Yesterday we went somewhere very special, St Clether's Holy Well and Chapel. To reach the chapel you walk through the graveyard of the Victorian church and along the side of a valley, with a river below you and the occasional rocky outcrop above. The spring bubbles out into a lovely well house with a thorn tree above decorated with clooties. The water then flows downhill out of the wellhouse and under the path into the chapel where it passes underneath the altar. In the wall of the chapel is the lower well house where the water can be seen again before passing under the yard.
The yard is bordered by trees full of bird feeders and birds and slopes towards the valley. At the lower edge, it looks as if the lower part of the yard is supported on a terrace and the water bubbles out of this terrace and flows down the hill to the river. Before it gets there though it has to pass through a little bridge and into a pool. The pool is obviously man made and of great signifcance too as it has an obviously man made bank and a little island in the middle.
Very beautiful and very peaceful.... or it would have been if we had not been there to drum!
It was a lovely afternoon. It was supposed to be cold and winter but instead we had briliant sunshine and it was relatively warm. The snowdrops were in bloom and daffs were beginning to poke their heads out. As we left, F and I went down to the pool and a huge flock of starlings flew directly over us, from the chapel to the river and beyond, flying South. As we walked back to the car, more flocks flew overhead flying more and more to the South West each time, all going to the same place....
Flocks seem to have some special significance for me right now, although I have not figured it out at all...
Drumming, as always, was lovely... And the focus was very much on the place that we were. Not surprisingly, the journeys were full of water. This is a place I want to visit again though - when I can enjoy the atmosphere of peace perhaps....
Sunday 29 January 2012
Friday 27 January 2012
B is for Bagua
The Bagua is one of those things that appears very simple at first but the more you look at it, the more you learn about it, the more it just appears to be a key. Keys can be simple but unlock an awful lot! I have come across the Bagua a couple of times, reading about Feng Shui and I Ching.
In Feng Shui the idea is to generate positive energy of qi by ordering things according to the laws of Heaven and Earth. So buildings are properly designed and orientated to act within their environment, such as a famous building with a hole in it, designed according to feng shui to allow the dragon in the mountain behind access to the sea. Within homes, feng shui allows things to be placed and ordered to allow us to manage energy and create the energies we wish for and aid balance.
This image is from Wikipedia
The map that helps with this is the Bagua. Each of the eight trigrams deals with a specific concept and has certain attributes. The bagua is overlain on your house, and can be pulled into shape to match and orientated by a compass. All this is explained in any feng shui book.
The eight symbols are the basis of I Ching which is most simply understood as a method of divination. An unbroken line is Yang and a broken line is Yin and each trigram has three lines. Divination has been conducted in various ways such as with yarrow stalks or with three coins.
The bagua itself is often turned into a decoration such as a mirror. This is used on the outside of buildings as a powerful antidote to negative energies caused by the position of the building. This may be beacuse the building is at T junction with a road pointing at it; some sort of offending and badly placed structure such as a tree, electrical transformer or wall; or just because the building is attracting negative energies such as vandalism or theft.
I am beginning to see though that all this is something more than home decorating and divination - it is a system for living, just like many other sacred circles, such as the Medicine Wheel. This has taken much pointing out to me! It is philosophical and highly complex and I do not even begin to claim to understand it. This system has been around for at least 3000 years and has been developed and studied by Chinese scholars, and more recently in other countries too.
It's roots are both magical and mathematical (Math for Mystics by Renna Shesso). Emperor Yu the Great, also known as the Sage King lived around 3000BCE. One day he found a turtle by a river and recognized it as a creature of magic. The dots on it's back were clustered and of two different colours. This pattern of numbers assumed a great significance and this pattern of numbers from this turtle shell are the root of the I Ching and Feng Shui, but also the Square of Saturn and the Lo Shu (Lo River Writing).
The numbers form a magic square which has many mathematical tricks up it's sleeve. Each individual row and column adds up to 15 as does each diagonal. Each edge pair adds up to 10 (4 & 6, 9 & 1, 2 & 8 and 7 & 3). 5 is the only number that does not have a pair, but 5 doubled is 10 as well.
This square was used by the Mayans, prehistoric French and Northern Africans. The Babylonians used it and it was the basis for the Star of Ishtar. It was used in India for divination and associated with the planets in Islamic lands by 983 CE.
So these numbers are a key and the Bagua is one development of the key, a more sophisticated version that opens many doors. Sacred mathematics is obviously a very full and complicated subject and Ancient Civilizations were very sophisticated in it's use and it's subtelties.
In Feng Shui the idea is to generate positive energy of qi by ordering things according to the laws of Heaven and Earth. So buildings are properly designed and orientated to act within their environment, such as a famous building with a hole in it, designed according to feng shui to allow the dragon in the mountain behind access to the sea. Within homes, feng shui allows things to be placed and ordered to allow us to manage energy and create the energies we wish for and aid balance.
The map that helps with this is the Bagua. Each of the eight trigrams deals with a specific concept and has certain attributes. The bagua is overlain on your house, and can be pulled into shape to match and orientated by a compass. All this is explained in any feng shui book.
The eight symbols are the basis of I Ching which is most simply understood as a method of divination. An unbroken line is Yang and a broken line is Yin and each trigram has three lines. Divination has been conducted in various ways such as with yarrow stalks or with three coins.
The bagua itself is often turned into a decoration such as a mirror. This is used on the outside of buildings as a powerful antidote to negative energies caused by the position of the building. This may be beacuse the building is at T junction with a road pointing at it; some sort of offending and badly placed structure such as a tree, electrical transformer or wall; or just because the building is attracting negative energies such as vandalism or theft.
I am beginning to see though that all this is something more than home decorating and divination - it is a system for living, just like many other sacred circles, such as the Medicine Wheel. This has taken much pointing out to me! It is philosophical and highly complex and I do not even begin to claim to understand it. This system has been around for at least 3000 years and has been developed and studied by Chinese scholars, and more recently in other countries too.
It's roots are both magical and mathematical (Math for Mystics by Renna Shesso). Emperor Yu the Great, also known as the Sage King lived around 3000BCE. One day he found a turtle by a river and recognized it as a creature of magic. The dots on it's back were clustered and of two different colours. This pattern of numbers assumed a great significance and this pattern of numbers from this turtle shell are the root of the I Ching and Feng Shui, but also the Square of Saturn and the Lo Shu (Lo River Writing).
4 9 2
3 5 7
8 1 6
3 5 7
8 1 6
The numbers form a magic square which has many mathematical tricks up it's sleeve. Each individual row and column adds up to 15 as does each diagonal. Each edge pair adds up to 10 (4 & 6, 9 & 1, 2 & 8 and 7 & 3). 5 is the only number that does not have a pair, but 5 doubled is 10 as well.
This square was used by the Mayans, prehistoric French and Northern Africans. The Babylonians used it and it was the basis for the Star of Ishtar. It was used in India for divination and associated with the planets in Islamic lands by 983 CE.
So these numbers are a key and the Bagua is one development of the key, a more sophisticated version that opens many doors. Sacred mathematics is obviously a very full and complicated subject and Ancient Civilizations were very sophisticated in it's use and it's subtelties.
Tuesday 24 January 2012
Sound
So I am sure you have gathered, I have had an ear infection *laugh*
Anyway, although the pain has been gone for a while now a couple of things have been really annoying me!
Not hearing things kept coming up and eventually a few things fitted together and I decided to try and make sure I really did listen, and off I went to work...
First of I went to the supermarket and as I was paying a child cried, which made me jump and reminded me that I was not listening. So I listened and the first thing I heard was a man telling a colleague about how he still had no hearing in one ear and was losing it in the other too now. I almost burst out laughing, which might have been unfortunate... but sometimes synchronicity works so very well!
So filled with certainty that listening was exactly what I needed to do, I went to work. And I listened, I realized that although I was having trouble hearing what people were saying, other noises had gotten much louder. Noises I normally just tuned out and ignored. The forklifts buzzing around, clanging in out of pallets, the noise of hydraulics lifting things, reversing beacons, roller doors, trucks....
I realised I was missing out on being aware of so much of what was going on around me. Of knowing what each vehicle sounds like, and knowing how different drivers sound. So much awareness!
At one point I had to go into the production area where the big machines were clanging and I realised there was a rhythm, almost musical... you could certainly dance to it. And it reminded me that I used to do just that. My Dad's machines were old and moved things around with whirrling arms and suction pads - and they had such beautiful rhythm - and we did dance. I used to jiggle around at the photocopier...
There is music in so many things, if we are listening...
But noise is an odd thing! Another person commented and asked for opinions on reports of sky noise or Unidentified Audible Objects. There are lots of videos on youtube. I am unsure, watching them whether they are genuine or not - they are just too far outside of my experience, but one thing was clear to me - it isn't the noise that is the problem but the context. The sound track and video don't go together, and that's what makes them disturbing.
Because sound is so much a part of our environments. I grew up in an old timber framed house. The wood would expand and contract as it warmed and cooled. So there was a set of warming creaks and a set of cooling creaks. I would lie in bed listening to them, and I felt so much comfort int hem. Just from the little tiny noises, I knew where I was and exactly what was happening. My bedroom was up a fork in the stair case and I knew the noise every stair made as it was stepped on, no one could creep up on me as I slept...
Noise is comforting and communicates how things are working around us, that everything is fine... I don't like the nosies my car makes when I hear them because I always listen to music! If I turn my music off or my car makes a loud noise it makes me quite nervous that something is going wrong! Just because I am unfamiliar... My first car was an ancient Hillman Hunter with no radio and it was a pig of a car! But I knew what it was saying to me and what to do about things...
Recently I have also been party to a couple of conversations - one person saying how they see such and such out but they never say hello. And then such and such saying they see the person but feel bad because they don't hear because they always have their music on. And how often do we have music on as we travel to drown out the noise around us, to keep us separate from other people?
The only bad thing to being more aware is that I am more aware of my tinnitus as well.
And the other annoyance? Well I got an answer there too! In talking about ignoring things I realised I was not dreaming so much and one of the few dreams I had involved Buffalo migrating down out of the mountains to the plain to eat. Except there was not much food so some kind farmers (but not farmers - they were tending but not taking) had scattered sage seed around and the buffalo were eating the young shoots as they grew. Well the discussion reminded me of this dream.
So I looked up Sage and realised it was the perfect herb for me right now... and maybe for longer. Sage has a lot of beneficial effects including improving memory, soothes mucus membranes and reduces swelling so is great for abcesses and tonsilitus as a gargle, reduces dandruff, reduces perspiration, assists with regulating mestrual cycles, assists with drying up milk, helps with hot flushes, compresses are used to slow bleeding, ease headaches, soothe stings and burns... and most importantly for me - it helps with upset stomachs and reduces diarrhoea but drying everything out.
The antibiotics have had a bad effect on my IBS and last week I was only eating after 1 p.m. so I would not be ill at work! There has been nothing wrong with the food I have been eating or with my stomach as such, so this drying effect sounded absolutely perfect - and after two days and two cups of sage tea, it has proven to be EXACTLY what I needed! And all from a dream...
Anyway, I love making progress.... I like understanding and dislike it when I know I am not understanding things.... So all is very good!
Anyway, although the pain has been gone for a while now a couple of things have been really annoying me!
- My reaction to the antibiotics
- The feeling that I was not 'getting' whatever I needed to understand
Not hearing things kept coming up and eventually a few things fitted together and I decided to try and make sure I really did listen, and off I went to work...
First of I went to the supermarket and as I was paying a child cried, which made me jump and reminded me that I was not listening. So I listened and the first thing I heard was a man telling a colleague about how he still had no hearing in one ear and was losing it in the other too now. I almost burst out laughing, which might have been unfortunate... but sometimes synchronicity works so very well!
So filled with certainty that listening was exactly what I needed to do, I went to work. And I listened, I realized that although I was having trouble hearing what people were saying, other noises had gotten much louder. Noises I normally just tuned out and ignored. The forklifts buzzing around, clanging in out of pallets, the noise of hydraulics lifting things, reversing beacons, roller doors, trucks....
