Hopi Elders’ Prophecy Oraibi, Arizona, June 8, 2000

You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you

must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are

things to be considered. . . .

Where are you living?

What are you doing?

What are your relationships?

Are you in right relation?

Where is your water?

Know your garden.

It is time to speak your truth.

Create your community.

Be good to each other.

And do not look outside yourself for your leader.

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a

good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and

swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on

to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer

greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let

go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes

open, and our heads above the water.

And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in

history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For

the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!

Banish the word ‘struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All

that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

A commemoration to giving it all

Tiny sparks

I see how small I am
even as I burst with light:

my tiny sparks matter little to

that which is the whole world to me

as I realise the whole world

would barely notice their absence.

I turn it all upside down

and discover

joyfully

I can breath

freer -

Free to live!

Knowing I import little

- there is little I can do

to ruin or make it right -

but also knowing the little I do

has some comport to the whole

as my essence seeps

into the world around me

transforming it,

just a smither.

You are not suffering alone

Our circadian rhythms revolve around the sun's path, but are influenced by many other factors. The sun's path orchestrates the body's rhythms through the activity of the pineal gland, the SCN cells and various clockwork genes, which together orchestrate the stimulation of hormones.

Recently I have been noticing on this small island, and through communications over internet, that we are changing, and changing fast. For some time now I have been seeing my loved ones and community also finding things bubbling to the surface that were long buried, creating suffering of one form or another. So I have found myself blabbering on to those who have that something in their eye, a mix of despair and hope like a furtive undercover blonde passing on a little secret theory that I have been harbouring inside…I haven´t been yelling it from the harbour walls because, to be frank, it sounds absolutely crazy and here I am trying to make friends rather than become the village idiot. But I am going to risk the buffoon’s hat because the idea of it all comforts me and may bring comfort to anyone who may also be suffering, and suffering a lot, over stuff that to be quite sincere is long obsolete, that surprises in its intensity, that brings up old shit that we really, really did think we had sorted out…and as it comes out again, it brings a sort of despair that we will never be free from its shackles, and yet strangely at the same time gives a feeling of the gift of growth… of growing through it.

So here is the theory:

1) The sun, our star, that which the astrologists would call our “I”, is having an extraordinary amount of solar flares.  It is well documented that the sun is waking up from a period of relative dormancy and will peak in its activity in 2013. The sun goes on a cycle of solar flare activity every 11 years. At its lowest it can have less than one flare a week, whereas last week (begining Monday 5th Nov) we had 11 solar flares, and some recent ones massive enough to hit headlines on the mainstream press. When a flare occurs solar particles are sent to earth and stream down our planet's magnetic field lines toward the poles. The interaction of the solar particles with our planet's magnetic field has the potential to create geomagnetic storms or disturbances in Earth's magnetosphere (According to European Space Agency).

 

An artist's impression of Earth surrounded by space junk.

Illustration by Photo Researchers/Getty Images

2) One nice result of the hyperactivity of the sun, which could perhaps be also a parrallel, is that Space Junk is being flushed like leaves from gutters (National Geographic).  I have never really considered this but right now some tens of millions of pieces of space junk are circling our planet—broken satellites, rocket parts, and other human-made materials trapped in orbit.  Perhaps even a broken doll? Cut and paste coming up:

In the latest issue of NASA´s Orbital Deris Quarterly News, agency scientist Nicholas Johnson notes that an increased influx of solar heat is causing Earth's upper atmosphere—specifically, a layer known as the thermosphere—to swell."This increases atmospheric density at a given altitude, thereby increasing drag. This causes [orbiting space junk] to lose energy and fall into a lower orbit," where the debris eventually reenters the atmosphere and vaporise before hitting the ground, Johnson said in an email.

"Last year," Johnson said, "there were 17 spacecraft and 8 rocket bodies which reentered in an uncontrolled manner, including two spacecraft and one rocket body from the 1960s.

3) The activity of the sun affects the earth’s magnetosphere. The earth’s magnetosphere is wobbling…animals that use the magnetic lines instead of eyes like us, are getting into trouble, birds are being affected in their migration routes, whales are beaching. On Nov 4th 2012 according to the article "Whale and dophin beached again after mass stranding" in The ABC News Australia volunteers were working Sunday to save the few survivors from among the 100 whales and dolphins stranded on a Tasmanian beach, hoping to get them back out to sea. 

Up to 60 pilot whales and 20 bottlenose dolphins beached 

themselves on New Year Island, off the coast of King Island. 

Nov 4 2012.

4) Our psyches are magnetospheres. Harvey Doyle writes on Walks with Hawk Herbs.

Every atom, every part of an atom, every electron, every elementary "particle", even our thoughts and sub-conscious, conscious, are vibrations of the human brain. We may define the Aura as a electro-photonic vibration or magnetic field that surrounds the object or our body. The Aura that surrounds the human body is partly composed of Electromagnetic radiation, spanning from Microwave, Infrared (IR) to Ultraviolet Rays(UV). The low frequencies can be related to our DNA structure, metabolism, circulation and heat of our bodies.  It also can be related to our sub-conscious and conscious mind. Research and experiments suggest that our DNA can be altered by influencing our Aura. The high frequency rays can been seen by the naked eyes if you concentrate and look just over the person's forehead.

