As I embrace all parts of myself I learn how to be both, and that has been very painful, to say the least. It’s like a continuous punch in the ego mind, which makes my false-self scream louder and louder, demanding attention and a life of co-dependency.

We are not programmed to see beyond duality, beyond the threshold of fear… So, it took me a long time, a lot of motivation, pain and tears to be able to change.

But, now I know that I am both the dark and the light, the mother and the wild woman, the maiden and the wise, the one complete and the one incomplete. I am everything and I am nothing. Then as the water from the ocean touches my naked feet, I feel the energy of my soul connecting with all that is.

Whilst waking up to the peace within, I forgive myself for everything. I forgive myself for having allowed me to drift away for so long. For being so far, so distant, so centered on my ego, so attached, disconnected and unhappy. I forgive myself for the times I was hard on me in a way I would never let anyone else be. I can only say I feel deep compassion for my ego, for all the times it has screamed at me that I was not good enough and that I deserved better than what I had.

I started to ask myself… Better than what? If at any point in time I decide to take more or less than what someone thinks is best for me, that’s my problem, and it should not be a point of concern to my ego or to anyone else. I wish I had known this before – it would have saved me from a lot of pain.

All I know, in fact, is that as I have learned to become more and more vulnerable, I also became stronger and more powerful. There is an awakening and a quickening coming from the heart once you know how it works. As I walk side by side with my shadow I see duality disappearing and I become all that I am. No more fear between all the versions of me – I am one.

I Just realised that there is a seagull in front of me. She looks cute. I have been walking for so long, lost in my heart and in my thoughts that I did not realise that I am in the middle of thousands of seagulls, but only this one grabbed my attention. What is she thinking, I wonder?She is helping me to focus somehow. It would be nice if she could read my mind and stay around a little longer. Perhaps we could even be friends…

Ah! Hold that thought! That thought – that expression of you that you are channelling through a process of simplification to make it easier to understand. Hold that thought – suspend that image that crosses your mind and dives into all the details surrounding all you can see. Then yes, focus a bit more and get the message you are looking to achieve. Layer by layer, do not stop yourself from knowing. Give a little time for that magic to happen within you.

Hold that thought – do not allow yourself to be sad without knowing the reason why. Only when you know you can feel beyond your ego, you can really feel the beating of your heart and the pulsation of your soul within your body.

Hold that thought – In all the different states of being, there’s only one you. When you are whole you can speak your truth in all authenticity. Nature always gets its way, through time and space, so do not be anxious about it but, hold that thought before it slips away from your mind! Now it’s the time to surrender with full heart. The mind can be at rest waiting for the new energy that will command what to do and how to do moving forward.

Hold that thought – Love is all that is and until you discover it, it’s your mind at service and your ego protecting you from being you. Intelligence from the heart must be prioritised over the intelligence of the mind.

Hold that thought, breathe and keep walking!

It was a cold crisp weather before the daybreak, but now a pleasant breeze runs by the seashore and all of us look at the waves as if we have lost something that only the sea could return.

And yes, waves are slowly crumbling in the sand, bringing with them long lost memories. But suddenly I feel something breaking the rhythm. It’s a woman walking all alone on the beach.

It’s a fairly good distance between us, but I can sense her steps. She is walking alongside her shadow, and both of them, her and the shadow, know that space and time interchanges continuously between them. Step by step she is getting closer but I take the decision of not moving any of my feathers out of the way. Whilst briefly closing my eyes, I patiently wait for her to get closer.

Interesting! Either she is deciding where to go, or the shadow sometimes takes the lead.

One is not walking without the other as both of them know that a divorce with your own self is not possible.

Based on my various observations of human behaviour, I have concluded that it is unusual for them to realise that they have shadows and that others have their own shadows as well. Perhaps because they are used to walking with their shadows, they don’t pay attention anymore, or simply because they completely forgot about others.

Humans forget their shadows and others so easily!

Then from time to time, some of them decide that they need to change their lives and embrace once and for all the existence of their shadow. That is always a very revealing, enlightening and important moment. Today it happened to her, I can sense that too.

She is wearing a red dress, her long curly brown hair is free with the wind. Walking on the sandy beach, in a straight line towards me, she is distracted from space and time but not from herself.

