Category Archives: My Take on What’s Happening in the World

A Curious Phenomenon – Twilight

Posted on by
Reply

Everyone that I know who had picked up Twilight has been captivated by the story of Bella and Edward.  It seems the books themselves carry with them an addictive quality.  Like all addictions you can never get enough of the thing you are addicted to.   Cos they are only books, there is really no harm done and once you have read them, there really isn’t any more to have except perhaps read them again. 

In the final book Breaking Dawn Stephanie Meyer explores the addiction to absolute power.  Personally I found that Meyer lost her momentum towards the end in the last book, but none the less it was a fitting conclusion.  Once again she has used fantasy to explore everyday real issues.  The vampire ruling class abuse their power under the guise of keeping everyone safe.  But in the end like some of our own real world leaders they are more interested in maintaining their position of power than anything else. 

At present our world is changing rapidly, financial structures are crumbling, the USA now has a black President, things that once upon a time would have been considered fanciful.  There are of course many who resist change and try to destroy anything that is too different or not understood.  Meyer tackled these very relevant issues in Breaking Dawn.  Maybe this is why the Twilight series has such an addictive quality, it uses metaphor and fantasy to explore and expose many of the modern issues we are all currently grappling with.  As with Bella’s father, we can no longer pretend that certain things are not happening or don’t exist.  In fact our insistence that they do not exist, robs us of much of the richness of life.

Certainly, I can relate to Bella, feeling like a fish out of water so far as main stream society is concerned.  Living a life that straddles the “normal and expected” with the world of metaphysics.  Yet, mainstream society is embracing metaphysics more and more as they seek to find the inner peace they crave.  And of course just as in Breaking Dawn there are powerful institutions and people who do not want to give up their power of absolute truth and authority. So it is in the “real” world. I am hoping that like in Breaking Dawn there is a happy ending, were in humanity can embrace and peacefully live with many possibilities of truth.  Perhaps even ultimately synthesizing a hybrid.

Moving Beyond the Sea Anemone Syndrome………….the 3rd Position

Posted on by
2

In Part 1 of Twilight: a story of love, sex and raw power I gave the analogy of the human heart space being like a sea anemone – if someone sticks their finger in a sea anemone it will close up and then after awhile open again.  Eventually, if you stick your finger in a sea anemone too often or too forcefully it will either not open up again because it is too damaged or it will only partially open.  The vast majority of humans on the planet have damaged or dysfunctional heart spaces.  After sex love is our biggest preoccupation.  Most dream of having the two together.  We often talk about someone having a broken heart, or that they never got over a lost love or that we never felt loved by our parents or a spouse or our children……….the list is endless.  In fact it is virtually impossible to arrive at adulthood with an intact and open heart space simply because we have all been “damaged” for lifetimes. 

 

It is difficult to say when our heart spaces first started taking damage, I do have some theories which I am not going into here.  However, I think the Adam and Eve story from the Christian bible gives and good metaphoric account of the first incident.  For those of you who don’t know the story -Adam and Eve are in the garden of eden, everything is perfect, not a care in the world.  Then Eve eats the forbidden apple from the tree of Knowledge (The red apple on the front of Twilight) and of course Adam followed her example.  We will ignore the fact that Adam has never taken responsibility for his choice to eat the fruit at this point.  In any case after eating the apple both Adam and Eve hide from god, they realise they are naked and they hide their bodies.  After this they are turned out of Eden and Adam and Eve and their descendents (us) have had a hard life every since.  If you take away any moral and religious overtones out of this story, to me it is about the first wound to the heart space.  Every child experiences the horror at some stage that mommy or daddy is displeased and may not love them, they become self-conscious, they are separate, can be isolated, punished etc. etc.  So to protect themselves from the pain they begin to close over their heart space. 

 

Every time our heart space sustains damage we die a little, we shut ourselves of from the world piece by piece.  Until one day we realise there is nothing left, darkness doesn’t come all at once, Twilight is the first time we realise that day is turning into night.  Darkness brings fear and death.

