Homesick

It is Lammas, the festival of the Great Mother, the life-bringer who holds us in Her wisdom and unconditional – but my no means always soft and gentle – love, and who showers us with Her horn of cornucopia, the horn of plenty.

It is also the time of the Goddess Conference in Glastonbury. My first conference was in 2006, the last Mother conference, and what a life-changing experience! I wish with all my heart that I could be there now, sharing, dancing, listening, talking, and loving. Meeting friends, sisters and brothers, speaking of the things I sorely miss: Avalon, the Mother, Goddess, spirit.

This September, it will be five years since my dedication as a Sister of Avalon. I haven't been back in Glastonbury since. Not in body, at least. And it seems I won't have the chance to go back for yet more time.

I'm homesick. I long to walk the land again, to lie under the apple tree at Chalice Hill and feel the earth breathing underneath, to wander the labyrinthine windings up the Tor and feel the wind whipping my hair and clothes, to taste the waters of the red and white springs…

I long to let my heartroot connect to the earthroot, in that special connection that exists nowhere else. Avalon is a place of the heart, a place co-existing in parallel to this dimension, but there are places where the veil is thinner, and Glastonbury is one of them. The connection to something greater, to something beyond me, and the wholeness that I feel in nature is so much stronger there.

It is the place my soul calls home, insofar as I have a home.

It is, as Sally Pullinger so beautifully put it, "the source and the return". (Words I heard in my heart while travelling across Britain that August six years ago, only to later hear and sing during that year's Lammas ceremony and read in Kathy Jones' book, Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess. The kind of synchronicities that abound in my experiences of Goddess and Avalon, and which thus ring deeply true to me.)

And I miss my Avalon family. How I miss them! I miss talking to my soul sisters, I miss the deep, instinctive understanding and the unintrusive listening, I miss being held in the presence of my sister and brother priestesses.

I feel quite a bit like Bilbo Baggins in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring:

I’m old, Gandalf. I know I don’t look it, but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel…thin. Sort of stretched, like…butter scraped over too much bread.

I've been away for too long. I feel like I'm losing touch with my Self, like my life force is running low. Lower than ever before, and yet at times stronger than ever. I don't know where and how to recharge my life's battery. Loving is no longer enough to replenish it.

I miss Avalon, even though it is right here in my heart. But I miss it so much that it makes my heart ache.

Your word of the day/week from Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Ever since first coming into contact with Oriah Mountain Dreamer's poem "The Invitation", and being touched by it, I have liked her work. And since some time back, I follow her "Page" on Facebook. Today she posted a beautiful and simple exercise to find a word for the day/week that I want to spread:

On ceremonial circles people often introduce themselves with whatever word arises with the breath from within the body, allowing the heart to offer a deep intent that unfolds & reveals its meaning over our time together. Take 3 deep breaths, allow the belly to soften, the shoulders to drop, the body-self to be held by the earth. My word to begin this day/week comes: "Trust." What is yours?

I took some deep breaths, grounded myself in my body and listened. The word I got was "believe". Such a beautiful, hopeful word! After sitting with it for a while, I realised that it was also telling me to "be" and "live", and to "be (a)live". It was exactly the guidance I needed for this week, not least after getting "Death" as my card of the week.

At the moment, I don't have the peace of mind to meditate, but this is a quick exercise I will remember and do again. A lovely way to ask for guidance and to connect with what my soul is saying.

Believe.

If you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."

~Mother Theresa

Love breaks the boundaries to our heart and frees the pain inside. It is not an easy thing to experience, or suffer, love. To walk through the pain of loving, openly and freely, without limitations or preconceived notions of what it is to love, what love will give in return; that is no easy task. And it is no easy journey.

