Loving Reflection

The glowing garden I walked in was full of the most impossible light, I could feel it shining through my cells into the centre of my body so that I felt as insubstantial as the air around me. The beauty of this light and the garden it illuminated, released silver tears of grief and worry from me, untying the last knots of my solid existence, followed by tears of gratitude.

Slowly walking around the garden I could hear and feel a gentle murmur of bees humming and felt the sound of birds singing as a rising and falling sensation of happiness, connection and ecstatic love within my body.

I didn't begin flying but as I approached the mirror I was no longer walking, it and I were drawn through existence to each like rushing rays of the light to bring me face to face with its cool, smooth, glass which as I touched, I could feel the weight of and I became more solid again. Seeing became easier in the solid mirror and as soon as I saw my hair I knew I was dreaming. Looking down at my hands I was mesmerised watching them turn as I turned them, reflecting in the mirror. I stroked my arms and held myself smiling at my reflection.

Exploring the scenery of the garden again, this time in the mirror's reflection, it was all more greenly vibrant and real. I could still hear the birds and insects but although I felt joy and excitement and delight, my emotions were separate to their sounds now. I stood a long time, watching and daydreaming? just being peaceful and happy until I noticed a familiar guide walking slowly toward me in the mirror's image.

The realisation that I strongly didn't want him to approach me dawned as I began to feel fear and panic rising through me that severed the clarity of my connection, Losing control of the dream, time jumped forward in starts, so that he was next to me before I could breathe. I held on to the frame of the mirror tightly looking down so as not to connect with him but I sensed his calm gentle presence standing next to my right shoulder. I could feel he was smiling and almost, gently, lovingly, laughing as he began to reach over my shoulder. I saw his hand and all awareness of sensations within me ceased as a yawning space in existence opened up around me and I sensed the ginnungagap behind all I could see.

Tightly as I held on to the mirror, when his fingers lightly tapped the frame it became air again for a moment and slipped, literally, through my fingers. As everything re-solidified, I could hear the mirror falling, thudding, cracking and shattering into thousands of fragments and everything was gone.

I could no longer sense or see anything around me through the grief, just the fragments of mirror in front of me, in which I desperately searched for all I had just lost, finding only distortions, stretched out twisted dark lines and things that made me feel afraid to focus. As much as I resisted seeing the dark things, trying to glance over them quickly, each one stabbed its image deeply straight into my centre bringing feelings of fear, abandonment, self-disgust and self-hatred, grief, remorse, embarrassment and shame.

I knew what each distorted image contained, many things I have done, the mistakes I have made, the life I took, the damage I have done to the earth, the ways I have betrayed trust placed in me through my own cowardice, my failures as a parent, all bringing more grief and unbearable remorse. Things that happened to me that I did not want to see at all, the feelings of shame and hot tears, the terror of anyone seeing that me, and my further, deeper shame of shutting that me, unhealed and unprotected, into cold isolation, leaving her to live the nightmare of how she felt, always alone. I was the abuser locking her in, ignoring her endless nightmare and abandoning her.

Trying not to feel, my eyes frantically searched unable to see clearly through the storm of feelings, not wanting to look too well as each moment of focus cut me again and again almost drowning me in dread, until suddenly, finally, came peace. The tide of images and feelings subsided and I realised I was looking into my own eyes, my face looking out at me complete and whole and contained in one shard of glass. Smiling, her/my attention taken and absorbed completely by the beauty she was lost in. The love I saw pouring out of her face felt more tangible and solid than any of my terrors now seemed in retrospect. This was reality, this was truth, this was the centre of my existence, endlessly Loving.

Looking into the Love in that one shard of glass I was healed and held forever.

I looked into the image, searching around for the beauty, searching in the little pieces of sky and garden greenery I could still see reflected around her, trying to listen for the birds or the hum, looking at her beautiful dress and body, perfect and warm and healthy. She was so beautiful and the split second I realised how beautiful she was and an inkling of envy arose in me for her beauty I realised the Love pouring out of her was her Love for me! The amazing beauty I wanted to witness was the me she could see looking back at her in the mirror.

Everything I knew about myself, fell, cracked in two, opened, tumbled out, spread, obliterated and was warmed into an incoherent cloud of passionate, gentle, over-powering Love.

I floated in the cloud, letting every atom of me be soaked and filled, saturated to overflowing, at which point I could suddenly, exquisitely, feel the love so intensely the whole process would begin again until eventually, very gradually I drifted back to consciousness.

