Category: Wellbeing
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Mary Magdalene sessions – Darkness part 2
For this session I discuss the Darkness and through another layer of Mary Magdalene’s teachings. Here I talk about the books available both as scripture and channeled publications, what the Darkness means in this lifetime of the here and now. And a look at what we can take away from her words in our own meaning of the Darkness within.
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Mary Magdalene sessions – Power of Darkness
Join me for a look at the Power of Darkness with the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
This is a meditation on the Darkness and the seeds to sow for your Heart’s Desire.
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Mary Magdalene Sessions
Introduction to the Mary Magdalene sessions I have created sessions on the Mary Magdalene Gospel, looking at The Powers. Within these sessions I read from her story, I talk about the teachings, the Powers. I look at the messages with images from the Tarot and what these teachings mean to me in this lifetime, the here and now.
I invite you to follow me through the readings of the Powers as I try to go deeper and deeper into the realms of Mary Magdalene.
The first form is Darkness,
the second Desire,
the third Ignorance,
the fourth is the Eagerness for Death,
the fifth is the Realm of the Flesh,
the sixth is the Foolish Wisdom of Flesh,
the seventh is the Wrathful Wisdom.
These are the seven Powers of Wrath.
Gospel of Mary 9 18-24
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Solar heat at 49
In my 49 life I am I am experiencing anxiety. This anxiety and me have a history coupled with PTSD. Recently I don’t always know what my physical body is telling me. A mix of anxiety, grief, overwhelm and menopause. This is my story from this week.
I was setting off in the car to visit a relative in hospital. I got into the car, the temperature read 38 degrees, I felt sick, hot, was it just heat? was it a hot flush? or was it anxiety! My thoughts jumped from one to the other, the truth of it ( which came later) was that my body had remembered something.
I needed to get out of the car and feeling like a failure and disappointed at letting others down I had to just stop and “Get out of the car”! Soon after as I cooled down I realised that I know this feeling, this reaction, it is when the body remembers. It is remembering a date, a past situation or a trauma. My body was not only messaging me to take a break but signalling patterns into my awareness. The body remembers dates, places, and the places can reignite triggers and the triggers can “fire up” to remind us that something from the past needs attention. Just like a fire starting in the shadows of our internal cave growing stronger so we go back, look, witness that situation again. The “issue” is that it comes up uninvited, unawares but the body has this internal storage that seems to just remember without the mind being involved.
As I uncoiled just enough for me to remember and figure this all out. I can give myself a break. At this time of 49 I am considering that these “anxious” remembrances or triggers are relating to the menopausal symptom called hot flushes. They are literally fired up in my face. The date of my “heatwave anxiety” corresponded to a past trauma that my mind had not acknowledged. My mind hadn’t connected to the date and place but the body did.
So what is a hot flush? At the time of a surge, are we actually in the spiritual sense going through a fiery upgrade? Are we actually re-membering ourselves? By that I do mean collecting our bones, our divided parts, which have been lost over time. Are we pulling ourselves back together in a newly fashioned way, a mature way?
To me this was a good reminder that my mind may think it is taking the lead with the logical stuff but my body is attuned to all that has been and will continue to message me from spiritual to physical body as I go forwards. In the wise words of Caroline Myss, the greatest power we have within us is the position we energetically hold as our power station, the solar plexus. This is the intuitive energy centre that messages us from “gut instinct”, or intuitiveness. We all have the ability to connect to the gut instinct and sometimes this power centre messages us in stronger ways. Is the menopause really a firing up of the solar plexus, our solar energy? Is the gut instinct being attuned? This chakra centre as it is known is after all the centre of our personal power, the seat of our inner compass. If I am actually having a solar upgrade then surely this is a positive thing for my mature years ahead!
Maybe, just maybe what is occurring in my menopause years is a gathering of my inner ability to discern all around me to assert my personal power. If this is the metaphysical change to the wise elder, then baptism by heat to burn away the old and transition into a new relationship with selfhood is what is occurring. The soul lesson is forging our life force, literally by forge or force, or both, a consolidating of past and present as our personal identity in full acceptance. Maybe I need to remember that it is my shadow and my light that make Gold.
