Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

As i sit here writing, my elder son sits at my shoulder, asking questions about cyberspace and facebook and bebo. He is asking me what is the difference between bebo and facebook and which is better and what is the difference. I was hoping to have woken at 5.30 to write, but the alarm i set was wrong and it sent be straight back to sleep. They were harps, and i suppose harps i not what you need to dig you outta bed at 5.30 in the morning. I also had a really weird dream last night. Dreams. I dreamt i was giving birth again, or about to give birth. I had a baby in my arms and i laid it on the bed and then i felt i was going to give birth. I looked down at my tummy but it was not large or anything, but then my waters broke and i thought, right, here it goes. I woke when i discovered that i had no contractions and discovered that i wasn't giving birth after all, which instead as coming as a relief, was more disturbing than comforting. I also dreamt i was on a bus in Singapore, with a ...

Yes yes yes.... i did not update my blog for over a month. This is probably symptomatic of my life at work at the moment. I am making a new short video about the important wildlife value we have here in NI, sorry that's shockingly bad grammar, and speaking of bad grammar, i have literally this moment discovered why reading documents written by civil servants and policy wogs is soul destroying - it is not only the jargon they use but the shockingly poor grammar. Nothing about it enlivens the soul. Why is that? Why can't we write beautiful policy? if we wrote beautiful policy more people would be interested in the way we ran things. It would actually be soul enlivening, not the other way round, when you sat down to read a piece of research or a bill. At my age i am utterly impatient with pomposity and can spot it miles off. At my age as well people seem to choose to go one way or another. To either keep it real and being honest with themselves and the world around them, or to pro...

It's a crazy blowy day out there, but that's not why my heart is sinking. I have downloaded an Excel spreadsheet budget and it is extremely daunting. There are at least 100 columns to populate and each of these columns has at least half a day's reaseach behind them. Some of them are smaller, of course. But many of them are things like taxes and cost of running cars, which i have no knowledge about. Peter and i are meeting on Friday week and i'm trying to help us get things in order. Many years ago Peter did a spreadsheet just like this one... sigh... At least we don't do the health club thing any longer. That's good. That's £2,000 savings. In many ways i'm looking forward to having this all shiny and beautiful, but until then...

It's been such a six months. Over that time i have really wrestled with the difficult personalities i have written about. I paryed to the universe for answers and i willed and willed and willed dreams that would help me... and then, something strange happened... I was sleeping in the spare room because of a cough, when i spied Bruce Lee's (of all things) The Tao of Jeet Kun Do. What the hell, i thought, i'll see what's in it... and there was how to apply the philosophy of the Tao to kung fu. And the more i read it, the more i realised how much the Tao made sense to me. And that got me reading the Tao Te Ching again, properly and i found that it pressed some reset button in me. I began occupying a space that was both there but also not there. It sounds so ridiculous because it cannot be put into words. It is simply not even a feeling, but a realisation that flows so that it is never still, which enables me to engage but in a gentle and strong way. An effective one as wel...

Attain the ultimate emptiness Hold on to the truest tranquility The myriad things are all active I therefore watch their return Everything flourishes; each returns to its root Returning to the root is called tranquility Tranquility is called returning to one's nature Returning to one's nature is called constancy Knowing constancy is called clarity Not knowing constancy, one recklessly causes trouble Knowing constancy is acceptance Acceptance is impartiality Impartiality is sovereign Sovereign is Heaven Heaven is Tao Tao is eternal The self is no more, without danger This is from the Tao and i don't know if it works, but it resonates very deeply with me. Everytime i read the Tao i come back to myself. It is as if someone pushes a reset button and i stop all the frantic worrying. I am my cheerful, happy, and i'd like to think effective self one more. I have limitless amounts of energy, patience and love, i am the ineffable female. It is a good place to be.