As a spiritual traveller, I’ve always had a fascination with the journey we take from living a very human existence with all its trials and tribulations, to reaching that state of Love and Universal Consciousness that we call enlightenment.
We are all on this journey in our own way.
Whilst there’s no way to fast track our journey, there are practices that will help us to move there more effortlessly.
Freefalling is amongst the most powerful of these practices.
So what is freefalling?
Freefalling is the practise of letting go. It’s such a simple concept and so natural to our inner child, yet it can be so alien to our adult self.
Did you know that the Major Arcana of the Tarot Deck are a set of symbols and signposts which reflect our journey to enlightenment? In ancient times when these symbols were first created, it wasn’t safe for spiritual travellers to openly teach their wisdom. Instead, they hid these keys to knowledge in these pictures.
The very first card in the Major Arcana is “The Fool”. This card invites us to become like the fool, stepping forward along our path with an adventurous and wonder-filled spirit, unattached to what lies ahead.
It invites us to be in the present moment, like an innocent child who is captivated by what they see and hear and feel.
I remember friends once telling me about a movie they’d seen. In it, an Angel had come to Earth to experience being human. This Angel had just broken his arm. Instead of cursing or crying, the Angel was in a state of raptured fascination.
It approached the broken arm with utter wonder. “Look at this! I’ve broken my arm!”
That’s a very different response to what most humans would have.
As humans, we’d normally put a whole lot of judgements if this happened to us. We might wish we could turn back time and take a different route that didn’t involve that stumble. Or we might feel angry at ourselves, because we had an important event to go to which is now inconvenienced by a broken arm. Or we may feel fear around how severe the break is, and whether it will ever mend completely.
Why is freefalling so natural for a child, yet so foreign for many adults?
The answer lies in the concept of safety. At some point in our journey of “growing up”, we had an experience that challenged us so deeply, we stopped feeling safe.
Sometimes that experience is felt as a lack of physical safety, but just as often it’s a lack of emotional safety. But our body doesn’t recognise the difference between these two types of danger. To our body, being unsafe means we are in primal danger (about to be eaten by that tiger).
Our nervous system flips out of that beautiful parasympathetic state of flow, and into fight or flight. We’re in survival mode, and we go into our head to work out how to survive.
After that, our life becomes a dance between survival and flow. If we can’t survive, we can’t flow. So you can easily see which of these states usually gains the upper hand in our life and becomes the “norm” or default setting.
We learn to analyse our situation for the threats, and we turn to our mind for the answers. And somewhere in this process, through the power of repetition and practise, we begin to lose touch with ease and flow.
Where flow is our most natural state, it starts to become the outsider in our life. Instead, our mind and our thoughts dominate, and that’s where we turn to for help when we feel uncertain.
In our journey through life, we are like the ocean. We naturally expand and contract depending on what’s going on around us.
I want to give you an example of this from my own life. Ever since I was a child, I have loved singing. It’s been my happy place, a place where nothing else exists but the wonder of singing.
Being the adventurous and creative young girl that I was, I formed my own band. I invited my girlfriend to join me, and we called ourselves “The Gems”. I sewed beautiful white skirts for us both, with “The Gems” stitched across in sequins. Then I took my favourite Abba songs, and I choreographed them.
I was around 11 years old at this time, and still at Primary School. We performed our magical Abba musicals in the basement of my parent’s home, and sold tickets to the local kids. We’d have Abba playing in the background, and we’d sing and dance and create quite a spectacle.
I was in my element doing this, and I never questioned it. I was in the moment, focussed, in a state of joy and limitless self-expression.
This is what “expansion” feels like. It’s a state that feels so right and so safe that we grow bigger and bigger and bigger. Think of it like falling in love. Our heart is open and singing, and the world is full of ripe potential and endless possibilities.
It’s like the classic Australian children’s book “Magic Pudding” by Norman Lindsay, where no matter how many people enjoy a serving of this pudding, it never reduces in size. It’s a plentiful spring, which is abundant and experiences no lack.
But now we fast track a few years. I’m age 14, in my second year of high school, and I auditioned for a part in our school musical. I still remember standing there at the piano while the music teacher was playing the song, and I sang with all my heart. I poured all of my sincerity and intention into that song.
Instead of giving me a standing ovation, this teacher and one of the senior students started laughing at me.
Even to this day I’m not sure why they laughed.
