Crystals

It’s been a while …

Angela PorterLeave a comment

It really has been a while since I last posted – two months more or less.  And what I couple of months it has been.

Work has been tough at times as respect has noticeably diminished along with good behaviour and attitudes.  I lost my voice for a week, a regular thing with me it seems.  The good news is that the ENT consultant put a camera up my nose to look at my vocal chords/throat and there were no problems at all.  I’m now awaiting speech therapy as it seems to be an occupational hazard and they can help me to use my voice without stress or strain.  I know of two, no, three ways my voice could be looked after while I still work.  One is to change my job/career.  The second is for the school to actually get the microphone/speaker system installed in my room so that the speech therapy can be focused on teaching me to talk at a healthy level.  The third is for the decline in behaviour to be managed and turned around so that I didn’t have to raise my voice so much, or even shout to be heard by the person two feet away from me.

A good point looks like I’ve finally achieved my aim of someone actually admitting that I’m right that the GCSE equivalent course I’ve been expected to deliver to my SEN classes isn’t actually possible for them to do the controlled assessments.  I do have to search out an alternative qualification that would give a GCSE equivalent qualification that I can deliver for part of the time while I continue to deliver the Entry Level science course.  I think I’ve done that, but it has to be sold to ‘the man’.

Outside of the world of work things have been strange.  It seems that a move away from a spiritual pathway I’ve been wandering along has finally happened. The signs have been there for a while, my unhappiness with it has been present for a while.  As nasty as the ending got (I vow to do my best to never become involved with committees with ego issues every again!) it showed that there was no way of mediating the schism.  I just hope the half-truths, rumours and downright lies about me don’t cause problems elsewhere.  All could have been avoided by effective, polite, even-tempered communication, or just a politely stated desire that the class I have run for a couple of years needs someone other than me to run it.

I’m finding that so many people who claim to ‘know’ me really don’t know me at all.  I really dislike confrontation, but am willing to listen to calm requests, well reasoned and logical arguments backed up with actual evidence, even if that is someone’s opinions.  I’d much prefer someone to ‘man-up’ and state their opinions rather than sneaking around behind my back, getting people to ‘spy’ on me with a remit to dig up dirt and if there is no dirt to dig up to manufacture it.  I’d much prefer someone to be open and honest, even if their version of truth hurts, for them to admit it’s all their own perceptions.

The result of all this was a rather nasty meeting with the committee members with confrontational attitudes and no desire to mediate, just to attack.  I think the members of the group I lead sent letters with their observations in that caused some level of guilt and/or jealousy somewhere as they were asked to explain why ‘she’s a credit to us’, she being me.

That means, to me, that I’m not a credit.

In the end I quietly stood up and politely said I’d had a day of managing confrontational behaviour in work that I didn’t expect it from adults in this kind of setting, that no matter what I said I’d not be believed, that I was obviously in the wrong and that the faults lie with me as a person for caring about others, for being welcoming, for giving my time to those who need it, for losing sense of time as I got lost in long discussions about things that were relevant to the purpose of this group.  I kept my voice quiet (mainly because the stress of the situation had caused my throat to constrict) and my demeanor non-confrontational, yet the attacks continued.  So I left.

I left with tears in my eyes for the pain caused to myself and others.  Tears of disappointment that those who proclaim so loudly to be spiritual aren’t.  Tears of disappointment that my involvement in a certain part of this organisation will also have to come to an end.  Tears of frustration.  Tears of anger.  Tears of embarrassment, humiliation.  However, there were also tears of relief among them too, and tears of grief, tears of letting go.

I hadn’t wanted to go, knowing exactly how it would be; knowing that someone had an axe to grind because they disagreed and disapproved of me and my ways and they wouldn’t be happy until they had not just put the knives against my back but driven them deeply in.

I’d felt the knives there for a long time, but there was no way they were going to puncture me, and I don’t think they did.

They will believe they are victorious, but it is a false image or at best a Pyrrhic victory, but they will not see that.