 

We are all taught from a very young age that love comes from outside of us and so we clamour to get it, to bask in it.  The concept of love coming from outside makes a very good mechanism for control and punishment.  The cycle has been playing out for centuries, maybe ever since Adam and Eve.  I wonder what the world would look like if we all understood that love comes from the inside and that no one can ever take it from us or withhold it from us because we have an unlimited supply of our own.  One thing is for sure in the short term our society would collapse and then have to reform itself on very different foundations. 

 

If we all had whole and healthy heart spaces there would not be any lack of any kind.

 

At present if you have been hurt enough that you have closed your heart space it feels very painful on the inside and yet you still long to be loved and to love.  Yet to open you heart again would seem to invite in more pain and so it feels like you are dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t.  So how do we get out of our current predicament?  Were it seems difficult to find some one who won’t trample your heart space?  Especially since the only reasons people trample your heart space is because it often happens as they try to protect their own.

The first step is to begin to love yourself deeply and completely warts and all.  Not and easy task for most but not an impossible one for anyone.  We can all do it, we just have to want to.  You begin, step by step to heal your emotional wounds and patterns rebuilding and freeing yourself of lifetimes of conditioning.  I believe as we engage in this process we will create a new heart space, one that is not so fragile by design, it will no longer carry within it the original wound of  childlike self-consciousness.  Instead it will be strong in the absolute knowledge that we cannot be separated from love no matter what.  The new heart space will neither be wide open and fragile nor will it be closed shut.  It will be radiant and strong, the love that flows from it creates love of every kind in its path.  No longer will it be a sea anemone flailing around in the water hoping for some nourishment to float by.

Twilight: a story of love, sex and raw power………Part 2

Posted on by
1

Just to recap this is my take on Stephanie Meyer’s book Twilight. You should probably read Part 1 before you read Part 2.

Bella’s Story
Bella is the fragile human female in the story of forbidden love. Whilst her physical body is small and frail in appearance and her physical aptitude leaves a lot to be desired Bella is still a very, very powerful young woman. In Part 1 I discussed the fact that we all want to be powerful and loved by a powerful other. I also said that equally powerful does not have to be mean that both have the same kind of power. Certainly Bella was physically weak, there was no way that she could match the speed and physical strength of her vampire love Edward. However, to dismiss her as weak and fragile on that basis is a huge mistake. The predatory vampire James made this mistake. He didn’t reckon on the ability and power of love to marshal around more love and support. Even the group of young men who were bent on rape underestimated her strength. It is interesting to note that they went after her in a pack – safety in numbers. What these two scenes portrayed was the plight of women who are abused by the greater physical prowess of men. The need for one consciousness to find the weakness of another and then exploit it. This is how humanity generally treats each other, the planet and all other creatures upon it. The greater physical prowess of men due to their genetics has been the excuse for centuries as labelling women as the weaker sex. The subjugation of women has largely been based upon one criteria and of course it is the criteria that women cannot usually dispute. On the foundation of this one attribute women have been labelled as less than and unequal in all areas of society in all cultures. This all reminds me of the analogy of the sea anemone in Part 1.

So we all can safely agree in the area of physicality Bella is weak, then what was her strength? Clearly she did have a strength, otherwise Edward would not have been so afraid of her. Bella possessed and gave the very powerful gift of unconditional love. She loved him even though she knew his nature and on top of that she unreservedly trusted him to not harm her. She trusted that he would not abuse the sacred vulnerability of love. Because she trusted Edward, she entered into relationship with him. Edward had to choose between shutting her out which could have included eating her for lunch or sitting with his own self-imposed inner demons so that he could be around Bella. Bella trusted Edward to do the right thing by her even when he didn’t trust himself. Bella brought him to life, he became more of a person or should I say vampire than he was before he met her. Bella embodied the gentle and yet at the same terrifying power of unconditional love. Bella caused Edward to step outside of his comfort zone, test his limits of self mastery, and self-resolve this was a very scary place for him. In the process he learnt among other things to trust himself. So really whose power was stronger? Does it really matter? You could do all these measurements to prove who was physically stronger or emotionally stronger, but does the outcome of either of these strengths justify calling another weaker. Does it matter what strength you possess does it give you the right to exercise it over another? Unfortunately just as much emotional and mental abuse goes on in our world as does physical abuse. Men are not the only potential abusers, they do however, have an institutionalized upper hand.

