SWEDISH TROLLS AND CYBER TROLLS

What comes to mind when someone mentions the word TROLL?

I LOVE Norse Mythology and Scandinavian Folklore. As a teacher of Norse Shamanism I personally see beautiful images by John Bauer. I also think of Swedish tales and Christmas decorations (we put small gnomes and trolls around our house at Christmas time). In Old Norse sagas trolls live in isolated places (like rocks, mountains, caves or remote forests) and they are only rarely helpful to human beings. They can tricky and even downright dangerous!

My children would immediately think of a recent movie cycle about The Hobbit, with a large cast of dwarfs,  trolls and many other characters.

Sitting on a London Bus this morning I noticed that today’s headlines are all about Cyber Trolls. As a shamanic teacher of children and young people I realised that something was being brought to my attention here. After my eldest son received a death threat in the dinner queue in school last week I wrote a blog post called THE BULLY: https://imeldaalmqvist.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/the-bully/ and I followed this up by writing another post earlier this week about spiritual tool kits for children: https://imeldaalmqvist.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/the-shaman-mothers-spiritual-survival-kits-for-kids/

Those posts got a lot of reactions for which I am very grateful: other people doing shamanic work with children have come forward and shared wonderful ideas with me. Yesterday a friend called Robert Rand  (a wonderful composer and musician, check out his work!)  was telling me about Aikido and I quote him:  “Aikido’s goals are a non-violent end to a confrontation.” I will be looking for an aikido expert to teach a session to my kids group!

Last night I appeared live on an American TV Show (interview with Sharon Ballantine on Conscious Evolution Media) and we got talking about the subject Bullying.

It seems that no matter what form bullying takes (physical bulling in school or cyber bullying on the internet through social networking sites) the KEY lies in the concept RESPONSE-ABILITY: the ability to not meet the bully ‘on their own level’ and punch them in the face (or internet equivalent!) because then the situation will escalate. The challenge we find ourselves presented with is to demonstrate that we can keep our cool and CHOOSE OUR RESPONSE. When The School Bully told my son: “I am going to kill you and your family” he said “OK” because a response was required to satisfy the bully, then he walked away from the situation. Fortunately he is a level-headed 13 year old.

Taking a step back from the specifics of bullying situations (I have three children and all parents come across this issue. Not only that: sometimes we may be asked to face up to the fact that our own child is doing the bullying! So… let’s do a bit of ‘shadow work’ here and own that darkness inside ourselves, we all carry the ‘archetype of the Bully’ within us somewhere!) it seems to me that the ultimate lesson here is about WHOSE  TAKE ON REALITY DO WE ACCEPT?

Bullies try hard to impose their point of view and wipe out your own, by criticising, ridiculing and attacking you they try to hurt you (maybe physically, certainly emotionally and spiritually speaking) but ‘tough as it sounds’: we can choose our response. We can choose NOT TO focus on FEELING HURT.  Instead we can CHOOSE TO feel compassion for human beings who are so sad, lonely or wounded that they are out there ‘trolling to get their thrills’.

We live in a MULTI-VERSE, a multi-dimensional universe. We are all dreamers. We all co-create our reality in partnership with the Divine forces of Creation. Whatever we focus on increases. If we think negative thoughts and focus on negative energy, we create more of the same. (This is not the same as saying I do not feel anger or despair when I hear my child is being bullied – but it means I know I need to make a quick “spiritual U-turn” as it were and reframe my own perception as soon as I humanly can).

So one of my challenges for the weeks to come is putting together a session on Cyber Bulling for my shamanic group for children & teens THE TIME TRAVELLERS and finding a London-based Aikido expert willing to visit for a night.

http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/info2.cfm?info_id=204756.

Another issue I am planning to run a session on is BODY IMAGE AND SELF ESTEEM as that is related to all this: being forced into an unnatural perception of ourselves and losing touch with the wondrous gift that is a human body and life here on Earth. More about that another time.

