Solstice Day. I’d woken up early, and the sun was already shining (something we’ve not been having that much of lately on the island). I headed straight to Indigo Cafe and got an almond milk latte, and I sipped it as I gazed at the horizon on Hin Kong Beach. I popped in to the 7-11 and chatted to a Russian girl sitting on the steps with her own coffee, and petting ‘her dog’ (in fact, one of the many ‘7-11 dogs’ here on Koh Phangan. Yet they’re not strays; it’s kind of weird, actually – but since lockdown started, I’ve not seen any of those skinny starving dogs I used to see so often; all the time, back when the island was busy and humming with tourists. Where have they all gone? I’m guessing some of them have died – but at least the majority of those that are left are all looking pretty tubby. It’s good to see.

And then I came home and started to pack up my stuff to head to Why Nam – a secluded bay a short boat ride away, where I’d be spending the Solstice celebration in ceremony with friends. 

The message from this year has been clear for us all. Move slower. Bin whatever’s not necessary in the unfolding of this new world; let it all go – and let it go with peace and grace, in the knowledge that whatever we’ll receive in the void will be so much more than we’d ever dared to dream of. 

And it’s only when we really start to integrate this, that we can really ‘come home’. To ourselves.

On that morning, then, of the 21st – and in the spirit of moving slower and with ease – I decided to align with own personal flow, and get the later boat to give me a little more time to ‘potter around’.

I put on some medicine songs – some shamanic songs that are so incredibly heart-opening – and I hung about singing along to them. ‘Blessed We Are’ was next on the playlist. And that’s when it started happening. Some kind of spontaneous healing process – out of the blue, and into my field.

First there came a deep warm glow in the centre of my chest; it felt like an electrical buzzing, and an opening-up to feelings of joy and awe at the beauty of life. I was so conscious of my heart that it felt like that was all that existed of me. And then, I suddenly I felt these waves of deep sadness rise, as they rose up in a flash towards my throat.

And then I started sobbing

This incredibly gorgeous release – which accelerated in a matter of milliseconds – and out of nowhere I suddenly found myself on my knees in the ground outside my house, and howling out all this rage and despair and grief and sorrow. Seriously. No word of a lie – to look at me, you’d have thought I was a woman who’d just had her child grabbed from her and thrown under a bus. It was wild, uncontrollable, untameable, untethered. What it was related to – I don’t know. I don’t actually feel that all of that was ‘mine’. 

But all of it was fucking divine. The most beautiful purge ever – like those that you get when you’re deep in medicine ceremonies, and you let go of the past, or old programming from deep within your DNA, or from your ancestral line (so many people say they don’t want to drink the medicine because they don’t want to purge – which is commonly via puking – but it’s actually something you celebrate when you’re in it).

But this time I had drunk no medicine. This was totally spontaneous. And all I could think of in between my dramatic sobs of grief was….

Fuck… yes!

Twenty or so minutes later – and in between giggles of recognition at what had passed through me – the waves of emotion started to dissipate (quite fortunately, given that seconds after that, the man came over to give my pool the bi-weekly clean). I immediately felt clear as a bell. Puffy-eyed and a little dishevelled, yes. But clear … hell, even more so…and feeling, frankly, radiant. Oh, and ravenous to boot – like I’d never been in years. I got straight on my bike and drove to What’s Cup and ate two breakfasts one after another. (Absolutely murdered the dinner we had that night at the Solstice celebration as well. I felt genuinely – and curiously – insatiable. I don’t believe I’ve been as hungry as that in a long, long time.)

I chatted to Jim about that as I was literally wolfing down the edibles like my entire life depended on it. You know, a few of us here have been doing quite a few rounds of this heavy-duty mucoid plaque detox cleanse this year, where you drink only juice for 16 days, along with psyllium husk and bentonite clay. This sticks to your intestinal walls and helps to remove all the toxic, stale old waste that’s been accumulating inside you for – frankly – decades.

The result of habitual scoffing – ie when we eat to suppress emotions (depression, anxiety, stress, boredom etc etc) – is that the vibration of those emotions actually get stuck inside the food that turns into toxic waste because it simply can’t move through an already highly-impacted colon. Mind is body, after all, just as body is mind; and eliminating all those kilos (yes, really!) of stale old matter inside you, liberates all your stuck energy, making you feel so clear and high that you feel you could virtually move mountains. 

That’s another story. How interesting, is it, though, Jim and I remarked, that now I’d transformed and purged such a huge energetic block from inside me, my body wanted to fuel up, and become just that little bit more dense again; as though operating from too high a frequency can often times feel too sensational, and our habitual response is to try and mute it. 

This is the call, though. To transform all our dark matter. 

Make no mistake about it. Spirituality is not about all ‘love and light’.

The power is in our darkness

So, a Solstice message for all you out there. Let it all go (because whatever isn’t meant to come with us is all going anyway).

And what’s so, soooo important right now is for us to strip back to the essentials; to the bare bones of it all, to the essence of our beings.

There’s an image I’m seeing: of us all walking forward as huge swathes of what had used to be a part of us just free-fall to the ground and disappear into the earth…. But … we are still there; who we really are beyond the limits we thought we were bound by (ha!) is still there… 

…and we just keep on walking forward; onward, and leaving those trails behind, to form dust.