Life

This post is different to my usual posts as it is not about colour or Aura-Soma – it is about the latest arrival into my family. On Saturday (27/2/2010) Elena gave birth to a boy! They are both doing really well and came home from the hospital that evening. He is very big, 4.6kg (10lb 6oz) strong and healthy.

Baby boy

The birth process

It was a great birth process. As with Daniel his older brother I was with Elena throughout the birth process – in this case from 5.30am through to 12.30 when he (we have not found his name yet) emerged. It is a privilege for me to be part of the birth process. It is such an intense and “being present” process where minutes seem like hours, but then every so often you realise another hour has passed and you wonder how much longer there can be to go …

Handling the pain

What I especially want to write about is how Elena handled the pain. Firstly we had no idea the baby was that big so we entered the process without fear. Early in the process I massaged the B20 Equilibrium bottle into Elena’s back. As the process went on, along with simply being there, holding, breathing etc., I also did many Reiki attunements to Elena and the process. However each contraction was still quite something to endure for Elena and the nurse did offer us (drug) pain relief. Some thing Elena and I did not want to use if we could possibly avoid it.

Help was at hand

After a few hours Elena went to her suitcase and pulled out a small cloth covered in prickly plastic discs (see the picture) which she had brought to the hospital on an intuition. It came from her uncle – an osteopath in Russia who had given it to her some time ago to help with her back pain (not connected to the pregnancy or birth). She asked me to hold it to her lower back as she knelt over the bed. As the contractions came she asked me to press the cloth into her lower back. This process went on for more than an hour. It was amazing. It was very deep and meditative. We were not talking much. With each contraction she was able to move her pelvis and she later told me that she was feeling the baby’s process. The relief provided by these discs enabled her to be with and support the birthing process.

the plastic discs that helped

There did come a point though where she felt she had no more energy and the discs became less relevant. For the last 45 minutes Elena was pushing and getting tired but the baby though we could see the head, was not coming out. It was a difficult time. Finally the baby came, first the head and then with a couple more pushes the whole body. Throughout his heart beat had been stable. And now that he emerged we could see he was a big healthy baby who immediately went pink and looked fantastic.

In retrospect those last 45 minutes though very difficult at the time were probably very helpful, because not only did Elena have no pain relief, she also had no need for stitches.

Elena after the birth

Home together

It was a great birth process and now we have a great baby.  And now as I write this in our garden it seems Spring too has come. The sun is shining and the birds are singing. It is a good beginning.

baby and older brother Daniel

December's Blue Moon - Image courtesy of Benedict Yeoman

Perhaps you heard, the 2009 New Year’s Eve Full Moon was a blue moon. The rarity of such an event falling on such a symbolic night - New Years Eve - got me thinking. A blue moon comes only once every 2 - 3 years. It occurs because, while there are 12 months in a year, there are 12 lunar cycles plus an extra 11 days. A blue moon then is when there is an extra full moon in any one month. In December the two were on the 2nd and the 31st.

December 2 Full Moon - reflected in Danube

Blue or Betrayer?

Why blue? The theory is that the name was not originally “blue” the colour, but an old English word “belewe” which means “to betray”. This makes sense for example when we consider that in olden days the moon was an important time keeper for farming cycles, each season having three full moons: early, mid and late. An extra full moon in the year will create confusion in the timing. For example: “Three winter full moons already but still too cold to plant our seeds – shouldn’t Spring be here by now?“  It is ironic that this use of blue as a corruption of “belewe” would mean that blue here represents the very opposite of its usual association - “trust.”

Whether this is the real origin of the phrase “blue moon” or not, one thing is sure - a blue moon year carries the energy of 13. And traditionally 13 certainly does coincide with untrustworthiness. 13 is superstitiously unlucky, just as Eve was the temptress, black cats are to be avoided and wise women are witches! Yes 13 is all things feminine and therefore to be put down.

The antidote - a positive wise woman

And so it was wonderfully refreshing that this New Years Eve the BBC aired a radio programme entitled “Blue Moon” which shared one wise woman’s project to honour this special event.

Elspeth Owen is an artist, and although she is 71 years old, she is spending the whole period from the first December full moon (on the 2nd) to the blue moon on the 31st, living entirely outdoors. Her project is to bury 14 white necklaces, one each night, for the 14 nights of the waning moon - the period when the moon shrinks. With the beginning of the New Moon she then retrieves each of the necklaces again, one by one, one per night. Her focus throughout this process will be “taking care” – both of herself and the necklaces.

