Life's A Bitch and then You Change Careers
We all have a hidden Self, or more accurately, several aspects of our personalities that we keep submerged most of the time. These submerged elements of ourselves are very important because amongst them are
buried memories of the person we were born to be. Most adults do not have memories of their very early childhoods. Time and the acquisition of an 'acceptable' social Self have long buried the experiences we had during that crucial period of our initial development. Often clients come to me when they need to recover that buried side of themselves when something like making a decision about changing jobs or seeking clarity with regard to the well-being of someone they love suddenly becomes an issue for them. I have found that in these cases, my psychic sense picks up on things that lay buried for decades under the 'official' social Self. When a client is on the verge of making a major life change, it is the deepest Self that they need access to because that core identity is not encumbered by 'shoulds'. The deepest Self sees clearly and knows what the social self cannot see, that life is much less complicated than we usually make it and finding our path in life is not as difficult as walking a path that is not our own.
buried memories of the person we were born to be. Most adults do not have memories of their very early childhoods. Time and the acquisition of an 'acceptable' social Self have long buried the experiences we had during that crucial period of our initial development. Often clients come to me when they need to recover that buried side of themselves when something like making a decision about changing jobs or seeking clarity with regard to the well-being of someone they love suddenly becomes an issue for them. I have found that in these cases, my psychic sense picks up on things that lay buried for decades under the 'official' social Self. When a client is on the verge of making a major life change, it is the deepest Self that they need access to because that core identity is not encumbered by 'shoulds'. The deepest Self sees clearly and knows what the social self cannot see, that life is much less complicated than we usually make it and finding our path in life is not as difficult as walking a path that is not our own.Life's A Bitch and then You Change Careers
Few of us are fortunate enough to do what we are for a living. We have been schooled through generations to believe that our natural inclinations and innate abilities are not as valuable as acquired economic roles would be. The world has become so over-crowded and complex that new job categories have to be created all the time IF we want to keep the present structure going. We need to ask ourselves, however, just how far we are willing to fit ourselves into these categories that are often arbitrary and require us to leave our real Selves at home during the workday. That means we must function as an artificial self for at least a third of our lives! As thousands more people are laid off every week in countries all over the world, finding our Right Livelihood is more important than ever. Notice of lay-off may also be a wake-up call to realise that we do have other possible ways to live, ways that make us less vulnerable to the vagaries of the marketplace.
The Right Path For You
It has been my experience that a job loss often acts as a trigger to make us reconsider who we actually are and how we can bring our economic identities into closer alignment with our true Self. I discovered shortly after opening my professional practice as a psychic that I had a 'knack' for identifying the sort of work that people were naturally suited to. I would sometimes sense objects around them that gave me a
clue to what they were really suited to and would be happier doing. I've had clients who spent decades building careers that at the outset of their work lives had seemed 'ideal' at least in economic terms but a crisis in which that economic identity is challenged can often reveal deeply buried dissatisfaction. The assumed necessity of finding a job, any job, can panic people into disastrous decisions based on their unquestioned assumption that 'they don't have a choice'. Of course, there is always a choice but facing it may be so threatening to one's identity and the financial expectations of those dependent upon us that we dare not acknowledge that. Sometimes a complete re-structuring of our lives is a painful but necessary alternative to gradually losing not only a job but one's home as well. There are other choices but there are no shortcuts throught the process of change. Facing financial disaster is no joke but neither is spending one's life in the wrong sort of job. That is the slow death of the Self that millions of us suffer for years. What is the alternative? If you are facing redundancy you need to do a deep examination of your life from every angle beginning with uncovering your true Self. If you try to skip this essential step in life, you may find yourself in worse straits later.
clue to what they were really suited to and would be happier doing. I've had clients who spent decades building careers that at the outset of their work lives had seemed 'ideal' at least in economic terms but a crisis in which that economic identity is challenged can often reveal deeply buried dissatisfaction. The assumed necessity of finding a job, any job, can panic people into disastrous decisions based on their unquestioned assumption that 'they don't have a choice'. Of course, there is always a choice but facing it may be so threatening to one's identity and the financial expectations of those dependent upon us that we dare not acknowledge that. Sometimes a complete re-structuring of our lives is a painful but necessary alternative to gradually losing not only a job but one's home as well. There are other choices but there are no shortcuts throught the process of change. Facing financial disaster is no joke but neither is spending one's life in the wrong sort of job. That is the slow death of the Self that millions of us suffer for years. What is the alternative? If you are facing redundancy you need to do a deep examination of your life from every angle beginning with uncovering your true Self. If you try to skip this essential step in life, you may find yourself in worse straits later.
