 |
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
How Colour Enhances our Everyday Lives
by Erica Connolly
We all connect with colour on a daily basis through the clothes we wear, the furnishings in our home, the dizzying array of colours in nature – even traffic lights tell us when to stop and go according to their colour. Yet we tend to take colour for granted, not noticing the subtle and not-so-subtle effects colour has on us, and its potentially powerful impact in our lives.
When we start to use colour consciously as a tool in our lives, we find that it can help us with:
- our relationships
- our work and career
- our health
- our finances
- our spirituality
Every area of our lives, in fact! And the deeper our understanding, the more it can help us.
Colour and the Body
Let’s look at the physical for a moment. Science shows us then when we are in red surroundings – a red room, wearing red clothes etc – we will literally heat up; our body temperature rises. In a blue room, we cool down. It’s a physiological response. So even if our conscious minds don’t always recognise colour and its properties, our bodies do.
What happens when we go out in nature and are surrounded by green? We literally breathe more deeply. We feel better. We open our lungs.
Next time you reach for your clothes in the morning, notice what guides your choice. Weather and occasion will of course dictate to some extent, but those things notwithstanding, what do you want to carry on your body today? Which colours speak to you and make you feel good? Start to notice how your moods and energy play a part in your colour choices. Why is it that one day you reach for a soft pink jumper and on the next you want to wear a vivid red jacket?
Notice how you feel when you wear different colours. Experiment with accessories such as scarves and notice how they make you feel. You may begin to look at yourself and your colour choices more closely, and as you do, you are tapping into the basic psychology of colour and learning more about yourself and the world in the process.
Relationships and Emotions
What happens when we start to tune in to our emotions and let them guide us to the colours we need at any given moment? We begin to learn about ourselves and the thoughts, emotions and feelings that drive us. And as we identify our feelings and allow ourselves to experience them, we start to notice that we don’t have to get so stuck in them or let them rule our lives. Turquoise is typically the colour of the emotions – and paradoxically it can also be the colour of choice for us when we are avoiding feeling our emotions! Turquoise can be a great protector in times of troubled emotions because it enables us to hide our feelings. Now, if we want to grow and heal, we need to start feeling our feelings not hiding them! So if you notice you’re obsessing over turquoise, wearing it all the time and having it around you, take stock of where you are and notice if there is something you are not allowing to be expressed. Likewise, if you know you are blocking or suppressing your emotions, turquoise may be the key to help you unlock them.
Blue and turquoise are the colours of trust and faith. So in relationships these colours can help us feel safe and able to trust.
When it comes to ourselves, for many the greatest challenge is to truly honour and love ourselves. Here, pink and coral can guide us to a place of self-love and worthiness. Notice when you are feeling unloved and unworthy how pink can soothe and make you feel nurtured. A spritz of the Colourworks essence Pink Angel does wonders for a sad and weary soul. And bathing in a pink coloured oil can be a truly nurturing, deeply loving experience.
Colour and the Mind
Colour affects us on a mental level as well.
Let’s take yellow for an example. In colour therapy we learn that yellow is the colour of the intellect, the mind, our capacity to think. It also links to the emotions of fear and confusion. And what do over-thinkers tend to have in common? They tend to think so much in order to avoid facing their fears! And all that thinking generally leads to confusion (you’ve probably heard the saying ‘analysis leads to paralysis’…).
On the other side of the coin, yellow is also the colour of joy and sunshine. Of child-like fun and laughter. So here’s the clue: if we can get ‘out of our heads’, halt the incessant thinking process, and turn it around 180 degrees, we start having fun, lightening up, and the answers we were so busy trying to force our minds to come up with arrive, easily and naturally.
Now often, however, this is easier said than done. And this is where colour therapy comes in. With tools such as the Colourworks system of coloured oils and essences, we can spritz, spray, rub into our skin, meditate, and even bath in the colours. And then our body and our heart get the message – and a shift can take place whether we’re consciously aware of it or not.
