Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

They shall not pass Today is gorgeous. The ang mos are going to be driven out of their mind. Their default mode is to go out as soon as the sunshines. It is going to be super difficult for them to stay in. As Singaporeans, it is ok. We take the sun for granted. Anyways, staying home is great now. I have turned the table around and semi organised this area. This has freed up the space in behind me - this also means that when I get this organised, all the boys and myself can work in here comfortably. I am now writing to organise my life. There are now many parts to it and they are all moving. So... just to be clear. ALWAYS first and foremost: 1. My own health and well being - running daily, cooking, cleaning, etc...  AND the boys, family and friends - all priorities. 2. Creativity: Piano, painting and writing 3. Work: School and Steiner 4. Gardening and growing 5. Admin: Gargamel and finances Now that everything is more or less settled for the next three weeks...

Angel, Book of Kells In Steiner education we work with the child to develop three things: Imagination, Inspiration and then, Intuition. We do this by believing in the human being. Trusting in it. There are many many ways in which the world undermines this trust, and it is mainly done through disconnecting us from our heart intelligence. This is done so that you can be controlled. When you trust yourself and your intuition, you are free. And no one wants that, right? The first thing that happens when you disconnect is you begin to fear. It is like a boat, which suddenly has no anchor. You are adrift and the world becomes a terrible place. This is why play is so important. When a child plays, they are completely within themselves. They work with their heart forces naturally. They are earnest. Their imaginations are so powerful that everything is real and they KNOW what they do. As we grow older, especially after the age of 9/10, we begin to lose our connection with this consciou...

Sekhmet - Hrana Janto The goddess create by Ra to destroy all humanity because of their corruption. She went too far so Ra then made her drunk and when she fell asleep he turned her into Hathor, the Goddess of Pleasure and Love. For the first time since this outbreak - or whatever it is - I woke up feeling sorrow. Not terror. I'm not afraid. But sorrow. Sadness for the people who have passed away. Who knows if they would have passed away in another reality, in another 2020 somewhere else in the multiverse, but in this one they did. I felt sorrow for their going on and as Heidi did say, they have gone on to another place. We both believed that. But it did not make it less sad - and for those fighting for their lives - or quietly having accepted death - it also does not make it less frightening. I don't know why I have not felt terror - I have felt a grimness though. The grimness of a question having been answered. The question which was always, how is it going to end? Wha...

Animals play while we are away So after a few days of trying to find our feet - this time last week we were wondering if the schools would close and closed they are, although no one was very surprised, to be honest. However, that still meant a couple of days scrambling about to get things ready and now that it has happened, I am hoping that it will go fine... It looks like everyone is doing well. I must learn to relax. A friend told me yesterday, I think you need to accept that you are a great teacher Steph and stop worrying about it. Sigh. I suppose I will have to. I have also noticed that I have really neglected myself over the past few weeks, if not months - possibly since mid January. I now understand what the phrase 'letting herself go' means. It means not really caring about very much and making do. Well I am no longer making do. I do have standards and these standards are going to be set once more and I am going to adhere to them. There was an unfathomable two w...

Purdy It has been a weird stumble and fumble into the world of disease. People are very strange. Panic is very close to the surface. I suppose this is not surprising. Most of the world operates on fear. It is fear that keeps us doing jobs we hate, staying with people who abuse us, take on lives with devastate the planet, take medication we should not, engage in an education system which is soul destroying, do things which would otherwise mark us out as sociopaths - like ignore the displaced and the homeless and the broken. I really have come to detest the way people have reacted. I kind of feel my patience is at an end. And it's only day 3. =============================================== HOWEVER, the days have taken on this rhythm. We get up and do some work. Then there is school till 12.45, as usual. After that there is getting things sorted time. So today is the first day of trying to establish a proper rhythm. It has been so peaceful really. Apart from the panic o...

Gnomes make their homes in the ground They travel using veins of metal and rock. The look after the seeds during the winter and the root health of the trees Now that we know that trees speak to each other using a network of mycelium, it is not so fanciful to associate gnomes with toadstools Incidentally, Steiner said that gnomes lived in horror that they would turn into toads and frogs and to do this they have to work ceaselessly if they stopped for anytime at all, they would change. So gnomes never rest, they toil all the time AND they are also grumpy because of this. The elementals are ever present. In land which is healthy, where the ecosystems are intact, they abound. They work hard to create links between all living and non-living beings. In truth, there are no non-living beings. Everything is in flux - everything has a life, and a purpose - or finds its purpose - a stone may be inert, but it will be a place for moss to grow, for bugs to shelter under, it will break down ...