Among the thousands of shards of mirror I could see the one with my face reflected in it immediately and had no need to look at any other, but I did anyway, looking at the pieces of my story with Love and compassion and welcoming joy that all these human, humane moments of life and decisions were mine. I sent out reassuring love and a sense of embracing to each of the shards for a long while until I felt finished and ready to bend down and pick up the shard with my face reflected. All the others were clear.

Taking the shard I sat with my guide who handed me a piece of glass-paper to sand the sharp edges so that I could hold the tiny mirror safely, and he showed me future images of myself sharing the mirror with others.

I saw and felt my Love, compassion, joy and sometimes gentle amusement at watching people's reactions...some holding tightly and crying, some dismissing and not looking, some giving up the glass easily, some needing to hold and gaze for a very long time, others showing me their reflection so that we could enjoy the beauty and Love together, which touched me with Love ever more deeply all over again. I could sense happy tears of gratitude and the beauty of the garden again.

Able, for the first moment, to look deeply and clearly into the face of my guide I became aware that he was more than one, I saw many I recognised in the flickering images I inferred from his calm loving face, and many new faces too. I thanked them all with Love and we hugged and held for a while before I had to leave and return to my everyday world.

Symphony of Science

There is really a lot of amazingness out there at the moment! I'm quietly having the most excellent ending to 2009...
I was really feeling un-prepared a few days ago...I still have a very odd sensation that there has not been a year between the end of 2008 and now!
Whenever I'm in a car on a motorway, which isn't very often, I get a very solid sensation that my existence is really just that continuous moment in the car on my journey...that everything else I experience on one turn-off or another, for one day/week/month or another, is in it's own timeless bubble of existence. That regardless how long it appears I have lived between each motorway journey in reality it is less than a blink of time.
That is how I felt standing looking in my bathroom mirror this morning, less than a blink since the end of 2008...feeling super aware of some underpinning moment.

Through one of John 'Halcyon' Styn's blog posts (a beautiful one may I add) he shared this video which in turn I share here. The video comes from Symphony of Science a musical project by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form. Enjoy ♥

And this one just fit so in with my headspace at the moment that I had to share this one too!



♥♥♥Wishing you a Love Filled Wonderous New Year!♥♥♥

Ted

Reading your writing
Is a physical experience
Ideas stepping off the page
Into my awareness
Setting off
A cascade of

recognition
acceptance
Love

Sometimes what I see
Is a hole in the logic
A space that lets the Love
And Mystery

Fall through

And ideas
Rush through me
To bridge the gap
Reaching to
The beautiful underlying structure
Of life.

I am a little dumbfounded

By the divergence of my life

From what I had imagined

I have done things I never thought I would

And never did the things I thought I dreamt of


There's a sadness to those thoughts

And more than a touch of curiosity

As to how little I knew

Or still know

And an over arching sense

Of happiness, mystery and amazement

At how all this can still be me being me.

Been listening to the gentle warm tones of Leonard Cohen tonight! This one is so beautiful:

Suzanne is perhaps my favourite song of all time, usually as performed by Nina Simone, but Leonard's version is beautiful too.

Love from Kathleen Keating

Wishing you Love from me too.

I have stumbled, pushed, pulled,

and directed my whole life

toward the expansion of my divine humanity,

an inner largeness

that keeps spreading my soul before me

and expanding my spirit around me.

Something closed and cold within

keeps turning me toward the eternal glow of love

until I melt and overflow

in tears and screams and laughter and roars,

and vitality spins around me like a dance.

I can't stop now.

I have taken risks

on purpose because I believe in love

and accidently because I was naive.

I not only have been burned, I have been consumed

in the fire of hope.

But after the pain I am always resurrected,

to my amazement, again and again

and again.

Each time I dust off the ashes of experience

I am deeper and richer

and closer to the wonder of who I really am,

and, as the family of humankind,

who we really are.

Taken from 'The Little Book Of Love Therapy' by Kathleen Keating

Grateful for Gillette

Came across this yesterday...exactly when I needed to! It's from the often deeply refreshing, interesting and nurturing blog Ex-Courtesan in Transition (again)

I Believe

That things can change.
That they do so in their time. Their time.
That we can rejuicify and re-ignite our lives and relationships, even in their darkest hour.
That there is an exquisite balance between being with what is
and excitement about possible futures.
That all is well, even when I can't see it.
That the world is abundant with infinite possibility.
That the glue of the universe is love. Even loving fear.
Yup.
It's a good day.

'That all is well, even when I can't see it' Seeing those words written down by Gillette moved them within myself from the 'wondering if I'm just kidding myself though' category, to the 'reasoning and faith of a perfectly wise enough woman' category.

Very grateful for that.

