The human voice is one of the most powerful healing instruments there is, and what makes it even more wonderful is that we carry it with us wherever we go. Whether we are singing, chanting, toning sacred sounds or silently focussing on inner sounds and mantras, we have the ability not only to relax ourselves and release stress and tension, but also to raise our vibration, to literally ‘tune’ ourselves up with our own voice. Ancient indigenous cultures have been doing it since time began, and if you rolled the centuries back across Europe, you would be able to see people out on the earth, singing work songs, chanting together as they dug, planted and harvested, in tune with the rhythm and the vibration of our planet.

But times and cultures have changed, and in this fast-moving, increasingly left-brained computerised society, we scarcely find time to speak to each other, let alone sing and make sound. The bad news is that many of us are vibrating more and more out of tune; the good news is that anyone can easily learn to work with these sacred sounds, and discover the immediate and positive effect upon the brain and the body.

The human voice is a muscle like anything else, and develops and stretches the more you use it. Some of us were told way back in school to stop singing because of the awful noise we were making, and some of us were told the same thing at home. And so we are taught to criticise and judge ourselves, to silence our greatest asset, when in fact our individual voice is vibrating with everything we are in this moment: emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually – it all comes out in the voice. We are subliminally giving messages to people about the way we are feeling, every time we speak, and that is why they say the human voice is the most healing of instruments: because it vibrates with our heart energy, and the more we open and express our heart, the more healing the sound of our voice.

You don’t have to be a trained singer or a musician to work with sound, and you certainly don’t need to be able to read music; and it doesn’t matter if you haven’t sung since a small child (so long as you don’t push and strain your voice now). The only thing that matters is that you let go of all that chatter going on inside your head, telling you you can’t do it, or it may work for others, but it won’t work for you. All you need to do is take a deep breath, open your mouth, connect to the sound that issues forth, and enjoy! People are constantly amazed at how good they feel after a day’s workshop with sound – clearer, brighter, more energised, more relaxed. The benefits are many and the greatest one is that once you get the hang of it, you can continue to make the sounds on your own, whatever you’re doing, driving the car, doing housework, walking in nature – or of course, sitting in meditation and with groups. I do believe that we all carry this knowledge held in the DNA of our cells. We are all healers, we all intrinsically know how to work with sound. My job is just to help you remember.

I work with a system of vowel sounds and notes connected to each energy centre or chakra. This is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘wheel’, so-called because these energy centres spin at different speeds and therefore vibrate with different colours. When we are really in tune, we can open and close the chakras at will, and our life-force energy flows freely through the body. But for most of us, as we grow and travel through life, stress and emotional trauma cause us to close down our energy centres to protect ourselves. Working with sacred sound is a simple and effective way of clearing and opening the chakras, helping us to be more in harmony with ourselves, each other and the planet. We also carry old memories within the cellular structure of the body, not just the brain. There is a membrane surrounding each cell which holds memory and really, we are like an onion – layers and layers of programming to be peeled away, right down to the bone, before we can access the truth of who we are. Sometimes it is just simply the fact that the growing child was not allowed to express feelings, or there was no support for them to do so. Those feelings are then tucked away somewhere in an odd corner of the body and although we may forget about them, they still subconsciously affect our behaviour now, increasing our fear and sense of isolation. But when we begin to work with voice tones, the voice becomes almost like a laser beam, vibrating us right down to the very core, clearing out anything which does not resonate in harmony, in tune with love; and the sense of relief we experience as we release the past is wonderful.

There is a great deal of documented research now with medical science in the area of organ donors, whereby the patients receiving the organs also begin to register the memories of the donor – clear proof that we do hold memory in our bodies; and it is fascinating to observe people in a workshop as releases take place over the course of a day, from pains in the head, neck, stomach or literally anywhere, to aches in the arms and legs. Because each side of the brain corresponds to a different side of the body - (very basically, left brain is masculine, logical, yang outgoing energy controlling the right side of the body; right brain is feminine, intuitive, yin receiving energy controlling the left side of the body) – people are often surprised to find one half of them is reacting with pins and needles while the other half is perfectly normal. It depends on whether you are blocked in your receiving or giving ability as to which side of you responds: but one thing is for sure. You can’t block the clarity of the sound you make, and the pain experienced is only the old repressed memories being felt, as the pure tones act to lift them out and clear a pathway for new energy to move through your body.

Exactly why does sound work so easily and efficiently? I wrote earlier of the constant chatter that goes on in our heads, which is caused by the two sides of the brain in continual conflict. If you can centre yourself enough to take a step back and observe your thought processes, you will see we are hardly ever in peace with our thoughts. In the very moment we begin to feel good, that other little voice will pipe up … ‘But what if this or that happens?’ ‘What if they think or say this or that about me?’ Rather like the American Bush administration, we are constantly projecting ourselves forward into a worrying future that hasn’t happened yet, and maybe never will: the power of Fear. But the power of sound is far stronger, and you will discover the most amazing thing about working with voice tones is that they immediately help you to create alpha (relaxing) brainwaves and calm down those insistent arguing voices inside you. You can literally become one with the sound and move into a place of deep relaxation and peace.

It’s so important for us to allow ourselves to do this, to reconnect with spirit within us and without, because another by-product of the fast-moving society we now live in is that we push ourselves beyond our limits, ignoring the signals from our stressed bodies and not allowing ourselves real quality time for relaxation. In fact, I sometimes organise relaxation evenings where people bring blankets and sleeping-bags and just lie on the floor for two hours, while I walk among them sounding tones and singing. It is quite incredible to observe the deep release that happens when people whose lives are crammed full to breaking point just stop for a couple of hours, breathe deeply, and spontaneously let go of old sadness and pain. I don’t lead them to do this in any way: I just relax them, and the clear high tones I sing seem to bring them to a place of calmness where the old negative memories just float up to the surface and disappear.

You don’t have to work by yourself with sound. There is nothing more simple or more beautiful than sitting in the middle of a group, all chanting together, or singing individual tones to create a choir of pure sound, and nothing more healing than allowing two or three people to lie on the floor in the centre of this impromptu choir and breathe in the tones. They will very often fall asleep in an instant and nobody every wants to leave the inner circle! There are tribes in Africa who still use sound in this way, and if someone is ill, the whole village will surround them and chant and sing to clear the negative energy. You can send sound into the earth for healing, you can connect with trees, animals, disabled children and adults. Sound is a universal language, because everything on the planet vibrates with it (even black holes out in the universe hum with a particular note) and it crosses all language and culture barriers.

You can work with Tibetan bowls and gongs, chimes and bells, musical instruments (I have a friend in Slovenia who uses her flute for healing) but for me, there is nothing so instantaneous, so joyful, so harmonising and heart-warming as the sound of the human voice. Try it now. Close your eyes. Focus for a few minutes on the breath as it flows in and out through the nose. Connect with your heart, breathe into it, and make a sound – any sound you want – the sound of your heart centre. As you make the sound, imagine a laser beam of light shining out of your heart. Maybe it will have a colour too. Send the sound and light together out into the world. Become that sound and light, and keep toning for as long as you want. Enjoy! You will soon notice the difference in the way you feel and at the same time, you will realise how very simple and easy it is to connect with the power of sound. So don’t delay – begin right now with this simple and easy way of tuning yourself back into harmony. You won’t be alone, because you will discover there are Angels of Sound who sing with you. So find the Angel in yourself, and sing. This is your birthright and it is who you truly are.

© Shirlie Roden
Singing Earth Music 2008

For more information on Shirlie’s work and music, please visit her website www.shirlieroden.com where her book ‘Sound Healing’ is now available to purchase
as an e-book

This is by Dr. Tian Dayton whose writing I have admired and used most willingly for about 15 years. She is perceptive, intuitive and caring. She holds a Ph. D in clinical psychology and an MA in educational psychology. Tian is a therapist in private practice in New York City. In her book of meditations DAILY AFFIRMATIONS FOR FORGIVING AND MOVING ON she always quotes someone else's work which is relevant to her own writing.

CONSCIOUS CHANGE by TIAN DAYTON

Today I recognise myself for the work I have done in recovery. I have not been satisfied with half a life and half a spirit. I have visited my own inner darkness and shed light. I have faced my tiger in the night. Many times I have been told that I dig too deeply and look too hard, but I have done it anyway - done it so that I can see the sky and hear the birds. So that the day is full and rich, I have made a decision to so what I could do, both to heal myself and to break the chain of addiction and co-dependency that passes down through the generations. Today I know that it has been worth the struggle - if only to see life in all its beauty for just a moment.

I am grateful for the path I have chosen

In the mouth of society are many diseased teeth, decayed to the bones of the jaws. But society makes no effort to have them extracted and be rid of the affliction: it contents itself with gold fillings.

Kahil Gibran

Now visit her site and see her remarkable work particularly on addictions. www.tiandayton.com

I have just read a slogan...... only healthy people can be happy....and I want to change it to.......only happy people can be healthy!

This is the beginning of my promotion of emotion.

