Fellowship of All Life

(Image : The Sanctuary, soul card, SG, 2005)

…Personally, I think that “Ecopsychology” is another name for Neo-Druidry. Some may not agree of course, and that is OK, they say that among 10 Druids there are 11 opinions! Lol.

In general and very roughly, there are four groups of so-called “Druids”, and I think that it is very useful to learn how to distinguish them, because they show vastly different ways of being in concrete reality, and also vastly different aims.

The Old Ones, of which practically nothing is known. They didn´t write down their teachings,have never built a temple in stone,  and have not left a mark in History, apart from some really faint traces that have been handed down the long corridors of Time. I list them because they are the genesis, the origin, true or false, of the other three groups.

The Romantic Ones, which are a re-creation of what a past century felt about the subject, a century in which there was no electricity, no highways, no Internet – and in which nothing was really verified. That´s where you can find the robed Druids and Druidesses who know all about casting spells and calling to the ancient gods, though they often dine at McDonald´s; those are the ones that are traipsing through the new forests, or even public parks sometimes since not so many forests are left, in flimsy fake-medieval robes, and trying very hard to look ancient, though most of them haven’t even got to the ripe age of 50. (No offense meant, it is just a passing remark, that happens to be true.)I think that these people are compensating the harsh reality of modern life, the very hardship of what our society has become, through happy dreams.

The Reconstructionists, who are very serious people who think that intuition is a valid way to perceive History, (particularly “His-Story”, lol), and are very precise about a lot of rather vague stuff,

And then there is a new group, which is still largely a sort of seed-group, which is pushing through the earth, straining towards the Sun, like a very modest plant still, – The Future Druids, the Gaian Druids, or Neo-Druids.

Our Druid Grove is part of this last group. We do believe in intuition, use it a lot, but do not think that it is really a valid way to “re-construct” the past, because such an enterprise as rebuilding an imagined past according to non-verified present beliefs distorts what is happening in the present, and sometimes even veils what should be happening if we are to correct past facts that have brought us to this collective disaster of a present, (yes, a long sentence, read it again, lol); we don´t need robes and wands and staves, but yes, we care about the Future of Earth, and in midst of this preoccupation for the becoming of the human species of which we are a part, absolutely, we understand that humanity needs a new Myth, for “without a Vision the people perish”, so, having gone through a real Druid training (OBOD), we might as well be called “Druids”, OK, Neo-Druids, if you will.

…This Vision that we have been so clearly a-creating in our far away valley these last few years, is that of a Humanity that would finally consciously acknowledge the simple fact that we human beings are Children of Planet Earth. Whatever our nations pretend to be, first and foremost we are Gaians, Earthlings. From all Internet users down to Eskimos and Bushmen.

(Sorry to draw such a scale, I actually do not mean to imply that people who are not Internet users are not human, lol.)

Yes, we envision a number of people starting to live the Gaian vision, very discreetly at first, inside themselves to begin with, people living with the clear knowledge that some things have to stop, like the desecration of the planet. I´m talking about people who would truly understand, because they have been coolly trained, that things cannot go on like they are, running around in stupid circles, that something must change, and that this “something” is the very structure of the patriarchal ego, which is an extremely limited historical view, even of physical reality: since man walked on the moon  (at the very least) and invented quantum physics,  we do have a pressing need to get out of the Freudian back alley:

Everything in our lives can be aligned to prosperity, agape *and abundance of intelligence, which is how Nature really works. There is no real necessity to botch human evolution.

We could, yes we could. We could do it, you know. Difficult ? Yes. Impossible ? No. Anyway, what with Climate Change and Peak Oil, we may be forced to change. Change into what, is now The Big Question.

If you find it difficult to accept the idea that our civilization is still barbaric, and that we DO have to evolve as a species, don´t change anything except this basic understanding, which you have to “grok” with your very bones : we are Earthlings, and we will have to deeply acknowledge this fact. Or we will disappear. Easy choice. And a long long process. Do we really have the time?

