As a woman walking this spiralling path of seeking my true nature for most of my life, I’ve realized that our human world desperately needs more feminine wisdom at this crucial time in our human evolution.

This doesn’t mean I’m only focused on women, as yin (feminine) energy runs through all beings. However, I do see a special opportunity for women to tap into their own ‘brilliance’ – the innate, cosmic intelligence that we are naturally – so that we can regularly replenish our own wisdom, intuition, compassion and vitality.

Thus, my motivation for writing the articles for ‘Natural Brilliance’ is to create a community ‘wellspring’ for spiritually aligned women to drop in, take a deep drink of refreshment and share their own stories of ‘waking up to their inner wisdom.’

The world is topsy-turvy, and the collective is undergoing a rapid shift in consciousness. Our individual choice can be to observe these events and shift our attention to evolving ourselves as spiritual beings in this human form, rather than being overwhelmed by judgment and fear, so that we don’t get caught in the undertow of these tidal waves of change.

As an empath and mysfit mystic who has rambled the world seeking answers to questions that no one seemed to be asking, I was fortunate to meet and study with several genuine spiritual teachers. Although my primary path has been Tibetan Buddhism, and eventually Dzogchen (an ancient wisdom pre-dating Buddhism), I’m not particularly sectarian and know that our inner wisdom can be called forth through many pathways. I also feel that the mystical arts, such as Feng Shui – in which I’m a certified practitioner, can offer insights into how to energetically connect with our true nature, as well as supporting our human goals.

Please introduce yourself in a comment below if you feel inspired!

Imagine yourself like a diamond buried under a thin layer of silt – already containing your unique brilliance without needing special permission from an authority to declare your specialness.

If your natural brilliance is simply ‘your attendant spirit at birth’ – the real meaning of the word genius, then each person is also a part of the cosmos, not separate from, but incorporating all of the vibrancy and conscious intelligence of the vast universe in its multitude of unimaginable forms.

Thus, your natural brilliance is a combination of the reflecting light interacting with the unique facets of the stone which allow the light to be experienced as colors, sparkle and clarity. We are in short, an ‘I’ and a ‘we’ in one body.

The act of polishing our diamond is simply to release what obscures this deep brilliance within. It does not require adding new concepts or elegant theories to your understanding of yourself. Rather, polishing is a process of seeing the energetic layers of ‘who you believe yourself to be’ and allowing these voices to be heard without believing in their stories.

Often, these voices are heard as judgmental thoughts about yourself, the world and what is right or wrong according to whatever standards the voices deem important. I know that I’ve had entire committees of soft-hearted to hard-headed identities arguing about what is best for my life, and the only way I could resolve it was to throw them all out by saying “thank you – now please shut up!”

I call the most persistent of these egoic and judgmental voices ‘the Gollum,’ after that beautifully personified character that represents the ego in us all that was a character in the Lord of the Rings book series. He is my favorite character, and I can do an exceptional speaking voice that seems to capture his essence of grasping for his desired ‘precious’ which is simply how our ego is always seeking more and more of what is deemed ‘good.’

During events that I term ‘energetic cleansing’ within myself, I have felt a direct channeling of my inner Gollum, and it was strangely both liberating and downright frightening. The power of this egoic voice simply wants to express how much pain it’s been carrying and one of the keys I’ve found to releasing this energy is to allow it to be heard by my compassionate heart. As I did this, in increments of about fifteen minutes at a time, I felt the energy in my heart space intensify like a flame, and then eventually the heat-like energy dissipated and a fresh breeze of natural light and spaciousness came rushing into my being.

Gollum’s emotional pain is created by the mistaken belief that ‘something’ outside of you is more brilliant and beautiful than you are and that you need to ‘add’ that to your identity. That’s why allowing the pain to speak sweeps away the energetic dirt that hides your natural brilliance. By hearing and acknowledging this pain – which is really the fears about not being ‘enough,’ you allow it to move from its dark cave into the light of your compassion.

My suggestion for dealing with your own Gollum is to give him short intervals to grandstand and then courteously escort him to the exit door if he’s too obnoxious. If Gollum won’t go, then breathe deeply into your heart space and connect to the natural openness there, literally breathing in and out of the heart with every deep breath as this will slowly open space for the tangled energy to relax and eventually let go. Additionally, you can write down the onslaught of verbiage into a journal until there’s nothing left bouncing around inside your head.

