If you see it, say it!

Just your average day at Harmony Hall is intense.

There’s snow on the ground and the sky looks ominous but out I must go to feed the animals and set off, I must (while I’m using some sort of Yoda grammar!) to the protest at the Hare Coursing Finals, to be there at noon.

I woke up with the ultimate realization of a self-employed person. I have to find a way to make some money from what I do. On my way to the kettle, a post-it note fell out of nowhere, apropo of nothing (as Cheryl Crowe would say). It had a little Venn diagram on it.

First circle: Things you can do

Second circle: Things that people will pay for

Third circle: Things you love doing

The little section where the three overlap is the activity you should focus on, I imagine.

While I was on a roll, I got my pendulum out and asked 1) how many and 2) what changes do I need to make, to make a livelihood; make it rich; immerse myself in abundance; cover my costs; exist, get my message of the divine spark in each one of us out there; bring my food and art and the healing of consciousness and sacred geometry to the world... You can see that sometimes I feel more ambitious, sometimes less!!

Here I combine my painting and use of sacred geometry in a depiction of Plato's water symbol

There were 11 changes to make! 5 of them were in the gold bedroom! No wonder it was blue for so long!

3 were left by a lodger with many darknesses around him (including poltergeist and an entity). One was an ambivalent wwoofer girl and one was a friend of years, who’d stayed many times, until a final bust up.

Just have a think, yourselves. Have you had any visitors that might have inadvertently left obstacles in your future path?

 If you want to learn how to clear obstacles read my book or another energy clearing guide.

So then there were 4 environmental changes to make.

1) Get a water turbine. Do not go for a grid tie system. Make sure it moves forward the exciting and necessary plan of being self-sufficient and off-grid. I have asked some experts, who produce micro hydro for 3^rd world countries and other remote areas, which way to go. Should I aim to just power the pump for the stove and back boiler? Or should I aim to power the storage heaters with their ingenious heat retaining blocks inside? If they were each on a timer, the turbine would only need the wattage to kick start one at a time. I will report back what I learn.

Picohydro are the ones I'm talking to at the moment! 

2) Investigate whether Ireland can support herself in wood. It is the only truly renewable energy. Turf has to stop as that takes 10,000 years to form. Plus it is like the Amazon jungle – considered the lungs of the planet. The peat bogs are a real carbon holder.  It’s extraction means emissions beyond our wildest nightmares. And I must look at Bord na Mona’s idea of putting up wind turbines on the bogs. In principle, good but if they are planning to use the tall ones – rejected as old technology by other countries, in favour of large flat satellite dish-esque turbines – then I believe they have to dig down to a great depth to secure the turbines. That would do even further unrecoverable damage.

Rocket Heater Plans that need only willow width sticks rather than logs 

3) Change my approach to animal rights. So far it has been a scatter bomb system interspersing letters and suggested improvements to government, articles to papers, protesting, developing a referendum for animals (to ‘ask the people’ how they want animals treated in various industries), rescuing, starting a pet farm so guests can hang out with pigs in person, practicing my animal communication, asking for guidance from animal spirit guides and learning what I can from their individual powerful energies (today I studied the hare, the elephant and the lion – as they had shown up in my paintings recently). 

Finally, I offered energy healing for animals at a reduced rate to that of people. Interestingly, I found the vet environment exacerbates a trauma. It is obvious really but the last 3 times, I was in there, they were having to put someone down. What do you think the energy would be like and how you would feel in the GP surgery, if often when you went, the last patient came out on a stretcher with a sheet over their face or as Ice T sings. ‘He went out for a drive and came back in a body bag’

 That's How I'm Livin'

So this last few years I have been trying to hold my nerve. Instead of jumping in the car with the animal in distress, I just get still and quiet inside and put my arm around them. Then I ask if there is anything I can acknowledge right now. For people and animals, all pain is unacknowledged suffering. It might be emotional, mental, spiritual etc but if you never stop and take time for yourself or whoever is complaining in front of you, it will eventually manifest as an accident or injury or developing physical condition. 

Anyway, back to the change I need to make: I should treat Harmony Hall as the microcosm of the whole. Deal with the power struggles, insist on the respect, cultivate the attention and affection each creature needs and most importantly don’t see myself as inferior or superior to anyone else. For too long, I have allowed the following dynamic to ensue: ‘Never neglect your work for another’s, however great his need’. The change is that I must no longer respond to crises. Every person and animal ultimately only has responsibility for him or herself. Let everything be.

4) Fourth environmental change: Document the journey to off-grid, sustainable living in Ireland; all organic, local, plant based, in touch with nature, empathetic, inclusive, healthy, entertaining, creative and awe-inspiring. Sometimes it gets messy and or mundane but not often and not so far!

Stream with turbine pipes in place

So that was nine changes. The first though to actually come to me was a financial management change.

