There is a battle going on right now, a battle for our minds.

I reckon this isn’t news to you. Anyone on the spiritual path will be aware that many things in the world pull us away from what really matters.

But now, we seem to be reaching a critical point.

In the afterglow of Space to Emerge, our spring woodland retreat held deep in the bluebell woods over Beltane, I’ve found myself reflecting deeply over the past couple of weeks.

For four days, I disappeared into the woods, completely immersed in nature, community and ceremony.
Then, when I returned home, It struck me the moment I drove my van onto my driveway, what had happened over that weekend that was incredibly precious.

I realised I had been completely present with where I was, what I was doing, and who with, for over 100 hours.

I had been completely present for what I would consider to be an extended period of time.

Think back to a time when you were completely in the zone, with nothing else entering your mind other than what you were doing in that moment, with the people you were with.

To be truly present like this is a real gift in today’s world, isn’t it?

And it’s a real luxury, in a world that is set up to distract us.

This realisation reminded me of an interview I watched a few weeks before with the musician Prince. He was speaking about the internet when it was just beginning to really take hold. He said:

“There is a war going on, a war for our minds. Use the internet, but don’t let it use you.”

We’re 27 years on now from when Prince spoke those words. I’ve had the internet for almost half of my life. I don’t think any of us could have imagined what was to come.

I believe the control over our minds is the biggest threat to humanity - bigger than climate change even. And the thing is, it is completely within our control to fix.

We are in control of our own minds. It is one of the few things that is entirely ours and entirely within our ability to reclaim.

In a world that seems increasingly disempowering, I find that extremely empowering.

Mountain message

I thought I had a pretty good handle on managing my mind and controlling the external influences that might be impacting it.

I haven’t had a TV for over 15 years, and I stopped listening to the news or reading newspapers when I was in my late twenties. But two summers ago, when I had found the courage to climb my first mountain alone and was celebrating that huge moment of achievement at the summit, I realised something.

As I noticed, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed rather than staring at the incredible view of the Yorkshire Dales in front of me, I realised I was addicted to social media.

Over the next few months, I took steps to address this, and I am very happily on the other side now with all the benefits of focus that come with it.

But last year, when I was walking in the Yorkshire Dales for two weeks, in one continuous loop, climbing the 30 mountains of the Yorkshire Dales, the insight I gained into how my mind has been manipulated and controlled reached a whole new level.

To explain, I’m going to bring in the work of psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist.

Dr Iain McGilchrst is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher, and author. He worked for 30 years on psychiatric wards and specialised in the difference between the left and the right brain.

What is unusual is that he didn’t begin by specialising in this one area. He came from a literary background before becoming a medical doctor in his late twenties. Later, he was elected as a Prize Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, where he was given the rare freedom for seven years to study whatever he liked.

What emerged from that period of inquiry was someone able to bridge science, philosophy, psychology, literature and spirituality in a way very few people can. His work on the divided brain and the impact it has had on modern society has become some of the most important thinking of our time.

After retiring around a decade ago, he set about writing what would become his life’s work. It took him ten years to complete and has since developed something of a cult following. The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, is an extraordinary piece of work.

In it, he speaks about how many of the problems in the modern world have arisen through an overreliance on left-brain thinking. Both sides of the brain are essential. The left hemisphere is the quick-acting, grasping, analytical part. The right is broader, more intuitive, relational and ultimately wiser in how it sees the world.

McGilchrist argues that our whole Western culture has become dominated by left-brain thinking: logic, categorisation, control, efficiency. The left hemisphere has become the master.

But this is the wrong way round. The right hemisphere should lead, with its wider and more connected way of seeing, and the left should come in afterwards to carry things out.

This is not how most of us have been conditioned to live.

If we are going to find a new way of living on Earth, if we are going to find our way back home, then we need to move more deeply into right-brain ways of being.

That means stopping, stilling ourselves, reading poetry, listening to music, finding regular moments of awe and immersing ourselves in nature.

It means learning to relate to the world again, rather than simply analysing it. To slow down enough to actually experience life, instead of constantly trying to control, categorise and optimise it.

The modern world trains us to live almost entirely in the left hemisphere - to rush, to consume information endlessly, to think our way through life.

But healing, meaning, beauty and connection are found elsewhere. They are found in presence.

Finding beauty

During my mountain pilgrimage, I began noticing when my left brain was leading, and what happened when I allowed the right brain to come more fully into the foreground.

My left brain was focused on getting to the top of each mountain and then back down again to the end destination. It wanted to march on as quickly and efficiently as possible.

