Simple Directions

Coincidence?

2010-02-23T17:33:00.003-05:00

Warren G. Harding, President March 4, 1921 to August 2, 1923, Republican; Calvin Coolidge, President August 2, 1923 to March 4, 1929, Republican; Herbert Hoover, President March 4, 1929 to March 4, 1933, Republican -> Great Depression: Aug 1929 – Mar 1933

Richard Nixon, President January 20, 1969 to August 9, 1974, Republican -> 1973–75 recession: Nov 1973 – Mar 1975

Jimmy Carter, President January 20, 1977 to January 20, 1981, Democratic; Ronald Reagan, President January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989, Republican -> Early 1980s recession: July 1981 – Nov 1982

Ronald Reagan, President January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989, Republican; George H. W. Bush, President January 20, 1989 to January 20, 1993, Republican -> Early 1990s recession: July 1990 – Mar 1991

George W. Bush, President January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2009, Republican -> Late 2000s recession: Dec 2007 - Dec 2009

Could it be coincidence that 7 of the 8 Presidents who preceded the five major economic collapses since the Great Depression were Republicans? (A Republican was in office at the start of ALL of them). Or could it be that gutting government services and putting all your faith in business is bad economic policy?

No Money Down

2008-10-22T14:47:00.003-04:00

NO MONEY DOWN
Coming to terms with your finances through The Work

Lifestream Center, Roanoke
Saturday, November 8^th, 9:30am to 5pm; $85 - $30 non-refundable deposit.

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man's world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man's world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It's a rich man's world

It’s a rich man’s world. It seems evident, doesn’t it? Everywhere we look, money talks.

Before I was introduced to The Work of Byron Katie, I was also convinced that it was a rich man’s world. Having been immersed in The Work now for several years, I have found again and again that what seems obvious ain’t necessarily so.

So what is The Work? The Work is a simple process of inquiry that enables us to see the truth behind our stressful thoughts. There are four simple questions and then the turnarounds, where we see whether the opposite of what we believed is also true. The four questions are:
1) Is it true?
2) Can you absolutely know that it is true? (if the first answer is either ‘Yes’ or ‘I don’t know’)
3) How do you react when you think that thought? and
4) Who would you be without that thought?

Which is all very well in theory. But The Work isn’t a theory. It is a practice, so what better way to demonstrate it than by giving a real life example. Let’s take a look at the abovementioned thought, It’s a rich man’s world.

Is it true? It appears to be, yes.

Can you absolutely know it is true? No.

How do you react when you think this thought? I feel disempowered. I feel that I have no control over my circumstances. I get upset with rich people and want them to be more benevolent. I spend a lot of energy trying to find ways to get rich, but get distracted when they don’t appear to be working or even simply when I allow myself to get distracted. I fail to notice the abundance around me and in my life. I get caught up in my thoughts and spend a lot of time planning. I feel guilty when I’m not busy. I consequently busy myself with lots of trivial things and lose any focus I may have previously had. I do things for their potential value rather than for their enjoyment, which often leaves me struggling with things I would previously have enjoyed doing, such as writing this article. Everything becomes a ‘project’. I put money before happiness, to the point where I begin to believe that money can buy me happiness. I worry about money and my finances. Life becomes a mission, and I start treating the people around me more like variables in an equation than human beings. I experience a lot of stress when I think money is being wasted, and get angry with whoever I think is wasting it, whether it be myself, my wife or the President. I become more concerned about what rich people are doing with their money than what I am doing with mine, and experience a lot of frustration as a result.

Who would you be without that thought? If I didn’t believe it was a rich man’s world, I would make the world more my own. By this I mean that I would embrace it and fall in love with what it has to offer me. I would be constantly amazed at how giving life is, and how I always have everything I need. I would not be preoccupied with making money, which would open up a lot of mental space to find ways to enjoy what life brings. The consequences of this could be quite unexpected, and I imagine one might be that I become more open to possibilities. This could, ironically, provide some wonderful and enjoyable opportunities for financial reward. I would respect and admire those who have achieved financial success, and would consequently respect and admire their decisions about what they decide to do with their money. I would be at peace with my financial situation and theirs.

Can you find any turnarounds? Yes:
1) It’s a poor person’s world.
a. Poor people make up the bulk of the world’s population. As the majority, it is their world. What they do about this is not something I can control.
b. In this country, as in many developed nations, poor people are given benefits that richer people do not receive, such as Food Stamps and Medicaid.
c. I have known both rich and poor people, and in my experience many poor people lead richer lives than rich people. By this, I mean that they often have deeper friendships, closer families and work less than many rich people.
2) It’s not a rich man’s world.
a. Well, no. How could anyone lay claim—with a straight face—to owning this planet?
b. It is no more a rich man’s world than it is a monkey’s world or a dolphin’s world or a tree’s world. Everything in this world lays a claim to its stake in it, just as this world would not be the same without them.
c. What happens when the rich man dies? Ownership is such an impermanent concept.
3) It’s my world.
a. Like they say, life is what you make it.
b. This is my reality and nobody else’s. I may share the same life as my wife, but my experience is mine alone. This is my world.
c. The world is my oyster. Shall it make a pearl? It is up to me.

Who would have thought that such a simple thought could generate so much wisdom? To see how much that thought affects me (How do I react?) was truly revelatory—at every level of my being it holds some sway. And then to see how liberating it could be to not believe the thought (Who would I be?) showed me the opportunity that awaits me when I can let this thought go. And finally, to learn in the turnarounds that this is my world—that nobody can claim it as theirs any more than I can—was an empowering discovery.

This is the beauty of The Work. You can do it for years, and on any topic, and it only becomes more powerful and beneficial. Money is just one possible topic, but it is a big one for many of us.

Imagine life with no money downs … it is possible.

You can find out more about The Work at www.thework.com, and more about my work at www.lifesupportva.org.

How bad you gonna smell?

2008-09-29T21:39:00.001-04:00

Back in the early ‘90s, my flatmate and I came to the realization that the world was really fucked up. It wasn’t just the rampant consumerism destroying the planet that we noticed, but a combination of unsustainable practices being championed by every political and industrial leader in existence. Everywhere people were talking about progress, and we were holed up in our flat talking about the regression we could see coming: regression back to the Middle Ages if we were lucky or, more likely, the Dark Ages.

We used to ask, “How bad you gonna smell when the shit hits the fan?”

I’m no economist, and I’ve never understood how debt can continue to increase without it all eventually collapsing into one big black hole. There’s a story I heard once that illustrates this: a man comes onto an island where the people have no concept of money. He has a big bag of marbles with him, and he shows the people how—instead of bartering—they can just give each other an agreed upon number of marbles for each transaction. He gives each of the people on the island 50 marbles to get started, with the simple proviso that when he returns in a year, they each give him 55 back.

News flash: we’re living on that island, folks! Have you got all your marbles?

It doesn’t really matter, because 700 billion more of them ain’t gonna stop the inevitable from happening. You see, this is the thing: all the current US Administration’s policies have done is catalyse an outcome that was always going to happen. You can’t have everyone spending more than they make without a consequence. And the longer it takes to get there, the bigger that consequence is going to be.

The proposed bailout package is like using a bandage to stop internal bleeding. Listen to what they’re saying: all they want to do is ensure that everyone can still get credit! It’s like that guy coming over with a ship full of marbles and saying, “This should solve your problem. Just remember to give me a ship and a bit back when I return next year.”

The problem is systemic. John Ralston Saul said it well in his definition of Competition in The Doubter’s Companion: “An event in which there are more losers than winners. Otherwise it’s not a competition. A society based on competition is therefore primarily a society of losers.” Our entire economic system is based on the idea of competition. At the end of any competition, there is only one winner. We could well be nearing the end of ours.

So the question is, who wins? Microsoft? Politicians? China? The Illuminati? The real question is, what is the definition of winning when the whole world is losing? It is altogether possible that our existing definitions of power will be meaningless on the other side of the black hole.

My guess was, and remains, that the winner will be the one who can look after himself. It will be the person who can feed and clothe and house himself without owing anyone a cent. It will be the one who doesn’t need any of the institutions which are folding now to keep him afloat.

The winner, I think, will not be an individual. The winner will be community. When a group of people use their individual talents to support one another, there is more power than any bank could ever possess. No bank can ever touch a group of people who have never needed it.

I love the irony: the competition winner is community.

So … how bad you gonna smell when the shit hits the fan?

Notes from a meditation retreat

2008-07-07T15:41:00.000-04:00

The paper’s got a mind of its own. Even the paper is mindful. My mind is in the process of waking up to itself. It’s a process slightly more painful than giving birth to an elephant—I imagine—but it’s a process all the same. Mindful? Hardly. Walking up the hill, trying to focus on my feet, and I find myself back home, having imaginary conversations in hypothetical contexts, and then down below I hear the flip-flapping of my sandals, the brushing of my feet against leaf litter, and I remember. This is where I am, not there. And I focus on my feet, and then find myself somewhere around last week, or was it last year? And it is another story, another place that is not here, another time that is not now. And I ask myself, “Where am I?”

I am a drifter. Theoretically, I live in one place and that is my home. But that is just what it looks like. I live in my head—or maybe my head lives me—and my head is seldom in the same place as my body.

Mindfulness? I could use some. I could use a healthy dose of reality. I would love to spend some time alone with this, instead of that and that and that. It could happen. Let’s see. If the paper can do it, so can I.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Life is a breath. It is just one short huff or a long slow wheeze, but it is just a breath. A candle flame flickering ever so briefly and PHOOSH, it is out. But the candle remains, and there is still flame, and nobody misses it because now it is time for cake! So life is the precursor to a party. Well, that’s a relief. All the universe’s mysteries revealed in a flicker, a miraculous instant. It is, after all, just an instant that I need. A single instant of clarity, and everything makes sense. But what of all the other instances? I suppose they cease to exist when that instant arises. Now is, after all, the only thing that exists. Even that is questionable. How would I know? All I know is that I breathe, and it’s not even me that breathes. All I know is that I don’t make any sense. All I know is held in the single flicker of a tiny candle on a great big cake. It is the cake that knows. In its ingredients lies the answer to those questions that haunt the minds of the sophists, the philosophers, the mind wanderers, the dreamers and the mystics. In that cake is a pearl. But be careful not to choke on it, for it is worth more than a meal, less than a life, and whatever that means will be revealed in the breath AFTER the flame is erased. And then common knowledge is all, and all is known, and nothing is left to chance. And nothing has ever changed, all stays the same, and I never knew a time I could trust or a belief I could kick far enough away. And for all this, the ink will still run out and we will throw away the cartridge without realizing its recycling value. And none of this could possibly make sense to a rational mind.

Could it?

What is it you really want?

2008-07-01T17:43:00.005-04:00

What is it you really want?

An introduction to The Work of Byron Katie

Lifestream Center
Saturday, August 9^th, 9:30am to 5pm

What is it you really want? Be careful what you ask for.

What people often find when doing The Work of Byron Katie is that what they think they want is not what they really want.

The Work is a simple method of self-inquiry that has opened thousands of people up to the truth of who they really are. Through responding to a limited selection of questions, these people have found that all the answers they have ever sought are waiting within them—often very close to the surface.

In my experience with The Work, I have found consistently that the fundamental cause of stress is an argument with reality. The problem is that reality doesn’t argue back, it just continues to be itself. As Katie says, “If you want reality to be different than what it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark.”

What is an argument with reality? There are so many, so I’ll just give you some examples that you might be familiar with:

· I need more money;

· Our troops should be out of Iraq;

· The weather has been too hot lately;

· He needs to tell the truth;

· The President should be impeached;

· I don’t want her to leave me.

These are so common that you’ve probably heard them all before—some out of your own mouth. But each of them is a statement that flies in the face of your experience of what is actually happening. And when what you think you want doesn’t meet reality, you have uncovered the source of confusion. No wonder thoughts like this cause stress!

The Work is a peace movement. World peace cannot be accomplished while the people who inhabit it are at war with their own realities. So world peace starts with you. If you find yourself believing thoughts like the ones above—thoughts that fight with reality—it could be time to ask yourself if you can expect peace to come from our leaders when it hasn’t yet come from yourself.

The Work can help make this possible. It is a simple process that anyone can do, and is as effective as you allow it to be. Through this method of inquiry, you can find what you really want, learn who you really are, and bring peace to your world. Are you ready for this?

As an experienced practitioner of The Work, and incorporating a unified spiritual approach, I would love to introduce you to this transformative process, while inviting you to look as deeply as you can at the real source of suffering.

You can find out more about The Work at www.thework.com, and more about my work at www.lifesupportva.org.

Play day

2008-04-10T17:08:00.002-04:00

Spring aromas wash around me with the wind. Blossoms blow by, and a tractor works on high. The cats by my feet wait and play, play and wait, wait, play, and a fly buzzes bright by my ear. The shadow before me reflects the warmth behind me. Green grass shining, greening.

Today I make my affirmations, today I give myself to freedom: until I can say 'I'm perfect', my answer is, 'I'm getting better'; kindness is a kindness I owe to myself; I am here to help.

If this is a dream, I must be dreaming. I like circles.

Butterfly bites off as much as it can chew and flaps off to another bud. Kitty cat smile smells of cherry blossom. Yonder hill awakens in a red flourish, and the bonfire beside me asks for a light. Sorry, don't smoke. Bouncing ball in the distance, distance, distance.

It's a nice day for a walk.

Waiting for Godot

2007-12-03T22:32:00.000-05:00

If someone told me, "Katie, wait till they start chemical warfare," I would say, "Good. I can wait. I can do that" – Byron Katie

I have been asked to wait recently, and this quote from Katie came to mind. I can wait. It is something I can do.

What I notice is that when I’m the one saying, “Wait until…” that I’m already there. I’m not waiting, I’m being impatient, pushy, getting way, way ahead of myself. What is happening here now when I’m saying that? How would I know? I’m too busy over there, possibly years ahead, possibly never, living a life I fear. Yet right here, right now there is nothing to fear, there is only support.

It seems the whole world is waiting for something. Once it was AIDS, there was Ebola, SARS, Avian Flu – epidemics are popular things to wait for because they speak of death, finality, the end of waiting. There are many people here waiting for the end of Bush’s reign – they even have timers for sale counting down the seconds to his last day in office. We count down the days to Christmas, to the next football season, to 2012, there’s always something to keep us away from this.

In this moment, I find myself waiting too. Waiting for the next word to come, waiting for Godot.

When I am waiting with expectation, when I want an outcome: that is when I’m no longer here. When I am waiting purely in anticipation of what could come next – waiting for Godot – then I remain here, at peace, aware and open. Anything is possible and everything is welcome.

Yes, I can wait. I can do that.

We Are Family FREE Workshop

2007-11-20T17:53:00.000-05:00

We all look to the holiday season as being a time to connect with family and friends. This can be a wonderful opportunity for togetherness, but it can also be a very difficult time.

As Ram Dass once said, if you think you're enlightened try spending some time with your family.

Family members know better than anybody how to push your buttons, and if your family is like most families, they probably will.

