I was reminded this week how important it is on our development and healing path to set regular time aside from all the “work” this involves, and just allow ourselves to be held by Source.

As well as the benefits of slowing down our busy minds and active bodies, something very powerful happens when we feel and know ourselves to be properly held. We are able to let go, because even for a few moments we know absolutely that we don’t need to support ourselves. 

Think back to your own childhood or your children, and how a firm but gentle embrace can quieten and soften the most wound up, over-tired, and over-stimulated little one. Or how the soul who soldiers on bravely in the face of great pain and grief finally collapses and cries their heart out when offered the silent sanctuary of loving and understanding arms.

I learned this lesson in a profound way when I was guided a few years ago to change my meditation practice. I had been doing a lot of self-development and self-healing, and as you will know (see my previous article Heal yourself, heal the world) it can become exhausting. My Higher Self simply said that for the next six months I was to do nothing else in my meditation time except to enter the void. For me, this showed up as a conscious sinking down and into my centre (instead of reaching up and out through the higher chakras). I had no agenda, nothing to achieve, no goal to reach, no experience to grasp.

For the first week or so I found it quite challenging, but gradually I began to enjoy it immensely. I found that I wanted to shift my meditation time from the usual first thing in the morning to the dark of night-time. This rich and womb-like environment (the divine feminine aspect of Source) helped me to let go more and more, to sink into simply being more and more. Believe me, as an active Aries this space can feel pretty scary when you’re not used to it!

Once I became comfortable with this development, another shift took place. I became acutely aware that I wasn’t alone. I felt an all-pervading presence of such strength, such peace and love, wrapping itself tenderly around me and oh so gently nudging up beneath me. I felt totally supported and buoyed up it, unconditionally allowed to be myself within its cradling embrace. When I had fully softened into it, this presence crept within me too, whispering of replenishment and energetic sustenance, sighing the breath of life softly into latent potential and fertile seeds. I knew I didn’t have to do anything with any of this, I could just place it all in the safe hands of my invisible companion and leave it there.

I can’t begin to tell you what a difference this discipline brought to my life. It improved my ability to trust myself and Source, to feel accompanied and upheld in all my activities, to receive intuitive clarity and inspiration, to accept the now and the “me” of each moment, and it allowed me to drop much of the striving and trying we can all get caught up in when we’re learning to embody more light.

It doesn’t come naturally for many of us, this allowing ourselves to be held, but it brings incredible benefits. Even when you are at home with it, it’s a state we all need to immerse ourselves in every now and then. So my reminder has nudged me to record the meditation that helped me drop deep into the chalice of Source and Creation, in the humble hope it can do the same for you – watch out for it on my Youtube channel.

Semele Xerri

Credit: semelexerri.co.uk