And to get back to the ancient trolls of Scandinavian lore: in old Swedish tales about  ‘TOMTAR OCH TROLL’ (gnomes and trolls) often human beings learn to co-exist peacefully and respectfully with trolls, elves and other such  ‘other world beings’, most often by ‘offering them something to keep them happy’ and keeping a safe distance most of the time. This is is not a bad strategy for cyber bullying either! And one great thing about the cyber world is that is offers buttons like ‘unfriend’ or ‘delete their posts from my feed’. Quite unlike ‘life in everyday reality’ we can choose not to pay attention to their comments and antics. Now that is all about response-ability!

Imelda Almqvist

BLAME THE MOTHER!

Recently someone brought an excellent book to my attention: “The Dance of Anger, A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships” by Harriet Lerner.

Some historians (especially the French historian Philippe Aries who wrote the book Centuries of Childhood)  have argued that ‘childhood’ is a concept created by modern society. He studied paintings, gravestones, furniture and school records and discovered that before the 17th century children were represented as ‘mini adults’.

Today adolescence seems to go on longer and longer with young people well into their twenties displaying symptoms of  (the mindset of) ‘eternal youth’. Not growing up – in plain English! Indigenous societies couldn’t afford this. They had Rites of Passage and the elder of the community organised Initiation for young boys. Adolescence lasted about  a week: before initiation they were boys and after initiation they were men.

I am a mother of three children. Like many mothers today I want my children to have a ‘childhood’, by which I mean: a period of unconditional love, close knit and supportive family life, protection and schooling.

So far so good!

But as many women put more effort than ever into motherhood , (motherWORK!), strangely this seems to coincide with women being blamed for all ills in the world.

Mothers get blamed for working outside the home or only working inside the home. They get blamed for how their children behave. They get blamed for acting short tempered in public with their children. They get blamed for tantrums their children have in public (“she doesn’t seem to have that child under control”).

Harriet Lerner says, very rightly, that “mothers cannot make children think, feel or be a certain way, but we can be firm, consistent and and clear about what behaviour we will or will not tolerate, and what the consequences are for misbehaviour”. I think this is important work: sorting out power struggles and control issues and being more clear about what comes under the umbrella of our RESPONSE-ABILITY and what does not.

Our own eldest son often says that when we have one of our ‘important conversations with him’ we have already decided what we want his response or the outcome to be. There is a lot of truth in that. We will never agree to the 7 hours of computer time he’d like to have in a day! To our defense I must say that we do try to listen and make changes inspired by the things he says in turn. But… the bottom line is that we are in the role of his ‘parents’ and not his friends. It is our job to create firm boundaries – as it this those very boundaries that make children feel held and safe (so they can then kick against those boundaries with all their might).

Don’t blame a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes, as the saying goes.

Don’t blame a mother until you have loved her children to infinity and beyond!

Human beings have an unfortunate tendency to project onto others what they will not own in themselves. Bearing that in mind I would say: instead of blaming mothers, or indeed blaming others (anyone) for the ills of society, let’s see how we can make positive choices about how we parent, how we take care of our relationships, how we treat Mother Earth and all sentient beings,  and how we run our lives – and give others (especially M-OTHERS!) the same freedom and respect.

When my own children complain about having me for their mother I always remind them that spiritually speaking, on the level of soul, they must have chosen me with great care! They pull a dirty face but do not argue with me!

(The paintings that go with this blog are taken from the MOTHERHOOD SERIES on my art website    http://www.imelda-almqvist-art.com/info2.cfm?info_id=28011

Imelda Almqvist

THE BULLY

On Tuesday this week my eldest son (13) told me how on Monday he had stood in the school dinner queue behind one of the biggest bullies in the whole school. The  Bully had said: “I am planning to kill you and your whole family”. My son had said: “OK” because he felt any other response would have enraged the Bully and “then he might have hurt me”. After that the Bully had ‘enjoyed his victory’ and my son could walk away and eat his dinner. (We live right opposite the school, this is commonly known,  and have a younger child in the same school).

My son also told me that just a few days ago this same boy (he is tall and extremely overweight) had pinned my son’s (much skinnier and non-aggressive) friend to the wall so he couldn’t escape. It had taken four teachers to surround the Bully and set the friend free. Clearly the teaching staff are already aware of  issues with The Bully.