Work and Career
What happens when we’re struggling or frustrated in our work? We know we’re not where we’re meant to be and it becomes more and more painful the more we struggle to keep going. Yet fears and worries arise – how will I pay the mortgage? What else can I do? I’ve no qualifications or training for anything else.
Each and every time we feel disquiet, discomfort and despair in our life and work, it’s a sign and a signal from our higher selves. Something isn’t adding up here. It’s time to make a change. Of course fears and doubts arise. Yet if we continue doing what we’ve always done, we’re going to keep getting the same results. And if we don’t like the results, we’re going to have to change something.
Now change is one of the greatest challenges we can face, and so we tend to avoid it like the plague. Yet change is often a great catalyst for growth and healing. And by saying yes to change, we can begin to put our lives on track and head for where we want to be instead of staying stuck.
So how does colour help us with change? And how can it help us in our work and career?
The colour choices we make, for example in a Colourworks reading where you are asked to choose coloured bottles of oils, will provide strong clues as to where our heart really lies and what we really want to be doing. If we’re working as an accountant and our heart yearns to be an artist, the palette of colours we choose is going to tell us our truth. It will be plain to see, even if we have suppressed our desire to break out and be more creative – the colours will tell the story! What we then do with this information is, of course, entirely up to us. But once we’ve seen something graphically and in colour it somehow takes on a reality and it becomes hard to pretend any more. The artist will out!
And then we can begin the process of working through our fears (yellow); listening to our heart (green or pink); following our inner guidance (lilac); reclaiming our power (gold); and making a decision (clear or silver).
Colour for Finances
Abundance and manifestation are two concepts we’re hearing a lot about at the present time. The Law of Attraction tells us that what we focus on expands and that our thoughts create our reality. This puts us firmly in the driving seat of our lives. Once we take these concepts on board we can no longer be victims, no longer blame or judge.
Yet so many of us carry baggage about wealth, money, abundance. We have hidden feelings of unworthiness. Or we may believe it is not possible to be spiritual and yet have financial wealth. Most of us have many limiting beliefs around money and wealth. Colour once again helps us by rooting out the hidden beliefs that are preventing us from stepping into the wealth and abundance that is all around us. The universe is fundamentally and utterly abundant. It is only our ability to receive – or our lack of such an ability – that prevents us from being fully and wholly abundant in every area of our lives.
An acute dislike of pink or an over-abundance of pink in our colour choices can be an indication of money issues and an inability to receive. Pink and red are the colours we most relate to finance – red being all the material, physical aspects of life and our need for survival; and pink being literally red with a light shone through it – which then shows up as intensified red issues….
In the Colourworks system there are several bottles that will help us with these issues. The base chakra bottle (C1) has had a quite miraculous effect for many people, clearing old ingrained fear-based money ‘stuff’ out of bodies and allowing the prosperity in. The Red Angel essence is called the Angel of Miracles and Prosperity and helps us get grounded and connected to the earth so that we might manifest from a place of stability and connection rather than fear.
Blue and turquoise bottles help us to have faith that everything is unfolding as it should, and as we begin to trust the universe more, then we open to more of what we want and desire and allow it to show up in our lives.
Pink, as mentioned above, will help us grow in self-love and self-esteem so that we no longer have worthiness issues and can open to receive.
And yellow and gold can help us banish our fears and feel at one with ourselves and our lives so that we can live from a place of genuine power and strength, and let the riches of the universe flow to us.
Green enables us to open to the abundance of the universe and to feel grateful for what we already have. And gratitude is the fastest key to attracting what we want!
Gateway to Spirit
As we move into a deeper connection with ourselves and the universe we find that colour points the way to our highest self, the Self that can love unconditionally, speak its truth and be authentically who it is.
Magenta is the colour of the divine - in any language! And it is a gateway to experiencing what is beyond our physical body, beyond our feelings, emotions and thoughts.
Magenta takes us into a place of deep powerful acceptance and grace where we no longer struggle or resist but allow and flow. As we do this we step into a place where we begin to know ourselves as divine, where we begin to see the God in ourselves and in all. And when we do that there is no place left for grudges, blame, resentment and judgement. We begin to see the oneness that is inherent in this universe and to feel it in our beings.
