cliodhna’s wave

I went for a massage recently and got the knot in my shoulder worked out. She is really good and knows what she is doing and sometimes when she has my shoulder blade and is pushing and pulling it out at the same time the pain is incredible but oh the relief when she lets go and the pain that was there beforehand is there no longer.

I think I identify with this knot I have in my shoulder blade. The constant nagging ache makes me frustrated and unhappy and uneasy and then, because I know it is there because of some unease in my emotional body I judge myself for having it and think oh why oh why can’t I get rid of this, I must be stuck with some block in my energy I can’t get rid of.

So, getting rid of it by massage I know is a short term solution but how nice not to have it and I realized yesterday I actually felt a peace with the world and with myself and only later thought that maybe it was because the knot had gone. Me without the knot in my shoulder. I guess I will go more regularly to her for a massage and let her heal my physical body so I can feel happier and more able to look at the emotional parts I can heal in me. A balance, I know sometimes I don’t want to go and get a massage because I am pushing myself.

I had a revelation about what to say to Paul too while I was getting it, it all seemed so simple. I was being frustrated with him too, wanting to push and not knowing where I wanted to go and I suppose by way of an apology and by way of accepting my own stuff I realized I just actually needed to tell him I was a worrier and a bit neurotic and my mind made me wrong all the time and made me feel bad about myself (no matter where I was or what I was doing) that from the heart I really wanted to be with him, that I was working on it, but that’s who I am. What a relief.

Is there a term like clinical depression that applies to worriers? People whose mind makes them wrong and judges them all the time? Because sometimes it’s like there is two of me, one part that goes with the flow and is happy and knows what she wants and is going there one step at a time and lives from the heart and then another side who I feel I have to fight all the time to stay on the first course, who is fearful and frustrated and extremely angry at what? I don’t know, life in general I guess, the two year old anger that she can’t control the people outside of her, the fear that she might get forgotten or ignored. The part that pushes me and says not enough or not fast enough or not good enough.

I feel she has got smaller. Maybe something to do with the dream about the evil head I had a few days ago. Maybe I have got stronger and am not listening to her and lately how I have been feeling is like a last temper tantrum trying to stay I control. Hope so. I don’t want her anger anymore, or her fear, I know it’s not real. I choose to be happy and when all lies and manipulation and control and fear have been left behind there is only truth and nothing can change that. My truth, who I really am.

What is it about a white sheet of paper? or rather maybe a sheet of beautiful watercolour paper with the ragged edges and the rough texture or a sheet of handmade paper with the leaves caught in it and the unevenness of the crafting of it. They are a symbol of endless possibility and reflect nothing except what is inside us waiting to come out. Maybe that’s why it scares me slightly, I want to practice on cheaper paper, but then cheaper paper doesn’t inspire me the way a good sheet of paper does and so anything I do on a cheap sheet of paper (like a photocopy paper or a sheet from a sketching pad) is so-so, it might be a good drawing but if it were on the best sheet I would be inspired to continue, put my energy into it to see where it goes.
It is the same with paint. Cheap paint just isn’t worth the effort, a brush stroke with cheap paint is just a smear of colour, colour that sits dead on the page and can be called colour only from the scientific understanding of the word ‘colour’, but good paint, like a good watercolour or oil paint or an expensive oil pastel goes onto the page like a song and shines and glows and entrances me into its depths. I could stare at it all day, and have done sometimes, I remember painting a canvas Prussian blue once and just sat and looked at it. It didn’t need anything else.
And my embroidery, I use silks and felts and wonderful satins because they inspire me and when I wander into a fabric store my fingers itch to hold and stroke and grasp cool blues and pale greens and watery smooth chiffons. I always end up spending more money than I thought I was going to.
And so to life, why use cheap things when good well made objects that were made with love are so much more satisfying and continue to be loved for years. Why eat crap food when good food makes me feel good and whole and healthy. When I want to do something I have to do my best and do it on the best materials available to me even if it takes a little longer. The end result speaks for itself.
That’s the other side of the good sheet of paper; it reflects my fears about myself. Am I good enough to give myself the really good sheet of paper? Or should I wait and practice on the cheap sheet and save the good one until I am better? If I use the good sheet that is saying to the world I am worth something, I value myself and give myself the best.

Forget the cheap sheet, it is a trick and a trap, nothing that is done on the cheap sheet will shine or inspire me and so I will always think I am not good enough for the good sheet or the good paint. I have found that I have to use the good sheet of paper and use good paint and with that leap of faith the rest flows from a place of trusting myself. So what if I mess up? Its only paper…. There’s lots more in the store… and in life there is always opportunities to fix mistakes.

