Friday Night

It's been a brief working week this week, a mere three days down the salt mine after the extended long weekend.  This weekend is another long weekend, this time for labour day, and another 3 days of relaxing before returning to the hustle and bustle.

So I am sitting here typing, while the girls are in the living room watching Gilmore Girls dvd's rather than enduring the incessant royal wedding coverage that seems to have sprouted on every TV channel just about.  In the meantime I am sitting back enjoying the joyous stream of cynicism and observation on twitter.

I will offer little in the way of commentary on the royal nuptials, I am happy for them and wish them a long and happy life together, however, having said all that, I would personally prefer that the television networks and news media in general refrain from their incessant need to bombard us with every single piece of trivial and tenuously related fluff they could lay their hands on at this time.  Some of us are getting a bit sick of it all, it doesn't engage us as viewers or readers, it just drives us to indifference and anger and we switch off.  There is other news in the world, as equally demanding of our consideration.

So then, after that rant, I am left with a problem.  Normally I try and write these posts to go somewhere and leave us all with something to think about and ponder and hopefully be inspired from.  Maybe not tonight, it's sometimes hard to feel positive and encouraged, and feel as though the weight of the waves is slowly drowning us and dragging us down into the depths, to the abode of Poseidon and Pluto.  Sometimes it feels like if you put on a brave face you are a fraud and you are dying inside because you feel like crap.  But sometimes you have to fake it till you make it, a theme that ties in with Poseidon (aka Neptune), who is the source of the stories we tell, the ocean of creativity.  We develop our own narratives and mythologies, culled from many sources, from what we were taught to believe by our families, by our friends, by society at large.  If it tells us we have no future, no hope, no purpose beyond being a cog in the machine, and if we tell ourselves that story is true, then how can we hope to rise above the truth we have made for ourselves?

So then, time to look at the stories we tell ourselves?  Maybe it's time to tell ourselves a new story, to begin to see that we have the ability to connect with a higher consciousness, and to see a better purpose for our lives, a new story we can tell ourselves.

Easter Saturday


Haven't had much to really say the last week or so, I have had an intrusion from the real world of work that has cut into my writing time.  That said however, and being as how it is a 5 day weekend (which takes me back to my art school days), I thought I would sit down and reflect a bit on things.

It is of course Easter, which for the christians is their most important religious holiday.  It's all about torture and suffering and death, and paradoxically perhaps, a return from the shadow world of death.  Such themes are indeed common in ancient mythologies, and represent powerful archetypal patterns that we can draw upon for our personal growth and understanding the seasons of our life.

Some may think this must necessarily invoke thinking of things from a religious perspective, but it doesn't necessarily have to be so.  As I said, archetypes and symbols are found in every culture, and while the stories take different forms, they all carry very similar themes.

So lets talk about death and rebirth.  Death can take many forms, from the agonies of trying to construct a reasonably cogent and lucent blog post that communicates some message to its readers, to perhaps public speaking, through up to perhaps facing serious illness or great loss.  In such times we face what may seem to be insurmountable obstacles, and we are confronted with our deepest fears and anxieties and apprehensions.  All these things have the potential to send either of two ways, we can choose to hide and run, and not face our fear of dying (not literal death but a type of death nevertheless, usually of our ego), and head the other way from the direction we are supposed to.  We are of course quite welcome to make this choice, but the consequences of our action are liable to bring down destruction on not only ourselves, but often those around us who share our journey.

The other path, the one most of only come to after choosing the hard option first and having our backsides firmly kicked for our troubles, is to surrender to a higher power and admit that our life is not our own to always do with as we please, perhaps that we are not always as in control of our destinies as we purport to be.  See that the universe has a flow and direction that it is taking you in, and learn to let it carry you that way.

That of course digresses slightly from the topic of death and rebirth, and yet it is all a part of it.  Jonah ran away from his destiny and spent three days in the belly of a whale before he accepted his part, Orpheus had to die to be reunited with Eurydice.  In both cases we see someone having to die, either physically or through the surrender of the will, the ego, in order to get to a place where they were able to receive what their heart desired, or to be able to serve others, both acts of love.

In the end then Easter can be a religious holiday for you, it can be an excuse for going the beach and overdosing on chocolate.  It can be a 5 day weekend.  Whatever you do and however you choose to spend this time, remember that the universe is not only bigger than your problems, it is bigger than you, even though it is a part of you and you are a part of it.  You are not above it and you are not below it.  Take comfort in the people who care about you, and contemplate the nature of things.  Be mindful of the way things flow and if you get frustrated ask yourself if it because you have removed yourself from that flow or decided to go against it.  You may indeed be facing tough times, and I am not promising any panacea for your woes, except to say that things do get better and sometimes you must go through these times to reach the other side.  I have before and I probably will again, so I empathise with those who are doing it tough.  I know things get better though and it's not what you believe so much as having faith in the process.