I realised I was missing out on being aware of so much of what was going on around me. Of knowing what each vehicle sounds like, and knowing how different drivers sound. So much awareness!
At one point I had to go into the production area where the big machines were clanging and I realised there was a rhythm, almost musical... you could certainly dance to it. And it reminded me that I used to do just that. My Dad's machines were old and moved things around with whirrling arms and suction pads - and they had such beautiful rhythm - and we did dance. I used to jiggle around at the photocopier...
There is music in so many things, if we are listening...
But noise is an odd thing! Another person commented and asked for opinions on reports of sky noise or Unidentified Audible Objects. There are lots of videos on youtube. I am unsure, watching them whether they are genuine or not - they are just too far outside of my experience, but one thing was clear to me - it isn't the noise that is the problem but the context. The sound track and video don't go together, and that's what makes them disturbing.
Because sound is so much a part of our environments. I grew up in an old timber framed house. The wood would expand and contract as it warmed and cooled. So there was a set of warming creaks and a set of cooling creaks. I would lie in bed listening to them, and I felt so much comfort int hem. Just from the little tiny noises, I knew where I was and exactly what was happening. My bedroom was up a fork in the stair case and I knew the noise every stair made as it was stepped on, no one could creep up on me as I slept...
Noise is comforting and communicates how things are working around us, that everything is fine... I don't like the nosies my car makes when I hear them because I always listen to music! If I turn my music off or my car makes a loud noise it makes me quite nervous that something is going wrong! Just because I am unfamiliar... My first car was an ancient Hillman Hunter with no radio and it was a pig of a car! But I knew what it was saying to me and what to do about things...
Recently I have also been party to a couple of conversations - one person saying how they see such and such out but they never say hello. And then such and such saying they see the person but feel bad because they don't hear because they always have their music on. And how often do we have music on as we travel to drown out the noise around us, to keep us separate from other people?
The only bad thing to being more aware is that I am more aware of my tinnitus as well.
And the other annoyance? Well I got an answer there too! In talking about ignoring things I realised I was not dreaming so much and one of the few dreams I had involved Buffalo migrating down out of the mountains to the plain to eat. Except there was not much food so some kind farmers (but not farmers - they were tending but not taking) had scattered sage seed around and the buffalo were eating the young shoots as they grew. Well the discussion reminded me of this dream.
So I looked up Sage and realised it was the perfect herb for me right now... and maybe for longer. Sage has a lot of beneficial effects including improving memory, soothes mucus membranes and reduces swelling so is great for abcesses and tonsilitus as a gargle, reduces dandruff, reduces perspiration, assists with regulating mestrual cycles, assists with drying up milk, helps with hot flushes, compresses are used to slow bleeding, ease headaches, soothe stings and burns... and most importantly for me - it helps with upset stomachs and reduces diarrhoea but drying everything out.
The antibiotics have had a bad effect on my IBS and last week I was only eating after 1 p.m. so I would not be ill at work! There has been nothing wrong with the food I have been eating or with my stomach as such, so this drying effect sounded absolutely perfect - and after two days and two cups of sage tea, it has proven to be EXACTLY what I needed! And all from a dream...
Anyway, I love making progress.... I like understanding and dislike it when I know I am not understanding things.... So all is very good!
Sunday 22 January 2012
Taking Advice
I like starting new projects and I like learning new things. Sometimes the planning of these things is much, much better than the real thing! I have spent hours and hours planning my bedroom - I can see it! And we are so close now really in many ways.... I have painting to do - an old print type case, a tall thin bookcase and an old chair. I have curtains and blinds to put up. I have a beautiful picture by the lovely Suzi to hang properly (it is hung just fine - but not in the place I want it to finally be because there is no hook there... and I can't put one there yet because I need to do it in conjunction with the print case...). I have things to rearrange on the bookcase - bits of cut glass brought for my wedding at charity shops and car boots which will be liberally decorated with candles and bits from the shore such as sand, shells and stones. I also have a big lump of blue obsidian which is man made but utterly lovely.
I have further plans - such as strings of beads hung amongst the curtains. A bead woven mat to put under a cut glass bowl. A net or some sort of dream catcher sort of thing above the bed. Pictures to find and print and make to go above the chair on the bit of wall the bookcase will go on including photos we have taken of the sea and a lovely print of another of Suzi's paintings. Rag rugs to make. Sort sort of window decorations.... And finally (maybe) an old metal trunk to restore!
The thing is, part way through doing all the bedroom stuff, I had to plan a wedding. And after the wedding I had no energy for finishing off all the wedding bits - like thank you notes (oh I hate doing them! I have said thank you but I need to do notes as well - I hate thinking of small talk to write... I am so very bad at it!) And I have a lovely photo album to fill with photos. Then I need to put all my beautiful things together in a nice, special wedding box.... Then we can take them out and relive our wedding day whenever we want and keep them as heirlooms.
But those thank you letters, they have really, really stalled me! I could not face getting out my knife and painstakingly cutting another stencil, which takes hours... And people were saying to me, why are you making it so complicated? But my heart wants to do it that way and that helped stall me too.
So although I don't want to do them - I have to because they are in the way. So they have gone on my to do list... And as it is limited to 13, a few things have gone, because they are new things that need to go on hold and not get started yet. They need their own space. So no ley line maps, or medicine bag, or rattles or learning about geometry... Not yet, not till I have space on my to do list again...
The book I ordered that I thought was going to tell me all about Sacred Geometry, didn't. But that is my fault not the books! The book was Maths for Mystics by Renna Shesso and was very, very good. It explained so much and made so many connections for me. It was exactly what I needed. It only took three weeks to arrive, but I am glad of this as this weekend was the perfect time for it to arrive _ I had enough brain back to understand it!
The other books were mixed. The first Medicine Wheel book ( I shan't name the author because I don't think that is fair...) raised a couple of good points but beyond that it offered very little. It seemed to be written from the perspective of using the Medicine Wheel as a spiritual tool for the average Christian. The second by Leo Rutherford, is I think, a very good book, but it will probably take me years to digest it! Jamie Sams, Earth Medicine is lovely, but as it is a book of daily readings, this will be with me for some time - I have enjoyed reading these snippets so far - although I am not sure I get all of them - why the simplest things sometimes the hardest? And then there was The Sun and The Serpent = an excellent book about the St MAry and St Michael leylines in the UK.
So next months books have yet to be finally selected and brough - but I know Renna Shesso's new book on the planets and stars will be there. For Geometry I shall wait until March when John Michell's book goes into paperback.... Which is why geometry has been knocked off the list - it is not a current thing.... and I had too many creative projects on the list - and if you have too many waiting, they go stale sometimes and never happen at all...
So pay day looms (oh what a long month!) and then a few things will wing their way to new or temporary homes, including my Angel Oracle cards and a book that I really didn't gel with but think someone else will appreciate. I offered up my Tarot deck too but I have realised they are meant to stay with me. I need to look at Tarot in a different way is all....
And the letter to my Uncle - well, that is about letting go of others personal failures. Not their fault if they never signed the contract and had no idea of the rules I had made. He had no idea I idolised him and I need to let go of that. I think he will understand - I hope so. It may bring a new life to our friendship - or not, but my heart tells me I have to do it...
And what has sparked this off?
I have been asking questions about why my ear infection is lingering - what does it mean spiritually? Why does illness often go hand in hand with the Moon of Welcome for me? Not got that one figured out yet but someone else delivered a very clear message to a group i belong to that we should all finish our unfinished business, close all our old wheels so we can start new ones.
It made me think.....
I have further plans - such as strings of beads hung amongst the curtains. A bead woven mat to put under a cut glass bowl. A net or some sort of dream catcher sort of thing above the bed. Pictures to find and print and make to go above the chair on the bit of wall the bookcase will go on including photos we have taken of the sea and a lovely print of another of Suzi's paintings. Rag rugs to make. Sort sort of window decorations.... And finally (maybe) an old metal trunk to restore!
The thing is, part way through doing all the bedroom stuff, I had to plan a wedding. And after the wedding I had no energy for finishing off all the wedding bits - like thank you notes (oh I hate doing them! I have said thank you but I need to do notes as well - I hate thinking of small talk to write... I am so very bad at it!) And I have a lovely photo album to fill with photos. Then I need to put all my beautiful things together in a nice, special wedding box.... Then we can take them out and relive our wedding day whenever we want and keep them as heirlooms.
But those thank you letters, they have really, really stalled me! I could not face getting out my knife and painstakingly cutting another stencil, which takes hours... And people were saying to me, why are you making it so complicated? But my heart wants to do it that way and that helped stall me too.
So although I don't want to do them - I have to because they are in the way. So they have gone on my to do list... And as it is limited to 13, a few things have gone, because they are new things that need to go on hold and not get started yet. They need their own space. So no ley line maps, or medicine bag, or rattles or learning about geometry... Not yet, not till I have space on my to do list again...
The book I ordered that I thought was going to tell me all about Sacred Geometry, didn't. But that is my fault not the books! The book was Maths for Mystics by Renna Shesso and was very, very good. It explained so much and made so many connections for me. It was exactly what I needed. It only took three weeks to arrive, but I am glad of this as this weekend was the perfect time for it to arrive _ I had enough brain back to understand it!
The other books were mixed. The first Medicine Wheel book ( I shan't name the author because I don't think that is fair...) raised a couple of good points but beyond that it offered very little. It seemed to be written from the perspective of using the Medicine Wheel as a spiritual tool for the average Christian. The second by Leo Rutherford, is I think, a very good book, but it will probably take me years to digest it! Jamie Sams, Earth Medicine is lovely, but as it is a book of daily readings, this will be with me for some time - I have enjoyed reading these snippets so far - although I am not sure I get all of them - why the simplest things sometimes the hardest? And then there was The Sun and The Serpent = an excellent book about the St MAry and St Michael leylines in the UK.
So next months books have yet to be finally selected and brough - but I know Renna Shesso's new book on the planets and stars will be there. For Geometry I shall wait until March when John Michell's book goes into paperback.... Which is why geometry has been knocked off the list - it is not a current thing.... and I had too many creative projects on the list - and if you have too many waiting, they go stale sometimes and never happen at all...
So pay day looms (oh what a long month!) and then a few things will wing their way to new or temporary homes, including my Angel Oracle cards and a book that I really didn't gel with but think someone else will appreciate. I offered up my Tarot deck too but I have realised they are meant to stay with me. I need to look at Tarot in a different way is all....
And the letter to my Uncle - well, that is about letting go of others personal failures. Not their fault if they never signed the contract and had no idea of the rules I had made. He had no idea I idolised him and I need to let go of that. I think he will understand - I hope so. It may bring a new life to our friendship - or not, but my heart tells me I have to do it...
And what has sparked this off?
I have been asking questions about why my ear infection is lingering - what does it mean spiritually? Why does illness often go hand in hand with the Moon of Welcome for me? Not got that one figured out yet but someone else delivered a very clear message to a group i belong to that we should all finish our unfinished business, close all our old wheels so we can start new ones.
It made me think.....
Friday 20 January 2012
B is for Boundaries
This has been a really important topic for me over the last few years, and to be honest, for a lot longer than that. My Boss has a difficult life and is often very negative and seems to enjoy others being miserable too. Working with her has made me very much more conscious of the energies we pick up from others and boundaries. This is what I have learnt from all sorts of places and acts as a summary of where I am now...
So...
I believe that the boundaries we maintain are really important but that it is wrong to make these boundaries so strong nothing can get through. It is also important they are flexible and can change. The stronger we get, the less we need boundaries at all, but while we are gettig there, techniques for maintaining and reasserting our boundaries are really, really important.
Many years ago I lived in the city. I found this quite hard and when I travel to other more urban areas oof the country I find myself re-erecting the barriers I needed there and becoming harder and more vigilant. In the city you do need to be aware of what is going on around you and there is just so much going on!
I remember one time I was in the city centre and I was sat having a drink. There were two young guys and I realised they were paying attention to me and I was able to pick up the gist of it, although I think it was more in the way of gestures than words. One of them was teaching the other to pick pockets or some such and the student had picked me out as an easy target. The Teacher took one look at me, found me watching back and told his pupil no and they moved on.
