Track Your Life with Boyd Varty

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/ Once in the far north of Kruger national park's pafuri area I found a clear pool of spring water rising out the earth. The pool was surrounded by three huge ebony trees and a giant eagle owl flew out from under the deeply shaded branches as I approached. The presence of the owl adding some intangible sense of spirit to the place. The water was crystal clear and bubbling happily out the earth. As I knelt to put my lips to the water I felt like I was being let into some great secret. My body took on the shape of an animal drinking lips to the water……and an archetypal connection millions of years old ran like a current through me. I like the wild animals of that wild place I was drinking from the secret source. I think to know wild water in these times is the kind of thing we have forgotten to even know we want. The way it runs into you full of the codes of the minerals and plants of that place……wild water is full of information that attunes your body with its energy. Unbottled, untreated…….having never known a pipe or a cistern wild water is full of spirit. I'm going to talk in a very shamanic way about how to get to know a river. I'm going to talk from inside the mythological way to share the way I make meaning of the world around me. I might say it like this Once upon a time a man lived in a tree by a river. Far off to the west he could see the high mountains in which the river rose. The man longed to know the spirit of the river for it gave so much life on its journey. He knew that he must go to those mountains to know from where the water of that river was born. Only then could he truly know the river. This was running through my head as the pickup swung through the foothills and climbed the escarpment. As the crow flies the mountains were only 90 km from where I had lived in the tree but by car it was a circuitous 180 km winding drive that took you from 300 meters lowlands up to about 1600 m on the edge of south africa's high plateau. In historical times there had been a natural flow of native people who lived away from malaria on the highlands and descended the escarpment via hundreds of foot paths to hunt in the lowlands when the winter came. My destination was my friend's bungalow, a beautiful mountain cabin with no lights and streams full of trout that flowed past it .The landscape around the house is a rugged kind of african Scottish highlands. High ridged terrain with deep vegetative gorges. Unusual birds, eland and mountain reedbuck….and a silence in which a leopard that was never seen slipped past. That first night in the bungalow the man did not sleep. He was between this world and the next. All night he tossed and turned in the darkness and dreamed that the mountains had a message for him. Eventually I rose well before dawn, drank a cup of coffee and set off with my friend through the freezing dark for the highest peak. Mount Anderson is the watershed…..from which all the rivers that run east to the kruger national park flow Through a trailess darkness we walked for the summit…..the stars giving way to a crisp dawn. We were fit and walked fast… cold air burning our lungs. Learning the mountain in some intrinsic way you can only achieve by being on it The summit at dawn was icy with a whipping wind and a thick fog so that one could not see how the land fell to the east calling to the water. But Up there on the peak I left an imprint of my body ……so I could always suddenly be back there. So I could always send a greeting upstream to the mountain from my home in the lowlands. What I could now say is that I had been to where the rivers rise. The source…….but not the source of the source…….water is too free for that and one can never really say where water begins or ends. If you know water somewhere you know water everywhere. The man came down from that communion with the high peak with stiff legs found a cold mountain pool to swim in. The water was freezing with aliveness and he drank and drank. Saturating himself. Baptizing his body with that kind of purity. I tell you these things in these ways as a remedy. I don’t mean to be flowery or poetic but in my time with native people I started to think of the relationship with all things as an exchange of an unseen aliveness. A connected story….like the story of all water… in which you weave yourself into the web of other currents of life. A river, a mountain, a friend. You can interact with the experience of living on so many levels and for me there is always a story within the story. The way of meaning making is the way we make the story of our life. I could tell you that on the night of the day we submitted we drove up a steep hill with a bag full of beers to watch the sunset. The light cut the cold mountain air in clear blazing holy gold. I looked to the peak of the mountain now as a place I knew and that knew me. The place where the river begins. A source of life and personal relationship. The remedy for this strange time to remember the story of the great relationship. We have to be soft enough and wild enough to tell it. To remember how to be friends with the earth in personal ways again. Personal. personal relationships with rivers and mountains and trees. Till it's normal again. To be married to a volcano. And related to a bear. And for a leopard to come to you to remind you that there is magic. Leaving that hillside at dusk the man saw a flash of eyes in the headlights. Then as if materializing slowly into form in the half light the shape of a leopard. A huge male with a thick neck sunk low to the ground and stepped off the road but did not run. For a time they all watched each other. The man knew this was the keeper of the catchment. The guardian of the river This is the most secretive of cats. And forever on when he looked west from his home beside the river…….he would know the source, the mountain, that cold pool and think of the silence in which up in those mountains a leopard moved. 4-0 out. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Followed a rhino bull, but he led me in circles. I couldn’t shake the distinct feeling that a rhino was trying to shake me off his tail. To add to the confusion there were also tracks of a female rhino from the night before. If the rhino was my nemesis then he was my sacred enemy. The difficulty he was providing was causing untold growth in my tracking ability. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Journal entry. The best time to be in the leadwood forest is in the creamy light of a full moon. All around the trees peg a scale of time beyond human comprehension to the earth. It can be a strange thing to watch people from all over the world walk into the dappled light of the trees and fall silent. In my days as a safari guide I would wait for the third or fourth day of a safari. I would wait for the hysteria to see animals to subside and then take people to the forest. You see the forest can be experienced on many levels and I have come to believe that it will meet you where you are ….it will take you to the level of stillness, wildness or reverence that you have cultivated in yourself and then some. The deeper you are the deeper the magic of the forest. The poet david whyte talks about the conversational nature of life. The idea that your life will never be exactly how you planned it to be but equally it will never be exactly the way life wanted it. for all our living days we are in a co-created experience with living…..some of our agency….mixed with life or god, or whatever you call its plan. Inside of this we have action when we know to take it and surrender when we have reached the end of what we can do…. another dance. We have the development of a contemplative mind ……the cultivation of a mind in which many things in the world can be true at the same time. Being in nature takes you naturally into this kind of inner exploration. If your eyes are open in a place life the leadwood forrest you can't help but notice the relational nature of nature, As dawn breaks in the forest a dark bull nyala lifts his head out of long brown winter grass to look at me. Franklins begin to chatter into the dawn. In the stereo all around me hyena started to call. A hyena is the perfect embodiment of opportunism. As he moves craftily through the bush he seems to have a single thought running through his head…… “what's in it for me?” ‘how could this situation beeeeee good for me” If you have ever battled to put your own needs on the table……hyena is your guy. He's gonna show you how. Im developing a strange technique for this podcast. What I do is go to a place like the leadwood forest. I move through the terrain at different times of day. I take a big sniff of the Amazonian snuff called hapi which is a mix of tobacco and ashes of herbs. Then with my head empty of thoughts I open myself and move through the space. Opening myself to a different way of knowing. It's like I'm trawling through the feeling of the place and each feeling is full of invisible codes that later when I sit down with my notebook will start to come out as memories, encounters, stories and insights. You see like those hyena calls in the forest this morning took me to an image of the hyena. In my mind's eye I saw his slanted body loping away with the leg of a giraffe held across his jaws and a look of glee on his face. Imagine your dog walking proudly around with a weed wacker in his jaws and you have a sense of how much this hyena had bitten off more than he could chew. This little encounter in my imagination takes me to the clarity of knowing that a hyena has. A hyena wants what he wants. This idea makes me think of the hundreds of people I coached who have started having huge transformations when they started to ask clearly without agenda or attachment for what they want. I think of how early on in my own journey this idea was totally foreighn to me. I remember a whole night in a ceremony where I lay half hanging off the edge of a mattress and it never occurred to me to ask people to move over. I had grown up in a world where resilience was the most needed skill…..you didn’t need what you didn’t have so get on with it. I'm very grateful for that place in myself but I remember also releasing that one of the ways to create more of the life you want is to want and ask….. “Will you move over for me? I need more space” could not sound more silly to me now but at the time it was the silly beginning to much big wants and asks that I was going to allow myself. It was a breakthrough to something new. A first step I could build on What will keep you out of asking for what you want? You limit what you think you deserve. The desire to not be too much trouble. The fear of needing things from other people Your fear of being rejected. Your assumptions about what other people will think of you asking. If you think i'm being trite well then try it. Take the next week and wherever you go……in your work……family……out for a walk. Start asking people around you honestly, clearly and without justification for what you want. Start with will you………rather than can you. Will you walk with me Will you go out with me? Will you upgrade me? Will you promote me? Will you hug me? Pay attention to where you can just ask……..notice where you cant…….notice where you don’t because you assume you know what the answer will be. Pay attention to where you hide from asking. Where you use shyness to be a victim Now all of that comes from a hyena in the wild. And this is where it gets mystical to me…… Track this like a tracker Something calls me to the forest as a sacred site……im there at dawn on a particular day to hear a hyena call……..this sets me thinking about how my life changed when I just started asking clearly …….transmitted via this podcast to you…….now you pick up the thread and see where it takes you this week. Who is creating the way life is unfolding itself through a notion,…..into a leadwood forrest……via the call of a hyena…..into my ears……through imagination …….into memory…….back into voice…….into your ears…….into action. Oh what great telepathy in a single field of interconnected consciousness we are playing in. What could be more sacred. Take action…….ask clearly for what you want and please report back. 4-0 out. