The Beauty of Mongolia

Uyanga Batjarjal says: My home country is Outer Mongolia. Mongolians are country people travelling with their camel and sheep herds from one pasture to another. The ancient culture and traditions still exist, and, as mainly Buddhists, we believe we have lived many lives before. My home in the only city, Ulaan Bataar, overlooks Mongolia’s tallest mountain. It's a holy mountain where people go to pray. Our climate is colder than the North Pole in winter, and, in the summer, we get sandy winds from the Gobi desert. It is a harsh landscape but the people are intelligent and happy and have a natural and instinctive spirituality. My country is six times the size of the UK, and has less than three million people scattered throughout its land area. This is an exotic place which has always appealed to travellers, it is sometimes known as 'Shangri-La. The rural countryside was brought to the attention of TV viewers when Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman filmed part of their motor-cycle adventures for the programme ‘Long Way Round’. This publicity brought many young motorcycle visitors. Mongolia is the destination for the annual London to Ulaan Baataar ‘Mongol Rally’ that has taken place since 2004, and is included on the itinery of the Blue Planet Run Foundation, which is a green issues fun-run from New York through Mongolia into China.  

 

Born to Win - An Extract

Born to Win - Transactional Analysis with Gestalt Experiments by Muriel James. 

“Each human being is born as something new, something that never existed before. Each is born with the capacity to win at life. Each person has a unique way of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and thinking. Each has his or her own unique potentials, capabilities and limitations. Each can be a significant, thinking, aware, and creative being, a productive person, a winner. 

The words winner and loser have many meanings. When we refer to a person as a winner, we do not mean one who makes someone else lose. To us, a winner is one who responds authentically by being credible, trustworthy, responsive, and genuine, both as an individual and as a member of society. A loser is one who fails to respond authentically. Martin Buber makes this distinction as he retells an old story of a rabbi who, on his deathbed, is asked if he is ready for the world to come. The rabbi says ‘yes, after all I will not be asked, why were you not Moses? I will only be asked, why were you not yourself?” 

Few people are 100% winners or 100% losers. It’s a matter of degree. However once the person is on the road to being a winner, his or her chances are greater for becoming even more so. This book is intended to facilitate that journey - Born to Win by Muriel James. 

Labyrinths and Mazes

A labyrinth is a single route to a central place, such as one sees upon the floor of Chartres Cathedral, whereas a maze is a puzzle with many possibilities that lead to the centre, such as the hedge maze at Hampton Court. Labyrinths are dotted across the world, Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, some extremely ancient and many are modern. They can be made of turf, brick, tiles or anything to demarcate the route that one must travel.

Oracle reading for Harvest

I have chosen at random, the number Seven from Numerology Guidance Cards by Michelle Buchanan is the first card and it is titled ‘Personal Growth’ and you are encouraged to have the highest standards possible, to be the best you can be as a person. It is time to ask yourself “Who am I?” “What do I want from my life?” “What prevents me from self development?” We sometimes need to acknowledge our limitations and work on our weaknesses. Now is the time to be determined to reach your full potential in all you do. Consciousness raising is on the cards for you and you can ask others to help you to reach higher levels of self awareness. Use the affirmation: As I improve myself, I improve the circumstances of my life and improve the lives of others around me.

Changing Woman – Goddess of the Corn from Goddess Inspiration Oracle by Kris Waldherr also tells us about our own transformation and that of the planet, to honour the earth and its nourishment and beauty. This goddess is one of the most powerful deities of the Navajo Holy People and her blessings of music and dance take place at major family celebrations. She is associated with corn and she symbolises the unique planet upon which we live. She appears as a young woman in spring, a mature woman in summer and she becomes a crone in the autumn and winter. Her words are: All of life’s seasons bring blessings. Appreciate them!

Dancing at Lughnasa - A Story

It’s 1936 in the Mindy family’s small village croft in Donegal, a priest returns home after spending thirty years in a leper colony in Africa. 