Being aware makes it harder for people to target you. Being unaware makes it easier to become a victim. Your boundaries have to allow you to be aware of what is going on, the question is how aware do you need to be? I had to leave the city without fail at least once a month, because even the parks were too crowded - I needed to be further from people. The city is too much for me.
Many people who have been victims work on making their barriers bigger and stronger. They become harder, more cynical, more dangerous in some ways. They are trying to deal with threats on the term of the threat. I had a bad experience many years ago and I remember making a choice mentally that I did not want to become hard and cynical. I wanted to be open to future relationships and happiness without being a victim or a perpetrator of nastiness.
One time, there was a black energy that was following me. I have no idea where it came from, but it used to un-nerve me when I felt it - often at night. I told a friend over the phone one time and then she felt it too, that night at least. In order to feel safe, I would cast a circle and call the elements and ask them to watch me as I slept and keep me safe. Then I could sleep.
I remember one time I traveled to stay with family at a very special place and I could feel the thing at the gate, stuck, unable to come in. And there was no physical barrier there other than the fact the positive energy of the place was such that it could not enter. I think this is how our energy boundaries should be - they exist because of the strength of what is inside, us. But being spiritually wonderful is not somewhere very easy to get to, and quite often we need to clear space in order to learn to even begin getting there.
These are some of the tricks I have learnt...
Visualisation
Grounding
However you ground it is always a good way of allowing negativity to flow out and good energies to flow in. I like to connect myself upwards to the sky and down to the ground and breathe the energies in both directions.
Policing Your Mind
It is easy to get trapped in negative thoughts - don't! They just make you feel negative. Don't repress them, feel them, express them, journal, do art, whatever, just don't let them become a track round and round inside your head, because this is a trap. Change the subject, make yourself think of other things, do other things, distract yourself. Don't dwell.
Meditate and practice thinking nothing at all....
Doing
Protections
Kyanite is a great crystal to carry, as is Smokey Quartz.
Carry any talisman of positivity and contentment that works for you.
I don't believe 'Happy' is a good goal - happy is a momentary feeling and implies you will be sad in the future. Contented is where you want to be - it allows space for happy without being sad un-necessarily. And we all need sad sometimes, it can be a very healing emotion, and it should be expressed - otherwise it turns to depression. It is depression really that we are fighting here I think...
But contentment is something you practice. If you work at being contented, eventually, some chemical trigger in your head might just get the point and suddenly that glass will be half full. And really, that's all you need to change... I have a book called the Happy Book which is a book of prompts to turn the book into a collection of stuff that makes you happy. Lists of memories, smells, objects, people. ideas of happy things to do... So that whenever you are feeling negative you can get out the book and see all the things that make you feel better. A lovely idea.
And that thing about something switching around in your head, well I guess that is what happened for me. Now I find I need to think about clearing my boundaries less. I don't even have to consider sleeping inside a circle - I have not had to do this in years! i don't feel like a victim but when bad stuff happens, I am more able to feel it with out getting stuck in it...
Now don't go thinking I know all of this and I am never negative... I have just learnt how to deal with it better than I ever used too. I still have lots to learn. There is always so much to learn.... But making sure you are not carrying around other peoples emotions makes it easier to do the work on yourself and we have to work on ourselves. If we don't, we have nothing to give anyone else....
p.s. Just read a post which gave a very timely reminder, there will always be situations where you should make your boundaries really, really strong. For instance when healing. Sometimes you just should not take things in to your self or put things out of yourself. I guess it is about adjusting yourself so that you are in balance with the situation you are in... Flexible but strong boudaries!
So...
I believe that the boundaries we maintain are really important but that it is wrong to make these boundaries so strong nothing can get through. It is also important they are flexible and can change. The stronger we get, the less we need boundaries at all, but while we are gettig there, techniques for maintaining and reasserting our boundaries are really, really important.
Many years ago I lived in the city. I found this quite hard and when I travel to other more urban areas oof the country I find myself re-erecting the barriers I needed there and becoming harder and more vigilant. In the city you do need to be aware of what is going on around you and there is just so much going on!
I remember one time I was in the city centre and I was sat having a drink. There were two young guys and I realised they were paying attention to me and I was able to pick up the gist of it, although I think it was more in the way of gestures than words. One of them was teaching the other to pick pockets or some such and the student had picked me out as an easy target. The Teacher took one look at me, found me watching back and told his pupil no and they moved on.
Being aware makes it harder for people to target you. Being unaware makes it easier to become a victim. Your boundaries have to allow you to be aware of what is going on, the question is how aware do you need to be? I had to leave the city without fail at least once a month, because even the parks were too crowded - I needed to be further from people. The city is too much for me.
Many people who have been victims work on making their barriers bigger and stronger. They become harder, more cynical, more dangerous in some ways. They are trying to deal with threats on the term of the threat. I had a bad experience many years ago and I remember making a choice mentally that I did not want to become hard and cynical. I wanted to be open to future relationships and happiness without being a victim or a perpetrator of nastiness.
One time, there was a black energy that was following me. I have no idea where it came from, but it used to un-nerve me when I felt it - often at night. I told a friend over the phone one time and then she felt it too, that night at least. In order to feel safe, I would cast a circle and call the elements and ask them to watch me as I slept and keep me safe. Then I could sleep.
I remember one time I traveled to stay with family at a very special place and I could feel the thing at the gate, stuck, unable to come in. And there was no physical barrier there other than the fact the positive energy of the place was such that it could not enter. I think this is how our energy boundaries should be - they exist because of the strength of what is inside, us. But being spiritually wonderful is not somewhere very easy to get to, and quite often we need to clear space in order to learn to even begin getting there.
These are some of the tricks I have learnt...
Visualisation
- Clean your aura (I take a brush and give mine a good clean out).
- Snipping energy links to other people (we don't need their energy and they don't need ours, not set up as permanent links like this anyway... healing is different but should not be a permanent drain...)
- Visualising an 'energy' cloak all around you as a shield
Grounding
However you ground it is always a good way of allowing negativity to flow out and good energies to flow in. I like to connect myself upwards to the sky and down to the ground and breathe the energies in both directions.
Policing Your Mind
It is easy to get trapped in negative thoughts - don't! They just make you feel negative. Don't repress them, feel them, express them, journal, do art, whatever, just don't let them become a track round and round inside your head, because this is a trap. Change the subject, make yourself think of other things, do other things, distract yourself. Don't dwell.
Meditate and practice thinking nothing at all....
Doing
- Dance or listen to music
- Do physical activities that don't give you space to dwell
- Nature... being with nature is for me, the best balm in the entire word. The wind blowing salt and sand into my face is one of my favourites for making me feel alive and good.
- Love - taking a moment to really feel love for those around us, so that it bubbles up through us.
Protections
Kyanite is a great crystal to carry, as is Smokey Quartz.
Carry any talisman of positivity and contentment that works for you.
I don't believe 'Happy' is a good goal - happy is a momentary feeling and implies you will be sad in the future. Contented is where you want to be - it allows space for happy without being sad un-necessarily. And we all need sad sometimes, it can be a very healing emotion, and it should be expressed - otherwise it turns to depression. It is depression really that we are fighting here I think...
But contentment is something you practice. If you work at being contented, eventually, some chemical trigger in your head might just get the point and suddenly that glass will be half full. And really, that's all you need to change... I have a book called the Happy Book which is a book of prompts to turn the book into a collection of stuff that makes you happy. Lists of memories, smells, objects, people. ideas of happy things to do... So that whenever you are feeling negative you can get out the book and see all the things that make you feel better. A lovely idea.
And that thing about something switching around in your head, well I guess that is what happened for me. Now I find I need to think about clearing my boundaries less. I don't even have to consider sleeping inside a circle - I have not had to do this in years! i don't feel like a victim but when bad stuff happens, I am more able to feel it with out getting stuck in it...
Now don't go thinking I know all of this and I am never negative... I have just learnt how to deal with it better than I ever used too. I still have lots to learn. There is always so much to learn.... But making sure you are not carrying around other peoples emotions makes it easier to do the work on yourself and we have to work on ourselves. If we don't, we have nothing to give anyone else....
p.s. Just read a post which gave a very timely reminder, there will always be situations where you should make your boundaries really, really strong. For instance when healing. Sometimes you just should not take things in to your self or put things out of yourself. I guess it is about adjusting yourself so that you are in balance with the situation you are in... Flexible but strong boudaries!
Thursday 19 January 2012
Tough
Life feels hard right now. It felt really hard last night but today is much better.
I always get a hormonally challenging day a few days before my cycle starts again and last night was it. I was definitely miserable, mopey and weepy. It comes after two weeks of pain and illness, first with my wisdom tooth removal and now with a ear canal / middle ear infection. I am on my second lot of antibiotics and these ones have side effects that do not go well with my IBS. So I am looking forward to next week - eating very basic food at very particular times of the day to avoid difficult situations!
Not surprising it all seemed too much when you add in hormones and a lack of decent sleep as well!
But there has to be a lesson in all this.... Doesn't there? A challenge....
It is the Moon of Welcoming right now and this for me has often been one of illness when it has been my Year of the Moon of Welcoming... (Wheelkeeper's post on this is excellent...)
It was the year I came down with glandular fever. Next time round it was the year I felt off colour, dropped out of Uni and then ended up in hospital being operated on a couple of days later.... So there is a lesson for me here for sure. And how often have illnesses corresponded with the yearly cycle of this moon?
The opposite of welcoming is rejecting....
Mostly I am keeping my chin up....
I always get a hormonally challenging day a few days before my cycle starts again and last night was it. I was definitely miserable, mopey and weepy. It comes after two weeks of pain and illness, first with my wisdom tooth removal and now with a ear canal / middle ear infection. I am on my second lot of antibiotics and these ones have side effects that do not go well with my IBS. So I am looking forward to next week - eating very basic food at very particular times of the day to avoid difficult situations!
Not surprising it all seemed too much when you add in hormones and a lack of decent sleep as well!
But there has to be a lesson in all this.... Doesn't there? A challenge....
It is the Moon of Welcoming right now and this for me has often been one of illness when it has been my Year of the Moon of Welcoming... (Wheelkeeper's post on this is excellent...)
It was the year I came down with glandular fever. Next time round it was the year I felt off colour, dropped out of Uni and then ended up in hospital being operated on a couple of days later.... So there is a lesson for me here for sure. And how often have illnesses corresponded with the yearly cycle of this moon?
The opposite of welcoming is rejecting....
Mostly I am keeping my chin up....
Saturday 14 January 2012
A is for Animism
1866, reintroduced by Eng. anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Taylor (18321917), who defined it (1871) as the "theory of the universal animation of nature," from L. anima "life, breath, soul."
I like that, universal animation of nature. Nature is alive. All of it. We all know that plants and animals are alive. Not everyone believes they have souls. I was recently shocked to discover that my Mother doesn't think they do, and she doesn't think they feel emotion either. It just goes to show that you can never be entirely sure what anyone else believes...
I think everything has soul.
I am beginning to understand that everything has spirit too. I am a newcomer to shamanism and I would not call myself a Shaman. The thing I love the most is that you get to learn and experience it all yourself. So you don't have to take anybody else#s word that these things exist... but you do find yourself realisig that it is not a good idea to disagree with someone else's experiences because the universe is a very large and very strange place - there is room for everything we can possibly image and more.
So recently, I got to meet the spirits of my childhood home on a journey. And now that I have met them I can see their presence throughout my life.
It seems though that two concepts are closely related, Animism and Totemism. Animists believe in the power of individual spirits to bring about life whereas Totemists believe there is a primary source such as Ancestors or the Land. Sort of like the one God versus many Gods viewpoints.
Personally I am not sure it matters. I think both are true in different ways. I think there is a primary source which is Everything but within that everything there are energies that can be separated out as archetypes.
So am I an Animist or a Totemist? I have no idea....
I like that, universal animation of nature. Nature is alive. All of it. We all know that plants and animals are alive. Not everyone believes they have souls. I was recently shocked to discover that my Mother doesn't think they do, and she doesn't think they feel emotion either. It just goes to show that you can never be entirely sure what anyone else believes...