Both of the books cited above are excellent. Both are written by professional career specialists with years of 'in the trenches' experience. What both have in common is the conviction that a career crisis is more than anything else an opportunity to find a way to make a living that is deeply harmonious with your true Self. This is not 'pie in sky' or 'new age nonsense'; doing for a living something that is not in harnony with you are can result in heart attacks, strokes, accidents, poor choices regarding health and well-being, and the loss of far more than a job.
These and a collection of other recommended titles can be found Delia's Career Shop HERE.
These and a collection of other recommended titles can be found Delia's Career Shop HERE.
If you are facing a potential job crisis and feel that you need some insight into a field of work that would make be more congruent with your essential Self, contact me for a Career Reading.
© Delia O' Riordan 2012
As the months went by, James's nightmares increased in number and intensity happening on an almost nightly basis. His screams and struggles frightened his parents, especially his mother who could do nothing apart from holding her son until the trauma passed and he stopped crying. Watching this almost nightly suffering was terrifying for her but she noticed that James always screamed the same words at the height of the nightmare: "Airplane Crash! Plane on fire! Little man can't get out!"
monotheistic humans - almost invariably male. Take the Feast the Nativity of John called 'The Baptist" which is 'celebrated' on 24 June. It is no coincidence that the Church chose to honour one of its favourite ascetics. Prior to the Christian era this was the month commemorating the death and re-birth of the Sumerian/Babylonian/Chaldean/ Phoenician god of shepherds, vegetation and fertility, Tammuz, who spends one half of the year following the summer Solstice in the underworld and the other half from the winter solstice onward bringing new life to the upper world. In later versions of his myth he is conflated with the Greek god of love, Adonis, and Dionysus/Bacchus, the gods of pleasure and abundance. The early Church on the other hand disapproved of pagan ways, especially the existence of numerous gods whose worship was deeply ingrained in the tribes of what we now call the Middle East. Prior to the creation of Monotheistic doctrine, the Israelites also worshipped a variety of Goddesses and Gods. Ashtera, Tiamat, Baal, etc. were the gods of ancient Israel as documented by the great scholar Raphael Patai whose book "The Hebrew Goddess" brought some balance to the perception of Judaic history as a male-only preserve.
provided warm skins for clothing and shelter and assured the re-birth of life each Spring. Whether it be Inanna/Ishtar/Tiamat/Isis/Ashera - without her all life would perish. The Great Goddess was at the very heart of human life; she gave life everywhere but she could took it away in times of famine, flood, or plague so she was both loved and respected as the Creatrix of the world. As time went on and nomadic existence gave way to settled farming communities, the recognition of the male contribution to human reproduction was recognized and the Goddess was joined by a Consort in a sacred marriage. In the case of Inanna, the lesser god Tammuz was her chosen Consort for half of each year from the Winter Solstice to the Summer Solstice. The Divine Marriage during what we call Yule brought longer days and a re-birth of animals and vegetation, a time of great joy and celebration. But in June Tammuz had to return to the underworld and his worshipers mourned his loss for six days, one for each month of his absence. The religion of Inanna/Tammuz made sense. One mourns the loss of sunlight when plants cannot grow and the lives of animals and humans enter a precarious stage and one celebrates the marriage of the Goddess and her Consort when a new cycle of life begins.
participate in sex and indeed elevates these un-natural practices to the level of virtue. John the Baptist, the wanderer in the desert, became the poster-boy for this brand of Judaic-Christian renunciation of the world. In Christian iconography, The Baptist is a grim looking character. Instead of the jolly Green Man who celebrates abundance and enjoyment of the fruits of the natural world, John represents the opposite - a puritanical, disapproving, anhedonic asceticism that has unfortunately carried down to the present day in Christian tradition. I find it hard to consider The Baptist's 'feast day' as a celebration. For me, The Baptist represents the dying god Tammuz, the darkness, and the hunger that can so easily overtake a world subject to natural disasters. I would rather adopt the philosophy of celebration of life represented by the pagan Goddesses and the Vegetation Gods. Maybe Herodias who allegedly who plotted The Baptist's downfall and her daughter Salome who obeyed her mother's wishes and asked her father for John's head on a platter had a point...
