Happiness - How to be happy and whole

There comes a time in your life when you realize that your happiness is your own concern. Unfortunately, what follows from that is the realization that you’ve been systematically depressing yourself all your life. I can confirm that you can turn those dynamics around. I have accessed my deepest wisdom on this and been able to assimilate it and bring it into every day life. Its a way of being called happiness, for want of a better world - word I mean! Your mission, if you should choose to accept it, is to cultivate a relationship with yourself. Simply make the decision to treat yourself well. Initially, you will not be able to hear yourself clearly, from under the blanket of denial and avoidance where our feelings have resided shame-facedly since we were young. Self awareness grows, however, with your commitment to listen to what you have to say and to notice with compassion the areas clouded by low self esteem and guilt.

Every moment you have the opportunity to make a new choice. Some of the ones I have made are to only give a minute to the negative thoughts of scarcity and not let the thoughts drench every cell in my body. To remember that everything and everyone in life is connected and I’m taking part in a playful and fluid movement of life, rather than a battle for survival. To build this sense of the whole, do what you love to do. Do it well, do it foolishly but make sure you do it. For me that has been academic life, playing the piano, riding, painting, knitting, cooking and swimming so far. Go for it and don’t stop because as you unblock your creative flow, you also open yourself up as a receptacle for ideas. An abundance of love, money and time get a chance to flow in for you to express. Because you have started to know and appreciate yourself, you’ll be able to give yourself credit for creating the turnaround and know at last for sure you deserve it. Bear in mind, everything you heal in yourself you are healing for everyone else too, so it is not selfish, it is time well spent.

Frances Micklem's book How To Live As One, a guide to clearing negativity and moving from old paradigm thinking to new

Happy 2011

Thank you everyone for being such brilliant aspects of the self; reflecting back exactly what I need to address in myself at exactly the right moment. I think we are all well able for what lies ahead. At 11 o clock and 1 o clock today, 1.1.11, I did an hour's meditation, allowing through support and intervention by a holy host of divine aspects, like God for example and to work from the top! to many angelos - messengers - and power animals like otter, dolphin and wolf and whoever else showed up like Windy of course. Went riding yesterday and I have to insist that everyone get outside preferably on horse back every day! Think we should also spread our arms around the world in some sense. I am so glad to have this way to be of service without leaving the building! That's the clearing I'm talking about! I have been doing alot of distance healing during the snow that have gone great for the whole family I'm tuning in to. It really is evidence that we can send good fortune and resolution around the world as long as we have the clarity of intention and the courage and compassion to try it. I also hope to prove that one can paint the way out of a recession or depression to a completely vibrant and heartwarming future, from the personal to the global. Further to my own colourful world of animals and wonderful people and natural beauty, I have already painted world peace and money arriving on angels wings. What reality are you yourselves going to create this year? x

At last, the last part of the meditation!

Well, I for one feel like I've been in a constant state of meditation, clearing and full on hibernation for months so I'll just start up where I left off! This is a painting of Windy and Beckett I did for Ann Marie who has been keeping them warm against the odds for weeks.

The soul is not gentleness, the soul is just love, joy and harmony. its movements are in line with its rhythms. It doesn’t need gentleness. Gentleness is a step down for the soul. However, living physically as we do in chaos, responses and reactions, we need a bridge into our intangible true nature, our soul. We have misrepresented love, joy and harmony. Love is not an emotion, a benevolence or charity. Love can sometimes let you fall on your face. Love is a state of being that encompasses everyone and everything at the same time. It is based on rhythms, so it can’t harm. It is always in joy. We can only interpret and reinterpret this until we develop a technique to get us in to that place.

Gentleness is a tangible semblance of what the soul might be and so we learn to get our bodies into that state. The soul is greater than we ever imagined, but we have to prepare our selves to experience it. We are bringing our spirit and personality into one for a time and that is our only way to bring our soul in to our bodies and live from that aspect rather than our physical aspects or a disembodied spiritual approach or even a karmic unconscious state that most people are in. Only the soul can connect us to the divine. Through meditation, the physical body is coming into its etheric equation and saying oh wow! I’m not only physical I am also light! If I bring these two together, they won’t oppose each other as do the spirit and the personality. They get in union and the soul says aha! You’ve stopped being separate so now I can come in. And that’s the difference between the spirit and the soul. The spirit is really just a bridge to the soul.

