Sense of Soul - Many Paths One Source

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Today on Sense of Soul I have, Iona Jenkins she is an author, creative writer, and poet with an MA in Education (Guidance and Counselling) from Brunel University, professional diplomas in Person-Centered Counseling from Metanoia Institute London, Clinical Hypnotherapy then Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy with the Institute of Clinical Hypnosis, London. She achieved B.A.C.P accreditation which she held until she retired from the profession. Moving from London to the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales brought Iona a more relaxed, creative life. Her long-held dream of sharing a vision of beauty, harmony, peace, and wisdom through creative, mystical writing began to blossom into reality when she won a competition for her first self-published collection of poetry and reflections, followed by descriptive prose showcased in Kindred Spirit Magazine and poems published in various editions of Touchstone.  A passionate interest in personal and spiritual growth spanning many years has inspired Iona's exploration of Eastern and Western spiritual philosophies and practices, the idea of a language of angels, as a stream of inspiration, creative wisdom, and beauty, flowing through everything, the energies of sacred sites both at home and abroad, and labyrinth walking. After meditating with Tibetan Buddhists in London, then studying mindfulness with Samye Ling Wales and the Mindfulness Association, Iona finally found her spiritual home with the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids. She is also a Companion of Chalice Well, supporting the Trust's ethos of "Many Paths One Source."  Exploring growth and change through her creativity, Iona's path of art and soul is inspired by angels, wisdom, nature, land, and legend, living by the sea on the south coast of magical Wales. Her beautiful poetic book “To Sing with Bards and Angels” is an invitation to travel through landscapes evoked by beautiful language, into the heart of nature and imagination. You can pick up her book wherever books are sold. https://www.ionajenkins.com https://twitter.com/ionajenkinsaut1 https://www.facebook.com/ionajenkinsauthor Visit Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Do you want Ad Free episodes? Join our Sense of Soul Patreon, our community of seekers and lightworkers. Also recieve 50% off of Shanna’s Soul Immersion experience as a Patreon member, monthly Sacred circles, Shanna mini series, Sense of Soul merch and more.
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Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have with us Iona Jenkins. She is an author, creative writer, and poet with an MA in education. Along Iona's journey, she has been a hypnotherapist and counselor, achieving many accreditations and professional diplomas, and she even taught French. And since her journey has led her to a land more relaxed, a creative life, her long-held

dream of sharing vision of beauty, harmony, and peace. After meditating with Tibetan Buddhists in London, then studying mindfulness, Iona found herself a spiritual home with the Order of the Bards, ovates, and druids. She is also a companion of Chalice Well, supporting the trust ethos of many paths, one source. She's joined yesterday to tell us about her beautiful poetic book, To Sing with Bards and Angels, an invitation to travel through landscapes invoked by beautiful language into heart of nature and imagination. And she likes labyrinths, and I can't wait to hear all about that. So, welcome, Iona.

Hi. Hi. How you doing? Well, you're awfully pretty, Iona. Is that your assistant? Yes, thank you assistant husband nice to see you nice to see you too i'm very excited to have a conversation with you yeah me too i had a listen to three of your um the sacred feminine goddess podcast i really the Sacred Feminine Goddess podcast. I really enjoyed it. And Bridget, of course, is very

special to me too, following a Druid path. I've got a St. Bridget's cross on my wall. I actually had ordered one from Ireland. So the Druids celebrate the eight festivals of the year. And Imolc, of course, is the first fire festival after the winter solstice. And that's when the snowdrops appear and the first little flowers and the promise of spring and the lambs. You know, so it's really quite special. And she was special to the bardic grade of the druids, the poets, the storytellers, the actors, the musicians, the people that kept the stories and the legends alive around the campfires in old Celtic times. Now, of course, modern bards are a little bit different, but some people still

like campfires. You know, that's how that works. She's a goddess of poetry, creativity, healing, and the smithy was in olden times. And she's related to animals because of the new birth, of course, which you already know. And her color is green. And, you know, and it was so unbelievable because my daughter had kind of seen her first before me. But actually, my little girl, she has seen almost all of the things that I experienced right before me how old is she with 11 wow that's brilliant she's brought that with her obviously she'll just mention something like she did with Bridget she said oh I have a new angel that visited me last night and I was like oh and she said yeah she has a long green dress with burgundy trim and long red hair.

