Walking Through Time: Exploring Timelessness
Have you ever walked somewhere and felt the past, present, and future converge in a single moment? This has happened to me several times, and it’s a feeling that’s both surreal and grounding. Ancient churches in Europe can inspire it. In Australia, it’s usually the forest or dramatic rocks and landscapes that evoke this sense of timelessness. Walking across these places, I feel time stretching all around me, as though the present moment expands to encompass everything. If we’re still, quiet, and open our senses—listening to the land—time can slip away entirely. Another instance where time dissolves is during meditation. In those moments, all sense of time can drop away, and we enter a timeless state. Sometimes it feels as a moment expands into eons. What? We wonder when we look at a clock after such an experience and find that only 5 minutes has passed! Timelessness in Nature and…
Let Life Be as It Is: A Reflection on Acceptance and Gratitude
I recently came across a simple yet profound piece of advice from Mingyur Rinpoche: “Let life be as it is.” It’s one of those phrases that seems straightforward at first, but the more I sit with it, the deeper it feels. It’s paired with another guiding principle he shares: It’s okay to feel bad,” and “Be present”. Together, these ideas are an excellent way to help us navigate life, especially when it gets messy or overwhelming. Does “let life be as it is” mean giving up? Not trying to change anything? That would be a common assumption from those words, but it’s not about passivity or resignation—it’s about acceptance. The Struggle to Control I think many of us—myself included—spend a lot of energy fighting against the way things are. We rail against the injustices in the world, the things we can’t control, the circumstances we wish were different. And it’s…
Unmasking: A Video Exploration of a Book
If you’ve ever looked into late-diagnosed autism or ADHD, you’ll quickly come across the idea of masking. Masking is something neurodivergent people learn to do over their lives to fit into ordinary society. It’s about hiding autistic or ADHD traits so you appear more ‘normal’ and are less likely to face rejection from peers. This happens naturally. Masking lets you grow up looking fairly typical, but it can lead to a strange disconnect later in life. When you start to wonder, ‘Am I autistic?’ the first thought might be, ‘No, I’m normal.’ You’ve masked so well that you don’t even recognise your own traits anymore. Losing Yourself in the Mask For some, masking becomes so ingrained that they lose sight of who they really are. In neurodivergent circles, the idea of unmasking is huge. It’s a journey of self-discovery, and it’s not just for neurodivergent people—it’s something everyone can benefit…
Revealing the Mystic Within: An Active Imagination Journey
Revealing the Mystic Within, the fourth in the Psychemagination Series is out now. Revealing the Mystic Within is a record—in the form of a narrative poem—of the active imagination that unfolded during an online course I did in 2025 with the Centre for Applied Jungian Studies. My active imaginations up until this point—shared in the previous Psychemagination books—had come into my mind of their own accord, springing naturally from my examination of how neurodivergence manifested in my mind and life. At that time, having never heard the term ‘active imagination’, I coined the word Psychemagination, meaning ‘using the imagination to examine the psyche’. Only later did I discover that Carl Jung described the same kind of process as active imagination—essentially the practice of entering a meditative state and allowing the elements of our unconscious mind to reveal themselves in a kind of waking dream. I began by sitting in meditation,…
Let’s Get This Show on the Road: A Morning Song and a Fresh Start
That Sluggish Morning Feeling You know that feeling when you wake up, and it’s like a heavy weight is pressing down on you? Maybe you’ve just clawed your way out of a deep, vivid dream, and everything feels heavy. You groan, stretch, and think, How am I supposed to get going today? I know that feeling. Some mornings, it feels like my body and mind are stuck in molasses. But the other day, something shifted for me. What We Usually Do When we feel sluggish in the morning, I think many of us default to things like coffee, scrolling through our phones, or just trudging through the motions until we feel awake. It’s like we’re waiting for something external to kickstart us. But what if the spark we’re waiting for is already inside us? A New Way to Wake Up That morning, instead of dragging myself to the kitchen, I…
Is Ancient Wisdom Still Relevant to Modern Life?
Have you ever contemplated what is unchanging over the ages? Is ancient wisdom still relevant to us now? One afternoon during a walk – which is often when insights come to me – I stopped to wonder what lessons our ancestors might have for us if they could speak across the ages? Imagine ancient beings, long gone from this world, observing humanity from a distance, watching us navigate the complexities of modern life. What wisdom might they have that could help us today? It’s tempting to dismiss our ancestors as primitive, as people who lacked the knowledge and sophistication we pride ourselves on today. But what if we’re missing something? What if the wisdom of those who came before us holds more value than we think? Many of us view ancient humans as less evolved versions of ourselves—people who didn’t know much, who lived in ignorance compared to our information-rich…
The Art of Taking a Break: Walking Lightly Through Life
Do You Ever Just Want to Get Away? Do you know that feeling when life feels like too much? When the weight of everything—your job, your problems, even your own emotions—makes you want to escape? I think we’ve all been there. That deep yearning for a break, for some kind of relief, is so familiar. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get to take a holiday. And for a while, it’s wonderful. We relax, we breathe, we feel lighter. But then we come back, and the same old grind is waiting for us. The same problems, the same patterns. It’s like the holiday was just a pause button, not a reset. I’ve been through this cycle more times than I can count. And while holidays are lovely, I’ve realized they don’t really change anything—not in the long run. The Common Belief: Breaks Are Temporary We often think of breaks as something…
Do You See the Sacred All Around?
Have you ever had one of those moments when you look around and suddenly everything looks a little different? When something the moment prior you might have seen as very ordinary takes on a special shade of vibrancy that speaks to a deeper level of reality. When the ordinary becomes extraordinary and you see the sacred in the mundane. Have you ever felt that? That’s where the song for this video came from. It’s also good to dance to. I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know if you do. If you like my video art, consider supporting my endeavours in that field by buying a book or a song. Buy a Book: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tahlia-Newland/author/B0063WTC8U Or a song: https://tahlianewland.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-the-soul Subscribe for new AI art music videos every week
Open Like a Lotus: Guided Listening Meditation in a Song
Meditation can be approached many different ways, which is great for those who tend to get bored easily. Instead of doing the same thing everyday, we can change our approach depending on how we feel. After all, what’s important for our mental clarity and focus is that we do some form of meditation each day. It doesn’t matter what kind of meditation it is. All meditation has one thing in common – an object on which to focus such as: The last two are not a good starting point for beginners as it’s easier to be distracted with them, but once we become familiar with meditation, these are very powerful methods of meditation. But no matter what kind of object you choose to focus on, after a while the sense of separation between the meditator and the object tends to dissolve leaving us simply resting in awareness of the present…
Earth Praise: Why it’s Important
As a species, we’ve reached a painful turning point. Animals are vanishing, ecosystems are collapsing, climate disasters are becoming commonplace, and even our communities are fracturing under the weight of fear and division. Beneath all of this lie two root causes: greed, and a profound loss of connection to the earth — the very mother who sustains us. Many Westerners dismiss shamanic and animist cultures as primitive or superstitious, yet these traditions hold something we desperately need to remember: relationship. Their songs, rituals, and offerings were never about persuading the earth or the sky to grant favours. They were about cultivating humility. About remembering that we are part of a living web, not masters standing above it. Praise, in this context, isn’t magical thinking — it’s an attitude. A way of keeping the heart soft and the ego small. A way of staying aware of our interdependence with everything that…