Rose Longworth Counseling

New Year’s Day at the River

Posted on January 17, 2020 by rlongwort

You will not believe this, but I went for a polar plunge into a swimming hole, in Black Run River, six feet deep at its deepest, on New Year’s Day. I went there to be at water on this first day of the year. It was in the forties and cold and I walked back and forth on the stony edge unable to get myself to put my already cold feet into the water.

There is the start of a bridge at the side of the stream. Beyond the beginnings of the bridge, no longer going across the stream, somebody was sitting out of sight except her two blue legs and her brown boots behind a nook that hid the rest of her

My neighbor was doing some contemplation just beyond this point.

I wanted to include some art in that first day of the year, so I tried to sketch the river. The rocks were so many, the distance too much, the stream so moving. Putting in the blue legs and brown boots was the easy part.

I saw her pick up her cloth bag, and climb up on to the remains of the bridge and soon we were chatting, she with a lovely smile and pleasant, as she spoke to me. I told her of my plan to fall into the water and she said that once she was in Patagonia surrounded by glacial lakes. She knew how cold they would be. She had to go for a polar swim there, as it was unlikely she would ever go back to that particular part of South America again.

She agreed to put some pictures on my phone, as I went in to the water and I was sold on getting in with my shoes and swimsuit on. I came prepared. I swam out in a circle, felt the bottom and decided to drop down to cover my head. What baptism is complete without dunking the head underneath; to wash away iniquity, cleanse me from my sins. In my distracted moment of being frozen and shocked, I forgot my prayers but that intention was there underneath the laughter that rocked me as I got out again.

I was full of laughter as I wrapped myself up

I persuaded her to go in also as she told me her job was a teacher and her business was a Forest School. She is out in nature all the time with her students.

She noted she had gotten frostbite on her feet in the past and had to be careful with the cold. She went in to the water with her beanie on her head. We exchanged telephone numbers. It turned out we are near neighbors.

January is one third gone. The moon is almost full again and I had a few dreams as usually happens when the moon is waxing. The dreams and the moonlight came in a skylight and landed on my face waking me up. I was highly pleased to think the moon had settled on me in this way.

My first dream was that my old mentor is telling me she likes my house but pity about the neighborhood. The next one of my dreams was of being in India and looking for the toilet bowl. I was having a hard time finding it. There was a man guarding the space but I did not see the needed commode. The next dream was of a basement with a wonderful bright green paint color on the walls. There was a bank of windows down there also. I could see out to the forest outside and the outside and inside blended beautifully. There were plants inside also.

Those first two dreams unsettle me, meaning I have to examine what I am bringing in to the neighborhood of myself that makes it “a pity.” My inner man, as represented by my father’s opinions that will not serve me now. The dreams are telling me of unbalance in my psyche which effects my health and my mental state.

Beautiful balance in this horse and carriage on the road by Silver Lake

The dream of the commode brings me to the place that carries away waste products from the psyche. My inner man(opinions) is preventing me finding that place. Also being intuitive about what I eat and making time for meals will serve me better than rushing down a huge bowl of something while on the run somewhere The image of the man that unstuck my feet from another dream is the opposite from the male in the dream above. He was such a helpful dream image.

I can ask what is stopping me releasing something I have to let go of. It can be physical as well as spiritual blocks. The second one brings me to India, which brings me to spiritual practices and I may need to release some thinking in order to let go of the way I am using my mental and emotional abilities.

That last dream about that wonderful green color, a color I think is associated with the heart, gives me encouragement. That the color is downstairs in the basement, in the unconscious may be a good thing. That there is growing plants within my individual space and also outside in the collective space is something to notice. I love windows and the bank of windows blend the inside and outside also. There is some protection there too from the glass windows.

Tree root above the old washed out river bridge – with green light in the starry moss

I will buy some of this “green light color” and look to see what new paints I need for the New Year. Doing something to salute a new dream is always a good idea as the unconscious will continue to interact with me in the dreams bringing me to what I need to work with next, and correcting what needs attention in my journey so far.

The full moon is waning now. I wish you good recall of the dreams we all are having and in this way I will get good recall myself. I will pray for you and as you can see from my blogs, while I have a focus, I often fall off the wagon of learning and into old stuck places. I need any and all prayers I can get. Thanks so much and Love from Rose.

Posted in dreams, Psychoanalytic, Uncategorized | Tagged dreams, New Year Day Swim | Leave a comment

New Year’s Day 2020

Posted on January 1, 2020 by rlongwort

I met a young man in his mid twenties over a week ago. He told me his story of how he was criss-crossing America in honor of his deceased father, who was a truck driver. He said he was going to spread his father’s ashes in different places where his father travelled in America. His 1940’s moter bike is currently in Texas and his friend invited him to Harrisonburg for the Holidays. He said his father worked hard to support him and his mother all his life.

He had a connection to making film and wanted to interview me about my life and he asked me about dreams and meditation and finally got to the question of energy.

I have no idea what I said on that short film about energy but when that Short story below came up a few days later, I connected it to the question of energy.

Short Christmas Story

(First told to me by my friend’s daughter on the occasion of a conversation about energy.)

The old man just over ninety, said it would be the last year he would be hosting Christmas dinner at the home he lived in for many years. He would try and sell the home of many years, where he raised children, had vast gardens, and molded his home into beautiful presentation. This announcement has a heavy chilling effect on the following two generations present, now gathered with their array of potluck dishes spread before them. Their red and festive clothes, their favorite and juicy dishes could not pull the mood away from this impending doom.

