Tag: compassion fatigue

First things first… The Sunday Meditation continues, whether or not I announce it. Sometimes I can’t, and there’s no one to cover for me. Yet I’m always there meditating at the appointed time, and so are quite a few other people.

You’re welcome to join us. It’s a recipe-free open meditation, especially for independent souls who follow their own path or live relatively isolated from others. All you need is half an hour, a cushion and your inner presence. Join us in the zone. No need to be online.

I might not be able to do regular meditation calls from now on. A lot of things are happening and I’m rather overwhelmed! Much of it is good stuff, and some is difficult – mainly my humanitarian work.

I three-quarters wrote a blog about this, about compassion fatigue, but I’m not fully clear how to write about a few delicate issues, so that’s gone into in the ‘later or never’ pile. For me, as a lifelong author and editor, getting stuck on some writing is unusual and strangely frustrating!

Even so, things are happening.

– I’m doing a talk on Tuesday 15th April, 7.30 at Gwithti an Pystri, the Museum of Folklore and Magic in Falmouth (book ahead);

– then there’s a visit to Gloucester to see my old friend Ibrahim Issa from Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem, Palestine, on 2-4 May (I’m still looking for a driver-minder for that, or a workable way to get there and back);

– and a talk at the Pathways to the Past conference in St Just, Cornwall, on Saturday 24th May (I’m really happy about that);

– and another at the Just Live Camp near Morvah in Penwith a day or two after, on 25th or 26th May.

Then there’s the Belerion Project, about which I’m really happy too. It’s a research project into the subtle energy and psychoactive effects of the system of ancient sites in Penwith. We did our first field trip to Portheras Common Barrow recently and, despite weather challenges, it went really well. Thanks to everyone who came. The next is on Wednesday 7th May.

I’ve always been rather workaholicky but, age 75 and doing a cancer trip, recently I’ve been running at capacity. Just getting ready to go out can wear me out, requiring a rest, and everything requires twice the effort it took in pre-cancer days. My brains aren’t handling all the messages, chats and enquiries involved – apologies to people I fail to answer.

I’m a hyperfocused Aspie, you see – good at concentrating for hours in a right-brained way but bad at hopping from thing to thing in a left-brained way. Aged brains do get creaky and slow! This is a mixed gift that has come with cancer: I’ve done some of the best creativity of my life, though I have a decreased capacity for admin, lists, names, timetables and even time itself. Or remembering to have dinner.

That’s the way it goes. Ideally I need an assistant (who lives close by and knows me well – not online). But I cannot pay such a person. That’s been one of the issues of my life that I was trying to write about in the latest, as yet unpublished blog: I’ve never had an expense account to finance projects and missions. It’s mostly come out of my own pocket.

A plus with this is that I’ve pulled off some mighty stunts on a slim budget, and I’ve been a free agent, but it is wearing too, and many good things could have happened if I’d had better funding.

For those who suggest I should ‘just’ do some crowd-sourcing (takes ten minutes, it’s easy and the money floods in, haha), I ask, do you require soldiers to fund their service at the frontline? Soldiers are paid salaries and pensions while peacemakers are told it’s our choice, our risk and why don’t we get a proper job?

You might hear a thread of resentment there. That’s why I didn’t complete the blog. I’ve got stuff around it. It’s still happening now: I and others I’m working with in Ghana, Mali and Palestine are all being seriously obstructed by, would you believe, the actions, errors, denials and avoidances of two banks, one in USA and one in Australia.

It’s not simple, this game. Paldywan Kenobi stares down the banksters! Who’d have thought I’d get sucked into teaching banks how to be human, at my age? Oh, and dealing with a few crime gangs, Wagners and drug-addled murderers along the way, remotely from my eyrie here in Cornwall. Well, I’m quite good at it, actually, and many people give up on such things when things get big or dangerous. I tend to hang in there.

When you step into what used to be called The Great Work, the rules of normal life seem to levitate out of the window and disappear. Retirement is something other people do.

For astrologers, I’ve just gone through Saturn opposing my natal Saturn (and square Moon and Ascendant). So I’m doing Saturn, yet again. When I started my cancer trip five years ago, I thought I had 1-3 years left, so I put my rather mission-driven, saturnine sense of life-purpose to the side. But it has started up again!

Well, my dear old late Mum used to say, “There’s no rest for the wicked!”. Well, yes, perhaps so, or perhaps not. She was a do-gooder too, handing me down that pattern, bless her. In our self-centred times, it’s not a sensible strategy, doing good, but some of us choose it or get sucked into it anyway.

Compassion fatigue, versus ‘To give and not to count the cost’. Non-attachment to the fruits of our labours, versus ‘Give me the compensation you owe for your frigging corporate errors’. Yes, these things have been rattling around in my heart during those Saturn transits. Well, life is for the learning.

I’ve been reminding myself of something a young Berliner taught me while standing (as you do) in the Sinai Desert. I repeat this here, particularly for people infected with the Trump virus:

It’s okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.

Love from me – as you might sense, in a rather saturnine mood on this fullmoon!

Palden