Embrace this inner Gollum by providing a compassionate space for it to express its worries, judgements and non-sensical stories. However, don’t give in to his crazy stories or he will take you over, pretending to be you! When you just give him space regularly, eventually Gollum will get bored and when he leaves, your naturally spacious brilliance will shine more fully.

As you release the egoic cage of long held emotions – hidden in your egoic identities – this creates more space in your psyche, which can be felt as greater openness, empathy and less judgement. Essentially, your true nature is this space, which as pointed to earlier, originates in the cosmos, and contains the potential for deep creativity and wisdom beyond what our little Gollum mind currently believes is possible.

When I was 47, the great cosmic shifter landed in my life to rearrange my psyche and my life priorities. This karmic set of events, while deeply unsettling and chaotic at the time, eventually connected my entire being more deeply to my soul’s true priorities, rather than allowing my ego-driven desires and fears to stay in the driver’s seat of my life.

During the landfall of this cyclonic mini-death process, my consciousness experienced a deep letting go of old identities that were worn and limping along. Although my intention was to live fully connected to my Divine self, my spiritual life had taken second tier to the day-to-day making a living hustle, even though I had been fortunate to have connected with a genuine spiritual teacher shortly after I moved to Australia when I was 40 years old.

The cosmic shifter overtook me one morning – like a mountain lion that was stalking me for weeks, and then it pounced and sent me into a no-woman’s land that our modern society calls ‘clinical depression.’ Prior to this eventual egoic death, my psyche had been drowning in emotional pain: memories of a traumatic childhood still haunting me, and then the sudden deaths of both parents – long since divorced, a job that felt like a huge weight on me, and a very tangled and ugly divorce.

Once I arrived at the end of the shifter’s cyclonic path, with debris of my former self lying everywhere, scattered into pieces that resembled a prior version of ‘me,’ I sensed that this process was more than a mental un-wellness. After months of reconstructing a new life, I could feel a deep spaciousness within – it was present throughout the depression but felt cold and empty then. Now, I sensed a field of compassionate love whenever I allowed myself the time to simply feel myself as this vast space within.

My inner voice instructed me to ‘spend more time healing and knowing my true self’ while discovering how I could earn a living doing more of what I truly enjoyed. I was a recovering academic who found solace, beauty and simplicity in the natural world, and joy through connecting with young people, but the competitive atmosphere at the university wasn’t in alignment with my values. I made a soul-level decision to discover what ‘lit me up’ and I began my own coaching business supporting people to find their own true path.

It wasn’t a smooth road to a very different way of being that relied more on my intuitive inner voice than the rational egoic mind – being a single woman and living overseas at the time. Yet, a newly born trust in myself, and in life itself, deepened with every decision that seemed to challenge my assumptions about what ‘should be.’

Some of my friends admired my boldness and others likely thought I had lost my mind – which wasn’t far from the truth. Although my rational mind appeared to be in charge before the episode with the great cosmic shifter, that was also a big illusion. As I began to realize during that healing time of dedicated self-reflection, often what appears ‘logical’ to our mind is really a smokescreen for emotionally-driven desires that can be illogical when seen clearly.

Alternatively, when I listened to my inner intuitive voice offering its gentle suggestions or occasional strong warnings, I could sense they were aligned with my higher path, even when my mind still questioned this source. Therefore, it was by allowing more time for meditation, walks, and just playful activity, that the blossoming of my soul-led life began to unfold, with grace and a bit of grit, to test my faith in the path as I moved slowly into a less-hurried and more openly curious way of living.

Today, as I look back upon that chaotic time after the mini-death, I feel a deep compassion for the ‘old Elaine’ who struggled for many years with a need to become ‘someone’ who was loved and admired. Of course, this pattern of seeking approval, through my work and relationships, wasn’t obvious to me at the time, but rather an unconscious way that my wounded child was seeking to find its way back to the love already present through the glowing spaciousness of the Divine within.

I believe we’re all seeking this redemption – a journey of integrating the ego with the soul (or higher consciousness) so we can live fully as a trusting and Divine being. My suggestion for you is to begin carving out more space and time right now to allow that integration – as a poem titled ‘Time’ that I wrote at the tender but wise age of 15 so eloquently states:

Minute by minute, the clock ticks the time away

Thinking more of tomorrow and less of yesterday

Days and hours seem more precious than ever

When you stop and realize that you may not have forever

For death may come and take you when he pleases

Not really caring just who he seizes

So make each moment count, and count well

For how much time we have, only time will tell

Whether you’re in transition to retirement or have already stepped away from your full-time career or family obligations, then the prodding question of ‘what’s next?’ often arises in your mind after you savor the extra freedom in your life.

