woolly gifts and a new groove

Soft, warm woolly scarves for dearly beloveds. I'm thinking about all the patterns/motifs I can dry felt onto finished pieces.

Oh this cold, cold day.....we resisted going out into it until 4 o'clock by when Beau and I were in great need of our afternoon walk. Despite the cold he still prefers getting shoes, hat and scarf off. I'm like a sergeant major running behind him trying to cover his flesh from the attacking wind. Lately Beau has been talking a lot about his 'different house' with his 'different mummy' and 'different daddy'. When we go out walking he says "do you want to go to my different place? It's just around the corner. You can stay there too!!' we never get there though it's always just around the corner. The last two afternoons on arriving home he has been in tears because we didn't go to the different place. The strength of the toddler imagination is unrivaled. Oh to have a glimpse of what that all means to him/ how it looks from his dimension.

K and I still trying to find our rhythm together. We are aiming for a comfortable groove like a bossa nova or more ambitiously a sultry tango, but we seem to be stuck in some kind of out of whack jazz improvisation where we keep having to stop and look at the chart to work out where the hell we are.....K has come back from India deeply and profoundly moved and drawn to being at the mountain again, preferably with us. I also feel a pull to the place. But I also want very much for us to have another baby and find our 'home'. So we are kind of pushing and pulling and bumping back into each other and then floating out again..trying to relax about it too and trust that we will find a way to compromise to the satisfaction of all three of us. Rinpoche talks about all people/beings experiencing life from completely different dimensions. We don't really know anything about anyone though we like to think we do. So my practice at the moment is to try to look at K as though I know absolutely nothing about him. On the rare occasion I can get my head out of my arse, that practice makes all the difference to our day!

skeleton woman begs for audience

What an autumn this is. Shedding more than leaves around here. Autumn has got me all topsy turvy. My head has been full to overflowing. Let go let go let go is my mantra. I hold my drawing pen and hover over white paper. We talk about where to go after winter. Freedom brings fears. Let go let go let go. She's in the cave putting new flesh on rattling rattling telling me to stay with it and watch and wait. Don't bolt. There's a winter yet and then a spring. Life is living us all whatever move we make.
This is the bit I always forget. Whenever I have big decisions to make (at least they always seem big) I feel like I have to do everything I can to bring a good outcome. And along the way there are many people to please and many factors to consider. Exhausting. Something good happened at Amma's feet. A pause long enough to show us what it might be like to just be.

So I'm feeling very emotional and open. Beau and I have spent many days at home talking, making things, dancing and singing, walking in between rain showers. We all spent last weekend driving around the country looking at property which was great research but rather exhausting. It was a little charged for me with the feeling that we have to buy a house now. I've been holding a vision of a family home, a place where we put down roots, unpack completely, and where our kids love to come back to years from now. Lurking beneath that has been the feeling that it's wrong to wish for it, a kind of spiritual guilt that I adopted somewhere along the way to fit in with my conditioning! So I'm again reminded that true freedom is of the mind and that it doesn't matter to pure awareness what we do or where we go. The most important thing is to BE present and aware and then whatever we do is the right thing.

K is planning a trip to India to sit at Arunachala where Ramana Maharshi spent most of his life. Perhaps we will all visit there together some time. K has never been out of the country and given that we are hoping to have another baby, this may be his last chance for a while. More importantly it's something he needs to do, he is compelled, which is a beautiful thing.

I've started a short course Writing and Illustrating a Children's story book. Something I've wanted to do for a long time.

Beau is watching Charlotte's Web, gorgeous story, and shaking off the last bit of a temperature from the weekend. Another slow day at home for us. Yay.

Love like a mother play like a child.

This morning K, Beau and I went to see Amma.
I don't really have adequate words to convey the experience except to say that I lost myself in the best possible way and felt the ocean of love that Amma radiates, and felt connected to everyone there and spent the morning in tears of bliss which came on each time I looked into another person's eyes. It was very difficult to leave but I reminded myself that we are never separate from the state of the teacher/enlightenment and so have managed to bring at least some of Amma home with me in my heart. I always come away from the presence of such teachers with enormous wonderment and gratitude that they have endless energy for everyone without exception. They just give and give endless love, and not always in ways that we recognise. It inspires me to give more and desire less, even though I slip back into the old habits and think there is a self to protect and satisfy.

