We feel alone sometimes in our actions but we are not – we are all linked together in this cosmic dance, all experiencing similar thoughts and feelings – we are not the same as each other but similar, we are all human and therefore must understand one another’s problems because THEY ARE OUR PROBLEMS. Everything that happens in this world is our problem and a reflection of ourselves. This from Carl Jung…

The Red Book -Resolution 253
…Forethinking is singleness, love is togetherness. Both need one another, and yet they kill one another. Since men do not know that the conflict occurs inside themselves, they go mad, and one lays the blame on the other. If one-half of mankind is at fault, then every man is half at fault. But he does not see the conflict in his own soul, which is however the source of the outer disaster. If you are aggravated against your brother, think that you are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your brother. As a man you are part of mankind, and therefore you have a share in the whole of mankind, as if you were the whole of mankind. If you overpower and kill your fellow man who is contrary to you, then you also kill that person in yourself and have murdered a part of your life. The spirit of this dead man follows you and does not let your life become joyful. You need your wholeness to live onward…

I have had the greatest opportunity to experience forgiveness and to forgive, to receive mercy and to be merciful. I feel privileged to have been able to do so. This way I hold no vengeance in my heart and I do not harm myself or others. It’s OK to be angry as long as temperance is observed and mercy and forgiveness have the last word. How often have I heard others say ‘I hate so and so’ or ‘I would kill someone if they did this is that’ and I feel such sadness. We have become an eye for an eye society where we take matters into our on hands, vigilantes with ‘truth and right’ on our side unfortunately without looking deeply into ourselves. You may remember a poor pediatrician some time back being hunted down because some people thought the word was synonymous with the word paedophile… ignorance of the situation led to this problem and a lack of self-awareness – this is what happens when we allow anger to rule us with no way of countering it. Again it harms not only us – say this pediatrician had been murdered? What then? More lessons… and so we go through history with the same problems  - we do not think that we all need mercy and forgiveness and that we can’t give that unless we hold ourselves up to the light for further examination.

I also don’t mean that punishment is not necessary but that understanding is – so someone serves their time and then they should not be accountable for their crime. It is finished. My sister was murdered in 1998 by her jealous boyfriend – a very sad event for all of us – but me, my mother and brother who were her only family left, decided to not go the trial/hearing, we felt that this would not benefit anyone, this would not bring her back, we also did not want to sit there and make this man feel any worse than he already did. He gave himself up to the Police. He needed help and I sincerely hope he got it, in some ways I’m sure he didn’t because prison generally doesn’t feel that the person serving the time is as much a victim as the victim…

On sight you would see a young man who took a life. What you wouldn’t see was the fact that this man had been badly treated as a  boy, lived in and out of YMCA’s for most of his teenage/adult years and had a breaking point due to this. He got six years for diminished responsibility as he was mentally ill. We are not God and don’t have the foresight of knowing a persons heart so we do not have any choice but to say ‘There but the grace of God go I!’ We all have reasons for doing the things that we do. In the book ‘The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral mind’ by Julian Jaynes, he talks about just a small change in the salinity of the brain can make us a killer… There is so much we do not understand about the way the mind works so therefore we all need to take the time to remember that we are all connected… The book is an amazing work by Jaynes – I recommend it!

Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), in which he argued that ancient peoples were not conscious (i.e. could not introspect). Instead, Jaynes claimed that ancient people acted by means of automatic, nonconscious habit. When habit did not suffice and stress rose at the moment of a decision, behavior was directed by auditory verbal hallucinations, which were heard as the voice of a chieftain or god and immediately obeyed. Jaynes argued that the change from this mode of thinking (which he called the bicameral mind) to consciousness (construed as self-identification of interior mental states) occurred over a period of centuries about three thousand years ago and was based on the development of special types of linguistic cognition and the emergence of writing as an alternative means of social control.

We don’t want to be isolated or thought of as ‘bad’ people, we want to be part of something… to belong… but how honest are we about what we want or believe? The phrase ‘wearing your heart on your sleeve’ is almost looked upon in a derogatory sense yet isn’t that more correct? Lies don’t hurt anyone? Children tell the truth and we will always let them off the hook or even smile and say ‘out of the mouth of babes’ – what-  until we teach them to lie? As if – well, they’re only children, they’ll learn!