It all boils down to the fact that all of us are collectively responsible for the welfare of all of humanity, and of the entirety of the planet.

War is a boorish, unrefined, uncultivated, churlish way of facing collective problems. Warriorship as a patriotic demonstration can best be used on an entirely different  level : I mean, a mental way of tackling problems, of grappling with reality. I do think that we have enough enlightened brains on this planet to create an entirely new game.

As for us as a group, as a Project, as a Neo-Druid Grove, we have made that choice already. Actually, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, we are deep into the consequences of it. As a group we have touched the brass tacks of what it means. This sense of consciously  “being on the side of the woods” (as Tolkien says through Treebeard), is what makes us Neo-Druids. We may even, if the Myth becomes as necessary as bread, sew some nice white robes and dance through our very own woods. We may as well, since we so deeply feel part of the Great Fellowship of Life on this Earth.

In this deep sense, we have the Vision of a huge Rainbow of Consciousness/Energy spanning thousands of years, from the Old Ones right down to us, the Druids in jeans. A new Ark of the Covenant, if you will. Or a new lease on our renting this planet from our great-great-grandchildren.

…Rivendell lives! Long live Rivendell!

 ;-)

 PS.- Agape  : Christianity. Love as revealed in Jesus, seen as spiritual and selfless and a model for humanity.

1. Love that is spiritual, not sexual, in its nature.
2. Christianity. In the early Christian Church, the love feast accompanied by Eucharistic celebration.

In the New Testament, the fatherly love of God for humans and their reciprocal love for God. The term extends to the love of one’s fellow humans.

Animus work

(Image : The journal shown here is part of the work I did for my PS course, “Book of Merlin”, SG, 2005).

The Animus (the masculine part of women) is usually, and culturally, projected on men. We fall in love with the Aragorns of the world, we never stop to think that maybe this lovely ruggedy energy could actually be ours. Ever seen a hairy Arwen ? Lol. Such is our deep deep cultural conditioning.

But I discovered that lots of our courageous Prince Valiant energies could be ours, it´s a question of looking inside and being truthful with ourselves. In my PS work, way back then, I realized that I was sort of in awe with Strider (Aragorn)- (no, not the actor, Tolkien´s character), because these energies were mine. I didn´t want to be Arwen, I wanted to own my Strider energies, and what a wonderful addition to my life!… I also realized that a whole part of the events of my past life had incorporated these energies, oh yes, I certainly did some rather non-female things in my life!…

All of which, being my real life experience, had me thinking that maybe our culture has some rather shady agenda dividing people into male and female stereotypes. That´s what Jung (GrandPapa Carl Gustav) tried to say when he formulated that men have a female part of their psyche (the Anima), and women a masculine part (the Animus). Though…mmmm…Granddaddy being a staunch Swiss macho man (Goddess knows I´m familiar with those characters having had a very Swiss e-dew-kation!), he naturally thought that the Anima business was more “normal” than the other one!

Anyway, I did work with my Animus, and even gave him some really well-known faces at the time, Merlin for one, Gandalf, my inner Druid, (yeah, I know he´s a Mayar, not a Druid), Aragorn-Strider, and Elrond, the half-elven. (You must have guessed that I am a Lord of the Rings fan ?…).

It helped a lot to feel that these “masculine” energies were actually mine! So I stopped projecting them “outside”, and could finally let my men be the troubled, fragile, chinked beings that they really were…oh blessed relief for them…See my point?

This post goes with the preceding one about Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. The Sun was considered a female entity by the ancient Celts, as it still is in the German language : die Sonne, der Mond. When I speak about a shady agenda above, it is so, or why should solar qualities systematically be attributed to the masculine, and lunar ones to the female? Examining both, you get to understand the agenda, lol.

Note *** Just so you get this right : yeah, I am an Elf, and yeah, I am 3000 years old! (No, not Arwen.)

Hahaha

The Final Initiation

(Image : “Druid Review”, final exam, SG, 2009)

A year or so after receiving the lovely scroll that marks the end of my formal training as a Druid at OBOD (actually you may find out that it never ends!), the final Initiation.

