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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Epiphany is my word du jour. It all started when I was explaining the importance of the 6th of January, or Epiphany, in the Italian calendar, as a day when La Befana fills the socks of children with toys or sweets if they are good or coal, onions or garlic if they are bad. My meandering mind then turned circuitously, via the origins and dual meaning of the word, to an epiphany of my very own triggered by a conversation about witches, witch crafts and covens.  In Italian folklore, La Befana is often depicted as an old woman or crone wearing shawl riding a broomstick, like a traditional witch. For Italian children, La Befana is like Father Christmas, coming down the chimney—explaining her sooty look. And just like children that leave food for Santa and his reindeer, Italian families will often leave a small glass of wine and some thing to eat for La Befana. According to local folklore, La Befana sweeps the floor before leaving.  There are a number of versions of the Christian legend behind La Befana, but one is that she was too busy sweeping and cleaning to join the Three Wise Men, [...]

I bought Me in You and You in Me because I really wanted to read more work by Portia Nelson. I love her Autobiography in Five Short Chapters and wanted to see if there were other gems. And there are. For me, however, this book is a little bit like the cupboard into C.S. Lewis’ Narnia. Sometimes I pick it up and dip into it and it does not resonate and sometimes I open it on a page and I am bowled over. It’s definitely one for those moments of confusion, where someone else’s non-linear musings help you make sense of your own thoughts. The first time I heard an Autobiography in Five Short Chapters it was recounted in one of my NLP courses, as a way to make us understand that learning by trial and error is valuable. I remember it resonating even then but I was still reeling from my own Chapter Two that at the time I did not think it was possible to walk down another street and so I did not take notice of its author and forgot all about it.   A few weeks ago at Wayne Dyer’s Mastering the [...]

“Hands up who in this room is a wounded learner? And now hands up which of you are products of amateur parenting?” In a room of some 100 people from all over the world, across all ages and occupations, in February 2006 it would seem that nearly all of us could identify with one or both of these statements. The questions were asked by Ian McDermott, founder of International Teaching Seminars, and teacher of Neuro Linguistic Programming, as an opening line for the first day of the NLP Practitioner Certification Programme. Ian explained that NLP was like a ”how to” to stop blaming the parents and teachers for our current state. These words echoed the sentiment of JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter book series, as she delivered a commencement address at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association in June 2008. In her address, The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination, in which she highlighted her journey to success, she said: “There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.” This phrase took me to my [...]

When something is meant to happen it keeps appearing again and again until one pays attention. So despite missing the full page advert on the inside back cover of OM Yoga & Life Style announcing an evening with Dr Wayne Dyer entitled Mastering the Art of Manifestation, it was one of the many emails from the various mind body spirit event companies that eventually caught my attention. Dyer’s book The Power of Intention wowed me in a way that The Secret failed to do so, as I describe in The Missing Secrets. So as I love to hear people speak viva voce to get a sense of their congruence and authenticity, going to this event is a no-brainer. Plus when the advert asked: Do you have limits in your life that prevent you from making changes or achieving your highest goals? Do you love what you do, and do what you love in life? Are you impatient, waiting for good things to happen? It seemed like the timing of the event it perfect for me. Looking at his daily affirmations were the tipping point. In Mastering the Art of Manifestation, Wayne,  known as the father of motivation”will be exploring the [...]

I was asked the other day why The Secret was not in the Library, and the short answer is that it is not a book that changed my life. I do, however, believe in the concepts behind the book,  specifically the law of attraction. At the time the book came out I had already read Ask and it is Given, which is based on the teachings of Abraham, so I felt I knew the concepts already.  The premise behind Rhonda Byrne’s book is based on optimism or positive thinking: change how you see life and life will change, which is exactly what Dr. Wayne Dyer promises in his book The Power of Intention.  The Secret is not a new or ground breaking discovery, but Byrne has taken that concept and repackaged it. If the author’s own success can be used as a benchmark, then the concept clearly works. Like all clues, or pieces of a jigsaw, collect enough and you will eventually get the full picture. The order in which you find the clues simply determines how long it will take you to solve the puzzle. For everything in life, there are short cuts. For some The Secret, and its sister [...]

The celestial body layer is the sixth auric layer associated with the process of enlightenment where divine love encompasses all life. It is related to the Brow Chakra.

An ordinary wet Saturday walking through Portobello market in search of coffee and the largest pink rose quartz sphere caught my eye. I stopped at the stall where lots (but not too many) Crystals were all respectfully laid out with their little stories. It was a gold coloured planet that sparkled at me: a large sphere of pyrite. As I spoke to Matt Forster of Venusrox, the owner of the stall, I learned that this ball was from Peru and represented the 3rdChakra in the solar plexus. The reason, however, I was attracted to it, is that it reminds me of my father. I already have a much loved piece of pyrite, which he gave to me many many years ago. It was always a big joke because for a very long time after, I was convinced it was a lump of gold. It is not that far from the truth as pyrite is also known as fool’s gold. Its name is a derivative from the Greek word pyr, meaning Fire as it was used to create sparks a long time ago. Matt explained to me that I might have been attracted to the beauty of the crystal or to [...]