cliodhna’s wave

To listen to silence is a very rare gift these days. We are surrounded by so much noise we cannot hear the silence behind everything. A child can hear silence, can listen to the song of the world as it turns and the song of the birds.

A house on a hill. A garden with a pool in it with three huge old fish, two gold and one silver. A child climbing over the wall, silently, cautiously, he had heard too many tales about this house in the past,

To sit on a hill where there is no noise except birds and wind and crickets is to listen to the world as it was in the beginning when we were not here, when there were no humans, it is timeless. Listen, hear and the world expands in every direction. We are too used to looking we forget to listen too. So listen and behind the sounds of the birds and insects there is a vastness and a sense of something timeless that surrounds us.

We have lost this connection I think, living in our machine age. Our televisions, radios, mp3 players, there is music and chatter everywhere. In supermarkets, cafes, buses, lifts, we live our lives in a shell of aimless sound and gossip. Our attention is always hooked outside of us. And we allow this to happen because that silence is too scary to experience. That vastness is too huge and we, who have not faced our true selves and found the inner core that cannot be blown away, are too afraid to face it for fear of not being enough.

To connect to this silence for a few minutes everyday puts us back in connection with ourselves and who we really are. I have heard it said that only troubled people seek peace. If that is the case then I am grateful for my worries and my inner angst because it pushed me in a direction I would not have found otherwise.

The child walks through the garden his eyes and ears open, his mouth open in wonder. Trees shaded him from the sun, parrots squawked and flew in a flurry of colour, a fig tree laden with fruit offers a branch with ripe fruit. He takes one and eats it, startled at the intensity of the flavour. He walks on soft grass, cut short and tidy, a white peacock ambles across his path, not bothering to take notice of him. He walks, taking in everything eyes looking up and down and around and above him and below him. He comes across a pool, an ornamental pool, quite large, with a small wall around it. In the pool are three huge old fish swimming in slow circles, two gold and one silver.

They swim in endless circles, when the sun shines and the pool is a mirror of glass they swim, when it rains and the rain makes a hissing noise as it hits the surface of the pool they swim, when it is winter and the surface of the pool is frozen they sink to the deeper parts and swim even slower. The water is their world and is all they have ever known, this water, this pool, this branch hanging over head, this face that hangs over their pool twice a day and drops the coloured flakes that is their food. They rise slowly and with gulping motion of their wide mouths they swallow the red and yellow and brown flakes.

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people with candles where their hearts should be, or stars, shining out to show our true selves past who we think we are

my victim self pulling my real self behind her on a cart, the power self is tied up, unable to move or act because the victim is running my life for me,

morning face… the face i have on in the morning before my first cup of coffee to wake me up

a wave of the sun destroying the earth, like in that film presagio, I had a dream about it where I was trying to hide in cow shit to protect myself. Meaning of dream? I think I was afraid of the suns power and being swallowed up by its flames and so I hide in cow shit. Cow shit= waste from a domesticated animal who gives and gives and gives, or rather we take and take and take. I realised a few days later that the sun will only burn the pysical selfs, that which is not light and my essence would be left. We are all light anyway pretending to be humans.

the picture I drew in Cancun of a male figure standing beside the sea perspiring because of the heat, the sun blazes in the top left hand corner, maybe i will put a fish in each drop of persperation. Water… emotions…. the mind…

It has been raining pretty constantly here in Galway and I finally realised yesterday why mexico is so dry. Because all the rain is here in Ireland! I am looking forward to going back to hot dryness now.

It is one thing I have learnt doing this work and seeing myself more and more clearly, that women keep themselves small so that men will love them. We blame the men but really it is us that need to stand up and reclaim our power. No more victims, no more ‘poor me’.

I have also been asking myself why I write this blog. Does it really help what I want to achieve in my life right now? It has been really good for me to do this, public expose of my inner doubts and fears which I have always kept secret but now I need to re-evaluate why I write here and what purpose I want it to serve. I think I will keep it ticking along until I figure it out.