And I was like, oh, and then I had learned of Bridget right after. And so I was looking at the pictures of Bridget going. This shirt is looking like what my daughter. It's amazing what they come out with. Gosh, one of my favorite movies movies and I hope that you know it is Labyrinth with David Bowie I don't know it I don't know it my favorite my kids favorite too oh wow yeah I don't know it and actually it was probably about five years ago she was probably about five years ago. She was probably like five or six. And we went to this gemstone store.

And the woman who worked there actually ended up being, I didn't know, but she was the high priestess of Denver. That's where I lived, Denver in Aurora, Colorado. Okay. Yeah. But I didn't know this at the time. And she kind of had a creepy voice. I'm going to be honest. She was like, my my aren't you pretty you know and then she tells my daughter well you look just like a fairy so then she opens this book

and she says look right here you look like this one and then she told me the artist and the artist happened to be the same original artist for labyrinth okay that's amazing yeah and then i was like i remember that fairy in that movie and she was biting people but there again more folk tales and stories that are passed down yeah and i guess that's a quest to um to rescue the child isn't it oh yeah it's kind of about that way yes all on that quest to rescue the other child right your inner child oh that is so true yes so where do you live at um I live on the south coast of Wales um you know I don't know if you know much about the UK, but it's divided into different countries. It's the United Kingdom of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. And we're

in the southwest. And our symbol is a red dragon on a flag. Now, I'm actually English, but my husband is Welsh. And I'm sitting on a cliff here I've got the sea if I go and I live in a flat but I guess you call those condos I go to the door I can open my patio door and I'm on a balcony and the sea's right in front of me and I can see right across the sea to the shores of England you know because it dips in there and then England juts out there and you can see over to the shores of Somerset in England and King Arthur country. My gosh, that is so amazing. And that's where I found the angel in the moonlight on the sea just outside my window. Okay. You know, and I've had many conversations with the moon. Some of my favorite times have just been me and the moon

yeah it's amazing well the angelic kingdom is very resonant with the sacred feminine and that she works through them and the inspiration I get from the angelic kingdom is actually what the sacred feminine wants now if you I don't know if you had time to read the article i sent over to you about you and feeling the energy of the divine feminine right there in the vatican huh i found it in the brushstrokes of michelangelo and actually he was named after the archangel michael so there's something in that really i think think and then a sacred well in Cisterna di Latina which is 40 minutes by train outside Rome going south towards Naples and just sitting outside there is a sacred well there by the church but sitting outside the whole thing seemed to come together

you know the ancient bards the poetry that I've been writing poetry for a long time, but I didn't do anything with it until we moved to Wales. And then when I started to follow a druid path, I really started to think about putting it out. And that's when I started to have some success with poems in magazines. So I thought, well, I'll write a creative book. I'll be a real bard. Now I'm not going to go and sit around a campfire what I'm going to do is write in a creative flow so that I write my descriptive prose as always but it comes as a flow and it takes in my travels which is what you've been doing is following your travels follow my travels through my life but my life is 73 years long know, so it goes back a long way. So I couldn't write it all.

But I just wrote in the flow. Whatever came up, I thought I'll write. And then I had instructions from the angel on the full moon through the moon goddess. It all seemed to be coming together. Since I've been doing this podcasting and writing articles, I've come across a lot of women who are actually strong in the soul, who are actually working with those new age energies. And it's really brilliant because I've found a lot of other women doing that. Yeah, I would say so. I believe the divine feminine is rising. She's no longer hidden or suppressed or you know buried in the nogamati or wherever

no she was shouting through the shouting from the sistine chapel ceiling they didn't have pope francis then it was pope benedict but i noticed pope francis has been trying to you know get women a bit more involved and and get rid of some of the injustice. It's small beginnings, but it's a start. I do have a vision. I'm not a Catholic anymore, but I do have a vision of there being female cardinals sitting in that conclave at some time in the future. Now, I don't think it's in my lifetime, but it is coming. You just wait till we get a Pope that has a little friendly girlfriend or something on the side and all of a

sudden you know they're all getting married no more celibacy well yeah the the one we've got has made a few changes he stopped marrying my mom being a prostitute um there are female deacons now you know he's working on the the sexual abuse of women and children. And he's actually made some inroad into that. So good on him. But then he's named after St. Francis, who was a rebel in his time. Yeah. And you know what? I don't know how.

