Tender and Beautiful Heart

Remember you are Magical. You are Unique.

I am searching for a way to commit to living life. Being alive.
I have the luxury to be able to say this. As I am not struggling to survive.
I want to have the expansive heart to appreciate this life. As Chogyam Trungpa describes; a raw, tender and beautiful heart.
Is it possible not to question every moment as if waiting for an answer, that is either an apology or an enraged rejection. I believe it is.
Can I bare not to question the struggle. Cherish the challenges in life that carve out this twisted shape, hiding secret chambers, each one sounding a unique note.
And so in my job I use the word 'resilance' to parents of children who want more and more and more, of what they are not sure.
Tonight I watched a dramatization of the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh taken from his letters to his brother. It seems to me that he struggled his whole life to feel a deep connection. A validation that made sense of his world. Where his aliveness was not rejected. Where he belonged.
I yearn for a continuity. I yearn for community - as did Vincent. And when community is forgotten I find myself lost within a crowd. And so I treasure my own space where I cut myself off. Running away. Far away from everyone else. From myself.
As I reflect on life being change. Each moment passing. The one life line is Spirit; that pulses in our bloodlines.
When we all die from this life our voices shape the music that creates the vessel this earth. Without this continuity it seems to me that the desolute isolation that Vincent felt, can only increase as we see our disconnection externalized in the loss of our environment.
As more of our wilderness disappears more of our senses dull. And so we rage on and the fires spread deep in the earth, stripping our woodlands bare. We are lost. Paths dissapearing. The earth melting our shoes. Peeling our ashen skin back, to smiling bare shining white bone.
Our nostrils full of smoke. In our desperation to touch earth. Unable to breathe. Unable to sing. We limit our capacity to live. We limit our capacity for empathy.
If there is a Devil this is it. Hopelessness. Addiction. Seperation. Violence. This Devil a shadow puppet hiding a face full of tears. An ocean of tears, where upon floats so many ships, full of lost souls.
Dare we look upon this our Devil?
Rather than being overwhelmed is it possible to deeply feel?
Sensuality. Celebration of life. To be fully awake deeply sense the world.
As a child the breeze brushes against soft bare skin, feeling each tiny hair vibrate. Feeling the tempeture rise or fall. Catching smells diverse, rich, dark, light, delicate, raw. Beautiful. Creating space. Connecting time. Connecting memory.

"There is unlimited sound, unlimited sight, unlimited taste, unlimited feeling and so on. The realm of perception is limitless, so limitless that perception itself is primordial, unthinkable, beyond thought."

So this being fully alive is a lack of seperation. And with this I imagine comes a deep awareness of responsibilty. A deep love. Beyond conflict - 'Drala'

"One of the key points in discovering drala principle is realizing that your own wisdom as a human being is not seperate from the power of things as they are. They are both reflections of the unconditioned wisdom of the cosmic mirror. Therefore there is no fundamental seperation or duality between you and your world."

Shambala - The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyam Trungpa.

Queen Hornet

http://www.bwars.com/ ~ Queen, In woodland below the Wrekin, Shropshire, 2005 by Nigel Jones

In 2 weeks I have seen 2 Queen Hornets. 1st in Hungary. 2nd nr Yeoford Devon. Both times I was completely transfixed. Amber Gold red colour. Such powerful confidence. Strong. I remember how the mention of Hornets people quake and shake.
So why was I so at ease? What was I missing? Or were other's missing something?
Tigers on wing. To be respected. Their beauty admired.

Some species of Queen Hornet apparently have enough lethal venom to kill a human. Hornets can kill bees and wasps. So everything including us has a place. Us who are at the top of the food chain.

The Queen and her female workers maintain the nest. Shamanically a Hornet would connect with female warrior energy, sisterhood and understanding female societies and communal living. I am very excited that I am meeting Hornet.
And with this {shamanic/spirit} medicine I experience working on befriending my shadow side which is fiercely protective. So many insects and animals have had so much shadow projected onto them do we see who/what they are?
I wonder at the misleading shadow we cast onto them. I wonder that I am connecting with ancient as my dear friend said today Hornets are mostly to be found in ancient woodland. She also told me an amazing story of when she first saw a Hornet she did not know they existed and watched with awe as she heard it's jaws crunching eating a wasp! And I wonder whether as man has reduced ancient wilderness so maybe the Hornet is coming into more domesticated spheres...Would that affect the medicine of the Hornet...Would many more meet that medicine?...
With this thought of my need my desire to meet wilderness of my heart. This year I have been faced with what I would have assumed as other's similar desire, has been at times glamour in service to the ego. At worst this has a dangerous echo of colonialism. Misunderstanding and misusing other oppressed people's life/culture/being which is inter-connected with the land.
I refer to many westerners after apparently seeking out indigenous shamanic teachers, using their experience to sell and promote themselves. Some ask whether you have trained with an aboriginal/indigenous shaman or 'their' shaman~ there by clearly defining the 'pecking order' and offering something which you can only get from them.
When I have met indigenous healers/shamans which I have learned a lot from; they have been very down to earth, average person/every day people. They have a job. They earn respect. And do not separate out their job/role from life and other people. I experience them of having studied bloody hard with open hearted and open eyed curiosity. Like our wonderful British naturalists who sit hours on end watching and observing nature. Tired and aching. On their own. They are rewarded by such amazing knowledge and I believe in time gifted with wisdom.
What I am describing is being in service. Full of love and therefore full of power. And I think that westerners have much to learn about what power is. Power not connected with ego.
I am hearing too often western people describing themselves as Shamans when I am not clear what their intention is.
It has been a journey for me to witness women within the alternative spiritual subcultures promoting themselves as a business. We trip into not only the tricky area of £ for spirituality but also the tricky area of the previously oppressed, marginalised and misunderstood ~ women's power and spirituality.

