Monday, 9 March 2015
PLANET CULTURE
As orange seeped through the cloud bank on the Eastern horizon, International Women's Day arrived at the edge of the Tanami Desert. The morning light hit the roof of the Tjilimi (Women's centre) as I finished my sun salute and returned inside to the women in my care. They are from the last generation of people born in the Western Desert. They are Law women, elderly now but they are Elders with great power in their hearts.
I am here with another Malpa (carer and companion) and together we take care of all their basic needs. As my friend and partner Malpa told the Elders about the significance of the day, it occurred to me how special it was for us to be spending International Women's Day at one of Australia's only Women's Law and Culture Centres.
The significance of this day resonated easily with the women even though their understanding is limited by language and cultural barriers, reduced senses, short term memory loss and some dementia. One woman sat up with her eyes a shining smile and announced, "Planet Culture ".
Her vision took me with a flash of quickening, to deep understanding of the weaved net of culture that women held all over time and all over the world. In this country they call it 'Yawulyu'. Intricate, delicate and yet strong. It is silk, spun from the hearts of women everywhere; the womb of the stars, the matrix of culture. Deeply imbedded in our genetic fibres it links us all in an exquisite tapestry. Spun with wisdom, held with love.
Women held culture strong throughout time so that there was no time. There was nothing to measure when all was intact and the sacred cycles of life were unbroken.
The tragic ripping apart of this net, this knowledge, began in our history and became our matrilineal heritage. While women cosseted embers of this knowledge away, their ways and knowledge were captured and destroyed. Imperialism grew and spread around the world, enslaving the intricacies of culture everywhere; reducing the calaedescope of patterns to linear time constrainted flat lines.
Now is the time of the great remembering. The patterns women weaved throughout time are awakening in our minds and hearts. They are being rethreaded through our lives as if we ourselves are being weaved. This is the time of the New Dreaming. This is a creation time and we are Goddesses alive to this power.
When we open ourselves up to this Divine Intelligence, we create channels for power to work through us. In our surrendering we release fibres of intention and that adds to the holding pattern of the womb space of this new Dreaming.
It may seem hard to escape the clutches of our modern minds because our entire world view has been constructed with this linear pattern of duality and separation However Planet Culture lies within the matrix of our human bodies. It is our birthright and each of us is individually important as vital strands in these Intricate patterns. While our Earth people and ecosystems are being consumed by the linear construct of a disconnected intelligence, we women can gather power through our intention and feed it to the collective, thereby helping to form Planet Culture.
We can bestow our children with an inheritance of faith and hope and intricately woven love for all. From threads of compassion and forbearance, with surrender as wings, we can soar above and weave our magic. Connecting with one another and the great Goddess Gaia that gives us life, we will spin the New Dreaming of Planet Culture.
If you're interested in volunteering as a Malpa, contact Zohl de Ishtar at kapululangu.women.centre@gmail.com.
Or visit www.kapululangu.org
Thursday, 6 November 2014
EARTH
PARENTING IN MARRIAGE
This is a wonderful realization, how I
think about my life affects our whole family.
I have stumbled on the power of woman.
The flip side of this then threatens to taunt me. That means all the problems were
created by me and how I handled them. Guilt is the inheritance of
the modern mother. Modern mothers have bags full of
guilt that arise at varying times of our children’s lives and usually come as a
hidden package that quietly motivates us at the level of sabotage. I believe this has roots going back into our
European ancestral antiquity. I don’t spend time digging up that Pandora’s box. I have just found that by accepting that it is the
modern mother’s shadow I can recognize that it is an illusion. We have nothing to feel guilty
about. We do our best with the cloth we
have.
In my journey
mothering while intuiting the ways of the ‘forgotten people’, the Indigenous
peoples of the Earth, I have continued to find myself facing my relationship
with my husband and its ongoing web of entangled stories. Our journey is but one of the collective of
our genre. We are the generation with
choices, and statistics show we are still making black and white ones; good and
bad. We are walking away from our
problems in every increasing numbers and our children are left in a
psychological chasm created by our separation.
Or are they?
This article is not written with anything more than anecdotal reference from my own experience and observation. Throughout our relationship I have anchored our experience to our ancestors and the Indigenous model, which has allowed me the benefit of forbearance long before I even knew there was a word for it. There is a bigger picture to our culture’s collective pain that we suffer in relationship and I believe my story shines a light on another way of looking at our present predicament.
This article is not written with anything more than anecdotal reference from my own experience and observation. Throughout our relationship I have anchored our experience to our ancestors and the Indigenous model, which has allowed me the benefit of forbearance long before I even knew there was a word for it. There is a bigger picture to our culture’s collective pain that we suffer in relationship and I believe my story shines a light on another way of looking at our present predicament.
I could
have left my husband more times than I would like to imagine. He has left me at least that many. We still have unresolved issues. We have four children together. We love each other. In times of survival that would be where the
story ends and living begins. Who would
care about past mistakes? It would be a
case of getting on with living and raising the children. In the Indigenous world, the fabric of their
societies and marriage lineages and Dream time law would have safeguarded and
held relationship in a way that doesn’t allow for comparison in such a short
piece of writing. In any case there are
endless examples of how different tribes dealt with marriage problems and that
fact alone demonstrates that it was in the interest of the entire tribe to
arrest problems and deal with them.
When our problems came to a head I would spend time grounding my hurting heart with ‘earth’
jobs with the kids; gardening, looking for insects, walking and just being out
in nature. While we spent these times
together it would allow for recapitulation, where the argument would come back
to me in small waves immersed in understanding and compassion. Often one of the kids would synchronize with this
understanding by bringing me something that represented it, like an emu feather
which to me means ‘fathering’. Their
spontaneous gifts seemed to be prompted from another world. They were working with the angels in
sustaining me with the fortitude to pray again, to dream again and to let go of
the hurt.
In my
wanderings in this kind of relationship ‘pea soup’ I have discovered that an important
aspect of our current climate of relationship stalemate is individualism. Our egoistic state is more pronounced than any
generation before us, partly fueled by consumerism and also accelerated since
the industrial revolution when families have been separated by the work force
and schooling. (Which are relatively recent phenomena.)
When we compare Indigenous cultures we can see that their fabric held them as part of their tribe first and their individuality was sustained by the tribe. We come from thousands of years of slavery, serfs and commoners; serving the elite, our individuality was not free to blossom. Now in our current culture it exists in spite of our family groups or communities; we are cultured to believe in our thoughts as if they are our individuality. Instead often they are our ego and very often they are running the show.
So when I added this wider perspective to my individual problems, I found that they would shrink away to mere shadows. Those shadows are the culture's pain body, haunting us from within our own minds as we, the next generation, carry the stories of our mothers and fathers. “Men were generally not useful in the home. Women were usually complaining and nagging.” These are just examples of common expectations of the husband/ wife experience.
When we compare Indigenous cultures we can see that their fabric held them as part of their tribe first and their individuality was sustained by the tribe. We come from thousands of years of slavery, serfs and commoners; serving the elite, our individuality was not free to blossom. Now in our current culture it exists in spite of our family groups or communities; we are cultured to believe in our thoughts as if they are our individuality. Instead often they are our ego and very often they are running the show.
