Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Let us take a selfie using this flower Arjuna... Are you sure this will work? Breakfast and the Gita. Over the last few days i have been reading the Gita. There is just so much inside it which is tremendous. While we could say that the Bible, Old and New Testament clearly came from some sort of a source, the way it was put together certainly, with the Gita, you can only marvel at its depth and wisdom. It like the difference between looking at a log cabin and gazing at the Pyramids. How the hell did whoever it is who wrote it did it? Then it becomes clear, they can't have written it. It is like the Tao Te Ching. No ONE person could have written it - maybe passed it down from generation to generation, but what is contains, this ineffable wisdom - that is surpasses all our understanding. It is like asking who created the mountains and the rivers - who? The universe created the Gita, that's who. And this was us, at the dawn of time, taking down notes and passing it down to oth...

Aloe vera - a miracle plant Today was a great day, according to Ghin. We bounced out of bed, had breakfast, made our packed lunches and then headed to school. First in, fifteen minutes early, i prepared the classroom, get all the things we needed to do out and the day began. In fact today was so good that Ghin said to me, can i come to school early tomorrow, with you? Ghin is a true Capricon. He loves order, he loves regularity, he loves clarity and schedules. He loves to try really hard at everything he does, he loves many of the same things that i love - cheese, toast, great food. New tastes. Everything Ghin does has this solidity about it - there is no messing about with Ghin - we do it and do it properly. There is a crispness around the edges and a drive in his activity. He told Peter last year, you need to get pro cleaners for the house. That is Ghin. We are now writing in fountain pen in school. I love writing in fountain pen and the children were thrilled to finally be...

Full moon tonight It took me about 45 minutes to clean the house. As in hoover, do laundry, wash dishes, etc. And i feel now actually rather well. I am about to embark on some cooking and then i am going to do some organising - well more organising. If the weather holds, gardening of course. Unless i collapse suddenly, which i might, since i am actually fluey. Perhaps this well high will last all of two minutes. Let's see. I suppose i should feed the boys something other than cereal. ..... Since then i have pulled something in my back. I have been blessed with rude health all my life. I know this. I do not know why though. It may have something to do with becoming a fitness fanatic at the age of 15 and then continuing to run more or less, on or off all my life. I have small things that never last more than a few days each year. Migraines, depression, perpetual colds, back aches, etc - i have never had any of these things. I never understand how come people get ill and s...

White hair Today i am having downed time. When i am ill i clean the house (because i cannot bear being ill in a mess, it only makes me more ill and miserable) so today, as i was doing this, i wondered, do i get ill because the house is not clean, or do i need to have a clean house to feel better? The things people think about when they are hallucinating as they clean. The SUN has come out. It has definitely got to be the WARMEST winder on record. It already feels like spring even though technically it is two weeks away, and right now, sitting where i am, in the conservatory, it feels sort of late Feb, rather than late Jan. Who knows what the weather will bring, or indeed the year at this stage, but i AM glad that i did decide to take the day off, i feel better already. I am now experimenting with aloe vera. Over the Christmas holidays i repotted many of our indoor plants and the aloevera has really responded to the treatment. It has grown in a Little Shop of Horrors sort of w...

Beautiful things happen when we let them... Love to the people that check my blog to see if i am still alive... 

Wearing the oversized Bear Grylls coat that keeps me warm these days :-) 8.10 am. Wow, it's dark out there. Weird. I love it when it is dark outside and everything is quiet and a few houses have lights on. People are slowly getting up. Or maybe still in bed. I love being the only person stirring about the house. Putting dishes away. Making the coffee. Half boiling eggs. Last night still inside me, this morning still creeping in. Only the blackbirds and robins singing. Some rooks cawing as they wake each other up. The windows are wet with rain, the road too. There has not been dry ground since the middle of December. It has been raining and raining. And raining. Last weekend i felt blah. Mainly because it was that swing of the moon. However, as the week has worn on i am feeling better. Feeling more myself again, which is a relief. Being sanguine when i am miserable, i am completely miserable. But i don't do miserable for long. I am now good again. Man it is great...

Magic....  When i posted the photograph of Perambaran on Thursday, i did not know that bombs had gone off in Indonesia. When i heard that they had i was devastated and broken hearted. Indonesia is one of my favourite countries - or should i say places - in the entire world. I love it. The people there are so mixed up (as in culturally and racially) and kind and patient... (although there is this phenomenon called amok), and tolerant, and the culture there is so varied and rich. The landscape is the closest anyone would ever come to paradise on Earth, if it weren't for the terrible environmental disasters taking place there, and the language and art is second to none. Indonesians are also canny, really smart, very inventive and extremely entrepreneurial. The average Singaporean businessman would not last five minutes in Jakarta. Unfortunately Indonesia is also prone to corruption and the politicians are exploitative. That has always been Indonesia's problem. It is a coun...

Living by the sweat of our brow Salt crystals have long been a metaphor for love - in fairy tales, a third princess says, I love you as much as fresh meat loves salt... It is also interesting that they have a cross for balance in the middle - as above, so below I am now finally reading The Incarnation of Ahriman . Ahriman is the force of materialism. I first heard about Ahriman about six years ago. I asked, so, is it supposed to be metaphorical? Nope, it is literal. It is literally the devil. Satan, to be precise. This is the bloke who asked Jesus, if you are God then turn the stones into bread. That is when Jesus says, Man does not live by bread alone... So - since then, i have wondered, if there is a difference between a metaphor and a literal being or beings... ahrimanic beings are supposed to be beings of pain. They feel so much of pain because they want to be human beings but cannot be - the cannot have physical bodies. So they cool their pain through the intellect and they ...

