Friday, 22 June 2012

Post No. 389 - A strange thing happened ...


A strange thing happened on the way to this blog ... I have a few shrines over at nshrines.com, and get some strange messages from time to time (for instance, some gamers at one stage decided they could "chat" to each other via my shrines - which I literally consider a sacrilege; I also had someone think I had created the shrines  so I could sell a rune card deck!). The latest offering includes someone who somehow has decided I am getting married (huh? have been handfasted, and can't get married because of legalised discrimination), and another saying they like my posts but can they be longer for newbies.

Actually, that last one makes perfect sense, and is a reasonable request of my blog (and I think I know who may have posted it, and welcome her - Hi C :) ). I do tend to make shorter posts in these days of utter exhaustion and time-poorness than I used to, and I could possibly add in a little more about basic concepts.

So, for instance, with regard to my recent post about the devices I've made to protect my neighbourhood, I could add the following:

Basic/Underlying Concepts for this Topic:
  • nonphysical energy exists, and can influence people;
  • moods are also associated with nonphysical energy;
  • thoughts and feelings can direct, attract/repel and create nonphysical energy, both good and bad;
  • tools can assist us as we work this magic, and one of those tools is wands;
  • wands are typically described as being a tool of Air (imagination and creativity), but I personally consider them more active and externally focused than that, so I actually consider them more a tool of the element of Fire (manifestation and transformation);
  • the concept of having a base station and moving wand relies on a principle called sympathetic magic (same symbols and intent on both - and from the same piece of timber - to help the "radio-like" connection);
  • free will is absolutely crucial to this, so all I can do is flood the public spaces (i.e. the streets) with positive energy (I was recently given a reading where I was told I was or was lighting up the streets) and reinforce boundaries to prevent people projecting their negativity at neighbours;
  • there are arguments about whether to actively return psychic attack, or passively reflect it off elsewhere: the issue of "we train others how to treat us" has to be considered here, along with other ethical issues such as non-violence (the amount of psychic violence in this world is absolutely phenomenal – which is something I have posted about previously), and the fact that what is appropriate in one circumstance is not in another ... ;
  • have a read of this post, also, and the book, if you can get it.

(Could someone actually think contacting people through lighting candles on a shrine is easier than using email? I suppose so ... maybe they're one of the social media only junkies and don't have an email address ... fools * grumbles off into distance complaining about how things were different "back in my day" * J )

Now, moving on.

WINTER SOLSTICE
I started writing this on winter solstice. It's interesting, but there are two days which, according to the publicly available information, are both 572 minutes long: the 21st AND the 22nd of June. (More accurate information would probably determine a difference.) This is one of the reasons I generally give a range when people ask me when I consider solstice is. The other reason I give a range is that, for solstices, I tend to favour the old Celtic approach to a day, which is that it begins at sundown, so my idea of winter solstice is that it starts at sundown on the 21st, and ends at sundown on the 22nd.

Winter solstice. Yule. The shortest day of the year (although the Wikipedia link I gave uses a different definition, based on northernmost and southernmost travel of the apparent position of the Sun on the Earth), start of the coldest time of the year, and in Waring, the Wombat season in the seasons, of the Kulin people, traditional people of this land.

In Wicca, this is a time for introversion, resting, healing, reflection, preparing yourself for the coming seasons of increasing light and growth. I find it interesting that the Celtic day starts with the quiet of night, and the Celtic year starts with Samhain, as we enter what is called the dark half of the year. Are we moderns too focused on partying and frenetic activity?

I think so.

Peace and quiet and a certain amount of solitude are necessary to enable us to start hearing the most important spiritual voice of all: our Higher Self. if we're being busy and frenetic and focused on the physical, we drown that voice out, and do things without reflection, thoughtlessly.

But if we take things with a few moments of reflection and tuning into our Higher Self first, we're far more likely to do things well and constructively - in a way that is of benefit to all, including our own Higher Self.

We would also head towards a lifestyle that used a lot less, and was less stressful, so we didn't had to live every day as if it was the equivalent of a famine for a Neolithic/Palaeolithic forebears - from whom we have inherited our physiology. (I've written about the problems of this elsewhere.)

Of course, I am in the Southern hemisphere, so those of you in the Northern hemisphere are celebrating Litha. Those of you in the tropics will probably be variously celebrating the wet or dry seasons ...