I’m the true ‘winner’, if there is a win anywhere.  I am now free of the rules and regulations.  What I do and how I do it is now up to my own personal sense of ethics and morals.  I would never treat someone the way they have and revel in the glory of it.  I’m sure the gloating will go on for a long time by some.

As for me, it’s time for me to decide where I go with this next, or rather how the decisions that have been made need to be developed.  It’s kind of exciting yet scary as it’s very much me breaking new ground for myself in some respects.

Another ending has been hypnotherapy.  I’ve had problems getting people to be guinea pigs for my case studies.  I’ve also become very jaded with the course and the practice.  I realised I had got from the course what I needed, realised that I didn’t really want to start up my own hypnotherapy practice.  Taken together, I decided that I had what I needed and wouldn’t complete the course.

Arty things have taken a bit of a back seat lately.  My half term break seemed to be filled with errands and appointments and trying to rest, relax and restore myself.  In the evenings when I return home from work I’m often too tired to do anything much, emotionally and mentally drained that is.  The weekends are often a washout for me as I sleep a lot of the time as my sleep in the week is disturbed (and has been this weekend as part of the fallout from the above mentioned meeting which was Friday night).

I did buy a book – Knitted Dinosaurs by Tina Barrett – on a visit to the National Museum Cardiff.  I have a lovely pterodactyl knitted with sparkly purple wings and a lilac body, head, legs and arms.  Some friends have fallen in love with him and have asked for ones of their own!

Yesterday evening, after a lunchtime outing to The Skirrid Inn in Llanfihangel Crucorney with one of my pals, Wendy.  I really didn’t want a dissection of the previous evening’s meeting, and so did my best to turn the conversation to other things, which we mostly did.  The little conversations about the meeting did help to bring some clarity that may be related to jealousy, guilt, and some evidence of absolute hippocracy in at least one ‘complaint’ that was levied by the committee.

The previous Saturday we’d been to Glastonbury for a nice wander around the shops and a leisurely lunch in the Cafe Galatea, where I had the nicest cheesy garlic bread and homemade coleslaw I’ve had for a very long time.  I had a good look around Starchild and stocked up on candles and incense – I just love that shop and always have since my first visit to Glastonbury some 11 or so years ago.  A new favourite shop is The Crystal Man‘s shop where I picked up pieces of spirit quartz and botryoidol lepidolite mica, which is shiny and silvery-pinky-lavender in hue.  The chap who owns/runs it is hilarious and friendly, which encouraged us to have a good look around and to rummage in his drawers – drawers of crystals/minerals.

This has been a bit of a random ramble, admittedly.  However, it does give an idea why there’s been little art or blog entries of late (not that I’m consistent in doing entries anyway).

My main problem at the moment is that I’m happily ensconced in bed tapping away at this on the laptop given to me by a friend when they bought a new one.  It’s comfortable here, safe too, warm as well.  My only problem at the moment is that I want a cup of tea and I’ll have to get out of bed to go get it!  That’s one of the main downsides to being single!

Flowers, folklore and folk-medicine

Angela PorterLeave a comment

Our Fathers of Old

Excellent herbs had our fathers of old –
Excellent herbs to ease their pain –
Alexanders and Marigold,
Eyebright, Orris and Elecampane –
Basil, Rocket, Valerian, Rue
(Almost singing themselves they run)
Vervain, Dittany, Call-me-to-you –
Cowslip, Melilot, Rose of the Sun.
Anything green that grew out of the mould
Was an excellent herb to our fathers of old.

Wonderful tales had our fathers of old,
Wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars –
The Sun was Lord of the Marigold,
Basil and Rocket belonged to Mars.
Pat as a sum in a division it goes –
(Every herb had a planet bespoke) –
Who but Venus should govern the Rose?
Who but Jupiter own the Oak?
Simply and gravely the facts are told
In the wonderful books of our fathers of old.