I try and play the piano everyday. This is Beethoven's Sonata in F. There seems to be some progresss.

Thor and the Midgard Serpent People think that the Earth is meant to support us. This is sort of like saying, we have children so that they can support us in our old age. I know some parents still think that - their children have a duty to look after them when they are very old. Children don't have to do ANYTHING. You however have a duty to the child. This is the way i think of the Earth. We are actually not the children of the Earth - we are the guardians of the Earth. We are its parents. We are here to help transform it into a place of love. Which is why it is in the state it is in, in the first place. To say that, oh the Earth is a mess and therefore we should just not do anything about it, is like saying, ah well this house is a mess and i won't clean it up. It is stupid and pointless to sort things out, we should just add to the mess. I know that it is troublesome and exhausting, BUT, there is also so much to learn and the SATISFACTION of learning it - this may inclu...

A friend sent me an article, in a lecture by Steiner. In it Steiner talks about the creation of the human being by the hierarchies and then says, the last bit is our Ego. Our Ego was created by the Lords of Form and what we are supposed to do with our Ego is to take the Wisdom in the cosmos and transform it using our Ego into love. He uses the phrase, the force of love. When we do this, we sort of pay it forward - we pay it forward for successive generations to then continue this work. (The Ego is not the usual ego use of the word ego which means selfish - but the self, the unique individuality in all of space and time which is you and I. The part of us which is eternal, transcendent and touches on the divine.) Steiner speaks of this as a scientific fact. This is really what is happening in the world around us. We need to do this work or we will be lost. While we are doing this work he says the forces of Lucifer and Ahriman will make is as hard for us as possible because they d...

I am now reading At the Gates of Spiritual Science , having left off the Incarnation of Ahriman , because I was in the middle of At the Gates . This is the lecture of the book Steiner wrote An Outline of Esoteric Science . The book is sometimes called An Outline of Occult Science . First, I must clarify that Occult is used in its original sense - Hidden - not Black Magic. And now the recognition that there is a spiritual element in our lives is slowly coming back. Sometimes it is very confused, but it is coming back. For instance, only yesterday I heard a lecture given by some American Buddhist academic, highly decorated with lots and lots of PhDs to his name (it is so exhausting listening to Americans list their credentials sometimes), he was saying, in the past psychology would not acknowledge religion, but now it is unthinkable that this is the case, citing the innumerable books on psychology which now use Mindfulness. Anyway, I have seen it myself. I was in that transition. In the...

Kepler's polyhydera Well, yesterday i went to Ikea with Ghin. We got a new bookshelf for the room because they have so many books that the tiny bookshelf i got them fourteen years ago has ceased to be of any use about thirteen years ago. It was inevitable that the children would have a book collection to rival our own and between the intervening years the books were kept in various places in the room - making a worse and worse mess as time went by. So yesterday, as i cleaned the room and tried organising the bookshelf, for the first time ever, i realised, the boys need a new bookshelf. How come i never realised this earlier, i do not know. So off to Ikea i pootled with Ghin in tow. Ikea was not busy - however it was busy by the time we left. It was just before midday and we managed to get everything we needed before 12.15. A simple Billy bookcase. I also got a frame and some hyacinth. The former because we needed to frame some pictures i have been finding around the house, ...

St Cecelia and the Angels I have completed rereading Steiner's lecture collected entitled Guardian Angels . It was only when i got to the end that i realised i had read it before - read it, had no idea what to make of it and then left it. It was ALL TOO WEIRD. But since then, three years have elapsed, and i have read and experienced a lot more since. Last year, in the throes of its final days, i decided that i REALLY wanted to find out more about the hierarchies in particular. This was prompted by always having loved world mythology, always very curious about the deep parallels between so many of the characters or as Jung would call them, archetypes, and thinking, really, there must be something to this. So, hence, me rereading this book, which i had not realised i had read, and understanding a little more of it, having been on my journey. Steiner speaks of the spiritualas FACT. There is spirit. We can deny if we want, but it is true. Steiner also talks about the Christ eve...

So, i spent most of the day wondering what i would do with the day and then i fell asleep around three pm and didn't wake till 4. I was hoping that i would be going for a run at some stage, but the weather is atrocious. So here i am. I have decided to plan the New Year instead. The rain is just going on and on and on. It wonder about people living near rivers and lakes. People who have been flooded out of their houses. I feel really sorry for them. On Sunday i start work again at the school. This evening, there is a planning. I am so so so tired still, despite having taken it easy for the past week or so. Well, since Christmas. I am just still so tired. I think i am going to have to examine my diet. This is just not right. So i am going to do up one room in the house per month. Clean it and do it up. The conservatory has inspired me and i believe it can be done. But i prefer to work at home alone. This is hard with children around because i feel i should be doing things wit...

The boys slept very late last night. Before Oisin headed to bed, he came to lie beside me and cuddle me. For awhile he was the little baby which was in my arms in Altnagelvin again. I remembered how I shared the bed with him - new mother, and new son. I barely slept all night, just watching his face. The tiny nose, the lashless eyes, the fingers with their little nails and peeling skin. Now he was this huge young man, with a thicket of hair, larger than I was, but still, in my arms. I love you mom, he said. I love you too, Oisin. Ghin is different. Ghin is outgoing and has an innate sense of rhythm. Style is effortless to Ghin. He is very funny. More grown up. Having a brother so much older it means that he learns things which he should not be learning. I have spent more but also less time with Ghin. While I spend the whole day in school with him, I have spent less time at the park with him. I was thinking what a firecracker he is. When he was a baby he had such a temper. He w...