Growing, making, creating – Somebody Stop Me!

My little apartment has morphed into a veritable plant sanctuary. Since beginning The Ringing Cedars Series, an eight part volume of concentrated and sometimes incredible wisdom, I’ve been sowing seed after seed. It started with a salad mix and some mange tout, then progressed uncontrollably to sunflowers, marigolds, foxgloves, calendula, poppies and evening primrose. I don’t know what’s next – maybe some cotton so I can create a fashion line - though limited acreage may present a challenge there!

Here’s some snaps of my growing little ones – the flowers have yet to come up. I’m encouraging them with banana skin, a tip I got from the movie Seven Pounds.  Can’t knock it till you try it, right?

The Sunflowers and salad mix...

The mange tout...

And, oooooo, I’m also experimenting with cosmetics and just made some lovely, bubbly coconut shampoo, a body scrub and some summer cream for the God Pod, or body! It’s all so wonderfully simple J

Deva...

If I were a teacher...

I'd play this song to the kids every morning. Trés mushy, but sure puts the boo in bootiful...

Serenity of a Saturday...

This music is conducive to floating...

If Christmas did not exist, would it be necessary to invent it?

Christmas begins at the darkest, coldest time of year. Almost exactly. The 25^th of December is just four days after the winter solstice - the shortest, blackest day of the Roman calendar. It comes to prevent us approaching our wits end, really.

The season for love and understanding breathes dragon’s fire on us, doing its mistletoed best to melt our icicled hearts. It comes with blow-torched fiery kisses to sooth – or startle – people out of bleakness. Without its passion, and without the fire-toned twinkle of red dresses, red nail polish, red cranberries and red fireworks, would we, or would we not, sink into a black hole of despair? Would we not float lifelessly in the deathly dreary doldrums? Would our existence not seem meaningless without it? Or, worse again, pointless?

This wild conjecturing begs the question: if Christmas did not exist, would it be necessary to invent it?

Think about it: it’s a time when man-made sparkling lights battle the dark; a time when we warm ourselves with heart-felt gifts and exchanges of love. Of course it’s necessary that we do this at the darkest time of the year. But… what happens subsequent to our desperate attempt to escape the dark clutches of Jack the Ripper-Frost?*

Well, fires increases pressure (a law of physics) and boy, does Christmas bring its pressure. Stroll around a supermarket on Christmas Eve and notice the stern faces of determined shoppers. “If it takes an elbow to get to that last pack of thyme in time, then so be it,” the more determined out there will say to alleviate themselves of guilt (and criminal responsibility). It’s a time when latent tensions come to the surface; when good old fashioned arguments get belted out across Christmas cracker tables. For others, it’s a time to sit gloomily while staring into a mental abyss.

Of course, this is one side of a double ended phenomenon. If there are no latent tensions or depression, then it truly can be a cracking time of year where muchos fun can be enjoyed. Whichever end of the sword an individual sits on, positive or negative, they can be sure of one thing: Christmas is going to heighten, maximize, blow through the roof, everything that person feels at a milder level throughout the rest of the year.

Christmas comes at a price: for all of its cheer and warmth, it demands that we look into the giant invisible mirror it holds to our face. “Are you really happy?” it asks us on Christmas morning as we look around to see who is or isn’t there to share love with. “Are you achieving your highest possible potential?” it asks us as we meet old friends who ask us to summarise our life story in the five minutes they have to hear it.

Everything gets reflected back to us. It’s a time for excessive behaviour, over-indulgence and unrestricted play, yes. But it’s also time to have a good look down the rabbit hole. What do you want to see down there? What is the stuff of your dreams? What do you want to create in your life?

New Year’s Day. Aha! An opportunity for resolutions. It’s genius, really – the whole operation. The system is carefully built into the structure.  Rather than seeing through all the fanfare and man created frills, I tend to fall under the hypnotic temptation of a fresh start. Every. Single. Year.

In keeping with that going-with-the-tide behavioural pattern of mine, I have a stack of resolutions higher than my wildest fantasies following me around the house. Will I really be so healthy this year that I’ll float to the moon? Who knows. But I’m not done trying yet. I’ve kicked those dirty fags to the curb. Again. This time, I hope it’s for life and not just nine months (I realise that’s the length of a pregnancy and that by saying I gave up for nine months I’m implying I was pregnant, but I wasn’t. It’s merely coincidence that nine months is how long my will-power lasted).*

I’m intent on fulfilling my resolutions this year. To those cynics out there who think New Year’s Resolutions are stupid, I say: what better and more practical time to set resolutions than at the beginning of the year? I also say: Cheer up! If you’re done reinventing yourself then maybe you should be hanging on a wall in the Louvre with all the other completed works of art.

Anywho… to all and sundry: I wish you your best year yet!