When his daughter and his granddaughter, now thirty-three, were cleaning up the very last vestiges of the meal and the gathering, when most people had left for home, something unusual happened in one of the rooms.

There were two candlesticks and an old music box on the table in one of the sitting rooms reflected in the mahogany patina. As the two women went past the pocket doors, their high heels clacking on the golden wood, both carrying what has to be put away, after such a large gathering, they were both arrested mid step as that old music box started to turn, filling the air with the sweet melody of years gone past. This music box had sat silent since the grandmother had died refusing to be wound up and refusing to play.

In astonishment the younger woman looked at her aunt, who laughed and said that is “just grandma.” She loved music and had a lightness of spirit that came in to let her granddaughter know she was not to loose the joy of life and that a place, such as that old magnificent mansion, was not the holder of joy, but the people gracing the spaces were the only ones who carried mood and joy in together with their dishes and their festive clothes and airs.

As the granddaughter sat there in the golden morning sunshine telling me her story about this energetic happing she gathered meaning for herself from this joyous event that just happened to her and her aunt. A realization comes up through her that she does not have control over her life in many ways, but she is striving after making up her own joy now. The one thing she can see is that her grandmother brought marvelous mood to the holidays. Her love of music and that of her grandmother has brought joy and happiness to the holiday gatherings. It was enough to set the music box to twirling out the old and beautiful tune that link the finite with the infinite, the living and the ancestor, the past and the future. The end.

I hope I do a little traveling again in 2020

It is New Years Day 2020 here and I want to try and squeeze in everything I want to continue with for the rest of 2020.

I meditated in the early hours and felt my energy spreading out into a oneness with the infinite spirit. However brief a few seconds that was, before my conscious mind dragged me back to my thoughts, I am glad that that happened to me, to get my New Year off to a lovely ecstatic start.

I head a sound of breaking glass that was loud enough for me to think it was outside myself. It was accompanied with the sight of a starburst. A lighted center, from which came many prongs of light. It was of the dream world, a little vision, but I like to be amused with playing with the idea that something is breaking out inside, connected to the light.

The dream I had was of a baby, still very young. I saw a baby at work, still sitting on the lap mostly, but also almost walking, seven months old. In my dream the baby looks lovely. I seem to be caring for it, but not very well. As it falls I reach out and steady it enough for it not to hurt itself as it falls down. I think it happened twoice in the dream, this falling down. Now when I am exercising I like to think this baby is on my body, or that I am holding it, or that I am being held like a baby. It feels good to keep the image alive with me as I go about my day.

On my own this holiday season, mostly, it is easy to fall into the feelings of aloneness, waiting for others to bail me out or to binge watch old episodes on TV. But today, the first day of the rest of my life and the New Year, I am vigilant to only let in what I want to continue with in my life. I meditated after 3.00 am. I exercised. I cooked buckwheat cakes that filled the house with good smells. I have plans to visit the river. This is my writing. And I will paint a little and be outside while I do it, preferably at the river.

I wish you all a great upcoming year my friends. Keep praying for me and I will pray we all may go straight forward wherever the spirit leads. All Love Surround you Always.

Posted in meditation, Psychoanalytic, Uncategorized | Tagged dream, meditation, story of music box | Leave a comment

Christmas Poetry Group

Posted on December 28, 2019 by rlongwort

I went to poetry group yesterday. Before group I listened to a long phone conversation, where the woman is telling the man many things to do. I listened to his consternation, audible on the other side of the phone, his unbelief that he had to take care of two sets of newly born kittens and make sure they were warm and fed.

She encouraged and coached him to hold the kitten to the mama cats’ nipples and to bath them in warm water and blow dry them if necessary to keep them warm and fed. She had a few other requests which went from cleaning out something stink in the fridge, to washing the cat rags after the birth and finally calling the town hall about an e-mail that went astray.

When our leader came she reported that she was delayed by dump and recycling concerns. She brought us a Christmas poem, which included the line that the oxen kneeled at the birth of Jesus. She answered some questions about the ability of the poem to bring us to something out of the ordinary, to have us fall into hope, to be lifted up. She quoted two lines from the end of the poem “The Collar.” In the poem, a priest is complaining deeply to God about his life and his profession and how hard it all is for him. His concluding lines approximately were; “Me thought I heard a voice say “child” and I answered “My Lord.”

I had a strong visceral reaction to the two lines above, as if something reined down on me from above and turned over in me what needed to be righted in my Solar Plexus. Shivers went all over me, as if I was the “child,” being acknowledged by God. I was caught in the net of the speaker, the words and my listening self. I kept repeating the lines all day in wonderment at their ability to move me so.

Later when I went over this story with a friend, the same thing happened again, accompanied by shivers. The listener then said, she might have come out that evening especially to hear the “Collar.” On that same evening she had come through a car accident when two deer dashed out in front of her and went between her car and another on a narrow dark country road.

A young man in his mid thirties said he is happy but his joy is gone. He thought he had it when cycling on the west coast of America, young and fancy free. While talking in this way he is looking in an old album and finds something that brings him back to his teens, a time when he wrote out what it was that would bring him joy. It is the necessary search of the second half of his life where his soul work has to be included in his life work in order to give him meaning. All he needs is that intention, that childlike intention, and it will bring him the dreams and the intuitions that will bring him back to his joy.