So when I added this wider perspective to my individual problems, I found that they would shrink away to mere shadows. Those shadows are the culture's pain body, haunting us from within our own minds as we, the next generation, carry the stories of our mothers and fathers. “Men were generally not useful in the home. Women were usually complaining and nagging.” These are just examples of common expectations of the husband/ wife experience.
When I step out
of my story I can see how I have supported that cultural view of the fish wife
at home nagging and complaining. When I
let go of expecting him to have simultaneous realizations that he too has let
me down, I release the whole story and my authentic self can emerge. My relationship is essentially with the
now. Now extends throughout time and
connects me with a wider perspective. I
can see that my problems will be my children’s and were my grandparent’s until
I release them; until I stop giving them energy. That means trusting, leaping grandly into my
inherited fear; knowing I have nothing to lose because love will always shine
more brightly than any shadow.
Indigenous
women did not talk about their menfolk in negative ways. They may have laughed knowingly and shared
teasing looks but their children’s minds were not cluttered with this
conversation that has littered our lives for many generations. I remember how my complaints with friends
about my marriage gave me short term satisfaction but did not relieve my
problems. Looking back I can see that they extended our problems as if they had
been prayers for what I didn’t want.
I think often marriage break-ups are exacerbated by this kind of talking.This talking is however necessary to some degree because we are living so separately. We need to offload and talking helps us put things in perspective. I found that when the friends I confided to echoed my alarm and distress, my problems became exacerbated.
I discovered that other friends were able to listen and in the listening allowed the space of love to return, giving me back the presence of feminine power; yielding and softening. This yielding is the power of women and I have much to learn about it. Single parenting for so long has stifled my ability to yield. In our culture yielding is often regarded as a flaw, a weakness. It is the primal state of woman. Yielding is acceptance and is the birthplace of prayer.
I think often marriage break-ups are exacerbated by this kind of talking.This talking is however necessary to some degree because we are living so separately. We need to offload and talking helps us put things in perspective. I found that when the friends I confided to echoed my alarm and distress, my problems became exacerbated.
I discovered that other friends were able to listen and in the listening allowed the space of love to return, giving me back the presence of feminine power; yielding and softening. This yielding is the power of women and I have much to learn about it. Single parenting for so long has stifled my ability to yield. In our culture yielding is often regarded as a flaw, a weakness. It is the primal state of woman. Yielding is acceptance and is the birthplace of prayer.
In staying in
my marriage with its ongoing problems I now understand that when differences arise between us, there is less resistance when I yield, surrendering the moment to the Higher realm. Interestingly, when I alone work on
what I focus on and stay grounded in my connection with the Earth then my
husband rises to his higher self and equilibrium comes over us again.
This is a wonderful realization, how I
think about my life affects our whole family.
I have stumbled on the power of woman.
The flip side of this then threatens to taunt me. That means all the problems were
created by me and how I handled them. Guilt is the inheritance of
the modern mother. Modern mothers have bags full of
guilt that arise at varying times of our children’s lives and usually come as a
hidden package that quietly motivates us at the level of sabotage. I believe this has roots going back into our
European ancestral antiquity. I don’t spend time digging up that Pandora’s box. I have just found that by accepting that it is the
modern mother’s shadow I can recognize that it is an illusion. We have nothing to feel guilty
about. We do our best with the cloth we
have.
Now let us get on with working with the
cloth. That work needs forbearance and
the quality of yielding so we can quietly gather more information about what
questions to ask and what to call in. And
so I accept our family’s story, share it where it is needed and then get on
with the work I have to do in my own family; cleaning and lightening our load,
enjoying each other and giving thanks for the bounty we share.
Monday, 26 May 2014
PARENTING TOWARDS UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS
| |
Tuesday, 15 April 2014
| NATURE MANIFESTS AT OUR HIGHEST EXPECTATION OF IT It is a free will universe so nature will give us our experiences based on our belief systems. Through many generations in our culture, we have been schooled in the understanding that nature is an unpredictable and wild place where we are potentially in danger. However that is not the reality of nature. Even though our modern documentaries focus of this exciting aspect of nature where it is survival of the fittest, the statistics of injury in nature do not support our collective fears.  Instead Nature tolerates our unsubstantiated fears by giving us the highest manifestation of them. Those with snake fears may simply have one cross their path. Someone scared of the dark will hear a noise. Another person perhaps scarred of spiders might freak to the sensation of something crawling on them only to find it was an ant. And so in this free will universe we have the right to be frightened of nature but nature has its own relationship with us which is above and beyond what we have interpreted through our collective myopic vision. As we approach Unity consciousness, we are remembering that we are intrinsically linked with the natural environment around us. The older cultures of the world understand this deeply. The Earth is our mother and all its forms are sentient beings with their own spirit forms. When we, as individuals, raise our vibrational level through uncluttered thinking, being present and surrendering to our heart intelligence; we begin to reach Unity consciousness. Our ability to manifest our reality becomes increasingly obvious as we reach this state. We naturally vibrate at the same frequency as Nature. When we enter natural environments we potentially extend our experiential field. If we are able to surrender our fears the experience in nature will be nothing less than sublime. However for many of us the fears will be deep; having been inherited, they often lie dormant, hidden in obscure places in our psyches. All fears separate us from our potential experience with love. What we don't deal with we hand on to our children, like unpaid bills. So by design our children will on some level, bring these fears to the light.  When we observe the elements as we would if our life depended on them, we activate an ancient listening skill that lies dormant mostly in modern life. By remembering that our shadow is death, we rekindle this communion. Then we can walk as spirit in a human body; alert and in love as Nature itself is. Held in the primordial dance of peaceful attention, vibrating with the eternal consciousness of love itself. |
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Surrender to Love
MOTHERING IS HOLDING AND LETTING GO.
 Just as breathing requires two opposing acts, inhaling and exhaling, we need to exercise letting go while simultaneously holding our children. The pure form of mothering in the collective memory, the Indigenous people of the world still exhibit this to varying degrees. This type of mothering is as easy as breathing and requires no real thought. The act comes from the wider intelligence of the heart space and therefore has no encumbrance.However modern mothers have no immediate village to let our children go to. We come ourselves with a mixed bag of repressed pains and fears. Like an archeological dig they pop up as our children reach the age the trigger was set, sometimes many generations ago. It is little wonder that the closest we come to letting our children go is to creche or school. Letting them go is deeper than that just as love is deeper than physically taking care of our child. It is at the level of the heart space that we hold and let go. It could be that like birth, we don't get to hold our baby until we have truly surrendered. The act of birthing is ultimately, the act of surrendering. In modern mothers our analytical mind is over active and often at birth this presents a massive problem that prevents true surrender and blocks natural birthing, as statistics show. So if we accept that we are a culture of women who have largely forgotten how to surrender, we can turn our attention to finding ways to allow that to heal. Moment by moment it's the simple things like singing and gardening, walking in nature, that give us back to the space of surrender. We need to let go of so many layers of thought that quietly drive us to ever shifting fashions. Breath in the love for your child, breath out that same love. You will see that it is not your love you give to your child but God's love, the universal love that you can source though letting go is so much bigger. |
Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Silence speaks loud and clear
The other day I had the privilege of walking into a beautiful forest with ten children under the cover of silence. Their challenge was to walk to the rocky outcrops where we would have lunch, without talking. I had suggested to them that we wouldn't talk if we were watching a movie, so we could try going in with the same attention. The veil of silence allowed us to experience the natural setting at a higher frequency; immersing us all deeply and quickly. As we walked the sounds of the forest turned to music, as if our silence was communicating a willingness to hear. Like a radio station tuned in with the slightest turn of the dial, birds song filled the air and we could even hear the trees cracking and rubbing together. When we arrived at the rocks a bliss had descended over us and we were all smiling deeply. We were experiencing a spiritual high.
