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This blog is a look at life that encompasses metaphysical aspects, nature and the cultural adventures of an English woman, Sara Gardner (that's me!), from London living in the Finnish forest on the edge of a lake whilst setting up a holistic healing place, known as Mairela Reiki Retreat, to live and work.

Thursday 21st August 2008

Sometimes we don't appreciate the power of our one small voice in this big old busy world of ours but of course when voices start to get added together they become loud and strong. I wanted to copy here a letter from avaaz.org showing the results of their campaigns which help to give a voice to folk around the world in need of help by providing a place for those of us who wish to make a different world to gather our voices together.

When a few drops of water come together they can sustain a small eco system and if you add some more drops then it can transform into a river which will cut its way through and shape the landscape, then with even more drops an ocean is created which supports everythng within it...so too can be the growth of our individual voices if we care enough to use them.

It doesn't take long to click on a link to add my voice to others who wish to see some positive change in the world. If we want our world to be different then we all have to make the effort for the difference to happen.

Dear friends,

In just over 18 months, the Avaaz community has grown to almost 3.4 million people from every country of the world, an average growth of over 40,000 people per week! Working in 13 languages, Avaaz members have taken nearly 8 million actions, donated over 2.5 million Euro ($3.5 million), and told over 30 million friends about Avaaz campaigns. A wonderful new source of global community and democracy is being created, and we've started to win real victories to close the gap between the world we have and the world we want -- on human rights, environmental protection, poverty, global justice and more.

Huge thanks and congratulations to everyone who has signed a petition, sent a message, donated, attended a rally, lobbied leaders, told friends, given advice or otherwise been a part of this effort. Scroll down this email to see some of the latest campaign highlights and achievements over the last 3 months, and click the link below to see a report back on all our achievements since launch and leave a comment:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/report_back_2

Campaign Update -- May-July 2008
Over the last 3 months, Avaaz members have helped to win the first global treaty banning cluster bombs, successfully campaigned for a ceasefire to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, prevented G8 summit leaders from spinning their failure to act on climate change, run a major global ad campaign in Chinese communities promoting a constructive dialogue with China over Tibet and other issues, and personally rankled the President of Sudan (indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court) with a campaign to help bring him to trial.

Below is a quick summary of campaigning developments on Israel and Palestine, the food crisis, Zimbabwe, climate change, China, Tibet, and the Olympics, Darfur, cluster bombs, and more. On all of these issues, much more remains to be done -- but we have all contributed in important ways. What we've done so far is just the beginning.

China, Tibet, and the Olympics
More than 175,000 Avaaz members have joined a global handshake chain -- launched by the Dalai Lama, carried through London by a 2000-person chain of Avaaz members to the Chinese Embassy, and then racing around the world online. A positive symbol of constructive dialogue, the handshake is arriving in China this week.

To amplify the handshake's message, Avaaz members have funded ads in Chinese publications from Hong Kong to California, launched a Mandarin-language Avaaz sister site in China, hired "mobile and walking billboards" in New York's and London's Chinatowns -- among a host of other tactics. You can still join the global handshake here before it lands in Beijing at this link.

Zimbabwe
More than 400,000 Avaaz members, including tens of thousands in Africa, have taken action to support democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe. This past weekend, South African trade unionists marched to a regional summit in Johannesburg with Zimbabwean refugees and civil society groups carrying a sea of red cards for Mugabe -- and holding banners representing the more than 75,000 virtual red cards sent by Avaaz members last week. Avaaz members have contacted governments around the world, urging non-recognition of Mugabe's regime; funded ad campaigns globally and throughout Southern Africa; and even flown a 280-sq-meter banner over the United Nations to press South Africa's Mbeki to push harder in his role as mediator between Mugabe and the opposition MDC. The summit is over, but our campaign for the end of the Mugabe era is not.

Israel and Palestine
215,000 Avaaz members, including citizens of both Israel and Palestine, have driven Avaaz campaigning for real peace talks, a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, and an end to the blockade of Gaza. A major print-and-online advertising campaign for the ceasefire reached more than 1 million Israelis this June, thanks to donations from Avaaz members. Within a week, a truce was signed -- encouraging the Avaaz community to play an ongoing role, large and small, in helping to resolve this conflict.

G8 and climate change
More than 250,000 Avaaz members urged the G8 leaders to adopt firm targets to cut climate emissions by the year 2020, signing a petition that was hand-delivered to G8 chair Japan's prime minister. During the summit negotiations, however, the US, Canada, and Japan refused 2020 targets -- so Avaaz called them out in a satirical full-page, full-color ad in the global Financial Times drawing on the Japanese "Hello Kitty" cartoon. The ad, funded with small donations from 2,000 Avaaz members, sparked coverage in media outlets from the New York Times to the Nikkei Business Daily. Coverage of reactions from Avaaz and other groups ensured that Canada's Stephen Harper and other leaders couldn't spin their way out of accountability for blocking progress on this urgent issue -- and with climate change a key issue in coming elections, hopes for change (and our campaigning plans) are growing.

Food crisis
Responding to a video appeal for international support from the Foreign Minister of Sierra Leone, 342,197 Avaaz members signed petitions urging governments to take action on the food crisis. In May, Avaaz staff hand-delivered their message to UN chief Ban Ki-Moon at an emergency food summit in Rome. Moon, in turn, used the petition with the press and global leaders to build his urgent case for action on food prices and practices. As the food crisis deepens, we are redoubling our efforts to meet this huge threat to the livelihoods of millions.

Darfur
To counter Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir's claim that the International Criminal Court is a "Western Crusade," Avaaz launched a major Arabic-media ad campaign. More than 4500 Avaaz members from 80 countries donated to run the ads throughout the region, which challenged the "crusade" charge by showing that Bush and Bashir are both strong opponents of the court. Arabic media reports that Bashir personally invited one newspaper editor who refused to run the ad to visit Sudan and accept his thanks. Our campaigning will continue until the Sudanese people can achieve a long sought peace with justice.

Other highlights
When a 120-country summit to ban cluster bombs was at risk of failure, more than 160,000 Avaaz members emailed world leaders to urge a strong treaty free of loopholes and delays. The campaign made waves with negotiators inside the conference and headlines in Finland and the International Herald Tribune -- and a firm treaty was agreed in the final days.
Avaaz members raised over $2 million in aid after the Burma cyclone, channeled directly to those at greatest need through monks and aid workers inside the country. A full report back on this campaign is available on the Avaaz website.
When the UN launched a closed process to choose its new top Human Rights official, human rights experts worried that a weak candidate would be chosen. In response, Avaaz placed a mock job advertisement in The Economist that generated a full story in the New York Times, Reuters and several other press outlets, and a strong response from UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. The ad, and a companion blog, helped bring a highly unusual level of democratic scrutiny to a top UN appointment.
It can seem as though every week brings a new crisis or international emergency. As human beings, we have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters, no matter where they are in the world. But it is inspiring to know that none of us is alone -- that there are millions around the world sharing our concerns and joining with us to take action when it matters most.

Avaaz is based on a simple idea: that global public opinion should shape global decision-making. When we take action, we may not win every battle -- but together, over time, we can change the field on which the battles are fought. We are already making a difference, and our voices are growing stronger. This is only the beginning.

With much respect and gratitude for this wonderful community of people,

Ricken, Ben, Graziela, Brett, Paul, Pascal, Veronique, Iain, Milena -- and the whole Avaaz team

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ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and Geneva.

Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages!

To contact Avaaz, please do not reply to this email. Instead, write to info@avaaz.org. You can also send postal mail to our New York office: 857 Broadway, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10003 U.S.A.

Sunday 17th August 2008

Just to let you all know that I have created some videos of the beautiful surroundings of Mairela Retreat and have posted them on the Internet for all to enjoy. The links for them all are on my new videos page. Enjoy and please pass on the link to all your friends! Sometimes just watching pictures of nature can be very relaxing.

Wednesday 13th August 2008

Anyone from London who is interested in energy healing...which encompasses so much more than just hands on healing, but doesn't want to come out to Finland should check out http://theloopenergyhealing.wordpress.com/ This is the new site for a friend of mine, Susanne, who has amazing ESP skills and the biggest heart stuffed full of love and compassion...what more do you need from a healer? J

Susanne, is also starting to go into central London businesses to offer free short healing sessions to employees in exchange for the opportunity to promote herself and energy healing in general. If you see an opportunity for Susanne to offer this to your business please drop her an email and have a chat.

Tuesday 12th August 2008

Whilst out walking with my daughter this morning she commented on the grooves left in the gravel forest road by the torrents of water from our recent thunderstorms. She was fascinated that they resembled lightning with the patterns that they'd left. I asked her what the two events had in common that might cause the similar patterns and she answered that they both take the easiest route. Exactly, they both follow the path of least resistance! Smart kid...takes after her mother you know J

I then commented that that is how all of life works. When we are in tune with nature we need only follow the path of least resistance and that no real effort is required but as we have grown away from our natural ways we have lost that feeling or that knowing.

My daughter commented that surely most folk did take the easiest route and I can see why she would surmise that from looking around at the world.

When we are thinking with our limited mind, when we only look as far as our immediate horizons and imagine them to be all that there is to us and the universe then it can be very easy to assume that we are 'going with the flow'. However, being in the flow inside a cardboard box isn't the same as allowing yourself to be guided and influenced by the earth, moon, stars...the universe et al.

I know that I have chosen to do nothing when faced with difficulties, not making so much effort in relationships, not striving for more education, not going for that new job....and mostly for the reason that I wasn't sure if I could do it and I would have rather done nothing than risk failing spectacularly at something.