The Work of Byron Katie is a button-removal tool. This simple method of inquiry helps us see that, as Byron Katie says, "Forgiveness is realizing that what you thought happened, didn't."

With this kind of understanding, the only buttons left for people to push are ones you will be grateful to discover.

Join Jamie Reynolds for a free We Are Family workshop on The Work of Byron Katie at the Jessie Peterman Library on Wednesday, December 5th, from 7pm to 9pm, and be better prepared for the holidays than ever before.

For more information, contact Jamie.

"It is changing my life already. It's a great way to address your life and find the truth. You will be surprised and emancipated!" - Workshop participant

Thank you.

"An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering." - Byron Katie

Could it be...

2007-11-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

Could it be that my only function is to complete reality? Could it be that the squished bug, the ugly divorce, the hate crime, war, pollution, the grisly death, are all absolutely necessary for no reason other than they are happening? Could it be that the only decision I’ve ever had to make is whether to accept this or not? Accepting reality. Could it be that no other decision I’ve ever made carries any consequence at all? Could it be? Could it even be that those decisions were never really made? That if my only function has been to complete reality, that my function has therefore already been set?

Fatalism? Does fatalism allow for the acceptance of reality? Or is it relinquishing to reality? It seems to me that there is freedom in acceptance, bondage in relinquishment.

Could this be? Could freedom be as simple as simple acceptance? Could I, with all my theories, thoughts and cherished dreams, could I accept such a simple premise? Could it be that if this is the only decision I ever need to make, that it is as inevitable as reality itself? Could it be that even this decision is not mine to make?

Could it be?

The bun is in the oven!

2007-10-29T16:30:00.000-04:00

Fluid motion

2007-10-21T12:32:00.000-04:00

Trees dance fluid in the breeze, performing as one: spontaneous choreography. The wind blows by me, but I remain steadfast, unmoved. A wall of resistance as a door slams shut in the distance.

I am the defender. Jaw and hands clenched, bracing in readiness for the next attack. I will fight to the finish though the only thing finished will be me. I am the warrior; I am the worrier. I am entrenched in a world of my own design, readying for the battles ahead: the ones I foresee in the strategies I make. The strategies, oh the strategies. I have a plan for every eventuality, plans for the eventualities of eventualities. I see so far ahead that I overlook what is directly ahead, and the plans, the strategies, crumble before my perpetual readiness.

Ready for what? There is no war to be fought. The wind flows through me when I am as free as a tree. There is nothing to win – no grand prize at the end. Indeed, there is no end. Fluid motion is all. Fluid motion.

Yellowing leaves

2007-10-03T19:59:00.000-04:00

Leaves yellow and drop as the sun fades into winter. These seasons come but four a year. Seasons of the heart change faster. Seasons of the soul … well … some would say there is only one.

They could be right, I don’t know. I will content myself with the yellowing leaves for now. It is not for me to theorise. God knows I’ve tried. I’ve contemplated, drawn diagrams, put words on paper in attempts to understand, and all I’ve learned is the trick of self-confusion.

What works for me, I’ve found, is simply to experience this. Take it in and move on, leave the analysis to the experts, the posturing to the politicians. The less I know, the more I understand; the less I have to say, the greater the freedom. I don’t know what anything means, and I am glad for it. It is easier on the mind not to dwell on what it cannot hope to know. Leaves a little room for the soul to speak, for the silence to sound like peace.

Let the leaves turn. I shall be the spectator, nature the magician, while my soul waits gently in the wings.

Mother in the dark

2007-09-28T19:10:00.000-04:00

There is a hole in the sky where the sun just set: a receptacle, a vortex for the light. It pulls the daylight in greedily, sucking up every last drop like a bathtub drain. Chhhloorshp, and it is dark.

There is freedom in darkness, for darkness is an expanse, wall-less. Darkness is always one uncertain step away from the void. It is the mouth of mystery, the key to dreams.

It is in the darkness that answers lie in wait, hiding from the perceptions that hunt them down solely to dismiss them. The eyes are great deceivers: they proclaim loudly at how much they see, yet they limit their sight to what we insist is there, ignoring what the darkness shows us all too clearly.

The darkness answers wordlessly, concisely, with perfect reasoning. It whispers with the wind, silently speaking wisdom where the world opens up like a fresh baked bread roll, steaming fresh, enticing.

I know nothing of the darkness. I fear it. I fear its potential. I fear that what it tells me will tear my world from me, ruthlessly, snatching angrily, ripping me from it like a baby from its mother’s arms. For that is what I am: a baby, resting securely in the story I have made, thumb in mouth and diapers on. I do not want this story to change, for I feel safe in it, warm and comforted. It is my story after all, why wouldn’t I wish to keep it?

Yet there is a calling, a cooing from the deep of darkness, beckoning me gently in, a mother’s forefinger crooking and straightening repetitively, patiently, knowingly. I pretend to ignore it, for the mother I have made is ‘mine’, and the mother who waits is not. She is more, for she waves us in indiscriminately, not belonging to any single one, being the womb of us all.

The mother I have made is mechanical. The comfort she gives me is a false one, for her cold, metallic arms, her creaking chest and her robotic voice are soulless distractions, a rough estimation of the one an unspoken memory, flickering candle-like in a corner of my labyrinthine mind, reminds me of when the silence allows.

This is partially why the estimation is a rough one. There is very little silence here. This is a noiseworks, a sound forge. The screaming clanging banging smashing yelling crashing noisiness in here makes it difficult to notice. Anything. I will begin to notice this, and then, whooshing in from stage right, comes a distraction so vast and overwhelming that this disappears and that takes its place, but coming up from behind, signaling with its whistle, is a train of thought emerging from a tunnel and bearing down on me ballistically, and on it goes until all that is left is the whir of uncertainty, dizziness. Confusion.

And still, still as the space between the stars, the womb bearer waits. She would be a hypocrite if she did not leave me be, and she has no need to do otherwise, for she knows, sure as the ground that holds me up, that I shall return. Prodigal, innocent, repentant, humble. Her arms as open as the mind that finds them, her heart pounding with the fuel of forgiveness, she is the source of the silence. She is the love I desire.

Vows

2007-06-30T17:00:00.000-04:00

As the rhododendrons bloom around us, we celebrate the blossoming relationship of E and J, surrounded by the rich fragrance of anticipation. Like buds on a tree, each moment together unfolds fresh possibility, nurtured by ever-deepening roots and nature’s sweet embrace.

Two trees growing together, entwined, sharing the same soil, the same sky, the same rain. The moonlight will shine on them tonight and the shadow will be one, complete in their sweet embrace. Watch that shadow dance with the fire, attached to the pair, yet moving entirely of its own accord: this is the freedom J and E intend for one another.

Everything in the forest gives unconditionally. Its trees and animals give their lives to it, and the forest flourishes. J and E also intend to turn compost into fertile soil, flourishing in a similar state of gratitude.

FAMILY CANDLE CEREMONY

CHILDREN RECEIVE JEWELRY

J (to E and girls)
I followed the simple directions to you
And now I would like to follow the simple directions with you
I want to share all of what I have
With all of what you have.
Commingle into one with you
For the whole to be greater than its parts
I want for this to be great, and even greater
For every moment together to be new
To see the sunshine in your eyes
Radiating through our space
I want this for me, I want this for you, I want this for all of us
I love you

E
I want to express my complete gratitude
I thank you for being the beautiful and righteous man that you are
Your sincerity, your integrity
Your willingness to work and nurture and be responsible
Are music to my heart
I love the way you love us
You’re so fun to be one with
Swim the current with and dance life with
I love you

Grace (E & J)
Forgiveness (E & J)
Devotion (E & J)
Integrity (J)
Sincerity (E)
Compassion (J)
Kindness (E)
Dissolution (J)
Illumination (E)
Completion (J)
Wholeness (E)
Yin (J)
Yang (E)
Gratitude (J)
Divinity (E)
Respect (J)
Nurture (E)
Defenselessness (J)
Strength (E)
Abundance (J)
Generosity (E)
Friendship (E & J)
Freedom (E & J)
Happiness (E & J)
Peace (E & J)
LOVE (E & J)

TOGETHER
I intend to love you through the cycles
To be aware that your gray hair is moonlight shining through you
Your wrinkles just places to catch pools of light.
I intend to grow gracefully with you and enjoy you deeply
Season after season after season.

EXCHANGE RINGS

CELEBRANTS’ BLESSINGS

GIRLS WRAP FAMILY

GROUP OM

Reclaiming light

2007-06-21T08:39:00.000-04:00

The only time I’ve been to church in this country was on the first Sunday of 2005 – just after attending the Cleanse, and just before venturing into Mexico. At that church that day they celebrated White Stone Sunday. White Stone Sunday dated back to Roman times when freed slaves were given a white stone to identify them as being freed – which was necessary because to identify them as slaves in the first place they would cut off your nose or ear or poke out an eye or something like that.

I’ve still got most of my body parts, but that hasn’t stopped me being a slave to my beliefs – an experience I have found more dismembering than any physical intervention could hope to be.

So at this church we were each given a white stone and a marker pen, and asked to sit for a few moments to see what came up as our word for the year. I sat, and the first thing that came was ‘Let the light shine through.’ So my word for 2005 was ‘light’.

I’ve continued this practice these past couple of years, and it’s been interesting to notice how much one word can affect me. Last year the word was ‘home’. I had just moved here from Australia to live with E, who was building the solid cob house we now live in. Prior to meeting E, I had been working through what I saw as ungroundedness, and ‘home’ seemed like the most grounding thing I could experience.

This year, I found the word ‘patience’. I was working through a lot of personal things, and there was a faint glimmer that appeared to be the light at the end of the tunnel. It seemed at the time that I just needed to be patient.

Notice that it was the glimmer of ‘light’ I was being patient about. Patience can’t exist without a story of a future – the light has been there all along, just as it was in ’05. Similarly, ‘home’ carries a heavy burden of a story of a future: this is where I live now; this is what defines me. Whenever something isn’t perfect about ‘home’, I find I suffer because I carry that imperfection far into the future and experience all of it before it ever happens. Home is heavy.

So today I am reclaiming ‘light’. Light is easy, light is fun, light is peaceful, and light is my inheritance. Why wait? Now is all I have anyway, so what is there to be patient for? Home is where the heart is, and my heart has never left me. So what’s the big deal about home?

Light is mine, and through light I serve more than I possibly could any other way.

It is time to shine.

Really succeeding successfully

2007-05-15T19:35:00.000-04:00

From the original transcript of Byron Katie’s new book, A Thousand Names for Joy:

A successful human being is the one reading these words. Do you weigh 500 pounds? You’re a success. That’s your job, to weigh 500 pounds. You have cancer? That’s your job, you are successfully do that job right now. It doesn’t mean it won’t change. Can you be happy from here? Take on that job. You don’t understand the words you’re reading? Perfect! Your job is not to understand yet. You may experience tomorrow morning in the shower a blast of understanding, a profound experience and appreciation of yourself as a successful human being, just a glimpse of how precious and how necessary it is for you to be you right now. There’s no mistake in the universe. There’s a perfect age, height, gender. You don’t have a partner? Perfect. You have a partner whom you can’t get along with? Perfect. You’re a success. You have just met yourself with unconditional love. This deep understanding—that is success. When you understand this, there is nothing that can keep you from realizing that you’re a success.

Look at that, I’m more of a success than I thought! Just looking at this moment, I am a success at sitting at the keyboard and getting sidetracked. It’s probably taken me more than half an hour to write this much – and most of it was Copy & Paste. And I’ve been having a great conversation with Y, getting so much wisdom from this little six-year-old, who reminds me that her name means ‘great teacher’. I love the way my fingers flick across the keyboard, the way they move themselves. I’ve spent most of today with a tummy bug, and I’ve noticed I’m an expert at doubling over in pain; at spraying the bowl (I don’t think I left one part of it untouched); at trying to upchuck with minimal results; at suffering in silence; at groaning enough to let people know that I’m suffering in silence. I’m really good at forgetting to sit in my Course in Miracles lessons throughout the day. Oh, and my moods: I woke up this morning blaming everybody for things; then I found a little peace in the Course; then I managed being rushed fairly well; then I spent a considerable amount of time unable to focus; there was some frustration in there – and a bit more blaming going on; a sense of achievement; then the sickness started taking over and things were pretty fuzzy for a while, while I lay there wondering how this body couldn’t really be me if it hurt so much; then eventually I read the passage above and a whole wave of clarity overcame me, along with the inspiration to write. I am a complete success at mood swings! And still, I can get myself in a funk that lasts for days – it can get really black and seem inescapable. I am really good at getting myself down. A master, I daresay. And I bounce back and can spend a long period of time in clarity, so I’m a success at that too. I’m a success at whining about things – like the mess – and doing very little about it. Oh yes, I’m very good at that. And I’m a success at change: one moment I can see you as beautiful, the next as unattractive; one moment I can treat you with the utmost respect, the next with complete disregard; I can look you in the eyes now, and later I will do everything to avert my gaze. I’m a success at being 37. I’ve done it for half a year now, without failing once. I did each of the other years leading up to it perfectly as well – not one moment in any of that time was I any older or younger than I really was. And I’m a real success at wanting to be different: when I was younger I wanted to be older, now I’m older I often want to be younger (not as much as I used to, though); I’ve wanted to be heavier; wanted to be in a different relationship or a relationship or not in a relationship so many times these past 37 years, I couldn’t hope to count them; I’ve wanted to be richer; wanted to be more organised; wanted to have a different job; wanted to live somewhere else – oh, I’ve wanted so much that I haven’t actually had, it’s a wonder I can be here right now to talk about it. And I’m a true success at that: being here right now to talk about it – against all odds, here I am, the greatest success story ever told.

I think I’ve just discovered the meaning of forgiveness.

Succeeding successfully

2007-04-24T18:47:00.000-04:00

Heidi has asked me to find how I am a success today, and if I have any secrets to success.

I am breathing. That makes me a success at living.

I just got off the phone with a teary girl who is now happy doing something she wants to do and not watching TV, which is what she thought she wanted to do. I noticed a lot of silence during the phone call, and I noticed I didn’t tell her off or even tell her what to do – I just asked her what would work for her, and didn’t judge the crying. That makes me a success at learning to listen, and especially learning to listen without judgement.

After several hours of persistence, I finally sent out a bulk email from work today that was presentable and had lots of links in it. Now I can sit back and watch the reports to find out what’s working and what isn’t. I can see that makes me a success at persistence, at taking feedback, and at being open to innovation.

I am doing my 102^nd lesson in A Course in Miracles today. This is my 102^nd day of doing the Course this second time around. Last time it took me two-and-a-half years to complete the 365-lesson course. Although I have no idea how long it will take me this time, I know I have stuck to one lesson a day since I started it again in January, despite distractions and many occasions rebelling against it in my mind. I would consider this being a success at consistency.

I find myself still married to E, still living with her, and still loving her as much as I can. I moved to a new country to be with her, having known her only three months (over two of which I had spent away from her), I moved in with her two daughters, and am now living on the same property as her parents and godmother, she was in the middle of building a house when I met her and we’re still in the process now. In short, there were a lot of potential stressors inherent in this relationship, and it seems we’ve worked through many of them. I see myself as being successful today at being open to possibility, open to faith and open to change.