One slight problem is that we have many new age courses and workshops that develop the spirit, which is just the etheric nature of the personality and people erroneously call that the higher self. All they’re really doing is enladening themselves with even more chaos and disturbing information which then dumps back in to the body. People see it as heading for enlightenment or self development. But what they are NOT doing is feeling the body in all its chaos, ugliness, symptoms, agony or whatever emotion its in. They throw things into the etheric body from the physical body believing they’re dealing with things but they’re not. Its just a vicious circle because the body will just dump it back in to the physical. We’ve got to have a language and an energetic science that reveals this because it is dangerous to meditate or do any energetic technique that doesn’t have a clarity about what the soul, disturbance, fire and spirit truly are, behind it. When its explained, everyone says yes that makes sense but if you leave it to God or the love of the universe, a reiki idea or consciousness - ‘all is love’ - you get lost in the science of energy and you play with energy but you don’t know what you’re playing with because disturbance can come in many colours. It can come very bright, very sweet and as soft as you want it to be but none of that is the truth. Basically, if there is something wrong with you, feel it. And then deal with it, but don’t try and suppress it.
So this gentle breath meditation came mainly from www.universalmedicine.com.au. but I haven't looked them up or visited so I'm not sure whether we're all on the same page in other ways. Still, all interesting food for thought!

Dream Big

Hi I have been working on this little poster to encourage new people to learn the ropes to clearing their energy. Although I am snowed in a couple of counties away, I am hoping to be back for these two space clearing training evenings
Wednesday the 8th December
Wednesday the 15th December
and obviously before that for our shamanic meditation and clearing this Friday 3rd
I'm saying 7pm start for all of them and €20. I'd love to create a biome like they have in Cornwall. A full size subtropical world with avocado trees and a little bay and sand dunes. I think I can do it, but won't have it ready for Friday I'm afraid!

Essential Meditation - second part

So while you're developing a rhythm, stay mindful. Keep affirming the conscious choice to breathe gently. You will start to feel the intake of the breath at the tip of the nose. Its all quite mechanical at this stage. We are preparing the body for the quality of breath that will bring the mind in line with the heart, when the chatter of anxiety or busy ness will take, at last, a break.

So we're on to the out breath. Concentrate on the out breath, raise your awareness of it. You are in control of what you breathe out. You are saying "I am not breathing in the chaos or stress or illness anymore" but furthermore, on the out breath you are expressing yourself consciously. "I breathe out the way I want to express myself, which is as gentleness". Keep the mind in line. If we perfect this, we are moving the power to within ourselves. Instead of being on alert for the external environment we are meeting; be it work or the shops or any environmentally dense energetic spaces (everyone and everywhere!), you now choose what you are breathing and are also asserting your self, deciding how that environment is going to be. This is a conscious action of deciding to be a gentle presence and influence on the environment. So that's what you're affirming mentally. Physically, you will notice that the out breath has its own rhythm and speed. Some people’s out breath is longer than their in-breath, for some its shorter. It has a warmth, not an uncomfortable warmth, its fiery and again gentle. The reason for this exact quality I will explain in the final part but, trust me, its not used in a flowery sense, aim for quite literal gentleness. It is being used as a medium for something much greater!

So with the out breath, we are further developing our focus and awareness. We are bringing ourselves back into ourselves. We are saying to the world, this is who I am. We are saying, we are gentleness. We are way more than that obviously but we are still gentleness, as opposed to say tension or resistance!

The next stage is embodiment. This is translating the gentleness of the breath to your body. Make sure the rise and fall of your chest and ribs is complying with the gentleness of the breath. You will be surprised initially how hard you have been holding your chest, as if braced for the next bit of bad news. It can be called embodiment because the body always responds second to the light. We have our etheric, emotional and mental experiences first and then it manifests in the body over time. The body we end up with is the choices we have made, there are no accidents, no incidents. So, now we are telling the body consciously to express the ease, to mirror the gentleness of our breath. When you express or exhale, make sure the shoulders are gently depressing or releasing. You will notice that you have been holding the ribs and therefore putting pressure on your spine. The breathing, let alone anything else, is tricky for many initially. This relates back to sinus problems when young or ongoing! All of these tell you that you have contractions in your heart. They point to difficulties receiving love and that you are holding back your love from others. If you don't believe me, just ask the pendulum and I bet you fifty euro you will get a yes and huge clearing will take place in every area. So, breathe out with affirming thoughts like, I am alive, I am love, this is gentleness, this is me. The me factor only comes in when you have successfully breathed your own breath. It is completely unnecessary to get sick or get diseases. The quickest way to get ill is to keep breathing other peoples' illness, chaos and stress. . . basically, other peoples’ emotions. To develop the me is: to choose the breath you breathe in and release it in the way you want the world to be, for you. You’re also telling the world how the world is going to feel you, experience your presence. The body then takes up and embodies the rhythm gently and makes you whole - aligns your body and spirit! Rather than a willow the wisp buffeted from one trouble to the next, of your own or others, you find instead that you're basically flying it!

