Words are Mantras. Why not say loving words to ourselves?

Masaru Emoto's water crystal "love".

 We can make a treaure trove of the water in our bodies!

Words are mantras. They form our self images and from there our ideas of the world. In the west we say, and often even with a sense of inverted pride, things like “I am shit, so shit, at maths. I can´t do sums to save my life.”

Which in my case is true.

We smile foolishly, charmingly and proudly declare our ineptitudes. It´s fine to hear “I´m not very good at cooking”, or “I´m hopeless at dancing” and as the words tipple from their lips, we smile a supportive-it-doesn´t-matter smile which makes us feel ever so benevolent. Priests help us with the “Oh! Bless me lord for I am not worthy” chant, and guilt has stayed in fashion since the Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans were in power.

Meanwhile in the East monks chant mantras such as “I cherish the divinity within me” “I worship the light that I emanate” “I am god, god is me.”

We could play spot the differences…

“I am shit” – and – “I am divine”

Quite a sea of separation between them really. Not to understate the issue at hand.

Words create us and destroy us. They define us and create our individual separate beings, our images of ourselves, our beliefs about ourselves. They make us separate to be able to create the necessary distance from the whole to see the whole, so we are not blind to the forest because of the tree in our eye sort of thing. But at the same time they destroy our entelechy, our relationship to the whole.

So as words create enough distance, enough separation, to be able to see ourselves, our lives and our worlds, at the same time they reduce our sense of “cosmic” connectedness, or to put in another way, our connection to our (Jungian) “self”. Words, like layers of an onion, cover and protect our inner being, and at the same time those same words are what individually create us.

So lets chose them carefully god damn it.

I once read in Rob Brezsny´s “Pronoia” to write a love poem to myself. I did. It opened up my eyes. I´m not a bad sort after all. It was a sensation in which I realised that I did indeed have the capacity to love myself. Not arrogantly, but in a cherishing, supporting, encouraging way. It was such a soft and comforting feeling. Ohh this is all a bit embarrassing, but I felt as if I were floating in a cocoon of the light of my own love, and I realised that all was well with the world. I needed nothing as long as I had this connection with myself. It´s impossible to really explain, and I can hear sort of embarrassed, ironic, smirks, (I wonder even if it is my own?) but I explain because it was something that happened for about 10 minutes 3 years ago and still affects me, comforts me, in a timeless sort of manner.

“Authentic Happiness” by Seligman and “Love, Inspiration, Hope” by Karena Kast, “Pronoia” by Rob Brezny and most Jungian Psychoanalysis, all say similar things: “Try and love yourself”. I just say that so that you don´t think that I´m an absolute freak. Let me tell you again, I´m shit at maths.

Loving ourselves can sound arrogant and dinner party chat it is not. It could all get rather embarrassing. “I love NY” is fine to wear across our chest; “I love myself” could be somewhat misconstrued. But loving self is an important human task – it is where all our habits-thoughts-actions-reactions stem from. It could even be our main goal.

Loving ourselvses is not arrogance or conceitedness.  Arrogance (prp. of arrogare "to claim for oneself, assume,") separates ourselves from others, we place ourselves as higher beings which is just silly really.  Even when we think we are "special" it is the ego tricking us into distancing ourselves further from the whole.  We are ALL "unique"...all of us.

Loving ourselvses is not conceitedness (from conceive based on analogy of deceit and receipt. Sense evolved from "something formed in the mind," to "fanciful or witty notion").  Conceit is when we are creating our own images of ourselves that are simply not true. When we think we are super duper (at something or other) but somehow we have to force ourselves to maintain that image, creating quite a stress to our psyches. We try to be something we are not, blocking our intrinsic natures.

Love is keeping our heart open to the here and now, to ourselves as we are. Love allows the ability to see as it is, not how we would like it to be. And to accept it. To see yourself as you really are, and accept both the good and the bad. No one is perfect and yet we all manage eventually to love others. So why not ourselves?

Now I don´t want to go Jesus Christ on you all, but when he said “Love your neighbour as yourself” being one of the main messages of the Christian religion, it infers that beforehand you have managed to love yourself. It´s self evident isn´t it? Because if we love others as we do ourselves, and we continue using negative words about ourselves, we would have to shout “you are shit at driving” every time our neighbour got into his car. In the same way a Christ consciousness doesn´t beat up on others, it doesn´t beat up on itself. The idea can´t be to make ourselves feel lousy, putting ourselves out trying to help others in ways that harm us while we chant “I´m shit at this” and “You are so much better” and “You are worth more”. No, no, no.