I think I was led somewhere from your post that you sent me, your blog post. And I came across just the most beautiful thing that really hit my heart about the divided feminine as well. And it says the divine feminine goddess meets everyone equally and exactly where they are in much the same way as the labyrinth or chalice. Well, she reflects the soul like a mirror mirror an image of the moon on water the goddess i mean the vegetation and the form of the garden might also look different according to whatever aspect the feminine is currently flowing through someone's life first of all my whole body right now is tingling from my fingertips. My knees are tingling right now.

I have goosebumps. When I read that, it was so much of my journey too. Whilst I was reading yours this morning, I felt quite a strong resonance. I thought this is the same path we write it differently but it's the same path I mean in my episode where I I kind of give my perception of the cosmology of creation and of Sophia and you probably haven't gotten there it's like maybe the seventh or eighth episode or so I have a vision of the pistis Sophia which would be the lesser Sophia looking into a body of water and seeing herself but seeing a light a light she doesn't realize that it's

herself and she jumps into the light and this is how she ends up falling into the third dimension and the chalice well and you know you mentioned that as well as well about the well you know these very sacred wells that are all over we have springs well that's good it's just no one's put a well around them the same same idea though isn't it yeah and actually they're very sacred hot springs i one time heard a story from someone say that they would be at war or whatever with each other and then they take a break in the hot springs together and then they go back to war together against each other oh sacred healing water it will except for the fact that they smell like egg that's true but you i had discovered that my name shannon means the the possessor of hidden wisdom.

And so I learned this during Sophia, wisdom being Sophia. And then I went further and I found that there was a goddess Shannon. I'm like, how many Celtic goddesses are there? Good Lord. But her story is that she jumps into the well looking for wisdom. Okay. story is that she jumps into the well looking for wisdom okay and so that was and I here I was jumped into some sort of hole trying to find the goddess Sophia so but there is so many goddesses and so many different mythological figures and archetypes aren't? There's a Celtic legend, it's Irish, about a sacred well with nine hazel trees growing around it. I can't always pronounce the Irish name, so I won't. But the

nine hazel trees drop their nuts into the water. So the hazelnuts go into the water, where they're eaten by salmon. Then whoever catches the salmon and eats the salmon becomes wise. So, you know, there's a well there and the salmon of wisdom that people can eat and become wise from the hazelnuts. The hazel tree feels quite sacred to me because if I meditate on hazel trees, I find stars. The hazel is special to me because I was born in a place called Hazelwood Castle. Now, it wasn't a real castle.

It was a stately home from Norman times. And they put crenellations on the top, which gave it castle status. And it's mentioned in the Doomsday Book. Now, it was a Catholic seminary for ages after it stopped being a stately home and then after that it became a maternity hospital during the time when I was born so my mother went in there to have me. So I was actually born in Hazelwood Castle so it's in a village called Hazelwood which which has hazel trees around it. So there's a wood with hazel trees. You love trees.

You love the oak tree especially. Yes, the oak tree is a particularly potent Druid symbol. It means doorway. So you walk through the doorway of the oak tree, you know, into the mysteries. Well, I'll tell you, I'm very connected to the oak trees the great oaks because I'm from New Orleans I'm from Louisiana and if you've seen them they're crazy amazing and not too long ago it was probably within like two years ago we went to this haunted known plantation called the Myrtle Plantation and here I am walking by myself. I don't know why. I

don't know where my daughter or my cousin was. I think maybe getting ice cream and I'm on this pathway. So this reminds me a little bit of your book too, and your, your poetry. So I'm on this pathway and I am just taken by, you know, the moss in the oak trees and just them all touching each other. Like they have relationships. Okay. And I begin to hum and I was humming over and over. So then my daughter, my little one and my cousin find me and they're like, what are you humming? And I'm like, I have no idea where this came from. I even have it on video because I was recording the beautiful trees and I just got lost in it yeah it's amazing trees are incredible yeah I'm just listening to the wind in the trees I was I was out in a place um in the