And the cost of abusing that which is weaker or vulnerable to your particular strength? You loose the opportunity to be loved and in relationship with another unique consciousness and all the personal nourishment and growth that can bring.  Its a funny thing most of us search for true love throughout our lives and yet we are terrified to face it when we find it.

Like Edward, Bella was also aware of how Edward, her mother and her father were vulnerable because of the love they had for her. Bella was very careful not to the violate the sacred space of love, so much so that she would rather die herself than let either of them die in an effort to save her. She was acutely aware of the vulnerability that came with loving and being loved and she wasn’t going to use that space as an opportunity for control and abuse of those that had opened their hearts to her.  In this regard Bella was fearless, she may have not been physically strong as vampire Edward, she may have been on the bottom of the preditory heap, but in the end she had more courage than all of them, she was not afraid to loose everything for love.

If you have a need to heal your sacred heart space so that you can open up to love without the need to control, manipulate or abuse, or alternatively you fear being hurt give me a call………………..

Twilight: a story of love, sex and raw power

Posted on by
2

Last weekend I devoured Stephanie Meyer’s tale of forbidden and impossible love between the human Bella and the vampire Edward. I enjoyed the book immensely so much so that I read it from cover to cover in 48 hours. The themes of the book invaded my mind and imagination. Considering I don’t usually have much going on in my conscious mind I knew there was something for me to bring from the choppy waters of the unconscious mind into my usually serene conscious mind.

I managed to subdue my obsession with Twilight and relegate it to back of mind processing until I decided to go and watch the movie last night. I have to say I feel that the movie whilst it has a more visual impact, it does loose much of the richness contained within the book. What the movie did, however, was bring all of the themes back into full obsessive focus in my conscious mind. I knew I had better sort this out before I went insane! So this time I got serious with myself……… “what had been stirred up in my unconscious mind?” “What need’s to see the light of day?” Judging by the fact that the theatre was almost full on a Saturday night after many months of showing, it was also clearly stirring others at a very deep level. My son who went with me reckons its because its a ‘chic flick’. Maybe so………..but I think there is more, I think people keep coming back to see it over and over because they, like me are trying to grasp its deeper meaning.

Metaphoric fantasy stories are profound teachers; they reach our unconscious mind in such powerful ways. The story of Bella and Edward is a powerful metaphor for the way human relationships function and how we long for them to be. It’s a story about love, sexual virility, vulnerability and the abuse of that vulnerability.

As I sit and write I have started to pull the story and it’s players apart and in doing so, I do what I do best – pull information out of the unconsciousness for conscious mind awareness and healing. The main players for those of you who don’t know the story are: Bella a human girl and a vampire called Edward who fall in love. This is the ‘chic flick’ component I guess. Anyway, Edward is a ‘vegetarian’ vampire in that he prefers not to feed on humans because he doesn’t want to be a monster. Then there is James the evil predatory vampire. Other minor and yet very important players were the group of young men who were bent on rape and mayhem – the familiar face of the human monster. This is going to be a bit of an epic so I have divided into parts:)