When I was teaching in a junior school and walking along the school corridor a little 1st year started walking along beside me. He looked me up and down and then exclaimed ‘You’re fat!’ I looked at him and thought about it what he said. I replied ‘Yes, I am’ he replied ‘Why?’ I told him I needed more exercise and then gently told him that he wasn’t wrong in his observations but that he could hurt peoples feelings by telling them such things. Now in an ideal world I shouldn’t have been offended by his remark and nor should anybody else because he was just stating a fact and wanted an answer but we are all so unsure of ourselves in general that we take comments to heart.

Honesty is very rare yet essential to the world. If we all lie how can we trust what anybody says as the truth? I have been trying to not say anything than just say something to keep the peace or to just appear to be going along with the crowd but that does tend to isolate you or make you appear stand-offish. I had a male friend a few years back who really was himself (well at least in my presence) many would have thought him arrogant as I did when I first met him, but eventually as I got to know him I realised that he didn’t put any airs and graces on in my presence, he didn’t try to impress me and he said what he thought. I went to Church with him one Sunday and it was pretty packed, everyone had sat on the edges of the pews but there were big gaps in the middle. He went towards a disabled woman and asked her politely to move along so he could sit down, she obviously had trouble walking and with difficulty she got up and allowed him to squeeze past her and sit in the middle of the pew. I was astounded at the time and later on said to him ‘Why did you make that disabled woman stand up when it was clear that she would have difficulty doing so?’ He replied ‘If she had difficulty getting up out of the way than why did she sit on the outside of the pew? And also, she has a voice, if she couldn’t get up she should have told me, I’m not going to presume that she can’t!’

He had a very good point. In fact he treated her with dignity. She is a ‘normal’ functioning human being and quite capable of speaking for herself… but how many other people just avoided asking her? I also felt that in his presence I didn’t diminish, I could relax and be myself rather than standing on eggshells or pussyfooting around – when I left his house I wasn’t in turmoil or slightly exhausted as I usually was around people. He was a bit of a rarity – yes he could be arrogant saying that his way was always the right way but you could also argue the same. If you were strong as a person this was possible but if you were weak than you may well have been crushed by his attitude. He was in fact very ‘House-like!’

We all really in our hearts want to be taken seriously for who we are and what we believe – so why not try to be more honest with yourself and others, if they don’t like what you say then and feel hurt you have to ask yourself – did I do that or did they let that happen to themselves?

We have an obligation to be ourselves – we are all different and unique- no-one has the right to stop your opinion but you have to take responsibility for your actions – this way we can truly be ourselves and the world will be a richer more diverse place. How can we help others if we do not know ourselves?

“Know yourself.”
Luke (Q) 17:21, Thomas 3 (Socrates, Buddha, and the temple at Delphi)

Jesus said (as far as we know) : Do unto others as you would have them do unto you …

In that case I would prefer honesty from people, and the right to my opinion and to be myself at all times in all company. That’s alright as long as you know what ‘MYSELF’ is!!! LOL

So my day is not governed and ordered by these two hours anymore, I don’t have to smile when I don’t feel like it and I can give myself a chance to breathe again. I came to this island to find myself and to try and understand why I have been the way I have been. I cannot do that when I have to be everything for everybody else! I was coming home with everyones problems on my mind. The command to ‘Go down deep’ I thought was something to do with a possibility of a song as the lyrics flowed and indeed a song did emerge about a mining community – it is very good – but that is not what the command meant.