We hear so much and see so much and experience so much these days about fitness. We are advised to exercise and diet and lose weight. There are many opportunities to join Gyms and numerous plastic surgeons to change our outer selves but what is happening to our inner emotional fitness. I am all for each of these aforementioned supports but what about the support of our feelings and sensations. If children are not happy and content and feeling safe, their lives, school work and relationships with others suffer. The man or woman who is trying to lose weight and is struggling with how they feel about themselves find it difficult, if not impossible, to shed the stuff on the outside. When we help more people to shed the inner baggage of pent up and unacknowledged emotional debris we would make the world a happier and more fulfilled place. Just as we can damage the planet we can destroy our own inner equilibrium. The outer always reflects the inner. The body creates these feelings for a reason. They help us. They are our friend and not something to subdue and hide. We should be proud and respectful of them. I trust my emotions and therefore I trust me too!

I am concerned about the emotional health of this planet of ours and the people on it.

Generally, some help is given for physical handicaps.........but not nearly enough!
Also, help is given for mental handicaps but not nearly enough.

Emotional handicaps are generally ignored. This means most of the world is ignoring their feelings and few receive any help with them. I believe the biggest concern we have gets the least concern and attention..

The weather here in the mountains of Central Italy has been extreme these last few weeks. In each week we seem to encounter all four seasons. This recent Easter Monday we faced all four seasons in one short day. Amazing. We had snow, torrential rain, blizzard, heavy gusty wind then sunbathing sun and a light wind like April. All within a few hours. I even watched a sight I had never before witnessed. A strong mist seemed to float down the valley and the next village, which is quite near, was suddenly engulfed by this mysterious cottonwool blanket cover that approached my terrace at a rapid rate like an encircling wave. It arrived and the cottonwool turned into a snow blizzard of battering intensity. It lasted only minutes and then suddenly the sun was out and really hot. Peace invaded for a few hours. This explosion of winter weather rapidly followed by a sudden spring reminded me how changeable nature can be. Like people. Our feelings change all day. It's natural. Every few minutes and sometimes fast and sometimes slow, sometimes mild and sometimes fierce, sometimes light and sometimes heavy and almost unbearable. We cannot be the same all day. We are not meant to be like that. It is not human. Of course, we can set our minds and go into denial about what is going on inside us.. We can ignore the feelings birthing in our bodies but they will continue to be there even if we avoid or numb them. It's sad that so many people are trying to excape from this very thing that makes us truly human. It makes us truly ourselves. The greatest gift we have is our humanness. Our next greatest gift is our ability to feel and yet we try and subdue this wonderful quality in ourselves. We use all kinds of feeling flatteners. We take care to pretend we have no fear. Fear is a natural animal instinct. We need fear to give us natural caution. Anger is also a primal emotion and needs to be faced and released. I took to Booze and sleeping pills and cigarettes to keep me going and they gave me false sleep too. I became more and more ill until I let go of it all some 22 years ago. I love life with my feelings and health now. I work with people who strive to feel the same all day everyday and find themselves falling short of perfect. Alcohol, Antidepressants, addiction to shopping, drugs, sex, over activity of all kinds, self deception, simply any way of avoiding self knowledge. Doctors often treat emotional unfitness with pills and potions which only make the patient feel good and does not get to the root of the problem. The cause or causes. Anything to change one's mood by an external feed. Anything to change one's mood. The now society. Anything to avoid being our real selves. Not being the real you creates dis-ease.

Many people in the world have acknowledged that positive thinking helps all of us but emotional support for these thoughts is essential. If we think one thing and feel the opposite the world is being given a paradox.......nay a lie.......the more the human being is in unity the better.
How do we raise the consciousness of the world's people to feel more and think a little less?.....to stop creating fear thoughts in the brain and bring the head and heart into balance. We need both mental and emotional realms in tandem for our health and this immediate helps us spiritually. Spirituality is an emotional endeavour and not a floaty escape. Emotional stability aids mental stability and clarity..........less fear more clear......I love myself and create a happy, healthy and dis-ease free zone inside me. Love conquers hate, anger and any of the fear based emotions. I am not a parking zone for negative emotions. I view them, review them and renew my inner health. I drive away the negative and free up my parking zone for wellbeing.

It is my desire to be emotionally mentally and physically fit. Fit for life.Love to you all.

The more I feel, the more alive I am. The more I feel, the healthier I become.

Feelings are to be respected in ourselves and in others. They need to be felt. Sounds silly? Well, in a way it is but the reality is they do need to be felt not secreted and stored. Our feelings are what make us human. They are a big part of what we are here for. I work with many people who feel that feelings are wrong and even dirty and certainly not allowed. They have learnt that feelings are something to be frightened of. Not true. Not true at all. Illnesses like Cancer and Alzheimer’s could be reduced if more people processed their feelings instead of numbing them in one way or other. I remember after I stopped drinking I nearly exploded with unfaced and ccompacted feelings. With unfelt feelings I was holding in.. Vesuvius was a pussycat compared with my leonine anger. I realise now that I spent years holding in emotions that I had not allowed to surface and be released. Fear was like a brick wall and could render me immobilised and petrified. How I ever managed to work or live I shall never understand. But live and work I did! In sex I had a great release but it was only solving the tip of my emotional iceberg. Crossing a large room full of people like a restaurant or something similar could be the emotional equivalent of climbing Mount Everest in flimsy fashion flipflops. I was living in world shrouded in a grey mist where my fear brain never stopped creating a new and negative paranoia to peruse while trying to hold down some wonderful work in Theatre and Television. It took months of discipline to slow down my brain and realise that life was bright, beautiful and colourful. That if I supported myself, instead of beating myself up, life would support me too.

Because of my perspective to my own childhood and all that that entailed I ended up by my mid twenties a confused and bewildered child with no handrail surrounding my ship in the storms of my life. I had success at work and always found sexual partners although relationships were always torturous and complex. I had many friends and even more acquaintances but never had depth with anyone and intimacy except in the sexual sense was unheard of in my pressure cooker emotional world. I exploded with unfelt fear and concealed aggressive anger. Finally after a wonderful year workwise I was playing a leading role at the Chichester Festival Theatre and I discovered the demon drink. I felt safe inside the bottle and the feelings of insecurity, terror and fury seemed to float away with the wine. Or Whisky. Or frankly anything I could lay my hands on. I was born to be an alcoholic. I was also born to conquer this damaging and life-draining disease. And disease it is both of the mind body and feelings. I know now that I was allergic to alcohol and that helped my drinking prowess. Genetically I was handed a legacy of drink and emotional problems which I formed into an art form all my own. I do not blame. I am grateful to be me now and the me then that has created the me now. I am so thrilled I don't get up in the morning and reach for the nearest bottle or the crisp seductive packet of fags………for the Americans who read my site this is English slang for cigarettes and not an abbreviation of Faggots! I get up to the joy and adventure of living and find that each day as I live and feel I have greater self knowledge and therefore a greater understanding of others.

Don’t misunderstand me. I was not that unusual. I followed my destiny and drank my emotions down into my body. I am not alone.What I am describing is not the exclusive realm of the alcoholic. It is a club belonged to by millions. So many people now find ways to avoid their emotional and mental development. Pills, alcohol, cugarettes and a wide variety drugs of legal and illegal kinds……quick fix lives with a distinct disinterest in their emotional body. More and more binge drinking particularly in young women in England is on the rise and I believe that worldwide the desire to subdue feelings is growing. The need to deny feelings and humanness seems to be growing. My impression as I talk to more and more people. So many wish to suppress their natural feelings and 'feel' the same all the time. This constant wish to always be ‘fine’ causes people to be in denial fo their feeling snad numb them any way they can. We are creatures of change all through the day. From minute to minute. Even from second to second we change. The reflex action in us to hide feelings from the world and also ourselves is so fast we are not aware we are doing it at all. The child in us learnt to subdue feelings. As far as I am concerned: No feelings…………..no real life.

I intend to start a revolution today and encourage everyone to face their feelings. They will discover that they are less monster-like than they thought. It helps them spiritually,,,,,,,,,if that is what they are seeking…..in the great balance of life the more self love, the more love we have for others. I am now becoming an emotional health enabler to defeat the denial and dumbing down of deadened emotions that, I feel, create the downfall of our society. I want to help all with their trauma and turbulence. It is by no means restricted to addicts of one kind or another, it is widespread and widely ignored.

Feel and life gets better. Feel and let life grow within you today. Breathe and feel.
Now!

I feel excited and inspired. I feel optimistic and calm. All at once. I also feel frightened, at times, and cautious. I allow my feelings to just get on with it while I observe. I choose not to get too involved. Mostly today, though, I feel happy and free. I look forward to the most positive and creative time of my life and I know, inspite of life's many challenges, I can focus on the limitless power of love and spirit power from within me to pick me up and place me where I need to be at the right time. I am always at the right place at the right time. I choose a wonderful inspiring life.

We concentrate at New Year on going into the new and forget to mention that we want to take with us the good things of the past. AND there are MANY! It is time to easily release the negative past and face the wonderful opportunities of the coming time of our lives. There is abundance for us all..........if we choose to take it...........if we stop resisting it arriving at our doorstep. When we open the door we can attract all that we want. Any sneaky little doubt can be subdued .......if we wish..........any past fears around our abilities can be thanked and told to shove off! To those who do not know English slang that is an impolite way of saying GO AWAY! I love to choose positive thoughts but always make sure my feelings are in line with those thoughts. I do not worry if negative thoughts creep in.........they are usually the past just trying to be noticed. If they continue for a time, just let them work their wonderful way inside you until they become your best friend. It's magic. Numb those feelings down and they surface later. Again and again. Often when you least expect or want them. Face them and speedily they cease to be a challenge and become an agreeable asset. Positive thoughts yes! Important. But.........Please work at bringing your feelings into line and concordance with those thoughts.