Part 1 – Edward’s Story
Edward is absolutely addicted to Bella, his love is so powerfully addictive that he feels he has no strength to walk away from her. Yet he struggles with the two faces of his nature and love. On one side he has an enormous desire to protect and nurture Bella, to be loved and accepted by Bella. Edward’s other side sees her as his defenceless, natural prey. Edward fears this aspect of himself and struggles to keep it in check. Initially he blames her for putting him through the torment of temptation. Edward is well aware that he is far stronger than Bella, that he could overpower her in a moment. He is also aware that everything about his nature makes Bella irresistibly drawn to him, so in a variety of powerful ways she is vulnerable to him because of who he is and who she is. He is also perceptive enough to know that he is also very vulnerable to her as she could destroy everything that he has tried to achieve and thereby become the monster he so desperately seeks not to be. Edward is also aware that Bella is a rare and beautiful creature and the chances of him coming across another human such as her, is almost impossible no matter how many hundreds of years he lives. Edward is very aware that there is a part of him that would want to kill Bella, consume all that she is and for the short term gain and satisfaction he would loose all of the things that he loves in her. Even if he was to make her a vampire like him, he would loose some of the vital essence of what makes Bella special and unique. The double bind is that should he loose her he would also loose part of himself because she, enables him to bring certain aspects out into the world that he was unable to do without her. With her he learns to trust himself, to be vulnerable and at the same time gain a sense of power that does not come from preying on the vulnerabilities of Bella.

So the challenge for Edward is how to love and be with this delicate human woman who he out of his own fear’s and need could crush in a blink of an eye and yet in doing so he would loose everything.

Now stepping outside of the world of fantasy, what does that mean for us ordinary humans living an ordinary life? In what way does this story speak to us about our everyday lives that don’t involve vampires?

Well sadly, there are vampires amongst us, though they may not be the blood drinking kind as portrayed in Twilight. We are all aware of human’s that have a predatory nature, those that we label the criminal element of our community, those who express humanity’s shadow. Most of us are not exposed to the raw elements of humanity’s shadow nature. Interestingly enough though, most have a morbid fascination or curiosity with death and destruction – our shadow selves. None the less we are all intimately exposed to humanity’s “civilized shadow”. We all accept certain forms or amounts of shadow behaviour from ourselves and from those around us. We only call it criminal or evil when it steps outside of our personal or societal norms. From a statistical point of view the most horrendous crimes usually occur between individuals who are known to each other and more often than not there is usually a “love” bond of some kind.

So lets look at the energy dynamics of love. The energy process of love is to open oneself up to allow love to come in, it is also to allow love to come out. In that process of opening up to love we all feel extremely vulnerable. Will they love me back, will they accept me shadow and all? I believe every human ill can be directly attributed to the corruption and abuse of our vulnerability, the sacred interchange of love. I often say to my clients humans are like sea anemones. When you were a child did you ever find those sea flowers growing on rocks in shallow tidal pools? Well, if you stick your finger in one they close up, then a little while later they open again, cos you can, you stick your finger in again, naturally the anemone closes up again. Each time you do this the anemone take longer to open up to receive food from the life giving waters around them. If you poke too hard the anemone will be damaged and may even die. Human sometimes never, open up again once they have been poked! In the case of the human and the anemone we are the predator, much stronger we can do whatever we like to the anemone and it will not be able to fight back, it can only recover or die. Unfortunately there is a corrupt sense of power that comes with the knowing that we can cause pain and destruction.  Of course we mainly exert this kind of power over those who are vulnerable to us. In the end the sense of power is an illusion.

Lets look a human to human example, a man and a woman come across each other by chance and there is immediate chemistry. The couple is drawn into the bait of cathexus a mixture of lust and love. When they realise how much they desire and need the other and therefore how vulnerable they are to other person, fear of loss also creeps in. “what if this person leaves me?” “what if they withhold themselves from me?”………….then follows the need to possess, control and dominate. Now you don’t have to have the strength and speed of a vampire to be able to dominate and control the person you love.  Their opennes to you makes it incredible easy for you.  Hence the vast majority of love relationships are bound up with subtle and sometimes not so subtle forms of control and manipulation all designed to placate our sense of vulnerability.