And there is that wondering in me about what exactly the collared priest would have said to his God to whom he had devoted his life… Perhaps it was thirty pages long!

The Priest’s Complaints

“I am here for mass and confessions and now look out at the crowd of serious faces, looking to my direction, so that I would look up to you oh God, for them. They come with their deep suffering and want me, a little man, to lift it all up. How useless I feel in that moment. I hear their sins and I attend to their deaths. I have no joy left in me.

What do I have from you Oh God, that goes through me to kick start their fires deep inside for burning their souls clean, for claiming their souls again!

I am your Man standing there, my feet frozen on the marble slabs waiting for the Net of Indra to raise off of everyone, that filament of hard tack that keeps their noses down on this big grind stone of life. I am their central pole having to hold it all up for you, for them. I need them all to be priests and I need them to hold up their own umbrellas and have courage to own their own souls again.

As I sit here resting, in that little space to call my own, on the marble chair on the side of the alter, I your priest am transported to the ocean, looking at the waves on the western seaboard of Ireland. I know I have to step onto my carrack with my own little oars and have to navigate the storm that life is for me. My little hallowed out log boat is bobbing about on the high waves of life. And I am asking you “will you take care of me?”

In the silence after the concretion of the mass I hear the word “child” and I fall on my knees, bow my head to the ground and say “Oh my Lord.”

Then I get up and ask the congregation to bow their heads for God’s blessing knowing that the blessing of God will come through me. “Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord.” The end.

I find myself on the far side of Christmas as I conclude these lines. I hope you are happy in your lot and in your life accepting all and pulling joy from the air around you and making clear your intentions for the New Year. I intend to write more,

more helpfully, be more in service and catch on to myself. I love the simplicity of the two lines above and their ability to ground me into joy. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Love from Rose.

I spent a lovely sunny afternoon at Rockfish Gap.

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Posted in Psychoanalytic | Tagged poetry group | Leave a comment

Mariah and the Butterfly Dreams

Posted on December 19, 2019 by rlongwort

Mariah was now living on her own for some time and while she was not overly happy about this situation she was not sad either. Winter had set in and she was going around in an inordinate amount of clothes, so much so, that she was in danger of becoming a pile of warm woolen rags. Sometimes her leg got caught in her skirts and would not go in or go out as she teetered on the brink of falling over into a bag of barley she had acquired.

When the weather was rainy she liked to set off the turf fire and cook up some barley cakes and wait for a leathery crust to form all around the soft insides and enjoy herself, not knowing when to stop her eating. The warmth and the sweetness filled her to overflowing with no indications of being too full until she was a few cakes too many inside.

She had one too many cabbages to deal with and was suspicious that too much cabbage was not good for her aches and pains. At the same time, she always ate cabbages when young and was reluctant to see the cabbages rot right in front of her.

She got a recipe last year, for the cabbages, from Druid Bernie who wanted her to make some for him also. It involved grating up cabbages, and mixing them up and then putting a little salty water on top and every day for five days pushing down the contents daily to get the air out, so the veggies would safely ferment. She found she likes this mix-up of vegetables and they lasted in her cold larder during the winter months.

She had a big dream of being in Druid Bernie’s kitchen, when she sees an enormous butterfly, about four times that of normal size, near her. She puts out and raises her arm and this butterfly lands on her arm as her eye rods adjust to seeing this butterfly, which is mostly whitish with black outlines on it and some decoration in black. The butterfly walks up her arm and stops at her throat and all the while she hears the butterfly breathing. Then she brings it over to a friend and the butterfly does the same thing again, breathing and going up to her friend’s throat.

Then there is some argument between the two women, about Mariah having to do some writing, but Mariah wants to leave it on her friend to do the writing. Her friend is sitting on a tallish stool and she says she cannot, as her hip is hurting her.

The butterfly trying to climb in her mouth

Mariah recalled another recent dream where a butterfly is trying to enter her mouth and she woke up as it was happening.

She would drag these dreams off to her dream group and see if she could settle out what they were about. She thought they were linked to her laziness for writing certain books and how she often lets herself off the hook paying attention only to her aches and pains. She resolved to write in short spurts and see where that got her.

Druid Bernie had not been around for a while, as he had not come back from his autumn wanderings. She was hoping he would come back so she could discuss with him the big changes in her life and get some input from him. She found herself bragging on how she was no longer living with Uishneach and at the same time, not feeling good about such bragging. She knew that something nearer the truth would be that she was pushed into living alone from a deep impulse inside, which left her time for her prayers and meditation.

She was spending more alone time along by the river and writing and watching the moon and dipping into the river. She was also getting time to meditate in the night or in the morning when she had the time to herself.

Her hip bones and knees were a little better behaved with less pain

She was going more on intuition relating to what she was eating and feeling good in general. She also had time for some body work where she used heated stones to move those complex muscle lumps from her thigh releasing her hip bones and her ingrown toenail into not hurting her half as much.

His lips were close to her lips in the dream

She had been writing about an imaginary lover, mostly inner man, and thought she had a few more limes to write. She dreamed of him on the solstice night, the darkest night in the whole year. He was in bed beside her and Mariah asked him how he got in, as she had two locked doors between her and air outside. It gave her a fright as she perused his lips so near to her own. He said one of her daughters let him in. Her dream went on to have him morph into a skinny guy that was not unlike her father. She had to think again about this sameness between her inner man and her father. Perhaps she was carrying around more of his images and influences than she would like. The end.

