A Spanish Wrinkle in Time

Have you ever had something inexplicably disappear for no good reason? Or maybe you've had a strange item suddenly appear that wasn't there before? The old farm cottage where I currently live was built in 1928, so I can imagine things perhaps slipping out of time to a previous occupant or even from the past to appear again in the present. In point of fact, something odd once happened in out tiny sitting room just a few years ago. Now I am one of those people that like to completely clean and rearrange the furniture in rooms from time to time, and, on this occasion I KNOW this particular item was NEVER there before. I was vacuuming and moving the sofa back to it's usual place in front of the windows. I then left the room for some reason. When I came back there was a travel brochure lying on the carpet by the sofa. It was all about Andalusia in Spain! Previously I had found out from the landlord that a lady tenant called Ruth had briefly lived at the property back in the 1990s before moving to Andalusia in Spain! The sofa we had purchased new in 2010, and it comes a part in three sections for transportation, so there is nowhere for such a brochure to hide anywhere inside. Also, I knew of the previous tenants before our tenancy: A family of four who were here 5 years, and Anna and her young son, Robert who were here for about two years before them. When my family moved in the cottage was completely empty and vacant. As for the Spanish Travel Brochure, I can only think that Ruth mysteriously lost it one day and it finally reappeared back in the same room sometime in 2012!

Out of the Body Experiences - Astral Travelling

As a very small child between the ages of 3 and 6years, I regularly astral travelled. I would so look forward to going to bed each evening because I knew I would go "travelling" - that's what I called it. I would lie on my back in my cot and stare up at the ceiling. Pulsating clouds would appear above me and it seemed as though my cot would vibrate. Then I'd feel my whole body shift upwards into those clouds I was watching.

Growing up I became less aware of this travelling experience but still enjoyed my vivid nighttime dreams. In my mid twenties there was one time in the middle of the night that I suddenly found myself sitting near the foot of the stairway, in the darkened hallway of the house we lived in then; I could feel the cold wall against my back and I thought "What am I doing here?" and the next moment I was back upstairs in my warm bed.

When I was around thirty years old, it was the very early hours of the morning and I became aware of a loud banging sound. I found myself slipping through the bed I was lying in, down through the floor and ceiling of the room below. There was a knocking at the hallway door there. I opened it and saw a young dark haired woman standing there holding the hand of a fair-headed toddler. She was was calling me "Miss!...Miss!" I suddenly felt weary and very tired, I couldn't speak. She said "It's alright. Don't worry". Then she bent down towards the toddler and said conspiratorily, "We're going to make a candle!" Then, still leading the child, she turned away and moved up the hallway. I then found myself back in bed again. A couple of years later when my son, Alex was around 16 months old (fair haired), he was playing in that lower room with Duplo bricks. I asked him what he was making and he said "A candle for you!". We now believe the the woman was one of Alex's guides who we call Julie.

When Alex was born he was in the breach position and I underwent a Caesarian Section with a general anaestetic. Early next day I was lying in the hospital bed with curtained screens around when I saw a white figure approaching my bed dressed in a hosipal nightgown. As she drew alongside me to my left she vanished. There was nowhere for her to go as there was only a wall and a wash basin next to the bed. I remember thinking that she looked just like me! I now believe I was seeing my astral body returning from visiting baby Alex down in the special care baby unit. I had not physically seen him at the time - due to a breakdown in communications at the hospital, I did not get to see my baby until 12 hours after he was born.

Before we married, and Richard and I had moved in together, I would sometimes wake in the night and see him pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed, only his body was still laying there beside me. It was anoying but I put it down to the stress he was going through at that time running our computer business. Some years later when I first learned to meditate and was opening up more fully to my psychic abilities, I opened my eyes early one morning and saw, for a split second, a figure hovering above the bed as though falling from the ceiling. It startled me but then I realised the figure was the image of Richard.

More recently, again in the early hours of the morning and as it was getting light, I watched the image of Richard (strangely dressed in a white shirt - not his usual attire by any means) come in through the bedroom doorway to Richard's side of our bed and disappear, while Richard physically lay sleeping beside me all the while. He has no recollection of any of these nocturnal episodes.

I believe we all vacate our physical bodies every night...it's just that most are not aware of this at a conscious level.

Where Your Attention Goes, Energy Flows...

One day in March last year, I was reading in Cygnus Review an article by Jon Kabat-Zinn entitled "Full Catastrophe Living". And, that very evening ...

I went into the kitchen to begin cooking our evening meal. The cats told me they had brought a friend in from outdoors to play with. It was a little brown vole (water rat) and it was hiding from them behind the fridge-freezer.

I pulled out the fridge-freezer and saw the wee beastie cowering. As there was three years plus dust to deal with I got out the dustpan and brush.

Bandit said he'd get the vole if I pulled the f-f out further. When I did, it revealed all the dried hair and cat sick that Bandit had deposited there when he had fur ball trouble a while ago. Well, Bandit went in round one side of the f-f and I blocked off the other side. The vole promptly disappeared somewhere into the back of the f-f.