I've been really watching Beau's play/child's play this week, more so than usual, maybe because I
am thinking so much about babies.....Children play in pure spontaneity, alone, with each other, with us if we are open to it. Beau is right into being a puppy or a cat lately and has to embody it as much as he can; drink from a bowl off the floor, have 'fur' tied around him, scratch around in the dirt, lay near the fire, come over for a pat and a scratch.



The other day we were at the park and he and 4 other little boys made a hotel out of a huge fallen branch; spent what seemed like hours, reconstructing it and moving in and out of it. I and the other two mothers sat back and talked and watched and helped when we were needed.


Parenthood is such an opportunity to relearn how to be present and free and to love without holding back. I'm counting on, that with all of these amazing teachers around(three year old ones included), there may be hope for me yet! For all of us!

What is Posting this?

These are some of the things I'm loving about living in this little house right now.

the wildly animated greenery at the bottom of the garden

back door

Passion Flowers on the banana passion fruit vine that smells divine

the beautiful Still Lives that randomly appear.

Even though I still feel like I'm in a loopy limbo betwixt West and East I do verily appreciate this home that has been created with love and warmth and a particular aesthetic that involves many, many books, beautiful old pieces of furniture, over-stuffed couches, wonderful small paintings, rambling gardens, comfortable beds, white floor boards, quirky corners and intimate mementos dotted about. It's the kind of home I would create for us after many years in the one place and so it is very easy to be here and we are so fortunate for the opportunity, thanks to our friend and her daughter who are off on their adventure for some months.

One of my and K's favourite night time pursuits at the moment is snuggling up in bed with the lap top listening to/watching the teachings of Mooji whose site I've linked to the right here. He was a student of Ramana Maharshi, and now lives in Brixton, London and teaches all around Europe and Asia. His teachings, like Ramana Maharshi's and the Dzogchen teachings of our own teacher Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, and the teachings of many others, go straight to the essence of the state of pure awareness. These teachings are the stuff that holds K and I together as individuals and as a couple. Even whilst we are distractedly sailing through daily life they cut through often enough to keep us on track. Despite it being of greatest importance to my life than anything else, my spirituality is the thing I talk about the least, especially here. It's an intimate relationship for me and I need to be in receptive company to talk freely about it. And then over the last few nights it has occured to me that someone might love to find a blog by a woman with a family, who lives in the suburbs, who goes about the rhythm of her day like everyone else, but quietly devoted to asking 'What Am I' and watching Satsang late into the night when she could be catching up on sleep! We have some wonderful friends who we met on retreat and who later became family for us when we all came back to Melbourne. They too have young children and busy lives and distractions and do what they can to keep focused on their spiritual paths, as I'm sure you do in your own way too.

I have times where I could talk about the teachings from sun up to sun down and feel glimpses of my own naked awareness shining beyond all the talk of it, and then most of the time I am thinking and dreaming, and talking and planning, and cooking and experiencing the grey scale between Joyously Happy and Down Right Depressed. I marvel at how fickle the mind is and how distracted and how committed I generally am to sense gratification, and yet how bit by bit the moments of clarity infiltrate a little more often for a little longer. We are told that it's all right here, nothing to attain, that 'awakening' can happen in an instant under the right conditions (does that include prostrate on the couch with tea and knitting?), that we must just discipline our minds. If one of us can be in that experience then so can the rest. When I really contemplate the possibility of living beyond duality with NO suffering; exuding endless natural compassion and love; going about daily life with quiet, un-earthshattering but unshakable joy; and deep clarity and wisdom; this emotional roller coaster feels more like a carefree Sunday drive and I can find a way to not mind so much when the birds poo all over my clean white sheets out there on the line for the second time on the same day. The birds are me. Their poo is my poo. And what is this me thinking about poo anyway?

P.S. Apparently there is no answer to this question, just the question itself is important, so I won't be offended if none of you try earnestly to help me find myself.....(who just said that?)

Here, there and everywhere .

