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.

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

there is a cat trapped in my swimming pool (which is empty, by the way) and I listened to it yowl all night long thinking it was a neighbours cat pissed at being left outside for the night. This morning though I get up to go look. A cat usually doesn’t care whether its been left out and sure enough there it was, the invisible cat I have been leaving food out for the past week or so.

I get down into the swimming pool thinking I could catch it and make a pet of it, it is only a kitten. But no, this cat is wild, and by wild I mean a hissing spitting ball of teeth and claws looking at me furiously. I might be 30 times its size but its not going to go without a fight.

I haven’t caught wild things in a while. I used to be an expert at it when I was younger, but recently I haven’t scaled my walls or hung upside down off trees in hunt of a stray kitten that needed catching ( I even remember falling into a wasps nest once and couldn’t see out of one eye for a week, but i caught it!). I round up the kitten saying reasuring things and making mommy cat noises with my shawl held out to throw it over it. I miss the first time and then the second time there is an intense flurry and I have kitten pinned down on the ground safely. You have to be firm but not too strong and the end result must look like your hand on the back of its neck… this is important. So then I make the mistake of being too… whats the word? to try to make friends with something too soon, or kinda hippy thoughts of poor little kitty witty, anyway I tried to scratch behind its ear to calm it and I know have a hole in my thumb. It actually managed to bite through the nail, I am sure its teeth met in the middle somewhere.

Reality check. Wild thing, give it some food and space and hang a blanket down over the swimming pool, it will figure it out and it will probably go back to being the invisible cat I leave food out for. I can see it now, it ate the food I gave it but it hasn’t tried the blanket and it is sitting quite comfortably in the curve of the pool like a dusty black rag.

So on to this blog a year later. Can’t believe I have been doing this blog a whole year. I have gone through stages of only writing about my art and craft, to wanting to write about my own journey, to running away from said journey and putting posts up about You tube or other fillers to returning to the point and the heart of the matter. I have made some virtual friends I have no idea what they look like or who they really are except what I see from their own blogs but I like their energy or maybe we are all disparate and separated around the globe but we are all really on the same path and that’s why we gravitate towards each other.

So I wonder where I will be in another year? or where this blog will have gone? Or who I will be? probably me but with a little less weight on my shoulders and a little happier and following my dreams still.

I had an idea of something I would love to do. I have always wanted this but never really figured it was for me or I could get the money to do it. I will set up a workshop space, my own little sanctuary, my space, but to use it for workshops for the toltec work or for yoga and I will have my own studio there too to work in. Somewhere really beautiful, beside the sea? or at least near the sea on a mountain side somewhere or in the jungle or… don’t know yet.

I have joined the stock market to invest some money my mum gave me to work towards this goal. Cool huh? online broker, small start up accounts. You see its interesting how money is so relative. I thought ooooo 100′000 dollars would be an amazing sum to have but then I check the leading stock broker in Ireland and they want minimum 125′000 euro as a start up fund. Gave me a start, and made me realize how really money is just energy and we call it towards us or not depending on whether we think we deserve it or whether its important to us. I never really cared about being rich in the past but also never saw myself as a person with lots of money, that was kind of unattainable, out of my reach, for the whizz kid bankers or older people, not me. I guess maybe I also felt a little superior to them, I didn’t need money to do what I wanted to do.

Anyway I change that agreement. Now I want money. Not for itself but to use it to construct my own dream and make my life the way I want it. To be self sufficient and in charge of my own finances, to take responsability for how I want to live and think ‘I can’

It started with a question my teacher posed us in a letter at new years. What would you do if you had unlimited finances at your disposal and all the love and support of the universe.

Well, what would you do?

Green is the colour of life, it is the heart chakra, it is courage and the ability to change and be fluid. It is shining forth of the sun through the blue of the sky. I read somewhere once that the colour of the world when it was born was blue and it sent a shiver down my spine. I think I have changed to green now for a while. It heals me and changes me and now is the time to sit quiet and let it do its work. Be patient and allow the changes to take place, not knowing what they are or where they will take me. Maybe I will change back to blue afterwards or maybe I will stay green, I don’t know.