I hope I am impressing on you how important it is to get on top of this! I have spent about three hours today concentrating on it. Luckily, as with all energetic medicine, it can be done amid other tasks like driving the car or at the gym! Its best application is just when you're clearing others though. Don't breathe in what you hear or feel around you, decide to breathe in air from the Rockies or Kerry or just a gentle void you create yourself to work from! A space of gentle acceptance.

Meditation

A time of meditation in your day is crucial. I know some people don't like it and just fall asleep or feel there's not enough time. Its absence is a bit of a disaster though. This is because it is essentially a daily choice to breathe in only gentleness and clear air rather than reel from environment to environment breathing in the chaos, illness and anxiety that you happen to meet. You then go home and dump it in your own environment, on your pillow to pile up over time. Through meditation one can learn to breathe only your own breath and express only your own energy, also of gentleness and joy.
The aspects involve the closing of your eyes, your in-breath, your body alignment and finally your out-breath, which is your own expression of how you want your world to be. You are creating all of it. So the more conscious our choices, the better job we'll make of it.

The imprint on which you close your eyes is important. You are taking you back to you. Many people are closing their eyes to shut out the world. That's just a numbing and a distraction. So the quality of your intention as you close your eyes will determine the quality of the meditation. If you find it hard to do this, look down and then slowly and lovingly close them the last bit. This is a strong gesture to you and for you. Posture-wise, there is no need to sit cross legged! Just be comfortable sitting or lying down. We are preparing the body for the breathing we are going to do.

The next move is to begin the rhythm - the in-breath entering through the nose. One can concentrate only on the in-breath for weeks I gather (although don't forget to exhale or you might explode). The more one does focus on a step, the more aspects you identify about it. Try and make sure from the start that it is a gentle breath. If the intention is honestly gentle then the gentle breath will eventually come. This is not a soft breath or a slow breath. If the breath comes through the entire circumference of the nostril it is just a soft breath and is just a full breath of disturbed air, in whatever way; very unhealthy!The quality is gentleness and the rest becomes a rhythm, an ease and a speed that meets the need of the body.

Meditation is a conscious beginning. It can be worked on methodically and mechanically and develops a focus. Get to feel the quality of the in-breath. Soft breathing is just slowing down the body, it doesn’t connect you, it just puts the anger, frustration and anxiety in to an arrest of some sort. We don't want that, it doesn't deal with your own or leave it where it is in your environment. The breath naturally moves itself towards the tip of the nose. Gentle breath at the tip of the nose has its own sort of quality - a coolness and it retains that wherever you might be, in a sauna or a hot humid country. Try and remain mindful and not mindless. Its impossible to make the mind quiet, without it being an escape. All one can do is bring the mind in line with the impulses of the heart and then the chatter stops.

Then we have to engage the mind again to release the breath gently. We become the master. We don’t exhale by sighing or even releasing. It is just a gentle exhalation. If you can do the in and out breath consciously and gently, you can have complete mind control. You have brought your mind in line with your conscious intention, where you want to go.

You will find the room goes in to a stillness but also a coolness because you're not releasing endless disturbance in to the room, the stuffiness that is really just emotion. This is the real key to being centred, to not impose your energy on another. No more dumping it.

So focus on the tip of the nose as the breath enters. Make it gentle. On its way out, it has its own rhythm, its own speed. For some people the out breath is longer than the in-breath, for some it is shorter. The quality of the out breath you will notice is warmth. It is a fiery warmth, a gentle warmth, no discomfort. It is not soothing or comforting though, because it is not emotional in any way.

Once you've got things going, let go of the focus a bit and allow the rhythm to develop. You will find how deep you need to breath. Gentleness knows how to caliberate itself. Notice you are not zonking out, you are not going in to any sort of bliss, you are not going into escapism, meditation is really about raising awareness. But I'm really keen for everyone to start doing it as the repercussions of unconsciousness are serious. In as much as, if you don't chose your air carefully! and express the best of who you are on your out breaths, positive change is highly unlikely, on the individual or the wider level.

This DIY kit to meditation I got from a CD made by someone at www.universalmedicine.com.au who is obviously a great vibe merchant. I will outline the other part when I write again. I'm hoping to get everyone meditating and then move on to nutrition. The basic premiss is that we need to keep cultivating our relationship with the self, don't get distracted by the troubles around you. So, look after yourselves!

The Billy Joe Trilogy Illustrations -Third Gallery Shots