A week on from my little holiday and I am starting to get the Oh Dear I Do Miss the Land of My Birth Blues. I do believe that the flying of me over there and the degree of lovin' I received from friends and family was a meditated plan to have me return to Melbourne with the planted seed of desire to up-root my boys from our home of 5 years and gypsy it back to WA with her Indian ocean smells and big clear blue sky and lolling coastal train ride to increasingly gentrified but still so pretty and dear to my heart Fremantle. Oh west coast temptress with your quiet, unpretentious facade harboring creative potential and the promise of your fertile southern shores. I was determined not to come back romanticising you in any way. I had Eckhart Tolle on the MP3 player both legs of the plane journey - you'd think that his utterly inspiring advice on being always present right here right now would have permeated somehow. But alas my mind being what it is, despite odd moments of clarity and awareness, dips and dives between here and now and there and then and before and later!!
This is not to say that the joy of returning home was in any way depleted. Such bliss in my heart to see my boys crouched at the gate - Beau's delayed but beaming recognition of my return which carried on over the next few days through sweet happy exclamations of "Mummy home from aeroplane" (inferring that he thinks I've been up in the air all this time?) We have swung back into the routine that keeps our shared life sane and steady - that isn't always easy to bare when it costs our relationship time and energy but is still worth sticking up for when the mind goes a romancin' with the idea that 'everything will be better when...'. K and I are trying to practise presence in our lives so that the challenges of busy city lives as parents and partners and home owners do not undo us and we are grateful for the good people we have around us here. We talked last night about how we are feeling - about moving states, about having another child and the amazing one we've already been so fortunate to bring along. We have hit a stasis of sorts where my wish for a bigger family and to simplify and slow down are in the sort of contrast to K's wish for meaningful employment, travel, study and spiritual pilgrimage, that means we need to sit with it all and find out if we can do it all, and if only some of it - what will be let go of. K's wise last words of the evening were "let's not try to DO anything unless we are doing it from a relaxed, present. aware space". That's dead sexy talk that is! Lovely man. Excellent co pilot on this sometimes turbulent journey through time and space. Now I must sleep before I go analogy mad.

Wild without and calm within

What a wild day. Wild wind. Rain. Love having an excuse to stay inside all day. Beau sleeps as does the child of a friend who is with us today. A peaceful spell to be with myself and eat the chocolate I hid this morning. I'm going to make Beau a doll - a Steiner Doll for which I have instructions. It occurred to me how quickly gender differentiation's starts - how Beau has ended up with so many trucks and cars and animals and no dolls. All the daughters of my friends have had dolls for a long time. I would love to see Beau connect with a doll and have a sense of that caring nature that girls are encouraged to have in their play from so early on. A friend who runs a Steiner Playgroup says that a doll is also special for a child because when the parent is absent the child cares for the doll and in turn feels the parent's nurture through the doll. I thought this was a great explanation;

"A waldorf dollmaker breathes life into each creation by slowly and lovingly sewing a body for its spirit to come into. These dolls are not just stitched together; they are 'born'. Something of the maker's own self goes into each individual doll; therefore it would be ideal for parents to make all their own children's dolls and toys. The next best thing is to have a doll custom-made for a particular child, and for the dollmaker to endow that doll as much as possible with the personality and colouring of the child.

Seeing that the doll is the child's 'alter ego', through which he or she can express his/her deepest feelings, they are not only for girls, but for boys too! I have made many dolls for little boys whose mothers tell me, years later, that their son still plays with that doll and that it is his favourite toy."

Victoria Robertson, Waldorf Doll maker Dunsborough WA

We've been having one of those weeks where everything is going so smoothly - Beau is happy and relaxed and easy going.....and I say it's all due to routine, to the blissfully predictable rhythm of a day and week that a 2 and a bit year old can count on. Our days are more relaxed, more productive, more creative and filled with much more laughter when we follow the rhythms that support our otherwise busy life. The changes that come with having no car are varied and while we often aren't home as early, being car-less has forced us to take our time, be more organised when we need to go out and do things and to just let it all go when it looks like we've missed a bus or the weather is too wild or we are too tired to ride. It has made me realise how much we would normally try to pack into a day/ a week and how much harder it is on Beau to be bustled out of the house and into the car and driven around on errands. He is truly so much happier when he gets to spend most of his time at home (still with visits to the park and friends) and so for that matter am I! There's more time for drawing and singing songs and dancing and looking out the window at the world going by. Being a mother is of course the most enormous and challenging commitment I've ever undertaken but it's taught me so much about relaxing and letting go which is very fortunate considering there is little time for formal meditation practice. One of the main principals of Dzogchen practice is to not separate practice from daily life - that it is daily life. Recognising and integrating our natural state of pure presence and awareness amidst the chaos of our daily lives is real enlightenment. I have kept this perfect quote from Dilgo Kyentse Rinpoche for a long time :

"The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself.