That kind of doing the easy thing isn't really following the path of least resistance because if we could or would tune into the fear that we are feeling, the fear of failure, the fear of not being perfect (shock, horror) then we would very easily become aware that there is in fact a huge resistance going on inside of us. The fear of failure has seized up everything and we are sat on our life path like a bunny stunned in the headlights...and that is not going with the flow, that is not following the path of least resistance.

It is quite easy to get back in to the flow....all you have to do is let go, all you do is stop making up rules and conditions and preferences for how we want each experience to pan out. There is no rule or judgement that states that you have to follow the path of least resistance....we all have free will and choice but there are those of us who realise that it takes considerable energy to wade upstream in comparison to letting go and floating downstream.

There has been a lot of talk about the so called 'credit crunch', people are tightening their belts and reviewing their spending and this is all just part of the natural flow of the universe. En mass we are being given the opportunity to reassess what are the important aspects of our life, the areas of our lives that we wish to pour our energies into. After all money is just another form of our energy that we use in our modern world.

We are all different and unique therefore we will all come to make different choices about where we put our energies. Some folk give more to charity these days because they now have an experience of how fear of lack can eat away at you and with this new felt empathy they reach out to help others less fortunate then all of us in the western world. The same fear of lack creates a huge resistance in others and they stop giving their money to charities because they are so afraid for themselves. Some folk cut back their food bill and start to buy cheap food whilst others who place a greater emphasis on health continue to feed themselves and their family with good quality organic produce.

I'm a very blessed person because I have been down the route of dis-ease and I know with the very essence of my being that the healthy balance of my entire body (the human energy field) is the basis for everything. All things are relative and with a healthy HEF (body) there is nothing more for me to consider.

There is nothing more for me to do except to be myself, however that is. Following my path of least resistance and thereby following the most natural path of being I don't inhibit myself with thoughts of how I should look, or how I should behave (that alarms some folk but be ok with your alarm or anger at such a statement from me).

Just be ok with yourself, no matter how that self is right now. It was around this time of year about one year ago that my guides sent me a message to soften my self bullying habit to help me release from the chains of trying to achieve perfection and sainthood in order to feel a worthy person.

'That's just the way I am and that is ok'

If it strikes a cord with you then please feel free to use it.

Friday 8th August 2008

An auspicious day, the 8.8.08 and I don't believe that it stopped raining for one minute! I had to feel very sorry for all those folk I knew that had been planning their weddings for this date for many years. I guess the universe was having a good clear out!

The vegetable garden looks a bit flattened now, the tent resembles a swimming pool and the hay will take a fair amount of drying from now on but at least the water reservoirs are filled up.

The figure 8 resembles the spiral of universal energy, the continuous loop of our existence with no beginning and no ending. We are energetic beings, so much more than just our flesh and blood, we were never born and we never die. Sure we change form but our essence remains, a unique blend of energies that we recognise as who we are if we take the time to 'see' it.

Everything changes form, there are cycles within cycles, life and death cycle, day and night, cosmic cycles, the seasons, weather patterns and moon cycles to name just a few. In fact the only consistent that we have is change!

That is why it is unhealthy to have a stagnant life although I recognise that we can easily get scared and wish for a quiet life out of fear. Sometimes folk get confused and equate spiritual peace with emptying their lives of everything that causes ripples on their otherwise serene exterior. I've been a long way down that route in my life and it creates the greatest stress and tension right the way from the physical muscle holding and tension that eventually took me towards fibromyalgia right up to the distortion of my celestial energy being used as an escape route from this seemingly cruel and often illogical world. (I could escape into a fantasy world via my third eye at will)

Trying to avoid life so that we remain serene and peaceful is the spiritual equivalent to valium, the old fashioned saying of 'being in the flow' really is a bigger truth. I live my life in the flow these days, I feel what comes through me and allow myself to experience it fully whether the energy flowing through me is sadness or anger or depression or joy. I realise after all these years that sad stuff happens and it is ok to be sad, I feel strong enough in myself to know that being sad, no matter how powerful the feelings are, will never cause me to die or melt into a puddle of insane gloop as has been my fear.

I even know now that I can allow myself to get depressed sometimes with the way of the world because I am larger and lighter than that in reality and if I don't limit myself in any way (by deciding how I SHOULD be feeling) then the feeling will pass through me as a wave of energy, maybe lasting a day, maybe a month, it doesn't matter because I know it is a wave and I know that it will pass and I know that I will be enriched by the experience of having allowed myself to experience it. My capacity as a healer is most definitely enriched by having a large breadth of experience.

I would rather die a thousand mini deaths each day, feeling every particle of sadness or anger or whatever, than become a deadened zombie pretending and faking through my life . I've been far enough down that route in my life to know what I choose to do now and why.....that is the joy of experience.....and that is the joy and perfection of the full cycle, because I have experienced the experience of the deadened zombie trying to be that which I thought that others thought that I should be, I know experientially which I choose now because I know experientially where it took me......and it wasn't to happiness or peace!

Without that experience I wouldn't know....I may be able to surmise but that's just an intellectual exercise resulting in changes on the mental level only, full body experiences bring full body knowing which is etched into my cellular memory.

You see it doesn't matter at which point you are on the spiral. Like me 20 years ago you may be heading down the deadened stage, trying to contain all the thoughts and emotions that have been blocked and hidden in the desperate attempts to be a perfect something, or maybe you are like me 10 years ago when your body can no longer contain all the festering toxicity and full blown dis-ease is eating you up. Ultimately the truth of what we are doing can no longer be ignored and we realise that we have been destroying ourselves when we thought that we were in fact making ourselves into this wonderful person!

Truth be told we never stopped being that wonderful being of light, it just kinda got buried under all the crap we mistakenly accumulated in our quest for perfection and happiness, so the next part of that particular cycle is throwing off the useless junk and keeping only that which serves us in being who we want to be.

Remember that you can always choose to be a pain filled miserable person too...there is no judgement in any of it. There are no 'good' or 'bad' places to be on a spiral, there are directions...one requires lots of effort and creates holdings and tension...and the other goes with the flow and therefore requires nothing more than just letting go.

Ah, the simple truth of letting go....it is always so simple and never so easy!

Namaste

Tuesday 5th August 2008

A lot of folk don't realise that when they are in times of stress and trouble that they can call on the help of the angels...of course there are folk who think that there are no such thing as angels but that doesn't matter because the angels are celestial beings don't have any ego and therefore are not reliant on folk believing in them. Angels will help you no matter who or what you are, all you have to do is ask and then be open to their assistance.

It's all too easy for us to decide exactly how we want the help to arrive and by doing so we close ourselves off to the angelic assistance that comes our way. Many times when I have felt that I would be overwhelmed by so much in my life and I have remembered to ask the angels for help, rather than coming and sorting out all my problems or making the hours longer for me to fit all my 'important' stuff into they lift me up above it all back into my sacred space of peace and the problems just fall away.

When we get caught up in the manic headless chicken dance of 'there isn't enough time' or 'I must do more' we are totally unable to just stop and be peaceful because we feel as if our very life depends on getting all our 'important' things done. It can take the enormous love and strength of the angelic realm to lift us out from this web of stress that we have spun ourselves into...it also requires some recognition on our part of the unhealthy position that we have gotten ourselves into....otherwise how would we even know to ask for help!

We always have a choice about what we do and that is why we must ask for the help of the angels, they won't force their will onto us....and in fact they don't have any will because in the angelic realm or when we look with our angelic eyes we see through all the rubbish straight through to the perfection....there is nothing to fix. That is how the angels work, they don't fix stuff because it doesn't really need fixing, they just lift us up above the clouds so that we can see the bigger picture and we are back into the light again.

So the next time you get yourself into a jam and feel overwhelmed by it all but don't feel that you can ask for help or don't even know where to begin to ask for help, just ask the angels. You don't need to ask them out loud, you don't need to believe in the heavenly host, you don't need to know how they appear to you, all you need to do is sit quietly so that you will notice them. Because they can see the bigger picture they know more of what is best for you, they can see further than us and they will not take you anywhere that you cannot cope with.

On those days when life seems to have handed you too much to deal with, send it up into the hands of the angels and feel the weight that is lifted from you.

Trust the angels for they love you all ways.

Monday 4th August 2008

It's been a while since I wrote on here, mostly I've been off enjoying myself or working through some of the work that needs doing around the place. I finally got around to replacing my boat pier as the previous temporary one had sunk below the water level at the lake end! The project didn't go quite as planned....now there's a surprise! but I do now have a drier version for getting into and out of the boat. After spending a few weeks launching from the shore I appreciate how much easier it is now. I even slung together a smaller version to go over the other side of the lake to make it easier to get in and out when I'm over there to visit the Linnavuori or picking berries.

Talking of berries, the raspberries are ripening up and taste delicious so my morning walks are taking a long time as I stop to pick and eat them all as I go. The lingonberries won't be ready to pick for a few weeks yet but I did find my first chanterelles this morning, yay! I'll take a trip out to my secret location later and see if I can find a few more to make some tasty chanterelle sauce with.

We took a trip down the road to watch the WRC rally on Saturday. The route had been changed this year and so we didn't go to our normal place, although the route was going past it but just in the opposite direction. We chose a viewing place where we didn't have to get up so early and trek through so much forest! Instead we sat on a specially cleared oat field quite near the stage starting point with a good view of a bend, a dip and another bend. I hadn't appreciated just how much faster this road would be compared to the 'jumps' road we normally went to, so when Loeb came round the corner and flashed past me I was dumbstruck for ages, I just couldn't conceive of the speed that they were doing especially when you consider that they are travelling on gravel roads! All of the practising that Loeb did around the forests a few weeks ago certainly paid off and he won the Finnish rally.

