Day and Night, Dark and Light

Tree blossoms at Findhorn - Dark & Light

We’re living the longest days of the year here in the northern hemisphere. The nights feel too short to rest from the at times overwhelming intensity of the light. Some friends have put up extra curtains to be able to sleep in the dark.  A song, well known here in our community, says, “Be still and know that day and night, that dark and light, are one holy circle.”

During these two weeks three community members left their body to rise into the realm of the Light. Well, after a challenging end in the physical, I believe that’s where they’ll be going. To the Light.

For this month’s entry of my Light Scribble I chose an image of young trees still in blossom in my garden against a dark background, a play of dark and light. 

The Mother, in one of her guided messages about white flowers tells us in ‘The Spiritual Significance of Flowers’ that “white light is the light of the Divine Consciousness in its essence. In this white light all other lights are contained and from it they can be manifested, for this reason white also indicates integrality, completeness and totality, especially the integrality of the being in all its parts, from the physical being to the true self.”

So take a deep breath. Inhale the light. Let the white flowers enter our heart and trust their light will shine on the darkness. 
To know this brightens my day.

© photo and text: © Adriana Sjan Bijman, June 2014

The divine and devil in ‘El Pico del Teide’

For the third time I visited ‘el Teide’, the most important volcano on the ocean island Tenerife. This May I came from the south of the island, which is said to have  been a desert for millennia.  Again El Pico del Teide —the Teide Peak— impressed me with its bare moon-like landscape. The soil seems fresh erupted ‘black lava’ of hard rock fragments; on other places it is covered with gentle hills of cream coloured sand dust, which actually is volcanic ash.  Like what came down from Iceland some years ago, remember? Nothing grows on it. Its earth seems as dead as the native aboriginal people the Guanches, who lived on the islands until the Spanish conquerors arrived at the end of the 15^th century. The Guanches believed in the mythology of the Teide and many legends survived, telling us of its divine legacy. It was thought the Teide held the most devilish forces in its crater. Personally I can understand some of that, as a decade ago our suspicious German workshop leader felt drawn to jump into the crater, believing we all would be saved by extraterrestrials. Tenerife is known for its UFO connection. So glad the jump was prevented by the local police!

Nowadays the island lives off the more attractive energies of tourism and the banana export. You see their polytunnels everywhere. Like the native Canary Pine tree the residents have adapted to live off what the land can offer — or they moved away. The abundantly growing pine tree is fire resistant, from blackened trunks they simply rise again into the green. They possess an amazing water-collecting system in their leaves to survive the long periods of drought. It only rains 14 days a year. What a difference with Scotland! We enjoyed the sunshine and warm breezes that cooled down the island. Thank you,  beautiful island of Tenerife!

© text and photo: Adriana Sjan Bijman 

Tulpomania

The famous Dutch painter Judith Leyster lived in Haarlem in the Dutch Golden Age, the 17th century. She became the first female ‘Master painter’ and had, like her colleague Frans Hals, a studio and students. To my surprise I once found myself in tears in front of the original oil painting of her self-portrait, hanging in the Frans Hals Museum, in the picturesque ancient street Klein Heiligland in Haarlem. Since I ‘discovered’ her during my art education in the early eighties, I always loved her work. It radiates self-confidence and “joie de vivre”. She inspires me four centuries later. 

Next to her famous oil portraits, she painted tulips, lots of tulips on paper. Her tulip books became very popular and became the first visual catalogues for tulip traders during the ‘Tulpomania’ and its speculation that hit the Netherlands and made the bourse crash in 1635.

Haarlem still lies in the middle of a tulip area. I have great memories of living in that town at the river Spaarne during several episodes of my live. Think of the Netherlands and many people automatically think of tulips, so the famous Keukenhof flower show made ‘Holland’ their theme this year. 

Amidst all flowers I have photographed, tulips have their own unique place, as I always loved them. I created this image to honour the tulip and Judith Leyster.

© text and photo: Adriana sjan Bijman

Moving, dancing, swirling around

This month’s favourite is a dance image. Look at those odd movements made during Scottish Ceilidh dances! What is it all about?

We’re fortunate to have lots of dance performances, shows and workshops here at Findhorn. Since the start of our community creative expression has been important. In 1975 Bernard Wosien brought the sacred circle dances to Findhorn. Here they received a home, developed and later on circled outwards using the Findhorn’s way of attunement, sharing and blessing into the rest of the world. In the 90s the Celtic Festivals with Peter Vallance brought a new kind of dances. Nowadays there are a huge variety of dance practices, from Biodanze, 5 Rhythms to Astroshamanic Trance Dance.

It’s all about moving, dancing, swirling around and around…. And this is how my life feels at the moment. Spring has arrived, securing new beginnings. But where did the idea spring from that those beginnings only would bring positive change? Every tiny fragile new tree bud knows it will magically blossom in the spring sunshine, accompanied by a gentle rain now and then. But while opening into a delicate blossom it might be surprised by a spring shower or even by an all-destructive wind and hail storm. It’s taking a huge risk in showing itself. It will be moved, danced and swirled around and its strength will be severely tested. It must be in for a bit of a blow. 

