A little housekeeping

It's currently the dark moon, the very darkest aspect of the moon. As night is darkest just before the dawn, the same is with the moon. And it's the perfect time to clear space. I've been taking to heart the Feng Shui advice given by author and comic Nury Vittachi at the Byron Bay Writers Festival - clear the space. Nury commented that each piece of correspondence we receive is an energy transaction. What do we do with each piece of paper we receive - we file it in a pile on our desk, and when the pile grows unweildly, well then we take the pile and put it under our desk.

The amount of laughter in the marquee was testament to the number of people who know the routine. Nury remarked that it was no wonder that writers working in such an environment, with so much dead energy around them, struggled to find inspiration. In this age paperless environment (sure you only need to look at my desk a few days ago to know how true this isn't!) the 2500 emails in our inbox cause the same congestion of energy on our computers. Nury's advice - read and delete, or read-reply-delete. Don't keep the dead energy hanging around.

The past two days I've been doing just that. It's embarrassing to admit the amount of time it has taken to scour my inboxes (I run two email programmes) and delete out all the unwanted emails. The sad truth was that around 99.9% of the emails went. I have an adversion to deleting emails, after three years of editing, it was always after one of these huge clean ups that I would be searching for 'that particular email' that I had of course designated the week prior as having no future value. It's wonderful to open my email and see only a couple of emails in there ... and no they haven't merely been filed away to all those wonderful side folders. I even went through my filing system and delated out all the old emails from there.

As for my desk - I have one bill to pay, some kindy photos to order. All the books from the recent book fair have found homes downstairs and I'm contemplating the perfect place to store the growing number of filled notebooks that constitute almost a years worth of morning pages. I think I'll build my altar on them downstairs? Also on the list of contemplation is a shuffle of my books - wondering what should leave for shelves else where and what might be needed closer to home. And then some stage tomorrow or Friday morning, I'll wave my smudge stick around, give my creative space a psychic clean and leave all the neighbours to wonder if I sit and smoke funny cigarettes while my son is at kindy. After all - isn't that how all mothers of four year old boys cope?

So - my challenge to you before the new moon hits on Friday evening (in the Sth Hems or around 11am if your in London, 6am-ish in LA) be savage, be rampant, be unforgiving in your decluttering - even if it's just attacking your indominable inbox. Seriously - you'll feel better for it.

Photo from Antishay.com which incidentally has some articles on it about decluttering! How's that for a spot of synchronicity!

Of boils and Goddesses

What happens when you mix a staph infection, the Goddess tarot, a Fiction Friday prompt and Julia Cameron’s ‘morning pages’ medative practise?
A trip into the Soul that’s been a long time waiting.

ednesday morning, as I was attempting to slide out of bed, from between Dave and Dylan, there was a blinding pain. When I got out of the shower I thought to look and discovered a raised and inflamed area on my inner right thigh, a hand’s span in diameter almost! My first thought was an ingrown hair or a blind pimple. The following day after a 24 hours of green clay packs on it and some rather persistent nausea, I had to relent and re-diagnose. The painful and vicious ‘thing’ was a boil. I still grimace when I have to say the word …. Urgh!

This is the third time in my adult life that I’ve been struck down with a staph infection. In the past I’ve been really, really sick before the boils have appeared – fevers, night sweats and terrors, nausea, diahorrea and epic lethargy. The ‘a huh!’ moment has come with the skin eruptions. This time though, my body seemed to save all its energy for the building pustules – how nice! Or so I thought!

Three days of green clay last week helped to reduce the swelling, the pain and the heat in the area. The nausea seemed to go, as did the diahorrea and my energy faltered on the side of an upswing, rather than the down swing. Now five days on my boil hasn’t gone away and to my mortification, another raised its ugly head yesterday morning on my neck – on the right side again. Sigh! There is obviously more to it.

