Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself – Charlie Chaplin Today is April Fools day. I wonder what pranks are being played around the world? The Archetype of The Fool has been coming up a lot lately, but when it came up as a central protagonist in a reading with Davina MacKail, I realised it was time to see what it was trying to tell me. It’s a card I rather love; I don’t see it as an idiot/fool but more as a happy-go-lucky see-what-the-world-will-offer me kind of card especially the younger Fool of the Rider-Waite deck. It feels like the side of me that wants to pack her backpack and head off leaving behind all the form and process. It’s no surprise that The Fool is a new beginning card. Last month I entered my 20th year as a financial journalist and in July I will have been in this actual job 11 years. Turning 45 in September is more than just entering Year 7 it is actually the start of my 6th nine-year cycle, what am I waiting for? None of this would be nagging inside me if [...]

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit” –Aristotle It has not quite been the first quarter of the year I had planned for 2013. It was not, however, until last night when I was attempting to bake a cake that I finally got what has been bugging me for a while now. A month or so ago—24th February to be precise—exasperated by my life as a One Armed Warrior, I turned to my favourite oracle deck to pick a card that I hoped would inspire me out of the sticky physical and mental mire I was sinking into. The deck handed me the Cosmic Carrot, a card I have never seen before. It made me giggle. I do like alliteration; and carrots for that matter, raw not boiled.  I have to admit that while I love the divinatory purpose of the Tarot, I personally use cards for creative guidance and inspiration, having not yet found time to study them in the depth they deserve to be of more use to me. The first thing that struck me is that the Cosmic Carrot is the 28th card and 28 just happened to be [...]

Today I enter my personal Year 6: a year that represents the start of a change. Without even knowing this as a fact, I feel it intuitively. Last weekend I started a year-long Yoga teacher training course. With all the yoga, the Meditation and philosophy I will be learning over the 200 plus hours, a mind, body, spirit transformation is inevitable. If the last 18 months of ISHTA yoga practise are anything to go by, the next year is not going to be just any ordinary journey. ISHTA is both an acronym for Integrated Science of Hatha, Tantra and Ayurveda, but also the Sanskrit for individualised or personalised. In the last few months, I have felt that I am finally entering my own mind and body, the latter of which ironically is thinking quite seriously about a change of its own, but that is another story. As I spent the summer watching the Olympics and painting my flat, I reflected on this very strange sensation; that of contentment. It has been 11 years since I moved into my flat; 11 years of stories: drama, death, heatbreak, love, lots and lots of lovely godchildren, a niece, the longest [...]

I spent a blissful weekend in my friend’s Derbyshire garden last week. She has transformed a plot of land into a magical garden of multi-coloured nooks and crannies; every plant carefully selected for timing, colour and purpose. It was a rare summer-hot day in this rain soaked spring we are having and so we took full advantage and enjoyed Pimms in the sun, drank tea on the swing and contemplated life and the universe, just as we have always done over the last few decades. We met at primary school and never stopped being friends. Nothing much has changed except for the fact she used to come round to my house to play in the garden, and now I drive for two and a half hours to play in hers.  I always leave this little sanctury at the foothills of the Peak District inspired in many ways. Horticulturally, I was re-invigorated to tackle my own little estate. So yesterday I communed with nature and spent a meditative couple of hours knuckle deep in potting compost, planting a few new geraniums in the remaining empty pots and reviving the soil of the balcony boxes, whose incumbents survived the winter for the first time in [...]

It’s a warm turquoise blue sky day in March the diamond encrusted snow crunching underfoot is the only noise penetrating the crisp silence of these heavenly un-crowded slopes. Suddenly everything makes sense. I always feel an intense connection with life when I am up in the mountains, especially in the winter. It is a connection that always makes me feel intensely grateful, intensely alive, and intensely hopeful. I think this is why have I always refused to give up trying to learn to ski. For a few moments as the lift drags me higher and higher up the mountain, the pure, white uncomplicated snow reminds me that everything however complicated it may seem does make sense. I get this elated feeling until I get to the top that is, when I look down to see my inner demons peering up at me over the edge challenging and goading me.  But this year, I finally get it. After years of trying, I finally get it. I finally believe that I know how to ski. I probably knew how to ski after the first or second lesson, but somehow skiing became inextricably associated with the things in [...]

