Monday, November 28, 2011

An Ancient Form of Uncivilized Wildness

Jung said that: “Psychiatry has turned the Gods into diseases.”

Unfortunately Jung and most Jungians have turned the Gods (and Goddesses) into archetypes: named and minutely described denizens of the collective unconscious that we can have an 'as if' relationship with at weekend workshops and schmooze with once and a while in our dreams.
Please don't make the mistake of underestimating the spiritual dimension of our human birth-right as you enter your own shamanic vocation.
In my experience, behind every image, thought and word, there is an emotion first. Behind every emotion there is a universal archetypal power and emotional energy that must come forth as imagery that expresses that deep emotion. Behind every archetype is a totally autonomous living force of deity that has no historical bounds, no time bound form.
These ancient and emerging deities, that use our lives and bodies as their playgrounds and every second hold us in sway as they incarnate themselves in us, ever emerging anew, arise out of a greater unifying mystery of benevolent silence.
Weep for the prophets and so-called psychotic visionaries who are robbed of their life giving gifts from the Gods by our culture of fear and human arrogance. And weep for us that we still treat them as lepers when they are, and always have been a divine source of the mana we need to survive on earth. (read full article)
Michael Cornwall Ph.D, 2010
The Icarus Project

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Intra-Species Predators

A Warning from the Ancestors: Psychopaths in Folklore and Fairy Tales
Thomas Sheridan
thomassheridanarts.blogspot.com
Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:51 CST

Recently, I received a message from a someone who read Puzzling People and they asked me this question: "Why are ALL fairy tales about psychopaths and psychopathic behavior?"

Mythology and folklore are really an early form of psychology. In a pre-scientific era - it was the only means by which average people could anchor their frustration and warnings to others regarding the Consciousness Parasites and other pathological predators within the material world - without having to rely exclusively on supernatural-religious concepts such as demons, succubi and so on. This was probably to avoid charges of witchcraft and blasphemy. So rather than deal with purely religious motifs - from around the Middle Ages on - the psychopath entered into the world of children's fairy tale. (read full article at Signs of the Times)

Dayum - I loved Rumpelstiltskin!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

....and what do you do for a crust?

That's Australian for 'what do you do for a living? What's your job?  For some years, whenever I am asked what I do for a crust, I have to suppress the wicked urge to reply: "I steal them from the ducks in the park!" because not everybody gets my sense of humour and they think I'm being a smart-arse.

Which I am.

Then they suspect I'm trying to make them look stupid - and with some people, they don't need my help. They're doing just fine all by themselves; and as stupidity is a kind of protection against impressions one cannot deal with; heck, I'll admit to being a tad envious of that bovine banal intelligence.

Just a tad.

But back to what we do for a crust and whether or not there is a scientific connection between breadcrusts and curly hair, there is certainly a connection between what some people did for a crust and ovens.

Will we ever Break the Chain?

The phrase 'banality of evil' relates to the fact that tens of thousands of ordinary individual people were complicit in the Final Solution. Many of them could not be charged with war crims later because they were just doing their job, just following orders, or just responsible for a tiny link in the chain. They followed orders mechanically and without questioning them. Consider the simplification of the chain:

Person A: I simply had the list of Jews in my municipality. I did not round up the Jews but I did pass this list on when requested to do so.

Person B: I was told to go to these addresses, arrest these people and take them to the train station. That's all I did.

Person C: My job was to open the doors of the train - that was it.

Person D: My job was to direct the prisoners on to the train.

Person E: My job was to close the doors, not to ask where the train was going or why.

Person F: My job was simply to drive the train.

[Through all the other small links in the chain that led to......]

Person Z: My job was simply to turn on the showers out of which the poison gas was emitted.


The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference
- Ian Kershaw


Indifference.

White Astrid Rose


   ...why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system?


So................what do you do ..for a crust?

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Quiet Birds in Circled Flight

I departed from Newark Airport in August 1996. My parents drove me. Jenn, who later became an anarchist, met me there to give me first class upgrades. So on my way to Phoenix I luxuriated in a large grey seat and later felt embarrassed about the “First Class” ticket on my bag. In Phoenix, we stayed in a house. I met Harmony there and we became friends. Harmony spoke about the patterns in the landscape when viewed from a plane. She was talking about the big picture

I explored Cuernavaca with all my senses. I walked. I took photographs. I bought postcards and I sent them to NY. I wrote letters. I included deliciously monotonous details in each letter. I watched life. I lived life.
I took a taxi alone through Mexico City to a hospital for a urinary tract infection. I spent the night in the hospital. I received 2 Iv’s of Ciproxin in my veins. The next day, I traveled to Oaxaca with my visiting mother. I spoke Spanish when my mother and I rented a hotel room in the Centro of Oaxaca City. I sat across from her at a restaurant on the Zocalo. I drank a papaya smoothie. I smiled for a photo. I held the straw as I drank. I did not buy chapulines, the hardened carcasses of grasshoppers.

I boarded a bus alone to the coast. I paid 24 pesos. I shared my oranges with the women on the bus. I marveled at the winding road. I drank in the green of the high territory between city and coast. I sat and sat for hours. I arrived in the evening to Puerto Escondido. I saw the Mexican Pacific for the first time. I stayed in a cabana on the beach with a woman I met on the bus. I fell asleep for the first time to the sound of the ocean. I paid for the cabana.

