The transformative power of Mercury Pluto lines at Dzogchen Beara
I returned to Dzogchen Beara, the Buddhist Retreat Centre at the far end of the Beara Peninsula earlier this month for two days. It’s about as far west as you can go in West Cork, and that’s saying something. Then somehow found myself staying another four days.
As you do.
It’s that kind of place.
Now I’m not so sure.
While dreaming one of the nights staying in the Spiritual Care Centre last week, I lucidly remembered that I had actually first discovered Dzogchen Beara as a direct result of my very first astrology reading all the way back in February 2007, one which very much included astrocartography, an aspect of astrology I just “got” from the get go. At the time I was in the middle of an incredibly painful divorce, was back in Ireland for Christmas after having just filed for divorce and a friend recommended her astrologer to me. Two months later, full of trepidation which was simultaneously mixed with a quivering excitement, I found myself flying back for my first consultation. One which blew my mind and which I remember to this day.
I was shown my natal chart and along with it, was shown my astrocartography for both Ireland and Europe. Let’s not forget lads, that at the time all I knew was that I was a Gemini. Niente more. Truly! I’d never even heard of a rising sign, never mind the fact that my chart had twelve planets, plus the houses and Lunar Nodes, plus all the usual extras. Nevertheless, I still sat on the edge of my seat as the cursor zoomed in on the Dingle Peninsula, the Ring of Kerry, the Beara Peninsula, all the most powerful places in Ireland for me.
Why?
My Mercury Pluto lines, that’s why!
As I was to subsequently learn, as Mercury is my chart ruler, the fact that my Sun, Moon, Mercury and Rising Sign are all in Gemini, plus Pluto and North Node in Virgo, (also ruled by Mercury) these planetary lines hence had a ton more significance than is usually the case. When two planetary lines intersect, they form a destiny point with the energy being combined and intensified.
This destiny point line is just 2 miles from the end of the Ring of Kerry, practically sitting on the Skellig Rocks, 21 miles from the end of the Dingle peninsula, and same for the tip of the Beara peninsula.
All of which are peninsulas I loved since my teenage years. I spent a summer working in a guesthouse in Killarney when I was a 16 year old schoolgirl, cycled to Allihies on the tip of the Beara Peninsula when I was not much older, sleeping on the floor in front of the fire of the electricity-less hostel when I arrived. Being both warmed and lit by firelight. All night long.
As you did in the 1970’s.
Sheer bliss.
I never, ever forgot those trips to Allihies and later when working in the tourist office in Dublin in the 1980’s, I’d make as many trips down as I could. It was a challenging trip, involving a lengthy train journey to Killarney, where you then pleaded the bus driver in Killarney to allow you take your bike on the bus to Kenmare, then you’d cycle to Allihies.
A mere 60 kms (37 miles) miles over the breathtakingly windy and stunningly wild Healy Pass.
On a bike with no gears.
As you did in the 1980’s.
So coming back to 2008 – Within two months of that life changing astrology reading, I found myself taking myself to Ireland for three weeks to spend a week on each peninsula, driving around searching for summer jobs as a stepping stone to an eventual full time move back to Ireland. The recession had yet to hit and summer jobs in tourism were plentiful. I had done some internet research before going over and stumbled across Dzogchen Beara. Goodness me, the hippie hostel of the 1980’s was now a full blown meditation centre. Not only that, they took volunteers! Even better, unlike many other centres, you didn’t have to pay to be a volunteer.
Nor did you have even to be a Buddhist!
Several job options opened up, but somehow, I found myself keeping Dzogchen Beara till last. As I drove up the long winding drive, full of potholes (it’s finally been paved!), I saw the prayer flags fluttering in the wind, did the almost 180 degrees turn half way up the hill, then meandered down and parked in the car park. You don’t see the power of the place straight away, that’s the thing. On coming out of the car park, and walking down the hill, that’s when it hits you.
The Atlantic, stretched out as far as the eye can see. Miles of stunning cliffs, as if carved by Michelangelo himself. More prayer flags. The shrine room.