When we returned to the school we were introduced to an Aboriginal song that an Elder had given us saying she wanted it to be sung along with our national anthem. It is a beautiful song that literally translated means, "Welcome friends, welcome good friends". I stood looking at these cultures polarized by this difference in digesting information; our culture needs so much more explanation, measurement and analysis. It is head-based and we are required to endlessly collate, relate and translate the world back to each other. The indigenous culture sees this polarity more clearly than we do, they even laugh about it being the 'white-fella way'. The indigenous cultures are much more deeply connected to their heart spaces; their song needed only to say "welcome friends", the rest is left to love which cannot be measured and needs no translation.
For all our intellectualism, we are blocked by a simple bias that tells us deeply that we are the culture that is smart and they are the culture that remained primitive. Our thoughts are necessary and our need to communicate is essential. We now have technology overlaying the industrial revolution and we are further imprisoning ourselves by our collective obsession with it. This age of technology comes with great opportunity to communicate but it also brings us the shadow of our culture which has been ravaged of its heart center and with every generation has further activated the mind; perhaps eroding and blocking the truly extraordinary experience of being alive. We might take time to listen to the beat of out hearts and remember we are here to connect with the Earth and each other. Technology needs to be actively put in the back seat.
We spoke more deeply when we used less words.
When we returned to the school we were introduced to an Aboriginal song that an Elder had given us saying she wanted it to be sung along with our national anthem. It is a beautiful song that literally translated means, "Welcome friends, welcome good friends". I stood looking at these cultures polarized by this difference in digesting information; our culture needs so much more explanation, measurement and analysis. It is head-based and we are required to endlessly collate, relate and translate the world back to each other. The indigenous culture sees this polarity more clearly than we do, they even laugh about it being the 'white-fella way'. The indigenous cultures are much more deeply connected to their heart spaces; their song needed only to say "welcome friends", the rest is left to love which cannot be measured and needs no translation.
For all our intellectualism, we are blocked by a simple bias that tells us deeply that we are the culture that is smart and they are the culture that remained primitive. Our thoughts are necessary and our need to communicate is essential. We now have technology overlaying the industrial revolution and we are further imprisoning ourselves by our collective obsession with it. This age of technology comes with great opportunity to communicate but it also brings us the shadow of our culture which has been ravaged of its heart center and with every generation has further activated the mind; perhaps eroding and blocking the truly extraordinary experience of being alive. We might take time to listen to the beat of out hearts and remember we are here to connect with the Earth and each other. Technology needs to be actively put in the back seat.
We spoke more deeply when we used less words.
Monday, 18 June 2012
Nature is our Spirit just as Spirit is our nature
In nature our children experience the oneness that is their nature. Given space and time, their ego selves shrink leaving anb expanded form; they have access to their divinity when they are immersed deeply in nature. It is the same for us as adults, potentially though as we have layers of belief patterns to get through before that experience can be ours. Exploration in nature with our children connects us with our deeper story. It reveals our fears, our hopes and dreams for that is where they were formed.
Though the indigenous parents emulated and lived this love of nature for their children on deeper levels than we can hope to achieve in our culture ravaged of it's nature, any small step towards their ways with their children will leave us with more wealth as parents than we could ever dream. We would do well to remember that all accounts written about the children of the new world were how amazingly joyful, happy and energetic they were.
I often tell my children how to delightful and easy to play with the children of my childhood in Fiji, Arabia, Africa and Pakistan were. The Fijian children were perhaps fifteen to twenty generations removed from those first people described by the early explorers but the easy childhoods had continued up until my childhood in the early seventies. After we left Fiji, industries targeted the place for cheap labour and production created jobs and pulled communities and families apart. When we returned after five years, we the found a modern Fiji without their huts and their traditions; the average mother working in factories; modern day slavery in my mind. Never the less the children still possessed that joyful nature; seemingly as yet protected by generations of intact community spirit in their genetic banks.
Now is the time to rekindle community and a lot of people are out there doing it. It is also time to get our kids back into nature. To do that deeply we have to look first for our nature within nature. By facing our beliefs as just that, multi-generational fears of an alien race in an alien land. (Our ancestors were an alien race to the original inhabitants.) Then by gently pushing ourselves just past our comfort zones, chipping away at the crusty and brittle ideas of those "alien" ancestors of ours, we can visit nature and trust our children in it.
This is the greatest respect we can pay our ancestors because when we look through the lens of the genre they lived in first, we can more deeply understand their personal story in its true spirit. So too when we see ourselves in this current times we would prefer to see ourselves outside of the collective consumer ego that has possessed the world.
When we decide to take this journey back to nature with our children we are rewarded by our trust with wonderful experiences, never to be forgotten memories. Nature rewards and expands our trust. We have taken a leap back into our indigenous mind; the collective understanding that our essential nature is nature itself, one in the same. Then a new journey awaits us with our children.
Go first to the place you have the most fear about...it might be the cold and the idea that inclement weather makes you sick. Explore it and take a walk in the rain or swim in the chilly ocean. If it is the dark then go for a moonlit walk, you will be amazed at how much your children will love you for doing it! If it is fear about dirt and being dirty start with some clay or make mud cakes.
Make sure that what you pick you are happy enough to do because your children will magnify your fears or apprehensions. Enjoy it for yourself, your children and your ancestors and for nature herself. Go in as deep as you feel comfortable and then go in some more. There, in the moments of trust, have we xpanded just a bit further into our true nature.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
Though the indigenous parents emulated and lived this love of nature for their children on deeper levels than we can hope to achieve in our culture ravaged of it's nature, any small step towards their ways with their children will leave us with more wealth as parents than we could ever dream. We would do well to remember that all accounts written about the children of the new world were how amazingly joyful, happy and energetic they were.
I often tell my children how to delightful and easy to play with the children of my childhood in Fiji, Arabia, Africa and Pakistan were. The Fijian children were perhaps fifteen to twenty generations removed from those first people described by the early explorers but the easy childhoods had continued up until my childhood in the early seventies. After we left Fiji, industries targeted the place for cheap labour and production created jobs and pulled communities and families apart. When we returned after five years, we the found a modern Fiji without their huts and their traditions; the average mother working in factories; modern day slavery in my mind. Never the less the children still possessed that joyful nature; seemingly as yet protected by generations of intact community spirit in their genetic banks.
