cliodhna’s wave

The Dragonfly is the gatekeeper to the land of illusion. He holds truth and reality and illusion and if you want to break through an illusion and find the truth behind it then dragonfly knows the path.

I could do with some of that! it is hard finding the truth sometimes, or more exactly, it is hard to find the real truth hidden under layers of illusion. Sometimes illusion disguises itself as the truth. I am angry at someone cause they won’t help me, I think the truth is that I am feeling disrespected and ignored but really the issue is that I am feeling judgemental and guilty because my business/art/money isn’t going as planned and because I invest my self esteem into these things I berate myself when they don’t work. This means that I can’t deal in a calm manner with the original problem because really my mind is a war zone and I am a war with myself.

I hate being inside my head sometimes, I want an off switch, and toggle that goes to ‘happy’ and I don’t have to do any work to get there… and even using the word ‘work’ in this context. I am obviously equating being happy with work, its not easy, its work… you are not working, better get busy!

So, finding my way to the other side of illusion is a slow process for me, gently picking away at the things in me that hide the truth of me from myself. Finding my way to just being happy and then everything else gains perspective and falls into beautifully balanced place.

I remember working in a store on Georges st and standing at the doorway on a slow afternoon when it was sunny and bright and fresh outside, and two dragonflies came circling and dancing through the air down the street. Iridescent blue and green they sparkled in the air as they flew and I watched them until they danced onwards and dissapeared.

x clio

There was once a girl who always believed the stories she heard, whether they were stories about the rain and the clouds or stories about aliens landing on earth. She believed them all. If someone said she was beautiful she would believe them and feel happy and if someone said she was ugly she would believe them and feel sad and ugly. If she failed at something she believed she was a failure and if she succeeded at something else then she was a success and the world was her oyster. She believed men when they said they loved her and she was the most wonderful creature in the world and that they would never love another and she gave her energy and her life to feed these stories to keep them coming to validate her because if we are not our stories then who are we?

One day she found out someone was lying. This was a huge shock to her, it had never occurred to her that someone would lie. Then she looked around her and realized everyone was lying, including herself. She was lying to herself. She believed each and every one of the stories she heard and told them to herself and there had been a part of her that knew they weren’t true but she ignored that part and kept believing the stories because they told her how to feel and how to be.

She stopped listening to the stories. She stopped listening to all the stories, when someone told her a story she would smile sweetly and look for the truth behind the story and the truth behind the story generally ran something like ‘listen to me I am lonely’ or ‘please believe this story of how amazing I am because I need your approval’ or ‘if I tell you how wonderful and beautiful you are you will stay with me and love me’ or simply ‘I need love’

As she stopped listening to the stories she began to lose her own stories and she saw that she wasn’t beautiful or ugly or a failure or a success or the most wonderful creature in the world capable of inspiring undying love in men, that these were simply stories to make people feel good or bad about themselves and it made her sad to let go of these beliefs. She wanted to be beautiful and a success and the most loved and most adored but these were illusions and stories and so she let them go.

What was past the stories? I am still finding out, it is a place of calmness and sense of unshakable self that comes from the heart. It is my own connection to my truth that does not depend on outside approval or a need to comply. It is not selling myself for love and realizing that being on my own does not mean failure, it is the letting go of all the stories bit by bit and facing the fear that comes with letting go my way of manipulating the world to see me the way my mind wants to be seen. It is happiness and a feeling of freedom that is greater than anything the stories can offer. It is love.

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.

Its not often anymore you can actually see the milky way. Light pollution from all our cities and towns has flooded the night sky and has obscured our view of the stars. I remember when I was little and we moved to the countryside I was really surprised that the night sky was black and not orange.

Last night driving to Temoris from the mine, away from the lights of the camp and the mine, deep in the mountains, the milky way really was as white as its name and spanned the sky in a glorious arc from one horizon to the other. We must be in the right time of year also to see it so clearly. It made my heart sing, the galaxy is unimaginably huge and the universe even bigger but we are just as much a part of it all as the brightest star in the sky.

I have often wondered about distances in space. Maybe they are just an illusion constructed in our minds, all that empty blackness between the stars, is it really there or is it going to be a big as we think it is? I had a very good argument once with a pair of very scientific minds on the nature of breaking the light speed barrier.

It’s not possible (them)

But how do you know? (I)

Because it has never been done and we have never recorded anything going the speed of light (them)

But that’s because you were measuring things with instruments constructed using the laws of physics as we know them now (I)

Its just not possible (them)

I considered briefly getting into astral projection, dreams and the nature of reality but decided to save my energy for my own explorations.

If we are light and whatever atoms are made of, bouncing round in the vibration called ‘I’ then speed of light is possible, in fact forget the speed of light and go read Jonathon Livingston Seagull for a lesson in the nature of possibility…

X

There is a place just the other side of what we think is reality. It shimmers and shifts and none of our rules apply.

