Kingdom of Heaven, Kingdom of Hell.

"People often asked Dr. [Carl] Jung, 'Will we make it?' referring to the cataclysm of our time. He always replied, “If enough people will do their inner work.” This soul work is the one thing that will pull us through any emergency" —Robert Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche (HarperSanFrancisco: 1991).

"The cataclysm of our time." That time was approximately 100 years ago. The word comes from the Greek, Kata (down, against) Klysmo (to wash over or surge). But do we now have a cataclysm? I think we do.

In fact, there will always be a potential cataclysm inside us, let alone in the world, if we don't understand the importance, calling and nature of our soul. The irony is that the vast majority of us don't know our own soul and not that many of us even want to.

It's much easier, isn't it, to live on the edge of chaos, exclaiming at the world 'out there' and blaming it and others for whatever situation you/we might be in.

But if you do want to, then the first thing to do is find the Kingdom of Heaven. This is a real place in the human psyche, a place of peace, self-acceptance and the gateway to your soul. 

Who says so? The ancient Judaic mystical system known as Kabbalah (which is the Hebrew word for 'receive'). This is nothing to do with Madonna and the Kabbalah Center — that's a modern re-working of the system which, in my not-so-humble view has completely missed the pot and potentially misled a lot of folks on the nature of this version of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition. 

You'll probably have heard of the Kingdom of Heaven through the words of Jesus in the Bible. He also spoke of the Kingdom of God which is where you can head for once you've found the Kingdom of Heaven.
Does that mean Jesus was a Kabbalist? In the sense that he knew the ancient mystical teaching and received inspiration directly from the Divine, yes. However, in those days, the tradition was known as 'The Way' or 'The Knowledge.' He certainly knew all about The Way. He never intended it to be limited to those who became what we now call Christians.

In a nutshell, in the Kingdom of Heaven is the place in the psyche where you have spiritual power within your own life and your surroundings. The Kingdom of God is where you have spiritual power within the World. Everyone's Kingdom of Heaven is unique to them and everyone's Kingdom of God is transpersonal — involving the whole of Spirit. That's why Jesus talked about giving up the self; you can do that happily from the Kingdom of God

We need both in these polarised times but more than anything, we need the Kingdom of Heaven, because it is everything within us that is generous and kind and honest and true and beautiful.

And we need to walk before we can run because if you head out seeking the Kingdom of God before we've internalised the Kingdom of Heaven we are likely to hurt ourselves - and others. It's like fire; marvellous when you know how to use it, and incredibly destructive if you don't. In fact, you'd never reach the Kingdom of God but you would believe you have and that's where you've opened a psychic doorway to something very unpleasant indeed, including the corruption of power.

My headline also mentions the Kingdom of Hell. That's where so many of us spend a lot of our time. The Kingdom of Hell is everyone else. It is where other people, family, work, governments, medical diagnoses disempower or incite us us. It is where our lives can be kicked in any direction without our say-so and sometimes even our knowledge. Sounds familiar?

As the lovely Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in Eat, Pray, Love (Penguin 2006): "All the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.” 

"The search for contentment," to the mystic in the Judaeo-Christian tradition is the pilgrimage to uncover the Kingdom of Heaven within us. If we won't go within, we must go without and when we go without, we do just that...

What will you find in the Kingdom of Heaven?

Peace, happiness, joy, contentment, the ability to intuit what is needed for your own healing, the ability

not to react continually to the outside world's silliness and craziness and a space within that is open to inspiration and guidance from Beriah the world of blessings; the place we call heaven.

Heaven is not something waiting for us after death if we are good. Heaven is the destination at the end of the hero's/heroine's journey, made famous by the American mythologist, Joseph Campbell. It's where we leave our old habits and patterns and set out for a better life and then, when we have tamed and released our inner dragons, we bring our story back to our tribe so as to teach them how to do the same.

This autumn, I'll be teaching a new online course, The Kingdom of Heaven: How to Live in Heaven on Earth, which will show you the map for your journey. it won't tell you who you are meant to be; it will help you find that for yourself. And when you know who you truly are, then truly, life itself becomes heavenly.

We'll be starting on Monday 7th October for five weeks and the Early Bird price is £75, rising to £99 on 21st September. You won't have to listen live to any of the course. It will all be recorded and sent to you in MP3 format so you can tune in in your own time.

Let me say again: this is NOT selfish work. Finding your own happiness is a gift to the world.

What are my qualifications for teaching it? I'm the author of 18 books, have been widowed and divorced, have emigrated and returned and have studied Judaeo-Christian mysticism for more than a quarter of a century and I'm a joyful survivor of cancer. I'm an independent minister, or Hedge Priest, and I am both very happily married and incredibly content. Most of my time, I live in the Kingdom of Heaven. More details of my life and work here.

"Working with you made me feel alive. The whole of my future opened up; I felt that I had a future. You saved my life" — Salley Farquharson, Birmingham, UK.

Let me know if you think you might be interested in knowing more. Thank you. maggy@maggywhitehouse.com

Esprit d'Escalier Or Some Ramblings About God.

"You seem like an intelligent woman," said the atheist to the vicar when they'd both come off stage. "Why don't you just use your brain and see that there's nothing."

Of course I couldn't think of a reply — at least, not one that wouldn't have been equally as arrogant — but esprit d'escalier has been working on it ever since.

In case you don't know it, esprit d'escalier means 'the inspiration of the staircase' referring to the clever replies we can all come up with once we are leaving the building and it's too late.

I know a lot — a LOT — of people don't believe in God but, trust me, your brain has nothing to do with it. That's because God does not exist. God is beyond existence. God is in the spaces between us and our thoughts.

Can I prove that? No, of course not. The whole point of faith is that it is faith. It is intangible and it lives in just those spaces. Proof lives in the physical world and nowhere else.

Possibly, oddly, I don't give a rap whether you believe me or not. That's because I have experienced God, I have known Grace, I have shared time and space with the Divine and I have waded through cosmic seas of awe adrift in the bliss of union. And I am certain that I will do the same - and more - again.

And if that's all sanctimonious wanky bollox to you, then fair enough. I believe what I believe and I know what I know and what you believe is none of my business. All I want for you is that you are happy and even that is probably grossly presumptive of me.

The trouble with using your brain about God is that what we are generally taught about God simply cannot compute in a world where we are beginning to understand the enormity of the Universe. Any conventional belief in God will seem ludicrous and the non-believer will throw the baby out with the admittedly ghastly bathwater. That's the bathwater that is willing to condemn some super-intelligent furry sound-wave in a distant galaxy to hell because it doesn't believe in some bloke who lived on Earth for 33 years and (in the words of Douglas Adams) whom we nailed to a tree because he went around saying how good it would be to be nice to people for a change.

I believe much the same as many atheists do. I don't believe in the God that they don't believe in. I can't. God is not that old man up in the sky, nor the mean bastard of many religions. God is not small or tribal.

If God Is, then God must be at least as big as the Universe which means that It is the God of every single aspect of that Universe. God can be nothing like the small God of Christianity, Islam, Judaism or any other religion. Those are local interpretations (and sometimes useful, sometimes not) of a much greater Source.