What we find when we step out on a journey with colour is that we learn to transcend our little egoic and fragmented selves, and become instead our joyful, magnificent whole selves and our lives become so much more colourful as a result.
If you would like to know more about how colour ‘works’, you are welcomed on a journey into your deeper self by attending my 2-day colour workshops for transformation and healing.
© Erica Connolly 2007
You may reprint this article in its entirety provided you include full details and references.
The Colour of Light - a Journey with Colourworks
by Alexandra Rice
Colour I
The clairaudient communication that I'd consciously heard first during a distant healing session continued to plague me: 'You are wasting time.' I had many sleepless nights. What am I supposed to be doing? I questioned, but did not get a reply that I understood.
One particularly bad night one of my guides came through and in no uncertain terms told me to move forward, let go and take some risks, so I started to search the Internet at his suggestion. Perhaps a course of some kind, I pondered. I re-read an e-mail I'd recently received from Erica Connolly, a Colourworks Teacher and Therapist, about Colourworks workshops. They did look interesting but doubts and practicalities made me hesitate. How would I cope? There was the travelling to and from the venue and a long day at the workshop. I'd had chronic fatigue and severe digestive problems for as long as I could remember and not done a workshop for over six years. But, as I read the information, I felt called to undertake the full training. This was what I had waited for.
I am passionate about colour and have denied it in my life for so long it was now shouting at me. But doubt also crept in. Was I grasping at straws? A fluttering to my left caught my attention. It was the early hours of a January morning and here was a Red Admiral butterfly flapping its wings on my left shoulder. What clearer message could I have asked for? I began an e-mail to Erica to ask if there was still space on the workshop, although my intuition told me there most definitely was room and I had to take it. The butterfly had gone now. As I wrote the e-mail I decided to tell Erica about the extraordinary message and with that the fluttering butterfly returned. It was as if Spirit, through the Red Admiral, was confirming the message and supporting me with its love.
The workshop did not disappoint. I was tense and stressed when I arrived at the venue but a hug from Erica dissolved all that in an instant and I knew I would be safe and supported.
I felt I wanted to drink, to ingest, most of the colours. They are so beautiful and ask to be held and used. They are of course, aspects of myself with which I am out of touch, what Jung might have called my shadow. But this does not mean they were negative. Far from it. They were telling me how far I had travelled and what joy there was if I moved forward now. I just had to trust. They included gifts and talents I had denied and doubted. And this is the main message of the Colourworks bottles. They are so full of light because they are reflections of us, reflections of the light and colour in all of us. For me this was so empowering. I was quite overwhelmed with the validation and affirmation that the bottles provided, for me and for others, in the workshop.
Although I had used the Colourworks bottles for my healing over the last year, since the workshop I have felt much more connected to them and their overlighting energies. I would thoroughly recommend the course.
One month later.
I was excited at the thought of the Colour II training, especially as it was beginning on my birthday, which felt auspicious. As it turned out, the workshop far exceeded my expectations. I was totally captivated by the essences from the Scent By Angels range; and that, in spite of a difficult first day with some emotional updrift for me.
But the beauty and joy of the range is that not only do they access and activate unconscious aspects of ourselves, our gifts and talents and what is blocking these for us, but they have immediate remedial effect too. They bring comfort and healing instantly. I clutched Black Dragon for most of the weekend to positive effect!
The best part of the course for me was experiencing the dragons. This helped me come into my power again and taught me the joy behind the fear of that authenticity. It was very affirming. It brings tears to my eyes to think how much they helped me and have continued to assist me ever since. I can feel their presence and laughter as I write.
From a definite reserve about doing more with the Colourworks ranges than healing myself, I have now set myself up as a therapist and feel immensely empowered the more healings and readings I undertake. I am finding that my intuitive and psychic skills have expanded beyond my wildest dreams, opening me up more than I thought possible. My own health is improving daily. I feel so blessed. After years of debilitating fear and illness, I feel that the light is now shining in my darkness once again.
