There is a crack February 2, 2009
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , add a commentRing the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
So goes the Leonard Cohen Anthem. Cohen is a doyen still performing in his 70s, whose poetic alchemy is so strong and message so sustainable, that a brand new generation is in love and profoundly. But what of this light?
Another excellent artist, James Gleeson explains it as an integral ointment to the process of painting:
If the Light is right the darkness will remain
to hold the form in stasis.
Something will be that had not been before
As a amateur painter I can relate to the Gleeson, as a broken individual I am addicted to the Cohen.
I paint to retreat and make meaning of things. Right now I’m painting a scene on the river at Woy Woy on the Central Coast of NSW. The painting is of the home of my grandparents. A retirement home they gave up, when they moved back to Sydney to look after us following the death of my mother.
My need to paint this scene, is parallel to my need to make sense of what home means.
The unfinished work sits on an easel in my spare room. And it’s as if there’s a presence in the house. As I pass by the open doorway and look in, it stares back. And I wonder – is it working? Should I stop now when the potential is still there, before I stuff it up? Do it like it? Would I know?
Undertaking the actual painting is like navigating a battlefield – one part of you motivated and defending the perfect vision of home, memory, life and loss. The other part, questioning and criticising your choice of colour and topic, and always with the eternal chant, “You’re not a painter”, “You’ll muck it up, you know you always do”…crack..
To add insult to injury, watching the progress of a painting is like caring for the wounded. Wandering the corridors with a lamp, you’re motivated by care, diligence and hope. Wanting to keep it alive, to rub it back, add more and then take off some.
And compelled at the open door, as if addressing an ailing patient, you whisper aloud, “You certainly made the right choice adding in that central focus point”. “You did well with the tone and depth”. But always when you turn away, if you’re honest, you’ll admit it could just as easily turn septic with the next encounter.
And it can happen at any time. These mistakes that take us on a certain path, unlike the one we started out on, these are the cracks and breakages and they are part and parcel of the artistic – healing process. Gleeson writes,
From the known a newer resonance
shaking old doors open to a separate incarnation
Last week I got an email from my niece, Georgie. Along with it – she’d attached the copy of a beautiful painting she’d 
just completed. It was the way she processed the loss and separation from her long-time boyfriend. The work was done on silk, full of abundant flowers – each with a symbology of loss, meaning, honour, fidelity and care. Not the work of a depressed woman – but certainly the work of a mind-ful one.
George stayed with me following the death of my husband a couple of years ago. She’d graduated and had given herself a year before applying for college. Most nights we’d sit out on the veranda talking. We spoke about life and hope and loss. We talked of death and battlefields and of caring for the wounded.
As much as you would hope it wouldn’t happen to an 18 year old, she had lost a friend in a car accident only months before and had seen it first-hand.
Georgie painted her way out of that grief as well. Embellishing a plaster cast she had made of this girlfriend’s torso some weeks before the accident It was a living canvas – potent with life, as it should be when you’re 18. And it was now frozen in time, attended to by the painter. So she took that cast and painted it with decorative meaningful emblems and gave it to the girl’s mother. The act was classy, brazen and inspired by love.
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
For you darling G
Imaginal cells and grout lines January 5, 2009
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Yellow , 1 comment so far
I’m starting the New Year of 2009 with fresh new tiles throughout my living space and thinking about Caterpillars.
As the last stage in my home transformation process I’m surprised at the level of disquiet and unease the change has caused. I’ve replaced the tired dusty 25 year old carpet with cleaner lighter tiles - marked out with cream white grout lines.
For the first day in this new environment I found myself gingerly stepping around and over the grout lines like a child or an OCD sufferer avoiding cracks in the foothpath. I couldn’t get away quick enough, away from the potential dissonance that comes with a big purchase or job. Was it the right choice of colour? Is the job a good job? Why do I miss the carpet?