Home Ed Petition and Ofsted Registration

One of the things I've been busy with is a parliamentary petition against the legislation being sought after the Badman review into home education. Dare to Know is a blog of information on this issue.
I do not agree with every home educator's point of view on this issue, we're a diverse bunch, but this speech today by Lord Lucas to the House of Lords says a lot for me.

Also this week I passed my Ofsted inspection for becoming a childminder, Yay!
Two hours of questions!!!!!
And I still have (more!) changes to make to the house
And I have to pass my pediatric first aid
And my husband needs to not turn out to be an axe wielding murderer on his CRB check

Other than that all set to go!

Never know I might actually get time to draw, paint and blog....then again there's Christmas to do next!

Hoping all goes well for us home-edders

Wishing you successes too

Big Kiss

Home Education

I need a moment of distraction, hence this tiny little post to say that one of the biggest things that keeps me away from my lovely world of t'internet blogs, healing, art and crafts is the time I spend doing things for my eldest son's home education and his learning blog.

So I thought I'd start to share some of what goes on there, here...and in the process record, share and encourage my own learning stuff too.

Currently I need to practice my French so this are my new darlings French-tastic-people! and Ma France from the ever amazing BBC Learning team. You can use their language guage sections to assess your level and progress from there!

Just Love This One!

Taken by my gorgeous husband Mark ♥

Busy Doing Loving

I'm just realising how satisying busy days are...perhaps because I am beginning to feel on top of things at the moment and am gloriously wrapped in the foolish denial of imagining that I can continue to be...but busy days are satisfying.

Big Kiss

Blessed Light

Blessed moments
I am nothing more
Than the dream of my children
The dream of my childhood
The light of Love's memories
Seen through my Heart.

I Love You

EMR

 

Sleepy dreaming early morning

Rambling thinking ideas dawning

Papers folding leaving marks

Unsure writing in the dark



Flowing loving feelings ebbing

Practicalities awakening

Information begins filtering

Through the lighted cracks



Hopeful waiting wishing holding

Memories treasured now are fleeting

Little voices chime beginnings

Of the clean slate day.

Falling over myself

I am at that moment
The wave sucks back in,
Falling over itself
As it bubbles and hisses
Through pebbles.
I've sat so many times
Looking into this hiss,
Always some part of me
Longing slightly
For the wave
to have come further.
Just that tiny bit further.
To have rested
Completed
before its own undertow
Sucked it back in.

Shhh

The ache familiar
The draw remembered
The passing of moments
Releasing of tears
Breath deep
Arms full
The dance of it's moving
The cool of it's air
The Freeing
The me-ing
The silence.
The spacing between
Me and the world
It and my soft spots
Work and my innocence
Dreams and their end
Distance
Protection
A charm
And it's incense
Provocative
Intoxicating
Devil-may-care.


I miss it.

Aaaaahhh!!!

I'm in the house ON MY OWN!!!!!!!!
Ha Ha Ha...doing the 'I'm in the house ON MY OWN dance'!!
8D

Love♥

My littlest man is wandering around the house in a Batman t-shirt, a Superman cape and playing constantly with his sing-song whistling, steam blowing Thomas The Tank Engine...a very happy three year old indeed!

Still, to this moment in my life, I associate the Thomas song with the extra half hour-half asleep in bed-that I used to relish when our eldest was still so little...so I'm a happy thirty-nine year old too!

Life is never what I expect! My love is with those that don't love me back, my patience is with those that drive me the most demented, and my prayers are with our niece for as swift a turn for the better as there was for the worse...If you feel like sending prayers or healing to our next grand niece/nephew, due 25th Dec, the are gratefully received.

Love♥

Boredom?

As I try to focus on almost anything in my life, I seem to have to learn about it anew and today I feel that not only is my life a constantly shifting seascape but I am suddenly aware that it is constantly changing in colour.

A gorgeous, vibrant, never caught the woman sitting still, friend of mine today suggested that one of the important things to takle in marriage is the boredom. !!!???
My brain is still !!!???
I'm struggling to imagine the possibility of boredom having the chance to settle in. Depression, anger, resentment, guilt, all often callers.
Perhaps you'd have to be constantly happy in order to get bored with it.
Perhaps I'm keeping myself so full and busy and challenged in denial of boredom?

As I was Lying

As I was lying
In exhausted ecstasy
Thoughts and worlds
Tumbling, dissolving, streamers
Around my bed
I slipped into Knowing
Into Nothing.

I am Loving
I am Loving Everything
I am Nothing Loving Everything.

Then it hit me
I am that darkness
That refreshing cool Void
I am the space
The Gap
The Pause.

I was no longer staring into the Void
Longing and fearing
Choosing and turning in the same moment
I have become whole again with who I was
Not by Leaping
But by being
That Nothing
Into which I had dissolved.

