I used to work as a property professional with a lifelong passion for music New Age thought and meditation and a desire to change the world! The Soulful Work web site combines all these things.
I have wasted so much time in life following someone else’s idea of the sweet things in life. Unlike the happy bumble bee who knows exactly what they are meant to be pursuing we have so much choice it’s baffling. It never used to be this confusing- when we humans were on a much narrower path of birth rank or subsistence level kind of lives. Now we have choice and boy are we making a hash of it. The problem is I can’t tell you what’s right for you- I can only tell you what worked for me. So when we are impressionable and a bit low on our own self-awareness and knowledge of what constitutes our own brand of honey we grab on to what’s available out there and assume it must be ok for us too. The maddening thing is that it DOES have to come from within. Any therapist can tell you all your issues and problems and even how to solve them. Career coaches can run you through your strengths and weaknesses and maybe the computer says yes at something that sounds attractive – but if you don’t feel it in your gut and you don’t imagine and believe in it and you don’t have the courage to live it then what good does it do you. So if you don’t know what you don’t know you can be mighty lost as I was! It has to come from inside yourself that is my one unfixed piece of advice about the subject.
I might also stick by saying that you could call whatever you want – never mind the specifics or a new career, relationship or life that you are seeking it fundamentally needs to be loving. Full of Love. That means it makes you happy it uses the best of you it doesn’t kill you living it or kill the rest of the world or nature executing it. It feels right at 3 am.
I can’t say what I’ve done is right for you so, I don’t want the responsibility. I do want to introduce you to the thing that you can do for yourself to discover the right thing. That will make you happy without harm to everyone else or the planet. Because I am very aware that without it I have been very much a part of the damage to the world because I didn’t know the sweet things and was on the wrong flight path. What’s so infuriating is that when you are doing it- you think this is exactly what I should be doing. It feels absolutely the right thing – I NEED to pursue this thing/ career /fame/money/relationship. They say that when you are in a set you cannot see outside of it –which is kind of obvious but not when you are in it. So it’s only when I get outside the set I see- oh my God that was so not what I should have been doing. So a bit of a conundrum- we can’t quite trust our own senses and instincts at times and other people can only guide us so far we still need to make the choice ourselves – you can see how circular that can be. Often in fact in our ego we absolutely reject anyone’s insight into what we are doing- well you just are being nasty!
What we need is an inner advisor who does know us and knows exactly what will make us happy and how to get there and helps us make it happen. There again being somewhat perverse and corrupted like a cd disc with a big scratch on it – I do not think straight about that discovery when I make it. When I find an inner source of everything I need that’s not the end it- it’s just the start. You’d think an inner source of love and help would be just the job to a wandering minstrel but no- we fight ignore repress fear reject and occasionally connect and realise that’s rubbish and no need to be afraid. In front of every relationship is the unresolved past and so we experience all the hesitation fear and reluctance we might have felt as a child when it came to bonding. You need healing and a firm hand on irrational fears to connect past unhealthy untrue beliefs about relationships / Love/ Spirituality. What kind of a performance do I have to put on for you- I think that was Barbra Streisand in what’s up doc! None is the answer in this case. You are worthy and loved as you are. That takes a lot of believing to many of us but it’s true.
The truth of our situation is not that flattering to us but if I talk about my ego then you can imagine it doesn’t apply to you! I see my negative ego – at times- is like a boxer who you really don’t want to meet on a dark night. Born of childhood fear and pain and punishment it is ferocious and hostile against me mainly as well as the world so it is going to take some time and effort to sort it out. It’s also cleverer than me hence I have no idea where the honey is. If I listen to myself often what I’m getting is it speaking to me, not telling the truth not guiding in a helpful way. Its objective is to kill me. As terrible as that sounds and I barely want to write about it but a lot of us glimpse the truth of its existence in us at train stations high places and dark moments- go on –do it- JUMP.