His five sisters greet him but he is saddened because his mother has died. He is the only son - the only male in the family. His sisters have sent their pennies to him in Africa over all those years, knitting gloves and taking other poorly paid work. As a man, he should have been at home to support the family, emotionally and financially, but he doesn’t fit in with the repressed Irish Catholic society. He talks of goddesses and he plays with his young nephew! There is a thin veil of respectability in the family house that overlies a very embarrassing situation where an illegitimate child was born to the youngest sister - and another sister is having a love affair with a married man! 

The priest says, “I have come home to die!” The sisters have no money to bury him and are resentful! However, the priest slowly changes the lives of those around him - they begin to enjoy a more relaxed happiness in their lives, but the Bishop expresses displeasure with the priest and does not come to visit and tells one of the sisters that she will lose her job as a school teacher…. 

Convergent & Divergent Thinking

 

There are two types of thinking:

Convergent thinking focuses on arriving at a single well-established answer to a problem. Convergent thinking is used as a tool to problem-solve. When someone uses critical thinking to solve a problem, they consciously use standard probabilities to make judgements. This contrasts with Divergent thinking where several possible solutions are sought.

Getting to know the Goddess Course 4:2

Goddess-Pages online course. Visit: goddess-pages.co.uk
The Goddess of the Sea

I have always been attracted to the sea. I love the large skies, and the blue of the sea where the horizon meets the blue of the sky. There is a sense of the eternal, and of an everlasting and awesome beauty that is unconquerable by mankind. We can never change that picture.

Aphrodite is not a Goddess I relate to, perhaps her manipulative personality is one I fear. In my childhood 'the Star of the Sea', was Mary, Mother of Jesus, though why she is called this, I have wondered. We had a hymn, that I remember well. Maybe Mary Magdelene should have the  title of ‘star of the sea’ instead.

I did once make a Goddess doll but I buried it in a ceremony. I seem to collect dolls; people give them to me as gifts. Some are very special. I believe some can talk! :-)

We are very lucky that so many ancient artefacts have survived many tens of thousands of years. These earliest of objects made by human hands are statues of the Goddess. It is thought that She was the earliest of deities, and a peaceful, caring society developed under a strong matriarchal society. I would hope that we could look forward to a time when women are once again respected, given power and that men are supportive of this role for women in our world. Maybe the New Age will provide the opening for this to happen. By looking into the past, we can see where patriarchy has made mistakes, in war, materialism which destroys the planet and enslaves other species, does not properly care for children, gives women a second class status. We can address the problems of the future, and I think the Godesss, in all her guises, can help us to do that.

Essay - Dance & Movement Therapy

Foundation Course: Introduction to dance and movement therapy foundation course. 

Clarify and define the meaning of therapy and the meaning of dance. When does dance become therapy?

The word ‘therapy’ derives from the ancient Greek word meaning service. Therapy is an abstract noun, and a popular concept word for the therapeutic process. The word ‘therapeutic’ as defined by the Oxford dictionary means alleviating and of the healing arts. Many activities of daily life can be considered therapeutic and therefore healing, for example listening to music, walking nature, associating with friends etc., all that rewards by way of release, pleasure, esteem, amusement, connection, relaxation, rest, acceptance, refreshment, and understanding. 

The Gospel of Mary

The Gospel of Mary! We do not know which ‘Mary’ this refers to, maybe the mother of Jesus or Mary Magdalene, but many give Mary Magdalene the credit. The Gospel of Mary is considered ‘apocryphal’ that is, it is not accepted by the established Roman Catholic Church. It consists of two small manuscripts from a much larger missing document, one in Greek from the third century, the other in a Coptic translation from the fourth. We have some sayings reputed to be from Jesus, and teaching about the nature of sin, evil and wrongdoing which relates to our physicality. 

22nd July Feast Day

Today, 22nd July, is the feast day of Saint Mary Magdalene. It was in very recent years (2016) that she has she been made into a 'saint' by the Vatican, as previously, she was only commemorated because since the early days of Roman Catholicism, she was regarded as a prostitute, a person extremely reviled in her time. 

Now the Vatican have realised - after 1,700 years - that the woman described in the gospels as having seven devils cast out of her by Jesus, two important things, firstly that prostitution might have had nothing to do with '7 devils', and also that this woman gave her money to support Jesus and his disciples in his 3 year ministry. So did the Church think that Jesus was living off immoral earnings!