Gratitude and Joy (Day 74) Get a coffee, it is a long one.... On this, All Souls Day, I feel a little bit like the walking dead. I am grateful that the Heath sisters have birthdays only twice a year. My liver couldnt take more. I hope you had a great time last night, Sam! I always love hanging out with you two xo 1. I am grateful for the struggling artists who are trying to make a name for themselves and earn a living by enriching our worlds. I am grateful for Dan Shears check him out and buy his music on Facebook here: https://facebook/danshearsmusic?fref=ts I am grateful for his unusual song writing gifts in the folk noire genre. I heard him open for Charlene Soraia a few years ago at Union Chapel. I thought perhaps his voice was that other-worldly because of the venue but then I followed his band to a couple of hole in the wall establishments in the east and north of London and no - his voice is really that good. I really believe in this young man. If I had the power to make him a rich and famous star (and his band), I would. If I were an agent, I would represent him. He is a real talent. I am grateful that I got to see Jonas Stouts work at Westbourne studios. I love that he upcycles the materials from his day job and turns it into fabulous works of art. I hope that his pieces sell out. Again, if I was an agent, I would represent him. He is one to watch, folks. I am grateful for all my writer friends and teachers along the way who share the same struggles. No matter how successful they are, it is always the same each time we start something new and try to give birth to our creations. Keith, Hart, Jerry, Sara, Stephanie, David, Tanya, Pamela, Rosie...I am grateful to have you in my life and to watch you continue to blossom. You have kept the way lit for me for all these years that Ive not been able to see my way out of the dark. I am grateful that when I started blogging and putting up my pocket camera photos, I somehow attracted a bunch of artists and fellow writers in my blogging community. Bob, Beader, Ruela - the fact that you have crossed over into real life friends means the world to me and you were instrumental in helping me to come out of the darkest art cave ever known and into the world of just giving things a go. I will probably never be a great photographer or a writer who changes the world, but I can use the camera and the pen to capture a moment for the simple love of it. The word amateur gets a bad rap. It doesnt mean unskilled (although I am, still). It means one who does it for love. You blog buddies have helped me to rediscover my love. And who knows? I hold out hope that I will be a late bloomer. And, finally, I am grateful for C. Michael Frey and his outstanding gift with Photoshop, the canvas and the camera. See his work here: freyartanddesign Michael is an artist in whom I have always believed. His painting is at once exquisitely refined and emotionally pure. Whatever he does, it is kissed by angels. I have learned a lot through Michaels eye and Michael was very encouraging of my odd obsession with Caravaggio and light in the past 18 months and I thought of him a lot when I travelled Europe to see new-to-me works by the big C. Perhaps whilst I have always believed in Michael, I may have underappreciated him. Michael supported me when I started the charity Jnana Dhana with his gift of painting as prizes in the annual charity raffle. I would not have asked him to donate his work, but I was also was not donating Reiki/Polarity sessions as well. I know. I hear you gasp. I dont think I realised at the time just what a big ask it was for him to donate his artwork. Although I should have known better, given my own shadow-art/healing lifestyle, the fact that I was undervaluing my own work meant that I undervalued that of others. I was insensitive and I am sorry for that. Artists, healers and ministers all struggle with this - the idea that we should somehow give away our work for free - and that is not okay. It is a livelihood and just as a Porsche takes years to design and build so too does an artwork (or energy-work session, or ritual/counselling) and they both need to be valued in a similar way. Being compassionate people, generally, we are prone to give away too much and people can take advantage. The fact that one has a gift does not mean others can consume it for free. If I never said it before, or I never said it enough, I am tremendously grateful for your gift of art, Michael, grateful for your support of Jnana Dhana and grateful for the gift of your friendship all these years. You always encourage me in any creative genre at which I try my hand and thats important for artists to do for one another. If I owned a gallery I would fill it with your work and if I were an agent, I would represent you but Id want you to have a far better agent than me. I love you more than words can say, and I am looking forward to owning one of your pieces soon. We are a community of loners, visionaries and weirdoes. Although we create for different reasons and are on a different wrung of the external recognition ladder, lets not be jealous or tear one another down. When one of us succeeds, it opens the door for the rest of us. I am grateful for each and every one of your successes xox 2. I am sincerely struggling with this post now. Isnt one enough for today? No? Ok..... After a night out with the Heath sisters, this morning, I am very grateful for water and paracetemol. My hangover thanks you, ladies, for your dangerous influence on my liver. My heart thanks you for your ability to be nutjobs and giving me a laughing session that made my diaphragm hurt! xox 3. Ok - since it is All Souls Day, I am grateful that I feel the presence of ghosts. Don’t stop reading just yet – hear me out. When my mother died, I was on an airplane, trying to reach home to say goodbye. I