Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Yesterday, Oisin asked me, how many selfies did you take today? I said, One, showing him my one selfie. Then what are you doing? I am looking at my double chin in the camera app Your double chin? Yup. How do you get rid of double chins? Plastic surgery. Plastic surgery!!!!??? Yup. (Pulls face) I have been running everyday for 18 days, doing sit ups and stretching. And these are the results. 1. Skin is clearer and browner! Yay! 2. Body is beginning to feel less lumpy 3. Gaining more strength 4. Fitting into clothes 5. Stomach muscle definition returning 6. More flexibility But most importantly, despite it only being 18 days, i feel about 10 years younger. Before i began running i felt like a frump. Now i feel like i could be in my 30s again. Today i wore my shorts to the co-op which i have not done for ages now, and did not feel like a walking sack of cottage cheese. And that's only 18 days of running. Anyone who wonders, what exercise i should do, can i recomm...

Have enjoyed growng my hair out... Now there are three colours in my hair!

Thin places, in Irish, refer to places where the worlds, the spirit and the material world meet. They stand close together, and the Irish people, who believe that the Da Danann, the Fair Folk, went into the Earth when the Milesians arrived, inhabit the land and that in some places, the gates between the worlds are closer than others. Rathlin, is supposed to be one of these places. This is according to Rathlin Islanders themselves. Their legends abound with mythological characters, from Mananaan Mac Lir, to the Children of Lir. Creatures which are not quite human and not quite fey also feature in their legends. Pookas, phantom horses, and then there are stories of how Rathlin men helped build the Pyramids. I kid you not. The truth is that most of Ireland is quite 'thin'. You only have to scratch the surface to feel this. The landscape is littered with megalithic monuments which align themselves to the skies and to leylines. The ancestors of the Irish were acutely aware...

Papyrus of Ani from the Book of Life (Book of the Dead) Yesterday, I had a wonderful evening talking about Anthroposophy. What is anthroposophy? It is an entire system which was set out by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner about a new way of thinking of what a Human Being is. Well actually it is updating the idea that the human being is part of the spiritual world. We are spirit made flesh, or as Terhard de Chardin said, "We are spiritual beings having a human experience." We spoke about the anthroposophical society, and why anyone would join it. The question was, Could you represent anthroposophy in the world? Could you stand up for it? Which made me ask myself, what was it? What did i understand by it. And to date, this is my understanding of it. Anthroposophy comes from the understanding, or the recognition, that there is an unseen consciousness. It isn't just one single God, but that the world around us is a manifestation of the spiritual. Steiner gives de...

Tyrella Beach where we spent Sunday in the sun So these holidays have been oddly erratic. On one day i spend all the day being very busy - like yesterday. And then today, i spend all day doing sod all. OK, i did the laundry and got the boys to hoover the house, and did some shopping for the house, but apart from that i watched Red Rock this police drama from Dublin. I have never watched a soap before and the strategy seems to be to have a set of impossibly, selfish, unaware, self serving people make the lives of completely innocent and good people hell. And these good people are so stupid that they can see how awful these people are. I watched 8 episodes and then discovered that there were 45 episodes. So i KNOW that i cannot suspend disbelief any longer and therefore i cannot watch this anymore. Well you know, it's good to be able to say, i did watch some kind of soap opera. I can strike that off the bucket list. It was supposed to rain today, but it did not. I took the la...

Archangel Uriel, during the time of St John I recently attended an anthroposophical conference in Dublin, and the question was, how can anthroposophy contribute to society? It was something which i had never considered before, since, i suppose i am working in a Steiner School. Anyway, a lot of the conference was about the age of Michael. What does a Michaelic community mean? Here is a potted history of the Michaelic impulse. When the Christ being, who was a sun spirit, united with the Earth, the hiearchies which followed Michael really wanted to help man evolve into the tenth hierarchy. So they agreed to set up a mystery school in the sun sphere and then bring intelligence to man. This intelligence though had a catch - man had to be able to be free as to how he could use it. This is made more complicated by Ahriman who wants to have the death of the Earth. This is done through the intellect as well. So the Michaelic impulse involves the use of heart-warmed thinking and intell...

Yay! the summer is here for today! There are maybe five days in a year where Northern Ireland becomes this hot. When i say this hot, i mean 25 degs. It almost never gets into the 30s. If there is more than a week of weather this warm, people will remember it as a 'good summer'. So far, we have not had a 'good summer' as such. Last week, for instance, there was torrential rain, and very little sun. Which is not to say that it is not hot. It is sort of muggy, but also very wet. Yesterday, it was so hot, i almost developed heat stroke while out running, even though it wasn't very sunny. It was only 23 degs, but that was enough to make me think i was going to pass out with the heat. I have now been running for seven days straight. I'll run at six again. It is not a long run, but it is very important for me. Really important that i get my circulation going and my heart exercising at that level. Yoga, i did yoga for awhile, and either because it just isn...

