cliodhna’s wave

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?

I remember when I first started doing the Toltec work my first big realization was that there was not going to be a Knight in shining armour who would ride in on his white horse and sweep me up to look after me forever more and love me and I would be happy… hey presto!

Man, I cried for about half a year over that one. The other side of that realization of course was the second one that came hot on the heels of the first. The fact that I was terrified of actually meeting said Knight in shining armour. In life, I had always run away from the guys I really liked. I am sure at least one or two of them thought I didn’t like them at all. Pride, ego, expectations, most of all fear that they would find out that I was not the cool, ultra-hip, rock and roll chick I portrayed on the surface. I was in hiding and had locked the door and hidden the key.

Those fairy stories, I understand them now, about the woman hiding her heart somewhere and then forgetting where she had put it. In the fairy stories there is generally a knight in shining armour wandering around with the key but in life I lost my heart and it was only I had the key. Actually now that I think about it, most of these women are old wise crones so maybe what I really lost was the connection to my own wisdom and power.

I think we women do that a lot. We give away our power to be looked after. We exchange wisdom for security and we believe the mind (man) when it (he) says we need it to look after ourselves. Of course I am not blaming men here, they will not learn to face their fears as long as we are behind them being small and keeping them happy by making ourselves powerless. We both need to change and grow and it needs to come from men and women but imagine the world if all the women suddenly stood up at the same time and stopped living in fear? We are the shapers and holders of society, we are the ones who hold the traditions and make sure they are passed on. I know men do too but really the way I see it we women hold the true power in this matter.

So, I accepted, slowly, that I can look after myself and still find myself sometimes getting annoyed with Paul that he wasn’t taking care of me how I thought he should. It is a struggle. I remember that summer of love (hard unconditional love), when I was going through that sense of loss and anger that I was not going to be rescued, looking around and seeing just how society is absolutely saturated with that idea of love, the old dream, you love me and I love you and we will look after each other because we are terrified of being alone. I will be who you want and you be who I want and we will be happy. Television, advertisements, magazines, books, songs, chat shows, news, celebrity gossip and of course looking at everyone around me searching, searching, searching, for that one person to make them happy.

I was angry because I felt that I had been abandoned. By letting go this illusion I really wasn’t going to find anyone. I felt angry because of all those years and energy invested into this dream, being the good girl, following the rules, doing what I was supposed to do and now it was a big lie. I felt loss because I was saying goodbye to an illusion that was comfortable like a pair of old shoes and now I was barefoot and facing who knows what.

But, it was only by saying goodbye to this old dream that I could move on and meet someone I could have a real relationship with. Someone I loved and who loved me and with whom I could face myself and learn about myself through being in a relationship.

Love is such a misunderstood word I reckon.

Old Dream

I love you so because you make me feel happy and now if I lose you I will feel pain so I am never going to let you go and watch every move you make to keep you with me.

I love ice cream because it makes me feel ok about myself and lets me hide in my addictions instead of facing myself.

I love you because you give me the attention I need and look after me.

I love you so much if you leave me I will die.

I need you because I love you.

I love you and you love me so I am going to become who you want me to be so you will continue loving me.

If you really loved me you wouldn’t do that. If you really loved me you would change.

I love my country so I am going to hate everyone else who is different.

I love god so I am going to fear everyone who doesn’t.

I love coffee so I am going to continue drinking it even though it’s not good for me and I can’t sleep when I drink it. I need it to feel good.

I will love you if you agree with me.

I love my children and because I love them I want them to be how I tell them to be.

New Dream

I love myself so much I am not afraid to be who I really am and create my life from happiness and love.

I love you but I love myself and so I will not live in your fears. They are your fears to face and I will support you facing them but I will not change myself to make your fears happy.

I am in a relationship because it makes me happy, not because I need a man in my life to look after me.

I love you just the way you are and I let go of trying to control and change you to my ideas of how you should be.

I love my children and I trust that they are growing and learning exactly as they should be from their own path and lessons. I am here to hold and nurture them until they are ready to do that for themselves.

I love my family but I give myself the space I need for myself to be happy and fulfilled.

I love my country but we are all together on this earth creating this dream of life and I accept all life as sacred.