Wonderful little, when all is said,
Wonderful little our fathers knew.
Half their remedies cured you dead –
Most of their teaching was quite untrue –
“Look at the stars when a patient is ill.
(Dirt has nothing to do with disease),
Bleed and blister as much as you will,
Blister and bleed him as oft as you please.”
Whence enormous and manifold
Errors were made by our fathers of old.

Yet when the sickness was sore in the land,
And neither planets nor herbs assuaged,
They took their lives in their lancet-hand
And, oh, what a wonderful war they waged!
Yes, when the crosses were chalked on the door –
(Yes, when the terrible dead-cart rolled!)
Excellent courage our fathers bore –
None too learned, but nobly bold
Into the fight went our fathers of old.

If it be certain, as Galen says –
And sage Hippocrates holds as much –
“That those afflicted by doubts and dismays
Are mightily helped by a dead man’s touch,”
Then, be good to us, stars above!
Then, be good to us, herbs below!
We are afflicted by what we can prove,
We are distracted by what we know
So-ah, so!
Down from your heaven or up from your mould
Send us the hearts of our Fathers of old!

Rudyard Kipling

Yes, there were some dreadful examples of medicine in days long ago, yet there were also many examples of folk-medicine that did work and that we use today.

For example research in biomedical Egyptology shows that many were effective and that some 67% of the cures recorded in various papyri complied with the 1973 Edition of the British Pharmaceutical Codex. They used honey, a natural antibiotic, to dress wounds and treat throat irritations, for instance, and aloe vera was used to treat blisters, burns, ulcers and skin diseases. They also used mouldy bread to treat infections; one of the moulds that grows on bread is penicillin!

There are many more examples of cures that worked and the active ingredients are used in modern medicine. Indeed, there is a branch of science called ethnobotany or ethnopharmacology that studies folk-medicines with the hope of finding new and active ingredients to treat the plethora of diseases still suffered by humanity.

Regardless of whether they worked or not, reading and researching about the uses of plants and other materials in folk medicine as well as the theories our fathers of old had about illness is something that I find fascinating, when I have the time to dig and delve into it. I find lots of interesting tales about where the names of plants come from, so I learn more about etymology, history, folklore, legend and myth. I get to look at photographs and illustrations of the plants used, so widening my knowledge and experience of art and so inspiring me to create my own. One day, the tales may even help to inspire me to do my own creative writing, maybe poetry, about all the wonderful lore that surrounds our most familiar plants, crystals, rocks, horseshoes, and so on.

Rose Quartz and Self-Love

Angela Porter4 Comments

During my weekly sessions of trying to put the marbles in the right places and getting them to stay there the focus has been on self-love, self-esteem and self-confidence, or rather the lack of all these things within myself.  I’ve come a fair way during the past several years in terms of personal progress, but these are the knotty issues at the root of everything and my excess weight is a symptom and not a cause of them.  Indeed, my weight may even be a barometer of my internal emotional health.

I spent sometime research what self-love is.  In my mind it’s been equated with those who shout loudly about themselves, who profess themselves to be wonderful in a strident manner, and who are egotistical to the point of excluding any one else in their lives.  And now I’ve kind of worked out what self-love is about those ideas are totally off the wall yet are indicative of how hard the self-talk has been programmed to believe that if I were to love myself, to consider myself worthy of good things then I would be like these loud, boastful egotistical people and that is something I would not wish to be.

Self-love is subtle yet powerful.  It involves having faith in yourself, being there for yourself, caring for yourself.  It’s recognising your talents, achievements, strengths, positive qualities and allowing yourself to be proud of them, to praise yourself for all your successes.  Not in a loud, boastful, bragging kind of way, but quietly, reinforcing all that is positive about yourself and in so doing gaining a positive self-image, a healthy sense of self-worth, of having a quiet confidence about what you are able to do.  It is about being your own best friend as you are the only constant in your life.

In learning to love yourself, you allow others to love you too.  This is a big lesson for me to learn, and it’s going to take time to overturn the thought patterns, the neural nets that have reinforced my poor view of  myself over 40-odd years of my life.  So it’s not going to happen overnight.

