Bloganuary Prompt: How Are You Brave

2nd January 2023

How am I brave?

That’s an interesting question. We rarely think about how brave we are – some of us may think a lot of how fearful we are. Fearful of so many different things.

When I was a little girl, my world was turned upside down and I became very aware of how things can change so fast and so irrevocably.

I hadn’t realised that there would be strategies put into place by my unconscious mind to ‘protect’ me. This protection has kept itself intact for many years.

I would never have put the label ‘brave’ on the things I have done, chosen, become, probably due to the remarks and comments of those in authority over me: those decision makers who were only thinking of my own good… in reality it was the most accommodating for them.

There was something in my character, something I have come to call my Maverick Self, my Mother called it dumb defiance.

Although I may not have been totally sure in Primary School what I wanted to do, most of the time it was staying in the cupboard under the stairs (yes, it happened for real) reading my ‘Tell Me Why’ magazine and playing with my desk and chalkboard: I wasn’t really welcome in the bedroom I shared with my elder Sister, she being 10 years my senior. There were many reasons we didn’t get on, the most valid of which I didn’t get to hear about it until a few years ago.

I have just followed my gut to a certain extent. Though the word ‘compulsion’ does come into it somewhere.

Not sure about the consequences, not really paying attention to them, I lived in the moment more often than not. It was in my early childhood I learned the craft of dissociation. The understanding that things could happen and my consciousness would not be there was an acceptable thing.

I use it a lot for pain management these days. It also allows the process of journeying – I am used to ‘leaving’ so it was easy for me to go into a trance… at the beginning though it wasn’t so easy to figure out where I was supposed to be going; that took practice.

There have been many Caves I have been reticent to go into. It was the knowing that the answers lay within that was the push I needed to get me in there.

So many secrets, so many Caves.

In Shamanic Practice there are Guides, Spirit Animal also known as Power Animals. Each of these comes to connect with us throughout our lives, some will be known as Totem animals and they are the mainstay, others come for specific issues, adventures… Caves.

You may already know about the Wolf being a mystical, magical force and this is very true in this belief system.

Wolf is known as ‘The Pathfinder’ in the real world the Wolf travels in both night and day, they cross the ‘tween times (a very magical time and space) they are family oriented, but also can be lone nomads without Pack.

The Pathfinder will guide us to the ‘roads less travelled’ they will show us the way to the Cave we seek; and even though we may not be aware of their existance we somehow all ways know to seek the Cave.

We are all brave in different ways, we are not consciously aware of it most of the time… if we thought about it, we might not push through the challenges that are coming our way.

Due, I suppose to all the Caves I have been into when dis-ease came I mobilised my defences. Everything I had learned through travelling those Paths, all of my training in Veterinary work and in Shamanic work was brought to the fore.

I made conscious choices and took my Husband with me in those decisions.

Each day was it’s own, it would come and what came with it would be done by bedtime

I refused to identify with it – it would never be spoken or thought of as ‘my dis-ease’

I researched as much as I could on the mind / matter field and found Huna

Only the people who HAD to know about it were told and they were few and far between.

All the resources and allies I could muster were brought on board.

I got through it all, there were some lasting side effects of the medical treatment, these were helped by all that was brought during the challenges we faced, my Husband was with me throughout, supporting me by letting me do what I had to do and be the way I needed to be.

I came to realise that I had been preparing for this all of my life. All the Caves were holding the resources that came into their own at the time they were most needed.

How am I brave?

I am brave due to the belief that I have the will and the power to overcome those challenges that come my way. I am brave by using the knowledge I have gained in life or seeking out that which I do not have yet. I am brave as I know that pain passes, I understand that we are all stronger than we are taught to think we are.

I am a Pathfinder by nature. I have that energy. I will go into the Cave because I can and I know that what is in there be it Bear or other, that Cave is there for me, to teach me how to go forward in this World.

How Do You Feel When You Look At The Stars?

How does anyone feel when we can see a night sky? Diamond bright pinpoints of light; some older than our own planet, wink and twinkle suspended above us, as we marvel and endeavour to make sense of what and why it is all happening.

That is, if we take time to notice at all.

At the time of my birth, the Plough, or the Great Bear [Ursa Major] was in the Sky. Little Bear following on [Ursa Minor] has since become an inspiration to me for a story of how a Mother and Cub became constellations. It intrigues me as to how any Constellations formed.

Chaos. That was the state of play at the time of the Big Bang; was it not?

It is said the Greeks first looked at the Sky and tracked the ‘wandering lights’ calling them ‘Planets’ they may have in the Western Hemisphere, it is however just as possible that the Mayans were tracking those stars too, even earlier in time. We have less evidence for that since the data on that was destroyed by Conquistadors and the Priesthood sent from Spain to relieve the Natives of their Gold and replace it with something less than was evidently good for them.