form not to contribute something that could be burned in the ritual. The purpose of the communal fire was two-fold: to ask the blessing of Áine on the crops and the animals so that the autumn harvest would be a good one and supply enough food for the villagers to survive the harsh winter and during the transition to Christianity to show the community just how virtuous or 'sinful' the young were by having them jump over the fire. Elders believed they could see the guilt or innocence of the fire jumpers in their demeanor and skill at avoiding the flames. Previous to that interpretation, jumping the fire was a simple act of revelry with an element of daring thrown in as watchers made bets on who would jump highest.
to the hearths of those who rebuilt their croft or created new dwellings. It was considered fitting to set the first fire in the new hearth with these coals so that the Goddess would protect those lived there from cold and hunger.. Ashes from the fire were also gathered and scattered in the fields to help the crops to grow and flourish. Like Brighid, whose sacred springtime fire is lit at Imbolc on February 1st, Áine is a fire Goddess and her blessing is sought for the newly planted fields of Summer. These two Goddesses herald the turning of the wheel of the year away from want and toward plenty, reminding the populace of their bond to the earth that supports them and to the fire that illumines their dwellings and keeps them warm year round. In the ancient world no one doubted that the gift of fire-making came from the Goddess and was the greatest of all gifts to humankind - regardless of what Haephastus later claimed...
day and as long as the work day isn't longer than usual, we couldn't care less about the 12 hours of sunlight and 12 of darkness. In recent years, however, there has been an upsurge in events that mark this day as a special one. It was once a vital day to humans and every ancient culture had a vested interested in gauging the date accurately. There is actually a window of time during which Solstice can occur and for summer Solstice that is as early 20 June and as late as 22 June. Agricultural societies in particular were cognizant of the importance of planting in accordance with the calendar of celestial events and the fact that even in our scientific era we plant our gardens with reference to the availability of sunlight and warmth reminds us that we are dependent on Nature's cycles for our sustenance. After all, we cannot eat cyber data…
difficult to feel the earth's "pulse" through acres of concrete or listen to the wind where there are no trees. Window box gardens may be the closest many of us get to a 'garden' and that is our loss. We were not designed for life in a concrete jungle; our sensory mechanisms can be seriously affected by an enveloping electronic environment. It will probably be decades - if humans last that long - before the real damage on the human nervous system caused by being 'hooked up' and 'plugged in' for most of every day are known. At a minimum, we already have evidence of the reduced capacity to deal with frustration when things don't happen instantaneously. Cyber life sets up expectations that the natural and human environment cannot fulfill. Things like growing a plant or training a dog or just cooking a good meal take TIME and the enjoyment isn't just in the result, it's in the process. Time, Process, and Participation are necessary to 
human life no matter how fast our micro-processors can work. We still live in a world where time rules and when we crowd our lives with more and more activity that involves machines rather than life forms, time seems to contract to the point where there is never enough of it and we constantly find ourselves 'running behind'. We can however experience the phenomenon of time expanding if we want to. We have the perfect opportunity this week. From today (21 June 2012) until the 24th, we get a reprieve from ceaseless movement. If even the Sun can still for a while, we should be able to! The Sun's perceived location changes by such a small degree that it is almost imperceptible to us. We have the luxury of time seeming to stand still. Hey, don't knock it: in a virtual world, "seeming" is all there is anyway, so why not enjoy the physical and psychological equivalent in the wonder of the Sun standing still for a few days? Time can imprison us but it can also free us; it's our choice.
another for a few hours. Woody Allen's "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy" is a contemporary twist on Shakespeare's delightful "Midsummer Night's Dream" which is also available in a very light and funny version starring Stanley Tucci, Michelle Pfeiffer, Callista Flockhart, and Kevin Kline as an hilarious "Bottom". This version is so visually appealing and lightly directed that even kids love it.
of faery folk, of elves and brownies, of trolls and gnomes, are lured closer to us by the smells of freshly turned earth, the greening of the land and the warming of the seas. Welcome them into your life with a small offering, perhaps a little faery house somewhere in your garden. If you think it is 'too silly' or 'too childish' or you are concerned about what the neighbours might think, it's a sure sign that you need to 'lighten up' - literally. Take advantage of the longer days and spend your evenings outside. Go for a long, slow walk with your kids or the family pet. Enjoy the light of the evening and take a book outside to read. Get out your bike and go for a ride with no destination in mind but be sure to take enough change to get a cold drink or even an ice-cream cone to cool you down after your exertions. Above all, look UP at the sky. Watch the sunset and really look at the subtle colours of the sky.
