Nothing is Solid
No thing. Is. Solid.
I just returned home from Ubud, Bali. During the Bali BlossOm Retreat I experienced my first ever earthquakes. The quakes were mostly in Lombok area but we felt them in Ubud and, for me, it was an unusual sensation having never experienced it before.
At first the mind doesn’t register what’s going on. The body feels the swaying and moving, but it takes a while to comprehend, especially if you’ve never experienced it before. There is this delay, quite an apparent one, which showed me how slow the mind really is and how unreliable. Intuition and instinct is much faster and reliable. Trusting in the body instincts and intuition. Something we haven’t been conditioned to truly honour in western culture. The mind has been given more prominance. But this can be changed. And it’s more important than ever that we do and reconnect to this other dimension of intelligence.
The first big earthquake occurred on the evening of the 5th of August while we were eating banana fritters for dessert. I thought I was having a spiritual awakening as things trembled and moved within me and all around me. (I do know a story of someone who had a big awakening while eating a banana fritter in Bali, and this story has become a little fun humour between my husband and I).
So here I am, eating the banana fritter and letting go into this unusual sensation in the body wondering if ‘it’ was happening, when all of a sudden there was loud screaming from the resident Balinese women who came running out of the kitchen to warn others to get out. This set off a huge rush of adrenaline and the feeling of danger. I later found out this is normally what the Balinese do. They scream to warn people to get out of buildings especially at night when people might be sleeping.
Out we ran into an open grassy area. This first quake lasted well over a minute and the ground was zig zagging under our feet. I was trembling inside from the adrenaline that was circulating through my body. It was an incredible sensation both outside and inside. Nothing felt solid.
Whilst this wasn’t the big “awakening” happening while eating a banana fritter in Bali, I did start to sense that nothing, absolutely nothing, is solid. We think we are solid, that the earth is solid, that our body is solid, that our mind is solid, but in reality its not. Its nothing. Its mostly space. Even the cells in our bodies are 99.999999 space. Space and moving energy.
I really got to feel how unsolid I am during the earthquake. There was movement from the ground and there was continuing movement inside the body even after the ground stopped trembling.
Nothing felt solid outside or inside.
Even when the ground wasn’t moving, there was movement still happening inside the body and I couldn’t tell, I couldn’t distinguish if it was happening on the inside or outside, or both.
There were subsequent earthquakes and tremors during my stay and each time the body reacted. Once experienced, there seems to be a hyper-sensitivity in the body to it thereafter because the body is wired for self-preservation and ready to respond to any threat of survival.
Flying home I had a similar insight. I had the same sensation of not being solid up in the air in this metal container. When there is turbulence there is nothing you do but feel and ride the bumps and the waves of air.
Mostly in our day to day life we think we have control over things and that we are choosing when really there is no choice, no control. It freaks most people out to even semi-contemplate this. During a natural disaster our sense of control is shattered, the choices non-existent. How do you control the earth’s tremors? You don’t. It begs the question, do we have control over anything? Or is this sense of control ‘maya’, the illusion.
The fear in the body is real.
Yet during the sensations of fear, one can notice what is happening from an expanded view. Notice that there is trembling inside the body, the heart beating faster, the breath increased. I witnessed this intelligence of the body to protect itself. There was no control, no choices to be made on my part. I didn’t tell my body to do this. It did it automatically. If I had to rely on my mind to make every decision on how to protect itself, it would be too late. That delay I experienced of the mind being able to comprehend an unexperienced phenomena has made it clear how important it is to strengthen the connection to something vaster than the mental functioning. How vital it is to connect with our intuition, our instincts and the feeling-sensations in the body.
It’s a gift to feel this non-solid state of being… fluid, flowing, changing. It’s important to keep reminding ourselves that we are verbs, not nouns. We are movement, not static and solid. We are not separate from our environment and everyone and everything in it.
If you have read this far, thank you, and please take a moment to send love to all those who are in the hardest hit areas from the recent and continuing earthquakes and may they find inner calm and relief from fear, loss, grief.
MAKE SHIFT HAPPEN
More than ever we need to re-review our sense of safety and security and where that comes from.
The chakra energy system helps us understand and connect to our emotional body and spiritual connections.
Root Chakra (Muladhara) roots us into our feelings of safety and security
Where do your roots anchor in times of unknown, uncontrollable situations? The root chakra connects to earth, and when the earth trembles and moves, when there is nothing that feels solid or stable on the outside, what do you find support and safety in?
Notice when you feel contraction or tightness in the body
Fear manifests as this contracted feeling in the body and the mind wants to control things, or thinks it can. Control is a false sense of safety. Listen to and trust your body’s messages.
Heart Chakra- Anahata (meaning unstuck)
In what small way can you begin to soften and surrender into feelings of love and trust more in the natural flow of life to guide you? What will help you strengthen trust in something vaster than your minds intelligence?
There is only now
Anchor your roots into what is here right now in the moment; right here there is love, space, freedom. Connect with the sensation of breath softening your body and let the sensation of softening come with each exhale. As the contraction in the body softens, listen and anchor into your intuition, your heart’s intelligence.
Let me know if anything mentioned helps you in any way. I’d love to know.
If you need additional support please reach out and connect with me. I offer sessions to support and strengthen your connections with creative energy, release fear, and align to what’s really real.
With love and gratitude,
