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| my thanks to similartohate on deviantart.com for this image |
Spirit-Soul-Body : a triad which has also been expressed as
Life-Quality-Appearance.
I have been thinking about that triad in terms of health and
healing.
Our form –the mental, emotional and etheric/physical bodies
through which our personality expresses itself – experiences a constant
friction with the spiritual determination of the soul to express itself through
that form.
Being “of clay” and essentially Earth substance, our form life
has a different agenda really.
The soul seeks to experience and operate through the form
according to its spiritual direction. The resulting tussle is very real and
tangible to us in the shape of disease and disorder.
Mental disturbance in depression and self loathing may
characterise our life. Equally distressing emotional upset may paralyse our
attempts to live to our ideal. Physical disability may repetitively hamper us
and cause us to focus our attention on the condition rather than the cause.
Any
or all of these may set up as a “closed loop” where our attention on the source
of distress actually causes the condition to magnify.
What to do? If this friction is at the root of dysfunction
what is the road to real Health?
As regards the physical/etheric body we can listen to the
guidance of our medical practitioner or healer of choice. That is an obvious first step we are all
familiar with. It is, however, a first step.
There is more we can do- something really very
straightforward and practical- we can learn to quiet the mind.
In health terms choosing to focus on the sound of our breath
rather than the chatter in our head is one of our best self-medicating options.
Even if we only manage it for a moment or two, we are supporting wellness.
Those who meditate or contemplate regularly can testify to
the benefits for Health in the widest sense of the word. The mind quiets and
cannot feed distressful self-sabotaging thoughts to disturb the emotions.
Calmer thoughts and feelings allow the etheric/physical to realign itself.
Muscles release their tension, digestion settles.
Over a period of regular use
a sense of wellness and trust in the future beings to pervade our life despite any remaining manifestation of
disease.
Life-Quality-Appearance: better in balance surely?
Here is a Short Story I choose to share today:
The Tin Whistle- an original tale in the traditional style. Recorded by MWB.
The story of Padraic Connell is a strange
one and worth the telling, so here it is.
Padraic was the seventh child of his
father, all were boys. Their mother’s pride was great but so too was her
loneliness for the girl her heart desired. This was not to be. His father too had
come from a family of men and he too was a seventh son. In better times this
would have bode well for Padraic. In these times of Great Hunger, however, it
meant no more to him than that all of his brothers, uncles and cousins, along
with his parents and grandparents, had gone on to the greater mysteries without
him. He was quite alone in a blighted country.
Even while his family lived there was never
more than just enough in the world to keep body and soul together. They had
eked an existence from tithe to tithe time, through seasons, each in their own
way beautiful but never bounteous. Never was there enough for the morrow let
alone a passage to new worlds. Padraic longed for other worlds but, for as long
as he could remember, there was only one ease, one comfort in the one that held
him. He had a tin whistle.
Alone with it now, as he was, there was
time and to spare for the laying of tunes. The whistle filled the one room of
his home of an evening, lifting a lilting song on the peat smoke of his hearth.
There were few neighbours now, but those that remained declared the sound
superior to the general class of piping. Padraic felt this must be so. Mulling
over this whistle one night, he took it into his head that he could find
himself wealth with it. Perhaps through his whistle he would find someone to
share his hearth, a body to enliven his music in the evenings when all the work
was done. He saw that the hunger which he now endured was matched by lack in
his life on every level. He came to desire a fullness in his being.
Padraic lasted through another freezing
season. Once the thaw began he left the deserted place of his home and set off
across the country. He walked with no other purpose than to see what his
whistle would find. He walked for six days. Sometimes he stopped and played at
a well or a dwelling. On occasion he was rewarded with a portion or a prayer.
It was not, however, enough to keep together the body or the soul.
The
road ahead seemed a great incline to him now, on the seventh day. He walked on
until the sun was sinking in the sky. Neither live man nor live beast had he
seen all the day and now the uneasy dusk was upon him, still out in the open as
he was. Padraic looked about for a likely place of shelter, all the while a
great thirst and hunger threatened to overcome his wits. When he came at last
upon a clear stream flowing gently from black rocks at the side of the road, he
sank down beside it to drink with gratitude for his deliverance.
Before Padraic cupped his hands to drink he
offered a prayer to all those saints, and their predecessors, who had guided
his feet to this place. From this upland spot, where he knelt in the new grass,
all of the country spread out below him was daubed with mauve and pink and
deepest blue. As he sipped and watched, the darkness spread across the lower
lands and left him alone in a misty silent place. Overcome by his travails,
resting his back against the rocky outcrop, Padraic fell deeply into sleep.
If his mother had been with him on his
journey she would have warned him of the perils of sweet water from black rocks
in a barren place. She would have held back his hand and prevented his
partaking of what belonged to The Gentry. For certain Padraic himself would
have shied away from the springs of the sidhe, if only he had his wits about
him and had not been so dreadful with the weariness upon him. As it was he
slept long, Padraic did, clutching tight to his whistle. While he did so,
dreamless and unmoving, grass grew up about him and covered him from sight. Not
one living soul passed that way at any time to see him there. The road he was
on was seldom traveled in these times.