 

Morning Time

Another morning of managing to wake up before 5am, something which seems to be a regular occurrence for me in recent months.  While I would rather enjoy an extra hour of sleep, I seem to be unable to roll over and fall asleep again, so most mornings I end up getting up and coming out to sit down and catch up on the all the internet goings on.  

This means sitting at the desk in the study and looking out the window, and as I have always done, I do so enjoy the peaceful calm of the morning.  It's always a pleasure to see the gleam of the dawn light and simultaneously hear the birds start up their dawn chorus, as the sky glows brighter in the east, and any clouds are illuminated in beautiful reds and golds as the sun begins it journey across the sky for another day.  It's a sacred moment, before the busyness of the day, before phones, TV, cars, and so forth, when you can just relax and be alone with your thoughts before the house is filled with noise, and it's a good time to prepare for the day ahead by doing not very much.

This then is my morning ritual, a place where I can practice a bit of mindful living.  It's always a good thing to do, to just find a place in your day where you can sit and be quiet, feel the silent and gentle side of the world, a world of soft light, and birdsong, reconnecting yourself with the natural rhythms of the planet, and remind yourself that it isn't in any way all about all the things that society likes to shove in your face, like breakfast television, the inane chatter of breakfast radio announcers, peak hour traffic, things that seem, whether by accident or design to keep us from thinking and connecting with ourselves and our spirits.

So the next time life seems all rush, rush, rush, why not sneak out of bed a little earlier and go enjoy the garden and listen to the birds.

Gratitude.

I have been checking the stats for this blog.  I have to say I am amazed at how many people seem to have read it recently.  It humbles me to think that there are those of you out there in the interwebs who actually take the time to click through and (hopefully) spend the time reading my ramblings.  I see most of you are in America and Australia. 

So today I am inviting you to scroll to the bottom of the page and post a comment and offer your comments.  I would be very grateful to hear from you all.

Many Thanks,

john!

A rainy Saturday morning.

Here I sit, enjoying the sound  of the rain and the cool in the air and enjoying the peace of 530 AM on a Saturday morning.  Autumn is definitely starting to assert its presence now and I am, as always, enjoying the change of seasons.  It's that natural rhythm of life, summer gives way to autumn gives way to winter gives way to spring gives way to summer again.  It's a constant, it flows, and it defines our lives, like the rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, the stars in the sky as the constellations wheel and change over the year as we travel round the sun, and the motions of the planets.  If we take the time to be mindful, and to look outside of ourselves and observe, we see these rhythms all about us.

It leads me on other thoughts of course.  There are indeed rhythms and cycles in everything, we are born, we grow, we die.  It's nothing to be afraid of, it's just life.  Along the way we meet other people all following their paths and living the cycle of their lives.  We may not know all the people on this earth, we may know a thousand, or a hundred, or even ten, but those we meet touch us all and leave their mark on us in some way.  Some of them we may meet only once or twice, some we may walk beside for a lifetime, some we may be friends with for years and either suddenly or gradually drift apart, wondering if we really knew this person at all, a place I suddenly find myself in.

The truth of it is to me that people go through life and there is this constant subtle energy that urges us to grow and evolve, whether we are only here for this life or if we have many incarnations to live.  If we resist the energy of change we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being left behind, withering on the vine and stagnating and dying, and wondering why we are being left behind by all the people who we used to know.  Most people cannot stay in the same place, they have to grow, have to change, do all the things that they do, marriage, family, a house in the suburbs, work.  Having said that we must grow spiritually and emotionally too.  To sit still for too long is to risk decay and stagnation, of being a teenager in the body of a 50 or 60 year old, too afraid to face the challenges that life presents and so clinging to the tattered vestiges of adolescence, like a child who grew up near me who kept his security blanket until it was a tiny rag that fit in his fist and far past useful for anything.  In the end people, whether friends or couples or colleagues, can either grow and grow together, or they can grow apart, and such separations, while painful, are often necessary, especially when you hold to the view that I do, that when we are so immune to the more subtle messages that the universe sends, that it will have to send along painful events to get us to sit up and listen and consider our path through life, and to shock us out of our apathy.

