The uncommon common cold

Now I am only too well aware that there is immense human suffering all around me in the world and I am incredibly blessed by my own personal circumstances. However, I am going to have a moan. My blog, my moan, so if you don't want to read, then you are excused. Tomorrow is another day and my positivity may be shining brighter than my nose which presently could be used as a light house beacon.

This malign, constantly mutating bug has been plaguing me since the end of November, when I attended an EFT course. One of my fellow students had a truly dreadful cold which she assured us was not going to infect us??? Signal for attendees to start dropping like flies.

I have coughed, spluttered and sneezed my way through the last six weeks with barely a 24 hours remission of symptoms. I kindly donated it to my husband which caused us to sleep in separate rooms for a week. No, he was not holding a grudge against me, but neither of us could sleep for the other's coughing, spluttering, sneezing and snoring through our barely open nasal cavities. Such civilised consideration is one of the reasons we are still married after almost twenty years. By some miracle our son has not been afflicted and I pray it stays that way.

Colds are a misery. Coughs are even worse. My voice sounds like a bad Darth Vader imitation which has put serious limitations on my recordings of my hypnotic sessions. I do not wish to terrify my clients out of their problems. Hypnosis is meant to be soothing, not traumatic.

So I've done my best to stay mentally active, planning business growth for this year, starting my NitroBlueprint System and working my way through a course from Jack Canfield, but it's like trudging through thick gloopy sludge. I am truly excited about my plans for this year but I just don't have the energy to really engage in the process right now.

So lots of Vitamin C, zinc, echinacea and loads of water. As much sleep as my bunged up nose and hacking cough will allow. I called in the cavalry today and asked for help from my Reiki Master Group. Let's see how the nasty little germs stand up to concerted onslought of a global group of healers.

Apart from all of that, I am managing to maintain a sense of humour, have not bitten the head off any passing relatives and it is being very effective in killing my appetite, making weight loss so much easier.

Ah well, every glowering, threatening stygian dark cloud has a shimmery thread of silver lining if you look hard enough, or is that just my eyes watering again???

Zen and the Art of Loving the Small Stuff

In December last year, after four years of intermittently practicing Reiki, first being attuned to level 1 and then 2 a year later, I felt a strong impulse to take my Master attunement. I almost immediately discovered Taggart King and his Reiki Evolution, a form of Reiki which is true to the method and spirit of Usui, the Japanese founder.

It called to me because it does not dwell on the westernised obsession with form and prescribed ritual but opens to the power of intuitive guidance and the potency of pure intention. I could never understand the necessity for the symbols; I could never memorise them and felt uncomfortable working with them. They felt immensely counter-intuitive to me. It was such a feeling of coming home when I found Taggart through another on-line Reiki group.

Taggart explained that the symbols were brought in as a means of giving a shortcut concrete focus to naval officers in the Japanese Navy who did not have the time or the inclination to pursue Reiki as a spiritual practice. Even the ritualised hand positions for working with clients were not part of the original practice. I felt like cheering - in fact I probably did. When I discovered that one of Taggart's Masters, Margaret Craig, lived less than five minutes from my son's school, the cheers got louder and I felt even more certain that this was the way forward for me. When I met Margaret the last piece of the jigsaw fell into place. It was as though I had known her forever.

The weekend attunement itself was blissful. The energy flow and shared experience of the four gathered together with Margaret was extraordinary. I loved it and I knew that there had been a space created in my life for something new and extraordinary to flow in. Those familiar with the concepts of the Hero's Journey know that as soon as you set your foot upon the path, challenges arise to test you. It is part of the strengthening and clearing process. It can also be very tough going!

Like many people who are naturally intuitive, there is a struggle to live in the "real world" or to balance the call of the inner world with the necessities of the external world, like eating, sleeping, keeping house, earning a living. Since childhood, I have been inclined to "time slip", my name for drifting off into some kind of inner space which always seemed a more enchanting place to dwell than in real time. I have achieved much in my life but I always knew that it could have been much more. I always danced away from the the idea and practice of self-discipline; it seemed so austere and in truth to me, soulless, redolent with the stories of my Catholic youth of martyrs, self-flagellation and other cruel and unusual practices.

It has taken a long time and a quite a helter skelter journey for me to wake up fully to the truth of mastery. Like all great truths it is incredibly simple when you finally see it clearly. Mastery is loving it all. Mastery is doing what needs to be done lovingly, reverently, joyfully, finding the bliss in each simple action of every day. It is not self- discipline; it is self-love. It requires no whips, no hair shirts, no painful self-immolation on the altar of self-sacrifice. It is not the dour dark dungeons of the enclosed orders of nuns I grew up in fear of having a calling to. It is the instrument of freedom, of joyful liberation. It is not the tedium of the mundane; it is the sheer magic of being fully, lovingly present to the active meditation that is the every day practice of everything we do.

For years I fought housework as if it were a demon which would consume me, drain my spirit and render me a brain dead housewife, barefoot and chained to the kitchen sink. For years, I not only didn't "sweat the small stuff", I blanked it out, ignored it and plain didn't do it until it grew from little things into great big things like chronic procrastination, chronic untidiness, chronic over-weight and physical inactivity. I became an expert at crisis management but it was me who engineered the crises by failing to stay in the present moment and do what needed to be done.

It has taken a very long time but now I know that the truth of living a life of mastery is to see clearly that living fully in the moment is to do all things with a loving reverence and quiet joy - or even a noisy, rip-roaring ecstatic joy, even the dirty dishes that your husband didn't wash the night before. No resentment, no bad temper, no "this is his job". Do it lovingly with gratitude in your heart that you have feet to stand on by that sink, hands to sink into the hot suds, the money to buy the detergent, a husband and son to wash up after, a kitchen to wash up in, a roof over your head. Do it with the recognition that life is a very precious gift and you are so lucky to have all that you have.

Don't "sweat the small stuff". Love it. That way true freedom lies.