Now, I do have a bit of an interest in things of a spiritual nature,  things considered ‘new age’, psychic, metaphysical, parapsychological and so on.  There are some circles I move in where I discuss such things, there are others where it is never mentioned, such as at work.  My own thoughts on things like crystals things is that they are tools, props, symbols to focus on that help change the thought patterns or emotional patterns to more positive ones.  Whether each crystal truly has a different energy, whether colour influences us or not, if we believe it to make a difference, to help us, then it will.  Science is recognising more and more that there is a link between our physical health and our emotional or mental state, so anything that helps to promote a more healthy mind-set or inner emotional climate must have an effect on physical health.  Mind you, that’s all an over simplification of something that is most probably more complex, and my views are likely to change as experience, knowledge and I change.  That’s part of life and how we grow.

Anyway, I digress.  I decided last weekend to look into self-love and to find which crystal or crystals would help me develop self-love, self-worth, self-esteem and rose quartz seems to be the most important one to do this.

Rose quartz is a stone of gentle warmth and love.   It heals emotional wounds and pain and in so doing it opens the heart to the beauty that is within us as well as the beauty that is all around us.  It promotes self-acceptance, self-love and self-worth.  It enhances all forms of love including self-love, mother love, caring, kindness, compassion, platonic and romantic love.  It encourages us to open our heart and to be tender, peaceful and gentle.  It teaches forgiveness and tolerance.  It helps us to emanate unconditional love and a nurturing nature and in so doing it helps us to attract positive, gentle, non-judgemental unconditional love into our lives.

There’s a lot more about it than this on the world weird web and in books on crystal healing and metaphysical topics.  It is suggested that you carry rose quartz with you in a pocket, as a piece of jewellery or, if you are a lady, to keep a piece in your bra close to your heart!  Of course, it’s useful to hold while meditating or working on personal issues in other ways.  It can act very subtly but also very deeply by bringing up past hurts so they can be examined, the reactions to them can be altered and then they can be let go of.

I’m going to use a piece.  I have stumbled across a methodology for self-love that I’ve adapted to my particular way of thinking and spiritual path and will be using that as a focus to help me move forward.  As it resonated in me, it’s something important for me to do, and something practical to do some personal work that I would usually shy away from for it being too painful.   I’m going to be rather secretive here as I’m not going to post any details of the kind of meditative practice here.

Crystals and other things

Angela PorterLeave a comment

The return to work … and stress…

Well, it’s just over a fortnight into the month and me being back and work and juggling everything else that goes on in my life such as taking and going to meditation classes, meetings, workshops, talks has meant that the time I have spent at home has been almost total ‘down time’.  Chilling with mugs of tea and a DVD or several is about all I’ve been able to do.  It may be a good sign that I am taking that time out and not filling my time up with busy-ness.

Stress hit a high on Friday with a confrontation with a pupil … and the fear that I may have done something wrong, that I will end up being told off for it, and yet common sense tells me that I did nothing wrong (apart from shout a little loudly). I was annoyed and angry with myself for letting my temper ooze out, though I regained control very quickly, and gained a stress-headache as a result of keeping things in.  There was no chance to let the temper out as I was on the roller-coaster of lessons yet again.  I wish I could have a ‘get out of lessons free card’ like some of the pupils, just for a few mins to gather myself back together.  I now have another set of negative automatic thoughts and reactions that now need de-programming, or perhaps that need revisiting in the light of some further insight.

Having said that, this was a lesson I had to take as soon as I got to work after a counselling session that ended just half an hour or so before the lesson.  It was an emotional session, with me trying to face up to my emotional eating, self-image, self-confidence, self-esteem and weight issues … sometimes I think I should just phone in ill.  I have leave of absence for these sessions simply because I give up my non-contact time in the week to attend them so that I have no classes to be covered.

Any suggestions for a career change for me?

