The most amazing aspect of happiness is its transient nature. I am often amazed - okay - always amazed - at how one moment I can be feeling happy, content, top of the world, thinking to myself "Sorted!" and then 'BAM!' - down for the count!
What? Am I meant to tell you all that I have it sorted? That having worked as an MI for more than more than 25 years, most of my life, that having stood in heaven, talked to Angels face to face, seen the things that I have seen, that I have it all sorted? Really? I am human, just as you are...damn! Lessons learned are seldom lessons held closely. We forget, we move on, we let go, we get brain damage, we get tired, old, hungry, despairing, but we always come back.
We always come back.
I remember this awesome song by Dr Hook that came out in the 70's...'I got a couple more years on you girl, and that's all. I've had more chances to fly and more places to fall. And it ain't that I'm wiser, it's only that I've spent more time with my back to the wall, and I've picked up a couple more years on you babe, and that's all.' (or something like that)
I think of that song quite often. I sometimes seek out people who have a couple of more years on me, even if they are not as old as me, and sometimes even if they are furrier than me, like my cat, and I listen to them. Wisdom comes from the oddest of places. But it always comes.
Dark is only Dark so that we can see the Light.
What I would really like to see happen for each of you today is for you all to listen to the wisdom of what is happening around you.
Is this a day for you to be quiet or noisy? Achieve actively, or just swim with the gentle ebb and flow that is around you. Is there someone you have forgotten to say thank you to, or told that you cared about them? Is there a project that needs finishing? The sock basket need sorting? The flowers need pruning? Have you used your good/best china to eat or drink from or are you waiting for an excuse to do that? Does someone 'special' need to come to dinner for you to break out your most beautiful possessions?
Don't wait - break them out - make every meal the meal you want to eat.
Find the joy and the peace that is in every moment of every day - if you let it be. And remember. Life is not easy or quiet. It should be, but it isn't.
But you - you fantastic Human, you - can make the world alright for you. You can stand in the eye of the storm and you can find the equilibrium that you need. You can.
It does not matter what others want for you, or from you, or of you. What matters is what you want and what you can create from the unfair hand you have been dealt. Change the belief, change the dynamics so that it is no longer unfair.
I hope that I have given you some peace, some insight. Thank you for sharing this blog journey with me. Share me your insights if you would like to. I love hearing all your responses on here and on Facebook.
In peace.
Love Carmel
Monday, July 25, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Gratitude
15 years ago, on this day, I was meant to bring home a baby.
That baby - JL - had been born 13 weeks earlier, after a long and often painful battle to try and stop labour. He was not expected to survive, my small, fragile blonde haired, blue eyed son. Having survived - he was never expected to thrive.
He had 2 strokes in the first 10 days of life. He survived N.E.C. and had so many bradycardia attacks and tachycardia attacks that even the doctors were admitting fear and concern. Every day, walking into the Mercy hospital neonatal intensive care was a trauma. Graduating to nursery 4, then 5, then 6 were all HUGE milestones. Every gram of weight gained was a day closer to home.
We were told to not 'expect much'. Bernie and I loved our tiny son who was so ridiculously small that we clothed him in cabbage patch doll clothes.
I remember so much about that time and about how painful it was. From driving like a maniac into the hospital in case he had died overnight, to coming home and sitting, rocking his pram, crying because I was not allowed to hold him (too small, too fragile). I could not breast feed him as my breasts were bigger than his head and the effort of feeding him made him lose weight. Express milk all the way!
Today I flounced into his room to wake him up - "Happy Birthday!" I shouted quietly. "15 years today if you had been born on time!"
From with in the warmth of his bed, he raised his head and smiled at me. "I was."
From being expected to be brain damaged, small, and all things not quite right, he is now taller than me, beautiful to look at with a physique Adonis would be proud of, smart as a whip, talented, popular - in short - everything a mother could hope for.
Yet I still see the little JL. The fragile, wide eyed boy who looked at me in grief as a lumbar puncture needle was shoved into his small 6 week old spine. I know every trauma he has gone through has made him stronger. He has not needed to hang on to any of it. He has survived, thrived, grown beyond and he shows no signs of the life, the struggle, he led to get here.
An example to me, to us all. Sometimes I forget what he has achieved. I forget that it was the Energy that I use that helped save him, kept him alive, clothed him in love. It is easy to just look at the boy and dream of the man he will be.
But today I will see the man he is becoming and I will remember the boy that he was. The boy who fought, with no recrimination, no questions, to survive - and I will be.
Just be.
That baby - JL - had been born 13 weeks earlier, after a long and often painful battle to try and stop labour. He was not expected to survive, my small, fragile blonde haired, blue eyed son. Having survived - he was never expected to thrive.