There are seedlings popping up downstairs and in the veggie garden, two compost heaps composting and one emptied for the strawberries, two beds planted and one nearly ready, and a worm farm starting to breed worms. I believe I have been successful at making much of this happen; I am successful at trying.

I have just begun managing a band, the Alliens, and it is a real joy for me. I recall managing the Book of Funk and how fast their popularity grew then, and I am seeing all sorts of possibilities with this new band, and it’s so exciting. Despite many shortcomings, I think I am a successful manager.

As for secrets to success, I guess the biggest secret seems to me to be able to accept success rather than deny it. Today’s lesson says, “God’s Will for me is perfect happiness. There is no sin; it has no consequence.” There is no sin. No mistakes. Every moment is successful; perfection. All I need do is notice. Sometimes, even, I am successful at that.

This was a tag, so I tag you. Whether you have a blog or not, how are you successful? What are your secrets to success?

Eclipse

2007-03-03T18:20:00.000-05:00

I love that when the moon is at its very fullest, that I can't see it.

The pedestal on Rumor Mill Rd

2007-02-25T12:27:00.000-05:00

There is a run-down old mill on this road, sinking slowly into the stream that trickles by it, lapping its doors at floodtime. The mill has two guardians: two brothers who share the same name as the mill. Every day they walk up and down the road, passing by it regularly. Some people around here think they’re a little crazy, but there’s nothing like a stroll to while away a day. They are my teachers.

My teachers come in as many forms as I witness crossing my path. Every one of them teaches me something of the spectrum of sanity. I have one dear friend, for example, who put me on a pedestal when I first entered E’s life, calling me a hero in admiring tones. Unfortunately, the ground here is wet and soft, so pedestals don’t tend to stay upright for long. When I first met this friend of mine, she left the door open to topple this pedestal, and I have been so kind as to give her the tools to do it.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the push. A pedestal is an uncomfortable place to sit, and the perspective is hardly flattering either, what with her looking up my nostrils and all.

Now we’re back on the same level, which you might imagine would be ideal. And in many ways it is. The only thing though, is that when someone puts another on a pedestal, it is usually because they think they need somebody to look up to, and this is a fairly solid indication that they don’t think too much of themselves. So now here I find myself eye-to-eye with someone experiencing a good deal of self-contempt. Instead of nasal hairs, now she sees herself, and that’s pretty tough on the poor girl.

This is where the rumours start. If I feel bad about myself, I could easily succumb to the insane logic that making someone else look worse will make me look good. The problem with this thinking, of course, is that I would only be attacking myself: it’s me I’m seeing in you, so by attempting to make you look bad, I’m actually making me look bad. If this doesn’t make sense, consider that everything is wave motion and a wave is the representation of a circle: it’s all circular. Another word for this is ‘karma’, but that term has earned itself so many misconceptions these days that it’s probably best not to use it in this context. Let’s just stick with ‘circular.’

So yes, my dear friend, in doing her best, has started a chain of rumours that has no option but to turn around and bite her on the butt. I would so love to share this with her, to give her the opportunity to stop the cycle before it gets out of hand, and it is clear that is not my place right now.

And none of this matters. What matters to me is that there is someone in my life who has enough concern to remind me in every way she can where my work still lies. What matters to me is that I know I have someone to count on.

This is my thank you note to you, sweet friend. Thank you for sharing. After all, to give is to have, and you have given me plenty. Just think, all of it is yours!

Americanization

2007-02-21T22:15:00.000-05:00

Holly

2007-02-21T21:27:00.000-05:00

Holy - Of God, therefore invulnerable.

Wholly - Proportion of anything that is 'of God'.

Holey - Method of obtaining emptiness; vulnerability. Means of seeing holiness.

Loving...

2007-02-15T10:12:00.000-05:00

Is this a tag? Heidi has asked me to share with her a list entitled ‘And most of all, today I love...’ Here it is.

The sun glaring through the window into my eyes, reflecting my face on the monitor.

The ice on the trees.

The broken tree limbs on the ground.

Life.

The way things all come together.

Clouds.

The warmth on my face and the chill on my back.

The hum of the computer.

Icicles.

No power at home until maybe tomorrow.

Watching the fire.

Not watching the TV.

All the things I don’t need. And that would be everything.

Everything.

And I can see how I could be expected to say E and L and Y and my family and theirs, and it all seems so redundant.

PS: One more: writing this.

Tagging:
Jade
Suze
Danét
Lee
Jamie

Shh

2007-02-14T21:51:00.000-05:00

Shh. Don't tell anyone.
The Work
Tao te Ching
A Course in Miracles

Ice pics

2007-02-14T08:09:00.000-05:00

Celebration time

2007-02-13T18:11:00.000-05:00

I was asked to write about how I celebrate life. This is what came:

I am looking out a window at the ice sticking to the needles of a pine tree. Frosting. Beyond the tree, mist settles over the barn and through the forest behind it. I have been hearing people talking of this and calling it ‘bad weather’. And here I sit wondering what good weather could be.

I come from a town that is hot and sunny at the moment. Somebody asked me today which weather I preferred: that of my oasis home then or this mountain home now. I don’t know, to me they’re both the same.

Recently I’ve taken to ‘forgetting’ my coat and walking around with my arms extended so my hands catch the full sensation of the cold. It’s such an amazing experience feeling them stiffen like food in a freezer. While the extremities numb, the joints send weather alerts to my brain.

A month ago I was in Florida hearing people complain about the heat. I love that people move to Florida to escape the cold and then turn up their air-conditioners so they don’t experience the heat. I love the heat, the way it pushes in at me from every direction like the garbage compacter in Star Wars, slowing my stride and giving my body permission to sweat.

I find life to be so much easier to enjoy when I love whatever it throws at me. At times like this, I don’t celebrate life, it celebrates me. It courses through me, a stream through an empty net, and I wait to catch what it offers up.

The more I live choicelessly, the more I have to celebrate. Every moment becomes its own experience as life directs me in its ingenious production. I once thought I was the director, but life proved far more qualified.

So I celebrate life by letting it be. I celebrate life by getting out of its way: I no longer stand before the tsunami with my arms waving like a manic traffic cop, now I turn around and surf the wave or drown in its abundance.

It’s such a beautiful way to die.

School's in!

2007-02-05T23:05:00.000-05:00

Three of my four brothers, from left to right: M,D & N, on their first day at their new school. Good looks must run in the family!

What's in a name?

2007-02-02T15:12:00.000-05:00

I was once given an exercise to name everything I saw without judging it. Just the name. For instance, I would not call that a beautiful tree or this a smelly sock. Just ‘tree’, ‘sock’, etc. After spending some time doing this, I found that it was often difficult to name what I saw: is that a chain link fence? wire? or am I looking at the gaps between the wire? At this point I found it easier just to call everything I saw, ‘God’.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not religious. I don’t go to church, I’ve never read the Bible, and I probably believe less now than I did when that word carried a big charge for me. God to me meant religion, and religion meant the opiate of the masses; it meant war and politics; it meant believing in the improbable, blind faith. Now God to me simply means everything. You, me, this, that: all of it. There is no my God and your God because my God includes your God, whatever that may be. And if you don’t have a God, it includes that too. There is no right or wrong with this God, no good or bad, no judgement. There is only this. And this, and this, and this.

I’ve been doing this exercise again recently, and I am finding the same peace in it as I found then. I am seeing through it that there is no real distinction between things: this hand, this pen, that sky and that barn are all essentially the same thing. It is only my perception that would tell me different. And I refuse to be a hostage to my perception, for I am determined to see.

+ / -

2007-01-20T19:09:00.000-05:00

Suze asked: Is it that much easier to be negative and furtive, than open, positive and grateful?

I don’t know.

For me, being positive and open about myself was once virtually impossible. Maybe it was only as I came to understand that I am forgiven that I began to be able to forgive myself. And through forgiveness comes love, for forgiveness is love’s mechanism. And where there is love – true love – there can be nothing else, no exceptions. I am included in the everything that excludes nothing else.

It is impossible not to love myself when I love everything.

From memory, when I first did the exercise I did in Self disclosure I found myself finally being able to break through the barrier to admitting positive things about myself. It was at the School for The Work with Byron Katie, in an exercise on accepting the gift of criticism. Each day of that School was designed to help open me up to love, and that exercise was a big part of it. Another big part of it had elements of the earlier piece that Self disclosure was a result of: if only you could witness the things I have seen people admit to. If only you could experience the love flooding that room as they did.

I guess the key to forgiveness is realizing that I am all of this. When I can find myself in the meanest despot and the kindest angel, and when I can forgive that, my work is done. Like love, forgiveness is total.

When I am in a forgiving space – let’s call it grace – it is so much easier to be open, positive and grateful, than negative and furtive. In fact, the latter two are impossible.

Ex-defacto-stepnephew

2007-01-18T03:31:00.000-05:00

I haven't been adding too many baby pics lately like I used to, and I just love this photo so much that I want to include it here. This is my ex-defacto-stepbrother Brendan holding his brand new baby son Thomas. Which, I guess, makes the little tacker my ex-defacto-stepnephew.

Congratulations Brendan and Jodie, this is such great news.

Loving it!

2007-01-17T21:03:00.000-05:00

It’s tag time again. Hopefully this one won’t prove to be as controversial as the last! Suze has asked me to find five things I love about me. Only five? C’mon Suze! Okay, here goes:

I love my life. I often find myself looking at where I am and being stunned by how close it fits the picture I had of myself before I had even heard of this place or met E. It dates back to before my last relationship, and that lasted five and a half years. Sure, it took a while, and not a moment was wasted in getting here.
I love my life (2). I look back at the life I’ve lived, or maybe I should say the many lives I’ve lived in this so-called lifetime, and it’s such a wonderful adventure. I’ve really milked it. For so long I thought I’d be dead by the time I was 30, so I did as much as I could, experienced as much as possible before my time ran out. Now all of this is a bonus! A really big bonus.
I love my gratitude. I love gratitude. Period. I love being thankful for this, and for everything that made it possible for me to be here – and that would be everything.
I love my abilities. I seem to be good at a lot of things. If I put my mind to something, I find that I can do it – and usually quite well. Even things that I didn’t think I could do in the past – like dancing, motor tasks, and driving – even these things I do really well nowadays. There was a time when I couldn’t avoid getting into accidents, and just yesterday I realized that I’ve driven in 22 states of this country, as well as Mexico, in all sorts of vehicles – including a car without brakes in Hermosillo, Mexico and a truck that didn’t want to go in a straight line in LA – and, touchwood, not a ding to speak of.
I love my path. The closer I have come to living the life I envisaged, the more clearly I have been able to see my path, and the more clearly I see my path, the easier it is to walk. Mind you, I’ve had some wonderful guideposts along the way. Thank you to all of them!
I love my personableness. I told you five wouldn’t be enough, Suze! I find that I can relate to and get on with people from all walks of life. It’s such a joy being able to have a redneck as one great friend and a hippy as another, for example. Apart from it increasing my options, it also is a great teaching tool for me – another friend of mine once told me that he tries to learn something from everyone he encounters, and this just gives me so many opportunities to learn!
I love my inquisitiveness. I love to find out about things, to explore. It’s gotten me in some fascinating situations, and I don’t regret a single one.
I love my openness. In order to be able to explore, I have needed to be open to possibility. In order to get along so well with so many people, I have needed to be open to them. In order to be loved by E, and by me, I have needed to open right up. I love my openness, it has gotten me so far.
I love my humility. I may have at least nine things I love about me, and that doesn’t have to mean I’m arrogant. And I am most definitely arrogant at times, too: just read my blog and I’m sure you’ll find it. And still, I love my humility. I love that I don’t find the need to boast about my achievements, that I am mostly happy for what I do to pass quietly.
I love my compassion. Really, Suze, I keep hitting Enter and another dot point comes up. I love that I am so often here for others, even sometimes for myself, when the going gets tough. I love that I am able to listen, usually without judgement. I love that I can often hear you.
I love my childlike innocence. I can be such a little boy, and it’s so much fun! I love to play and to identify with the girls and their friends. I love to just be silly. I love to play act.
I love my easy-going nature. More often than not I’m happy to go along with whatever is happening. When I’m clear it’s very difficult to get me upset, no matter how hard you try. I love that I can just be.

Okay, that’ll do for now! Thanks Suze, that was fun!

Now I’m going to tag the usual suspects, and some:
Carol
Heidi
Sahaja
Lee
Mona

Enjoy!!

Self disclosure

2007-01-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

I’ve been given some useful feedback about the Your tag is showing piece I wrote a few weeks back. I thought I would go through it using an exercise I’ve found helpful before. First I look at a statement and see where it’s true – finding three genuine examples of this. Then I find three genuine examples of how the opposite is also true. Aside from being a revelatory and liberating process, it’s also an excellent demonstration of how nothing is entirely true and how there’s an element of truth to everything.

Let’s see how we go.

You have not yet discovered your true direction in life.

1) I can find this. At the moment I am working in a poorly paying job, and although I love it I hardly see it as my entire future.

2) Although I have had some small glimpses of where the inward journey that I have embarked upon (as we all have – some are simply more conscious of this than others) may lead, there is still much flotsam floating between me and my goal, obscuring my view to a point that it’s rarely clear exactly where I’m heading.

3) I often find myself getting caught in the belief that my direction involves making a lot of money / being a success, and yet when I’m at my clearest it is so obvious that the direction that would make me (and those around me) happiest is the one where I am at my most joyful and loving.

You have discovered your true direction in life.

1) Many times! Sometimes it is so clear that my direction points directly to the Source that I can sense the gravity of it pulling me in. This is choiceless – a gravity that is sucking every single thing in – so why fight it?

2) I have been working my way through The Master Key System and its exercises are giving me more focus than ever before. Instead of having a bazillion projects on the go at once and getting none of them completed, I now have just a couple and am directing more and more of my energy there.

3) Today I ran my first A Course in Miracles group, and the experience that gave me left me with little question where my direction lies. It isn’t necessarily in the Course itself (though there’s no reason it shouldn’t be), but in facilitating paths to freedom where they appear before me. It is such a beautiful sight! What could be better than a life full of miracles?

Your path of self-indulgence, self-destruction and dependence on others’ ideologies perseveres.

1) Hmmmm, this is a big one. I’m considering breaking it up into a) self-indulgence, b) self-destruction and c) dependence on others’ ideologies. But I won’t, for the sake of brevity. So I’ll start here with an ‘ABSOLUTELY!’ I would not identify with this ‘self’ if I didn’t indulge it; I am therefore doing what I can to destroy this identification I have with this ‘self’; and in the process I am finding the wisdom and experience of others most helpful (particularly, at the moment, Byron Katie, A Course in Miracles, The Master Key System and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet; past excursions into the teachings of the Buddha, the Tao te Ching, The Four Agreements and yogic principles (for example) have proved most useful to me as well). Why would I try to find all this invaluable wisdom purely through my own experience when it’s been so many thousands of years, so many lifetimes, in the making? I may be self-indulgent, but I’m not that self-indulgent.