Vale of Glamorgan the other day called Dufferin Gardens, which is a peaceful place belonging to the National Trust. And there was a wind blowing and it wasn't cold and the treetops were waving and the wind was incredible going through the trees. And I just stopped and I tuned in and I usually put my hand on my heart because I like to tune my heartbeat. I like to think my heartbeat is tuning into the wind in the trees um and then the flowers the daffodils were also um like they were rippling you know in the wind and the whole thing was like a rhythm it was quite incredible and I just stood there and you get such joy from that such a feeling of peace and joy from connecting with wind and trees i know and you just you just described what maybe some people would almost think with heaven like heaven you have you created heaven right there within your body right there in that moment it was free and you were free

absolutely it was it's amazing the peace that comes from that the peace and the feeling of lightness and joy almost like you are the the song of the wind you are the song of the the treetops the song of the flowers rippling in the wind you become a note in the great song I do that too I really do and you know I can think of this one particular time, it was really windy. And there was like this, it was just like like music and like a beat. And then I kind of got freaked out. It's very personal, isn't it? I often hear, I liken it to a harp because the strings ripple and the wind ripples through the trees and it ripples on the water outside my window and it ripples in the flowers. It's like waves and water is very soulful anyway i did an almost an entire episode of my mini series about the liar

it's true there is so much healing in in nature and in sound and frequency yeah we don't tap into it and all you have to do is slow down and start to use the senses you know you talk about a sense of soul you get a sense of soul by using your senses and people don't they just from one place to another loads of chatter going on in the mind and if you just stop stop talking stop doing just stand there and see and hear and feel you can feel the season changing under your feet you can hear the spring in the birds voices you know it's just so incredible i was talking to someone the other day whose grandchild said um grandma, the birds are talking to me. You know, how many people hear the birds talking nowadays?

You don't have to be a child, do you? Nope, I talk to birds. I'm going to admit it. You don't have to be a child to hear that. But you know what? You also hear poetry. It becomes poetic because it's that beautiful it's like a romance and so you do become like Shakespeare in those moments that's like that's

my language of angels that you know it comes in and I call it in Druidry we call it the stream the flowing stream that's the holy spirit of the Druidry, we call it the Awun, the stream, the flowing stream. That's the Holy Spirit of the Druids that you can sing it. And it kind of flows in. And if you belong to something else, you could call it a language of angels. There are different ways of, some people just call it Holy Spirit, but it flows in. And it flows like water. And it kind of flows through my pen i

only put it on my computer later i like to let it flow through my pen and my hand yeah i know like for myself i feel like i can't stop either once i get started i gotta finish it i'm just like kids are late for school there's no dinner done until i'm done I know and even if it gets you up in the middle of the night sometimes it will get you up before sunrise so you can watch it happen for myself it comes in waves and it probably is because when I have the space when I've allowed the space for me just to be and usually it is outside with with the, with the trees, with the sun. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's nearly always outside.

I mean, it can come in the house. And if I open the door, it's stronger than if the door is closed. But outside, that day I'd been in the Vatican and I went back to Cisterna di Latina and I sat outside. It was like the well and the brushstrokes of Michelangelo came together. And I wrote a poem called The Language of Angels. Is it very long? Could you read it? I can read it if you like. Yes, it's in Chapter 2.

It begins Chapter 2 because all my chapters start with a poem. So, there is peace in dove grey mountains and in this rich red Roman earth as late October sunshine wraps my skin in its subtle scent of ripened lemons. The leaves turn slow from green to gold. I see my inspiration like a lighted lamp, and then my mind becoming still at last is more than just a little glad to be here in Italy, such a warm embracing place where my own creative truth outruns the waves of restless racing thoughts, and the sound of my heart's voice rises speaking soft in the language of angels very lovely I had a perfect vision of you with your blog post because it gave me the background of that poem okay lovely you know I want ask you, because this has happened for me throughout the years. Sometimes what Bridget, which I don't think I added to my miniseries. But I kept ending whatever this poem was, it probably is still here in my notes.

I kept ending it with, so mote it be. And I'm like, I don't talk like that. So mote it be. That might be Wiccan, I'm not sure. That could come from quite a few places. So have you experienced that? All the time I write things and I think, oh, where did I get that from? How did I write that? You know, and then you test it out and it works out.

