So… as we approach the Autumn Equinox, I am on the move again. In search of new work, a new way of being, new sacred space. The ancient limestone of the Yorkshire Wolds is releasing me for the Carboniferous rock formations of Otley Chevin Forest… at around 300 million years old even more ancient than both myself and the limestone I’ve been walking for the last six months, so I wonder what learning, what doing, what being is around the corner?
I have lived in Otley before - though a quarter century ago - so 'I was not then who now I am' as the saying goes. But then, am I who I was yesterday? This will be a very different kind of living too. On the obvious practical level, it’s a tiny rented flat in a mill conversion on the edge of the Chevin rather than the 2-bed terrace I owned right in the town when I was there before. A different kind of physical and mental geography altogether.
As a retired (as if I ever would!) non-earning, non-property owning individual, on a financial level I’m probably ‘lower’ now on the socio-economic scale than I was then, but with my pension-ettes and occasional donations for the work I offer, I don’t need to earn a living as I did when I was in Otley before, and that has a major energetic difference for how anyone lives. And I have different priorities in other ways too. And… writing this, I have realised something quite remarkable.
I moved to Otley for the first time just after I had my labyrinthian epiphany and received inspiration for Journey to the Centre which was the name I was given for my therapeutic and personal development ‘business’. Setting up JttC, I became officially self-employed and let go of earning any money at all via the educational system, or via any other kind of work as an employee. I did return briefly to employee-hood some ten years or so later, when I did my TESOL training (teaching English to speakers of other languages) in Spain and used those skills to earn a little money there, and when I subsequently returned to the UK with no real idea of what to do next in my life.
Fast forward another 15 or so years and after another epiphany just a week ago I find myself signing up for the Otley flat. This new epiphany, like the previous one, was no doubt ‘brewing’ for some time - and I had recently set a conscious intent for new sacred space - but it initiated fully into my consciousness via a dream.
This time, instead of walking a labyrinth, I was walking the Chevin in a wild, wild wind. So strong was this wind I allowed myself to lean backwards into it and fully relax. I did not fall to the ground. Nothing but wild air supported me for what felt like, in the dream, forever: as if it was a permanent state of being. It was only whilst forming these words I remembered that although I rarely went up the Chevin when I lived in Otley before, on one occasion when I did, I had exactly (yet not) this experience: it was a wild, blustery day and the wind felt so strong that I decided it would support me if I leaned backwards into it and fully relaxed. So I did - and fell to the ground, bruising both coccyx and dignity.
So, I await developments. And whilst waiting, I’m thinking about the community allotments directly over the road from where I’ll be living, and where I hope to volunteer. I wonder how sacred space will manifest there, as well as in my own personal space, and whilst walking the Chevin, embracing that wild air. And surely, water, earth and the fire of sun and stars too.
As yet, I have no photographs of the Chevin taken by me, but the ones here are taken by Sarah, a many years friend of mine (from when I lived in Otley first time round, in fact) who has herself lived in Otley for almost 300 million years, and who frequently walks the Chevin. Thank you Sarah, for the pics, and for what else you’ve brought into my life.