It seems to be a lesson of this life for me; love. Or lessons of one life after the other that are coming together into a healing process. I am slowly becoming aware of how complicated it is, and of how much pain that flows through me as I slowly venture deeper and deeper into my Self with love. It is the journey of the wounded healer, the wounded lover, and it is painful to the point of being unbearable. Because in that pain and confusion, as the love I feel and walk with picks at wounds in order to heal them, I lose myself; I lose control, and I end up hurting others. It is not a pain I want to inflict on anyone, and yet I do. I'm not a victim here, but the offender, who hurts people who get too close, who may even show me true friendship. I reward it with pain, with primitive gut reactions of doing unto them what has been done to me. And I wish I knew why. I don't yet. But reading Mother Theresa's quote touched something, a string, a nerve, and seeing how I instantly connected it to some things and patterns, I guess that it is true. There is a connection.

I've vowed Goddess, the Lady of Avalon, to live life loving and to let Her love shine through me. I do my very best to speak only love, to act from a place of love, but as the journey deepens and gets darker and more painful, it actually gets harder. Does that mean I am going into the wounded places; the places that need healing the most? And the lesson to learn is what? To maintain my Self and stay in a place of love even when it gets hard?

I feel rage bubbling up, I feel like I'm shaking in my fetters and when I break free I may lash out and hurt people; I feel egotism, ruthlessness, and such anger in the pain. And if I can't rein them in, I feel like I might just as well isolate myself; distance myself from the people who may care and get too close. I didn't choose to be born with the wounds I have; I didn't choose my past lives, all the things that are coming together, the seemingly endless line of wounds of love, wounds against love. If this pain is something I've felt before, I'm not surprised that I'm finding it so hard to fall in love. I love, but I don't fall in love. Way too risky. That way pain lies. And yes, I am aware that the only road to healing and to finding that true love; to entering that place in me that is only love, goes through the pained and wounded places. The challenge lies in doing it while remaining in a state of love. Probably more than anything, love and acceptance of myself. But I am not who I want to be; I don't act the way I want to do. There are things in me that make me do something other than what I wish I did; something makes me react in ways I didn't expect. And I want to change that, to be who I want to be. But how? Is the answer to ground myself in love? To accept myself in spite of all my flaws and mistakes so that I can ground myself in love? Let me tell you: not easy.

Whenever I think I've gotten somewhere, that I can love and accept myself the way I am, something happens that triggers doubt and brings up another wound to be healed. I am once again thrown into the cauldron. And it's getting tired; I am getting tired. For every step of the journey brings me deeper, and the deeper wounds are the most painful. Otherwise, why would I have buried them so deeply?

When will I have loved so deeply that there is no more pain; only love?

Eve Ensler: Embrace your inner girl

I received the link to this talk by Eve Ensler from a Goddess list - thanks, Kathy! - and have to share it. Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues, and many other works, talks about the girl cell. A grouping of cells in women as well as men, that we have all learned to suppress; that patriarchy has done its best to suppress and eradicate.

I want you to imagine that the girl is a chip in the huge macrocosm of our collective consciousness, and it is essential to balance, to wisdom and to, actually, the future of all of us.

And then I want you to imagine that this girl cell is compassion, and it's empathy, and it's passion itself, and it's vulnerability, and it's openness, and it's intensity, and it's association, and it's relationship, and it is intuitive.

And then, next thing, how compassion informs wisdom, and that vulnerability is our greatest strength, and that emotions have inherent logic which lead to radical appropriate saving action.

And then let's remember that we've been taught the exact opposite by the powers that be:

That compassion clouds your thinking. That it gets in the way.

That vulnerability is weakness.

That emotions are not to be trusted and you're not supposed to take things personally.

Which is one of my favourites.

I think the whole world has essentially been brought up not to be a girl. How do we bring up boys? What does it mean to be a boy?

To be a boy really means not to be a girl.

To be a man means not to be a girl.

To be a woman means not to be a girl.

To be strong means not to be a girl.

To be a leader means not to be a girl.

I actually think that being a girl is so powerful that we've had to train everyone not to be that.

[...]

