cliodhna’s wave

A friend gave me a lump of coal when I moved into my new house and i said thank you and left it wrapped up in the tissue and put it on the windowsill. Not having a fire to burn it in it stayed there for a few weeks as i wondered what to do with it.

About two days ago I washed it. Coal is Beautiful!! who knew? under all that dust and black dirty powder coal is black and gnarly and midnight dark and shiny blue at the same time. I was so surprised.

So anyway, sitting in a steam room in Kilronan waiting for Nessa to show up I head off with my lump of coal in my hand to ask the old woman on the island what was the coal all about. I got a few answers,

Coal is about showing that inner light we have and shining out to the world. Our inner fire (creativity, warmth, hearth, passion) can’t go out and we can’t use it up so the more we use it the more we have. We can stoke the fire of our own hearth and like the coal it will glow red and yellow and white with heat and energy.

Coal is also about honouring those parts of ourselves we take for granted. Coal is dirty and unregarded but without coal we would not have achieved so much as humans. Its keeps us warm, cooks our food, gives us energy but we never think to thank it or honour it or give it pride of place. We expect it to work for us. Same as with parts of ourselves that work and work and are ‘dirty’. We expect these parts to keep going and shape our lives yet we never stop to say thank you or let them rest.

I had a dream that night about waking Kali up. She was black and pitted and shiny blue and it was only when I woke up the following day I realised she was like the lump of coal. I am waking up the earth fire, that cleanses and destroys and rebirths again. Feminine energy that so often, like the coal, is taken for granted and kept small.

So light the fire and stoke the coal and feel the heat as it builds and you can see the centre of the fire starting to glow white with the heat. Let it warm you and guide you and create your inner hearth fire as you want it to be.

xx

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So, when I was in Guanajuato, Mexico there was a guy… he was quite mad and would wander the streets of Guanajuato with a briefcase under his arm, muttering to himself, shaking his head and generally brandishing a shief of papers in his other hand. When I first saw him I wondered what he was up to, where he was going and what was all the fuss about, big meeting maybe… But then I realised as I saw him again and again that that was his particular madness. He was always on the way to or from a big important meeting. I thought at the time… what a good analogy for the human race, we are constantly on the run around from one place to another big important doings that really don’t mean squat in the bigger picture.

Thing is though I didn’t apply that to myself. Blind spots are wonderful things, they cushion us and protect us from things we would rather not face. I was recaping this morning about a time in Chihuahua when I was in denial about certain broken aspects of my life and it hit me I was doing exactly what this guy had been doing. Not so much.. I mean I wasn’t racing around in dirty clothes calling into businesses demanding to speak to the managers about a big important non existent projects but I was investing all my energy and self esteem into being successful and selling art. Anything to be doing something, I would chase short term goals with obsessive energy and be crushed when they wouldn’t work. I wasted time on circles when I could have been focused on long term achievements that would actually mean something and be achievable.

That’s self sabotage for you though. When we are in denial about some aspect of our life the rest gets affected too. It becomes a shield to protect us and keep us in oblivion and so nothing gets fixed and everything stays the same in self enclosed circles that we run on endlessly.

Now I have to figure out how I am still doing the same thing and stop doing it!

i am organising workshops here in dublin for Luis Molinar and its fun, I like it and i am learning a lot about advertisng and what works and what doesn’t and the prices of things and what to say to people and how to say it and all sorts like that. Interesting and informative.

What I am also learning is letting go of the outcome. I wrote a post about ‘attachment to the outcome’ and this is the same thing. I am attached to the outcome because of taking it personally and judging my own self worth on the doings of other people. So if they choose not to come to event I have organised then I am a failure and I judge myself and make myself feel bad after and before the event. 

This means sometimes I actually don’t want to do the thing or go to the event because of my fear that it might be a failure according to the ideas my mind has about it and then I will beat myself up afterwards. They (the events) turn out good and I look back at the agonies I put myself through beforehand and see what a waste of energy that was. I could have been happy and enjoyed the time beforehand. 

anyway, onto the trust. I have a set of pieces by jonathan goldman which are the seven chakras, wonderful and a good focus to clear the chakras and meditate on them. I was listening to the heart chakra one and thinking green, peace and then I felt that this chakra was not only the love chakra but the one where trust is. If it is open then we trust and love. 