Now is the time to rekindle community and a lot of people are out there doing it. It is also time to get our kids back into nature. To do that deeply we have to look first for our nature within nature. By facing our beliefs as just that, multi-generational fears of an alien race in an alien land. (Our ancestors were an alien race to the original inhabitants.) Then by gently pushing ourselves just past our comfort zones, chipping away at the crusty and brittle ideas of those "alien" ancestors of ours, we can visit nature and trust our children in it.
This is the greatest respect we can pay our ancestors because when we look through the lens of the genre they lived in first, we can more deeply understand their personal story in its true spirit. So too when we see ourselves in this current times we would prefer to see ourselves outside of the collective consumer ego that has possessed the world.
When we decide to take this journey back to nature with our children we are rewarded by our trust with wonderful experiences, never to be forgotten memories. Nature rewards and expands our trust. We have taken a leap back into our indigenous mind; the collective understanding that our essential nature is nature itself, one in the same. Then a new journey awaits us with our children.
Go first to the place you have the most fear about...it might be the cold and the idea that inclement weather makes you sick. Explore it and take a walk in the rain or swim in the chilly ocean. If it is the dark then go for a moonlit walk, you will be amazed at how much your children will love you for doing it! If it is fear about dirt and being dirty start with some clay or make mud cakes.
Make sure that what you pick you are happy enough to do because your children will magnify your fears or apprehensions. Enjoy it for yourself, your children and your ancestors and for nature herself. Go in as deep as you feel comfortable and then go in some more. There, in the moments of trust, have we xpanded just a bit further into our true nature.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Gathering momentum
Wait a moment Mum.
In my family there has been an ongoing climate of tension between myself and my husband that is reflected in our children. My work as mother has been a continual regrouping as we live in this pea soup of old patterns passed down through the generations. My choice has been to stay united with my man, to work on myself, gathering momentum to break free of these patterns with the aid of prayer.
Our children are our indicators of the 'weather patterns' of our energy bodies. Under seven year olds are directly connected to the mother's field, while pre-teenaged children absorb and recreate it themselves. Once they are teenagers they will work to refine it within they definitions of their morality and their own inherited karmic patterns. At this stage the parents and significant adults will and can intentionally refine a child's emerging individual patterns. With love, no patterns are locked in. Our children are still growing in every way so really the only work to be done is the continuing effort by the parent to grow themselves and transform their own behavioural patterns.
This work of the mother is the power of forbearance, something our generation has lost and is searching for again. Women gave this power away with the feminist movement, which brought equality but turned its back on the ability to rise above the difficulties of a situation by holding peace for the bigger picture. Too often I have reduced my spirit by engaging in the difficulties of the moment. By recalibrating my view to this wider perspective, I find that answers are replacing my need to 'fix' things and the healing is transforming my family like magic. I am aware of the patterns but more able to stand apart from them. The momentum for change has its own order and like a snowball rolling down hill, it is easy, mostly.
When there are no 'what ifs', there is only the known and when I am open to that it becomes more obvious what to pray for. The momentum of spiritual growth is natural when I expose myself; when I become translucent, vulnerable as a flawed human being, I open myself up for healing. It is a natural process. I stand exposed with my short comings and then see how they have manifested in my children. I feel these feelings, realise them and then they are released, freeing up love to do its work of magic. This will gather momentum and transform us as a family. I need only to stand aside and surrender to the power of forbearance.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
In my family there has been an ongoing climate of tension between myself and my husband that is reflected in our children. My work as mother has been a continual regrouping as we live in this pea soup of old patterns passed down through the generations. My choice has been to stay united with my man, to work on myself, gathering momentum to break free of these patterns with the aid of prayer.
Our children are our indicators of the 'weather patterns' of our energy bodies. Under seven year olds are directly connected to the mother's field, while pre-teenaged children absorb and recreate it themselves. Once they are teenagers they will work to refine it within they definitions of their morality and their own inherited karmic patterns. At this stage the parents and significant adults will and can intentionally refine a child's emerging individual patterns. With love, no patterns are locked in. Our children are still growing in every way so really the only work to be done is the continuing effort by the parent to grow themselves and transform their own behavioural patterns.
This work of the mother is the power of forbearance, something our generation has lost and is searching for again. Women gave this power away with the feminist movement, which brought equality but turned its back on the ability to rise above the difficulties of a situation by holding peace for the bigger picture. Too often I have reduced my spirit by engaging in the difficulties of the moment. By recalibrating my view to this wider perspective, I find that answers are replacing my need to 'fix' things and the healing is transforming my family like magic. I am aware of the patterns but more able to stand apart from them. The momentum for change has its own order and like a snowball rolling down hill, it is easy, mostly.
When there are no 'what ifs', there is only the known and when I am open to that it becomes more obvious what to pray for. The momentum of spiritual growth is natural when I expose myself; when I become translucent, vulnerable as a flawed human being, I open myself up for healing. It is a natural process. I stand exposed with my short comings and then see how they have manifested in my children. I feel these feelings, realise them and then they are released, freeing up love to do its work of magic. This will gather momentum and transform us as a family. I need only to stand aside and surrender to the power of forbearance.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
Friday, 13 April 2012
Safety is a state of mind
If eliminating all risk is the way to keep our children safe then absolute safety would be assured by putting them in a comfortable box. Of course, this is not sustainable! By realigning our intent to a wider frame of immersing our children in nature as an essential ingredient for their optimal development, we then lift our children free from those boxes.
When we trust nature; we trust ourselves and our children. The experience becomes lighter and more joyful. Play is freed from legislation and the constant monitoring that our safety parenting requires. When we follow the lead of our young children and then push ourselves just past our comfort zones, we find the path of trust shining before us like a well lit series of beacons, beckoning us on, ever further to exploring outside those boxes.
In the raising of my children, I have followed this process and have received many flowers from it. Each step of the way is clear when I follow their lead. If I think too far ahead, it can become very frightening. Once while spotting my toddler balancing on a wall, I had a sudden realisation that this could lead to him climbing a high bridge as an older boy; instantly fear threatened to overcome me and I wanted to get him down and put him in that box. By following my children's lead, one step at a time; I will breathe through these random fears as they come up. When I stay in the moment, these irrational fears disappear, in this case, the present reminded me that he was still small and the universe was supporting us in his venture across the wall. Bridges in the future would be made safer by this very act of trusting and empowering his body and spirit now, as he had shown was his desire.
Fear is all in our head and so is the need for safety. Paying attention in the moment provides all the safety we ever need. Our babies come to us with trust as a natural and fully functioning aspect of their love for us. When we give it back to them, we complete the circuit between ourselves and the higher power. Now we are activating ancestors, angels, fairies, and all unseen elements that connect us ever more deeply with ourselves.
We are limited also by our collective understanding of safety and children. In some cultures, babies grow up in trees, on boats and are absolutely safe in their environments. Scientific studies too have proved that babies have inbuilt faculties for keeping them safe which are activated by experiential learning. By design our babies learn about the world through their early explorations.