I feel happy that this website has had a facelift and some new innards. I look forward to resuming the monthly writings and talking to all of you. I am sure you know that there are such amazing energies happening in this world at this time. We have been going through amazing times astrologically and I, for one, am reeling from the strength of the past month with it's major changes in our lives. If you have felt tired and emotional over the Christmas period.......you are not alone......Oh, I know what you are thinking.........Christmas is always like that! True, but, this year there seems to be an extra big wild wave of disruption in our body energies and emotions. As one website calls it 'A Tsunami' of changing energies. We are being pushed into a new way of living. I feel I am almost 'oven ready' for my life to come. The preparations of this last year and 2006 have been hard on everyone. Now, we can face this new life's rough and tumbles with a fierce determination and a desire to overcome everything to achieve a better more satisfying life.

We live in a world where we are taught knowledge is the most important thing we can acquire. At school we are pumped full of facts and figures and fairly useless pieces of information. We are encouraged to go on to furthur education if we want......nothing wrong with any of this I must add......BUT.......to achieve what? A head full of data and detail? How much better it would be to know ourselves better. Self knowledge is becoming less and less popular! I have spent some 20 years learning who I am. I can recommend it. I understand why I do things now instead of just being buffeted by weird and wonderful thoughts and explosive unfaced feelings. I love me now and can face and do anything. I do not feel the need to cram facts into my head to show others how clever I am........I am great........I also have compassion first for myself and then for others. I see my fears and face them so that they are reduced from monsters into mini mice. I find that the more I understand the complexities of me I accept me as I am. I do not live in the world of 'I should be'. I do not live in the words of others. The more I understand me the better I can help others to straighten out their yards of emotional knitting. We are all miracles in our own right. We only need to be truly ourselves without limitations, without pressures but with clear self knowledge. "To thine own self be true."

Let us make a New year resolution right now to be true to ourselves completely this year. There has never been a better time to do the things we have always dreamed of......to do the things we have always coveted for ourselves and others. I send you love and courage and clarity. I send to all who read this the playful determination for real change this year. I feel free and calm and loving and confident. I feel sure you can achieve everything you wish.

I send love. NOW.

I want to feed the souls and the bodies of the world. It will please me to show people how they limit their lives and release them from their self-created confines. I want to help people to grow knowing that they can be strong. No misuse of power, just true inner strength. How wonderful it will be to encourage people to love themselves and then truly love each other. I want to help all people help themselves. I’d like to teach the world to love. I am being shown how to use my power in the best interests of all. I undertake to create peace and harmony where there once was fear and doubt. I will not hold back or give up.

Let me help global peace by working on me and befriending all my negativities and doubts and prejudices. Anger becomes passion. I transmute fear into love. Using alchemy my negative past transforms into my positive present and fulfilling future. If I cannot love every bit of me how can I project anything into the world but a love that is impure? I want to give love to everyone and everything at all times. I seek to love myself for all that I have done in the past. Even those bits that I used to deny and hide. I love myself that I was an alcoholic. I love myself now for what I saw as my faults. I am not perfect. I am only trying to find more and more love in me each day. And surprise, surprise I find it was there all the time. Just masked by my thoughts and misconceptions. A jewel surrounded by jaundiced junk.

I wish to view things with new eyes. Now I feel my feelings and create with a new perception. I give all I can to others. In this moment I release any pattern of blaming others. I am the creator of my life and attract to me all that I need for my growth and development. It is time to take responsibility for my own feelings and hurts. I rejoice in my emotions. I see the other person’s point of view. I give unconditionally of myself. I look after me first, that I may look after others from a position of strength. I surrender to the real me. I am being made ‘oven ready’ for the next phase of my life. I accept this transformation with all its ups and downs. I feel like I am clinging to the rudder of a large boat, sometimes on the surface and sometimes gasping for breath as I rise to the surface. I have reached a stage in my development where by reaching to the very depths of my heart and soul I can give the love so much of the world needs. It is time for huge change in the world and I am ready to give what I can to counteract the destruction and malignancy that is spreading like a fever over our planet.

Let us all help this ‘NOW’ society and show how inner values and simple lives can move mountains which block our world from peace and harmony. I resist the need for a quick fix and give myself the time and truth I need to truly become at one spiritually, emotionally, physically and mentally. Harmony and unity on the inside reflecting out like a lighthouse to the world. I find all the answers I need inside me. No one else can give me what I already know if I just take the time to listen and feel. I give myself time.

I send you all much love.

I am just reaching the end of one of the most intense processes of change that I have ever done. Five months nearly! Days off. Yes. Hours off for good behaviour!!! Even. It has been exhausting, exhaustive and at times exhilarating. There have been days when I could barely see straight. Days when I could barely walk because of the stuff in me that I needed to make friends with. Days of joy. Then, there were those days and nights with pain processing to a new status inside me. Getting in touch with the love for everything in my past. And I mean everything. To shake hands with those elements of me that I hadn’t forgiven. Just buried. I must quickly clarify that we are all different in our needs and aims spiritually. What I have had to do is purely mine. I chose this long labyrinthine look at my inner life. Your needs will be different but there will be similarities.

At the beginning of October I had really enthusiastic buyers for my English house, I was walking better each day and I could feel that I was ready to move to Italy. I rushed to Marks and Spencer and John Lewis to buy the oddments that I needed to take to the Italian house, all seemed to be streamlined towards a move for Christmas in Italy. Suddenly towards the end of November it all fell apart. I limped badly. I lost my buyers. I was getting angry with women. I rarely get angry but this linked back to old patterns and the words of women used to hurt. The attitude of how the words were spoken hurt even more than the words themselves. It was difficult to deal with as I felt betrayed by the women and by myself. I have gone through the proverbial emotional roller coaster of stored memories of old hurts. I started with Psoriasis when I was an insecure eighteen years old young man. This was the result of how I didn’t deal with the feelings around the hurt of others words. The skin problem had grown more over the years until I began to make friends with it some eight or nine years ago. I realised that it had protected me and been a real friend to me for all of my life. The minute I saw how good it was to me I stopped seeing it as an enemy and it started to diminish and grow paler. For those of you who don’t know this supposedly incurable skin disease it has lots of large scaly red patches of skin particularly around the joints in the body. Some people have it all over their body. Mine got worse as I released alcohol and cigarettes and needed to work on the buried emotional past which had caused the need for addiction and this over produced angry skin. With the help of Homeopathy and Cranial Osteopathy I have reduced it over the last five years and it will soon go as I release the negative past in the body. More about this in a separate book!

I realised during this last three weeks that I was in touch with a past life regression that I did some eight years ago in which I was persecuted by a tribe of women or more accurately the women of my tribe. Their words stung. They talked behind my back. Finally I was stabbed and killed by these women. Many times I have been through the pain and terror evoked by this old scenario culminating in one almighty push last Saturday when I dragged myself finally into making friends with it. Release came after years of this dark difficult cloud. I lifted my head and looked at the world anew. I looked at the astrology for this week and saw that Saturn was to begin its movement forward after a long period of retrograde. I searched for the date when Saturn had started its corrective retrograde path. Saturn loves to make us sort ourselves out.

I was telling a friend that I had been doing this work for months and she reminded me that I had spoken of the memory to her. She jogged my memory by saying that I had previously said in telling the story that I was stabbed several times under the left shoulder blade.Yes! I had forgotten that I used to have a lot of pain under that bone when I was having conflict with women, particularly in the workplace. Next day, I was at the osteopath and we talked in brief of the emotional stuff induced by the Homeopathy I was taking. She proceeded to help me release my negative body biography. She then turned me on my front and told me that she was drawn to a particular area of my back…….yes, under the left shoulder blade and towards the middle of the back………there was no pain…….there was, however a sort of grey congealed energy left there. I told her the conversation of the previous day. So simple.

Later that day, I received an email from the Jonathan Cainer website telling me that the Saturn retrograde has begun on November 22nd which was when this enormous final transformation had begun. I feel great relief at all the pieces fusing together into a complete healing of the past. What a miracle that we can, if we choose, do this process of self heal. I feel sure we come in with these experiences, whether past life or not, and help the soul settle with the body. The more we release the negative past, the more we free the body of old guck. The more we make friends with our inner selves the more we know ourselves. Our real selves. I am no detective. I simply allow my loving self to pull up what I need from inside me. I seek assistance but it is entirely my doing. I send you the love and the courage of St Michael. I send you love from me too!

My dogs help me. All three of them. Every minute of every day they look after me. Not in ways I sometimes would like. Can they make a cup of tea? No. Can they get the washing in off the line when it pours with rain? No, if only they could! But they are sensitive to my every movement, feeling and intention all day long. That doesn’t mean they do as they are told! No. But as they are breaking the invisible rules they check my mouth and eyes to find out how far they have transgressed and how much further they can go. They are remarkable beings. They feel with me, protect me and always look for fun and giggles with me. They teach me more about spirituality than any book. I just observe and interact. I admire their ability to shrug their shoulders and go on to the next. The past is quickly forgotten.