…I was in the kitchen, talking with Mika and Adam (the other two parts of the Earth Sanctuary Project´s coregroup) over coffee one morning, about how hard it is sometimes to maintain this land, and how sometimes we would love to travel or go someplace different, smaller, easier, – and how we couldn´t ever go back to living in a town flat, when a sudden realisation hit my brain.

I, who thought I couldn´t ever live in a town again, had the sudden vision that all the trees of the world were now rooted in my heart, and the mountains, and the rocks, and the little river, and all the animals, deer, fox, squirrels and eagles, and that I could, without batting an eye, pack my suitcase and go…anywhere!

Tears just welled up in my eyes.

All the forests of the world are now rooted in my green heart.

I have become the Grove.

Naa-niiiiiii!

(Image : Little Mister Sunshine, on Mamiiii´s knees, photo : Tata I-a, MDG, 2010)

“L´homme propose et Dieu dispose.” (Anon Le Grand,  ze French Anon)

Grandmothers propose and grandsons dispose, if you will pardon my French!

I told my daughter in no uncertain terms that no way do I want to be called “Granny” or anything remotely like it! So we said, OK, so Alex will call me”Ya-ya” (Granny in Catalan), but after trying it on, well, I´d rather not, ”La Yaya” is the other Grandma, thank you very much. So we said, what about “Nana” ? Mmm, nice. Nana, I can digest.

But no.

D´you know who that screech is meant to bring about running : Na-niiiiiiiii!! which means just about anything from Gimme-my-bottle-and-not-too-warm-eh? to Lift-me-up-quick-I-wanna-see-sumpthing!…Yeah. Me. the Wizard of Lothlorien. Ha.

So be it,  – Nani it is. And …Maaaami-iiiii (Mama), Tata I-a (auntie Mika) and Da-da (Adam). Awa (agua, water), Maaa-meh (dáme, give me) and other wonderful words which we have a hard time not imitating! Like in:  ”I-a, maa-meh awa”! (Mika, give me water). Family in stitches.

Dark epiphany – 2

(Images : Spider Woman, The Cailleach, Wild Woman, soul cards, SG, 2009)

“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darknesses.” (Nicolas Kazantzakis)

OK,  I think it´s a good moment to share some of my more ”creepy-crawley” soul cards. Not all of my  work is bright and shiny. I love what I call my “shadow warrior” cards as well. They give me a good insight into domains that are not at all angelical, and I believe that´s really good for personal integration and psycho-synthesis, lol. Even so, I can´t let beauty out of it…

Madame Mim and Native Americans

The little Mademoiselle on the left is me, aged three (I think), the photo in the middle is me, 60 years later, and the drawings (not mine!) are of Madame Mim, of Walt Disney fame.

Madame Mim is of course another funny archetype with which I have worked. She is the zany side of me, the “animated” Miss Marple in me. I love her dearly.

…The two comments on yesterday´s post don´t sound odd to me : I have a very keen inner relationship with the cosmos of Native Americans. Being such a nut about Ecopsychology (= the relationship of Humankind with Nature), I have this same…errr…sort of disinterested (questing ?) look on the Crazy White Man (the photographer)? Lol.The “heatmap” tech thingie and the colours no doubt emphasize the perception, but the energy is there, that´s true. It´s the Warrior of Shamballa in me that comes to the foreground through the “heatmap” thing. And yes, it´s the very same picture! (See how you can play?)

I am working in a journal with the original picture, in all sorts of nutty ways. What looks Native American can also look very ladylike with another option of the same programme. I´m working with all options, including an Andy Warhol-like pop painting type of collage.

