Welcome To the Cedar Grove

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

The God in us is not a half-presence.
There is no screening who we are.

…dis-ease begins the moment all of us is not played.



Two things come out of this particular entry for me. The first of which I can't speak about as much as I would like because I can't find the text I want to refer to anywhere. I know I used to have it – should still have it somewhere – but it was a book that dealt with the notion that each of us is god. "Thou art god…" the book taught that in an interesting and thoughtfully spiritual way – and yes, you really did need to think when you read that book… particularly about the nature of 'Hu' in the question/statement "Hu are you?" It's going to bother me now until I can find the book.

The second is the origin of words and their meanings. Say the word 'disease' to anyone and they will automatically think of being ill, or having a sickness, virus, etc… but look up there… look at the word. It's made up of a prefix (dis) and the word, (ease). Anything that puts us not at ease… is disease. This has to be one of my favourite – and in my opinion the most profound – example of the change in meanings and understanding of words down through the millennia that we've used language… and that brings me a nice segue into a show I recently saw with Mir at Memorial Hall. The show was called Babel… (http://youtu.be/Sz7UY5DEVhQ), and really defies description, but begins with a 'robotic doll' kind of character talking about the evolution of word and language and communication. Seriously see the show live if you get the chance, and if not, watch the clips on Youtube. I came away from the theatre both babbling with excitement over what I'd just seen and totally speechless about it both at the same time. I've not seen anything quite as breathtaking and meaningful for a long, long time. It was jsut astounding!

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

What lies behind us
and what lies before us
are tiny matters
compared to
what lies within us.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

regardless of the words or the melody, this effort to sing is a way to open passageways, between what is growing within and what is growing without.

I love to sing, and I do it a lot... singing or humming... or listening to music. I do it consciously and unconsciously... there's nothing like it. It affects mood, it affects breathing, it affects mind and body and spirit.

It's no coincidence that our ancestors celebrated moments in a day with song – a waking song, a working song, songs of thanks, of joy of sorrow. Songs and chants are within us and all around us... and too many of us don't use them.

I used to have a whole repertoire of 'pagan' songs and chants (including some from native America, from Africa and so on). I've lost many of the recordings and forgotten far too many of the ones that were inside of me. Some of them I've been able to 'find' again thanks to sites such as YouTube and so on... but it's a loss I feel greatly.

Using chant during ritual is a great way to control the flow of breath and the flow of power through one's body, but it works just as well with the progress of daily living... intent too. How many parents have sung a soothing song as a lullaby to a child resisting sleep? The so called 'negro spiritual' songs – were they not working songs, meant to help keep rhythm for work that needed it? Why don't we sing any more as a matter of course?

I remember once (and for a very short time I might add) I had a job working in the office of a recruitment consultant. It was run by two elderly ladies, and on one occasion not long before I told them it wasn't working out for me, one of them asked me to stop humming as I worked. I couldn't do it then... it made my working day miserable to not be able to express myself in that way. And yet, along with the other changes that happened to me of a sudden, I lost my 'gift of song.'

Perhaps it's a sign of my healing that I've suddenly realised I miss singing my day, singing the changes of the day, the year, and all that goes with it.

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

Though the wind enlivens the tree,
The tree is not the wind.
And though life enlivens us,
We are not the source.

For like the tree and the fish, we as human beings have no control over the movement of grace.

A question that keeps cropping up from time to time is that of predestination or free will, and also from time to time I swing between the two poles - sometimes believing completely in free will and at others the notion of predestination.

As a Wiccan, I believe in a Universal Consciousness, present in all of us, embodied in aspects of Elemental Powers, as well as in God and Goddess. That doesn't necessarily mean that I believe that there is actually a physical being that is God, and another that is Goddess, etc, rather there are Universal Male and Female principles that are symbolised in God and Goddess in order to facilitate understanding, a way for the human mind to access these overarching principles and energy.

I believe that each soul has a series of lessons to learn, or experiences to gather hat will bring the energy of that soul closer to the resonance of the Universal Consciousness, but not that these things can only be learned in a specific, predetermined way... so while a soul might have a 'destiny' if you will, the means and manner in which these destinies are reached is a matter of free will – of the interaction of the individual souls with the experiences that the Universe puts in their way. So I suppose that my view of the universe is like a branching tree, with infinite possibilities, but that 'grace' or the progression of the soul toward Universal Consciousness is present in all possible paths.

I believe that each soul can and will form lasting relationships with other souls that span beyond the ending of a single lifetime, and as I believe in reincarnation, these bonded souls sometimes come together in a succession of lifetimes, not necessarily consecutive, to continue their linked journeys together... but the when and where of it are not of our choosing. Perhaps there is some kind of design behind the when or the where, or perhaps it is completely random, but that we come together time and again on our journeys toward each other and toward grace.