2) And yes, I’ve just taken the kids to Disneyworld. That’s extremely self-indulgent in a world where so many people don’t even know where their next meal is coming from. I continue to bite my fingernails, which is a destruction of a part of what I would call my own self and I continue to drink coffee and have even gotten a little bit drunk once or twice in the past month – neither of which can be good for me. I still call myself Jamie, often believe that I’m a man, and accept without question other people’s names for things – all of which demonstrates very clear dependence on others’ ideologies.

3) The first work I did consciously on this path was reading a series of Siddha Yoga pieces under the collective heading In Search of the Self. Naturally, this was about the universal self, and to this day I continue to indulge this self to the best of my ability. That’s a big goal of mine. However, in my unaware state that I spend so much of my time in – the one where the ego seems to be in charge – I do everything I can to destroy this self, as though it were possible to destroy the eternal: I berate myself; I accuse and blame others; I find fault; I attack and believe I am being attacked. This, I agree, is extremely self-destructive. And in this, I am very dependent on the ideologies of others – I need them to do and condone the same things to make these attacks appear real. If they didn’t believe that attack is possible, it would make it so much harder for me to do so.

Your path of self-indulgence, self-destruction and dependence on others’ ideologies ceases.

1) Sometimes. When I’m clear. It is a beautiful thing to experience, if only for a moment.

2) I have had the opportunity in one of these brief moments of clarity to truly experience ‘this’ as a dream state. In this, I saw how none of this matters because none of this is really happening. I was, ever so briefly, the witness. As the witness it is entirely obvious that my path of self-indulgence, self-destruction and dependence on others’ ideologies has ceased simply because it never existed. This is not an ideology, it is an understanding. The two things are very different.

3) I am only self-indulgent when I am being self-indulgent. I am only self-destructive when I am being self-destructive. I am only dependent on others’ ideologies when I am dependent on them. At all other times I have ceased to be this. I am not even the sum of my parts; I am a changeling; wave motion.

You have a lack of sensitivity for the needs, feelings and personal values of those around you.

1) It’s true. Often, for instance, one of the children will be crying and I just find myself getting upset with them instead of being compassionate and accepting their experience of suffering as genuine.

2) The more I notice life goes on with or without me; the more I see that other people’s experience has nothing to do with me, the less sensitivity I have for these things. People will get upset with or without me; they will be joyful with or without me; they will find someone to blame with or without me. I am happy to be the perceived source of that blame if that’s what happens, for it is none of my business what another person believes or how they deal with those beliefs. I am coming to see through careful observation that my needs are always met, that my feelings are totally dependent on my own headspace, and that my personal values are based entirely on others’ ideologies. Why would it be different for anybody else?

3) This reminds me of an incident at the School for The Work when somebody cried “I don’t care,” as if it was a great sin. Katie immediately asked us to put our hands up if we didn’t care – and most of us did. I didn’t, as I was a bit slow to catch on. Now I’m starting to get it. I have never cared for anyone but me. When I appear to be helping someone, the truth is that I am attempting to help me. Maybe I think it will get me your approval, maybe I’ll be a bit clearer and see that I get at least as much out of giving as I do out of receiving. It doesn’t matter: nobody has ever cared for anything beyond their own self-interest. It’s not possible. If I were to be sensitive for the needs, feelings and personal values of those around me, it would first be preferable to ask myself why: am I doing it to be liked (manipulation) or am I doing it out of genuine concern? Whose business am I in? And if it’s not mine, what right do I think I have to be there? Good questions, all.

You have a sensitivity for the needs, feelings and personal values of those around you.

1) Whenever I travel, I do try to make a point of observing cultural norms to the best of my ability. You know, when in Rome…

2) I do my best to allow people their point of view. I argue a lot less than I used to. I prefer to ask questions of clarification rather than tell people they’re wrong. I notice that I am becoming a better listener. I say ‘thank you’ a lot. I try to allow people their feelings without interfering in their experience. I do a lot of things ‘behind the scenes’ to help make people’s lives more enjoyable.

3) The more I realize that those around me are naught but extensions of me, the more I realize the importance of having a sensitivity for my needs, feelings and personal values – as this directly affects everyone around me. I have noticed that when I am upset, those around me reflect that; when I am happy, their behaviour becomes delightful. I am cause and everything else is effect. Compassion, like everything, starts here.

Your recent public “revelations” may have given you some instant gratification and notoriety.

1) Yes! It is such a relief to get this stuff out. I’ve been holding onto most of it for over a decade.

2) I hadn’t really considered the notoriety, as many people who read this blog can probably identify with most of my ‘revelations’. Indeed, many of my readers were probably disappointed at how tame they were compared to their own experiences. And still, I can see how they could have appeared outrageous to others. I can’t take that away from them: if they want to identify me as notorious, they will.

3) There was definitely a time when I would use this sort of information for the instant gratification of notoriety. Now though, it all seems so passé. I look at the time when I had a ‘bad boy’ self-image and feel compassion for someone who knew no better, for a man who thought he needed to impress others. Naturally, I still suffer from this affliction, though nowhere near as severely as I did then.

The effects on those close to you could prove disastrous to the point that you destroy everything you have created.

1) They could. The subheading to this blog is ‘Nothing’s personal.’ This is something I have been learning for myself, and it is in many ways something I want this blog to demonstrate. However – and this is something I had not previously considered – while there is one person in the world who does not share this understanding, then there is the very real possibility that someone might want to use this information against me for ‘personal’ reasons. That would not be fair to those close to me, especially my wife. For this reason, I have now made this blog as anonymous as possible: no names, no location and a blurry photo that could be of just about anybody (it’s me, is it true?).

2) In many respects, this was exactly the intention. As per an earlier point, I am working on destroying everything I have made: every story, every belief, every idol. That exercise was just one small step of the process.

3) One thing we do in The Work is to look at the worst that could happen and find ways in which it could be the best that could happen. I’ll attempt that now with ‘E and I are separated and I am forced to leave the country’:

a) I would have just had the most incredible learning experience;

b) It would be an enforced new beginning. The goal is for every moment to be a new beginning, to live in the experience of total innocence – and such an event would invite such an opportunity;

c) I would be free of all the restrictions I impose upon myself to help make this family environment work.

The effects on those close to you could prove successful to the point that you create everything you have destroyed.

1) Again, they could. Although there is nothing in here that I have been trying to keep from E and her family, what I have been finding is that there can be many benefits to opening up and being as honest as possible. There is a lot of freedom in having nothing to hide, and it is in freedom’s space that miracles happen.

2) How do I know that what is happening is what is meant to be happening? It is happening. Whatever comes of this is a manifestation of perfect order, and who am I to fight that? Can I know that I would be less happy if what I imagine to be the worst that could happen actually happened? Of course not. I can only know that this is happening now, and notice this. It is not my job to judge what is better and what is worse – I lack the necessary qualifications!

3) Creation seems to be inevitable – the way of it. Like it says in the introduction to A Course of Miracles: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.” If nothing real can be threatened, then nothing real can be destroyed. Only creation is possible.

You will only perpetuate and intensify your lack of self-esteem.

1) That, I have found, certainly seems to be one of my ego’s primary goals. It’s what keeps me in check, subservient to it. So yes, ‘I’ will do this. It gives ‘me’ the illusion of control.

2) I wasn’t really aware I had a lack of self-esteem, and now thinking about it I can find it. At my low points I do get pretty down on myself, and at times like this I seem to do everything I can to perpetuate and intensify my lack of self-esteem.

3) My goal is really NO self-esteem, so yes, absolutely, I will do everything I can to perpetuate and intensify a lack of it. Self-esteem is purely ego gratification. It is confirmation and justification for the ego’s existence. In a state of no self-esteem, no ego gratification, I am at complete peace. I have nobody to impress and nothing to be. Yes, this is most definitely an objective of mine: a complete lack of self-esteem.

You will only perpetuate and intensify your abundance of self-esteem.

1) Over the past few years, as I’ve delved deeper and deeper inside, I’ve felt better and better about myself. With low self-esteem I found myself with a determination to be important, to prove myself. As I feel better about this one, I have less and less to prove to anyone, and ironically success is becoming more and more probable as a result. I love irony! It seems the truth lies in irony more often than not.

2) With low self-esteem I was much more inclined to keep secrets from people, to only show the part of me I thought might impress them. Again, ironically now that I am willing to share more of me with the world, the better I feel about myself. There is little shame left now - there is nothing to be ashamed of: the person I present to you is always one from the past, never the one here right now. Once it is written it is over; goodbye; never to be seen again in exactly the same form. How can there be shame when the person I am talking of no longer exists?

3) You know, I just have too many reasons to feel good about myself. I am doing my best, and that is always good enough. And when I’m clear, I’m so grateful to be in this one’s shoes.

Perhaps it’s time to break the cycle by taking a very close look at what you have done, and acting on that.

1) Of course! When does such a time not exist?

2) I do The Work (Inquiry) regularly – at least a few times a week. This always entails breaking the cycle by taking a very close look at what I’ve done, and a natural repercussion is often acting on that. This is not lah-di-dah stuff – the deeper I go, the heavier and more revelatory it can be.

3) I have discussed the post in question with E, and as a result the aforementioned anonymity has been introduced. Names of my family members and myself can no longer be found on this blog. There was nothing else she felt was necessary.

Perhaps it’s time to mend the cycle by taking a very close look at what you have done, and acting on that.

1) Yes. I love this. So much of my time as this ‘self’ is spent interfering with natural cycles, and yet I have noticed that allowing a cycle its space is what actuates flow. The time has come to mend the cycle, and part of the process could well be taking a close look at what I’ve done, and acting on that.

2) This reminds me so much of the Making Amends step in 12-step programs. I’m not into these programs for reasons of my own, and still I can see their benefits. Making amends is one of the most effective ways known to mend past hurts, to mend the cycle. If I can make amends to you, please let me know how, and I’ll see what I can do to honour that. So long as I can stay in my own integrity by doing so, I can see no obstacles to this.

3) When I take a close look at what I have done, I see so much good coming from it. I have done a lot to improve people’s well-being and I have no intention of stopping. Improving well-being must surely be a way to mend cycles, I would imagine.

If you can’t see the damage you’ve already done to E and her family by divulging such personal details on the internet while living in a small town, then you hardly deserve their love and trust.

1) You could be right. I, for one, would agree that I don’t deserve their love and trust. It is not mine to have unless they are willing to give it, which they currently appear to be.

2) I am looking for the damage I have done to E and her family by divulging these details about myself, and I am struggling to find it. If she or her family feels that I have done damage to them and I still can’t find it, then of course I wouldn’t expect their love and trust. At this point in time, they haven’t given me any cause to believe that they do feel I have done them any damage. And I am open to them doing so.

3) I am finding that love and trust come hand-in-hand with the truth, and that these things are eternal. I don’t deserve their love and trust, it just comes naturally. Like Katie says, “I’m very clear that everyone in the world loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet.” You see, they don’t have a choice!

If you can see the benefit you’ve already done to E and her family by divulging such personal details on the internet while living in a small town, then you easily deserve their love and trust.

1) This may be a small town, but it’s largely a liberal small town. People move here because they identify with the place and its people. I am one of these people. The few locals who actually read this blog (and I used to keep an eye on the hits – there are very few, and I know who most of them are) would not, I imagine, find anything too surprising or objectionable in what I’ve divulged. If anything, it is probably most likely that if any ‘damage’ is done, it will be done to me, not to E or her family. They have lived here almost two decades, and as this is a small town, they are well known for who they are and what they’ve done here – it’s highly doubtful they will be judged on my merits.

2) As mentioned earlier, I have been finding that the truth is a wonderful panacea. It seems to break down barriers and open things up. With this sort of information readily available, little room is left to doubt me or my motives. A confidence in my honesty can be fostered from this point, and the reader can rest assured that any questions they may have about me are likely be readily and honestly answered.

3) As per the corresponding point above, I deserve their love and trust just as much as anybody does. True love is unconditional and unavoidable, for love is truth and love is all. It’s not about me being special, it is simply about me being.

You have little respect for them and their values.

1) I feel I have a better sense of them and their values than most readers of this blog, and still I’ll try and find this. Let’s see, ah yes, E and her family make a number of lifestyle choices that I don’t have a lot of respect for. I won’t discuss these here because they’re not my business and therefore most certainly not yours.

2) Let’s stay here in my business for the moment. I am finding that a surefire way to experience stress is to get into someone else’s business. Worrying about other people and their values is getting into their business. And what I notice is that when I do involve myself with others and their values, that I spend at least as much time disrespecting them as I do respecting them – probably a lot more.

3) Values are idols. I have little respect for idols.

You have lots of respect for them and their values.

1) If I didn’t respect them, then why would I still be here?

2) E and her family have a lot of values that I don’t agree with, and still I respect the fact that that’s what they choose to believe. I do my best not to try to change them, to allow them to walk their own paths, and it seems to me that this is a strong sign of respect.

3) I have bundles of respect for these people who have been living the way I have chosen to live for so much longer than me. Over and over I learn things from them that had been lost on me previously. What comes to mind immediately is the way they raise their children: the freedom that E and her brothers, and now her children, are given is something that continues to amaze me. And seeing the wisdom and beauty that comes from this is a wonder to behold. Yes, the gratitude and respect is strong here.

Why then should they love and trust you?

1) Because they have no choice.

2) Because that is what they choose to do. (Don’t you just love the apparent dichotomy between these two? Ah, dualism is so much fun.)

3) Because I do.

Why then should they hate and distrust you?

1) Oh, let me count the ways. If you could read my mind at its darkest, you wouldn’t like me too much either.

2) Because I have revealed things to them far more disturbing than what I wrote in that post.

3) Because that is what they may choose to do. It is quite common.

Soul-searching may be beneficial in the consulting room and the fishbowl, but not on the internet.

1) I would agree that if you believe this then it is definitely not a good idea to do it or to read it.

2) It’s true. From what I can tell, the primary uses for the internet are much more pragmatic than soul-searching. That is, if you can call porn pragmatic.

3) Yes, and I can’t afford the consulting room!

Soul-searching may be detrimental in the consulting room and the fishbowl, but not on the internet.

1) Yes! Especially if you’ve got one of those therapists that encourages you to blame other people. That’ll keep you in therapy for a lifetime.

2) I am soul-searching as much for you as I am for me. This takes us straight back to the ‘Nothing’s personal’ subheading. The whole point of this is that there are no new stressful thoughts – I’m not writing anything here that you can’t identify with if you put your mind to it. If you don’t believe me, try this exercise yourself, and see if you can’t come up with three ways in which each of these comments are true for you too. This blog is a demonstration of a process, that is all.

3) There are a lot of blogs, and a lot of them are ‘personal’. Check out the blog links to the right for some good examples. It seems that the facts point to a lot of soul-searching going on here in cyberland. Soul-searching, to me, seems like a good thing to do anywhere. If it brings peace, even if it is a step on the path to peace (and who’s to say it’s not?) then to me it’s a good thing.