I somehow found the hostel, knocked and walked in. The hostel manager happened to be there. Yes, they took volunteers, Yes, they had summer vacancies. Yes, I could come back early July and stay two months. I’d stay in the women’s dorm in the hostel and have bed and meals in return for about five hours work a day, five days a week. She showed me round. It was all fine and cosy. She just needed to run it by the Centre Director who happened to be around and free to meet me. So, I then met the centre director, sitting on a bench outside the old café. Can’t remember what I was asked, apart from me needing to firm down dates which we did. I went back and told the hostel manager, telling her I’d ring her to reconfirm exact dates before booking the ferry back over from Wales.
So it was that easy.
Back home, I told my ex husband and set about making plans for my then 15 year old late daughter Ruth for her own summer. She was to stay at home in Wales, then have a week’s holiday with a friend and her family, then back to Ireland. She was almost 16 and I felt she would be able to handle it.
Three short months later I was back in Dzogchen Beara…I remember delaying the arrival by a day, staying overnight en route as this was such a momentous move. In an Adrgroom café where I lingered for several hours, I came across Damien Enright’s beautiful book “A Place near Heaven” – written about the Courtmacsherry calendar year. Not knowing either that that’s where I’d be living three years later.
The first week was awful. I clashed badly with the hostel manager and it transpired she was soon taking off for a month and I was expected to run the hostel. I refused. Also, everything centred round meditation, so our day’s work didn’t start till almost 11am. I’d had visions of starting at 9am and being finished by 2pm. Instead, between meditation, and breakfasting afterwards plus an hour’s lunch break, this ueber Mars in Aries person found herself furious at the fact that I often did not finish till 5pm. So much for being done and dusted by 2pm! Most days I hadn’t a clue what I was supposed to be doing as I was swopped randomly between the hostel and the kitchen. I flared up at the hostel manager to no avail. I found myself despairing – this was the end of the road for me and if I could not make this work, then what would? Some days later along came two guys who I worked with for the remaining summer and who I bonded with instantly, and from then on things improved beyond imagining.
Slowly, slowly I learnt to laugh more and more and live in the moment. The lack of internet and phone coverage anywhere suited the three of us perfectly, allowing us to live even more in the moment. I had been warned by my astrologer earlier that year that it would be a place where I would disappear from the world for a while.
That too.
I studied my Feng Shui notes as best I could, usually in Castletownbere during my days off. It was a summer of stunning weather and the vegetarian diet and active life I now lived meant that I shifted a ton of weight, over a stone and a half, and I really felt that lightness too.
By the end of that summer, I had made friends for life, (some of whom still pop in and out of my life) and I returned to Wales utterly changed. Such that my divorce got fast forwarded and by Christmas 2007 I was back in Ireland, having moved to Cork while my late daughter Ruth returned to live with her late father and late stepmother in Cavan.
The recent visit back this time was one of many, but was the first lengthy stay in several years, and was about as different to previous visits as you can imagine. I don’t write this lightly, I really don’t.
The run up to Ruth’s third anniversary had been particularly gruelling, with two months of serious laptop problems, car problems, along with endless paperwork regarding my house sale, so I found myself booking a Luka Bloom concert in Lehanmore and two nights in the Spiritual Care Centre. I had let them know I was struggling before arriving and asked to meet with a former colleague, if they were available. We arranged to meet briefly, and after arriving and a short nap I took myself off to Luka Bloom.
It was one of the most sublime concerts of my life. Luka was electrifying, in crackling form and wittier than ever. To be back at a “pay cash at the door” mobile phone free gig where you poured your own glass of wine (i.e. fill it as full as you like!) beforehand was deeply restful. I hung around after to ask his advice about choosing Clare as my new base and he confirmed that yes, lots of Dubs were moving there since Covid, driving the house prices sky high. That was a probable no then.
I met my former colleague after morning meditation for a deeply insightful chat during which time it was pointed out to me that maybe, just maybe, these never ending lists of things to fix was in fact a sign to move on sooner than expected. “That’s just it” I said excitedly! I could look at this part of “further out in the wilds of West Cork” as a base and so I started scouting round for houses to rent. I’d seen an ad in Castletownbere while driving out but no reply to date. I spent hours in the café on Saturday and Sunday writing, contemplating and reading between group meditation sessions. My former West Cork loves’ Mum had also crossed over the previous week, the very same week Ruth had, also whilst coming up to a New Moon in Virgo, as Ruth did. Aged 96, and the very day Pluto moved back into Capricorn.