You know, it's like something's come through me and the language sounds a little old fashioned. It's not hip language, you know, but I didn't write like this when I was younger this kind of lyrical prose that I write in now it just happens it's become my voice but some of the things I write down I'm quite surprised at and I think well you know I'm not sure I knew that did a higher part of me know it but you know I'm talking to an angel I say I'm talking to an angel am I channeling an angel that say i'm talking to an angel am i channeling an angel that's what people call it channeling am i channeling lots of other people am i channeling a tree when i get ideas from leaning on one you know what is it it's the

connection um that everything speaks in the language of angels and i think you know sometimes you didn't know that and you were being told it to write down that makes you a messenger yeah sometimes I'd look back or I'd share with my best friend and I'm like can you believe that's some good shit isn't it I'm like I don't know where it came from so do you stop for a while and you think, well, how did I know that? You know, sometimes you can go and look it up on the Internet and find connections that way. Other times I just accept it. I wrote it down. And I think, well, how did I know that? But it makes total sense. So I'm leaving it. You know, somebody's telling this to me and I have to put it out because I'm being a messenger

you know in poetry is so divine in the way that for myself in ways it usually brings me into tears yeah I mean I have poems that I have a really hard time reading aloud do you have those some of them some of them if they're emotional i might have difficulty reading them out if they're pure description and i'm looking into other realms or i'm just looking into to nature and i'm seeing what i'm seeing and hearing what i'm hearing and just writing it down no but if i'm looking at my own emotions maybe i wouldn't read those anyway. I've only ever, you know, put a couple of them out in previously self-published stuff. How I felt at particular times of my life, memories of things or things I wrote down when I was younger, you know, when emotions were much more raw than they are now. Were you a writer when you were little?

Yeah, well, I did write stories when I was little. My background wasn't conducive to female education. My father was a coal miner and my mother cleaned in a school. And basically, you know, back in that time, an intelligent girl would go and be a teacher, a nurse or a private secretary, which I suppose is called a PA now. And so you didn't have a vast, if you came from that kind of working class background, there wasn't a vast possibility at that time for a girl. It was different for boys. Things were more difficult. And I did used to write a lot down

because I used to come top of my class in junior school all the time, you know, but it wasn't as important as if a boy had done it. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, Helena Petrovna Blavats. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, you know, the great mystic. I mean, she's not necessarily a poet, but for her time, late 1800s, I don't know if you know, but I mean, for the longest time, she just went by HPV, you know, because, you know,

she should have been a he. Yes. Yeah. Things were being stabilized after the war you know after the second world war things went into this women you know women cook dinners and make gravy and and men go out to work sort of time in in history when in my first marriage i think my first husband was a musical and he wrote and he painted. And I think I was a muse. And after the marriage broke up, I became a poet. You know what? I was going to ask you, did I hear that you were a teacher of French?

I taught French. Okay, so this is hilarious. When I was doing, I went really deep into my ancestry and I had found that I could find a lot of information about the French Creole people through music and through poems. Yeah. So there was a book called The Less Than L. So they have an English version. But for some reason, I end up getting the French version. I know what you mean, because I used to teach literature at A-level and I would read it in French and then I'd read it in English. And I'd have to work it. I'd always worked in the French version because it just didn't, you know, sometimes it just didn't sound right. I remember the end of one, you know, where it's a John Paul Sartre, where the guy runs out, he's going to be shot. And he goes, non recuperable.

And yet in the English version that says not worth salvaging. Now that doesn't work at all. And I was like, oh no, that's terrible. Yeah, it's beautiful in French. But in French, it was so dramatic. Yeah, it's beautiful in French. But in French, it was so dramatic. Yeah, it's dramatic. Oh, my gosh. So what was interesting, though, not even kidding, Ayana, I could read French during my journey.

Wow. I don't know why. I've never learned French, but I could read it. So, you know, stuff like that again, you know, there's just something divine about language, about words, about history. And I think it's the energy behind it. Right. And the magic behind the words. It's the Italian language as well. I haven't done I mean, I've done I had Italian neighbors and I did attempt to speak some Italian and I had 15 weeks of lessons.