Friday I went onto Mystic Medusa’s blog to see what was happening there, discussions about the dark moon cocoon feeling. I mentioned that I had boils – hoping that someone would be able to offer up an energetic explanation for what was happening. Jack pot – there was plenty of wisdom on offer. Louise Hays says boils are about anger boiling over. Really? Hadn’t Anger and I already done the hard yards earlier on in the year – haven’t Anger and I been dancing a passionate tango for years now. Surely there is not more there? Surely? The affirmations to go with boils and carbuncles are “"I express love and joy and am at peace" and "I release the past and allow time to heal every area of my life." The final one made more sense to me … and even more so this morning. After all any type of awakening for me is a slow unfolding process!

Dan reinforced all of this asking me 'what’s boiling or on the boil', where was my life 'boiled'. What was cooking? Not a lot in my oven that’s for sure – for more than a week I’ve been unable to lift the oven even though every other adult can do so. The ignition works but no matter how long I hold the knob down the flame wont stay. Dan also reminded me that our ailments can be viewed as symptoms of the soul – as healers.

So by Friday afternoon I’d assembled an interesting collection of wisdom – none of which was really geling with me.

Saturday was the New Moon, a blissfully, watery beginning to a new lunar cycle. As I wrote here I make wishes on the new moon and then I pull two cards from my Goddess Oracle deck. It is always spot on – the wishes and the message from the Goddess. I drew my cards in the picnic area at the foot of Mount Tibrogargan and thought how very pertinent to where I was situated at the beginning of another lunar cycle.

The Goddess messages for this lunar cycle came from the Haiwaiian Goddess Pele at the top, ancient British Goddess Sulis, from the healing spas in Bath.

Pele bought to me her the wisdom, that of awakenings:

….when necessary
With dramatic, fierce volcanic eruptions
I wake you up
With lava and fire
I say “pay attention”
-Goddess Oracle-


I’ve had for the last week a restless slip stream of energy, wanting to get on, break out of the nurturing cocoon that I’ve been hibernating in, reconnecting with my Self and filling the cup that was sorely parched. It’s what has been in the forefront of my mind, this need to re-emerge, but perhaps the plan to exercise my new butterfly wings is a little premature. Dramatic, fierce volcanic eruptions sounds a little like a boil wouldn’t you agree? This illness is saying ‘pay attention’, but attention to what?

This cycle the wisdom of Sulis permeates the lower stream, filling in the details with her the wisdom of the illness/wellness dance. I often take the lower card to be the energy that is passing through and out of my life, or something that is unconscious. Rarely does it represent the here and now – making me realyl pay attention, looking for the hooks and the connections.

The healing waters at my shrine
regenerated
revitalised
brought clarity
mended holes
opened vision
allowed flow
with energy flowing
The dance of life resumes
- Goddess Oracle-

Friday I finally got around to writing my article for Down to Birth about my experience of losing my Self in my mothering experiences to date and how devastating it has been for me. I’ve been thinking quite a lot on how to nurture and nourish myself in small, simple, loving ways and the second part of my article went through the importance of having time and space to ourselves. It’s no surprise then that a lot of the wisdom offered in the paragraphs on Sulis are about how “have you been ignoring your own deep requests for more time, more space, more attention.” In that regard – I’m glad that I have awoken to this need and I’m consciously working with it and alerting others to it as well. I’m getting accustomed to making my needs a priority, nourishing my energy and allowing new ways of being me that support this healing process.

My friend Catherine, using 'The body is the barometer for the soul' by Annette Noontil told me boils or carbuncles are, ‘stirred up emotions that you let out, because the stagnation of a concept has come to a head.' That about sums up where I am at the moment and the fact that I have had my eyes opened to what happened with my connection to my Self over the last four years.

“It came to pass that I built a succession of cages around myself – like my own internal labyrinth of imprisonment. Somewhere at the centre, somewhere on this transition through motherhood I’d dropped the Self off and forgotten to go back and pick Her up. Then I’d got busy, distracted and forgot that She even existed.”
‘Finding my Self’ - article for Down to Birth Autumn

Knowing all of this … I still have my boils! As always I ‘get it’ – the yin is well functioning, but don’t know where to go to from there … a serious yang deficit. And then I stumbled onto it by pure accident … a gift from the Universe?

