The Spirit of abarefootman.co.uk is treading lightly on this earth. It is moving quietly, carefully, savouring the sensations of each step. It is drinking in the textures that lie beneath our feet.

Here you cannot help but be aware of your mistakes. If you fail to see a thorn and tread on it too firmly, you may hurt yourself. This is a reminder that you need to pay more attention, that you need to be more sensitive to your environment and to your actions. Perhaps you may even fall down like you did as a child when you were first learning to walk. Making mistakes is how we learn. We try something, and if it doesn’t work, it leads us closer to what does.

Being open to the world is being vulnerable to it. That might seem like too much for some. We are so tenderfooted after all these years protecting ourselves. But true strength can only be gained when we cast off our protective layers, when we stand upon our own two feet, touching the world directly as we did when we came into it. When we rely upon our real selves instead of the shell we have created, we can develop our true strength, a strength that comes not from destruction and domination, but from harmony and co-creation. We can learn it is our nature to have a flexibility that would have us mould ourselves around the world, and not the other way around.

We are not separate from the world we live in. We are all connected in the great cycle of things. I eat, and then I will be eaten one day. What a plant breathes out, I will breathe in. Anything that occurs in life is part of life, and so here you will find not only lessons and teachings for those of an actively spiritual outlook, but also things that might interest or amuse you simply because you are human. To my mind, none of these things can be separated.