Inspired!

Inspired to write a book!

When I read that Jane Roberts had channelled a spirit by the name of Seth I was keen to read her book. I had been brought up with strong Spiritualist leanings from my father and paternal grandmother and had spent a few years studying Spiritism with someone who had lived for many years in Brazil. Soon, I was also channelling and enjoying the amazing messages I received from angels and Ascended Masters. I found it difficult to work alone and so I formed a group where we met to share ideas and we supported each other with information exchange and sharing ideas. We distributed our channelled messages to friends, many of whom then wanted to set up a group themselves so I wrote a booklet to help them to do so. As time passed, I had enquiries from mediums all over the world where there was no centre of excellence. My booklet grew in size to include healing divination, dowsing and other fascinating areas where we were gaining expertise and understanding from each other. This became a successful distance learning course and many groups were set up around the world to receive and transmit messages from Spirit. All this happened with the help of an Ascended Master named Diotim

Gipsy Vans - A Poem

 Gipsy Vans by Rudyard Kipling

Unless you come of the gipsy stock
That steals by night and day,
Lock your heart with a double lock
And throw the key away.
Bury it under the blackest stone
Beneath your father's hearth,
And keep your eyes on your lawful own
And your feet to the proper path.
Then you can stand at your door and mock
When the gipsy vans come through...
For it isn't right that the Gorgio stock
Should live as the Romany do.

Blank verse - Shakespeare

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold; purple the sales, and so perfumed that the winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver, which, to the tunes, the flutes kept stroke, and made the water, which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, it bettered all description: she did lie in her pavilion, cloth of gold of tissue, over picturing that Venus where we see the fancy outwork nature. On each side stood pretty dimple boys, like smiling cupids, with diverse colour fans, whose wind did seem to glow the delicate cheeks, which they did cool, and what they undid, did. Shakespeare

Eastman death

George Eastman perfected a process of dry photography and launched a revolutionary camera called the Kodak. He instantly became one of the richest man in the world. In the decades that followed, he developed a revolutionary management philosophy. He gave his employees shorter hours, disability benefits, retirement annuities, life insurance, profit sharing, and one third of the stocks in his company. On March 14, 1932, this great inventor and humanitarian wrote a brief note and committed suicide. 

Lee Harris - Tribute to his Dad

Lee Harris wrote this song as a love letter to his Father. And as a way of having a difficult conversation with him, at a difficult time for the family.

"I wrote it at my piano in California, August of 2019, nine months before he died, and I trusted his soul would ‘hear’ me over in England. I had no intention at the time that this very personal song, would be released publicly. Nor did I realize that it would become increasingly relevant in our world the more we travelled through 2020.

"My dear Dad, David Ernest Harris, was diagnosed with bowel cancer in July of 2019, just a couple of weeks after Steven and I had visited him with my family in England. During that trip, he and several members of my family had attended our workshop in London, which was lovely for all of us. It always lit Dad up to be at our live events, and I loved nothing more than seeing he and my mum chatting to those who attended. So that day is now a very special memory.

The Wood Wide Web

Trees remove the dangerous levels of carbon dioxide from our air, and make wood from it. They give out helpful oxygen! This huge synthesising work takes place in addition to supporting wildlife and providing beauty free of charge!

Pollution affects trees, the climate change causing them distress. They find hot summers, cold winters, floods and droughts difficult to cope with. Many infections and pests, especially from abroad are killing them. We all need to think of planting a suitable tree that will help wildlife and the planet. The oak, for instance, supports over 2000 species and 300 of those only live on the oak tree! 

Legend of the Lady in the Forest - A Story

Legend of the Lady in the Forest by Jo Gregory

Deep in a woodland glade, sunbeams filtered through the branches of the ancient oak, ash and thorn. A path woven by deer was well worn and threaded through the undergrowth. The only clue that someone lived there was the small curl of wood smoke and the tip of a small chimney within the leaves. It was an ancient dwelling with worn walls, clambering roses and small windows under ragged thatch and ivy. The roof gave a haven to many creatures including sickled swallows diving for insects to feed their young. No one came here. Legends and folklore passed across generations had warned of a woman, elusive and strange sometimes seen wandering the woods with a basket and muttering. In local hostels word would pass of her ability to vanish with a swirl of her old cloak.

The girl was desperate. Her chest heaved and her breath was ragged. Her dress was torn through running in blackthorn thickets and brambles, her hair tangled in a halo around her head. She had run like the wind from the village, morning dew soaking her clothes. Her face showed her determination as she paused and then opened the old gate to the cottage beyond. Eyes fixed on the door to calm he nerves she knocked and waited. No sound came from within but the door eased open slowly and after a moment she crossed the threshold.

We Have Come - A Poem

We Have Come to Be Danced —by Jewel Mathieson

We have come to be danced, not the pretty dance -

not the pretty, pretty, 'pick me, pick me' dance, but the claw our way back into the belly

of the sacred, sensual animal dance, the unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance,

the holding the precious moment in the palms of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced, not the jiffy, booby, shake your booty for him dance

but the wring the sadness from our skin dance, the blow the chip off our shoulder dance,

the slap the apology from our posture dance. 