This idea of hell is frankly ridiculous anyway: it's simply not sustainable. Just suppose for a moment that you actually got to heaven but someone you loved went to hell. How could you possibly experience heaven? You couldn't; you would also be in hell because your heart would be breaking.

I may do some more rambling about all that kind of stuff and why people need to believe in the idea that God wants to punish us another time...

I've long believed that Dark Matter is Spirit - and the Holy Spirit is part of God; inexplicable, ineffable, incomprehensible. We are not meant to know with our small and limited brains. But if we are lucky, we can know with our souls and, if we ever want to discover what that's like, then I think we have to learn how to find the space between us and our thoughts.

That's why I attempt to meditate every day. Even after 20 years I sometimes resist it but it is when I stop the thinking, even for a few moments, and find that space, that God can reveal Itself to me. Of course, incredible sunrises or sunsets, the sparkling night sky and moments of terror can do the same but it's nice to show up on a regular basis just to say, "I'm here; what are the miracles today?"

And if the atheist should ask me again, I'm going to have to try and compress all that into just one sentence.

Or, I could just smile and say nothing, like I did the first time.

The EasyJet Blog Part Seven (Those Whom The Gods Love...)

The idyom is: 'Those whom the gods love, die young' and it's generally used as some sort of 'comfort' when someone young does die ... as in, they were so lovely, the gods wanted them with them. Cold comfort for many, I'm sure.

However, my Teacher always said it meant that those who were in touch with spirit retained a youthful attitude and aspect throughout their life - somewhat along the lines of Jesus saying that you have to be like a child to access the kingdom of heaven.

In my tradition, the kingdom of heaven is the same as the Hindu solar plexus chakra; the true self - away from the ingrained habits of the ego, so that makes sense to me.

I'm not saying that the gods love me - but I do take the time and trouble to honour and talk with them wherever I am, especially in a land where they played a significant part in history. Greece for example.

You have to be careful with gods because they are never neutral. The first commandment in the Hebrew Testament is clear: 'no other gods before my face' meaning that the One, the Source is the most important and only focus for the true believer. But that doesn't mean that there are no other gods.

If you've ever read Terry Pratchett's brilliant book, Small Gods, or Douglas Adams' Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, you'll be familar with the concept of gods still existing, just fading slowly because they need belief to keep them powerful.

And I'm always respectful of the gods because ... well, just because. Long before I was ordained, I would always greet the angel of a land when I arrived, introduce myself and ask that they be blessed by the All-Holy One. And I would feel that the request was received and appreciated. It might only be my imagination but I like to do it and, if it is real, it's only polite.

Even if places no longer have gods, they have angels and angels like to be greeted too.

The primary god of Cyprus is said to be Aphrodite, and I greeted her and blessed her on our first evening and, as I was peturbed by the whole suitcase thing, I was tempted to invoke her for help. I could feel curiosity about my desires, but gods are always transactional - they require sacrifice in return for their actions - which is one of the reasons that religion goes wrong: it teaches us to worship a transactional God and to expect to pay in return. The Holy One is transformational; you can ask for sure but then you must let go and let God so that better than you could imagine (or at least better for you can happen). We turned the original meaning of 'sacrifice' from 'to make sacred' to 'suffer.'

So I said, 'thanks but no thanks,' and let go and let God.

You'll have read Harold's story by now ... and the next day, Lion and I went out to visit some archaological sites and ruined temples and, at one of them, I sat quietly in the shade of a carob tree, in meditation. There was absolutely no one there but Lion and me and we had walked into the site through quite a small, open gateway. This was not a site you had to pay to enter so you just walked from the car park, and there you were.

I was quiet, and grateful and still. After a few minutes, I felt the energy of the angel of the island (Aphrodite or not, I don't know) settle within me with a feeling I couldn't quite recognise but which felt peaceful and even abundant. I sat with it and realised that I felt young ... and free ... and oddly, innocent. I blessed her again and then the feeling left.

When I opened my eyes, there was a rabbit skin on the stones in front of me. It had not been there before.

This was a perfectly-tanned skin, not a wrap or a scarf, just the skin. Of no practical use whatsoever. And it was just lying there.

I checked with Lion as to whether it had been there earlier and he said, 'no.' I checked to see if any other people had turned up, and they had not.

I can't think of any explanation other than it was a gift from the goddess/angel of Cyprus. Perhaps to say 'sorry' for the trouble over Harold? Who knows.

Do I have any use for it? Practically, no! But it is now lying on the altar in my offic as a symbol of abundance and I find it to be beautiful. In its way, it is a sacrifice - in the old way of the gods. Something died so that something beautiful could be given. On my altar that rabbit's life is made sacred, in honour, appreciation and love.

Edinburgh Blog Appreciations.

I was in Edinburgh for three and a half weeks and I don't think I can count the blessings I experienced but I would like to mention some people, places and things which brought me such joy.

Anne-Marie Birch, whom I met about six years ago when I did a prosperity workshop in Edinburgh and whom I contacted on the off-chance to see if she knew of anywhere I could stay for the Fringe. She lets out two rooms on AirBnB and one, the little Serenity room was free. That was such grace because it became my sanctuary with its blue walls and white metal and brass single bed both of which reminded me so much of my childhood bedroom. The walls and mantlepiece were covered with messages of love, the view from the window was of green garden with butterflies covering the Buddleia and the forest around the Water of Leith behind.

Through the window came only the noise of the waters, birdsont and the kee-kee-kee of the buzzards overhead.

Not only that, but Anne-Marie is so kind and so full of the joy of life. Not for one moment did I feel wrong or out of place or in the way (even though I broke a glass and damaged a covering with a dropped match). Anita too was lovely, chatty, wore the most glorious 1960s-style pale lipstick that inspired me to think about something similar for me and who was constantly good-humoured and covered with dogs which all accepted a cuddle graciously and repaid it with random and unexpected face-washing at times when I was lying on the lawn having a quiet meditate or think.

Emma, Anne-Marie's daughter who, I think is one of the most beautiful young women I've seen in a long time. She almost certainly doesn't think so because she is 18 and, as Georgette Heyer would put it 'not in the common way.' I wasn't 'in the common way' either when I was 18 and I thought I was fat and ugly and all that crap. Now I look back on the photographs of me then and see a really beautiful girl with a lovely figure who simply couldn't see through the spectacles of 'size eight, blonde and into all the right pop stars.'

Emma came to the show on the last night and at the meal afterwards, with a little wine inside her, she became so beautifully animated, slightly flushed of face and I thought what a joy it was to be sitting with that vibrant potentiality that Dundee University is so lucky to be sharing next week.

Sam, Anne-Marie's son who is (I think) about sixteen? He has that handsome young man glamour and style but unlike many his age was courteous, helpful, funny and didn't for a moment seem to minding sharing a house with, at times, up to six women.

Kaylin and Stephanie, from Washington State, USA, first-time visitors to 'Yurp' who lived next door to me for the entire three weeks and who were obviously having a whale of a time in Edinburgh. They shared food, chats, laughter and suggestions and laughed at the idea that the bus into the city took a while, given that anywhere — anywhere – is about two hours from Spokane.