I love myself so I give myself food that nurtures and is good for my body. I face my inner insecurities and I don´t bury them under addictions.

life is tricky sometimes, to negotiate each moment with truth and wisdom, what way to go? which choice is the right one? am I obeying my fears right now and hiding or maybe it’s just not the right time to do something. Patience with myself. All is well. No need to rush, negotiate my own inner maze slowly and with love, if I go wrong I can always go back to where I started. Let my heart be my guide, if it is happy then I am going the right direction, even if it seems the wrong way at the time.

sometimes it is only later that I can look back and see why I did a picture and what it meant to me at the time. My first exhibition was full of pictures like that. Lost and lonely characters populated strange landscapes and looked helplessly out of the picture searching for something but they didn’t know what.

I didn’t know what I was looking for at the time either. I thought it was a boyfriend probably, someone to love me when I couldn’t love myself and avoided relationships. Lucy is me and the dog is me, I am running away from my own inner dog, the part the unconditionally adores me for me and will gaze in my direction with big round eyes. Dog owners know exactly what I am talking about.

Of course I didn’t realise this at the time, I just knew I was unhappy and painting the pictures and doing the embroideries was a way of getting it out in the open because my natural state was secrecy and I needed practice in being open with the world. I look back on those pictures now and there were a few I am still happy with and a few I see where they lack finish but at the time they were perfect and doing an exhibition and putting them out in the open for the public to see them was the best medicine ever.

On my recent trip into self-discovery/oh my, I can’t believe I have been carrying this all this time and I made a realization (No. 22356) that I have been carrying failure all my life. That I expect failure and prepare myself for it. I want success but expect failure… and guess what comes to me?

All the times when I was little and I (thought I had) failed and one of the fears about letting go the attachment to the failures was that maybe they were right. I wasn’t good enough.

Anyway, I learnt a lot from having ‘failed’ in doing what it was I wanted to do, I learnt about this attachment and I learnt that my mind was getting in the way, wanting to control and not letting go when it meets something past its comprehension. When I would be better served not knowing it wants to know and would rather keep me here in control than let me not know and be happy.

So, I remember a time a few years ago in Guanajuato when I decided I would offer Reiki. I had done Reiki level two and I figured I would face my reluctance to do it on people (in case it didn´t work, judgment, all that kinda stuff) and I would put up the posters and just go for it and see what happened. So, I put up the posters, had a space kind of organized, looking back now I think I wasn’t prepared at all. But the most amazing thing happened when I put up the posters, I was wondering about whether I was ready to give Reiki or do healing on people when it hit me that I didn’t have to worry about any of that stuff, that who-ever needed what I had to give would arrive to me and I would have exactly what they needed. It was out of my hands and the feeling was so freeing and very happy and I wandered around in a mini state of bliss for a few days.

Nobody did arrive so in one sense I failed but in another sense I was the one who got healed by making a leap of faith and putting up the posters, it didn’t matter that no-one came.

Standing on Sandymount strand one early evening with my bike propped against my hip I gaze out into the sands and pools of shimmering water left by the outgoing tide that stretch for easily a mile out of shore. The sky is that wonderful almost transparent blue/purple that has a promise of mystery and a hint of things hidden about to be revealed. The sun has just dropped below the horizon of houses behind me, the moon is just peeking over the horizon in front of me and just up to the right Venus shines in her first star glory.

I begin to do a mental exercise. I imagine it all in 3d. I put the sun behind me and the earth a ball on which I stand spinning on its axis on its orbit around the sun. I put the moon on its smaller orbit around the earth and Venus on her orbit, a smaller one closer to the sun and moving faster then we are. I put aside all notions of up or down or flat orbits and I place us all in space, where these considerations do not apply

I play with this idea for a minute, and then suddenly it hits me with full force. It becomes real. I look up/down/sideways and grip my bike tightly as if to give me weight. There is nothing above me. Nothing, really nothing holding me onto this spinning ball we call home. There is no such thing as ‘sky’; that is a word made to give us a safe concept of having a roof over our heads. Only reason its blue during the day is because of reflecting light. I have incredible vertigo for a few seconds and then slowly it passes and I am once more feet on solid ground again.

Thank you gravity, whatever you are!

Fear is a shapeshifter, it has no concept of size or occasion and does not learn from new examples, once is enough and the fear has understood. Thereafter the fear always has the original example in mind and when a new situation comes up that is different to the first but maybe has some common element the fear changes shape to suit the occasion.

