Category Archives: Collette O’Mahony

The Language of Dreams

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Last night a dream leapt up from my subconscious and forced me to remember that I have dreamed the same dream multiple times. The subconscious is a dangerous place full of hiding places for our fragmented souls and it launches an attack when our conscious mind is sleeping. The insomniac knows this trick and remains on guard throughout the long night. The subconscious is canny, it shows us a flash of a dream, enough for us to recognise it is a frequent visitor but then snatches it away in case our conscious mind goes to work on decoding its language. The language of the subconscious is in dreams and only the life force permeating our finite meanderings can understand its true meaning.  

Dreams like water have many fathoms, some skim the surface of our daily lives and others dredge deeply linking us to the unfathomable depths of infinity. There are dreams that are prescient in quality, forewarning us of the path we are about to take and others that excavate our emotional graveyard for buried trauma. Decoding dreams is a tricky business and the truth within them can only be felt, it cannot be told. In a way, dreams transcend death and mortality giving us a glimpse into a world beyond the waking mind and the repetitive noise that creates the rigid corners of our existence. Occasionally, we have a dream that presses a reset button and rids us, albeit temporarily, of our structured thoughts and beliefs. In these enlightened dreams, we can reach back in time to touch the great minds of the past, those unhindered by religion and societal constraints. It offers us a fresh objectivity on life as a whole, steering us past our cornered subjectivity.

We can enter into contemplation, a relaxed open state of mind allowing ideas to germinate and grow, rather than an active thinking mind where constant mental activity leads to a hurried pace within and without. When we are engaged in constant mental activity we enter a treadwheel of finite possibility, when we are in contemplation we are on the precipice of wonder. Contemplation is not mental laziness, it is a state of vibrational activity and offers fertile soil for new ideas. The means by which these new ideas bounce into life is by enthusiastic and creative response.

And so, back to my dream, a tool to circumvent my active thinking mind that is moving along life’s middle lane and missing out on contemplative opportunities. In the dream I am driving a car, an illusion of control, until in a flash I am moved into the passenger seat and trying to steer from the side-lines. I need to indicate and pull off the motorway, it’s time to allow the life force at the core of my being to take the steering wheel from the middle-of-the-road conscious mind. My acquiescence finally allows the dream to decode in my conscious awareness. I am not in control. I am in control. The dichotomy of my existence rests on this axis. The former occurs when I am trying to control my life through active thinking, the latter comes about through contemplative openness. Dreams are powerful communicators from the source of intelligence if only we would allow that source to work through us.

Photograhic credit: Rekha Garton.

Time: Friend or Foe?

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Time swoops into focus, nudging us with a ticking noise, ‘keep moving’ it says, ‘my survival depends on motion’. The mind, wired like a ticking clock, swings between right and wrong, swayed by excitement and an avalanche of opinions. One day, it’s taking sides in a political debate, the next it’s swallowing every story of the digital age. Pierce through the stories about fractious nations, warring families and rising inflation, climb down from the pendulous left to right motion that is stealing your valuable life.

Solitude is the enemy of time sitting still among the swirling edifice and finding the eye of the storm where sanity prevails. Seek nature, walk in the forest, climb a hill for the views, in ten years, even twenty, these are the shining moments of joy that decorate our lives. Daily news stories that readership devours will be assigned to the scrapheap of our minds. Every step we take in nature reduces this mind-fill and allows us to live life on our terms rather than become fodder for the beast.  In fifty or even a hundred year’s time no one will remember the irrelevance of commentary on insignificant stories, only facts will remain. Put down the phone, turn off the TV, step outside and take a deep breath. This is truth. We need air. We don’t need a constant drip feed from media outlets. Breath connects us with something greater than the news channels and apps that decorate our phone screen, it provides us with life. No one, ever, reached to check the latest news story when they were choking or in cardiac arrest. Breath is all important.

Every country has their headlines, every social network drowns in opinion swaying from left to right, we want free speech but only on our terms shouting down those who disagree. The online platform allows us to hide behind its shield and let our fingers do the talking. If we enter the slipstream of time and motion caused by outer phenomena we are in a state of reaction, positive action comes when we act from a place of stillness within.

