How can we maintain a state of wholeness in a fragmenting world?

That’s the question I’m exploring — and I’d love you to join me.

Before we begin, I want to say this: whatever you are feeling in the midst of our chaotic world, you are not alone. And you are welcome here exactly as you are. This is a space to breathe, to reflect, and to remember that even when you feel the world is falling apart, wholeness is possible.

We’re all in a process of transformation, whether you call it that or not. Our world is going through rapid, radical change and we are each a part of it with our own unique part to play.

In this series of brief conversations, I am exploring different aspects of the experience of transformation with friends from my tribe. My intention is to spark your thoughts, feelings, memories, insights and inquiries and to ignite bigger conversations. The transformational process is different for each of us and yet there are common phases, stages and themes.  The better we understand it, the more we can co-operate with it, the more gracefully we can move through it, into new life.

I’d love to know how you are experiencing transformation and hear the wisdom you’ve gathered as you’ve moved through different phases of the process.

The best way to grow our understanding is by making space to reflect on our own experience and to listen to the experiences of others. The act of conversation can be transformational itself.  When we come together in an intentional space, speak authentically and listen respectfully to each other, we co-create a bigger energy field which holds us all. and which can become our transformational container.

When you’ve had a chance to listen and to consider the inquiry questions, I’d love you to join me in an introductory group conversation where we can explore further together.  The Tribe in Transition Transformational Practice Community is opening its doors soon and I’ll tell you more. The link for the call will be sent to the email address you have provided.

We are all moving through a process of transformation – whether we call it that or not. Those of us on a conscious healing path are holding and weaving together our expanded spiritual being and our vulnerable physical reality. To make inner resilience and wholeness  a sustainable daily reality, we need each other.

The Biggest Challenges in Life Can Be Opportunities to Awaken

We all go through times of loss, grief, confusion, overwhelm and deep change. Experiencing feelings of vulnerability in the face of global chaos is part of being alive.

In my own life, I’ve faced many experiences of loss – the death of loved ones, moments of vulnerability, the abuse of trust.

I’ve also experienced the synchronicities, heart awakenings, and unexpected gifts that come when I’ve faced into these challenges.

Over the last 30 years, I’ve followed my Soul Journey — trusting intuition, embracing transformation, and allowing both the pain and the beauty to shape me and direct me. The biggest challenges of my life have been opportunities to awaken, deepen and to become more compassionate. This has enabled me to grow the skills to hold safe, loving spaces where people can share openly and grow together.

Now I’m launching the Tribe in Transition Transformational Practice Community — a place to practice holding and weaving the threads of  our expanded spiritual reality  and our very human and vulnerable physical reality. We are spiritual beings here on Earth at a very turbulent time to experience all that it means to be human. We can choose to transmute suffering and maintain our wholeness. For this we need each other.

Questions for Inquiry: How are you experiencing transformation now? Remember some of the gifts you have received when you’ve faced into your greatest challenges.

The Shedding of the Old Identity Is Essential in the Process of Transformation

Sundy Gilchrist describes how the pain of being estranged from her three adult daughters has led her ever deeper into the process of transformation.

As her awareness opened and she let go of old, limited beliefs, she found herself in a void, stripped of her old identity and feeling alone, with no safety net.

This shedding of the old identity is essential to the transformational process and can be the most challenging part of the process. Sitting with the death of the old self, helpless, and unsure if anything will take its place, is scary.  It also provides a wonderful opportunity to practice making conscious choices, to feel part of a greater whole and to gather the gifts of self empowerment.

Sundy works as a an Estrangement and Self-Love Coach in her Sublime Relationships community. By entering into the transformational process she has developed the skills and wisdom to be of service and guide others.

Find Sundy Here on Substack

Questions for Inquiry: Have you experienced the falling away of your old identity? If so, what happened? What helped you to move through it?

Letting go is central to the transformational process. As we let go of old versions of ourselves – limiting beliefs, unconscious attitudes, unkind actions – we make space for more flexible, authentic, empowered and expanded selves.