I think everything has soul.
I am beginning to understand that everything has spirit too. I am a newcomer to shamanism and I would not call myself a Shaman. The thing I love the most is that you get to learn and experience it all yourself. So you don't have to take anybody else#s word that these things exist... but you do find yourself realisig that it is not a good idea to disagree with someone else's experiences because the universe is a very large and very strange place - there is room for everything we can possibly image and more.
So recently, I got to meet the spirits of my childhood home on a journey. And now that I have met them I can see their presence throughout my life.
It seems though that two concepts are closely related, Animism and Totemism. Animists believe in the power of individual spirits to bring about life whereas Totemists believe there is a primary source such as Ancestors or the Land. Sort of like the one God versus many Gods viewpoints.
Personally I am not sure it matters. I think both are true in different ways. I think there is a primary source which is Everything but within that everything there are energies that can be separated out as archetypes.
So am I an Animist or a Totemist? I have no idea....
Leylines and Churches
At the moment, I am pursuing an interest in Earth Energies. There is a book called the Sun and the Serpent by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhusrt which looks at the St Michael and St Mary line which are two really important leylines in the UK. They pass all the way through Cornwall, so they tend to come up whenever you research anything to do with Earth Energies in Cornwall. And to be honest there is not much good information on leylines on the net - it sweeps over the top generally and is non-factual and non-experience based. So this book gets referred too...
Recently my conspiracy friend referred to it as well in conversation. We were talking about a couple of local places that I believe are situated on the St Michael line. Places I like very much and do not find negative. He believed them to be negative and that the St Michael line is 'bad' while the St Mary line is 'good'. I really, really struggled with that idea. I decided it was time to get this book and see what it actually said, instead of keep getting it all second hand....
I am glad I did! The book was the tale of two men traveling across the country dowsing the position of the St Michael line. Except that part way through they found the St Mary line and had an aha moment about the nodes they had found previously. They then went back and traced the St Mary line as well.
One thing that is clear reading the book is that they did not feel that either of these lines were good or bad, although one did feel more masculine and the other more feminine. It was clear that both have been known about by the church and the freemasons and used by them. But there is no mention here as to whether or not their use over time has been good or bad at the average parish church. The book is very careful to steer away from such material - whether or not the dowsers felt such things or not, they have not set out to generally criticise, except where evidence is clear or unlikely to offend.
They talk of the destruction of Avebury and the part the church played in this and it is easy to see how the church could become jealous of a serpentine landscape temple that they could not adopt as Christian very easily. At Glastonbury it is clear that the church was more easily able to adopt the mythical landscape and did so with great success.
Because that is what the church has done over time. They have adopted all the pagan and shamanic techniques and places they can and have kept the knowledge alive and well at some level. What they have done is discredit that knowledge within the general population or cut it off from it's non-Christian roots. They have set themselves up as the middle men between the people and divinity. Unfortunately this has meant that in the modern age, many people have lost all touch with divinity in their lives. I think the Church has realised this and is to some extent starting to make things more accessible again.
Where Paul and Hamish do talk about bad energies they are linked to very specific examples - a tomb that emitted bad energies that polluted a church and a castle that was used as a prison which unfortunately on a ley line and had considerably polluted it. I am left wondering though, at all the things they left out, all the sites they passed through and barely mentioned or left out. Sites that I am interested in and believe to be on the line were not mentioned at all, even though it is clear the line passes in the vicinity. And these are some of the local sites I have discussed with my conspiracy friend.
In some churches, leylines make dramatic turns, but the writers were unsure as to whether the points of interest marked or controled the energy currents. Leylines often make dramatic turns within stone circles as well.
Interestingly, the churches where the energy was alive and well had congregations which were active and cared for the church. In one church the writers even met the priest who not only knew about the energies but was well versed in them and the area exorcist... This is what they say "The energy, he said with a refreshing openess, was neutral until used, and that it was the practice in the past to site religious establishments on the flow to keep it pure. The chapel, crucially situated near the Mount, had, since being built, been allowed to deteriorate spiritually, and he had been charged with the reversal of this downward trend. It certainly seemed he had done an excellent job, for it is now a place that uplifts the spirits."
I personally feel that churches are my heritage whether I am Christian or not. They are built in my land, by my ancestors, my ancestors worshipped in them and are buried at them. Or current disillusionment with Christianity has meant a considerable loss of focus and spirituality in communities. I personally feel that Churches need to become more multi-cultural places, because these earth energies need to be cared for.
Recently my conspiracy friend referred to it as well in conversation. We were talking about a couple of local places that I believe are situated on the St Michael line. Places I like very much and do not find negative. He believed them to be negative and that the St Michael line is 'bad' while the St Mary line is 'good'. I really, really struggled with that idea. I decided it was time to get this book and see what it actually said, instead of keep getting it all second hand....
I am glad I did! The book was the tale of two men traveling across the country dowsing the position of the St Michael line. Except that part way through they found the St Mary line and had an aha moment about the nodes they had found previously. They then went back and traced the St Mary line as well.
One thing that is clear reading the book is that they did not feel that either of these lines were good or bad, although one did feel more masculine and the other more feminine. It was clear that both have been known about by the church and the freemasons and used by them. But there is no mention here as to whether or not their use over time has been good or bad at the average parish church. The book is very careful to steer away from such material - whether or not the dowsers felt such things or not, they have not set out to generally criticise, except where evidence is clear or unlikely to offend.
They talk of the destruction of Avebury and the part the church played in this and it is easy to see how the church could become jealous of a serpentine landscape temple that they could not adopt as Christian very easily. At Glastonbury it is clear that the church was more easily able to adopt the mythical landscape and did so with great success.
Because that is what the church has done over time. They have adopted all the pagan and shamanic techniques and places they can and have kept the knowledge alive and well at some level. What they have done is discredit that knowledge within the general population or cut it off from it's non-Christian roots. They have set themselves up as the middle men between the people and divinity. Unfortunately this has meant that in the modern age, many people have lost all touch with divinity in their lives. I think the Church has realised this and is to some extent starting to make things more accessible again.
Where Paul and Hamish do talk about bad energies they are linked to very specific examples - a tomb that emitted bad energies that polluted a church and a castle that was used as a prison which unfortunately on a ley line and had considerably polluted it. I am left wondering though, at all the things they left out, all the sites they passed through and barely mentioned or left out. Sites that I am interested in and believe to be on the line were not mentioned at all, even though it is clear the line passes in the vicinity. And these are some of the local sites I have discussed with my conspiracy friend.
In some churches, leylines make dramatic turns, but the writers were unsure as to whether the points of interest marked or controled the energy currents. Leylines often make dramatic turns within stone circles as well.
Interestingly, the churches where the energy was alive and well had congregations which were active and cared for the church. In one church the writers even met the priest who not only knew about the energies but was well versed in them and the area exorcist... This is what they say "The energy, he said with a refreshing openess, was neutral until used, and that it was the practice in the past to site religious establishments on the flow to keep it pure. The chapel, crucially situated near the Mount, had, since being built, been allowed to deteriorate spiritually, and he had been charged with the reversal of this downward trend. It certainly seemed he had done an excellent job, for it is now a place that uplifts the spirits."
I personally feel that churches are my heritage whether I am Christian or not. They are built in my land, by my ancestors, my ancestors worshipped in them and are buried at them. Or current disillusionment with Christianity has meant a considerable loss of focus and spirituality in communities. I personally feel that Churches need to become more multi-cultural places, because these earth energies need to be cared for.
Thursday 12 January 2012
I have things I want to write about - earth energies - the dragons of the land, the Moon of Welcoming... And I am sure there is other stuff....
Instead I have a nasty ear infection and my brain is scrambled with pain killers. I had one of those days yesterday that would have floored me a few years back. well maybe even only last year... So many things happened but I came through smiling, but in pain.
Today has been about sleep and I suspect the next few days will be too. My wisdom tooth is fine! but I was obviously meant to get something and after the day I had yesterday, I think timing is important.
I just want all the stuff in my ear to come out and for my ear drum not to end uo being burst, again. But it will happen, it can not remain like this. It will have it's cycle.
I can't even be bothered to talk about yesterday but if you are curious you could have a look at my gratitude blog....
Instead I have a nasty ear infection and my brain is scrambled with pain killers. I had one of those days yesterday that would have floored me a few years back. well maybe even only last year... So many things happened but I came through smiling, but in pain.
Today has been about sleep and I suspect the next few days will be too. My wisdom tooth is fine! but I was obviously meant to get something and after the day I had yesterday, I think timing is important.
I just want all the stuff in my ear to come out and for my ear drum not to end uo being burst, again. But it will happen, it can not remain like this. It will have it's cycle.
I can't even be bothered to talk about yesterday but if you are curious you could have a look at my gratitude blog....
Sunday 8 January 2012
Tooth Fairy
Last week I had a wisdom tooth removed. Unexpectedly the tooth decided t let itself be extracted without incisions. For the two days after my temperature was up and down but it was not to painful. Then on the Thursday night it woke me hurting in the night. Friday was a tired day and it woke me again Friday night too, once the pain killers wore off.
Last night I did some reading about infections and things and discovered that you need to keep the scab intact in the hole. If you don't it can become infected. I got F to get his little torch and have a look in and after a lot of struggling his pronouncement was no scab, only yellow / whitey stuff.
I went to bed and decided to have a go at journeying for some healing. So I climbed my tree and asked politely for some helpful wings and took off for the upper world. I just got there when a voice asked me what I was doing up there and I should be going down. So we flew down head first and I started climbing down my tree to the Lower World, except I was the wrong way up! Very disconcerting!
I climbed down into the cave with the pool. I was told to wash my mouth out three times and then there was a little red fish in my mouth with one of the mouthfuls of water and it was eating and nibbling all around my sore teeth. Then I released the little fish and thanked it. I was told to wash out my mouth three more times and then there was a little white fish in my mouth nibbling away. I thanked both fish and that was it...
My teeth did not wake me in the night and I even managed to get a lie in! I am not saying they don't still hurt, they do. But the level of pain is much more what I would expect now.... And when I got F to have a little look in my mouth earlier, all the white and yellow stuff was gone and he could see scab.
I couldn't remember if I thanked my guide or not, so I thanked him this morning and promised I would go and meet him properly. He said he would like that. I have only visited the Upper World once and not for myself. I have spent more time in the Lower World and I am much happier there because of this. I am aware of the landscape around my tree now and I know some of my shortcuts. Traveling there is becoming easier for me because of this.
I used to have such trouble with journeying and had to join a drumming circle. Drummming is very good and my journeys with it are very vivid but it is nice to be able to do simple journeys alone to, as and when I need to....
And I think my guide will pretend to hate that post title but secretly be very amused!
Last night I did some reading about infections and things and discovered that you need to keep the scab intact in the hole. If you don't it can become infected. I got F to get his little torch and have a look in and after a lot of struggling his pronouncement was no scab, only yellow / whitey stuff.
I went to bed and decided to have a go at journeying for some healing. So I climbed my tree and asked politely for some helpful wings and took off for the upper world. I just got there when a voice asked me what I was doing up there and I should be going down. So we flew down head first and I started climbing down my tree to the Lower World, except I was the wrong way up! Very disconcerting!
I climbed down into the cave with the pool. I was told to wash my mouth out three times and then there was a little red fish in my mouth with one of the mouthfuls of water and it was eating and nibbling all around my sore teeth. Then I released the little fish and thanked it. I was told to wash out my mouth three more times and then there was a little white fish in my mouth nibbling away. I thanked both fish and that was it...
My teeth did not wake me in the night and I even managed to get a lie in! I am not saying they don't still hurt, they do. But the level of pain is much more what I would expect now.... And when I got F to have a little look in my mouth earlier, all the white and yellow stuff was gone and he could see scab.
I couldn't remember if I thanked my guide or not, so I thanked him this morning and promised I would go and meet him properly. He said he would like that. I have only visited the Upper World once and not for myself. I have spent more time in the Lower World and I am much happier there because of this. I am aware of the landscape around my tree now and I know some of my shortcuts. Traveling there is becoming easier for me because of this.