The Power of Colourworks Courses
By Janice Hughes-Madden
Doing Colour 1 helped me to move on three large areas of my life (not just one, not just two but no less than three!).
On the evening of day one I bathed in a whole bottle of No. 14, the wonderful turquoise communication bottle. Nothing much seemed to happen that evening but between Colour 1 and Colour 2 (exactly one month) I had sorted out a very difficult long term relationship, voiced the fact that I am going to quit my job in order to pursue my love of Colourworks amongst other things, and decided to sell my house to finance the change of direction.
Workwise I have been running my own insurance business for five years and have wanted to do something else since year three. Less than one month of working with the Colourworks system and I have a plan to leave - I was able to voice and communicate, firstly to myself and then to others, what it was I really wanted to do. I gave myself permission to follow my own inner wisdom and was given the courage to follow that through. WOW what an amazing system.
I have been working with other women, practising my reading skills and have always been delighted with the results. They have all had huge insights and shifts which I have been privileged to share with them.
It is a wonderful, magical, transformative system. Many thanks for sharing it with the world.
Inspired Living
by Erica Connolly
Nick Williams is probably best known for his inspirational book: ‘The Work We Were Born To Do’. Through his teaching, his coaching and his writing, Nick has inspired people all over the world to follow their hearts to find work that brings meaning to their lives. With the recent publication of his latest book Nick further refines and clarifies his teachings on inspiration to bring us ’How to be Inspired’. Erica Connolly met Nick recently to find out more about how to live an inspired life.
EC You are an international coach, speaker and workshop leader, write best-selling books and run a number of businesses. How did you reach this level of success?
NW From nothing, to be honest. That’s what I think is really important for people to know, that every great success starts as an idea. The core of it was being unhappy in what I was doing, and like so many people, I began to realise how much pain and suffering was caused by people not finding their vocation. It started with an idea: what would happen if I put inspiration at the centre of my life? My life now is almost like a daily experiment with that thought at the centre of it.
EC What does success mean to you personally?
NW I guess one of the ways I define success is holding nothing back. I used to think that when I was successful I would give my all and I realised that’s not a good way to start a business. I realised I would be successful by giving my all. It’s about not holding back anything that I’ve got or that I know. It’s about listening to my own heart, my own inspiration, my own intuition. Sharing that with the world and having to grow hugely as I do that, having to go through my own fears, go through my own doubts, go through my insecurities. It’s about living authentically and living out of love and inspiration and not out of fear. For me success is the by-product of living my purpose.
EC Much of what you do is about helping people realise the gifts they have to offer and discover the work that brings them joy. There seems to be an increasing need for us to find work that fulfils us. Why is meaningful work so important to us?
NW Recently I’ve been thinking there are probably three major ways of expressing ourselves in life: intimate relationships; a family if we have one; and our work. It’s like a holy trilogy, and for most people, they spend more time at work than they do with their partner or their family, so to be in something where you’re not inspired and you’re unhappy, it can’t but leak over to the rest of our lives. I don’t think we can be miserable at work and have a fantastic relationship, or be totally depressed at work and then come home and love our kids unconditionally. Also I think people know deep down that you can’t dismiss the idea of a soul - we’ve got a soul, we’ve got gifts, we’ve got creativity and we can only live spiritless lives for so long. If we know there are greater parts of ourselves that are not being expressed we can’t run away from them It comes back and bites them because they know they’re not happy, they know they’re living on a fraction of their potential. That’s why our work is so important to us: being happy in our life, finding our gifts, gives life meaning.
EC What is it that prevents us from following through on our dreams, from creating the lives we would love to lead?
NW I think two things go wrong. Number one, in my experience, is that very few of us get told when we’re growing up that we’ve got a part of us that is precious and powerful and creative and unique and lovable, so we end up believing that we are our personality, and personality on the whole is about ‘getting’. So long as I get money or I get appreciation or I get success, then I’ll feel fulfilled. And that deeper part of us, that unconditional self, all it wants to do is give itself. That doesn’t mean being a kind of saint or being in self-sacrifice, but I think that the only thing that will ultimately fulfil us is giving our gifts, giving heart to life.