We are not the only beings that look to the night skies, the Wolf sings to the Moon, letting the other members of the Pack they are there. The lone Wolf also sings to the Moon and the Stars.

Birds and even Butterflies and Moths, Cetaceans and so many other creatures are mindful of the night skies.

It is only at certain phases of the moon, in certain seasons that the seas become a massive nursery of new life.

How do they know? How do they calculate the right time, the right phase? It’s as if they have an inner clock that is energetically wired to the changes happening around them.

We had that.

We still have that, we just find it hard to find it and release it from the cubby hole of gunk and stuff and technology and stresses. If we bother to look for it at all.

Even though it’s muffled chimes ring on, under it all.

We don’t look up.

We don’t see anything beyond a rectangle of technology, that is our world now.

Shall we one day, instead raise our eyes to the Sky again and wonder at it’s magnificence? Will we still know the mythology of the constellations? Shall we understand the dying light of stars long dead, shines still as it traverses distances that we cannot conceive?

Shall we look up and know that is where we began?

What is it to understand that we are the stuff of Stars? How does that translate to mundane tasks like paying the Taxman, paying rent, paying….and working in order to pay…?

When we dream are we dreaming on beams of Starlight? Is it memory? The being in the deepest of darks, our way lit only by those pin spots, themselves now only the stuff of dreams, since never discovered, never charted we can only see an impression of what and where they were; their existance shown by the beacon of bright energy diminishing as it travels to the ends of the Universe.

How is it, to conceive of that? The magnitude of it all?

How do I feel when I look at the Stars? Humbled, connected, a part of and apart from, small, a speck of dust from one, the only evidence of it’s existance… Powerful that this element is within me. Consciously aware of the knowledge that I am, here, now, a being who is all of this and more.

Purposeful and joyful and sad all at once.

I seek the moon, I seek the Plough, I breathe in the night air, I open my throat and I HOWL ! I celebrate the night Sky I celebrate being. I call upon any with the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the heart to love and the will to walk forward.

Such a feeling is that.

Bloganuary: Describe Yourself As A Tree

Shamans & Trees

There’s a lot of Folklore and Magick centred around Trees. Faeries live in them and or their roots. Dryads merge with them to hide in plain sight. The Faerie Forest is filled with stories of magical, mystical things

So how do I choose to be as one tree? There is of course that ONE tree – the Tree Of The World Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil the treewhich stands in the Middle World and whose branches reach out over the 9 realms and is the centre of the Cosmos, holding it all together; in Viking Lore if the tree falls all the realms fall with it.

Trees and creation stories. Trees; they are ubiquitous in the tales of our being. There is tell of a saying about knowing the Shamans of the World, they are the birds who sit on the topmost outer branches of the tree. They share the tree with the other birds but they sit apart, on the highest, outermost, exposed branches. This is a paraphrase and more of my take on what was written. It is true though. There are many of us who are a part of, and still apart from our relative communities.

To be a tree. It is my wish to be a tree. I can do this when I leave this earthly plane. The physical part of me can nourish the roots of a new tree.

I admire the fae-ish Silver Birch, who can be seen shiny-bright under the Moon; standing elegant tall and silent strong.

The chitter chatter of Faeries in the Hawthorn, from the sleepy roots to the bustling branches, there is so much magic in this tree. So much magic that the lone Faerie Thorn is never disturbed for fear of the incumbant Fae taking their revenge.

If you have ever been travelling in Ireland and Scotland and have viewed a lone tree, in a field or on a roundabout, or in the middle of a bypass and thought to yourself, ‘I wonder how that got to be there.’ Then it is possible that what you are looking at is a Faerie Hawthorn Tree.

The mythology around these trees is well known to the older generations, and is being lost as time goes on, however, the legends come back to the fore when roadways, buildings and land purchases are being made and one is found to be somewhere in the picture. The power of the apocryphal stories involving the repurcussions of uprooting these trees is impressive.

The sturdy steadfast Oak. The magical choice of Druid lore and mistletoe. The Seasonal Sentinel of Ancestral knowledge and more. A tree whose age is measured in epochs, whose roots are the anchors of time.

The Mountain Ash AKA the Rowan Tree, a Spiritual Guardian and tool of the Druids, (they did a lot with Trees and have a whole calendar based around them). It’s a resilient little tree and the berries feed the birds long into the late Autumn, those Druids used those berries and the bark to dye ritual clothing black for lunar ceremonies. It’s known in Scotland as a protector against enchantment and Witchcraft. It has mythologies globally. For such an unasuming tree it has a massive place in Cultural history across the World.

The Eucalyptus, the comeback kid, from raging fires this tree returns Phoenix like from the ashes.

There are so many, so many that I could write a book about the relative merits and stories of them all.