I adorned myself with necklaces. I pushed silver hoop earrings into my ear holes. I slid bracelets up my arms. I tied pieces of my long hair into tiny buns. I fastened each bun with a clip. I listened to myself doing these things.
Sourced from: munchess

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Talk to the Hand: Vicarious Trauma

Few people in the general community give any consideration to the complex occupation of sign language interpreting. Demands placed upon interpreters other than those associated with languages (linguistic demands) include environmental, interpersonal and intrapersonal.

Few interpreters recognise the insidious development of vicarious trauma as they interpret in emotionally charged settings such as mental health consultations (diagnostic and ongoing), legal appointments, court appearances (Children's, Family, Magistrates, District etc), police interviews, and the gamut of general medical appointments.

Close and prolonged work in settings where the interpreter is repeatedly exposed to crises of various kinds - interpreting an abusive interaction between family members in a counselling situation, conveying the doctor's prognosis that the patient has six months to live, assisting a police officer and medical staff communicate with a person who has been pack raped - can have serious psychological consequences for the interpreter.

Not only is information interpreted often very sensitive and linguistically challenging, the interpreter has to deal with their own emotions and how they react automatically to the situation at hand.

The following is a quote from a paper written by Carmen Valero-Garces - Emotional and Psychological Effects on Interpreters in Public Services.
"Experts also consider three levels at which the signs of being under psychological or emotional impact are visible. These levels are: physiological, cognitive, and affective. The most perceptible signs on a physiological level-as all of us probably know-are high blood pressure, chest pains, headaches or backaches, nausea, etc. which can be accompanied by antisocial behavior, insomnia, a change in appetite, consumption of alcohol, tranquilizers, and other drugs. At the cognitive level, the most perceptible signs are confusion, bewilderment, paranoia, feelings of guilt, suicidal tendencies, or recurring thoughts, lack of concentration, etc. At the affective level, the most perceptible signs are: sadness, anxiety, irritability, fear, and shock.
The consequences derived from working in these strong emotional contexts are also categorized into three types: those related to the profession itself, to the workplace, or outside the workplace.
In the professional context, emotional alterations can produce the psychotherapeutic transference-counter-transference phenomenon, anxiety and stress, mistaken perceptions, heart problems, as well as the burnt-out syndrome (which include symptoms such as disillusion, lack of motivation, apathy, physical and mental exhaustion, loss of energy, and frustration). In the workplace, the consequences are: increased absenteeism, a tendency to leave the position and/or the organization, a smaller role at work, and a rise in interpersonal conflicts.
Outside the workplace, the consequences are often problems within the family relationships, isolation, and effects of the 'vicarious syndrome' ('vicarious traumatisation'). Blair and Ramones (1996: 24) describe this phenomenon in the following way: "The endless stories of violence, cruelty, exploitation and atrocity; the emotional impact of experiencing another's terror, pain and anguish; and the continual exposure to the darkest aspects of the human condition can produce symptoms strikingly similar to the post-traumatic symptoms of their patients."
Interpreters need to be aware of the effect of vicarious trauma together with other related concepts such as compassion fatigue, burnout and work stress.

Interpreters who are informed about vicarious trauma and who actively maintain a balanced personal and professional life are in the best position to provide an ongoing quality interpreting service with minimal risks to their emotional health.

More interpreter training in basic psychology regarding core concepts such as stress management, dealing with anxiety, understanding how empathy and self esteem can be effective 'tools' when faced with emotionally challenging situations, would assist interpreters maintain a healthy emotional state.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Close all doors behind you as you exit

Burning in a lake of fire is certainly one way to spend one’s eternal damnation.
But Jean-Paul Sartre had a more insidious suggestion.

The three recently deceased characters in Sartre’s play “No Exit” discover at the outset that the afterlife for people of their questionable character consists of nothing more threatening than a French drawing room with inconsistent valet service.

No sweat.

But what if you had to spend infinity in a room with people seemingly chosen to drive you optimally batty?
The characters in the play await their torturers, little suspecting that they are meant to torture one another.

Sartre didn’t draw his notions of hell from the Judeo-Christian tradition. He was one of the most well-known atheists of the 20th century. Sartre was a proponent of existentialism, which stresses – among other things – full personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts.

Thom Hofrichter, First Presbyterian Theater minister of drama, said he believes the play has a lot to say to modern Christians. Hofrichter says Sartre alleged that “existence precedes essence,” meaning that humans have no essence when they are born. They exist first and then establish their essence through the choices they make.

We live in a time, Hofrichter says, when words seem to speak louder and more persuasively than actions.
“In this society, people give themselves labels and then their actions contradict the label. People call themselves ‘compassionate conservatives’ when their actions are anything but compassionate.”

The characters in “No Exit” have no place to hide when the toxic chemistry of the three forces self-reflection.

Joel Scribner, First Presbyterian Theater production manager, who is actually directing Hofrichter-as-actor this time around, says there are too many instances of situational morality in today’s society.

“Murder is bad, but it is OK if it serves the oil industry,” he says.

Hofrichter says one of the ways modern Christianity fails its adherents is by making it too easy to absolve oneself of responsibility for one’s actions.

“There is a misuse of the saving power of grace,” he says. “It reminds me of an Emo Philips joke:

‘When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bike. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and asked him to forgive me.’ ”

Hofrichter says words – no matter how powerful, seductive and oft-repeated – should not free a person from fearless self-assessment or transform harmful acts into just ones.