Love, I believe is something that puts each other in a better position to be able to be who each naturally is. I do not think that Love is helping someone else to do that and putting yourself in a worse situation, nor putting yourself in a better situation at someone else´s expense. If we are creative we’ll see that there are plenty of combinations to do, to be, something that gives us the same benefits, and choosing one of those that is compatible with our neighbour, with our partners, with our friends, with our family, is simply an act of love to ourselves and to them. In so doing we live in greater harmony.

A friend of mine, edging into her sixties, recently discovered how to love. Beforehand she had felt an impostor of love….loving with the head only. Who are we who say we love? Who are those who we love, and it is real? It was one of those situations…until she let herself comprehend that she is not a pain in the ass, that she is not bad company, until she turned it around and began to believe that she had something to offer: herself. And that it was valuable. She realised, relaxing into her relationships with friends, that she listens really well, and that recently the things that she says (that I think are deep and wonderful) are not just silly little stupidities, but are in fact so very useful to others, they are so deep and wonderful. She helps people to see themselves in a new light. And as she realises, she enjoys her relationships so much more, and gives so much more, and enjoys, in a sort of ever increasing cycle of loving herself and loving others with her listening and her new found confidence in her loving words.

If we love ourselves, Vipassana says, it sort of runs over the brim, and we can´t help but see the world for what it is, for the better or worse, and still love it and those in it.

So go ahead, take off those glasses, see who you are. It´s like hearing your own voice, your own words, on a tape recorder. Gulp. Stand amazed and embarrassed and somewhat disgusted and happy and genuinely surprised. Accept it.

Those around you already do.

And Love yourself. Go on, you know you want to.

Doing things with Love

 

A couple of years back I did a speech in a conference in a very fine stately sort of building surrounded by tendered gardens in a hall for 500 people.  It was titled “¿Hacemos las cosas con Amor?” (Do we do things with Love?).  I was quite pleased with how well I was coping in front of the audience of 30, in spite of the echo, and at the end of the forty minute speech I had a standing ovation from about 18 of them.  The others didn’t stand because they were in a balancing act trying to clap and not let their walking sticks fall over. 

But even though the audience wasn’t so grand in numbers, nor young in age, I was proud of my speech, not only for the fact that they seemed to understand my accent, but for the content.  It basically went:  if we all do things with love, simple day to day things, then we create more meaningful relationships with ourselves, others and the world. 

We’ve all seen people go onto the street wired for an argument.  I’ve done it.  I’m on my bike one day and a car looks like they are going to swerve into the bike lane…so I slow down and give them space.  Another day, the same situation and I angrily keep my ground, let them nearly get me and with that excuse knock all uppity on their window.  They say “Perdona! I didn’t see you” and I launch into a speech about being having to be more aware on the streets, that cyclists have no protection, I hint at possible death etc etc etc.  I jump off my bike and get right onto my high horse. 

But what about if we do it the other way around? If we go onto the street “wired” to help, to be nice, to smile at the least opportunity?  If you try it, it makes you feel like Amelie.  Or Mary Poppins.  It depends on the weather forecast (it’s the umbrella thing).

So this weekend we had some bad news.  On Friday men came knocking on the door and asked about the leak.  What leak?  The leak downstairs they say is drip drip dripping into the vacated bank downstairs. 

God damn. 

Apparently it had been like that for a month.  I’m used to banks insipiently being a money drain, but not like this.  So we spent the weekend (workers respect the Sabbath here with a holiness…) without water.  I didn’t realise how often I wash my hands, or turn on taps.  I hadn’t realised how much I take for granted something so elementary such as water.  With it on again, it really makes me appreciate not just unsticky fingers but the simple fact of water, clean good water.  On tap.

I found the whole affair somewhat threatening.  A mishap within my own castle.  I can only just accept uncontrollable negative things outside, but inside…  So on Monday, Señor Camilla’s brother-in-law, the plumber, came along.  Just to see his face was a relief.  He had such a clear countenance that I instantly felt that I could trust this man which in a world of lampisterias (Spanish plumbers) is a relief in itself.  You can be put over a drippy barrel.  

And I was right, he and his trusty assistant found the leak.  It was under the corner of the bath.  Relieved, we were able to flush.

So today he came and did the final touches, which were putting the spare tiles back into place.  We got out the tiles and Sñr Comilla´s brother-in-law got to work. 

