Nose No Better For the Face

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Perhaps the shortest and most powerful prayer
in human language is help.
--Father Thomas Keating

Asking for help, whether we get it or not, breaks the hardness that builds in the world.

It's something that, being Little Miss Independent, I sometimes find hard to do. I think it depends on what kind of help it is that I need as to whether I will ask for it without a second thought, or will grudgingly ask for help.

I'm better than I used to be, but not as good as I should be.

For example, if it's something I can't reach, and there's a chair nearby, I won't ask for help, but I'll stand on the chair and get whatever it is myself. That's a shame because, as I think I mentioned elsewhere, asking your man to reach you something down from a high self is something I actually find very romantic... something that softens the hardness of my world.

If I'm sick, I'll just push on and push on... rather than ask for help. I don't want to seem weak. Often gets me into a lot more trouble than not, because I won't go to a doctor unless I'm at death's door – and I'm usually grumpy because I don't feel well. I don't mention it because I've gotten a complex by being told that I get sick all the time...? And then I get told off for being grumpy...

If it's something I think I should be able to do without help and I still can't, I still keep on trying, nipping at it like a Rottweiler and getting more and more frustrated when I can't do it, and still, I won't ask for help. It's stupid I know, but that's my bloody minded independence for you!

Both Sides of the Coin

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Please remember, it is what you are
that heals, not what you know.
--Carl Jung

...someone I love comes along in pain and I start dumping my pockets, looking for the one thing I know that will help them.

This is almost exactly what I do. Someone comes to me with a problem, and besides being sympathetic, which I am even when I don't express it, the first thing I will do is start looking for a solution. It doesn't occur to my overactive mind that actually what might be more appropriate is that they might just want a hug. It's something I have to stop myself from doing on a conscious level.

By the opposite token though, sometimes that kind of response, when given, has been rebuffed, dismissed or unwanted, and often in a less than pleasant way. I'm putting this out here in public right now. If I make a display of sympathy, give a sympathetic gesture or express solidarity because of a problem or hurt a friend or anyone else is suffering, it's because the feelings I am expressing are genuine, as is the support. I don't do fake sympathy. It's demeaning both to the person giving it, and the person meant to be on the receiving end in both a practical and a spiritual way.

Rising Tides

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Suffering makes an instrument of each of us,
so that standing naked, holes and all,
the unseen vitalities can be heard
through our simplified lives.

In every space opened when what we want gets away, a deeper place is cleared in which the mysteries can sing.

I touched on this in another post a little while ago – this being the thought that came and comes to mind when I read this entry. Driving home from Atlanta I suddenly felt a deep sense of loss while talking about Glastonbury, Avebury and other of Britain's sacred sites.

One site in particular that I was talking about was Arbour Low in Derbyshire.

When I first visited Arbour Low with a ground of friends once close and dear to me (now no less dear to me even if the feeling is not returned), I was still very much involved with the Matter of Britain – the story of Arthur and the Sacred Knights. There was a kind of awakening happening at the time, the Land and those that serve Her were all coming together, finding things out, working to heal things... there was a lot of natural 'power' in the atmosphere in general and definitely in pagan moots and gatherings.

I was with a group of people who were local to the area and the folklore of the area, and (in spite of what it says on the website the link goes to), one of the legends or old wives tales if you like about Arbour Low was that you could never count the stones and reach the same total twice. We tried. We couldn't... and whether that was psychological or not it set a kind of spiritual tone of reverence for the visit to the circle.

There was definitely an odd feeling. We were looking for something... searching. We did not find it, I don't think – and I say I don’t think, because each of us certainly took something away from the circle that day, nothing physical, but certainly we were changed in the coming and going of the place. And there was a definite 'going' too.

The longer we stayed there, the thicker the atmosphere became, until it felt as if the energies of the Land at the circle there were telling us that enough was enough, it was time for us to leave. We were not welcome there any longer at that time. We left.

I've returned several times since, but the feeling is different... or at least it was. I haven’t been at all recently. It feels as if the site itself has become lost... bereft of something that was necessary to maintain its awakening. Dead or dormant now like many of the other sites, where so few people visit with the right feeling in their hearts, or who are spiritually attuned to the natural Earth vibrations that run through such places... but now... I am wondering...

After so long – how much longer before the tide turns again?