It was parent evening last night (before all GCSE options are submitted tomorrow) and I had a long conversation with the Head of Year 9. My son had asked me not to say anything but I told him I couldn’t ignore this. As his parent I need to act when I hear something like this and make sure he is safe in the school.  My son sat right next to me as I raised the issue. Once it was out in the open he  said he preferred to tell the story himself, so he did. The Head of Year 9 listened very closely and promised to look into this. She also addressed my son’s concern about ‘this bouncing back on him and hurting him’ in some way. He said: “I don’t see myself as a tittle-tale!”  The Head of Year 9 explained that on the contrary, he helps keep other young people safe by ensuring the incident is reported and properly addressed by staff. She also said that ‘OK’ had been quite a clever and mature response because more commonly kids lose their temper and embark on fist fights. Those are much harder to ‘sort out’ for teachers. My son kept the incident ‘brief and clear cut’ with a sensible response.

A very different thing we did, as part of the ‘shamanic parenting’ in this house,  is that we revisited the incident and did some spiritual work on the words spoken by The Bully. We visualized them as a speech bubble, popped it and saw the words transformed into ‘golden rain’ or ‘blessings’ (and my son will see this process differently from me). This is called ‘transmutation’ – changing energy from one form into another, from negative into positive.

In a recent post here titled ‘SPIRITUAL TOOLS FOR CHILDREN’ I explained about the Time Travelers group I have started here in London. It is a shamanic group for children & teenagers  where we create safe sacred space for the kids to develop a spiritual toolkit and find spiritual solutions to challenges they face in everyday life and school. Bullying is one of the issues we do sessions on: we look at the underlying issues of stealing power, powering up, how to take personal power back, how to keep safe and what to do if you observe other kids being bullied.

Earlier this week  our group did a session on introducing safe ways for children to do shamanic healing work. My own three children are intuitive healers and all have had their own ways of working for years. The children in this group are truly amazing and the work they did as a group blew me away. My eldest son’s  healing skills are considerable and growing.

I suspect that the person in greatest need of love and healing in this story  is The Bully but right now he is not open to such things. However, my children (and all children in our group) understand that bullies act from a place of being deeply wounded themselves. We can choose to see the Divine Spark as it were and the potential for this young man to mature and change his ways – for now. My son is ‘big’ enough to wrap his head around that.

I am glad that we addressed this issue on all levels, in ‘all worlds’ as it were…

Imelda Almqvist

SPIRITUAL STRETCH MARKS

KISSING THE UNBORN BABY 2004

“Plato has said that whenever anyone has an experience of original beauty (an archetypal experience) , it causes the feathers to sprout. As he explained, in the olden days the soul was known to be feathered, and the goose bumps that arise on the skin are the sprouting of the feathers of the soul”

(Albert Kreinheder in Body and Soul – The Other Side of Illness)

For some reason I got thinking about stretch marks yesterday. It was a main concern while being pregnant. I remember dutifully buying industrial amounts of cocoa ‘butter’ and lathering it on.

However, as our youngest son (i.e. the bump in the  pictures that illustrate this blog!) approaches his tenth birthday I feel my perception of stretch marks is changing. My body isn’t exactly the same as it was 15 years ago (three pregnancies and births over a period of four years took care of that!) but I don’t want it to be either.

More and more I come to see my own body as the map of of my journeys here on earth: three babies have left their mark. I won’t win any ‘flat stomach competitions’ (and I am not planning on entering any either, if they exist). I am approaching my 47th birthday and I have only very few silver hairs. However, I dream of living long enough to earn ALL my silver hairs and having long mane of silver hair that glints in the moonlight, one day… Crone hair! Hair that suits a ‘wise woman’ or elder of the community…

So, really I got thinking about the human soul: we live in turbulent and transformative times. We are all having to stretch: our perceptions of ourselves and others, our perceptions of life and love – it all keeps stretching…

So arguably the human soul bears a spiderweb or road map of spiritual stretch marks? And that is how we find our way and guide others in finding the way. Those silvery lines that never tan and glisten in moonlight. They are faint but distinct markers on our journey. I am pretty sure they are related to the small bumps where the feathers of our soul have sprouted. And I wouldn’t be without either my physical stretch marks or the spiritual stretch marks of my soul. I intend to keep on stretching!