I bring healing, I bring possibility. I stamp my feet and the Earth quivers. I stretch my arms and the blessings flow. I squeeze my fist and the rain falls. And I have watched. I have watched and seen and I have waited patiently. And I have tried over and over to tell you, this is wrong. But you have not heard the cry of the orphaned and the lost. The abandoned and the destitute. The diseased and the burned. So, here I must stretch out my hand and intervene.  Notice, how small you are. All your achievements, your vanity, your greed, your pride, your trinkets - all of these things... notice, how they are pointless and insignificant. With one wave of my arm, the illusion goes under and you are left, standing on the broken shore.  Enough is enough. Grow up. Get off your knees. Be honest, drink in the truth and become who you were meant to be.

Amergin's Poetry to remind us of the sacred nature of our lives We are here by the grace of the planet. What is very clear is that science hasn't helped us very much during this mess. The entire thing, apparently is science led and we are discovering that the science is rather whorish. It can be made to say whatever it is you want it to say. The flu season, the pandemic, the coronavirus, the rates of transmission, the economy collapsing - which it would have done anyway - under the weight of greed and stupidity. I mean, I have been whittering on and on about it for so long. I was hoping - although i dunno how this would have happened since no one who could do something about it did anything about it - that somehow, instead of driving off a cliff, we could have turned the car round, change the vehicle and eventually gone to a more peaceable life where things were restored. It would have been painful, a little bit, but it would have been doable. Instead, what has happene...

So the universe has given me an opportunity to think about life and take a back seat. Amazingly all the schools have been closed. No one is allowed to go anywhere. Pubs, bars and restaurants have closed and everyone has been told to stay at home. Everyone is terrified because the thing is invisible. Unlike the plague you know you have it or you don't. This one is invisibility means that everyone is suspect. I don't trust the media, I never have, and now the media are the ones driving this. Their decision to make this a huge issue has made people go insane. I can't trust them on most other issues, should I trust them on this one? Are they the broken clock? Is this a case of a boy who cried wolf for me? Lancelot of the Lake Also I don't understand why when it was in China no one cared and now that it is here, and nowhere near as awful as China, everyone is terrified? I don't care anymore really. I am just following instructions now and I have no choice. Iro...

Pachamama by Hrana Janto Today's learning: I also have this image of an older woman - the wise older woman - with her herbs and her love and her wisdom in contentment. In wisdom. This is the beginning of wisdom. I may have nothing to prove to the world, but I do have something to prove to myself. To go into old age in the way I have lived my own life - redefining it for myself. To be brave, have courage, to be never stop questioning. To hone my voice. This wonderful voice. To be that steady flame. I am who I am. ============================== Yesterday did not begin with much promise. I felt the usual blahness of existence and I was quite bored... not bored... pissed off with myself. However, as soon as I began doing the dishes around 9.30 am it happened. Ma called, I did the dishes, then all of the laundry - this took the entire day to be fair - but I did do it, all of the laundry and was glad to, then the hoovering and finally after the hoovering, I managed to do stuff. ...

Today's Leunig  The year began with the Forest Fires in Australia - and Brexit. People were also now very aware of Climate Change and the whole plastic thing took on a life of its own. As February bumped along and people tried to get a handle on things, along came the Coronavirus which to be honest had been brewing now for a few months. It was clear that like every other virus which now had not affected a population of healthy people wit good infrastructure, it was going to be a huge threat to the old and the very very young, but mostly leave everyone else unaffected. Unless you had an underlying condition.  Health officials at the centre of outbreaks had to be very careful of course because the human body can only cope with so much bombardment before it gave in - it needed time to create its own antibodies and being a health official made things tough that way.  It killed not every doctor or nurse, but you always had a higher than usual proportion dying of i...

Ghin in 2010 December... so he is almost 4? I am Ghin I am very coot I've been bumping along the ground for the past three weeks or so. Maybe it has been a little longer than that. Possibly since the start of the year. So almost three months now. It feels like forever though. And no one wants to know, of course. No one cares. Not really. It doesn't really matter because I can do this. Just head down, I've been here so many times before in the last few weeks. Just feeling really crappy and then feeling really good. It has what made me think, am I mental a bit? Ghin has not been attending school properly. Last week it was the Coronavirus quarantine and now, this week he has had a sorethroat. I guess I should get him tested, just in case, but there's a part of me that just rather not know because it is so stupid. The entire thing is an overreaction. Someone has died because of it now - because they have had underlying problems. Coronavirus was probably the lea...