EC You teach and write a lot about abundance and financial prosperity. Most people don’t believe they can do work they love and still make a living. How can we find work we love and still make money?
NW Most of us have grown up believing that either you sell your soul to make money or you do what you love and you starve, so even that basic level of belief is the problem for most of us. When we do find our gifts and our talents, doesn’t it make sense on one level that we could actually be more successful? So if we’re only doing what we think we should do or we ought to, then we’re going to run out of energy. When we’re doing what we love we’re going to be more energised, so my way is two-fold: one is to help people develop prosperity consciousness because we’ve got to weed out all that negative conditioning (and in my experience most of us have heaps of negative conditioning) and discover that there is abundance within us. And then the second bit is figuring out what that looks like in the world, because most of us think of one job as the way that you earn money and I think that most inspired people, people living the work they were born to do, don’t just have one source of income, they have multiple sources of income. Most of us aren’t even that clear about what we love in the first place let alone how to get paid for it, so the first thing is to figure out what it is we’d love to get paid for and then secondly, how can we get paid for it. And for most of us that’s a whole journey about self-esteem and self-belief and self-worth.
EC: With a lot of focus on dreams, goals and plans, is there a risk that we can forget to experience the here and now and miss the magic of the present moment?
NW: I think it’s a very big challenge but even if you’re not doing what you think you’re here for, do whatever you’re doing as if it were the most important thing - give yourself to it fully. I think we tend to think until I find what I’m really here for, I won’t give my heart to it. I’m a great believer that whatever we do, if we do it whole-heartedly, we just keep graduating. So it’s to keep recognising that it’s about living in the here and now, and as we live in the here and now fully, we’ll also create opportunity for the future.
EC: Can you share with us some of the key themes in your latest book, How to be Inspired?
NW: It’s about the nature of inspiration, how we nurture our own inspiration, which usually then comes out as some sort of creative action. I think many people find it very easy to get inspired, the harder part is to stay inspired. The thing we don’t tend to understand is that where there is inspiration, there is resistance. So one of the things we need to do is to recognise and learn to deal with our resistance, which is our own inner enemy. We also need to recognise that inspiration is a call to growth. I’ve written quite a bit about what I call ‘higher realms’ within creativity and inspiration. Our ego will try and trip us up, but I believe there are angels or muses or whatever you want to call them also cheering us on, and not just cheering us on but actively participating in our success.
EC: There’s also that element of community; having like-minded people around, people who support us.
NW: The biggest killer of dreams is not negative thinking, it’s isolation. We do need to create community around inspiration and it’s something I’m seeking to do more and more in London. I came across a fabulous quote the other day from Caroline Myss. She said that ‘we evolve at the rate of the tribe we’re plugged into’. We evolve not just by our own life but by the lives of the people we spend most time with. To me community is crucial.
EC: What role do choices play in our lives?
NW: At the end of the day choices are probably the most powerful thing that we have. In ‘A Course in Miracles’ it says every decision is a choice between love and fear. Most people don’t even recognise there’s a choice, because most people are caught by their fear. For me it’s about choosing love, choosing inspiration, even when I’m feeling terrified or depressed or lost.
EC: What about gratitude?
NW: Gratitude ties into living in the present. One of the most powerful ways of living in the present is to notice what you have and be grateful. I think people often think if I’m grateful for what I’ve got I’m going to be stuck with it. It’s almost like we’ve got to trash what we’ve got in order to get something new, and I’m a great believer that we keep graduating: if we’re grateful for what we’ve got we’ll be given more. In a way if we’re trashing what we’ve got we won’t be given more. Gratitude is fundamental.
EC: Why do we need inspiration? What does it do for us?