I think this may be the only way out of what seems to be constant source of stress in my life, and with the way attitudes towards education have changed, both among parents and pupils and the low value placed on education and the lack of respect for teachers from parents, pupils, government and the wider society it’s not going to change, is it?  A way out, but I have no idea what else I would like to do or could do (bearing in mind I do need a certain income to pay the bills …).

Crystals

Thinking about stress, I’m always trying to find ways that work for me to relieve stress in my life and so stop me becoming totally drained and heading towards a dark place.

Meditation certainly helps no end, but that takes a fair amount of time, time I don’t have in the normal school day.  Morning and night not a problem, but during the school day … not even at lunchtime do I have time that is mine.  So, I do look at other things.  Square breathing that can be done ‘on the fly’ to regain control of some part of myself and my emotions, for instance.

Crystals may be another way of helping myself … though I’m not always convinced about such things.  I also have mixed views about the rape of our planet, our home in the Universe, for it’s precious resources that cannot be replaced, well not in our life-time at any rate.

I did have an interesting experience with a tumbled piece of sodalite that I purchased after a particularly emotionally harrowing counselling session a year and a half ago.  I was fondling it while having a make-over in the Body Shop.  There was a cracking sound and a piece of the sodalite had broken off and crumbled.  Now, I’m not strong enough to do that, there were no obvious flaws that I could see in the mineral, and it would most likely have broken into two pieces if that were the case, but to crumble into what looked like blue sand …

Crystal therapists and ‘experts’ I’ve related this tale to tell me that was a sign that some powerful healing had happened, and that such breakages are not uncommon.

The scientist in me is very sceptical about anything like this, even though I know that I did end up feeling better sooner than I thought.  There was a sudden easing of my emotional distress, whether that was due to the crystal or the make-over or just a little bit of time and space I don”t know – too many variables to say which one it was!  Or maybe it was just a combination of them all.

Sodalite

Sodalite from www.exquisiteearth.co.uk
Sodalite from http://www.exquisiteearth.co.uk

Sodalite unites logic with intuition and opens spiritual perception, bringing information from the higher mind down to the physical level.  When used in meditation, the mind can be used to understand the circumstances you find yourself in.  This stone instills a drive for truth and an urge towards idealism, making it possible to remain true to yourself and stand up for your beliefs.

Sodalite eliminates mental confusion and intellectual bondage.  It encourages rational thought, objectivity, truth and intuitive perception along with the verbalisation of feelings.  As it calms the mind it allows new information to be received.  Sodalite stimulates the release of old mental conditioning and rigid mind-sets, creating space to put new insights into practice.

Psychologically, this stone brings about emotional balance and calms panic attacks.  It can transform a defensive or oversensitive personality, releasing the core fears, phobias, guilt and control mechanisms that hold you back from being who you truly are.  It enhances self-esteem, self-acceptance and self-trust.

Sodalite aids, among other things, the throat, vocal cords and larynx and is helpful for hoarseness and digestive disorders.  From The Crystal Bible, Judy Hall.

Well, that most probably covers all I’ve mentioned in my experience of sodalite, as well as issues I’m working on.  I do remember just finding myself attracted to the sodalite in the display of crystals in the shop, which was Exquisite Earth in Merthyr Tydfil.  I also remember the owner telling me to look up the crystal in a copy of ‘The Crystal Bible’ by Judy Hall and at the time it perfectly suited the situation I found myself in, and still do.  However, I am working my way through to the other side, and I am certainly a lot, lot better than I was back then!

Art

Art has taken a bit of a back seat to life in general lately.  I am hoping to lose myself in some art in the very near future – such as as soon as I’ve finished this blog entry and got a mug of tea!  I don’t have a lot of time this afternoon as I have a talk to do tonight.

Currently reading …

My reading list is really odd at the moment :

‘I can make you thin’ by Paul McKenna

‘The Spook’s Battle’ by Joseph Delaney

‘After Death Communication’ by Emma Heathcote-James

‘The Physicists’ View of Nature, Part 2: The Quantum Revolution’ by Amit Goswani

So, you can go figure!