Wisdom from Dr Margot McKinnon

Every now and then you hear something which leaves you feeling as though a lightbulb has been switched on inside of you. It’s that ‘a-ha’ moment when something really resonates, it just feels right and you know it to be true, yet it’s brand-new information, something previously unknown.

Those little ‘ooh’ moments, as I like to call them, don’t come along all that often, but when they do you just have to sit up and take notice. I often find myself literally saying “Ooooh!” out loud, with glee. It’s like a message from your soul or higher self, sprinkling a bit of wisdom that connects you back to you. It seems as though something is whispering, “Look here! Go there! You’ll love this, take note!” It’s a first-class delivery of insight perfectly attuned to you, and you can tell by the way it makes you feel.

That’s exactly what happened to me this week. A friend sent a link to the brilliant Next Level Soul podcast and I flicked it on to pass the time during a long drive. I was instantly hooked – host Alex Ferrari was interviewing Dr. Margot McKinnon, an Oxford-educated doctor and teacher who shared her perspectives on spirituality and children, and her book ‘The Dominance Theory: A Guide to Elevating Your 5 Dimensions of Self’.

Understanding your Life’s Blueprint

Dr. Margot explained that she believes we each have a blueprint for our life that’s mapped out before we’re born. Like an architect’s blueprint, it provides the plan for building our life, although of course the finer details are up to us, much like the architect designs the house and yet it is up to us to furnish and decorate it.

Following this divine blueprint is our soul’s mission in life, leading us to become more of who we are: it allows for our ongoing expansion at a physical, mental and spiritual level, which leaves us feeling purposeful and fulfilled.

In the language of the Spark, the blueprint of our life is intertwined with the inner guidance system of our Spark, which helps us to know when we are walking our path of purpose. We experience our Spark firing up, feeling ignited from within. Our passion shines through our eyes, people can hear the Spark of life in our voice and see it in our mannerisms. In this context, then, the Spark can be seen as the conduit between our soul’s blueprint and our physical bodies, letting us know we’re on-track.

Of course, it’s very easy to get ‘off path’ in this life. We take a wrong turn, make a few questionable choices, and before we know it, we’ve allowed ourselves to become so diminished, so cut off from who we really are that we almost can’t recognise that there was a perfect blueprint in the first place, let alone find our way back to it.

For many of us, getting off-path isn’t a dramatic right turn that happens due to a cataclysmic event or a tragedy that strikes, stopping us in our tracks and making us do an about-turn. No, most of us disconnect from the blueprint of our lives through a casual stumbling, a few tentative steps off course which over time lead us in the completely wrong direction. It starts with the insidious thoughts of not being good enough, not being deserving of love and affection, not having as much worth as others. These thoughts might equal one-inch steps off the path of our soul’s blueprint, but as they become habits of thought and then beliefs, pretty soon those inches stack up and the gap widens between who we came here to be and who we’ve become. Off we trot, ignorant and blind to the fact that our life could’ve unfolded in a far richer way.

The Breadcrumbs on the Path

It’s at those times when we feel lost, despairing and disconnected (from ourselves and the whole) that we often need a helping hand to guide us back. Dr. Margot suggested finding a photograph of yourself at your happiest, a moment in time when you were alive with joy and Spark. She suggests using that as the basis for calling yourself back to you, creating a vision board or using the image as a prompt to remind you of your soul’s blueprint. Just setting an intention to reconnect with that version of yourself can often be enough to start you on this journey back to your path.

As I was pondering this idea, later in the day after listening to the podcast, I lifted a stack of magazines from the coffee table, and there underneath was a photograph of me as a child, looking joyful and full of Spark with my favourite childhood yellow bike. How did the photograph get there? I don’t know. But it felt like a clear sign, a breadcrumb on the path.

These ‘breadcrumbs’ are important. Most of us don’t hear a booming voice from the heavens or experience a miracle near-death experience to connect us back to ourselves. For most of us the process is subtle – it’s the finding of a photograph, the unexpected scent which evokes a memory of a precious time, the lyrics of a song on the radio which seem to be speaking to us. These ‘micro miracles’ are like little breadcrumbs which we can follow to find our way back to wholeness.

But what if we were to never lose our way in the first place? What if we retained the ‘knowing’ we had about ourselves and our life path in early childhood, when we clearly knew what lit our Spark and who we were at our core? Before the conditioning and the negative beliefs and the sidestepping away from our purpose?

This is the work of The Spark Movement, to ensure our children retain this deep connection to who they really are, and to create the systems and structures which reflect this knowing back to them, instead of diminishing and cutting it off.

More and more children being born on Earth now are retaining a greater remembrance of their life’s blueprint and are staying connected to their Spark. They’re not putting up with rigid school systems or negative media messages which end up cutting off their soul connection. But it’s up to us as adults to support them fully, and that starts with us getting back on track. Taking an honest inventory of where we’ve come unstuck, and noting which wildernesses we’ve wandered into which no longer serve us.

The 5 Dimensions of Self

In Dr. Margot’s book, The Dominance Theory, she shares a unique tool to help us connect back to our life’s purpose and path, through exploring the ‘5 Dimensions of Self’. She writes that as a human, each of us have five different dimensions of self: Body, Mind, Spirit, Soul, and Oneness. We were born with gifts and talents predominantly in one of these dimensions, and so the others must be nurtured over time.

Some of us are rooted in our physical body – exercise or self-image might be really important to us, while others of us are more predominantly rooted in mind. We love to chew on problems, think strategically or be logical in our approach to life. Others are more connected to their spirit and might at times feel quite detached from their body and the world around them.

Each aspect of us must be nurtured and developed in order for us to live as a whole being, which can help guide us back to our soul’s path and our Spark. Being more rooted in our bodies by walking in nature, finding a connection to the oneness of life by sharing a smile with a stranger, finding a deeper sense of our own soul and listening to its wisdom by journaling or sitting in mediation – all of these things can help us find a way back to ourselves, and in so doing, help our children to avoid getting lost in the first place.

Buy Dr. Margot McKinnon’s book The Dominance Theory and learn more about her work here. Listen to the Next Level Soul Podcast here.