I was to ‘Go down deep’ within myself. Now I have the time, space and vision to try and do just that. I can now choose when I want to see people and interact – today is a bad day for example, I feel weak, dejected, tired but not unhappy. I hadn’t thought about God for a while and reading a work by a Kabbalist – Moses Chaim Luzzato – (Ramchal) -138 openings of wisdom, gave me great joy again and I felt like it was going to be a lonely path, this discovering self, but essential. The people I normally interact with would mainly not understand, most people would not dwell so deep. I am realising that I am not like others. Yes, I can make small talk and I am interested in how peoples lives are going but most would not have the time nor the inclination to do the work. As usual Carl Jung’s Red Book speaks when I and others can’t…

Instruction 249 -

It is no small matter to acknowledge one’s yearning. For this many need to make a particular effort at honesty. All too many do not want to know where their yearning is, because it would seem to them impossible or too distressing. And yet yearning is the way of life. If you do not acknowledge your yearning, then you do not follow yourself but go on foreign ways that others have indicated to you. So you do not live your life but an alien one. But who should live your life if you do not live it? It is not only stupid to exchange your own life for an alien one, but also a hypocritical game, because you can never really live the life of others, you can only pretend to do it, deceiving the other and yourself since you can only live your own life. If you give up your self you live it in others; thereby you become selfish to others, and thus you deceive others. Everyone thus believes that such a life is possible. It is, however, only apish imitation. Through giving in to your apish appetite, you infect others, because the ape stimulates the apish. So you turn yourself and others into apes. Through reciprocal imitation you live according to the average expectation. The image of the hero was set up for all in every age through the appetite for imitation.Therefore the hero was murdered, since we have all been aping him. Do you know why you cannot abandon apishness? For fear of loneliness and defeat.

To live oneself means: to be one’s own task. Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself, it will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself then you do not begin with the best and the highest,but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are reluctant to live yourself. The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified…

So are you an ape? I have been, but now I want to change… this is and will be a lonely path for me but I hope to be rewarded with many mysteries, lost treasure and the ultimate aim of knowing truly, who I am.

When completed, the tubes will be solid mesh to stop the dormice falling out.

Solid mesh? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

Also, when you watch the video, it shows the mesh tubes but at the end I guess the poor ‘ole dormice will have to practice a little bit of metal tight-rope walking to get to the post so they can clamber down. It reminds me of the mousetrap game I had as a kid! It also seems important that dormice ‘talk’ with each other… Oh God… if I hadn’t have chuckled at this news item I would have torn my own fingernails off! Watch video HERE

Are you good at sulking? Do you think you could complete a Sulkathon? Then turn up at Cardiff City Hall, on Friday, between 1 & 2pm. Read news item HERE

Finally – roadkill beer… read news article HERE (the third article down)

In the last major election this year someone asked me why I wasn’t voting – I told them ‘It doesn’t matter who you vote for, they are all the same’ the agenda has been planned for decades, well executed by clever men in positions of extreme power and manipulation.

We – the ‘Sheeple’ have allowed it to happen. In small ways and in big. It is not our fault but it is our fault. To stand up against the crowd requires courage and stupidity, it is not the norm for every person to make a difference, not everyone can be a Martin Luther King, yet we are required to be just that if we want to be free. So slowly and carefully engineered, we gradually lost our rights to do anything in this Country and in fact in many countries across the world. We have this Government because we chose it. None of us stopped working when the troops went into Iraq… none of us stopped paying our Council Taxes when ‘our’ various industries became privatised, buses, trains, Post Office.

We all think that the Government surely has our best interests at heart? We are shackled by mortgage repayments that were produced out of thin air, the money didn’t exist in the first place, brought to our knees by credit so that we have to work to pay back our debts – all this makes us a ‘bought nation’ we could never stop work or we could not pay our debts. We allowed the Government to take away our right to strike. Our children HAVE to attend school by LAW and slowly the clamps came down, as more and more power over our children’s future is in the hands of the Government.

We have been bought and sold and so have our children, before they are even out of the womb.

The Television has become our guide and the massive advertising campaigns have become our conscience. Those of us who don’t watch this brainwashing rubbish don’t fit in society, we cannot talk about what was on TV last night. We will become ever more outsiders, considered ‘ODD’ that we don’t conform.

So I ask you to now read Nick Cleggs Speech on freedom and bear in mind that this has been manipulated from the very beginning, they always intended for our freedom to be taken so that ‘they could give it back to us’ – oh so magnanimously! Oh how they now care about us!

I also hate being called a citizen.

The human race is on a treadmill and we smile as we ascend, only to find that it drops us in a big pit at the end.