I have always used sound to convey levels of danger and extra caution required by my babies. Modern parenting tells young children that a pot belly stove, for example, is always dangerous because it might be hot. My children grew learning that the environment around them was ever changing; sometimes the pot belly stove was hot, other times they could open the door and play with the ash, other times the ash was too hot: it changes. The only thing that never changed was electricity which I always indicated to my babies was dangerous. Any power point, socket or gas appliance knob that they showed interest in was met with strong danger noises from me. As they got older I told them an invisible snake lives in there.
On one hand my babies had a natural respect for their environment and would daily meet things in it with new found curiousity. On the other hand, I organised my home and life so that they were never out of my sight. In keeping with indigenous parenting, the village arrangement gave toddlers freedom to explore their surroundings with the constant observation of their family members. Here is the real key to safety; mother/ baby bonds provide intuitive connection that extends throughout the wider family group. Earth parenting fosters this consciously, understanding that we as individuals flourish when we are deeply connected with our family group. When we lived close to nature, we also lived closer to eachother. This can be recreated in our modern living simply by understanding how important it is.
I have borrowed another indigenous understanding which underpins my every moment and that is that my shadow is death and my children's shadows are their death too. This knowing leaves me attentive at all times, grateful and ready to bless or pray in a moment because I know how precious life is. And life is to be lived! So cast away safety as a barrier to your children's lives and release them with the understanding that you can't escape your shadow, only let it keep you in the present moment. Disrespect comes from not allowing experiences to happen, foster connection and love's light will cast small shadows for your children as they enjoy their amazing lives.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
When we trust nature; we trust ourselves and our children. The experience becomes lighter and more joyful. Play is freed from legislation and the constant monitoring that our safety parenting requires. When we follow the lead of our young children and then push ourselves just past our comfort zones, we find the path of trust shining before us like a well lit series of beacons, beckoning us on, ever further to exploring outside those boxes.
In the raising of my children, I have followed this process and have received many flowers from it. Each step of the way is clear when I follow their lead. If I think too far ahead, it can become very frightening. Once while spotting my toddler balancing on a wall, I had a sudden realisation that this could lead to him climbing a high bridge as an older boy; instantly fear threatened to overcome me and I wanted to get him down and put him in that box. By following my children's lead, one step at a time; I will breathe through these random fears as they come up. When I stay in the moment, these irrational fears disappear, in this case, the present reminded me that he was still small and the universe was supporting us in his venture across the wall. Bridges in the future would be made safer by this very act of trusting and empowering his body and spirit now, as he had shown was his desire.
Fear is all in our head and so is the need for safety. Paying attention in the moment provides all the safety we ever need. Our babies come to us with trust as a natural and fully functioning aspect of their love for us. When we give it back to them, we complete the circuit between ourselves and the higher power. Now we are activating ancestors, angels, fairies, and all unseen elements that connect us ever more deeply with ourselves.
We are limited also by our collective understanding of safety and children. In some cultures, babies grow up in trees, on boats and are absolutely safe in their environments. Scientific studies too have proved that babies have inbuilt faculties for keeping them safe which are activated by experiential learning. By design our babies learn about the world through their early explorations.
I have always used sound to convey levels of danger and extra caution required by my babies. Modern parenting tells young children that a pot belly stove, for example, is always dangerous because it might be hot. My children grew learning that the environment around them was ever changing; sometimes the pot belly stove was hot, other times they could open the door and play with the ash, other times the ash was too hot: it changes. The only thing that never changed was electricity which I always indicated to my babies was dangerous. Any power point, socket or gas appliance knob that they showed interest in was met with strong danger noises from me. As they got older I told them an invisible snake lives in there.
On one hand my babies had a natural respect for their environment and would daily meet things in it with new found curiousity. On the other hand, I organised my home and life so that they were never out of my sight. In keeping with indigenous parenting, the village arrangement gave toddlers freedom to explore their surroundings with the constant observation of their family members. Here is the real key to safety; mother/ baby bonds provide intuitive connection that extends throughout the wider family group. Earth parenting fosters this consciously, understanding that we as individuals flourish when we are deeply connected with our family group. When we lived close to nature, we also lived closer to eachother. This can be recreated in our modern living simply by understanding how important it is.
I have borrowed another indigenous understanding which underpins my every moment and that is that my shadow is death and my children's shadows are their death too. This knowing leaves me attentive at all times, grateful and ready to bless or pray in a moment because I know how precious life is. And life is to be lived! So cast away safety as a barrier to your children's lives and release them with the understanding that you can't escape your shadow, only let it keep you in the present moment. Disrespect comes from not allowing experiences to happen, foster connection and love's light will cast small shadows for your children as they enjoy their amazing lives.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
Saturday, 31 March 2012
Earth Parenting
Across the span of time and all over the world, indigenous peoples raised their children with nearly identical ways which indicate that humans have an 'earth code' for our raising just as all animals have innate parenting codes. Detailed studies of anthropology reveal many exceptions to this and therefore experts can easily dismiss my simple observation as idealistic and even romantic. However what can not be overlooked is that despite the exceptions, peoples all across the world maintained culture for thousands of generations and their parenting was nearly identical with different colour feathers, so to speak. Even modern day Steiner's work seems to have been tapping in on this innate 'earth code'.
A brief breakdown of the common threads of 'earth parenting'of the stage of babyhood are:
1. Singing as main ante natal preparation for maidens. There was no application of logic or analytical mind to what is essentially innate and part of the ancient limbic system of the mind.
2. Birthing was secret women's business, attended by sisters and elder women and generally safeguarded from maidens.
3. For one lunar month the mother and newborn were cared for by the sisterhood in a womb like environment. This was the dreamtime of the new child, important bonding was established.
4. Women regrouped their energy through synchronized menstruating where they would often withdraw to a special place, taking only breast feeding babies and newly menstruating maidens with them.
5. Once out of the dreamtime, mother resumed her place in the tribe; gathering and preparing food with her baby tied to her or carried with her. Generally the first stage of babe in arms, the_ baby was carried by the mother or woman who breastfed him or her.
6. As baby got bigger it was carried freely by older children. The baby was immersed in its tribe very deeply.
7. Babies were never left alone. (The exception was the practise of leaving the infant out over night when first born in some tribes)
8. Babies breastfed for three years, generally. This matches the apparent 'psychic bond' of mother and baby.
9. Once toddling, the baby was free to explore the world around, safely observed by the sisterhood. The collective body of the tribe provided a natural safety net for them. They were immersed in the elements; eating dirt, sucking rocks, navigating fire, uneven ground and many other situations.
10. Babies were unrestrained and grew with a feeling of infinite freedom. Safety and monitoring them was done collectively and it was obscure so that the will of the child was not prematurely activated.
11. Sounds and particularly baby sounds were used with babies. They picked up their language from those around them, everyone happily spoke babies sounds to them. Many cultures use repeat words with babies; for example Ma ma, Da da, Pa pa and so on. We under estimate how important these sounds are to the developing mind in our quest to comunicate with our babies we over look the natural process of bonding that opens up doorways to intuition and allow us to instantly be able to understand our babies without words.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
A brief breakdown of the common threads of 'earth parenting'of the stage of babyhood are:
1. Singing as main ante natal preparation for maidens. There was no application of logic or analytical mind to what is essentially innate and part of the ancient limbic system of the mind.