I escaped to my sister’s house 2 hours away for Christmas and New Year. Normally a haven where the brain slips into neutral, the body goes into idle and the heart gently opens. Calming, loving, no disquieting elements at all. A fabulous end of the year. As the weather proved to be a delight, we swam each day in warm Christmas water, retired early and slept in late. And during each day, the most energetic thing we found ourselves doing was making a pot tea for whoever was laying around nearby.
Only this year was different. There was a discontent, a restlessness, and the ever present grief. Old feelings in a reliable setting, not unlike my now defunct carpet. Comments in passing, spiralling thoughts on the eve of a new year: Why was I alone? Was I driving people away? Would my life always be like this? Why was I such a worrier? Why didn’t I have more friends? Any friends? Why did I have to invade my sister’s life.
On New Year’s Eve it peaked. Friends, new and old, were invited around. There was predictable conversation and brand new people. The house was squeaky clean, the windows glistened, the table was over flowing with our signature dishes, the garden awash with sand-bagged candles, glowing as the sun descended. My wish for the event was that it heralded a new year full of wonderfully creative loving people, as well as an open hearted attitude in myself to new adventures and experiences.
There were 2 conversations that evening that proved to be testament to the wish. The first was with a long-standing friend of my sister’s – who is opiniated, funny, wounded and guarded. Having just broken up with her boyfriend, and undergoing profound family dramas, she was transmitting nervously most of the night, old scripts, old lines, sure laughs, side-swipes and commentary. In truth it was exhausting to watch and interact with. But then again, I had a head full of grout lines and sustainable fear of the future.
The 2nd conversation was with the new gay girlfriend of a (previously assumed straight) family friend. She was affirming, interested, gentle, alive, abundant, happy and in love. When you’re in love – is there a sweeter place? I found her delightful.
I got what I wished for. It was time to let the old way go, the old friends or friends of friends; the old way of worrying about everything; the old way of standing on my turf. And it was time to embrace the new. But how?
To transform yourself is hard. It’s hard enough changing the external environment, but now I have to fac
e the disintegration of my old self. Luckily my best teacher of all (my sister Cate) rang me with the answer – Imaginal Cells.
When a Caterpillar turns into a Butterfly it has to disintergrate and disolve first. Then almost by magic, imaginal cells appear to help the move into a Butterfly. All of this is done, unseen within a chrysalis. There’s a period of waiting and a total surrender to the process. When the Butterfly emerges it’s hard to link the two creatures so tranformed is the shape, look, feel, weight and scope.
If that means I have to walk on the grout lines, I will! Just Imagine then, what I’ll be able to do.
All the world’s a stage…… December 15, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Coming Back , add a commentI attended a workshop on the weekend called “Play of Life”
The training program is run by my very dear friend and her husband who designed and created it. For information on the program – you can visit their website.
It’s a program that grew out of the disciplines and philosophy of psychodrama wher
e the client can “show” rather than “tell” issues and life situations they need to deal with. By “showing” their current and ideal situation utilising a 3-D stage/play of small figures and props, they see for themselves the role, relationships, dynamic and often the first step to making it better.
It reminds me of the old fashioned sand-play, but taken to the next level. The program involves various techniques. One of my favourites was a technique to envision the ideal solution to a problem then envision what helps you move towards it and what enables you to move away from it. You strengthen one, and lessen the other. By using a series of well structured investigative, diagnostic questions a person can glean greater insight into their own patterns, roles and limiting behaviour.
We spend so much time creating our stories and narratives. And part of that creative work includes filling in the untenable gaps in life and our ideals. We plug up the holes with addictions, defence patterns, and often unrealistic mental constructs. For me, drinking my way through grief was better than facing the black hole of loss.
With this program I could “show” myself and another (witness) what was really going on. I could get out of the area of talking/telling /language and go straight to where the emotions and memories live. That’s why it’s so powerful – one can’t lie (that is if you’re serious about fixing the problem.)
For me, the wealth of the program can be encapsulated into the 2 main insights I took away:
1. That we can only change our own behaviour and we can often begin that change with a small step.
2. That we play roles in life -some helpful, others not so helpful. Once we are able to describe that role and see it for what it is – we can change it, just as one assumes and drops a role on a stage.