The staff at Ryries who found us all a blasted nuisance to start with but, when treated like real human beings (some comedians are so daft...) turned out to be — surprise! — normal, really nice and helpful people. It got so that they just had to see me come in to fetch my equipment for me from the cellar and pour me a pint of lime-and-soda with ice and a wedge of lime.

Adam, for coming up for three days to enjoy the Fringe, for pushing me into shows I wouldn't have seen, dinners I wouldn't have eaten, frozen yoghurt I wouldn't even have considered and the National Museum of Scotland which, I think, is my favourite museum (so far) in all the world. And for his love, advice, companionship, true belief that I am a Master Kabbalist (I've just got to believe that myself), support and laughter.

All the people who directed me, advised me, sat on benches and chatted to me, sold stuff to me, smiled at me and performed for me.

And Edinburgh ... you beautiful, magnificent, breathtaking city. Wow. Thank you so much.

Edinburgh Fringe Day 26 — Endings and Beginnings.

St. Mary's Catholic Cathedral.

The last day. How perfectly it works out because now I am ready and eager to go home. But how very strange it will be not to go out and perform every night.

I had a last, lovely, lingering walk by the Water of Leith which has a selection of such lovely fairy islands: rocks about 18" or so square covered with moss and lichen with plants here and there as trees. You can almost see the spirit folk sitting with their feet in the water and imagine their tiny houses at the top of the rocky hill.

Most of the day I was packing and very relieved to find that everything would fit in my suitcase (just). There have been a few visits to charity shops here and there... But apart from that it was listening to inspirational tapes or reading and relaxing before heading into town for the very last gig.

I enjoyed the last bus ride in, looking at the now-familiar road and houses, the hills and the view of Edinburgh castle and the towers of the cathedrals. Not sure if I mentioned that I got locked into St. Mary's Catholic Cathedral a week or so ago. I had a lovely wander, looking at the amazing Scottish Diaspora tapestries and then spent about half an hour sitting right up near the high altar in the choir having a quiet chat with God and the angels.

Then the lights all went off. Politely, I finished my prayer and got up just to hear a big door go slam-click.

Luckily, the verger had a few things to do backstage, as it were, so some respectful hello!ing brought him back after about five minutes but he was not best pleased. 'Where were you?' 'Up at the high altar?' 'Why?' 'Um. Praying...?'

Obviously a fairly outrageous and ill-advised thing to do at 6pm. I thought it best not to advise him of my day job.

I'm very blessed because I knew there would be an audience tonight — Anne-Marie, Anita and Emma from Colinton are coming with a couple of friends and I was also promised seven Interfaith ministers (although only three turned up). Still, it was a lovely audience of 18 of all ages and with one good-value atheist with the only respectable answer to the Atheist-orgasm joke I've ever got.

One of the Interfaith ministers in the front row didn't crack a smile which was slightly un-nerving but then I am as fierce on the spiritual wanky bollox as I am on the religious stuff and, as usual, it was hard to tell how much people were laughing. It's an odd thing but when you're behind the microphone only the loudest belly-laugh will reach you.

I remembered all the jokes in the right order, finished dot on time and then, that was it. The whole thing over and George Firehorse coming in to take over. I just picked up my things, said goodbye to the staff who were around and walked away.

...To an utterly delicious supper at The Vietnam House restaurant just around the corner with Anne-Marie and her friends and where the Interfaith ministers had also booked a table so I could flit back and forward between the two and chat to absolutely everyone. The stone-faced lady turned out to have enjoyed it very much (or be a very, very good fibber) and the other four turned up at about 8.45 with 'oh so sorry we missed yous.'

I'm not very good with those. You either really want to go somewhere or you don't. You either get there or you don't. It's absolutely your choice. There was an act I wanted to get to see, Tim Ralph's Rebranding Beelzebub, but in the end I didn't want it enough to stay out until 11pm on the two nights that I could have made it. My loss, not Tim's. The 'I'm sorrys' are good manners of course but we do usually get to places we want to be. It's like the people who don't come but want to see a video on YouTube immediately. No. If you don't come, you don't see it. I know that's terribly old-fashioned in this modern world and hopelessly bad marketing technique but maybe I'm just tired!

And then home and bed and up with the birds to be taken to the airport by beloved Anne-Marie and a last (for now) look at the beauties of Scotland as the big bird takes me safely home to Devon, my Lion and the beagles.

I did it. I did it. Well done me.

Edinburgh Fringe Day 25 — On Knowing What I Don't Want.

The angel font at St. Giles' Cathedral

Tonight Anne-Marie and I planned to go and listen to the Scottish National Youth Choir singing  Fauré's Requiem at St. Giles' Cathedral on the Royal Mile.

The programme started at 10pm which meant I had a couple of hours to fill after the gig. Shouldn't be a problem — there's plenty of comedy on, right?

But I spent a couple of hours on the Internet this morning trying to find something I fancied that started at 8pm and, frankly, there wasn't a lot. The two comedians I really fancied were all booked up so eventually I decided on Patrick Monahan, given that several Facebook friends have highly recommended him.

So it was a quiet day of rest, which I really needed, in Colinton, and I only went into town at 5pm. Lovely gig; smallish but very appreciative audience and both the Heavy Petting team before me and George after me were commenting on the end of the run, how tired they were and how it would be good to get home.

The Heavy Petting act is a lot of fun. Four of them are performing a series of sketches and sharing the somewhat sparse proceeds. They haven't been as popular as the Tickled Pigs and I'm going to sound like a boring old fart when I say it's probably because it's much more intelligent comedy. And they are lovely people too.

Happily I caught the no. 2 bus to the Guilded Balloon venue which was utterly stuffed with people (well it is Saturday night) and queued happily for Patrick Monahan and sat happily waiting for the show to start.

The first five minutes, all composed of Patrick and one audience member doing Zumba passed amusingly enough. Then it got onto men sitting down to wee on toilets ... and 20 minutes later, with lots of audience participation, it was still on men sitting down to wee on toilets. My face hadn't even cracked once.

I was totally in the minority; the audience loved it. It was all about them and they all had a drink. At least it wasn't profane — not a single swear word and children allowed in. But it was boring, trite, predicable. So I left.

Now that was a big decision but having been so very happy here, the feeling of boredom and being in the wrong place felt so much more powerful than it might have done; I actually started to feel distinctly off-colour and I simply wasn't prepared to allow that. Luckily for me, there was a little sketch about getting into a party when you're not invited where Patrick was focused on someone else so I could dive out without drawing attention to myself.

Instead, a walked in Edinburgh in the rain, trying to find something to eat. Tupiniquim had just closed down for the night but I found a lovely little cafe with Earl Grey tea and a piece of shortbread and just sat there in complete contentment until it was time to go to meet Anne-Marie. Again, there was absolutely no feeling of being odd or out of place alone.

St. Giles' is a lovely vaulted cathedral (do look at the website) with wonderful acoustics and it's really beautiful to sit in and appreciate to the sound of soaring, cascading music. The prelude was some modern choral music which was all about death and conflict and which really didn't please me although the singing was superb. I wondered if I were just having a very off day but actually I'm just knowing what I like and don't like and I don't want stories about murder or execution in my life, thank you.