something 'more productive'. Suppose the most productive thing you can do at this moment is to appreciate the beauty of the sky. In native American traditions, it is part of our responsibility as sentient creatures to acknowledge the dawn and the sunset and to give thanks for both to each of the directions. Suppose, just suppose for a minute, that they are right, that we play a part in the continuity of the universe and if we become 'disconnected' from the natural world, we actually become less human, less sentient by limiting our attention to ourselves. Why? Because if we are failing to notice the most powerful force there is, the force of nature itself, we are guilty of the most absurd form of hubris, thinking the artificial world of humans is somehow more significant than the Universe itself. We cannot exist apart from the Universe, from All That Is, but by ignoring it we run the risk of losing that which makes us possible in the first place. So don't laugh at the notion of invoking the Great God Pan as you plant your garden. Invoking this powerful archetype will help to keep you Mindful and your extra attentiveness may influence the growth of your plants. It may. What have you got to lose by trying it out? Likewise, building a house for the faeries with your children or even by yourself is also a practice in Mindfulness, a way showing respect for the unseen energies and powers of nature that are strongest at Midsummer.
when for a few days our star appears to stand still in the sky. The image at left "...is a long-exposure photograph, with the image exposed for six months in a direction facing east of north, from mid-December 2009 until the southern winter solstice in June 2010.[4] The sun's path each day can be seen from right to left in this image across the sky; the path of the following day runs slightly lower, until the day of the winter solstice, whose path is the lowest one in the image." See credit below.
explanations? Although the best known megalithic monument in the world is Stonehenge there are others that are a thousand or more years older than Stonehenge and orientated toward the winter rather than the summer solstice. The pre-Celts who built megalithic structures like Knowth and Newgrange for the winter solstice placed a premium on the re-birth of the sun in latter half of the year whilst the pre-Anglo Saxon peoples of Britain and those of other northern countires like Germany built their structures for the summer solstice. It seemed to me that there were 'winter people' and 'summer people' even in pre-historic times.
current era. Their observations had to be recorded by carving into bone or stone and even painting the insides of caves. Many of these images relate to the movement of the sun and constellations. But pre-historic people didn't just use that information to help them to survive. They recorded what they had observed and they did it in as permanent a way as they could, leaving behind massive stone structures like standing stones, henges, and mounds on an astounding scale and in amazing numbers. Why? To predict the sequence of celestial events, of course. But suppose there was more to it than that? Suppose these remarkable ancestors engraved their knowledge and erected stone observatories in order to communicate with the future? With us and our descendants. Suppose they had discovered that the soltices and to a lesser extent the equinoxes opened some sort of psychic passage way through which we could travel only on these special days each year?
found in them, but there is simply not enough to satisfy our need for scientific proof of a coherent pre-historic cosmology. I have been fortunate in being able to spend some time at Newgrange and at Knowth, in other passage tombs and stone circles in Ireland and Scotland and have had the privilege of examining at first hand some of the rock paintings of the African San people that date from 25,000 to 40,000 years ago. Perhaps it is merely the passage of aeons of time or the fact that we are ignorant of the motives and thoughts of those who left these structures and carved/painted images behind, or perhaps it is because so many of these remarkable structures were buried deep underground and remained undisturbed for most of their history, but there is definitely an 'atmosphere' in these places and a strong sense of psychic connection with those who constructed them. Like the great stone faces of Easter Island, the megaliths cry out for our attention, for us to try to understand the message of those who placed each stone just so. We know that humans do not labour for hundreds of years on a building project just to pass the time! There is intent behind monumental structures and that intent was sufficiently compelling to keep generation after generation adding to the existing structures right down to the great temples, mausoleums, pyramids, cathedrals, mosques, etc. whose history is better known to us. Perhaps if we respect the intent of the builders of the megalithic structures something of their meaning may yet reveal itself. Our science tells us that we call time does not in fact exist and that human thought does have physical effects so why not give the ancients the benefit of the doubt a few times a year and take a minute to open our hearts to those who so long ago left their imprint for us to find.