He had 2 strokes in the first 10 days of life. He survived N.E.C. and had so many bradycardia attacks and tachycardia attacks that even the doctors were admitting fear and concern. Every day, walking into the Mercy hospital neonatal intensive care was a trauma. Graduating to nursery 4, then 5, then 6 were all HUGE milestones. Every gram of weight gained was a day closer to home.
We were told to not 'expect much'. Bernie and I loved our tiny son who was so ridiculously small that we clothed him in cabbage patch doll clothes.
I remember so much about that time and about how painful it was. From driving like a maniac into the hospital in case he had died overnight, to coming home and sitting, rocking his pram, crying because I was not allowed to hold him (too small, too fragile). I could not breast feed him as my breasts were bigger than his head and the effort of feeding him made him lose weight. Express milk all the way!
Today I flounced into his room to wake him up - "Happy Birthday!" I shouted quietly. "15 years today if you had been born on time!"
From with in the warmth of his bed, he raised his head and smiled at me. "I was."
From being expected to be brain damaged, small, and all things not quite right, he is now taller than me, beautiful to look at with a physique Adonis would be proud of, smart as a whip, talented, popular - in short - everything a mother could hope for.
Yet I still see the little JL. The fragile, wide eyed boy who looked at me in grief as a lumbar puncture needle was shoved into his small 6 week old spine. I know every trauma he has gone through has made him stronger. He has not needed to hang on to any of it. He has survived, thrived, grown beyond and he shows no signs of the life, the struggle, he led to get here.
An example to me, to us all. Sometimes I forget what he has achieved. I forget that it was the Energy that I use that helped save him, kept him alive, clothed him in love. It is easy to just look at the boy and dream of the man he will be.
But today I will see the man he is becoming and I will remember the boy that he was. The boy who fought, with no recrimination, no questions, to survive - and I will be.
Just be.
Monday, June 6, 2011
What an amazing time to be on Planet earth...
Life without pain sounds wonderful, but in reality it would tiresome and unfulfilling. People will often ask themselves the question of Why?' They wonder why would they do this? Put themselves here, on earth, to suffer the trials and tribulations of humanity, to love, to lose, to fight, to suffer.
I remember a line from one of my most favorite movies - 'The Princess Bride' where the hero, Westley tells us that 'Life is Pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.'
People assume that it is their right and indeed a necessity, to live a life pain free.
The only thing that life can guarantee you is that you are born and that you will live the full extent of your life, as given, be that a day, or one hundred years. IN between birth and death, you will laugh and you will cry.
Life is pain. But not all that pain is bad, or to be avoided. Pain tells us where we have truly loved. Pain can tell us what is absent from our life. An absence of pain, of feeling, in a human is often a key symptom in a person who is a sociopath.
Yet people studiously avoid pain. Life without pain disalows you the right to be compassionate, to cry when your child is hurt, to grieve when your friend ails or dies, to mourn when you feel that you are betrayed, to know that hurting another is wrong.
To try to avoid pain is to fail to live to your full extent.
I do not want to be in pain, I do not want to cry and yet, it is this depth that will allow me to know where to love, where to trust, where I have failed or won, or am driven.
I sometimes think back on the people that I have loved and in one way or another, have lost. I feel pain. But I also feel joy that I knew that person, that I was blessed to have been part of their journey. This is a good pain, a healthy pain...
My point within my ramblings is to help you to see that life is not a free ride, full of only joy. Life is a patchwork quilt that is full of all the experiences and emotions you can feel. To deny or to diminish any of them is to live a less than full life. To love fully, you will need to experience loss of love.
Which of you would give up the intense love you have felt for another being, just to be pain free?
Between grief and nothing, I would take grief. It is in that way that I can feel true love, true joy.
Blessings,
Carmel Bell
I remember a line from one of my most favorite movies - 'The Princess Bride' where the hero, Westley tells us that 'Life is Pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.'
People assume that it is their right and indeed a necessity, to live a life pain free.
The only thing that life can guarantee you is that you are born and that you will live the full extent of your life, as given, be that a day, or one hundred years. IN between birth and death, you will laugh and you will cry.
Life is pain. But not all that pain is bad, or to be avoided. Pain tells us where we have truly loved. Pain can tell us what is absent from our life. An absence of pain, of feeling, in a human is often a key symptom in a person who is a sociopath.
Yet people studiously avoid pain. Life without pain disalows you the right to be compassionate, to cry when your child is hurt, to grieve when your friend ails or dies, to mourn when you feel that you are betrayed, to know that hurting another is wrong.