I must confess that I am pleasantly surprised that a human decided to walk this distance with thousands of us in between. It’s not that we are going to hurt her, but there’s too many of us and she is only one.

Now, it’s time. I need to move so she can pass. We all do it slowly so she doesn’t get scared, but I decided to look at her straight in the eyes whilst giving her passage. I want her to feel the space and the time, right here, right now. She is looking back at me and there is a shy moment of silence that I recognise in any circumstance.

She is awakening.

She turns her head over her shoulder to look back and then she looks at me again. I can see that only now she realises that she is in the middle of thousands of seagulls and there is no human soul nearby to help – if we, for some reason, decide to attack her. Which we will not of course, but what if…

What will she do now, I wonder? We were all very cautious and gave her passage for over 1 km and now she is exactly in the middle of us! To turn back would take as much time as to continue walking until the end of the beach. I hope she doesn’t panic, but I can see that she is thinking fast about what to do, a lot of different thoughts and emotions are passing through her eyes, and between fear and confidence she takes a deep breath and continues her walk.

I like her!

Time for me to go for a walk with my shadow and discover more about my new human friend. Seagulls see their shadows all the time when flying close to the water.

We know that shadows are more than simple reflections, they are a side of us that we can’t hide from ourselves once we are awakened.

I hope that one day she acknowledges my existence as I do hers. I wonder what her name is and what she is going to do next.

Bullying always existed but I believe it became particularly dominant as a social activity with generation X (individuals born between 1961 and 1981, which is my cohort). This is the generation that had to learn how to deal with the baby boomers who are a very self-centered confident generation, but this is also the generation that learned how to deal with the following generations more digital driven, such as millennials.

Generation X was raised alone, as in most cases both parents were working, in many cases parents were divorcing. As a result of the deep social transformation that was taking place, this generation was very peer oriented. Being part of something, having friends was of the utmost importance and so bullying had really devastating effects and long lasting scars for this group of people.

We all know what happens when we don’t love ourselves. This generation was not loved and was quickly forgotten. I am glad to see that most of us moved on and learned how to deal with it, perhaps our story can now serve as an inspiration for other generations suffering from social bullying. Perhaps some of us are still lost.

There are at least four main categories of bullying; physical, verbal, social and cyberbullying. I am particularly interested now in the social bullying where ‘generational bullying’ fits.

By identifying ‘generational bullying’, I am hoping that you can see all of this in a different perspective and transform what can be seen as something negative, into something extremely powerful for leadership. Vulnerability in leadership is so important and if you are part of generation X as well you will perhaps know what I am talking about.

In ‘generational bullying’ there is a lot of comparisons being made. It happens when you get compared to your older brother or sister, or when you get compared to your younger brother or sister. It can be a comparison between you and someone else, close or distant from your family, such as an uncle, a cousin, a friend, a friend of a friend. The point is you are always in the position where someone else from a different generation performs better than you on something identified as important by someone you care about, and no matter how hard you try you can never live up to the expectations so you decide and program yourself to think that you are inferior to that someone else you are being compared with.

This can decrease your levels of motivation to try new things, take risks and be fearless about making your voice heard. If you have transformed this experience into something positive in your life you became an entrepreneur in some shape or form, you know that you depend on yourself to make things happen and you know that you do not depend on other people’s opinion about you and about what you do and how well you do it.

No matter how close these people are from you, you follow your inner guidance and your instinct and you do not follow other people’s voices, opinions, judgements and criticisms.

If you have never identified comparison as a form of bullying and still believe that you are not good enough then just look inside you, what is your heart telling you? Follow your inner guidance and get surprised with all that you are and all that you can be. Don’t follow my words, follow your heart.

She was a pleasant person to be with, but she had this entertaining bad habit of walking fast whilst strongly waving her arms up and down, leaving everyone else around her with the impression that something important was not being taken care of and that she was the one going to save humanity of something. People could roll their eyes about it, but deep inside they admired her attitude. Yes, she could give that impression just by the way she was walking and looking straight ahead of her. She always looked like she knew exactly what she had to do, by when and to whom with what and why.

My dear, what happened to you? Have you forgotten about all this? You used to be so passionate about life. Where is all that fire now?

Have you forgotten about the time when we were kids and everyone was deeply impressed about our storytelling abilities? Of course, you were the one shining all the time, I was just there to guarantee that you had a secondary character supporting you.

