s presence known but you are not aware of it yet. The tension and stress that you may not even notice in you, slowly starts to come to life. You start to notice that you are controlling everything around you and that you are hanging on to the reins.
Unfortunately in riding and in life, if what we are doing is an action driven by fear, it only produces more fear in the horse. This is where no matter what we do, we keep sending signals of insecurity, control and tension and this keeps bringing back to the same response to us from the horse. Continue reading “Letting Go”→
Working with the Andalusian Stallion, Gato, in Jakarta, Indoneisa ’14’
I have been working for a while now as a Dressage rider and coach. I went from learning how to ride bareback, no bridle, no helmet and on my own as a young child, to working with animal behaviorist, Andrew Maclean, to living and working/riding under old school Classical Dressage trainers in Germany, to owning my own stables in Australia. I have since been head coach for stables in Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and recently in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Throughout all those years, working with all these different horses – young to Grand Prix, Show Jumping, hobby riders, to Western riders, beginners and professionals, different religions, cultures and even in different languages – there is one thing I came to realise;
How do we take control of fear and not let it take control of us?
Fear is not always that we are afraid of heights, dogs or snakes. With so many of us now taking on our own companies and businesses, it can be the fear of opening the post. Of reading an email from a complaining client. Not making the months bills or losing your clients. Sometimes the fear of being afraid can override the thing you actually are afraid of!
You cannot help a situation when you are living in fear of it.
Just under 8 yrs ago, I sat and watched the shock and horror on the face of a truly gifted woman playing a huge part in my then business and Dressage Training stables, Equinoxe Equestrian, when she told me that I could NOT use the word Spiritual in the new brochures! She was afraid that we would lose all the clients from the equestrian world and sure enough, she was right ;-). I didn’t however lose the clients who were benefitting from me fully embracing the truth of who I am and what I believe my Soul came here in this life to be and do. Those clients are still friends today and have become great teachers and riders themselves.
Have you ever wondered why certain behaviors happen with your horse? Maybe a situation in your life is effecting you or repeating itself?
All references made to God in my writing, is in my belief a Universal energy that may be interpreted in whatever way that connects to the reader.
Loves Truth
‘I cannot live without you’. A belief we have of love is that it is attached to a need. The need to be with someone, the need to have something and the need to be somewhere are all recognised as loving something or someone. ‘I love you so much, I need you’. But this is not love in its truest form. One cannot teach this truth for it must be experienced, we can be given directions on how to get there but this special journey must be walked by thee alone. He who stretches beyond their current belief in search of the truth about love will be touching upon the Devine; The aspect of themselves that is in alignment with the truth of everything – the truth of God.
Sitting on the side of the mountain after climbing the Buddhist temple, I had slowly emerged out of another deep meditation when I realized leaves had been falling on my head. As I looked above me, there sat, ate and played a large group of black with white rimmed eyed, monkeys. Not at all concerned with me being there, they only began to move away slightly once I stood to leave and enter back into the mountain for the long stairway journey to the bottom.
How do we take control of fear and not let it take control of us?
Catherine Louise Birmingham 