Monthly Archives: September 2012

Dear me…..


Preparing for the forthcoming Southern Hemisphere Spring Equinox, I did a meditation in which I asked to see my animal guides.
 
I was surprised to see a young female deer, she was wild, but physically similar to the deer I encountered on Miyajima and Nara.

 Questions came up, such as “Am I standing in fear?”

The rational mind immediately thought of the saying “like a startled deer in the headlights”.

But the sensation within my body was not of fear, it was of calm and peacefulness.
Other questions that came up were:
“Where am I?”
“How is the deer related to me?”

We walked through the meditation together and the next image that came to mind was that of a circular clearing in a woods, surrounded by white trunked trees, just starting to sprout their soft green leaves. We rested together for a while and left this place separately and in our own time.

Coming back to the office, I took a while to review the meditation in light of my recent journeyings into the world of spirit awareness and the questions that came up.

Consulting Dr Google, I found that the meaning of the deer was quite different to what was expected and very interesting. Reflecting on the questions that came up, helped to clarify thoughts about my business direction and motivation.
More questions arose.
Am I coming to terms with the intuition that is becoming stronger?
Am I ready to leave behind what no longer serves?

All these are to be pondered over the next few days as we are in the energy of Ostara .
Not only does this equinox energy start from when it is marked on the calendar (September 21st) but the actual crossing of the sun over the Equator happens on September 23rd at 0.49am EST. Interestly, September 20th marks the last 100 days to the end of the year as well!
Another challenge!

Reaching out to the past

I continue to be surprised at what happens during a Past Life Regression.
Each time prior to a session, I begin to have niggling doubts.
Is it real?
Am I just making it up?
What will happen?
 I am lucky to be associated with a group of people who train Hypnotherapists to lead clients through Past Life Regressions.
In fact, I did the training myself.
I have had a couple out of curiosity and a couple as part of someone else’s training requirements.

The first Past Life Regression I had took me back to a scene in World War 2. It was a very powerful session and I came away thinking that I must have made it up. Several weeks later I met an elderly woman who waved at me and came up and hugged me – she had a sense we knew each other. I was on a school excursion at the time, so I made a time to go back and see her.

What transpired was amazing.

She brought up the subject of Past Lives and I enquired why? The conversation turned to my experience and I told her the name of the person I was in my past. She beckoned for me to come with her to the bookshop – her book was there and the details we had just talked about in it………… We both had tears and hugs and I left her with the card of the hypnotherapist I had seen, if she ever wanted to get a copy of the session. When I discussed the session with my father as he is a returned Allied soldier, and showed him the book, he went quiet. He was part of the Allied forces that liberated a small hospital on the border of Belgium, where a number of young women and girls were being held, including the woman who wrote the book.

Another Past Life session that was notable, was as a result of a specific issue I was having regarding a mentor suggesting some training. As she discussed a process of the training, I had an immediate gut reaction and said “No”.
It was crystal clear that I would not go down that path.
Every cell in my body was rebelling against doing this training. I couldn’t fathom out why and decided that there must be a subconscious block.
My mentor suggested that it was due to my “money issues”.
The hypnotherapy session went almost immediately into a past life. My throat constricted and I began feeling as if I was choking.
The Hypnotherapist regressed me further back to the time leading up to these events and I found myself in a narrow tunnel that had been built as an escape route from an old European castle.
I was fleeing with my mentor, who was at that time also a trusted companion. As we opened the escape door and emerged into a small clearing in the woods, soldiers fell upon us and bound us. I was seated on a horse with a rope around my neck …………..my friend had betrayed me and we were hung.
Researching the dates that came up was interesting, as were the characters. Around the same time, I had been in contact with a distant cousin in Canada in regards to our shared Scottish heritage.
He had been fortunate in discovering a matrilineal record and it was interesting to find that the officer who was in charge of the group in my past life regression was recorded as marrying one of the women in my family tree. She met a violent end as did his previous wives.

Very recently I had another Past Life regression and another family connection. It didn’t take long and there I was back in the Scottish Highlands. Walking down a narrow track to help out a young woman, who in this lifetime, is my own daughter. The date was very specific,  as was the area, and combined with a Google search about the events around the date and the details on my family tree, there was another connection.
I don’t recall that I knew that the ancestral home was in Aberdeenshire, but there it was……

The leaving of this life was peaceful….. like a fog gently rolling in and the soft grey just gathering up an old woman who had fulfilled her life purpose in that lifetime………

Insights are still forming and a task in the next few weeks will be to listen again and transcribe the recordings.
In this way, I will look for themes and understanding of how the past has shaped the present and future………

The Meaning of…….

words….

It’s interesting how we put different meanings to words – depending on our

  • values
  • cultural upbringing
  • or perspective.