“You shouldn’t be able to call yourself the Environmental Protection Agency and rape the land,” he says.

“We are getting more and more sophisticated about how we lie to each other in this culture. ‘No Exit’ says you are ultimately judged by your actions. What you do is who you are.”

All this philosophizing doesn’t preclude the play from being thoroughly entertaining. Hofrichter says it’s funny, fast and even lusty at times. But it also makes you think, which is not as incongruous as it might seem to some present-day patrons.

Review by Steve Penhallow, fireman lifted from John Paul Sartre.org
 

Paint, Brush and Spirit

"Seasonal Joy" original mouth painting by Natalina Marcantoni

They said I could not paint because I don't have use of my hands. I have proved them wrong! ~Simon Rigg, quadriplegic, Warrnambool, Victoria.

The Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists of the World (AMFPA) was founded as the Vereinigung der Mund- und Fussmalenden Künstler in aller Welt, e. V. (VDMFK), in Liechtenstein in 1956. It is a commercial conglomorate of publishing houses that employs artists, who, for reasons of illness, accident or congenital disability have no use of their hands, and who use either their mouth or feet to create their work.

The main product of the company is Christmas cards with motifs painted by the member artists. These cards are sold every year in the months leading up to Christmas via direct mailing in 46 countries around the world (2004). Other products available through AMFPA include postcards, art prints and calendars.

The AMFPA has in later years been the subject of several exposes suggesting unethical behaviour within the organization. The coverage has spurred criticism from charity, consumer and handicap organizations.

In June 2007 the company sued Danish Broadcasting Corporation and Danish daily Ekstra Bladet for libel after negative coverage during December 2005. On October 10 2008 the High Court of Eastern Denmark ruled in favor of the accused journalists, stating that there was sufficient factual basis for statements like:

"Behind the scenes we found a well-oiled money making machine with economic puppeteers, who are scraping in money with arms and legs",

"People think they are supporting a charity, but in reality we are looking at a money making machine" and

"...only a measly 3% is going to the mouth and foot painting artists".

AMFPA has not appealed the decision.

Shop Online for MFPA Christmas Cards

MFPA - United Kingdom
MFPA - Australia
MFPA - United States of America
MFPA - Canada
MFPA - India
The India chapter of the association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists is part of a worldwide art movement that is wholly owned and run by its artists.
Our organisation empowers disabled artists to pursue their creative dreams while earning their own livelihood with dignity and respect. All our artists paint holding the brush in their mouth or in between their toes.
"Ganesha - Remover of Obstacles"
MFPA artist

 

Friday, November 4, 2011

The Way-Inn

Sabian Symbol
Pisces 4: Heavy traffic on a narrow isthmus
Monomoira: Venus

By the true causeway of imagination
You'll come to your destination.
 


A cause makes a way; a way may require a cause., or provide one.  The word "causeway" derives from the Old English “causey way”, meaning a thoroughfare that has been “heeled” or “trampled” down. A causeway is typically a road raised above surrounding water or wetlands. Causeway" derives from the Old English “causey way”, meaning a thoroughfare that has been “heeled” or “trampled” down. A causeway is typically a road raised above surrounding water or wetlands.

 The longest in the world is the Ponchartrain “bridge” in Louisiana. Singapore and Malaysia are joined by a causeway. Churchill had five causeways built - the Churchill barriers - linking the Orkney islands around Scapa Flow as defense against the German navy in WW2. Dykes in Holland are sometimes also causeways.

Consider the “isthmus of imagination” described by the medieval Sufi master Ibn 'Arabi. For Ibn 'Arabi, imagination is the isthmus (barzakh) between the ordinary world and the world of eternity, between body and spirit, and between being and nothingness.

To walk this causeway requires discipline, practice and discernment. On the way of true imagination, higher beings become visible and intelligible. Imagination has the power “to embody that which is not properly a body.”

Isthumus, Supreme

(Al Barzakh al'Ala). This is the Great Isthmus standing between Allah and nothingness. It is known by various names. Nondelimited Imagination, The Cloud, The Breath of the All Merciful, The Real Through Whom Creation Takes Place, The Universal Reality, Nature, The Reality of the Perfect Man.

Polarity Degree
Virgo 4:
A coloured child playing with white children
Monomoira: Jupiter

Yesterday I was shopping at the NQR Food Market and served by a young woman about 18 or 19 wearing a short-sleeved top which displayed her amazing array of tattoos; body art. She was like that Tattooed Lady at the circus and had a ring through her nose. What I found interesting is that her tattoos were old-fashioned, not the trendy tribal designs and they were beautiful and so colourful. I couldn't take my eyes off the red rose in fullbloom in her forearm. I wondered if she was a performing artist when she wasn't the register jockey at NQR (which stands for Not Quite Right). As I left, I was surprised that she hadn't been told to cover-up: to wear longsleeve shirts as used to be the drill in my youth. Heavy tattoos, face jewellery and other expressions of individuality are considered significant barriers to gaining employment within conservatively-minded workplaces. Clearly NQR is more accepting and doesn't judge a book by its cover.

My natal Chiron is at 4 degrees Pisces and meeting that young woman has given me a completely fresh perspective on these degrees. I am finding that applying Valens' Monomoira correspondences of the classical planets to the degree symbols is pulling me into deeper dreaming with the elemental archetypal energies of the Sabian Symbols.