*Both Jacks (Ripper and Frost) are related and in cahoots. Jack the Ripper-Frost is a figurative representation of this malicious (if supernatural) axis of evil. Warning: it is possible they may try to take over the world. Explanation: I made this up for the sake of it, and possibly for its humour factor, though dubious. Humans make stuff up all the time, that is the point of this blog. But it’s still fun to play with our creations – holidays, religions, theories, laws, etc. Existence is a game. I digress…

*Maybe nine months is the human limit for will power and that’s why the baby has to come out after that period. Ever seen a woman whose pregnancy goes over by a week or so? They’re not very friendly. 

Why Taste Matters

I entered a portal to the perfect-health dimension last Saturday. As my feet  landed on the other side of bright orange entrance doors, I felt a ticklish current move through my waters. I knew I had been transported someplace really special. I had arrived at Satmya.

Rows of potions and lotions glimmered and shimmered from rustic, wooden shelves; teas and tonics and oils and elixirs beamed vitality; rosehip oil and calendula cream oozed soothing, uplifting scents. Books of wisdom and ancient texts of lore offered the seeds to spiritual enlightenment.

I breathed in a ‘this-is-lovely’ breath and further explored its otherworldly terrain. Once satisfied, I did what I came to do: attend an Ayurvedic winter cooking class. Boy, did I absorb some quality info.

I have already posted  on the basic principle of Ayurvedic Medicine. For a brief summary, view it here: http://audreyshanahan.blogspot.com/2010/10/petals-in-air.html

Anywho, what I learned on Saturday was mostly how the six tastes (sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent) influence our humours or individual constitutions. In Ayurveda there are three humours: Vata, Pitta and Kapha. All of these humours are made up in differing proportions of the five great elements. In turn, the elements are associated with specific tastes. Tastes are our biggest clue when deciding what is best for us individually. For example, a person with a dominant Pitta humour (fire and water) may want to avoid pungent tastes such as raw onions and chillies. Overdosing on such tastes could well light the fires of indignation. Not cool. Choose sweet, earthy tastes to pacify the Pitta bull.

I also learned how choosing seasonally relevant tastes can optimize health. For instance, in early winter, which is the current season, the Kapha (water and earth) principle naturally dominates. Kapha tastes are generally sweet, so individual Kapha types may want to veer away from sweet and earthy root vegetables at this time of year or risk aggravation/overload/heaviness.

There’s much more to discover. Satmya’s website www.satmya.com is chock-full of information. Click on their link below to find out your personal dosha. http://satmya.com/satmya/ayurveda/dosha-quiz/

Ireland Will Rise from the Ashes

This post is going to make a hypocrite of me. Last night I didn’t just watch the news, I watched Prime Time. The sheer scale of the nation’s financial crisis drew me in the way spinach does Popeye. With one exception: the news’s effect on my physical state was more shock than strength-enhancing. Wow, as Harry said to Marv in Home Alone when the ceiling fell through, what a hole.

I won’t go into how the presence of the IMF and the European Central Bank is going to erode our sovereignty. Or how debt forgiveness laws in our country are archaic, or how the next budget will likely reveal a plan that trumpets bleeding money into flailing banks over encouraging economic growth. I won’t go into it because everyone everywhere is going into it more than most of us can stomach. And personally, I feel that economists are really the only people who are qualified to gauge the outcome. Not politicians with dubious credentials or journalists with egos, and certainly not me - however accurate I may think my ill-supported guesstulations are.

Why, oh why, I ask myself, isn’t there a system in place that sees to it that only the most qualified - and not the most charming and manipulative - sit in positions of major importance? Doesn’t it seem like a no-brainer? How did we not see the importance of brainpower? There is a difference - a major one - between intelligence and cunning, the latter being the prized quality of the modern-day politician. The good news: we now clearly see the Emperor is naked.

Anyway, I digress. I’ll give my positive twist; my entirely subjective, if flaky, opinion on how the situation may actually turn in our favour.

For one thing: the truth is about to out. No longer will the Irish people be lured by false promises. No longer will we be hoodwinked by cunning spin. The bamboozling is over. The game is up. There is going to be major systemic change in this country. We may even veer towards total social equality, which was, let us remember, the dream of the patriots who began again our country's journey to independence in 1916. Funny that it was Fianna Fail that quashed their dreams, too.


 How could we not change to socially conscious government now we’ve seen what money-obsessed neo-liberal ideologues are capable of? Possibly, and this is wildly optimistic, we may even change our views on how Government itself is structured. Maybe we'll see through the whole power myth and realize that we alone are our masters. These are exciting times, no doubting it.

We’re at a crossroads. We have decisions to make - even though it may take a few years before we’re totally free to implement them. I believe in evolution and I believe in Ireland. Mostly, though, I believe in the people of Ireland.

We will rise again. We don't need to wear ourselves down with anger or violence or upheaval. We need to get wise. 

Henry Ford said: “Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again.”

I agree. I am in no way undermining the stress families are under when I say that. Our system has failed us spectacularly and I have nothing but compassion for those who have been forced to bear the brunt of it.

Let us never let it happen to us again.There is no greater teacher than suffering.