Everything is not so bad

‘Everything is not so bad,’ said Daniel at Kaliyoga France.  Ostensibly he’s an osteopath and a reflexologist (whole body though, not just feet) but I suspect he’s a fair bit more than that – definitely a healer, maybe a bit of a shaman.  And, oh those eyes!  Those young/old wide open palest blue eyes.  He’d checked me over and found all the old kinks, even dug around in my abdomen and found the same gut quirk that had surfaced in Austria.  He adjusted a little here, a little there and then paused.

‘It’s here,’ he said, gently tapping my breastbone. ‘You’re locked right here... in the heart.’

Ah.  My poor heart.  It’s ever been thus.  For our bodies try, dear souls/hearts, to protect us, don’t they?  They build up a carapace; they armour us with wrenched tight twisted fascia.  And our minds play sidekick, quickly jumping in, alert to hurt, watching for a reason to doubt, to suspect, to withdraw.  And Body is more protective of Heart than it is of anything or anywhere else. 

‘People hurt you,’ whimpers Body.

‘Keep ‘em out,’ advises Mind.

‘Might be best,’ agrees Body.

‘Definitely,’ says Mind with a profound sigh of relief.

Yet at Kaliyoga everything was conspiring to open me up again, to blast away heart/mind/body’s carefully constructed defences. 

A series of yoga postures – opening, exposing, baring.  And I felt a giving somehow, a loosening. A silent tear or two.  And then chanting which, again, was all about opening, being, letting go of doubt and fear because, really (at heart), whether doubt and fear are true or not, they are not helpful.  Om Tare, Tuttare, Ture, Soha... The Green Tara mantra which protects against doubt and delusion, the wrong thinking that traps your heart. And Tayata Om, the healing mantra of the Medicine Buddha.  Gate gate, Paragate - passing the threshold, evolving into fearlessness.

Once you know something, you cannot unknow it.  You can never go back; you can never change back into something you once were. And change is not just inevitable, it is safe. It must be.  No matter what happens on the other side of the gate, on the other side of change.

‘Do you really believe that?’ said Mind.

‘Hell no!’ replied Body.

‘Give it a chance,’ whispered Heart.  

Karma and The Cold

There are times when I have absolutely no idea who I am.  I catch sight of my reflection in a mirror and am simply perplexed.  I look down at my hands, typing, and think 'whose are these and whose words are they tapping out?' So many people seem so sure of themselves; so keen to bestow their certainty on everyone; to tell you what is right and what is wrong. How lovely to be so sure.  Even if you’re not right.

Right now, I feel buffeted.  It feels like I’m standing at the front of a fast-moving ship with the wind forcing air into my lungs – so hard that I can’t breathe out. Signs and symbols and synchronicities are crashing into me so fast, so furious. I try to bat them away like flies, but there are simply too many.

It’s nearly June and I’m cold, so cold, so freezing cold.  Or is it just me? Is it an inner cold, an inner ice, a soul cold?

Is. Ice. Isa. The rune that is one straight line. I. Id. Idol (ego).  I’m in here (but where/when?).

Isa imerges again and again.  Standst(ill). (Cons)t(r)aint. That which impedes. Ill(us)ion. 

‘”The winter of the spiritual life is upon you.”
The I, the eye and the ei. Funny, innit – egg in German is Ei.  The divine I. Eggo. Egg-O.  This last bit, by the way, from a little book Adrian gave me on his return from Russia – on Euphonics.  ‘I and O are sounds which link the solitary self with the totality of things, as in I alone, or I all one. At one are those who can atone; For the All One revolves alone.” 

Sorry…(I can see Milla rolling her eyes) but I just love the way words have deeper, core, universal, sometimes hidden,  meanings…

And I dunno. I have no right to feel frozen. I am lucky, I keep reminding myself. I have family, friends, health, not wealth (but that is small in importance – as I was strongly reminded the other day, I would rather live in a bedsit and be free than in a mansion and be bound in hell).  So why this freezing? Why this soul sadness that creates such a deep ache in the heart?

I asked on Twitter, as you do.  Yeah, you can ask about deep soul sadness on Twitter – it ain’t all about cupcakes and sexbots.

‘I’m getting a strong hit for Yellow Rattle karmic essence,’ said Jackie Stewart (@JSFLowerspirit).  So I checked it out.

“Those in need of this essence carry an innate sadness and melancholy from previous lifetimes that they are often unable to express, and which causes recurring and apparently unfounded feelings of hopelessness and despair to surface in their current lives.” 

And welled up a bit.  ‘Are you alright, Mum?’ said James, curled up on my sofa (home ill from school).

‘Of course I am, love. I just felt a little sad. You know – you do too, sometimes.’  

Swallowing the tears – sometimes one is never alone when one needs to be.  He hugged me until he made me smile, his warmth thawing the chill.  But it returns, it always does and then all I can do is run, run, run.  Go to the gym again and race against my self to get physically warm, pushing my body, punishing it really.  I do get warm, eventually…but only on the outside.

I ordered the remedy.  I wonder what it will bring.

Do you believe in karma? Can we carry *stuff* over from one lifetime to the next?  My family believes so.  My brother always said that, as a family, were carry bad karma. My sister goes further. ‘We did bad, bad things,’ she said once. ‘And we will pay and pay…’  Will we? Do we?