Ocean grounds

2007-01-03T22:04:00.000-05:00

We’re on our way to Disneyworld! Eight hours in the car today took us from the eastern ridge of the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia to Tybee Island at the northeastern tip of Georgia. This was Spanish territory once – part of Las Floridas, so the history in the hotel’s stained and dog-eared information book tells us. But despite its two pages of tales of the Euchee people and Spanish, French, English, Confederate and American flags, regardless of its talk of the war of 1812 and the amusement park that closed in ’99, it seems not a lot has happened here really. The sea still laps its shores in gentle rolling waves, the moon still rises over the ocean, and the ships still pass on the horizon, charting their position east of an island that exists as little more than a mark on a map. It is a western boundary of the Atlantic, and the Atlantic has many.

My plantar warted foot rests now in warm vinegary water, having just returned from dipping into the Atlantic. And it occurs to me now that after 18 months in the States, after almost six months in Mexico, two trips to France, three to England and one to Portugal, that this may be the very first time my feet have touched Atlantic waters. No matter, the ocean knows not names. When I first landed in California two years ago last October, I went to the beach often to dip my toes in the same ocean that touches Australia’s shores. It gave me a sense of connection with the place I then called home. Later I learned that home is where the heart is, and my heart never leaves me. There is grounding in that understanding, resting lightly twixt sheets of uncertainty.

That grounding led me to E, her house and family, the rock stairs, Floyd. It was that grounding that made all this possible. The ocean didn’t take me home, my heart did. It said, “Time to settle down, boy. Whatever you chasin’ ain’t gonna stop runnin’ ‘til you sit down ‘n’ wait for it.”

Patience may be this year’s virtue.

Your tag is showing

2006-12-16T11:14:00.000-05:00

I’ve been tagged! My friend Carol has tagged me to write five things about myself that others might not know about me. There are plenty of tags going around like this, and this one morphed a little one generation back, when Mona changed it a little so that it’s more like five things I don’t want people to know about me. The Work will have that effect!

Let’s see. You've had over a month. That's long enough. One way or another, these five items and a whole lot more can be found on PostSecret. You should see there that there are no new secrets - that you're no worse than anybody, that nobody's any worse than you.

Okay, now it’s my turn, I tag:
Jade
Rachel
Heidi
Sahaja
Lee

Good luck!!

Okay okay

2006-11-17T23:56:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay, I guess 15 comments is enough. I’m still alive. Speaking of weddings, the date is set for ours on Saturday, June 30^th 2007. We’re having it here, and if you’re reading this, you’re invited. I think. Get in touch and I’ll let you know.

There are four minutes to go until the end of my birthday. I was born at 6pm our time last night 37 years ago, so I’ve really had the opportunity to milk this one. E took me to see Borat and eat some wonderful Indian food. Then we got home and a surprise party was waiting for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had a surprise party before. It almost brought tears to my eyes. I am a very fortunate man. To see all these people who already mean something to me, and to realize it’s only been a year, is quite a powerful experience.

I’ve never really had a lot of people around me I could truly call friends. And now, I see them sprouting about the place, and I see yet another dimension to Floyd County’s motto: “To grow is to prosper.” I hated it when I first saw it, with all my stories of progress popping through my skull, and as time has, well, progressed, I’ve seen more and more other more subtle meanings to so seemingly a simple sign. I am growing, and I am prospering as a result. I am beginning to see it.

The house is sealed. We have a woodstove (potbelly for my fellow Australians) burning downstairs and a door as well. We have been living in this house now for a few months. The top floor – where we sleep, where I am now, listening to Parliament on Pandora (thanks Lee) – is on its way. Six of the eight walls are painted, and internal walls still look a while away – we don’t even really know where we’d put them yet. Most of the electrical sockets are functioning. The lighting still needs to be sorted out a bit, and it’s not a deficit of it that’s a problem. Downstairs, the floor is gravel, water comes in and doesn’t go anywhere from there, and the frame is up for the bathroom wall. We’re working on that.

I’m also working on a rock staircase. I’m really learning to love rocks. About a year and a half ago in Mexico I went to a Viaje de Poder at Teotihuacan, big pyramids just outside of Mexico City. It was based around Don Miguel Ruiz’s (The Four Agreements) work, and quite an experience. At the beginning, we were asked to provide an object that we represented then, and an object that represented what we wanted to become through the course. I was a leaf, floating in the breeze, and wanted to become a rock, strong, steady and solid. At the end, I saw myself more as the breeze that carried the leaf, rather than the leaf – and that’s another story. As I move these rocks now, I find myself transforming more and more with the rock: it is grounding, pulling me home. Finally, I find myself here, entering this space and becoming one with it. If things go the way the script could suggest, I have a lifetime ahead of me to ground further.

And that is not my concern. The script writes itself, and I will be the rock or the wind or the leaf; I will be the husband and stepfather; I could be the father too; I could be a lot of things; I have already been a lot of things. I am this now, and it looks and feels more like a rock than it ever did before.

Double glow, part 2

2006-08-18T09:24:00.000-04:00

My old friend Sharon with her beau Alex in Tuscany. What a place to get married! And to add a little more spice to the occasion, there's a baby in her belly too. Good luck, Sharon!

Double glow

2006-08-07T17:41:00.000-04:00

My great friend Tiff with her latest flame, Georg Sampurno. She told me he glows, but I needed a photo to see what she meant.

Yikes!

2006-08-01T13:16:00.000-04:00

All I want to do is sleep. I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open. It seems I took a lot out of me at FloydFest, and I don’t know where I’m going to find the time to rest.

Two electric sockets stare at me with startled faces, like the current is being pumped up their rear ends. And I suppose it is. I could do with a charge right now, but that seems a little extreme.

Not so long ago I had so little to do and it was bliss. Now my life is so full that I have a tendency to leave the bliss behind in preference for what comes next. The bliss is here, now; but I am already over there.

Yikes!

Back to life

2006-07-31T09:38:00.000-04:00

Back to life again. I had a few days off there where life looked a whole lot different. Now we’ve returned home and it looks just like we left it: disaster area mess; cat lying on the bed; cobwebs in the corners; work to attend to; moving to be done; house to build; breakfast, lunch and dinner to provide. Kids telling us what to do.

I awoke to all this this morning and my response was one of frustration. Whining, demanding children were the trigger, but it looks to me as though the source was life’s grand reentrance into my field of view.

Oh well, at least it’s dependable.

Dancing the night away

2006-07-30T10:33:00.000-04:00

A cool, light breeze sweeps the clouds away and reveals the blue of a brand new day. Movement has commenced around the FloydFest site and I am again the last one out of the tent.

We had a late one last night – it's our anniversary. Anniversaries, actually: a year since we met and a month since we got married. We met dancing early Sunday morning at FloydFest last year, and we danced until early Sunday morning once again this time around.

And boy, we danced. I used to do a radio show on Melbourne's PBS FM with a guy called Big Al Watts. He called it Blewz Blast and loved playing what he termed 'ball-tearers' and 'ass-rippers'. It was rough and heavy white boy blues, the type that causes your body to move involuntarily with its driving rhythms.

Well let me tell you, the Lee Boys just stole it back. Smoother than a bowling ball and just as hard, the Lee Boys pumped out two non-stop hours of high octane rhythm and blues that self-started every engine in the room. It was exhausting.

These boys have taken down and dirty rhythm and blues and pimped it up. They've given it style, injected some black magic, and turned it into an experience that no mere white boy could hope to reproduce.

What a way to celebrate an anniversary! Thank you Lee Boys, for the sore legs and the ringing ears.

The voice of sanity

2006-07-29T10:51:00.000-04:00

It can be so easy to get caught up in life and what it all means, taking it seriously, believing the stories, and then someone like Gabby La La comes along and blows it all out of the water. Last night we saw this woman dressed like a parakeet, with a fluffy tiger in her bright green wig, playing children's piano a la Schroeder, sitar, theremin and ukulele, and singing about the silliest things. It just made so much sense.

Ah, the voice of sanity. I love how the voice of sanity laughs so gleefully in the face of insanity, how it says with a twinkle in its eye, “Oh, you're so silly, how could things possibly be so bad?” How it can say, “Sucks to be you” in the nicest possible way.

The voice of sanity speaks, and last night her name was Gabby La La.

No drama

2006-07-28T13:42:00.000-04:00

In Australia we have an expression, “No drama,” which roughly translates to other colloquialisms like “No worries” and “She'll be right.” Here I sit for my first opportunity for a break on the official first day of FloydFest, and I'd have to say we've had our fair share of dramas. We had two medical emergencies and an arrest yesterday, and the festival hadn't even begun!

I'm fortunate enough to be working in the office, which is the hub for the entire event. I get to see it all: I got to transport one of the medical emergencies to the ambulance, was point of contact with the US Marshals and have been right in the middle of a lot of action. I'm loving it!

There is something about having all of this drama going on around me that helps put everything in perspective. I get to be the observer, I get to be the one who sees that there really is no such thing as a problem. I get to be the one who translates that to the person who thinks there is.

I notice that when there isn't any drama around me that I make some. I find something to get upset about, something to take seriously, and I make it my own. Then I think there's a problem; and what I also notice is that if I think there is a problem when there really isn't one, that I've got the perfect ingredients for insolubility.

No problem! No drama.

No-man's land

2006-07-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

It’s official: this is no-man’s land. Yesterday I my receipts from the Immigration Department arrived and now I’m a resident of nowhere. I’m not a resident of the US until – if – my application is approved, and as I’m now living here, I’m not an Australian resident either. I’m an Australian citizen who’s not allowed to go home, not even classed as a visitor anymore in this country. And the thing I like best about it is that it’s official: I am nothing!

I remember my foreign friends in Australia – Tiff, Martina and Tomas – all going through a similar process. It was hard for them to wait for someone else to tell them what they were. And I imagine that if I have to wait three years before I can go home – like some of them did – then it could become hard for me too (although I guess the whole point of this exercise is to be able to call this home instead). But for the moment I am reveling in being officially nothing, a glitch in the system, a nobody from nowhere. No thing.

Storytime

2006-07-26T08:03:00.000-04:00

My eyes close and I struggle in the search for something to write. A short story awaits editing beside me. I started on it last night, but sleepiness prevailed. It’s amazing how many changes become apparent after a few weeks. When I wrote it I thought it was largely sound, but now it seems very much like a rough draft.

I have to admit I like writing better when it’s easy, when it just comes to me. The story was more like an assignment – not something I’d normally write – and tough to get through. It was a good exercise, though. It showed me how the story writes itself if you have the basic ingredients – in this case a situation.

I’ve shied away from writing stories since I was at school. I remember writing one but being told it was predictable. Looking back, I think it was just poorly written, because it was anything but predictable. That was enough to put me off, though. A lack of confidence doesn’t need much to be convinced.

It’s funny, because I was a good story writer for while there at school. Again, I’d just need to be given the ingredients and the story would follow naturally. I already knew this!

Maybe I should start taking story submission: give me the ingredients and I’ll see what I can come up with. Hmm, looks like the elements of a new blog could be brewing.

Fortress of hypocrisy

2006-07-25T07:46:00.000-04:00

I am a hypocrite. I espouse The Work, but when I’m most in need of it I shy away from it. I have been absorbed in A Course in Miracles, but I do not live it. I expect to be understood, yet understand nothing myself. I see that atrocities are being committed and do nothing about it. I surround myself with forgiveness opportunities and pile them into a wall, lock myself in an unforgiving fortress.

This is the crux of my hypocrisy: my unwillingness to forgive. When I look closely I see that I have forgiven nobody. And this makes sense, because in essence forgiveness is an all or nothing thing. Forgiveness is not saying that you did me wrong but I’ll let you off. Forgiveness is acknowledging that what I thought happened didn’t. It is the great undoing.

There is a fortress wall three feet thick that needs undoing. It is obstructing my view so that all I see is the wall. Beyond the wall freedom lies.

Today I watch the wall crumble as I unwrap the fabric of the stories that enfold each unforgiving brick and see that behind the story is nothing. I can pop these bricks like balloons!

Tumble down, my fortress. Tumble down.

Unhurried

2006-07-24T10:15:00.000-04:00

We are supposed to be busy. In a week’s time the plan is to move into the house we’re building: the house in which the wiring and floorboards and plastering are still being done; the house that has no running water or gas (we’ll use E’s folks’ place for these until the time is right). In between times there are the four days of FloydFest, in which both of us are quite heavily involved. Ah, FloydFest, the place we met; our first anniversary approaches.

It all seems so unlikely, and yet this morning we found the space to sleep in. Empty boxes everywhere, debris strewn across every available space: southern Lebanon without the terror and devastation.

On Saturday we emptied three carloads of goodies at a yard sale and still it’s hard to find a dent in it all. Man, we got a lot of stuff. So much more of it needs to disappear too, over the coming week, as the space we’re moving into would not be a quarter the size of this house. Sure, there’s another half of the place as yet unready, but that still leaves a lot of stuff that simply don’t fit.

And here I sit hypothesizing while boxes wait, unhurried.

If I had a ladle

2006-07-23T10:29:00.000-04:00

The days are warm now. Thunderstorm days. Warm mornings, cloudy afternoons, thundery nights with enough moisture in the air to give it a solidity all of its own. Humidity creates a kind of wall, like every water molecule is another thing to push through, turning the air into soup.

Insect anthropology

2006-07-22T15:14:00.000-04:00

The fireflies’ light is different now. In late spring and early summer they were bright white flashes filling the night sky like fairy dust. There are fewer now, and they are yellow, more intense and longer lasting. I am told that they use their light to attract a mate. When mating season started it was more fun, carefree; with thousands of potential mates abounding. Now mates are scarce and the light looks more desperate, pleading, “PLEEEAASE!!” Each flare-up looks as though it could be the last, as though all the insect’s life force is being put into it.

Summer for fireflies is like a night in a pickup joint.

This is a thought

2006-07-21T10:26:00.000-04:00

Seeing what it is that I want is an interesting exercise. I thought what I wanted was to be living in abundance, and in a sense it is – but only as a consequence of what I really want. When I look at this from the perspective that it has already been received, what I find is that I want to be free, at peace; in love with all this, joyful and awake. The rest of it becomes irrelevant – just a trivial form of attachment – when I see what I truly want.

I want what everyone wants. For a while there I couldn’t see what I really wanted, and I’m sure it’s the same for most of us. Life seems so immediate that our desires for what seems most real mask our true intentions.

I want this because I don’t have a choice. And in wanting this I am coming to see that this isn’t what I thought it was. I thought it was a bunch of stories bound in a volume called The Life of J, and it turned out that it was a work of fiction. This is just that from another perspective, and even that’s not true. This is a picture, a dreamscape, a mystery, a joy to behold, and not a bit of it actually real.

This is a thought.

House keeping

2006-07-20T08:54:00.000-04:00

The walls are bare. Various pictures, tapestries and fabrics adorned the fake timber walls of this house until yesterday. Now they lie in piles and boxes, awaiting decisions on their future. Some will be trashed, some will be cushion covers, some will be sold and some will make it to our new house, where E proposes to use them as a makeshift downstairs ceiling until we have the wherewithal and desire to make it appear more permanent.

