Day 35 - Enchantment

Boyd Varty — Wed, 06 May 2020 02:00:00 +0200

I think of this experience as the slow removal as a shell. As the days went by I felt more myself. I felt the creativity coming back in, co-creating the story with nature. My energy levels return to new highs. My relationship with beauty was revived. I feel like so much of what I was trying to do before was trying to tune out, now I am trying to tune back in.

I felt I was absorbing tons of information but my minds own capacity for dynamic movement was slowing. It’s like a fasted state, you know you are much much leaner. Things I used to eat I can no longer touch. When I eat something that I shouldn’t I get an instant no. After a long run I will crave exactly the kind of salt I need. I feel that with my mind. I relish the stillness and the silence now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m watching myself and sometimes I get into bursts of frustration and rage.

In some way what I’m learning is that mystics went to nature as a set of bars. In nature you reset the bars of harmony, stillness and present. It shows you where you were, it shows you where you could be. It plants a flag. Stillness produces right action. Solitude teaches you about connection. Simplicity gives you more. Everything you want with the world is inward.

How often do you meet someone who is enchanted with life? Its pretty rare isn’t it. Out here I feel like I’m touching that at moments. Utter enchantment.

The bateleur is a long standing totem of my family. The spirit of guidance. The ways we naturally make meaning when we stand close to nature sustains us. Our relationship with life itself comes to life. That’s enchanting.

I climbed high onto a single large boulder on a hillside and watched the land below me. My mind was empty of thoughts and watched with empty perception. All I could do was take it all in. I was actually there. That’s what it takes to be enchanted…to actually be there.

Eckhart Tolle says that there are 3 levels of enlightenment.
1. Acceptance
2. Enthusiasm
3. And I forgot the third one

I spent five weeks thinking about how long it was to be alone and now I have five days left wishing it was longer.

Here is some homework, free write for at least a page on the following. Where do I see beauty? Where in life am I enchanted? What makes me feel the most alive? When was the last time I was totally on track? Who really sees me? What’s my mission? What do I complain about? Who do I complain about? What am I doing out of a sense of duty?

If you bring back to life enchantment in yourself you can awaken it within other people in your community. Enchantment is a type of activism.

Connect with Boyd Varty:
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Day 14 - Compass Not Culture

Boyd Varty — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 11:00:00 +0200

One month of solitude to go…until what? The idea I could finish this experience is becoming somewhat absurd to me.

Touch wood my camp has not yet been ransacked by baboons. Everyday I bathe in this gratitude and I would like you all to put this all on your gratitude at the top.

After washing a pot in the river I came face to face with a teenage elephant.
Communication has been well established. An amazing cast of characters lives out here.]

Harmony is when, by being yourself, you form part of the greater whole. A Shaman once told me that what we are trying to do as we live is balance our harmony with the intelligence of life. We stop trying to live well and we are lived. Our path and purpose comes through us by being who we most naturally are. And to look at any of the animals it just takes you there. I am in this tree to find my harmony.

Inner work has two movements, the first is a clearing out and becoming aware of all the things that are not really you. Patterns that come from trauma, social conditioning, how you needed to be to be liked, to belong, your ideas about what made you valuable. Ideas from your culture. What you discover is a lot of who you thought you are is just conditioned response.

So if I aint that then what…who am I? There are no signposts here.
You have to let your essence express itself, become a tracker, find your medicine way. But this is a deep challenge.

Carl Jung has this idea that the unconscious will play out in your life until it’s made conscious. That’s why certain patterns repeat over and over in people lives until they gain awareness around what’s driving it.

It seems to me that you choose to do inner work or life will choose for you. If life chooses for you it will be much harder.

My work today is on the tracks of a leopard which cut across a sandy patch of ground.

I’m alone at sunset. Into the Wild Journal Entry: Happiness only real when shared. I don’t know if I believe it but I understand the sentiment now. On his path the leopard suddenly calls. I’m asking myself what is my work? What can I learn from Londolozi and the leopards. Certainly my work is to let myself be seen, completely, maybe not by everyone but by someone. That is a true challenge.

Connect with Boyd Varty:
Website | https://boydvarty.com/
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/
Twitter | https://twitter.com/BoydVarty

Find out more about Londolozi
Website | https://www.londolozi.com/en/
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/
Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Track Your Life with Boyd Varty - Episodes Tagged with “Harmony”

Day 35 - Enchantment

Day 14 - Compass Not Culture