I love workshops that enable learning – specifically if that learning is going to make my life more loving and expansive. With my love and background in theatre I loved this sort of learning especially. I’d also done psychodrama before with very helpful results and so I was surely in my element.
The group was comprised of insightful, humble, loving individuals. These learning groups always are. People that want to grow are invariably interesting. The group were a microcosm of society and a rich mix of types, some introverted and extraverted. Some were willing and able to externalise their insights in the feedback sessions – no matter how painful. Others were able to witness someone else’s work, without having an opinion – not interpreting, just reading the signals and signs. We all loved it.
Mainly because the 2 days were facilitated by a delightful individual – a friend to many of the group. He is a young man – committed to caring and enabling the growth of others. A man who’d found a great vehicle for insights into his own process, the meaning of why we do what we do, and a way he can help. He was getting his trainer “P” plates, and he passed with flying colours – and well deserved.
The first night of the weekend, I was so exhausted I virtually collapsed asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. And I dreamt.
I dreamt of a stingray threatening the safety of my twin sister and myself. We were swimming in unclear, opaque 
water, and I warned her of this hidden threat To avoid contact with Stingray, I urged her to scramble onto a pier out of the water. My sister, though, remained in the water and was touched as the Ray nudged past and around her. Instead of dying, or being stung, my sister rode on the back of this huge magnificent beast – as if were a flying carpet. And as she did, the Stingray morphed into something less ominous and more graceful. It grew a neck and head of a swan, which my sister caressed.
I took the memory and elements of that dream into the 2nd day of the workshop. On this day I set up my ideal future – including the chance to love someone again, and to live in a fuller way. My intention, in this play of life, was to shed the role of fearful resigned loner and assume a new role of courageous giver and lover.
For me the Stingray’s beautiful transformation was testament to this desire. Change and growth were possible, if we stay immersed in the emotional water – despite the lack of vision and clarity and fear of being hurt.
Now totems in dreams are a big part of my psychic library. And both the Stingray and Swan evoke stronger intuition, protection and discernment. My own more pedestrian associations link it to the sudden and surprising attack on a well known Australian naturalist who was fatally pierced in the heart by a Stingray. No guesses there about my own lesson.
Later that night, when I returned home I spoke with my sister Gab over the phone. In tandem, we romped through the events of our respective weekends. She told me of her delightful stay with dear friends at Noraville, on the Central Coast of NSW; I told her of my weekend – the people I’d met, the insights I’d gleaned. Just as we were about to phone off.. she said,
“Oh yes, I forgot to tell you. The group went snorkelling today over the rocks at the end of the beach, as the tide was low and one of the blokes saw biggest stingray he’d ever seen. And even though it scared the life out of him, there was something extraordinarily beautiful about it.”
Making friends with the dark side November 27, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , add a commentA couple of times lately I’ve been forced to admit openly, I have a shadow side. And it’s well and truly alive.
Nothing new about that concept.
However, this last week in particular has led me to ruminate why it is that some people have a genuinely sweeter nature than others. Kinder, thoughtful, empathetic – you know, all those qualities your parents and teachers tried to instill in you and those you and your therapist(s) tried to re-activate or even find!
One expects to find those qualities shining brightly in younger people – merely because life knocks most of it out of you the more years you stay walking on this planet. And of those older people – my peers and older - who still manage to hold onto the qualities, well they’re one step away from sainthood.
This week just gone, I farewelled one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known. No she didn’t die but she did change jobs and after 11 or so years it felt like a little death. We’d traversed so much landscape together, she was there for me at my nadir and I trust, in some small way I have been there for her at her lowest point.
I admired how she left. A lot of us would skulk away, shunning those who treated us badly and leaving the rest with a gaping hole (given that we are soooooo fabulous, they won’t realise what they’re missing till I’ve gone!). I know I would do just that. I couldn’t risk finding out how few people actually liked me. I couldn’t face the fact that only the die hard loyalists turned up to my farewell. I have tried it before, and there was only a handful – so I’m right on that score.