E wants the house to stand for 500 years. In this knock ‘em down put ‘em up world, that is quite an objective. I remember visiting my hometown of Perth a few years back and stopping at many of the significant places in my life there. No less than three houses had been knocked down and replaced: my grandparents’ home, my babysitter’s, and the first place I lived when I moved out of home. The latter had to go, it was a hovel. But the others were comfortable homes replaced by soulless monstrosities. Perth is not a city renowned for paying homage to history; Perth is all about new, new, new.

The community of Floyd has an advantage for our house over the suburban streets of Perth: it is a rural area, and houses tend to get left alone more in the country than in keeping up with the Jones’ cities. So it may survive at least a little more than a few decades.

And who knows? Change is the only given. What happens beyond this moment is beyond our control. There is a house that is almost ready to move into, and one that we are on the way out of, and that is all.

Tired

2006-07-19T09:04:00.000-04:00

Awakening has been difficult this morning. It is as though I could sleep for a lifetime, Sleeping Beauty prematurely awoken from the spell. I have been up, sat, back to bed – drifting in and out and everywhere, the most awake I’ve been right now as my eyes focus on the page.

I am tired. It seems that when we’re not house building or working or looking after kids or cooking or cleaning that we’re packing. I don’t know where to start with the packing -none of this stuff is mine. I notice the energy drain from my being as I think about it, the enormity of the project, and I see that what is making me tired is not just the work, but the thought of what is to come.

Guess it won’t come if I just keep thinking about it. Better get to it!

Maybe.

Don't tell me what to do

2006-07-18T08:12:00.000-04:00

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Living with headstrong kids can be challenging, especially when this is the first thing you hear from a five year-old in the morning. But I’m getting used to it.

I like that they can be so strong and self-assured. I like that they have the confidence to be able to talk to a grown up in this way. I may not particularly enjoy it being said to me, but I like that they are able to.

Fear is such an integral part of so much child-rearing. If you can scare a kid through threats of retribution and punishment, if you then follow through with them, then you are likely to have a well-behaved child, too scared to speak up and ask for what they need. Without E here to guide me, there is a good chance that to some degree I could be this kind of parent. I probably am anyway.

Fear and love are opposites: it is impossible to experience both at the same time. Obedience can be a form of dishonesty: I behave like you want me to in order to avoid your wrath, not because this is who I am.

And Y has a point when she says not to tell her what to do. I can tell anyone what to do, but the moment I become invested in the outcome I am setting myself up for a fall. She’s such a great teacher.

Tacklin' Declan

2006-07-17T18:15:00.000-04:00

Okay, he may still be a little too young for footy, but he's taking his first steps. And at this rate, little Declan will be ready for a game in no time.

Sluggish

2006-07-17T08:51:00.000-04:00

The lingering taste of cream cheese and jelly bagel washed back with a hot flush of Wild Berry Zinger and the day comes alive again. An hour ago I wiped a mountain of sleep dust from my eyes as I got up to sit, but this morning’s meditation was – shall we say – restful. The wakefulness is still coming: gentle waves of life lapping at the shore in an incoming tide.

It seems quiet this morning, as though the birds are sleeping in. The latening morning sun reaches over the trees telling a tale of another warm day and nature prepares by finding a shady spot in which to rest. A fly buzz somewhere, or was that an added tone to the ring in my ears? That is the loudest sound right now: the soft-sharp ring that becomes imperceptible the moment noise enters my existence.

The dust dances, settling in the sunlight, and my nose wonders how much passes through it unnoticed. I wave my arm through it to watch it swirl. L’s interpretation of a four-legged beast, head shaking, does more to move it, though. And then, like dust, she settles and quietude once again prevails.

Limited movement. The sluggishness of summer.

(Don't) be my guest

2006-07-16T10:47:00.000-04:00

There is a plantar wart living on the underside of my foot. My body is its host. From time to time it causes some discomfort: a wart growing inwards at a place where my whole body weight can be exerted will do that.

What is the role of the host in such a situation? A guest has arrived uninvited and made itself at home. The guest chooses an inconspicuous place to set up, where it is not noticed except when revealed by the host. But the longer the guest stays, the more discomfort the host is apt to feel.

The obvious answer is to kick the guest out, but an interdependence of sorts has developed and this option would likely cause more discomfort to the host, if only temporarily. And it doesn’t help resolve the issue of why the guest arrived in the first place, why it was able to settle in so easily.

I know someone who once had such a guest, and she starved it out. Just stopped feeding herself, and the guest starved to death as a result. This is getting closer, and it would send a message to other potential guests that they’re not welcome here.

But I don’t intend to punish myself for being a host. That seems unkind to me, though it could well be time for another cleanse, to flush out the system once again.

I think a good host is a clear host: “This relationship isn’t working for me any longer. I would like you to leave.”

“But I’m comfortable here.”

“I hear you and I would like you to leave.”

“You’ll have to make me.”

“If that is your choice I shall do so, and I will give you a chance to consider your options before I do.”

Right royal garb

2006-07-16T08:15:00.001-04:00

My ex-defacto stepbrother Brendan with his wife Jodie, appropriately attired at Royal Ascot in England. The word is that Jodie is now three months pregnant. Congrats to both!

Message received

2006-07-15T10:35:00.000-04:00

Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them. (Mark XI, 24 RV) The Bible isn’t a book I’ve gotten around to reading yet. I’ve looked at it and saw so much fear, vengeance and violence in it that I was unable to reconcile it with my vision of the man Christians name their religion after. Having said that, I am more than aware that many pearls exist within its pages, and this purported quote from the man himself is one; one that seems consistent with my understanding of what he had to say.

It’s another way of saying we create our own realities, only it takes it a step further by saying that we don’t create our own reality with hope, but with faith.

Faith is a much maligned word these days, and deservedly so with the manner in which it is being used. Blind faith is necessarily unseeing; true faith sees all. The difference between the two is considerable, a polarity unmatched. True faith comes from understanding, blind faith comes from belief. Belief leads to hell in the mind (where all hell resides); understanding is the path of peace.

At this point I believe a lot and understand a little, and as of now I believe that I receive understanding.

God's gift

2006-07-14T09:44:00.000-04:00

A bright yellow bird greeted me by the purple flowers this morning. It flew into the snowball tree where another bird, duller in colour, sang beautifully. The yellow bird flew away, outclassed, ashamed that its preening had not improved its singing.

The woman goes on a diet, gets a boob job, does everything she can to be that yellow bird. Then someone comes along whose beauty shines from inside. What do you see, the pretty plumage or the beautiful song? The insecurity or the self-assurance?

What do I see? I would hope that I saw it all, and I imagine that I miss a lot: if that bird had not sung when it did, I would have remained mesmerized by the yellow one.

And if I continued to look, even deeper, maybe I would see that each was exactly the same gift, wrapped differently. God’s gift presents itself to me every time I open my eyes, but I am so used to receiving it that I have come to take it for granted.

Discriminating between Gods gifts – beautiful songs versus pretty plumage – is completely missing the innocence that underlies it all.

Hall of mirrors

2006-07-13T20:18:00.000-04:00

Phhhh. It is done. The immigration papers, the cheques, the supporting documents are on their way to Chicago and all that is left for me to do is wait. Wait and forget, get on with life as it presents itself to me.

I am glad for it. Relieved. A little tired. More relaxed than I have been. Less reactive.

There is a freedom in this. It reminds me somewhat of the freedom I felt when Dharmananda told me I would have to go: no more trying, no more living to others’ expectations.

And that is, after all, the essence of applying to immigrate: living up to the expectations of the nation. Not that most people here could care less whether I stayed or left, but the government does find itself in the position of needing to live up to the people’s expectations: keep those undesirables out!

It is a hall of mirrors: me living up to the expectations of a government living up to the expectations of the people living up to a multitude of expectations from lovers, bosses, children, churches living up to more and more and more and more expectations until all that’s left is the illusion of expectation.

The best way to not get lost in a hall of mirrors is to not enter it in the first place.

Rolling, rolling, rolling

2006-07-12T08:34:00.000-04:00

I feel rushed, as though there is more to do than there is time to do it in. The rhythm of life has reached a crescendo.

And the good thing about all crescendos is that they do not last. All things must change; this too will pass.

Passing, passing, past. My time has come, gone, and come back again. Cycles.

And like a cycle, this is going nowhere. It thinks it’s getting somewhere, gets there and just keeps going. Perpetual motion.

Watching the wheels. I can ride them or watch them, it is essentially the same thing: riding them is busier, is all.

Rolling, rolling, rolling. Time is a second hand ticking.

Weighting

2006-07-11T09:57:00.000-04:00

Clean-up day. We have a visitor coming tonight, and an entire house to relocate over the coming weeks. It is exhausting just to think of it, I am finding. I sit here between breaks – between breaths – and try to find just what it is that tires me. I am puffing, and as far as I can see there is no valid reason for it. There must be a valid reason, but I cannot see it.

Weighed down, possibly, by thought: contemplation that I never realized could be so heavy. Though I already knew that thoughts were a burden, I did not see that they carry a physical weight. But they do. My shoulders feel as though they are being pushed to the floor while a separate force pushes against my forehead, making each step require the effort of three or four normal ones.

There appears to be a lot happening with my life at the moment, and the more of it that remains on my mind, the more it takes on the nature of a quagmire. And in the middle of the quagmire all I want is to rest, but if I do not proceed I shall sink.

Time is on my side

2006-07-10T09:46:00.000-04:00

The clock ticks. One week today ‘til my immigration papers are due. The line is very, very fine.

Today I see the doctor for all my blood tests, for my medical. Today I process some photos. Today I get a step or two closer. But that fine line gets closer too. It is a race. A race to the line: me versus time.

Or maybe it is me with time. Competition doesn’t work for me the way it used to. Today I am more inclined to find the place where everyone’s a winner. Can time and I be on the same team? Can we reach that line together? A three-legged race with time as my partner.

Why not? If it is as illusory as they say it is, why not play with it? Let’s stretch this week out and make it an aeon. Let time not just stand still, but move sideways, backwards, every which way but marching on.

Let the framework change. They say there is no time like the present: let it stay here. For it is not the time of my life that I seek, what I want to see is the life of my time.

I am watching.

Time for a change

2006-07-09T09:38:00.000-04:00

Another Sunday. They just keep piling on top of one another like cards in a game of Snap.

Maybe weeks should be longer: add an extra day or two. I like the idea of a nine-day week. Seven is too messy: a prime number, indivisible. And too short: give The Beatles a chance to love me eight days a week. With nine days, they can even have a day off loving me and maybe love you instead.

And I have a proposal for having more hours in the day. I hear too often how if only there were more hours in the day… Well, look at this: twenty seconds is nothing, right? Easy to miss. So, if we chop 20 seconds off each minute, then we’ll find ourselves with a 32-hour day. Just think: eight hours work, eight hours sleep, and still 16 hours to play with!

And with the nine-day week we could have a three-day weekend and then still only have to work seven hours a day. It just keeps getting better!

I think we should start a campaign to change time. It’s old and stale the way it is.

Are you with me?

Headache

2006-07-08T11:16:00.000-04:00

A headache overcame me yesterday, today still pinging me with occasional remnants. A sickness has spread stomachwards, and a general irritability outwards. There is also a tiredness, like exhaustion.

I would like to think this is some kind of bug, and maybe it is. But I can sense that similar experiences haven’t proved so debilitating in the past, and it occurs to me that at least on some level I’m doing this to myself.

I think maybe all this immigration business, the idea that we need to move house within a month when neither place appears anywhere near ready for it, that we’ve just bought a car that we’re already considering selling, that we’re recently married, that I don’t feel as though I’m getting results at work: I think that maybe all this is beginning to have an impact.

So what do I do? Savour the headache? Enjoy this moment? I guess if I look at this right now - man at computer – there isn’t a problem. Looking at this right now, I see that everything that’s stressing me is a story of the past or future. I don’t know if it’ll help the headache, but at least I can see that in this moment there is nothing more to this than this.

Cloud games

2006-07-07T08:13:00.000-04:00

The clouds today are islands, a shoal, a virtual reef. Close knit they hover overhead, jumping distance between them, inviting me to stand on my head and hop.

There is a game the gods play when the clouds are so close. They play it because they know the clouds conceal them. It is a giant game of checkers, each cloud a square on the board, and the objective is to jump your piece to the other side of the world, one cloud hop at a time. They do not care that it could take a long time, for time is nothing in eternity. They do not mind that the clouds may dissipate before the game ends, for being gods they understand that nothing happens before its time.

Closer to home, God plays another game. He plays the game where I think I’m me and you think you’re you. This is more akin to chess, for each piece has a different role to play. And like any game, it doesn’t work without all the pieces. He plays against Himself, chuckling all the time, and does not care that it could take a long time, for time is nothing in eternity. He does not mind that we may disappear before the game ends, for He understands that nothing happens before its time.

Immigration blues

2006-07-06T10:32:00.000-04:00

Ohmigosh, this immigration business is trying. You’ve really got to want to do it, I’m finding. I guess it’s a good test to see how dinkum you are: charge lots of money, make lots of red tape, give me umpteen hoops and see how far I’m willing to jump. If I get through all that, there’ll be some evidence at least that I’m not doing this for a lark.

I have no less than six (possibly seven) different forms that need to be completed by four different people, plus all the documentation that’s required to go with them (including five – count ‘em – five photos! (and one of E)). And then there’s the money: $325 here, $70 there, $180 for this, $190 for that, maybe another $170 there, oh, plus the medical, which shouldn’t give me much change for $265! Yikes!!

And all this needs to be signed, sealed, delivered by Tuesday week. Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have left it so late, I’ll grant you that.

And the funniest bit about all this? They could reject my application and I’d have to do it all over again – only this time in Australia. It wouldn’t seem so funny to me at the time, I’m sure – but I wouldn’t blame you for laughing.

Eating cake as the fiddle plays

2006-07-05T08:40:00.000-04:00

This immigration stuff is costly, convoluted business. It looks like my health check alone is going to cost over $250. Coming from Australia, where going to the doctor can be free and rarely costs over $30, it can be quite a shock to the system to be told that blood tests cost a minimum of $75. A couple of days ago I spoke to a nurse in Australia and she was astounded, as I am.

What does it say about a society when things like health and education are so expensive, so prohibitive? To me, it demonstrates a good deal of disrespect for the people within it. Surely, if you are running a nation with the good of the people foremost in your mind, then physical and mental health would be a priority.

And this nation does have some of the greatest health and education facilities in the world, of this there is little question. But when such a large proportion of the population has no access to them, how does the nation as a whole benefit? The nation is the sum of its parts, and many of its parts are suffering the effects of neglect.

It seems to me the powers that be have decided they are more important than their growing horde of minions. Nothing unusual or unexpected there, just as there wasn’t in France before the revolution or in Rome in Nero’s day. I think I shall eat cake as the fiddle plays.

