tarot healing spread

I use the tarot cards to help me identify emotional blocks and help me find ways of answering my own questions.  I allow the imagery to open up new ideas to me and aid meditation.  I love the healing spread best of all.

Healing spread

1: 5 of swords, The emotional block : An interesting facet of this card is revealed by symbolism in the Rider-Waite scene. It shows a man with two swords lying at his feet - the spoils of his victory. But he already had three swords, and his trophies really represent nothing more than a hollow victory. It is plausible that the two "defeated" men were really not defeated at all; they simply laid down their arms and walked away. They either knew they would lose, or they knew winning would be a pointless exercise. And by choosing not to fight, they are really the winners here, because he who knows when to fight, and when not to fight, will be victorious.  http://www.ata-tarot.com/resource/cards/

I dont use the waite rider cards as I learned on these and they represent my interest in fortune telling.  I use the mythic tarot now as I think it is better for subconscious insights.  the cards are very beautiful and dont contain some of the scary imagery of the occult ones. 

Summary I must face my own limits and not engage in battles just for the sake of winning them. emotional block is therefore not being able to accept my limits and not heading the advice of others when to back down or when to walk away from a conflict. 

2:  8 of cups, Wow this past relationships card is so pointent, the woman walks down the steps past the cups with her eyes downcast.  She is leaving behind her love.  I am leaving behind mine and my foolish dreams. I always had unrealistic expectations of my relationships.  I wanted them to help me be happy but now I dont need that anymore.  I can heal myself and be happy on my own.  

3: Present relationships, 3 of cups.  I love this card , for me it means that there is an abundance of love in my life and I can see it.  so often I get the 4 which usually means that I am not aware of or open to the love around me. 

4: Revelation , Temperance, lol moderation in all things as my dad would say.  here  iris is poursin water between two cups with a rainbow int eh background .  I must lean r to have a balanced heart.  Balancing myself , my life and family is what has been reveled to me and I think I need to look at a new image.  for years I saw myself as juggling now I am balancing, a see-saw, a plate spinner, scales, balance. 

5: guidance, king of cups, father figure hmmmm not sure instinctively what that is.  this card is about emotional growth , this is the one to contemplate I think as I cannot immediately see the point of it.  I can interpert most cards quickly and fit them into the story but in this casr I cannot .. Is it a person, is it me, I am needing guidance on a life changing decision and was thinking about the last time I bought a house I asked for my dads advice.  I suppose I wanted him to say no in someways.  I wanted honest feedback.  but he wanted me to be happy and said go ahead.  Later he told me that he had reservation but saw that I really wanted it and gave me the advise against his better judgement.  I suppose this is saying to me Be cautious from whom you take advise and balance it all up.  

6: spiritual lesson: 3 of wands, Never let failure set you back, learn from all of your mistakes and snatch victory from the jaws of every defeat.http://www.ata-tarot.com/resource/cards/

in this card in the mythic tarot he is getting the spoils of battle but he has a long road ahead.  wands is pure energy that has yet to find its outlet.  

In summary I am in a good place but must be mindful from whom I take advise and how i proceed.  Learn from past lessons and enjoy the abundance of the love that surrounds me.  I have completed one phase of my life and I have to work hard to succeed at my goals. 

I think it is time to take a realistic look at my goals and take some timeout to contemplate what it is I really want. 

BAlance in all things.

Balance in all things and all things in balance.

what causes disease

what causes disease
Extracted from an aritcle by CLAIRE O'CONNELL

Probably every biological process has a microRNA or set of microRNAs behind it, but when we began our work about three or four years ago nothing much was known about them in the immune system at all,” he says.

“Then we began to find them in the immune system. We began to find they were very strongly regulated by Tolls , and Toll Four was inducing loads of them.”

In particular, their research pointed to microRNAs having roles in keeping inflammation under control.

“We have found that microRNA is very important for dampening down the inflammatory process – through a negative feedback effect they fine tune the system,” says O’Neill. “We have stumbled into a set of molecules that are probably important for the resolution phase of inflammation, so microRNAs are very important for returning the body to normality after an infection.”

