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Dear Diary; Souls Connecting

Julia Chi Handstands

‘A barefoot runner!

William look look – barefoot running’… William glanced at my feet as he bombed by on his bike…

Battersea Park resembled a holiday training resort today.

Sun burning down, hot already…

Crowds of people were on the main loop, on bikes, on foot, babies in running prams… A group posing for a photo- arms outstretched smiling, before jogging off together…

And on the grass, exercise classes dotted about, and pairs too; like Anadi and I…

‘It’s like Club la Santa’ I commented…’Minus the music’ Anadi replied, laughing…

And so we settled into our circuit… Which I keep extending 🙂

It’s grown to four sets of three different exercises which we do ten times each, twice round the three ( are you following me! 🙂 ) and now I’ve added an eighty meter stride along the length of the field in between the sets…

All this followed by handstand practise…

My ideal life

I love training

Always have 

All my life, right from when – age six years – I joined my Dad at 6am to do exactly what I am still doing…

A series of exercises to start the day..

For no reason other than the joy of moving, of being, 

Alive 

I am writing this in my lunch break… I’ve popped out for a coffee and a matcha almond croissant, the matcha somehow lending a healthy aspect to my choice of a second breakfast for lunch.

It’s midsummers day

June 24th…

10 years ago today I have discovered that I was doing this…!

Mark Cooper has just posted a memory on Facebook.

‘Marathon 49 done, 3hrs 33mins, loved running with former international marathon runner and top 10 runner in the UK for her age group Julia Armstrong, one more to go guys, what an unbelievable expedition, target is so nearly there now, thank you!’

I remember flying out to Girona, and on finding there wasn’t a bus for hours and hours, I had jumped in a taxi which smoothed me quickly to Lloret de Mar… As the car slowed into the town, Mark crossed the road right in front of us…

I had travelled out to make a podcast with him, as I was then producing my podcast series ‘Running to Learn, and I was also there to write an article about him for ‘Running Free magazine’… Oh; and to run the penultimate marathon of his journey of fifty, with him…

Mark had travelled on foot from Amsterdam and would be arriving in Barcelona, the day after our run…

He, his girlfriend ( now wife) Ferelith and I all went for supper together in Lloret de Mar… The next morning Ferelith drove Mark and I to Girona to the start of Marathon forty nine, and we set off to run to Feliu – 26.2 miles away – it in 30 degrees heat.

Mark and I had only met once before… I had interviewed him for a previous podcast in his home town of Edinburgh… We had spoken while he was actually running a marathon on a treadmill in a shopping centre right slam bang in the middle of the City….

And now we met again…

We bonded on that run.

We talked about everything

We shared ourselves, our lives.

We’d both experienced our mother’s dying when we were teenagers, and he was now running to raise money for the charity that had supported his family through that difficult time…

Far reaching dialogue, open hearts, two souls communicating through the run and on the run…

I’ve never seen him again…

We finished our run, we all had some lunch together, the three of us – and then Mark and Ferelith drove me to Girona airport.

And I flew away…

But our hearts are always connected

Sharing as we did for a few short hours 

On the road from  Girona to Feliu…

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Dear Diary; It all Comes to No Thing

It all comes to nothing…

I cried, but I also felt free.

With this realisation

With this acceptance…

My ‘conditioning’ was based on continual striving, somewhere… To do your best, to be a good person, to think of others, to achieve, to never rest, to never complain.. To keep going.

I recognised this very early; but freeing myself from the constraints of this energy – which of course was all mine, simply reflected back in the play out of my life – well it took time.

There was a cycle of letting go, following by a taking up of the reins once more, and a setting off with great enthusiasm and zeal.

Many projects, some begun and aborted… Many taking me on wonderful journeys of self discovery and growth, great learning and a gradually deepening of acceptance of my self…

The adventures were often rewarding, fun, successful… But still there was this nagging driving force coming out of the fear… The fear of being wrong

Not measuring up

Just not good enough….

This is a familiar energy in our culture – many of you will recognise it – and in our society it is written about too; there are courses and books and seminars designed to remind you that… 

You are enough, as you are.