The Big Fat Nothing

I wanted to run around last night
Yelling I get! I get it! I get it!
Instead I smiled
Floated in Peace
Dark Peace Deep
In the cool refreshing space
Of Nothing
Not even Loving
Not even Love
Just Nothing.

I heard somewhere once
That the journey for men
Was to learn that they are Love
Yet be pre-disposed
To knowing they are Nothing
Whilst the journey
For women
Was to understand
That they are Nothing
Beyond their knowledge
That they are Love

I had stood there once
On the path
Into Nothingness
Pulled and invited
Tempted yet holding
Onto Love
My Love
For my son

Half of me left
Half of me stayed
Often wondering
If I could ever let myself fall

Then there I was Loving,
Loving Everything
When inescapibly
It was clear
I was Nothing
That was Loving
Everything

I was there
As the Darkness
No Leap
Just myself
As the the ocean
Of Nothing
I had feared.

A couple of recent ones from The Universe


Julia, I know what it's like. I've seen it played out a few zillion times. You're waiting for that magical day when someone makes the connection and recognizes who you really are. Maybe they'll first catch the sparkle in your eye. Or perhaps they'll marvel at your insights and the depth of your spirit. Someone who will help you connect the dots, believe in yourself, and make sense of it all. Someone who will understand you, approve of you, and unhesitatingly give you a leg up so that life can pluck your ready, ripened self from the branch of magnificence. Ahhhhhhhhhhh...

Well, I'm here to tell you, Julia, your wait is over. That someone, is you.

Good thing you rock,
The Universe


Julia, here's some sage advice I once scrawled onto a cave wall long before the wheel, Atlantis, and Facebook:

Aim with your heart, adjust with your head, and always, always, always, do all you can.

Caves, email, same, same.

Tallyho,
The Universe

Trip to Yorkshire

I was sooooo proud when I saw our eldest climbing this!

And happy watching them all playing


Mum's green fingers contributed to dinner every night!

The most stylish pic!

In this picture you can just about make out me taking a picture of me!

Just an Oldie

So much so much so much.

I find that life and myself are flowing in little rivulets back toward some body of self, of source.

And of course it's all Love Love and more than I can imagine, Love.

There is such peace there, yet somehow staying true to that source/self/truth is such a challenging path.

Ahhh, starting to get the feeling of the 'peace in the centre of the storm'

It all seems so new and so fragile all over again...

Let me stay keen to this.

Cheeky Chen

Cheeky Chen...Super sweet, super cool, Big space in my heart for him, he's trying to raise money today for Stick AID/ Unicef by auction.

Nuff said:

Reasons to be Cheerful, 1, 2, 3!

Heading towards the last third of the year and I'm a little stunned at just how unhappy I've managed to feel about this year! It's not in the day to day moments; it's been an excellent and gorgeous summer, there have been lots of moments of promise, and you just can't argue the glorious joy of spending the day playing with small children when you open your heart and mind and just jump right in to the middle of it.

So I'm not really sure what the grumpiness is about...(except I've just been reminded that having a teen in the house isn't always a breeze!)

Lol! That's perfect timing with these pictures! One extreme to the other...trying to take the weight of the world onto their shoulders...and joining in with toy trains!

But yes, somewhere in this year I got lost and I'm really not sure how. Last night I had to hunt for a post from last year to find a video...and there was so much happiness shining out from the posts! And I found a letter to myself from Grandmother Julia that says it all really.

Wake up and smell the sunshine honey!

Take it into your heart as breath

Smile your love into your day

Dance with every moment left.

Wishing for loving transformation in my heart and in our household!

HesFes

There's the most stylish pic!

There's the joy of putting up your own tent for the first time

There's the trying to work out where on earth to balance things while you cook

There's the relief of a tea tent that serves HUGE slices of cake!

After which everything else...

Just falls beautifully into place

with a little bit of improvisation.

We walked through the rain to say our 'goodbyes'

To be farewelled by the HesFes rainbows!

Today

Aching until I feel sick

Cold tears feel hot on my face

Grief is the tide coming in

Sharp and dark, the rocks.

Back to the process of abduction

Heart and mind taken against will

Thoughts invade with slightest seduction

Every sunny thought

Turns to rain.

Exhale

Life brings me many things
Sometimes exciting
Some things a challenge
Somethings like seeds,
Wake ups like lightning
Moments all changing
Constantly offering
Days just like these.