Jamie is a totally brilliant dog. He reasons. He works things out and assesses every situation. I don’t need to speak to him always. We work together telepathically. He is big and solid and kind. He forgets he has grown from the age of two months to his current age of 6 and a half years. At around 40 kilos in weight he loves to sit on your lap. He watches and is patient. This is no dumb dog. If he doesn’t obey the order to sit it is because he will do it when HE wants and not before. The truth is he tries to be brilliantly behaved at all times. He cares. My Golden Retriever. My golden angel. A healer in doggy disguise. His greatest lesson for us all is that he expects things to always go well. He assumes that when he has finished one mouthful the next will be supplied. He never thinks it will be his last abundance as humans do. He assumes milk will be put down in the morning. He is more a teacher than any human.

Jake is a mad Border Collie and I rescued him several years ago. Alert. Loves life. Brightest of bright shining eyes. His eyes are sharp headlights of joy in a strong determined head. He is a sheep dog but afraid of sheep, a cocky puppyish approach to every bit of playful life but mixed with a transient lack of self esteem. A bundle of blatantly cheeky charm. A kind and loving animal no matter what his current fears and phobias! Benji is the most extraordinary and demanding. Demanding means he is so frightened that he will lose me that he trails around after me shadowing my every move. I took him on when the family he was with from a puppy decided they could no longer give him the attention he asked for. They had four children and a new baby arrived. He is comic and adorable. He makes his wishes and intentions clear all the time. He shows me clearly his every mood and thought. There is no misreading with him! The universe and I support him clearly at all times.

Their loving loyalty combined with acceptance that life is always good if they want it to be is amazing. They are a constant source of joy and energy in my life. While I have been doing this very deep spiritual work these last few years they have been my constant support, companions and frequently caring canine handkerchiefs!

LOVE LESSONS YOU CAN LEARN FROM YOUR DOG...
Posted at the San Pablo Catholic Church in Marathon, Fla.

If you can start the day without caffeine,
If you can get going without pep pills,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time
If you can overlook it when something goes wrong through no fault of yours and those you live with take it out on you
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment If you can ignore a friend’s limited education and never correct him,
If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help If you can relax without liquor
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs If you can say honestly that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed, colour, religion or politics
Then, my friend, you are almost as good as your dog.

It is so easy to get lost in observing and changing oneself and not notice the outer edges of the web of our creation. We forget to assess just how far we have come in this earthly life. I am always shocked when people observe how much work I have done on myself because I have been so involved for so many years that I forget to step back and appreciate how much I have done for myself. The deeper I go inside me, the deeper I can help the people I live with and work with. Time to stand back and pat yourself on the back, I think! Examine the progress, success and not what you feel is yet to be done! Remember we are always perfect. Give yourself a break. Get a yardstick.

I am told so often by people that they are lost in their processing. They have lost their way and similar ideas. It is impossible to be on the wrong track. We are always at the right place at the right time. It is a brain trick. Assuming we are going wrong is the mighty fear ego trying to trick us into self doubt. We are choosing what we want and need for our lives on a very deep level and although the brain doesn’t like how things are happening the soul and heart know the truth. Searching the soul and bridging the abyss between our personality self and the soul is the single most important gift we can give ourselves. The brain has created the separation between our outer and inner selves and we are working to join the two together with invisible loving glue.

I stopped healing people some ten years ago because I felt that until I was clearer and more in touch with my negative past it was not a good idea. For them and for me. I made a decision to be as clear as possible. To face that past and lovingly without self pity and always with joy. I remember that St Francis of Assisi when he was very ill and bedridden made a decision to only be joyful no matter what his bodily pain and illness. This he did until he died. He also took opium for the pain only in his last day or two so that he felt the pain and knew what he was experiencing. One of our worst enemies in release of old unfaced emotions stored in the body is self pity. In the instant society we live, where to pop a pill is preferably to letting the body work on it’s self-heal, it is all too easy to give up when the going gets tough.

I have realised very clearly today that in this spiritual life our greatest strength is our sensitivity. To reach the bottom of our well of vulnerability is the most powerful thing we can do. If we are sensitive to everything in us, we can truly be spiritual .I realise that the way forward is by losing strength to gain it. As I feel the heart beat of the smallest wren I stand tall in the world. It is the opposite of what this society tells us to be: ‘Take action. Don’t get left behind. Smash. Grab. Take all you can in the now.’ THAT is not the way. The subtleties of this world are achieved by stealth and sensitivity not by push and shove of the modern life. Be sensitive. To yourself. Be sensitive therefore to others and their ways. Give yourself a break and realise that all our life paths are different and sticking rules on anything or anybody is the instant but wrong way to be. The first and only rule is that there are no rules!

Be kind to yourself today. Know that you are on the right track always. You always make the best and wisest decisions for the life you have chosen. There is no wrong way to go. You are perfect as you are today. Have a great day. Be sensitive and therefore strong. It is your greatest asset in this spiritual life. Love and power to you today.

The following story was e-mailed to me recently by a friend of mine and I just loved it. I don't know its source or writer but it is such a wonderful simple comment on attitudes and life that I wanted you all to read it.

If you know the author please MAIL ME!............................If you are the author......THANK YOU SO MUCH.....................and could you PLEASE e-mail me as I love your piece.......................

- JMichael Fields

A boat docked in a tiny Greek village. An American tourist complimented
the Greek fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took
him to catch them.

"Not very long," answered the Greek.

"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the
American.

The Greek explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet
his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with
my wife. In the evenings I go into the village to see my friends, dance a
little, play the bouzouki, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you.
You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra
fish you catch. With the revenue, you can buy a bigger boat. With the
extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a
third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers.
Instead of selling your fish to a middleman, you can negotiate directly
with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant.
You can then leave this little village and move to Athens, Los Angeles or
even New York City! From there you can direct your huge enterprise."

"How long would that take?" asked the Greek.

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

"And after that...? Afterwards?"

"That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing.
"When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make
millions!"

"Millions? Really? And after that...?"

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the
coast, sleep late, play with your grandchildren, catch a few fish, take a
siesta with your wife, and spend your evenings singing, dancing and playing
the bouzouki with your friends."

In the silence I find me In the silence I meet me face to real face

I love noise. I love loud music and voices clattering and screams of delight but I also need as much silence as possible in my life. We have such easy access to sounds with Discman players, mobile phones, stereo set-ups of many kinds, television, the constant sound of voices and machines if we work in a busy environment. Buying, selling, begging and suggesting. All require voices. Music with MP3 players and cars with engines, dogs barking, children playing in the playground all make noise. Sometimes with joy, sometimes with determination to dominate. I am the first to advocate the speaking of feelings. I shout when I am angry. Into the air to avoid doing it to anyone unfortunate enough to be in my immediate vicinity. We need sounds as a very important means of expressing ourselves. The problem, as I see it, is that people are becoming more and more scared of silence. More and more afraid of being alone. Terrified of being alone and silent. The danger, in this modern age, is that we lose the times of silence. It is so easy to become afraid of silence. I live a fairly silent life but realise even as I sit here working at my gentle lap-top with a dog sleeping near my feet we are not truly soundless. I go into my woods which are so peaceful and the sound of the birds can be deafening at times. I wouldn’t change that beautiful sound for anything. As boring as my dogs barking can be at times I would hate them to be truly silent!

Life already has plenty of sounds and noise without us adding more and more. People on trains and buses use their mobile telephones. What a miracle we can do so but the danger is that we grow co-dependent on always having a voice there. The trick is to hold that magical life gift called silence and hold it no matter what the tumult outside us, of traffic and storm, of people-rage and fearful clamour. By quieting the ego fear of the brain and breathing into the silence within we are always in touch with an inner silence of huge proportions. We can sustain the peace inside us and we can help the peace in the world. If we have no inner peace we send out more disquiet and dread on this rather loveless planet. Silence brings love and peace for us to radiate out into the entire world.

To feed the soul with hope and love and grace we need enough silence to let in the love needed for communicating with and listening to ourselves. I have been constantly reminded that we think we are listening to others but it is so easy to be waiting to speak. A different energy completely. I try to be sensitive to another’s person’s contribution to our conversation. A conversation is double sided and not a talk with interruptions. If we do not have a silence inside us how can we truly hear anyone else. If we listen to ourselves with peace and joy and compassion we listen to our fellows with peace and joy and compassion. If we give ourselves the silence we need each and every day we can really be in repose as we listen to our friends and family and co-workers.

In silence we find our strength and do not need to constantly prove our worth. In silence of spirit we know our worth and don’t keep showing it off to make ourselves feel better. There is no need. If we truly know who we are we are happy with ourselves and don’t need confirmation from anyone other than ourselves on anything. In silence and spirit we hear ourselves and the vaster knowledge of the universe can be ours. We already know all we need to know if we go silent and listen. Books are lovely but they don’t replace our inner knowledge. We have all we need in our silence and self to have a splendid and successful life.

Live in your inner silence. Know your own truth from the heart and not the brain. Love in the silence. Don’t live in the words of others. Silence brings spiritual splendour.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I am grateful for the gift of life.

I am grateful for everything in my life. The blessings of every kind. I love my dogs. People are wonderful to me……mostly! I love living in my house with the woods. Nature is truly my friend if I choose to view it that way. The sun, the rain and the snow.

Soon I will move to an amazing new home. In a new country. I love this new house already. What an amazing adventure!

I see all my life experiences as something positive even though they sometimes hurt.

I realise everyday that I can choose to be happy, whenever I want.

Serenity and peace are my friends.

Joy is my middle name. Freedom is my aim. Service to me and others is my life.

When I take myself too heavily I weigh myself down. If I stand on my dignity I may squash it. Life is lighter when I simply smile. I focus on the golden leaves of autumn and what I view as problems seem insignificant.