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The Sensitive Gardeners
To walk in a room, even a familiar space is difficult sometimes with illness, emotional pain and anxieties looming in the ether. Walking into a new place a new space is challenging. There are unpredictable energies spilling into the space, free floating unregulated matters of people we may not even know.
The issue for Sensitives is that they walk into a space and identify with the energies. A new environment has a collection of thoughts, feelings and needs of others. To the Sensitive this is like a room full of passive energy emitters. The Sensitive sits within this uncomfortable space, muted and bearing up, it is a necessary part of living. You may think why do they go there? Well they have to. Whether it be a training course or a waiting area, they work hard, they need to maintain their own energy but still appear sociable. They have arrived are constantly regulating their own energy systems, including the nervous system and so many other levels in between. To them this world can be exhausting!
The Energy Changes
These days I am calling the energetic personal field the energy garden, this is the internal landscape, because Sensitives are good cultivators of their gardens too. They do the weeding and tend to their spaces daily. The energy garden was once an unseen field, but now, in the current climate it is a well known plot. The change has arrived. Gone are the days of a mysterious energy as a collection of past experience, past lives and traumas. The Sensitives right now are aware of what is in their garden. They tend to it. The old ways of trying to connect to the akashic records, the auric debris or find blocks in the energy bodies is over. This is new upgraded, intelligent design. And the ones who arrive in our future generations are more advanced that this. Maybe they arrive with a greater capacity for their gardens and wouldn’t that be just the treasure humanity needs on this planet?!
For now, my statement here is this, care and support the Sensitives around you. I invite you to consciously be aware of thoughts, feelings and emotions of the Sensitives around you. They are adjusting to a new wave of consciousness that is asking them to step up to a new challenge, to new practices, to work collectively in some way in the future.
If you could be a good neighbour and help those Gardeners a little more. And if you need some assistance with your garden, please ask for some help from a Sensitive Gardener who as willing to cultivate with you.
You won’t be sorry, your garden will blossom.
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Mature 49
49 is not what I expected. I started my working life as a medical professional then turned holistic and spiritual practitioner and so far this week my practice has been my saving grace. I have navigated my own selfcare treatments from Reiki to calm my nervous system to Reflexology to regulate the endocrine. It is a rollercoaster of a role to witness our elder’s needs from lightbulb changes, medication dosette boxes, emergency calls and missing wheelchairs.
I have called upon my spiritual allies to help in many varying degrees from negotiating contracts and holding space for my Mother as she feels she is losing her friends to dementia. Then there’s my Fathers loss of mobility and fragility. My faith in the wise and well ancestors have been my allies in the subtle realms only too willing to be called upon.
I lean to the ancestors, after all I am them, my bones and facial features are theirs, from them I am born. The role of the carer is a difficult one to navigate. It arrives at a time when I myself am changing. I go through a multitude of transitions being a 49 year old woman, self employed spiritual business practitioner, a wife, a friend, a listener and a menopausal shifter.
Whilst navigating the elder’s care needs in an ever-shifting NHS and social care system I am trying to figure out the menopausal fatigue and wonder if my symptoms are from too much or too little evening primrose right now. I am pulled to “clean house” of the unfinished business I have stacked up. The courses, submissions, assessments and the continuing professional development that is a feature of all our professional pursuits these days. I am always reading 4 books and far too tired to complete any. Then there is the cleaning out of the emotional and energetic baggage of old worn out perspective and my inner archetypes all shouting for some deep witnessing.
This thing they call menopause is a maturing of the old ways, the inner pathways, a realisation of what has worked well and what has not. Call it menopause, call it a life review if you dare! It is the wise one willing me to tune inwards and not be so outwards when the world is wanting me to be all things. This crone inside is trying to be birthed into a new way of navigating the here and now. So while we nurture those around us, the message deep within is “Who is nurturing you?” Birthing is painful and changeful. It can’t be pushed down or ignored. So no wonder I am feeling the fatigue of this gestation from menstruation.
It is the big gardening of mature life. Call it weeding for now, it is asking what am I keeping up and what do I need to let go? What is right for me and what is right now for me? 49 is full of loose ends, never-ends and the inevitable end. Right now the weeding is all important as I take this time to nurture the garden within. As the elders take an afternoon nap, the cat does too and the 49 year olds are discerning, weeding and regulating their nervous system with left-right eye movements in the mid-day sun. One day I will be through the change, transformed and the ancestor of my family tree.