This summer, O’Neill’s team will start another research project on microRNAs in the immune system, teasing out a potential tug of war between microRNA 155 and microRNA 21 during inflammation. So far this work, which was funded by Science Foundation Ireland, has looked at how the microRNAs affect cells. But with a grant from the European Research Council, O’Neill can now progress the research to more complex preclinical models to get a more complete picture.

“We are very much on a frontier here,” says O’Neill. “We are really fishing now in the world of microRNAs, to see are they relevant and can they affect disease outcome.”

And knowing more about the mechanics of the volume control will help inform the use of microRNAs in diagnosing and treating disease, he adds.

I found that article facinating.  Connectivity is the buzz word of modern society.  We are all connected.  this over connection can disturb those of us who need quietness and space to process the world.  Part of the healing process is  processing  what has happened in our lives to bring about the disease.  This is not always practised in a holistic way by conventional medicine, and the physical process which bring about disease is not always fully integrated by alternative medicine.  We are at a point in the evolution of science and the understanding of the mind body link where both communities are beinning to see the other side of their so called rivals.  I had a wonderful experience when my daughter was in hospital last week.  My second daughter has been treated for a medical complaint which went away and recently came back.  The first time I went to every quack in the locality, and here I use the word quack in an affectionate way, as quack is a sound made by a bird and is the best way we can describe another creature, that is a duck, trying to communicate with us.  We do not know what he is saying but we know he is communicating, anyway back to the point.  I have discussed the alternative therapies with him in the past and this time decidied to go down the conventional treatment method only and have as yet not tried to quack.  But amazingly he considered the question my daughter asked him about the connection between a new vaccine and her disease the last time she was in hospital.  This time he told me that he had investigated it and said that it is worth a try and although there is no scientific basis for it working there have been trials and cases where it seems to work.  This is such a huge growth in his attitude to non scientific treatment, just because we don't know why it works and we cannot prove that it works does not mean that it does not work.

I found the above article this morning and I believe that the mind body connection, the wholeness of being, the fact that disturbances of brain function , which has hitherto been called mental illness in in fact a full body illness and cannot be treated in isolation.  We need to heal the whole person in all cases.  We dont not know how our thoughts create the physical disturbances as yet but research is getting closer with the advances in neuroscience.  Philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, logic, medicine, alternative therapy, religion, art, music , all of the world and our experiences go up to make us who we are.  We often go through the world blind to the guides there to help us on our path, we forget that all our lives are joined.  We are each the centre of the universe because the universe is infinite but infinity connects us.

To quote my late father :"they are all out of step except you".  They a were all marching to a different drum and I did not know that there was more than one drum beat in the world.  We are all connected, all the drumbeats go to make up a cacophony of noise and wonder, sometimes it is in harmony and at other times in disharmony.  Our search for connectivity and wholeness is a search for our tribe that beats the same drum beat as us.  But when we want only one beat, the one the we know the sound of, the one that we have heard all our lives we close our ears to the possibility of learning a whole new song and to all the other musical instruments in the world.  I value openness, I value honesty, I value knowledge and now I have found a new value one that is completely new to me , I value the difference in others , I do not need to live in a world with only one drum beat I live in a world full of all sorts of sounds.  Time for a new therapy for me , music and sound , it unlocks so much of our minds and unlocking the mind is the key to unlocking the soul.

Today I will not look at what is the evidence for that truth that I thought about.  Today I will be open to everything, I will listen to all sounds, and not just one, I will take off my glasses and marvel at the uniqueness of all sounds; the beautiful birdsong, the clicking of the keyboard as I type, the weird sounds the dog and child are making, the accidental music of the electric guitar as she learns to play, the squeak of the sliding of the fingers down the string, the buzz of the electrical equipment, the hum of the fridge, and that lovely singing of the thrush outside my window.  We are all connected but we can only experience that connectivity if our senses are attuned to the world.