NW: If you want a miserable, depressed life then you don’t need inspiration! I think most people think inspiration is a luxury, that in a way life is about survival, getting by, paying the bills, and because I think we’ve all got a soul and a spirit, for me inspiration is what lifts that soul part. Even if people have got all the material possessions or financial success, if they haven’t got inspiration they’re poor. And somebody could be very poor, but if they’ve got inspiration they can still feel rich. I think on one level inspiration is what makes us feel most alive; for me it is spirit. We all need spirit, we all need to have our spirit nourished, and inspiration is about that level. When we’re inspired we transcend the limitations of our lives and we discover that we can do things that we just never thought we could do. I think it’s important to understand that inspiration can be an evolutionary force in our lives. I think most people don’t understand the anatomy of inspiration. They think of inspiration as an occasional flash, not as a daily experience that can transform and evolve our life.
EC: You seem to have the ability to bridge various different worlds – the corporate world, the spiritual world, the world of personal development. What is it about your message that makes it universal?
NW: I think that the inspiration idea is the thing that is the common thread. Spiritual people want to be inspired, and business people want to be inspired too. I think what helped it dawn on me, was that about a year ago, I was reading the Sunday Times who do a survey of the top 100 companies to work for, and the opening lines of the report were ‘Inspiration rather than perspiration is the key to a company’s success’. It was like music to my ears. So I’ve almost used that as a lever, to say, if they’re saying it you guys have got to be saying it too, because then in a way I’ve found the language that allows me to bridge those two worlds.
EC: How do you handle the cynicism you meet?
NW: I understand it. I used to be very cynical. For me cynicism is thinly veiled fear. People can be cynical and they get to be right, but they don’t get to be happy. My life is now testimony that cynicism doesn’t work. It takes courage to be open-hearted rather than cynical, because cynical is an easy cop-out. It takes courage to say: ‘maybe this will work - I’m going to put myself on the line’.
EC: Do you find that you have to keep finding reserves of courage within yourself?
NW: To do something new or to face a fear takes courage, but then when I’ve done it, it doesn’t take courage, it just becomes an integrated part. I think that the bit that a lot of people don’t get, is that we’ve been trained most of our life to avoid fear, so a lot of people don’t understand the power of facing fear.
EC: If you were to suggest one question that we ask ourselves about our lives, what would it be?
NW: What is it that inspires, thrills, excites and scares you the most? That will be a good indicator of the work you were born to do.
Nick Williams, PO Box 2236, London, W1A 5UA.
Telephone: 07000-781922.
Email: nick@heartatwork.net.
Website: www.nick-williams.com.
by Alexandria Rice
My Dad had a saying: ‘Call me anything you like, as long as it’s not late for dinner!’
I had always been called Alex. It was the short form for Alexandra, the name with which I had been Christened as an infant.
Mum and Dad didn’t usually agree with shortening people’s names. I never understood why they shortened mine. Years later, having to produce my birth certificate for something official, I found out that the name with which I had been registered at birth was Alexandria. ‘A slip-up from the Registrar, or perhaps your Dad had been celebrating rather heartily.’ Mum passed it off.
I didn’t much like the name Alexandria; it always seemed so grand, so formal, and so long-winded. So, I stuck with Alexandra. Even when proof of my name was required for me to go on the Roll of The Law Society for admission as a solicitor. I submitted an affidavit to the effect that by repute I had been known for most of my life as Alexandra. I didn’t question it.
As I worked on my spiritual path and became interested in all things esoteric, I looked at numerology and what it meant for me in relation to my birth date and name. It seemed significant that I was calling myself by a name other than one which I had been registered at birth, but when I realised that the extra ‘i’ in Alexandria only added a number 9 so that the numbers added up to the same whichever label I used for myself, I did no more about it. Besides, the administration involved in reverting to my registered name after all these years, seemed insurmountable.
Then on 21st April my dear friend, Erica Connolly, a Colourworks teacher and healer, gave me a numerology reading using Colourworks.
No surprises, here, I thought. I already knew the numbers of my birth date reduced to 7 when added together, and that the numbers of my full name, whether Alexandra Louise Rice or Alexandria Louise Rice, were the same. Erica used a slightly different system. She worked with the name I am known by on a daily basis. The one I use most. I do not use my middle name generally, except in official documents. I gave her my usual name, Alexandra Rice. I insisted on Alexandra these days, rather than Alex. One day, years ago, leading a dance class in which we danced our names, I began as Alex as I’d so far been in life, and ended the dance as Alexandra. It felt so much more colourful and feminine. I hated being called Alex now. Alexandra seemed to flow much better.