What else, I talked to my mother about doing this work, the Toltec path, which I had never done before, fears of their judgment I suppose which is really my own. Also stuff about how we take on things from our parents and how unsaid emotions go to the person who is saying them and if no one is saying them then they rattle around looking for some sort of a release. I was happy afterwards I talked to her about it but there was also a part of me really worried she was going to be angry, and I could feel myself wanting to run and reassure her.

I need to reassure myself. I cannot change or fix someone else. Old dream, look after everyone else first and give all your energy away so you have nothing left. New Dream, heal yourself first then you will have energy to give to others from love and not from limitation.

So with love, from a surprisingly sunny morning in salthill, galway…..

To not be emotional is to be good, to be the quiet no fuss easy going child, to be the one who doesn´t cry or kick up or assert herself. This is not being emotional. To keep it inside, even though you might cry on your own, hidden away from everyone, because you don´t want them to know.

To be emotional and to cry is to be needy, to be the ´problem´ child, to be the one who makes a fuss and gets what she wants no matter what everyone else thinks.

To be needy is to be sticky and constantly wanting attention and then no one will want to be with you or play with you or love you. A little bit is ok, because we are all human and it is good to cry sometimes, but a lot is not ok and better get controlled.

The trouble is, after a while, all the unsaid emotions get so tangled up inside that I don’t know what’s what anymore, and they all get filed under ‘better get controlled because you don’t want to appear needy’ and then when I want to just take one out to express it they all fall out at the same time in a big mess.

I guess I am starting to get them sorted out now. Express them one by one, little by little as they come up until the mess becomes an interesting tangle to be sorted through patiently.

Time is speeding up, at least that what it feels like. The more I take my time and do things slowly and conciously and methodically the more it seems to zip past. Its kinda scary in a way. One of my issues is impatience. I don’t feel like I deserve success so I do things fast and then they don’t work. A cycle of failure which perpetrates itself.

I make a desicion a while ago to really go with the flow. Allow myself to slow down and breathe. Take the time I needed to do the things which make me feel good, do my yoga and my recapitualtion and excercise and plan my next act properly. The upshot? I am sitting with my oatmeal, its half twelve and I am meeting my mother in about an hour to go shopping with her in the dundrum shopping centre. Day is gone.

I do want to meet her, no problem there but I am noticing that the less I try to hang onto time and the less I worry about getting things done within a certain time frame the more it seems to slip past my fingers like water. I suppose I spent a lot of my life worrying about the fact that I was wasting time, I wasn’t young enough anymore to be succesful, I attached succesful onto age and I had failed that, worrying about if I don’t do something NOW I would lose the chance and I would never get another one, if I don’t get something major done everyday the day was a failure. I was really chasing my tail round in circles, agonizing over the moment and feeling like I was failing each one. Getting nowhere very fast.

It is scary to let it go. To say, ‘the gallery can wait till next month or next year when I have something to show them’ or ‘the printing of promo cards can wait until next week until I talk to my artist friend and get some advice on what might be the next best step’ or ‘ I am going to spend my time now getting together a professional proposal together for galleries’. I face my fear of being left behind and forgotton about. I am not as fast as others, not as good.

So now, that time seems to have got loose and taken on its own momentum I am concentrating on letting go and not thinking about it. Go with the flow. I am viewing each day less as 24 hours and more like a heartbeat. Badum Badum Badum……

…it raineth every day

so goes the old song. I know a lot of folk songs that have the word rain in them, I wonder why?

I have been thinking to myself that it would be nicer to be more feminine. Wear pretty clothes and nice shoes and be more elegant. Not to attract men, though I am sure Paul will be pleased but to feel good about myself. I am, and always have been a tomboy. I was the first one up the tree, the first one down the hill on the dodgy bike, I put on a dress and then look in the mirror, think for a second, take it off and put on the jeans. phew, safe again.I get tired sometimes though of the baggy sweats and the jeans and the practical but nice tops and shirts I have. I do have some really nice clothes but they hang waiting for the excuse to wear them.

Its only in recent years I could wear tight clothes, when I was younger I wore huge voluminous dresses and flowing tops and skirts over jeans so my ass wasn’t in view. I am ok about that now but I still am aware of it.

Part of my problem I reckon is the weather. In ireland it is cold and rainy and there are very few days where it is warm enough to venture out in t shirts and short skirts. I like being warm, I like being comfortable and there is no way on earth I am ever ever going outside my front door on a cold december night in a short skirt and heels just to look good in the pub. Not going to  happen.