But then the organ and choir melted into Fauré's Requiem ... and I am not kidding, the angels and the spirits of the cathedral emerged from the walls to listen. The whole timbre of the cathedral changed and it became alive with sentience. Beautiful, glorious, perfect.

Oh and it was just lovely to be driven home too!

Edinburgh Fringe Day 24 — The Beginning of the End

Tupiniquim. Yummy gluten-free crêpes

I think the most profound thing about this whole Edinburgh trip is the level of happiness I have experienced. Why? Maybe because I have finally been able to get out of my own way.

For the last year I've been working on this happiness lark. To be fair, I thought I was happy and in fact, my homeopath told me that often life-enhancing dis-eases do turn up when you've just got everything sorted and relax. Your soul says 'okay, now we can get something deep sorted.'

I remember thinking, as I walked on the moor last summer, 'why? Why when I'm so happy here?' and the answer was simple, 'You're in the right place to regain that happiness once the fear has gone. You are away from pressures that might make you make decisions that aren't right for you; you are safe.'

Fear is a huge component in a l-e-d. I reckon it takes a good three months to deal with that aspect (which is why I so often want to beg people who I can see might be going towards the slippery slope to their own l-e-d to deal with the issues now, before they also have to deal with the fear).

Edinburgh was a big goal for me. At times I honestly didn't know if I would make it — which make asking people for financial support to cover the cost once my original backer had gone AWOL a huge prosperity challenge. But once I got here, the sense of contentment was palpable. The focus was entirely on learning to get around Edinburgh and to perform; nothing else. There was no time to think about how I was, whether I was better or worse, whether I was up to it. I was here. Time to just get on with it.

As the teachings of Abraham say, 'In the absence of the struggle, the Vortex takes you in.' But I think what has really happened is that the emptying of my ego's resistances, the work I've done on dissolving old issues has blossomed. There is no longer that almost indiscernible feeling of a slight, grumbling lack of ease that has been present in my subconscious since I was about three years old. Now, my default position is a kind of peaceful joy. That is very, very good to know.

Anyway, today was the start of the process of saying goodbye in a way. I was going in early to see Plumbing the Depths with Hattie Hasan and after that went and got myself an utterly yummy goat's cheese, sundried tomato and spinach wrap from Tupiniquim, a family-owned business in a kind of tardis at the corner of Lauriston Place and Forrest Road. They offer a healthier alternative to the usual street food — gluten-free crêpes with all sorts of vegetarian and vegan options as well as meaty treats and juices and smoothies.

Just sitting on a tree stump in Greyfriars' chuchyard ingesting this simple, culinary delight was wonderful. Not once on this adventure have I felt for one moment that it was odd or 'wrong' to be alone. All through my solo travelling days when I was young I used to feel that people judged me for being single or alone. So that bit of stupidity is over then! When I had supper at Dante's in Colinton a couple of weeks back and the waitress said, 'just one?' I corrected her with 'entirely one.' There's no 'just' about it.

The rest of the afternoon was spent back to the National Museum of Scotland because I wanted to take a more thorough look around. There was a whole series of galleries that I had missed when I came the other day with Adam so I browsed and pottered and enjoyed and let God look through my eyes at things that I myself would simply not have noticed. S/He is very fond of blue and white plates, it would appear — we always have to spend a good 20 minutes looking — really looking — at those. Then I had a cup of tea and read Florence Scovel Shinn for an hour and treated myself to a Chinese mug with its own strainer for green tea in the shop together with one of those lovely browses where you say, 'I have unlimited money; what shall I buy?' and select all the things you would like.

Good crowd again at Ryries, including two men in their 30s who arrived solo. That may mean two more reviews which is both good and scary. And, to my complete astonishment, three of the suited young men who came more than a week ago, came for a second helping! That was certainly another 'unexpected that happens to surprise and delight me.' They laughed at it all again and almost forgave me for thinking they were older than they were; the youngest being 18 when I thought he was about 24.

It's nearly over; that's fine. I'm having a ball but the year has turned and I'm now looking forward to going home.

Edinburgh Fringe Day 22 — On Happiness and Adventure.

I've been very happy since I've been here. That's not a problem (how could it be?) but it's interesting to examine why I've been so happy when I'm away from the man, the beagles and the land that I love.

It has been ... and still is ... a marked, deep happiness. One that I did not know that I had been missing.

I think it's partly the newness of the experience of performing every night and partly the time I am spending on my own rediscovering myself. Or perhaps rediscovering the part of me that, for so many years, lived alone and looked after herself. She is the one that loves me best because we have had so many adventures together and got through so much. At the time a lot of it was frightening or at least very challenging and I thought, mistakenly, that it was a good idea that those times were over. But the need for adventure is in my blood. And that is exactly where the dis-ease manifested.

The final pointer (although I've known this instinctively for a few weeks) was when I took one of those silly 'Which famous film star would play you in a movie of your life?' quizzes on Facebook. Four times I did the quiz; four times I clicked on 'female' in answer to the first question; four times I answered all the questions about my life and personal tastes. Four times I got the answer 'Jason Statham.'

Who is a bloke. And an actor who does movies about wild, violent adventure stuff and killing people.

Not sure about the violence or the killing people (though there are times...) but I believe that God sends messages and this one seems pretty clear. Adventure, adventure, adventure.

In the past, my inner adventurer and I have travelled abroad together many times, solo, and faced situations as wide-ranging as an attacking barracuda off the coast of Cairns, Australia; being 'the Princess Diana of Changchun' in Manchuria, China; wandering among the windmills of Crete; eating alone in fabulous restaurants in Paris; drinking hot chocolate in St. Mark's Square, Venice; sitting, dreaming in the sunshine at a railway station in Uruguay; riding quarter horses and watching the eagles fly in Montana and bringing the first dog in the world from the USA to the UK on Passports for Pets.

But this part of me has been dormant for a long while now. She has become lost in the happily-married, stay-at-home Maggy who occasionally does workshops and who became somewhat of a hermit because being with Lion and the beagles is so lovely.

I think it was she who became hurt in the terrible time when my former spiritual teacher was angry with me for 'stealing' his work — the intention had always been to write primers for his work so that more people would come to it but it was really a lesson in doing my work, not his. She already had collateral damage from Henry's death and the post-effects of Montana including divorce and, slowly, she began to die inside.

Comedy woke her up again although it was hard to uncurl from that tightly-wound deep hibernation. She knew that this was the time to speak her pain and loss out loud and manifested a dis-ease.

But now, in Edinburgh, having the biggest adventure I've had for fifteen years, she is in bliss; she is wandering the streets of Edinburgh doing exactly what she wants. She is standing up on stage and performing just for the sheer joy of it. She is knowing that what she is doing is absolutely right and wonderful and tremendous fun (if a bit scary at times).

So, the lesson is simple: I have to have adventures. No matter how much I love Lion and my home, this vital part of me who is the explorer, the entrepreneur, the lone traveller, must have a say in my life.

And thank God Lion understands. He would; he's my heart and soul mate. He's enjoyed this time on his own too — pottering at his own pace, free of the stress of the last year, sorting out again how he used to live when he was alone instead of walking at my pace with my timing and, with his great love and generosity, being the rock in my life.