One of the lovely astrofiends on Mystics Blog had suggested that I meditate while I was in my cocoon. Mediation is something that I love, but I always struggle with. I need a guided meditation to get best effect and I never seem to find any good meditations … and then I realised that my Goddess Oracle book has mediations … there is a meditation to travel to and with Sulis … and the title of the meditation … “Recalling and rebuilding your inner fire” and suddenly all the lights went on for me.

That’s what all this has been about. All this musing on nourishment, nurturing, finding the Self etc etc. It is about going back and connecting again with my inner fire – this is the elemental essence of my Self. And by a beautiful stroke of synchronicity, Fiction Friday’s prompt had been about fire … and after my character Brigit danced by/with the fire, she talks about why she dances with the fire what it means to her:

“When I dance with the fire I no longer have to be cautious, or show restraint – I can be impulsive, temperamental, and wilful. I forget that this is a 21st version of Hades.”

She bent down and pulled on an old V neck jumper.
“There are beings called salamanders – elemental beings of fire. They say that the faces you see in the fire are them. Salamanders are Will itself. When I dance I find my will again.”

She threw the stick to him. He caught it one handed, feeling her sweat and the heat of the fire still radiating from the metal.
“Your turn now.”
Fiction Friday 7th March: Fire; dance with me

I understand now that Brigit was throwing ME the fire baton … imploring me to find my Will again, to seek out my face in the flames, to connect with my ‘Will’. Fire is also about the imagination and creativity. It’s also about the burning away of the impurities in the first process in alchemy.

And I’ve got why my boils aren’t going away. I’ve been plastering the heat rising with cool earth. I’ve yet again been smothering and suppressing the fire. Now I need to play with, rather than against the energy. I need to put hot compresses on my skin, I need to draw all of this ‘poison’, these impurities of the soul out, and allow them to flow out like tears for the soul.

I need to be brave and go dance with fire … but first I need to go down to the depths with Sulis.

Post Script: since writing this earlier on today, I’ve got my MP3 recorder to do the meditation. The boil on my leg has expanded ten fold in size … it is desperately trying to make its way out. I’ve put a hot compress on it and rested up in bed (it kills to even sit) … so we’ll see what transpires tomorrow?

Quote of the Day: Mether Baba

Wandering back to my car yesterday after my weekly Artist Date .. I came across this quote in the window of a shop. It basically sums up last week for me. Yet another veil has fallen for me.

And yes ... this is my untidy script - quickly scrawled at the end of my musings for the day in my morning pages book.

What have you done this year to dig deeper to find yourself?

The Morning Pages: dousing the Wicked Witch

When I read about something, that glowingly and gushingly proports to be wonderful and life changing, I'm often a little reticient to believe it. I like to try before I buy - or in these terms, try before I buy in. I was like that with acupuncture. Had read lots, heard others give amazing testimonials to its healing abilities, but I am forever part cycnic and part inquistive, a strange but compelling mix. After having acupuncture (it was the Japanese kind which does not involve needles - for those cringing at the thought) I was sold. I could feel the heat travelling slowly but most assuredly down the backs of my legs during the treatment, and the next day, I most definitely could feel that my pelvis had opened (we were trying to bring on labour!)



When Julia Cameron introduced 'The Morning Pages' in the Basic Tools chaper in The Artists Way I was a little reserved as to how they could have such a great impact on opening up creative blocks and helping rediscover your creativity. I thought about the years of journalling I'd done, and though they were a great means for sorting through they miasma in my mind, they were never really life changing ...just a life chronical.



What are the morning pages? Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of long hand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness ... They might also, more ingloriously, be called brain drain, since that is one of their main functions.
Page 11-12 The Artists Way



I have for most of my life fought with the internal dialogue that goes on incessantly in my mind. Conversations, debates and arguments with others and myself; problem solving; draft creation for articles and stories - you name it. It's hard, nigh impossible, to turn it off. Thankfully after some counselling in 2003, and some Cognitive Behaviour Therapy the negative tape stopped playing - the one that subliminally, like 24 hour sleep teaching went 'I do not deserve to be loved', 'I am not good enough' - you get the gist! But nevertheless the monologue, and sometimes dialogue never shuts up and over time I've just got used to it. It loudest when I'm alone - especially when I'm out walking. I've decided that its Gemini sun, gemini rising.



