Helen Martineau's Blog

Puberty   Fourteen is the archetypal year marking puberty and the shift from child to adolescent. The age when this takes place is quite varied. There are both physical and emotional changes and these may not happen together. Already in the couple of years prior to puberty, great changes commence in the body and become a strong drive in the boy or girl. Girls prior to puberty experience a dramatic growth spurt in their physical body. Their energies are all directed to this so they can have a lack of energy and lethargy. Prior to puberty boys tend to become gangling and awkward, ‘all elbows’. This is matched by lots of assertive ‘conquering’ energy. The moon remains a strong influence as a young person moves into the early stage of adolescence. This is what brings about the rapid growth and bodily changes as well as the ebb and flow of emotions. The astral Puberty signals the third birth, and it introduces the astral cycle. We have looked at the physical stage when the body is ...

The second cycle, ages 7-14   When the baby teeth loosen most children feel that something new is in the air. It is. And it involves more than physical events. The coming of the second set of teeth marks the etheric cycle or second birth. The etheric – prana, chi or life body – is what gives the life to the physical. The invisible etheric weaves through the earth’s flora and fauna. Without these forces any physical form isn’t alive. The etheric is characterised by movement and rhythm and relates especially to the rhythms of life as  kairos  or the timely season.    A child enters a new life season at around seven years and the etheric forces begin to flow in a new way. Children develop new energies, more vivid imaginations, memory and a sensitivity to the world through an emergent feeling level. T hrough the inner rhythm of their own being   they become awake to the rhythms of the world, of day and ni...

From birth to seven years Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come  From God, who is our home. Wordsworth the poet has captured it. That’s how we arrive on earth. And those clouds of glory open a mother’s heart in readiness, even while we are in the womb. There o ur brain is being imprinted with the potential we need for our spiritual development, based on the spiritual blueprint our spirit gave to our soul. It’s important that we are loved. Our dramatic birth into the physical world involves the first experience of taking in air, abrupt, sharp noises, light, unexpected faces and strange objects. It’s a shock after the intimate relationship with the mother during our womb life , held close and bathed in the warm amniotic fluid, communicating through our mother’s rhythmic heartbeat w...

Part 1 - an Introduction Our life on earth is framed by our birth and our death. From our soul’s point of view, it’s an amazing journey we undertake to help us to progress spiritually. Our spirit is like a light always shining ahead of us; our body is always in the now. The soul is a mediator between the two.   And this has implications: We came from spirit and will return to this our spiritual home. During our physical life our soul retains a connection with the spiritual realms, even if we aren’t conscious of it. Before we are born our spirit gives us a blueprint. It’s the purpose of our incarnation. Our soul chooses to incarnate into a certain family, place and into certain conditions. What we encounter throughout our lifetime needs to be experienced so we can work with and fulfil the requirements of our blueprint – for this life. In the big picture it’s part of a continuing process for the soul. We have lived before and we will live again in a new body. What we br...

I had a startling experience on November 24. It was a Friday. I opened my email inbox to find loads of messages encouraging me to enjoy the 20%, 40% etc discounts on all products 'Today Black Friday only!'  On Black Friday?! In Victoria, Australia, my home, there are certain days, black days that mark the most horrific bushfires, the unbelievable devastation and death, and the blackened land left in their wake. For example, there was Black Saturday of 2009 and one of the earliest devastations recorded (by European Aussies) on Black Friday, 1939. I wasn't alive for that one but it's  our history, the history of people pushing too carelessly, without understanding, into a dry, heat prone, vulnerable and threatened land. Bushfires were my nightmare w hen I lived in the country . I still dread hot north wind summer days in case, in case ... I have walked through the aftermath, lost a friend in a bushfire and can barely imagine the horror of being in one.  Oh,...

                                                   The battle for and against assisted suicide, what used to be called mercy killing, is always fierce and heartfelt. But in the State of Victoria in democratic Australia an act to make it legal for the terminally ill is close to being passed in parliament’s Upper House. And then it will become legal. In some countries it is legal already. To take the responsibility for ending a life, even your own, is momentous. And there has been plenty of passion around the euthanasia debate, with valuable and compassionate considerations on both sides. These are widely accessible and most likely you will know them. I want to look from a different direction. Humans have a complicated, conflicted and often irrational attitude towards taking the life of another human being. There’s a universal injunction against it that lies a...