And here I was 10 days later, in one of the most Plutonian parts of Ireland. While Pluto is doing it’s last final sweep in Capricorn until 19th November.
I mean you really can’t make this up can you?! I found myself back down memory lane, as my former love had also been born in Allihies. Should I write to him, send a card, text, phone call? I hadn’t gone to the funeral, it was two days before Ruth’s anniversary and it would have been far too triggering for me. My first thought on hearing of her passing was “He’s finally free” followed swiftly by “If only” for us both. I meditated, reflected, lit prayer lamps for her and prayed for her and all his family, along with Ruth, Mam and so many others. It helped.
It helped a lot.
I then spent a night in the family room in the hostel, where, well, not much had changed at all.
Then back to the Spiritual Care Centre as after talking to a former colleague I had decided I might as well stay on, to be there in person for houses which may come up for rent and have a look at those for sale. After all, why not? But the night after moving back there I fell so scarily and violently ill, I could not move for three days. The worst stomach pains ever in my whole life, so violent I was wretching in the middle of the night, unable to even stand up. Combined with some sort of fever. It wasn’t Covid, I’ve had it before. It was as bad but different.
So that was that then. My much needed extra three days of calmness to myself wiped out. Just like that. The Friday morning, I staggered out of bed to pack and leave feeling marginally better, deciding that no matter how shit I felt, I’d still go into the café for a last coffee and some writing. While paying for my coffee at the till I bumped into my witty, irreverent, sassy former admin assistant, and we spent a hilarious hour catching up on everything and anything
It’s that kinda place too.
Someone from your past almost always pops up there.
And you are always both beyond thrilled to have met again.
I then drove on home, getting right back into bed on arrival and pretty much staying there for the next three days.
I’ve since done a lot of reflecting on the almost insurmountable challenges of my stay there.
The morning I left, someone had put a note outside my bedroom door telling me not to drink the tap water. Really? That was pretty much all I had been drinking whilst there as I don’t always drink bottled water. And a note outside my door? Surely something as serious as this needs to be informed in person asap. There are only seven rooms there after all.
I could not use the meditation room while there as it was constantly in use by private groups, something I never ever expected and one of the things I had expected to access while staying there.
The Spiritual Care Centre ain’t cheap folks. It is now between €115 and €130 a night (as I write this, I see that the prices drop to €95 a night from October on). For that, I got a room where the emergency exit sign was so neon green it disturbed my sleep, replete with another neon green thingy on the ceiling which further disturbs your sleep. Breakfast is self service which is fine, but no where near enough fruit and friggin’ biscuits everywhere. I’d rather see tons more fruit.
And for that you get a meditation room you can’t use, and if you go to the new Temple, it’s hard to meditate as there are visitors trailing in and out all day long. So, I took myself off to the old shrine room which was even worse. People coming in chatting loudly, “click, click, clickety click” photo taking and videoing on their mobile phones.
The outdoor meditation garden was not much better. It was truly heartbreaking to see. People walking into the meditation garden glued to their phones. Same in the café. People who were clearly not staying in the Spiritual Care Centre wandering round the grounds, nosing into windows and talking loudly. The groups which had clearly privately booked the meditation room (which I then could not use) also talking loudly.
The new Temple is stupendous, it really is. It cost over two million to build, almost all of which was raised by donation, as has always been the case with this most sacred place. But Dzogchen Beara, heartbreakingly, is currently a victim of its own success and less than three months after the Temple opening it is already well on the way to become nothing more than a major tourist attraction on the Beara Peninsula, now also attracting camper vans driving up and down the narrow road, blocking other cars en route, and no doubt blocking other traffic through the narrow streets of Casteltownbere as well.