Which wood I choose?

In my garden I have Acers, Japanese Maples in pots. One day it is my wish that I have a garden of my own in which they can grow. A peaceful medatative space. I have a deep connection with these trees since I have watched them grow and helped to nurture them along.

That is one thing.

My way of thinking is that when we remember what the Tree is, what they do, and how they are the lungs of the Earth, then we might be more respectful of them. We might be even more respectful when we can think of ourselves as Trees. Connected, communal, beautiful, healing and having a World wide connective root system, so each knows what is happening to another from anywhere in the World. The hosts of Dryads and Elemental beings. The source of the homes we build, the fuel we might use to heat those homes, the fuel on which we might cook the food we eat. They even feed our animals too. They give us shade in the Summertime and protect us from wind and so much more. They are hospitable friends who we have taken for granted for so long.

There is a song by KailashKokopelli , ‘I Am A Walking Tree https://youtu.be/MQwG1vfM4lw and so I am already a Tree – a walking tree.

Shamanically the Tree represents the 3 Worlds, Upper, Middle, and Lower Worlds. These Worlds that we can connect to.

Let’s be Walking Trees together.

How Are You Changing The World?

Think about it. The question today is, ‘How are you changing the World?

I am thinking that there are many of us who have no clue that what they do everyday has any effect on the bigger picture at all. Also that there are too many things to be worrying about than the ‘bigger picture’.

We are in an interesting position at the moment. Globally we have the same issues.

How we are adressing those issues is not the same.

Individually, culturally and economically we are not seeing the same things the same way.

At the moment we are seeing the need for survival. It’s what we are being shown, globally. What we are not shown is what is deemed okay to put on the back burner for the forseeable future; while we deal with this issue in front of us.

Just because it’s on the ‘back burner’ doesn’t mean it’s not going to burn!

The way the media works in the 21st Century, is a bit like a spider’s web. It’s complex, it has it’s own beauty, it feeds its builder and it traps prey. Once caught in the sticky threads the food source is sent into a coma; it is then exsanguinated at the Spider’s leisure. The dish of the day had no inkling that what it was getting into was going to have such a consequence, but now there are so many other cocoons, cut aways, discards; deftly sliced out of the web and left dessicated, finished with. Old News. The dish of the day was only looking for new sources of food itself, bright shiny new things to consume…

There are some, some who are aware and awake to what is on the ‘back burner’ and they do their best to give it a stir, put the gas on a peep, look after the sustanence for the Diners who wait to be fed… there is a menu, and that menu is written by those who are in charge of the Kitchen. Those who will decide how the food is sourced. The quality, how it will be prepared and if it can be replaced by something similar but not quite as good. After all those Diners, they don’t know the difference and so the top tables will be given the meat and the others will get the offal. The menu is not the same for all, but the idea is.

The awake and aware Sous Chefs are trying hard to make sure that the food that goes out is as good quality and well cooked across the board. They don’t have access to the ordering of the ingredients. They don’t have the contacts to the buyers, they are not ‘qualified’ to be in that strata. They themselves have to eat the offal even thought they prep the meat. They themselves know where the ingredients are coming from and how they have been treated, but they don’t believe they have a voice. They are so few…

One ingredient, one idea, doesn’t fill the bellies of all Cultures. There are many wonderful ingredients to be found in many different Cultures. Many menu setters are just leaving them off the menu entirely so that the Diners have no clue that their choices are being funnelled into one main dish of the day. There are many ‘food critics’ who wax lyrical about the ‘dish of the day’ in whichever of the main restaraunts they frequent. They can tell everyone how good this diet is, how wonderfully sustaining and appetising it is. How it will keep them healthy, happy and rich. At the top table at least, for they are the ones writing the menues. They are not the ones eating stuff they serve.

The main foodstuff is fast food. For those not at the top table (those who sell it, but won’t actually eat it) it is readily available all over the World, almost. For those other tables and the Kitchen porters, they are the ones whose livelihoods depend on those who write the menues. They are the ones who are told they must give up their own cuisine and only eat THIS from now on. They must stop being who they are, leave their wonderful recipes behind, see them destroyed and the source of their ingredients taken and destroyed also. The Source of the food, the Source of the sustenance, the Source of our being is tossed around from Top table to Top table….

Complete co-operation, equal,sustained & inclusive of Cultures which remain undisturbed by dogma

There are voices coming from those ‘kitchens’. There are some changes on menues available in parts of the World that we are getting to hear about; a soupcon here and there. There are some of the ‘old ways’ being brought back into our conscious awareness. The increase of some appetites are being shown to be gluttony personified.

We are not just not seeing the demise of freedoms we are not seeing the demise of indigenous cultures and many of them have been subsumed by dogmatic ideals that have deemed them ineffective as they don’t fit the factory fodder of fast food, ideological meal deal chains.