It was a shame to hear that there won't be a Finnish rally next year as the locations are now going to be changed each year, seems a bit of a strange decision to me considering the drivers consistently vote the Finnish leg as the best rally of them all. As the rally magazine wrote, it doesn't really encourage folk to invest in the rally either and all the long term knowledge that creates a safe sport for everyone gets lost. Still, that's progress!

Saturday 19th July 2008

Today is my name day, so happy name day to all the Saras or Saaras or Sarahs out there. The Hebrew definition of the name is princess and the Sanskrit is essence, so both are very beautiful thoughts to be holding about ourselves today.

I started my day with thinking of all the beautiful things that would come to me and being grateful for them. Sometimes when I sink into bed at night I hold my hand on my heart and think back to all the wonderful things that happened to me that day, I really feel the energy of softness, warmth and love soaking me in a bed bath of well being, just as the universe intends and I give thanks for what I have received. Some days, like today, I start the day off with the memories of things yet to come in the new dawning day, I feel into my heart and allow myself to soak in an energy of gratitude knowing that I will always be brought gifts by my angels and guides.

My morning walk brought me a gorgeous smell as yesterday evening's heavy shower had soaked the birch trees and allowed the aroma of the leaves to permeate the whole atmosphere. Whatever I imagine as the goodness coming to me, if I leave my mind open to receive anything I am always surprised by the magnitude of the gifts that I am surrounded by.

Thank you.

Thursday 17th July 2008

I sent a donation this morning to Avaaz.org This organisation is internationally promoting the plight of those without voices and increasing international awareness of various causes across the globe that would be assisted by the voice of the world standing together and insisting on their voice being heard concerning pressing issues in the world, thus creating the world in which we want to live.

So often the apathy of the masses when faced with a difficult situation across the globe is the main stumbling block inhibiting change. Sometimes we think of the UN or the International Criminal Court as being ineffective and so we sink back into our armchairs glad to be released our responsibilities towards our fellow humans...we can bring to mind all the good excuses that we would help if we could but what can we do as one person, that if the UN were more effective then that would be great etc etc.

This is exactly the same kind of reasoning that we use with our spiritual and physical welfare. We avoid taking responsibility until such time as we are faced with the awfulness of our situation and we can deny the truth of our co-creation no longer, after which, we actively embrace our responsibilities and set about changing our choices to ones that serve our purpose in creating the world we wish to live in. We can either choose to have no responsibility for our body, our life, our world and our universe, taking each event as a chance occurrence whereby we may be struck down someday or maybe not, it's just pot luck! Or we can choose to recognise how we are each responsible for our body, our life, our world and our universe and when we see that it doesn't look or feel how we would like it to then we know that we can change it because we know that we created the way it is now, mostly likely erroneously with mistaken beliefs about what we would gain from our actions.

We may not get it right the first time we try something, the UN may not be as effective as we would like in world situations, there may be world leaders from powerful nations that don't wish to recognise the ICC but those can be reasons to drive us onwards, these can be our inspiration to continue with our actions so that we grow in experience and find out what we can do when joined as one voice. When as babies we start to walk we don't ever get it right first time, we fall down, we wobble and all the parts of our body are uncoordinated until we continue focusing on what we are aiming to achieve, we keep on practicing and learning by experience until the parts of our body start to act together in balance and harmony. Then we can walk and from there we can learn to run and jump and skip.

Imagine if as babies we had all just sank back into the floor and each part of our body thought that there was no point in trying anymore because it was only one small piece......

Sunday 13th July 2008

My experiences in nature have taken on another dimension now with the arrival of the forest or wild strawberry and its beautiful sweet fruit! Wild strawberries have such a taste that you can't help but think that there must be some higher intelligence creating all of this universe just for our pleasure! There I am every morning eating the sweetest tasting fruit as I wander through the forest, it seems in that moment that life couldn't get any better.

I can see from the raspberry bushes from which I pluck the new leaf growth for my morning superfood blend that there will be plenty of wild raspberries coming soon too....another great favourite of mine but I also note with a little sadness that there will be no blueberries again this year as they have been the victim of the cold weather. Ironic that parts of the winter were too warm for snow and then parts of the spring were too cold for blueberry blooms! In general I have noticed an abundance of blooms this year but that may in part be due to my growing awareness of the abundance around me as I start to recognise individual plants and explore their culinary and medicinal uses.

I'm particularly overjoyed to discover that the weed which plaques my vegetable patch is chickweed and it is a remarkable plant, so I've now stopped fighting with it and have been gathering it to include in my morning mixture and my salads. It is extremely high in vitamin C...another irony that I tried to weed it out to make room for my lettuce when in fact it has a higher nutritional value than the lettuce! Chickweed is also high in mucilage which is why it is good for soothing mucous membranes making it invaluable for coughs, asthma and arthritis. It is also great for cooling and can be applied directly to sites of inflammation. Another little known use for it is for childhood convulsions...apparantly a few infusions of chickweed and the convulsions will disappear and may never return again. As if all that weren't enough it also provides niacin, vitamins B2, B1 & A, magnesium, iron, calcium, potassium, zinc, phosphorus, manganese, sodium, selenium, and silicon.

The whole chickweed experience provides a timely lesson for me in the treasures that we can sometimes miss in our lives when we label stuff in a certain way and have a rigid belief about what things are and how they fit into the world. We learn so much more about this world when we haven't already made our minds up about how things are.

Wednesday 9th July 2008

I watched a program last night about planet earth and how the environment is changing so rapidly these days, which is something that I have experienced first hand living here in Finland for the past 5 years. There have been so many incidents recently where I have noticed how we (humans) react to some of the changing conditions and it really gives an insight into the way that our minds work. I was reading about an experiment where bees are fitted with microchips in a bid to understand the decline in the world population, as if there is going to be a one time magical answer when to my mind all you need do is to look around at the pesticides and chemicals that we spray over our plants, the acres and acres of monoculture that rip the idea of balance to pieces and the relentless destruction of natural ecosystems without any thought as to their place in the grand scheme of things. We don't need a microchip on a bee to see the damage we are causing...or do we?

Nature and life are all about balance, it's all about cause and effect. Nature works in cycles, some big and some small and it's the same cycle that happens at the smaller level with us as individuals which is reflected in the work that I do here via holistic healing holidays. As individuals we spend many years pursuing a course of action in the mistaken belief that it will bring us a certain something (the something at this level is unique to each person but ultimately is wholeness) and it is only when we learn to step back and see a wider perspective, when we take in more of what is around us that we can begin to see what is really happening. It is when we step back that we see how we are really a part of the whole and that our actions have a further effect than we had realised...this is both a cause for concern and celebration...it all depends on what you are doing with your power. When we step back we see more clearly how our former actions could never bring us that which we desired and in fact took us further from our true self.

I am aware that at the ultimate level of the universe that what is happening on planet earth is just another natural cycle of life. When the tree falls down in the forest it doesn't weep for its death because it doesn't have that thinking mind, it is pure essence and it merely passes to another form as it rots into the soil and eventually becomes a part of the new tree that grows there. Maybe that tree will not re-emerge for another million years because someone came along and stuck a concrete house on the cleared space but there is no concept of time to a tree. If our physical bodies die on this planet we do not cease to exist, our spirit remains in a different form, so in that way we do not have anything to fear from the impending doom of the human race as it flaunts even the most basic rule of a parasite and finally leaches all the goodness from its host and kills the host, thus killing itself. Tapeworms have got that sussed but it seems that humans don't.

The reason that humans don't see or acknowledge what is happening is that we are so disconnected from nature, we live our lives as if there is nature and there are we. This is what I was talking about before, we haven't stepped back yet, we haven't widened our perspective or our awareness enough to see that we are an intricate part of the whole. My liver may go off and live as if it were separate from me but if it doesn't function naturally (in tune with the system) then it will kill me and thereby kill itself. We humans are acting as if we are not a part of a system, we are acting like a liver that takes all the blood supply for itself and grows all out of proportion to the other body parts.....and that is what we call cancer.

There are now many people on this planet who are stepping back and seeing their place as part of the whole, there are people who are changing the way that they live and work and eat and eliminate. There are people trying to protect the natural ecosystems of the world, trying to educate the ignorant and there are many folk living in harmony with their surroundings. It is not all doom and gloom, any cancer can be healed with the right nutrition, the right mind and an unpolluted environment.

When I am using the word 'right' I am talking about something that is right because it serves the purpose I have or the purpose of the system and not in the sense that there is a right way or a wrong way and there is somebody somewhere who can decide that for us.

Do we all know where our food comes from? Do we all really know what it cost to bring it to us? I'm talking about cost in terms of pollution and decimation of the worlds resources, or oppression of fellow humans. Was the price we paid for this produce really worth it?

I know how easy it is to slip into the mindset that as individuals we can't do anything to change any of this but in fact it is only as individuals that we can change this. Step back and see your place in this system and decide how you want your system to look and then start right now to act with that intention in every action that you take.

Nobody is going to tell you what choice to make but at least make sure that your actions reflect the choice that you have made and make sure that you have all the information possible to make that choice.

Remembering that your governments are there to represent your views....check to see if that is what they are really doing, after all that is what they are paid huge amounts of money for! What is your country contributing to the G8 summit? Below is a message from Avaaz.org which you may find interesting....