But in the case of my friend – there were all staff emails, there were enormous group bbq’s there were farewell afternoon teas, dinners; it was as fine a farewell as any of Nellie Melba’s. And she deserved every one of them.
When we are couragepous to mark significant moments like departures, we give ourselves a great gift – the gift of love. We acknowledge our own splendidness and we play it out on whatever stage we strut our stuff.
When we are not courageous, we remain skulking in the shadows. Afraid of rejection and afraid of love. And in that shadow we make friends with the dark. We believe, often erroneously that we belong there.
When you are there, though, it gives you a great chance to make peace with what you find there. Your own dark thoughts and bitchy behaviour, your limiting beliefs and fear. You also great a great view of the light - In its absence.
Whether you can step into that light, spotted at times of transition, is merely a matter of choice and courage. Friends like mine however model it well and give me a gift far beyond the norm. A lesson on living well.
All the best dearest s.t.g.
About Dad November 9, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , add a commentWe had a reunion yesterday. It was also Dad’s anniversary.
My brother gave us a gift of photos – scanned from a box of old slides he’d collected from the family home. Most of the slides, he reported, were mouldy and useless, but he had managed to salvage a collection that he was able to digitalise.
My brother is one of the kindest people you could meet. Unlike me, his older sister whose response to life is sharp (alas more acerbic than insightful), Chris has a gentle spirit that doubles as a spiritual balm. Don’t get me wrong, he’s no saint – he’s a soldier and a guardian of memories.
The photos are rich and loaded with such balm. As he showed us the show, from his laptop, amidst the glare of an overdue sunny day, we caught a glimpse of a past.
Some images were in shadow with only a hint to their identity – was that Marie? No that’s Gel – see on the left, what was her name? Others were so fragile and ethereal as if painted on rice paper, torn at the edges and only just able to hold their colour. And some, as if painted on a still wet canvas, pulsated redolent and vibrant, transporting us immediately to that shared place in time.
A time shared between us as an immediate family but also shared across our extended family of cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. So there we were gathered around a laptop in a sunny park on a picnic 40 years after most of the photos were taken.
The reunion was organised this year, 2 years after our inaugural one, by my cousin, also called Chris, an equally heart-centred person to my brother. She is mid way in a larger family, and the same age as my older sister. There was always a cousin who was the same age as someone else.
There were shared birthday parties, Christmas parties, picnics, and religious rites of passage. And there were shared and common Grandparents who were central to the concept of family; they were formidable, immovable and almost sacred in our collective identity.
Dad had clearly started photographing after the death of his wife, for we couldn’t find any photos our Mother. I can relate to his strategy – capture everything you see, try to figure out what it is you’re seeing and then figure out whether you want to be a part of it.
I’m glad he did. I’m glad he thought we were important enough to photograph. I’m glad he came back from the abyss that goes hand in hand with death, an abyss so beguiling so tempting you want to fall headlong into it. I’m glad he wanted to come back to us.
My brother is like my dad. They look like each other – so says my cousing Brian and he should know he’s a great observer of life and people. I agree with Brian. And I’ll go one step further and say my brother is like my dad in intention and drive. Attending to the bones he trawled through a record of life – our life – and brought back the pearl of great price. A testament to love.
I am profoundly grateful to you darling bro. I love you.
Have I ever said it? October 31, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Coming Back , 1 comment so farI realised I’ve never blogged about my twin sister, Cate.
The time is now. For a couple of reasons:
- We’ve just had our very middle aged birthday and
- We both have a thing for Jesus
Don’t get me wrong – our fascination comes not in a fundamentalist way, but rather, as an aesthetic sensibility and appreciation of religious iconography and the role of the teacher in our midst.
