HOMECOMING
THE STORY OF OUR PLACE
Where does the story of this place begin? Is it 35 years ago when we emigrated from Austria, when it was bog land grazed by cattle with no tree or bush, no road, no house, no electricity or water supply? Or did it begin millennia ago when it was all wooded, a time before the Celts came and burned the forests down to make space for their cattle to graze?
The other question that arises is what do I mean by place? The 20 acres of bog land next to a lake, i.e. the material place or a multi-layered, multi-dimensioned reality, an energy field which is alive and informed as I have come to experience in these years?
To start with i will tell the story of the physical place as experienced by our physical outer senses and next the story as sensed with my inner senses. Out of these different perceptions arises a meaning and a sense of home coming and belonging.
The physical place
What brought us to the place? We had lived in a small cottage in the Austrian country side, where we had a few sheep, chicken and a cat, learned to spin wool and made our first attempts with a garden. 4 years prior to that we had let go of our lives in Vienna and Munich with the wish to find peace, to re-connect to our roots, to source, not being sure what we meant by that ourselves. We knew that we felt disconnected from land and people and most of all from ourselves. And so our journey into the unknown had started.
I was up for an adventure anywhere in the world. Bettina’s vision was to create a place which would serve us and others, mine was to create a park. While travelling for 2 weeks along the West coast of Ireland we found a place in form of a bare wet bog land at a lake near a small town at the edge of wilderness.
After our arrival with our 3-year old daughter in early spring 1984 we stayed for 3 months in a rented house in town, while we got planning permission, built a road, refurbished a caravan and moved it onto the site and planted around 3,000 trees. Around the caravan we built a storeroom and toilet in the back, a glasshouse in front and a room for people who came and helped us above. Everything went slower than anticipated. The glasshouse got exchanged with a much bigger conservatory and instead of building the planned round house the following year we opted for expanding the structure we had started.
Next spring we moved the caravan and built the living room in its place. By the end of that year we moved into the half-finished house. We were happy for the achievement of having built a roof over our heads without electricity and running water. At last we were able to relax. only now we were able to feel the culture shock of being a stranger in a strange land.
Over the following few years we finished the house, added more rooms and built a shed, started a garden and flower beds. We joined local groups in yoga, tennis and dancing. Yet the sense of alienation persisted. This forced us of looking for the cause within us, i.e. our thoughts and beliefs.
We had built a house, established a garden and planted more than 3,000 trees when we were confronted with the news that there were burdens on the land. Four neighbours had the right to cut turf for fuel on the whole land and the right to take moss peat from the land. It took us 7 years to clear these burdens. Solicitors took responsibility for their mistakes and we had to look at the burdens in the form of undigested life experiences we had brought with us.
This started a process of inner learning. We had to look at our conditioning and everything we were not in peace with from the past. In this process we got to know ourselves, the place and our nearest surroundings. For the next 10 years we lived without a car and very little money, which meant no distractions. The decision to home school our children helped to look at all the obstacles that were in the way of a happy family life without any outer stimulation. I firmly believe that the energy of the bog and the land helped to bring up what was unresolved in us. The bog is said to store memories. we had stirred up the bog which in turn stirred up our concepts of life.
When we moved out into the community and wider world again we felt grounded and ready to open the place for other people as well. The trees had grown in these 19 years to give shelter from the storms and a sense of home. We invited people to drum, sing and write with us on a regular basis. We also joined different groups in the country, learned to speak in public and were introduced to shamanism. I opened my practice as an architect and Bettina gave creative writing workshops.
During those years of going out into the world we just did the necessary to maintain the land, house and garden. In 2009 the economy crashed and it was time to focus again on house, land and ourselves. I dived deeper into perceiving reality as fields of energy and us being an integral part of an undivided whole.
At the time I published a book on the energies of places and spaces and Bettina an anthology of her poetry. I started to improve and upgrade our house. When our children left to move abroad we invited young people to stay with us and clear the land, extend the pathways. We are now in the process of preparing the land for a next stage of development. It will need new and younger people and new capital to open the land to other people.
The Spirit of the place
I will now tell the story from the level of energy, which is invisible and holds the blueprint and essence, the unique quality of the place. It provides the power and information of how the place is destined to grow.
I describe in detail in my book ‘House Whisper, Energies of Man, Places and Spaces’ 2 different types of places: places which have a personality-motherly, outwards-going, inwards-looking, open, etc. and places which serve the wider community or state. Our vision when searching for a place was a park and a place which would serve us and others. Unconsciously we therefore were attracted by a place which serves from its energy field a public interest.