Resources

Vettius Valens' Monomoira Table - Aux Mailles Godefroy

Almiraj Sufi and Islamic Study Centre, Broken Hill, New South Wales

A Desert in Bloom: A Broken Hill Story - Encounter, ABC Radio National

The Robert Moss Blog



Thursday, November 3, 2011

Six Degrees of Separation from Evil to Empathy

Simon Baron-Cohen, expert in autism and developmental psychopathology, has carried out groundbreaking research to isolate and understand the factors that cause people to treat others as if they were mere objects. In his book, Zero Degrees of Empathy (2011), he proposes a radical shift, turning the focus away from evil and on to the central factor, empathy.

Putting empathy under the microscope, he explores four new ideas: first, that we all lie somewhere on an empathy spectrum, from six degrees at one end, down to zero degrees at the other. At six degrees we meet highly empathic people, while at zero degrees we meet the psychopath.

Secondly, that deep within the brain lies the 'empathy circuit'. How this circuit functions determines where we each lie on the empathy spectrum.

Thirdly, that empathy is both the result of experiencing parental love, and the result of genes. And fourthly, he asks an almost unthinkable question: while a lack of empathy leads to mostly negative results, is it always negative?

Full of original research and radical ideas, Zero Degrees of Empathy presents a new way of understanding what it is that leads individuals to treat others inhumanely, and challenges all of us to reconsider entirely the idea of evil.
The above is from the inside jacket cover of Simon Baron-Cohen's book which I have just borrowed out from my local library. Along with Pema Chodron's, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears and Robert Moss' Active Dreaming: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom.

An eclectic triplicity of books I know, but you go to a Public Library you meet the Shelf Elf and have backpack, will travel. Since I got a new computer a couple of months ago, I haven't needed to go to the library each day to use their public computers, but I did today and - gosh - it was fun! Broadband and printing facilities and chatting with the Librarians, who were kind enough to say that they missed seeing me. I've missed seeing them too.

I am really looking forward to reading Zero Degrees of Empathy because the subject matter segues into the work that I have vowed to do with this lifetime: to help create a more compassionate world. A vow I made when I was six years old after visiting my mother in a psychiatric asylum - an environment utterly devoid of compassion and empathy. You could cut the fear with a knife and serve it on toast.  As a highly sensitive child and psychically untrained, visiting these environments wasn't all that healthy for me yet I think I must have had a good deal of protection from the Spirit realms when I did.  I have been told that a special grace walks with me and I am living an extraordinarily karmic life, which isn't necessarily negative. I've also been told that I'm one of the rare ones.  I have yet to figure out what that really means and the longer I live, the less it matters. For all I know the person who told me that may have just been blowing smoke up my ring.

The zero degrees of the book title got me thinking about the zero degrees in astrology and whether or not there is an empathy connection with planets and sensitive points at the zero degree. I've read that 0-1 degrees in Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn are extremely critical degrees in predictive astrology: always a jump start, so to speak. I read that at the Joy of Satan Ministries, which is wickedly ironic. A jump start into what though?  Out of the frying pan and into the fire? 

And what about the zero degrees aspect, the conjunction, said to be a Magical angle. Does a conjunction influence a greater capacity for empathy or a potential for ruthless manipulation?  Recently on an astrological forum, a member owned an awareness of their capacity for using and manipulating others; wondered if they were psychopathic/sociopathic/narcissistic because they felt that had all the Dexter-traits of presenting a facade of caring concern, whilst assessing each person in terms of how they could be used, their value in furthering professional and personal agendas. They posted their natal chart: no zero degrees, yet a difficult Cardinal Grand Cross with a twelfth house Chiron and a pesky Leo Ascendant that just wants to be special.

I note that in all the information that has been offered to this person, no one has said "Lighten up, dude, it's just your Shadow. Listen to some Alice Cooper, get some tattoos, wear black and work it". But that's just me.

On the other hand, serial killer Aileen Wuornos has Mars at zero degrees in the Seventh House and Neptune at zero degrees in the Fifth House, with her IC/MC axis at zero degrees. I have a great deal of empathy for Aileen Wuornos, she never had a chance with her upbringing. I did an analysis of her chart a few months ago: Lucifer and Orcus in the first house and Nessus in the twelfth. When she was executed by lethal injection, Saturn was transiting Lucifer, Orcus transiting Pluto, Chiron transiting Mars and Medusa transiting Neptune.

I pray for the soul of Aileen, may she find peace and love in her next life. May the loved ones of her victims find peace and forgiveness in their hearts in this life.

May we all have the fortitude to walk the line on the side of compassion: the only path with heart that counts.

Only what you Makemake of it.

The combination of the Scorpio New Moon, Hallowe'en and the Spring Racing Carnival have unleashed energies that have propelled me through an amazing process of enlightenment and ascension.

Indeed, fellow thrill-seekers, I have ascended from the Ninth Level of Hell - Cocytus - to the Eighth Level of Hell - the Malebolge. 

The leap of consciousness that has released me from the company of the treacherous to hobnob amongst the merely fraudulent malicious panderers is redolent of my years as a teenage werewitch in the wilds of the Northern suburbs of Melbourne: if you can't eat them, join them.

With just eight shopping days left until 11:11:11, I feel that I have been given a glittering backstage pass and I can say with presumptuous pride, elegant envy, grecian greed, wide world of wrestling wrath, lilithian lust, georgian gluttony and victorious virtual vanity: I'm with the band.