didn’t make it. My family had bought me a first class ticket to be picked up at the airport and as it was first class, I knew the news was bad but nobody actually told me how grave the situation was. As I tried to doze on the red-eye from Toronto to Vancouver, I suddenly awoke and said aloud “I love you, Mom.” I was a bit embarrassed, but everyone else seemed to be asleep. So, I checked my watch which was still set on Toronto time and realised I still had a way to go. So, I tried to doze some more. It wasnt until I got home to her house that I learned she had died, and later still that I learned the moment I checked my watch was her time of death. Now maybe, as the Sufis say, our souls meet in our sleep, or maybe it is when our ego-mind is out of the driver’s seat enough that we can allow ourselves to feel our connections across time and space. I don’t know. What I do know is that I got to say goodbye and the only thing that really mattered; the only thing that ever matters. I used to feel her around me a lot but not so much anymore – I knew she wanted to go and I had to release her so I did, many years ago. But whenever I am at risk of falling into the darkness, I know it, because I feel my mother around me. I am so grateful for these visits and her energetic protection. I love you, Mom. I’ve felt ghosts at other times, and they really aren’t to be feared. There are dark forces out there that will try to attach to beings of light and they are to be rejected. But ghosts – they are just souls in transition or unable to transition and when I can, I’ve done my best to help them on their way. After 9/11, I felt strongly that there were not just bodies trapped in the rubble, but souls. I don’t know what you know about Reiki, but the most powerful aspect of it, to me, is that it can be used to heal the past. I was working down in the village and we had a view of ground zero from the balcony that ran the length of the building. My colleague (a person very in touch with spirit and whom I shall not name for the sake of privacy) and I went onto the balcony overlooking ground zero. The air was acrid and the smell of death and destruction was everywhere. But I closed my eyes and did what I needed to do to send healing back into the past, to the moments that the towers collapsed, so that their spirits could be freed. Before I tell you – I am going to say that I am grateful I set up this page so that all my Chartered Accounting colleagues don’t have to read this – but what happened next was the greatest gift the universe has ever given me. I felt the balcony fill with light. I believe that more than a few souls were released that day and I am so grateful for that. Since then, whenever I hear of a suicide of a friend, I do the same and I hope that their soul is released and at peace. And while it is All Souls Day and we think of the dead whilst the veil is lifted, there are ghosts that still live I am grateful that I can still sense them when the world around us refuses to see. There is a photography exhibition I want to see of council housing in the North. I have been thinking of this work and looking around where I live. The words the end of the East end keep coming to my mind. Everywhere in London you have this odd mix of unaffordable homes and council flats - many of them quite run down. I live near Canary Wharf. I dont live on a street with multi-million pound flats. I live across the highway from that. And every day when I cross the highway, I feel the disparity, acutely. The last few affordable apartments in East London are being torn down and replaced by new-build flats for bankers and brokers. We are driving the poor into worse and worse conditions. I am aware that there are homeless people in the area by the signs on the streets: abandoned cases, sidewalks and corners used as latrines. But, I have never actually seen anyone living on the streets in my neighbourhood. Yesterday, I didnt get a good nights sleep and I finally got up and wandered over to Limehouse for a little walk in the healing sunshine. The basin is like a little oasis but is also an exhibition of conspicuous consumption. I took a photo on my phone of some waterfront homes reflected in the glass windows of an estate agency. It was then I noticed - in the doorway of the same building - a duvet and a ceramic coffee cup. I was immediately struck by the folds in the duvet and the way the light hit them. Although it was mid-day, it looked like it had just been freshly pushed off the sleeper, who had been stretching in the sunlight. And I wondered - who lived there and then who had been kind enough to give our ghost a hot drink in a ceramic cup? I thank whoever it was, from the bottom of my heart. I stood there a long time, watching joggers and yummy mummy types as they walked past that doorway and did not notice. There are ghosts moving amongst us and although we can’t see them with our eyes, if we just blur our vision, and tune in, we can. They leave us signs. Dead ghosts leave us a sense of energy or memory and we can feel their presence. But it is the living ones that so few of us can see that troubles me the most. And Joy – Well, as I said, I had trouble sleeping Thursday night. So, I turned on the acoustic versions of Julian Lennon’s Everything Changes CD. If you like it, please buy it, but you can sample it here: youtube/watch?v=44cItE-wLKY&feature=youtu.be His acoustic versions were like a lullaby and I drifted off as the music continued. I was in that REM state when I rolled over to turn off the computer playing his music. I opened my eyes to see his photographs of the most glorious sunsets being uploaded, real time. It was like a mirage and in a strange way, I felt that we were ‘in conversation’ at that moment. And that, was a joy.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 11:50:20 +0000