All Shall be Well, and All Shall be Well

In this Post: Guest Writing Piece, Intuition Course and Free Talks

After going to Costa Rica, I have been battling inner turmoil about this country and my place in it. I have been wanting to go somewhere where life feels easier and freer, and more heart-connected, but feeling guilty about leaving this place.

I have been venturing into the depths of my shadow side, feeling anger at our country and society filled with smart phone addictions and rampant inequalities. And what’s been done to us as a species in our consciousness. I feel deeply sad by how worn down many people seem, including myself too at time. So much controlling by money and fear and conditioning.

But then I see people doing amazing, brave, light-filled work, and I have hope. Yes, go into the shadows and process and express your anger and frustration and sadness. But then we see the bright lights here and there.. growing stronger. We are still moving between worlds, still shifting. It’s not easy. But we all signed up for this as carriers of light, because we can do it!! Let’s come out and be there for each other.

What about you? What are you feeling right now with so much energy shifting and moving?

In the meantime, I do my best to share my light with you, to help you expand your intuition and connect with the highest version of yourself in this massive shift. Develop Your Intuition and Find Your Soul Purpose is an 8-week online course (self-paced) starting February 5th. This is not just an online course you take and forget about, it’s designed to help you flow on the path to awakening and expansion. (Includes two group guidance sessions and one private session. Discounts for those registering by Friday (tomorrow)!).

I’m also honored to be doing a sermon called “The Great Expansion: At One with All That Is” at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland, Maine on Sunday, February 11th. This is a free event (part of the church service). If you’re local, you may want to join us for a workshop this Sunday January on Expanding Intuition (the last in-person workshop of this kind for a while!) at Presence of Mind Studio . If you live far away, you are invited to join us on Tuesday, January 30th for a free sample virtual gathering of the Soulful Work Community, a monthly in-person and virtual gathering of like-minded souls on a path to expanded consciousness (with new videos, guided meditations, writing tools every month).

Ever wondered what exactly it is that I do? The newly-created Soulful Work™ Framework explains the path to soul evolution that is the ultimate goal in your expansion! You can undergo a transformation, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, into your soul essence. Much like the pattern of the hero’s journey,  this involves a separation from, and dissolution of the protective shell of the ego to open to  your true, higher self!

Guest Writing Piece: The Garden

The following is a piece from a guest writer. This person would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this post. Please leave a comment in the blog post, or send an email to me directly at rhortonwhite@soulfulworkconsulting.com

This short essay stems from my belief that each of us is born connected with–name your flavor–God, the essence, the infinite–and that our journey in life is essentially a quest to discover–to return to–that connection.  We all know it, we all feel it.  This essay calls that place whence we came, and to which we yearn to return, The Garden.

Joni Mitchell’s classic song, “Woodstock,” is about the idyllic few days in 1969 when about four hundred thousand young people gathered for music, love and peace on a farm in rural New York State.  The song is about meeting “a child of God” traveling to Woodstock to “set my soul free.”   The chorus resonates most when it calls us, and calls us again,  to “get back to the garden.”

Get back to the Garden.  What does that mean?   What is the Garden, and when were we ever there before?

In the Bible, the Garden is the place and time where and when the world began for us human beings.   But more to the point, it is the place and time that the Bible teaches that we were with God.   A more secular way of making the same point is to say that we are most in harmony with ourselves when we are in harmony with creation and at peace with the universe.   It is that state of harmony that is the Garden.

But were we ever there, in that Garden?    If ever we were, when?  How can we possibly find the path to return?

My own answer to all of those questions rests on the epigraph that E.M. Forster, the British novelist, chose for Howard’s End: Only Connect!   The connecting that Forster wrote of has at least three meanings.

“Only Connect” means, first, to relate to yourself—to be happy with who you are.  Younger people, especially, struggle with that connection.   And that makes perfect sense—almost by definition, a young person is still growing, still evolving.  They may feel, more acutely than older people, a disconnect between who they are and who they would like to be.  For them, getting back to the Garden means bringing those two into alignment.   Second, “Only Connect” also means to find and connect with what lies beyond you—other people, other places.  And third, “Only Connect” means to see the relationships, the connections, between yourself and the rest of the universe.

So the Garden—that place we all somehow remember and can imagine, that place we yearn for—is the state of being connected with ourselves, our surroundings and creation as a whole.

Remembering the Garden, imagining the Garden, and discovering the Garden are, in a sense, the same thing.   Each of us is born with the vision of the Garden and each of us has the ability to make the discovery.    Finding it again is a matter of synchronicity.  We can sync our phones with our computers and tablets.  Remembering the Garden, discovering the Garden, are both just a matter of achieving synchronicity between what is inside us and what is outside us.

Julian of Norwich, author of the first known religious work written by a woman in English, spoke of that state of harmony in a simple way, but in a way that I connect to.   She wrote:  “All manner of thing shall be well.”   T. S. Eliot in his Four Quartets converted her words into a kind of mantra that I have used to remember/discover the Garden: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Just repeat those words five times with a smile on your face and a cleansing breath between each time, and you will find yourself being wafted toward the Garden from which you truly have come.

Please feel free to share your comments here, we would love to hear your thoughts. What speaks to you in this piece? What resonates with your experience?

With gratitude to all,

Rachel