Dear friends,

Canada, Japan, and the USA are blocking talks at the G8 on targets to cut climate change by 2020. Join the call for action:

Our message will be delivered in a full-page Financial Times ad on Tuesday, using the Japanese "Hello Kitty" cartoon to shame Harper, Bush, and Fukuda:

The vast majority of the world's people want urgent, bold action on climate change -- but here at the G8 summit, three politicians stand in the way. Canada's Harper, Japan's Fukuda, and the United States' Bush are refusing to discuss climate targets for the year 2020.

Scientists agree that the next 12 years will make or break our response to the climate crisis. But if the facts haven't grabbed these leaders' attention, something else might: humour.

Avaaz has arranged a full-page satirical advert for Tuesday's (yesterday) global Financial Times newspaper, shaming Harper, Fukuda, and Bush for their climate irresponsibility. The paper will be delivered to the hotel rooms of every G8 delegate. Together, we can make it costly and embarrassing enough that these leaders will think twice before squandering another opportunity for climate progress.

Why this last-moment push? Our strategy is based on two important stories--Australia and Bali.[2]

At the UN climate negotiations in Bali, Harper, Fukuda, and Bush were trying to block any reference to climate targets for the year 2020 -- just as they are now at the G8. But a global uproar turned the tide. Negotiators from the global South rose, one after the next, to demand that the spoilers step aside. Citizen groups in every nation raised their voices -- including 320,000 Avaaz members in the final 72 hours. And a satirical full-page Avaaz ad in the Jakarta Post (a remake of the Titanic movie poster featuring Harper, Bush, and Fukuda) made headlines worldwide. A major Japanese paper later reported that this ad was waved at a top-level Japanese cabinet meeting -- leading to a step forward in Fukuda's climate policy.[3]

The second story, of Australia, shows what happens when humour combines with mass political power.

In Australia, former Prime Minister John Howard was as bad on climate as Harper, Fukuda, and Bush are now. Last fall, he chaired a summit global summit, APEC, where he tried to paint himself as a world leader on climate change. But Avaaz and other groups pushed back -- with stunts, marches, and a terrific parody television spot from our friends at GetUp, exposing Howard's charade and demanding real targets for climate emissions cuts. Climate change emerged as the defining issue of the election -- and when Howard lost, the first action of the new government was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Harper faces a difficult election this fall, and climate change is emerging as a key issue. In the US, the campaign to succeed Bush could hinge on climate policy. And Fukuda's political opponents are challenging him sharply on how to confront the climate crisis.

In short, Our global efforts now can send political shock waves through all three countries. It's up to us to raise a cry once again. Sign, donate, and spread the word:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/g8_2020_targets/5.php?cl=106088207

We can't always be certain of the results of our actions. But in the face of the climate crisis, it's worth trying everything we can. We make green decisions in our private lives. And when the big public decisions are made, if enough of us stand together -- this time, next time, and every time -- then, one way or another, our message will be heard. Our leaders will change ... or we'll change our leaders.

With hope and determination,

Ben, Iain, Alice, Ricken, Paul, Graziela, Pascal, Veronique, Mark, and Milena -- the Avaaz.org team

PS: The climate change ad is one of four full-page ads we're running in the global Financial Times this week, all designed to multiply the impact of member-driven Avaaz campaigns. Look for them in the paper, or find them at http://www.avaaz.org/ads.

PPS: Here are the sources for this alert.

[1] Global and Mail: "Climate-change goals fall short at G8"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080707.G807/TPStory/

and AFP: "Climate deadlock seen at G8 despite 'constructive' Bush."
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jP0zW0kW5h1m3Yl7omV7sk34R6hA

[2] See the ads and learn more about the Bali and Australia stories at http://www.avaaz.org/climate-victories.

[3] Fukuda announced that Japan would adopt mid-term targets for 2020. That was a major step forward -- except that Fukuda now refuses to include these targets in the G8 negotiations. Moreover, though Fukuda has promised 2020 targets, he hasn't actually set them. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/09/japan.climatechange

---------

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and Geneva.

Friday 4th July 2008

There are so many beautiful sights in nature and even though I take the same walking route most mornings I always notice something different each day...without even really looking so hard. I've noticed over the past week how the wild geraniums are coming to the end of their flowering (purple flowers in picture) and the red clover flowers are taking their place along side the wild daisy flowers. I particularly love all the different kinds of grasses which are opening up right now as they are at just the right height for running my hands through them as I walk along the path. Not only does it remind me of doing that as a child but it brings a tactile aspect to the whole sensescape of sound, sight and smell. This morning the grasses provided a fantastic light show for me as the early morning sun shone through the remaining dew drops that hung on the seed heads swaying in the breeze. Awesome! There is just so much to see if you take the time to notice it and once you get into the habit of noticing all the beauty around you it just grows.....both the habit and the beauty you see. This isn't just limited to the physical world either, the more time you spend noticing beautiful emotions and thought forms both within and without you the more they will grow too.

It seems that the baby swallows are leaving their nest today (photo right)....it has been very crowded of late (photo left was taken last Friday) and now I am privileged to watch them as I gaze out of the window. I can't help feeling a little envious of their new discoveries, as they will fly for the first time today and discover a whole new world out there. Maybe I'll join them in my own way, I can make this the day that I take off and soar leaving all my baggage behind and be free in the flow of Mother nature. Yippee!!

Wednesday 2nd July 2008

Today I finally had my last amalgam filling removed! it's taken over a year for them all to be safely done because I had so many and I wanted to make sure my body could cope with any stray mercury. I've been dosing myself with vitamin C, selenium and charcoal each time I visit the dentist and I haven't had a bad reaction. My sister also provided me with a homeopathic remedy which removes any mercury residue from the body and I shall be taking that for the next week too.

The dentist that started my treatment has since left and I had to persuade the latest one a little more to remove my last black filling. I was told that latest research shows that there is more mercury entering our systems from the fish we eat than from our amalgam fillings. Personally, as I eat local fish I don't think that is true but even if it were I would say that was more a reason to stop eating fish than for me to keep my amalgam fillings.

Funnily enough I stopped on the way home and bought some fish for my dinner. My daughter's classmate's parents run the local fishing business so I know where my fish came from and when. They come out of the same lake that provides all the drinking water for the people of Helsinki and they are always caught just the day before they are sold.

Tuesday 1st July 2008

As we've had so much rain and sunshine this past month not only have my plants (and weeds) grown well and I have a full well of spring water but it has also been perfect weather for the mosquitos. I probably shouldn't complain as we've had a good long run of summers without being bothered by them but I'm going to complain anyway because when they keep buzzing round your face it can drive you mad! At least June is over now and that is the worst month and I had escaped relatively unscathed until Sunday night....

I had some friends visiting for a birthday and they wanted to celebrate by cooking a fish outside on the fire...and they invited me to dinner. Now normally I wouldn't sit outside in the evening when the mossies are so bad but it was her birthday and I had accepted the dinner invite....

So, for the occasion we cracked open some wine and damson gin...I don't normally drink so I don't have much in stock! I do remember thinking how great it was that as the evening wore on into the still bright night that the flying and biting brigade eased off a bit...and it wasn't until the next day that I realised they hadn't actually gone anywhere, it was just me getting slowly anaesthetised by the alcohol and ceasing to notice them. My legs had taken a direct hit and were a joyous jumble of lumps and bumps and itchy bits!

It kinda put me in mind of how we slowly dampen our consciousness as we go through life or how we slowly poison our physical body with toxins and as each new layer goes on we don't really notice it because of all the previous layers that clouded our awareness....but just as with my mosquito bites just because I couldn't feel them happening didn't change the fact that they were!

When I had my chemotherapy all those years ago I was really ill from it, as are most people but I was excessively ill. I noticed that folk who drank lots of alcohol or coffee or who smoked didn't suffer so badly as me and it was explained to me that because my body was healthier I could feel the poison (chemo) more than the others who drank a lot. It seemed unfair to me at first that I had a healthier diet and yet suffered more but over the years I've come to see that I didn't really suffer any more than anyone having the same dosage of chemo but that I was more in tune with my body and therefore I felt it more.

A double edged sword maybe but I know which way I would prefer to be. My clearer body awareness brings me so much more insight into what is really happening within me and therefore more awareness of that which is happening without of me. This way I can more easily see that which serves me in my life and that which doesn't.

This way I can be more authentic, more real. And that's important for me because I've spent many years of my life trying so hard to be something, trying to be a perfect saint in fact, and all for the limited reasoning that I needed to do that in order to be loved and yet.....truth be told all my tension and worry trying to be so perfect took me further away from the truth of me. But in divine perfection the frustration of seeing that my sainthood never brought me peace I finally gave it all up and thus found my peace. It really is through the valley of the shadow of death that you will find heaven.

So take note next time you find yourself armed with a list of all the things that you 'should' or 'shouldn't be...what are you trying to prove and why?

And take note next time you're drinking outside and the mosquitos seem to have gone away....

Tuesday 24th June 2008

The stormy weather has continued here for a few days now, we've seen hail storms and non stop thunderstorms interspersed by beautiful sunshine which I suppose makes ideal growing conditions for my plants.....although not the hail stones bit!

I stayed up last Friday night after building myself a large Midsummer bonfire because I felt drawn to lighting the fire at the exact Solstice time of 1.59am. I had just missed a heavy rainshower but it was still the darkest Midsummer night I've ever experienced in Finland! Still, that made my big fire look and feel more special!

I knew in my mind that I wanted to mark the time of maximum light on my particular place on the planet as a celebration of me being in my light. Recently with so much of my old ways falling away I have really felt that I am entering a new phase of my life (of course every new moment is a new phase but this has been quite a large shift) and I marked the occasion by burning some of my old clothes and possessions. Not for any other reason than I no longer used them as they didn't fit (some of them literally!) with who I am now. Fire, is such a great transformer of energy. My old possessions are now reduced to ash which will eventually be dug into the garden and become part of the new growth in the future.

