LIFE IS A KALIEDOSCOPE - MEDITATIVE VIDEO WITH POETRY

This poem speaks about life in all its complexity and glory.

Author and poet, Esther Austin beautifully narrates this poem

How I tripped into a deluge of Doubt - Week ending Friday 18th June 2010

This week has taken me on a roller coaster of a journey with ‘doubt’ my 6 legged friend. Doubt being the main hub with fear, frustration, loneliness and its other For three or four days this week I struggled. I got up one morning and self doubt assailed me like a tomb, I actually felt my energy levels take a dive. For once in a very very long time, I felt as if I wasn’t doing enough, as if business was static and with those feelings I found myself becoming more and more frustrated.

I felt that I should be doing more and began to question what was I doing wrong. All of a sudden I felt like a failure. There was also something very important playing on my mind. The inability to express myself and feelings in terms of a particular situation, as I am a person who likes to express, and that frustration coupled with this sudden onset of insecurity and not feeling good enough almost drove me to tears yesterday.

The urge to speak to someone was so strong, to express how I felt, to talk the pain out of my heart, to just get out what had built up inside, to speak out my pain because I had begun to feel pain and I was aching inside. Aching for an intimacy to be had in my life, aching from the frustration of working so hard and ‘feeling’ I was still not doing enough.

These feelings had been building up since Saturday. There is a saying that no man is an island and certainly for me, someone who spends an incredible amount of time on her own, which I enjoy by the way, made me also realise that I needed to stick my head up from my computer and papers and seek the comfort and company of a good friend or two, which was such a blessing.

As I poured out my heart to this special lady, she suddenly said (as she is highly intuitive and psychic) you need a break, you are working so hard, there is one piece to the puzzle that is keeping you in this position and that is you need to promote yourself more widely, so that you can generate more clients, then you can get a break. You are carrying a lot. I must admit I am a workaholic and therefore, I have told those close to me to shake me out of my spot once a week to do something, to get me out and about. Yet this week was such a learning curve for me. The universe allowed me to become vulnerable. I didn’t particularly like the feeling, but I had to be taken there to a place where I got so frustrated that I wanted to cry and even then, I couldn’t because I was trying to hold onto sanity and therefore at that moment by shedding tears – I would’ve crumpled.

Last night, I spent a while speaking with another dear friend. He listened and I shared, then he shared and we came away both feeling better and even healed from being able to release. I just needed to talk things through at a very deep level. A level of consciousness that went deep, as I needed to go there. I looked at how I was handling me. I looked at how I was feeling about me and this situation. I looked at me from every angle possible and just having the space to talk and to release and to get it out was so powerful and in the space of analysing, I also knew I was being too hard on myself, constantly pushing the bar to the next level and not totally being present to embrace life as it was presented to me at that moment in time.

Today I do not ache as much as I have been over the past 3-4 days, because what I had to learn to do yesterday was to accept a few situations as they were, to pull back from having any expectation whatsoever and to know that everything was in divine order and to allow the universe and God to work in their mysterious and magical way. I am calmer and learning to fall back into me again and to trust. I have also learned to just accept my feelings and to know it is ok to feel what I feel. Isn’t that the beauty of love, to know it is ok to love.

Once in a while I slip off my train which hurtles through life. I have learned especially this year to enjoy the scenery as I go along by slowing it down a little. I often take myself off for bike rides and find the most remote of places where I can just sit in open space and dream or meditate. Or I head off for long walks along river banks and parks and other outdoors spaces. I love the outdoors as it nurtures and replenishes and revitalises me.

Today, this message is simply to say that NO MAN IS AN ISLAND. I had to reach out to a few people yesterday. Those close to me and whom I trust. But most of all I had to learn to fall back into the arms of God and the universal flow of energy. I was at the end of my tether, I was tired, I was aching. I needed to share and to feel as if I was being heard. For once, I wanted to be the one someone listened to.
So once again remember, NO MAN IS AN ISLAND.

Esther