I used to have such trouble with journeying and had to join a drumming circle. Drummming is very good and my journeys with it are very vivid but it is nice to be able to do simple journeys alone to, as and when I need to....
And I think my guide will pretend to hate that post title but secretly be very amused!
Friday 6 January 2012
A is for Avebury
So starting this a little late and posting retrosepctively....
I remember very well the first, and only time, I have been to Avebury. I had a call shortly after work one Friday evening from a friend, saying lets go on a trip. We bundled ourselves up into his van and he took me to Avebury.
It was dark when we got there and we parked in a layby near Silbury Hill, which we then climbed in the dark. Afterwards we played Crib in the back of his van, comfortably outfitted with a mattress, and nearly suffocated ourselves with fumes from his parafin lamp....
In the morning, shortly after dawn we walked to the Long Barrow and I remember being so amazed... We met a man who had spent the entire night in the barrow, and I was bemused by this, I was so very young and pagan things were skirting around the edges of my life back then. We gave him a lift into the village and before he left he took out a battered set of cards with the names of animals on them and asked us to choose one each. I chose Otter and my friend chose Deer.
I remember looking around the stones in the early morning and we had it all to ourselves, no body else had even stirred...
I wish I remembered more of the trip but my memory is notoriously poor, but I remember Avebury with great fondness and would love to visit again. And this time I would be more thorough in my visit.
I have just been reading about Avebury recently and it's sad history of abuse and destruction. As much as some of the stones have been removed and destroyed, the underlying energy structure of Avebury is still intact. The St MAry line passes through a pair of stones to Windmill Hill, loops round to Avebury stone circle, down to Silbury Hill, the Swallowhead Spring and finally the Long Barrow bwfore passing through the Sanctuary.
The St Michael Line crosses the St Mary line at Windmill Hill before passing through Winterbourne Monkton and then crossing the St Mary line again in the stone circle before leaving through the West Kennet stone Avenue and then crossing the St Mary line again at the Sanctuary.
I find it curious that my friend took me to three of the places on the St Mary line and I can't help but wonder if he even knew of the others at that time. When I go again, I shall take a good map and visit all of the sites, and hopefully I shall get to spend some quiet time at each so I can really feel them....
There is one further place called Knoll Down that I would visit, but then, one look at the map for this area and there are so very many stones, tumuli, barrows and earthworks, I think you could spend a long time in this one place....
I remember very well the first, and only time, I have been to Avebury. I had a call shortly after work one Friday evening from a friend, saying lets go on a trip. We bundled ourselves up into his van and he took me to Avebury.
It was dark when we got there and we parked in a layby near Silbury Hill, which we then climbed in the dark. Afterwards we played Crib in the back of his van, comfortably outfitted with a mattress, and nearly suffocated ourselves with fumes from his parafin lamp....
In the morning, shortly after dawn we walked to the Long Barrow and I remember being so amazed... We met a man who had spent the entire night in the barrow, and I was bemused by this, I was so very young and pagan things were skirting around the edges of my life back then. We gave him a lift into the village and before he left he took out a battered set of cards with the names of animals on them and asked us to choose one each. I chose Otter and my friend chose Deer.
I remember looking around the stones in the early morning and we had it all to ourselves, no body else had even stirred...
I wish I remembered more of the trip but my memory is notoriously poor, but I remember Avebury with great fondness and would love to visit again. And this time I would be more thorough in my visit.
I have just been reading about Avebury recently and it's sad history of abuse and destruction. As much as some of the stones have been removed and destroyed, the underlying energy structure of Avebury is still intact. The St MAry line passes through a pair of stones to Windmill Hill, loops round to Avebury stone circle, down to Silbury Hill, the Swallowhead Spring and finally the Long Barrow bwfore passing through the Sanctuary.
The St Michael Line crosses the St Mary line at Windmill Hill before passing through Winterbourne Monkton and then crossing the St Mary line again in the stone circle before leaving through the West Kennet stone Avenue and then crossing the St Mary line again at the Sanctuary.
I find it curious that my friend took me to three of the places on the St Mary line and I can't help but wonder if he even knew of the others at that time. When I go again, I shall take a good map and visit all of the sites, and hopefully I shall get to spend some quiet time at each so I can really feel them....
There is one further place called Knoll Down that I would visit, but then, one look at the map for this area and there are so very many stones, tumuli, barrows and earthworks, I think you could spend a long time in this one place....
Thursday 5 January 2012
Gull
Oh and another numpty moment regarding totems....
Sometime ago, i was traveling to big hill when three birds flew past each other, all at equal distances so that there flight paths made a perfect equilateral triangle. They were Crow, Magpie and Sea Gull. I have known this a long time but kind of ignored it....
Crow I can cope with, cousin to my beloved Magpies... but Sea Gull. i wince slightly at the thought of Sea Gull.
I love Gulls of the sea, they are graceful birds who soar on the winds and ride the weather. they travel the world and are so in tune with the elements. But on land they show a different side of their nature. They steal food, attack people near their nests, make a mess, make lots of noise.... They are brash and in your face. They are the thugs and bully boys. They are so utterly themselves and completely at peace with that. And I do envy them that I guess, that they are happy to make a noise and everyone else can think what they like. But me, sea gull? oh dear... not me...
but it is Gull who joins Magpie and Crow sometimes at lunch. It is sea gull who is always there with them. Today though they did not stop to visit, they hung in the air all around.
And the other night, it was Gull who met me in the Lower World to offer some answers, not Magpie. or Crow.
I have lots of questions about earth energies and things right now, from ley lines to vortexes (and I am STILL waiting for the book I most desperately waiting to read *laugh*). As I lay in bed, quieting to go to sleep, I suddenly became conscious of my heart beat. And it sounded like a drum. And it was calling me. So I decided to have a go, there and then journeying with it, and it worked.
I found myself on a rock in the middle of the sea and there was gull, happy to answer my questions. And very kind of gull too - because of course if there is a bird who really knows how to ride the energies around it, then gull has to be right up there.
So now I have to look at why gull makes me uncomfortable and what that says about me. Because it says rather a lot. Thankfully Gull believes in itself enough not to care that I have a somewhat bipolar view and has been patient enough with me to let me get there....
Sometime ago, i was traveling to big hill when three birds flew past each other, all at equal distances so that there flight paths made a perfect equilateral triangle. They were Crow, Magpie and Sea Gull. I have known this a long time but kind of ignored it....
Crow I can cope with, cousin to my beloved Magpies... but Sea Gull. i wince slightly at the thought of Sea Gull.
I love Gulls of the sea, they are graceful birds who soar on the winds and ride the weather. they travel the world and are so in tune with the elements. But on land they show a different side of their nature. They steal food, attack people near their nests, make a mess, make lots of noise.... They are brash and in your face. They are the thugs and bully boys. They are so utterly themselves and completely at peace with that. And I do envy them that I guess, that they are happy to make a noise and everyone else can think what they like. But me, sea gull? oh dear... not me...
but it is Gull who joins Magpie and Crow sometimes at lunch. It is sea gull who is always there with them. Today though they did not stop to visit, they hung in the air all around.
And the other night, it was Gull who met me in the Lower World to offer some answers, not Magpie. or Crow.
I have lots of questions about earth energies and things right now, from ley lines to vortexes (and I am STILL waiting for the book I most desperately waiting to read *laugh*). As I lay in bed, quieting to go to sleep, I suddenly became conscious of my heart beat. And it sounded like a drum. And it was calling me. So I decided to have a go, there and then journeying with it, and it worked.
I found myself on a rock in the middle of the sea and there was gull, happy to answer my questions. And very kind of gull too - because of course if there is a bird who really knows how to ride the energies around it, then gull has to be right up there.
So now I have to look at why gull makes me uncomfortable and what that says about me. Because it says rather a lot. Thankfully Gull believes in itself enough not to care that I have a somewhat bipolar view and has been patient enough with me to let me get there....
Medicine Wheel
Do you ever have one of those aha moments that is so very closely followed by a d'oh moment? Well I did today.
I finally got something that probably most people will look at me and either go, oh yes! or gaze at me blankly with a look of pity, wondering how I didn't get it before....
A lot of special ways of looking at things come back to the Sacred Circle. In order to understand the universe and categorize things we often divide the circle up in various ways. This is the heart of the Medicine Wheel system.... and the heart of many, many systems the world over.
Lisa told me this yesterday but I didn't quite get it until I read a Medicine Wheel book I got in the post today. I shan't say too much about the book except that I have already read it and while there are some useful things in it, I am not sure I shall need to keep hold of it very long. But it did make it blatantly clear that the sacred circle is the basis of the Medicine Wheel and that other circle traditions are all related... (although, as I said, you would think Lisa having told me would have been enough....)
So take astrology - a large and complex wheel where each of the planets has it's own position and relations. Maybe each planet has it's own circle even. But each planet has things associated with it - elements, colours, masculine / feminine, stones, plants, so many, many things and they all have their place on the medicine wheel of western astrology.
Witches have their wheel of the year with the story of the Goddess and God and all the things associated with the different times of the year. Mandalas and stone circles and celtic knots and spirals all use the sacred circle. And all of a sudden I can see how every place and time could have it's own circle. Sort of like ecology...
In an environment you have different organisms occupying different niches. In similar environments in different places, you will always have organisms doing similar roles but they may be very different. I know I should give an example....
So the things relevant to me, in my circle right here, in this land are different to those relevant to someone living in the desert. They would not have badgers and foxes, or granite and serpentine but they might well have scorpions and camels, or sandstone and er... sand. But just because my circle here is different doesn't mean someone else's circle does not hold relevance to me. I know what a lion is and I know what the grand canyon looks like, even though I have little direct experience.
But it is the position these things hold on the wheel that is important and their relationships to each other, so it does not really matter if I decided to include the moon in various positions on my wheel, what I would call each of those moons, the name does not make the moon. And the four elements are the four elements wherever you are. And so my animals might be a little different but they would live in the same niches, have the same symbolism.
But I guess what I really like about the Medicine Wheel is that the process of direct revelation in shamanism has allowed some shaman to explore the wheel to a very deep level and it is this that makes the North American medicine wheel so very interesting to me. It doesn't matter what names you give things exactly but how you work with it and how it helps you improve your life. So it may not be of my land, but that does not matter. Not one bit.
Maybe one day I might make a Cornish version of the Medicine Wheel, but it will still use the principles I am currently learning. And I suspect my teachers would find it just as intriguing as I would, as I find their wheel. After all badgers are lovely creatures. And moles, what's not to love?
everything has it's place somewhere on the wheel.
I finally got something that probably most people will look at me and either go, oh yes! or gaze at me blankly with a look of pity, wondering how I didn't get it before....
A lot of special ways of looking at things come back to the Sacred Circle. In order to understand the universe and categorize things we often divide the circle up in various ways. This is the heart of the Medicine Wheel system.... and the heart of many, many systems the world over.
Lisa told me this yesterday but I didn't quite get it until I read a Medicine Wheel book I got in the post today. I shan't say too much about the book except that I have already read it and while there are some useful things in it, I am not sure I shall need to keep hold of it very long. But it did make it blatantly clear that the sacred circle is the basis of the Medicine Wheel and that other circle traditions are all related... (although, as I said, you would think Lisa having told me would have been enough....)
So take astrology - a large and complex wheel where each of the planets has it's own position and relations. Maybe each planet has it's own circle even. But each planet has things associated with it - elements, colours, masculine / feminine, stones, plants, so many, many things and they all have their place on the medicine wheel of western astrology.
Witches have their wheel of the year with the story of the Goddess and God and all the things associated with the different times of the year. Mandalas and stone circles and celtic knots and spirals all use the sacred circle. And all of a sudden I can see how every place and time could have it's own circle. Sort of like ecology...
In an environment you have different organisms occupying different niches. In similar environments in different places, you will always have organisms doing similar roles but they may be very different. I know I should give an example....
So the things relevant to me, in my circle right here, in this land are different to those relevant to someone living in the desert. They would not have badgers and foxes, or granite and serpentine but they might well have scorpions and camels, or sandstone and er... sand. But just because my circle here is different doesn't mean someone else's circle does not hold relevance to me. I know what a lion is and I know what the grand canyon looks like, even though I have little direct experience.