So enough of that, I wish to help us all overcome it and connect to the honey the sweet things in life we all deserve no matter what. We get it, all of us if we allow it and can adjust our flight path. If we at least connect inside to our inner spiritual self, higher wisdom, personal guide we can find ways that will like me eventually lead you out of those dark places to find the honeypot. We make it ourselves with their never ending help. We don’t have to be good we don’t have to be kind and giving or nice or anything – we just have to be willing to receive their help. That’s it. Eventually you’ll give up all the bad habits because they are stupid and hurtful to you but meanwhile just keep receiving the love – that’s all that is fundamentally required. They have the power to rewire and retune you with energy –often overnight so you don’t even get to know. You just wake up and you are a lot more loving one morning and it feels good! We made it so complicated- the ego made it impossible. So now we have to trust and hand over a bit of control, which we hate, in order to be free of the fake honey addiction.
I love bumble bees with a passion and grow lots of flowers to feed them and was rewarded last year with two nests on my allotment and I saw the queen mating- what a thrill. I provide lots of nectar rich flowers for them and they come like a beautiful sign to say- hey you’re doing something good. At last I say!
To connect emotionally I recommend the music videos suggested below.
5. Tests Allies Enemies – Soulful Work Make your Own Kind of Music- Paloma Faith. Finding out who we are what we want and then in time making it happen for us. Lovingly and with Fun!
Can’t Stop Killing You – Understanding Negativity – Soulful Work Kirsty McColl A review of the scandals in public life that are an example of our own negative ego at work –like a Greek tragedy we are responsible for our own undoing. Especially in politics right now!
3. Meet the Mentor – Soulful Work Judie Tzuke If, When You Go . Lyrics based on the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling. Stage 4 of The Journey of change is Meet the Mentor which can be a therapist a book or most usefully of all your own inner mentor the Higher Self.
12th November 2021 -here are the headlines- Cop 26 ends today and Children in Need begins- what a metaphor. 1000 migrants risk their lives to cross the channel and 3 paddle boarders don’t make it. The answers we seek for a better world require we address at its heart- inequality.
In terms of Climate change and COP26 as currently politicians drag their feet and people still hope they won’t have to change -I have an image in my mind of people not too long in the distance of the rich countries begging – PLEASE let me help you, in order to save ourselves. Let us be allowed to pay for the changes in developing countries that will move away from the things that threaten our whole planet. Like it or not we are all connected now for better or worse- all in the same lifeboat, oligarchs and street children. We can’t buy a new planet – Mars is hostile and nobody wants to live there. Earth is our only chance, Nature our biggest ally. I’m quite pleased about that ACTUALLY. For too long we just closed our eyes and kicked the problem down the road. This is it. You don’t take anything with you when you go –except what you’ve learnt. I hope we have learnt that we are all connected and it feels good to make a difference.
Thinking about the case for helping poor countries make the changes we should consider how much of what we now enjoy in the west in the colonial powers was robbed / exploited from the countries that now need our help. We owe them all that cash and resources we took from them at one time to build our economy. We owe the people whose ancestors we dragged by force to work for us.
So how can we get people to feel the need and want to respond positively to it. Good old self interest would do it. But put it with compassion and a spiritual point of view we can learn to conquer our fears of not having enough. Go with our Higher Self as guide- they can help us get through and never be without a bike wheel to hand when we have a flat tire! I had that image in a dream many years ago that was a message from my deeper self- you can rely on your higher self to help you get what you need- and so it has been – although that reliance has taken 30 years to seep into my bones.
All of this needs to happen for Nature. And guess what it feels great to help the planet and animals as well as other people- willingly. Psychologically if you make people do something or pay them to do it – it takes a lot of the fun out of it . So ideally they will volunteer to do it- make a choice – and that’s really when it feels good- I don’t have to but I will. We know that when we give to Children in Need – it feels so good, its inspiring to see what our giving can achieve for others. When also we see how little things matter so much. We have the power to be generous and still have enough-but can we face our inner demons that drive us and overcome our never enough mentality? We are afraid that if we give too much we will be destitute and it comes from a long time ago and it’s not about money- it’s about being loved! Will I be loved? Am I safe? A child has endless needs and its unmet needs we get to manage as adults. Our inner child’s fear infects our natural inclination to help and unless we deal with it we face an endless struggle to overcome its reluctance for us to be as generous as we could be. We feel we have to continue to fortify our fortress with money and stuff to keep us safe.