They say it’s all in the timing and this morning I awoke with a particularly bad case of the trots (diarrhoea).   Sñr Comilla´s brother-in-law was really lovely about it all.  A couple of times I found myself doubling over a bit hoping that he could clean the rocky lumps from under the door to be able to close it before my bottom turned into Mount Etna and erupted.  Meanwhile Enric and him are having a right manly chin wag, about the size of tiles, how tiles aren’t the same these days, about their different tools etc.  Sñr Comilla´s brother-in-law was particularly touched by the offer of a coffee, which he sipped while I was groaned in the toilet.

Later Enric was at my bedside with a home remedy from our friendly lampisteria-cum-doctor: a small glass of coca-cola does the trick.  He finished his work, by which time he had invited Enric and I to his house in a little village, Mont Blanc, the next time we were up.  Really he was so very caring, so very open, so very warm hearted…

Which was a good job, because a good job he did not.

Tonight inspecting his work, I said to Enric, “the tiles are jutting out a bit”.  He said “And that was the third attempt, he broke two before that”.  We had a couple of loose tiles in the hall way that we constantly crunched over from the table to the kitchen, and now they are nice and firm, one in a few more pieces than previously and the other slight rised.  To put it blunt, Mr Camilla’s brother-in-law is a bit of a cack hand.

But do you know, I am more than pleased to pay up for the signed three hours, that we reckon a skilled tiler could have done in half of the time.  Because as I sit on the toilet, now in a controlled fashion, I look with a warm feeling, at the jutting out tile.  It reminds me:  it is not what you do, but how you do it.

I´ve got on instantly with that jutting out tile, it makes me think of Mr Camilla’s brother-in-law and wonder what his house is like in that little village, him sat out back with his twenty by twenty tiling.  I like thinking of him doing his best, with his good heart, really trying.  It´s like our house has a bit more character.  But if a horrible man had done it in a bad mood, I wouldn’t react in the same way, at all.  I’d get all farty about it while sat on the white telephone.

You see, it doesn’t matter what we do, even if we are just an English teacher, getting grammar mixed up while trying to untangle phrasal verbs in front of students, or if we are a high flyer dealing with lots of money, or a person who cleans the stairwell in buildings…it doesn’t matter what we do, but how we do it.  

It’s not so important the result of our labour, but how we laboured.  And really, if we do things with love, we don’t only end up enjoying what we do and loving that others appreciate it, but we begin to love ourselves.  Our worlds change. 

No sorry that’s wrong. 

We change.

Just like the Little Prince who tames the fox who tells him  "Here´s my secret, it couldn´t be simpler:  It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

And so a big thank you to Señor Comilla’s brother-in-law for the unwobbly reminder that doing things with love makes all the difference because at the end of the day it is not what we do, but who we are, that counts.

Projection

R2D2 Projecting onto Princesses again...

The comic Rodney Dangerfield, once said "My wife´s a water sign.  I´m an earth sign.  Together we make mud."  But really, we do create a third intangible thing when we get together with another.  But what is it?  And do we see it, or do we project something else while hiding the truth from ourselves?

I think most of you know that I am courting an older man.  Difficult to call him really my boy-friend, since long past he ceased to be a boy.  And yet it is one of the longest relationships I’ve had.  It is definitely the one with the least tension, least arguments, least problems and where love has been able to peacefully grow.  He is earth, I am air.  No mud huts.

You can imagine that it was not easy.  It is not easy.  It is like being gay and coming out of the closet.  Except there is no closet.  There is no “May-September” young-older night clubs, magazines, or flags to wave.  There are people who have and are in May-September relationships, quite a lot of famous people actually, but no social standards, no guidelines to follow.

And so it begs the question…what is a relationship.  Why am I living in a partnership with this person.  To what end?  If you are a come-cocos (a coconut eater – or rather someone who thinks too much), it’s quite a tough cookie.  In relationships that are socially more freuquent, then the question is not so evident (though it is still there, just hiding like Anne Frank in her attic).  But what drives us to live, share, sleep with someone else?

I’ve been mulling over this for some time and the conclusion is somewhat embarrassing:  I am unconsciously following, as if along a ploughed path, dreams and fantasies that I have in my mind.  These were created when I was, ohh, all of the age of…

Thirteen. 

One-Three.