We've had lovely travels together — and worked together abroad too — but, obviously, those still don't count as the adventures that the inner me wants.

Lion and I had the perfect lovers' conversation two weeks ago when we discussed whether we missed each other. Not really. And we were quite content with that.

But this week, as the time for homecoming comes closer, we are glad that we will be together again. This separation has done us both a great deal of good.

It will be so lovely to see him on Monday; lovely to be cuddled and to chat and to potter; lovely to be covered with beagles; lovely to walk on the moors. And it will be lovely to plan further excursions on my next expedition because If I want to be able to keep on coming home to my dear ones, I must not let my friend and companion, the adventurer, slip away again.

Edinburgh Fringe Day 21 — the Inner Work.

So... No audience last night. It happens. As George Firehorse, who follows me at Ryrie's, said 'there's no rhyme or reason.'

But maybe there is. Did I take my eye off the ball, having fun with Adam all day? But surely, having fun is part of the deal when you're working with this law of attraction. Was this a bit of resistance coming up to 'punish' me for having so much fun? Good old 'chemicalisation' as Catherine Ponder of Unity would put it?

I haven't been racing around handing out flyers, for sure. But this was an interesting departure that wanted my attention. So I gave it some. In the morning I listened to some Abraham-Hicks recordings and when I left for town I tucked Florence Scovel Shinn's The Game of Life and How to Play It into my bag and told the horrid little doubts that were trying to tell me that it was all downhill from here to go hang until I could deal with them later.

Adam and I were due to meet at lunchtime to go to Daniel Cainer's Jewish Chronicles. I didn't want to eat first because I was still full from last night. Full, that is, in the strange Chinese food wanting more in the middle of the night but knowing you'd eaten quite enough in reality. So we met at Underbelly and went into this dark cave of blackness for Daniel's show.

Which was not entirely to my taste at first but won me round. I'm a very odd Jewish (very ish) hybrid, having spent eight years married to a Jewish guy and knowing quite a lot about the culture and loving it. So I was slightly irritated by Daniel's explanations of Jewish stuff for us Goys although I knew it was necessary. Interestingly, Adam (who's Jewish) wasn't. As he explained, Jewish folk have to explain those things all the time so it was the norm for him.

Daniel mostly sings his own songs about Jewish life. He started with his Ashkenazi heritage — Russia, Lithuania, Poland — and stories of his family after immigration into Britain. Again, that wasn't for me because it's a/ not my heritage and b/ I'd heard much similar stuff before. But for Adam it was very moving.

After that, I was engaged fully with Daniel's tales of bad rabbis, love and passion and life and I felt gently nostalgic for some aspects of my past Jewish life.

We had a snackish lunch at Underbelly and then Adam went off to see James II by Rona Munro at the Festival Theatre and I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Central for a cup of tea and a long, thoughtful and affirmative read of Florence.

I've read The Game of Life and How to Play It a dozen times before but hadn't picked it up for a couple of years. However I'd known I had to bring it to Edinburgh. I read and worked and read and worked for two hours, dissolving resistance and allowing wonderful surprises. One of my favourite of Florence's quotations is:

My seemingly impossible good now comes to pass. The unexpected now happens to surprise and delight me.

For most people it seems very weird when there is no one in the audience to sit down and read a book. Surely I should be out there handing out flyers. Nope. If I create my own reality then I must go within first. Then I will be led to inspired action.

I took a rush-hour bus to Ryries and I was almost late for the first time ever but I knew I had to do a little flyering around the tables before going up even so. Two different groups, one of four and one of six people were already looking at my flyer and engaged me in conversation about Independent Catholicism so I only went upstairs to the event room at pretty much the last minute.

There was my unexpected surprise! Daphne, the lady who ran the volunteer section when I worked as a chaplain at at St. Mary's Hospice in Birmingham was sitting in the front row and had brought three friends with her. I haven't heard nor seen anything of Daphne since I left more than two years ago. It was amazing and fabulous.

What's more, the room just filled up, and filled up with people, including Kaylin and Stephanie from my digs in Colinton, Facebook friends Mica and Hattie and six members of one of the groups I'd been speaking to downstairs. They told me that they had all met up to go to the funeral of their 92-year-old father the next day just in case I might have any jokes that would be a bit of a challenge for them. But they'd liked the leaflet, and talking to me had clinched it, and they thought they could do with cheering up.

It was a good night. Nearly all the audience older people and they knew both about The Mary Whitehouse Experience and the real Mary Whitehouse. They laughed and laughed. And when a drunken Scots guy came in and tried to heckle, they unceremoniously told him to shut up because they were listening and then threw him out. I hardly had to say a word to him.

Afterwards there was a queue of people to talk to me including two of the funeral group. One was a retired religious education teacher in a Catholic school who said he'd never been to a comedy show where he understood all the jokes before and that it was incredible and refreshing comedy. His brother was a retired headmaster at a Catholic school who wanted my card and to know whether I'd be willing to come back to Scotland to talk to schools and perform more comedy. Well yes!

Hugs and happiness with Daphne, Mica and Hattie ... and a complete turnaround of an evening. Good old Florence.

Supper with Adam was the other side of the city — a Southern Indian restaurant. All vegetarian tonight and delicious. And with the generosity of the donations from my lovely crowd tonight, it could be a taxi home.

Thank you God.

Edinburgh Fringe Day 20 — Nom, nom, nom.

At least I think it's day 20. It gets a bit confusing sometimes, probably because Adam has been here and my carefully thought out daily routine went completely to pot.

I'm pretty careful with my diet — it hasn't been perfect up here by any means but I've been doing what I can to eat healthily with some holiday treats. But today, that went right out of the window. Fabulous.

We met up for lunch and chomped our way through a pretty amazing Japanese meal at Koyama in Forrest Road, just by all the major Fringe venues like the BBC and Underbelly. Pork ramen, seaweed, pickled vegetables and loads of green tea.

And then we went to the National Museum of Scotland for the afternoon. Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. It's a really eclectic mix of things with an old-fashioned mini next to a 19th century grand piano next to pots and jars. The building itself is worth visiting just for its beauty.

We looked at their Egyptian section with the mummified queen (or at least very high-ranking lady) with

her baby, the Natural history section with the skeleton of the pre-historic giant sloth that was nearly as big as their Tyrannosaurus Rex, Jackie Stewart's championship-winning race car, Dolly the sheep—the first cloned sheep, looking manic and bemused as only a sheep can. She was bigger than I expected, certainly bigger than our Dartmoor sheep, but not any less bemused.

We looked at statues of Buddha and a whole section on Hindu Gods and at Roman statues and ceremonial costumes and watched the six minute show that was about how the Universe began. The Chinese girl next to me spent all six minutes checking her messages on her phone and then wandered off having seen nothing, but that's really her business, I guess. It was a good, simple presentation and Adam and I agreed that it was entirely Kabbalah—the breath or word of God working its way down through the four worlds of creation.

We had tea. We looked at the Scottish galleries with claymores the size of a house and the Lewis chess set made of wales' teeth and walrus ivory. We pottered round the shop We had a wonderful time.

