The photo was taken several years ago, when I had the joy of flying over Lincolnshire in a friend's tiny plane...

This blog is to accompany the Check the Box course offered by Janet Conner starting May 2013.
The title comes from the poem 'The Journey' by David Whyte (a favourite poet!), Janet cites in the opening lesson.
Janet speaks my language in so many ways...

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Post 6 - Spiral 2: Back to the beginning...

Oh my... I really don't know how to express today's happenings in a linear fashion, but I'll do my best to hit the pertinent elements...

I set out my spiral again, this time under the gaze of my mother's mother, who I never knew - she died of breast cancer aged 32 on my mother's 10th birthday... but I knew I needed her presence...

But after a few minutes, I knew I needed to be with my baby picture, so I set it up against the candle, and put away all the other photos.


So there I am, a few weeks old, asleep in my pram, between Mary Magdalene and my grandmother.

As I gazed, and sought to connect with my Soul, Cara, through this picture, my monkey-mind was non-stop chattering, 'How can we choose our parents? How could I choose my mother - she who needed a mother herself, not a baby! Of all the people to choose... and why would I choose to be breech born!!'

Then, I stopped... I'd forgotten I had been born breech - full-breech, feet first, apparently!

Immediately, I asked Cara, why was I born breech? What did it mean? And I/Soul wrote:
 
Why would anyone choose such a difficult birth?
All I can hear from You is, Why choose the easy way? You know wisdom comes through difficulty. There is nothing of value on the easy path.

Oh my! Do I hear that? There is nothing of value on the easy path.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, is all I can say...

And once I again, I hear Janet's voice, 'Trust your Soul... trust your Soul...'

So, I'm trusting my Soul, and I'm noticing everything, because I know some things are really important.
Like this morning's poem from Panhala is my email box.

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII
 
Want the change.  Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.
 
What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.
 
Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.
 
Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive.  And Daphne, becoming
a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

(In Praise of Mortality, translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

The penultimate stanza really struck me this morning:
Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.
 
Hence, I sort of 'knew' my spiral session would be with my baby picture, and I 'knew' I needed to 'Flow into the knowledge', no matter how much my logical mind balked at the  notion, we choose to be born...

So this afternoon, I wrote out the poem in my new Soul Art Journal, and made this collage in response to the poem and my spiral time:


Trusting my Soul, and taking Cara's lead, every day, I am writing and making pictures in this beautiful journal


Made by Conni Altmann, using a fabric patch of her own painting, this is how I imagine Cara looks...

I started it on Saturday, and I'll close with pages so far, starting with the inside cover, where I stuck a postcard of a favourite author, Virginia Woolf , with the quote, 'No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself'.

Cara is taking the lead, and gently showing me what my Soul needs to see... 

Enjoy :)



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