This is why the part played by Edward is so powerful. He is fully aware of his vulnerabilities to his beloved. Initially as many do, he blames her for his vulnerabilities, later he realises his vulnerability is not a product of Bella but a product of his own insecurities. Edward is also very acutely aware that because Bella has opened herself to love him she is very vulnerable to him. This is the case whether you are in love with a vampire or a human, opening yourself up to love opens yourself up to vulnerability……….the other has the capacity to hurt and destroy you. (see part 3 for the alternative view on this) This is probably the meaning behind the saying “you always hurt the ones you love the most”. It is in this area of vulnerability that most domination, control and manipulation are brought into play in human love relationships. It is in this energetic space that most of the wounds of humanity sit. It is from this space that all fears arise.  It is also from this space that many of our survival needs arise and the experience of lack occurs.
In the story Edward confronts his fears of rejection, not being good enough in Bella’s eyes. He  is also very acutely aware of Bella’s vulnerability to him and he does everything possible not to poke his finger in that space. He does not want her to feel unsafe because he does have the ability to destroy her. This I believe in a nutshell is the fascination with Twilight, we all want to be powerful and be with powerful individuals, we also want to be loved by the powerful ‘other’. We also long to be safe in the knowledge that our beloved will not abuse the sacred space of love and vulnerability no matter how more powerful they may appear to be. This is our yearning for the freedom to love and be loved fully.  The most rewarding love relationships are formed when there truly is an equality of power even though the power bases may be quite are different. Just because the human male is physically stronger than the human female does not mean that she is weak or for that matter that he is powerful.

It will be interesting to see in Stephanie Meyer’s next instalment “New Moon” whether she explores the other damaging behaviour that occurs in love relationships – the need to be like the other or to make the other like ourselves so that they are acceptable to us. This dynamic was hinted at towards the end of the tale, when Bella is determined to be like Edward to become a vampire. If she did become a vampire at his hand or another’s sure she wouldn’t be as vulnerable, but she would loose many of the qualities that he has fallen in love with – her humanness. Sadly, this is another thing I see in my clinic a lot of people forget the qualities that first attracted them to their beloved. Instead they berate their beloved because they are not the same as they are. Similarly how many times do we try to be like others rather than ourselves and in the process loose our beauty and uniqueness?

If you are not bored yet and would like to read my take on Bella’s powerful archetypal role in the dynamic of love go to Part 2

What’s in store for 2009

Posted on by
Reply

The Aura-soma numerology of 2009 is very indicative of what I think we have in store for the coming year.  In the Aura-Soma system 20 is blue over pink the “Star Child”. 

 

bottle 20Bottle 20 encourages us to heal our inner child, allow our inner child to grow to maturity and balance the male and female within.  Once each of us heals our inner selves we will be able to feel the unconditional love and acceptance that we all crave.  This of course will also mean that we will be able to communicate this to others.  In many ways this is feminine principle in action.  It is often our lack of love and self-acceptance that is at the root of our desire to control and dominate our environment.   

 

Bottle 9Bottle 9 is turquoise over green, “the Atlantean” The message of this bottle is get you priorities right, remember the lesson of Atlantis, rectify the feelings of guilt associated with the misuse of power.  It is of note that probably 95% of my client base have a major influence of 9 in their birth numbers.  2009 is going to be a big year.  Nines absolutely do not like authority of any kind. In fact they have turned their back on authority including their own spiritual authority.  This has caused those with 9 energy in their energy field to be very stuck for eons.  The trick with authority is to know when to buck it and when not to.  There is no point being a rebel without a cause.

 

Bottle 29When you add the 20 and the 9 you get 29 red over blue, Bottle 29.  The challenge of this bottle is to find the peace that you crave and let go of the anger, frustration and resentment at life which is often very evident in people with 9 energy. Bottle 29  The message here is get and get going, heal the past and move on.  29 added together comes  to 11 clear over pink bottle 11. 

 

Bottle 11This is the bottle we use in the Aura-soma system when nothing else you seem to do in a therapeutic setting seems to work.  This bottle is about  clarity of mind, to see one’s soul clearly and to allow love to be the abiding principle in all that one does.   Probably the biggest challenges of this bottle are to overcome self-doubt and allow yourself to truly feel again.

 

Bottle 2Add 11 together and we are back to the beginning again blue over blue, bottle 2.  Difficulties with authority; be it masculine or feminine and no knowing how to move beyond the societal models of male and female – mother and father.  Once again healing the inner child and consequently finding the love, peace and connectedness that we all so deeply crave.