What about you?!

Imelda Almqvist

“THE BABY MUST BE BORED IN THERE!” OFFERING THE UNBORN SIBLING SOME TOYS! 2004

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

My mind is often on music! I love playing the cello ! I sometimes feel that music (vibration) is the ultimate nature of everything.

When I die I would like to become one note in a really beautiful piece of music and continue to journey through the universe in the form of sound waves. Imagine being part of the Music of the Spheres!

Quote from Er) “And on each of its circles was seated a Siren on the upper side, carried round, and uttering a single sound on one pitch. But the whole of them, being eight, compassed a single harmony within the seven intervals.”

In the painting above: The Moirae (or Morai) in Greek mythology were the Goddesses of Fate. They allocated every person their fate or share in life. Their name means “parts”, “shares” or “allotted portions”. Clotho – the Spinner – spins the Thread of Life. Lachesis – the Apportioner – measures the thread of life. Atropos – “She Who Cannot Be Turned” – cuts the Thread of Life.

Plato’s Tale of Er: In Book X of his “Republic”, Plato wove a tale describing the reincarnation of souls. The myth envisaged a cosmos enclosed in eight concentric spheres, as a model of the heavens. Each sphere had its own distinctive colour and musical note. The eighth note was the same as the first, but an octave higher; all eight, sounded together, produced the Music of the Spheres  

See also:  http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/info2.cfm?info_id=147250

I am clearing my desk today (it’s like an archeology dig: I am finding stuff from years ago!) and I found the following drawing by my youngest son Brendan. He must have been 3 0r 4 years old at the time (today he is 9 years old). It is the ‘first piece of music’ he ever wrote and it seems to be a ‘Song for Tigers’ if I read the symbols correctly. Tigers are his favourite animals. There is also an airplane (journey?!) in there somewhere and possibly a tree. Doesn’t it look like hieroglyphs?!

Yes, that definitely got me thinking about music. I am enjoying some rare child-free time so I think I will go and play the cello now!

Have a restful Sunday everyone!

Imelda Almqvist

PAINTING SPIRIT CHILDREN

 

The lives of surprisingly many people have been touched by the death of a child before or after birth.

As a shamanic painter I make what I call spirit-led paintings. This means that my work is guided and informed by other worlds, by evolved luminous beings on the other side of the Veil, by the Invisible Realm, you could say.

Work that I pioneered years ago was painting Spirit Children. By Spirit Children I mean children no longer on earth in physical form: children that died in infancy, any other age, or even at any time during pregnancy.

When an older child dies, the parents have photographs and memories of the child. They got to know the child and his/her appearance, preferences and personality. When a child dies during pregnancy the parents are left with little idea of what the child would have looked like or been like. When a miscarriage occurs in early pregnancy, the parents often don’t even have a scan (ultra sound) picture. And our society has no rites or ceremonies to honour the passing of pre-term babies. We have no words to talk to the parents either so often they feel lonely with their great loss.

A few years ago I had a show my paintings in Geneva and I was asked to do a talk about spirit children. Images of Spirit Children (that is to say: paintings of them) were projected onto the wall behind me as I did my presentation. It turned out that everyone in the room had a connection to a spirit child in one way or another. The images of spirit children touched many hearts and many people had a story to tell. People always say: but I had no idea that this work existed! That’s what made me write this blog today.

To visit a spirit child I do a (so called) shamanic journey and go to meet the spirit of the child in the other world (also known as the spirit world or the Land of the Dead). I then ask the child how it wishes to be painted. Sometimes there are messages to be passed between parent and child. Then I go to work and make a painting based on all the information I received.

I cannot return a dead child to their parents, but what I can do is create an image that represents the child in physical form (and often spirit children ask to be painted in the spirit world, riding power animals or swimming with dolphins and so forth). The parents can then put the painting on their wall and so give the child a physical place in their lives and house. This also means that they have an image, a way of thinking of the child.