I feel like I’m living proof that having less- when you choose it – makes you happier .The creative challenge makes life more interesting- when you get enough time to do what needs to be done. Again self-interest will do it. I work less I earn less and spend time growing and cooking real food it’s much more satisfying than spending money.
When we just spend there is no challenge no creativity in it we need to be given the opportunity to express our creative selves in our lives – in the living of it . not like a hobby –but living life as a creative adventure. The current way of living and working makes us stressed , angry, we buy aggressively in compensation for feeling so bad. I have to have 3 holidays in exotica so I don’t kill myself in despair at my crazy lifestyle the rest of the year- see? Don’t ask me to stop travelling for the planet – I can’t, they feel they’ve already given up so much – funnily enough!
If you are unhappy nothing really stops the rot it’s just a sticking plaster until you claim the underlying solution and find a better way to live. So for me that was give up a job I dislike, get an allotment , a lifetime mortgage and a pension and voila- freedom from a slavish need to earn cash and a new focus on what turns out to be eco living- who would have thought it! Give up meat so I can lose weight- good for me good for the planet good for my economics as veg are cheaper. Buy second hand everything from books to clothes and get a Freecycle alert for things for free- have you seen what people give away?!!! Grow stuff on the allotment – I have flowers every day in the season and I feel like a rock star because it’s such a luxury to have something so beautiful in my life- that I never had before. Best of all – I have TIME TO THINK! And Time to sort myself out to be aware of myself and be able to unpick the past and again it’s good for me and good for the planet. I’m not so volatile angry and I find a calmer nicer me under all the stress which is electromagnetic energy (see a brain scan for details). All this terrible weather, electromagnetics playing havoc with the planet. We need to sort our emotions out to calm down the reactive weather. Absorb your own toxic waste and deal with it responsibly- not dump it on the planet- the metaphor is clear for us all to see.
When I start to get away from my negative ego way of living and live more in harmony and stop thinking I have to be something I’m not, contentment can emerge. I’ve been fighting this my whole life thinking that an “ordinary life” isn’t enough ,that I have to do something spectacular in order to make my life matter. And that without that I will be nothing.
Having a new point of view I can see that spiritually – this is fine, we can do what we can do and then relax, I don’t run the world, I’m not God we can only do what we can do and be at peace with that and let go. We don’t know the plan necessary, we are doing enough when we do what we can to make a difference. Accepting our place in the big scheme- neither insignificant or all that is. We don’t need to feel powerless we have access to a lot of it when we spiritually look into it but it is all still a mystery. There is a plan and we need to learn to trust it- that from me – is such a change. Mrs Control, Mrs No trust in anyone or anything. Quite the revelation.
There’s a lot on TV about Coventry right now as its the City of Culture and I have a lot of connections to it. I was born in a council house there, my father came out the Navy and briefly became a worker in one of the car factory’s there. I had my first professional job working for the city council as a Chartered Surveyor and that’s where I met my ex-husband. I feel like the town my parents and my life seem all muddled up in a complex metaphor about how my life and life in general has changed. We are in the middle of a similar big change of which the pandemic is a part and it will require some rebuilding personally for many and in business. Sometimes chaos seems dark but we already know that we are learning much that is useful about what we genuinely value. My hope is that when we come to rebuild after what has been so devastating that we build well and with heart and not just think about money as the driver.
Coventry for those that don’t know was a nice town in the Midlands with half-timbered buildings and trams and some pleasant Victorian high street shops before Hitler bombed the centre out of it in one night in 1940. This one night essentially made the practical case for an experiment in town planning possible. The highlight was the building of a new Cathedral to replace the devastated beautiful high arch gothic building, the sort that’s full of Soul. The replacement was built alongside the skeleton of the old and the reasons it turned out as it did are fascinating and may be timely.
