I am so good at knowing what I should be doing. I write lists of the amazing things I need to practice and then I spend the following days feeling more and more guilty about the fact that the list remains unused.

So much anguish is being generated by me in my life. My health is suffering, I am fatigued and depressed most days and I binge eat absolute shit, which numbs me momentarily and then leaves me worse off than before. I know that I need to practice meditation, yoga, exercise, healthy eating, positive thinking…I KNOW ALL OF THIS! And yet, here I sit in front of my computer, doing nothing but wasting my time and feeling worse and worse about myself daily. I am so tired of my own uselessness, my own whining and self-pity. I am bored with myself. I just want to tell myself to get over it, shut up and sort my shit out, but that doesn’t help. I am a master of procrastination and sloth. All the skills which would serve me now -perseverance, patience, equanimity, diligence, will power- are the skills I have never worked on and so am sorely lacking. How do I begin, when I am so lost in this desert of my own creation, this dry land of morose fatigue and dry heaviness?

“This too shall pass.”
”Be the change you want to see in the world.”
”There are no ordinary moments.”

These sayings all ring so true for me, but when it comes right down to the wire, nothing has any value unless you back it up with ACTION. You have to do the work to move forwards and there’s where I fall apart. I set myself goals and fail at them daily. Even deciding not to eat sugar, or to eat more greens, or to practice yoga, or meditate. I make these tiny decisions and then go back on them within hours. Over the years I have turned myself into a master of indecision and commitment avoidance, a genius when it comes to excuses.

Finally I’ve made myself ill, so that my physical self now supports my emotional feelings of weakness and an inability to deal with real life. I wake up every morning completely fatigued and my energy fluctuates massively through every day, but never gets to more than 70% of what it used to be. I’m so painfully deep in this dark hole I don’t even know where to begin trying to climb out. Every aspect of my life right now is a challenge and a chore I don’t have the motivation, energy, drive or will to face and overcome.

So I guess it comes down to one simple question: What am I going to do?

My simple answer is “I have no idea.”

Thanks to Brandon Brazier and his lovely book The Thrive Diet for introducing me to the recipe for these energy bars and thank you to Hanli for first showing me the book (sometimes I take a while to learn lessons, hehe).

I basically used the first energy bar recipe as a base and then added my own tasties to suit me. Added shelled hemp seeds and LOADS of Maca powder, as well as some cranberries, sultanas, sunflower seeds, raisins and a few other tasties.

Can’t believe I somehow thought I needed to make eighty bars rather than forty! Ten days, four bars a day…FORTY bars Nathan! Hehe, have to laugh, I had fun anyways:)!

No-one told me snow fell so silently, brought silence with it, coated everything in silence, left silence in its wake. The silence allows space for the One, the I to observe, unobstructed by the surface chattering of ego self. All that is left is this gentle love, this silent and slightly amused awareness. Nice:)

Here I am mere days away from my next adventure! Last night I made myself a test batch of raw energy bars, using Brandon Brazier’s recipe from his book the Thrive Diet as a guideline and then adding my own stuff to it (hemp seeds, maca, sultanas). Had to use my blender as a food processor which is always interesting, because too fast and you’ve got baby food. Suffice to say…they turned out AMAZING, yay!Now I only have to make another seventy of them and I’ll be all good to go, hehe.

I have a black garbage bag full of clothes, shoes and items I’m letting go of. I’m streamlining my possessions. Discarding layers of material baggage, allowing myself to be light and flexible again. This is what it means to float, to drift like a seed on the wind, floating in trust until the time is right to settle in the Earth and let roots discover life beneath the surface.

So Nathan, what are you doing with your life?

Being

My father built the house with his own hands, my mother with her money. There are photo’s of me, less than a year old, sitting in the foundations. I have always lived there (even when I haven’t) and it has always been my rock of safety and security when life has been a wildly flooding torrent, threatening to wash me away.

It is for sale…

My father (I will call him Papa from now on) has turned the house into an unbelievably beautiful wellness centre. He has installed a yoga room, massage room and sauna. There is a swimming pool and a river running through the garden. Papa put so much time and energy into in and once he was done he realized that he wanted nothing to do with the running or maintenance of the whole thing. He has realized that he wants to simplify and slow down his life and a part of that is selling the house. He is 60 and ready to kick back and relax…fair enough!

When I heard about it initially I had many feeling come to the surface: anger, resentment, sadness, fear. I fully understand and respect Papa’s need to get chilled and surf more but the feelings of resentment were still coming up. I had a long chat with my sister Lucinda and she was feeling the same. In our conversation I started to say that for us to feel these feelings we had to be willing to take responsibility for our own wishes to keep the house. How can we feel upset with Papa when we are not willing to step in and help him carry the load?

After thinking about that a lot and then speaking with my brother Joshua I decided to offer to head back to South Africa and run the wellness centre, which would take the pressure off Papa and allow him to kick back and relax. The feelings of resentment and anger instantly faded; I was now taking responsibility for what I wanted and was willing to sacrifice for it to happen.

Notice anything worrying about that last sentence? the word ‘sacrifice’ perhaps?

Although I was willing to go back and run the wellness centre that would not be doing what my heart was asking for, it would be moving away from following my own dreams. Nothing in my experience of life’s lessons has taught me that that would be a good idea.

After taking part in a beautiful shamanic ceremony the following weekend, in which I was faced with my deepest fears and insecurities, I came to realize that I truly need to let go. Let go of my past, let go of my future, let go of material gain, let go of resistance to experiencing fear or anything else. Let go, perhaps, of my life-long home in Scarborough, let go of the memories ingrained in the wood and soil there, let go of the heavy Root holding me tethered and preventing me from truly soaring.

The feeling of lightness which has come with my letting go has been amazing. Suddenly it is ok for me to have dreams of timeless wandering, of learning from those who live with the land, of experiencing what it truly means to be a human in communion with the Great Mother. Suddenly I am again a limitless and angelic spiritual being having a physical experience.

Let go, breathe, allow, let go.