I have, at times, made attempts planet wide rituals. I haven’t done one for the solstices yet, but here are a few I’ve done previously:
  • September equinox (Southern Ostara, Northern Mabon) - here;
  • Southern Beltane/Northern Samhain Description: Link- here;

Basic/Underlying Concepts for this Topic:
  • things to exist in cycles, or possibly a dynamic equilibrium;
  • cycles tend to go from one side to the other, and then back again, which is symbolised by the taijitu ("yin-yang" symbol), where each half holds the seed of the other in itself;
  • spirals are also common (as an example, the spiral of a tornado has been copied to create a VERY efficient water tank mixer), and in this case, the cycle repeats by also moves on;
  • the day and the year tend to be divided by many pagans into two halves, with each half having a beginning, a peak and a decline: these sometimes don't correspond with what people might consider "obvious" - for example, the wintry half of the year is considered to start at Samhain, reach its peak at Yule, and then decline, despite Yule being the start of the coldest time of the year: I consider the reason for this largely to be that what we know as Wicca/paganism has its roots in agriculture, and the amount of light is equally as significant as temperature, as plants respond to both (e.g., spring growth is trigger by both reaching a certain amount of light per day AND a certain temperature). "Modern" people have become so divorced from the reality of where their food and everything else comes from that too many don't know basic, fundamental things such as fruits are seasonal, floods and droughts impact on agriculture and thus the availability of food, and that transport and storage are key to us having fruit available all year round, for instance. (I've posted reading links about this recently - won't repeat them here, though.) In fact, that divorcement from physical reality is why I would like to make it illegal to water lawn grass: when the lawn goes brown, it's summer, people; when it's green it's winter, and when it's growing like crazy and needing cutting every couple of weeks, it's spring. Pardon me - I'll go take my anti-sarcasm medication (chocolate, if anyone wants to know :) - but not too much, given my diabetes) now ... but I am serious that measures need to be taken to get people back in touch with the physical realities of life on this planet. We need our Earth Star chakras, the chakras 150mm below our feet that keep us in touch with the planet, to start working again. (The base chakra is about our personal existence in this physical realm, the Earth Star is more about our interaction with Gaea.)

OK, what next.

SIGNATURE BLOCK QUOTATIONS

I'm going to start using a few new quotes in my various signature blocks around the place, including three new quotes from ... me :)

Right, so now my signature block in full will now be:

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr  
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear")
May the world of commerce & business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people.
A home is for living in, not feeling, becoming or being rich or a “better” class than others.
The International Labour Organisation's definition of "full employment" is wrong, useless and misleading.
Armageddon is alive and well and happening right now: it is a battle between the indolence of "I only ..." and/or "I just ..." on one side, and perspicacity on the other.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing. EDMUND BURKE

Your children are not your children. ... They come through you but ... they belong not to you ... for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow KAHLIL GIBRAN

We didn't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we only borrowed it from our children ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Those whom we cannot stand are usually those who we cannot understand P.K.SHAW

The new quotes are:

A home is for living in, not feeling, becoming or being rich or a better class than others.
  • this is a comment on the materialism and greed that is making buying a first home impossible for many people. It doesn't matter whether your home value has gone up or down: all that matters is, can you live in it? You certainly don't need to redecorate or change simply because you're bored (if you are, GET A HOBBY!!!) - leave the resources and energy that uses alone, so we have less impact on the planet.

Armageddon is happening right now: it is a battle between the indolence of "I only ..." and/or "I just ..." on one side, and perspicacity on the other.
  • this builds a little on the previous quote. I am heartily fed up with people saying things like "I only wanted a nicer home" to justify an egotistical extravaganza, or "I only want to have fun" to justify not thinking about other people (especially those one cannot see). The words have been chosen with some care: if you don't understand them, look them up - don't be indolent!

The International Labour Organisation's definition of "full employment" is wrong, utterly useless and misleading.
  • 1 hour of paid work in the previous fortnight is enough for the ILO to consider you fully employed. What rubbish! How does one pay the bills and rent, buy food, plan for the future, etc on one hour's pay? Are they completely nuts? (I do know the era was different when that definition was adopted: so what, it is out of touch with reality, and needs to be changed)

I've also added my standard email quotes, including one I use on lobbying/activist emails.

Sorry about the length of it all ...