Everyone I meet gives me a reflection of where I am. It may be somewhere deep inside me or on the surface, more obvious and overt. I see when I am controlling myself and limiting myself. I am free and have all the wonderful things of the universe if I just get out of the way and let life lovingly engineer my inner chosen path.

I am surprised when life is not quite the colour I expected it to be! I thought I would take the open motorway and I seem to be on this twisty overgrown lane. I wanted a quiet back street and I got a main thoroughfare. But which way leads to my chosen destiny? I keep asking spirit to tell me my life purpose but part of me knows it better than anyone or anything. I keep myself unified by knowing that I am always on the right track. I don’t need to chop and change from one direction to the other. My road is always right. There are no missed opportunities. Deep inside me I know what to do. I listen to myself every minute of everyday. I really listen to myself and everyone I meet and I take such simple joy in that.

I am grateful to my family and friends for all the help they knowingly and unknowingly give me. They teach me directly and indirectly. We all teach best by example. My Mother taught me so much from her difficult life by just being her. I know now that my frightened Father was my friend not my foe. My brother was a soul mate and one of my challenges in life. I thank them all for such miraculous help.

Today, I notice that my greatest challenges have slowly become my greatest strengths. I was always hurt in the past by people’s words and now I love writing words and listening to them. Listening to others is a joy. I am no longer hurt or frightened by others words. I adore reading and speaking in public and this was a source of nightmarish neurosis in the dim and distant past. Strange for an actor? Everything that was a problem becomes an asset when we do our lifework. I was frightened of money and now I truly love it. Not greedily but generously.

I thank god for this wonderful life with so many amazing possibilities for me if I only see them and let them in. And even if I don’t see them I let them in anyway. I know I deserve a calm but exciting life. I know that I deserve all good. I accept that abundance is mine for the taking. Prosperity is mine. I deserve it. And even if I don’t deserve I can have it anyway. For fun. For future. For now and always.

Thank you for all my supports and help. I get out of the way and let love and good and smiling simplicity in.

I love everyone. I care for everyone. But most important. I love me. I care for the ‘me’ I am now. I love me especially for what I was. I am lovely and loving. I am an amazing paradox in change. I unite my soul, mind, body, emotions and all levels of me in truth, light and love.

LOVE.

‘Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbours build their philosophy of life.’

- A.J.Cronin

I am bored with hearing what a silly man he is. Georgie Best, I mean. I get extremely uppity when I hear the word weak when attached to alcoholism. I get angry when I hear the misconceptions about alcoholism and addiction. Defence comes vehemently forward from me to protect and support anyone in this position. You may think it is not good to say that he cannot help it, but it is true. He can’t. A powerful inner demon controls him to such an extent that he can ONLY drink. He feels without choice. He feels trapped in this hell of a life he has created. Believe me it is a knife-piercing hell of a life. It is manic strength not weakness. I have been there. I am fortunate that I was able to climb the rock face of recovery with clenched fists and nails clinging to the perilous, slippery slopes of sobriety. It is not through discipline we stop drinking it is actually the reverse. No discipline. Letting go and having the faith to know it will come right in the end. Alcoholism is still being judged as being merely drinking too much. People tend to judge alcoholics by their own standards of over bingeing social drinking. IT IS NOT. Totally understandable as we can only base our views on what we have experienced or learnt. Alcoholism is manic and apparently uncontrollable. To not drink takes huge concentration and devotion to giving you a life. To create and not destroy everything around you and in you.. It is not two sweet sherries, too much, too soon, on a Sunday before the roast and sleep-it-off snooze. It is waking up and mentally grabbing for the soonest, strongest drink you can manage. (For the people who read my work outside of the UK. George Best is one of our former charismatic footballers with extraordinary talents in all areas of his life.) He started to live the high life until the low strife of alcoholism took over. He has chosen a life of destruction and is constantly pulled to the wrong people and worse situations. It is his choice. He needs our love and compassion. He also needs the strongest kick up the bum!
I remember very clearly the late Diana Dors (Actress) saying that he was a genius who was ruled by ‘the devil’s brew.’ This made sense to me before I really drank but devil’s brew it is! I felt controlled by the destructive power inside me. I could not just have an odd drink… I had to be permanently drunk and it got worse and worse as it spiralled ever downwards to its dramatic end. After stopping drinking I held onto life as if it was going to be taken away from me. I erupted with rage at the slightest thing. I clawed my way back to sanity while feeling like an unexploded bomb. I was fortunate that an acupuncturist who was treating me said, after a year of weekly visits, that perhaps it would be better if I dealt with my confused locked- in feelings rather than releasing them with acupuncture every week. I asked him how to do that and he told me to go away and work it out. He has more effect on my inner journey to remove the reasons for drinking than anyone at that time. Apart from me that is! I set about to remove anger from my life. I set out to be a hate free zone. I set out to remove all fear and bitterness.

The truth is unless you do the body and emotional work to excavate the roots of the why you drank you will end up inevitably returning to the bottle. Separate the person from the need by delving into the emotional and genetic past and the person comes out shining, creative, loving and free. Shaking hands with your enemy works wonders. George Best never chose the route that I am describing because he was not shown properly how to do it. Help drying out. Yes! Help getting back into life. Yes! But systematically removing the effects of the ‘disease’ in the body is a tough but worthwhile occupation. And don’t mistake what I just said. Alcoholism is a disease. An illness. It is a mental, emotional and physical monstrosity. I believe spirituality is the sole reliable way of solving the growth into sobriety. I know that a connection to this healing energy can turn lives around from any addiction. Stopping an addiction is easy. Staying stopped is the real job of work!

Many, many people have addictions of small or large kinds. Over spending, too much sex, shopping for the sake of it, addicted to grapes because the body is allergic to grapes.(Me! Among all the others I had) Eating the wrong things and not able to stop. Not eating or over eating, then bingeing and throwing up…All are addictions of one kind or another. “I just can’t get going without my cup of coffee in the morning”………… The only way I know that truly works is to clear the body of stored-up suppressed old emotions. And replace that with the love from spirit. The love of the God or whatever you call the energy in you. We are not seeking salvation but uncovering it. It is already there. Inside us.

George Best was and is a wonderful human being but he has lost himself in a shadowy world of fear which demolishes and de-creates. He is a loving amazing man beneath the crap of his outer life. I was fortunate that I could retreat to the wilderness to find me. It was amazingly hard and requires dedication and patience. But to try to recover your life and purpose while still so much in the public eye must be almost impossible. His choice, I repeat. Let us send him compassion and love as he lies in intensive care. Let us see the shining light that he was and still is although a bit shaded at present. Let us wish him love. Let us wish him joy and hope. But most of all let us send the peace that eludes him.

If you haven't visited the website of the very talented ISHA LERNER you should do so today!

There are certain sites I visit daily and Isha Lerner's inspiring colourful site I visit whenever I have a moment. Sometimes several times a day! Her knowledge of Astrology and flower essences combined with her couselling and motivational abilities produce a simple, no-nonsense view of spirituality. A lovely lady and a fantastic site. This months Heartlinks piece is taken from her site and deals with Astrology at a time when the world is shifting so drastically in its energies. After reading it please click on the link and visit her site. I make special mention of the INNER CHILD CARDS which have guided and opened people's hearts for years. They are a miracle.

Saturn in Leo

Saturn in Leo: Reconstructing the Heart of Humanity On July 16th, 2005, the planet Saturn entered the sign of Leo after completing a 2 1/2 year cycle in the sign of Cancer. We’ve now shifted from the watery moon nature of Cancer into the fiery solar light of Leo. We shift from the idea of self-preservation to that of self-expression. The energy is very different. In the last two plus years we explored the emotional infrastructure of the collective unconscious. We examined the under belly of fear as a means to rebuild, perhaps, a sanctuary of social order that might protect, preserve, and nurture the masses. However, on the shadowy side, the shell of fear would provide a place to hide, deny, and ignore the cry of need within and without. As the years gained momentum we began to ponder upon simple, yet, poignant questions, such as, “What is safe?” “Who protects us?” “Who do we trust?” “Where do I belong?” As global tensions amplify, our duty to discern between a fierce pretense of defense, or, false power, and true caring that truly meet the needs of humanity, or, Love prevails. Saturn in cancer challenged us to look at our own emotional response to parenting and authority. It is believed that a good parent or leader will keep us safe from harm and teach the ways of survival and protection against all evil. If that authority is immersed in a paradigm of fear and false power, a foundation of trust within the life of the child cannot be formed. The child will eventually stray, and ponder, “What measures must I take in my life to find safety in an unpredictable world?” The child must now find a way to redefine life according to new standards and self-realized values. Our next step as a humanity involves the task of pursuing the Truth of our passions and the conviction of Love as we redefine the power/fear imprints from the past. We now turn our face toward the fire where passion and creativity conspire. The force of Leo will seek to manifest as a torch of conviction and self-expression for each individual, assisting one to reference the unconscious material that has been collected in the past two years. No doubt, there will be uprisings in religion, prophecy, and all matters of the heart. The symbol of loyalty, passion and patriotism will prevail. Fierce, bold, showy, and grandiose gestures will be expressed as the masses begin the battle for power, prestige, and attention. You may see many new book titles about relationships, and all convictions of the heart, including more literature and books about the Christ Consciousness, Mary Magdalene, and the human pursuit toward Love and Devotion. The momentum of this cycle could be dangerously arrogant, or, it could open the door to the Higher Will of Love and Wisdom. My guess is that it will be a mixture of both. Saturn represents structure and form and is the teacher, or, initiate. Leo is generous, childlike, playful, and needy...Leo individuals do need attention yet they don’t like to tell anyone or show it. Consequently, they play out their dramas hoping to get the attention they seek. Unappreciated or ignored, the Leonine individual may sulk, suffer pride loss, and run away to lick their wounds of rejection alone. As their internal fire rages, time will tell how this deep unmet need will manifest. The healthy Leo child learns to balance the internal need for creative action and attention, discovering ways to unite with the world around him or her with a playful pride and ego. The unhealthy Leo may strategize ways to manipulate the system so that all eyes will be focused on his or her drama of the day, gaining more and more attention for him or herself. Archetypically, this will be the choice we have before us as a collective ‘body social.’ How well we behave? How will our leaders behave? Leo rules the fifth house of the astrological wheel. The fifth house governs children procreation, passionate experiences, romance, and defines how we receive love. When Saturn occupies the fifth house in an astrological chart the individual is given the task to learn responsibility in these areas of life, and, must explore the potential for joy. With Saturn in Leo, we are each given a taste of Saturn in the fifth house. We have an opportunity to use our creativity and passion responsibly, remain self-centered and focus on the power of Love and relationships. It will become our privilege to explore the many ways love can manifest unconditionally in our changing world. The experience will be nothing short of “Reconstructing the Heart of Humanity” for the good of all concerned.