[T]he verb that's been enforced on girl is the verb "to please." Girls are trained to please. I want to change the verb. I want us all to change the verb. I want the verb to be "educate" or "activate" or "engage" or "confront" or "defy" or "create." If we teach girls to change the verb we will actually enforce the girl inside us and the girl inside them.

Yes. Many of us have been raised, trained and educated to deny and suppress the girl inside. I spent decades trying to do just that; thinking that it was the right way to go about life. No-one ever taught me any other way. I literally tried to annihilate myself in the hope that I might fit in, never knowing that I'm not meant to fit it. I break stereotypes, I defy the norm, and trying to be anything or anyone else will only mean that I diminish myself and my glow. And I'm not better off for it, am I? Are you better off for denying your inner girls? It's time we embrace her, embrace our inner girls and be who we were born to be.

Let's stop pleasing, and instead create, defy, break down barriers and just be the glorious emotional beings that we are.

Note from the Universe for March 25, 2010

If you would see everything filtered through the light of truth, you'd never, ever again know sadness, lack, or limits. You'd see that you are safe. Bathed in love. Surrounded by admirers in both the physical and spiritual realms you grace. You'd see only beauty, perfection, and meaning. And you'd realize that just as the stark contrasts of time and space and the illusions of have and have not imprison you, so too can they make possible wings that will lift you higher.

Seek understanding, or as it was once put, seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and everything else will be added unto you. (Same thing, different audience, grossly misunderstood to this very day.)

Cawwww, cawwwwwww, cawwwwwwwww.... (Soaring bird sounds.)

Tallyho,

The Universe

---

Thoughts become things... choose the good ones! ®
© www.tut.com ®

The Privileged Lovers - Rumi poem

The moon has become a dancer

at this festival of love.

This dance of light,

This sacred blessing,

This divine love,

beckons us

to a world beyond

only lovers can see

with their eyes of fiery passion.

They are the chosen ones

who have surrendered.

Once they were particles of light

now they are the radiant sun.

They have left behind

the world of deceitful games.

They are the privileged lovers

who create a new world

with their eyes of fiery passion.

~Rumi (translated by Deepak Chopra)

Charlie Browns' depressed stance

"This is my depressed stance. When you're depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better. If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this."

Charlie Browns' depressed stance says quite a lot. It's easy to feel disempowered, depressed and low when you hunch your back and keep your eyes fixed on the ground. Our body languange affects our emotions in more ways than most people are aware of. And not only that: it also reveals our sense of self, and other people will behave towards us based on what we reveal about us. So if you show that you are depressed, that is how people will treat you; which can be nice if they boost your self esteem, but can also affirm your state of mind and your low sense of self. Which is not a good thing.

Try doing the opposite! The next time you feel small, disempowered, and dejected, straighten your back, hold your head high and try to smile. Smile at yourself in the mirror, smile at the people you meet. What happens with your mood? What happens in how other people respond to you? What happens with your self esteem?

We Create What We Want

The following is an excerpt from Mohammad Yunus' Nobel lecture, given during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, December 10, 2006. I was very happy when Yunus and Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, as I had been impressed by their working system of micro-credits and microfinancing. That is a true path from poverty to empowerment and autonomy, economic as well as personal growth.

But in Yunus' lecture, what spoke to me was a part about how we create the world we live in; how we get what we want by accepting certain things. If we objected to poverty, then surely we would fight to eradicate it. We - the west in general - don't, but our silence and passivity is an acceptance.

We Create What We Want

We get what we want, or what we don't refuse. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.

We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have not put our minds to it. We create what we want.

What we want and how we get to it depends on our mindsets. It is extremely difficult to change mindsets once they are formed. We create the world in accordance with our mindset. We need to invent ways to change our perspective continually and reconfigure our mindset quickly as new knowledge emerges. We can reconfigure our world if we can reconfigure our mindset.

