Learning how to direct your thoughts

Thoughts should not just be things that flood in and out of your awareness, lets order them and make them constructive.

Good Choices

Here we have a real opportunity to bring more joy into our lives and relationships. We make choices all day, every day but mainly we don’t think about them. If we can go back a step and notice the choices we’re making, we are, one, slowing down, two, becoming less reactive and three, becoming more aware of ourselves and the others involved. This awareness is no good if its just room for more judgements. Like ‘no, I definitely won’t be pushed into this’ or ‘actually, I don’t just dislike the noise from the neighbour’s, I hate it’! That is just reinforcing an old thought with more emotion (and drama, be it anger or hurt). Real awareness is applying two principles as often as you can. These are, we are all connected and the other is non attachment. When you start to see yourself as connected to everyone else and all situations, you don’t need to fight them anymore. Your mind invests in a positive outcome and instantly sees the innocence of the thing or person you were about to judge. Once you accept things in this way, problems pass more easily. Non attachment is mainly about starting to see what you are excessively attached to. Instead of focusing on the current choice, notice the theme. It might be that you are constantly pushed by shoulds and shouldn’ts. You may be defensive about you do. There are always things that get us going and making us make subjective, emotional choices. If we can crack this, the first choice we will always make is not to be offended and not to personalize anything. Sometimes we may need divine intervention to forgive, grow and let things go but our choices are good place to start!

A Loser's Limp

I read a book called Champions about an equestrian who won gold at the olympics. She described a phenomenon common to all sportsmen, the ‘loser’s limp’. It is a perspective that limits your success. The one she had to overcome was the belief that someone who had only started horse riding at forty years old could be as good as someone who had ridden all their lives. For a Carlow footballer, that I did energy clearing for, he had worked excessively on his fitness, 500 sit ups a day, to get the speed and stamina for selection. The underlying belief was that he didn’t naturally have the conformation for speed. Many people I have worked with have felt they didn’t have the backing, be it financial or encouragement, to succeed. For two reasons, a loser’s limp can be very damaging. Firstly, because it creates an ‘against the odds’ atmosphere around your training. You continually put extra strain and stress on yourself to excel that will manifest in the body as injuries or other set backs. When I’ve cleared these beliefs, the attitude you bring to training is one of ‘doing what you do best’, simply honing a God given gift that is already yours to play with. Secondly, with a deeply held belief, perspective or negative expectation, your whole unconscious focus is on it, however productive and healthy your conscious plans are. This dynamic moves you inexorably towards failure. Think for a moment if you have any negative thoughts about your pursuits. Awareness is half the battle won!

The spiritual energy field

Living well might be seen as getting a balance between work, rest and play. These days, it is almost more acceptable to only look for a balance between our responsibilities to others and to ourselves. That smacks of all work! Rest and play are dismissed as the time-wasting pursuits of the weak and immature, respectively! Our spirits are tired from lugging our responsibilities around though and from constantly being judged on our time keeping, house keeping, handiwork or sales record. Our spirits are eternal, timeless, perfect and valid, regardless of these daily details. Our spiritual energy field is one of our best, I reckon, although they are all favourites of mine! Its not just a little area that we can ignore. We are only 20% physical and we are 80% spiritual. Although not many have looked into this consciously, I can confirm that our spirits love to play and serve. They can quickly transport us into a stream of giving and receiving on every level, that brings us everything we need.

Sadly, this field hardly gets a look in, in our culture. It falls at the first hurdle - I’m just using my Cheltenham vocabulary to get the racing feel because life is short, 8 furlongs at most! It is important that we have an understanding of our place in the bigger picture. The hurdles go on and on. All I’m saying is don’t fall for them! Sometimes its the church being seen as responsible for centuries of conflict. Sometimes its abuse, sometimes the misuse of power and wealth. Some feel that The Bible stories are impossible guides to a good life - for example the virgin mother is a hard code to embody! Others are put off by the makeshift spirituality of holistic practitioners, who use a bit of shamanism, many buddhist ideas and also have used the healing power of prayer and calling on angels to help. Yes, some of these might get on your nerves and make you cynical but no, none of these are reasons not to have spiritual beliefs of your own and build a trust in your own spirit.

Take Your Time

All we really need is quality time. This can be defined as time when we are simultaneously grounded and engaged. Both these are energetic states. I refer to a reality that takes place in time but is not exclusively physical. We don't have to be sitting down with quiet music on and the washing up done to be grounded. We do not need to be reading a book and paying attention to how we feel about the story, to be engaged. We don't need to 'do' anything. When we are working with energy, it is dealing directly with the non physical formations and dynamics. We are going straight underneath the obvious. We are systematically getting grounded and engaged. Everyone knows there is more going on than physical developments. Ideas are happening, climates are changing, waves of feelings are shaping our experiences. Everyone knows that stress is the cause of illness and accidents. People try and use physical solutions to address these non physical problems. They get a massage or an anti depressant etc. This is only a turning away from the learning, the life and any chance of positive change.

I am starting to run the healing courses again to offer people guaranteed quality time. First we will talk about the whole spectrum of applications - environmental, physical, emotional, spiritual and mental - and then we will deal with them. Notice and deal with, become aware of and heal, be hurt by and learn from, judge then accept. Resist then allow. Holding on, letting go. These are the true movements of a healthy life form in 2012. You must evolve your own consciousness and share the resulting peace of mind and joy that follows. Difficulties that are karmic (repetitive destructive patterns) can be cleared. Once you have these out of the way, you no longer need to look askance at yourself and others, wondering if its all just more of the same s***/different day. You can start to trust yourself, establish faith that you're on course, exactly where you're supposed to be right now and build some more love in to this ol' thing we call reality. Nature has it wrapped up, constantly carving out new improved ways to get to where its going. Like this waterfall at my place!

Acceptance, Joy and Enthusiasm

I gather that all actions should be done with acceptance, enjoyment or enthusiasm. Acceptance, actually, as a last resort if you can't muster enjoyment! All other approaches to your 'to do' list, I'm afraid, are unconscious! The puppies seem to be even more conscious than I am already so! Nevermind, come if you can to the drumming on Friday night and we'll push on through to some new dimensions x

Kilkenny Paved With Gold Series of Paintings on Saatchi Art but then this one from Valentia Island

This is the latest painting I have sold. The beach on Valentia Island...if its not immediately obvious!

I started doing a few paintings set in Kilkenny, called the Paved with Gold series but no matter how much gold leaf one uses, buildings are, on the whole, grey! So I’m taking a break from urban scenes again. Last night I captured paradise finally and then made a start on a venetian sky line with dolphins in the foreground. The appearance of particular animals, as with the appearance of a particular ailment, always has a symbolic meaning. For example, sinuses represent the emotions, often stuffy or sometimes streaming. Lungs are where you hold grief and quite literally how you breathe is how you live your life so one can be totally subdued by the former. Sometimes you’ll breathe deeply and realize that you’ve only been inhaling to quarter capacity all the previous day! With animals, dolphins help with difficult communication. If a hare shows up, it may mean you are fooling yourself about a plan or a relationship and need to take a reality check. I saw a hare recently and realized I was fooling myself about nearly all my plans and relationships!! Killer! The snake can get you out of a tight squeeze financially and a dog is a reminder to trust yourself whatever is going awry in your life. Don’t get me started on the other organs of the body. I am great on source and healing, but not great on physiology and what resides where exactly!

I was thinking of doing an opening or a clearing day at the Regazzi coffee shop in loughboy as it is they that are kindly letting me put up my work as it comes. Maybe angel readings or maybe just coffee. Hope everyone is on a creative roll x