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

I thought I could become wise, but it is much
beyond me. Far away is all that has come into
being and very, very deep. Who can find it?
--Ecclesiastes, 7:24-25

The wind grew stronger, whipping in the little holes where native spirits lived, and they began to sing beneath the wind, and I thought of Carl Jung confessing that only in terms of the centuries did his life have meaning, I realized that everyone who ever sought the truth of spirit has lived like this, looking out from their dark hallowed cave into the majesty of all there is.

There is nothing more... powerful to me, more moving than ancient sites, especially when visited at hours outside the norm. It brings to me a connection with Earth that I sorely miss... that used to be a part of me – still is, but deeply buried somewhere.

I've visited many sites in England at such times, hours of the day the sites were technically closed... slept at the foot of Glastonbury Tor many a time... Tintagel... Arbor Low – my Dragon-knight site... Avebury... Silbury Hill, where I was scared to death by a pheasant... the Rollrite Stones... Wayland Smithy....

Now there was a site... it's actually a long barrow, not a smithy at all, but the feelings, the sense of awe in the very air around the site was something special. The kind of place where you walk a step or two and feel the tingling in every pore of your skin and all your hair stands on end... There's power there that has been lost in so many other sites.

So much has been lost.

I was recently driving back talking to Mir – I think it must have been when we were coming back from Atlanta, and I started talking about this loss, this... lack of feeling in the people, the lack of connection with our sacred sites, and I started crying... it was as if a great sadness had swept over me.

In the days since, I've realised my own loss too, of these things, and I miss them, and of the connection I have with a guide that used to visit me often – frequently, but who is currently so hidden from me that he will not even allow me to remember his name. And I feel a sense of urgency that I do.

I need to find us again, I need to find that sense of place... I feel a little but like Will in Susan Cooper's children's novel, The Dark is Rising and my mind and thoughts and memories are turning to people that once held places of importance in my psyche... friends... fellow pagans... even acquaintances...

Just what is going on?

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

The human soul is to God is as the flower to
the sun; it opens as it approach, and shuts
when it withdraws.
--Benjamin Whichcote

Thus our experience and perception of God in the world may be limited and different, may even change, but that doesn't define or limit the Source.

People quite often think I'm pretentious when, daring to ask of whether I am religious or not (daring because I was always told never ask about religion or politics), I will tell them that I'm not a religious person, I'm a spiritual one… but to me there is a big difference. To me, God and spirituality don't necessarily go hand in hand… and I certainly don't have to be of a particular religious persuasion to have a spiritual experience.

Case in point… two of them just to prove it:

A long while ago, a friend and I were engaged in a series of… I suppose you'd call them 'rituals' meant to empower and rebalance the earth. During one of these, in the middle of the Rollright Stones in Oxford, I felt as if an unseen person had stepped up behind me and joined with me in my part of the ritual… and for the skeptics among us, I could still see my friend, so I knew it wasn't him. For me, as a Wiccan, this was a spiritual experience.

More recently than this, as a teacher in a Catholic school, I was required to go with the children to mass. (Still a Wiccan, and that was quite an experience in and of itself.) On one such occasion, having just sat down from receiving the blessing (couldn't take the host – not Catholic), I felt as though someone had put their hand onto my shoulder. I turned around, thinking the teacher behind was trying to attract my attention, to find her happily kneeling in prayer – not her then, but someone definitely did, and it was too big to have been one of the children. Shortly thereafter, I was – for no reason at all, (it was silent in church) – suddenly moved to tears; another spiritual experience… just as powerful as the first and not a hint of being tied to any one religion.

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

Asleep too long, we need to wake.
Awake too long, we need to sleep.

Perhaps the wisdom in blinking is that it keeps us in the middle, keeps us from drowning in the dark and from burning up in the light. Perhaps this is the reflex that lets us make sense of being human.

Isn't this the shape question of the day?

It's right up there with question and observations such as: Glass half empty/half full; the act of lighting a candle casts a shadow; is a shark evil because it bites a little girl that was swimming; are the Wraith in SGA evil for feeding on humans (you can substitute vampires if you don't know SGA), or are they just doing what they must do to survive… Does our perception of light and dark change with how we see ourselves and the position from which we're coming, originating, or are these qualities absolute?

There's a series of ads that I see every time I walk along the jetway of international flights. I think they're for HSBC bank or something… It's a series of two or three identical pictures, only the captions change. ( here's the kind of thing I mean) There are a lot of them, and they really bring the matter of 'perspective' into sharp focus.