This is privileged work and so far I have never turned down a request to make a painting of a spirit child.

Imelda Almqvist

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ABUNDANCE DAY!

The pennies Brendan found in the street on January 7th, 2014. (He found some more after school!)

On Tuesday last week my 9 year old son Brendan found three pennies in the street as we walked to school together. As I kissed him goodbye he said: “Mum, promise me one thing! Tell everyone you meet today that TODAY IS ABUNDANCE DAY and that they should make the very most of this!”

On my way home again I met two friends and told them the good news. Then for good measure I posted Brendan’s message as my Facebook status update. It got many likes and some interesting comments and adventures shared from other people.

As I went to collect Brendan at 3.25 pm I asked him: “Will the 7^th of January always be Abundance Day from now on, do you think? Do we need to put it on the calendar?!” He frowned at me and said: “No, you are not getting this Mum! There are always pennies in the street. I am finding them every day. The point I am trying to make is that EVERY DAY is Abundance Day – all we need to do is look for the pennies and pick them up and receive abundance in all other forms as well. Not just money. That is not so difficult to understand, is it Mum???!!!”

Imelda Almqvist

My son Brendan finds pennies in the street every day. He calls it ABUNDANCE HUNTING!

SPIRITUAL TOOLS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

SHAMANIC DRUMMING

This week I have been preparing for an interview on an American TV show on January 22nd. I was asked to submit a biography and write down for the TV presenter what I am passionate about, what my work as an artist, shamanic practitioner and teacher is all about.

As a mother of three young children (aged 13, 12 and 9) I am passionate about working with children and young people. I run a shamanic group for children, teens and ‘tweens’ called the TIME TRAVELLERS, here in London. The aim of this group is to provide safe space and a spiritual toolkit for young people to explore spiritual matters, share experiences and find solutions to challenges young people face in school and everyday life. The group has been running for about 18 months now and we have a community of wonderful guest teachers sharing skills with young people. We have covered subjects like (spiritual strategies for dealing with) bullying, dream theatre work, animal healing, weather shamanism, shamanic drumming and so forth.

TIME TRAVELLERS was born out of my healing work with children and young people in private practice as a shamanic practitioner. I realised that the children I saw for individual sessions struggled with similar issues (such a strong intuitive spiritual perception of life but peer pressure in school to deny and hide that, to the point of being bullied for being ‘different’). I received strong spirit guidance that they would benefit from meeting each other and having a safe community of likeminded youngsters where they could share issues and explore spiritual ways of perceiving the world and interacting with others, nature and their own imagination and innate ability to heal.

In August 2013 my colleague Nick Taylor and I facilitated a VISION QUEST (i.e. a night of SITTING OUT at Druid’s Grove just outside London) for the first time. There was an INITIATION for one of the teenagers who indicated he was ready to mark the moment where he leaves childhood and steps into manhood. This field trip was such a success that we have decided to make such Rites of Passage an annual event. This also means that the experience of Initiation will naturally be available to any Time Travellers ready for this ancient yet profound step.

We are all aware that many young people today engage in binge drinking, drug abuse and anti-social behaviour. In Africa there is a saying: “If the youth are not initiated, they will burn down the village’. It is my belief that if we fail to provide adequate Rites of Passage and Ceremonies for our young people, they will go out and try to create ‘transcendental experiences’ for themselves in risky and inappropriate ways. This explains the levels of adolescent violence and antisocial behaviour escalating in the West. We need to facilitate the  transition into meaningful adulthood for our young people.

Anyone who shares this interest is welcome to get in touch with me! The group welcomes new arrivals and young people are most welcome to give it a try!

Our next session is on Monday January 13^th and we are going to learn about moving energy: safe ways of doing healing work with human beings.

A flyer for the TIME TRAVELLERS group and a WHEEL OF THE YEAR listing the themes for all sessions is available on request. The TIME TRAVELLERS also have their own website:

http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/info2.cfm?info_id=204756

Imelda Almqvist

VISION QUEST WITH THE TIME TRAVELLERS AT DRUID’S GROVE IN AUGUST 2013