…uFor a place surrounded by trees, in a warm place but not too hot. It gets cool in the evening and dusk and dawn are the best times to be out doors. There is a spring there gushing clean clear water from deep in the rocks and a well full of life and greenness where the frogs come to play and raise young and goldfish swim in lazy circles in the cool water. A fig tree overshadows the pool and is a beautiful shaded spot to sit during the heat of the day and my dog spends most of his day crashed out in the shade watched by my cat from the branch above.
The land surrounding is large full of huge old trees and I let it go to wild. Grow however it wishes with paths winding their way through the trees and art work hidden here and there. A carving of a face hanging from a tree, a sculpture made from old tractor parts being overgrown by trailing plants and a tiny seat and a house for elves under a tree somewhere. Nobody else wanted this land because it was ‘useless’, because no crop plants would grow there or it was too steep or for whatever reason but it was waiting for me to come and live there and there is magic in this place and power and I nurture it with benign neglect. I plant trees like fig and orange and pecan and avocado and passion fruit and lychee and mandarin.
Attached to my kitchen is a greenhouse for the birds to live. Canaries fly free in the high domed space of the greenhouse and the stream from the spring winds its way through the floor and out the other side. The house is old and comfortable and there was love in the building of it. Little nooks and crannies await precious things to fill them, a stone, a light, a candle, an ornament, a found thing from the garden. I have a space in which to make my art, maybe off the greenhouse so the birds are free to fly in and out. The bathroom is huge and has a huge bath in which to soak and a steamroom.
A little ways away on the land is the circular workshop space. The centre is roofless and has a small pool fed by a diverted arm of the spring and around the edge of the circle are spaces for beds and hammocks screened by netting for privacy and protection from the insects. One section of the circumference is a room for yoga and meditation and has an old stove for warmth during the cold season and in the evenings. The smell of warm wood smoke and incense permeates this room and it welcomes all who enter. The walls are white and the floor is wood with cushions and rugs on the floor. Connected by a round passageway to the entrance to the circle is the kitchen with an oven and a huge wooden table in the centre. The floor is stone and the walls are curved and soft. A herb garden is just outside the kitchen door with chives and parsley and oregano and basil and rosemary and dill.
Coyotes wander through the land and deer and Tlacuaches and all insects and animals are welcome. There is protection on the land which protects all who live there from harm and a peace which works it way in on the spirit of all who come and visit, staying with them when they leave to go back to their lives again. The sea is close, a quick drive away down the mountain to get to a beautiful beach where I snorkel and swim and relax in the waves.
I think that just about covers it!
I wish for the above and I call it into my life and I ask for the support of the universe to manifest this into reality. I thank you and I am open to receive all good in my life. X Cliodhna

my new threadless submission…..

So I did something yesterday for the first time in my life. I bought stocks on the stock market! I was quite excited by it, it made me feel grown-up and important and a getting my life together feeling. I am now an investor, I told myself, I own stocks. Two phrases which when I heard them when I was younger had a mysterious magical feeling to them, they belonged to a far away grown up world of money and business and running around talking on phones and mysteriously making money doing nothing really. The stock market is a bit like that, it’s pure abstract energy, money in its most purest form, nothing, a concept of trade and exchange and by buying stocks and selling them I am playing with this energy.

I am coming to see the more sinister side of it also though, because it is so abstract we forget we are playing with people’s lives and businesses and some of the stuff I have read while I was researching how to do all this and what stocks to buy and all that reflect this attitude. Make money from the recession!!! While everyone else is in dire poverty you can make $$$$$$$ I can actually see how maybe a group of people with lots and lots of money could play with the market and push it this way and that. Of course I can also see how the reason they could do that is because the market place as a whole lives in fear and will respond with panic at the sign of imminent losses, get out quick before everyone else does.

Also made me think about my own ethics; what companies did I want to give my money (and support) to? How did I want to make my money? I have never thought about this before except in the most vaguest and idealistic form. If I could make ten thousand dollars tomorrow but it meant endorsing a company I didn’t like and didn’t agree with would I do it?

Its like the eternal dilemma every hero faces in his/her quest for the golden grail/ princess/kingdom. Or the old fairy stories where there is three sons head out to fulfill a quest. The mother always asks them before they leave “Do you want the whole loaf and no blessing or half the loaf and my blessing?”

The first and second sons say the whole loaf of course, it’s a long journey, we will need the food but then they come to a test of character and fail. The third son says half the loaf and your blessing and then he meets a hungry person along the way and gives the bread to him and receives valuable advice as how to pass the test.

The first two sons do not trust the journey, they don’t realize they will be looked after and they guard their possessions from fear. The third son is the fool, the eternal hopeful, the trusting one who lives from an open heart and is taken care of, who ends up getting the princess, the kingdom and rescuing his two older brothers along the way.