The place is to a great part bog land. It is said that the bog stores not only bodies and butter, but also our human stories. It sucks us into inner places, which are hidden from our awareness. They may be hidden talents, but also unresolved issues from the past. The past maybe be in this life time but could go back millennia. While the house, caravan and garden are not bog land, living surrounded by bog will inevitably stir up undigested life experiences which want to be resolved and forgiven.
While the bog has literally a tendency to bog us down, the lake with its ever changing colours and moving water offers a lightness and flexibility. As the place is on a hill, it also gives a wide view in all directions as a counter force. Lake and hill represent a balance between masculine and feminine aspects of energy.
In the year 2006 I discovered a crossing of lay-lines. Lay-lines, as I understand them, are a network of cosmic energy with a high frequency which informs society and its culture and gives them structure and meaning. These 2 crossing lay-lines are connected to 4 places of power. To the North there is Nephin Mountain and its quality is the strength to stand alone. To the East there is near Foxford a mountain marked with a cross. Cosmic energy is drawn into the Earth and opens like a flower. To the South is Ballintubber Abbey where spirit is expressed in material form. To the West is Crough Patrick, the holy mountain, where light pours down the mountain like milk, blessings its nearer and wider surroundings. These four power points represent a seasonal life cycle. It starts in winter in the North, blossoms in spring, grows into maturity in summer in the South and bears fruit in autumn in the West.
The place names also give some insight into the quality of the place. The neighbourhood area is called Derreenmanus. It comes from the Galic and means ‘The oak wood of McManus’. When the oak wood was burned millennia ago to give land for cattle to graze, the bog started to grow. In one corner of the land which is not bog land there was a house which belonged to a farmer. We can still see the potato ridges around this area. There is no stone left. Before I started to clear energy of places myself, a man came and told us there were many souls gathering around our fire place in the house. They had died during the famine and left a sad dark energy around the place, which we often picked up unconsciously. He also talked about a very angry soul at the point where the house used to stand.
Years later I came in contact with this soul. He was very angry and told me that he left the farm during the famine and when he returned 20 years later the house was gone as the neighbour had taken all the stones for his own house. As I listened to him his anger dissolved and he was able to let go.
The name of the lake is Lough Rusheen. It means a wooded peninsula. In spring when the water level is lowest you can see tree stumps. The neighbour told me that he had cut the trees many years ago to get posts for fencing. When we came the neighbour’s cattle grazed on the land, leaving deep holes in the soft ground which makes walking away from self-made pass ways very difficult.
You can see on an invisible energetic level there are very high creative and healing energies as well as very low man-made energies which darkened the potential of the place. We needed to clear the dark energies not only on the place but also in us to co-create with the creative energies of the place.
Syntheses: Homecoming and Belonging
Austria was not in the EU where I came from in 1984. I had the official status of an alien and so I felt the longer I lived in this foreign culture where people thought and dealt with the ups and downs of life in a different way to what I was used to. I had built a house, but it wasn’t a home. Home was no longer the place where I had grown up, which had conditioned me, where I had belonged. I had left this birth place and there was no way of going back. We both had to find home and with it a sense of peace, belonging and identity somewhere else.
We became aware of our thoughts as the source of our unhappiness. We uncovered all the conditioned beliefs we had brought with us. I became an architect of my mind which I learned I could change, refurbish, rebuild and alter like any town. I became aware of past lives and its traumata and shadows both in myself and on the land.
The more we cleared on an energetic level, the more we felt connected to my family, the place and the community. I feel at home wherever I am, but here on this place I feel deepest connected as I have planted and seen grow every tree and bush.
Millennia ago the trees and this land and wide areas all over Ireland were burned down to create grazing fields for cattle. Temperatures dropped and allowed the bog to grow. A mono culture of cattle and potato ridges led to famine and poverty. With this background in mind nothing could have been more meaningful than my vision to start a new cultural cycle by planning trees and bushes.
Christianity always made us hope for heaven but never taught us to bring heaven to earth. It is high time we learn to reconnect to ourselves and the earth that we can co-create with the earth and stop destroying this planet and ourselves.
Bettina asked an interesting question after reading this: Why is this place not known as a place of power as are Crough Patrick or Mount Nephin? Because the centre of this place, with the crossing of lay-lines, is a symbol of the place within us. This our core, our connection to all that is, is not visible, is not here to be worshipped. It is secret because it is sacred.