The first thing I noticed last week when I began doing my Morning Pages was the internal voice stopped. It wasn't saying negative things, nor positive ... it was blissfully silent. How come? Anything that had been tying up my mind space each morning, was put down on paper. I came to realise within a few days, that journalling at night gave me the opportunity to put it down, record it, and reflect ... dreaming at night gave me a chance to process it, and finally the morning pages were like the blow off ... blown away on the tide of a breathe like dandelion seeds ... ahhhh. With the static gone, the wafts of original and creative thought dont have to be sucked into the stagnet electricity like dust particulars.


The voices were back this morning - loud, angry and clashing, swinging from wildy destructive to pathetically ambivalent. They were so loud and intense, I walked straight past the huge funeral directors without noticing it (and it takes up a whole block!) I went walking before I had a chance to do my pages this morning. Its walk, a little Fly Lady, make everyone breakfast and then the pages. So there was plenty of time for my over active mind to bend, stretch, minimise, maximise, personalise and then step back from the conversation I had with my mother on the phone last night. There was plenty of downloading necessary this morning ... the pages like a nondiscriminating sponge just sucked it all up - and left me with a clear mind. With a clear mind I've had a chance to really process, look inside, see parallels, paradoxes and repeated patterns and begin to make sense. I now have a starting point for healing ... and I hope over the weeks an avenue for healing will appear.


Also, since beginning my Morning Pages my dreams have become more vivid and fluid. I'm also remembering more of them, and in stream of consciousness style able to record them down in my morning pages ... which are mutilfunctional ... and can already understand why the morning pages become an essential part of people's life. I'm seeing patterns emerging death/endings and birth/beginnings - though I'm curious about that connatations of rhubarb in dreams?


There have been other suprising, unexpected and generally welcomed developments. I've been forced to create a morning routine so I can fit everything into a morning and still be able to leave the house at 9:00am with a freshly baked cake/slice if necessary. This has meant getting back into FlyLady http://www.flylady.net/ which is a housekeeping routine, that allows you to honour and love yourself by honouring and loving your home - yes very Virgo! It practical though - the 2007 motto is "progress not perfection" and I can be good at that. It also means that my partner has his toast and coffee prepared for him,waiting on the table when he gets out the shower (and tell me he's not a lucky man!) and most excitedly, I get a morning walk (something that I made a pledge to do after returning from our holidays - to mediatate and walk - the morning pages being a form of mediation that really suits me!)


Additonally I've been more intuned with Dylan and seeking out fun and varied things for him to do - we're escaping the house at every opporunity, and tomorrow we'll finally get to a toddler dancing class after wanting to go for more than 18 months. Being more connected with myself and my creativity, makes me want to be more connected with him ... and to encourage all of his talents.


Lastly - I've been able to cook dinner without a cookbook! This might sound a bit strange. I can't cook dinner unless EVERYTHING needed is either in the cupboard or the fridge, and I very rarely digress from the recipe. I'm not the type that has to have the cup measure of flour exact, but I'm not terribly original in the kitchen (most people I know, know me for the food I create - so this seems a little of a paradox!) I can't, from scratch, make up my own dishes. Tonight however - I discovered that upon tweaking the recipe I wanted to cook, that we were missing some key ingredients - I didn't throw my hands up in the air and pass the cheffing reins to my partner like I would have done in the past. I instead I thought creatively about another recipe and came up with chicken and green vegies in oyster sauce. I had to use the green vegies before tomorrow when we get our new box of vegies. So the combination of getting mystery boxes of vegies every week and feeling free to experiment is having payoffs in the kitchen also! The best thing though (other than its tasted yummy!) it was done in less than 20 minutes. The creative blocks are slowly melting away.


I imagine the creative blocks like the Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz ... they are just waiting for me to find the inspiration (rather than desperation) to pick up a pail of water and toss if over them. And you know what - I'm grabbing the bucket now!

PS: Interestingly enough - Margaret Hamilton who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 'Wizard of Oz' shares the same 9th December birthday with my mother!