2. Birthing was secret women's business, attended by sisters and elder women and generally safeguarded from maidens.
3. For one lunar month the mother and newborn were cared for by the sisterhood in a womb like environment. This was the dreamtime of the new child, important bonding was established.
4. Women regrouped their energy through synchronized menstruating where they would often withdraw to a special place, taking only breast feeding babies and newly menstruating maidens with them.
5. Once out of the dreamtime, mother resumed her place in the tribe; gathering and preparing food with her baby tied to her or carried with her. Generally the first stage of babe in arms, the_ baby was carried by the mother or woman who breastfed him or her.
6. As baby got bigger it was carried freely by older children. The baby was immersed in its tribe very deeply.
7. Babies were never left alone. (The exception was the practise of leaving the infant out over night when first born in some tribes)
8. Babies breastfed for three years, generally. This matches the apparent 'psychic bond' of mother and baby.
9. Once toddling, the baby was free to explore the world around, safely observed by the sisterhood. The collective body of the tribe provided a natural safety net for them. They were immersed in the elements; eating dirt, sucking rocks, navigating fire, uneven ground and many other situations.
10. Babies were unrestrained and grew with a feeling of infinite freedom. Safety and monitoring them was done collectively and it was obscure so that the will of the child was not prematurely activated.
11. Sounds and particularly baby sounds were used with babies. They picked up their language from those around them, everyone happily spoke babies sounds to them. Many cultures use repeat words with babies; for example Ma ma, Da da, Pa pa and so on. We under estimate how important these sounds are to the developing mind in our quest to comunicate with our babies we over look the natural process of bonding that opens up doorways to intuition and allow us to instantly be able to understand our babies without words.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
A miracle is just a wish away
When our eleven year old daughter was told that the queen had gone and therefore the hive too was gone, she simply said, "maybe she left a princess". For the educated in this subject it was a fanciful idea at best; the musings of a child. However Earth Parenting is deeper than logic and understands that logic often stands in the way of the magic of nature.
So without attachment to my daughter's comment, I met her at the dreaming place and together we made it into a wish. Perhaps I had already corrected the things that seemed to be lacking when we first discovered the bees had gone and we were loving our garden again; who knows, but the bees kept gathering pollen. Evita lovingly observed this day after day and the other children began watching for signs of an active hive with her. Then, yesterday, our youngest boy came running with news, "they are making honey, I saw the honeycomb and I could smell the honey and there are more bees!."
We have a princess who has become a queen! Another one of nature's daily miracles, that our logic often rules out. The queen has gone, long live the princess.
Earth Parenting is about recalibrating ourselves with nature through our parenting of our children. In this process we need to take heed, much of what we believe about nature was told to us by adults who themselves were already many degrees removed from it. Our small children see energy and nature as it really is. Our 'parental warnings' often camouflage this reality and eventually distort their own innate senses. The sensory reality of children is intangible to the adult operating from the limited space of logic and reason. The bridge that can take us there is trust. When we trust nature and our children, our logic takes a back seat and something more powerful than our usually unreasonable fears takes over; love drives the vehicle and magic and miracles become daily events.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
So without attachment to my daughter's comment, I met her at the dreaming place and together we made it into a wish. Perhaps I had already corrected the things that seemed to be lacking when we first discovered the bees had gone and we were loving our garden again; who knows, but the bees kept gathering pollen. Evita lovingly observed this day after day and the other children began watching for signs of an active hive with her. Then, yesterday, our youngest boy came running with news, "they are making honey, I saw the honeycomb and I could smell the honey and there are more bees!."
We have a princess who has become a queen! Another one of nature's daily miracles, that our logic often rules out. The queen has gone, long live the princess.
Earth Parenting is about recalibrating ourselves with nature through our parenting of our children. In this process we need to take heed, much of what we believe about nature was told to us by adults who themselves were already many degrees removed from it. Our small children see energy and nature as it really is. Our 'parental warnings' often camouflage this reality and eventually distort their own innate senses. The sensory reality of children is intangible to the adult operating from the limited space of logic and reason. The bridge that can take us there is trust. When we trust nature and our children, our logic takes a back seat and something more powerful than our usually unreasonable fears takes over; love drives the vehicle and magic and miracles become daily events.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
Saturday, 17 March 2012
The Queen has left
Our landlord is an absolute gem. He was raised in the house he rents us and he raised his kids in it too. His shed stands like a living museum full of things from his past that may soon have place in the future. Last week, within minutes of me showing him the swarm of bees I had found on my garden's fence, he had them in a box he had easily found in his shed. Yesterday he arrived with the necessary partitions and discovered they had gone. It felt like the death of something.
The Queen didn't like it anymore and moved on so they have all followed; it felt like an accusation from the universe. I hadn't primed the kids and paid enough attention to the beehive, the garden wasn't loved enough....I accepted the swarm as a positive omen, now I must accept the loss in a personal way. I had not fully experienced the bee hive as the gold it was. My life had gone on business as usual and this 'omen' hadn't really changed anything and the now the queen was gone.
We don't like to hear each other 'beating ourselves up', "don't be so hard on yourself". We are weighed down with guilt in our culture and don't like to hear each other getting bogged down in it but guilt aside, it's worth considering where we haven't connected, so we can deepen that connection.
Once I accepted the possible reasons the Queen had left, I felt more desire to shape my life around the garden, making it more of a priority, revaluing it and helping it to grow with love and gratitude.
Once I accepted my place in the scheme of things, I felt the dryness of the land around echoed in the intense flowering of the Karri trees that had brought so much activity from the bees in the first place. I remembered other people's oservations about this bumper season of bees but now with the wider question, is this a symptom of pre-drought conditions?
Can we as culture take on that nature gives us warning signs gently and even sweetly, at first? As an individual, I can open myself up to communion with nature when I am prepared to see the failings of my own life in the wider context of how our culture operates with nature.
I can't elicit any change other than that within my own family group. The place where I am Queen is in my family. That is the real gold, the honey of life.
Connected by MOTOBLUR
The Queen didn't like it anymore and moved on so they have all followed; it felt like an accusation from the universe. I hadn't primed the kids and paid enough attention to the beehive, the garden wasn't loved enough....I accepted the swarm as a positive omen, now I must accept the loss in a personal way. I had not fully experienced the bee hive as the gold it was. My life had gone on business as usual and this 'omen' hadn't really changed anything and the now the queen was gone.
We don't like to hear each other 'beating ourselves up', "don't be so hard on yourself". We are weighed down with guilt in our culture and don't like to hear each other getting bogged down in it but guilt aside, it's worth considering where we haven't connected, so we can deepen that connection.
Once I accepted the possible reasons the Queen had left, I felt more desire to shape my life around the garden, making it more of a priority, revaluing it and helping it to grow with love and gratitude.
Once I accepted my place in the scheme of things, I felt the dryness of the land around echoed in the intense flowering of the Karri trees that had brought so much activity from the bees in the first place. I remembered other people's oservations about this bumper season of bees but now with the wider question, is this a symptom of pre-drought conditions?