I got a picture from her yesterday with the following request:
I thought you should know that this is the picture I want on my funeral booklet. Thanks to Michael for unearthing it from who knows where, but I think it completely captures what I’m all about: irritating to Jesus who is ready to bonk me on the head because I talk too much; envious of other older women who can still pull handsome sailors and, of course, a lifelong, studious disregard for my own appearance.
With that request, and with that photo, I realised I loved her more than ever before. She’s clear, she’s unapologetic and she’s joyous (yay even unto death and men that sail the 7 seas).
Death is, funnily enough, on both our minds as we’re coming up to the anniversary of our dad’s death. He died over 20 years ago now, and so didn’t live to see his twin grandchildren turn 21, or my other sister’s Gab’s children reach their maturity. His anniversary this year will coincide with a large family reunion we’ll be having with our cousins, and as a catholic family we have scads of cousins – and of course we drink! Dad would surely endorse this dual celebration of life and death.
Cate and I both have a proclivity for dreaming as well, and often share notes – seeking help and insights from our shared family paradigm, culture and personal history.
My own significant dream this last week was, I believe, portentous. It featured, as mine often do, totemic animals, often blue in colour, that talk or visit or leave me gifts. The message I took from th
is last one was a wake up call to check my health and in particular the health of my heart. I took it also as a direct message from my Dad who had died early from a heart attack. Of course, I did check only to find out my blood pressure was much higher than normal, with a consequent need to run a series of blood tests to find out what’s going on.
Cate’s dream this week was about being at the edge of an endless ocean, on fine white sand, more exquisite than she’d ever seen before. Her take on it was a view of the limitless, ego-less boundaries a sort of heaven on earth – when the spirit in action and the numinous in life are realised. Cate reminded me that (as Gnostic Jesus says) ‘The kingdom of Heaven is at hand and men/women don’t see it.’
Clearly our shared preoccupation with Jesus, that grew out of a Catholic childhood, is also a pursuit of the perfect life. A life that was lived; that is – a life worth living, for however long. A life more about the journey than the destination. More about the process that the result. And of course one that can be shared (if you’re lucky enough) with someone you love.
I looked up the meaning of my latest blue (dream) totem – the cricket , to find out that it is the protector of hearth and home (hence my linking it to Dad). It’s also a totem best known for chirping and singing, which it does by rubbing its wings against a leaf. In my dream the cricket was sick and only when it started moving around did I put it back on a leaf (I guess to start singing again). Is this me, coming back to life after Bloke – getting ready to sing up a storm?
In any event, with the love of my life gone, and the other half of my heart on the other side of the world, it seems that life “just isn’t cricket” any more. So what’s a girl to do?
Dust off the blues (and in my case working in a blue collar environment perhaps shed them altogether), get truly green, turn over a new leaf and sing aloud.. Here’s one for Jesus, One for Cate and one for me. Have I ever said it better?
I love you S.H
What’s your life for? October 20, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Yellow , add a commentI asked my friend L yesterday, “What’s your life for?”. Her answer was, simply, “To live it”.
As an agnostic, she doesn’t believe in anything after death. Life here and now is all we know for sure. There is a force within us that drives us and pushes us - an irreversible momentum – regardless of what happens to us (except murder or suicide).
She marvelled at her own ability or willingness to go on living her life after the devastating death of her only daughter several years ago. She would have been less surprised if her body failed to take another breath and she too expired with her daughter. To her way of thinking thiswas a more understandable consequence of such a devastating death – it would have made more sense. Her eggs and her DNA helped with the birth of her daughter, therefore her daughter’s death could just as easily linked them again. The hopeless irreovocable force of it could have, should have swept them both away – but it didn’t. She was left. And she chose to do something.
A life force is the only answer. A force through us, outside us, parallel to us, in us and perhaps as a result of us, that causes the self – this miriad of cells and blood and skin and breath – to get up out of bed, put some food in our mouth and go on with the next day and the day after that and the day after that.