But when I gave the pilgrimage a different objective - to notice beauty, to write about it, and then read those words aloud to the spirit of the mountain in ceremony at the summit - my whole experience changed.

I slowed down. I chose longer paths that took me to more beautiful places.

I still reached my destination by tea time, albeit several hours later than I otherwise would have. But I had experienced something completely different up there.

This approach changed me deeply, both within myself and in my relationship with the mountains. As I walked, I found myself praising each one. I was no longer a tourist there to ‘bag’ them and tick off a goal. I was a poet, entering into conversation with the spirit of the place and offering my appreciation.

As I moved through each day, I noticed the battle within my own mind between the left hemisphere that wanted to push on - because that is how I have been trained - and another way of being altogether.
We are taught to focus on the endpoint and move towards it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Everything must have a point, a purpose, a measurable outcome.

But the mountains were teaching me something else entirely: that meaning is found in the wandering. in beauty, in relationship and in presence.

Into the woods

Space to Emerge is quite different to a solo pilgrimage around the mountains of the Yorkshire Dales for two weeks.

For four days over Beltane, I submerge myself in the spring woods with 150 people.

Jason and I have been running this retreat for ten years now, and it has grown into something quite extraordinary. I would describe it as Otherworldly and not of this world, or at least, not of the world I was born into.

Here, in a private woodland overlooking Lake Windermere in Cumbria, life feels very different.

We are completely surrounded by nature, and I would argue, one of the most stunning landscapes in the world: an English bluebell woodland.

This place has been nurtured and cared for by Barry, the woodland owner, for more than three decades. It is full of sunny glades, mountain streams and waterfalls, birdsong, and at Beltane, bluebells.

There are sacred places scattered throughout the woods. We have a yew grove, a stone circle, and Mother Earth altar, and each year we draw a seven-circuit labyrinth, an ancient pattern created by a very different kind of mind from the modern one, over 3,500 years ago.\

The people who come to spend those four days in the woods with us really care. Yes, everyone is in their own process of healing and reflection. Some people are right on the edge, coming to an event like this. But there is a genuine holding between people. A depth of care that, from my experience, feels increasingly rare in the modern world.

After studying the work of Dr Iain McGilchrist, I realised that Space to Emerge is almost perfectly set up to help people shift into their right brain. I believe this is one of the reasons it is so transformational.

For one weekend, we leave the left-brain world behind - a world built on consumerism, competition, speed and endless distraction - and move into something else entirely. We move into a right-brain world rooted in creativity, nature, ceremony, dance, music, poetry, reflection and stillness.

Everyone’s experience is unique as there is no single programme. We offer more than 25 workshops, and people shape the weekend in the way they need to. It is a very easy place to stay quietly on the edges. It is also a very easy place to step right into the centre.

For one weekend a year, we come together and create a different kind of world.

I once read that it takes around 200 people to create a real community, and I can see that now. It might sound like a lot of people, but honestly, you wouldn’t know there were that many there. The woods hold everyone beautifully. There are countless quiet places to disappear to, and many of the workshops hold just eight or ten people, allowing for real depth and connection.

The making of a happy human

Last summer. Whilst I was walking those 30 mountains in the Yorkshire Dales, I learnt something else profound from Dr Iain McGilchrist.

He speaks about the three things human beings need in order to be happy. They are:

Hearing this blew me away, because this is exactly what The Way of the Buzzard, our online Mystery School, and Space to Emerge do.

Jason and I didn’t consciously set out to create those things. We simply followed the guidance from our spirit guides. But this is what emerged.

And I can honestly say, for me, achieving these three things in my own life has led to a happy Nicola.

At Space to Emerge, I attended a storytelling workshop led by the lovely Melissa, who came all the way from Perth, Western Australia, to be with us.

We explored the idea of longing and were invited to reflect on our younger selves and ask what they longed for most. Then we wrote a postcard back to them.

It moved me to tears.

Because I realised that Space to Emerge is exactly what that younger Nicola had been longing for all along.

A place to be truly seen and accepted. A place immersed in nature. A place filled with like-minded people. A place where I no longer felt different. A place where my mind became clear enough to hear the answers I had been searching for. A place where I belonged.

I’ve left carrying that feeling within me. I feel different. And the craziness of the modern world - the thing I know so many people are being knocked about by right now - feels even further away from my reality than before.

It is almost as though I feel untouchable.

Nomad energy

Two days before the Winter Solstice last December, Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to Earth, at the time of the new moon. It had been travelling towards our solar system for at least 11 million years, passing through on our ecliptic plane and moving by several of the planets, and our sun.