Much the same with old energies that we let go of, they can then be transformed into new forms of energy that serve us in our new alignment and purpose. As the old falls away it provides the fertiliser for our new growth.

Sometimes we feel quite uncomfortable or downright terrified when our old structures and way of living start to fall away or disappear, it can make us feel very exposed and naked without our familiar padding and coverings. The new doesn't arrive before the old has left because as we know it is the decaying old matter that provides the building blocks for the new so there is always a time between shifts of energy. It is like a waiting time of neither one thing or another when we can feel disorientated and confused. I always tell my guests that being confused is great, it shows that all your old structures are falling down and nothing makes sense anymore but if you can trust and stay open, knowing that you are always held in love (which you are whether you know it or not) then the new energy will emerge and grow.

New growth is implicit, it will never not come....I may plant seeds in the earth and be staring at bare ground for weeks wondering if everything is ok, yet really I can go off and enjoy myself leaving the seeds to grow because they always will. My fussing and stressing over them doesn't serve either of us! I could spend time cutting and shaping the new growth so that it fits in with some ideal of what it 'should look like' but if you take a look around at nature there isn't anything there that requires to be trimmed and pruned by us in order that it looks more beautiful. What grows in nature is perfectly adapted to its environment otherwise it wouldn't be there in the first place!

We may not have recognised this new growth, we may not have a label to give it yet but there have been many times in our lives that we have been through this scenario in many different shapes and forms. Maybe you remember the first time in your life you looked at written words (I do!) or gave birth or watched a birth or felt your heart was broken or could hold a friend who was in great pain, if you had stopped to think about these events too much you'd have probable frightened yourself and talked yourself out of them but when we just allow them to unfold naturally there is really nothing to fear and a great new depth to gain.

This new energy will be in a form that serves us best right here and now, just trust and let it be what it will be rather than trying to shape it through thoughts of worry and panic. There is nothing to panic about as everything is in divine order. Look out the window at all the new growth around you and notice how everything is different and notice the perfection in it all.

Friday 20th June 2008

The whole garden and forest seem to be jam packed at the moment with birds as many of the nestlings have emerged into the big wide world. It's wonderful to witness so many baby birds in one place and I spend many peaceful and contented hours just watching them and listening to the voices. In fact the more time that I spend listening to the different calls and sounds the better able I am to distinguish between their meaning...as far as I can being a human! It's always fascinated me how we always think of bird song as just the joyful singing of our avian friends when in fact a lot of the time their call is for somewhat cruder purposes and if we spoke their language it would lose a lot of its romance!

For example in the early spring there is a cacophony of sound as the various males of the various species declare their goods to the females and chase off rivals from their territory, so in fact what we are listening to is "Hello darling, check this out" or "Hey gorgeous, do you wanna come and mate with me?" mixed with "eff off Mr, I was here first".

In fact as I look out of the window now there is a terrible airborne fight going on as a pair of house martins have only just arrived and started to make a new nest on the sauna much to the dismay of the swallow pair nesting there already. I'd quite like it if the house martins stayed as I've never had them nest here before but it does seem as if the swallows are making their point quite strongly!

Quite often the world of the birds is harsher than we would normally appreciate, about 10 days ago the woodpecker drilled through the front of the blue tit box that didn't have a metal protection on it and took the baby birds to give it's own young some protein.

A nicer story came yesterday when I was following the sound of nestlings around my garden and I discovered two birds caught inside my old fishing cage, a male and female of what I identified later as Reed Buntings....I've never seen them before, so it's lovely to realise that they are nesting somewhere in the garden and even better to know that by following my instinct and following the trail of hungry chick voices I was able to rescue the pair before tragedy struck. I didn't continue with looking for the nest as I figured that the family had suffered enough trauma already!

From what I could see Mrs Reed Bunting had been hopping along gathering insects from the ground as she does and had followed one into the cage, then got distressed when she couldn't get out, her face was a little bald from knocking against the wire. So Mr Reed Bunting had come to her aid following her distress calls but had also got himself stuck in the cage, meanwhile the babies being very hungry kept calling for food. As a mother I can imagine how horrific that would have been...but luckily for them some giant came along and lifted them out! Well anyway, that's my human version of the story!

Friday 13th June 2008

The wet weather seems to have abated now and the sun is shining once more but in the past week we've had some cracking thunderstorms here, which are amplified by the rocky surroundings. It means that we have to unplug everything electrical as it's a local hazard having stuff blown up but the advantages are an amazing show from Mother Nature. Although we often believe that we would like constant sunshine we'd end up living in a desert if we did so it's nice now and again to remind ourselves of how grateful we are for the rain. It saves me watering the garden with my watering can and as you can see from the picture the combination of sun and rain produces the most amazing spectacles such as this double rainbow arching over the old fort hill opposite here. If I'd had a wide angle lens I'd have managed to get both ends into the picture...but I don't!

Monday 9th June 2008

It's been a while since I wrote here as I've been very busy with my garden, trying to keep on top of the natural rampant growth that comes at this time of year so that it doesn't swamp the seeds that I've planted, plus despite the sweltering daytime temperatures there is always a risk of an overnight frost so there has been much to-ing and fro-ing of pots and trays still. The current warm spell with temperatures of 27 degrees ended last night with a huge thunderstorm which was still going this morning, so at least for today I don't have to water my plants!

The organic growth of both myself and my garden have continued, I'm taking the time to keep aware of what is growing in the garden and making room for the things that I want to grow there (it's called weeding!). Just like in life you can't have a 50 week unhealthy lifestyle and expect it to all be sorted by a 2 week holiday where you head off to a spa or take a course or go on a detox, you can't expect to just leave the garden to itself and then come back weeks later to pull out the weeds and expect all your produce to be at its best underneath the layers!

That's why I always teach methods and skills for people to take home with them, that they can incorporate into their daily lives. It's nice to have somebody around that you can call if you need help but the best results come from incorporating health and balance into everything that we do in our lives 24/7.

Another thing that I've noticed is the effect of toxins on me, not just physically but mentally and emotionally too. Of course this is something that I am aware of as everything is linked through all levels of our energy field, a blockage on the physical has a corresponding blockage on the emotional and mental levels, therefore a physical toxin affects the other levels too but I hadn't been prepared for the magnitude of this effect.

I think that when you have spent a long time cleansing of course your body is much clearer and healthier and that means that you see the effects of toxins much more readily, they are not affecting you more than others it's just that the effects are clearer to see and feel. Just the same as when we have blocked out our unwanted thoughts and feelings (the ones that don't make us feel very good) we don't lose them, they are merely stuffed out of sight and mind, if we choose not to notice the effects of toxins on our body they are still there happening but we just don't notice them. I should know, I thought I was really healthy 8 years ago and it turns out I was riddled with cancer!

The start of a warm Finnish summer goes hand in hand with the return of the mosquito and they can be a bother when you are gardening all day. I'd cleared out an old cupboard a while ago and found lots of old creams and potions to keep mossies off and so I used them despite knowing that they weren't natural deterrents but chemical based. In laziness I figured that it wouldn't hurt to just spray them onto my skin, that it was better than getting bitten and yet I was also aware that I knew better than that.

After using them for a while I noticed how toxic I was feeling, not only had my physical vitality fallen off a little but my emotional and mental state had gone toxic too....I was totally in tune with my hate! As with all things this was in divine perfection, of course it was great to bring all that hate into my awareness because the effects of it within me would be none the less tangible if they remained unconscious and I guess that would also explain why I have been so quiet lately as I've been holding all that hate and anger. When I say holding it I don't mean stopping it in any way but more like a mother would hold a child, I'm allowing it to be there without acting on it, noticing what it does and why it does it, not judging it in any way and hopefully not feeding it in any way.

I always say that the difference with consciously working with your emotions as opposed to just letting them run unchecked or just stuffing them back down again can be imperceptible to the eye or the mind of another because it is your intention and your inner processes which are different to previous.

When I feel the hate come up and get directed at somebody around me I don't allow it to come out, not because I want to stuff it away again and pretend it doesn't exist and that I'm a saint but because I realise that this person is not who I am really angry at or hateful towards. Even when I am around the person who was the original cause of my hate ( it can take a while to find the root cause) I realise that my hate came from the limited erroneous beliefs of a young child and I choose not to act on them. However, choosing not to act on them doesn't mean that I stop them from coming. It's a fine balancing act but it only needs awareness to pull it off.

When the emotions run strongly I take myself to a quiet space and ask for help from the angels and my guides and mostly I write. My writing takes me to the places that evoke the relevant memories and slowly as the picture unfolds in my mind's eye I relive the situation even as I sit there writing about it but this time it is different, I'm not a small child lost in the hopelessness of the overwhelming emotions that I am feeling, I don't have to shut them off to preserve my sanity and well being, this time I am strong enough to let myself feel that huge anger and hate and yet not be consumed by it. Thus the hate is released and thereby my body feels lighter and more balanced.

I think that by actively engaging my mind in an activity such as the mechanics of writing I free myself from it's hold on me. I don't mean that my mind is holding me in any nasty way but rather it is saving me from feeling all those overwhelming emotions that threatened to reduce me to cosmic gloop all those years ago and my limited ego mind knows of no new reason why it would be different now.....but another part of me does, my higher self has a bigger view of life and the universe and therefore it knows more about how everything works in divine perfection and it knows that I cannot be hurt.