‘O unhappy citizens, what madness? Do you think the enemy’s sailed away? Or do you think any Greek gift’s free of treachery? Is that Ulysses’s reputation? Either there are Greeks in hiding, concealed by the wood, or it’s been built as a machine to use against our walls, or spy on our homes, or fall on the city from above, or it hides some other trick: Trojans, don’t trust this horse. Whatever it is, I’m afraid of Greeks even those bearing gifts.’ And to think I studied Virgil’s Aeneid in Latin decades ago. Not only was I a reluctant Latin student, it was the only time I ever truly rebelled in school. I can still hear the chant we would sing to taunt the teacher: “Latin’s a dead language, as dead as dead can be, it killed off all the Roman’s and now it’s killing me.” Now who had the last laugh? I am the one with the malicious murdering Trojans masquerading as helpful protective shields holding my computer to ransom. Did I listen? No. Was I warned? Yes. Why did I think the enemy had sailed away? Laocoön, the Trojan priest of Poseidon, was [...]

The flat downstairs has a magnolia tree, and every year around this time pale pink buds start to pierce their way through hoping to announce the onset of Spring. When I see this starting to happen I always get a sense of hope and Happiness. Against a bright blue sky, each day the walk to work is lined with magnolia trees and cherry blossoms, whose delicate silky petals flutter to the ground like flakes of snow, lifting the spirits for the day unfolding. In the world of interior design, Magnolia coloured paint is harmless shade of cream more yellow than pink and often used to give a room a neutral clean feeling ahead of a potential sale. Magnolia as a paint hue is not seen as an adventurous colour, but I have often wondered what the meaning of the magnolia flower is. It turns out that the Chinese see this flower as a Symbol for Self-esteem and Spring. The pink hue inspired the idea of the delicate and the feminine. Magnolia grandiflora is for those lacking self-appreciation or belief in themselves; feeling undeserving, according to Claire Harvey author of The New Encyclopedia of Flower Remedies. As a remedy, [...]

“When one door closes another door opens,” Alexander Graham Bell was right. I did not even get a chance to wallow in regret after last night’s realisation that it was time to graduate from the brand & buck translators of spiritual concepts to the original works of some of the great masters. My next teacher appeared to me in the body of Michael Fassbender the cute actor playing Carl Gustav Jung in A Dangerous Method, which I saw last night. At the moment, I am finding that the mainstream spiritual lecture circuit is about more about selling books and courses than the sort of insightful discussions that I crave. They have, however, been instrumental in opening my mind, giving me ideas and ultimately getting me to the place I am now. There are still of course many great teachers living that I want to learn from, but the time has come to look to look beyond the gurus to the teachers that inspired them. I was feeling rather deflated after Stephen Russell’s two hour monologue about his new book The Message on Thursday and more convinced than ever that it was time to take a [...]

Her face red, her curly raven hair looking like it had been electrocuted, and her words vaporising before they had condensed into anything that made sense. Nothing usually escaped the Drama Queen, except important words at important moments. On these occasions the Drama Queen became speechless and her usually regal demeanour faded as frustration welled up inside. The Drama Queen was having one of her customary internal melt downs. They had grown fewer and further between episodes as the decades passed, but once in a while they reared their head to remind her she was not being understood. Friends and family would give her gifts but not the gifts she wanted. They would give her compliments but not the compliments she needed. They gave her time, but not in the way she needed it. “Mirror mirror on the wall when will ever be about me?” the Drama Queen asked her reflection one day when one of her friends did not seem to be taking her into consideration any more. “What is so hard about asking someone how they are and what have they been up to?” the Drama Queen thundered after a particularly wet and lonely weekend. “On what planet does [...]

To me feathers are the Symbol of writing. I see a feather and I think of a quill and the creative writers in the times of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Even in these days of my iPad notepad, I still love to write with a fountain pen. So when feathers started to appear in my life about a year ago, I started to wonder if there was any other more commonly known symbolism for feathers. I have always been fascinated by the meanings in signs and symbols but one of the key thing one needs do is ask themselves “What does it mean to me?” before racing to the bookshelf to get another person’s interpretation. As I was now curious to find out if a feather might mean more than just my Anchor for writing, I turned to my trusty books on symbols to find none of them had anything significant on the meaning of feathers and so the subject fell from my consciousness. That was until I turned up without a feather to The Path with Heart, Davina MacKail’s workshop introducing Shamanism and I realised that to the Native American Indians and shamans feathers are not only symbolic, but essential in [...]