Last night in Memphis
Tonight in New Orleans
Tomorrow I’ll be miles from here
Ain’t nothing to me, nothing me

Sweet gypsy highway
Won’t you let me chase my dream
Cause I got a song to take me there
And it’s something to see, something to see

Lord I was born with a suitcase in my hand
Living in a life that few could understand
Sometimes it gets so confusing that I don’t know where I am
But I always know who I’m with
I’m with the band

Cheap whiskey midnight
Another round with my friends
Watching the world through the windshield
And we’re rolling again, rolling again

Lord I was born with a suitcase in my hand
Living in a life that few could understand
Sometimes it gets so confusing that I don’t know where I am
But I always know who I’m with
I’m with the band

Oh Lord I was born with a suitcase in my hand
Living in a life that few could understand
Sometimes it gets so confusing that I don’t know where I am
But I always know who I’m with
I’m with the band

Last night in Memphis
Tonight in New Orleans
Tomorrow I’ll be miles from here
Ain’t nothing to me, nothing me


Get your Dante on, flunk the test!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Conversations with my Womb

When different places within us are in pain, we should extend the care of deep friendship towards them. We should not leave them isolated under siege in pain. A friend of mine went to hospital to have a hysterectomy. A priest friend came to visit her on the evening before her operation. She was anxious and vulnerable. He sat down and they began to talk. He suggestd to her that she have a conversation with her womb. To talk to her womb as a friend. She could thank her womb for making her a mother. To thank it for all her different children and who had begun there. The body, mind and spirit of each child had been tenderly formed in that kind darkness.

She could remember the different times in her life when she was acutely aware of her own presence, power and vulnerability as a mother. To thank her womb for the gifts and the difficulties. To explain to it how it had become ill and that it was necessary for her continuing life as a mother to have it removed. She was to undertake this intimate ritual with tenderness and warmth of heart.

The operation was a great success. Her conversation with her womb changed the whole experience. The power was not with the doctors or the hospital. The experience did not have the clinical, short-circuit edge of so much mechanical and anonymous hospital efficiency. The experience became totally her own, the leave-taking of her own womb.

When a part of your body is ill, it must be a lonely experience for it.

~ John O'Donohue on befriending the places of pain from Eternal Echoes: Exploring our Hunger to Belong, 1998
Befriending the Garden of the Soul

In mid-2010 when I began to experience savagely intense panic attacks after 18 years of being blessedly free from their demoralising occurences, for a short time I was unaware that the natural transition of perimenopause had cranked up the fight-flight-freeze cycle again.  An insightful discussion with a nurse from The Jean Hailles Foundation for Women gave me comfort: my physical and emotional symptons were within the range of normal perimenopause. I wasn't going crazy yet the nurse encouraged me, with my history of Panic-Anxiety Disorder, to explore any residual issues at the root of my anxiety.

At the time of the New and Full Moons in June 2010, I experienced two intensely terrifying panic storms, that raged for 6-10 hours, leaving me exhausting, covering in sweat and seriously scared of my body and distrustful of what it was going to do next. I recall during the first storm that I was assailed by a multitude of fears: fears of having a heart attack, a cerebral hemorrhage, an insulin crisis, a bowel torsion, and on and on. As I struggled to raise myself out of the pit of fear through a meditation technique, I became aware that these fear thoughts weren't mine.  I recalled that my parents had died from heart attacks, a grandfather from a cerebral hemorrhage, a grandmother from a diabetic crisis, another grandfather from bowel cancer. As I began to tick off where the fear thought originated, the inherited fear thoughts: I felt the cold hard grip of fear loosen until it finally released me and I drifted into an exhausted sleep.

Befriending Woman

I can tell you, I om mani padme hummed as though my life depended on it. I certainly felt that my sanity did!  When I awoke, I went to my collection of Flower Essences and made up a super-duper combination of essences that I intuitively selected, but the core essences were that of the Australian Bush Flowers Woman blend, specific to harmonising any imbalances during menstruation and menopause.  To the essences of the Woman blend Billy Goat Plum, Bottlebrush, Bush Fuchsia, Crowea, Five Corners, Mulla Mulla, Old Man Banksia, Peach-flowered Tea-tree and She Oak, I added quite a few more specific for fear and anxiety.

Reading the profiles for each essence, I began to develop a sense of being disconnected from my own femaleness and then the truly shocking realisation dawned: I had never been connected to my own femaleness in the first place, my feminine principle was MIA!  How could this be?  How could I be all of 48 years old and not connected to my sense of womanhood, my feminine self? 

The answer, my friend, was blowing in the winds of my womb and so began a series of conversations with my womb and the forging of a deep befriending of this flesh-and-blood vehicle that has been my constant companion and which, as I learned, had been dreadfully lonesome for me.

The Orange Book

In December of 2004, I had purchased John O'Donohue's Eternal Echoes from a pre-loved bookshop, yet had never read it. Sure, I had dipped into its pages from time to time, yet the circumstances of my life from December 2004 had tipped me into an excruciating cycle of poverty, near-homelessness, survival issues, a crushingly severe iron-deficiency anaemia, and I was besieged on all fronts. There was no time for reading and I was leaking energy all over the place and mired in Survival Mode. Not only had the rug been pulled out from underneath me, the floor had collapsed as well and the walls of the house had crashed in over the top of me.