She was a vibrant woman refreshingly unconcerned by any need to be rational. It was delightful to listen to her with her wonderful laugh which reminded me of Claudia Booth’s. The programme was a great antidote to the traditional negative associations of 13 and the feminine.

Tzaphkiel as Mother

And it seems to me that Elspeth’s story provides an insight into the nature of Tzaphkiel, just as did the film Avatar which I wrote about in the previous post. In the case of Elspeth’s project I believe it is an enactment of the Divine Mother aspect of Binah. Let me explain …

Elspeth began by making the 14 white necklaces – here she is Mother as creator.
She then births her creations into the world. She does this by burying them through the period of the waning moon - now she is Mother as birth giver.
Finally she retrieves and resurrects the necklaces - she completes the process as Mother the nurturer.

This project can be seen as a metaphor for the Creator’s relationship with the created. Souls are created through Binah, the Divine Mother, in order that consciousness may be enter into matter. Souls then travel further from the Divine by entering Matter in our case the human experience. It strikes me that at both the level of soul and the human being our deepest need and desire remains the same. We wish to be loved and remembered. What could be worse than being forgotten by your mother? I have seen film of grown men in orphanage / institutional homes in eastern Europe saying that all they want is to be reunited with their mothers. I have also heard that when soldiers call out with their dying breath it is invariably to their mother. Why would souls be any different in their relationship to the Source? Binah is the sphere of the mother and Tzaphkiel is its presence. It seems to me that Elspeth’s project re-enacts the archetypal mother myth of creation, dispersion and reunion.

The perpective of the Divine

Most satisfying of all, the  aspect of Elspeth’s project that bothered me the most is actually the key. Elspeth started her process on the Full Moon. This is the absolute opposite of my normal way to approach lunar cycles. Usually I associate beginnings with the New Moon, the process reaching a fruition with the Full Moon and then suffering a decline again with the waning moon.

Elpseth began her project in the totally opposite place!  But I see now that by burying the necklaces first and then resurrecting them again she is providing a metaphor for the process of consciousness entering into form, from the Heavenly perspective rather than the earthly. Brilliant. How Tzaphkiel!

B107 Tzaphkiel

Conclusions and a link

Though the film Avatar will probably grab me more – I am sure this radio programme will be the more heart-warming, humbling and enriching.

If you would like to listen to the radio programme - it is 30 minutes long - you can follow this link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00pdjy1

Don’t delay too long, like a blue moon it may not come around again for a while.

I wish you all a happy, feminine and wise New Year.

Cows have feelings too

It was front page news recently in a local Japanese newspaper that cows who receive and are called by, a name produce more milk. Is it pink that they feel cared for? Do they have a (yellow) sense of self that responds to attention? Mooooving on to a related theme …

His Dark Materials

This is a prize-winning trilogy of three books by Phillip Pullman that addresses a host of cosmological questions in the form a children’s adventure. A vital subject in the adventure is what the author calls “Dust” A kind of golden energy, invisible to the naked eye, which surround anything that has consciousness invested in it. There is a lot of Dust around people for example, but it also clusters around human-made objects, since they have received conscious attention.

A Blackbird

These two pieces of information come together when I consider an insight I had during a pre-class walk one sunny Tokyo morning. As I returned to the hotel, I noticed a bird fluttering in a bush beside the road. I also noticed my mentally naming it – “Blackbird” and the fact that I was turning my consciousness towards it. In that moment I understood that our seeing the world with consciousness bestows consciousness upon the world. This fits Pullman’s idea of the presence of Dust that is so vital to all the worlds in his books.

Djwal Khul

I remember that I associated this realisation with Djwal Khul. I think because with DK we talk about “Objective seeing” - seeing things objectively, just as they are
without bringing any need, expectation or interpretation to them. It is a way of seeing which will give maximum support for all things to unfold just as they wish.

In this context it is interesting to note that since the early days of Aura-Soma DK has been connected to the gold as well as the Emerald Green. Perhaps it is for this reason …

And so

The importance of names, the gift of consciousness, the freedom to unfold truly …
My latest course, Equilibrium Journey, draws on many ways of looking as it seeks to understand the bigger story revealed through the Equilibrium sequence. Along with colour and number, names play an important role. It has caused me to wonder about the names of the bottles. No doubt they are all perfect, but I wonder if they are an outer name, and that perhaps there may also be inner names for each bottle which have yet to be revealed …

Life is a lottery

Nothing about colour this this time – just about humanity.