Seeing the Trees Cover It has been completely mad. Today I had to stay home with Ghin again. I cannot believe the number of days I have had to miss because of illness. Not my illness mind you. I went to the print workshop last night. I had a rude awakening with the dry point. My tutor is amazing. She is really REALLY good. And also a really good human being. I want to do my next thing which is a project about women's bodies during the menopause through the agency of women - so thinking about the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of menopause and looking at it through mythical beings - like dryads, selkies, mermaids, volcanoes, etc. It has been such a strange feeling really. I'm going to bed to think about this....

You cannot harm me I have seen the truth and know its language There is a great story behind this picture. Oisin was asking me if I was the third or fourth wave of feminism and I said, I'd be in between the third and fourth wave - there was a time when it was not the done thing to call yourself a feminist in the last 80s, early 90s. Think Spice Girls, yes. Anyways, he then began telling me what the third and fourth wave of feminism was to help me better place myself at which point I said, are you mansplaining feminism to me? But he did mention these books - Backlash and The Beauty Myth, which was pretty cool. So I dug them out to show him. I said, when I discovered feminism it was like a part of me which I had never been able to describe finally had a language. It was like learning a new language. I took a photograph to put on FB... along with On Pornography, these books shaped my life. Also de Beauviour's The Second Sex and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. What a time to h...

Gilgamesh The stream is filled with light. The water lets every photon through. The light moves, quicksilver, through the water's shifting body, and I see fish, pebbles, weeds inhabiting its clear depths. It is so enchanting, I stop to look. It is hypnotic. The burbling and murmuring never stops. It is and will ever be. Long before and long after. The water is cold. It is cold because it comes from the mountains and in those mountains, I know, that is where I am heading. Heading North, North to the answer to a question. Could it be Return to Atlantis are a collection of stories of protagonists since the fall of Atlantis? Question.... hmmm.... Manu, Rama and Sita, Arjuna and Draupadi...  

Results at the print workshop Four native Irish trees and a blackbird Yew, Alder, Rowan and Crab Apple Why are we here? To drink it all in. To self actualise. To delight in everything life has to give us. To eat all the fruit of the garden. I remember now. To never fear, but even when we fear, to know that this is what we do. Mixing colours! Weee!!!! Examining my work Ah.... coffee... Yesterday's Nice Thing: I got everything back into shape. All because of running. After a one and a half of blobbing and feeling sorry for myself - astoundingly at the very same time that Mercury went into Retrograde - I managed to pull myself together by going for a run first, and then... 1. Cleaning the dining area 2. Planning everything 2. Organising my finances 3. Sorting out my emails 4. Doing Elements stuff I also did do some housework - but not a lot. But that was loads. And I also watched The Tale of Princess Kagunaya which was very very sad and beautiful. I just ende...

What did Plato know? I return from the interview wondering if I can write it up. I need to find out more, surely? Even for her own protection, I must be able to verify her claims. Perhaps she was speaking metaphorically? Perhaps she was trying to convey a project she was planning. In truth, I was so confused and embarrassed for her I didn't ask her questions, instead I just let her speak. And she was happy to speak, her words spilled forth, as if she had been longing to tell someone this story and couldn't stop. It was such a relief for her. Was she going mad? When I got home, I received a call from my editor. I didn't know what to tell him. I felt like I had failed in the assignment, I got plenty of good photographs of her house, of her. She sat patiently for me, and obliged every shot. All the time she spoke and I nodded. She also showed me artifacts from around her home. It would seemed she lived through every time. "Ah yes! That was when I lived in Central...

Lim Kwong Ling Mata Ikan - Collecting Seaweed Last night, I was in bed, listening to lectures on Rome, I was thinking about how I operate from a position of plenty. These are important things to tell myself, because they are subtle. Unnoticeable. And no one will tell you this, of course. These are the small things that count. Dear God, I've just realised that it is now March. Eek. That is really scary. The weather is not March though. The weather is crap. I need to get a move on with Elements and the soft launch. Right. I also had this overwhelming need to pray last night, for gratitude. And now I must do some writing - around 5. It will be a busy day today. I must get my finances sorted... so it like this: Write Run, breakfast, laundry, hoover Finances Elements Emails Lunch Separation Magazine Organise Dinner Class Prep The world is now going through a huge change. People are going, actually you know what - enough. From people being too rich at t...