Perhaps the scientists that discovered the micro RNA were so open to working out how things worked that they did not dismiss anything they encountered in their search for knowledge.  I think that it is a lesson to us all , and to me in particular.  Open up to the world around you be situational aware, there is some much out there to enjoy.   I was thinking about the many people who have shown we the way on my road to recovery and think of them as signposts, because road signage is very much part of my work, and I need visual metaphors to understand the world.  I have long mulled over the poem Autobiography in 5 parts which I have read and reread since I first discovered it many years ago.  When we are looking for a new street we can find it with the help of our signposts.  Be open to them and stop and carefully read them when they appear as they have been sent by your subconscious to show you the right path for you.

Loose the rigidity that keeps you in your rut and follow the signposts that the world is offering you to new an fantastic places.
Happy Thursday. 

command the muscles

Very early on in my episode it was as much as I could do to get out of bed and sit in front of the tv all day.  I watched quite alot of rubbish, but I also saw some interesting programmes.  On one of the morning shows there was a woman describing exactly how I was feeling, particularly the anxiety.  I listened to her as she described a method she used to overcome the anxiety.  It was the Recovery Inc. method based on the work of Dr. Low.  It was like a miracle as she described how you command your muscles to act.  When you are stuck you need to change your thoughts to change your actions and vica versa.  I had heard that so many times but it was by connecting with my feelings, and by seeing someone who shared that feeling, and more importantly by seeing them on tv dealing with their very real anxiety that I understood what it meant.  So I tried it .  I closed my eyes and said move your hand, I moved my hand.  It became slightly more complicated the following day as I tried to get out of bed.  Who knew there are so many ways of getting out of bed.  I recommend you start by wriggling your toes.  Then stretch out your arms. Rotate your wrists.  Slowly sit up.  A few rotations of the neck.  The swing your legs to the side. Wriggle your bum over to the edge.  The the final push push against the bed with your arms and push against the ground with your feet.  There you go you are out of bed, was it so hard??

So from the small beginning of commanding my muscles to get out of bed I ventured further.  I started to make my bed every day.  When I was a child I loved to help my mother make the beds, especially on the bright sunny mornings when the dust flew up into he air and caught the light.  Again it looked like magical glitter to a 3 year old.  By making the happy association between the magical glitter, the happy feeling and making the bed i was able to turn a chore into an opportunity to feel better.  By commanding the muscle, by doing things in part acts I was able to piece myself together again and out of the blackness my soul reemerged.  It had not been fed for so long that it had withered.  Your soul needs to be nourished with joy and happiness, other wise  it will wither and hide.  Nourish your soul and life will be less bleak.

Happy Thursday.

building my happy place and other projects

I am a very visual person.  I think in images.  I find words hard to use to describe unless it is in a series of visual metaphors so when I initially started to move beyond the awful despair and crying associated with the early days of my episode I looked to pictures to try to understand what was happening to me.  The first image I worked with was a black well surrounded by grey stones in a dark place, without light , without colour.  I tried in so many ways to colour the picture but each time I closed my eyes all I could see was the bottomless pit.  I was now fortunately kneeling at the top of the pit looking in, previously I have been hanging on by my fingernails trying to claw myself out.  Thankfully the help of family and a very good doctor pulled me out of the pit.  Time and counselling have turned the bottomless dark well into a very pleasant place.  Now it is a lovely stone labyrinth that I can journey through to an inner sanctuary of calm, the pit is now a beautiful still pool in the middle of the labyrinth .  It is surrounded by a wild flower meadow.  In my new found sanctuary it is always summer.  Not the sweltering heat of mid summer rather the beautiful early summer weather in May , just hot enough to lie out in the sun.  Where the ground is warm but still sit has the slight springyness of the damp winter rain.  I have added it to my projects: to build that beautiful sanctuary in real life so that other troubled minds can find a place to revive and renew themselves.
I started this post in order to describe how I started to overcome the despair.  Essentially I sought to visualise a happy place to counter-act the dark pit I felt I was in.  I tried to find images on the internet, then I tried to take photos and piece them together, I tried to draw it.  Eventually I started to collect images from books magazines and the internet.  It lead me back to my love of art.  I found that I have sky arts on my tv and started to watch art programmes.  I was inspired by the film The gates.  I had forgotten how much I loved Christo's work as a teenager, his wrapped landscape was so different from my previous view of art it was inspiring.  What drew me to the film was the total vision he had and his inspirational self belief.  This film should be compulsory viewing for the depressed.  Pure joy was what he created.  How long had I lived a life without joy, where I sought pleasure rather than joy and happiness.  I did not even recognise the difference until last week while reading the art of happiness.  Pleasure is fleeting but happiness comes from within and does not depend on pleasure for its existence.  So I started to compile a list of projects that I would like to complete.
The first was a collage of Gustav Klimt: The kiss.  I spent days and days looking and examining the image.  For me it represented the pureness of female submission, something I had explored last year.  I was still at odds with my desire to be submissive and could not reconcile it with my intellectual belief that I was equal with men.  Who knows where this exploration will end up but for now I am working on the collage.  at present I am collecting things to use in it.  I examine the image form books and from the Internet.  I have plans to go view it.  Next year or later this year is a significant anniversary of his birth, 150 years and there are a number of exhibitions planned so I hope to travel to see them in reality, possibly by train but who knows yet.