Psychosynthesis calls these aspects of oneself “subpersonalities”, or “subs” (lol). All of us have lots of facets, and PS gives us the tools to make a true Mandala out of all of them, so that we can see that they are all fragments of the same Self, each semi-detached piece being a path in itself towards “center”. Some of these fragments are quite independent from the central ego-structure (what we generally call “me”), for example the Shadow realm on one “side” or on one hand, and then the spiritual side of our basic nature on the other.Very often these two aspects are not contained within the ego structure, and are “projected” onto other people. PS is the Path to reclaim all these projected aspects of ourselves (of our selves) and bring them into harmony, “owning” them, maybe for the first time in our life.

I think that PS, or any Path that practices “soul retrieval”, is especially good for ladies of “our age” (mmm…) because in a way our lives are behind us, we have already made our choices, and lived through the consequences, for good or for bad. At least that was my experience when I worked for my PS diploma with Will Parfitt (you´ll find a link on the side).

So yes, thank you, Susannah and Jill, I really appreciated the sharing of your perception.

Becoming a Legend…

 

Just so you see what I mean in my preceding post…The lady on the left is Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, both Miss Marple and Dame Margaret being legends, and dear models of mine as I go through my post-menopausal years.  The image on the right is me, recently, retouched with a heatmap design and nothing more, bwahahaha (so appropriate!)…Yes, well, I still have a long way to go to be like The Legends, but I´m getting there, day by day, …from the feet up!…

Yeah, I know, I look a lot tenser than Miss Marple, I look weird (even without the heatmap thingie), but that´s because I try to control the damn jawline! See what I mean ? I would prefer to let go, and am not able to, yet. Anyway, did Miss Marple worry about her looks, or didn´t she ? We´ll never know.

 ;-)

Hecate, and all that jazz!

(Image : Autoportrait surréaliste, SG  April 2010)

…Have started a new Art Journal to explore the tricky passage that I am going through as a woman, I´m definitely a crone now, but you see, I don´t really feel like one.I wonder how many women feel the same way ? I don´t have a clue of how I´m supposed to feel, though I know that I am supposed to feel something, some things, and I dont – repeat: don´t –  agree with those things one bit! And I see the desperate efforts of some other women to cling to the last remnants of their youth, like clinging to worthless rags… I swore to myself that I would not be like them!…

I don´t feel “my age”, I don´t really look “my age”, I´m the same “me” as before, and yet there are subtle changes that I do acknowledge. I cannot run as fast, I have wrinkles, sometimes my teeth are hurting (lol), and I´m certainly not as slim as I once was (never been “slim, so what?)

Actually, I feel strong, ready for battle, full of creative juices- and quite determined to help the next generation as the brand-new challenges of climate change and the need for deep change arise in their young lives. I´m a weathered veteran really. Veteran, as in skilled,steady, adept, expert, versed and practical. (Courtesy of Dictionary, com, lol). 

And that, my friends, is one hell of an advantage, for me and for them.

PS.- The Spanish say “Don´t you have a grand´mother?” when someone throws compliments at themselves (which is a grandmotherly task, as we all know).

 Well, no. I don´t have a grandmother anymore. I am my own grand-mother (on my passport only).

The Mystical Experience

(Image : Soul card,  SG, 2009)

“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darknesses.” (N. Kazantzakis)

“God has no religion.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

…I had several deep mystical experiences from the age of 8 to the age of 30, “peak moments” as they came to be called in Humanistic Psychology; all of them, each one of them, changed my life in a profound way.

I´m over 60 now, so it took me at least 30 years to completely integrate what happened when I was younger.

The first difficulty, as one can imagine, is how to remain rooted in reality when one just had the realization with all one´s senses and with absolute certainty that one is a conscious part of what other people have been calling “God”. I never ever said that I was “God”, but I said that I was an awakened part of what people call “God”, the same as us all. You really get to have to make sense of what you´re saying, and that wasn´t easy. Fortunately for me the contents of the experiences and the Vision that I slowly acquired also showed me that there were ways to say what happened without offending anyone! My experiences never inflated the ego, as they so often do. The heart of the mystical experience is too beautiful to be mistaken for something that an ego could produce, that much was clear from the start.