And so must we! As for the blossoms, our own ‘new beginnings’ are not guaranteed to start positively. Don’t tell me! As here I am, shifted, switched and swirled around by life. Some roughly opened old scars about love and trust reveal ‘the mess I made’ (free to Amy Winehouse’s song): loss, disappointment and grief under the anger. It can be a long lasting dance into the exhaustion of resist. Or until a fresh wind brings the insight that actually a good thing is happening: old challenged perceptions and pains need to be released first, gently or by force. Is this all present from a deeper need to heal and grow? Is that its main reason for materializing in our lives? As long as I engage with, submit and surrender myself to the movements of this dance, while seeing it as a kind of spring clean before I myself can spring into the new beginnings of my own inner springtide, I know somehow it will be fine. I will be fine.   

So, let’s dance, “let’s dance the feelings, the tears and the passion”. Come on, I found some beautiful blossoms for in your hair.

© photo and text: Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2014

‘Teatro de los Sentidos’ (Theatre of the senses)

What communicates the impact of light better than this colourful play? It reminds me of the Catalan theatre company Els Comediants, who identifies with the festive spirit of human existence. The goal is not only to open our eyes but also to be a theatre for the senses. It seems to me that the light in the impressive cathedral in the old city of Palma wants to do just that.  There is no separation between the light from the heavens and the space it illuminates. The floor space is like a stage. The stage is the place for the collective experience of the audience, while we entered as spectator in the house of the Gods. The benches are waiting for the Heathen and Pagan worshippers of an ancient Sun God. I sit down. As the sun caresses my skin, the fragrance of warm oak wood enters my nostrils.

Like many Christian churches, ‘La Seu’, the Roman catholic cathedral in Catalan-gothic style was built on the site of a pre-existing mosque. Lying above the old Roman citadel, it overlooks the emerald and turquoise Mediterranean and from the southern coasts you sometimes still hear the late afternoon Asr prayers calling to the island, while a breeze wafts along the mouth-watering smell of spiced couscous with roasted almonds. 

Visiting this ‘Tierra sagrada’* l am moored to the full spectrum of bright colours falling down from the rosette shaped windows. In this house I am moored to the beauty of Nature. Is this world not meant to be one wonderful big House, in which we can make love, create compassion and culture? As well as separation, skirmish and suffering, if we choose so…. I ponder over it while the light enters me. It makes me think in the colours of my heart.

© Adriana Sjan Bijman Photo: Palma de Mallorca, Easter 2011, text: Findhorn, February 2014.  

findhorn images

*holy ground. 

The Shutters

Doors and windows. There is a folder full of them in my photo-archive. They can be so symbolic, can’t they? Openings into another realm or a different reality…. We speak of ‘windows of opportunity’ and here at Findhorn we work a lot with the ‘Opening Doors Within’ guidance of Eileen Caddy. On the material level the door is the entrance and exit, the passage into a building. Sometimes the windows look like the eyes of the house.

Several summers ago during a journey through the south of France, I worked with the theme of windows and doors, their colours, potential and deeper meaning. They became the focus of that photo-travel. Les portes et les venêtres. Les yeux ouvertes ou fermés, qui me regardent, qui me parlent — et moi, j’ecoute. Et on se regarde, nous deux. *

In one quick movement, this window with its turquoise closed shutters in the bright afternoon sunshine called my attention. Was the Madame of the house having a well-deserved siesta? I imagine a late fulfilling lunch with friends, with Poisson aux Legumes, freshly baked baguette and a bottle of Sauvignon de l’Arjolle, a crisp white wine from their Languedoc region?

Was hers such a happy story? Or do we make our stories reflecting our own mood? Are they filled with our dreams and longings like shutters opening and closing to expose the film of our life?

The windows have their eyes closed for the world; looking inwards and I cannot read life in between the hinged wooden panels. But in the shade of the lush green tree my eyes keep moving upwards wanting the story to continue.

January 2014, © story and photo Adriana Bijman

*Doors and windows, eyes open or closed, which look at me, which speak to me — 

and I, I listen. And we look at each other.

This is my view!

Findhorn dunes with gorse - photo ©

I have moved house this week. To a wonderful apartment with a fabulous view. Culbin Sands Apartments still carries in its attics and cellars the pain of the past, as Culbin Sands Hotel, from which it was told it was haunted, and much earlier, when the Viking warriors stepped on land here and the soil soaked the blood baths. So much healing is needed, as well as joyful energy. I'm doing my best. Let me tell you: 

This apartment — rejuvenated — wants to be celebrated

While the smell of paint and varnish has hardly vanished

While many boxes full of life and release still wait to be opened and integrated

The walls still bare

Before my images fingerprint them

But the summer solstice sun and the full moon do call for it now

While the blooming gorse reflects on the walls

While endless skies and seas invite themselves in, to be discovered by experienced eyes still so curious.

So I give thanks to all involved 

And let us bless this place with Joy and Healing

To be my new Home

Summer Solstice  20 June 2013