Click here to visit Isha's superb website.

I have just returned from Italy where I have been monitoring the progress, by the builders and team, on my house there. It always shocks me how this area of Italy has such an amazing spiritual energy. This hot, artistic country. There is so much to stimulate me spiritually, creatively, emotionally, physically and mentally. I feel excited there, challenged but know I am fortunate to be lead to live there. My heart knew Italy was the country for me some three years ago but I am shown how important it is for my life every moment I am there.

I think back to ten years ago when I was desperately short of money and not really wanting to work in Theatre as I felt my route in life was through my heart and spirituality. (In those days I lived in a one-bedroom flat in South London.) My destiny is to delve deeper and deeper inside myself to face and befriend the darkest corners of my innermost being. To face the war that raged inside me some times and turned to the most magical peace at others. I wondered how I could manage financially to do this work and follow my heart where I knew it was leading. The money has always come in from different means. The more I trust and assume it will come in – it does. Strange too that I understood that I should live alone too. I instinctively knew that living with a partner would interfere with what I needed to do. Not something I wanted but it has proved right every step of the way. Let me be clear. We all have different ways means and routes to achieve the journey down inside ourselves. I started to work with homeopathy and cranial Osteopathy in order to release the festering fungus of my early life’s emotions. I wanted to face all the demons and be me. I wanted to face the fears and suspicions I brought in with me. Slowly - but surely - I have gone deeper inside me and my outer life has improved in equal measure. As I have come to terms with the shadow me, my worldly life grows abundantly as I do on the inside. I have become the person I pretended to be.

Now I have a church and a priest house in the mountains of Italy which is currently being reconstructed so beautifully. Life gets better and deeper and more loving every minute of every day. I note how far I have come. I walked the streets of Assisi and thought of that small man who made a huge impact in the world. In a world without communications, as we have now, he became and still is an important figure. I cannot follow all his religious views but I must admire his love and determination for what he felt was right. He has inspired me to help my fellow creatures toward a more fulfilling life. I feel much of my work is going to be with people who find spirituality difficult and life hard to cope with. There are so many sensitive people in the world who have not been taught to stand up for themselves and be themselves. To protect themselves but be open too.

Let us care for all creatures in this Universe compassionately. Let us begin with ourselves. Let us follow our inner voice and not the outer voices of others. Our outer life grows as our inner work develops. Our inside is mirrored on the outside. The deeper our development the better our life.

I send you love and care and peace. I send love to Melanie and Luigi who I met briefly in Italy. I know they will find what they are looking for. It’s not how much you do. Just turn to LOVE.

The 7th day of the 7th month in a number 7 year

Such large gestures and movements on the world this year. Both man and nature are erupting. What tragedy balanced by triumph and joy. Within a day of the announcement of the Olympics in 2012 coming to London there are four bombs attacking innocents and the inner city. Such emotional contrasts and physical destruction. Not only the damage to people, goods and property but the long term effect to thousands involved emotionally, physically and mentally. We must be grateful for the simplicity we can achieve in our lives at times like this and grateful for our faith and good fortune. Let us send all people affected by the London blasts our love and joy and hope for a speedy return to their individual realities. Let us not dowse them with our tears but with our smiles. We can send out our compassion and leave pity in the dustbin. We send love.

Let us send our prayers to the world leaders gathered at Gleneagles to bring them clarity and humility. Let us send love for the decisions affecting today and not condemn their past errors of judgement. We send them prayers of light. We send love.

With the future and present of Africa so much in the world news this last week. For the good that the concert held worldwide brought. The awareness it engendered. Let us send determination and courage to the Africans who so earnestly want to work and help themselves. Pity, they don’t need. Throw that out today. I am particularly interested in the fate of Zimbabwe and its political insanity. No seed and therefore no crops. No machinery because it has been smashed by the thugs of authority so therefore no produce from the crops. No food. No education for so many. No hope. Let us send them courage. One or more leading lights to break through the darkness of destructive domination. Let us send them love and peace and hope for the future. We send love.

Before we condemn or criticise let us look at ourselves. To bring world peace we need to bring peace inside ourselves first or the task is fruitless. How can we slam the suppressors of society if we are dictators in our own homes? I wish to remove every prejudice and lie and hateful thought. I send my self pity to the cesspit where it belongs. Let me first love myself as deeply as possible so that then and only then can I love the world for its beauty, truth and light. If I am not true to me, how can I truly be true to others? If I am not the truth of me, the real me, am I not presenting to the world a lie? I will let the truth of me shine in the world. I will unceasingly work to fearlessly face and befriend my past negativities. I will continue to work on myself that I may serve mankind in a deeply truthful way. I want, for all people in the world, the best life that they can uncover. I want that for myself first and then for everyone I can help either directly or indirectly. I send love to myself and it radiates out to the world.

LET US REPLY WITH STRENGTH AND LOVE
AND JOY TO EVERYTHING IN OUR LIVES.
WE SEND LOVE.

There are days when I have to remind myself why I ever started on this spiritual way of life. YOU know the sort of days I mean! The days and nights when nothing you do in your development seems to make sense or go right or click into place. Things feel as comfortable as a hedgehog in your handbag! On those days I have to remember to encourage myself to look how far I have come since I started fifteen years ago. When I question my doing it at all, I separate myself from the part of me that knows I am at the right place at the right time - always. I feel unified these days. And I am a long way from the person who started all those years ago.

I realised, around this last Christmas, that we don't encourage each other enough. And we certainly don't encourage ourselves enough. There is so much creative talent in this world of ours and we forget to say to others, "YOU'RE GOOD! Keep going! You’re getting better and better!” We tend to hold on to the negatives and criticise each other instead of forming a healing, harmonious and encouraging way forward. I feel that my parents only ever told me what I did wrong. They seemed to tell me I was always wrong. Of course, this is just my view and not a reality, but that is my reception of what they did. My parents wanted 'the best' for me and pushed and pushed me and corrected me at what appeared to be every little step I took in life. As I said before.......this is my reception of what they did for me.

It is so much easier to tell people what's wrong with them and not how truly miraculous and unique they are. AND THEY ARE. We control others in what they say and feel and do, just as we control ourselves. Stop one and the other disappears. If we see the miracle that we are ourselves then it shows us how wonderful our friends, families and colleagues are. It is much better to be kind than to be right. The more we show ourselves compassion the more we can show others compassion. The deeper the love for ourselves the deeper the love for others can be.

People are always amazing. Even if they are a little bit angry sometimes or naughty, or unhappy or afraid or resentful sometimes. People are still talented and wonderful in some way and if we take time to look at this part of them we can then appreciate and praise that part. I am learning to tell myself I am special. I am learning to tell myself how wonderful I am. Do you? I can't always get there but, do you know, the more I encourage myself the more I feel I can achieve. Everyday I get better and better. If I can appreciate myself and love how special I am, then I can give that as a gift to others by appreciating them and encouraging them to be fully creative and truly themselves at all times. Even if they fall short of their targets today, with a little encouragement they can become genii tomorrow. If they want to paint, make music or write for themselves…………encourage them. If they want to paint, make music or write for the world........encourage them. If they want to achieve anything in any field, encourage them. Even in humbler aims, encourage them. In everything. I believe that what I give out I get back. If I encourage others I find I am encouraged by return. I support others and they support me enthusiastically and encouragingly. Encouragement is loving, spoken support. It can also be just an implication or a thought. A feeling left unspoken but freely given. Unconditionally.

I want to help others to learn how truly miraculous they are. We are all brilliant, but we can be blind to our own amazing qualities. We are loving, but our fear makes us conceal all that part of ourselves. We are children of God and are pure love even when we feel far removed from it. We learnt in Sunday School that God is all good and since we are one with God, so are we. We are all abundant, all powerful and all loving if we choose to be. It is my dearest wish that everyone understands that they can do great things. They can do anything they can set their minds to. It is so easy to negate our lives. To say no to life….. and hide away. It's time for change.
BIG change.
Why not say yes to life instead. Encourage yourself.
Say yes. TODAY! Go on.