One of the definitions of the word Shaman, is ‘the one with eyes to see in the Dark’ well the lights in the restaurant are dimming… many Shamanic Cultures have been shown the door, many have been sent to prison and starved of their sustenance… a food that can feed and aid the World, as every Culture in the World has known the recipies themselves.

How am I changing the World? I have begun with myself. How I think, how I perceive that my individual choices gather together with others and become an avalanche of ‘stuff’. Each of us makes choices daily, on what we buy, where it comes from and how ‘convenient’ or cheap it is for us. We make choices on what we are told we ‘need’ not on what we actually require to live. That’s what we see. We as Human beings are all near sighted in that respect. We are kept that way so we keep the Top Table full and replete at every meal.

A while ago in the UK there was an advert for a Union. Whether you agree with Unions or not is not the point here. What they showed there; is.

This is the ad, https://youtu.be/iewSJ6nTEv4 Everyone has a voice, everyone has a choice, everyone can be ignored as a individual. When we pay attention and we get more voices to join us….

If Music Be The Food Of Love

The prompt for today is Music and the question is ‘what’s on your playlist?’

Being an older personage and having an eclectic taste in music there is more off my playlist than on it. That is not to say that what is not on it is not favoured…more that the storage capacity of my phone just can’t handle the list!

From Beethoven to the Beatles, from Jim Croce to Eddison Lighthouse, from A – Z from the 1920’s all the way to now there are songs and memories attached to those songs and pieces of music. I remember Mozart’s 40th symphony getting into the charts when I was still quite young, 1971 as it happens. The year before All Things Must Pass, was released, though my introduction to it took a wee bit longer to occur.

Music can be an all consuming passion. It certainly manages to transport us TARDIS like as within the notes, lyrics and melodies are the hooks to faces, places, times, events, loves found and loves lost. Bitter Sweet Symphonies indeed. There is so much of our lives in the music, like touchstones, each song is a memory, a feeling, a place in Space and Time.

All Things Must Pass is a treasured box of memories. It is also a good thing to remember. Impermanence, even now I wonder how many songs are not on my list that hold pieces of my life’s experience.

Shall I seek them out, or wait to be surprised while listening to a radio show sometime?

For me there is less music that is new. The compulsion to have everything, all the time, in a gadget does not fill me with glee.

I would rather dance myself into trance with James Asher’s Shaman’s Drums than listen to ads with musical interludes.

The Salve of Solitude

Solitude is a state of mind and being for me.

I can be in a space with anything from one other to 500 or more and still be in a state of solitude. I believe that we are in that state naturally. It is a sense of Self, not of being alone or overlooked. That is not solitude that is loneliness – as I see it.

The mind is a Universe of solitude. For some it becomes filled with fast moving thoughts and ideas, inspirational blasts of energy spark off, firework like, and they find it nigh on impossible to close the door on those intrusions.

Yes, the mind is our Universe, our very own.

We can travel light years in the time it takes to have the notion. Somewhere on the other side of the Universe, the mirror of that reflects the very same notion.

We have such power, such a wealth of Resource and yet we actively, voluntarily chain ourselves to dogma. Dogma that is not even our own, but handed down in whispers each keeper adding or subtracting from the original so there is nought but the skeleton of the message left for us to make some kind of sense.

Therefore I travel within my Universe. I will look for and sometimes find another Universe that is at one with my own, not the same, similar in it’s make up.

I suspect that there have been many who have discovered the solitude of the mind lately. It has been recorded that this cessation of constant chatter, for some has caused distress. They have forgotten to remember the natural state of solitude in the womb, even when there are multiples, each one is its own Being. Each one nourished by one umbilical cord to the Source.

Is it that which we seek so ardently? Are we always seeking that one Source? The solitude, peace and comfort, the fertile dark of the womb, do we look at Space and wonder how we connect to Source without a physical umbilical cord? Is that why people feel disconnected and lost now?

Source has always been manifested in the physical, but has all ways been metaphysical. The transferance of our Universal minds to a gadget, a search engine, has physicalised the miracle of the mind’s ability to seek out information and store it. There is now and has been for some time; outwardly focussed validation of Self, of identity. Solitude has not been sought for many as they see it as a vacuum. Perhaps a desert of being with just themselves. It makes no sense really to be afraid of oneself, and yet we are many of us, strangers to ourselves.

I go inside for solitude, and in that state I perceive and understand many wonderful things. I meditate on these and when I feel that I can take the hustle and bustle and noise of the other’s chaos of having to be seen to be popular and right and frenzied, then I will bring myself back to the party, oft times to hear someone say to me, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’ a vapid platitude to which I have been known to answer, ‘It just did’.

Shamanism Scotland

Truth, Myth & Everything Between is in the Story

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