Then we went to a frozen yoghurt shop and had yummy rubbish, synthetic stuff covered with fruit and sprinkles and I felt about eight years old and very happy.

So, off to Ryrie's we go, to meet Jonathan Hipkiss, the lovely and talented comedian who is opening for me for three nights before the end of the festival. And no one else turned up. No one at all. That was a first for me and it's very un-nerving. Jonathan, who's gigging everywhere, did a bit of his act for us (and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest) and then pottered off and I did three-quarters of an hour, just for Adam, on what it was like working at the BBC in the 1980s in radio and TV and about encounters (safe ones) with Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and their ilk, including my infamous Paul Daniels and Jeffery Archer stories which had better remain safely un-written-down. The greater the truth, and all that...

I managed to put thoughts about the zero showing away to deal with later and we had a cheery and yummy Chinese supper at Chop Chop just down the road from Ryries with pickled cucumber, beans in chilli sauce, deep fried beef, prawn dumplings, sticky chicken wings and prawn crackers and talked life, the universe and everything and how I have to get back into teaching Kabbalah and get off my backside and get out of Devon more frequently. Adam, who doesn't pull punches, said 'you are a Master Kabbalist. Start acting like it.'

That was more food in one day than I generally eat in two ... maybe three ... but bless her, my stomach manned-up and took it and only quietly explained the following morning that a little less excess would be a very good idea, thank you.

Edinburgh Fringe Day 19: The Law of Attraction.

Many of you who read this blog know about the Law of Attraction. It's also karma or 'what goes around comes around' or 'thoughts create things.' I'm really good at it.

Most of you also know about my three missing socks which vanished in Anne-Marie's washing machine last week. I've made a lot of jokes about them on Facebook and there's a running gag here in the house about the hi-jinks that they're up to out there at the Fringe. It's possible, if they lay off the whisky a bit, that they may win the new act comedy award.

Yesterday I used the washing machine again. It had only my clothes in it. I put them in; I took them out. And another sock vanished. Yes, I know that all washing machines have parallel universes inside them and sock-holes where innocent, unsuspecting socks are whirled away to another dimension. But it doesn't happen at home. It happened again here because I kept on talking about it.

And now I'm writing about it so it's actually unlikely that I'll get home with any socks at all (unless people coming to the last few days of the show make their donations in socks—as my friend Dee did last week).

Another cute little Law of Attraction thing showed up yesterday ... Lion's and my friend Adam is up for a few days and came to last night's show. He's a good laugher is Adam if he thinks something's funny. And he did think the show was funny — as did the rest of last night's crowd.

We went out to supper and in the taxi on the way, we were discussing a section in the show where I talk about things being 'very good' (nowadays meaning average) as opposed to brilliant or stunning. We arrived at Howie's on Waterloo Place, sat down happily, both ordered the venison and found that, at 7.45pm, they had run out. The other meals we chose were exactly what we had talked about — 'very good.' In fact everything was 'very good.' But it wasn't brilliant or stunning. Still, it gave us a laugh.

So tonight, in the act, I think I shall focus a little more on the fact that the world is fabulous, amazing and awesome, and hope that while I'm out the rest of my socks don't make a run for it.

And today I will stop the rogue little thoughts that have been coming up along the lines of 'It's nearly over; what do I do next?' What if ... what if ... where do I go from here...? How do I...? Because Edinburgh has been such a major focus for so many months, there's a temptation to let the energy drop.

But if my guardians are letting me know so clearly how powerful (or sockfull) I am then that must end now.

So this morning I have emailed out to several places suggesting workshops and I am beginning to make plans for the next few months. The joy I have had (and am still having) here in Edinburgh must, and shall continue. That's my task; to remain delighted and to move only in the directions that inspire me. So often we carry these little, un-noticed, habits of unhappiness or just low energy and they will manifest slowly but surely in ways that we don't like.

It's true that we need to speak only of that which we desire and only of that which brings us joy to create the life that we want. But I love my sock jokes and they make me feel good so they are never going to cause me any genuine harm. And after all, I have spent most of the summer at home barefoot so my socks were probably feeling very unappreciated.

Still, the autumn is on its way and there will be plenty of months for my socks to feel loved and cherished. Who knows, by Christmas (after a world tour and a sell-out show at Wembley Stadium where Michael McKintyre opens for them) I may find the runaways neatly folded and looking very innocent at the back of my sock drawer.

Edinburgh Fringe Day 18 Part Two "But the greatest of these is charity."

St. Paul's famous quotation from his first letter to the Corinthians is usually translated now as "love" rather than "charity" because charity has come to mean "helping or giving money to those in need." But charity's wider meaning is "love for humanity."

It's long been a special quotation for me (and for a lot of people). Part of it is engraved on my first husband Henry's gravestone.

It's been a day of both sorts of charity. After seeing the fabulous Arthur Smith and being deeply moved by his love for his mother in the midst of his anecdotes, I accidentally came across Nicholson Street, Edinburgh where I found nine charity shops in a row. Nine! Oh joy. I came away an hour later very happy with a blue leather jacket and a replacement for my much-missed denim shirt.

I am going to have to post some clothes home at this rate because my suitcase was already stuffed on the way up.

You may remember the Helpful Heckler of Day 14 ... a guy who appeared to be a little the worse for wear for drink and who was very interested in the laws in the Book of Leviticus. He asked me to write out for him the basis of my comments on those laws from the act, which I did.

Every day since then, he has waylaid me as soon as I have got to Ryrie's (no matter what time of the day it was) with questions and an overwhelming need to talk. He doesn't drink; he just acts as though he does. And he's one of those guys that people try to avoid because he's terribly intense and he doesn't have the antennae that spot when other people aren't interested or want to move away.

Anyway, I thought I'd done him a huge disservice with my writing out of the Leviticus stuff because I had written it to explain the act but he seemed to be taking it as God wishing to punish him for sins he had committed as a child. I'm not going to go into those but I've been trying to say, day after day, that wasn't my intention. That I believe that God just wants us to be happy; He is not there to be a punisher but to help us to learn to love and that what God would want this guy do, to most of all, would be to be true to himself and seek happiness. I haven't been getting the slightest clue that I was getting through to him and I wasn't even sure if I was meant to be doing so. But this man seems to have taken me as his temporary priest, which on the one hand is my job and on the other is a bit challenging because he's a Mormon and I'm not.

At least, he was a Mormon. Today he thrust a six page letter to his Bishop into my hand asking me to read it. I sat down, put on my specs and, with a slightly doubtful heart, began to read.

The Helpful Heckler has resigned from the church he has been in since he was 17 because he has now realised that he wants to have full and loving relationships (and lots of sex) with other men. He's known he was homosexual for a very long time but the church disapproves of it so he hasn't been sexually active. For some strange reason, a comedy act, which at first disturbed and shook him, has been the catalyst for his realising that he has to come out and start living the life that he wants.

I read the letter with a lump in my throat and that extraordinary feeling you get when you realise how responsible you are for every single word that you speak. Pray God this is the right move for him. Right in the middle of the letter he had quoted St. Paul's writings on love as part of his explanation to his Mormon Bishop on how he wanted to experience real love in his life through the love of other men.

