January was a weirdly inspirational month, which has made me feel very hopeful about the coming year.
It began with one of my dearest friends finally finding herself in the place she has been holding out for for a very long time. When I say ‘holding out’, I really mean standing firm in a raging storm, getting beaten and weather-worn from every direction (for so long that most of us would have given up and gone back into the house).
When referring to similar experiences, I tend to use the picture of swimming upstream in ice-cold rapids. It is a feeling that anyone trying to do something that doesn’t comfortably sit within our society’s paradigm is all too familiar with.
When finally finding herself in the wonderful position where her values and beliefs have aligned with her work, she said to me “ I feel like I have never felt in my life, which is with my ego at its smallest and my mission at its highest and it feels great”. I felt the powerful truth in that. for once aligned with your truer purpose, there is no need for shouting to be heard, just an obvious path where all the thorny brambles have been chopped down!
I have long felt our current world is calling for those of us who are gentle ‘disruptors’ to rise. Her words motivated me to keep swimming up the rapids for there will be a tranquil stretch, still cold and demanding, but so completely worth the effort.
This tied in very nicely with the book I was reading about being at peace with our impermanence called ‘Staring at the sun’. In it, the psychotherapist Irvin Yalom offers up the idea of rippling as a singularly powerful counter to anxiety and distress around the transient nature of life and our desire not to be forgotten. Rippling refers to the, often unconscious, concentric circles of influence we create with our lives that may impact others for years, even generations. Namely, the effect we have on others then gets passed on to others, much like the ripples in a pond.
We unconsciously leave something of ourselves all over the place, offering a different kind of legacy than having a building named after us. This isn’t about preserving personal identity but leaving a trace of your life experience or piece of wisdom or feeling of comfort or deep friendship that you passed unknowingly onto others that allows them to attain ‘joy and virtue in life’. In the book he uses the example of a client going to her mother’s funeral and as she delivered the eulogy, she could physically sense the aspects of her mother that had rippled into all of her friends, who in turn would pass those ripples on to their children and children’s children.
It reminds me of an exercise we did in my shamanic training where we were reminded that decisions used to be made with an eye to the impact on the 7 generations to come, not what could be done in the next 4 years to ensure re-election!
And so in returning to the ‘gentle disruptors’, let’s talk about tea. As the monks did millennia ago when they began cultivating Tea trees in their monastery gardens, we believe that the Teas have their own energies and presence, that they are wise and sentient, having lived on this Earth for literally millions of years.
Importantly at this time in our human experience, they can help us open to deeper spaces within ourselves and shift our perspective back to a more truly human one, to begin to see in a different way. Our ATTIC Teas invitation has always been aimed at those who are also able to ‘allow this to be true’. Drinking these fine teas and experiencing everyday life with a broader, more interconnected lens, allows us to move through life with greater ease.
I wanted to finish this newsletter having reflected on what an inspiring month January was, with a quote from our dear friend and colleague Natalie, who has created Tea Attunements for each of our teas “The Earth needs new dreams and new dreamers to dream it”
Wishing you a wonderful February. Happy Lunar New Year of the Fire horse - it promises to be a bold and chaotic and brilliant year so hold on tight :) We look forward to speaking to you again in March.
Anne and Ric x