With allowing myself to fully witness my hate, and allowing myself to fully experience experientially my hate I came to a place of understanding, then from that place of complete understanding of why and where it had grown I am compassionate with myself and then from compassion comes love and when love is fully present there is no place for hate and it simply melts away. Beautiful.

Saturday 31st May 2008

Today was the last day of school in Finland and now the long weeks of summer lie ahead of us. Around Kuhmoinen, which is a very popular summer place many of the summer attractions will open now or at least move onto summer opening times.....and I usually find there are a few more exotic dishes available in the supermarket to cater for our city visitors! I have started to get into the habit of doing a little gardening when I return from my morning walk before I make my superfood breakfast and this morning was no exception. Gardening is a growing experience in more ways than one, of course you grow plants but you grow your knowledge too and it really struck me this morning just how much of a parallel for life it is. I've never really had a proper garden as such with vegetable bits and flower beds and a surrounding forest just waiting to invade it so I am on a very steep learning curve here but the thing is that it's fun and if you screw up then you get to try again...although sometimes you have to wait another year for the opportunity! A lot of my attitudes have changed with gardening and a lot of my gardening has changed with my attitudes! Labelling some plants as 'wrong' and so trying to eliminate them at all costs is madness and very stressful, years ago I spent hours making a bigger lawn and it was exhausting to maintain but now I have a huge semi wild part of the garden that will be a mass of yellow in the next few weeks as the buttercups come into bloom. They are so much prettier than grass and the butterflies fly around like it's a busy airport!

Check out the blue summer sky!

Then there was the saintly stage that a lot of us go through under the guise of 'spirituality', we start to get all caught up in being 'good' and we mustn't kill this plant or splat that mosquito because that would be 'wrong' and so we end up with a body covered in bites and a garden full of weeds that totally choke any vegetables we are trying to cultivate. Hmmm, not quite the spiritual paradise I had in mind!

Then finally I arrived at the knowing or remembering that there is no 'right' or 'wrong' in life, there is just energy in a form that either suits our own purpose or it doesn't. The semi wild parts of my garden provide me with herbal medicines as well as attracting butterflies and insects which keep the whole garden in a natural balance as well as providing food for my bird friends and therefore all my nesting boxes are filled with families which give me so much delight watching them grow. The cultivated areas give me a place to be artistic and grow some totally organic fresh produce, there's nothing like stepping out the door and picking your own fresh vegetables, especially when they have been grown with such love.....I have sticks around the garden with little flags on them with the word love!

It was great to see an article in the local rag about someone who had their field blessed before they planted it, my cousins laughed at me when I planted my potatoes by hand so that I infused each one with reiki energy so it's good to see that the idea is being more widely accepted.

I have stopped viewing gardening (and life) as a race to attain a certain status or goal and I am living in the moment, pottering through my garden and keeping it clear and open from weeds (pulling out weeds without fear of damnation because I killed a plant!) because my intention and my purpose in that space is to grow my own plantswith love as well as to allow myself to grow in total love. These are my own choices. I will find over the next few months how my choices fit into my idea of picking fresh produce from the garden....maybe I will just be faced with lots of dead plants because they don't suit this climate or soil conditions. I don't know yet and that's ok with me because I don't need to know that, all I know is that I will have lots of new experiences that become an integral part of my understanding and thereby my understanding grows. As my understanding grows, so too do I.....and that is what life is all about.

Monday 26th May 2008

A walk through the forest this morning felt even better than usual after a day out in the city yesterday, hearing the gentle breeze in the trees and seeing new bright green tips to the spruce trees around me as if they had been decorated by forest folk was just the tonic for me. Yesterday I took my daughter and her friends to Linnamäki in Helsinki. It's an amusement park with a really old wooden roller coaster, amongst other non-wooden attractions but it's not my thing so I dropped them off and went off to explore the sights and sounds of Ikea...because I've never been there before. I wasn't all that enthralled so I spent most of the day sat in the sun reading, napping and eating my way through the huge bowl of salad that I'd especially brought with me! After 6 hours of bliss I headed back to the centre to find the girls, grab an ice cream and watch the action for a while before heading home.

Funnily enough I had already been thinking about how a day in the city with its stark contrast to forest life makes me really appreciate where I live, even before I got back to my car and found the window had been smashed in. As a Londoner, sadly, I would know not to leave a rucksack on the front seat of my car but I have forgotten all about such things living in a place where I quite often leave the keys in the ignition. I think the window breaker and I are equally disappointed about what happened as the rucksack contained my empty salad bowl, empty yoghourt pot, spoon, fork, book and blanket....and there was quite a bit of blood in and around the car too. I swept the glass out...which amusingly enough made a passing dog owner tut at me (so I swept it all into a neat pile!) and then I covered the seats with rubber mats to protect the children, a nice guy from the park came and made me a window out of plastic and tape and off we went back home to the place where you don't really need to lock your car. Me and four children with our innocence a little bruised.

It is sad to think that there are folk who are so caught up in some perceived desperate need that they do things like that, I haven't felt angry yet.....that'll probably happen when I have to pay for the new glass!! It was a stark lesson/reminder for me about how we all live in the same physical world and yet we all live in totally different worlds, some more similar than others and all seeming equally real because we make them real by putting all of our focus on them.

I'm grateful to the park staff for their help, I'm grateful to who or whatever scared the window breaker away without noticing my camera and video camera in the unlocked boot, my MP3 player in the door pocket and my sunglasses on the dash, I'm grateful to my kind neighbour who came over whilst I was out and chopped up a pile of tough logs that I couldn't manage. I'm grateful for a lot of things in my life and that is what I'm focusing on today, with a little time later to send some healing to my window breaker, I hope that they feel better soon, in all ways.

Wednesday 21st May 2008

As I returned home from my morning stroll through the back garden, which is forest, I was surrounded by birdsong and not for the first time in my life I felt as if I lived inside one of those relaxation CDs! It really is glorious to be walking through the trees totally immersed in sound, as well as the smaller birds serenading around me there was the cuckoo some distance away cuckooing away like crazy and somewhere on my lake I could hear two seagulls arguing about something and then I heard a familiar sound that I haven't heard for a while...the swifts had returned for the summer with their unmistakable screeching and mid-air aerobatics. Now I know that summer is complete because the swift is the last bird to return and the first bird to leave. Yesterday I had seen the spotted flycatcher with her signature flight and bright eyes down by my sauna, she always nests there and I have the pleasure of watching her babies grow up and then fly away each year.

I've seen lots of baby mice around too, as there is a nest inside my front wall! I realise now the mistake I made and I shall rectify the structural situation but I'll wait for the babies to grow up and leave the nest as I couldn't bear to hurt them....in some ways I'm still not cut out for this country living! I saw a mouse by my front wheel when I came out of the supermarket last week and I thought it was very unusual for it to be around there but I just hoped it didn't get under my wheels and I drove off to visit friends. Whilst sat outside with my friend we noticed a little mouse around the wheels of my car....how about that for a coincidence! On closer inspection we discovered that it wasn't a coincidence, I had a mouse nest inside my engine compartment and there were two baby mice running around in there! They must have been in there when I drove all the way to Helsinki and back awhile ago!! It's a shame to think that one of them survived all that and then my friend's cat ate it as soon as it emerged...I guess that's life!

Monday 19th May 2008

The cold, sunny weather has continued for a while now but the snow showers seem to have turned into rain ones for now so the continual prancing back and forth from the garden with my vulnerable seedlings has ceased for a while. It got so ridiculous by the end of last week that I gathered all my pots under my front porch roof making the area around my front door look like some vegetation refugee camp. I've still lost a lot of seedlings, including all my squash bar one! Some of the growth in the forest has been hit too in certain places. The new fern fronds slowly unwinding are all limp and brown now but I suppose that the fern will just grow new ones. The blueberry bushes which were abundant with blooms (see right) don't look quite so good anymore and I'm not experienced enough to know if this has wiped out the blueberry crop again this year as it did about 2 years ago. Time will tell but I hope that shadier areas were less affected.

I tried a whole new experience last week....kind of an extreme eating thing! I discovered some mushrooms known as false morels or turban fungus (gyromitra esculenta) which are known here as korvasieni (ear mushroom). They look like a dark brown brain to me rather than an ear but anyway, they are ugly looking and extremely poisonous and the Finns love to eat them...so when in Rome....

First of all I read all about them on Wiki and I started to feel worried about them for the first time...an interesting experience to feel the fear rising! Undeterred by this, I know how the Finns like their health and safety and you are allowed to sell the mushrooms here with strict cooking instructions and so I went ahead......apparently I won't die until about day 7 so I don't know if it was a success yet!

I chopped them up and a fantastic aroma wafted around my nasal sensors, now that would explain why folk went to all this effort! I boiled them for 5 minutes, changed the water, rinsed them, boiled them for another 5 minutes...now unfortunately at this point I got side-tracked into some writing I was doing and the second boil ended when all the water had evaporated and I started to smell burning, whoops! So mine have been boiled twice and barbecued a little too so I'm quite so sure about how great they may normally taste. I then cooked them with butter and onion and they tasted superb. Then I sat and waited to see if I would keel over. I felt a slight tightness around my head a while later....although that has happened to me previously when my reiki energy was growing stronger and I've had some wicked block buster type dreams since then too....but who knows if they are connected.

I've now been given some more by a friend and I've decided to wait until day 7 before trying more....although that isn't logical because if I'm a goner I may as well eat the rest and if they are OK then I don't need to wait....but I'm drying these other ones as that is an alternative way to remove the toxins...and before anyone panics about that I will still be boiling them twice etc.