The red tent to women like me in the middle of life, becomes a life tent. It is the anchor that sits you down and holds you in. It is a place remembered for birth and death, but it is also for the mid shifters, for transformation. It is the place to go to in pain, in need, knee deep with the earth and discerning cries, “help me transform, shift through it all”. If you have never been inside a red tent, create one, create if just for yourself! It is the resting place and the place to let it all flow.
Here in the middle we are asked to change, do work differently, parenting and elder care differently. Our loved ones change, societies views and expectations change, my hair colour has changed….and everyday the needs of those and ourselves change. My own requirements move and new boundaries need to be created, what once was ok is now far from acceptable. They call this growth in the spiritual community, with grow there can also be pain. So the message for now is take it slowly, even when there are urgent moments, walk the earth with every step at a slower pace because everything is changing.
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Menstrual Matters in the Current Climate
The vaccination roll out has seen menstruation reports to the yellow card scheme, which is the system to report adverse effects of any medication or treatment in the UK. “Common side effects of covid-19 vaccination listed by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) include a sore arm, fever, fatigue, and myalgia. Changes to periods and unexpected vaginal bleeding are not listed, but primary care clinicians and those working in reproductive health are increasingly approached by those who have experienced these events. “More than 30 000 reports by 2 September 2021, across all covid-19 vaccines currently offered”. (1)
The Science Media Centre on the 21st June 2021 stated that “It is vanishingly unlikely that vaccination, including Covid-19 vaccination, would have this effect, and women should not be worried that vaccination might cause problems with their periods” (2). Another report from the International Journal of Epidemiology suggests that menstrual disorders are extremely common, in its explanation to the yellow card scheme.
I have no doubt that there are “challenges”. “Studying menstrual cycle features is challenging. Normal variation exists within women over the lifespan and between women in relation to characteristics such as history of infertility, body mass index (BMI) and exercise. In addition, menstrual cycle features such as volume, pain and PMS symptoms are subjective “(3). But my concern is that women do not go to their healthcare provider about their menstruation cycle unless they are experiencing a different pattern. Women know.
One report from the School of Medicine in Chicago found that “More than half of respondents to an online survey reported changes in their menstrual cycles during the pandemic, including differences in premenstrual symptoms and in the time between cycles and the duration of their bleeding”(4). Changes can be accredited to stress of the pandemic, as “It is well-known that stress can cause changes in menstrual cycles, and these changes range from shorter or longer periods to heavier or lighter bleeding, and may cause women to skip or miss a period altogether,” said study author Nicole Woitowich”.
There has been more media coverage, that may highlight menstruality to all with campaigns such as #periodpoverty, the Scottish product free provision, Red Tent Movement facebook groups and resources for online education. The University of Edinburgh has highlighted that when women have irregularities or “problems”, they know. They know the difference between ‘Typical and problem periods’ (5). The author and obstetric Doctor, Michel Odent writes in Primal Health (Ch9) that our bodies and our cycles are also intrinsically linked to our external world as well as the internal. Our stresses and strains are influential to our cycle. How can you measure tiredness as a quantity measurement? One person’s levels of tolerable activity are different from another. This is why comparisons are not as scientific as science would like. This is why we have not engaged in parameters of normal Michel Odent says, “what is normal health and how is that measured?” (6).
More recently the American Society of Gynaecologist rate the menstrual cycle as a “vital sign” in health. “ACOG and supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advises health practitioners to consider periods as the “fifth vital sign” — meaning menstruation is as important a health indicator as changes in body temperature, pulse, breathing rate, and blood pressure (7). Other countries are participating in further investigations, such as The Institute of Public Health in Norway. They monitored 6000 women, and are now going on to research a cohort of 60,000 participants. In this study they state that in most (vaccine) cases, the changes were transient and returned to normal in the next cycles. Here in Norway the reporting system has gone on to formulate a research study. The findings of this study will be vital to all pharmaceutical companies and all countries rolling out programmes in the future, as well as Women’s Health around the world. (8). (Menstrual changes following COVID-19 vaccination – NIPH (fhi.no)
1.(www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2211).