What a year.  I was a right little busy bee making up wonderful romantic ideals.  My first idea of true romantic evening was a fantasy (never came true) of watching “Pretty Woman” with a wonderful boy eating pizza on a blanket on the middle of my lounge floor.  Yep, the Cinderella Complex.  That old favourite: I dreamt of being pushed up into a perfect self and henceforth perfect life, thanks to my prince charming.  I needed only to look out from my upper floor window, no work on my behalf needed, and smile, laughingly, charmingly at Richard Gere overcoming his fear of heights with a rose between his teeth.

I remember sitting at my homework desk, with my pink paper and the white lines, with my pink heart pen writing down the list of the characteristics I deemed necessary of my ideal boy hero.  He must be handsome, funny, intelligent, musical, sporty, rich…

Thirteen eh?  A ripe age for dreaming. I remember sorting out my life, what I would be like by the astronaut year of 2000.  I would have children by then and be just like…and again I embarrass my adult self somewhat more…the family in “Back to the Future”.  You know when M J Fox comes back to the future and he’s sorted out those pesty problems of the past.  As a result he has a family in a spotless, white, glorious kitchen, sun shining in through the windows, mum and dad have just come in from a fun, exciting, evenly matched game of tennis, they are smiling, the children are doing their homework happily and are smiling and the baddie, now turned goodie, is super happy in the garage cleaning the car, aware of his inabilities and happy to be working, and is smiling.

It didn’t actually happen for me like that.

But all that dreaming, all that Pretty Woman and Back to the Future, all that sure idea of what life is about, didn’t leave me when faced by a strangely different reality, it went underground and became my secret template without me even knowing it.  It became the glasses that I wore for discerning if my relationship was going right or not, without me really knowing it.

The thing is that with an older man those projections just broke down.  Shattered.  Really, I cannot ask of him to be sporty and (this is the deal) I cannot dream that he will become sporty.  It’s impossible to change him into my hero.  I cannot project onto him the “sporty” characteristic on my pink paper list.  It’s just not going to happen.  I cannot tell him to start climbing mountains, or mountain biking (he cannot ride a bike).  And so I cannot blame him for when I don’t go (which believe me, I have done many a time with other boyfriends).  He is just not going to change much, or be much else than what he is now.  And somehow, it is a huge relief.  It is a clear level playing field.  I am not projecting things into our relationship that simply cannot and aren’t going to happen.  And it leaves me able to more fully appreciate what is there, like comprehension, an ability to love, complicity... 

But still what is a relationship?

I don’t really know, but I know a little more about what it is not.  I wonder if it is simpler than we project.  Since the simplest things are often the most difficult. 

I don’t want Richard Gere to get jealous, but Rainer Maria Rilke is definately a poetic hero.  In his book Letters to a Young Poet he writes “Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or like books written in a remote foreign language.  Do not search now for answers that cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.  And every thing has to be lived.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually live your way, without noticing, into the answer some day.”

The Inner Self

Image: Jardines del Laberinto de Horta

A friend once told me a simple idea that has stayed with me for years. We are like a garden. Inside our garden we can plant whatever flower or vegetable or tree we like, with or without grass, with or without a rockery, and if you like plastic gnomes, just go ahead feel free. We must discover the conditions of your ground soil, for some plants may struggle while others thrive. Care for our garden with water and light or leave it to grow wild. We can leave it in a complete state if we want to. We can do as we like. But it needs constant work for it to be weed less and lovely.

Let us presume that we have an interior garden that we particularly like, we have done it up just so, just as we like so that we are as comfortable as possible within the conditions that we have been given.

We may allow into our garden who we like. But that person really should respect our garden. We don’t want them to be stamping on our pretty flowers or making mud of our grass lawn. And yet often we forget and allow Tom Dick and Harry to harry around.

And so we must learn to control who is allowed in and who is not, on our own grounds. Those who we feel will not respect what we are growing, we can bar entry if we feel necessary, it is our garden to do as we see fit. We can leave them at the gate. Maybe they’ll move on and leave us in peace or if they have the time and patience they can look through the gate. Maybe they’ll begin to appreciate how delicate our little garden is, how uniquely planted all of the beautiful flowers are. Perhaps with time they will become willing to enter our garden with respect and we can change, if we want to, our original admission policy and let them in.

There are others who see the inherent beauty and can help us to make our garden more us. They see the potential of the plants and help us to fertilize to make them stronger, they see sad plants and can help us to cure them. They bring new seeds. Once fear of change is conquered, we are can glad to allow these people to visit our garden of pleasures.