Read Nick Cleggs Speech – HERE

Apparently, ‘midges target their victims by sensing carbon dioxide in exhaled breath and other odours associated with their targets.’ When they have finished sucking (the saliva they inject is what causes the irritation) they secrete a pheromone  which informs other midges that a ‘free meal’ is available!

So – I’m going to try not breathing through my mouth and other odours, I can only presume, must be sweat? Shame it’s not farting, what a great excuse I would have for farting in shops, at dinner parties, on public transport…

The Scottish Midge forecast is quite useful – click HERE – on the site you can also buy ‘Smidge’ which is supposed to offer 8 hours of waterproof protection… Avons ‘Oh So Soft’ lotion has also been tried and tested by the U.S. Army.

Smoke is also a good deterrent – Queen Victoria is reputed to have smoked cigarettes on her Highland jaunts for that reason!

I think it’s time to buy a midge hat to confound the wee fellas… 17th August… I mixed a few drops of camomile oil in base oil and applied that to the bites, that did the job, totally soothed the bites…

Alleluia Hand

Gravelly bearded and crusted
Gray ash-like soiled crumpled
I stand
Barely
Hungry with famished surroundings
terror of life in gangs, shining fangs
That draw blood
Others
Fear, a struggle that bolts
Like laughter long gone
I hang onto that alleluia hand
It tells me I’m not alone for now
A walking wake, searching
Hopeless but not in vain
a small grub of taste hardly
Reaching
Silent silver blood from a gun
Stops tracks
I have my ‘alleluia’ hand
as comfort
for now
Another, shapeless form
Heads towards nowhere
blinded by ageless sight
another ‘alleluia’ hand
He forms a smile
for now
shabby earth once noble in colour,
dead, dusty, violent
running with monsters
once shared a mall
I stare down at the
alleluia hand
It still remains
but frail
true but slipping away
mucous coughing grips
a soiled lung with blood
Poppa, Poppa – no
The ‘Alleluia’ hand is still

That hand I gripped and under breath
I whispered – alleluia – you have found rest
Swirling, shapes of misery
Linger, longing, forming
My future, a man

When I look in the mirror I don’t see a fat person yet I am considerably overweight but when I look at photographs of myself I am really shocked at how big I am! It’s obvious I don’t see myself as a fat person because often I don’t allow for my size, I bump into things as I misjudge spaces/sizes I can fit through.

Isn’t it funny how nearly everyone hates photos of themselves? Yet we live with ourselves everyday, in our skin and body we hold that precious centre or soul, we might even be married which should make us feel that someone wants to spend the rest of their life with me and in a privileged condition, but we don’t think about that, at least most of the time.

Also when we have that photograph taken it is generally at a happy occasion when we were supposed to be having fun or in the least doing something special but we look back and hate or dislike  the image of ourselves. We would never allow someone to take our photo when we are feeling depressed or having a bad hair day so that must mean that we always want people to see us at what we think is our best. Yet when we are married, that person is allowed to see us at our very worst, and we them – it’s like wearing make-up, I never understood why women wear so much of it, don’t they think that at some point they will be seen without it? Or do men just accept the two faces of his woman? If I was a man I would not choose a woman highly made-up!

I can never imagine what it must be like to not be able to see myself  in a mirror, they are always around but I wonder how society would change if we didn’t have mirrors or photographs – if we were suddenly without them – what would change? The image given to people everyday of HOW they should look would be a thing of the past. It’s amazing how surrounded we are by images – all staring back at us, making us want, believe, adore and lust – being a photographer the phrase ‘The camera never lies’ is true but it’s what we do with them afterwards when we develop them, adjust light, colour, contrast, even effects like Black and White affect the original mood the photo was taken in!

So maybe we don’t trust the photograph to be honest or do we trust the mirror to be honest… beauty is in the eye of the beholder? We already know that if we ask our other half  how we look we often don’t get honesty… plastic surgery, nip and tuck, botox as we try to mould and fashion ourselves into a new creation not being happy with the one given to us.

So – most of us are not happy with what comes back to us in the mirror. What would make us happy? What happens when we get old and no longer have need of looking good for others… is truth only possible then?