Psychic pain is common to us all. It is a combination of emotional and mental pain, a type of anguish that encompasses more than intellectual frustration or emotional distress. When we experience frustration of the intellectual sort, some idea or concept of reality that we had harboured turns out not to be viable when applied to the context of our lives. Emotional frustration results from not achieving a meaningful goal or finding ourselves unable to "get through" to someone whose position of power (of whatever kind) creates an insurmountable obstacle.
our expense, something whose loss can threaten our very existence. Psychic pain cuts deep into us, leaving permanent scars and affecting the way we see ourselves and others in the present and in the future. The worst thing about psychic pain is that it is un-necessary. It results from our failure to register subtle signals emanating from the people around us, a failure to listen more deeply to our inner selves, the part of us that feels vaguely uneasy but which we decide to ignore because we feel we would be betraying someone we need if we reject what they are telling us. Psychic pain, in other words, stems from self-betrayal. Yes, the betrayers are guilty of wrong-doing but we are guilty of not listening to our deepest selves, the part of all of us that 'knows' something is wrong but is too inhibited and afraid to admit it.
sensing mechanism - the combination of perception and understanding that so many people are trained from early childhood to deny in favour of some other view of reality, usually that of parents, teachers, religious leaders, and in adulthood, spouses, bosses, colleagues, co-workers and national leaders. Many of us are programmed from our earliest days to ignore the subtle sensations of uneasiness that are trying to get our attention - shallower, quicker breathing, 'butterflies' in the stomach, goose-bumps, sudden inability to think or move or - perhaps worse - a feeling that we must protect those who are hurting us by refusing to acknowledge our right to our own perceptions. Entire generations of people are subjected to this sort of tyranny or seduced by its 'soft' equivalent a kind of Disney-esque dumbed-down view of how the world is supposed to be but never is. That vital disconnect is the key to psychic suffering. Any form of distortion to which we are subjected when we are too young to defend our 'psyches' leads ultimately to psychic suffering in later childhood, adolescence or adulthood. To be continued in my next post.
men to mentally 'trade places' with women and identify with what it feels like to be constantly aware of the presence of predatory males intent on asserting their 'right' to sexually intimidate women. It is especially difficult for men to 'get it' when their bullying behaviours are justified by mis-guided social and religious authorities asserting that male dominance is the natural way of things. It just happens that when the Egyptian mob attacks took place I had recently read a few books on the problem on male sexual, physical, emotional, and even intellectual aggression towards women, what seems to motivate it and what causes it to 'go viral' spreading from place to place in a heartbeat. One of the most interesting 'takes' on this psychic disturbance in the form of sexual aggression is a new book, The Moral Molecule by Dr. Paul Zak. Zak argues that human culture has become distorted in the direction of increasing levels of aggressiveness largely as a result of male-constructed social and economic models designed to ensure their control over both human reproduction and economic resources. The concentration of economic and military power in the hands of men has been only marginally affected by the entry of more women into paid employment, the professions and the military. In fact, the situation seems to be worsening in a sort of un-named backlash against women that takes the form of everything from rampant cyber-porn addiction to sexual trafficking of women and children on an unprecedented scale whilst at the same time punishing and killing women for alleged and largely unproved 'adulterous' behaviour in which the man is cast as the victim rather than the aggressor. No matter what the alleged provocation, there is no excuse for male sexual aggression. Not ever. But in a world that positively rewards aggressive behaviour of all kinds in males, sexual aggression becomes inevitable and even employed as a weapon of war as in Sudan, Somalia, Kosovo, Congo, Nigeria, Chad, Rwanda, etc.
of non-productive wealth in the hands of a tiny minority of the population, it is obvious that humans face the strong possibility of self-extinction. This should have resulted in a 'market correction' in the direction of sustaining the eco-system of the planet, greater sharing of the function of 'care giving', greater internation co-operation in avoiding financial melt-downs, etc. Instead of which we have steroid-induced male aggression on an unprecedented scale in schools, athletics, the military, gangs, and other male-only preserves and the open denigration by such groups of all things female - except of course female sex organs. The implication of Dr.Zak's thesis is that the headlong rush to self-annihilation can be reversed either directly through oxytocin 'therapy' or by using the same model by which testosterone became over-dominant: an emphasis on males allowing the natural oxytocin levels in their systems to find expression in co-operative efforts to reorganize the way we 'do economic life', a higher level of care-giving for males of all ages, and a recognition of the constructive effects on human happiness and well being of 'female' relational styles. 
