Today marks 11 years since my life was catapulted into a new path. The foundation that was ripped out from under me has forced me to be ever truer to myself. Filling my Circle from the inside out, there’s just no other way to heal.
It was actually Paul who encouraged me to book Yoga Teacher Training. I was surprised by his encouragement but I guess he could see quite clearly that ‘Blaithin after Yoga’ was a much happier girl than ‘Blaithin before yoga’. He also knew I loved to teach, I loved reading and research but what I loved even more was sharing what I knew with others. I’d get a buzz finding ways to make complex subjects easy to understand and using real life analogies to explain philosophical concepts. I literally do not know where I would be now if in January 2012 I had not gone to India to start my Yoga training. A training I had booked into 8 months previously under Paul’s insistence.
In the 11 years since I have allowed life and the universe to guide me. It has, in so many ways, been a wonderful way to experience life. To notice the synchronicities, to trust what’s for you won’t pass you, to make choices on a daily basis to ‘go with the flow’ and allow life to show what’s possible. By living in this way I have found practices and teachers and healing that has helped me feel whole again.
However, in order to allow this creative feminine flow of life I found in myself that I had become weary and resistant to structure and systems. I thought that it had to be one way or the other until eventually I found myself exhausted and the foundations underneath me uncertain. Then life gives you what you need, there have been challenges this year that have arisen as a direct result of me not squaring my circle!
Squaring the circle is a term you will hear in geometry and in energetic practices. I knew it meant something spiritually significant but only recently, through experience, have I come to fully understand it’s meaning. I’ve come to understand it in this way:
The Circle represents feminine creative power, life from a spiritual point of view.
The square represents the masculine protective guiding force, life from a systems and structure point of view.
Squaring the circle ‘in life’ can be interpreted as the process of harmonising the presence of both spirituality and structure in your life.
A story that helped me see the need for the square
I found myself in Blacklion a few weeks ago on the way home from a nature-connection facilitators retreat in Monaghan. Blacklion is a small village 50mins drive north of Sligo just south of the border. It’s a lovely little village but when you stop for Diesel on a Sat night at 2am and your van won’t re-start you become instantly aware of how quiet it is and how far from home it feels.
With nothing much I could do at 2am I chose to take a few hours sleep and woke at 5.30am again to try and figure our what to do. My inclination was to ‘phone a friend’, hoping that by some synchronistic chance someone might be awake and in the mood for a spin. Highly unlikely obviously, but that is usually my first urge, ‘who can I call that I know?’.
As it happened a man with a van and trailer pulled in to fuel up before heading south. He asked me, ‘did you call AA?’ I hadn’t thought of this as I didn’t think I had an AA policy. I also wasn’t sure if I had road-side assist on my insurance. He asked me ‘did you call your insurers’? Again I had not!! So here, this is the craic, I was afraid to call insurers incase they confirmed my fear that I wasn’t covered. But as this man watched me, I obediently dialled their number, quoted by policy number and sure enough, road-side assist was covered and the girl started the process of getting a truck to come help me. It was already 7am at this stage and I had endured 2 hrs of stress, not just because of my stranded situation but because of my fear of making the phone calls that needed to be made. I don’t know if anyone else has this problem but as I journalled in my van waiting for the tow truck, I came to a very clear conclusion that it was time to get over that fear.
I recognise it comes from a fear of systems, seeing systems as the opposite to creativity and healing flow. I made a choice in that moment to choose to respect the systems that are in place. The systems that are designed to protect us and give us foundations. The irony that the subject of squaring the circle had been discussed on the retreat did not elude me. I recognised it was now time for me to start the squaring.
To apply this in a practical sense in my life I took some time the following Monday to ask myself ‘where else in my life am I not taking the supports that are available?.’ Luckily, as I see it now, I have a very real and challenging situation in my life that I could use to explore this. A situation from which the pressure has now been relieved by simply making the few phone calls that I had previously avoided. I got good advice and followed the guidance I was given.
There was also in this the realisation that I do not have to do everything on my own, this being another tendency I have.
So now after 11 years of dancing with the flow of life and filling up my spiritual cup I am enjoying the process of looking at the systems that are in place that will support and protect me on my chosen path.
This concept of squaring the circle is also reflected in the connection between the Root and Heart chakra. I have been teaching for years that for the heart to be open the roots must be strong. The root chakra is often associated with finances and a sense of security in life. This does not suggest you need to be rich to feel secure and have an open heart. It talks more to the fact that if there is a fear of systems, health, government, education etc then that fear sits in your matrix and blocks your heart from being fully open.
Those who create and govern our national and international operating systems have a responsibility to make those systems safe and accessible for people to engage with. The fears people have stem from a conscious and unconscious knowing that systemic corruption is being allowed and going unpunished. But these systems can still support us. When we release the fears we have and allow the relevant parts of the system to be present in our lives, we can actually feel protected and ‘safe’ to be open hearted.
This, in my humble opinion, is what ‘beating the system’ really means.
Using what works for you so you can live a full and open life.