Another thing that struck me today as being about a matter of prespective – there's a big hullabulloo going on right now, because there's this 'explicit gay sex scene' in Torchwood that the BBC are cutting, but Starz are not (forget that Starz already nixed a scene where someone was speaking with a welsh accent because they didn't think the Americans would be able to understand it), now… doesn't bother me one way or another to be honest, far as I'm concerned Captain Jack is as gay as Christmas and always has been, so… *shrug* but there were these whole bunch of comments on the website where I saw the news where some people were complaining about having the gay sex 'shoved down their throats' (which in itself is a funny comment… if you have a warped sense of humour like mine). Don't like it, don't watch that scene – end of subject. Personally I don't see why we shouldn't see it – we see enough 'straight' sex push at us in just about every other show… why not just… complain about the sex, period. Gay, straight, transpecies or otherwise!

Perspectives… which is light, which is dark?

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

As a frightened man in a burning boat
has only one way to the rest of his life,
we must move with courage
through the wall of flame
into the greater sea.

But the subtlest ring of fire, it seems, is that self-centred way of thinking that starts to suffocate us with its smoke. For we carry the smouldering of being self-centred everywhere we go. It lives off us and eats up who we are. So, how to jump from the burning boat that is us? Well, it somehow requires jumping from the boat of the ego into the sea of our spirit. This somehow involves the courage to surrender our stubbornness and dreams of control. It means letting the ribs of the ego burn. And jumping through. We will more than survive-we will be carried to an unimagined shore.

I am self-centred, to much so… though not always in the way people might interpret that admission, (though maybe my qualifying what I mean is a kind of self-centredness in itself. I don't know). The stupidest thing about it though is that I'm this way because I want to be able to do things for other people, be in places, and be there for other people, and because of that I'm stuck with living in the material aspect of the world far too much, with little consideration for the spiritual or other considerations… and I don't mean that in an airy-fairy kind of way.

Today I was expecting to work only in the morning at a school I know well. It's where I did a whole term of tutoring for children that had fallen 'behind age expectations' (yeah, lets not even go there… whatever happened to letting kids be kids and learn at their own pace?). About five minutes before I was going to leave the house, I got a call to ask if I could go to a second school (also one I know well), that is about 10 minutes walk away from the first. I said I would, of course… but sitting here now, my motivation for that kind of hurts me. Didn't say yes because the kids didn't have a teacher for the afternoon and needed one. Didn't say yes because it's a great school, (though it is). I said yes because it meant a whole day's work, and I need the money. Now, I know, in today's economic climate, and in the grown up world, that's going to be a consideration, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with thinking it, per se… but… it's a terribly materialistic way of looking at things. I don't like that in myself. No, the need to earn a living isn't going to go away just because I don't think about it like that, it'll still be there, but I don't have to let it drive my thinking in a way that makes me feel as negative as it does. It makes me feel choked and stifled.

That aside… lunch time came around and I started my walk, along streets that actually used to be my old haunt, because it's not far from where I lived for a while. I couldn't help noticing the changes, and the things that were still the same. I couldn't help but notice the plants and things still flowering… and notice the quite of the outdoors… I actually found myself missing the racket that the cicada's make in the woods around home in NC and missing that sound opened up the whole of my heart to missing everything about home… not in a painful or bitter way – but in a poignant and fond way.

I don't mean to say that I don't miss being in NC at other times. I miss Mir every moment of every day. I miss the ratties, I even miss the cat… but this was in a different way – in a way that acknowledged that a greater part of it was outside of my control, and in an acceptance of that I found connection with the world again. It was a step away from self-centredness that somehow brought me back to my self for as long as the pressures of the 'real/material' world would allow anyway. I felt creative for the first time in a long while.

I think there need to be more moments like this, and while I know I can't control them, I understand that, I can accept them, recognise them when they arrive… when they give me the opportunity to be myself in a un-self-centred way, and just be without the driving considerations and stresses that are dominating my ego and consciousness. I need to be the river… go with the flow…

…and I need to walk in nature once in a while…

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

To direct the mind towards the basic unity of
all things and to divert it from the seizing of
differences - therein lies bliss.
--Tejo Bindu Upanishad

...the heart can feel what joins us with everything or replay its many cuts.

(from 9th May)

Today was a day of ups and downs, of universal togetherness and separations. I started out the day feeling very positive, working with a joined consciousness to wash and rebuild a new playground for the ratties, enjoying what I was doing. There was contact from my beta, the chapter was ready, there were people far distant contacting me and I replied. I felt truly connected... for a while.