I hope you can enjoy the above winter story. While it is the darkest time of the year , there is so much more time to be in moonlight, starlight and for dreaming and imagination. I wish you all the best holiday greetings, and a great openness to love, what ever your persuasion. Keep praying for me and I am praying regularly for my readers. Love from Rose.

Happy Christmas – Artwork by Miriam completed many years ago.

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Posted in dreams, Psychoanalytic, Uncategorized | Tagged dreams and drawings, Leprechaun story, Watercolors | Leave a comment

Anger Management Group – Patience and Wrath.

Posted on December 12, 2019 by rlongwort

Anger Management Group – Patience and Wrath.

Over the years I have sat in many anger management groups, including two a week for the last eighteen months plus. I also ran an anger management group in the Community Services Board for about four years. Most of those attending were court ordered.

Looking through the November Window where I work two days a week.

I can say that I have and do love all the clients that attend. I especially love the interactions between the members, where they become the teachers to each other.

So many have been so badly treated in childhood by angry parents and other trusted individuals. .

What cross purposes in the sky last Sunday?

I have used various sheets, to help the process along and give us a focus for the 60 or 90 minutes as the case may be. Sometimes I found them very helpful and at other times had to depend on my clients to say how the material applied to them. They bravely answered questions that I did not even know were hidden in there in the materials and in the people attending.

Recently as we discussed what had occurred to cause anger in the previous week, the words that came up were wrath and patience.

Now wrath is a resentful type of anger and patience, in the ancient sense is the “ability to suffer.”

Someone might be looking for a way to work through their anger but fails to see that is what the class is for. As far as they are concerned, we are useless to them, especially as they grapple with the court ordered piece of the class, failing to see we are the messengers of the anger management group and are not the courts and their orders.

A meditation candle patiently burns and in this case has acquired a little dress for the flame.

As time goes by however, we all settle into this rolling group which becomes a unit as some point as three or four or five start near the same time and they get to know each other and generously share their circumstances, not holding back at all. Good advice is also given out unexpectedly by clients, sharing what works for them, helping one and all.

Working on the unit about empathy, brought up the advice for a man to say to his wife that what he did hurt her. When he came back the next week, he shared that she stopped giving him a hard time over what he had done, just because he listened to her one time and acknowledged that what he had done, hurt her. We could all try this approach of acknowledging out part in a conflict, and noting that our actions did hurt the other person, deeply sometimes.

When one young man said he was looking for other anger management help, he found there was little on offer, and when he found one, they were booked up for a long time. I felt the slur on my offerings but let it slide on for a moment. Then I said to myself, he thinks little of my anger management group, why don’t I confront him about what he did to make his girlfriend angrier that ever.

“At any point before making the call, did you consider that this would not help your case and give you what you wanted.” He immediately went into why he had to set the world to rights in this case and say what he thought.

Sometimes we get red in the face when our buttons are pushed and if we are pushing other people’s buttons.

Other client said that he should not have allowed her to push his buttons, that she never lets others do that to her. Another said that he “sucks up” in order to get where he wants in relation to having time with his children. He was able to get a good custody arrangement and mostly what he wanted.

I mumbled that when it comes to anger, we all have to find what works for us. If we fall on our faces, we have to get up and try something else. If we always do what we always do, we cannot expect things to change.

Ancestral inheritance plays its part also and the young man later thought of his grandmother and how she was. Anger is a learned behavior we are told.

Watercolor – inner person- maybe ancestor representation.

I might say that we came into the world to work on such issues as our anger. That patience is a part of possession of our souls and that this possession comes through suffering the other person to be the way they are until they see differently. We do not seem to be in charge of how the other person is acting. Walking away works for so many people.

Toward the end of his life, my father said he found his anger very difficult. I was helping/watching him dose a calf. His method was to put the medicine in a smallish bottle that he held in his hand. Then he would put it in the calf’s mouth and hold the animal steady as it drained down the throat. Naturally the calf thought this was not something he could comply with and he pushed with all his might and his tongue to stop the medicine going down.

Evening sky over Mole Hill – farmland all.

When my father lost his temper he almost pushed the bottle down the calve’s neck completely. I stood by, seeing with horror, the bottle almost disappear down the calve’s neck. The calf helped cough it up and the medicine was gone down. That was when my father said “I have been trying all my life to manage my anger.” The following summer he was dead, lifted out of this life and his animal husbandry.

Often but not always liquor or drugs may have a hand on the dreaded punishments from the courts. I like to drag on that a little and sometimes the client will clean up their act completely, and other times they are determined to keep on keeping on with the booze. My training in motivational interviewing comes in handy as I flex those muscles of trying to motivate them into change. In these cases I need a lot of patience as I watch body language that tells me the client wants to block out completely what I just said.I gain a good rapport with them and the other clients sometimes help by telling how the substance abuse had harmed them and how they are managing their life much better without it.

Walking out by the farmland near Stanton in Virginia

Thank you for being on this journey with me in the anger management department. I always have to keep an eye on my temper, on the road and in other arenas. Please sign up for my blog and also share as that is the one way of getting my works out. Please pray for ma and I am praying for you as I sit in the light of the full moon coming in through my skylight. Love from Rose.