To try to avoid pain is to fail to live to your full extent.
I do not want to be in pain, I do not want to cry and yet, it is this depth that will allow me to know where to love, where to trust, where I have failed or won, or am driven.
I sometimes think back on the people that I have loved and in one way or another, have lost. I feel pain. But I also feel joy that I knew that person, that I was blessed to have been part of their journey. This is a good pain, a healthy pain...
My point within my ramblings is to help you to see that life is not a free ride, full of only joy. Life is a patchwork quilt that is full of all the experiences and emotions you can feel. To deny or to diminish any of them is to live a less than full life. To love fully, you will need to experience loss of love.
Which of you would give up the intense love you have felt for another being, just to be pain free?
Between grief and nothing, I would take grief. It is in that way that I can feel true love, true joy.
Blessings,
Carmel Bell
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Thursday ramblings
"In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning." F.Scott Fitzgerald
Sleep is the last great unfettered refuge to many of us, particularly to those with worries. But what happens when that precious sleep is interrupted and taken over by thoughts that we cannot seem to control. We end up with worries that pile in on us, unrequested and yet - here.
Charles De Lint said - (author) "Problems are not something you should try to solve in the middle of the night." Problem solving in the night, whilst you are awake, is often one of the greatest causes of misery.
So should we stop trying to problem solve? How can we solve this dilemma?
I think that we are best to leave it to sleep time. In sleep, what dreams may come...I find that for every problem I have, my dream consciousness has the answer. It may not be the answer that I want, but it is the answer that I need.
When I am lost, when I am floundering, I ask my mind to give me the answer. Sometimes it takes a day, sometimes it can take a few days, but the answer does come.
Sleep - that precious gift that does more than just refresh the body. It also refreshes the soul.
Blessings,
Carmel Bell
Sleep is the last great unfettered refuge to many of us, particularly to those with worries. But what happens when that precious sleep is interrupted and taken over by thoughts that we cannot seem to control. We end up with worries that pile in on us, unrequested and yet - here.
Charles De Lint said - (author) "Problems are not something you should try to solve in the middle of the night." Problem solving in the night, whilst you are awake, is often one of the greatest causes of misery.
So should we stop trying to problem solve? How can we solve this dilemma?
I think that we are best to leave it to sleep time. In sleep, what dreams may come...I find that for every problem I have, my dream consciousness has the answer. It may not be the answer that I want, but it is the answer that I need.
When I am lost, when I am floundering, I ask my mind to give me the answer. Sometimes it takes a day, sometimes it can take a few days, but the answer does come.
Sleep - that precious gift that does more than just refresh the body. It also refreshes the soul.
Blessings,
Carmel Bell
Monday, April 18, 2011
Challenges in our lives
Each day when I awake, I open my eyes and my heart to the world with no expectations.
But being a mother, a wife, a friend, and a Medical Intuitive I soon discover that there is some some problem, awaiting me.
This is inevitable and it is inescapable.
This is life. Life is a series of problems given to us to solve. Life is a series of challenges for us to run, jump and leap over. Life is painful and messy and dirty and delightful. Life is the way that I look at it.
And I can look with fear or I can look with awe.
I can look with wonder and delight or with sheer, cold horror.
I personally meet with people each week who are sick, who are dying, who have lost heart, lost faith, lost purpose, lost path. I hear them speak about their world and their life. Some speak as if they were the only one who has stood where they stand or has trod where they tread.
Their daily expectation sets the tone for the day that they are about to live through. Some of them take all the slings and arrows in their stride, and some of them crumble under the weight. I have compassion for both responses. I have had both myself. But I know that the belief that life is moving as it should is the one that will sustain you.
Because life truly is a series of choices and you are what you choose to respond to.
But being a mother, a wife, a friend, and a Medical Intuitive I soon discover that there is some some problem, awaiting me.
This is inevitable and it is inescapable.
This is life. Life is a series of problems given to us to solve. Life is a series of challenges for us to run, jump and leap over. Life is painful and messy and dirty and delightful. Life is the way that I look at it.
And I can look with fear or I can look with awe.
I can look with wonder and delight or with sheer, cold horror.
I personally meet with people each week who are sick, who are dying, who have lost heart, lost faith, lost purpose, lost path. I hear them speak about their world and their life. Some speak as if they were the only one who has stood where they stand or has trod where they tread.
Their daily expectation sets the tone for the day that they are about to live through. Some of them take all the slings and arrows in their stride, and some of them crumble under the weight. I have compassion for both responses. I have had both myself. But I know that the belief that life is moving as it should is the one that will sustain you.