Time moves at a speed corresponding to our mental activity. Slow the mind and time expands, fill the mind with news threads and we find ourselves swinging mercilessly upon the pendulum of time. If we wonder where the year has disappeared to, then we have consigned much of it to the scrapheap of our minds. If we can look back on the year and pick out several cherished moments, we have brought some balance to our lives. If, however, we sit in this moment neither looking backward or forward, we have achieved the magic moment that always exists, taking us beyond the boundaries of time into the very existence that pervades all life on earth and the universe.

Collette O’Mahony

January 2023

Perpetuum Mobile by Matjaz Jerman

BEYOND THE TWO DOORS

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After three years, my novel Beyond The Two Doors is finally published on Amazon. For lovers of history, spirituality and exploration of mind, this book will appeal to you. The book image below is linked to my bookshelf on Amazon.com. The book is also available on Amazon.co.uk and all in all other countries.

Book Cover

Beyond The Two Doors explores the mysteries of life as we follow the story of a man and woman across different timelines. From modern day Britain to post-war Asia, the story takes the reader on a historical journey to the Celts of Britain and Ireland, tracing the roots of the Celtic cultural and spiritual ancestors to an ancient tribe who lived on the Eurasian Steppes.

After leaving her husband, Clara Lewis moves back to Gloucestershire to complete her PhD in archaeology. During her research, she stumbles upon a photograph of a mummy taken by an explorer in the 1940’s during an expedition to the Altay Mountains. Her curiosity about the Jade Mummy and the explorer who found it, takes her on a journey through time where she discovers not only the ancestors of modern day civilisation, but also provides her with a portal into her very life essence.

From the ancient Silk road to the stone circles of the Neolithic, this adventure sweeps through deserts, mountains and plains until it arrives at the very heart of humanity and the quest that underpins our existence. This story will not only take you on a journey through human history, but it will open doors into the invaluable nature of your soul.

Collette O’Mahony

May 2022

Authenticity

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Our level of thinking is directly related to our authentic self. The more we think, the less authentic we are and the less thinking, the more authentic we become. It’s a conundrum. How do we lessen our thoughts without overthinking it? Some people are masters at switching off and allowing their flow of thoughts to gently drip at a slower pace. Others find that the more they try to turn off the thinking tap, the more gushing and muddied the waters become. Meditation is generally cited as the best approach to quietening the mind. However, it is not a quiet hat to pull over your thinking cap to silence all your thoughts. It takes continuity of practice.

The road to authenticity begins at the point when we can no longer live with our conditioned self, the self bound by tradition, beliefs and expectation. We may come to this point through a personal crisis, or perhaps we might come in contact with an authentic person who ignites the flame of the authentic self within us. In my case, it was a combination of both. If we do not undertake this journey, we will continue to struggle and blame others for our shortcomings and frustrations. Worse still, we will project our dissatisfied self onto the people around us. Life is a mirror, it will reflect and attract the many facets of our character. Everyone is living a life created by their thoughts and these thoughts are generally caused by early conditioning, limited beliefs and expected achievements.

We must allow the emergence of our authentic self, we must encourage it, water it with conscious exercises such as breathing. Read the words of spiritual masters. Practice mindfulness, not only through meditation but in mundane tasks also. Become present to whatever it is you are doing in this moment. Otherwise, we will become misanthropes, at odds with ourselves and our fellow man because we cannot bear to see our limitations reflected to us through their thoughts, words and actions. Every political leader, celebrity or friend will become a mirror which we will want to crack from top to bottom because of the feeling it evokes in us.

Authenticity is a kind of inner rebellion. The true self struggles to outgrow the tight bud of ego, and to bloom in all its glory. After all, it is a seed of the cosmos. No less a star than those spilling forth from any cosmic nebula, straining to make their mark in the galaxy. We are star seeds, planted by the governing principle of the cosmos. To bloom, we must allow our conditioned self to wither, and watch as our authentic self flowers and brightens up our corner of the universe.

Collette O’Mahony

18/02/2021