I’ve made several donations there over the years – this is not what my donations were ever intended for and I am sure there are many other like me who would feel the same were they to see the lack of respect now being shown pretty much everywhere on site by the aggressive and highly invasive non stop use of mobile phones. The café has a sign saying something along the lines of “this is a screen free zone but if that email can’t wait, here is the wifi code”
I mean, really?
That email can friggin’ wait!!
As can that phone call.
Those photos don’t need to be taken, no they actually don’t. This arguing around how essential someone’s mobile call is has gone on for years now. I went to Dzogchen Beara to rest, retreat, heal and meditate. And ended up not being able to meditate in any of their three places, apart from the group sessions in the Temple. Even then, visitors would open the gate and walk round (yes of course whilst fiercely gripping their mobiles) while there was clearly a meditation session going on inside.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe it took that extended visit for me to clearly see how beyond utterly enslaved we now are to our phones. The only lasting plus from having been so violently ill was that I’ve eaten very little since returning and the mental clarity and calmness which has arisen has been astounding. Those two houses I could have rented in Castletownbere, I’ve let go of too.
On the plus side, I now have a new laptop, shower fixed, car fixed too. Mercury Pluto held me deep in its thrall and I wrote more deeply than usual whilst there. The other deeply thorough email I wrote yesterday was to both the current director and policy director of the overall Dzogchen Beara Centre. I have told them I am writing this blog and I am sending it to them to read. I told them I am being transparent and that what I am doing.
My six days cost almost €800 folks. That’s not nothing.
The pattern in my life these last eight weeks has been highly Plutonian. As it has been for us all. Standing up to figures of authority and their abuse of power – that’s as Pluto in Capricorn as it gets.
Who were and are the supposed figures of authority I was dealing with? Well, the three computer shops who screwed me over, the two garages who fixed the wrong thing on my car, and now added to that are whoever the management people are in Dzogchen Beara who think it’s perfectly fine to run one of the most spiritual places I’ve ever been to as if it’s a tourist trap. They might as well set up an ice cream van selling 99’s outside the Temple while they’re at it.
But the thing is, this place is almost totally funded by public donations folks, so that gives me and everyone else a say. That’s my take on it anyway and I’m not budging from that.
So, if you go there folks, I implore you, leave your phone in your car. Switched off. And your camper van at the start of the long path up. Plenty of other people have taken photos which you can view wherever and whenever you want online.
And if you can’t do that, why are you even going there?? Ask yourself that question. The meditation garden is not for tai chi, or yoga, or chatting, or endless screen photo and video taking – it’s just that – a meditation garden.
The whole place felt like it was being run as a marginally cheaper alternative to a BnB. But with a ton more disturbances than you’d get in a BnB.
Except for – oh yeah – you can’t actually really use the meditation rooms while there!
Not undisturbed anyway.
Yes, I am sure they were hugely impacted by Covid. But we all were. They can overhaul their volunteer system too for sure, that’s now outdated. Put signs on the tables in the café about it being a phone free zone. Enforce it. So much could be done, much of which would only take a week or so to implement.
I’m not against change, far from it. I’ve been at the forefront of the titanic changes we are now navigating as an astrologer for five years now. Places like Dzogchen Beara need to step up and be part of this new world we are all now learning to navigate. We need them to be one of the changemakers and leaders. But as members of the public who actually help run the place via our ongoing public donations, they need us far more.
So have your say folks. Write to the Dzogchen Beara Centre Director and protest about what I have written. Be part of the change. If you are a donor, threaten to ask for a refund of your donations unless they tackle the absolute scourge of phones being used everywhere.
Here is the email addresses below. I implore you take the time to write. I have never ever written a blog like this but if it helps change a place I have loved so much and which has helped heal so many people over the world, it’s well worth it. It’s like I just could not write it.
I went there to rest retreat and heal and came home a complete wreck. That’s not on.
Ever.
Here are the email addresses centredirector@dzogchenbeara.org and policy@dzogchenbeara.org
And don’t stand for any waffle in their reply. Pluto is in Capricorn remember?
My next blog will be posted soon, and I’ll be writing about the current between eclipse energies. Rest well dear readers and thank you as always for taking the time to read this.
Thank you dear readers for reading my blog on The transformative power of Mercury Pluto lines at Dzogchen Beara.