Posted in Psychoanalytic, Uncategorized | Tagged Anger Management | 2 Comments

The Case of the Heart

Posted on December 1, 2019 by rlongwort

I awoke at 4.26 am last night and considered I had enough sleep and I could meditate. Toward the end of my meditation I made the prayer about creating in me a pure heart. It is an affirmation from the Edgar Cayce reading and I had committed it to memory many years ago.

Before going to sleep, I had just read of a woman, who had a dream about Jesus offering her a new heart if she would agree to accept it.

After my meditation, I went back to sleep and had this dream:

My ex and I are together in a room. We had left out last digs and arrived at our new ones. Then I realize that I have left an off-green colored case behind, as I had not checked out one of the rooms properly. I just know it is back there and also know I am not going back for it. There is the complication of some pure white clothes, which I am wondering what to do with.

I concluded that the dream is about the heart, as the case is in the green color and the other woman’s dream is about the heart and I said the prayer relating to the heart. That was my intuitive leap.

While I am meditating later in the morning at my little church, I focus on the dream some and think of Jesus talking to me about it. He helps me into my new white clothes. He shows me the other beautiful green of the pure true heart. He is sending his energy down into the ground and connects with the mother there that rides on the sweet secret streams of light sending up all that is green that grows on the earth. Then he lifts up his arms and pulls down all that is light from above and the both meet in the heart chakra, sending it around, a great prayer wheel, grinding all that has to go including that off color green case.

Water diverted away from the water wheel- the wheel is toward the right of the photo below

After church I leave for Dayton Lake as the sky is so blue and the sun is shining. I settle close to the waterfall. I know I want to write.

I find a ledge, a little below the lake and the worst of the breeze and I am dressed warmly in my blue layers and have found some towels destined for the second hand store in the boot of my car and am comfortably sitting on them.

As I am sitting there lots of horse and buggies go past, some on the bridge below where I sit and many others on the road behind me, by the side of the lake. The horses’ tails and manes fly out behind them in the breeze. They are running fast and I had to be ready to catch one on camera. Strong horses, to pull a big black carriage up the Mole hill and down the dales on the other side.

Waterfall to my right and the horses sped past

Three strands of grass grew out of a little hole in the concrete and when the wind blew them into the falling water, I was covered in drops of water. Other times the breeze got under the water as it fell and sent spray my way. I love being so close to the water.

Toward the top left are the drops falling down catching the light.

The wheel here at the Dayton Mill is almost out of my sight and no longer in use. I crawl along my ledge to get a better view and see the water dripping down catching the light in each of the beaded drops. The business of that mill in the past was grinding grain from miles around and keeping the district supplied with food. I could see the light of other days, when so many came and went here on their horse drawn carriages, full of the grain of their fields.

Mandala with kundalini energy imaged on the right represented by the snake like image.

The other image from the dream is that of the folded white clothes. I associate this to Revelation where the injunctions are to put on ” white raiment to cover your nakedness. You are luke warm and because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth.” Well the white raiment is in the dream. I need to let go of the past and the ugly green suitcase and get on with wearing that white raiment. There is no room for luke-warmness on this path.

When I arrived in Dayton first, I notice lots of geese on the lake. The green sludge, an ugly green, is still banked against the edges of the lake. The geese are cleaning the sludge up and there is much less than in the late summer.

In outer life my ex and I are separated again but he is back in my dream representing my inner male side. He and I have made a move, a shift into other places in our outer life, which brings in an inner psychic shift. Dream work is soul work and this past weekend, working on this dream had calmed me and helped me see where I am going and helped me be about my soul business.

A little soul business is always good business

As I always ask, keep me in your prayers, hold me up in the light, surround me with light. Take your pick. After I meditate, I will send the light your way.

You can sign up for my blog anytime and enjoy this writing, whether you are in India, Ireland, United States, England, or any of the other countries where my blog has found a home. Thanks for being there in this conversation and Happy Thanksgiving. Love from Rose.

Posted in Counseling, Dream Counseling, Psychoanalytic, Uncategorized | Tagged Daton Mill wheel, dreams, Mandalas, meditation, Silver Lake, Watercolors | Leave a comment

Lines Written Above the River

Posted on November 21, 2019 by rlongwort

I love to visit Riven river where it is so decorated with large rectangular rocks. The light in the flowing water its such a treat and is ever changing depending on the leaf cover, the blue sky reflections and the time of day. I always feel drawn into the water even in the winter and went in the water as late as a week ago. I threw myself under about 13 times as a sort of winter baptism for cleansing and for invigorating my slowing up body.

The lines composed below have been gestating for a few weeks now. The poetry started with the Harvest moon when I had a lovely dream of a man who was young and beautiful. His dark hair fell over half his face and he had a shy smile. It is always a good idea to acknowledge such a gift with a little writing and painting. He unlocked my feet where they was stuck.