Life bought me fullness
In desperation
And happiness
Bought me to loving
Its rawness
And dreams

Life gave me children
And people
New chances
Life gave me difference
And hunger
That's me

Life opens constantly
Creaking the cross beams
Letting the rain in
With tendrilling leaves
My heart lives in sunshine
And beats about freedom
And life is a breeze
When I remember
To Breathe

EFT and Human Petri Dishes!

Offering this today it's a brief reminder/explaination of some points Bruce Lipton covered in one of the Jennifer McLean's Healing with the Masters shows earlier this year. It's been good for me today. I came to this after clicking on a Bruce Lipton quote promoting EFT which we've been using to the max in our house over the last 24hrs...I'm happy with the little links life is offering me today!

I use my blogger blog as my on-line 'centre' so the links and video bars and are essentially set up for my own use, my own reminders just as my own old scrappy books of writing are where I return to to centre myself in my physical world...I definitely love being able to share all the things I find too though!

Love on tailcast

This lovely little video was created by a friend on tailcast the Wonderful Beautiful Steff. It was created earlier this year and I only just found it...I think it's a little gem.

Have to say tailcast is as chock full of diverse amazing creativeness as ever you really must go check it out!

Asking for Forgiveness

Hmmmm...just pondering the forgiveness thing

I have a sense that asking for forgiveness is not asking to be 'let off' but a wish that the person wronged be released from their anger and hurt by a heartfelt remorse. That balance and freeing of Love to flow clearly again is the desired result.

I also understand for-give-ness to be the giving of love in circumstances you would not have thought possible until it happens.

The thing I'm pondering this morning is more about my concept of Spirit/God/All That Is and forgiveness...

That perhaps my feelings of faith and surrender to something bigger than myself are my need for forgiveness. That perhaps I'm really not sure how to forgive myself without external forgiveness...even though when I feel I need to ask for forgiveness I have faith that I am forgiven instantly, automatically, no questions asked and feel the release and Love flow immediately.

Okaaayyy...but...

'forgiveness is not asking to be 'let off' but a wish that the person wronged be released from their anger and hurt by a heartfelt remorse'

! The faith I do have of Spirit/Universal Energy/Love Eternal is that It Is complete, undamageable and impossible to offend and so would have no need of releasing from its angry judgements

...That's Me!!

Huh! Forgiving myself all along! Cool!

Been Wondering about that all morning...funny how far we can get from our own understanding!

Now I'm wondering if each time we come back round to understanding something we do so more deeply than before? And does it ever stick permanently?

New Friend!

Thomas is our littlest ones newest friend! Much love is flowing into this new relationship which has involved some days of continual requests to visit Thomas and much parental persuasion that Thomas is asleep!

We have made one trip to Drusillas where I think nearly twenty rides were taken on Thomas's train but apparently it's too long to wait until the next visit... so under very specific instruction this week, shops were raided, several hours were spent planning, cutting and taping and now we have a rather large extra member of the family!

Sunshine Pictures

Well as the last couple of days have been greyer and a lot wetter I was happy to find these sunny pics on my phone! Though I also thoroughly enjoyed walking slowly home through the evening downpour last night, listening to the rain falling and dripping from trees and rushing river like down into the storm drains...bit of sunshine never goes amiss!

I love the light through and on these petals, totally captures that evening's walk!

And above the Gorgeous Goddess stone I found on Littlehampton Beach

and below a little sparkly crystal on...though I'm not sure it shows!

Following

Now I've worked out how to follow blogs I'm loving how easy it is to browse through all the gorgeousness and news!

Looking for a Shot

I haven't even looked back to see how long it's been since I posted (I'm working toward this being an entirely guilt free zone)...I just know the particular shade of blur my life has been recently and it's decidedly lacking in a splash of blogginess, mine and every body's I love to peruse.
My life blur is usually shot through with Vibrant Turquoise, Mellow Yellow, Loving Pink and Peaceful Green. Thoughts and ideas of lovely souls on this planet other than my immediate kin...and I feel less sane, less rich without them.
Life is full though, of other beauties and thought provocation, other Energisers and Serious amounts of Sunshine (well for England at least!) and a seemingly constant barrage of shop, clean, cook completely unrevealed by my unkempt house...beginning to wish I'd found the pennies and space for Leonie and Lisa's de-cluttering fest!
Okay I'm off to get my fix, soak in some inspiration and work out what's next in the mix.

Phototastic Birthday Anime!

Go off to meet up at the station (I'll point out here Tom that THE shoes stayed on for a total of eight minutes!)

Decide which way London is well enough to get there...

hang out on a bridge across the Thames...

Find some other Naruto Characters and plenty more besides!

Have a good time

Try not to get arrested!

Make sure we get the kids home

Check out the days pics

And off for Birthday dinner!

Ramen!!!

And Laughter!