witches' brew

So when another girlfriend dropped by tonight we had the numbers for a coven. The night went something like this :

Witch 1 : Round the cauldron we go;

In the poison'd entrails throw.

Coven : Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Witch 2 : For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Coven : Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Witch 3 : Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;

Make the gruel thick and slab

Coven : Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Witch 2 : Cool it with a baboon's blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

Well ... maybe it didn't quite like that but we sure did cackle over a bubbling pot. Unfortunately, the pantry was fresh out of eye of newt and toe of frog, so instead we had to settle for a thick gruel of lentil and vegetable soup and flat bread.

If you ever wanted to concoct your own pot of magical charm, saute leeks, garlic, carrots, and celery in a little virgin coconut oil, add red lentils, vegetable stock and a good dose of tomato puree; bring to the boil and simmer for as long as it takes until the soup is your desired thickness. While you fry off some wraps in coconut oil until they are gold and just crispy; add a couple of handfuls of baby spinach leaves to the pot. Serve generously. After consumption cleanse the palate with a thick slab of chocolate mousse cake (make sure it is mousse and not chocolate mouse cake as that can leave a slightly bitter taste and you must never serve chocolate moose cake to a vegetarian!).

Make sure that you stay up until the wee hours of the morning sharing the most embarrassing stories - tell them with the greatest degree of drama, acted out with the highest levels of comedy and leave no detail uncovered. With this ritual, you are guaranteed a deep deep sleep! My final piece of advice for today's post : "Whatever happens in a witches' coven, stays in a witches' coven".

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Flying Solo Tip 094365 : The sound of laughter is a hymn to the ears of gods and goddesses. Make laughter a sacred ritual you practice often.

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the crux of it all

I had been in two minds about how to acknowledge the passing of today. There is something I have wanted to write about for some time, and although there are some potential misunderstandings that may arise by attaching it to today, after a deep mediation I have made my decision to speak of what has been the core of my experience this past year.

Today marks what would have been my 5th wedding anniversary, if I had not separated from my husband earlier this year. Although we are still legally married we now live on opposite sides of the world. By navigating through the break up, I have been challenged me to deal with situations I could never have imagined, I have had to confront my inner demons, and deconstruct and discard many of my assumptions and by the same token it given me some of the greatest insights that I have had about myself and guided me on how to now live well.

Along the way, there have been times when I have stumbled in confusion. Along the way, there have been times when I have been granted the foresight and wisdom to act with wellness and heart. All those experiences have brought choices that have shaped and sharpened my awareness. I have not always acted with conventional wisdom, and I know that there are times that I have acted in ways that others, including my husband, do not understand. I have gone deeper emotionally and spiritually than ever before in coming to terms with what will always be a significant time and significant relationship in my life.

My decision to end the relationship came directly from an inescapable need for wellness, to live in an atmosphere of wellness and to act with intent to be well. The relationship was not healthy for either party and was on a collision course with spiritual, emotional, mental and physical disaster for both parties. With the outfall of the decision, I had to make some very specific choices.

At one level in understanding relationships, their emergence and demise, I could come up with plenty of justifications (real and imagined) to feel resentment, pain, hurt, remorse, blame and even hate. In the past, there have been plenty of experiences where for years after the event I have harboured those and similar feelings - although always knowing that carrying those burdens into my present and as a foundation for my future did not serve me well. As life goes, I kept finding myself ultimately in similar situations time and time again. Although the recurrence of those situations always presented as "being better this time", I would come out of the experience in a worse situation, even if I had felt though I had forgiven the offender; had made personal changes and had "learnt my lesson".

I have become increasingly aware over the past years through some very intense emotional experiences that my fundamental belief in the "righteousness" of forgiveness was not enough. Forgiveness is a word that is readily bandied about, it is presented as the only thing that needs to happen in order to let go and move forward. We are socially and often religiously conditioned to believe in the power of forgiveness. I have realized this year that I have actually struggled with forgiveness. I have realized that my filters around forgiveness gave rise to certain expectations. One of those expectations was that in the whole-hearted granting of forgiveness that the slate would be cleared and that the situation of the relationship would "magically" change and improve. When someone asks for forgiveness, they are asking us to give. If anyone has been in a situation where they have been deeply hurt by another emotionally or physically, it can sometimes feel that the onus is on the "victim" to give something else of themselves (in this case forgiveness) to "heal" the situation. In a way, it is based on the assumption that "the victim" has had the capacity to heal the hurt and are able to give again. The "perpetrator" in a sense does not have to do any giving, or make any inner change to ensure that the dynamics of the situation or relationship has shifted at a fundamental level. It is very difficult to truly forgive if you are still hurting, sometimes we still hold resentment, particularly if we grant forgiveness and nothing changes.

At the core, I think forgiveness is predicated on an assumption that blame has been attached to the other person, on their actions or the circumstances. Blame is predicated on a "rightness" and wrongness" of action. In doing so, we miss the point for healing. A dualistic and judgemental view of human behaviour quickly falls apart when we acknowledge the complexity of why a a person does what they do. When we seek to understand and act with empathy, it is far more complicated and sometimes impossible to attach blame. We can never truly know what lies in the heart or mind of another, we can never truly comprehend the logic of another; we can only ever discover what lies in our own hearts and minds. To try and make rational sense of another from within the confines of our personal world view is a futile experience, it is flawed.