Thursday 15th May 2008

I've received a great gardening tips book and found out that it is actually only a man's urine that is any good on the compost for rotting it all down and to think of all those wasted years I've spent perched up there.....

Tuesday 13th May 2008

I saw a new bird in my garden today, a Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus). I'd never seen one before and it took a while to identify it because it acts so much like a flycatcher I almost convinced myself I'd found a new species, maybe some bird that had got blown off course by all the strong winds blowing round the world at the moment!! The Redstart is great, it swishes its tail all the time and makes a great noise which I've finally identified as the high pitched whistling sound hweet that always makes me look up from my gardening because I think someone has just whistled to grab my attention! It looked as if it had taken one of my nesting boxes which is really exciting. The pied flycatcher has definitely moved into another of my boxes and I put up another one in a slightly less exposed place to give it more choice. The new bird box came courtesy of my daughter who made it at school in her woodwork class. The girl's a genius.

As if the day wasn't exciting enough with the Redstart, I got my new road today too! Huge lorries arrived with tonnes of sandy gravel and the lovely local tractor man smoothed it all out for me, so now I can drive up my road without dodging rocks and negotiating huge ruts. We've also put in some pipework to deal with the spring time thaw problem which created the quagmire this year. I've included some recent photographs from around Mairela showing the new emergence of the gorgeous green leaves of the Goddess of the Forest, the Birch tree. The view from my window is changing daily, the window picture below was taken on Friday and the forest picture opposite was taken this morning. You can see how the lakeside birch trees have produced patches of bright green amongst the dark fir trees.

This spring came later than last year, although more in line with the usual timings, but it has come so quickly. Four weeks ago I was stood on the lake surveying snow and ice all around me and now I'm surrounded by greenery. The aspen trees have yet to come into leaf although I have seen a few starting to on my travels. It's a lot colder at the moment though, in fact we had a very brief snow shower this evening!! That certainly got me moving to cover all my new plants, gardening is so stressful this time of year in Finland!

I would like to mention that if anyone would like an electronic copy of any of my photographs then please just ask, they make wonderful wallpaper for your computer and if I supply you with the original then you get all of the pixels and not the reduced version shown here!

Sunday 11th May 2008

Today is Mothers Day and I took a trip over to my favourite meditation spot on top of Linnavuori (Castle Hill) and sat to send some love to Mother Earth and Mother Nature for I certainly have a lot to be grateful for. In ancient times we would often make sacrifices and offerings to the Gods, maybe a slight distortion of our true essence of gratitude, to give thanks for what we had by giving a little back. By making some kind of ceremony or ritual over our abundance, be it the harvest or a hunt, we put ourselves automatically and naturally into a place of gratitude, we remembered the source of our abundance and we expressed our appreciation to her. By remembering to do it we stayed connected and aware of the great cycle of nature of which we are an integral part, we understood our role within that cycle and we knew how to stay in tune and in balance with it.

Over the years us humans have become more and more detached from our natural source, we flick switches and we have heat and power, we turn a tap and we have water. We don't stop to think about where it comes from or even where it is going. Here at Mairela Retreat I spend time collecting my firewood from the forest, I know the source of my heating, I know how many trees it takes and I know how long they need to grow and how much space they need...in other words I can see how sustainable my heating is because it is right there in front of me.

I can watch the levels of my drinking water rise and fall with the passing seasons and weather patterns. The weather has a direct connection with my drinking water supply, I can see the effects of increased traffic along my road on the roadside plants and the water in my lake which ends by the road. I see which trees and plants can produce fruit after late frosts or dry summers, I see new species come to live after milder winters and I notice old friends who don't return. If I move some trees I see what comes to replace them and if I drain some swamp I notice who loses their home.

I have to take responsibility for the effects of me in the great cycle and yet even with my close proximity to nature I can't know all of those effects of my actions. The only way to keep within the flow of nature is to stay in tune with it and to flow with it, to adapt and change in line with my surroundings whether on a local scale or a universal scale. When I am living in the flow and with the flow, then instinctively I will know what to do.

Just trust yourself. Then you will know what to do. Goethe.

This kind of knowing can't be learned, it is the knowing that comes from quiet listening, noticing and conscious awareness. It is one of the unseen gifts that guests to Mairela Retreat are given by Mother Earth when they are here. Not just because you collect your water from the well or use a chemical free composting toilet, although they certainly help you to start connecting again but the sheer weight and abundance of nature permeates you, surrounds you and imbibes you. I can't explain it very well with words because it is so beyond them but when I sit up on my rock and close my eyes I can feel myself being held by Mother Earth and I can feel her vibration running through me, I am held in pure love and I am so safe, I know that nothing could ever hurt me.

Friday 9th May 2008

Summer must officially have arrived as my swallow is back and sorting its nest out on the sauna already. I think that only leaves the spotted flycatcher and the swifts to arrive back and complete the set. Meanwhile continuing with my cooking experiences I made another vat of nettle soup last night which I have to say is much better than all previous ones as I enhanced the recipe somewhat. I'm really getting into this natural food thing, my house is covered with pots of new seedlings growing for the garden....waiting for the last frost threat to go, which could be the end of this month so I spend a lot of time bringing them in at night and putting them out during the day. There are sheets of newspaper on every other available surface with various herbal remedies drying out to be saved for future months. Whilst out on my forage yesterday I collected lots of fresh birch leaves, some are made into tea, some will be kept for making a great hair tonic for shiny hair and heaps of coltsfoot flowers which are a fantastic expectorant. In my previous existence this kind of 'clutter' would have driven me insane but it feels great to be surrounded by such life enhancing produce.

My previous existence as I call it.....life before I reaped the gift of my cancer was all about trying to hard to be some kind of idealised perfect person that I had concocted in my head....I call her Saint Sara, she's still very active but at least I recognise her now and know that she isn't real.....I would like to share a letter that I recently sent about Saint Sara and the cause and effect of her in my life, I hope that it may be of help to someone.

Dear ++++, ....I'm not telling you something that you have to do or even have to agree with, it's just me sharing something with someone I love very much.

I used to always be so very frustrated with my back, it was always so stiff, it 'went' so easily and it was unpredictable with when it was going to 'go' and I felt like a real bloody cripple and that annoyed me...my stupid back was stopping me from doing what I wanted with my life, it was making me look like a weak person and made me like some kind of invalid and quite frankly I hated it sometimes and wished it would just f*** off and leave me alone. It was ruining my life.

Then one day I realised that my back was a part of me (strange that this is obvious and yet not!) and that if my back was a certain way then I was responsible for it being that way...and that I could split it off from me in my mind as much as possible and deny any connection between its pain and my existence or way of being but ultimately that was as ridiculous a notion as denying it to be a part of my own physical body.

Of course I had previously realised (intellectually at least) that my lower back muscles were holding me in this rigid perfect idealised self that I had concocted in my mind as the way that I believed that I should be in my life in order to be accepted and loved and a worthwhile person. Not showing my anger and if I did then self punishing myself for it, not showing my silliness and definitely never showing any of my thoughts of spite or hate or revenge...eventually not even acknowledging them in my conscious mind, as in that way I could continue to believe in my sainthood which was what made me good enough to be allowed to exist.

I realised that I had lumped all of this onto my lower back and then forgotten about it and then when my back started to collapse and be unable to hold all that rubbish anymore having reached maximum capacity (in fact been so toxic at one point as to have produced 7 tumours), I had turned on my back and rejected it for its efforts because it was letting me down....still trying to be Saint Sara!

When I realised all of this I changed how I felt about my back...when it has bad days I look after it, I understand the load it has been carrying and just as I would care for a child with love and gentleness I care for my back.

Because of my gentleness and compassion my back has been able to let out some of the tension and holding that it has carried all these years, consequently it feels more free and flexible with each day. Some days it is very stiff and painful as another memory surfaces and is allowed to come out, rather like an old splinter that has been festering deep in my muscle for years and has now come to the surface or the light. Those days I rest and let the memories and experiences come fully into my mind and be relived with the intention of healing. (The timings have grown shorter with my growing trust in the experience and my growing healthy systems)

I find it easier for myself to be kind to myself when 'bad' muscle days come because I have the understanding of what they are and I know that allowing myself to live and experience the full meaning behind the pain is what will ultimately release me from the holding that creates that pain.

When we are being kind and compassionate to ourselves then what we are doing is learning to love ourselves unconditionally...it's a beautiful thing, a healing thing and a freeing thing as it allows us to be totally at peace with however we are in each moment....now that is real and total peace.

Our lungs equally hold very much of our pain.....some children stiffen their back and some children hold their breath....some hold their rectum, genitals, stomach....we all hold our tensions and fears in different places, of course we all have a holding in most places but we also have a favourite place too....it doesn't matter which or how many because the route for them all back to health and balance is the same.....love them and allow them to be how they want to be....not in a rigid saintlike way but with true compassion.

It is easier to allow ourselves to let the stuck toxic stuff surface when we are feeling strong enough to deal with it, we trust the process, we feel the holding and love from our guides and angels and our own immune system is working well.......I have got myself into the habit of taking a superfood health drink each morning...giving my own systems the nutrition to work as nature intended...