 

Welcome 2009, more than any other year you will be called to drop your baggage and move into a place of wholeness that facilitates healing not only for yourself but for others as well.

The nature of love

Posted on by
Reply

Some much has been written about love, apart from money and sex it is humanity’s greatest pre-occupation.  Feeling unloved could be fairly labelled as the root of all evil in the world.  Money, sex and other material things in the end are just ways we try to make ourselves feel loved.  This is reflected in some new age thought which states that the absence of money equals you don’t love yourself enough. The vast majority of us are taught to look for love outside of ourselves rather than from within.  Once we are convinced that love is outside of ourselves then it can be used as a instruement of control and it is, mercilessly. 

The sad thing is that you could be in the presence of the greatest love in your life and not even know it.  Whether you can receive love, feel it, it’s up to you and your inner capacity to love yourself.

The theme that has been running through the conscious collective is love.  In particular self-centred love and sacrificial love.  Self-centred love is all about the individual, they don’t feel love for the inside. They are constantly seeking ways to obtain the trappings of love – money, recognition, time from others, success in their business and personal lives, but essentially, they never quite get what they are seeking.  These people do love others, but it is rarely a sacrificial love – because it is all about them, they are happy to love you providing the cost is not too great for them.  Unfortunately these people rarely feel  truly loved.   If you take away some of the trappings of love they feel angry and afraid.  This is exactly what is happening with the finacial crash at present.

Then there are those who love in a sacrificial way, these are the individuals that the first group usually attach themselves to.  Sacrificial love is about recognising that the Other is Self and if the Other is unhappy or disadvantaged in any way then the Self will also be unhappy etc.  This stems from concepts such as: we are all one and love your neighbour as you love yourself.  From a chistian point of view the greatest example of this is christ on the cross.  Personally I believe that no matter what christianty teaches about sacrificial love it is based on self-centred love which expects and in fact glorifies another individual taking on the consequences of their personal bad behaviour.  You cann’t get more self-centred than that. The problem for the Sacificial Lovers is that love rarely comes back to them.  The response of the Sacificial Lover is to do more to love more, be more accepting etc etc.  None of this works of course, it’s not in the nature of the Self-Centered Lover to give back unless there is something in it for them.  In the end the sacrificial lover has the same problem as the self-centred lover they are so busy loving others they forget to love themselves.

The theme in the clinic has been “sacrificial love”  is it all it’s cracked up to be?  Essentially yes and no.  Yes, because until we understand that we are a collective and therefore our personal actions impact upon everyone else we can never truly work as a collective that is for the benefit of the whole.  We all know what happens when nature gets out of balance.  Humanity stepped outside of balance a long time ago and constantly does not think or feel the impact of their actions on the total.  It’s all about me and my needs.  Lots of new age thought is also unfortunately all about me – the glorified “I am” it’s time to move on to interdependence. Environmental damage, species loss, poverty are all hallmarks of humanity being out of balance.   How humanity every thought it was above or different than the environment it is part of is a mystery to me.

 And No, because Sacrificial Love often steps in to save  others from their own consequences which is also very detrimental to all concerned.   Sacrificial Love often keeps on loving even when the self is destroyed – were is the good for all concerned in that action.  If we did not cut ourselves with a sharp knive when we used it inappropriately we would not receive the natural feedback – the consequence.  We would not learn, we would not evolve.  Evolution on every level is reliant upon feedback and consquencies.  Mother earth is the biggest example of unconditional, sacrificial love – the question is how much longer can she tolerate humanities current behaviour.  When will consequences become immediate?

In the end both types of lovers need a review of their style.  From my perspective it is usually those who are deeply spiritual who are the sacrificial lovers.  Which leads me the crux of the current theme – it’s time to clean up your act because in the end sacrificial lovers also crave love, often also feel just as unloved as the self-centred lover types.  The nature of sacrificial love as it is expressed in the world is part of the problem, imagine the difference if every time humanity tried to pollute the earth she rose us and immediately smacked them?

On a personal level – what are you a sacrificial lover or a self-centred lover either way it’s time to clean up!