Added to this feeling is the awareness of being immersed in the world, surrounded by energy and part of it with no separation as surely as a fish is part of the water around him or better still a drop of water that contains awareness in the middle of the ocean being part of the water around it. I am the water and the fish; I am the awareness and the ‘I’ looking at ‘you’ looking back at ‘I’. Sometimes I have had these understandings in the past for a little while, maybe five minutes maybe half a second and maybe a whole day but they faded and I was left with the intellectual knowledge but not the connection. Maybe the knowledge of it spurred me to search for a surer connection to that timelessness. I have thought we get given gifts of knowledge, little glimpses into the possibility of what is ahead so we can work our own way back to it.

Well this time it doesn’t seem to be going away. I look for it and there it is; the deep understanding. I get stressed and annoyed or frustrated and I look for the connection and the frustration ceases or becomes smaller and I am back on track again. Very cool altogether, I like it. The temptation is to judge and push and try harder but somehow I know it’s time just to wait.

Here I sit, 8 in the morning, in between making cups of tea, calling my dogs back, thinking about breakfast, yoga, should I take the dogs for a walk now, my English lesson later on. I write and look for the inspiration to take me. Wondering also about the things I have learnt I don’t want to share yet and reckoning that’s exactly where this stop in inspiration is coming from. I am trying to edit what I say.

Ok, let’s just get it over with. We are all part of one big life. We are all little reflections of it and because we are part of it each one of us has our own connection to it and also, we are all connected to each other and to the earth, in fact we make up the whole thing. Everything you can see around you is part of this life and what holds us together is intent. Intent is life.

That wasn’t so hard. I have been in resistance since I did this last journey. I don’t know why. Alongside the resistance is a surer and firmer knowledge of my place here and what I do here. I guess the resistance will just give up and go away soon. It’s like my dogs in the morning when they want out. The little one starts scratching the door around 7 am; she is a good, if slightly annoying alarm clock. The point is that the first few times she did that I got up and let her out. Now, it is in her head that door scratching=out and it is the same with limited patterns. The mind uses them as an escape route and it takes an effort to break them. I know this resistance all my life. It comes from childhood, from resistance to the catholic church and all its control, resistance to my parents trying to teach me things I didn’t want to learn. Resistance to school and why did I have to be there. I never opening rebelled though; I became the master at passive resistance and that is exactly what my mind is trying to do to me now, even though I don’t want it anymore.

So I am part of everything I see around me and my resistance is part of me. I have to just accept it and it will fade out slowly, like a scratched record playing an old tune I don’t listen to anymore. I am not going to wind up the gramophone anymore.

I have a picture in my head waiting to be painted.

A woman standing with her feet on the earth and her head in the sky. She holds her heart in one hand and the other points to the stars. The land is flat and ochre and there are mountains in the distance. The land only comes up about a fifth of the picture and then the sky starts so my woman is standing in the sky it looks like. Her head goes all the way up the top of the paper. Her hair flows into the sky and becomes part of it. She looks out of this image with a proud expression, not an ego ‘proud’ but a sure ‘proud’ a sense of herself and her place in this world and her connection to earth and the stars. She is rooted in her own self and nothing can shake that.

Her dress is light blue with butterflies of white and yellow. Her feet are bare and around her neck is a necklace of green jade stones with a carving of the head of a jaguar carved from leopardskin jasper. The night sky swirls and moves and the stars twinkle and shine and the earth has faces that emerge from the dirt and the rocks, some eyes open some still shut but all looking upwards to the sky.

I have taken a break from constantly sketching ideas and drawing pictures to wait to see what comes in its own time. When I have an idea it comes fully formed into my head with only the details left to work out and how best to get across the original idea. It’s a new one for me; normally I am trying to have lots of ideas just in case I need them and I don´t feel good unless I have one in the process of being painted. This way is slower but I will see how it goes and what happens.

One resolution I made on my recent trip was to stop ‘doing’, to stop constantly trying and instead see what happens. Make room for opportunities to come into my life, stand still so they would know where to find me instead of constantly spinning like a top trying to get somewhere not really knowing what I was doing or where I wanted to go but doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing.

Anyone else care to comment on a picture they have in their heads?