These are the ingredients if you would like to try it...Spirulina Powder, Nature's Living Superfood (Kiwi), Maca Root, Ginger, Hemp Oil, Pumpkin Seeds, Sesame Seeds, Sunflower Seeds, Ground Flax Seeds, Wakame Seaweed, Nettles, Lecithin, all blended with apple juice and a banana. Soak the seeds, nettles (as they are dried) and seaweed overnight. You can add in whatever else you feel with be good for you and take it as one superfood drink

If you need any help with any of this just ask and I'll be there....as always,

Love Sara
xxxxxxxxx

Thursday 8th May 2008

The weather has changed again so we've had some rain which should spur on the advancing greenery and the sunny days still look the same but the temperature is vastly different as there is a serious chill in the air. On the bright side it makes chopping and log carrying much nicer and fresher! I saw that the pied flycatcher has arrived in my garden a few days ago and was checking out the accommodation, I've had two pairs nesting here for the past few years and their eloquent singing is always a welcome addition to the serene atmosphere.

As usual I've incorporated some of the new spring plants into my diet to take advantage of the abundance of nutrients therein. Dandelions and nettles are two of nature's real superfoods and I'm eating as many as I can whilst they are fresh and young. If you think about the power contained in any young plant it is amazing, some of them seem to grow before your very eyes and to harness some of that power for ourselves is very worthwhile. I chop up the dandelion leaves and add them straight into my salads as a substitute for rochet or I stick a handful directly into my morning blended superfood drink, I have mountains of dried nettles from last year which I use for tea and also for adding to my morning drink. I've also made some nettle soup from the fresh young shoots.....but don't tell my daughter as she still thinks it's spinach soup which she loves and so she eats loads of it. Nettles not only contain heaps of nutrients including calcium, phosphorus, iron plus vitamin D, they also cleanse the blood which makes them a great restorer for lymphatic problems and are a useful natural anti asthmatic making them excellent for all respiratory diseases.

I found a recipe for dandelion flower fritters so now I'm waiting for them to flower so I can give it a try. I sometimes get folk questioning me about taking leaves and flowers from the garden to eat, as if it were dangerous because they haven't come wrapped in clingfilm and been washed in bleach to kill any bacteria on them etc. Bless them, there are actually soil bacteria which we need to maintain a healthy digestive system....I buy myself an expensive food product to ensure that I maintain mine in these days of sterile food....also known as dead food. To my mind the chemicals that our foods are exposed to on their way to the supermarket are much more deadly than anything I could pick up in my soil. My own personal trust is in Mother Nature and my own natural defences, if I am healthy then my body will deal with anything that doesn't serve my physical body and get it to pass through me or out of me as quickly as possible with the least risk to me. If I put my reliance to never coming in contact with anything I deem to be harmful then straight away I have put a whole heap of pressure on myself to know everything there is to know about the universe and how all things work and balance out......I may be fairly arrogant in some respects but I fall short of that. My body is a perfect working system designed over many years and if I can learn to listen to it then it will guide me to the very things I need to maintain my good health...as opposed to creating a sterile (or dead) environment for me to exist in ( I can't use the word live there, it just doesn't feel right).

I'm off now to gather a sack full of new birch leaves to make some tea.

Sunday 4th May 2008

The beautiful fresh bright green leaves are really bursting forth from the birch trees now and with the bright sunny weather continuing they are highlighted most exquisitely. I've spent many years trying to capture the essence of how it looks but with little success.....it seems that the camera can't capture everything but I continue with my quest. On the other hand whilst taking some shots of a water snail this morning I discovered that the camera also sees different things from me! My camera kept focusing on the reflection of a birch tree instead of the snail 10cms lower but it surprised me when I looked to see the reflection that it took me a while to adjust my focus enough to see it...very strange.

I'm quite used to coming across hidden truths whilst doing my healing work, sometimes we really can't see what is right in front of our faces, for example when we think that nobody loves us and we have no help with our lives, we can actually be blocking all of the love and support that surrounds us and if we could just adjust our focus a little we would see......if we can adjust our energy a little we can feel the love and support that is constantly surrounding us all. This love and support never goes anywhere, all we need do is to sit quietly and tune into it, one of the easiest ways to tune into it is to take note of all the beautiful things around you and spend a little time focusing on each one and voicing your gratitude for it...as your gratitude grows so too does your sense of well being....you are feeling into the natural well being flow of the universe.

This is actually very similar to an exercise I teach for tapping into the abundance of the universe, for a period of 30 days make a gratitude diary. Start with writing down 5 things that you feel gratitude for and then increase it daily until you reach about 25 and then keep up this exercise for about a month and see what happens. The more gratitude we feel, the more abundance we attract....like attracts like, the law of harmonic resonance......or if you don't subscribe to that idea.....you see what you are looking for!

Friday 2nd May 2008

I was visiting down in Helsinki yesterday so I got to see first hand some of the wild May Day celebrations including a grand naked run around the esplanade by a very fit young man wearing his graduation cap....a traditional thing....the cap, not the streak! I noticed that as I drove south there were more leaves appearing on the trees so it won't be long until they arrive in these parts......in fact when I scan across the lake with my binoculars there is one birch tree taller than the rest that has emerging leaves on the topmost branches.

Wednesday 30th April 2008

This was the warmest Beltane that I have ever celebrated in Finland, even without the traditional Beltane fire the temperature was 21 degrees and I broke out my shorts!! I always mark the old Beltane festival with a fire to smoke and cleanse the house, cottage, everywhere and myself. The smoke is said to drive out all the evil spirits left over from the darkness of winter...which is nice. I also jump through the flames....well the remaining smouldering bits after the huge fire has died down and I've cooked some traditional Finnish sausages, all washed down with some of the traditional Sima that I made specially for may day

Elsewhere in Finland young folk are celebrating the eve of May Day by getting wrecked and spraying their hair lots of weird colours, wearing silly masks and clothes. At school my daughter and her friend ran a disco for the lower classes which was one of many fun events at the lower school.

The festival of Beltane announces the summer half of the year and is the festival of the sun God Balder. As with all spring time festivals the cleansing of the winter to enhance the fertility of the spring is the main idea behind most rituals. The actual fire is made from 9 different types of wood and comprises a sacred grid, traditionally all other fires would be put out and then relit from the Beltane fire.

Tuesday 29th April 2008

A very warm, almost 20 degrees day, a pleasant surprise for the end of April in Finland! As I went for a dip in the lake during my sauna tonight the water was a tropical 9 degrees. The toads have now taken to the water after their winter snooze and unlike the frogs who favour the ditch, the toads prefer to swim in the lake. As I walked down the jetty for my dip I thought that I was less like 'Man who dances with wolves' and more like 'woman that swims with toads' which just isn't half as glamorous. What's more after clambering back up the ladder from my chilly plunge I then heard the unmistakable smashing of the beaver's tail on the water's surface over the far side of the lake...seems he was objecting to me being there...cheeky bugger, I know I'm not the world's prettiest sight naked but I didn't think I was that scary!! The previous evening we had seen him glide by just by the shore with his huge wake giving him away as he set off in search of some tasty lily roots for his supper.

Monday 28th April 2008

Pretty much all the ice has now melted from the lake, quickened on its way by two warm nights where the temperature didn't go back below zero. There is already frog spawn in my ditch and when I took a long walk through the gorgeously warm and sunny forest yesterday I heard and saw hundreds of frogs in every size and shape of ditch, I even found a couple getting it on in the road so I excused myself from peering at them (how rude!) and put a small rock in front of them to dissuade drivers from using that particular piece of gravel! That was my good deed for the day!

I often think what a strange and dull life it must be for a frog, they spend most of their life in a semi coma one metre underground to save themselves being frozen to death, they come out and sing for a mate for a couple of weeks and then pretty much disappear for the rest of the time....you don't see them lounging around on deckchairs or reading a book, they just vanish. But of course the thing with frogs, and all living things except for us humans is that they are pure essence, they don't think, they haven't imposed this concept of time on themselves, they don't worry what they look like...it fact it never occurs to them what they look like....they are pure essence and as such all they do is be frogness.

So why are we humans different?...we are certainly essence too as we are wonderful creatures of light and power but we also possess something else, an ego mind caused by a split. If we were still a oneness like the frog there would be no other part of ourselves that could look at who we are....after all who would be doing the looking? We have the part of ourselves that decides that our bum is too big, our career isn't good enough, our bank account isn't big enough, in fact even when this part of ourselves decides that we are the right shape and in the right place with the right amount of money by default it is still creating a reality where there is a wrong shape, wrong career etc. If we make something right then we have to create a wrong way to support it.

So what causes that split? Well....strangely enough (or not) the human race is divided, or split, on that! We either split because we partook of the apple and now we are paying for our sin......I personally don't buy into that one as that creates a very mean God and I don't believe in a mean, spiteful and vindictive God that wants to control us. For me the split is there in order to allow us to experience our total perfection, to know experientially our essence and to do so by choice. After all the frog is totally pure in his essence but he doesn't have any choice in that....I'm not saying that we are better or worse than frogs, we are just different!

Knowing that I'm here for the experience, that in any moment I always have a choice about who I am and I have a God/universe/light that doesn't insist on me being a certain way sure does take off some pressure.....although my dear old ego mind is always there with my big bum and lack of finances to put pressure back on should I let it.

The two states (and I leave my mind open to other possibilities too) are actually not so different when you start to look at them either, as happens a lot with life and experiences, one is just a distorted view of the other.

In nature there are certain laws such as cause and effect, we may not be able to pin down every effect to a certain cause making a nice set of rules but there is always a cause and an effect. Now when I'm in tune with the flow of the universe (God) everything falls into place and I am in heaven, it feels great but when I am out of tune, when I'm not seeing the effect that I am causing by my own actions then I get frustrated, I don't understand why my life is so bad etc. The more we become out of rhythm with the well being flow of the universe the worse it feels to us and we suffer, we forget about the essence that we really are and we start to totally subscribe to the world where our body should be a certain size and shape and our career should be this and our house shoul