But it is the position these things hold on the wheel that is important and their relationships to each other, so it does not really matter if I decided to include the moon in various positions on my wheel, what I would call each of those moons, the name does not make the moon. And the four elements are the four elements wherever you are. And so my animals might be a little different but they would live in the same niches, have the same symbolism.
But I guess what I really like about the Medicine Wheel is that the process of direct revelation in shamanism has allowed some shaman to explore the wheel to a very deep level and it is this that makes the North American medicine wheel so very interesting to me. It doesn't matter what names you give things exactly but how you work with it and how it helps you improve your life. So it may not be of my land, but that does not matter. Not one bit.
Maybe one day I might make a Cornish version of the Medicine Wheel, but it will still use the principles I am currently learning. And I suspect my teachers would find it just as intriguing as I would, as I find their wheel. After all badgers are lovely creatures. And moles, what's not to love?
everything has it's place somewhere on the wheel.
Wednesday 4 January 2012
Root of the Tooth
Yesterday I went to the hospital. I had been brave at my prelimiary appointmen and elected to have a local anasthetic rather than a general.. i was calm but over time a little nervousness crept in - mostly fuelled by other peoples stories, and nightmares.
The removal of my troublesome wisdom tooth was easier than the staff even expected. They had to make no cut. The staff got the right angle and the tooth let go. I was in and out within fifteen minutes.
I had no right to expect that!
As they worked on my mouth first injecting and then removing. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing deeply. I may have let out a tiny whimper when one of the injections touched a nerve, but that was it.
So I came home, with swollen mouth and had the joys of numbness. F and I stopped for coffee and chatted, well I had water in a bottle.... We laughed. I think 'steb in pubbles' was my favourite and we giggled about that few times throughout the day. As for the numbness - I explored the sensation of drinking from a bottle and only being able to feel half of the bottle. And touch, I had to touch all round the area. And I had to get F to touch it too.
Once the injections wore off, it hurt, of course. I always find pain draining. I always find that healing requires sleep. So off I went to sleep. Then I got up and bathed and read and then I slept some more. I am glad I booked today off too though. There is no 'good' reason for me to be off today but I still feel drained and I have more sleeping to do.
I don't think my work place understands the wisdom of time off and being gentle with yourself. I think sometimes my willingness to use my holiday for things like this and to take more than I need and then 'waste' it on sleeping seems a little odd. But I have spent so very many years being ill and sleeping. Now I am more gentle with myself, I get ill a lot less. I have not had a cold in some time for instance, whereas most of my colleagues have colds that drag on all winter and into the spring.
But today i really hope my new book arrives... The Sun and the Serpent was the first to be despatched and it could very well arrive today. I have been thinking about earth energies and the like a fair bit these last few days and I am not finished yet.
The removal of my troublesome wisdom tooth was easier than the staff even expected. They had to make no cut. The staff got the right angle and the tooth let go. I was in and out within fifteen minutes.
I had no right to expect that!
As they worked on my mouth first injecting and then removing. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing deeply. I may have let out a tiny whimper when one of the injections touched a nerve, but that was it.
So I came home, with swollen mouth and had the joys of numbness. F and I stopped for coffee and chatted, well I had water in a bottle.... We laughed. I think 'steb in pubbles' was my favourite and we giggled about that few times throughout the day. As for the numbness - I explored the sensation of drinking from a bottle and only being able to feel half of the bottle. And touch, I had to touch all round the area. And I had to get F to touch it too.
Once the injections wore off, it hurt, of course. I always find pain draining. I always find that healing requires sleep. So off I went to sleep. Then I got up and bathed and read and then I slept some more. I am glad I booked today off too though. There is no 'good' reason for me to be off today but I still feel drained and I have more sleeping to do.
I don't think my work place understands the wisdom of time off and being gentle with yourself. I think sometimes my willingness to use my holiday for things like this and to take more than I need and then 'waste' it on sleeping seems a little odd. But I have spent so very many years being ill and sleeping. Now I am more gentle with myself, I get ill a lot less. I have not had a cold in some time for instance, whereas most of my colleagues have colds that drag on all winter and into the spring.
But today i really hope my new book arrives... The Sun and the Serpent was the first to be despatched and it could very well arrive today. I have been thinking about earth energies and the like a fair bit these last few days and I am not finished yet.
Tuesday 3 January 2012
Aramaic
Do you ever get a little confused as to what has actually happened in the waking world and what has happened in the dream world? The edges of things seem a little fuzzy right now.
I came across a peace of knowledge earlier and I can not remember where it came from. I have no idea if I read it or not. I have searched for key words on blogs I read. I have searched for it on the net and not found anything that looks familiar, but I have found that what I was remembering is actually fact.
Is it that some thing I read some time ago has been brought back into my consciousness because it has relevance to something I am working on and that this happened while in a dream? Because I had an anathestic today I slept a lot this afternoon. Maybe I was half asleep and halw awake, thinking about things.
Does it actually matter?
Maybe....
Because if I am taking something from somewhere, i would actualy like to give credit (and if anyone reading this has any idea where I might have gotten it, please let me know!)
But what came back to me is talked about here....
I think wherever this came from, there was a discussion about how this mistranslation of the bible has shaped so much in the Western world. If good means ripe and evil means unripe in the bible then this has repercussions for everything.
This comes back to some things I am thinking about to do with earth energies at the moment. I know they seem like completely unrelated topics *laugh*
Anyway, have some way yet to go with my thinking.... and I need yet more sleep!
I came across a peace of knowledge earlier and I can not remember where it came from. I have no idea if I read it or not. I have searched for key words on blogs I read. I have searched for it on the net and not found anything that looks familiar, but I have found that what I was remembering is actually fact.
Is it that some thing I read some time ago has been brought back into my consciousness because it has relevance to something I am working on and that this happened while in a dream? Because I had an anathestic today I slept a lot this afternoon. Maybe I was half asleep and halw awake, thinking about things.
Does it actually matter?
Maybe....
Because if I am taking something from somewhere, i would actualy like to give credit (and if anyone reading this has any idea where I might have gotten it, please let me know!)
But what came back to me is talked about here....
I think wherever this came from, there was a discussion about how this mistranslation of the bible has shaped so much in the Western world. If good means ripe and evil means unripe in the bible then this has repercussions for everything.
This comes back to some things I am thinking about to do with earth energies at the moment. I know they seem like completely unrelated topics *laugh*
Anyway, have some way yet to go with my thinking.... and I need yet more sleep!
Monday 2 January 2012
Small Things
So here are a few more beautiful things including lots of Magpies and a few other assorted birds... Snippets...
As I walked into the garden to leave my offering at my parents house and say my good byes, I heard the clack of a Magpie. So before I went to do what I needed to do I walked towards it. I got to the edge of my parents property and saw them in a tree in the field beyond, two little magpies, chatting away happily to each other.
Christmas Eve saw me not getting out of bed early as we arrived so very late the night before. Christmas Day I took little dog out and became quickly aware that lots of birds were flying over, in small groups, and settling in a tree over the road. The tree was getting fuller and fuller until eventually a flock took off and swirled around. The starlings were all around, flying round and round the house and they were obviously feeding in the fields around.
Boxing Day I saw the starlings begin their day again, roosting in the same tree. I did not see them roosting in that tree again but they were still in the vacinity. Given my recent synchronicity with flocks... The name flockhart jumped out me again, from the radio this time as well...
On the morning of the Winter Solstice, I went up big hill. Not to watch the sun rise though as it was far cloudy to see anything! It was windy and I had little time but I did get out of the car. As I did so, a magpie took flight from by the monument. It was a lovely moment.
My local flock has had to survive without me. I was concerned to begin with but then I thought about it and realised that these birds have been stashing the food I give them for quite some time now. They have a whole set of little stashes to see them through till I return. I gave up giving them my food as I started buying extra to give them! So now I have a bag of bird seed in my boot for them which I scatter on the grass. This has been really good as the Crows are a lot less aggressive over birdseed and the magpies are able to feed much more easily. The same goes for gulls, a large Herring Gull occasionally joins in but doesn't stop any other birds from feeding. Not getting flocks of gulls is definitely a bonus....
Books! I ordered januaries books yesterday. Two books on the medicine wheel - because I need to adds ome breadth to my seeds of knowledge. I need help and I can not be too demanding of those around me who are helping. Going to people and saying, tell me everything, is not what those people need! They have written a lot about the wheel but I want more....
I also ordered the Sun and the Serpent which is about the St Michael and St Mary ley lines. I have come across this book several times and never brought it. It is however accepted as the definitive book about these lines and is often quoted. I am interested in them and want to learn more, particularly as they are so much a part of my local environment...
I ordered the Starseed Transmissions for curiousities sake. Such things are right on the very edge of my comfort zone, maybe even a step beyond it....
I also ordered a book called Maths for Mystics which is an introduction to sacred geometry. I have a long standing interest in geometry so this seems a really good thing to look at further.
dreams have been a little thin on the ground in some ways while away. I didn't have many big dreams and when I woke I did not remember any dreams as such. Except that throughout the day, things would happen and I would remember something and not be sure if I had dreamt it or not. Sometimes I had, and other times it had actually happened. I did have one big dream that was a follow on from another dream and at some point I shall write about these two dreams.
I also found a nice long piece of kyanite in a shop which now sits in my pocket. This is especially good as it can go to work with me. My niece brought one two, and I hope she uses it, as it would be a good stone for her.
while out with my niece that day I had another odd experience. We found a book shop as I decided to have a look and see if any books appealed for the journey home. As we went in I thought 'Sheri S Tepper' or at least, I heard that thought anyway. And lo and behold I did find an ancient second hand copy of one of her books tucked away on the bottom shelf....
Oh and my wisdom tooth comes out tomorrow. For some reason I was feeling brave and elected to have it done under a local, not a general. I do wonder if that might have been a mistake....
As I walked into the garden to leave my offering at my parents house and say my good byes, I heard the clack of a Magpie. So before I went to do what I needed to do I walked towards it. I got to the edge of my parents property and saw them in a tree in the field beyond, two little magpies, chatting away happily to each other.
Christmas Eve saw me not getting out of bed early as we arrived so very late the night before. Christmas Day I took little dog out and became quickly aware that lots of birds were flying over, in small groups, and settling in a tree over the road. The tree was getting fuller and fuller until eventually a flock took off and swirled around. The starlings were all around, flying round and round the house and they were obviously feeding in the fields around.
Boxing Day I saw the starlings begin their day again, roosting in the same tree. I did not see them roosting in that tree again but they were still in the vacinity. Given my recent synchronicity with flocks... The name flockhart jumped out me again, from the radio this time as well...
On the morning of the Winter Solstice, I went up big hill. Not to watch the sun rise though as it was far cloudy to see anything! It was windy and I had little time but I did get out of the car. As I did so, a magpie took flight from by the monument. It was a lovely moment.
My local flock has had to survive without me. I was concerned to begin with but then I thought about it and realised that these birds have been stashing the food I give them for quite some time now. They have a whole set of little stashes to see them through till I return. I gave up giving them my food as I started buying extra to give them! So now I have a bag of bird seed in my boot for them which I scatter on the grass. This has been really good as the Crows are a lot less aggressive over birdseed and the magpies are able to feed much more easily. The same goes for gulls, a large Herring Gull occasionally joins in but doesn't stop any other birds from feeding. Not getting flocks of gulls is definitely a bonus....
Books! I ordered januaries books yesterday. Two books on the medicine wheel - because I need to adds ome breadth to my seeds of knowledge. I need help and I can not be too demanding of those around me who are helping. Going to people and saying, tell me everything, is not what those people need! They have written a lot about the wheel but I want more....
I also ordered the Sun and the Serpent which is about the St Michael and St Mary ley lines. I have come across this book several times and never brought it. It is however accepted as the definitive book about these lines and is often quoted. I am interested in them and want to learn more, particularly as they are so much a part of my local environment...
I ordered the Starseed Transmissions for curiousities sake. Such things are right on the very edge of my comfort zone, maybe even a step beyond it....