I personally don’t like anything much about what they built back then, its impersonal with lots of concrete lacks greenery and it only works in theory. It was built from a need to get people the basics – a place to shop work pray and live. Money and time was short. The people making the decisions were in the majority middle class middle age men. When cathedrals and these towns were built originally craft and organic beauty and development brought a charm we appreciated. The Cathedral initially was going to be rebuilt in the original style but the main church “guy” had a different idea. He wanted the cathedral like the town to be built focused on the architecture of what he perceived as the future. Modern in other words. For me the feeling that I associate with such buildings was intellectualised out of the design, the soul is feminine and the spirit masculine. So perhaps it’s no surprise that in an age where they built something deliberately called Brutalism in style- Soul was definitely left out along with feminine beauty.
To build something so aggressive – I mean really, come on what’s wrong with you? Possibly you have been brutalised and been persuaded that the world of curves and sensual expression and design are to be dismissed in favour of cold hard intellect and reason. The same thinking got us tower blocks to live in. You got a roof over your head- it may be a mile in the sky –what do you mean you feel alienated? Be grateful! They put people in impossible situations so far removed from our nature that of course we end up feeling separated and even hostile to each other and to nature itself. We end up wishing for the very terraced housing we bulldozed. Only now all the AB’s live in the ones that are left as they are so valued as being a sympathetic way to live!
To bring it down to the human level I know my parents would think me ungrateful. “You did alright” says Mother as we talk about my childhood. And what she means is – you got a ton of presents at Christmas, foreign holidays, money for clothes and Sunday dinner with plenty of meat! Stuff she could have only dreamed of as a child. They went HUNGRY! Their lives as children were blighted by fear of invasion. I would have shut my feelings off too! The feelings I was having growing up I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough- repression saved the day, but when you try getting your feelings back when the emergency is over it is quite a difficult matter. You don’t even know they are missing. So you stay in emotional lock down and rely on your head and make decisions without any heart. This allows us to do all sorts of things that actually harm us including paving over paradise. We are not in touch with who we are deep down- we are just a thinking machine. We are unaware until we start paying attention to those feelings.
My parents had so much less than me physically so why have I been so upset and spent a lifetime sorting out my brutalism childhood. I had all the advantages they did not and still I’m not happy. What was missing was exactly what’s missing in Coventry, feelings of connection to nature and each other – love by any other word might cover it. Nurturing, affection, time for each other rather than just work, kindness were exchanged for what boils down to money. They worked hard at their own business and earned enough but we never went out or had the kind of exchanges you can only have with children when you are not stressed out after working a 14 hour day at something you don’t love! That situation often begs for obedience and rule following rather than let’s talk it over now!
The lucky majority now are much better off than in the war. Now we have large numbers of extremely wealthy people. Things have really changed at the top end . For instance top footballers in the pre war could have been on the equivalent of minimum wage, now its £9m to get out of bed. People sing for an hour or two at some vast cavern of a building now for £100 a ticket and I find myself so lacking in emotional involvement at these huge venues I refuse to go any more. It feels we have ditched real connection to make money . Let’s make it big impersonal and suck up the money, its ugly and lacks heart. I would prefer seeing a pared down version of something that actually moves me rather than over produced spectacle that leaves me cold, its like watching tv for all that we can see of the performer. We seem to be living in a world lacking in the virtues and are spending all the extra money we have got on things we don’t need or that don’t make us happy.
When they rebuilt Coventry they had already built England’s first garden city – Letchworth. It was beautiful full of trees and gardens and flowers. I live a short way from the second one – Welwyn Garden city and having worked in town for over 10 years and in Coventry for 2 I know which one feels better to use and live in. Coventry is of course much bigger but none the less I do wonder why more attention wasn’t given to nature and gardens and outdoor spaces for people. Things of the heart. Its these things that make a place feel like you want to be there.