Padraic himself had drawn within, to the
heart of the rock, where by rights he should not be. He came to his senses,
feeling on top of the world, surrounded by a great gathering of bright people.
Amazed he was at the good times to be had there, with food and drink in plenty.
There was fine fiddling and dancing underway. He had never seen the like of
this dancing – flying feet springing effortlessly over the rhythmic beat- men
and women weaving out and back across the tune. It was unreal. He looked about
him for his trusty tin whistle but it was gone, and his stick the same. He was
sad to see that whistle no more but he tapped his toe to the beat, content to
listen and watch the patterns of the reelers dancing.
Sometime later the most beautiful woman
came towards him, her hair streaming light behind her, copper and gold. In her
right hand she held a branch of silver. Instead of leaves tiny silver bells
suspended from the tracery of twigs upon this branch so that her movement
caused such a rustle of tinkling sound that all his attention was drawn to the
sound, despite the revels going on around them. In her left hand was Padraic’s
own tin whistle, but he was not to know any of this because she walked with her
hands behind her. The objects were screened from view by the pale silvery green
of the gown she wore so lightly. So Padraic could not see what she had with
her, though he heard the light rustling of bells in her walk. With her voice
full of some enchantment this vision of a woman spoke to him saying “Welcome
you are amongst us Padraic of Connell, I should wish you to stay.”
“Kind you are good lady”, Padraic replied
with a courteous bow in her direction. “I have, however, been thinking there is
no place on earth but home for a man of my sort.
The lady nodded and regarded him in a
considering way. “I could get you home to be sure, but after all you have seen
here the world would seem a pale place you know.” She leaned a little more
towards him and said in a confidential way “Besides Padraic, that was our
spring you drank from and, by rights, having come here, it’s here you should
remain.”
Padraic was at a loss. This was a seeming
impasse which he knew not the best way to resolve on his own. The lady sighed,
seeing this and spoke again. “Here is a puzzle for Padraic. Both my hands hold
an object similar, but not alike. Both will enhance the senses of the owner.
Both offer travel over space and time. One will keep you here but with the
other you may go home. Which hand will you have then?”
Now Padraic felt himself in a bind for such
a riddle is a delicate contest and not to be taken lightly. At first he held
his tongue. This was not one of quizzing riddles he knew, and he held scores in
his memory. He considered a moment, gazing across to the gay feasting and the
spinning reelers dancing their sets, as he searched within himself for a clue.
As he did so he noticed the gleaming golden drapes around the walls reflected
all before them. It was in that way that he was able to see behind the lady’s
back and spy the answer. It was ungentlemanly to cheat a lady but he was surely
keen to be away so he answered her this way “Lady” he said with courtesy “if I
took your right hand I would see more than I should and pass to places from
which men such as myself seldom return. Such knowledge is a great temptation.
If, however, I took your left hand I could share my song with you before I
leave.” He smiled and bowed with courtly grace. “If it happens that my playing
cannot please you then I will stay and learn a little more, but if the airs I
play are comely may be then you will open the door. Let us leave this riddling
rhyming now most Gracious Monarch. I am completely in your hands.”
Well the Queen of Fairae, for such she was,
laughed at his boldness and rhyming. “I like that well enough Gallant Padraic”
she declared. “Take your own whistle now and strike a tune for me. Let us see
what manner of song is within you.”
Padraic perched himself there and fixing
his eyes upon the sweet form and face of the lady, began his medley, soft and
sweet. The notes caressing came and spoke of love and beauty, both dark and
fair. Such a phrasing came from the whistle as brought to the place the bird on
the wind, the rushing foam of a full sea, the settling rustle of a lone hill at
dusk, and Padraic played on.
While he played the bustle and the chatter
of the place where he was became still and hushed. His plaintive air filled up
the room with the sounds of the earth. His song called out a soul’s longing for
his own hearth and place upon the green land of home, and Padraic played on.
For three whole days and three whole nights
Padraic played for the Queen of Sidhe. There was not a feeling from exquisite
joy to black despair that he omitted to play, not one fear that was not called
forth, not one glory unrecorded in the song. When the last notes faded away
Padraic found himself back on the hillside in the still morning air, his
whistle in his fist and his stout stick beside him. You could even feel he’d dreamt
it all, save for the lock of copper hair he found wound around his whistle.
By now Padraic felt he had no further taste
for travel. He turned his face toward home. Wealth and companions counted as
nothing to him besides all that he had seen. So back he went, treading his way
arrow straight to his own hearth. Things
seemed changed about him. Nearer home he was disturbed to see there was no
longer anyone he knew by sight. He came as a stranger to his own door. Once
there he was amazed to find a lovely young woman with copper coloured hair to
be his wife. In the evenings he would play to her and people came to listen to
the strange lilting tunes and wonder. Before long the music Padraic made was
famous across the whole country. He lived a charmed life and wanted for
nothing. The years that passed seemed to lie lightly on his form, so that there
was no one entirely sure how old he really was. Some were heard to say he
played with a magic touch and charmed breath but no one ever asked him and
Padraic would never say.