But I forget it when I'm not with Italians, you know. But the sound of it, the life in it, it's incredible. And I don't think you can really understand a country unless you look at the words. Now, here we have two languages. We have Welsh, which is an old Celtic language. And all the kids learn Welsh in school as well as English. My father-in-law was bilingual. I can't speak Welsh but I can read it because I've taught myself how to read the jumble of letters you know that are really quite difficult. I can read it but not

speak it. If you go down to the station and wait for a train you'll get the announcements in two languages. All the road signs are in two languages. It's fun reading it. And I described it as a singing dragon because it goes with the land somehow. So did you learn Latin as well, being Catholic? I did learn Latin when I was at school. We had to do five years of Latin if you were going to study languages. I forgot most of it, but I do remember sayings, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I did teach French for about 26 years.

And after that, I retrained in psychotherapy and counseling and hypnotherapy. I was ready for a change. And so I did that. And then when my husband was ill several years ago, we moved down here and we decided we'd retire. I didn't start my practice again because we were in a smaller place and I was too tired basically, you know, after all the packing up and the illness and everything, it just seemed, I thought, well, look, I'll do this writing. We'll see how we go. We can afford to live without doing

it at the moment. So let's see how it goes. And it's worked out fine. I want to know about your walks through the labyrinth. We do have a labyrinth here so have you ever seen the shining movie with jack nixon i have yeah so it's in the stanley hotel that's here in florida and they have a labyrinth in front of it so i would say is that not maze though oh you don't know single path a labyrinth is circular it's just it has a single path that winds through seven circuits maybe 11 circuits sometimes sometimes even five circuits to the center and in the center is where you meet yourself and then when you come out again you walk the same path back out you You just walk in the opposite direction.

You unwind. So the center is where you walk to the center of yourself. Now, lots of other Christians use it, and they have their own reasons for doing that. Some pray all the way around. Some meet Christ in the heart, the sacred heart at the center, however you want to look at it. When I was working with Christians, I used to work with the Psalms sometimes. Working for myself, I would work more creatively. I would walk around with an idea for a project and then go to the centre and then come out,

releasing what's stuck around that project and see what worked out afterwards. You know, always there were poems and ideas for me i you can use it you can use it with your faith if you have one or you can just use it for whatever you want you can use it to solve a problem you can say i have this problem to solve you can if you're religious you can pray about the problem you can just think about the problem and ask for guidance and help if you're not and you can just walk to the. You can just think about the problem and ask for guidance and help if you're not. And you can just walk to the center, spend some time in the center, walk out, ask to release whatever's in the way. And then sometimes ideas come. But always,

if it's outside, you can notice the trees around, the flowers, the grass, the season, the sky, everything. Just connect to everything. everything okay so i was just looking up as we were talking so some labyrinths are just pathways where they just go in a circle and i mean that sounds fine but i want like the the nature i want the leaves and the bushes around me sorry about that do you know what i'm talking about i want i want to be enclosed in like this you know with the bushes around me leading me into a maze um yeah like a maze on that where you go into the maze and it has many paths um some of them go to dead ends oh yeah right that's a maze you you have to solve the puzzle to get to the center and then get back out again it's a different thing a lot of people think

a maze is a labyrinth but yes you know a maze is more difficult yeah well and you could get frustrated you might get logged yeah there's a method to it but I can never remember what it is okay so a labyrinth like explain to me what the labyrinth looked like you can actually buy a portable one or you or you you can have one on canvas or sometimes I've seen one in the in London that's actually set into the pavement around the major banks near Lombard Street in the city of London. You can put them anywhere. You can put them in paving stones. You can map them out with stones in gardens.

I had a lovely one. I used to walk at the back of a convent. It's a circular path, and it's sacred geometry. If you think about the inside of a shell, that works it's a similar shape you can have three circuits five circuits um seven circuits 11 circuits if you want a really big one and then there's a that's the traditional labyrinth and nobody's quite sure what they were for but the different people have taken them over as time's gone on they've become popular again and then there's the medieval one which you find

in the cathedral in chartres which um was just like a pilgrimage to the center it has a rose at the center what is that in france it's in france in chartres just south of paris it's like a six petaled rose and you can walk to the center of that and like you're finding the new jerusalem you know you will go to the center of that and like you'll find in the New Jerusalem. You know, you will go to the center of that. And it's more like a snake. It snakes in on itself. And that's an 11th Circuit labyrinth. Have you been there?