In our western world today, separation and isolation are the norm and many of us long to be held in a loving, accepting community where we can feel each other’s support as we contribute. We are a work in progress and we can support each other  as we develop our skills.

Making the Shift from “My Problems” to “Our Solutions”

In my conversation with Diane Lester we explored our human need for connection and belonging. Feeling needed, being part of an exchange of energy, serving others and feeling connected to something bigger than ourselves – this is what feeds us and makes us thrive.

Around the age of 30, Diane was called to work in Nigeria with mentally ill and destitute people – an experience where she found herself “in at the deep end” and radically challenged to move beyond “what do I want?” and to be of service to the community. Amidst the challenges she experienced being held and supported by a culture that was focused on “our problems” and “our solutions” rather than the sense of isolation and separation that is often our reality in Western society.  After five years with this project she came back to the UK and became a mother of two children, another experience that stretched her beyond her previous identity and into a bigger sense of “we are in this together”.

Questions for Inquiry? Have you had the experience of feeling isolated and separated as you’ve moved through all the challenges of your inner journey? How can we co-create a kinder, more connected world, starting where we live and within our communities? What might be your next step with this?

Make Joy Your Daily Practice

The day I met  Suzi Joy Lever was her 30th anniversary of her relationship with her partner,. We talked about how maintaining our individuality and empowerment while being in loving relationship can be a path to healing and a transformational practice. And how, allowing, respecting and accepting differences is the key to sustainably loving personal relationships. As we drop our judgments and open our hearts, we contribute to the collective shift of consciousness, from “me” to “we”, which our planet so badly needs. At the heart of conscious relationship is self-compassion. Suzi  has chosen to become an ambassador of joy and made this her daily practice. One step at a time, one loving act at a time, one small choice at a time – we can align with what is whole and peaceful and loving.

Questions for Inquiry

Who has been your best teacher about how to be in relationship? And how?

How are you being challenged now in relationship and what are you learning?

Do you have a simple, daily, joyful practice which makes a difference to you while touching others? If not, are you willing to start one?

One step at a time, one choice at a time, one simple action at a time – we can align with what is most whole, peaceful and joyful within us.

Don’t Just Talk About It – Take Action

Gwyneth Jones is a Deep Adaptation coach who holds spaces for people to talk honestly about the heartbreak of living in a world shaken by climate collapse, genocide, war, far-right politics, injustice and environmental degradation. Gwyneth is following her soul’s calling to make sense of living at this time and to help others to find connection and meaning. We explored how we resource ourselves and find inspiration through immersion in the beauty of nature, humour, creativity, learning and holding a bigger perspective. Perhaps the biggest comfort of all is taking part in group conversations with like-hearted companions. Together we can practice holding the complexity of our experience as we find meaning within it. Action is also important – experimental action from a place of commitment and non-attachment to results.

Find Gwyneth Here

Questions for Inquiry:

Have there been particular global events that have sparked a deep calling in you?

Who have been your teachers and guides on this path and how have they helped you through the chaos and heartbreak of these times?  What are your sources of inspiration and renewal?

How do you find a place to stand amidst the complexities of these times?

Stepping out of isolation and finding our like-hearted tribe is one of the biggest steps into liberation we can take.

Hold the Dark and the Light in Your Heart

When I asked Yeshe what she has been noticing over the summer, in the various communities she is part of, she spoke about a slight shift in the balance between the dark and the light, with the density of human experience clearing a little and the light ascending. We agreed that the work of transformation is to reach a place where we can hold the light and the dark of human experience in our own hearts and bodies, without attachment or judgment and with acceptance and forgiveness – a big work! We spoke about the personal breakdowns so many of us have been experiencing since lockdown and how at times we can feel completely undone and without a transformational toolbox. This death of the old self is an essential part of the transformational process that challenges us to the core.

Follow Yeshe on her Youtube Channel Here

Questions for Inquiry: Have you experienced a personal breakdown such as those Yeshe describes? If so, what happened? And what helped you to use it as an opportunity to transform?