I sat there for a while feeling this trust and felt how nice it was, how warm and comforting and peaceful it was. How easy it was to be there and comparing to the usual state of anxiousness I am and worry about ‘what if’ and the future how much nicer it was. I made a resolve to stay there more often.

Greenwitch sings alone in the heart of a tree, and yet not alone for in the heart of every tree there is a greenwitch singing. Her eyes are green with gold sparkles and her skin is the mottled green of moss. Her heart is pure gold and shines through her eyes and it is from her heart that her love flows and gives energy and strength to all growing things.
It is for greenwitch that the flowers stretch their heads to the sky and the sun. It is for greenwitch that the spiders spin their webs and do their dance of death. It is greenwitch that inspires the song of the birds and the whirring wings of the hummingbird and it is greenwitch that the donkeys love as they amble their slow way across the mountain.
Rain falls for her and rivers run and she sits at the heart of everything and sings her song of life. She is the weaver and she is the warp and weft and the fabric emerges from the loom in a thousand colours and in threads of silk and gossamer and gold and silver.
She is me and you and everything around us.

here’s a question? if the whole scientific phrase is right ‘energy cannot be created or destroyed’ then where do all the new people come from?

this question stopped me in my tracks a day ago. Since then I have been pondering on the interconnectedness of our life on this earth. That we are all made from the same stuff, me, you, spiders, rocks, this computer. We drink the water and eat the plants and turn it into us. The plants drink the water and absord the minerals in the dirt and turn it into more plants. What is the differance between growth and not growth is light. The light fuels it all to grow, to reproduce to become endless fractals of cells reproducing and shifting shapes to become life.

Inside every cell is a mini sun fueling it all and taking energy from the light outside and really at the end of the day the propulsion to grow and be alive cannot be pinned down on a slide under a microscope or explained adequately with theories or words. That’s the mysterious side of life, the place where the mind cannot go, cannot understand or explain. Without it nothing would change or move, no endless variations of movement and living things, including ourselves.

Cool huh?

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

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.

We are made of love.

That’s it, full stop, actually don’t need to add anything else, though I could substitute the word ‘love’ for ‘light’ or ‘energy’ or ‘will’.

I have been in awe for a while at the sheer amazingness, unbelivability, simply incredibleness of this existence I partake in. A bit hippy and a lot happy…

But it’s true! We are beings of light and love and held together by our own will and image of ourselves. It’s an act of power to be here in the first place and we take it for granted so much. We worry about our jobs, cars, insurance, the news, the enemy at our gates, politics and sports. We spend all our energy avoiding facing the wonderness of where we are because it is just too damn huge to take in. Or we use drugs to face it while still keeping a veil between us and it.

Stand, little humble, tiny me, without armor or protection in the great wind of existence. I exist, so I have the right to see this. I am here to learn how to be all that I am, not to make money or have children or be a famous artist, though they might happen on the learning journey, they are not the reason I am here.

I am here to learn how to see past my own folly and past the folly of others to the heart of it all. To the source, the fountain of knowledge, power, existence, inside my own being.

There is the risk that the wind will dissolve me, make me nothing and my ego goes into battle mode. How dare he say that, or how can she act that way or he is a wimp or she is ugly. Judgments… how my mind keeps control on me. Stop me from stepping into my own birthright.

My mind is small, my spirit is huge, my mind cannot see past it’s own understanding, my soul is beyond understanding. My mind wants facts, reassurances, control, my heart wants to play and dance and sing. My mind would have me die before it lets go of control, spirit is not afraid of death. The mind is frantic to discover a way of holding on, the heart is infinitely patient, it knows mind will run out of energy sooner or later.

Choose knowledge, freedom, happiness and tell the mind to take a holiday. x