The second project is a bubble machine.  I love bubbles.  As I looked out into the garden while washing up I thought how lovely it would be if there were bubbles blowing around in the garden.  At the time I was reconnecting with my interest in kinetic art so I made the connection that I could make a wind powered bubble machine to blow bubbles for me.  I have an endless permutation of possibilities.  So far I am collecting different shaped bubble wands and drinks cans to make the anemometer-like windmill to power the fan to blow the bubbles.  I decided to make it out of objects I find or that I have lying around so it could also even be from parts of old bikes , I love bikes and the rotation of the wheel on the bearings is so pure.

my bubble farm created by the organic bubble machines(children).

  Again a work in progress but such fun to think about.  I love the concept phase of a project where different ideas are considered.  I love the initial creation stage and also the construction bit.  work projects are just no fun for me anymore since it became all about money and paperwork.  I miss the early days of my career where the creation of the project was the aim, not the keeping the stakeholder happy, not the balancing of the books but the essence of taking an idea and bringing it to its conclusion, then admiring the achievement.  Hopefully my art projects will bring me the pleasure I lost in my work.  Perhaps they might bring me the happiness of expressing myself through the creation of things.  Or is that even possible.  


The most important project is to start a business so that I can use my talents to create an income for myself that does not rely on paid work.  I dont want to be defined by what I do for a living anymore.  I invested too much of my time and effort doing things for others now it is time to do things for myself.  Finally I know what I want in my life.  I want a simple happy life, one that I can look back on without regret, one in which I create things of beauty, the life I have always wanted but put aside as I did all the things that I thought I should.  The only should I need to keep in my life is I should take care of myself.  


While writing I always listen to music.  This post was accompanied by Leonard Cohen.  I am off to read my book of Leonard Cohens poetry now.  


Happy Wednesday 

time to get me a pogo stick and other thoughts

Yesterday I felt the familiar feelings of despair and anger   I began to wonder if I had really  made any progress at all.  I started to feel sorry for myself.  Then in the course of conversation with a friend later in the day I realised I had made progress.  I realised my thinking had changed.  As I listened to him talk about how fixed things were and how we cannot really change. I realised that perhaps he was right maybe we dont really change but I also realised that we can change how we think about things.  I had changed how I think.  I also have self belief so when someone makes a statesment I disagree with I dont need to argue with them to prove I am right.  When I believe in myself I dont need to constantly prove myself to anyone.  I see so many people arguing about small irrelevant things.  I see their need to be right.   It used to really really annoy me. I examined that trait in myself.  If I know I am right does it matter if everyone else thinks so also.  I think the main cause of my episode was when I lost my self belief.  Up until that time I was stressed but I coped relatively well.  It was when I lost hope and my senses of who I was that I went down.  I focused too much on the bad stuff.  It was only the time away from the world that allowed me to heal all the past hurts I never acknowledged.  I focused on keeping going and staying strong, but it is ok to show that you are hurt, it is ok to admit that you cant do everything, it is ok to ask for help, it is ok to be vulnerable and unsure.