Now, SUICIDES.
Once upon a time, I had a hard-line view on these (excepting what I would describe as self-euthanasia, in the case of people with incurable illness and ongoing pain), but now I've realised how tough life is, and that people do bite off more than they can chew. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing: there have been a few articles in the media of late about how in Silicon Valley failure is seen as a necessary learning tool - do we need to have a similar attitude in spirituality, rather than the idiotic rubbish about "you're never given more than you can handle?" After all, it is ultimately us who gives this all to us, when we - our Higher Selves, that is - plan our lives ...  Then again, I have personal experience at how we can sometimes take on more than we can handle for the sake of others. When I was a primary school child, I was a member of a surf lifesaving club, and at one competition I was asked to carry a lifesaving reel [I couldn’t find a link for this: it is exactly what it says, a reel, with several hundred feet of rope used to pull a rescue swimmer and rescued person back to the beach] in a march past. It was too heavy for me – I was a scrawny little runt at the best of times, but if I didn’t try, we would lose too many points … so, if the person who has bitten off too much guilty of poor planning, or of being the only person prepared to take on a necessary task or role?)

There are times when people do resort to suicide - in some cases, they are driven to it by other people's behaviour (I am thinking of people who have been hounded into suicide by discrimination, for instance, including people I've known). In that case, is the failure theirs, or the people doing the harassing? If the person being harassed does cope, does that give the wrong message to the bigots - i.e., that they can do whatever they want to, and it is OK, because the victim "was just upset a little, but it wasn't serious - they didn't harm themselves".

There are often ways to cope better with such overloads in life: counselling may be part of it, but getting people who doing WRONG things to change is another - and is possibly one of the main reasons I am and have been for so long involved in human rights activism (so hard to write that rather than the old "lobbying" ... ).

Anyway, I found a new aspect to this topic recently: people who commit suicide because they consider that they can do more to help people from the "Other Side" (of death). Apparently at least one such person was actually correct.

Basic/Underlying Concepts for this Topic:
  • at some stage, "we" plan our lives;
  • that "we" that plans our lives isn't necessarily what we know as our "conscious" self in this incarnation, it may be our Higher Self (that is particularly likely to be so for less evolved people who are trying to put off learning lessons);
  • there is a certain amount of responsibility we need to take for our lives;
  • in many cases, people are capable of doing FAR more than they realise;
  • "we train others how to treat us" (see here, here, here, here, and here, for more), and thus there is a balancing act between being able to cope with anything that comes our way, which selfishly (pick up my bias there? Hope so! If you didn’t, please write a 500 word essay on why my bias there is unreasonable … just joking! OK?) allows us to become evolved beings, and contributing towards the world being a better place so that EVERYONE can learn in a more constructive way (which does not preclude the coping with everything approach);
  • like many such things, the balance point probably changes with time, circumstances and people;
  • if we seek to opt out of lessons (perhaps by committing suicide when we could have coped or should have thrown behaviour back at others), we have failed a lesson, and at some stage that lesson needs to be repeated;
  • the understanding that people have of concepts may be simplified to suit their current level of evolution (spiritual immaturity, perhaps?), and thus, for instance, a Guide may snap at someone who is wallowing "You will only have to come back and do it all over again", which the person may interpret as "all suicides are bad, and all suicides have to come back" and adds their own little bit (to show how much they "know") about it being immediately or ASAP (ever watched a rumour grow? When I was at uni I was told of an incident where an army officer told a subordinate to use two sticks of gelignite to create a hole to bury some rubbish in: the subordinate didn't think that would be enough, so added a little bit, as did the next subordinate, and the next, and so on - until two crates were used, and blew all the buildings in the base off their stumps ... and all because each person thought he knew better than the other).

READINGS
I've mentioned that I have been tootling off to a Spiritualist development circle. Well, crunch time has arrived, and we are being expected to start having a go at "proof of survival" readings. In these, typically, the medium starts off with something like "I'm being shown a male with you, an older gentleman, bald, had blue eyes, bit taller than me, etc".

Well, I've met and know, to some extent, probably several thousands of people in this life. In my mind, I do not file them under categories "these are all the people I know who are six feet tall", "these are all the people I know who have blue eyes", etc. I file them, first and foremost, under how close they are to me (which is NOT the same thing as how closely related by marriage/hand-fasting, blood or adoption they are), and then maybe by what part of my life I knew them in.

