Life’s Tests

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I feel that maybe life is a test, we come here to achieve something, find ourselves, maybe remember who we are but we get caught up in life and forget our purpose.

We come to develop an understanding, find tolerance and compassion.  Often this comes from the tests life give us, that we suffer on occasions ourselves opens our understanding of suffering.  To feel pain we recognise the pain of others and in turn learn compassion.  I know it sounds silly but it’s like anything, to experience is to understand.

When we find tolerance, we are able to meet life’s challenges head on, knowing that they will make us stronger and strengthen our soul.

Joy and pain are two sides of the same coin, like night and day, there is not one without the other.  If we have an easy ride, well maybe that’s a life without meaning, recovery from the last or we are here to help others.  I’m not sure we won’t know until the end, it’s all a mystery really.

via Daily Prompt: Test

Test of the Tower

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I pulled the tower in 2013, not for the first time in my life but anyone who understands the tower in the tarot deck, will know it is significant.  I’m not frightened of the tower because it signifies necessary change, it’s just not always easy.  In fact I have pulled the tower at some major points in my life.   I pulled it when my husband and I lost our business, home and marriage.  I pulled it just before I quit a very well paid secure job at the beginning of 2013 and I pulled it before my mother died eighteen months later.

The tower is a test card, it usually indicates the breaking down of establishment, established ways of living, signifies necessary change and rocks the status quo.  I’m not one for thinking too much about it, what will be will be.  My friend on the other hand is terrified of the card, she makes me laugh because as much as these cards do tend to come up at the right time, they are really only for entertainment.  It could be that our unconscious self, that, that knows where we are going knows exactly where each card is in a pack.  I am quite psychic, do read the cards etc but don’t let it rule my life, as we are very much in charge of our own destiny.  Small changes we make one day might take us up a totally different path the next, although I do think the lessons along the way are the same, as is the destination.

Well the point of this post is to look at the changes that have come about for me over the last few years.  I started this blog as my mother was dying, it helped me process her impending death, she died in 2014 and I left it alone.  A few months back I came back to my blog and it is like I am a different person.  I talk out loud through my writing and I am now nearer to making sense of who I am.  It has been a difficult three years, extremely difficult.  The day my mother died, my stepfather had a heart attack and cancer was discovered.  I brought him home to live with me and he died at Christmas, two months after my mum.  I got through it with the help of my family and friends and now, two years later feel I have finally reached the other side.

I am happy, although I would do anything to have my mum back with me I have also had to stand on my own two feet.  She was my rock, she listened to me, supported me and worried about me.  There is something about the death of a parent that makes you grow up.  You have to think for yourself and make your own decisions.  It’s not that you didn’t anyway, but you did so in the knowledge that your parents were supporting you and loving you all the way.  I’m single so don’t have a partner for support but this time has been so good for me, I have discovered myself.  I’m comfortable with who I am and don’t rely on anyone for confirmation I’m going the right way.

Where am I going now, I work as a consultant in care, although it doesn’t really fulfil me anymore.  I’m between contracts and not really looking for anything along those lines, I think I’ve done my time.  I’m looking for a new direction, that’s why I have so much time to write and read your blogs.  I know I want to work in a way that will help others, I have natural empathy and can help people work things out somehow, maybe it’s because I listen and I’m good at untangling knots.  I’m a great believer in what is meant to be will not pass you by, so I’m waiting patiently.

I got a new tower today, I found it in my stats which made me think of the significance of the tower in my life.  Just maybe I will win the euro millions tonight and spend the rest of my days happy and blogging 🙂

Friendship

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None of us can get through this life alone, we are not made that way.  We are born into a family group and from there we spread out into the world and join other groups.  We make friends along the way, special people we want to be with, that give us something and get something back from us.  Real friendship is a blessing, these people we love as we love our family, for some who have experienced difficult upbringings these are the only family they may ever have.

So what is a friend.  To me a friend is someone who understands us and likes what they see, friends look beyond the outer shell and understand the soul of us.  Our friends champion us, they will us on and help us get there.  There is no jealously or competition in friendship, we want and wish for our friends to be happy.

I’m not like all my friends, we don’t have to think the same or say the same we just have to love each other.  My oldest friend I met at 4, I knocked on her door and asked if she wanted to come to my party.  I was new on the estate, mum had just divorced and we had moved back to London where she could work in the city.  I told her ‘it won’t be a very big party because I haven’t got a daddy’.  Well she came and we have been great friends ever since.  We rarely see each other, a couple of times a year and apart from the odd email and text we are not in contact a lot but we love each other dearly.  When my mother died she was the first person I phoned, she loved my mum very much too.  She was a rock through those dark days, along with other friends and I don’t know how my sister and I would have got through without them.

I’m not really like any of my friends, we are all different and that’s good.  One friend I met through work, we worked in a children’s home where violence and aggression were a daily occurrence.  We understood the children were traumatised and their behaviour was just a communication of their emotions and early life experiences but it didn’t stop us getting hurt on occasion.  I knew this girl was always behind me, she always had my back and me hers, so it was only natural we would become good friends.  We have been friends ever since and we continue to support and have each others backs.  Funny we are nothing alike, we like different music, choose different places to go and have different interests but experience holds us together.