Astrologically, this birth-death-rebirth cycle kicked off with Saturn opposing Saturn and Neptune square Neptune. Jupiter trine Jupiter at the very least promised I'd survive.  But I didn't know anything about astrology then. Not one iota. I've understood the events of 2004 retrospectively. In 2010, I began to follow the trail of breadcrumbs back home and in doing so gained a deep understanding and gratitude for that Wise Woman in me that knew what it was doing all the time.  I have learned to trust her. I had to meet her first.

When part of your body is ill, it must be a lonely experience for it.

This profound observation of John O'Donohue's totally and irrevocably shifted me into a new relationship, a deep communion with my own body. When I read his words late one night whilst reading in bed, they burrowed into the core of my womb and I felt so sad, so inexpressibly sad when I remembered the times my body had been ill and I had been so......callous and discompassionate towards myself.

Rock of Ages, made by me

When reading the ritual of leave-taking the priest had suggested, I remembered a similar ritual of leave-taking I had engaged in before losing my gall-bladder back in 1994.  For three years I had been suffering with random attacks of biliary colic, the first attack woke me from a deep sleep and I instinctively knew "gall-stones" and being somewhat versed in homeopathic and naturopathic treatments, I prepared a hot-water bottle and laid it on my body. The warmth helping the bile duct to expand and release it's grip on the gall-stone. I adjusted my diet (three years without chocolate) and consulted a homeopath and did all I could to avoid surgery.  At the time I was still agoraphobic and I greatly feared I wouldn't be able to cope with the whole hospitalization process, I was buying myself time until I had broken the hold of agoraphobia. This turned out to be wiser than I knew. I have since read that there is a greater risk of complications from surgery if you are in a state of intense fear - which I was.

As it turned out, there were complications during surgery. The key-hole procedure almost turned into an open cholecystectomy and for months afterwards I felt very bruised inside, like somebody had put a metal rod in my abdomen and swished it around violently. Which wasn't too far from what actually did happen. I suppose that imagery came to me as a way of my body giving me a metaphor to work with.

I am getting ahead of my story though. 

My Misremembered Self: Bitter Rage

The process of leave-taking for my gallbladder came naturally and it seemed strange at the time. I drew a picture of my gallbladder and with coloured pencils filled with with turquoise and gold, like a beautiful opal. I then wrote a letter apologising for not taking better care of it, admitting my failures in not being able to heal it naturopathically (there are limits to naturopathic medicine). Knowing that three years previously I didn't have gallstones at all, I remembered the intense work I had been doing on a transpersonal level, and apologised for all the feelings of bitterness, hatred and resentment I had been fondling as I worked through my issues. I had written an essay from a self I called Bitter Rage, told a story that she had created marbles to play with and those marbles of hatred were the gallstones. I apologised to my gallbladder for giving it so much toxic poison and making it sick.  Then I folded up the picture and forgot about it - until I read about the leave-taking of the woman's womb in Eternal Echoes.  Then I thought:  Dayum, that's what I did! How about that?

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

In 2000, a couple of months before my 40th birthday, I had bent down in the shower to pick up the bar of soap I had dropped and I felt a twinge in my back.  I went to work but after a couple of hours, felt my back tightening up and made an appointment to receive a massage from a remedial massage therapist I knew well and trusted.  This therapist was actually my Teacher in massage. I had just completed my training as a Massage Therapist. He agreed to see me straightaway. As I lay face down on the table, he gave me a forceful and heavy massage. When he finished, I couldn't get off the table: my back was completely locked and I was in a world of pain like I  had never experienced before.

I remember berating my body, don't do THIS to me! don't DO this to me! don't do this to ME! I didn't know that my body was protecting me, the muscles had locked up to prevent my spinal cord from being severed. I was angry with my body for letting me down, for placing me in the humiliating position of being carried out by two paramedics, for stopping me in my tracks, for giving me my first ambulance ride (that hit every pothole on the way to hospital), for an embarrasing rectal examination to check the extent of the damage to my spinal nerves.  I came within a whisker of ending up a paraplegic. Of living the rest of my life in a wheel-chair and I was angry at my body without knowing how hard it was trying to save me from that fate.

Such a fool I have been.  John's gently Irish-lilting words helped me to see clearly what had been obscured to my view before: I had not befriended my body. In its times of pain, it was intensely lonely and I always responded with anger, with negligence, with ambivalence, with ignorance, with a laissez-faire approach of taking it for granted.

In Oriental Medicine the body is considered the garden of the soul. When I read those words, I was filled with an ecstatic joy: my soul has a body, my soul  has a body, my soul has a body!

The Soul of my Anatomy

I then began to draw pictures of my organs, very anatomically correct and informed by my studies in anatomy and physiology. I bought a set of 36 artist pencils and gave my creative spirit free right. When I drew my heart, the image of an Elf appeared; when I drew my womb and ovaries, the image of a Goddess appeared, the fallopian tubes her arms holding the pearls of my ovaries. I became aware that each of my organs had it's own Spirit and consciousness and I turned to another book I had purchased a long time ago (and never read), Guarding the Three Treasures by Daniel Reid, learning about the Five Elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. The planetary correspondences, the Eight Extraordinary Channels, and I started to work consciously with these principles. Each day to check in with Jupiter-Wood-Liver; Mars-Heart-Fire; Saturn-Earth-Spleen; Venus-Metal-Lungs and Mercury-Water-Kidney.