Spend a time every day in the office or amongst my receipts and see what I’ve spent, what it may cost to complete each mission and how it adds up with any income being generated. The key to this is starting now, while it’s only February. I started jotting down notes for 2017 and doing the accounts recently was a walk in the park, for the first time ever. 

Tidy upbeat place to do admin is essential!

I have put a few quid into new bedding, curtains and rugs for the guest rooms. I have invested in organic farm manure, a multitude of edible flowers, fruit trees, vegetable seeds and mushroom starter kits as well as organic pest, cat, weed etc solutions to streamline food growing here.  Readier Than Ever for Veggie Visitors Post

Practice makes perfect.

That was an insight from a friend a few weeks ago. She said ‘You play the piano! Use that disciplined application and resulting mastery in every area of your life’. Don’t worry, I said to myself later, I can still do things just for fun and without expectation. The balance is to take oneself just seriously enough to put some work in to things, take risks and be receptive. This reminds me of when I took the unprecedented step of becoming a life model!

Portrait by Leslie Fennell

I had worn many, many, many layers all my life. Even on the beach.  And my intuition alerted me: How outrageous to go through life in a state of semi-apology for one's body. For most people, it masquerades as modesty but underneath there is a lot of poor self-image around. If you think badly of yourself on any level, it’s a bit of a disaster. Especially if you have reached the conclusion, like I had, that ‘the story you tell about your life becomes the foundation of your life’. So, I started right then to make it a great story!

11) The last change I had to make was also money related: Don’t oscillate between being totally abstemious including rehydrating dried goods from the back of the cupboard, when things get tight, to trying to borrow €8,000 to buy a log cabin that would offer some independent accommodation for retreat guests! Just take one step at a time. Stay in balance.

 

So, it has been a great day. The protest was great because Off The Ball (Radio Sports Programme) came and interviewed us. What a breakthrough to have the conversations we needed to have. 

This  included the fact that they can’t find enough hares anymore. They are a protected species, the Irish Hare. For example we are not allowed to rescue one and keep it. But the coursers have been made exempt. 

The grey hounds are also mistreated, dumped, surrendered to pounds to be put down or sent abroad to race again. 

 

Welfare legislation says that no animal should be terrorized. No one could argue that a hare is terrorized; being trapped, held in a cage for weeks and then set upon by two grey hounds on a track. It is banned in England, Wales, Scotland and everywhere else already and yet we allow it. 

We said that the Irish coursing club's power is in that every greyhound owner who wants to race a dog has to belong to the coursing club whether they agree with coursing or not. 

We mentioned the government subsidy to them using tax payers money, despite public opinion. We talked about the vote in government on it last year where party members were told to vote in line or not vote at all so that meant all TDs against against coursing did not vote unless they were Independents. 

We answered the claim that it is natural for hares to run from predators saying that in the wild this contrived situation would never happen and certainly not pre-empted by a traumatic captivity and doping and trafficking from one coursing competitions to another. 

We said that there was nothing sporting about coursing, asking if it was purely the gambling that attracted people and the money that meant everyone still supported it. 

They asked whether the muzzles improved things. We said no, the hare does not know that the dogs are muzzled and furthermore, the dogs can do the same serious damage of tossing them around and breaking their backs, with the hard plastic muzzles on. Obviously, the hare doesn’t know whether the animals pursuing them are muzzled or not. 

 

We also said how sad it was to see families in there. If we can gloss over the suffering and stress of hares in coursing, it is a lesson to the young in reducing empathy and their humanity later on. Like Gandhi saying that the state of a nation can be seen from the way they treat their animals, we pointed out that Ireland is a disaster for animals in every industry. It seems like if it makes any money for the revenue then anything goes, however little regard for welfare – such as the puppy farmers. 

If people are alright with what happens to animals, it becomes more and more likely that they will be okay with witnessing bad treatment of others. 

The demonstration was organized by the group, Ban Blood Sports. There had been 60 people there yesterday which was a great turnout. Sadly, on the other side of it, one campaigner had gone on their website and seen that so many people wanted to come that they were laying on more coaches! Also, it was said that lots of people had traveled from the UK to it.

Please don’t think that just because it’s popular it is justified. Don’t shut your eyes and hearts to the plight of fellow lives. To quote one of the Go Vegan World advert ‘Their lives are as important to them as yours is to you”. 

Also why aren’t more people protesting? We decided today that it is not fear as such, it is more a sort of embarrassment. That is not good though is it? We’ve got to defend each other. 

In a timely way, as I drove down there in the blizzard, someone on the radio said that, in Ireland, you are never more than 5km away from people who are living in some sort of slavery; passports taken, not being paid, working without rights or reasonable hours. Do not let anyone or anything be exploited on our watch. And as they say on the trains, about inexplicable left luggage or dodgy behavior “If you see it, say it”