I haven't. I keep meaning to go, and I will go at some point. Yes. Yeah, I'm sure that's going to be fabulous because it's so old, you know. It put there in medieval times we have one here in colorado and it says hidden away near colorado's oldest church is a giant prayer labyrinth right that's it i want to go yes probably hours away yeah yeah if he says it's a labyrinth not a maze it's ginormous wow that's going to take you a long time to walk it but maybe you can work a lot of stuff out on

that you know i don't know maybe i'll send you a picture what's very interesting about this is about a year ago i had a dream and i created this exactly what I'm looking at. And I didn't know what it was until right now. So this is, I love it because I'm constantly figuring out stuff over, over, but it literally says that it was our lady of Guadalupe labyrinth. And it's built to embody the mysteries of the rosary of the catholic faith okay um it says and is built as being not only a sanctuary but a shrine a special place for meditation and invitation to prayer and deepening one's faith so how does this so as you're moving through it and you're really just experiencing everything right and in like you said the middle or the end of this is coming home to yourself or finding yourself and then unwinding in returning right um and here in this space you found a lot of poetry I found a lot of inspiration I think you to me I

look upon it as I'm going into my own heart it's a journey into the creative heart creative you're going into your own heart that we are I believe we are responsible you know for for part of partly creating our lives, that we are given that responsibility to actually find find the direction and to work on it as a quest until we get get it right. And I always sort of pull my head down into my heart before I do anything like that, because the head goes starts thinking, oh, well, you know, that's that's all wrong and that should be like that because the head goes starts thinking oh well you know that's that's all wrong and that should be like that and you know and then it starts coming up with things from the past or going to the future so I pull it down into the heart and try to to walk from a heart-centered point of view so so my head's connected to my heart and my heart's connected to my feet the whole thing is in alignment so I'm walking on my feet but i'm aligned to my heart and

i'm getting my head to talk to my heart what comes out of my mouth comes from my heart not just my head and that to me is wisdom that's how you speak wisdom yeah yeah so if if you think so fear before you go in and then then do, it's always finding that place in the center. The labyrinth has a center that's a sacred heart, but we also have that. And I believe that those pictures of Jesus and the sacred heart, I believe he was trying to tell us that. The kingdom is inside of you. We've messed some of the message up over the years or misunderstood it. But I believe there was a much deeper sense of

what he was trying to teach us and I think that's what my mini series is about Ayanna that's where I had found that the Gnostic Gospels is so poetic it was like words I'd never heard like I am with a lot of poetry I was hanging on every word yeah yeah and Yeah. And it was speaking to my heart. You know, it's again, it's the vibration and the intention behind it. Yeah. I mean, I can't tell you how much I love poetry. I love labyrinth. I love everything about your book.

Yeah. It's absolutely beautiful. It's a big book too. Yeah. I like to use the poem as a door into the chapter so when you how what was the time frame that it took you um you know where are these poems like how long over how many years did you write these poems I wrote these poems have mostly written recently but there are a few from you know 10 years ago and some even before um I've kept poems for years and I've put them together gradually um some of them are quite

recent and others are a few years ago the language of angels I wrote in Italy about 10 years ago but it wasn't until I started looking at the full moon on the water here when we moved here we moved to a smaller flat first and then we moved here um you know after my husband started to get a little bit better and the moon on the water is where the angel started the full moon for me is the most creative and it's like I thought well what happens then I'm I've got an angel in here in my forehead and I've got an angel outside it's like the two things am I creating it or is it creating me you know it's what came first the chicken or

the egg really and I'll ask questions so I write a question and then suddenly the answer drops into my head I'm not hearing a voice I'm just getting an answer my mind produces an answer and sometimes I don't know where that came from and I didn't know it I'm just the pen so I write the conversation and at the end of that I've got a full conversation and I've put five of those in there and I've written quite a few more since I wrote the book do you have a favorite um I quite like the first one yeah Yeah. You know, because that was the beginning. I liked all the angel conversations, but the first one was the beginning. And I like the last one where I actually found the name of the angel after I'd been doing the garden at the heart of the universe meditation.