After that, after having been shown the interconnectedness of all, of the Great Chain of LIFE, of which I was now a conscious link, I really studied hard to get a sense of normalcy again. Except for a certain dancing light in my eyes, I functioned in the most normal way. Being “enlightened”, as they say, is no guarantee for being a balanced human being. And it is so, point-blank right on the nose! Hard work on oneself does that. I understood that very early on. And I did work hard on the person that I also was.

The sense of awe and the certainty that “all-is-Light” never left me. But I came to understand what the experience meant in contrast to what we are being fed through “education”. I studied hard then to be, one day, able to help others out of the dark tunnel of ignorance.

I also learned – sometimes quite painfully – that not everyone wants to hear the good news.

All in all, and with all, my life was changed forever and the more I understood, the more my view of the human plight changed, became more precise, more defined. The process of enlightenment is a gradual one, a continuous one, though the experience itself is more like a flash, out of time. If you think that it is a “wambam thank you m´am!” (lol)type of thing and you´re done, no, that´s not it at all. It is a long process of becoming more and more able to contain the Light, and to reflect it in a safe way. Progressively all functions align to the inner Light, until you are completely “normal” again, and seen as normal by others. The difference is just that you are being awake where most people seem to be fast asleep. This sleep being an illusion, as I learned going through the process of becoming a guide.

Enlightenment, my dears, is the basis of the normal human state of affairs, so you can measure how far we have strayed, as a species, from Home.

Transition Mode at the Sanctuary

(Image : Biosphere 2030, MDG, 2009)

…Do you know about peak oil ? No? Well, you had better Google Wikipedia for it, otherwise  it could be a rude awakening if you don´t!…

Do you know about the Transition Movement ? No? Same thing. (Have a look at Wikipedia, there are lots of Spanish websites, too).

We know about all that jazz, have been into it for a good number of years now, and are slowly changing the basic gears of our community to “go into transition” (=post peak-oil mode). Yes, we have been recycling for quite some time , but hey! it could become worse, and it´s later than we think.

The Sanctuary is quite litterally carbon-neutral  (two cars and one van for 100 acres of woodland), which means that our trees give us more breathing space than what we waste with the cars. This last week we made the experiment of consciously writing down all the plastic stuff that comes out after shopping in a supermarket, and I mean all, well, my dears, just becoming totally conscious about this (and actually writing down every bit of plastic that we throw away, then thinking about alternatives), we have been able to spare 80 % of plastic trash in one week!

In the same way, we have been able to save 70% of supermarket shopping. We do not buy new furniture (what´s wrong about good second-hand?), are not travelling on planes, and haven´t had a real “holiday” for years. Why go to the Bahamas, or to the Seychelles, when we can have a “holy day” every single day just by going down to the vegetable garden ? (We bought this property as a group, as an investment for a sustainable future, and have gone through a long and sometimes painful process to really make this project a healthy alternative.)

OK, and we are now into Trash Art, recycling stuff into Artwork (like paper beads to make curtains made out of old magazines), baking our own bread (very symbolic), and planting our own vegetables. And we are planning to buy a good wood stove, as soon as possible.

We have wood in abundance for the fireplace, and lots of water (our own, fortunately).

All symbolic gestures and not much more than that, I know – but at least we are concretely and above all psychologically ”processing” the hard truths of our times!…

I would encourage you to start doing the same. Who knows? We might yet survive…(Not funny, I know).

PS.- Plus, we do have the methodology of the Psychology of Change, elaborated over two decades of group processing too (see Pages right-hand corner up the post), so at long last, we might even come in handy, seeing the sorry circumstances… If we want to survive the long night, lol, we will have to learn how to live together, after all.

Two must-see DVDs (At Amazon, no problem):

- The Age of Stupid, Why Didn´t we save ourselves when we had the chance, “Think  “An Inconvenient Truth” but with a personality” (lol),

and…

- A Crude Awakening, The Oil Crash, Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, “We´re running out…and we don´t have a plan”.(Gulp.)

Both are eye-openers!…(Gulp again.)

Have fun, if you can.