You are who you are and it is enough…

But still the patterns can continue; the drive to succeed, to achieve not coming from the sheer joy of finding out, stretching and allowing the creative expression its arena…

I freed myself…

And part of the freedom for me came from the acceptance that when that final curtain falls, its all gone, it’s all come to nothing… This deep acknowledgement within me, somehow freed me to approach any endeavour or idea or adventure or project from a completely different position…

From one step to the next… Being fully in that step and trusting that the next would take care of itself..

Being in the flow and going with it…

Of course for others this isn’t always the case… The legacy they leave is important to them… The people they have given birth to, the books they have written, the businesses they have created …

We do not know the path another treads… We do not know what they have come to find out, to live out to experience

Each person’s journey their own…

But for me the freedom from feeling somehow wrong, that I hadn’t measured up, that I still needed to somehow earn my place came with that realisation

It all comes to nothing

There is no point

Its simply an experience 

Our energy playing out.

A deeper recognition of my soul in motion… 

A deeper connection to the no thing from whence we all came…

And I was free…

To play, to have fun, to let my spirit be truly free,

And; in an even better position than before to guide and support others in their own endeavours, and experiences and desires and needs to express and to find out.

In a better position to guide and support them to live and breathe and be here in whatever way they want to be here.

There is no one way.

Only the way within you.

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Dear Diary; Alive with Aliveness

Rising up to our self requires simply silence – and letting go.

To fully live we let go.

Into meditation and mindfulness, and we remember that we have always been free

But there is no rush

No need to make meditation another thing to do

Simply an orientation

A steady daily practise.

To be quiet and remember who you truly are.

When we are free of the past, and full of presence in the here and now, we can use our conscious mind to its full potential.

Only five or ten percent is generally in use; our actions mainly arising from programming and patterning.

Deep seated beliefs and ideas; stories programmed in, embedded so strongly… Emotional responses coming from a childhood past that some barely remembered…

Never here

Always there.

And so stop

Be still

Be here

Let go of all the thoughts.

Let go

And experience the vastness of the soft milky void of silence, alive with aliveness! 

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Dear Diary; Citius Altius Fortius

It’s nice to sit on the grass alone; in the sun. 

The hum of traffic nearby;

Music too

Pigeons  gathered on the ground under the tree; they know that people are picnicking on their takeaway lunch while drinking their takeaway coffee, and matcha…

Matcha- beyond is just beyond where I am sitting, alone on the grass.

Green cookies, green oats, green grass. Matcha matcha everywhere, and also delicious to drink! ( as long as it’s with honey! 🙂 

What happens when ambition runs out, what happens then…?

What is the point then, when all the enthusiasm to achieve and ‘get there’ is done, finished, its come to the end of its own road?

What then? In this life of upward and onward, bigger and better and further…

This life of Citius altius Fortius, faster higher stronger – a motto created for its moral beauty.

What when morality falls away, and conditioning and control.

What then?

Are we ready to surrender our acts to the divine…?

Anything done with stress about the results is less, than any work done in a state of presence, relaxation, ease.

This truth is a known truth, but a hard one to live in this world of more and more, and then even more.

Stretching for excellence is my understanding of the true beauty of the meaning of Olympic ideal; and this is different to striving from a place of anxiety and stress…

Finding out what is possible without attachment to the outcome, or any ideas that the outcome will somehow make us superior or inferior .

We are inspired when we see someone performing at the highest level, we are often inspired by the beauty and seeming effortlessness of it; the hours and hours and hours of practise distilled into what we are witnessing there in front of us…

Practise with presence

Practise practise practise, and the road never ends; the journey continues.

Ambition transcends itself to become our art in motion; ourselves in motion 

Sharing surrendering silent 

Becoming always from the inside out

Citius Altius Fortius

Even in my case, in the expression of my art – the art of running – as I become slower.

I feel myself to be becoming Citius Altius Fortius in each moment

Here and now

As I sit on the grass in the sun

Surrendering my acts to the divine…

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Dear Diary; Round The Sun

The world keeps turning…

The green parrots keep flying overhead…

The mother with her new baby arrives – she parks his ( how do you know he’s a boy? Anadi asks) little orange pram beside the bench – gets out her phone and starts her routine… First stepping up and down off the bench, then a lunge matrix… she pushes his (‘I just think he’s a he’, I reply) pram to the open grass to do her ‘frog jumps’ and ‘split squats’…

Anadi and I finish our circuit and go over to the small white building to practise our handstands ( ever improving, but still I need the security of the little white building to balance me…!) She is watching and calls out in admiration, whilst pulling her baby from his pram; she takes him over to the bench to sit and feed…

Multi tasking – baby at her breast, her eyes on her phone – mid exercise routine… 

The world keeps turning.