So, i look out my window at the rain and I wonder is it possible to buy really warm wooly tights to wear under a skirt so i can look more feminine and still be warm. Can I get cool boots with felt lining to keep my tootsies nice and cosy and do I dare go outside without my insulated hat and leave the body warmer with the really nice hood at home.

I am off to Galway today to put posters and leave fliers for the workshops I am organizing. It’s funny doing this, It is reminding me of all the times I would have done it for gigs we were doing. Book the venue, do the radio interview, put up the posters, tell everyone we knew and then when the night of the gig arrived we would do the sound check, and then sit back and wait for people to arrive. Sometimes they would arrive early and we would relax and enjoy and sometimes nobody would come for ages and we would have visions of playing to three people, but eventually they would trickle in little by little and we would always have a full house to play to.

Same feeling here, putting the fliers out and spreading the word and waiting for the response. I am feeling responsible for getting people and a part of me wants to push and control it and thinks that if I don’t do it right nobody will come and I will be to blame. This is where, I think, doing your best comes into play, that if I do my best and give it the energy it needs and deserves then no matter the outcome I will know I did what was to be done and I couldn’t have done it any differently, where-as if I had skimped on time and attention I will always wonder what if?

Of course the other side of that is my wonderful judge who will try to make me feel bad no matter what I did but I try not to listen to him.

I remember putting up a poster for Reiki in Guanajuato and having this wonderful realization afterwards that I didn’t need to worry about it or try to control it, if there was someone who needed my energy they would find me so I could relax and let the universe do its stuff. Nobody did arrive but I figured I had put up the poster for me to have that revelation, to not be attached to outcome and then I can take the risk of doing something new.

So i was telling the girls in the office yesterday that on certain kinds of rainy days in Ireland we say it’s a ‘soft day’. They thought this hilarious but then they come from a place that when rainy season hits the rains fall with a fierce purpose of inundating the world. Flash floods, instant lakes, life springs from nowhere to frantically grow for three short months. The idea of rain seeping its way downwards is an alien concept. It’s like walking through a cloud I explained. They got that, they live in high mountains so walking through a cloud is a casual occurrence and is walking through a damp grey mist.

I have been thinking about making choices. About the last post I put up and I would have to add that I don’t think a choice can be made until the moment arrives to make it. When that moment is, is of course another choice, but then choices are the only things that are truly ours in this world. How we choose to live our life from moment to moment. In the past I have rehearsed choices and practiced them in my head and ran over all possible scenarios to make sure I would know the right thing to say or do when the moment arrived. Of course when that particular moment did arrive (if ever it did) then it would be completely different to anything I had ever imagined and sometimes I would get it right and sometimes I would get it wrong. I would get it wrong because I was afraid to live in the moment. At that moment I would have been rehearsing another choice somewhere further up the life stream and so still in fear and making choices through fear.

I don’t want to make choices through fear anymore. I don’t want to be so attached to/afraid of the outcome that I am paralyzed in the moment and my head makes me spin in circles. Sometimes the choice is to do nothing and let it all pass by, sometimes it is to step in and grab and hold, and sometimes it is neither and something completely different. The thing is though that the impulse comes from the heart and not the mind; and that I cannot know until the moment arrives to make the choice.

What is at stake is everything. My life is at stake here. My wishes for myself, my path as a soul making its way along life, that is what is at stake. Not possessions or career or relationships or my self-image or my pride. These things in the end of the day are not important and when balanced against self discovery and growing to be the person I can be are small. It is not what I have that is important it is how I live them.

The first is from a film called ‘Ghost Dog’ where the main character is living the life and ideals of a samurai warrior. He reads from his book during the film the following quote

~ In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.~

I think its to do with the fact that when faced with a difficult decision we already know which way we will choose but fear prevents us from making ourselves sure. The answer is in our hearts and in our inner being.

The second is from a carlos casteñeda book. When Don Juan tells him a warrior never regrets a decision. Once the choice is made then there is no looking back, only forward.

Both such simple pieces of advice and so hard to follow!

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.