Entirely alone is a matter of choice and a repeating motif on my vision board which speaks to me of solitude. There are six images of women in total – solitary and introspective.
Images on my current Intuitive Vision Board
Since I made this vision board seven months ago, these images have been a constant reminder in times of doubt: “Mary, do not, I repeat do not, allow your ego to drive you into doing something because you feel you should but wait quietly, fully available, for your Muse to find you.” And so I have.
This is not the same thing as me doing nothing. By nature I’m not a ‘do nothing’ person when sometimes it would be better for me if I were. Instead, my vision board has informed me to give myself time and space to loiter, linger and indulge in creative play with no particular goal or outcome in mind.
I have learnt a new tolerance – and enjoyment – for being unclear. In the murky waters of ambiguity I have
- taken a holiday to Andalucia (more of that later and the profound connections to my vision board)
- stepped up my commitment to ‘knowing’ through my body with Feldenkrais
- joined an in-person creative writing group
- dipped my toe into various online and offline art classes
- increased my ability to serve up Ottolenghi-style plant-based cuisine
- read like crazy, discovering two authors I love – Ann Patchet and Maggie O’Farrell.
- glorified in walks through wild flower meadows and the transition zone where land meets sea
- braced myself for a full emersion in ‘La Mare’.
Entirely alone
Solitude.
I love it. Crave it.
To be entirely on my own,
no-one to recognise me
or needs anything from me,
no interruption to my train of thought,
If thoughts are what they are, arriving unexpectedly like Travellers.
Contrary to expectation, I’m not flooded with thoughts.
Instead my mind empties and gradually grows still.
The coating of dust sloughs off to reveal another version of me,
With my hat off to the great outdoors, my perceptions widen,
clarity comes. I don’t go looking for it.
Sitting isn’t always the most comfortable way to solitude.
Moving is.
A gentle, aimless stroll awakens the senses,
I’m delighted by what I see, hear, smell, and imagine.
Always I want to touch – to reach out and feel what’s there.
Answers I wasn’t looking for I find.
Questions I never asked are answered.
Images never envisioned, I picture.
What an undervalued luxury this solitude is.
Creating an Intuitive Vision Board can offer you a moment of solitude, should you choose it alone or in the company of other ‘solitudinals’. I am there as your guide, making sure you don’t slip off the path of intuitive musing and lose yourself in thought.
My role is to create a holding space. This allows you to deconstruct what’s gone before and what you think should come next, to allow the exigencies of the moment to be heeded under my watchful visionary mid-wifery.
Four hours is the least amount of time it takes to allow your attention to be diverted inwards, allowing the gentle promptings of your heart and soul to get a voice in edgeways, above the gushing clamour of an event-filled life.
What you’ll find there is calling you to greater accountability. An invitation to live a deeper, richer, more meaningful life. That is in spite of commitments that plough a furrow all the same, driven by external pressures and internalised scripts we never barely know we have.
Shakespeare was known to have said:
‘No prisons are more confining than those we know not we inhabit’.