World on Fire - An Extract

In the Serbian concentration camps of the early 1990s, the women prisoners were raped, over and over, many times a day, often with broken bottles, often together with their daughters. The men, if they were lucky, were beaten to death as the Serbian guards sang national anthems. If they were not so fortunate, they were castrated or, at gunpoint, forced to castrate their fellow prisoners, sometimes with their own teeth. In all, thousands were tortured and executed.

In Rwanda in 1994, ordinary Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis over a period of three months, typically hacking them to death with machetes. Young children would come home to find their mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers, on the living room floor, in piles of severed heads and limbs.

In Jakarta in 1998, screaming Indonesian mobs torched, smashed, and looted hundreds of Chinese shops and homes, leaving over 2000 dead. One who survived - a 14-year-old Chinese girl - later committed suicide by taking rat poison. She had been gang raped and genitally mutilated in front of her parents.

In Israel in 1998, a suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives rammed into a school bus filled with 34 Jewish children between the ages of six and eight. Over the next few years, such incidents intensified, becoming daily occurrences and a powerful collective expression of Palestinian hatred. “We hate you” a senior Arafat official elaborated in April 2002 “and the air hates you the land hates you the trees hate you there is no purpose in your staying on this land.”

La Belle Dame Sans Merci - A Poem

 La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats

I am remembering poems from my childhood: 

Ah, what can ail thee, knight at arms,
  Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is withered from the lake,
  And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, knight at arms,

  So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
  And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
  With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
  Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads
  Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
  And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
  And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
  A faery's song.

Ozymandias - A Poem

Ozymandias by Percy Bysse Shelley

I am sharing poems I remember from my childhood....

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Writing Autobiography

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde

Don’t just remember what happened! Relive and reflect on episodes of the past as though it is happening today. Write in present time! Write like you are writing to a dear friend whose relationship you treasure!  Don’t forget to say how you feel, and include your thoughts, not just circumstances. Live your truth and describe it with good language skills and as few repetitions as possible. You are unique, your story is unique, don’t copy anyone else. Make it deep. Make it exciting. Make it live! Send shivers down spines, make your reader gasp, make them tell their friends about the excitement! Write from your heart, mean every word. Write and write, but your spontaneity is required. At the end, edit, and edit bigtime, especially avoid being presumptuous, up staging or praising yourself too highly. Take out the ‘shitty committee’ and if you criticise, end with compassion. We don’t walk in the shoes of others, and if we are in their shadow, look for our own mistakes within that uncomfortable relationship. 

Claim your story! Write for yourself - readers will relate to you better than you can relate to your readers. There needs to be light and darkness, different moods, joys, tragedies, difficulties, burdens overcome, outcomes not expected, people described in all their variety, places experienced, warmth followed by coldness, followed by enlightenments and revelations shared. What is the motive for your memoirs? Please don’t say ‘to make money’ because unless you are an international star, your time will never be paid for. Revenge, therapy, for your grandchildren, to raise yourself out of obscurity, setting a record straight, to make others laugh or to share your life wisdom? You will discover your reason usually after you have written it! All these and more will be part of your life story!

Winter's Cloak - A Poem

Winter’s Cloak by Joyce Rupp

This year I do not want the dark to leave me. 
I need its wrap of silent stillness, 
its cloak of long lasting embrace. 
Too much light has pulled me away 
from the chamber of gestation. 

Leadership Styles

 

Dowsing at Bradwell

I facilitated a small group to investigate whether a ley-line could be detected by using dowsing rods in the vicinity of St Peter's Chapel, Bradwell on Sea, which was built from stone recovered from a Roman fort which defended Essex from invasions from Europe. 

When the Romans left (early 400s AD) this fortress fell into dilapidation. In the mid seventh century, the Celtic Bishop, Cedd, sailed down the coast from the Holy Island of Lindisfarne to preach Christianity to the pagans of the East Saxon shore, and he decided to build a chapel using the spare stone from the Roman fort he found on the beach at Bradwell. He dedicated it to St Peter, who was a fisherman, and at this site, sea and river meet, and at that time it was rich in all varieties of fish. 

Yoga Styles

Hatha Yoga: Physical, for strength, flexibility and balance.
Iyenga Yoga: Go slow and listen to your body.
Jivamukti Yoga: 1980s USA style, chanting, poses, philosophy.
Yin Yoga: Easy, ideal for elderly or injured. For flexibility and circulation.
Kundalini Yoga: Meditation, hand gestures, breathing, chanting, invigorating.
Yoga Nidra: Relaxation, meditation, visualisation, positive thinking.
Bikram Yoga: Hot! Challenging. You need to be in tip top condition.
Ashtanga Yoga: Dynamic, challenging.
Vinyasa Yoga: Athletic, originating in Ashtanga. Breathing orientated.