Did I sing off tune? Was I so lost in my intense emotion for the lyrics that I looked ridiculous to them?
The impact this had on me couldn’t have been more violent. I was a young woman holding this incredible huge balloon that was as big as the Earth, filled with all my hopes and dreams.
Their laughter was the pin that burst it.
My expansion turned into contraction. I began speaking very softly at school, so softly that my teachers often couldn’t hear me. I stopped singing, carrying a shame for something that still remains invisible to me. .
A horrible thought entered my mind. Maybe I’d been a bad singer all along, and no one had the courage to tell me. Maybe I’d been a fool, dancing and singing in front of the neighbourhood kids, thinking I was this amazing singer.
Ever since that time, my head judges my singing. I’ve been to the best voice coaches I could find, all of whom praised the power of my voice, my vocal range, and the potential I have as a singer.
That one experience has controlled me when it comes to singing. I sing with glee in the bath when no one is there to hear me, but I contract with self-consciousness when there are other ears around. In the act of contracting, my vocal cords constrict, so of course my voice is impacted.
I tell you this story because it’s a wound that I’m still healing, and actively transforming. But aren’t we all? We all have wounds like this, where we oscillate between expansion and that unquenchable calling to do something wonderful, and the contraction of our fears and mental self-abuse.
When we are in contraction we are in our head. We’re judging ourselves, the situation and others. We’re trying to work out the best approach. We’re in a state of mental gymnastics.
When we’re in expansion, we are fearless warriors. We take spontaneous action, jumping at new opportunities, stepping effortlessly out of our comfort zone simply because we can. We are The Fool in the tarot deck.
Freefalling is the art of switching from contraction to expansion.
It’s the practise that takes us out of our heads (the mental realm), and into our Being (the Soul realm).
When we are in our Being, we are fully anchored in our body. We feel safe, and this safety enables us to be present in the moment, instead of stuck “outside of time” in our heads.
Freefalling takes us into that state of flow.
And when we are in flow, we are able to witness the perfect synchronicities of life as they unfold around us. Gift after gift lands at our feet. Everything resonates with harmony. And we feel ourselves so strongly. We feel where we are guided to be. We become in tune and sensitive to the needs of those around us, and the nudges from Spirit within. We are an open vessel for Spirit and Universal Love to flow through.
Freefalling is the antidote to controlling our life and other people.
But how do we get back to that natural state of freefalling, after we’ve become so accustomed to being in our mind that freefalling has become the alien here.
The answer is simple. We practise it. We treat it like a meditation. The purpose of meditation is ultimately to have a mind that is empty of thought. But the process of getting there takes practice. We find something to focus on (a mantra, a word, a candle, our breath), and each time we notice that our mind is chattering, we bring ourselves back to that point of focus.
The power lies in the practise. The gift embedded within this practise is the moments when our mind is empty and whole.
Freefalling is no different. Its power also lies in the practice, and its gift is the state of flow that we experience when we are actively freefalling.
When you feel yourself holding on, let go. Swami Sarasvati used to hold her fist in the air like a German sergeant. Then she’d open her fist as if she was releasing a hundred pigeons all at once, and she’d command her students to “Freefall!!!!”
I love that analogy. It helps me when I’m holding on.
But it’s not the only tool we have to help. You’ve probably heard the saying, “Let go and let God”. This one statement can shift us from a state of thinking we are in control of our life and our destiny, to one where we surrender attachment and judgment and their associated emotions, and we just trust.
And when I need that extra bit of help, when my need to control has gotten out of control and my hands have become like frozen claws from hanging on so tightly to what I think my life needs to look like, I reach for a very special essential oil.
Surrender oil is my antidote to control. I put a few drops on my shoulders, and its beautiful aroma reminds me to take a deep breath and simply trust, knowing that there’s a bigger picture here, and my need to be in my mind and control is taking me in the opposite direction to happiness.
That’s the simple truth of it.
When we are in our mind, we are trying to work out how to make our life right so we can be happy. We are not in our heart, so we can’t feel joy and love. We are not listening to Spirit or feeling the nudges and helping hand that is always there for us.
Freefalling takes us to that place where we are able to feel and experience the wonder that’s all around us. In this state of Spirit, we are led to that place of enlightenment in the most efficient and effortless of ways. We still need to traverse our personal lessons and grow from them, but at least we avoid unnecessary dead-ends and toil and trouble along the way.
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