I also ordered a book called Maths for Mystics which is an introduction to sacred geometry. I have a long standing interest in geometry so this seems a really good thing to look at further.
dreams have been a little thin on the ground in some ways while away. I didn't have many big dreams and when I woke I did not remember any dreams as such. Except that throughout the day, things would happen and I would remember something and not be sure if I had dreamt it or not. Sometimes I had, and other times it had actually happened. I did have one big dream that was a follow on from another dream and at some point I shall write about these two dreams.
I also found a nice long piece of kyanite in a shop which now sits in my pocket. This is especially good as it can go to work with me. My niece brought one two, and I hope she uses it, as it would be a good stone for her.
while out with my niece that day I had another odd experience. We found a book shop as I decided to have a look and see if any books appealed for the journey home. As we went in I thought 'Sheri S Tepper' or at least, I heard that thought anyway. And lo and behold I did find an ancient second hand copy of one of her books tucked away on the bottom shelf....
Oh and my wisdom tooth comes out tomorrow. For some reason I was feeling brave and elected to have it done under a local, not a general. I do wonder if that might have been a mistake....
Intervention
Sometimes people lose there way. Sometimes people lose their way so badly that they become a problem for those that love them, not merely a concern, but a problem. Sometimes these problems just need to be borne but other times.... sometimes something has to be done.
I have a relative, my Aunt, who I have mentioned before. She is not a blood relative of mine but is the ex wife of my Uncle. Her own family has grown and she is falling through the cracks. Her Mother has gone and her Father wishes he had, leaving two siblings with their own children, spouses, ex-spouses and grand-children.
My Aunt lives alone and has now retired but for many years strong principles and an inability to drive meant her choice of jobs was limited. When she did work, she generally worked part time. Ill health has caught up with her as well now and she does less than she did in previous years as she has fallen out with the organisation she used to volunteer for, for years. Good friends have moved away....
I had not realised but depression has settled in with a firm grip. Although now I know, i can see it there. The problem is, I have suffered from depression in the past but I don't now. I believe contentedness is an attitude that can be learnt, it can be practiced and if you practice it for long enough, one day your mind clicks round to feeling it.
Living by herself and being so severely depressed she has reached a point where she is alienating those around her, becoming a stone that drags them down at the least and falling out with them at worst. Her behaviour is becoming difficult and no one is quite close enough and she is not robust enough to cope with hearing any difficult truths.
Even my Mum is not sure she can face another Christmas but she can not bare the thought of my Aunt being alone at that time. One year weather meant she might not make it and she was on the phone in tears and was quite positive she had no where else to go. Not that I think she enjoyed this Christmas and that was in large part down to me...
My parents house is normally quiet with noisy bits being in smaller doses round my Sisters. This year I added a mad manic dog, a teen and two adults to the mix and it was no longer what she wanted I think. I think it also added to that feeling of being on the outskirts of the family.
If we go out, she occasionally offers to pay for herself and gets promptly turned down because in a large group, for one person to pay for themself is just rude. My sister and I take it in turns to buy things for the whole group. As a non-driver, she is always there expecting to be transported and thank yous for that are few and far between, as are offers for petrol money.
At Christmas though, the worst bit was her attitude to food. Mealtimes are communal times in my family, we sit together and we help each other get the food we want etc. One meal which consisted of various left overs and salad vegs etc meant there was lots of dishes of food. We were still bringing things through and by the time I sat down she had completely served herself and had even started eating. I started serving myself and making sure everyone had what they wanted and had finished this when my Mum came in with the last of the food. Instead of starting my food, I then made sure I passed my Mum all the things she wanted. To do this I had to reach across my Aunt who just kept eating ( and possibly looking a little cross that I was being rude and reaching across!).
At one point she shot her chair back and my Mum asked her what was wrong. She said the dog was sat on her foot. If the dog had been it would have stood up when she shot back like that. I find it hard, her attitude towards dogs, but yet she chooses to come and stay with my parents who have four dogs. Dogs are a huge part of our lives and she has no idea how much she disrupts things with her attitudes, or how irritating the commentary of go away can get...
So my Mum brought additional food in once or twice and my Aunt was straight into it every time without helping anyone else. I got there second and found out who else wanted some and served the remainder out between us. I then felt she was cross, probably because she had wanted more. At other meals she was taking seconds (and finishing dishes) before I had eaten more than a couple of mouthfuls. My Mum asked my Dad to finish a small amount of food on a dish and she was there, I would like some of that....
Anyway, enough whining. At the moment, i resent buying her something nice as a present. She did not say thank you for anything we gave her for Christmas and expressed no pleasure in any of her presents. Reading on Lisa's blog, that giving presents should only come from the heart makes it even harder for me to want to send her a birthday present. But I need to and I certainly don't want to make her any unhappier.
There is one present that springs to mind that I would like to send her. I would like to send her a couple of books but I am not sure that she would react well to receiving them. I wonder how much trouble they would cause, but they would be presents from my heart.
The Happy Book and the Joy Diet
The Happy Book is a book within which you collect things that make you happy, be it a list of happy songs, happy smells, a collage of a colour that makes you happy, all sorts of happy prompts. The idea is that you feel happy doing this and that you end up with a lovely book of happy you can look through whenever you need some happy...
I am less sure about the joy diet, I never actually worked through it myself but it always looked a lovely book. I have it here somewhere, just waiting for me to feel that urge to do it. Maybe I should send her my copy.
Sending a depressed person who you are having increasing trouble getting on with such things may be asking for trouble, but maybe this is one of those times when some trouble is required.
I have a relative, my Aunt, who I have mentioned before. She is not a blood relative of mine but is the ex wife of my Uncle. Her own family has grown and she is falling through the cracks. Her Mother has gone and her Father wishes he had, leaving two siblings with their own children, spouses, ex-spouses and grand-children.
My Aunt lives alone and has now retired but for many years strong principles and an inability to drive meant her choice of jobs was limited. When she did work, she generally worked part time. Ill health has caught up with her as well now and she does less than she did in previous years as she has fallen out with the organisation she used to volunteer for, for years. Good friends have moved away....
I had not realised but depression has settled in with a firm grip. Although now I know, i can see it there. The problem is, I have suffered from depression in the past but I don't now. I believe contentedness is an attitude that can be learnt, it can be practiced and if you practice it for long enough, one day your mind clicks round to feeling it.
Living by herself and being so severely depressed she has reached a point where she is alienating those around her, becoming a stone that drags them down at the least and falling out with them at worst. Her behaviour is becoming difficult and no one is quite close enough and she is not robust enough to cope with hearing any difficult truths.
Even my Mum is not sure she can face another Christmas but she can not bare the thought of my Aunt being alone at that time. One year weather meant she might not make it and she was on the phone in tears and was quite positive she had no where else to go. Not that I think she enjoyed this Christmas and that was in large part down to me...
My parents house is normally quiet with noisy bits being in smaller doses round my Sisters. This year I added a mad manic dog, a teen and two adults to the mix and it was no longer what she wanted I think. I think it also added to that feeling of being on the outskirts of the family.
If we go out, she occasionally offers to pay for herself and gets promptly turned down because in a large group, for one person to pay for themself is just rude. My sister and I take it in turns to buy things for the whole group. As a non-driver, she is always there expecting to be transported and thank yous for that are few and far between, as are offers for petrol money.
At Christmas though, the worst bit was her attitude to food. Mealtimes are communal times in my family, we sit together and we help each other get the food we want etc. One meal which consisted of various left overs and salad vegs etc meant there was lots of dishes of food. We were still bringing things through and by the time I sat down she had completely served herself and had even started eating. I started serving myself and making sure everyone had what they wanted and had finished this when my Mum came in with the last of the food. Instead of starting my food, I then made sure I passed my Mum all the things she wanted. To do this I had to reach across my Aunt who just kept eating ( and possibly looking a little cross that I was being rude and reaching across!).
At one point she shot her chair back and my Mum asked her what was wrong. She said the dog was sat on her foot. If the dog had been it would have stood up when she shot back like that. I find it hard, her attitude towards dogs, but yet she chooses to come and stay with my parents who have four dogs. Dogs are a huge part of our lives and she has no idea how much she disrupts things with her attitudes, or how irritating the commentary of go away can get...
So my Mum brought additional food in once or twice and my Aunt was straight into it every time without helping anyone else. I got there second and found out who else wanted some and served the remainder out between us. I then felt she was cross, probably because she had wanted more. At other meals she was taking seconds (and finishing dishes) before I had eaten more than a couple of mouthfuls. My Mum asked my Dad to finish a small amount of food on a dish and she was there, I would like some of that....
Anyway, enough whining. At the moment, i resent buying her something nice as a present. She did not say thank you for anything we gave her for Christmas and expressed no pleasure in any of her presents. Reading on Lisa's blog, that giving presents should only come from the heart makes it even harder for me to want to send her a birthday present. But I need to and I certainly don't want to make her any unhappier.
There is one present that springs to mind that I would like to send her. I would like to send her a couple of books but I am not sure that she would react well to receiving them. I wonder how much trouble they would cause, but they would be presents from my heart.
The Happy Book and the Joy Diet
The Happy Book is a book within which you collect things that make you happy, be it a list of happy songs, happy smells, a collage of a colour that makes you happy, all sorts of happy prompts. The idea is that you feel happy doing this and that you end up with a lovely book of happy you can look through whenever you need some happy...
I am less sure about the joy diet, I never actually worked through it myself but it always looked a lovely book. I have it here somewhere, just waiting for me to feel that urge to do it. Maybe I should send her my copy.
Sending a depressed person who you are having increasing trouble getting on with such things may be asking for trouble, but maybe this is one of those times when some trouble is required.
Sunday 1 January 2012
Moon of Breaking Masks
I am exploring new beliefs and patterns of things at the moment. I may not get things right so it may be a good idea to go back to the source on stuff. My sources here are Wapeyit and Wheelkeeper as well as the facebook group set up by Wapeyit. This is a shamnistic group that tries to live and learn through the Medicine Wheel.
I am currently looking at moons and I found this post by Wheelkeeper. It seems this year for me, is the year of the Moon of Breaking Masks and as I look at the chart, I can see other years that have been also of this moon at ages 9 and 22. And immediately some things start to swing into place, about what this moon means for me and how my experiences with it have changed over the years. It ties in so very closely to the preceeding Moon too, the Moon of Surrender.
Just before I turned 8, I went to a new school. Things were very, very different for me there. I certainly did not surrender. I put up a fight. I resisted. I was deeply, deeply unhappy. I had accidentally been put up a year and no one realised so I was deemed as being behind and given extra tuition and tested for dyslexia. I was not behind and I was not below average. In an effort to impose grammar by stories were leached from me. I found it hard to go from being one of the oldest in the group to being the youngest and I was behind in physical development too, I was always the last picked for team sports. I also missed boys - I was a tomboy and now I was stuck with girls.
So yes, my First Moon of Surrender year was oh so hard. This lack of Surrender led to a great deal of Anger and this Anger came out, beyond my control. I used to lose it and see red. I used to hit out. I very definitely wanted to break all those masks around me. This was a hard year for me too. In fact my inability to learn Surrender caused me heartache for a few years to come. I don't think I ever surrendered to that school.
When I was 18 I was raped by an ex. This event rumbled through the next couple of years, until shortly before my 21st birthday. I didn't just surrender, I collapsed, my world view just couldn't hold together any more, everything I believed and everything I was just gave way. Days before my 21st birthday I returned to my family home a broken person. I guess having been forced to surrender like that, I had no resistance left. Over a few short months I managed to put myself back together enough to function, to return to the city and work. 21 was a hard year.
Although the events that caused my break happened years before, there was a girl meddling and pushing buttons who helped with the timing of my break some what. A nasty piece of work she was.
By the time I reached 22 I was working and functioning. For my 22nd birthday I bought an expensive dress, got my hair done and went with all my friends to a comedy club. A determinedly stark contrast to the year before where my parents took me to a pub where we knew no one, with just us, sat well away from everyone with me safely in a corner....