For me my journey this year has been about reclaiming my authentic spiritual woman self. I have been working with not giving my power away to other female figures in my desire to heal the wounded daughter that comes from a line of mothers and daughters who have been abondoned. My journey has been to see this ancestral thread. A woman's wound. That thread, that blood which longs to bleed into the earth and belong.
This journey of healing the woman's wound has connected me with a desire to connect with the Divine feminine. That which is woven inside my womb, vulva and heart. In my blood. That vibrant hot red energy. That song.
And so I have been meeting Queen Hornet. A truly humbling experience.
And with that, dare I connect with that power. Not distort. Not demonise ~ internally or externally. Be that either an unclaimed part of my self or another woman.

For we are all mirrors and 'our worst teachers are our best teachers'

I am reminded that to connect with Divine it is that volcano that burning star that burning sting. Fire. Red. Orange. Yellow. Sun. Hot.

I am reminded of the wonder, diversity, power and beauty of Her Divinity.

*

For an interesting read on a related subject ~ "Personality" by W.E.Butler

http://www.servantsofthelight.org/knowledge/butler-personality.html

Melting the Ice in the Heart of Man

Last Monday I went to St James Alternatives to hear a talk by an Inuit from the Eskimo-kalaallit people in Greenland. His name is Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq from a family of healers. At 65 he said he has only been an active Shaman for 5 years. After a long time of procrastination his sister said enough indecision it was time for him to take his grandfathers talisman and be a Shaman. A generous open hearted man full of humour, laughter and intimacy.

He shared his concern for the ice melt in Greenland and the unusual temperatures ~ apparently last year they had temperatures up to 35 degrees which made the ice boil. Where upon he went to his grandmother and asked what he could do about the ice melt. Her answer to him was that he needed to go out and help to melt the ice in the hearts of man. He asked her how he could do this. She thought for a little time and answered to go out and help melt the ice in the hearts of man and walked away. So this was what he was doing. He told us that in the 70's it was possible to have stopped the change in the world but now it was not possible. It was inevitable.

Last year I had a calling to go to the Arctic. The calling was from spirit and so shocking ~ for it had to be for me to listen and wake up ~ I awoke in the middle of the night with a cry that I didn't want to die. But in order to wake up from the living dream I needed to answer this call to be born. Which I did. And with that a growing understanding of the vision I had of Death walking beside me as my friend.

I was born to a mother whose heart broken, had been burnt ice cold by electric shock treatment. Her memories buried. As a child my experience of her was of ice. I have for many years described her as frozen. I am not sure I can honestly remember a time where she laughed from deep in her belly, a laughter that ripples out through the heart. Never satisfied she remained locked in a dysfunctional relationship. She died when I was 20 after being diagnosed with cancer when I was 10.

When I answered the call I connected with the loss of my connection of my mother with my struggle to connect with the divine feminine. I felt how those two were interconnected inside me. I also was connecting with how this story was fed down through the family blood ancestors. I am not a mother in the sense I have not had a child. And at 41 I am near the time when that will not be possible. So with that in mind I have been with how I can heal this story handed down through mother and daughter.

My time in the Arctic was more than I could have imagined. I fell in love ~ an experience beyond a focus on a single person. I had the experience of being held. I had the experience of wilderness. And along with that experience I connected with the loss of this connection.
And I then realized ~ My God ~ if I was being gifted with just a fraction of what indigenous people felt all the time?...what could they have felt at others trying to burn this connection? And with that I felt such grief at this loss. Not just theirs ~ which still goes on. But also our collective loss. For even though that loss happened generations ago for my ancestors, that loss is still there. I heard stories of how Shaman's drums were burnt in front of their eyes. Now I understood not just in my mind what this could mean.

So I returned to London with an expeirence of 'coming home' in a land far away. With the growing awareness that I was gifted this experience so that I could feel this loss. I was not meant to run away into the country. My medicine was to be with this loss in the middle of the city. When I was 20 I ran away to the city to be lost. Now I find that I no longer crave to be lost. It is about remembering. And at times that thaw can be painful.

Through the thawing of my heart I can connect with that divine feminine that is part of me ~ as I am woman. That this wilderness is in the heart of us all. And that calling can come with the smell of blossom, a butterfly alighting on your skin or the call of the fox in the night. All this in the middle of this huge metroplis. For it is not possible for thousands of us to go and live in the countryside as it is cities are spreading into vanishing green land. And with that thought I ask how do we reconnect? First we need to remember. First we need to feel the loss. Both are connected. And as I write this I wonder how Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq experiences people/us who have forgotton that connection?

At times I have felt impatient with myself. Why can't I get a move on and heal my personal wounds so that I can get out there and help with this environmental crisis? Then I catch myself. I remind myself that there is not a divide between the personal and the collective. I remind myself of the times I have been in communion with others and feel that healing resonating outwardly and inwardly. That I and others can only start from where we are. That there is a connection with the microscomic and macrocosmic. This world view in which we are isolated beings that are not dependent on others is not real.

So I clean my local area of rubbish. I can't clean the whole of London but I clean the paths where I walk. And even though I feel an urgency not only in my desire akin to a 'Call to arms', I also call for patience and compassion in these accelerated times. For I do believe that as we get nearer to 2012 more of us will feel that thaw.

http://www.icewisdom.com/icewisdom/

In Darkness Mirror