Interdependence Day

2006-07-04T08:38:00.000-04:00

The cow came back this morning. Yesterday our landlady took her across the road to spend some time with the herd – and specifically the bull – there. This morning I stepped out the front door to find a giant turd just off the porch. My immediate reaction was, ‘How did the cow get there yesterday?’ Then it slowly clicked that she didn’t. So I guessed that Shanti – the cow that stayed behind – had gotten out. They were calling to one another so much after they were split yesterday that it seemed plausible. I went to check if she was still inside the fence, dodged a couple more fresh turds on the way, and there was Nandi sitting comfortably on this side of it with a look that said, ‘What’s the problem?’

Nandi is a big girl. When I first saw her I had to double check to see that she wasn’t actually a bull. I milked cows when I lived at Dharmananda, and my recollection is that it was relatively easy getting them up and moving them. Nandi was not agreeable to either. The gate was open in front of her, Shanti was just on the other side of it, and it seemed to me that Nandi had returned to be with her. But I guess fenceless freedom and a seat in the fresh grass were worth savouring for a bit.

But when that’s accompanied by a human pestering you it probably becomes a less attractive proposition. It seemed to do the trick anyway – eventually.

On Independence Day Nandi opted to return to interdependence. Even though she didn’t want to go through the gate, she chose to return to a place just beside it. Could it be that in celebrating independence that we are missing the point? Is it possible that independence is overrated?

Drifting

2006-07-03T07:56:00.000-04:00

The air is soft this morning. Cool yet comforting, light without being bright. Soft: gentle like a mother’s love. It does not possess its usual gravity, does not weigh down on me so hard as I am used to, and this somehow makes it harder to keep my eyes open – eyelids drifting up and down without me being able to control them. Weightless.

There is a lot of drifting this morning: consciousness drifting in and out; voices right beside me heard but not listened to; thoughts like blown bubbles popping. Delicate bubble thoughts: the moment I touch them they disappear.

People drift in and out too. I came in here because it was quiet: Y sleeping, me writing, clock ticking, spider weaving – nothing else to interrupt these drifting thoughts. Then within minutes, everybody in here talking, playing, yelling, laughing. A pretty scene perhaps, if not entirely conducive to writing.

Time is a sand dune, drifting.

The Earth our heat sink

2006-07-02T11:04:00.000-04:00

I’m not used to typing my blog. Usually I write it on paper, then type it up. Today is different. Today my notebook is at home and I’m not. Today it’s going straight onto virtual paper.

The sun ekes through the shades, pummels the walls and says, “You can’t keep me out forever!” Well, it would if it cared. It is too big to care. Like me stepping on an ant, it’s own business is far more important to it: burn, baby, burn.

The sun is not the only heat source in this room, though. The computer hums and whirs, works even when nothing appears to be happening, pumping electricity: heating not only this room, but somewhere away from here lies a power station undoubtedly generating more heat. Global warming comes from more than emissions: we are heat generators. The Earth our heat sink.

Until it’s not. It isn’t news to anybody that this can’t go on forever. Soon enough, if we don’t stop being ourselves, this place will be too hot to handle. Sure, we’ll adapt; we’ll find new ways of doing things; we’ll rearrange the deckchairs again and again and again. But I’m not too sure that many people really get it: we’re killing ourselves. Suicidal society.

I used to care so much about this. I used to think it was a problem. But now I’m beginning to see it is just our way. We are really good at destroying things, and I’ve always been told that if you’re good at something, stick to it. So maybe the destruction of the planet is not a problem, maybe it’s simply our path. We’ve been working on it for thousands of years, and of late we’ve been getting much, much better at it. Let’s stop berating ourselves for it and give us all a big slap on the back instead: “Well done friend, you’ve found your talent!”

Meaningless drivel

2006-07-01T07:59:00.000-04:00

The door fades in and out, changes colour, becomes almost transparent – like I can see the holes between the molecules. Then the mind snaps back and says, ‘That’s a solid red door. Enough of that.’ And the door becomes red again, solid wood, impenetrable.

A warping door is interesting, but ultimately meaningless. Eyes playing tricks, maybe. Or not. Doesn’t matter, the meaning lies beyond – on the other side of the door. And the meaning that lies there is essentially that there is none. There is nothing to look for as the cracks open up, the stars but holes in the fabric that reveal the light behind it.

Meaning only has a place here, when we think it could be important. Meaning gives us a reference, something to tie us down to time and place, to give us a reason to exist. And yet there remains a reason that the search for meaning is so elusive. There is none. God’s little game with Himself does not need meaning. God’s little game with Himself just is.

There is no meaning and it does not matter. Play!

Comparing the contrast

2006-06-30T13:01:00.000-04:00

Children are the chorus at this mountain lake: a swimming pool with boats, a raked beach without salt or waves. It is easy to revert to what I know: heat, clean sand and waves - when in a foreign land. But if this be my home now, then this is what is mine to know. Memories are not how things should be; this is how things should be.

Comparison. I find myself falling into it often, and what I notice often follows is some form of stress: anger, frustration, resentment. What is to compare? This is this and that is that. That is all.

When I look at it, I notice that the only reason I compare is to be better than, even if it’s to be better than you at being worse than you, a better victim. It is one way I choose to remain separate: comparison requires an other, this to be separate from that – and therefore somehow comparable.

Comparison is competition, and all competition requires a loser.

There is no comparison. It is all this, and I can’t compare this to this: it is all the same. Beach, no beach; waves, no waves; hot or just a bit warm: it is no different. It is just this. Pure, simple, this.

No comparison, no competition. Winning without a loser.

The paradigm of paradox

2006-06-29T08:50:00.000-04:00

The sun where once were clouds does shine. Two knees raised, notebook in the lap thus formed. Interplay of light and shadow on sheets. Contrast.

Without light there is no shadow. The shadow the Yin to the light’s Yang. Perhaps. Nothing exists without contrast, without something to compare it to. Duality is the source of existence.

It is like giving a baby a mirror and showing it that the image in the mirror is itself. An amazing moment, the moment the baby begins to exist in separation.

No lap without the knees. First the thought, then the image. All arising and passing away.

Nothing and everything, this and that, you and me: none can exist without the other. It all started with a thought, ‘I am…’ No start without an end.

Chicken and egg. Which came first is not important, what is important is that it came. No coming without going. No existence without death. No story without an ending.

No way home, for home was never left.

All the same to me

2006-06-28T09:54:00.000-04:00

The sun has melted the clouds, the girls laugh upstairs, and the clock ticks, reminding me that no two seconds are alike.

And yet, somehow, it is all the same. I remember traveling through California, Arizona and Mexico last year and having that experience: there was some quality that was all the same. I couldn’t place it, it was just my experience that it was somehow all the same.

There is an equanimity about such an experience. I guess it is the very essence of equanimity: for the internal to remain equanimous, the external must be experienced as that.

Or is it the other way around? I am told that thought is cause, experience effect. I am told it is all projection. The external a manifestation of the internal.

There I was experiencing equanimity and I didn’t even know it! I love that. I love that the experience is impossible to name; the truth impossible to say. I love that I have glimpsed something unspeakable.

And I love that I sit here trying to find words to explain it!

It's axiomatic

2006-06-27T09:11:00.000-04:00

Waiting for words. I have been reading how the Vedic people in India realized they needed nothing but words and fire. For the moment it feels as though I have neither. They would carry out an elaborate daily sacrifice and that was all. They left no trace but their words: no temples, no architecture, no infrastructure. They trod lightly upon this delicate Earth.

And they were almost right. Ultimately – whatever we do – there is nothing left, not even words. They morph, distort, become something altogether different, and then as their relevance is lost they fade into obscurity. It is all a flash of consciousness, only some flashes appear longer than others.

I was also reading how every proof requires an axiom. It is impossible to prove all of anything: the central point of any proof is the axiom, and the axiom cannot be proved. It is the nature of an axiom.

So the entire universe we live in rests upon the axiom that it is real. Where is the proof? Every proof of reality you attempt to show me relies upon the axiom that it was already real. Circular argument.

So where does that leave us?

Unfinished business

2006-06-26T07:10:00.000-04:00

Last night I lay on the floor as the thunder rolled through me. The whole house shook to its roar, an energy of other proportions.

This morning I watch the rain ease off after a nightlong solid dump. Those clouds just got to be exhausted now. There’ll be flooding around these parts today, I’m sure.

And the cat buries her face in my arm, clawing me gently, a suckling kitten grown old. I bite my fingernails, the cat suckles: what is the difference? Acting out unfinished childhoods.

Childhood is never finished. Where there is innocence there are signs of the child, and underlying all of this is a profound innocence. It is inescapable, try as we might to deny it.

Manifestations of fear would try to drive us away from our innocence. And who is it that fears? Who is afraid of the dark? Of monsters under the bed? Of spiders and mice and other creepy-crawlies? It is the child. Always the innocent child.

Downpour

2006-06-25T08:46:00.000-04:00

Downpour. Loud and heavy the rain pounded the roof last night. A thousand hammers beating on tin. A percussive symphony. Cacophony. And with it the light show: bright white fireworks accompanied by thunder’s drum roll.

And it poured until the clouds were exhausted. Like an angry man, they can only vent so much.

And now it is still. Nothing moves in the aftermath. Like the object of an angry man’s abuse, recovering from such as assault takes time. A tentative chirp in the distance, the slight wave of a dandelion, mark the start of said recovery as the water stops flowing and starts seeping. Life blood.

Persistent, life is.

Married!

2006-06-24T13:42:00.000-04:00

Is this married life: go, go, go, go, go? Yesterday the celebrant signed the papers and now we’re as good as married. Married! It only took me 36 years.

I remember doing The Work a week or so ago on the belief that marriage traps me. One of the turnarounds was that it was liberating, and what came to me then is that it would liberate me from all my limiting beliefs about what marriage would be like. I think it has. It really feels like a weight off, a burden lifted.

It’s still bizarre talking about ‘my wife’ though. Or my stepkids. Fiancée was one thing, and I kind of got used to that, but wife – wife holds a whole lot of meaning for me, it seems, that I am yet to investigate. Well, here’s my chance! If ‘til death do us part sticks, then I guess I’ve got the rest of my life.

Married! How can one word appear to change so much? The adventure begins. Again.

Rhythm

2006-06-23T07:08:00.000-04:00

Last night I sat outside and watched the fireflies blinking. A plane drifted overhead and joined them, tail trailing red and white lights. Last night I held a firefly in my hand. I would like to make a firefly lantern: dozens of fireflies in a jar, ideal for moonless nights.

The wind this morning is restless. It shares its rhythm with the trees, drifting in and out like sleepy dreams on a lazy morning. Change in the weather warning.

There is a rumbling in my stomach that chants like a Tibetan monk singing, “Feed me, feed me.”

And E wraps her arms around me in a way that says, “Love me, love me.”

The television is a mirror, the washing basket a history lesson, and the dog barking in the distance a call to the gods. They are not listening.

An airplane rumbles overhead, getting lost in the breeze down here; the tall grass dances with the leaves; the barn at attention, unblinking.

There is a rhythm to all of this. Can you find it?

What do you think of this?

2006-06-22T18:56:00.000-04:00

What I've noticed is that some people can't handle criticism at all, while others seek it out as a resource. My friend Rachel and her friend John - who were both at the School for The Work with me (no coincidence there) - are in the latter group. This is them in San Francisco going straight to the heart of it. Rachel also has a Summer Inquiry Project planned, which is worth checking out.

Timely

2006-06-22T08:22:00.000-04:00

There are times when the words can’t find the page. On other occasions the page soaks them up, a sponge.

There are times when I am so in love with the world and everything in it that I soak into it, transparent; and then there are times that I reject it.

There are times when you and you and you are equally perfect in my eyes. Mostly though, you are special and you are not, while you are just plain contemptuous.

And yet all time – eternity – is one. There is nothing special or different here - it is not possible. Eternity is the entity. Within, it looks tumultuous; but as an entity it looks complete. It is complete, it has no choice.

Eternity is all and here I lie within it. How is it that the finite seems so real? How could anything be important in the midst of the infinite? How did I make this seem to matter? Guess I must be cleverer than I thought.

Solstice

2006-06-21T10:14:00.000-04:00

Solstice. Top of the cycle to you! A day like any other, only a little bit more of it. The sun don’t get no higher.

Solstice. Focus of gatherings from Stonehenge to New Mexico. Somewhere in these 24 hours people are prostrating, worshipping, chanting, contemplating, decrying the big ball of fire in the sky. And why not? It holds a fairly significant place in our existence. Without it there would be none. Not here, anyway. And with global warming, it could hold a fairly significant place in the end of our existence. Our relationship with Ra is tenuous, it turns out. Any drought victim or skin cancer sufferer will attest to that. Giver of life, taker of life: master blaster.

Solstice. Day like any other.

A year ago today

2006-06-20T08:58:00.000-04:00

A year ago today I was wearing all white and a turban, sitting in a large outdoor shed, staring in a woman’s eyes, holding a pose and repeating a mantra – along with over a thousand others. White Tantric Yoga, Kundalini style. A year ago today I was taking cold showers and was less than 40 days away from meeting E. A year ago today I was in the desert mountains of New Mexico. A year ago today I didn’t know it, but I was about to travel through 15 states in two weeks.

A year ago today I was well along the path that led me to this. And I had absolutely no idea. What path am I on now? Where is this leading? This morning, instead of staring into a woman’s eyes I was staring at a wall, attempting to form a cone within a square. This is hard work too, though not as taxing as the Kundalini Yoga event. So where is it leading? Soon, E and I will most likely be married. Where is that leading?

I find that one of my issues about settling down is that life becomes predictable, but it ain’t necessarily so. I look at where my mind has traveled, at where life has taken me, since I returned here in November, and I don’t know that any of it was predictable. The only thing that appears the same is four people living in a house together, and no element of any of that has remained the same either.

It seems the obvious isn’t quite so evident when I look at it closely. The obvious turns out to be only the apparent, and the evident becomes transparent. The mystery may be inescapable, after all.

Seasonal Circles

2006-06-19T08:19:00.000-04:00

The blackberry outside the window is racing skywards. The window’s panes act as markers for its growth, and today it is half way to the top. Breakfast in bed blackberries are on order, and all I need do is wait for the sun and rain and air and soil to serve it up. A butterfly flitters around it, generating a shadow across the room and life is full this morning.

I harken back to winter when all was a sheet of white, when the trees were sleeping, and the contrast couldn’t be more complete. The seasonal circle here is full.

Drifting inwards, I see the cycles within me. I see how each experience seems so complete: when I am down it seems there is no way out; when I am high on life it feels like forever; when I am in love – as now – the fullness bears an apparently unbreakable totality.

Inescapable expressions of the moment. Here now turns out to be all I’ve ever known; all else has only ever been a story.

Rest in peace

2006-06-18T09:25:00.000-04:00

Sunday – so they say. Domingo, Dimanche. The seventh day. Day of rest. Ha! As soon as I’m done with this, off to work I go: first at the venue and then on the house. Day of rest! What’s that?