Caught in the moon

She hung upside down

Happy to be a fool

Until pearly drops

fall

From toes to nose

Over the top of her head

Oystering her all over

The view from the top of the steps at our digs in Santorini – We were surrounded by water

Her moon river young lover

Hovered over her

Writher

Rider

In the early evening

Goddessing her

King of angels

Waters of Babylon

Under rocks

Bathing her

Healing leaves fall

On her naked body

Leaves leaping from

Rounding branches

Chance letting go

To fall down

On her upturned toes

Glancing off her knees

Rooling down long bones

Circling in her leg tops

Bathing in her basin

Rounding her breasts

Licking her chin

She butterflies

The leaf passing by

With her tongue

Sticking to her forhead

tangling in her long hair

Falling on the ground

Leaves

Carried on the sound

Of wind

Blown over river stones

To gather around the man

Waiting patiently

For the meeting

Waiting for timing

To let her slip into his lap

Alive

In Sunlight she hangs

Above the pools

Above the three stones

She sees her fish

Flaunting

His orange fins

As he weaves back and forth

Showing

The black and white lines

of the edges

telling her of Damulzi

Her lover

Lost on the mountain

When her need is the sorest

The inner Man can come alive in the imagination of poetry. The metaphors relating to the Hanged Man of the tarot cards plays into the art of that place where we have to stay in an impossible situation for some time. These situations come up often, maybe daily for us. I meet people in my work who are caught in such court orders and such relationships. They appreciate the feeling of there is nothing you can do but wait.

I am in a new place again having finished my old relationship and having to hang in the in-between of my decision and without seeing into my future that my conscious mind might like to have.

Nevertheless, I am happy writing and meditating and feeling new feelings of being unstuck, and released in new ways. Sometimes when something is over it is over. Everyone benefits from the change.

I hope you are remembering your Dreams and that you are getting some insight from them. Please sign up on this site for an email which will come to you when I post a blog. Please keep me in your prayers as I keep you. We are the people of the light, keeping each other in the light. Love from Rose.

PS: I am starting a dream group on December 4th at 9am. I have one person signed up and hope to collect a few more over the next few weeks. Contact me at rlongwort@gmail.com if you wish to find out more details. Thanks.

Posted in Dream Counseling, Psychoanalytic, Uncategorized | Tagged Animus, poetry, Tarro Card | 1 Comment

The Walls of Memories

Posted on November 9, 2019 by rlongwort

I had a two dream fragments last night; one was a very purposeful woman going to the right. There is a wall so I only see the upper half.

I remember a different kind of walls, from my childhood. When I was young, the walls of rocks and cement, were built by my father. One wall was at least five feet high. The tops were jagged and were spaced, like on the top of a castle, each one a little apart.

The top of the wall was spiky – but not as spiky as the top of this mandala.

The wall was part of “a crush” into which the cattle, four at a time were hunted, with shouts and sticks. When the cattle were persuaded to go into this crush, the first one had its nose up against a steel gate and the last one had an iron bar against its knees and neither could escape, back or forward.

Then the wily framer could put clips in their ears, dose them or inject them. This was my father’s farmyard operating room.

I remember him rubbing his hands together in satisfaction the first time it worked so well for him.

He was dressed in a thin grey pants, which hung on his bony hips. He liked to wear some old cardigan and blue shirt on top. His hair was graying and his teeth were few and far between, even though he was not very old yet.

Meanwhile the crush was a great source of delight for our imagination. I learned to walk along the jagged stones at the top, light on my feet, in my ragged little dress, at home on the farm. My younger sister and brother was there with me too. And while we were at it we walked along the top of the gate also. The top bar was an inch wide at most.

Matty on top of the shed cutting the ivy out of his beloved tree.

The crush was built to fulfill government regulations that all cattle be tested for Tuberculosis. Each head of cattle had to have a clip on it’s ear, as a result of the testing, after they passed the test. The vet had to come out to give the all clear for the cattle. It was a great source of anxiety at the time, whether the animals would have the wrong reaction, a lump on the rump maybe, that told the right or wrong story.

The ones that failed the TB test had to be taken away and the rest of the herd had to be tested in six months again, and cattle could not be sold in the meantime. It seemed a shameful fate for a farmer even if his cattle were carrier of the disease.

My father also built a ramp to get the cattle up into his new trailer. The wall was the height of the floor of the trailer, backed up into place. This meant he no longer had to walk/bike with the cattle, five miles to the “sales” in Moate, where cattle were sold.

Prior to the trailer, he would have to get a few people to help him get the cattle to the sales safely, making sure they did not escape into houses or through open gates along the way and also making sure they stayed on the right road.

Unlike this road, over Molehill, the roads in Co Westmeath in Ireland mostly have hedges on either side.

He would ride up along the side of the cattle, as they ran along on the road at a fast run and he would just about head them off so they would not go into a field or a wrong road. He used his long legs to balance against the ditch and push off if he had no room at the side of the cattle. He used shouting liberally to achieve his end. He carried a stick.

Much more control when cattle were loaded up on a trailer and tractor.

The evening before going to the sales, we would kneel down, as a family and pray he would get a good price for his cattle. I knelt under his shadow, as his knees touched the armchair and he had his brown beads in his hand, with my mother calling and the family responding.

The turf fire in the stove gave off a soft warm heat that made the kettle sing, behind him and to his right as he faced away from the stove. A pot of porriage gestating on a cooler place on the stove, was getting ready for the morning meal. Above the stove was a rack with three lines on it, that went the length of the kitchen and had a pulley to lower and heighten it, full of clothes drying, oftentimes nappies.

I remember the first time he used his new ramp, we all got up early to help with getting the loading accomplished. My father scattered straw on the floor of the trailer and out onto the ramp, to fool the cattle into walking over the divide between ramp and trailer. Cattle can be spooked by such gaps under their feet. I remember rolling in the fresh straw for fun, basking in that smell of dust and warmth.