Why had he done this? Because I had explained in the act that the Hebrew Testament's condemnation of homosexuality, and St. Paul's views on it had not been about loving one-to-one relationships between men but about male rape and prostitution and ritual humiliation.

The Helpful Heckler gave me two photographs of him as a young man in Red Square, Moscow. I'm not sure why, but he wanted me to have them. I told him as gently that I could that I thought it was an admirable letter and accepted the pictures with as good a grace as I could.

The gig tonight, was very far from my best. The audience were not particularly responsive but it's always hard to tell who has affected who. May not have helped that Elvis was in the audience...

In fact it wasn't the real Elvis (surprise?) but a friend of my FB friend, Hayley who came along tonight with a group of people who are raising funds for Birmingham Children's Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital by travelling with the amazing Gavin Sandford who is running 45 marathons in 45 days through major cities in the UK. This is a labour of love that Gavin truly wants to do so, keep your eyes peeled for him and his team. You can find out all about it here. If you feel moved to donate, please do.

So it's been a strange day of love and charity.

There's one more line to the Biblical poem which is not quoted on the beautiful sampler above, and that's 'Love will never come to an end.'

I believe that.

Heading for the Edinburgh Fringe

Quite a few of you know that I'm a comedian. And in August I'm doing a one-woman show called at the Edinburgh Fringe.
THE Maggy WHiTEHOUSE EXPERiENCE

So, I was happily planning to do all the promotional stuff in the last two week. You know the kind of thing — press releases to radio, newspapers and TV, event page on Facebook, regular updates on social media etc.

And then our Internet connection went down. And I mean down. It just vanished. And, on the day I'm writing (31st July), it's still not back. Plusnet and BT have spent the last fortnight trying to find what's wrong (and blaming each other). It's not just us, it's 12 people on Plusnet in Whiddon Down area, Devon.

So it's been a very peaceful time really. And very suitable for lots and lots of rest. We didn't worry a lot because Plusnet told us virtually every day that it should be solved in 24 hours. And the BT people said the same. Eventually, we did go down to the shop at South Zeal where, in return for a cuppa in their cafe, Alex let us log on to the net. There aren't an awful lot of Internet cafes where we live and most of our local friends had the same problem that we had, if they weren't away on holiday.

So, God will have to do my PR for me. Fair enough. I expect He/She is really good at that.

Instead, it's been time for lots more inner work — and huge gratitude that I am getting to go to Edinburgh (well, I'm already there) because a year ago, this did seem quite a bit of a risk. But I am here. I am well enough to do this. I will be going into the city tomorrow to pick up all my leaflets and start spreading the news.

I am so grateful to be here; to be doing this ... and to be staying at the lovely home of a lady called Anne-Marie Birch whom I met five years ago when I did a prosperity workshop in Edinburgh. She's on AirBnB and I'm currently sitting in her little turquoise single room with my packing reasonably sorted and feeling peaceful and excited.

I flew up on Flybe ... £85 to fly whereas it would be £250+ to take the train. Ridiculous really. But a very easy trip with lovely, helpful people. Mind you, most of my luggage is coming up via MyHermes because that's a cheaper way of getting it here than its going in the hold.

So here we go. Hopefully a daily blog on what it's like to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe....

67. Rocking the Ego.

We arrived safe and sound in Cyprus in the mid afternoon and were picked up at the airport by the car hire people. While Lion was sorting out the paperwork, I had a mild panic attack.

You see I've never been abroad with this body before; I didn't know how it would respond. I wasn't going to do any driving and that's unusual for me and felt disempowering to the ego. I'm the woman who travelled all around China with her Dad in thee 1980s and barely turned a hair at staying in hotels where the only loo was two floors down and the culture was challenging the say the least.

And I have a neck that does not look normal—and my ego hated the idea of people staring at me. Yes, I've got a lovely haircut from Ivan so that the hair naturally flows around that part of my neck but in wind (and Cyprus has wind) it's painfully exposed.

I had been doing so much inner work on feeling beautiful again and, guess what, another challenge. Yes, I know it's all about inner beauty but it's also about re-training the ego. Middle aged women are fairly invisible a lot of the time and it had been such a wonderful surprise when I became slim again after so many years to find that I turned heads like I used to as a 30-year-old. The heads were in their sixties but fortunately that doesn't matter when you get older.

There was also the ego's fear around food. No juices for a week, unknown foods and precious little hope of any gluten-free bread. Even on a healing journey we get locked into the 'you must do this and this and this' and I am very careful about what I eat. With, effectively, a week off, ego tried to fret because its safety net had gone. Friends, of course, said 'it will do you good to eat what you like and have fun' and they're right. But...

By the time we were at the hotel I felt better and within 24 hours my ego had settled in and realised that no one was going to point and shout like in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and even though the salads were strangely disappointing, they did at least exist. And oh, the sunshine! And oh, the sea! It's only a year since we had a beach holiday but nonetheless it was so wonderful to be warm and to paddle and to sit on the sand.

(WBX warning). I sat on the beach the first evening and greeted Aphrodite, the Goddess of this island and asked for blessings on all the land, its creatures, its people and its spirits. I don't have the slightest problem with speaking to ancient Gods. They are archetypes—each one is represented by one of the names of God in the Hebrew Testament. One of the brilliant things about Judaism and Christianity is that they brought the pantheons together, recognising one over-Divinity containing different aspects to make it simpler and less dangerous for us.

In Christianity, for instance there is Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Ghost but also Mary the Divine Mother and all the stories of Christ in the Gospels. Jesus' life and those he meets and works with are beautiful demonstrations of the different aspects of Divinity and how they can be balanced or out of balance. Through understanding the Hebrew and New Testaments in a mystical context we can see those 'Gods' in us and assess whether they are positive or negative influences.

The commandment 'thou shalt have no other Gods before me' is advice to stick with the whole of the Divine as your first port of call. It doesn't say that there are no other Gods.

If you mess around with Gods you get in trouble because a single God is out of balance with the whole. Yes, you may need the energy of one to pull you back from imbalance at times but generally they're best not messed with.

However, it's only polite to greet and bless them (Gods don't just vanish because we stop believing in them—read Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul for more on that. And they're pretty prevalent in our movie and comic culture too). The blessing is the blessing of the most Holy One so you are making it quite clear where you stand. I called for blessing on all the Greek Gods but led with Aphrodite because it's her island. Aphrodite appeared—or at least I imagined she did—to see what this little human being who had blessed her and her companions was about.

Gods don't chat. Angels don't chat either. Gods are angelic archetypes and completely ruthless when they need to be. But you can usually tell if you're speaking with something from another reality when the words (that you hear in your head) are totally unexpected.

Aphrodite asked what I wanted in return for the blessing. I said 'nothing', she said 'pah' so I said 'healing, in the name of the Most Holy One, but I don't think that's your provenance for me.'

She said 'it will cost you blood' and vanished. And Pallas Athene was there instead. Yes, I know, I know, but that's what seemed to be going on and Athene is the aspect of the One God with which I am working right now—the martial 'let's cut out the crap' attribute. Athene and I had a short talk—under the provenance of the Most Holy One—and made an agreement but it was still going to cost blood.