When i went running i would often see monkeys, monitor lizards, snakes, koels, munias, skinks, crocodiles and a million types of butterflies and dragonflies. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of trees and plants. At that time, i did not realise it, but I am so lucky to have called Macritchie my running trail for many many years, at a time when no one else used to go running. Often i would be the only person, apart from the occasional JC cross country team pounding their way through the foliage. Thank you the universe for making it possible. Today i got up and went for my run. Before i did that i wrote a FB thing about running. It was really to say that electronic devices have never played a big part in my running life, and the reason why - because I have come to enjoy running without them. I get to meld with my surroundings, I get to take it the things I see around me, I get to be with my thoughts. No matter where I am. It is my form of meditation. It enables me to be compl...

In lecture 9 of the Egyptian myths and mysteries, Steiner says that Man was only about to create images of himself when he developed a certain level of consciousness. Before that, man was incapable of perceiving him/herself This fine example of 1AD art from Ireland is a wonderful testament to the artist's skill - the perfectly round head, expressed everything that was miraculous in the universe as beheld by man Yesterday, I looked up holidays online for myself and the boys. Which reminds me I need to do that and book it today. Amongst my long list to get done today. I have already gone for my run, done the laundry, folded the plastic bags which were exploding out of the back of the kitchen door (I am not responsible for single one of those bags, I might add), washed the dishes, and organised my bag near my desk, which will now be cleared to become Oisin's desk. Anyway, the next thing I will do is order requistions for the school, while i tidy up my classroom. I leave ...

I must admit that I did ask myself, why oh why did i sign up for this conference? What was going through my mind when I thought it would be a good idea? Did i REALLY need to go down to Dublin again? Did i really need to sit in a room with anthroposophists and listen to lectures which would undoubtedly fill me with more questions than answers? However, as soon as I posted my reports, got on the train, and headed out from Belfest, I KNEW it was a good idea. I sat, facing the direction of travel with my journal, a novel and my iPad, and i relaxed into the weekend. The accommodation was a hostel in Camden Place. It was clean and adequate and on the noisiest party street in the whole of Dublin. I felt very old indeed whenever I was woken up in the middle of the night by people screaming and shouting and singing to each other. The weather was warm and muggy. I had decided I would only wear what i was wearing for the entire conference, apart from my pajamas. The problem was the T-shirt ...

One of the great delights of being a Steiner Teacher is the licence to go away and read up on esoteric literature. In my case, specifically esoteric literature which emerges from the early part of the 20th century in Europe. People forget what an experimental and open-minded society existed at that time. It was the era of communes and cultural resistance movements. Even as the great wars were being played out then, even as social Darwinism was being advocated, people were also discovering jazz, the flappers, universal suffrage, etc. The Arts and Crafts movement had given birth to Art Nouveau, people were seriously questioning industrialisation, again....it was the time of Marx and Engels, the time of assassinations and the start of independence movements. Archaeology was also something which the West was starting and they had begun to find these amazing stone monuments, like the Valley of the Kings, like Borobudor, like Machu Pichu. Out of this, slowly, a hypothesis about a great civ...

Things I have learnt about myself and my garden. 1. Don't grow things which I can eat, cost slugs will eat them too and don't have the time to be chasing them buggers around in the middle of the night. Don't ask me to use repellent, etc. i.e. it is too much hard work. 2. I grow things they don't want to eat. Herbs. Herbs are useful and also resilient. They are the next best thing. Also, when you garden, it smells like you are having a bath. 3. Grow flowers, cos, you know, flowers. 4. Grow things which are low maintenance. And herbs, and flowers. When in doubt, grow lavender. You can never go wrong with lavender. 5. Grow soft fruit. For some reason slugs don't like them/can't get to them. 6. When your garden is about two years old you can start working with weeds. Like you can start leaving nettles and buttercups in patches cos they are pretty and low maintenance. Also bees and insects like them. 7. Always make sure that you have good structure. If ...

The horror, the horror That could have been the subtitle of the Chilcot Report I spent a really odd day yesterday. I completed my school reports and watched the Chilcot address. After that I watched the fall out cried and shouted at the TV. My sons thought I had lost my mind. I was anticipating the address and had stopped my reports for this. At 11.07 he came out and began speaking. When he said, War was not the last resort, I had a sharp intake of breath and burst into tears. And then it just went on and on. Everything, everything which all of those who had opposed the war, everything we knew, it was all confirmed, all made true, in glorious forensic detail. I cried and cried and cried. Everytime someone who had lost someone, or who had been displaced or who had suffered through the war came on - I cried. Never again, we say, and yet we keep going on into it. Watching Tony Blair was horrific. It all became the fucking Tony Blair show. The man could not even, for one minute...

I never do politics because I think there is nothing in the political system worth fighting for really. However in the last few weeks I have become quite incensed with what I have been seeing. Firstly, the bloodlust for Jeremy Corbyn, a good man, a truly good man, who is simple, truthful and filled with dignity and integrity. A man who has always stood on the right side of history. Men like him do not get elected into positions of power and because his goodness was recognised by millions of common people, the same way Ghandi's goodness was recognised, and because we live in a democracy, he is now the leader of the opposition. But witness the entire corrupt weight of Westminster that not only the Tory party hate him, but also, his own Labour party, and the mainstream media come out to crush him. I love the reasons they gave to get rid of him, which are all spurious: But before I go into that, the REAL reason they hate him of course is because he threatens the very fabric of t...