Venus had a lot to say and in the saying I learned that my Panic-Anxiety Disorder was really Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that I needed to work deeply with Metal and converse with my Large Intestine. I was inspired to overlay a diagram of my Large Intestine over the 12 Houses of the Zodiac and visit each house from the perspective of my Ileo-caecal valve, my appendix, my ascending colon, my hepatic flexure, my descending colon, my sigmoid colon and finally, my anus.  My anus had a lot to say as well!

The Great Awakener - UR-anus.

Slowly and surely my Soul became more embodied within it's Garden and we walked together through the fields, the groves, the orchards, the flower beds, the herbs, the mosaic paths of cells, the fireflies of neuron synapses, the rivers of blood and lymph.  I came to understand that my gall-bladder had sacrificed itself for the health of the others: had taken one for the team.  Had agreed to quarantine the extreme toxicity of my emotions and transmute them into gallstones rather than cancer. It had agreed to leave so that everybody else could live.

I still have a gallbladder in my etheric body. Every now and then it give me ghost tickle under the ribs and I tickle it back.

In 1994 after my surgery, I had a follow-up consultant with the surgeon and he told me about how beautiful my gallbladder was, the internal surface he said, was like an opal - green and gold. Just like the colours I had used in my leave-taking.  I thought it odd, at the time, that this Man of Science had an artist's appreciation of this piece of flesh, yet I know now that the very best surgeons, the very best healers view the body as a work of art, are constantly awed by its architecture, it's intelligent design, and the weird and wonderful things that it can do.

The Mystery in the Mundane

As a child I would read the Reader's Digest and was always fascinated by the monthly series called "I Am Joe's Body".  I am Joe's ear, I am Joe's eye, I am Joe's heart, I am Joe's spine.  That's when it all began....that's when I started my training as a Medical Intuitive, as a practioner in the healing arts, as a soul-centered counsellor, as a Soul Gardener.

In making my journey through the wilderness of utter ignorance, confusion and deep fear, I have learned something that, perhaps, I might not have done if I had sat at the feet of a Guru, or been engaged in more formal and structured spiritual practices. I have made my journey backwards: stumbling through the experiences then coming across a book that explains You were there.  At the beginning of a new experience I have always acquired a book, or undertaken a workshop that planted seeds that only trial and tribulation would nourish. Most times I was given tools that I didn't use or didn't know how to use effectively and that, too, was part of my journey.

Someone once said that wisdom is the accumulation of our ignorance. Spiritual teachers often write about their wisdom, what they have learned: I think it more useful to write about my ignorance and the mistakes that I have made, the signposts that I missed, the symbols that I misinterpreted, the dots I failed to connect.  In writing about such things, perhaps the reader can detect between the lines, the presence of the Great Spirit behind every misstep I made.

Perhaps the experienced journeyer will get a good laugh and then think about having a conversation with their testicles or left elbow and find out that there are many wild things that dwell in the bottom of the Garden of the Soul that desire to be met and befriended.

Blow Gabriel Blow

In her book Defy Gravity, Caroline Myss wrote:

After working in the field of health and healing for more than two decades, I have come to believe that we as a society have not fully animated the body-mind-spirit trinity that is the foundation of this approach to health, for a simple reason: we are still enamored of the more familiar power of the mind and intimidated by the less familiar, the mystical and transformational regions of the soul.
I read this paragraph and it resounded in me like a trumpet call. The familiar power of the mind - the bodymind. That's the missing understanding in society when it comes to the body-mind-spirit paradigm. Always within the articulation of the problem, you will find the seed for the solution. What if the holistic health paradigm isn't a trinity after all?  And the belief that it is a trinity is the problem? It's a cherished belief that has long been enshrined on the mantle in the Temples of Healing. Perhaps it is that belief, that familiar belief, that needs to be released to fully activate the energies of multidimensional healing.

Just a thought.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Trick or Treat: Invidia

Invidia is the sense of envy or jealousy a "looking upon" associated with the evil eye, from invidere, "to look against, to look at in a hostile manner." Invidia ("Envy") is one of the Seven Deadly Sins in Christian belief. Shades of the Seven Deadly Squirrel Sins from my archived blog The Violet Hour.

Invidia (sometimes called Pax-Nemesis) was also worshipped at Rome by victorious generals, and in imperial times was the patroness of gladiators and of the venatores, who fought in the arena with wild beasts, and was one of the tutlelary deities of the drilling-ground (Nemesis campestris). 

Strange

Last night was Halloween and while I didn't get any trick-or-treaters rocking up for a handful of the sweeties I had purchased for just such an occasion, I did receive a visit from my neighbour: a chap I have known these last 5.5 years. He came to my door with an extraordinary proposal that on the surface appeared to make good sense, sound economic sense as well as being a practical solution for a way out of challenging external circumstances for both of us.

The proposal, motivated by a forthcoming rise in our rents at the end of November, is to enter a shared-living arrangement. Pool our resources, halve our living costs and presumably have some more pocket-money. We are both in reduced circumstances and I have lost my car back in late June which has really narrowed my opportunities for picking up casual work. He has a car that he says he would let me use: if we entered a shared-living arrangement. 

Sweet Dreams

It's a practical and realistic proposal. Except I'm a woman and he is a misogynistic male with a deep streak of Invidia and it's been challenging enough living next-door to his energy signature; which is a signature I have a lot of experience with. 