© THE NOBEL FOUNDATION 2006

I believe in the power of manifestation and attraction; I believe in our power to change the world with our thoughts and actions. It is not just a matter of poverty, but also of injustice based on gender, sexual orientation, age, race, class, caste, and status, of gendercide, of the atrocities committed in the name of religion... We have the power to change it, if we want to. Each change has to start from ourselves, and sometimes, silence is acceptance.

Invincible

Follow through
Make your dreams come true
Don't give up the fight
You will be all right
Cause there's no one like you
In the universe

Don't be afraid
What your mind conceals
You should make a stand
Stand up for what you believe
And tonight we can truly say
Together we're invincible

And during the struggle
They will pull us down
But please, please let's use this chance to
Turn things around
And tonight we can truly say
Together we're invincible

Do it on your own
Makes no difference to me
What you leave behind
What you choose to be
and whatever they say
Your soul's unbreakable

And during the struggle
They will pull us down
But please, please let's use this chance to
Turn things around
And tonight we can truly say
Together we're invincible
Together we're invincible

And during the struggle
They will pull us down
Please, please let's use this chance to
Turn things around
And tonight we can truly say
Together we're invincible

Words I firmly live by and believe in. Today, I needed a reminder that things will become alright again, that I am in fact invincible, and this song appeared. Although I'm a fan of Muse, I've never really listened to the entire lyrics of this song until now.

Message received.

I try to believe.

Hero of War - Rise Against

This song reached right in and grabbed my heart in an ice-cold, numbing vice.

It left me in tears; tears over the things we humans are capable of, the atrocities committed in the name of truth, justice and religion. The lack of civilisation that is the direct result of the cruelty of war, civil war, genocide, hate crime, religious struggle, rape, degradation, torture, bullying, battering, and abuse in its many forms.

I honestly don't know how they do it; the soldiers who kill civilians, maim and torture innocent people. The guards in the Abu Ghraib prison in Bagdad who degraded and humiliated the prisoners, the torturers in Guantanamo... How could they do what they did and still look another person in the eye? I can't believe that they actually thought, deep down in their hearts, that it was OK to treat another person like that just because it was an order, or because everyone else did, just as I can't believe that the guards and officers of the concentration camps deep down could justify what they were doing. They may be stupid and blinded by their leaders' bullshit about us and them, about how one people has a higher value than another, but deep down in their hearts, surely, they must have a sense of right and wrong. Don't they know that they are selling out their souls, their civilisation, their humanity, when they abuse and degrade another human being?

I feel things deeply, and I have often felt that the agony over the things that people are capable of is too much to bear; the despair over animal abuse, child abuse, and the atrocities of war grows so heavy that I don't want to live in a world where such things are allowed to happen (and go unpunished). I feel like the despair and hatred for the perpetrators grow so big that it's a matter of killing or be killed. I of course don't, but I feel it.

I want to avert my eyes and forget what humankind is capable of, but what would that make me? A silent accomplice? I believe that any sentient, intelligent, caring person has a duty to see, to witness, and to be the change that is needed. There may be precious little we can do, but any major shift of consciousness has to start from within each and every one of us. And we are able to change the world. Not at once, but bit by bit. We hold the power to live our lives from a place of love, not hate or fear. If we send out love in the world, there will be more love, and we can influence the energy of others by what we choose to send out.

In the words of Mahatma Ghandi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Reasons why I can't or reasons why I can?

Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to,
when all they need is one reason why they can.

~Martha Graham

This is so true! It always seems to be easier to find reasons to why I couldn't or shouldn't do something (in other words usually known as excuses), than reasons to why I can or shall. I wonder why? Where along the way did I learn to make excuses rather than to just do it? Who taught me that - my mother, my teachers, "society"?

And making excuses instead of doing is so accepted, pretty much the norm in society. We need to change that in order to progress. Because I believe that we call all agree on one thing: progress was not born from excuses.

I think "all" it takes is a shift of perception and a change of thought: What if the next time I think about doing something, I push the excuses and reasons why I can't to the side, and instead hold on to the reasons to why I can?

Inspirational words

The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the world's ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

By Atisha