My dog fell into water when he was little, it terrified him and I had to find where he was hiding after he ran for his life when he reached the shore and comfort him until he stopped shaking and crying. Puppies are such babies, pure emotional response to their surroundings and they respond like babies or young children. Anyway since then Cubo (who by the way is now a huge heavy marshmallow of a Rottweiler) is afraid of water. Doesn’t matter what shape or form, a puddle, a small stream, a flow of water across the road, anything except his drinking water in his bucket.

It took lots and lots of visits to the nearby stream until he was relaxed enough to start playing in it and even then only up to his ankles. Lots of walks in the countryside and dragging him across streams to keep going and even now he stops and whines and looks desperately for some other way across.

We all have common sense in place, basic survival instinct, don’t stick your hand in fire it will hurt or don’t eat that plant over there you will die, but the fear in us takes it all one step further. It becomes like a guard dog who won’t let you out of your own house because you might get run over (ever see the movie I Robot?) it parades as for your own good but really would prefer if you climbed into a box and threw away the key.

Fear has no sense of size. A little fear is the same as a big fear, open the gate just a little and it all comes rushing out. A fear of death becomes a fear of dogs, spiders, water, losing our partner, whatever is our own personal fear, and it takes a hundred or a thousand examples of something is ok to erase the original agreement of fear.

The interesting thing also, watching my two dogs is that the younger one is also learning to be afraid of water. She learns from Cubo and when he won’t go near the water she won’t either.

So I ask myself how many of my fears have been passed directly to me by my parents or peers without me even assessing them or deciding whether I want them or not and I ask myself what am I afraid of that does not serve me anymore? What agreements made long ago now hold me back from being who I am?

I am currently writing my letter of intent for my life and, as always, have made some realizations about myself and how I ask for things.

There are a few rules which have to be followed when writing this and the main one is that all negativity has to be erased and the intention stated in only positive terms. You can’t say “I will live without fear” because that still holds fear, you are still connecting to fear by saying that. I also wrote one that was too vague, that had no concrete attachment to my life and so was easy to write because my mind is finding loopholes and ways to control the outcome.

I knew this one was going to be hard to write because I was feeling a bit (ok, still am) lost as to how to state exactly what I want in life because in truth I am a bit vague in what do I actually want. My mind knows what it wants and I discovered I was trying to control the outcome of the asking by phrasing things in particular ways. My mind saying I want this, now what words do I have to use to get that and still maintain control and hide? I am stuck because I think I have always done this and now when I want to state it differently I can’t imagine what to ask for because I am not sure what is past the mind exactly. I have a feeling of freedom and peace but then to put words on it my mind is putting up resistance and not allowing me to get past it and put the words in order.

The one thing I did come to a shocking realization was that by saying “I want to do/be this” make it so’ to the universe I was attracting ‘the want’ instead of the goal. It is a very subtle but at the same time big difference. Try it… think of something you would like to achieve/have in your life.

Say “I want to be able to do this/to have this/to be this”

now try “I am able to do this/I have this in my life”

feel the difference? It’s amazing… words have such power and the words we speak have such power on our minds and how we program our lives. I was just increasing my want and also therefore my frustration when I couldn’t do what I wanted to do

I reconnected with a big intention I lose sight of sometimes. Simplicity; the reason why I ditched the tarot, numerology, astrology and all mind based information-rich systems designed to ‘understand’ the universe and our place in it. I am sure they work as good tools for others but I got lost in filling my mind with information and trying to control my world that way. I knew there had to be a better way, of direct, unlimited connection to source. I suppose Star Wars is always the best analogy… join the side of light and feel the force baby! The drawback, according to old fear based system of control is that you have to give up control to gain this knowledge. Give up all ideas of who you thought you were or wanted and go with the flow and see what happens.

First though I need to know what I want to ask for, to manifest in my life, can’t ask if I don’t know. Forget asking myself is this possible or can I do this or how would this work and just ask. The universe will take care of me after that. Will probably be nothing like what my mind thinks it will be, but you know what, it will be better, I am tired of my mind trying to tell me what I need with its limited ideas of what is possible and what is not.

The picture above is about writing these letters and sending them out there to the universe.

Alrighty, better get back to writing the letter so…

X clio