In Coventry they built a great big central precinct that like all those built without streets and traffic went dead at night with no real character to it. It felt scary and empty. Still not much was learned as they still built Stevenage and Hatfield and Milton Keynes. Maybe you think its twee but people respond to Poundbury and pay greatly for the privilege. I wonder if those that have the capacity to be able to study so hard to be an architect find that it necessarily screens out the feeling types! I couldn’t build a rabbit hutch but I could make one comfortable to live in and friendly looking!
I managed some of the Coventry City council property for a while as my first job as a surveyor. I have to admit that I was as divorced as those architects from my feelings back then. I cared very little for the people in the properties, I just did the minimum because I didn’t like the job that much. I did say one day on the phone to a chap “well that’s the way the cookie crumbles” as he asked for help when some part of his property crumbled the day after signing his Full repairing lease. The office were aghast but laughed at my insensitivity. In my career I went on to sell school playing field development sites to greedy housebuilders wo would have sold houses made of cardboard if it made them a profit. I generally responded to the demands to generate money as the measure of success- because there was no one that interested in anything else.
Being paid well is not about what you do- it’s who you are now! You can’t be a success really without earning a lot of money –that was the message I got growing up. I grew up a brutalised money seeking self-protecting lost little soul who in truth ,sought a position to get approval and earn love and used that insecurity to choose a profession that paid well and was respectable but did not make me happy. I chose money and protecting myself over beauty and soulful connection to something I might love but might cost a lot in sacrificed wages or lifestyle. It emerged from my home life – that said – you better look after yourself because you cannot expect anyone else to. Industrial strife class warfare Maggie Thatcher telling us there’s no society! That tone I and everyone else absorbed it. Yes we want the good things but we misunderstood what that was. The reason we are not and never will be satisfied is illustrated by my favourite psychology model the pyramid of needs by Abraham Maslow . His perhaps flawed but compelling model speaks to how we got here and why we are changing . We didn’t fail – we grew. We met some needs and now we have some new ones that are calling us to meet them.
The theory states that you climb up the Pyramid meeting each need as you go and then move onto the next. So when I think of where we are now I feel we met our physical needs and now we are stretching toward love and belonging . You could say that our very existence is threatened so safety and security on a global scale with nature in crisis is drawing attention too. So for me caring for nature meets so many of our needs that our belonging would be met if we sent more time in nature and love just tends to be absorbed when you spend time gardening or walking in woods. You can’t put people in no nature zone like a lot of places are now and not expect them to feel disconnected and upset that their fundamental needs are often ignored and they feel unloved. I know this from my own experience.
I grew up in a pub but was child minded from a baby in a haven of nature by a man who was a lot like the character in Goodnight Mr Tom and his wife Flo was like Ethel in Ethel & Earnest. She baked cakes and made jam and we delivered produce that Bill grew round the village. For a child like me it truly was ideal and I often think it saved my life. We lived a lot slower there. The bakers van came to us with fresh bread and we had coal delivered for the one fire in the living room . The garden had the outside toilet, roses and sweet peas and chickens and a tomato house. They had no money and Flo cried when the TV smoked its last but they seemed very content and lived very long healthy lives. Those smells and sensations live inside as templates of what feels good and can last a lifetime. I have been travelling and nothing is as precious to me as those times – I forget a lot about where I’ve been in Australia or Cost Rica etc. but those smells and sensations live as fresh as the day I experienced them. Its love really, a love of nature and what’s good about life. It was so nourishing at a time when not much else was. It’s so instrumental in forming who we are.