This produces a tremendous energy which usually is locked up in the process of mental evasion and a general running away from life experiences.

Clarity of awareness may, in its initial stages, be unpleasant or fear-inspiring; if so, then one should open oneself completely to the pain or the fear and welcome it. In this way the barriers created by one's own habitual emotional reactions and prejudices are broken down.....

......The everyday practice is just ordinary is life itself. Since the underdeveloped state does not exist there is no need to behave in any special way or try to attain or practice anything.

There should be no need of striving to reach some exalted goal or higher state; this simply produces something conditional or artificial that will act as an obstruction to the free flow of the mind. One should never think of oneself as "sinful" or worthless, but as naturally pure and perfect, lacking nothing."

It's the same message for me within Skeleton Woman story. It's so perfectly simple and yet utterly challenging all at the same time!!!! But NEVER boring!

Caught in Her jaws

It's way past my bedtime and my boys are fast asleep. My mind is full thoughts following "Notes on a Scandal" (great film) and a phone conversation with a friend. To back track a little Beau has for just over a year now had a tendency to bite and scratch other children in various situations; mostly when a conflict arises over a toy or space, or when he is tired or overwhelmed in a small space with many people. Sometimes he has bitten without provocation . It has been a big journey for us - not really for him as he is an innocent two year old who happens to have this impulse and has only just recently begun to understand what's goign on. K and I have done a lot of research, spoken to a lot of parents, consulted a lot of books, had many, many conversations and tried many ways of dealing with Beau's behaviour and it seems we are not alone. It seems that it is the sort of behaviour that eventually ceases and usually when language becomes such that verbal communication can be used and encouraged. We are at that point now where Beau's language and understanding is actually very good and it will be interesting to see what happens form now on.
But my Gods it has been challenging. So much stuff comes up in me and in other parents. Now and then we encounter parents who don't feel triggered by their children experiencing pain or distress and can separate their feelings from their children's. But more often than not it is an emotionally charged situation. Sometimes I can have that spaciousness too, but often I feel very confused and that I have to please every other parent and be seen to be doing 'the right thing', and given that pleasing everyone is impossible, shame then emerges and all i want to do is remove myself and my child from the situation. Sometimes that is actually the best thing to do. My love for Beau is unwavering even in those times when I have ashamedly felt angry at him for biting, because it presents a situation that I find difficult. But that's about me not him . An adult should know better but a two year old child has much to learn about cause and effect and responsibility. For a long while yet I am responsible for Beau. There are times when I feel quite isolated; I stopped taking Beau to playgroup and I've tended towards one on one play dates rather than groups.Steiner philosophy suggests that until the age of two or three a child isn't naturally geared to socialising - that a toddler is happier at home with parents in a gentle, simple, nurturing environment. We have found this to be the case for Beau and because of this I haven't felt that keeping him out of playgroup is detrimental to his development. I must also say that Beau is a very loving, friendly, bright, responsive, and joyful little boy, who loves his friends and when the playing is good it's great. My sadness tonight is for the limitations we as adults create for ourselves and our children when we project our beliefs and conditioning onto others and are then unable to see what is really going on in the present moment. That our children love each other unconditionally and do and say things to each other but come straight back from an outburst or an altercation and play as if the moment is completely fresh and they hold no grudges. Yet we adults have years of habitual thought processes and emotions and opinions and expectations that we allow to cloud what would otherwise be the same moment of fresh possibilities. I'm trying to practice awareness and presence. Trying to notice what my mind is doing, trying to be patient with what is going on for others. I want so much to raise Beau without shaming him . I would love for him to feel that he is allowed to make mistakes and still have space and love to be himself. Both K and I wish to find the balance between boundaries and freedom, not to try to control Beau but to hold him firmly and lovingly and in ourselves to let go and relax so that we really can be there for him fully present. It isn't easy because conditioning is hard to break but I feel that this whole biting thing has been an enormous lesson and I'm actually grateful for it. It has taught me so much about myself and my relationship to others . I've learned so much about what Beau needs and it has shown me that there is a fine line between being protective and being controlling. There's so much more to come. Skeleton Woman reminds me to stay close to the process, that when we want to run is when we should turn and face the pursuer and let ourselves be vulnerable. So i"ll take my wobbly self off to bed and sleep for few hours before Beau wakes up and says "Cuddle Mummy" and climbs under the covers and snuggles up to me and a whole new day of bliss and challenges begins.