So who do we attract to our garden? They say energy attracts like energy and if we are positive, for example, we will be able to share our garden with many other wonderful positive people as they pass through and sit in our deck chairs for a while, bringing with them the sun.

Indra’s net is a Hindu idea that we are all diamonds on a net. Each diamond is a garden. Each diamond is a soul. Each diamond reflects all of the other diamonds in the net. So let us make our little garden, our diamond, no matter how insignificant, just to our liking and allow the people who are close to reflect and bathe in the beautiful colours. Like a stained glass window of our petals. We are born with an uniqueness, as each snowflake is different. Think of that and marvel if you may.

We each have a talent for arranging our gardens in different ways, we each can do things easily and effortlessly that others find difficult. How do you want to grow your garden and who do you want to allow in?

Who do you enjoy sitting in your deckchair with sharing each other’s sunlight and doing your bestest to disperse the clouds?

Postcards from the Labyrinth

Image: The first film i went to see without my mum!

Dear Family and Friend,

The time of year has come where we have to doubt if we can ever believe ourselves ever again. Two weeks into New Year glass of red in our hand remembering the night, bright eyed (the champagne) and innocent, when we declared to the world and to ourselves what virtuous thing we are about to do. Today, that pureness of festive good will having met the light of 12 whole days, seems to have got lost with the tv remote down the back of the sofa, and we realise that we haven´t actually reduced drinking alcohol at all. Trainers are neatly lined up still at the back of our wardrobes and you find yourself unable to stop yourself from scoffing chocolate every time you go into the kitchen.

But we still have chance! We can prove to ourselves that we can gyrate our bad habits out of the orbit that we are presently flowing in. (Everyday is really a new opportunity, but don’t say it too loud else we’ll be doing an awful lot of stuff tomorrow.)

So today, I’m starting on my New Year’s resolution. It is to open up and share a little of my inner world. The thing is that in the past I had no problems sending out group mails, because I was travelling, and I felt I had the postcard right to email home. I was treading into new territories, I was experiencing new adventures, and I needed to feel that I had an anchor back home so as to not get lost, again.

These days I have become stable. On the outside world it is really my only news. I have been teaching English for 9 years (albeit in lots of different academies, orphanages, universities, countries), I have been living in Barcelona 7 years (albeit in 10 different houses) but now (drum roll please),

drrrrrrrrrrr

..for the last 2 years, I have become absolutely stable. Yes, yes, feel that rush of fresh air woosh through into stunned silence…

I work in the same single establishment, the UB, I live in the same house (the longest I think I have ever lived in one house as an adult) and I am going out with the same man, which is coming up to record breaking proportions.

But constancy is not totally alien to me. What I have been doing almost steadily since I’ve been travelling (it all began in Patagonia in 1999) is an internal journey. Nepal in 2004 got me on a new track and recently I just finished a two year masters in Jungian Psychology and Psychoanalysis. I’ve been going at it some. And now, really I’m in the same situation as when I set out from Heathrow with Chris 14 years ago. I need an anchor. I need to send post cards of where I have been on this internal adventure so I don´t get lost in the labrynths of the mind. Now, all of you on this list have walked some of this journey with me and we have something special between us because of our joint experiences, our shared learning and the love created through them. And as a result, to show my infinite gratitude, I’m going to bare face use you: I need an audience.

I need you now as an extended family the same way that me and my little bro needed my mum and dad on our Special Theatre Performance nights while coming out from the small hiding place behind the curtains of the double patio doors to say “I say, I say, I say, what do you call….” Mum and Dad would laugh hysterically (not exactly at the joke) and clap politely at the end.

Maybe you are going through a New Year’s resolution to reduce your inbox to a manageable amount and respect to you (but remember to send me a mail so I can remove you from the list). Conversely if you want to send this onto other people, feel free. And if you want to add your tuppence worth email me, and you want to have a knees up discussion for all and sundry, I’m also going to post the notes on a Blog.

But no discussion today, just like a first day of class. Me prancing around and trying to be affectionately nice and then doing a register. Students leaving dazed.

It’s not too late is it to say Happy New Year is it?

Happy New Year.

Thanks, mil thanks for anchoring me.

Lots of love

Julia

Happy Christmas Solstice and a Merry New Year

image: a julia set

Dear All,

¡¡Happy Christmas and New Year!!

The Christmas (Winter) Solstice is the time in which the sun sends the least amount of light in comparison to the dark. It is when our ancestors feared that Set (the god of darkness and chaos) would win over his brother Horus (who has a surprisingly similar CV to Jesus and we could say represents Platonic light and order). 