After a few years I was ripped from this Eden into what I would categorise as urban deprivation. We had an Arboretum nearby but at home we lived without gardens without trees or grass verges. After my initial experiences it was depressing and upsetting. I wouldn’t have known why I was upset- after all I got presents and holidays and clothes but I got little parental time and attention, no connection no nature no beauty. I think if you don’t have those things then the whirlwind of problems we see in society is as natural as bluebells in a wood. I remember going missing for several hours after school as a 8 year old as I went bluebell picking (different times!) with other kids and parents. I think I was punishing their neglect – I certainly had a bad attitude brewing because of all this! I was angry at their neglect of my needs and grew up feeling they were not important. I tried to adapt and win what I needed and that’s how I lost my authentic feelings and creativity. You can also get very angry and cold to keep it under wraps. You supress your feelings so you don’t spill this anger all over the family – who are already fed up with you and your sense of belonging is very low.
When I chose a career it had nothing to do with what I liked ( I didn’t know what I liked other than a fantasy of being a pop star) and everything to do with a) doing something that might impress my folks into loving me b) paid well so I could be independent c) was stable and reliable because I could not rely on anyone else to take care of me. I became a chartered surveyor as a default not a devotion and it showed at every level of what I did or didn’t do. There was no love in it. My heart was well and truly slammed shut to all the pain that lay somewhere waiting for me when I could get around to dealing with it.
I am an Aquarian and we are often accused of being like robots – all thought no feeling and yet it’s not true- we just don’t like feeling out of control that emotion brings. I think many of us are like that. We have a lot of sensitive feelings but we repress them so well even we don’t know what’s being hidden. We don’t want to be assaulted by sadness and upset and it certainly makes you look weak in our eyes if people see you upset. There are very big costs however involved and you probably can look in the mirror of your life to see them . Our health our relationships our children our work all get affected and in my case my creativity was non-existent before I did take the time to explore my true feelings and set them right You can’t pick and choose what you repress. So if all you have is thoughts – that’s where you will work from and that is not many peoples best side-it’s not mine I know that. I think we can see that things are not going well in the world and this is a fundamental reason why- we have lost our feelings as a guide to what to do-what to love what to pursue what to encourage what we should be doing with our lives. We know what we should like – what other people like but that’s not us.
We need to explore and uncover our feelings to know who we truly are and to give of our best- to truly be able to give of our Soul- that feminine essence of beauty and creativity and nature. Our spirit is all “do this do that” , Soul just sits and waits a while. It takes time and attention to contact that bit of ourselves it’s not like logging onto Windows- google me up what I need to know. Its takes time alone and in contemplation-something many of us work very hard to guard against.
As I have previously said I have been an insensitive unfeeling out of touch intellectually driven angry person in the wrong job/relationship/life. It did not however, even for one so cast adrift as myself take long to discover a whole different life was beneath the surface. Read a few books, do some meditation/ visualisations and bingo there’s a whole new interesting life that starts to open up. One where you are finding your own power not giving it to someone else , where you are finding love and acceptance and wisdom from your own inner self that beats anything that comes out of your limited ego mind. But it is up to you to seek it out to be willing to receive it. When I told all my friends about it they could not have been more offended or upset about my discovery than if I had crapped in their sink! They could not wait to deny my experience because it meant they had no excuse if it were true. So these new solutions we need- we have to be willing to receive them – if you want to rely of the mind alone then you’ll get Coventry Cathedral mark 2- functional it works but on a very deep level it misses the mark of connection and love that makes this not just a life but a life worth living!
You can start to understand how this can be achieved for yourself with a little experimentation. Begin by watching your thoughts when things happen in your world. See how your thoughts precede the event – as if they are creating them – which they are. You feelings determine how quickly they arrive. Second spend some time considering something you would really like that you could reasonably expect. Something simple like a convenient parking spaces or a bit of help you need at work. When you allow for the possibility that this could be true then your sub conscious will allow the confirmation to arrive- no belief –no confirmation. The sub conscious makes your reality conform and consistent with your beliefs . You can pretty quickly find confirmation that you are in a world much more aligned to our thoughts and feelings. Yes its disruptive to our world view and we definitely have to choose to leave our comfort zone but I don’t think it’s all that comfortable for many us at all right now so maybe that’s the prompt we need to take that first step into a new world. A world that despite what we may be currently experiencing could turn out to be exactly what we need and will love.