I asked L how she moved forward after the death of her daughter, and she told me that after a certain time, she compartmentalised or “put aside” the feelings so that they didn’t imobolise her. She still had the feelings, but they were put in a special place, out of the way, and as such she was able to go on with life. Her raison d’etre is – I guess – is that life is for living.
L is more driven than I am. So, although only a few years older than me, she owns more, works at a job she is passionate about, has a happy marriage, lots of friends, she earns more money and believes in herself more than I do, and of course, she therefore contributes more to the world.
I’ve ground to a complete standstill, I’m contributing nothing. I can’t move on past Bloke I guess. I think I might have peaked already – and now it’s just a matter of waiting until I die as well. Because I believe Bloke’s gone somewhere, I can still talk to him. Is this somewhere Heaven? “the other side”, in my head? in my mythic imagination? Whatever the location, it is a location that is still accessible to me. This dialogue, my friend L might call “inner dialogue”. The trouble is – I can’t stop yakking!
Today it’s 3 years since he died. And as the day before my birthday – I read through the correspondence he’d written to me during our marriage. I’d already stored or “compartmentalised” the missives in a booklet, so I pulled it off the shelf and read each one. Some cards were for birthdays, some were coaching notes when I’d be facing challenges at work, some were consoling, when I was feeling worried, and some were love letters – missing me when either I was travelling or he was. I began to cry at card No 1.
At the time he wrote the notes, I needed the coaching, the calming, the cajoling and the laughs. I still do. He was one of the funniest men I’d ever met, and amidst the tears I had a few good belly laughs. He was the best medicine for me when he was alive, and now 3 years later – he still hits the mark with his wisdom and consistently good advice.
If L is right, and the dead live in our memories, then it would work the same way as if he was in some “heavenly realm”, it’s just a matter of geography or nomenclature. For instance, I didn’t hear his voice read the notes out to me, but his strong cursive handwriting cut through me like a knife. Not yet cutting me free, just fragmenting me.
What’s life for? It’s for living as close as possible to the centre of love in your life. That’s the force that goes on after death. That’s the force that gets us out and up after devastation. The trick is, to eventually, slice by slice, cut free from the past, but take the love along with you.
Lub! big!
Gearing up for the sell October 9, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Yellow , add a commentI have an interview on Tuesday for a new job.
I’m relieved that I made the “cut” and am one of six who have to sell themselves one over another to persuade a panel of three that they are the best for the job.
At the same time I’m preparing for the interview I’m preparing to undergo a radical elimination diet to find out what is making me feel so ”blurrrr” and “blahmk”; to fnd out what is possibly triggering an allergic reaction (to everything!)
Both are eliminations. Both are necessary and both are appropriately simultaneously occuring at the same time. mmmm but why?
Will I be chucked out at the end of the job interview as an “also-ran”, beaten to within a hair’s breadth by a charming younger woman, adept at this and that and even then some?
Will I be retained and identified as a safe food group – easy to digest, no trigger reaction, no cause for sneezes or rashes or hives. I’ll let you know in a later blog.
Today I tried to find out what the panel wanted (I mean really wanted and expected from the person filling the role). I figured that in a 30 minute interview – and I’ve had my fair share of them – the panel are hard pressed to get through all the questions – let alone give quality time to cogitate on the answers. Of course the answers were not forthcoming.
If my memory serves me correctly, interviews like this are more an endurance under pressure test; and a test of memory, matching your verbal recall to each of the stunning successes you presented in your pulitzer prize winning application for the job.
And then at the end, when everyone wants to just run away, and you feel sure that the reason the older panelist didn’t look at you is because there’s something physically wrong with your face and hair, will there be time to pin the panel down to answering questions I want to ask; will there be time to interview them?
I think so many work choice mistakes are made by the pace of the one-sided interview, invariably with the script driven by the decision making employers. And we, the interviewees, are often so desperate to sell ourselves, to be liked, to be chosen, we overlook the critical thinking questions that would determine whether the workplace is going to match our personal style, values and for that matter our diet.