The main stage was completely yours.

What happened to the girl that was waking up in the middle of the night to write plans and adventures in her journal? I don’t know you anymore.

It started with the sudden disappearance of hope. You changed your habits and yes perhaps I changed mine as well. Perhaps I should have been more present for you.

But hey, you need to escape your own mental trap!

Imagine a blindfold covering your eyes and a pair of silver swords by your side. One is on the left side and the other one on your right side.

Now, despite the fact that you can’t see anything, you sense something coming towards you and because you are blindfolded you get confused and perhaps even afraid.

You know you have two silver swords by your side but you have no idea of what is coming towards you. What if it’s something nice? What if it is not? You have no idea, you don’t know, so most likely your instinct will tell you that you need to defend yourself. You were attacked so many times that now you can only think of attacking back in order to defend yourself. That instinct of yours is not your inner guidance, I am your inner guidance.

See, and this is where I get really confused. If your hands are free to pick up one of the swords why not just use your hands to take off the blindfold then?

How many times have we chosen to attack instead of trying to understand what was coming towards us? We prefer to excuse ourselves, and our attacking behaviour, because we didn’t know better at the time. Because based on previous experience this is all we could do…

We were defending our space, and now that we have defended ourselves so well there is nothing else coming towards us because we made everything and everyone aware that coming close means a cut of a sword.

So are you still feeling alone, despite all the people around you? I wonder why!

Dear child, remove your blindfold and open your eyes, it’s going to be all alright. You just need to trust and define your own framework. Don’t wait too long to make the obvious choice, and the obvious choice is you.

Our friends, family, acquaintances, plants, animals, our objects of desire, the objects that we collect and don’t know why, music, flavours, smells, textures, and colours. Our enemies, the moments in our life where we were left behind, the moments in our life when we had the courage and sometimes the regret to leave someone behind.

Sometimes we have realised how much pain we have inflicted on someone, sometimes we were just too occupied thinking of something else and didn’t pay attention. Sometimes people made us go through excruciating heartbreaks, sorrow, grief, sadness, and tribulations, sometimes it was only our turn to be wrong.

Memories change with time, ours and others because in one way or another we have learned to forget what once may have caused us discomfort, pain and tears. That is our way to start again.

When we need to move on, we instinctively know that the place we are in today may not be enough for us tomorrow and for the day after and still, it is so difficult for us to forget certain memories, although we know that when we forget them we are allowed to dream again and even have the chance to do everything better next time.

As time passes by, our capacity to renew, forget, move on and create new memories becomes more and more difficult, more and more slow. We start thinking it’s too late for us to forget, it’s too late for us to start again, and then one day we are eventually right. But, does everything end in the end? Are we designed to lose everything? Memories, body, experiences, knowledge, energy, soul? Do we forget that we have a chance to do everything better next time? Could we learn to do it better next time even with our memories from the past?

When and where is the point that divides our past from our beginning to design a better future? It’s the conscience that the only thing that is real is the present moment, here and now. Everything else can be forgotten, everything that could be is not important at all. Living the present moment gives us the opportunity to awaken and act on our lives, take command, follow our heart, design our story, chase our free will and detach from everything that is blocking us outside and inside.

For a brief moment, allow yourself to live in the present moment and be amazed by the potential within yourself. You will then attract good things for you and be able to change your future, reconnect with your true essence and forget, forgive yourself and others, and move on.

Once or twice in a lifetime, there are events that will change the way you think about everything. Sometimes we don’t have the courage to act on that, and so we keep ourselves as slaves of our past and cowards of our future. There are infinite possibilities for our future, and our past may not be exactly how we remember it. Although, the present is here and now, and we can do something about it.

Once you find the present moment, you can start exploring beyond time and space. Beyond them, there are portals that can take you to different worlds, and upgrade your mind. If you chose to evolve from a simple existence of survival to an existence of controlled knowledge, most of your problems will disappear. You will be living in a more advanced frequency of your energy and therefore you will be able to do things you otherwise would consider impossible.