Can we as culture take on that nature gives us warning signs gently and even sweetly, at first? As an individual, I can open myself up to communion with nature when I am prepared to see the failings of my own life in the wider context of how our culture operates with nature.
I can't elicit any change other than that within my own family group. The place where I am Queen is in my family. That is the real gold, the honey of life.
Connected by MOTOBLUR
Monday, 12 March 2012
Words are making us ill.
At every turn there are more words that need to be said, written, thought,read: words vying for our attention.
The other night I got a creative idea for helping my son to be more interested in reading and with chalk I wrote messages and equations all over the carpets throughout this house.
Now that I have been moving about in my house, these letters under my feet are crowding my head. The visual pollution of words is everywhere, I just hadn't. thought about it like that before. It took awhile to realize that I had become scattered by the words under my feet; they were blocking my connection with the earth.
I can' wait to get down with a bucket and scrub the floors.
The prescribed pattern of today's mass consciousness would judge this as masochistic, having no need to hear more and moving quickly on to the next lot of words. I need some grounding, stretching and meditative time where I can rub all the words away until my mind is free floating on my heart. There are no health resorts in my life; it is easy to overlook just how therapeutic cleaning our homes is. I don't use a vacuum cleaner because it invades my energy and leaves everyone and everything jangled. I prefer to get on with my hands and knees and scrub the carpets with hot soapy, eucalyptus scented water.
When we take time, we make time and often those 'boring' jobs are the gold that give women power by grounding us in our spiritual foundations, the floors our family walk on.
The other night I got a creative idea for helping my son to be more interested in reading and with chalk I wrote messages and equations all over the carpets throughout this house.
Now that I have been moving about in my house, these letters under my feet are crowding my head. The visual pollution of words is everywhere, I just hadn't. thought about it like that before. It took awhile to realize that I had become scattered by the words under my feet; they were blocking my connection with the earth.
I can' wait to get down with a bucket and scrub the floors.
The prescribed pattern of today's mass consciousness would judge this as masochistic, having no need to hear more and moving quickly on to the next lot of words. I need some grounding, stretching and meditative time where I can rub all the words away until my mind is free floating on my heart. There are no health resorts in my life; it is easy to overlook just how therapeutic cleaning our homes is. I don't use a vacuum cleaner because it invades my energy and leaves everyone and everything jangled. I prefer to get on with my hands and knees and scrub the carpets with hot soapy, eucalyptus scented water.
When we take time, we make time and often those 'boring' jobs are the gold that give women power by grounding us in our spiritual foundations, the floors our family walk on.
Monday, 27 February 2012
Medical doctors and husbands
When we look to the medical fraternity for help with illness when we have access to knowledge about herbs, we give something away from deep within ourselves.
With our husbands too; when we operate from the place that seeks their approval, the same thing happens, erosion of some deep connection with the wise woman in ourselves.
I know these things because I have lived this perpetual seeking of my husband's approval as an extreme example and with Shanti's illness I can suddenly see the connection with the loss of power I experience through my marriage in the way I suddenly rushed to the doctors when Shanti's condition declined.
Through chance encounters and amazing wise woman tfriends, my rush to the doctors got rerouted to Chinese medicine and her decline in health got easily sorted with herbs and acupressure.
This discussion is not about there being something wrong with the medical system, merely it is a very physical approach to health and in this way is not subtle enough for many of the health problems we have to overcome, especially with our sensitive children.
This discourse is about women accessing the wisewoman within, day to day, in the real moments, when it matters. I intuited that the whooping cough illness with Shanti had life changing lessons with it, especially with regard to trust issues. I have trusted spirit and surrendered on plenty of occasions to serendipity. I had no idea spirit was going to pull me inside out over this, leaving me naked and empty in the storm, madly snatching at John for help and understanding; overlooking my own power.
I have taken us to hell and back, again. My family ravaged with the insanity of it; woman needing man's approval, bi-passing ancient knowledge. Women are the custodians of wisdom as we collectively carry the genetic information of the past into the future. Our true power lies in the ether, in prayer. Man needs words and we need silence. We are the generation of women who have immature male to deal with, very often, and we were given guilt as our inheritance. Forbearance and accessing the wise woman within has the power to overcome our genre's challenges.
The storm is over and John's devotion shines like a beacon. He is a rock and serves our family with stability. I am something less tangible and magical if I go within for solace. When I look to the divine mother I no longer need approval, I am connected to source and therefore can be transformed as the feminine power of my womanly self. It is not something my husband need know about, though through irony he would sense it as an extraordinary change in me that would release him from the lower male energy that by design, avoids the woman.
Peace in my heart
Peace in my family.
Peace in the world.
Peace on earth.
Shanti OM
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
With our husbands too; when we operate from the place that seeks their approval, the same thing happens, erosion of some deep connection with the wise woman in ourselves.
I know these things because I have lived this perpetual seeking of my husband's approval as an extreme example and with Shanti's illness I can suddenly see the connection with the loss of power I experience through my marriage in the way I suddenly rushed to the doctors when Shanti's condition declined.
Through chance encounters and amazing wise woman tfriends, my rush to the doctors got rerouted to Chinese medicine and her decline in health got easily sorted with herbs and acupressure.
This discussion is not about there being something wrong with the medical system, merely it is a very physical approach to health and in this way is not subtle enough for many of the health problems we have to overcome, especially with our sensitive children.
This discourse is about women accessing the wisewoman within, day to day, in the real moments, when it matters. I intuited that the whooping cough illness with Shanti had life changing lessons with it, especially with regard to trust issues. I have trusted spirit and surrendered on plenty of occasions to serendipity. I had no idea spirit was going to pull me inside out over this, leaving me naked and empty in the storm, madly snatching at John for help and understanding; overlooking my own power.
I have taken us to hell and back, again. My family ravaged with the insanity of it; woman needing man's approval, bi-passing ancient knowledge. Women are the custodians of wisdom as we collectively carry the genetic information of the past into the future. Our true power lies in the ether, in prayer. Man needs words and we need silence. We are the generation of women who have immature male to deal with, very often, and we were given guilt as our inheritance. Forbearance and accessing the wise woman within has the power to overcome our genre's challenges.
The storm is over and John's devotion shines like a beacon. He is a rock and serves our family with stability. I am something less tangible and magical if I go within for solace. When I look to the divine mother I no longer need approval, I am connected to source and therefore can be transformed as the feminine power of my womanly self. It is not something my husband need know about, though through irony he would sense it as an extraordinary change in me that would release him from the lower male energy that by design, avoids the woman.
Peace in my heart
Peace in my family.
Peace in the world.
Peace on earth.
Shanti OM
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
Thursday, 3 November 2011
RECAPITULATION: Mum the Shopper
To recapitulate is to look back while still moving forward, life's rear vision mirror. I am using it all the time, seemingly on a highway right now with information coming in at all angles. The first and most obvious road sign is woman/ mother as shopper or as my daughter when three told me "it's not shopping, Mummy, it's swapping."