We stopped to see the vibrating pole that doesn’t vibrate anymore! It’s a pole in the ground that we noticed was slightly vibrating, when you put your hand on it you could feel it but not tonight – we laughed wondering why it vibrated last time we went walking.

I looked up to see the stars, it was partially cloudy, a very bright star was overhead and as I pointed this out to hubby another EXTREMELY bright star appeared as if out of nowhere, turned slightly so you could see another brighter side of it and then faded. The other star was still shining brightly. It was quite strange as it seemed to get brighter and then fade, we thought praps some cloud had covered it but we hung around and when the clouds had passed there was nothing there! This was not a moving object so it wasn’t a satellite.

Have you noticed that you do certain things or approach people the same way you did in the past? Has the way you dealt with living changed at all or do you not think it needs to change? Do we still act as though we are teenagers in some areas, having never learnt from the trials that life has dealt us? Do people still have the ability to hurt us in the same way as they did many years ago even though we ourselves are actually stronger in character? Can we change and be stronger in character without learning about ourselves?

These sort of questions have been my study… helped enormously by learning from Carl Jung – not just his spiritual life experiences but his works in studying analytical psychology. His theories have helped me understand female and male relationships and why we interact as we do. A particular theory I like is anima and animus. The animus is the female part of the unconscious mans psyche and the anima the male part of the unconscious female psyche, part of the collective unconscious that we all share.

…The anima and animus can influence a person in either a positive or negative manner. If a man is under the influence of the positive anima he will show tenderness, patience, consideration, and compassion. The negative anima manifests as vanity, moodiness, bitchiness, and sensitivity to hurt feelings. A woman with a positive animus shows assertiveness, control, thoughtful rationality, and compassionate strength. The negative animus reveals in strong opinions, ruthlessness, destructive forces, and “always the last word”. Both men and women are on the path to their own integration and must struggle with the interpersonal ramifications of the anima and the animus…

So we are in control of our anima or animus? Not at all!! How many times have we had an argument with a loved one and felt at the time that we are totally in the right? Only to find later that perhaps we went a bit too far or were totally wrong? I know I certainly have! Jung says that sometimes the only way a man can break through his wife’s anima is to ‘take her’ – this allows the strength of the man over the woman to come through in perhaps an aggressive/loving way resulting in a non-resistance from the female – this seems somewhat caveman like but I bet many women would be calmed down by this method! I’ve heard women say that ‘make-up sex’ is the best kind of sex…

And how many times have women said ‘he’s in touch with his feminine side’ but quite often you never hear the opposite ‘She’s on touch with her masculine side’… Men like Leonard Cohen are considered sex symbols by women because they show a very feminine part of their selves – he writes about love but is dark and mysterious… he is in touch with his feminine side but that doesn’t make him homosexual and then the opposite is admired in a man – say for example – Jean Claude van Damme because of his obvious physical strength and fitness.

For me especially, something happened to me as a child, I won’t go into detail but it has affected me and my relationships as I became adult. I have had a chance to slowly come to terms with it as work and time constraints on me have been lifted. I didn’t want to keep going through life feeling the same way and acting the same way as I have – I am not whole because of it – and truly becoming me is one of the most important things I want to learn. Having a psycho-analytically trained husband helps… but I have also been studying how I feel, what I dream, why I do what I do. It will take time to fully integrate what I have learned I know but now I feel as if I’m on the right track.

Understanding self is important work but first comes the awareness that we need to understand ourselves or even want to change, if change is required, I’m sure it is as we all have something to learn from our behaviour to ourselves and others.

Do we have habits that should have been broken/integrated years ago? Do we habitually have the same response every time we meet someone? I know someone who does this and sometimes I don’t answer him just to see if he realises that he has come out with the same response to seeing me AGAIN! And how often do we speak when we don’t actually need to? Are we happy with silence? Do we talk over others? Do we allow people to hurt us? Do we hurt when someone seems to be getting at us?

Shakti Gawain makes a very valid point… no-one can hurt you unless you have already said the same thing about yourself…

Anyway – without going into too much depth and Jung can say it better than me – I recommend a look at ‘SELF’