I made a Vision Board!

This weekend, with time on my hands between my husbands two gigs on Saturday, I invited my friend around and we set about making a vision board each. Despite all my crazy spiritual adventures, you may be suprised to hear I have never made a vision / dream board before! Well. There is a first time for everything. So we set about cutting up a dozen or so magazines and gluing them all over a bit of card.

This is not as easy as one might first assume. There is something intrinsically powerful about this act. Suddenly I became very picky about images and words that I wanted to use to summon up my perfect future. I am a strong believer in the saying 'be careful what you wish for, it may come true'. And so it was with this in mind that I weilded my scissors with due care and attention and started to craft my collage of desired loveliness.

Making our vision boards was a very relaxing and meditative act. It is rare I sit and focus so intently on my life, and what I want. Perhaps that is wherein lies the power of the Vision Board. Because in this act of concentration I focused my mind entirely, not on what I 'think I might ' want, but on what I actually want. My friend and I spent a good couple of hours creating our boards, and every thing that went on there was mentally screened and assessed by my inner guru. Only when fully approved was the glue brought out and the scrap of paper committed to the board.

Whilst I have never done a board such as this before. I knew from my choices, that they were so completely different to what they would have been several years ago. Many of my desires revolve around the easily acheivable, and the internal things such as emotions. I was pleased to notice that I had no requirement for anything very much material (other than a future little cottage). That way heartbreak lies. Most important for me, it seems, is love, relationships, friends, pets, family, well being and my writing. Nothign else really featured. It seems I want what I more or less already have. So my vision board was like a new and improved version of my current life, though without the sleepiness and occasional stresses - of course! Oh and a few images to represent fabulous holidays thrown in - well you have to don't you!

Creating a Vision board was an enlightenment and an exercise in getting to know me, and what it is I really want! I encourage all you Soulies to get making your one too and maybe blogging about it here! Paper and a pritt stick has never been so powerful!

A bad witch's blog: Review: High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living

A bad witch's blog: Review: High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living: "I review lot of books for my blog, but rarely do I find myself nodding in agreement as much as I did while reading The High Heeled Guide to..."

SMile and F**k the Wrinkles!

I am sat in a red dress, with hastily applied make up waiting for a photographer. A few years back, this was my ambition: to be a person photographed regularly, or a model as they are otherwise known. Today this little photo session is very much not about what I look like per se, but more about illustrating an article for a local magazine. I'm a local person and in writing my books I have become of some interest to the Shire in which I abode. Which is always lovely, but this isn't about my potential newfound and very specifically shire-d fame, it's about the whole she-bang.

Havng dashed into the house with 30 mins till photography time. I threw on a red dress - it's classy and didn't need ironing - and I haphazardly topped up my make up. In doing so I couldn't help but notice the appearance of some lovely new wrinkles! Some of you may scoff and say 'what wrinkles' but trust me, it's my face, they are there! And even though I just wrote a book ranting and raving about the beauty industry and how it makes Women feel if they do not fit the beauty and youth prescription, my heart still sank a little bit. So being the brave spiritual trooper that I am I decided that a smile would fix it all, so I smiled in the mirror, and guess what, the wrinkles got worse! You just have to laugh...

So this leaves me with a dillemma. The way I see it is I have 3 options. Be morose and sullen and in turn hope to look relatively young. This will of course lead to me obsessed with how I may look, concerned wholly with externals and drastically avoiding any and all humor for fear I may lapse and allow the old crows feet out of the (old) bag. There is of course the option of Botox. Nope to that. So the final option is of course, smile and F**k the wrinkles.

Guess which option I chose?

So if you see a slightly frayed version of my younger self, happily peering out of the pages of a glossy local social mag, you know why. Looks, youth and smooth undereyes are a passing trend, they have an expiry date. Compared to our souls and our wisdom they are but a blip. So with this in mind we should all just smile and F**k the wrinkles! We are more our souls than we will ever know, and the externals be they warped, frayed, wrinkled or flumpy are perfect. They are our perfect little well worn homes. They keep our soul housed and wasting time on major renovations, money on nip tucks and tears and frustrations on ravages of time is time, money and tears wasted! You are beautiful, and your imperfections are too!

On that note... where is this photographer, I'm not getting any younger...

New Moon July 2011

Ok guys and gals I'm feeling this one already. Currently all I wanna do is go and hide in my bed. There has been a lot go going on in my life lately, some really fabulous things, but I'm feeling a massive urge to take those things to my bed and absorb them properly whilst I sleep.

I believe this is the result of the New Moon, and a continuation from the recent full moon and lunar eclipse. I feel there is a pattern of monns at the moment that is causing much ructions in our emotional and mental wellbeing. this is not necessarilly a bad thing, just a transit we need to pass through to come out more fully ourselves... I also find myself harping back to the past, wondering about things that have happened and wandering around those events in my brain, and relatign them to where I am now.

New Moons are invisible in the sky, and as such they represent the need to hide away, take things in, pause before action... They represent the correlation of the past with the present and give us space to bring all those things into the present moment. They give us a chance to breathe.

Take some time out today to be alone. To meditate, listen to music, ponder on the past and the present. There is no need to plan an outcome, just be. Allow life to catch up with you.

How is this new moon affecting you?

My second book is now available!