Because life truly is a series of choices and you are what you choose to respond to.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
What I have learned today
This morning I sent 3 of my four children out the front door together, each armed with a camera. These three incredible souls are in the Autism spectrum and I spend time working out how I can see the world as they see it, and how I can also encourage them to see the world as other people do - or at least for them to understand it.
Autistic children view the world in such a different way to most people.
An hour later, full of pride and eager to share, they walked back in the door where I was entertained and educated by many photos. I saw what they had seen as they walked, from the angle that they had viewed the world. Photos taken from down low, up high, through trees, around corners, from young men sliding down mud soaked embankments rushing towards an overly full lake, to a beautiful young lady with delicate hands photographing the corpse of a duck that she had discovered. The beautiful, natural decay of a body no longer needed by the soul that had flown within it. No sorrow, loads of compassion and bundles of curiousity.
The luminous and unbelievable BRIGHT pink of a dahlia filled one frame completely, as did the sign warning of slider turtles filled another - displayed with equal pride.
Each step charted. Each tree that these three beings walked past was looked at, examined, and sometimes photographed. The world spread before me through the lens of their eyes was lush, green, fertile, sometimes dangerous. The path that they had trod was wet, muddy, slippery and full of intrigue.
This is their world. This is their day. They hold on to nothing that does not matter, they see each step as new. Each of these three children have been bullied so badly in the past that I wondered how I would recover, much less them. But all three of them recovered.
And now all of them see the freshness of a brand new day.
This is living.
This is not just surviving.
This is being present and being open to joy.
This is what my children teach me.
Blessings,
Carmel
Autistic children view the world in such a different way to most people.
An hour later, full of pride and eager to share, they walked back in the door where I was entertained and educated by many photos. I saw what they had seen as they walked, from the angle that they had viewed the world. Photos taken from down low, up high, through trees, around corners, from young men sliding down mud soaked embankments rushing towards an overly full lake, to a beautiful young lady with delicate hands photographing the corpse of a duck that she had discovered. The beautiful, natural decay of a body no longer needed by the soul that had flown within it. No sorrow, loads of compassion and bundles of curiousity.
The luminous and unbelievable BRIGHT pink of a dahlia filled one frame completely, as did the sign warning of slider turtles filled another - displayed with equal pride.
Each step charted. Each tree that these three beings walked past was looked at, examined, and sometimes photographed. The world spread before me through the lens of their eyes was lush, green, fertile, sometimes dangerous. The path that they had trod was wet, muddy, slippery and full of intrigue.
This is their world. This is their day. They hold on to nothing that does not matter, they see each step as new. Each of these three children have been bullied so badly in the past that I wondered how I would recover, much less them. But all three of them recovered.
And now all of them see the freshness of a brand new day.
This is living.
This is not just surviving.
This is being present and being open to joy.
This is what my children teach me.
Blessings,
Carmel
Sunday, September 5, 2010
I don't know what to call this
I found out today that a very dear friend died, quite unexpectedly. Why is it unexpected? We all die. He was a young man - well - older than me, but just. Someone who I have known for about 25 years. I have seen him grow, mature, agonize, go through doubt, reach natural conclusions, have children, love those children, travel, laugh, cry, develop hypertension, relieve it. I have massaged him, eaten with him, had coffee with him - in short been a friend. I expected him to be here with me, journeying for at least another 20 years. In truth, I relied on that because his skill and compassion as a dentist were second to none. And now...
...Now there is a darkness upon me as I grieve for the loss of him, my friend. I am feeling so many feelings.
Even having stood in heaven, talked to Angels, seen Spirit up close and personal, I still grieve. I grieve not because my friend is dead but because I am no longer able to touch him and speak to him and I did not say all that I wanted to, all that I should have. I neglected to tell this man how special he was to me, and how much he had altered my life for the better. I forgot to tell him that I am a better person because he walked beside me sometimes.
Now I need to try to remember the lesson that his loss has offered me. Will I speak up or will I remain silent?
Paul Soon. Goodbye.
Blessings,
Carmel Bell
...Now there is a darkness upon me as I grieve for the loss of him, my friend. I am feeling so many feelings.
Even having stood in heaven, talked to Angels, seen Spirit up close and personal, I still grieve. I grieve not because my friend is dead but because I am no longer able to touch him and speak to him and I did not say all that I wanted to, all that I should have. I neglected to tell this man how special he was to me, and how much he had altered my life for the better. I forgot to tell him that I am a better person because he walked beside me sometimes.
Now I need to try to remember the lesson that his loss has offered me. Will I speak up or will I remain silent?
Paul Soon. Goodbye.
Blessings,
Carmel Bell
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