So how do we then deal with hurtful or traumatic experiences? There is a choice. We can choose to re-live the memories and feel the pain and the hurt, guilt or shame or whatever emotions the event or relationship sparked inside of us. At a physiological level, at a neural-chemical level the brain cannot distinguish between a real-time experience, the re-living of a memory or an imagined experience. When we re-live past traumas with the same emotions that we experienced when we went through the trauma, we are cementing those neural pathways and allowing the thought of a memory to infiltrate the options and emotions that are available to us in our present moments; we are fuelling our chemical makeup at a cellular level to become "addicted" to those emotions. We are still giving the "perpetrator" power over our todays. Hence the quote that in various forms attributed to various persons which says "Holding onto resentment or anger is like drinking a cup of poison and expecting the other person to die". In doing so, we become the perpetrator harming ourselves; it is only us that are affected by the process. For some people, the feelings of guilt, shame and remorse about an event are so great that it seems honourable to be held within that quagmire of unwellness. As Eckhart Tolle writes, " Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of your life but from the conditioning of your mind."

We could choose to simply pretend that those traumatic experiences never happened to us; promise to ourselves that we will never allow that to happen again and harden our hearts until it becomes a stone. In doing so, we shortchange ourselves of life, by shortchanging our capacity to feel. We start to live life with a greater sense of fear, lack of self esteem or confidence, we avoid situations rather than embracing opportunities. We hide away.

We could choose to find a way to honour those traumatic experiences, become an inner alchemist and turn the lead into gold and give ourselves the permission to receive the gifts from even our darkest experiences. We can choose wellness for and only for ourselves; we cannot expect it from others. For me to honour the moments I shared with my husband within and outside of marriage, I consciously chose to go beyond forgiveness. Time and time again I had forgiven my husband's actions as I had knowledge of some of the contributing factors that created the dynamics of our relationship, but it still did not make sense "why it happened, when .... ". The pain was so great it deserved great honour. Initially, I guess I felt I had paid a handsome price, so that value I wanted to learn from another broken relationship had better be worth it.

At one level, I had to acknowledge, experience and grieve for the hurt and loss; at another level I had to give myself the permission to receive the gifts that had been bestowed from those situations. I had to search deep inside myself to find the value that made sense to me and my inescapable flame for wellness (which had nothing to do with my husband, his state of mind, or his actions). I chose to enter into the realm of appreciation.

When we begin with an open heart to deeply appreciate the things that happen to us in our lives it is simply not possible to attribute blame, to harbour resentment, to feel hate or entertain a desire to wallow in guilt and shame and remorse. From appreciation, we do not seek logical explanations for why things happen; we accept that things have happened, we accept that in those moments we feel certain emotions but we choose to live our moment now fully and not to be coloured or sabotaged by those emotions that are linked to some past event. When we allow ourselves to discover the gifts and to appreciate those gifts (greater wisdom, clarity around our priorities or values, clearer intentions, deeper knowledge about ourselves, whatever it may be), what unfolds is an ever increasing desire to live with compassion, tolerance, to express appreciation and love. I sit far more comfortably in my personal responsibility to create my life. I am far more certain about what my inner state of wellness looks like. Through the act of consciously choosing appreciation, the relationship with myself has improved beyond measure. For me, my view of life and living and the capacity to imagine possibilities has expanded, and not contracted as a result. I have a renewed philosophy for life, one that is bringing me closer to who I am. For that I am eternally grateful, and with that I can experience a greater love and appreciation.

One of my favourite songs of all time : The Beauty of Gray

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Flying Solo Tip 093365 : When we live in appreciation it is impossible to attribute blame or to hold on to resentment or anger.

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Friday phrases

Feeling somewhat lazy today so I have dug into the archives for another free form verse, although the emotions expressed here are not in the least an indication of how I am feeling today. However the poem does deal with an emotion that most of us have experienced at some point in our lives. It deals with the emotion of grief.

Grief is part and parcel of the human condition, it acts as a process of cleansing and healing after experiencing some kind of loss, that may the loss of a job, a relationship or a loved one. Grief gives us an opportunity to choose - to either succumb to the pain an stay stuck in limbo; or to gain a new and different perspective on life and transform. The choice to grow, to transform the self is not always the easy one. It requires work, perseverance and endurance. The process of grieving gives us an opportunity to re-think and re-evaluate the priorities in our life; it can bring value and meaning to our loss and as a consequence discover what we have gained because of the loss.

No matter how hard I try

The tears would not come.

I was empty inside

Yet I could not console myself.

My eyes burned with hurt.

There were no tears to quench their thirst.

My heart was aching.

My head throbbing - thoughts muddled.

My whole body lay listless,

Waiting, patiently waiting.

Ears heard the slightest sound - real or fanciful.

Eyes watched shadows -

How those suspicious demons danced.

Breathing had lost the sense of rhythm.

My heart ached with the pounding,

Irregular, uncontrollable.

Lips - dry and cracked - partly open -

Air admitted, air emitted.

Still no tears would come.

Dawn was breaking

The wearier in body

The wearier in mind

The wearier in soul

Still the tears did not come

Like a desert on a cloudless day

Eyes were harsh and dry

Their smarting - the heat of blazing sun

The salty sands lay barren

(Relaxation deceived

How victorious melancholy sang

and praised my state on mind)

But in the restless weariness

In the empty, desolate aching

Eyes drooped

And, as in desert rains, torrential in their coming,

So did the tears, salty and incessant

Pour from desert eyes

Rolling down the plains of swollen cheeks.

And, as in desert rains

It all soon quickly passed

And though the body lay listless

Occasionally upsurged by sobbing

(That sound, such sweet comfort)

My muscles relaxed their tensions

The pain was set free

Eyes swollen became the servants of slumber

Though there was a gulf of emptiness

There was a stillness and

Inside a voice whispered, "Sleep Child Sleep"

My eyes closed.

The chasm of emptiness, in deep slumber

Slowly and gradually filled.

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Flying Solo Tip 092365 : Grief can be a healthy process when it transmutes buried anger, hurt and resentment into love, compassion and appreciation.

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