Perhaps your ‘what’s next’ includes expanding or giving more attention to your hobbies, booking travel to an exotic destination, taking care of some neglected house chores or simply taking time to connect with family or friends.

However, the question of ‘what’s next’ is actually a deeper invitation to hit the reset button in your life. It’s a nudge within your psyche to examine what is truly meaningful for you as a woman who starts to shed the years of responsibilities while transitioning into this stage of life which I call ‘the wisdom years.’

When you feel into the intuitive sense of ‘the wisdom years,’ questions such as these might arise for you:

• How do I choose to define myself now?

• How have my priorities shifted?

• What isn’t serving my highest good, in myself and in my life, and needs to be gently released?

Before answering the first two questions, consider that the third question may be most important to ponder. Too often, our egoic rush to the next thing bypasses a critical stage in this period of spiritual and creative renewal, which I call ‘The Invitation.’ I’ll describe what I believe are the general ways that this invitation begins to show up – like a friend who has been away for many years.

First, ‘The Invitation’ stage may be giving us nudges that feel strange at first. We might find ourselves seeking to spend more time alone, while feeling an urge to explore our inner self through connecting with spiritual texts or local groups of a religious or spiritual flavor.

Some may miss the opportunity for ‘The Invitation’ because the idea of simply spending time in a state of ‘being’ seems counter-productive to our deeply engrained Western culture persona of ‘thinking-doing.’ This common identity feels secure when either solving problems by thinking or taking physical actions.

Whether you’ve spent decades building a career, and/or juggling family responsibilities, your feminine nature may have taken second priority because of the demands of our quite masculine focused modern life. When I use the word ‘feminine’ I’m referring to the more ‘yin’ aspect of our being, which all people possess, regardless of gender. It is more introverted, intuitive, gentle, receptive, deeply feeling and observant of life using all of the senses.

Of course, our identity as a woman has multiple facets which have been shaped through our experiences and choices, both consciously and unconsciously, over our lifetime. Perhaps we’ve polished some facets of our identity that we feel good about and particularly if we’ve been well rewarded by society for showing up in a particular role.

Again, think of the ‘thinking-doing’ masculine ‘yang’ way of being, and how our society continually promotes this style of human identity – going from one thing to the next in our daily lives with very little space or rest time (even sleeping hours have been reduced). It is actually an overly yang way of being that we often get pulled into as balanced yang is natural growth, embodied expression, creativity and passion.

The main reason for discussing the overly yang focus on ‘thinking-doing’ is that it appears normal to be in this mode from the moment we wake up and start going through our checklist of tasks already planned for our day until we finish the dishes after dinner. Unfortunately, our feminine aspect isn’t often given the space to show up, and our intuitive and creative nature may have taken a backseat for many years.

This way of ‘simply being’ has been quietly waiting for your attention and it wakes up when you answer ‘The Invitation.’ By taking up or expanding your meditation practice, or venturing out on long walks in nature, you’ll begin to feel a depth of inner spaciousness that is below the everyday surface of ‘thinking-doing’ mode.

The Invitation is to allow yourself to notice and create a deeper connection with this ‘spacious-being’ within. This experience is not simply the absence of constant mental activity, but rather it is felt by allowing a sensory awareness of the vast and subtle energy that gently holds your consciousness, like a mother holding its baby.

Similar to the space that surrounds all objects, this type of spaciousness is not an empty place, but rather the rich, fertile ground of existence itself. In the Buddhist tradition it is often called ‘emptiness’ or sunyata. I prefer one translator’s definition of ‘open-empty-being’ as it more clearly links it to our own sense of who we may be beyond ‘thinking-doing.’

Why is this connection with sunyata or ‘spacious-being’ important in the wisdom stage of life, especially for women?

Perhaps this is a perfect question for your daily meditation by asking the question and letting the spaciousness within answer. Because my answer might not be your answer, and although I will explore this topic further in another article, I’m confident that you might just discover something new and wonderful by allowing your ‘spacious-being’ to provide you with an answer. And if you feel inspired, please share any insights in a comment below!