A Time For New Beginnings

Being a Monday (which I have off from work), and with my dear lady feeling a bit under the weather, I had time to drive her into university today rather than have her suffer the vagaries of public transport.  It gave me a couple of hours to go down to West End and sit in my favourite coffee shop and read the novel I am currently trudging through (The Remake, by Clive James, and while I say trudging it is rather good), write a bit in my journal, and drink a few cups of very good coffee (Ugees don't have a website, but you will find them on facebook).  Following this I indulged in what has become a Monday ritual lately and stopped off in Boundary St to buy pide for me and Sue.  I know this semester will end and we may not have Mondays any more like these ones, but I will always enjoy the thought of our little ritual.

All this talk of ritual though puts me in mind of the importance of ritual in our society, which is something I have struggled with in some ways.  I remember many years in art school being introduced to the whole conceptual process, and the idea of developing art from a concept.  Our assignment was to create art based on of our rituals, something I was uncomfortable with.  At the time I had just started the journey away from being involved in organised religion, from a safe institutional state of mind (a journey that continues) towards new ways of thinking.  Looking back I think I was unsure of the difference between ritual and routine.  I had entered into organised religion at the age of 19, and at the time it seemed to answer a lot of questions and provide safety and stability, as well as freshness and excitement.  10 years later I felt as though all that shine had worn off, I had spent time thinking critically and looking at some of things I had believed and decided I didn't really believe them any more.  All this to say that rituals can deliver a safe, warm, cosseting, environment, but they don't always encourage us to discover new things, and sooner or later we reach a point where we have to form our own opinions and come to our own conclusions.

From this we learn to create our own world, by our thoughts, and by the stories we tell ourselves.  In a way then we do create our own realities.  We can of course choose to believe other peoples stories and participate in their realities, but then we are merely players on someone else's stage, and we surrender our power to create our own story and create our own reality to someone else.

Today then is a new moon, and a powerful one at that, placed in Aries, the first sign of the zodiac.  What better time for new beginnings, to put negative thinking and negative people behind you, to begin to tell yourself a new story, to create a new mythology for yourself, and to start life afresh.

Really beginning to enjoy blogging again...

Anyhow, a day when we didn't really get much of anything done that we wanted to get done.  Breakfast became brunch, and was enjoyed immensely after washing one of the cats, who had managed to acquire a fine collection of fleas.  This was followed by a drive across to Redcliffe, but unfortunately the beach today, while looking lovely, was altogether too windy to enjoy.  Also in a sure sign that summer seems to be behind us for a while, the combination of wind and shade left me feeling decidedly under-dressed and I expect that the time to keep a warm shirt for such occasions is now upon us again.

I digress though, to the feeling that we didn't get as much done as we wanted to.  Sometimes we have certain expectations that we place on ourselves, things we want to get done and start to panic when they don't happen.  Somedays however the universe has decided that we don't need to do those things and today was one of those days.  It has been a long and difficult week all round the last week, replete with drama and disappointment, and while the temptation is to keep busy so we don't have to think about things, we are far better served by taking the time out to recharge our batteries and recover from our outlay of nervous energy. 

So when you have been under stress, remember, it's the weekend, and time to take some time off from your troubles, time to go sit in the sun, write out your thoughts, enjoy a coffee and a nice breakfast, play with the kids, whatever.  You are bigger than your problems and stresses.

An Interesting Week

It has indeed been an interesting week for me. 

My return to the world of work is proceeding relatively smoothly.  It has been busy though and fairly strenuous.  A lot of semi-repetitive lifting, and moving heavy cartons.  In a way I love it though, I am helping to support my partner and it is good exercise, better than I would get sitting in an office all day.

A good friend of mine also ended up in hospital last week, but is now home and recovering from surgery.  As always with these experiences, while being in pain and feeling your body recover is never fun, these experiences often allow us to see who really cares about us, by visiting and spending time with us, and by making sure our physical recovery is also matched by our mental recovery, something I learned about first hand after a stay in hospital myself a couple of years ago which was followed by what was basically a nervous breakdown.  I am in a much better place now, but only thanks to the love and support I received from my darling Sue (thanks my love).

Anyway, I suppose that is a tangent, but one I intended to take.  It's just been brought home to me that events can make us open our eyes and see things (and people) in a different light.  As people we need to change, evolve, grow, mature, all that sort of thing, or else we get stuck, we get trapped, and before we know it ten or twenty years have gone by and nothing has really changed for us, but the world moves on and we get left behind, stuck in the same attitudes and mentality that we have carried for decades, and suddenly unwilling and unable to move forward and grow as people, or maybe sometimes just too frightened, holding on tight because we are scared of losing things, and in that action we lose everything we hold dear and end up a pale shadow, a ghost, an echo of the past.