I dutifully got out the Flash Anti-bacterial Wipes from under the kitchen sink and began to clean up the mess.

Sparkles alerted me to the fact that "Voley" had made a bid for freedom and was now trapped in the corner of the kitchen by the door. Sparkles said she couldn't get to him as there were bottles, shopping bags and a box file in the way; this was brilliant as I could then use all these items to build a fortress around the vole to keep him from escaping again.

I managed to get the boys to bring me a pyrex jug to attempt to secure the little brown friend but it was too cumbersome to manoevre in such a tight space. It was dark in the corner and we discovered that when you shone a bright light, the wee creature became transfixed! Then Chris brought over a glass and card with angels on it, and with these I was able to entrap the vole.

I struggled into my wellies, grabbed the torch (it was dark early that day), fought my way out of the house into the dark night, stomped across the grass to the very far end of the garden and deposited "Ratty" on the high bank above the stream.

I returned to wash the glass and set the kitchen in order before I commenced with the evening meal.

Christopher, closing his session of World of Warcraft, hastily pulled out the internet cable to his PC and promptly knocked off and smashed his favourite green Dartington Crystal tumbler! I divert his anger with the promise of buying a new one - it is replaceable and not worth the angst. I send Alex to fetch newspaper while I retrieve the dustpan and brush for it's second round of duty.

Alex doesn't understand my instructions for locating some newspaper, so I have to get it myself while stopping people and cats from walking in the green chards of glass. I have yet to start preparations for our long awaited meal and I reflect that this is what it is like actually living Full Catastrophe Living!

It may only have been words but I note that I now intend to be more mindful about what I place my attention on during the day !

Navigating to Where You'd Like to Be

When I was a very little girl in Innercity London, England, and my brother and sisters had all gone off to school, I would sit on my swing in the small back garden and look over the garden walls, and look beyond the neighbours' washing strung out like flags from the farther taller buildings, and I would focus on a patch of sky glowing just beyond the horizon. Then I would imagine that if I could reach that place beyond the gardens, which so invited me, that I would find there a little town by the sea; I could sense it, and in the distance I imagined I could hear the mewing of the seagulls.





All these years later, when I go to Watchbell House to sit with Ken to do my transformational stuff, I am aware that I am now in that little town near the sea and, obligingly, the seagulls come and squeal with delight overhead!





I knew I needed to leave the city; it didn't resonate with my inner being. Where we lived later on, although still technically Innercity, was once lovely Surrey countryside many years previously. So as I walked around the area on a regular basis, instead of noticing the buildings and the noise and smell of the traffic, I would spend my time imagining that I was actually walking in that beautiful countryside. Part of me yearned for a village home and community, surrounded by green field and open countryside, like the place my family lived when I first came into this world. I also longed to be near the sea.





Later a new notion came to me: I wanted to live on an island! My friends whom I had grown up with joked about this but also they actually believed somehow that I would indeed have my island! I would walk around Brixton in South London and feel the sea breeze blowing in my face and calling me away from there. And it was that same year that the opportunity to relocate to the Isle of Wight, UK suddenly manifested.





Twenty four years on, I am still living in a little village community, surrounded by green fields and open countryside, and only a short distance from the coast. I am very much an islander and many people who meet me assume that I was born and brought up here too.





If only you knew the power of your own mind...

Asking... through the medium of water

There is something quite magical and mystical about water. It is through contact with water, which supports and nurtures all life on this planet, that we can reconnect with ourselves. This is why the bathroom is a place where modern humans like to retreat to regularly, like an inner sanctum where they refresh body, mind and spirit.

With running water we can tune in to our unconscious mind to find out how we really feel and safely confront what is challenging us in the physical. We can also more easily reconnect to the non physical from which we were created, and through this we can access all the answers we are seeking in the present.

In order to receive in life and move forward daily, we need only ask.

So what is on your mind? What is bothering you? What is asking for your attention? What haven't you been able to resolve in this moment of now?

Go to your bathroom and engage with the water. Get busy. Cleaning the bathroom will keep the left side of the brain beautifully occupied while you quietly ask, allowing the creative right side of the brain free rein - (so you don't have to sit still to receive). Showering or batheing is equally good, though you can have good enlightened moments just sitting over water, of course; but you are doing the real work with your mind.

What you ask is always uniquely personal to you. Examples may be: "What shall I do about ....?"

"This is important to me: how can I resolve this successfully...how do I do this?"

"How can I find...?"

"Who do I need to see about this?"

"Who around me can help with this?"

"Why is this happening...what would make this better?"

"I need some help with this!"

"I would like this sorted out now."

"I can't seem to make any headway with this...point me in the right direction."

"I've been struggling to long with this...help me please."

Focus only on what is concerning you - picture it in your mind - and ask. Be ready to receive whatever comes in that moment.

The answers will present themselves to you immediately.

Receive these graciously; they are answers that are unique to you. Ponder them carefully and then plan to act on them. The action is important - it is a gift you have now received. Engage with it!

You will be amazed how everything now falls into place; you always have the answers but you need to tune in to receive them.

Let the water be the process.