2.(www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-mhra-yellow-card-reporting-relating-to-periods-after-covid-19-vaccines
3. http://www.academic.oup.com/ije/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyab239/6447179
4 .www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-10-04/pandemic-stress-altered-many-womens-menstrual-cycles
5.www.ed.ac.uk/centre-reproductive-health/news/2021-news/menstrual-health-animation
6. Michel Odent 2007 Primal Health Chapter 9
7. http://www.elemental.medium.com/doctors-think-your-period-should-be-a-fifth-vital-sign-5b882c864783
8 (Menstrual changes following COVID-19 vaccination – NIPH (fhi.no)
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The Menopause, the Matrix and the Moon
For Christmas I gave myself adrenal fatigue. This feeling of minimal activity and maximum fatigue is not a new thing for me. I am well versed in how this goes. I am also well attuned to deep rest, hydration and good food to begin with, from a well oiled radar to the early signs. The “Holiday” in deep winter has me thinking that I am not as attuned to the seasons as I thought. My preparation for Christmas was not at all prepped appropriately. My inner vision was covered. I did not see the wood, literally, for the trees and here is why.
I got swept into the tangibility of it all. The Matrix was there with its all seeing eyes and I was lost to it. I got moved along with the to-do-lists, helped my elders with their food preparation, the lights and the tinsel. I colluded to buy and messy wrap the presents and all the time my energy levels waned and I knew it. I felt it, I recognised my bodily signs saying, slow down. I went out again and again when the fire side was calling with its soft golden glow and its warming invites. I left for one last trip with the Christmas cards.
All this was done out of love, but was it love for myself! And where do you draw the line with your loved ones at Christmas to say, I am done! I am menopausal, my instincts are saying I need to go inside and withdraw not do more. I am listening to my body and my answer is just one more thing! But the body knows the limits and has no cajoling from the mind, the body doesn’t say ok, let’s finish all this and high five. No, the body has a limit and when the limit is overstepped it shouts now, now is the time for rest and no more.
All this came home to me yesterday as we sorted, cut and piled the wood from the pruned trees in our garden. Here I was again, but this time the realisation was of my sacred rhythms with the trees and the land. As I over stretched once again I had this vision that my ancestors worked with the rhythms of the seasons. I thought I was doing so well with my menstrual practice cycling like the earth with my inner landscape then it occurred to me, what do we do when the cyclicity is gone.
Here I was without the clock, without the dial, the rhythms all gone. I was chopping wood in winter when this could have been done in preparation. My ancestors would have prepared for winter, just as I had prepared in the autumn of my cycle, my premenstrual phases, listing and smoothing things over so I rested in winter. My inner cyclicity had been musical even, never mind rhythmical…..and now as I arrive in this space of no cyclicity it began to look more like no-womans-land.
My world was not prepared for the winter. If I had looked, really looked at myself and my nature this would have been all in good timing. The cutting, pruning and gardening would have been put to bed weeks ago. If my body had been in a menstrual cycle I would have been prepared for this! But is it just me, or is the outer world out of sync? As I sit here typing, the window is open the hedges are green and it seems the earth herself is in a great flux of menopausal seasonal crisis of no-womans-land too!
When I close my eyes and think of my ancestry I see the high stocked wood stores, the jars of pickled fruits and veg, the importance of the harvest festival and the fire flickering and tended to day and night. Frosty mornings and sleet showers with streets of leaves piling up the brick walls. Houses with the lights on early and no more to do about the gardens but witness and welcome the returning of the light in weeks to come. Nothing kept for keeping sake and nothing needed but stillness and the flame.
My awareness is bringing up that familiar nervousness that all is not right with the world. I am aware of what has occurred on the inner landscape and I can accept that and find my path again. But what can be done about the outer landscapes, how do we assist the cycles of the season of this planet? Is this a greater task that we have as a collective? Is this a task for all women at menopause, as we sit in nature to nurture ourselves can we be in reciprocity at this time? Is it time to nourish both? If the earth is also out of cyclicity do we now look to the moon for our rhythms and reflect deep into our old ways, the wise and the well, the ancient and ancestral knowing once more?
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Sounds of the Sea
A moment spent by the sea can calm all the cells, water by water. We develop within the rhythm of water. No wonder the sound of water resonates deep within every part of me, even those places that are tucked away, hidden and protected.
“Deep peace of the running wave to You” (Celtic prayer).
Janice Turner Salmon 