So what else have I learned.  I suppose the importance of rest and recuperation after any event that is taxing.  To recognise my energy levels and not to force myself to do things when I feel low energy but to rest a little to let my energy levels rise.  I have learned to speak out about how I feel. I have learned to stay with myself and not be blown around by the whims of others.  I have learned to show my vulnerability.  I think that is the most important lesson.  No-one expects me to be perfect so why should I expect me to be perfect.  We all have flaws but being depressed is not a flaw it is an illness.  It can be healed with the correct medical and psychological attention.  Once our mind, soul and memory heal we can then address the stressors in our lives from a place of power rather than fear.  Addressing our negative thinking frees us from that awful downward spiral of what if, what will happen if, if that happens i wont cope, etc etc, .

What will make me more resiliant to stress?  I really dont know.   The scientific explanation of stress is force divided by area.  How much stress is caused depends on the amount of force and also the area on which its acting.  Reducing stress means reducing either the force or increasing the area.  How can I increase that area on which the force acts??  What does that mean for me, I think perhaps it is all about sharing the burden more, asking for more pillars to hold up that force, finding a shield to protect me from the force, maybe covering myself with something springy so that the force bounces off, I think perhaps I have found what I need to meditate on today.  I need to look at ways of reducing the force, ie the demands on me, and also on ways of increasing the area,  my resilance.   I need to be more elastic and get some bounce back, think its time to get me a pogo stick. :-)

Happy Tuesday.

if waterslides are this much fun why did i wait so long to try one

If water-slides are this much fun why did i wait so long to try one???????????????????

This question is the basic question I need to ask myself when I start to slip away into the dark place again.  I have put my duty, moreover my perceived duty, before my enjoyment of life for so long.  I forgot what fun was, well good clean fun anyway.  Sex and drugs, and sausage rolls well perhaps they are fun but they can be emotionally damaging if used in the wrong way. 

Yesterday i went down a water-slide for the first time.  I learned many lessons.

1)  I admitted I had not experience of how to do something and did not know how to do it i.e. go down a waterslide- overcoming the belief that I must have all the answers.

2)  Ask for help or clarification if you need to :such as could I get stuck- Here the lesson is to admit my fears, I am a size 16 I think that I am quite fat and this stops me doing things for fear that people will laugh at me, I did genuinely think I might get stuck, I know many people would think that was really silly but now I know that would be impossible.  By asking you are inviting others to help, and the nice helpful life guard explained to me on my second go just how much more fun it could be if I went really fast and showed me how to hold my body to do that. wow fantastic.

3) Let go of fear: I started to panic a little when I gathered extreme speed, yes I did follow the instructions on how to go really really fast and I managed to zoom down - but having learned to let go I let go of my fear and enjoyed the ride.

4) The best lesson of all was you are never too old to have fun- the sight of an overweight middle aged woman screaming her head off with pleasure in public half naked is an image of myself I had not considered never mind been comfortable with.  Its important to consider:  Do I want to have fun or conform to an image I imagine other people expect of me. Maybe I can learn to project better expectations onto others and maybe they might just want me to live up to those new images: of slightly overweight odd woman likely to so something fun.  That is a better image to me rather than serious career woman with no sense of humour. 

5) We all can choose to change when we are ready to do so.  I spent an hour under the water jets massaging every single knot of tension out of every single bit of my body.  So when my daughter asked me to go down the water slide, normally I would refuse as I would be afraid of pulling something or putting my back out, I could find no reason to refuse as my body was so relaxed and felt so good. I was ready to go down the slide and have fun. 

So give up your oul limiting images of yourself and have some good clean old fashioned fun. 

Happy St Patrick's Day