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

We are subjective beings, even when we think we are being objective we are still looking out from a lifetimes store of experiences and assumptions and learnt behaviours.

I was thinking about this when I was trying to describe the Toltec teachings to people as I wander around putting up posters and leaving fliers and talking to people who are interested. Anything I say about it comes from my experience of having done the work and felt the changes that took place in me. I feel freer and happier and more at ease with myself and others around me. I can say that to people but I can’t show them. Except of course by being who I am.

I was making an ad for the irish independant this morning, small space, vital I choose the right words. At the beginning i put the fact that it is an ancient mexican teaching of warriorship for changing your life. Then I thought about this and I realised that this what appealed to me. I loved the history of the teaching, the fact it has been aound for centuries being passed down from generation to generation, changing and staying the same with each transition. Maybe that won’t interest others, maybe it will but I have to describe it somehow to grab attention in 10 cm of space.

Same with my art work. I was remembering from art college when they taught us to look objectivaly at our work and cut through the padding to get as close as we could to what we wanted to express. I can look at my work objectivaly to a certain point and I am very grateful to have received the training I got but still when all comes to all I am still looking at my own work and there are certain things I cannot see because I am still looking subjectively.

So thats the thing, I really don’t know what someone is thinking about until I ask them and sometimes I don’t even know what I am really thinking about until I sit down and really ask myself. Because as with the art work there are things sometimes about my life I can’t see because I am the one looking at them.

The birds in the photos flew over my head very close and very fast and I could actually feel the noise of their wings. A very cool, very subjective experience.

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 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.

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

Who am I really? Who am I underneath all the pretenses and masks I have developed over the years? All the times I have shifted colour and form to fit in while never really succeeding, always on the outside, not understanding how others made it seem too easy, trying too hard, being seen as the ´weirdo´

That is the problem I have faced in the past. Wanting so much to be accepted but afraid to be true to myself because I wasn´t enough, everyone else seemed to be so much more happy, successful, witty, just plain ‘more’

I didn´t know who I was, not a clue, not an iota, well maybe a part of me knew but was covered over by the masks. How do I find out who I am or want I really want in life if I don´t know and really don’t know how to cut through all those layers I had covered myself with. I wrote a story about it called Coat Boy. I will post it later. How to dig down through those layers and find out what lay beneath and smash those mirrors into smithereens.

I remember about three years ago making a promise to my heart, standing in front of a Rathmines window and gazing out at grey Irish weather that if my heart were to bring the means to finding what it really wanted into my life I would do my utmost to make it happen.

I decided I needed help, for the first time in my life actually admitting I could do with some help. I think now, just occurred to me, that my resistance to seeking help meant that I might actually have to change myself on a deep level instead of wanting it and wishing it but at the same time ultimately avoiding myself.

I did Reiki one and as part of my intention for doing it was to find someone to work with and he presto, three weeks later I find myself agreeing to become an apprentice to a Mexican teacher who works in the Toltec teachings. My life has never been the same since. I have ditched so much baggage and there is more going all the time, I have completely changed my outlook on the world and seen past the stuff that I took for granted and saw into the heart of myself and the world around me. Competition, comparison, my inner fears, my manipulation, my need for attention, my inner tantrum throwing control freak child all get put under the spotlight and seen for what they are. Outmoded tricks of the mind which will do anything to stay in control.

I am writing this from a hotel room in Mexico City, about to go on spirit journey to the pyramids of Teotihuacan. I have done this before and always come out the other side charged and renewed. There will be changes though, there will be upheavals and earthquakes, there will be the tower card of the tarot inside my inner being, there will be resistance to letting go and there will be competition and comparison until I surrender and become in line with the flow. But at the end I bring gifts back with me to my life and they continue to shift and grow inside me until they flower and bear fruit.

“Have you ever considered writing about how you can tap into something so much bigger than yourself? I’ve just been on your red bubble and I continue to be amazed and delighted by how you can so eloquently paint the heart of myth. It is as if each of your pieces is a poem. Susanne Ilse”

Following this wonderful email from Susanne at Bonesinger, whose work I admire greatly, (and check out her post on Irish stone spirits in the irish arts blog) I sat down to write this response.

Myths are stories spun in and around our life to give richness and meaning to those everyday things we often take for granted. A Myth conotates something grander than a mere fairytale. A Myth is bigger than we are, it is what we aspire to, what we can dream towards and they are always set in the far past, unconnected to today to emphasis the otherworldness of the heroes, heroines, gods, goddesses.

Maybe Myths scare society a little, if they were true they would upset the safety of reality and a rule based society, maybe that’s why they are always in the past or in another world or set in a world beside ours that touches it occasionally but doesn’t quite meet. They are uncontrollable and unsafe, they break boundaries and rules. Gravity does not have power in a myth, neither does age, time, space or simple laws of what humans are and are not capable of.

We have been separated from our own Myths, from our own power, we have given away possibility in favour of a safe existence from cradle to grave. We accept what we are told about life, about our bodies and about our minds and we are hooked by the big ‘I AM’, we think personal power is having control, of ourselves and the world around us. But in myths the heroes and heroines have no control, they are spun by the threads of destiny and they have to drop what they think they want and suddenly everything flows forward and they are successful. There is always a struggle before the dropping of the mind.

I want to live my own Myth, I want to see what happens when I drop control and let it all flow… and this is what I do every time I create something, I try as best I can in that moment to drop control and see what happens. We all do this as artists, that feeling of flowing, of effortless creation and when its finished you look and your mind is surprised and a little in awe of ‘I did this’. Truth is though ‘I’ didn’t do it I merely got out of the way and it happened all by itself.

I am getting better at the getting out of the way bit and as I do I get closer to how I dream my pictures. A new freedom, a new level of letting go, a new style and a new trust in my voice, no comparisons and no competition. It is freeing and it is scary and it is living from the heart. Living each moment surrounded by the grandness of the Myth, by possibility instead of facts, by the wonderfulness of the fact we are here instead of mundane worries, by the connection to life as an endless river and we are here for the ride and to learn how to swim, without struggling, straight to the sea.

Thanks Susanne for the inspiration to write this, we need reminding of this sometimes and it was good to actually sit down and think about it right now. Put words on the feelings, put my intent back on track.. XX cliodhna

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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