"Those who are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize."

A quote from Elizabeth Harrison

Birth and Death

I seem to have so much around me at the moment about birth, rebirth and death. My Aunt died in March. A friend of many years ago some two weeks ago. Last Friday one of my goats giving birth to a Walt Disney-cute goatlet while, in the next stable, a one year old goat was dying after eating something poisonous. The pain of birth balanced by the pain of sudden accidental death.

The Mother of a very dear friend of mine died very recently too. We think birth is to be celebrated and death abhorred but they should both be feted as similar. If you like, one is a birth into life and the other is a birth back into spirit. I asked to read what my friend Roger Martin wrote for his Mother’s funeral and here it is for you to read.

Mum (Eileen)

It is impossible to even begin to say all those things that adequately describe mum. I could easily go on for hours celebrating her wonderful qualities as a wife, mother, grandmother, neighbour and friend.

The Reverend Sue Walker will say more, but I’d like to make a very simple tribute to mum in a way she would have recognised and, I suspect, probably preferred.

I want you to play a little game with me. When you are at home later, I’d like you to choose a word that will always remind you of Eileen, made up from the first letters of the qualities you admired most in her.

For instance, if you choose…

Lovely, Uplifting, Caring, Kind and Young-at-heart, you spell LUCKY

…which we all were for having known her - and we certainly were to be part of a family that had mum at its centre as its lynch-pin.

So let me spell out my word for you.

The first letter is
S is for Special – which she was; undoubtedly – to all of us
The second letter is
U is for Unselfish – anyone who knew her was aware of her generosity and selflessness
Sorry mum, but the third is
N is for Naughty - which she was. She would never do what she was told… and neither will dad. And before you ask… yes, it does run in the family
The fourth letter is
S - and that has to be for Smiling – We have received over 140 cards between us, an my guess is that the word ‘Smiling’ appeared on well over a hundred of them. It appears that none of us can ever remember her without a smile on her face
The next letter is
H is for Humorous – I doubt if any of us will ever forget her infectious giggle
Then comes
I is for Irreplaceable – which needs no further explanation
Then there’s another N, and sorry again mum, but it has to be
N for Noisy – she was – you know she was - if there was outburst of laughter at home, at choir practice or in a shop, a theatre or a restaurant, you could guarantee that mum was at the centre of it… and had probably started it. AND… she never stopped talking… there was rarely a moment’s silence - and before you say anything, guilty, that runs in the family, too.
The final letter is E, and that is either for her name, Eileen, or how about
E for Ebullient – which describes that lovely bouncy, bubbly personality.

Those letters spell SUNSHINE. She was the sunshine in all of our lives. That’s why we’re all here. She was quite simply one of the most wonderful people I have ever met in my life – I loved her to bits. I am very proud to be her son, and deeply honoured to be one of only two people in the world privileged to call her – Mum.

"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separate us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous."

- THOMAS MERTON

I almost need say no more as it reflects what I know to be true. What a wonderful quote. I realise that I have never worked so diligently or believed in anything so steadfastly as I have with this voyage to join the personality me to the grail of the wholly real me. It fills my days. It lifts my mood with hope. It can be a hard task master but I can say without doubt: IT IS WORTH IT.

It has taken me so far from reality as I knew it and placed me in a truly real state of being one person and not several joined together with unsticky sticky tape. A complete man.

By the time I was 18 I was at least six different people and changed from one personality to another to suit the person I was with. Or so I thought. I tried to be who they wanted me to be. Or so I thought! It never worked because I was never authentic. I was untrue to myself. A form of dishonesty was always there and whether they absolutely knew why or not, people feel uncomfortable around lies and dishonesty. I set out to 'unite the disunited states of me.'

My feelings are always changing. I am always changing. My body shifts towards where it needs to go. All levels of me are moving to where they know I need to be. I need only get out of the way and allow myself to be worked on by spirit. As I said in last months piece, we let go to let the real us in. I surrender with grace to the voyage across the abyss.

With this wonderful feeling of spring at the moment it is easy to feel the rebirth of the universe and of ourselves. I know that I am at the end of a 9 year cycle which finished on the 20th March. The first day of spring officially. All my trees are beginning to burst into new life after the wilderness and mild wildness of the winter. This year after a really intense winter season of thorough spiritual transition inside me, I am springing into a new life, a new country, a renewed me. I feel gratitude that I am able to do what I have done and will do. For the help I have been given on all levels. I love the trees and plants that are beginning to flourish anew. We are one as we are children of nature. We are all one under the sun. I love the weather whatever it is. I am part of nature and complaining about the snow or rain or cold just separates me from nature and my true self. My bluebells are rampant this year as result of my clearing of old bracken and weeds. The light gets to the earth and charges the bulbs and seed that have lain, in many cases, dormant for years. Perhaps for always. I feel as if I am starting life from scratch again. The bulbs and I have so much in common. I connect to the earth for my deeper spirituality. I reconnect to all in Nature. We voyage together to be born anew. We sail across the abyss.

I know it is a year, for me, of adventure and surrender together. A letting go and a building up. I move out of my comfort zone and face the exciting new stage of my voyage. I cast my mind from time to time over the need to fly animals, dogs and goats over to Italy.........I feel like Noah with my fanastic flying ark.........it is both exhilarating and frightening.....but I breathe and face the magic of the possiblities and miracles I am being given. But, that means that I am giving all this to myself. As I work through the natural energy of spirit I draw to me what I have clear inside me. I release the old ways of pushing away my own good. I take on the cloak of clarity and abundance. It is only through working on the emotional self that we can truly create the real us. With the diamond that we are we shine our intentions out into the universe and they reflect us clearly back. This year of 2005 is a year for great change emotionally and therefore spirituality for us all. A year of huge breaking down of the old ways. I risk. I set forth on my adventure. I fly across the abyss.

This is the only journey that brings us true satisfaction. True peace. Truth and Joy. As I find more of the real me, my life grows and improves daily. Begin today. Love yourself enough to know you are wonderful and following the right path ALWAYS. Even when you feel you are lost. You are not. You move to the greater you. The real you. With each word. With each feeling and thought. Let go of the rules. Let go of the old belief systems. With every release of the negative and unreal past you gain the simplicity and strength of the journey across the abyss to where you can meet you. Fear and confusion fall away and we are left with perfect love. I am love. So are you.

Some days I feel I have all the answers to everything. The truth is…I KNOW very little. But what do I need for a loving life? Spirituality is not a case of reading and absorbing everything you can lay your hands on. It is a case of listening to your inner wisdom. There you have the wisdom of the universe. It’s amazing how much you know without sitting down and learning. It’s better to sit down and listen to yourself. It is strange at first but the more you do it the more you can. It’s not facts we need. We need instincts and intuition and sensitivity. My greatest strength is my huge vulnerability. My greatest power is my super sensitivity. By facing me, I release the small me and welcome the bigger me. By surrendering to the vulnerable me, I found the towering, loving and feeling me. Fear is there to help me and it needs to be swiftly faced, used and transformed into subtle strength. Anger from the past can be accosted, re-felt and then transmuted into passion and power.

Some days I feel very, very old. Not physically but emotionally. I feel very experienced and in charge of my life, without taking control at all. In fact, by truly letting go and assuming life will work for me, with me and on me. And it does. It’s not a question of learning spirituality. It’s unlearning. Don’t think. Feel.

Some days I feel very young and innocent. I realise how little I know in this great universe. I am happy with myself knowing this little and know that I can hold my head up high because I am unique. I am special and don’t need to keep proving that I am good by constantly showing it to others. I am wonderful. I am brilliant. I allow myself to be whatever I am each minute and each minute I change. I don’t get up in one mood and stay that way all day. I shift every few minutes. Nay, seconds. I am not fixed. I am free. I butterfly through each minute of the day. The minute I think “Ah, now I know who I am!” I become not that. I move and become more flexible. If I grip a thought it is because I am controlling myself and holding myself to that moment. That moment that is already the past. Let go.

I was an actor but I don’t choose to be that now. But I am still that when I wish. I was a drunk but I don’t choose to be that now. I am glad that I have been through those experiences but I am only that if I choose to be. I am a writer when I wish. A dog-walker extraordinary when I wish. One minute a goat breeder: the next a therapist. A gardener. A builder. A carpenter. A teacher of spiritual development. And with my inner wisdom I can call on any of them anytime. I shift. I move. I stay flexible. My feelings change. My moods, my mind and many cells replace all day. I am not to be put in a box. Our sexuality changes every few minutes. I fancy different things about different people of either gender. So what does that make me? Me. Please don’t stamp me like an egg. No box. No label. Me.

By being strong I am weak. By allowing myself to be weak I get stronger. By going the wrong way I find my path. Therefore it is the right path. By not being me I find me. I say No to the ‘me’ I thought I was. The me that formed in the first few years of this life. The me with past life experiences to continue. I came into this life with fears and doubts which influenced everything in this life. The me, with the learning and views and perceptions of my parents and siblings and early life experiences. As I release what I thought was me I become me. As I see I am not me I become me. I say yes to the real me that I am becoming. I love me for creating this strange and fairground-feel life. (Actually, I love fairgrounds!)

