Monday 15 October 2012

Chakras and my voice

I have two friends who are dead into Reiki,  I don't understand how or why it works but it does.  When I acted as guinea pig (with no reluctance at all!) a few weeks ago they found that my throat chakra was blocked but my crown chakra was wide open.  I've had time to reflect on this and it does correspond with my current feelings of frustration.  Sahasrara, the crown chakra, is concerned with connectedness to the universe, the mystical chakra connected to higher consciousness.  Basically I'm wired in to the universe, that figures.  On the other hand Vishuddha, the throat chakra, is to do with communication, fluent thought, growth through expression.  The block here means I am connected to the universe and have the vision I want but am unable to express it, and this is I am very well aware the source of a lot of my rage, fear and frustration.  To be able to see and not speak what I can see, to always be mediated through others who can speak it better than I can.  To be a ghost in my own life.  The only remedy is to do in the face of the difficult feelings is to keep keeping on and to embrace them.  My fear is my teacher.

I will create my book.  This will be a book collecting my journey, part diary.  I currently have a desk diary which I write in daily and staple in newspaper clippings, write in knitting patterns, but IT ISN'T WHAT I WANTED TO SAY!  I have so many words, what I think about the newspaper articles, why they mean something to me.  What I am knitting, stitching, seeing, how it feels to be doing that.  I want to speak of my train of thought, of events of the day without feeling self conscious and pretentious, oh, look at me, I think I'm Samuel Pepys, like what I have to say is important enough for everyone to hear.  I'm not a king or queen, I just need to speak, to hear my own voice.

My grandmother once gave me a book she'd created.  It is very simple.  The cover is two pieces of card joined by a spine of webbing, white paper glued over the inside of the end boards.  The pages consist of cut up pieces of lined paper with two holes punched in one side.  A lace is threaded through the holes and through eyelets punched through the back cover, so these can be tied and the pages easily added to.  My original thought had been to create a side bound book the same as Jan Messent's Celtic Influences book from her beautiful and inspiring Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Embroidery, a collection of illustrations of her multimedia books exploring different types of ancient British embroidery.  She uses four eyelets punched through the front and back of the book, but my grandmother's mean's the lacing doesn't show on the front.  Mine will be bigger, A4 in landscape.  So let's go...