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.

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.

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