Lapping the park – the familiar figures – we encounter every day.

All of us rising and running at the same time

Each day

Clockwork

Round the park we go

Round the clock we go, following the earth’s rotation each day

Again and again…

Around the sun; a whole year long to journey back to where we first began

Travelling

Very fast 

Sixty seven thousand miles an hour

To return to the starting point and set off once more…

Mirrored in us lapping the park on wheels and on legs

Going nowhere 

Back to the beginning

Travelling ever inwards if we care to look, up and see the bright blue sky of promise

Of infinite space, endless, limitless

Our spirit free

All that we can be

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Dear Diary; Breaking Bread Together

It’s Friday night, and I have a date with my BF (best friend/Boy friend!)

We walk through the park hand in hand, the clouds grey heavy hold a promise of rain, muggy heat, summer night, mid June.

We see others out for Friday night fun, walking talking, some also holding hands…Runners running, sweaty, fast, focused, training hard – go by… And cyclists too, some training, some on their way to a night out…

Like us…

The Pear Tree opened a couple of week ago…

I noticed it as we ran past on our morning run…’Look, look… Anadi look’ I pointed to the ‘We are Open!’ sign on the road…

A scene like a festival beheld us as we arrived, people scattered in twos and threes, six friends meeting – sitting on the grass… A group of guys in suits around a table, three young women occupying another; the new mask under the chin look fashioned by a couple of folk – one supping a pint, the other a cocktail in one hand, and a cigarette in the other…

Everyone else bare faced…

Clusters of people near the pond, standing, some sitting cross legged on the earthy earth; cradling plastic pint mugs, pizza boxes, glasses of wine…

Signage all around… Instructions; the new order…

We joined the queue.

‘It’s all part of it now’ I said ‘The British liking to queue has been taken to another level…

More chatting time with you’, I added…

While Anadi waited for his beer and our pizza, I took my mango lasi and our salad box and set up camp…Throwing my purple – blue gold swirls of colour – yoga mat onto the grass, I sat alone watching people being people – all around me…

Gathering, talking, laughing, eating drinking, being together… 

Communal beings, being, creating a mini community on a Friday night in Battersea park.

And so life goes on…

People adapting adjusting accepting

Carrying on doing what we have always done

Living loving sharing…

Breaking bread together.

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Dear Diary; A Higher Level of Consciousness

If we want to see change in the world…

Our responsibility is to effect and be that change…

Practical implementation, an essential part of that change – of course… But for social transformation, our part is in our own individual transformation…

We must be that change.

By raising our level of consciousness in every moment; moment by moment by moment.

Every single moment, never ceasing in our awareness…

Can we always, with each breath we take, be kind, clear, non reactive –  with the thoughts that flow from us always loving ones… ? If we cannot do this, and often we only have to look across at our own families to find we cannot – then there is work to be done…

As Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher said  ‘ if you think you are enlightened, go spend a week with your family…’ 

Walking in the park on a lovely sunny evening;  Anadi and I heard two young women – walking too – talking, not very kindly, about another; snippets of conversation… Disregard, dislike distrust often prevalent.

Observation is very different to criticism, and only we truly in hearts know the difference….

For true global evolution, all must be cleansed from within our own hearts…

By going within and not looking out – at the other. ‘Their fault, they are to blame…’

Instead look within…

‘Where am I cutting off love to those in front of me? And so cutting off love to myself’…Our own inner work driving the social change is the change that will change the world. 

Raise consciousness… Deepen the healing

Within

And so without…

Energy playing out, in an ever repeating cycle…

Until we are still; and see beyond the madness of this samsara 

This duality

This dark and light

And find the silence in our hearts; and feel the love which heals the world

Infinite love

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Dear Diary; The Centre Point

I am sitting on a wall on the Kings road watching the people… All the different energies going by and by and by… Some faces are covered by masks…

Two young girls appear with hope and energy and enthusiasm in their step, in their own bubble; together; laughing, in comparison to others who are looking tired and tense… Everyone making their way somewhere…

Moving, breath by breath

Towards the end of this life, the end of this incarnation – when this body will die, and all we know, will be gone. 