So, for instance, if I receive a reading which starts "this person was a close friend in primary school", I have a much better chance of identifying who the person was, because I am "looking" in the correct part of my brain from the start, rather than aimlessly wandering along wondering what height everyone was.

So I am going to have a go at establishing a new technique with my new readings guide (who looks like a delightfully nerdy librarian, complete with desk and pile of books, and gives me a thumbs up for yes and thumbs down for no):
  • where on the pyramid of closeness (base is wide, and represents lots of acquaintances, whereas the top is for those people who are genuinely and significantly close) is the entity that I am describing to the recipient;
  • what part of their life did the recipient know this person (still working on a symbology for this - and I have to keep in mind that they may not have known the person at all);
  • what type of person was the entity, which I can best assess by seeing what the colours in their aura were; and
  • THEN go through the physical appearance, distinguishing features, etc.

Basic/Underlying Concepts for this Topic:
  • the reading being conveyed is you contacting your BPF Guides, who then talk to the BPF Guides of the person receiving the reading, and convey the recipient’s message etc to you;
  • it is important that, if a recipient, you do not feed the medium: you only answer yes or no, to minimise any chance of an inaccurate reading or the "cold reading" that skeptics say happens for every single such reading;
  • on the part of the medium, it is important to relay the messages and impressions as you give them: many people go to mediums after they've had a reading and say "oh yes, that WAS old Uncle Harry" (in fact, I've sometimes suggested a book for recording such comments so they can be passed on to the medium to help maintain an accurate self-assessment of their abilities);
  • free will applies here as well: you are allowed to say "no" to a reading, and a good medium should start with something like "may I come to you?"


WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! - MAJOR RANT AHEAD

And finally ... well, I have a MAJOR rant to get off my chest, so you may want to skip this and just go straight to my latest reading offerings, but any who are foolish enough to stay here, her goes ... I warned you.

I have a link here about a woman who spent many years living with her parents, despite being of an age normally considered to be an adult. I will NOT refer to her as an adult, because as far as I am concrned, she isn't! Pretty much the only definition of adulthood that I give any credence to these days is: the capacity to live independently of one's parents.

If you're living in your parent's home, you're not an adult. You're a child.

So ... this particular child has, in my view, compounded her sin by refusing to pay board (which I consider that she has mislabelled "rent" - it's only rent if she is paying for food, bills and doing her own cooking, washing, etc AND a fair share of the housework separately). She has claimed "the pleasure of her company" was adequate payment. What an arrogant, up-herself ... build a bridge and get over yourself, little girl! 

This arrogance has been even further compounded by her presumption that she can now pay her board later - but only in one particular form, that of an all expenses round the world trip.


Now, she claims she "knew" they were alright financially: how would she know - for sure? What if they weren't? In any case, and more importantly, what if they want to use the money for something erlse, or they can't get time off from work without negative consequences, or they just don't want to go???

What if they don't want the money? (I personally don't ever want money from any of my step-kids when they've left the roost.)

Sheesh! What a ... loser!(I have slept overnight, and toned this down very considerably.)

OK, safe to emerge now - rant over, and RESUMPTION OF NORMAL SERVICE :)

More reading

  • When I write legal contracts, I specify that email communication cannot be used unless a receipt or acknowledgement of receipt is received: otherwise, you have to assume the email hasn't got through, and use a legally admissible form of communication, such as fax or mail. That uncertainty of email is partly behind the following: "Writing's on the wall for snail mail", 13th June, 2012: http://www.theage.com.au/business/writings-on-the-wall-for-snail-mail-20120612-20860.html;

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear") 
May the world of commerce & business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people. 
A home is for living in, not feeling, becoming or being rich or a “better” class than others. 
The International Labour Organisation's definition of "full employment" is wrong, useless and misleading. 
Armageddon is alive and well and happening right now: it is a battle between the indolence of "I only ..." and/or "I just ..." on one side, and perspicacity on the other.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing. EDMUND BURKE

Your children are not your children. ... They come through you but ... they belong not to you ... for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow KAHLIL GIBRAN

We didn't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we only borrowed it from our children ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Those whom we cannot stand are usually those who we cannot understand P.K.SHAW

Tags: about me, energy work, Kulin, meditation, personal responsibility, readings, rituals, Sabbats, seasons, society, spiritualism, suicide,

First published: Frysdagr, 22nd June, 2012 

Last edited: Friday, 22nd June, 2012
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,