My own elimination diet, no matter how much I withdraw from and add in to the mix, will inevitably come to the conclusion I made some time ago, that I throw back far too much wine that can be justified in a healthy life style. This gay practice of swilling and imbibing has got to do with our generation and in my case catholic background. Like my mates, I’m practically a fermented experience all on my own.
My younger workmate told me this morning of her evening out with 2 older sisters. They, like me, do a fair share of imbibing, and have a miriad of internal complaints to show for it. It’s sort of like a secret club, that has run out of credit in the healthy bank and have to make increasing withdrawls in the face of a wilting, drooping, decaying landscape. Yikes! I’m depressed writing about it, and I have no panacea, because – yes, you guessed it – wine is one of the first things to be eliminated!
So I’ll throw myself into both experiences with gusto. Relatively clear headed (give or take a sneeze here and there) but keen to explore and interview them about what I want from such a job, and what I can expect from a renovated internal system.
Do you think I can have fries with that?
Happy birthday September 23, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Blue , add a commentWhen Bloke and I shared an early birthday years ago – his in September and mine in October- I commissioned an astrological (natal) chart for us both. It was done by a delightful guy from Queensland, David, a friend of my sister. I listened to it yesterday, in my car, whilst driving to work.
A Natal chart shows the planets in each of the 12 houses governing our relationships, our careers, our family and our home etc. As a Libran coming up to a birthday this month, it was like listening to a report card at the end of term.
Am I doing well? Meeting my potential? Have things happened the way they should, the way he said they might? Is there anything in this science of the stars?
My own proclivity for things “other worldly” apparantly grows out of some innate skills I was born with – psychic and intuitive skills and a strong connection to higher learning or arcane wisdom. I believe these skills get a “kick along” as a result of events in life that skew, threaten or validate our belief system. Transforming events like marriages, like deaths, like separations, or fortuitous events that guide or help us further along the path and push us up or out to another level. Events that align us to a truer purpose or message.
Librans are all into alignment – we like to balance, straighten, organise and collaborate to get things right. There’s a bunch of us at work, all coming up for birthdays this month ( proof that the traditional Christmas holidays, occuring 9 months before, are an annual festival of baby making across all generations).
Yesterday, I met with one of my fellow librans and 2 librarians to talk about a collaborative knowledge and research program using Wiki technology Our aim is to build on the information associated with one person and one event, so that the organisation creates a storehouse of connected ideas and stories, threaded together as knowledge.
Some spiritual practitioners believe there is compendium of arcane wisdom referred to as the Akashic Records. It is a warehouse of wisdom, life purpose, lessons and stories lived by the brave souls who trod the earth one day light years before and after us Yet, we get to tap into that shared wisdom through our dreams, through divination; they appear as flashes of insight, archetypal art and myth or random co-incidences and events of synchronicty.
I’ve always found Librarians to be a “higher form” in the workplace. I find them gentle, clever, kind, insightful and generous, in pursuit of truth and knowledge. There’s something noble about that pursuit.
Our librarians live in a glass library. Above the library a void reaches skyward, passing through, and surrounded by 3 floors of open-space-workstations, in other words, there are no walls anywhere. Central to the building, the library is a testament to learning and education. In reality, these poor darlings who work beneath the void, are battling noise overload, as they sift through the brittle static and crackle that comes with worker conversations in the air above and around them.
So as I listened to the whirring crackling noises emanating from my car tape deck this morning, I sifted through the information housed in this astrological reading. David, although a young man, has also died in the ntervening years. And as his voice reached me over the air waves, making predictions based on my natal chart, I got a chill. Yes, he portentiously predicted the inevitable separation of a significant man in my life 11 years from the date of the recording.
But in that whirring and crackling noise that accompanied this kind and encouraging reading, I realised we’re all connected in cycles, waves, sound, light, learning, truth and knowledge. The wisdom plays out through us, around us, in us and over us, again and again and again.
So to all my libran companians and all the splendid teachers and wise librarians in the world, may your road be wide and long and bring you home safely and wiser for the journey you’re on.