Then suddenly everything switched - I started feeling a bit like a punchbag, or whipping post. The messages I was getting on LJ and facebook were pointed and I read them (for no reason, I might add), as if they had been written with an angry tone, or in irritation. That I'd somehow done something wrong.

Then something Mir said hurt.

Then someone pointed out that the way I was viewing things was a negative way of looking at it, and I should see it as closure rather than viewing it with suspicion.

And then, and then and then...

Walking round the grocery store, I stopped. This was ridiculous - why was I feeling this way - why were these things that happened, these comments that were made separating me from dwelling within the sense of peace and togetherness that I was, for the most part, feeling? What could I do to to have my heart focus on the communion and not on the cuts. I recognise that the recent communication I'd had threw me for a loop, and I felt old patterns - perhaps that was a part of it.

Just when I think I'm free of the weight of that negativity, it crops up again. Maybe Gaile was right after all, but it's hard to just let it go when there is so much baggage that I'm still carrying.

I made a promise to myself to live only in love and quiet harmony for the rest of the day and for the most part I think I did. I want that to continue...it will.

(for all that it might take a little while to deal with the remaining fall out from messages out of the blue).

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

I'm late! I'm late. For a very important date!
No time to say hello! Good-bye!
I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!

--The Mad Hatter, from Alice In Wonderdland

Now I have to hurry along to make sure I can get everywhere on time... I laugh at myself. I can so easily become a slave to a schedule I create. Not one of these things is necessary...

I'm great at filling up a schedule, or to do list with countless tasks. I rarely get even half of them done, even when I'm rushing through task after task, which of course means I'm not getting any of them done properly. I either overestimate the amount of free time I have, or underestimate the amount of time it's going to take to do something. I always do it. It doesn't matter where I am, or what day of the week it is, without fail, I overplan... and I still try to get everything done.

Another thing - being a supply (substitute) teacher, I have a whole thing going where I say to myself "If they don't send me out to work today, I will do x, y and z..." and when no call comes by 7:30am I start to relax into the thought that I'm going to be following my own schedule - and it's actually quite a nice thought some days - only to get a call ten minutes later, meaning I really do have to rush to get to the school on time, (and without a car sometimes that is quite the challenge), and you know what?

Actually, I don't like rushing.

I don't mind workikng hard; I don't mind working continually - I quite enjoy the sense of achievement at the end of a busy day when I have managed to get a lot done, but... I don't like to rush.

The last few days have been quite an education in that kind of thing, and no more so than yesterday... a lesson in slowing down. To explain:

Every time I've come out of the house in the last few days there's been a sudden erruption of cicadas from the vicinity of the front porch. I don't know why, but they seem to enjoy using our porch to climb and hang on to hatch out of their skins before making the climb to the trees to start their life cycle all over again. It's quite something to see.

Then in the afternoon, Mir and I decided it was a nice evening and we'd like to read outside, so I took out a blanket and lay down on the ground with the book to ready, part way through reading, I turned my head and got scared half to death by two red eyes looking back at me. One of them had decided to climb up my arm, and was hanging on there just looking at me. I managed to coax him off back into the grass, but he just kept on crawling nearer. Then it was that Mir looked around and laughing said, "You have one on your back you know," and sure enough, there I was with a cicada settled on my back to get himself out of his shell. At this point I decided that I just had to remain still and allow him to do that.

We took video... which you can see here

Nothing like having a cicada emerging on your back to let you see that yes, you can slow down and appreciate the wonders of nature... of all life.

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

The culmination of one love, one dream,
one self, is the anonymour seed of the next.

We life, embrace and put to rest our dearest things, including how we see ourselves, so we can resurrect our lives anew.

Sitting by the fire yesterday as the sun started going down I had a sudden awakening... turned and asked what the date way, and when being told, non plussed that it was April 30th. Yes, it was Bealtainne, and until that moment it had completely missed it.

Rather than feeling foolish, as I could have done, I felt awakened. It wasn't until yesterday that I realised that I hadn't just let my faith, my way of life fall by the wayside, I had - albeit unconsciously - buried it... laid it to rest to cleanse outmoded, outdated ways of thinking, and to commit to Earth those things that had been rendered as negativities, and therefore tainted what had been that light of perfection in my soul. That carrying the influences of all that had happened with Bran, and with Colin before - and the whole mess of things with the members of the group that turned away, hurting me as they did, was damaging my faith.

So I committed it to Earth to cleanse and purify - to await renewal... and for that renewal, I have Mir to thank. For the meditation garden, for the fire to venerate returning life at Bealtainne... for the renewal of my faith.