Two days later, five minutes before going into the church for Ariadne's christening, I had a totally spontaneous nose-bleed. The Goddess got her blood. She will keep her end of the bargain.

NB. On one day, we were walking on the beach by the hotel and a bronzed man in just swimming shorts appeared about 50 yards in front of us. He had only one arm. The other had been amputated at the shoulder. I looked at him just getting on with his life and dealing with the fact that people would always look at him twice and surmise what might have happened to him ... and received another powerful lesson in humility.

I never saw him again.

To read more of the story, please click on 'newer post' or 'older post' in black below.

If you are new to this blog and would like to start at the beginning, please go to the side bar and click on 'January' to find post no. 1. Thank you.

If you would like to make a donation towards Maggy's healing journey it would be very much appreciated. There is a Paypal button to the top right of the page.

65. On Death and Resurrection

It was my friend Rachel who taught me the metaphysical meaning of the Easter story. When you think about it, it's incredibly simple but, being me, I'll drag it out a bit and shove in a couple of stories.

It's incredibly relevant to me because a life-enhancing disease means that something must and will die. There is no getting around that part of it.

The story is that Jesus is betrayed by Judas, is tried, crucified, dies and resurrects. Christianity teaches that he died for our sins. We should be very grateful for that, feel appropriately guilty, not play with ourselves under the bedclothes and thank Grandma nicely for the gifts she gave us that we really, really didn't want.

And we are asked to believe in an all-loving God who would cheerfully send His only-begotten son to such a horrible death. Tough one that. After all, if that's what God would do to his own child, what would He do to us? And that leads to the last judgement, to purgatory and hell.

'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' cries Jesus on the cross in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.

'Father, forgive them,' says Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.

'It is done,' says Jesus in the Gospel of John.

Kabbalah taught me that the symbolism of numbers is inherent within the stories which became the Bible and that the four levels of creation is an enduring and important pattern. Four elements: Earth, Water, Air and Fire, four courts in the Temple, four Gospels in the New Testament. There's more to it than that but, in a nutshell, Earth represents the physical world, water the psyche and soul, air the spirit and fire the Divine.

Our bodies scream when they are hurt. So do our psyches. But our spirits see deeper into the mystery and know that there is a greater magic afoot. The others are nearly always just doing the best they can with the level of understanding that they have and following their training and the social mores of the world. And they are all our reflections; they are in our lives for a purpose.

Our Divinity sees the whole picture from beginning to end and totally accepts what is, seeing it as perfect.

In the physical and psychological we focus on the suffering. I always thought Deepak Chopra made a very good point when he said 'I'm not asking you to give up your pain—just your suffering.' Pain is. Suffering is optional.

My first husband died once; in my heart and mind I made him die 10,000 times. My second husband left me once; in my heart and mind I made him leave me 1000 times. It's natural to go over the pain for a while but it's not natural to re-empower it. There's a North American Indian tradition that you may tell your story of woe three times only. After that, you start to embed it in your soul. A developed soul, in touch with spirit, feels pain but does not suffer.

So, Jesus, in Matthew (body) and Mark (psyche) is expressing the pain and suffering of a mortal man. In Luke (spirit) he is out of the suffering and into the level of understanding and compassion. In John (divinity) the emotional level is pretty much unimportant—he's completed the most difficult part of the job he came to do and can let go and move on.

For me (for us?) that's the story of what it's like when life goes 'wrong' whether it's bereavement, divorce, losing your job or facing a difficult diagnosis. We can yell and rant and blame and suffer as much as we like—and we do. Our wounds become a long-lasting part of who we are; how we relate to others ('oh they can't possibly understand what I'm going through' or 'he/she really gets me'). We compare wounds in building relationships and often even require our friends to maintain their wounds so we all have a lovely excuse not to develop and move on. (Caroline Myss is brilliant on this subject).

I discovered very swiftly what kind of temptation a life-enhancing disease gives you. For the first time for me it was entirely possible to say 'no, I won't do that' without having to give any excuse. People would just say, 'well, it's understandable given what she's going through.'  I suddenly saw all the manipulations and control mechanisms that 'suffering' gives to those who want that kind of power. Hopefully I haven't succumbed to them because, once you do, it's going to be very hard to surrender that dis-ease and its benefits. The ego loves a bit of power and control.

The healing is about re-discovering the soul and working in spirit. No matter what anyone has allegedly done to me over the years, it's time to let go of it and move on. To forgive is rarely for the other person, it's to let go of the poison in us. To forgive ourselves is even more important.

In Luke, Jesus talks with the two thieves on the cross. One is unrepentant—wants to be set free without atoning (at-one-ing) for what he has done. The second understands that this is cause and effect for him but not for Jesus, who is innocent. It is to the second one that Jesus says 'today you will be with me in paradise.'

It's all about letting go. Once you let go, then the problem is solved. That's true whether the outcome is life or death. Because, as Rachel taught me, it's not the crucifixion that matters, it's the dying. Once you die to the problem, then resurrection is a done deal.

You die and you resurrect. You let go and let God. You release the suffering and you transform.

That, for me, is the real message of Easter. Am I doing it? More and more each day, each blessed day on this beautiful earth. Is it healing me? Absolutely.

It's also worth noting that Jesus was on the cross for six hours. That's all. I'm sure it was more than enough but it's less time than the average woman is in labour. We've kept him on the cross for 2000 years.

Yes, his suffering makes us believe that he understands our wounds. But his death and resurrection shows us that we can heal them. It will probably take considerably more than six hours but that's the challenge of true Christianity. How long before we can truly forgive and move on?

G. K. Chesterton said, 'Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried at all.'

It took a life-enhancing disease for me to take the time and energy to really get into this forgiveness lark. I'd played around with it and thought I was doing okay, but when you get down and dirty, it is truly amazing and liberating. My friend Adam-who's-Jewish said 'Maggy, this is your crucifixion. You can do it.' Yes I can. And what an incredible journey it is.

Oh—and God doesn't need to forgive us or them. God loves us unconditionally. But we need to believe that we are forgiven to feel set free. If we forgive ourselves and others, it opens the door to that all-embracing love.

How do we forgive? Well the simplest method is the ho'oponopono I mentioned in the previous thread. It's not swift and it works subtly but it's very effective. Say the mantra 5,000+ times a day. Ah, yes ... it does need commitment. The lovely thing is that it works without telling you what it's working on. You'll just suddenly find that a thought that used to hurt doesn't any more. It's gone.

In closing, forgiveness does not mean to condone the cruelties of others. Not at all. It means to set our hearts free of the ongoing suffering. As my friend Janet-the-Methodist said, 'forgive by all means. That doesn't mean you let them get away with it.'

To read more of the story, please click on 'newer post' or 'older post' in black below.

If you are new to this blog and would like to start at the beginning, please go to the side bar and click on 'January' to find post no. 1. Thank you.

64. Blessing the Dust, a poem by Jan Richardson.

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
Did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.

Jan Richardson

With thanks to Rev. Harriet Every.

To read more of the story, please click on 'newer post' or 'older post' in black below.

If you are new to this blog and would like to start at the beginning, please go to the side bar and click on 'January' to find post no. 1. Thank you.