My background as a language teacher allows me to explore words both in English and Japanese. The artistic side of my brain is nourished by the beauty of the Japanese characters, whilst the logical side enjoys the structure which allows the character to be written in a balanced way.

Language and the love of words has always featured in my life and was nurtured by my grandmother who wrote “racy”novels for Mills and Boon in the 1920’s using a pseudonym as it “wasn’t the done thing to do” in her social circles in Colonial India. There is even the family story of being distantly related to a Poet Laureate, but not substantiated.

As a child in England, I have memories of the family sitting down and competing to get the best score in the Reader’s Digest Increase your Word Power and ongoing games of Lexicon and Scrabble. We didn’t have a TV until I was 15, then it was quickly disposed of when my grades at school plummeted.

I remember feeling surprised when talking to a student in a relaxed moment on a school camp, when he revealed that I was known to be slightly eccentric because of my extended vocabulary. Teaching students to find a better or alternative word became more than a passing interest after the tedium of marking essays filled with vernacular and repetitive words. The discovery an Edward de Bono book that had exercises using words was incorporated into language coaching classes and students given games to play using the thesaurus on the computer.

Even more recently, I was looking up a word in the dictionary – yes I still use a paper one – I ruminated on the words following…..

I was following up an idea about manifesting, as per  The Secret and all of that….(another post perhaps) when I noticed that the word following was “Manifesto”.

I bought a copy of the “Communist Manifesto” in a tiny bookshop in Nelson (NZ) in the late 1970’s that  my parents threw out when they “repacked” my stuff, not realizing that I bought it out of historical interest and not ideological alignment.

Again perspective comes into to the picture!

So how do you feel about the term Manifesto?

If an organization that you had contact with in the free, democratic world used it,  how would you react?

Do you see it as something that clarifies their position, states  their policy or something more?

If you are a Baby Boomer, as I am, what emotional attachment have you inherited from the word? Implications of control, compliance…….?

Then I turned the page and found some new words to ponder……………

 

What’s your baggage?

We all have baggage.
Some have a little and some have a lot.
Some baggage is more easily put down and left behind than others. 
I get curious about types of baggage and what purpose it serves the person carrying it.

Is the baggage a backpack?
Is it light or heavy?
Can it be easily removed?
Does it feel like there is someone putting stuff in and making it heavier while you are moving to your destination?

Is the baggage a suitcase?
What’s inside? Is it full of things that “might come in handy” or familiar, comfortable objects?
Does it feel like it’s making your arms or hands ache?

One of my favourite films, “Up in the Air” uses the metaphor of baggage really effectively.
So how easy is it to unpack the baggage and only take what is necessary for the journey and are you willing to let go and let someone else take the weight from you – even if for a short time?

The familiar or comfortable things need to be looked at first.
Familiarity doesn’t mean that it serves you now.
 Familiar could be an unhelpful habit or attitude that has outstayed its welcome.
Moving it on or leaving it behind can either be a joyful or gut wrenching occasion. It all depends on your perspective.
The comfortable may no longer be of use either.
Who hasn’t had that dearly loved pair of shoes or an item of clothing that is comfortable but has definately got that scuffed and tatty look or frayed at the seams………
Sometimes it takes another person, often a friend or family member, even a coach or counsellor to help us to see that it is time to make a change.
Having made a change, it is all too easy to slip back into previous habits, reach out to do the “same old, same old”, but looking at new options can be exciting and life changing.

Fathers Day

The official start to Spring in Australia, got off to a balmy start; a languid weekend of sunshine although still quite cool once the sun dipped below the horizon. Following on from the August “Blue Moon” the weekend included the low key festivities of Fathers Day on Sunday, followed by a magnificent Monday. This probably saw more “sickies” taken from work than usual, simply because it was a beautiful day. Hopefully it was an industry rostered day off!

We began the Fathers Day celebrations with the father in law on Friday, due to his other social commitments and I visted my 91 year old father on Sunday afternoon with a box of chocolates supplied by my son and his partner.  He was curious as to why he was getting a present, as Father’s Day is a relatively new tradition born of commercialism and we never celebrated it when I was a child. It is quite unlike the original Mothering Sunday which was celebrated in the Northern Hemisphere Spring, by the church. He happily accepted the gift as he has a sweet tooth, so much so, that he has only one left!

 My own adult children gave their father a couple of pots of tulips as he has been nurturing an aging bulb …yes …. that was singular….. for the last couple of years.
 
I find that tulips are intriguing flowers. Once highly valued and rare, they made their way from the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th century to Europe where they often were more valuable than gold. Now they can be found even in the flower section of the local supermarket for just a few dollars.
Selected breeding has created many different colours and shapes and they have evolved from the simple single flower on a stem to double or even frilled versions.  
The scent is exquisite…. almost imperceptible unless you take the time to stop and savour it.