Many cling – in fear – to life…

But in fear there is no life.

And in true life, there is no death.

We must die to live

We must die to who we believe we are, to fully live, to grow and flourish in this lifetime…

Which is the seed of the real life. 

The tree

Of life.

But the seed must die, the imagined self, for the tree of life to grow.

A couple are hugging a lot, in the sun, and kissing, and hugging some more, and smiling…They look happy – they don’t look tense or tired. They look to love one another…

Two women speaking in a foreign tongue I don’t recognise, arrive with their little children; glad of the sun and the space to sit and watch while the children play… So that they can talk.

They look at ease too; not tense or worried… In summer dresses – love for their little ones etched in their beings

Love – all there is, infinite love the only truth, where life can blossom in every step of our inevitable journey

As I sit here writing, it flows from within me, from the silence; my mind only being used to form and to type these words, the language of my silence. For silence speaks volumes.

Silence is the only language.

It is the source of truth

The centre point.

The place to live and experience this universe of polarity.

Beyond the duality

The Centre point 

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Dear Diary; Making his Own Way

He stands in his stripy blue yellow and white T shirt

Eating a bun

He walks slowly, exploring, examining the grass under each tiny foot fall – making his way… Unknowingly towards me… He looks up, suddenly – sees me in his pathway and stares, looking a little surprised.

I smile and say, ‘hello’ 

He says nothing, looks straight at me for a little longer and then turns away…To explore more of his terrain, the flower bed nearby.

In his world, his own world

No inhibitions.

A man is walking just behind him, he smiles at me, and they go off together across the park…. The big one and the little one.

The fruit of his loins I guess… Now living and breathing – a separate human.

On his life journey, an arrow from the bow of the big one’s heart…

Off exploring

Eating walking – nearly talking

Making his own way.

We are all responsible for our own way – in the end.

When we’ve worked out our hurt, when we’ve cried and we’ve blamed and railed against those that got it wrong, did us wrong, There comes a time when we’ve cried all the tears, and shouted all the anger, that we can be still

And we can see .

That all along it was us; our reflection staring back… Our wounds to heal; our hurt to mend.

To find who we are

Not

We are not our wounds and our beliefs – our values, our stories;

We are so much more;

Than all this.

While we are here we can experience and live.

We can create and make and love and live and be filled with joy.

We are consciousness, experiencing itself…

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Dear Diary; The Keys to Our Life

We all have the keys to our life…

All we need do is put them in the lock; turn them and the door will open to reveal a completely new landscape. In each moment the past completely vanished, just like the wake of a boat.

When I look back now at my life all I can see if the vast expanse of the ocean.

Of the life force.

Of infinity

Huge vast infinite… Lifetimes upon lifetimes. All happening here and now.

And at the same time all vanished into the no thing ness.

Each moment new, a drop of dew. Shimmering quivering with life. And in each moment limitless possibilities for something different to happen.

I am this moment.

I started writing when I was very small; I have lost the original ‘manuscripts’, but I can remember when I was eight years old I wrote a story about battle.

I wrote about the men praying for the battle to be over, and of their prayers being answered, but not as they might have wished; with an arrow through their heart – and they fell to the earth.

It was over…

I wrote about how if you were to look up there was beauty; sun blue skies, clouds scudding… Branches of trees dancing in the breeze; but then if instead you were to look down you would witness death and bloodshed; dying men and horses screaming in pain.

I wrote of how the battle ended, and the men went home to their families.

There were scenes of great joy and scenes of such sadness – some never returned.

Parting and re uniting all at once.

Life death and re birth.

I wrote about the yin and the yang; the samsara of this universe.

And for over fifty years, I have – in some ways – simply written the same thing;

Over and over again

And I have watched the yin to the yang reflected outwards in my life, as I swung with the polarity of this existence, until I could fully experience the silence beyond the duality, and so help others free themselves from fear.

Fear stops us from truly living and truly loving 

Ourselves 

And others

In perfect love there is no fear