To be fair, my days are filled with a lot of respite, but a day filled with rest I am barely capable of. I recall Vipassana – ten days of sitting in silence – being some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. So if I’m working overtime being perfectly still, when do I ever get to rest? When I sleep? Even then, of late I’ve noticed that I’m active even in sleeping. My dreams are busy, and more often than not I awake more exhausted than I was when I went to bed.

The mind is relentless. Without this, this body would stop breathing, stop pumping blood around itself and this form that I call me would cease to exist. Not such a bad thing, maybe; but the point is that mind is never at rest. I can be restful, but never completely rested.

So it follows that it can’t be possible to truly know peace while identifying as this. All I can do is approach it or stop identifying as this. Which would I choose? All I now is what I’ve chosen so far.

Top of the morning meanderings

2006-06-17T09:14:00.000-04:00

Top of the morning meanderings. I notice that I would rather close my eyes and drift than pick up these pages and write. I often approach these writings with a sense of trepidation: what am I going to write today? I have nothing to say. It often takes me a while to allow the pen to take over and say what it has to say. While I think it is I who needs to have something to say, the task is a difficult one.

I remember someone once saying that writing a blog about your philosophy of life would take about two or three entries and then it would be over. I recall someone else saying that’s what I do here. And I wonder. To me, little of this is philosophy. Philosophy is questioning, theorizing, arguing. Philosophy assumes there is an answer that can come from its questions. Thousands of years of questions and it still makes this fundamentally flawed assumption.

The ideas presented here are not new; I would never claim that. Nor – to me – are they theories. They are based on experience, or come from a hand that is not guided by me. And the words I read when I’m done reflect those of people who know the experiences that are written about. No, there is nothing new here, nor nothing personal about the philosophy.

Leave the new thoughts – if there are any – to the philosophers. I’ll take the wisdom of the masters instead. No questions, no doubts; no question, no doubt.

Light - Weight

2006-06-16T11:10:00.000-04:00

I sit here, alone, with the house to myself for three days. A wonderful opportunity to regroup my thoughts and rediscover the lightness that I once knew so well. There is a heaviness I have found I associate with relationship, with family. Maybe it comes from a perceived burden of responsibility; maybe it comes from a belief that I need to take such things seriously. I don’t know. I have simply noticed the weight where once I had feathers to fly.

And I do not know what this means. It is just an observation. To prefer one to the other is to judge, and I am not in a legitimate position to take on such a responsibility. Which, of course, is not to say that I don’t.

And there it is! This is where the perceived burden of responsibility begins: judging against it. The ego’s a tricky little bugger, isn’t it? It makes something seem real, then judges against it; sets itself up to fail, then bemoans the lost opportunity. Cleverness is its trait, as is the pride that it derives from it.

I’ll take understanding and humility instead, thank you. That is where the lightness lies, where peace dwells.

A half life away

2006-06-15T08:54:00.000-04:00

Half way through the month that takes us half way through the year and time’s half lives race by in supersonic motion. The thing about supersonic motion is that the sound can’t keep up with you, and time is the same – the way it flies. It is gone the moment it is noticed and no moment can be grasped. It is all a memory.

I can talk of this, now, but what I am really talking of is that, then. It is impossible to talk of now, for the moment the first utterance is made, that moment is gone. And that is what makes this moment so amazing and every new moment a mystery: it is impossible to describe or define as it slides on by.

It is also what makes every ‘I am’ a lie. How can I know what or who I am in this moment? The truth is closer to ‘I was’ or ‘I could be’, and nor is there ever enough evidence to support either of these claims. We are still discussing a collection of indescribable, indefinable instants. It is all a lie, a story.

It is said the truth is stranger than fiction, but it’s not. What we would call the truth is fiction.

Falling away

2006-06-14T10:08:00.000-04:00

A vague emptiness drifts through my head. Words do not reach meaning. They form then dissolve before I can make any use of them. Thoughts too are indistinct, just a gentle sea of incomplete concepts. A judgement here, an opinion there, a belief floating by as driftwood, and all falling away before I can make sense of it.

The ring in my ear an undertone for the dog's howls in the distance. Where is the meaning?

Falling away: a full cloud sprinkling. Falling away: a distant voice echoing. Falling away: dust drifting.

There is a world outside this place and it fades in and out: a voice, a clunk, an engine rolling, a hairbrush brushing. It is there but I am not. He is trapped somewhere, and this morning attempts to drag himself out of the maze and identify as me again. He wants to give me a reference. He wants to make this real, to call this body 'me'. But the rubble that is falling away pins him under for a few moments more. Instants of respite. Flitting freedom. Television snow tuning in.

The worst thing about today

2006-06-13T09:12:00.000-04:00

“The worst thing about today is that J’s looking after us.” L’s opening salvo this morning. Oh well, if that’s the worst thing about today, I guess we’re in for a good one. I’ve had J looking after me – one way or another – for the past 36 years, and he doesn’t do such a bad job – most of the time.

I watched where my mind went after she said this, and besides a minor deflation the moment it was said, not much happened. I didn’t seem capable of getting upset about it. I tried – sort of – but I just couldn’t do it. I dwelled on it, but it felt meaningless. And by the time E tried to discuss it with her, my mind had moved on to other topics and spent some moments attempting to recall what she was talking about.

And who knows, after all? What looks to be the worst thing about today could turn out to be the best thing that could happen. It is so often the case that I am finding it pays not to get in the way; not to judge a situation, but to watch it instead.

The worst thing about today is that if I’m not here for it, it’ll be gone. And I can rectify that.

Without questioning

2006-06-12T09:40:00.000-04:00

The sun finds a small gap in the clouds and an explosion of warmth covers me, then it goes back into hiding. I look for it and white glare stares back at me. Another stormy night: thunder and lightning preceded by fog; by low, low cloud. The fireflies were a galaxy of short-lived stars, and then when the fog descended they switched off. Too much energy to expel for too little visibility, perhaps. Now this morning there is dampness, an avian chorus and growth. Green, green growth. It is so powerful here that is seems as though you could actually watch grass grow. In Australia we get one crop of hay a year; here they get three, and all within a window of just over six months. They have been baling up the first crop these past couple of weeks: mechanically grazing, industrial cattle. And at the bottom awaits a sea of green, vibrant, pushing up, defying gravity, skyward to start another crop. Unquestioning.

How many times would you need to slice me down before I decided it was pointless and gave up? Where is the override switch that allows me this self-defeating luxury? Maybe it’s true that I’m given nothing I can’t handle. Maybe, without questioning, I would continue to thrive until the time came to rest. Without questioning, maybe I would just be an organism serving its purpose. And if I could look at my life without questioning, maybe that is precisely what I would see.

Not quite good enough

2006-06-11T09:44:00.000-04:00

The sun is out after a stormy night and I am tired after staying up late to hear my football team throw away another opportunity. That seems to be what they’re best at: discarding opportunities, refusing to be great. Their constant underachievement has become the running joke of the competition, and any semblance of respect anyone has ever had for them is diminishing as rapidly as their opponents kick goals against them.

And I notice that disrespect for them coming from me as well, and as I do I wonder what that implies. I have found that I am incapable of thinking something about someone else that I don’t already think about myself. So where do I disrespect myself? Oh, let me count the ways. I see that personal disrespect has been a driving force for me for most of my existence. I have used it in a distorted attempt to push me to greater heights. It may have led to me doing plenty and achieving a lot but, like the Dockers, I’ve never really finished anything off. I dabble. It’s like I don’t respect myself enough to allow me to succeed. The perennial boy most likely, I remain a self-fulfilled prophecy of not quite good enough.

I have been upset with the team, but I see that what has really upset me is myself. And I notice the disrespect in that and it hopefully allows an opening for compassion. Vicious cycles go nowhere, and that explains a lot.

Break a leg

2006-06-10T09:41:00.000-04:00

The clock flashes, my skin itches, my nose blocks and all is well. The sky is grey, the trees wave softly in the breeze, and E cooks up a delicious smell in the kitchen. Saturday morning, Virginia time.

My realization yesterday seemed to be all I needed to float free from the thoughts that were drowning me. Knowing versus understanding. Knowing is so overrated. I notice that when I think I know how things should be, I suffer, and still I continue to try it. This is the unwinnable war with reality that Katie talks about. I fight it all the time, I lose, and I get up and fight it again. And I continue to wonder why I get upset. War will have that effect.

And I love that understanding comes from not knowing. It looks a little like this: when I don’t know how things should be I have an understanding that everything is just the way it should be. And that is impossible to understand when I think I know what my world should look like – then the judgements come flooding in and colour every single point of my perspective.

I love the flow of the cycles; I love that I can be party to it; I love that I play my role so convincingly that even I believe it most of the time. I always wanted to be an actor as a kid; it just took me this long to see how successful I have been in my career choice.

Wave motion

2006-06-09T09:23:00.000-04:00

Time is relative, and at the moment it all seems to be converging at one point. It is a laser, cutting into my mind, performing an operation with random precision. There is no anaesthetic for this operation, and no science behind it. It is just time’s sadistic way of saying I am at its mercy. Time is not on my side; time is the enemy.

I am so glad that it’s an illusion! Somewhere, beyond this sense of being overwhelmed, is the peace of knowing that none of it matters, that nothing is real. Somewhere.

For the moment it feels real. For the moment it seems that I am incapable of coping, that I am being overrun. There is no peace in this, just desperate grasping at a rescue device tantalizingly close but still out of reach.

The rescue device is understanding; the incapacity comes from thinking I know. Every time I approach understanding, I begin to think I know, and the oscillation happens; every time I see I know nothing, I begin to understand, and it turns back the other way. Wave motion.

And at the moment the wave is big and I am drowning.

Obvious

2006-06-08T09:54:00.000-04:00

The obvious stares us in the face, and it discomfits us so we look the other way; look at all the other possibilities but the one screaming, "Pick me! Pick me!" I guess the incessant yelling turns us off; I guess the obvious is only for those who are ready for it.

One leg out of the petri dish

2006-06-07T09:49:00.000-04:00

Well, we seem to have made it through Armageddon relatively unscathed – just as we did 1000 years ago and 1000 years before that. So much significance people place on dates, and they’re entirely arbitrary. We’ll attempt to make a system out of anything if we can; try to make sense out of chaos; attempt to find order in insanity.

Why? There is a perfect order to everything, but it is beyond numbers and theories. Eternity does not need a system; it is the system. The infinite cannot be enumerated, so why bother trying?

It is so easy to get caught up in the ways of the world, when the world does not have a way. It is just a great petri dish spinning around a light bulb. Imagine bacteria attempting to make sense of their situation: do you think their behaviour would change once they realized their population would explode then die out? No. They’d just make a few ineffective attempts to stem the flow, debate the possibilities; conclude the worst; conclude the best; breed and breed and breed, and then die out.

And would life then be over? Of course not. How can the eternal die?

This really is not what it looks like, and that is why it doesn’t make sense. Recognise the insanity and that’s one leg out of the petri dish.

Ring around the moon

2006-06-06T08:50:00.000-04:00

Heavy, heavy dew this morning. I am told that means a fine day ahead. Ring around the moon last night. I am told that means rain. Even nature is confused!

I couldn’t quite make out whether the ring was a dark rainbow or light smog. Smog is not common out here, though surely not impossible. It gets around, as most airborne things do. For the moment, it brings to mind standing on the northwestern tip of the Iberian Peninsula and seeing a thick band of smog from one end of my vista to the next. Just hovering over the ocean, like a wall. Across the Atlantic lay the US; somewhere, quite a distance to the north, the UK sat doing its thing; and to our right, hundreds of miles out of view, was the west coast of France. Nothing anywhere nearby to account for this golden-brown band across the water - nothing but our knowledge of geography.

At the time I saw this strip of smog, I was mortified. It was proof-positive of our destruction of the planet, of our interference with nature. On nature’s behalf, I was outraged at my fellow man for allowing this to happen.

Today, a brown-stained ring around the moon doesn’t have quite the same impact on me. A while ago I realized it is all nature. If it is composed of atoms, it must be nature. It just isn’t the way I used to think nature should look. Maybe today I’m not so arrogant to assume that I know what nature should look like. Maybe today I’m not so arrogant as to make life on Earth my business.

And because I like to have life around me, I will continue to do my best to preserve it. I’m just less inclined these days to disdain those around me who have other priorities.

What do you suggest?

2006-06-05T10:21:00.000-04:00

I so rarely know where these posts are going to go. Usually, I don’t even know what they’ll be about. I just sit and wait and watch what comes out, and it can be quite a fascinating process. I’ll be writing away – like now – thinking, 'This is going nowhere.' And then a revelation comes swooping in and I am grateful yet again that I took the time to sit and write.

It has been suggested that these posts are too self-absorbed, too much like a personal journal. It is intended that this discusses things that many would consider personal, and only for the purpose of demonstrating that they’re not. The idea is that the thoughts presented here are – in some way – your thoughts too. That – as Katie says – there are no new thoughts. It is an experiment with group mind. It is another perspective, a way of looking at these age-old thoughts in a different light and seeing their fallibilities, their insanity.

I’m just attempting to follow simple directions. What would you have me do? What do you suggest?

Chaos wasn’t meant to be easy

2006-06-04T09:20:00.000-04:00

Waking to a day can be stilted. Morning bits and pieces floating in and out until the mind paints a picture to make sense of them. That picture makes it all look like one thing – a composite – but it is merely a work of art, a trick. This isn’t supposed to make sense! That is why babies cry so much: the muffled bubble becomes a rampant, insane assault upon the senses. Making sense of it is all we can do to maintain some vestige of sanity. Chaos wasn’t meant to be easy.

Too hard

2006-06-03T08:12:00.001-04:00

Rain patters percussively on the tent roof as I slowly wake inside. I’m getting soft in my old age, finding it hard to sleep on the ground these days: body sore, aching in the back, the hip, the shoulder, the arm – wherever, it seems, I had contact with the ground. Soft.

I think I would like something softer to sleep on, and then I wonder whether maybe it is my hardness that is part of the problem. I am bony, thin, and do not merge well with the contours of the earth. My density is higher than average too, as I don’t have any fat to spread me out, so maybe my points press harder against the ground too. Larger people have a place of contact when they sleep; skinny people like me, we have a point of contact. Points poke.

Hardness is not giving; hardness is a sign of resistance. I think I would like to be irresistible. I think I would like to soften.

Reflecting upon reflection

2006-06-02T09:15:00.000-04:00

Television at the end of the bed reflects my image back at me, black screen lit by the sun gleaming in from the window to my right. Reflection of an image staring back at me.

White sheet, blue t-shirt, black pants melding with the dark wall behind. Lines ill-defined. The window a picture framed on the wall, source of light. Me a statue, still, reflecting.

This is what I do: I reflect. I have no choice in the matter. I am a mirror for you to see yourself in. You are my looking glass too. Life is a hall of mirrors, reflections everywhere; never the true image to be seen. This thumb, this pen, this hand: but an image that I’ve made to help make this reflection appear different from that. Distortions. The mirrors are curved, coloured, cracked, but they remain mirrors all the same.

Reflecting upon reflection; what else is there left to do?