So my second year of Breaking Masks was proceeded by an avalance of a Surrender and this Breaking Masks year was no less huge. I believe from what I have read that it is about breaking down illusion and it's opposite is possession, holding on to things. The mask that had broken was me and this year, I picked up all the little pieces and found a way of putting them back together again. This time my world view was not informed by the rules of Chritianity I had been taught as a child - linear and black and white they had no flexibility at all. My new world view came from anywhere and everywhere.
As an academic and a lover of learning, this aspect of breaking masks appeals to me tremendously. I enjoy it. I feel growth and movement running through my mind. I already knew I was in one of these times again and it began around about my birthday. Live has connected me to new teachers and is endeavouring to take me further into other realities through dreaming and journeying. My view of the world is growing tremendously (thankfully this time without being shattered first). Illusions are definitely being broken.
So what of last years Surrender? Oh I surrended in so many ways, with much less trauma and without collapsing (although sometimes with a little griping!). There was another girl in my life at the time who was pushing buttons and testing me, the Little Princess. I did finally Surrender to the experience I had to go through with her, and this time I rode it out without caving and she moved out my life. I also surrended to marriage ( I was engaged a looong time!) although this was mostly about surrendering to the process of arranging a wedding....
I also surrendered some long held aspects of my world view. I read Supernatural by Graham Hancock and this veyr literally turned many thing upside down for me. Surrendering to that was what allowed the door to open so smoothly to the learning I am experiencing now in many ways.
I know there are many aspects of these moons, that the aspects I have looked at within my life are just a small part.... I also know that as well as a personal moon for a year, we collectively progress through the moons, changing each full moon....
I am currently looking at moons and I found this post by Wheelkeeper. It seems this year for me, is the year of the Moon of Breaking Masks and as I look at the chart, I can see other years that have been also of this moon at ages 9 and 22. And immediately some things start to swing into place, about what this moon means for me and how my experiences with it have changed over the years. It ties in so very closely to the preceeding Moon too, the Moon of Surrender.
Just before I turned 8, I went to a new school. Things were very, very different for me there. I certainly did not surrender. I put up a fight. I resisted. I was deeply, deeply unhappy. I had accidentally been put up a year and no one realised so I was deemed as being behind and given extra tuition and tested for dyslexia. I was not behind and I was not below average. In an effort to impose grammar by stories were leached from me. I found it hard to go from being one of the oldest in the group to being the youngest and I was behind in physical development too, I was always the last picked for team sports. I also missed boys - I was a tomboy and now I was stuck with girls.
So yes, my First Moon of Surrender year was oh so hard. This lack of Surrender led to a great deal of Anger and this Anger came out, beyond my control. I used to lose it and see red. I used to hit out. I very definitely wanted to break all those masks around me. This was a hard year for me too. In fact my inability to learn Surrender caused me heartache for a few years to come. I don't think I ever surrendered to that school.
When I was 18 I was raped by an ex. This event rumbled through the next couple of years, until shortly before my 21st birthday. I didn't just surrender, I collapsed, my world view just couldn't hold together any more, everything I believed and everything I was just gave way. Days before my 21st birthday I returned to my family home a broken person. I guess having been forced to surrender like that, I had no resistance left. Over a few short months I managed to put myself back together enough to function, to return to the city and work. 21 was a hard year.
Although the events that caused my break happened years before, there was a girl meddling and pushing buttons who helped with the timing of my break some what. A nasty piece of work she was.
By the time I reached 22 I was working and functioning. For my 22nd birthday I bought an expensive dress, got my hair done and went with all my friends to a comedy club. A determinedly stark contrast to the year before where my parents took me to a pub where we knew no one, with just us, sat well away from everyone with me safely in a corner....
So my second year of Breaking Masks was proceeded by an avalance of a Surrender and this Breaking Masks year was no less huge. I believe from what I have read that it is about breaking down illusion and it's opposite is possession, holding on to things. The mask that had broken was me and this year, I picked up all the little pieces and found a way of putting them back together again. This time my world view was not informed by the rules of Chritianity I had been taught as a child - linear and black and white they had no flexibility at all. My new world view came from anywhere and everywhere.
As an academic and a lover of learning, this aspect of breaking masks appeals to me tremendously. I enjoy it. I feel growth and movement running through my mind. I already knew I was in one of these times again and it began around about my birthday. Live has connected me to new teachers and is endeavouring to take me further into other realities through dreaming and journeying. My view of the world is growing tremendously (thankfully this time without being shattered first). Illusions are definitely being broken.
So what of last years Surrender? Oh I surrended in so many ways, with much less trauma and without collapsing (although sometimes with a little griping!). There was another girl in my life at the time who was pushing buttons and testing me, the Little Princess. I did finally Surrender to the experience I had to go through with her, and this time I rode it out without caving and she moved out my life. I also surrended to marriage ( I was engaged a looong time!) although this was mostly about surrendering to the process of arranging a wedding....
I also surrendered some long held aspects of my world view. I read Supernatural by Graham Hancock and this veyr literally turned many thing upside down for me. Surrendering to that was what allowed the door to open so smoothly to the learning I am experiencing now in many ways.
I know there are many aspects of these moons, that the aspects I have looked at within my life are just a small part.... I also know that as well as a personal moon for a year, we collectively progress through the moons, changing each full moon....
To Do
Sometime ago I started 101 Things in 1001 Days. I liked this very much, to begin with, but it made me very conscious that setting up so many goals was just unrealistic. It allows no room for breathing, for change. Trying to pluck so many goals out of the air right at the beginning also means you set yourself up for a lot of failures... I certainly did.
But I like goals, they serve as reminders for the things I want to do, the projects on a back burner, the topics of interest I have yet to follow through. They help me achieve things. I also like the sense of achievemnt when I look back and see how much I have done. I like to see where I have been....
So I have changed the form, now my 1001 days are officially over. I will add things as I feel drawn to them. When a thing reaches a point where I am no longer drawn to it, I shall remove it from the list. It does not matter how long something is on the list and if it leaves the list, it can always come back. The list shall never have more than 13 things on it, as how many things do you really need on the go at any one time? But it may have less than 13 things. Things done will move on to a second list where I get to look back. Things that get incorporated into my life will get moved off the list rather than stay there indefinitely. Some things are on the list because I need to do them but something about it challenges me in some way, I can not let myself forget.
So my current to do list sits over on the right and this is what it contains....
Visit a Graveyard for Stories
My growth and the healing of my imagination have called for me to visit a graveyard and feel the stories contained there. I am finding this challenging because it requires going out and doing, the emphasis being on the out bit.
Start a Moon Journal
Reading today has brought me to this and I like very much the idea here that Lisa has for a Moon Journal. I think it would be a good thing to do.
Restart Dreamboards
I used to enjoy doing these very much and it was always interesting looking back at them at the end of the moon. I stopped when the wedding prep got too manic, but I want to start again and doing them in conjunction with a moon journal seems right.
Get my wisdom tooth sorted
Cross your fingers for me....
Do my Foot exercises
Got out of the habit somewhat, need to start again....
Make purple bracelet
I started a purple bracelet for myself that is going to be a little time consuming - I want to finish it though for sure....
Look at Geometry
I have always like geometry - noth mathematically and artistically. I have a book coming on sacred geometry and I feel the urge to keep mining this area of interest...
Give Away Unwanted Cards
Another thing that came up yesterday was giving away my unwanted Arthurian tarot and Healing with the Angels Oracle cards. They do not speak to me any more. Interested?
Collect Stones for Medicine Wheel
I need 36 stones to represent the points on the wheel. I have one so far, a piece of flint I found in a flower bed while at my parents. According to this site flint helps to sever emotional ties, which makes this an especially appropriate stone to have picked up when and where I did - it was the last gift of my spirit home as I walked the gardens one last time.
Make rattles
I have guords to hollow and dry to make rattles!
Make a Medicine Bag
I want a medicine bag. I covet one. One that really shows my love for Magpie, and uses my skills as a dedication. I don't want a plain bag, or even a leather bag. My current idea is to make a little beaded amulet bag using dark blue and green iris beads on a loom with black threads. I would like to line it with white cotton to protect the beadwork but continue the cotton out of the beadwork to act as the flap. I want to needle felt black and white wool on to the flap to make a magpie wing... Maybe a little ambitious!
Transcribe the Journal
A couple of years ago, an Uncle died and amongst his possessions, two journals from the other side of his family were found. I find them so interesting and wish to share them with the world. As such I have decided to transcribe them onto a blog and link them to people in Ancestry. I have created a new blog for this purpose which is completely unrelated to this blog or to me as an individual (well, they are not about me at all after all!) but I want to completely finish this project. if you wish to read about life in the long ago, let me know and I shall send a link....
Read borrowed books and return them
I have some borrowed books I have had far too long. I need to give them back. I need to make them time to read them to honour my friends gifts of sharing. And if I am not going to read them, then they need to go back anyway!
But I like goals, they serve as reminders for the things I want to do, the projects on a back burner, the topics of interest I have yet to follow through. They help me achieve things. I also like the sense of achievemnt when I look back and see how much I have done. I like to see where I have been....
So I have changed the form, now my 1001 days are officially over. I will add things as I feel drawn to them. When a thing reaches a point where I am no longer drawn to it, I shall remove it from the list. It does not matter how long something is on the list and if it leaves the list, it can always come back. The list shall never have more than 13 things on it, as how many things do you really need on the go at any one time? But it may have less than 13 things. Things done will move on to a second list where I get to look back. Things that get incorporated into my life will get moved off the list rather than stay there indefinitely. Some things are on the list because I need to do them but something about it challenges me in some way, I can not let myself forget.
So my current to do list sits over on the right and this is what it contains....
Visit a Graveyard for Stories
My growth and the healing of my imagination have called for me to visit a graveyard and feel the stories contained there. I am finding this challenging because it requires going out and doing, the emphasis being on the out bit.
Start a Moon Journal
Reading today has brought me to this and I like very much the idea here that Lisa has for a Moon Journal. I think it would be a good thing to do.
Restart Dreamboards
I used to enjoy doing these very much and it was always interesting looking back at them at the end of the moon. I stopped when the wedding prep got too manic, but I want to start again and doing them in conjunction with a moon journal seems right.
Get my wisdom tooth sorted
Cross your fingers for me....
Do my Foot exercises
Got out of the habit somewhat, need to start again....
Make purple bracelet
I started a purple bracelet for myself that is going to be a little time consuming - I want to finish it though for sure....
Look at Geometry
I have always like geometry - noth mathematically and artistically. I have a book coming on sacred geometry and I feel the urge to keep mining this area of interest...
Give Away Unwanted Cards
Another thing that came up yesterday was giving away my unwanted Arthurian tarot and Healing with the Angels Oracle cards. They do not speak to me any more. Interested?
Collect Stones for Medicine Wheel
I need 36 stones to represent the points on the wheel. I have one so far, a piece of flint I found in a flower bed while at my parents. According to this site flint helps to sever emotional ties, which makes this an especially appropriate stone to have picked up when and where I did - it was the last gift of my spirit home as I walked the gardens one last time.
Make rattles
I have guords to hollow and dry to make rattles!
Make a Medicine Bag
I want a medicine bag. I covet one. One that really shows my love for Magpie, and uses my skills as a dedication. I don't want a plain bag, or even a leather bag. My current idea is to make a little beaded amulet bag using dark blue and green iris beads on a loom with black threads. I would like to line it with white cotton to protect the beadwork but continue the cotton out of the beadwork to act as the flap. I want to needle felt black and white wool on to the flap to make a magpie wing... Maybe a little ambitious!
Transcribe the Journal
A couple of years ago, an Uncle died and amongst his possessions, two journals from the other side of his family were found. I find them so interesting and wish to share them with the world. As such I have decided to transcribe them onto a blog and link them to people in Ancestry. I have created a new blog for this purpose which is completely unrelated to this blog or to me as an individual (well, they are not about me at all after all!) but I want to completely finish this project. if you wish to read about life in the long ago, let me know and I shall send a link....
Read borrowed books and return them
I have some borrowed books I have had far too long. I need to give them back. I need to make them time to read them to honour my friends gifts of sharing. And if I am not going to read them, then they need to go back anyway!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)