I have a friend who always leaves flowers on my kitchen table for me to return to when I have been away, she has recently started a blog on here and knows who she is and that I love her dearly.

I haven’t mentioned family, those very special and wonderful friends, because they deserve a special post just for them, but my son and sister are my best friends and I still talk to my mum daily and know she listens.

Friendships can be transient, people come into our lives for the time we need them, they complete the task and move on, it might be we were supposed to do something for them.  I think friends are probably planned before we come here, some of these people we have known before in other lifetimes, that’s why we recognise them.

I am so blessed with the friends I have, those that have been and those yet to come.

 

Morning View


Blue is the sky from my window today

Birds high in the sky, maybe flying away

A fluffy white cloud, a slither of white

I’ve a feeling today might just be alright 

This time of year you just never can tell

Last days of sunshine, a gift from a spell

Squirrels jumping, on leaves on the floor

Today is for playing, there’s not many more

Early Morning Visit


Laying in bed in the early hours, I felt a pressure on the end of the bed, something touched my foot. I didn’t look, l wanted to, but know through past experience nothing is there. The longer I keep my eyes closed and just lay there, the longer it lasts.  

Last year when this happened the pressure moved around for a while, it felt similar to a cat padding through the covers. This was shortly after I lost my cat and I wondered at the time if it was my Eris coming to tell me she was okay.

I don’t know what this pressure thing is but do know it has only happened in the last couple of years. I had two huge bereavements in 2014 that rocked my world.  This activity has only happened since that time.

It doesn’t happen when I’m wide awake but also I know I’m not asleep, I’m in that in between state on just waking.  I think it is a message from someone. Last night it felt like someone sat on the end of the bed, gently brushing against my feet as they did.

I know this would terrify some people but I find it comforting.  I don’t say anything at the time as I explained as I don’t want it to end, so I thought I’d share it as a confirmation of the experience.

Does anyone else have similar things happen to them. Is it our traumatised minds or something else, something we don’t really understand.

Creativity ?

Creativity is wonderful and something in which we can immerse ourselves.  When we create something, we also create something else inside, joy, fulfilment and a bright light that cannot be put out.

Writing, painting, dancing, music can all bring a deep and wonderful feeling of joy and contentment.  When we sit back alone at the end of the day and look fondly at something we have created and find happiness in that, despite no one else seeing or experiencing it, that is real creativity.  Like a mother looking at her child and knowing she has created something truly special.

We create first and foremost for ourselves and the feeling it gives us to immerse ourselves and dance with our creative minds.  We might share what we produce with friends and family, who are happy that we have found a creative outlet, enjoy and admire what they see.  That they find enjoyment in our work will of course make us happy but that is not the reason we create.

When we share our work further afield for example through our blogs, we are at risk of getting caught up in producing something for others, will they like what we have done, how can we adapt it so everyone will like it.  Is the end product still the same when we share it universally as it would be if we kept it to ourselves.

Is it then really our work or the work we do for others, is this how we loose our creative spark?  Will we find as much joy as in the reward of our own creations when we think first how others will interpret, see experience.  Is this really creativity as its natural state?

I have been pondering on this, so I thought I would get it out and see what you think.  I’m interested in the thoughts of my friends this community.  Of course if you don’t respond I will know that my piece on creativity is rubbish 😉

Universal Dream

 

 

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Are we awake right now, living in the minute

or we just dreaming, just thinking we’re in it

is all of this an illusion, created by our minds

could it be we are asleep, not even humankind.

 

Is the planet our creation, but not really here

just all experiencing the dream, so very clear

And if that is the case, oh, where in hell are we

are we just a stream of thought, nothing else can see.

 

via Daily Prompt: Facade

Always Ask the Question Why

Always ask the question why,

my grandfather said to me.

He gave me a diary and a pen,

the words inscribed to see.

He was a man of intellect,

he was a man of vision.

Reading at his writing desk,

not watching television.

We used to sit and talk for hours,

exploring many things.

Why the world was round,

what literature meant to him.

He taught me to philosophise,

to think a little more.

He instilled the trait in me,

keep asking until I’m sure.

It will take so many lifetimes,

there’s multitudes to learn.

Not leaving doubts unanswered,

a candle I have to burn.

Every puzzle has a final piece,

just to slot in place to see.

Always ask the question why,

my grandfather said to me.

Facade – DP

 

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Your life is just an illusion, you will realise it one day

masquerade without the ball, why care what others say

the mask you wear to cover up, does not fit your face

with a semblance of dignity, you’d get out of this race.

Why do you hide your true self, behind this gross facade

keeping this act ongoing, must be so incredibly hard

the veil in which you stand behind, is wearing very thin

I suggest you face reality and let you real friends in.

 

 

via Daily Prompt: Facade