Woke up this morning to discover that people have been receiving their pre-ordered copies of The HIgh Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living. This is all a little premature as the launch parties and signings are not till the end of the month! However this happened with my first book too, so I was half expecting it!

So I guess I'd like to welcome my little piece of writing to the public, she has spread her wings and taken flight, when her momma wasn't looking! Good luck girl, you're on your own now!

If you would like to order a copy then Amazon seems to be the place, although other sites are equally as good and no doubt equally as premature!

Why choose Vegetarian and Vegan

This post is taken form my networking site http://www.soul-cafe.net and the group for Veggies and VEgan people!

People become veggie/vegans for a number of reasons. SOme because they simply do not like the taste of meat, others because they hate the thought of killing an animal.

I write a whole chapter in my next book The High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living about my choice to become a vegetarian. Though it was something more pressing than a 'choice'. I felt that after years of on/off vegetarian eating, I could simply no longer eat meat. It was simply an impossibility for me to continue to do. I can't explain it better than that, but it made perfect sense.

I still ge teased mercilessly by friends about whether or not I am a vegetarian this week! Though I am proud to say that I have been for over a year now, no slip ups, no fails, no 'just one last time bacon sandwiches!'

The first time I became a vegetarian, shame to say it, was because Mark Owen from Take That was one. Not only this, but he lived near my Dad in Oldham, and I once saw him in his bedroom window. THis sealed the deal for me in typical teenage fashion. He was, so I was. I stuck to it for years, but then my downfall was a McDonald's cheeseburger. Soooo not even worth it, but by now I was an older teenager, and my thoughts were not so conscious.

I'm not sure what happened then. But from my late teens till a year ago I would have fads and phases of vegetarian living. Followed by mad attacks of 'atkins diet' style meat fests. I was trying (and failing) to be a model at the time, and copious amount so meat seemed the way forward. I was very much thinking of my own waistline, and in no respects was I concerned about the animals that suffered for it.

Again a few years after that, when under a 'vegetarian' label I cracked under the pressure of a deeply stressful holiday and ended up loading my plate full of the hotel's finest bacon. I started smoking too. I guess that in my confused state, again, the animals and even my own health was the last thing on my mind.

Happily, I am now past these flummoxes of consciousness. I have been a semi-veg for a few years, and a full-on - 'no meat passes the lips vegetarian' for over a year. I am so happy about this. I can safely say that this is a decision that will be permanent. And who knows, maybe in a few years my friends will stop asking the question, 'are you vegetarian this week / month / christmas'.

And why do I choose to be a vegetarian. So many reasons... I can refer you to PETA or VIVA, for the full list of abuses caused to animals and the environment caused by the meat industry. All of these are my reasons. But on a more personal note, I simply love animals. I love their fluffy, furry innocent little selves, and I have no desire to be part of a chain that chops that fluffy self up, roasts it and munches away liberally. Been there, done it, and I always did prefer the veg option on the menu anyway if I'm honest! I believe my spiritual progression led me this way, and I am not one to argue with spiritual progression. I try to go with the flow and if the flow insists on veg and grains, then so be it.

I hope in time, to cut right back on the animal products too and lean strongly towards veganism, for the most part. This is something I'm working on though, so be patient with me!

So why do you choose to be veggie...?

From dresses to darkness in one fell swoop

In total opposition to my last post about dresses, here is something a little darker to get your teeth into...

We live in our little worlds of our own makings... We sit on our sofas, watch our TV's and if we are lucky we talk to our angels. This thing is life is not all ice-cream, eastenders and crushes on inappropriate rockstars. Life is adarned hard place to be. Everyone reading this will have their own set of crummy circumstances to contend with. SOme of us will have suffered real pain and heartaches in our lives. And perhaps these pain and heartaches have led us to the place we are at now.

So what about the war torn countries and the horrifc stories you sometimes read in the news, or on sites like Amnesty International. What about all the world's cruelties and human rights abuses. What about the world of pain that exists on the other side of our four walls and silk taffeta curtains form Laura Ashley?

Well in The HIgh Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living I address chaos, darkness and difficulties in some of it's awful forms. As spiritual folks we kinda have to reckon on the fact that all things are spiritual. That's my theory anyway. Sometimes those spiritual things are also horribly painful. But even looking back on your own life, those darknesses that have visited you, have all made you who you are today. It is often the death and destruction that forces the light of love and lovely spirtuality in to our existence.

Whilst I would never deign to suggest that anyone 'deserves' their pain and torture, perhaps we still all benefit from each other's pain. Perhaps those people in war torn countries are suffering so that as individuals and as a planet we can progress. So that we can outrage against what is happening to them. So that in the future they can have a knowing voice that speaks out against evil regimes and cruelty, and that in turn helps make the world a better place. Perhaps those people undergoing mad pain and suffering have in some ways volunteered for that, knowing that their survival and their braveness in the face of untold horror can help make the planet a better place. If that is the case then those brave souls are more special and more powerful than Buddha, Jesus or Gandhi himself in their sacrafices for the rest of human kind. It is through the eyes of their pain that humanity will become closer.

So maybe there is spiritual sense in even the darkest of moments. We are all here for each other, and it is through the bad as well as the good that we will raise our consciousnesses, spread our wings and rise like a phoenix to a better version of humanity than we can even imagine right now.

Big love to all of those suffering, and may we all rail against it to create a new peace.