On shaky ground September 15, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in : Matters Yellow , add a commentThe older I get, the less I like standing up in front of people and performing. But last week I was doing just that.
I agreed to talk at a conference about organisational change communications. As last speaker of day one, I became increasingly more nervous as the day wore on. I compared myself (unfavourably of course) to every speaker who went before me. These were General Managers, Goverment CEOs, Directors and Managers. These were national and international organisations of thousands of staff, with publics in the tens of thousands. Way out of my league.
What had the organisers been thinking when they asked me to tell our simple story? All day, I tweaked my narrative, adding bits, taking bits off, giving it a different angle, only to change it again once another speaker finished their glamorous and interesting story. I had nothing! And I was about to be humiliated with mass walk-outs and dismissive smirks, I could see it happening right before my eyes.
With no alternative but to push ahead, I settled on a simple story from the heart, a few humorous annecdotes and some well-timed self-deprecating insights. I got through the talk, dry-mouth and all. Why I even made them laugh. So I guess it worked. People told me (as they always do when queuing up behind you at the drinks counter) that they enjoyed it. And that it was the sort of story people like to hear at these conferences. But even that didn’t make it better.
That night, in my room, I cried myself to sleep. Partly from stress relief, partly because I missed Bloke as he wasn’t there to comfort me, and partly because I’d drifted so far away from my own core beliefs and values that I felt a fraud. But what message would have helped me sleep soundly that night; and what would make me proud of using my gifts and talents to reach out to people again.
The Saturday before this conference I was getting my hair cut and coloured. And in the seat beside me was a woman whose 5 year old daughter was playing at her feet. For over an hour, this child amused herself with curlers and whetever other salon paraphenalia appealed. I watched with delight this creative, engaging, resilient, funny, affectionate, never-clingy, never-demanding, great kid.
I commented to the mother how impressed I was. The child’s “in your face” style reminded me of someone, and as I watched her it took sometime for me to realise that she reminded me of myself at that age. Like this child, I was always going up to strangers, talking to them, even sitting on their lap on the bus. It was a family joke, that I had no fear barometer and was too friendly for my own good.
As the similarities occured to me, in my mind’s eye, I fast-tracked this child’s life and informed the mother that she had “an actress on her hands.”, the mother laughingly agreed, and as if, on cue, the strangest thing then happened.
This child of 5 looked at me and asked if the baby in my tummy was ready to be born. I laughed and told her that there was no baby there – just fat. I looked down expecting to see the tell-tale roll of fat on show, but realised I was wrapped up in a salon tent-like sheath, covering me from neck to mid-calf. Without a pause, the child climbed under my hairdresser’s shroud, to curl up on my lap where she began to loudly whimper like a baby. With no other alternative - and in shock I guess- I patted this tiny form and coaxed a psychodramatic birthing. And with the precision timing that comes with a short term memory, a minute later this baby-child slid out from under the sheath, to land right at my feet.
I laughed at the time, and assured the nervous mother that it was all good fun, as it had been. But it’s only now, a week later, and following the insights I’d gleaned from the conference presentations, I realise this little guru had come with a message.
What landscape had I traversed since being 5 years old and how much had I forgotten of my true nature? Was it time to give birth to some reincarnated creativity? Re-kindle the first principles of my courageous nature. Could I remember the fun and drama of being 5? Would that be my message – to grab at those precious moments when they come and say yes! Now I’m not suggesting we sit on strangers’ laps to be born again in front of them, but for me, I needed just that.
I needed to remember the world is a comforting place not a frightening one. And the baby inside of me, that child who survived the most awful event of all, a mother’s death, can survive all sorts of mini-deaths and changes life produces. In front of an audience or not. It’s actually not about me, but about the messages I’ve learnt on the way.
‘So if we find our feet on firm or shaky ground, we just need to get out of the way . Only then will stuff start to happen. And despite us, people will hear the message they’re meant to hear and meet the teachers they’re meant to meet.