I give myself the gift of self development which links me to the universe and everything in it. I love nature in all its beauty and power. I am part of that. I am that. By facing my feelings I link to the earth and through the earth I find the spiritual me. I feel more. I think less and less. The earth is my friend. My brain can be my enemy.
My heart and body can tell me all. I link to the real me. The soul is already there and connected. I just need to get out of the way. Let the real me take over. Some days I feel unsettled and distraught. I am still linked to spirit and the real me. We are inseparable at all times. I just need to remove the dustsheets that mask me from me. Everyday I feel happy. And grateful for my life and everything in it. I wash in the waters of clarity and peace. I find myself in everything I see. I reflect. I shine.

I open the windows of me to the loving Universe. I open me to me. Love.

I am being led on an inevitable path which has always been there. It has just been a case of listening and waiting for the right elements of time and opportunity. I mentioned in my Heartlinks page of November last that I was looking for a house in Italy and from there to set up a Spiritual Centre in the Assisi or nearby Marche areas. I went on November 9th and was very happy with what I found. The inevitability of it all is overwhelming at times. I cannot answer all the questions about the future. I will face any problems as they arise but I know I am on the right track.

I have a real thing about robins. Sounds silly put like that but I am given robin pictures or see them in my garden when I need verification that I am on the right track. I was given a picture of one last Thursday while I was in Italy again. An email containing the most beautiful photograph of one on Saturday and yesterday in my garden my friendly bright-chested gardening companion was there to welcome me home. Three signs that I am doing the right thing. I don’t jump at signs unless I see them three times.

I have wanted to live in Italy since I returned to Venice almost two years ago. I researched St Francis after that and realised that I wanted to go to Assisi. Spending a blissful week there eighteen months ago just felt right. So this is what coming home feels like! A furthur visit to purchase a house was essential when the time was right. More recently a friend told me that he knew someone who had bought a house there over the mountain in Marche. I had met this lady once before and we had hit it off immediately. Now, with the possibilities of being italianate neighbours we spent some long time on the telephone when she told me of a friend of hers who is an agent in that area. An agent, a manager, a supervisor of works, a hand-holder and generally a good sort it sounded to me. I rang and emailed this agent and suddenly in one communication said “I don’t suppose you have a church and priest house for sale”……It was a sort of bolt from the blue or, at least, a dart from the dim distant past. A friend recently reminded me that I had said I would live in a church or chapel one day. I had even looked at one or two chapel conversions in England. Suddenly the thought was there again. I promptly forgot it as quickly as I wrote it.

November the 9th 2005 and I return to the Hotel Da Angelo just outside Assisi. I met the agent called Danny and we looked at several wonderful fair-priced houses before I had even unpacked my toothbrush. The day after, Wednesday, we looked at some four or five splendid properties of different types and ages. I liked them but knew I hadn’t seen the one. Danny said that she had been trying to contact someone with a view to looking at one particular property on the Friday. Something told me that this was the one but I lowered my expectation visor and put it aside for a day. The Friday morning dawned and we set forth to a place called Colle di Antico (Ancient on the hill). It was raining and cold and muddy. We went up the mountain by twists and turns until we arrived at a ‘crosslanes’ with signposts to Antico and Colle di Antico. We followed the hill road. Finally a tiny hamlet and there at the end was this beautiful but desperately-seeking-some-help house. I knew instantly. The house had the number 12 on it. My birthday. It was lovely and big. The church was glorious Italian and 16th Century in a poor state of repair. My request was standing stone by stone and splendid in front of me. I said YES immediately. The price was right and the location was perfect. It was on a sort of peninsula on top of one mountain surrounded and protected by a circle of bigger beautiful mother mountains. Extraordinary. The agent said that the english friend Felicity’s house was nearby and we should look in on it. Would you believe I had chosen a house in the other part of the village to her? Her lovely well-kept house was two minutes away in Antico! For weeks after that I asked if someone could find out the name of the church before it was closed up and crumbling. It took a while but then Danny, the agent, emailed me in dramatic fashion for fun; the name of the church is………………………………

LA CHIESA DI SAN MICHELE ARCANGELO

The church of St Michael Archangel.

Well!!

My name and the energy I call my guardian angel’s name too! I knew in that moment that I had indeed come home. I was being led. It was not coincidence. My heart sang. I ask St Michael for the courage to help me on this adventure. He has guided me through all of my spiritual development and is no easy taskmaster. Believe me. It feels like I have been working for this for years. Quietly, patiently and knowing that everything happens for our greater good.

I send you the love and peace that I feel this evening of the New Moon 8th February 2005. I ask St Michael to give you his undisputed courage and strength. May you be grounded and loving in every little action you take. Every feeling that you feel. Believe in your dreams and follow them even when others think you are crazy! Work from the heart not the brain. Love yourself every minute of everyday. I send you love.

We are being bombarded at present with words upon words and images upon images about the Tsunami disaster. It has been devastating. Totally incomprehensible the sheer size of it all.

I shed some tears and made a donation but realised that I would help more by holding a vision of the survivors getting better and getting fed. Better that than shedding tears based on my own past and not on their present. I send them love, safety, protection and peace from head and heart. I know it is better for the five million people affected by the cruelty of natures mammoth for me to send them warmth and a desire for success in the aftermath: a new life out of the destruction of the old: hope where there has recently been hopelessness. I hold a thought of them winning against enormous odds. They are victims already. Let us not add to that. Let us not donate more by putting our own oil of un-cleared emotions onto their turbulent troubled waters.

I am currently doing some very deep and painful spiritual transition work and although I have done a lot of it in the past this feels really strong and like someone is digging and driving sharp metal pipe-work through my body. I always hold the knowledge that when I am going through extreme change that I am even closer to spirit than when I feel jolly bright and able to conquer the world! I look at the children’s faces in Asia and I see their bewildered looks. I look at how they are going to reconnect to life with no parents of lost families. I am choosing what I am doing but they have had no choice on a conscious level. I see the faces of the elderly who seem profoundly disturbed and distracted by the whole event. I have been told that by this last Wednesday there had been 160,000 deaths. I was also told that in that area there have been 160,000 births. Presumably brought on by shock. I make no further comment on that.

I send love and peace to you all for 2005. It will be an extraordinary year of emotional growth for us all. Keep your perspective of your life in balance. Just before Christmas I was aware that with the spiritual work I have been going through for the last two months that I had not had time to be truly compassionate about other people. I have now. I didn’t feel I had a choice. Tsunami gave me that. I am grateful for my life and feel privileged to have been able to do this inner work on myself. Grateful for everything and everybody in my life. I have wonderful support and love around me. I am deeply grateful for all my friends and loved ones and life. I breathe. I breathe in loving energy. I thank spirit for all the good I have in me and around. I love myself. I love my life. Thank you to the universe for supporting my work. I thank myself for allowing myself all that I have.

Thank you. I did not intend to use so many words.

I don't need Christmas to be playful. I only need to get up in the morning.

We easily forget the value of play in all of our everyday lives. I include playing games…..playing the fool……creative play……all sort of play…...but most important is approaching life with a playful attitude. Play is not just for children, it is for us all. Ages 1 to 101. How to squeeze the life out of life. Remove play. When we are doing our spiritual stuff we can take ourselves a little too seriously and a playful point of view is the answer. We need to care for ourselves in a lightly detached and humourful vein (I know there is no such word but if we can have humourless than I wish to stake a claim for humourful!!) Even if we are not following a spiritual path we need to give ourselves our daily play. Everyone. I don’t mean playing hard in the evenings at the pub! I mean being playful all day and everyday.

I get a reminder to be playful everyday when I get up. My dogs are desperate to run up the long path to the woods barking and playing as they go. Three wonderful, wagging and joyful tails. Even on a tired and heavy day I can't help laughing at their antics and I encourage them to play as we go on our way to feed the goats. Have you ever seen full grown goats play! It is an incongruous sight. Bizarre. A digger was employed to build mini-mountains for my goats on which they run and skip out of balance with perfect lopsided poise. They give comedic impersonations of little lambs. Full grown Nanny goats with udders-a go-go. They don't care what they look like. They just want to feel free. So do we.

I am going to give myself today off work. I deserve it. And even if I don't deserve it I will do it anyway! I will giggle as I write. I will play as I use the keyboard. This afternoon I will give myself permission to laugh. Literally give myself time off from everything I do. I choose to be happy everyday. Today I decide to play at everything I do. I love me enough to be joyful. I will be light and loving. I will view any chores or work as a source of fun. Work is only WORK if we view it that way. Work and chores can be transformed by play into want mores. I pay my bills with gratitude and a giggle affirming that money is always there for me to have a wonderful skipping life.
'Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.'
I find that a playful attitude brings me quicker to connect with spirit than any meditation. A loving smile and a smiling, healing heart does much for you and those around you. I notice that as I am listening to people’s problems if I stay with my lightness and playfulness they seem to heal quicker as they speak their earthly burdens. No matter how serious the content of their plight. Put your love forward for their hearts not grief or anger and they will soon be up-lifted. Compassion and kindness cures. Play produces loving links.

From the day we are born we are taught directly and indirectly to become a grown-up which tends to mean serious and restrained. Learning how to play a role of being a parent or grown-up. Settling down is a much used expression in the UK. Just look at what it implies. Down and settle suggests restriction and held down. Responsibility becomes a dark and dirty word. Serious tends to mean heavy. I prefer to choose the opposite and be spirited and free. Spirited.....in spirit............and free of invisible mental and emotional chains. Responsibility for myself is a wondrous and mag