Drawn by a Star

My retreat guest this week comes from London. She's here to make a Shamanic retreat. We're based in the Contraviesa mountains of southern Spain. My retreat house is on the edge of a tiny remote village. The village is still untouched by tourism. Annie works in the National Health Service in London. She is intelligent, brave, and discerning. This sensitive 35 year old wants to re connect with her intuitive voice and access her 'higher wisdom', her soul's calling, which have been dulled by a long dark night of the soul. She talks about wanting to develop that ‘intuitive muscle.’ I think she’s come to the right place! Moorish southern Spain is steeped in the mystical, and has for centuries been open to and rich in diverse belief systems. ‘Shamanism is a path of knowledge, not of faith, and that knowledge cannot come from me or anyone else in this reality. To acquire that knowledge, including the knowledge of the spirits, it is necessary to step t...

Hello dear readers. This is the new me ! 13 kilos lighter ! Feeling so well and so happy! High protein and lots of mountain hikes. That's done it. The fact that I'm posting a photo of myself is a miracle in itself. I have been camera shy ( neurotic) for so many years. “Success is sweetest when you've known defeat.” Malcolm S. Forbes

Remembering 9.11: honoring and blessing all who lost loved ones, all who acted heroically , every act of kindness during and afterwards, every brave soul who has rebuilt their life , and all who still struggle and are scarred on the inside. May peace and love, compassion and acceptance grow in all of our hearts, day by day. "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." Mother Teresa (1910 - 1998) I would prefer to say, personally, that if you love despite the pain of it being rejected..that by keeping your heart open, only more love, only more love can enter. I don't have any other words to share about September 11, 2001. These images say what my deepest self can't articulate about that day. Shamans tell us: images are the language the soul understands. And today, 12.09.11 a friend has written on my facebook page : "Let us not forget the tens of thousands of innocent lives los...

Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit. ~Eli Khamarov, Lives of the Cognoscenti.

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart... Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers... They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them... It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day." - Rainer Maria Rilke These pencil sketches were made in Alaska in 1999. They are the basis of a series of paintings inspired by the lives of the Skellig Michael monks. The monks lived on an enormous rock (in the 7th century), nine miles off the west coast of Ireland. They were said to have lived their devoted and austere lives 'on the margin of the world.' The Atlantic ocean. I often feel I live my life in the margins of the world, loving wilderness, drawn to huge uns...