The other day I was thinking about it, toilet paper in hand...can you imagine a time without refrigerators, without shops and food supplies coming along motorways in lorries, but just you and your tribe watching the cold, seemingly dead earth. You’ve just had a bad harvest year. You are hoping to get through this winter again…without dying. Some you may not see each other again, especially the older and the younger ones...It is a time of family closeness.

The pilgrims going over to the Americas the first couple of years would not have survived the winter if it weren’t for the native Indians who helped them. (Who they later killed of course, but lets forget that again).

We live out this drama watching Luke Skywalker fight his asthmatic father while complaining the heating is a bit low and the chocolates aren’t up to scratch. Physically, it seems we have lost sense of Xmas.

But there are other levels of this light-dark struggle that are not just physical. And so I wish for you all in this celebration of light, that as you eat, you enjoy, as you contact or see your family, you appreciate their lives even though they drive you crazy, and that you have a god damn good knees up where ever you are. 

As the New Year once again breaks through chaos to create a new order, I wish for you, as we each make our journeys around our suns, that in the dark inevitable patches of individual chaos that each of us will face, that your light, deep down, will be a constant source of comfort and you will have strength to maintain the connection with your natural inherent beauty and perfection.

Will I break the alcohol side of my diet to celebrate Christmas? Is Rudolf´s nose red?

Thanks for being in my life, near or far.

Lots of love and Christmas Cheer
Julie-a

--
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.~Anais Nin

Dear All,

¡¡Felices Fiestas!!

El Solsticio de Navidad (Invierno) es el tiempo en el cual el sol proporciona una menor cantidad de la luz con respecto a la oscuridad. En ese momento es cuando nuestros antepasados temieron que Set (el Dios de la oscuridad y el caos) vencería a su hermano Horus (que tiene un Currículo sorprendentemente semejante a Jesús quien podemos decir representa luz y orden Platonico). 

El otro día pensaba en ello, (con el papel de higiénico en la mano…) imaginé un tiempo sin frigoríficos, sin tiendas y provisiones que vienen por las autopistas en camiones, en el que solamente existe las personas y su tribu que sienten el frío y miran una tierra aparentemente muerta. Acaban de tener un año de mala cosecha. Esperan pasar este invierno otra vez…sin morirse. Alguno de ellos tal vez ya no van a ver al otro otra vez, especialmente los más viejos y los más jóvenes…Es un tiempo para la cercanía familiar. 

Los Pilgrims que fueron a las américas no habrían sobrevivido las primeros años de invierno si no fuera por los indios nativos que les ayudaron. Olvidemos que luego les mataban...

Seguimos viviendo esta drama mirando Luke Skywalker lucha a su padre asmático mientras que nos quejamos que la calefacción está un poco baja y los chocolates no dan la talla. ¡Feliz Navidad! Físicamente ya se ha pierdo su sentido.

Pero hay otros niveles de esta lucha de la luz-oscuridad que no son solamente físicos. Y por eso te deseo que en esta celebración de la luz, cuando comas, disfrutes, cuando contactes o veas a tu familia, aprecies sus vidas, aunque ellos te vuelvan loco/a, y que pases muchos momentos bomba. 

El Año Nuevo viene otra vez emergiendo del caos para crear un nuevo orden, por eso te deseo para ti, cuando a cada uno nos marque nuestros viajes alrededor de nuestros soles, que en los zonas oscuras de caos individual, que es inevitable, veas su luz al fondo, por que será una fuente constante de consuelo y tendrás fuerza para mantener la conexión con su belleza y con su perfección inherente y natural. 

¿Romperé yo la dieta con respeto al alcohol para celebrar Navidad? ¿El nariz de Rudolf es rojo?

Gracias por estar en mi vida, cerca o distante.

Mucho amor

Julia

-- Y el día vino cuando el riesgo que lo tomó para quedarse apretado dentro del brote fue más doloroso que el riesgo que lo tomó para florecer.~ Anais Nin

masters first day

ohh golly gosh, golly gosh, i'm so happy and excited.

went to the masters course. it was hopelessly organised. but really, with a little patience, and ears out (it was a bit difficult to hear all of the words, cos the profe talks quite flat and mumbles) i hear some wonderful stuff. actually, since i've done a lot of preparation, i knew a lot of what was being said, but i began to see it all in a different light.

like the shadow. it isn't repression, but this inability of ours to open up to our eternal, beautiful selves...