I thought there for a second as to which I would say or do and it just occurred to me that none of the three ask their mother could they have both. The whole loaf and the blessing, we can have it all if we ask for it. So I ask for the whole loaf please and the blessing that I deserve it and I would like to make some money so I can create my space in life. I will stay away from the companies I don’t like and trust the journey.

How do I want my space? Tune in next chapter in this ongoing saga of life!! X

I went for a massage recently and got the knot in my shoulder worked out. She is really good and knows what she is doing and sometimes when she has my shoulder blade and is pushing and pulling it out at the same time the pain is incredible but oh the relief when she lets go and the pain that was there beforehand is there no longer.

I think I identify with this knot I have in my shoulder blade. The constant nagging ache makes me frustrated and unhappy and uneasy and then, because I know it is there because of some unease in my emotional body I judge myself for having it and think oh why oh why can’t I get rid of this, I must be stuck with some block in my energy I can’t get rid of.

So, getting rid of it by massage I know is a short term solution but how nice not to have it and I realized yesterday I actually felt a peace with the world and with myself and only later thought that maybe it was because the knot had gone. Me without the knot in my shoulder. I guess I will go more regularly to her for a massage and let her heal my physical body so I can feel happier and more able to look at the emotional parts I can heal in me. A balance, I know sometimes I don’t want to go and get a massage because I am pushing myself.

I had a revelation about what to say to Paul too while I was getting it, it all seemed so simple. I was being frustrated with him too, wanting to push and not knowing where I wanted to go and I suppose by way of an apology and by way of accepting my own stuff I realized I just actually needed to tell him I was a worrier and a bit neurotic and my mind made me wrong all the time and made me feel bad about myself (no matter where I was or what I was doing) that from the heart I really wanted to be with him, that I was working on it, but that’s who I am. What a relief.

Is there a term like clinical depression that applies to worriers? People whose mind makes them wrong and judges them all the time? Because sometimes it’s like there is two of me, one part that goes with the flow and is happy and knows what she wants and is going there one step at a time and lives from the heart and then another side who I feel I have to fight all the time to stay on the first course, who is fearful and frustrated and extremely angry at what? I don’t know, life in general I guess, the two year old anger that she can’t control the people outside of her, the fear that she might get forgotten or ignored. The part that pushes me and says not enough or not fast enough or not good enough.

I feel she has got smaller. Maybe something to do with the dream about the evil head I had a few days ago. Maybe I have got stronger and am not listening to her and lately how I have been feeling is like a last temper tantrum trying to stay I control. Hope so. I don’t want her anger anymore, or her fear, I know it’s not real. I choose to be happy and when all lies and manipulation and control and fear have been left behind there is only truth and nothing can change that. My truth, who I really am.

White fox is a character that has been around for a while. I am not sure where she came from except she jumped in front of me once in a meditation and cocked her shiny black eyes in my direction and I have been kinda hooked ever since. She takes on many forms.

I suppose she could be to do with camoflage. The artic fox changing its coat in the winter to blend with the snow so maybe she is to do with the other side of me. The one who is still hiding in the snow.

white fox dances while I look on

White fox is the mysterious dancer, slightly out of reach and almost not there. I watch as I walk my path in life. White Fox doesn’t care who sees or not. She is dancing.

She dances again while it rains. She puts on her special dress for the rain and enjoys the water

i am listening to white fox while she explains the art of camoflage

Camouflage. Hiding. In the snow. Good or bad? not sure. To be able to camouflage can be a useful skill but I guess needs to be used in a way of power and not of fear.

Maybe I will ask her in a dream. Or maybe the lesson is to learn the opposite. To not hide, to show myself standing out against the snow. To not wear the white robe in winter and the red one in summer. Who knows, I guess I will find out some day.

x

Back in the mine again. Back with my dogs, the big lump and dancy dog, back with the food from the cantina and some amaranth bars I brought with me which I am just now tasting and are a bit yucky, though that might just be the taste after vanilla sweetened coffee.

I had a dream this morning about a shriveled head which had been torturing women chainsaw massacre type or the saw or like those horrible ‘chase ‘em down and cut ‘em up’ films I don’t watch. Anyway I had him in control and was trying to drown him in water but he wouldn’t die. I was trying to suffocate him but the water was just a puddle. In my other hand I had control of the whip/chain he used. I decided to put him in a jar and fill it with water and close the top and drown him that way. I put small hot chilies in on top and a snake I had caught, though the snake escaped and got cut in half before I could close the top. He was potent, this head that has been torturing me and making my life a misery, small and mean and concentrated and I realized at one point during the dream that he couldn’t torture me, I was powerful, I had power, not like the other women he had tortured, I was a witch and I knew what I was doing.