My mother and father did the most of the work but we, the children were placed strategically to make sure the cattle went in the right direction. Even a small child jumping and shouting persuades a huge steer to go in a different direction.

Some of us felt more frightened than others.

Now the other fragment of dream, in addition to the dream of the wall and woman above, was of walking in a chaotic mess, chartreuse, red, like fallen leaves but not.

I associated these colors here, from my MARI training, to represent all my negative thoughts that have fallen down around me and I have to walk through them, unless I become conscious of those negative thoughts, and finally got above them. This fragment shows what is behind the wall.

So if you have a preponderance of negative thoughts going on, maybe you, like me can get up on your wall and walk lightly along the top, as you work with your imagination and have a great time, being the tight rope walker of your mind, no longer falling down into that mess of negative thoughts. You are looking out beyond, where the path is pleased when poured around, where it is straight forward where ever the spirit leads.

You too can sign up for my blog post when I put them up on this site. I hope you enjoy and that you are encouraged to record and think about your dreams. I am always here to help if needed. If you are serious about your own spiritual path it is a must and for me a given that I will look at them even if they are only fragments. Love from Rose.

Posted in Counseling, Psychoanalytic, Uncategorized | Tagged dream fragment, Mandala, memories of childhood., walls | 2 Comments

Party Time on the Street

Posted on November 1, 2019 by rlongwort

The springs in the bottom of this lake are in service to any that want to partake. The geese benefit and the farmers and many more.

It was Friday night, of JMU’s homecoming weekend, and I went to bed early as usual. I had a busy day and early start so I was ready for some lie down. But the party across the road, was only coming into full swing. Earlier I saw a guy cutting the grass, another going in and out of the basement. Cars came full of coolers.

There are eight apartments in the house. The bank took it from an old lady that used to house the poor, homeless and the mentally ill, among othrs. There used to be cardboard boxes in some of the down stairs windows. My daughter called it a crack house when she saw it first. It stayed vacant for about two years. What marvelous quiet. Now it looks fine on the outside and noisy at times like this.

These are holy people connected to Japan and Buddhism. The party goers were surely as numerous.

The lights were down low; the upper story with a roof over the front porch was dotted with people. There was a steady stream of people in and out of the basement and each time the basement door was dropped it crashed loudly. Music came out of there that had a beat that could only be described as disharmonic. It rounded itself out way below the ground and only found its way through, out of there, through those who were imbibing far too much of what is not too good for them.

Cars came by the dozen, dropping and picking up people. I slept after 3.00 am until 8 am when the last of the people, some with occasional shouting and screaming, were heard to leave, having discovered the loss of something that was precious.

The house can be seen through the hedge with two sets of steps up to the front door.

Trying to do meditation in the middle of this mess is wearing and the relentless noise over eighteen hours is hard on the psyche. I wonder what the lesson is for me; that I need to party a little more, acknowledge my dissonance and spend a little time, a little tipsy on the roof!

The intersection where I live at the corner of two streets, is the place of many accidents and I had a purposeful idea to imagine angels on the four corners so that it would not happen any more. It has been a while since I heard that loud bang of two cars coming together. I prefer not to hear it ever. If it happens, the city comes and does clean it up in a matter of hours leaving nothing but a little bit of a light in the hedge, a piece of metal, a small smatter of glass that is left to catch the evening sunlight.

Going away on vacation can change our direction, when we come back. This friendly cretan woman pealed some figs for me and handed them to me to eat as the sun was going down.

I am at an intersection in my own life again, after four years in a committed relationship. We will stay friends. I am sad of course but feel compelled to move this way.

Getting into the intersection happened quiet suddenly and we are now spending out last nights together. I blame the last full moon, and moving upstairs into a newly completed attic space. Apparently the four roads opened up for me in that space and hopefully there I will find the up and down direction, down into mother earth, into the ball of the iron core in which sits the crystal of life and out into the universe, where her crystals sit in the center of all the bright objects out there.

A little bonsai the did not work out too well for me.

I had this dream I was at the local box office for the Court Square Threat. I am at the grill, getting my ticket. There is a crush of people all around me and my feet have become locked in place. A hand reaches in to my shoulder and extricates me. I think that the hand is of one of my former teachers at JMU but when I look into his face I find he is a man I do not know with a shock of dark hair over his face on one side and he has a shy smile.

From my imagination to yours – from the dream above

This is a depiction of my animus, my inner man. I am delighted to see him, both in my dream and when I wake up. I take it that my decision to live on my own is a good one, as it somehow unlocks my feet, my understanding. The support of such a one is romantic, profoundly helpful. He seems to know what to do. Oh how we love a man who knows what to do, about something that is locking us down. Inner man, inner man of course.

This dream man represents the hero, as he rescued me..

My massage therapist dreamed of a wonderful nettle pesto. My mother gathered nettles up and put them in soups and mashed potatoes. She fed them to delicate turkeys before eating the turkeys’s for Christmas. She believed them to be very purifying, the nettle I mean.