There is magic in our world, and it is within each one of us, beyond pain and limits, in our words, in our thoughts, in what we do and in what we don’t do. Our love for others is used sometimes as an excuse to live our lives attached to the past and worried about the future. Love is here and now and true love is unconditional, it simply exists. To feel love for others you need to love yourself first and how can you do that when you are worried with the money you don’t have, with the friends you can’t stand anymore, with the partner you don’t wish to sleep with anymore, with the job that makes you feel tedious, empty and incomplete?

Take a moment to think about you. This is a journey for yourself and sometimes with the help of others, but remember in the end it is just you. We are individuals, walking our own individual path. Love can take us much further, higher, and deeper but we are not someone else’s life. We are our life, here and now, alone with ourselves, exploring and learning until the day we finally decide to forget and move on, leaving our body behind, and all the others we met in our path. Yes, we will forget everything eventually, and they will also forget about us. That doesn’t mean though that our story ends here, it may, in fact, start from this point again and go round and round in circles.

To remember something we have long forgotten may be the exact guide we need at some point in time. However, if we had that memory all along we wouldn’t probably be in the situation where we had to remember and so the positive effect of recovering a memory would be lost. The incompleteness of our existence is the fuel that keeps us going on, searching for more and better. It is good to remember what we have forgotten when what we have forgotten is exactly what we need to remember, so we can live a better life here and now. The information comes to us when it’s needed if we are living in the right frequency.

Not all portals are the same. They will appear depending on the level of conscience we reach at a certain point in time. To open a portal there must exist a way in from somewhere that leads to a way out somewhere else. Portals are usually one direction only, this means that once you go in, you may not be able to come back through the same portal to the point you were before.

So, be careful and brave when opening a portal. There are many of them, explore as many as you can, as long as they are within your inner truth and your heart tells you that it’s the right thing to do. In case of doubt find the silence within you and place yourself here and now. The decision will be the correct one no matter which one you take in the end.

In the end, there is no end after all.

She was all that everyone expects of a woman.
She was a lady, not a mistress.
She was respectful and she was respected,
She was a role model for society,
She lived a perfect life,
She had the perfect husband,
She had the perfect kids,
She was the best at her yoga class,
She always had beautiful clothes and very good taste.
She had her standards well defined!
She even had a part-time job at a local charity,
She was so educated,
She was so generous towards her family and friends,
Occasionally she would spend time learning something new,
Like painting with watercolors, playing music in the family’s piano or knitting a scarf using a difficult stitch.
She was impressive but not easily impressed.
She had her standards so well defined!
She cooked very well,
She had everything clean at home,
She was always so pleasant,
Never confused, never confusing.
She was so predictable, so consistent,
Day after day,
Week after week,
Month after month,
Year after year.
Every time she was made aware of deviations in her perfect world, she was fast and precise on how to correct them.
Her standards were indeed very well defined!
She was in control,
She was aware of everything about everyone around her,
She was powerful and utterly unhappy, but she was all that everyone expects of a woman.
She was a lady, not a mistress.
But then there was a mistress, and then another one, and then the one that she could blame for her unhappiness.
He left home,
Her kids were older and independent.
Her standards were of no use anymore.
She lost her purpose in life,
She didn’t know how to reinvent herself.
She didn’t want anyone to know that her life was falling apart.
She realised she has no friends after all.
She didn’t understand how life played a trick on her.
Her happiness was completely dependent on others and not on herself.
After everything she did for everyone, she was abandoned.
There had to be something she could do to take back control!
She tried,
She tried harder,
She tried even harder, and all she got was the opposite effect of what she desired.
More and more isolation, loneliness, sadness.
She had no valid standards anymore!
She had to change,
She didn’t know how,
She was so lost and scared.
She hurt others to get their attention back… it didn’t work,
She hurt herself to get their attention back… it didn’t work,
She decided to free herself from her standards!
She cried, she almost died.
Then she started to connect with other women in a similar path.
She found her own truth, her inner knowing,
She healed her body, her mind, her soul.
She forgot about standards and started living the present moment!
She remembered that she is wild,
She forgot about perfection, and she became a role model for her community.
She started to live her own life, not the life of others,
She became more unpredictable, less domesticated.
She let go of attachment and co-dependency,
She started to love herself,
She was now able to love others as well.
She doesn’t care if she is what everyone expects of a woman.
She is not afraid of the dark anymore, because it was in the darkness of her soul that she found herself,
And she will never be lost again.