My ears pricked up when I noticed the timing and alignment of it all. When a synchronicity happens like this – its approach closets to the Earth being at the time of the new moon and Winter Solstice, I take notice. I renamed it Interstellar Nomad, as throughout history nomads have been known to bring in a different energy and be the catalyst for change.

During those seven weeks between Samhain and the Winter Solstice, after it passed the sun and moved towards its closest approach to Earth, for the first time in my life, I felt certain that we are being looked after, and that everything is going to be OK. I never thought I would feel the emotion of hope - a real hope for humanity - but I do.

Our interstellar nomad friend seemed to bring a different energy into the world. And right now, as I write this blog, the Earth is passing through the region where 3I/ATLAS erupted back in October, jetting six enormous plumes of material from its surface.

I’m sure scientific papers will eventually tell us more about what was released, although that will take time, given how science works and how long these things take. But we already know that asteroids can act as seed carriers. 3I/ATLAS came from a world far, far away, and brought its energy with us and left it here with us.

Things in our world are undoubtedly changing. The shake-up that has long been spoken about in prophecies is unfolding right before our eyes. If you pay attention, even with half an eye on the world, it can feel like frightening stuff.

But I choose to look towards the world that is forming in its wake. I choose to imagine what is possible, and hold in my vision how good things could really become, and then walk in that direction.

Our woodland retreat, Space to Emerge, gives me a glimpse of that world. For four days, I not only get a window into that world, but also get to immerse myself in it. I get to live it.

And when I come back out again and drop back into everyday life, I know deep in my bones what is waiting further down the path as more and more people wake up.

That gives me hope beyond measure.

Hare

The day before Space to Emerge began, Jason and I were in Fellfoot Wood making the final preparations.

Jason headed up towards the top of the woodland to draw the labyrinth. Each year, we choose a sunny glade right on the edge of the woods for it, beside a stone wall and overlooking a meadow. A stream trickles alongside. It was the perfect spring day. Soft shades of light and dark dappled the woodland floor.

As Jason stood there, sizing up where the centre of the labyrinth would go before he began drawing, something caught his eye in the understory nearby.

A Hare.

He or she moved closer and slowly walked right across the glade in front of him, exactly where the labyrinth was about to be drawn.

The Hare stayed there for several minutes before bouncing off deeper into the woodland, later to be spotted again by a couple of our crew members who were busy putting up marquees.

In our Mystery School, we’ve worked a lot with Hare over the years, and it is one of my own spirit guides, so I know its energy well.

Because Hare cannot be tamed, it symbolises freedom. Hare is a reminder that we all have a wild nature within us, and that our souls are calling out to run free. Hare moves quickly, twisting and turning at great speed. Its energy is about overcoming fear and moving towards our dreams without allowing anything to stand in our way. Through Hare, we can turn fear into faith, and doubt into opportunity.

In that moment, this felt like such a significant message for us at Space to Emerge, because ultimately, that is what the spiritual work is about.

It is about each of us finding our way back to freedom. Stripping away the conditioning. The shoulds, the have tos, and the musts. Learning instead how to quieten ourselves enough to hear our soul speak. Because our soul is always guiding us towards what is true, towards what we came here to do and towards true happiness.

As I said at the start of this blog, there is a battle going on for our minds. And perhaps the most important work any of us can do is to learn how to reclaim sovereignty over our own minds. Because in doing so, we begin to find our way back to personal freedom.

It isn’t easy. As I said earlier, it’s a war. There are forces in the world with a vested interest in us remaining distracted, disconnected and exhausted.

Space to Emerge offers a pause from all of that. A chance to come back to nature, back to each other, back to ourselves. To remember what is truly important. To find our way home again. To remember what it feels like to belong.

This was always the invitation. It is why we had the idea to create Space to Emerge in the first place - to find out what it would feel like to run away to the woods with like-minded people.

And we discovered the answer by returning year after year.

In many ways, it feels like we are creating a different world there. Or perhaps not a different world at all. Perhaps it is simply a remembering. A return to something ancient within us. A way of living that existed before industrialisation, before consumerism, before the few controlled the many.

It feels like a homecoming and a path back to freedom.

In our closing meeting after the retreat, Barry, the woodland owner, commented on the video Jason had captured of the Hare crossing the labyrinth glade. He told us it was the first Hare he had ever seen at Fellfoot Wood.

Barry has cared for this woodland for more than thirty years.

That is quite something.

In shamanism, when an animal presents itself like this, it is a sign that needs paying attention to.

Perhaps that is why spaces like this matter so much now. Because they enable us to be truly present for long enough to remind us what it feels like to be human again.

I believe more and more people are longing for this now - a different way of living and a different way of being together. And I think that longing is leading somewhere important.

It is guiding us home.

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