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Journal entry. Tracks of huge pride of lions cut off a beautiful white sandy road onto a game path. Here the pride walks in single file laying a perfect trail. The path opens into a small clearing next to the crusted mud of a dried up waterhole. Next to a huge termite mound with a giant brown ivory growing out of it the tracks tell the story of a giant lion love ball. They have lain down here… lying up against each other…..cubs climbing on mothers heads and biting each other's ears. The flat grass and imprints of tails tell me that they slept here some time yesterday afternoon. They probably moved as the sun went down so they have a whole night ahead of me. I was not planning on tracking but this is life in the wild. This is life as a tracker you must let yourself create with the moment. It’s a large pride and to a tracker this magnetism is too strong. I walk a half circle around where they lay to find the direction they set off on …… quickly I am onto their trail as they head into a deep thicket. Through the night a herd of elephants have moved through the area covering over many of the tracks. Then a herd of zebras followed the elephants cutting the hard ground on top of where lions padded past. Quickly the majority of the tracks are gone. This can be very common in tracking. You can go from this is going to be easy to this is impossible in a few steps. Like life. Like any time you set out on a new path. Now I must follow as a shadow tracker…..to follow these lions I must become a student of vagaries, a follower of faint impulses and weak imprints…..i must drift through the terrain every reactive… ever alert…..moving on invisible lines that those tawny creators may have taken through the thick terrain. Anticipating If I want to see each track or be sure I'm on their trail I will make myself crazy. Here quite suddenly the need for certainty is an impediment. The shadow trackers energy is that of drifting….as if in a world between worlds…..noticing…..moving with attention…..but with the world in a soft focus around you. Somehow letting go of thinking about how lions move and being empty enough to move like a lion. It is a lost kind of attention in modern life. It’s the skill of riding a tide like a jellyfish. Or catching a thermal like a migrating bird……it’s the skill of being in the right place to be shown and taken. I tell you this now awakeners because that unexpected lion trail was teaching me how to follow the trail of my own shadow. The shadow is the part of you that has never been allowed. It's your dark twin, a narcissistic, bad, even evil part of you that got stuffed away so you could belong. It's your most unsocialized primal desires. There is biting and talking without asking. It’s the back side of years of being good to get a cookie. But your shadow denied will run parts of you with unconscious force until you can meet it as a friend. I say this now cause we are in the time of shadow….and we must work in ourselves to work in the world. Your shadow given a seat at the fire becomes more self….. strong boundaries, unfuckwithable personal power. a person with a well integrated shadow is not interested in being nice or liked they are interested in being true. There is a grace to a person who has found the dark in themselves. A compassion that can look at a tyrant or a weakling and know that is in me too. But strangely a person who has met their shadow stands up to tyrants and is able to ask for help where they are weak Shadow tracking… is for if you want to get to know yourself more deeply. It will liberate so much primal energy if you get to know that dark part of yourself. To find the shadow you must give up certainty and need to know it and drift with an open awareness. Notice the people who make you most mad and uncomfortable. They are holding your shadow. Pay attention to your restments. See what you fantasise about. Notice where you are compulsive. That which we repress bursts out at strange times or runs our lives without us knowing. Do not try to understand the shadow. Do not try to identify it outright. Not like a shadow tracker drift in the half land where it lives. Become aware of it. Ask yourself……that person I can't bear why ?……they are narcissistic, loud, self centred. What are they holding so you don’t have to. That’s the part of you that is repressed. Ask that resentment…… resentment what are you asking for? Rage what do you want. ? Disgust what you need? Let the answers be truly uncensored and ugly. As you drift towards the guarded outlines of your shadow with this soft eyed attention you will find themes. You may be annoyed at someone who always puts themselves first cause you never do. Until you explode and leave so you can do what you want. You will get to know what your anger is asking for. You will come to understand how your patheticness is a place where you couldn’t get the help you needed so you acted like you never needed anything. Oh shadow tracking is not an exact science it’s a kind of background attention on actions and intentions and thoughts and reactions. Maybe you just had a conversations with your boss….or your partner…….you find yourself after the account running an enraged conversation in your head with them…..about how they don’t fucking get it. Ask that voice what it needs, what it wants, why it's mad…..that's shadow tracking. Your shadow integrated becomes more presence in which you can show up with no need to be liked. It’s a power through self knowledge and understanding of the truth of you. It’s the part of you that tells someone clearly what they are not getting in the moment with no fear. Work is the shadow is to balance yourself in real goodness. The awareness of what lives in you and the choice in how to consciously be with that all. I exit the thick terraine after about thirty minutes of shadow tracking…..below me is a dry river bed where thick riversand covers the ground….i use the sand to cut back onto the tracks….the entire pride crossing the dry water course and suddenly I am back on their trail with absolute clarity. Now I follow the imprint of toes and lobed pads across beautiful terrain. I follow at pace the energy of the shadow tracker is gone. I move with purpose and clarity. Alone for miles in any direction. In the beautiful clear light of the morning. In a ravine I hear the lions growling. These are the sounds of feeding. The lions have killed a kudu The pride feeds with brutal intensity. Biting and clawing at each other as they ingest chunks of bloody meat. I watch through binoculars from a distance the savagery of the feeding each man must fight for its place at the kill. After they feed quit suddenly all aggression is gone. They lie around and groom each other with gentle care totally in tune with the full range of being a lion. Every day the wild is my teacher. It takes me on adventures. It takes me inward. Slowly I walk back to my land rover watching my shadow beside me 4-0 out. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/