Did you ever think about the fact that solidity is an illusion? that an atom is mostly empty space and it is only the electrical forces which hold the atom together that give us the impression of ’solid’

So back to possibility. Consider all your preconceptions of the world as the electrical force giving the illusion of solidity where as it is actually 90% empty space and we create the rest.

Sometimes I look at the world and I realise there isn’t actually ‘anything’ there. It is energy I am putting form on and time on and my wants and needs on. Sit in a place of nature where there are no people or signs of human constructions and think about time. It becomes meaningless; plants grow and die, trees shed their leaves and grow new ones, flowers emerge spread their seeds and then wither, it is an endless circle of change. It will circle forever, life surging forward. Basic scientific rule we all learn in school… energy cannot be created or destroyed.

It is only when we step in and put ‘time’ on things that we get lost in needing to put structure on outside of ourselves. We have invested huge amounts of energy into time, we must do so much, we will die and it will all be over, must achieve, must make money, not enough time, too late, too young, too old, too early, to fast, too slow, too much, too little, hours, minutes, seconds, days, months, years, decades, ancient, antique, new, old, fresh, stale, time is money, three minute pasta, 30 second meals, fast food, life expectancy, growing old, yesterday, tomorrow, five minutes ago, in an hours time, three hours long… etc, etc

We are running in circles trying desperately to keep up with ourselves.  There is no time, not as we have constructed it. We are immortal beings and time is a circle or a river we flow along and the only thing to do is relax and go with the flow. Its great when I remember this. I get lost sometimes in the ‘too old’ thoughts, or ‘not getting enough done in the day’ thoughts and it makes me worried and anxious and impatient and I feel like I am pushing against a wall or walking in a dream when I can’t seem to walk fast enough. I think about the illusion of time and I let it go and I can be happy again in the moment.

I was doing a tarot reading with Paul last night, the osho zen tarot, I love them. They have a directness and a simplicity and a connection with here and now that I like. Anyway, I asked for me and ’sorrow’ came up and I was explaining to Paul that, for me, to really release sorrow you have to go into it and experience it and not try to run from it into control (whatever form that takes.. television, books, cigarettes, food, anger, however) and also what was I hanging onto in my life that I didn’t want to let go of, didn’t want to fully mourn and accept that it was gone. For me also tears are about the fear of letting go, the mind goes to fear and out come the tears.

I started a path about three years ago working with the toltec teachings and I don’t think I have ever cried so much and in front of people too! Its my first port of call and sometimes I hate it and try not to and other times I accept it and accept the fact that it will pass in time.

I know when I am in control because I feel a pushing in my solar plexus, a frustration, a want that cannot be satisfied, anger, a feeling of wanting to pick a fight, a need to make someone else wrong or make them little. It is my flag, this feeling, that it is time to relax, let myself fall into truth of here and now, stop trying to twist the world into my idea of how it should be and let it flower in its own time. I think I have been feeling this way recently, I have been doing so much administration, getting the past in order, setting up structures (like this blog and my shop) looking at other amazing blogs, making a web of myself on the ephemeral world that is cyberspace, that I fell into the illusion of control, I could, by much action, shape my world into happy and successful.

This is my fear, an old one, to control how others see me, to make them like me, to manipulate the world so I get what (i think) I need. The fear of really truly being exactly who I am right now because it might not be enough and the sorrow is to let go of the facade and let truth shine through. There is only truth.

The second card I got was ’sharing’, the image of a woman offering a bowl of fruits. She has so much she can give and she gives from endless abundance. This is the way past my fear, to share with the world what I have because each of us has a unique path and wisdom to give to the world and there is always enough for everyone. My mum used to say that we each born with our own packet of love and each child had his/her own.

I have been connecting with others who are on the same path as I. I got a wonderful email this morning from A Fanciful Twist (a really cool blog I discovered recently) which gave me a smile and encouragement. And of course Paul, the ever present love, with his own viewpoint on life. Sometimes we are completely in sync with each other and sometimes it’s immovable force meets unstoppable object! He got ‘the master’ card in this reading last night, but you know, I think I am going to ask him to write something from himself for that!

So, a deep breath, relax, time to put the admin in perspective and stop organising for a while. I am going to get the oil paints out this morning. I ADORE the smell of oil paints, they surround me in a cloud of magic or possibility, don’t know why but they do. Start creating and letting it flow once more. If anyone is feeling too much ‘doing’ and trying to control this morning, sit back, have a cup of tea, get a piece of paper maybe and doodle or write or hum a tune or sit under a tree or ring a friend you haven’t talked to in ages. These are the things which make us happy!

x cliodhna

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