We can see everything in daily life as an opportunity for transformational practice.  We can choose to sit with death and choose life.

Look for the Gifts amidst the Chaos and Reach out for Support

Janie shared her experience of being locked out of her own country during the Covid pandemic. We explored how this followed the transformational themes of endings and new beginnings, death and rebirth, being thrown out of the comfort zone into the unknown, and yet at the same time feeling looked after, and how taking action leads to empowerment. Some of the supports Janie drew on were family, local and global community, spiritual practice and understandings of transformation. She chose to look for the gifts amidst the chaos and trauma of the experience and was strengthened by it.

Janie lives in the South Island of Aotearoa-New Zealand where she is an energy worker and spiritual midwife, currently  exploring being an elemental crone.

Find Janie Here

Questions for Inquiry

The time of the Covid pandemic and lockdown was a pivotal time of change world wide. What was your experience and how did it change you?

Hager Vor – What do you hold onto in Rough Seas?

Mark speaks of being in a time when it’s difficult to have faith in the process of transformation.  Finding our way through grief, loss, chaos, distraction and the demands of everyday life can be overwhelming – sometimes to the point when we don’t know if we will survive. And particularly for empaths who feel deeply the suffering in the world. Holding conversations, drawing community together, treading water together – these are essential supports. So too is having an evolving map and landmarks. Together we can co-create a bigger energy field that buoys everyone up. We need to cultivate patience, trust, kindness, persistence, commitment and determination as we stay present at the unfolding edge and co-operate with life. We can cultivate deep remembrance that we are part of something vast, unknowable mysterious and alive.

Find Mark Here

Questions for Inquiry

What do you hold onto when your experience has become so overwhelming that you have lost your faith in transformation?

How do you support yourself to hold your heartbreak at the suffering in our world while also staying empowered?

 You are Worthy and You’re Welcome

For Benn, transformation arises through a process of crisis and revelation.  Following a time of disillusionment, he discovered new fields of study which provided bigger perspectives and led him to practices and inquiries which helped him to ground his experiences. Starting with the question, what is the way of the human, he began to explore right relationship – with self, other and country. This led him into a quest to discover who he really is.  Through exploring his own shadow, recognizing the armour he was carrying, and exploring less defended ways of being masculine, he found his way back to the ancient knowledge of trust and no shame – You are worthy and you’re welcome. And from there, he began to experience the miracles of daily life.

Perhaps wholeness can be found in our willingness to embrace the light, the dark, and the shadow within ourselves. And in holding the dynamic tension between the choices we make and the pathways that are available.

There is a natural law of polarity – where there is grief, there is love. Where there is shame, there is understanding. Where there is guilt, there is forgiveness. Where there is fear, there is courage. We can take a step back from polarity and find the harmonic resonance that joins the opposites into one life.

Are we breaking down or breaking through?

Jools shared an experience she had when a succession of losses coincided with a spiritual opening. From the point of view of western medicine her experience was called “a psychotic break”, from the point of view of eastern spirituality it might be termed “an epiphany” and from a psycho-therapeutic point of view it could be called a “spiritual emergence”.  The fact that such experiences are more socially understood and acceptable now than they were a few decades ago is a sign of our evolution.

We tend to move through our own cycles of transformation – for Jools, this is every 19 years. And even though each new situation is different, we retain strength from what has gone before and a growing trust that we will come through the darkness back into the light. A spiritual opening shines light into whatever in us is still in shadow which then needs to be examined and integrated. So we progress through a series of expansions and contractions and the journey requires patience and courage.

When Jools transitioned from Mother to Crone with menopause, she met aging, death and grief, just as the Buddha, in his quest for enlightenment, found aging, sickness and death. We wake up to the reality that we are spiritual beings having a human experience and living in a vulnerable and finite human body; a fact that we need to grieve.  Entering elderhood and preparing for old age, can be a difficult transition but it also brings many gifts. One of those for Jools, is the ability to relax into a sense of expanded time and to savour the joy of every moment.

Find Jools here