Back to empty cupboards and an empty fridge with a new level of dietary understanding from our ten week vegetarian diet with minimal milk product means there was room for some new decisions. Armed with my sour dough culture from the walk I made some bread. Then we harvested potatoes and boiled up home grown eggs we were given. Mayonnaise was easy to make and then, as if by magic, we had an organic potato salad. Abundance came also from the sea when we were given a fish on our first day back. Shopping/swapping the pantry was filling up on its own. I have always been silently dedicated to reducing our family's eco-footprint and have been blessed with a wood fired stove so I fired that up with Karri sticks (by the way, wood sticks release the same amount of carbon being burnt as they do when left to break down) and cooked our sour dough bread and made a stock from Evie's garden.
When lighting the stove two articles jumped out for reading; one was about the global economy and how women make up 70% of the spending market, with a global purse of 17.8 trillion dollars while we are represented at government level by only 10% female economists. You can further reduce that percentage when talking about women in politics who are actually producing home made goods for their house holds. No doubt most working women of that level would not have the time.
So whilst we have this massive global purse we are barely represented at the global financial decision making processes and therefore we are shopping in the dark as a group; susceptible to advertisers who target us with essentially aesthetic product. This brings me to the second article titled 'The Sisterhood of Shopping''which shows our love affair with shopping centres started with the beginning of the industrial revolution and the first shopping centres which were places of liberation for the women of the time.
Well times have changed and while our men are still largely the 'bread earners' they statistically are not the main spenders. While we are also contributing to the 'bread earning' we continue to be the main spenders. Our collective decisions are leaving us all in chains and our Mother Earth stripped bare.
We need to be accessing our power as the main spenders and making decisions based on real needs. Real needs are directly linked with sustainability both environmentally and individually with reference to our time managed lifestyles. As a side line but very much worth considering, we live in nuclear families that cannot provide all the essential needs that for eons were met in communities and the fallout is represented by our collective need for more stuff. Ironically, this very need is what is fuelling the drive for nuclear power stations. The waste created by them has a half life of 1.3 billion years so obviously this path is unsustainable and immoral.
So with these cards on the table it is a natural and commonsense conclusion to remind ourselves of the very powerful position we have at the sink and the kitchen counter where we decide for real what we can make verses what needs to be bought.
The movement for saving our world, our families, our health and our women's business is through these small decisions we make at home. So fill yourselves up with this amazing power of womanhood; gather together as sisters and bake a cake for humanity, cook a stock for sustainability, walk to school for the power of making a difference to our planet. These small acts will connect us and nourish us . Remember we are the decision makers and our children are watching. Life is abundant and beautiful and so are we.
1. Buy local produce and eat seasonal produce.
2. Recycle and swap and buy from second hand stores.
3. Refuse to buy products that are over packaged or poisonous to our waterways.
3. Teach our children how to shop sustainably
4. Worm farms and compost for kitchen waste.
5. Find ways of opening up your home to your wider community; billet families or individuals in need (Japanese families need billeting to get small children away from the radioactive fall out. If interested contact me at kryystalmcmullan@yahoo.com. I am finding out more about this at present for our family.) Or go camping with other families, invite your mother in law to live with you. Knock down fences....have regular meals with people in your street....there are many ways of deepening our community and lessening the sometimes stale air of our nuclear families.
6. Walk or ride instead of driving.
7. Challenge the princess in yourself and your daughters; we are physically capable of more and it benefits us to stretch ourselves in that direction.
8. Get wet and immerse in the elements. Nature will reward you...
9. Support small business, buy from market stalls etc. Keep out of shopping centres.
10. Stop throwing out things you haven' t used in a year. The Zen housewife is refuelling the consumer cycle because removing clutter is removing potential. Our children need chaos and order. Too much order means the energy of chaos goes underground leaving us attached to control and needing new things. Don't get me wrong; I do subscribe to the idea of keeping belongings moving and not hanging on to things that are no longer useful but I think it all needs tempering. We have Zen homes and full tips and over flowing second hand stores. This is a much broader conversation but essentially I am suggesting that we take a back seat while managing order in our homes. Bless our collective abundance and pause to consider our children and our men may not always see it how we do.
Connected by MOTOBLUR™
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
HIT THE GROUND RUNNING
I have parachuted some twenty jumps as a eighteen year old and remember well that with a stiff wind blowing you need to start running when you hit the ground or you get dragged along like a fishing net. So when we eventually arrived home at six pm on Sunday with school starting the next day I went to bed with my boots on.
I have found the whole transition, harder to cope with than I expected. On many levels I have felt fine but I have had 48hours of acute asthma. So the stress has measured on my nervous system without really impacting my patience or tolerance.
Normal things like driving, shopping, operating a plastic card, are all out of frequency with what I have been accustomed to and definitely add an element of stress. Stopping and starting things too, has felt stressful. Our days were more fluid and naturally rhythmic, perhaps that loss in our modern culture is why we crave our 'routines'.Anyway there is more to say but for now real life has more pressing needs than cyber space so I will round this off here.
This blog will continue as part two; the unfolding after the pilgrimage. Twelve hundred kilometres takes some time to digest.
Looking forward to catching up again with people. Love Kristi
Sent from my Motorola ATRIX™
Saturday, 22 October 2011
THE DOWNWARD RUN
We are camped at Mundaring which in Noongar means the "top of
the hill." It is all downhill from here. We pause here for a day off tomorrow and we will celebrate Evita's birthday. It seems fitting that our group begin its celebrations with our maiden turning eleven ;the number is symbolic of a gateway. We are indeed passing through a gateway, back to our lives, to the places we all came from. There
Sent from my Motorola ATRIX™
the hill." It is all downhill from here. We pause here for a day off tomorrow and we will celebrate Evita's birthday. It seems fitting that our group begin its celebrations with our maiden turning eleven ;the number is symbolic of a gateway. We are indeed passing through a gateway, back to our lives, to the places we all came from. There
Sent from my Motorola ATRIX™
Monday, 17 October 2011
PERTH IS ON THE HORIZON
We walked into Northam today after leaving Greenbushes at seven am. We arrived at our first caravan park since the trip started. We have 100 kms to go. The kids are so happy and well. I feel a special bliss decending on me. Mostly I think it is exhaustion! Goodnight.
Sent from my Motorola ATRIX™x
Sent from my Motorola ATRIX™x
Saturday, 15 October 2011
We sleep everywhere.
At first it was bush camps; sometimes on red dirt soft and smooth, others on hard and rocky ground. Occasionally the earth was littered by crystals or prickles with five points of razor sharp prongs. Then we slept by a uranium deposit(sickness country). We camped at a reservoir and in gardens of wild flowers. Droning mine sites gave way to bird nirvanas and we woke to their happy songs. As we first came out of the desert, we camped in the backyard of an Aboriginal elder over the road from the refugees million dollar prison. There were still many bush camps to go. The bush changed to woodlands and on one occasion it was a B.M.X. track. At Kalgoorlie we slept next to a train station and then with the cyclone we slept in the cultural centre centre surrounded Aboriginal paintings; ironically, I slept on a exercise walking machine. We camped at a children's playground, a trotting track, in a stadium and last night we slept at a church with a loud party next door. We are getting accustomed to the city.
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