I have just spent 60 minutes sitting next to two very inspiring people. An elderly couple who were returning home to the USA after visiting her family back here in the UK. As we settled in to our seats the man turns to me and tells me he and his wife met in the war. !!! Yes. I did a double take. My mum was born in 1939 and she is 70. This couple had to be 20 years older than her. They were – both 89. I would never have guessed. They were sharp, alert, just the slightest shake when placing the luggage in the overhead locker. That’s it.

We talked about the war. In my whole life he is the first person I have spoken to who actually fought in the war. He was parachuted in to France, and then Holland, and then Germany. He carries shrapnel in his back to this day. They met in England. She was a war bride and travelled over to the US in 1946 in a hospital ship. We talked about war and peace, friends in foreign countries, retirement, geography and gardening.

It is hard to say why I feel touched exactly. More than anything I think it must have been the amazement I felt in the first moment. This unremarkable looking elderly couple who in a moment suddenly became so remarkable to me. Good people. People who have lived a lifetime and can still talk about it. People who have experienced the past but are still in the present.

Why do I call this post Life is a Lottery? From listening to some of their wartime stories it struck me how arbitrary life and death are in war. He lost fellow soldiers who died as they stood right next to him. Her wartime neighbours in London had fled Germany in 1937. Their house was hit by a stray bomb and the mother and son were killed in the blast.

Wrong time, wrong place. Right time, right place, how can we possibly know or choose. Life is so much bigger and fortune – good or bad is all around. This morning mine was to be sitting in 3F on flight KL1490.

I watched them being taken to their connecting flight and felt uplifted to have met something special in something so unremarkable.

My next post will be on twin souls. It seems to follow on nicely … Coming soon.

­My Japanese translator in Okayama this year, fresh to the Aura-Soma world but already a student of astrology, told me excitedly one evening that an interesting connection had just struck her. Coco Chanel was a Leo sun sign, her signature product was the perfume Chanel No. 5, and now she realised that 5 is the number of the Aura-Soma Equilibrium colour combination which signifies the Leo energy.

Her comment reminded me of another fact I had learnt years ago from my brother. Coco Chanel had been the one who had shocked the world when she disembarked from a transatlantic liner in the 1920’s. The crowd gasped, she was suntanned; brown, not white. The European ideal of sophistication was about to change. Being brown no longer meant you worked in the fields, it meant you had leisure and money to follow the sun.

And then these two items together led me to make a third connection. Coco Chanel was a Leo. Leo is the sign that is associated with the Sun. It is amazing to me that this lion - sun - woman should have been the one to lead people back out into the sunlight. Coco Chanel as a Leo sun person created a whole new cult of sun worshippers.

Vicky Wall

A word about Vicky Wall, the founder of the Aura-Soma system. She too was a Leo and, like Coco Chanel, a charismatic pioneer. Throughout her life she set precedents. Leaving home at an early age her achievements were her own. She was the first lady to be a member of the College of Surgical Chiropody. She also, remarkably, weaned herself of insulin in the managing of her diabetic condition. Remarkable in that nobody on such a high dosage of insulin had ever before managed to come off insulin entirely through diet management alone.

Her greatest achievement though, her enduring legacy, is surely the creation of the Aura-Soma Colour System. A Colour System she received in inspiration and which, since its birth in 1983, has now spread around the world. As I write today there are more than 44,000 students in more than 50 countries. Much can be found about her story and the Aura-Soma system elsewhere, the fascinating point here is the way that two Leos, Vicky Wall and Coco Chanel, each led people back into the light.

Into the Light

Coco Chanel led people into the sunlight in the 20^th century. Vicky Wall, as the founder of the Aura-Soma system, has led the way into a different kind of light for the 21^st century. It is the light of a spiritual consciousness. The Aura-Soma system awakens us to a soul awareness, a light of love and understanding, in which we may become whole and grow.

Vicky Wall and Coco Chanel, two pioneers, two ladies related to Number 5 (Vicky Wall’s most beloved colour combination was the Yellow / Red which carries the number 5 on its top), and two Leos who each invited the population at large to step into the light.

B5 Leo bottle "Sunrise, Sunset"