That was the point of the dream, to realize he didn’t have any power over me. I was a lot bigger than he was and I was powerful and I knew it. The head of course is my mind which has been judging and beating me up since forever and the mind has invested a lot of control in maintaining the belief in us that we are our minds, we must believe what it tells us or we will die. The mind is the only thing that might die and it is terrified of this. It’s a very nice realization, to be able to separate from those thoughts that sneak in the back door and start chopping at me with a knife. I was feeling crap a few days ago and I could hear in my head a voice telling me ‘you are a failure’, ‘you have failed at everything you do’ ‘you are crap, you will never succeed’; usual stuff, heard it a thousand times before, the difference being though that before in the past I would try not to listen but a tiny part of me was wondering if just maybe it was true, after all who knew better than I what I could do or not do.

This time I suddenly realized that if this were someone outside of me were telling me this with the same intention of hurting me and keeping me down I would never speak to them again and I wouldn’t listen to them and probably, after I got over being angry at them, feel sorry for them that they had so much judgment in them. I guess I have been in a abusive relationship for years but it all went on inside me.

I haven’t been able to breathe properly for months. Feeling a certain level of fear and frustration that I hadn’t felt before. So I did a cleaning on myself with the egg and a cord cutting and then another cleaning an hour or so later and hey presto I immediately feel lighter and calmer and able to catch my breath properly.

To explain all this when a man has sex with a woman they have a cord connecting them and this cord is a conduit that transfers emotions and energy back and forth. Most of the energy goes from the woman to the man to support him (I don’t know why but somewhere in our past we humans made an agreement that this was to happen) but also when one of the partners is not processing emotions then it gets passed onto the other. This is generally from the man to the woman because in society it is more acceptable for the woman to be emotional so she becomes ‘the emotional one’.Now just to be clear, this is not an emotional attachment cord, this is a cord of energy that connects a man and a woman after intercourse. Cutting this cord does not mean ending the relationship. If you cut the cord it will connect again the next time you are with that person.

The egg cleaning is a form of healing particular to mexico and central America. It is a shamanic technique and after the egg is used you break it into a glass of water and ‘read’ it. I don’t know how to read it yet. There is a book I am thinking of buying here that explains it or at least probably points me in the right direction to use my intuition. You don’t have to know how to read it to use it though. You can do it to yourself in your own home. Has to be done with intention of cleaning and you rub it over your whole body. The shamans here do it with smoke and chanting.

So to me personally I was holding all of Pauls’ emotions that he wasn’t dealing with and processing them for him. But the thing is I can’t process someone elses’ stuff. He has to do that himself and I had a conversation with him last night about it asking him to do that and did he think it was time. There is nothing harder in this world than to turn around and face yourself. We are all taught to project outside of ourselves, it’s her fault, they need to change, go to war and kill a few thousand people; but in reality there is nothing outside of ourselves except us, what we project onto the world.

So it is time also for me to stop holding onto his stuff. It is tempting to do, if I look after his stuff then he owes me, he needs me. If I supply him with energy then he will stay with me and I can control him. It is not fair on him or me. If I hold onto his stuff then when will he ever need to look at it? I am denying him the chance to grow. It is time for me to ask him to do it himself and for me to keep the cord cut that joins us until I can properly distinguish between his stuff and my stuff, process my stuff and ask him to take responsibility for his.

The egg can be done by anyone, the cord cutting needs to be done by someone who knows how to do it. Think about it, every person of the opposite sex you had sex with in the past seven years you are still connected to and you are indirectly connected to everyone they had sex with. All the unresolved emotional energy that nobody else is dealing with is searching for a release valve, is going to the one person who is expressing emotions. Explains why sometimes women are emotional basket cases doesn’t it? You know, we all know someone who is sooooooo emotional they can’t handle it or are constantly crying or expressing emotions to a point where it’s too much? Well maybe they are expressing for others and maybe they need to disconnect for a while to find out what is theirs and what is someone else’s. I remember the first time I got it done for me I felt like a balloon that had been let go and had no attachment to the earth. It was an amazing feeling.

You can read about the egg cleansing below. I looked for links to the cord cutting but couldn’t really find any. I guess write an email to my teacher Luis and ask about it if you are really interested. His link…

http://www.eggcleansing.com/

http://www.newconnexion.net/article/11-03/eggcleansing.html

so, finally I have uploaded, resized, put on Flickr and ready to post, pictures from my helicopter ride in Montana.

Paul’s daughter Rachel is learning to be a helicopter pilot which I think is a totally super cool thing to be learning. She loves it and she took us up on one of her training flights when we were there. It wasn’t scary at all, its like a little sports car inside and very comfortable if a bit cramped. That’s me in my new North face coat which is like wearing a large fluffy warm cloud. I love it, I hardly took it off the whole time I was there.

Anyway… here are the photos. Missoula and Bitterroot from the air.

a stream, really black against the snow.

can you find the deer? there are four of them just about dead centre

cows feeding have left patterns against the white

missoula at night when we were returning to the airport

the panel of the helicopter