But according to the colours, it wasn’t flowing at all. When the numbers of my birth date and the consonants and vowels of Alexandra Rice were laid out before me in Colourworks bottles, immediately I was uneasy. There was a discordance here that I could not tolerate. That discord, that dissonance was inside me, was me. I was only seeing the truth of myself as I’m known and as I insist on being. I could live with the birth date colours. The consonants too, were similar and blended together, but the vowels were another story.
The vowels numbered 22 and 4. 22 is magenta over pink. A lovely bottle, and one I had been bathing in that week. For me, it is about forgiveness of the Higher Self and relaxing into the wisdom of the Higher Self. It relates to the Fool in the Tarot pack and urges me not to keep going round the same old track again and again but move forward in life. To do this, I need to forgive and realise that I am not guilty. I am a Divine human and in my Divinity there can be no guilt or blame. The Divine is innocent and so am I.
I was happy about this bottle but pairing it with 4 seemed totally incongruous. It wasn’t the meaning that upset me. 4 is Uranus in the Colourworks system and as an Aquarian I am very in tune with how Uranus operates. No, it was the colour combination. Uranus is yellow over very dark turquoise. It looked terrible with the pinks of number 22. I use the word terrible advisedly for it seemed to unnerve me, frighten me. That is who I have become by naming myself Alexandra. Where was the harmony?
‘I can’t have this,’ I told Erica. ‘How about if I add the extra ‘i’ and make it Alexandria?’ So, we tried it. The vowels then added up to number 31. Aah, bliss. Number 31 is The Recluse, it relates to The Hermit in the Tarot pack. It is pale green over a deep forest green. It immediately allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief. It allowed me to feel space inside, a deep peace. No longer was there a split in me or the discord in the colours. I was lapping up the greens of the natural world I love so much. The woods, the fields, the moors. The deep green feels comforting and nurturing, protective, enfolding without possessiveness or cloistering. There is a quietness about this bottle, and a sense of being home. I am a bit of a hermit in this life, needing to take time away from the world at regular intervals to feed myself on the bliss of silence and reflection. Giving myself time to ‘be’ rather than ‘do’. This bottle was giving me back myself. Not only this, but also it blended very well with the colours of Uranus and toned in with the other colours in this reading, the turquoise and blues. I would change my name. There was no other way. I had no doubts. I would be Alexandria.
I got home very late and went to bed, leaving the administrative work regarding my name change for the next day. This would be a new beginning.
Next day, the 22nd April, I tried to write e-mails to people in my address book to notify them of the change. But I couldn’t do it. I went for a walk. On returning, I remembered that I needed to send an urgent e-mail. I was about to sign it ‘Alexandra Rice’, and couldn’t bring myself to do that either. Now I would have to make the change. So, I sent the e-mail notifying my friends; then I then realised the date. 22\04. It couldn’t have been more significant. And no wonder I’d been feeling split in my decision. But having done it I felt good. Healed. I meditated with number 31 bottle and felt great peace. This is who I really am. I’d been afraid before. Alexandria conjured up Egypt and all the terror of lifetimes there. The power issues. It felt so dynamic and the extra ‘i’ meant that there was no room to hide any more. It reminded me of the burning of the great library in the fourth century. I was a library too, would I burn?
But no. I am extended now into my full self. My full size and shape. The extra ‘i’ provides more room for the I Am. It could mean more ego, but as the ‘i’ is a ‘9’, a Martian energy of ambition and idealism, I feel it is about service to humanity, which is what my name means in fact, ‘Helpful to Mankind’. The ‘i’ also seems to convey that I can see more clearly, there is more ‘eye’. The extended name means that there is more room inside me, the green depth of my heart, more room to breathe and be peace and spaciousness. It gives me permission to claim my own space in the world as a unique being, and let nothing come between me and my Truth. My discord split; there is no need to battle with myself.
Time will tell.