Just when I thought I had "switched off" my homing-signal for attracting people into my life who bear this signature, Nemesis-as-neighbour knocks on my door, on Halloween, which what is in essence, a Faustian Pact. 

Last night as I lay sleeping, I had a dream of being in a stone cell with a gladiator. Then the dream morphed as dreams do into my neighbour attempting to rape me, except he couldn't get it up, then I was back in the stone cell with the gladiator and he was injured and I was there to minister to his wounds. I woke up thinking of Nemesis. One Google search later, I made the Invida Pax-Nemesis connection with the dream gladiator and dragged out my natal charts.

Walkin' After Midpoint

A few days ago, I began to wonder about the Midpoint Sort data that was given to me by an esoteric astrologist back in January 2005 after reading that Alfred Witte of the Hamburg School was the first astrologist to really come to grips with the idea of midpoints.

What's it all about, Alfie? was the question I posed a couple of blog posts ago.  Well, I got a big old dreamtime clue and was led to calculate the midpoint sort in my natal chart between Uranus and the eight TransNeptunians.

The midpoint of Uranus/Apollon falls at 9 degrees Virgo which happens to be the exact Mars/Neptune midpoint calculated by the esoteric astrologist in 2005.  I have been swotting up on Medical Astrology and the Mars/Neptune midpoint is called The Immune Midpoint.

This nugget of information seriously got my attention.  The 9 degrees Virgo Mars/Neptune midpoint is close orbed by my Pluto/North Node twinning, but that is besides the point, because over at 9 degrees Pisces is the Lot of Nemesis. In the Eighth House. Conjunct Chiron.

Themis/Nemesis

Murry Hope in Olympus: an experience in self-discovery offers this psychological comment into the archetypes of Themis/Nemesis:

The somewhat ambiguous question of conscience inevitably raises its ugly head here, ethical stands of right and wrong being individual, comparative, and naturally coloured by each person's ethnic Weltanschauung, environment, collective social programming, and temperament. If we feel we have committed some kind of wrong, then the odds are that we will unconsciously lead ourselves into a situation where retribution is exacted in some form or other. If, on the other hand, we are convinced of the justice of our actions, psychological complications are unlikely to occur, regardless of whether we are or are not in fact, flouting some civil/criminal law. In other words, it is all in the mind!

Many people believe that life has treated them unjustly, but Themis/Nemesis throws the onus back on the complainers accompanied by the question: 'What have you yourselves done towards correcting the situation?' Should the reply be in the positive, then the good thiings are to come; if the reverse, then they will find themselves bending under the scourge of life until such times as they apply their own mind-power towards putting matters right. Although this may sound callous in the light of modern liberal thinking, and will doubtless evoke adverse comments from some analysists and social workers, it is possibly nearer to the truth than the more sentimental among us would like to believe. Taking the mental attitude into account, is there such a thing as natural justice, or the balancing out of cause and effect? The Greeks obviously thought so!
So Wrong

Warnings don't come any stronger than this.  Accepting my neighbours offer to enter a shared-living arrangement on the basis of economic practicality would pose a direct threat on the integrity of my psychospiritual immunity. The imagery of my dream is unmistakeably symbolic of psychic rape. I am also informed by my real-life exchanges with this person and I do have my suspicions that he is spiralling into a crisis and is looking at me as a life-boat. I used to be a Rescuer. I've learned to disable that archetype whilst maintaing a detached concern and offering assistance without the necessity for self-sacrifice.

You're Stronger Than Me

What has come strongly to the forefront in just the last 48 hours is the persistence of this theme; a pattern that has played out in my life, and caused havoc, my personal chaotic noodle. A theme that, fortuna, I hunted down a couple of years ago and tied a cowbell around. It goes this way: each time I have been energetically powered-up to move forward in my own life, a nemesis rocks up. Testing my dedication, my devotion, my discipline to stay the course and not head off in the direction of another's bright idea, or plan for how I will fit into their schemata. In essence, measuring the strength of  the seed of my self-determination to stay rooted in the vision of my soul purpose. Self-determination was a concept I didn't learn about until I was 33, by which time a lot of damage had already been done and certain things had been set in motion that couldn't be undone from the level of consciousness I had at the time.  Somedays it's hard to be a human!

A lot of me is quite astonished that the archetypal energies of Themis/Nemesis/Invidia have turned up so strongly and embodied within the parameters of this strange proposal and within the personage of this neighbour. From the apperceptions of my shaman self it has been quite the Halloween treat and I love it when the Divine frocks up.

From the viewpoint of my average woman in the world self, I am chagrined that I almost tricked myself into believing that entering into a shared-living arrangement with this particular person would be a good thing for me to do.

My purple polka-dotted people pleaser, apparently, is still lurking in the shadows; and that is my true Nemesis and it is as stubborn to get out of my programming as it is to remove an orange cordial stain from a beige shag-pile carpet.

She's Got You

Under the surface of this proposal is a veiled expectation that I take on the role of Personal Carer when his health fails and he is ill. He wants a personal nurse, housekeeper and companion and he doesn't want to pay wages. The proposal is not realistic at all. If the offer had included  free rent, all expenses paid, a wage, four weeks annual holidays and sick leave entitlements, as well as superannuation, then that would have been just and fair. Trying to squeeze all that under the peashell container of house-mate is just....naive. 

Just another day in the life of a woman with squirrel medicine. There's always a nut to crack.