Yes. I love how it always fits together you know well we're all wired differently aren't we so we all receive in different ways I believe that and I think of that when I think of all of the characters when I was having the journey of figuring out is Sophia Bridget is Bridget you know this other goddess and they are definitely all the same energy and archetype well you know um the ethos of chalice well which is the holy well in somerset king arthur country over the water is many paths one source oh many paths one source wherever you're following you know wherever you're coming from there's only one source which is why we get so many different names oh my god did have you wrote about that

yes i have but somebody said to me the other day um when the romans brought christianity to britain um they had to there were all the pagan gods and goddesses and made them saints. Yes, they did. And I found that with every single thing in my journey. But it's still the same energy. Yes, true. Maybe it raises up slightly every time anybody does it, but it's still there.

Oh, good point. You know what i'm seeing now is that just ordinary people are doing sainteful things now yeah we don't have to be ordained or proved to have you know we're all no that's true that's true there are so many people who are tapping into these new vibrations some people can cope with it and other people can't that would be a beautiful name for a saint iona there probably is no there isn't but my name is is after a scottish island it's in the inner hebrides and it's a sacred island um from saint columba and it's associated with the sacred feminine with Columba's image

of the dove was a child of druids in Ireland and he went to Iona to start his own thing there and he was a peacemaker and he was a healer but Iona is an island in Scotland off the Scottish west coast so I sat on Iona in the sunset you know it's it's only a very tiny island. It's three miles long and a mile and a half wide. You can walk it. Can't have a car unless you live there. It's the most incredible place. It's thin there, you know, you can really feel the world through there. You can tap into the angelic kingdom. You can receive messages in the sunset.'s quite amazing my mother didn't call me Iona I have a different name but after I've been to I've been on Iona I thought that is that is what I want for my name you know and so I'm going if I'm going to create I'm going to create with this name this speaks to my soul I see the seals in the water you know there's the legend of the seals the soul skin just spoke to me I I came away from there. I learned hypnotherapy after that. So I could heal with words and I'm still healing with words.

But I'm also hoping to inspire and create a vision of beauty for people, something to lift people up in these terrible times. Yeah. Who's your favorite poet? I always liked I like Wordsworth. And it's funny. My home, my home when i was young was called shelly crescent oh so there's always the synchronicities here yes so i quite like the romantics i suppose well i mean i'm sure you know more than i that shakespeare they say had a lot to do with even the Bible itself. I like the sonnets. I really like the Shakespeare sonnets. Those are nice.

Sometimes I just see something that's quite simple and I think I like that. Just being open to it from anybody. They don't have to be a famous poet. I just know what I like when I read it. I like the ones that it takes you there. You know, you can close your eyes and be there with you, which I think you did really well on the ones that I've read and feel it. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't like to categorize things really because people are individuals. They write from where they are. If you write from your heart. My dad was a funny guy. He's passed, but he used to always have this poem it was there once was a man from gorham he had a pair of pants and he tore him he stooped and he laughed for he felt quite a draft because he knew just where he had tore them yeah yeah he was he was he had corny jokes but I always remember that one

yeah thank you so much for coming on and and sharing just truly your authentic soul with us well thank you for asking me I really um after I read your stuff this morning I really thought I can't wait to do this now well you know what you're very inspiring to me you really are good then what I'm doing is working yeah can you tell our listeners where they can get your book well obviously you can get it on Amazon but if you don't like Amazon and you want to go to a bookshop you can order it from any small bookshop. If that's what people want to do, then they can do that. They can order it from my publisher, johnhunt.com. If people go on my website, which is ionajenkins.com,

on the page for To Sing with Bards and Angels, there's a whole load of bookshops that you can buy it from. You can buy it in ebook as well on Kobu, Apple, you know, there's there were so many that I can't remember them all, but they're all on my website. And then they can also read a lot. You have actually wrote quite a bit on your website. Yeah, I've got quite a few blogs on there going back months. You know, some of them are a publicity for to sing with bards and angels. Others of them are things I wrote before I got into the publicity. Once the thing got published, obviously everything became publicity. But

later on, it will go back to being about nature and inspiration again at some point. Can they follow you anywhere on social media? They can follow me on Facebook and on Twitter. Well, I'm going to find a labyrinth. And when I do, I'm going to go in the middle. I'm going to take a snapshot and send it to you. Yeah, do that. Yeah.

Keep in touch and tell me what happened. I'd be really happy to know that. I'll send you a picture of the moon on water outside. Oh, my gosh. I would love that. Thank you. It's been great. Thank you.

Bye bye. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. It's been great. Thank you. Bye-bye.