My dreamer wondered what to do about her dream. She knew where the nettles grew and I encouraged her to gather them together to the making of a great pesto and to invite me over and we could look into the dream together over dinner. I think the fact there is a pesto mentioned with the nettles, may mean that the body would benefit from an oil combined with nettles. I like to drink nettle tea when I can and a dreamer once gave me a 2 oz. bottle of nettle tincture in exchange for some dream interpretation. I though I made out well in that instance. The liquid was a bright green.

God and Goddess uniting – another kind of marriage.

I dreamed of the photographer, at my wedding forty years ago, last night. I like to take photographs myself. Another male handsome man coming in the dreams to me who did something creative for me back then. I know little of his life now except he likes to dance as an interest. Perhaps I can look at those photos he took as I started my married life back then. Forty years ago I was buying my wedding dress. Hopefully the marriage within will come in its own good time. The dreamer man encourages me to bookend my forty years of marriage, in a quiet, peaceful way.

You can sign on for my blog easily and you will get a copy by email as soon as I post.

Blowing in the wind after a day in the surf in Santorini.

Likes and comments are greatly appreciated. Happy dreaming and where ever you find yourself in life, may you stay in touch with all that is pure crystal, ready to get into the crossroads of the up and down movement of energy. May you be full of the love of life. Love from Rose.

Posted in Dream Counseling, dream interpretation, dreams, Interpretation, Psychoanalytic, Uncategorized | Tagged Animus, dreams, Homecoming for JMU, Inner man, Interpretation, party time, stages of animus | Leave a comment

A Positive Soul Woman

Posted on October 29, 2019 by rlongwort

I got the following dream from a friend to share. He was able to say it to me verbatim before he ever wrote it down.

Having fun with oil pastels and oil on heavy paper at the black face of the coal for the client.

My mother said that when she was in her thirties she had a dream of an angel coming to her with a scrool, on which was written what she needed to do for the rest of her life. By the time she was telling me about it she had let it drop away from her but she may have been strongly influenced by it none the less.

Angel of the morning in a mandala circle

The Dream:

Rose,

“I am sitting in a circle in a small group. The lighting is soft, subtle, soothing. There are about 8 in the group. Our facilitator is a wise, calm, centered woman … listens well and is very inspiring. We are gathered with the purpose of spiritual and personal growth. As the session ends, I sit next to her as others get up and leave the circle. We sit silently for a period. She turns to me and says, “I have something very important to tell you, very important. Life is about choices. As you see two paths before you, notice that each one has assets and liabilities, joys and sorrows, struggles and opportunities, doors difficult to open and doors wide open, light and darkness.

Evening on Mole Hill where I sat painting for a few hours in the sunshine.
The view from this path was stunning toward the mountains.

Ponder each path. Look carefully at the dynamics present in each one, pluses, and minuses. Now look inside yourself and examine how and why you look at each path as you do; how you discern, what you are drawn to and what you wish to avoid. Now, as you choose one path, be fully aware that Spirit will be with you to guide you to wholeness.” She slowly turns in her chair, rises and walks slowly away. I sit there stunned, flooded with gratitude, fresh insight, anticipation and anxiety. I am silent for a long time.”
You have my permission to share this on your blog. The end.

An evening meditation on Mole Hill, where there is a pull off with trees overhead, and a view east west with the road.

The first archetype that can appears in men’s dreams is Eve with her instinct and biological relations. Helen of Troy is a depiction of the second archetype, where she inspires a war. Emotions and feelings are up and going with this one. The third archetype is Virgin Mary which raises love to a spiritual level and the last one, the wisdom one, is depicted by the wise Mona Lisa, or the Shulamite woman of the Song of Solomon in the Bible, where there is an embodiment of the spirit and love into the physical body.

Dreams have to be treated to some imagination as in active imagination – which brings in the light.

It will be important for the dreamer to identify what he will do as a result of this dream. The ending of his dream is full of feeling words; stunned, anxious and grateful. He will need to take seriously the feelings, moods, fantasies and expectations sent by his anima figure above. When he works slowly and patiently with this material, his next dreams will bring up material from a deeper level of the unconscious that connects with the earlier material.

What he decides to do has to be evaluated ethically, and intellectually. The anima wisdom figure above is encouraging him to “look inside and examine” What he is “drawn” to: what “to avoid.” The dream does not do the work for him, which has to be done on a conscious level.

I work from the heart and hope there is a window of light flowing through to help with interpretation.

I think that the work he does should be undertaken with another who has some skill with dreams, to looks at dreams as the way to unfold in his true form, no longer regarding dreams as “only a fantasy” but taken seriously as the way to be in touch with the soul, the anima. It is what I love to do best.

Surely we were looking up over the Monastery in Crete for the window from heaven that is pouring down a blessing that there is not room enough to receive. Siri Amrita is on right- leader of our retreat.

Sign up for my blog on this site. Hope you keep your spiritual work alive and well with dreams, prayer and meditation, not to forget keeping your self exercised and watered. All things work together for those who love the Lord. Love from Rose.

Posted in Dream Counseling, dream interpretation, dreams, Psychoanalytic, Uncategorized | Tagged anima, dream, dreams and interpretation, meditation, soul woman, watercolors and drawings | Leave a comment

Rose Longworth Counseling

New Year’s Day at the River

New Year’s Day 2020

Christmas Poetry Group

Mariah and the Butterfly Dreams

Anger Management Group – Patience and Wrath.

The Case of the Heart

Lines Written Above the River

The Walls of Memories

Party Time on the Street

A Positive Soul Woman

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