Much of my earlier life is very definite in my mind, yet when I try and remember some of the fine details they can escape me. What did the railway station in Howth look like? And the way between the station and the strand and many other details are vague to me now. Nevertheless I find that when I write, I fill in details sometimes without being sure that I am right. 

Today I went back to Crimora in Virginia to show my friend the Riprap trail and I was certain how to get there, with a Bear lane someplace nearby. I often went up the trail to the deep swimming hole, very cold, with friends and church groups. I was always getting into that water too. I found Bear Lane,  but this road dead-ened with big notices of Private Property and houses where there used to be a parking place where the horse boxes pulled up and where we, as hikers came regularly. It has been closed down for a few years and there is current litigation going on about it. I was disappointed. I brought my waking sticks and hoped I could go back there. 

I was satisfied that my memory was better than I though, when we stopped into a local gas station and found out what was going on. 

A recent dream brought me back to a time when I lived in Howth, County Dublin in my 20s. I lived in community and we had a yoga teacher. He did not live with us.  I became the bread baker for the community/company and sent bread into the store/gym in town. The bread I made was always whole wheat bread. Sometimes I made apricot pies and raisin bread too using wheat based crust. Large cans of cooked apricots from Spain were available locally and very delicious, even with a bread crust.

There was a walled in Garden up at the back of the house that was accessed by the stairs through the house. Under the apple trees, filled with blossoms, in the spring was a wonderful place to lie. There were little bedrooms and big bedrooms. I had met my ex-husband through the yoga and we hung out and lived together in this house. There were a number of couples and one child that lived with her mom.

We paid rent and also give more than the required amount as we felt inspired to support the whole venture. It was mixed up with past lives and the idea that we were all pretty important people in a distant biblical past. One of the tall girls had some ability to see the past lives of others. She said I was interested in prison reform and was a quaker in another life. The Edgar Cayce readings were front and center, backing up these ideas.

As part of this community our duties were to teach yoga classes. We practiced yoga but we’re not given much in the way of formal training. The leader liked to come in late at night after some class in Dublin, and we all stood around as he talked. We had some high jinks with dancing on the table and staying up all night and had a lot of fun, as a group. 

I was passionate about things like prana, diet, and yoga exercises. We did classes in the towns both far and near. I was dropped off in Mullingar, in the center of Ireland.  My classes were held in an upstairs hotel room with big windows that looked out on the street. I waited for the other person to come back from her class in another town, to get my ride back to Dublin.

Part of the Yoga business included selling cottage cheese and bread to the class members as well as in the store/gym in Eccles Street  in Dublin. Not everyone loved the hard bread and follow-up business was not always that great for my bread. The cottage cheese was made by another member of the group. He took on this onerous chore of producing cottage cheese to a consistent standard.

I was interested in dreams back then and kept a number of big dream journals. When emigrating to the United States I decided not to bring them with me and left them out for the trashcan. Later I kept dream journals and pondered their meaning. 

I am still having dreams but much less often, reduced to a few a month. I do hear dreams every day from others and love to hear them, draw them, talk about them and generally walk around in them. Chains have appeared in three dreams of others lately. 

This morning in meditation I quieten my body into a stillness by breathing exercises and chanting. I am also seeing the need to quieten my mind so I brought myself back to this task a few times. I said “less and less” of Rose and “more and more of God” as I got into a child’s pose (yoga) in my mind a number of times. Eventually there seemed to be a shift and I felt some thing that was around me fall away and like a lotus flower opening. I was left with a center above me. It was shiny and diamonds and finally a flame. 

When I told this to another, he said that when I said those words he had the vision of being very small and going into the lighted cross. I am reminded of the white shadow of the cross from my mother’s dream. I felt calm and at peace after the meditation. 

If you are wondering what to do about any war situation, you can meditate at 8 am and 8 pm each day and when you get into some center in yourself, you can send the light to surround the leaders of nations. Do not be frustrated, accept what is and be assured your prayers will be heard in God’s time. Thank you for reading, for considering these things. I look forward to comments.  

Love from Rose.