4) There was an article on La Contra of La Vanguardia called "El sol, y su luz, es un manantial de salud" ("The sun, and its light, is a spring of health") by David Lumera (nice coincidence of a name!) that talks about the connection of light coming in from the sun and how our bodies transform it into biophotons that then create a network of mini emitters throughout our body. Translated text:

Biochemist Fritz-Albert Popp proved with his theory of light and biophotons that we are made ​​of light, which is what the Kabbalah said 4,000 years ago. According to Popp, light carries information and messages that are capable of modifying the activity of matter.

Our cells communicate with each other and with other agencies through light pulses. They are not only points of reflection, they are also light emitting centers, as is the sun on a macro scale.

Do our cells emit photons?

Biophotons regulate all cellular enzymatic processes and keep the body healthy. Our cells communicate through light thanks to the DNA, which serves as a transmitting antenna of these electromagnetic waves. It receives and retransmits DNA, allowing the internal and external circulation of information and light frequencies of an organism.

And I cut and paste from William Hamilton at Rense.com (underlining is my own)

Biophoton light is stored in the cells of the organism - more precisely, in the DNA molecules of their nuclei - and a dynamic web of light that is constantly released and absorbed by the DNA may connect cell organelles, cells, tissues, and organs within the body and serve as the organism's main communication network and as the principal regulating instance for all life processes. The processes of morphogenesis, growth, differentiation and regeneration are also explained by the structuring and regulating activity of the coherent biophoton field. The holographic biophoton field of the brain and the nervous system, and maybe even that of the whole organism, may also be basis of memory and other phenomena of consciousness, as postulated by neurophysiologist Karl Pribram and others. The consciousness-like coherence properties of the biophoton field are closely related to its base in the properties of the physical vacuum and indicate its possible role as an interface to the non-physical realms of mind, psyche and consciousness.

The science behind Nature's use of vortices is still not completely understood. Like electricity or gravity, we're not sure how it works, but we can prove that it works. We can photograph biophoton energy, and we can see the results of its actions in plants, animals and people. http://www.photonicwater.com/biophotons.html

5) Beware!! This is my own jump, but really to me it seems quite logical:  If birds are being affected by the sun affecting the earth´s magnetosphere, and if our auras are magnetosphere, if we are like mini emitters of the sun with our biophotons, then the activity of the sun is also affecting us, and our psyches.

6) Beware: mouth to mouth!! I heard this through a friend who has a spiritual guide in Germany who told her that (I cannot vouch for any of this, but it sits well with me) that this is a time when our psyches are being shaken up by the hyperactivity of the sun and its solar flares so that it brings out all of the old patterns so that we can see them and heal from them.

7) I have noticed that a lot of people who are sensitive are being dragged through the mud backwards, are going through really deep stuff, that is coming from past experiences, and that as they heroically face the music, and stay calm and true in the center of this out of date pain then real healing is occuring.  I have quite a large social base (especially over the internet) and here on the island, and I am seeing this all over the place. Everyone who is particularly sensitive seems to be in this giant healing, that brings out really painful experiences and limiting self belief systems. Beware I might be projecting onto the world.

So if you are crying more than normal, or feeing anxiety or depression or just plain wierd, if you are angry at something or someone, if you feel like the world is crashing in, look into it, while you body and mind is going crazy, go into the pain and sit there quietly, allow it to be, to vibrate, go into the sensations that are in your body, and speak to it, say “I am ready to hear you, I am listening and strong enough to attend to you” and maybe you will be surprised at the weird images that come into your mind, or the memories that suddenly pop out, or the fear. Perhaps spontaneous crying, or deep repressed anger, or strange stuff that we really do not need to even try to identify (it really isn´t necessary - we only have to observe). And remember what happened to us in the past, is NOT happening to us now, our bodies and minds are remembering it, holding onto it, and one day, perhaps today, perhaps now, we need to let go of these rocks that we carry on our backs, get the things off our chests, forgive those who hurt us, remember our love to those who bore us or knocked us down, so that we can continue our path with a lighter heart as we all go into the uncertain future. Uncertain scares the shit out of me (past habitual pattern arising) and presumably others but perhaps we can begin to realise that as the world changes, "uncertain" may hold untold joys, may hold a brighter life, and that we can circulate our biophotons with greater light, creating clearer more magnetic auras, that attracts the new that we have become. Perhaps all this suffering that we are going through, on a personal level, and a social level is preparing ourselves and our societies for a consciousness of deeper peace...of greater joy...

So Emmanuel Kant said that it is time (like any genius philosopher he was a bit before his time maybe?) to take the responsibility from outside and bring it in. Right now we go to the doctors and hospitals to look after our bodies, to the school to learn what to learn, to the Judge to decide what is fair, to the politicians to tell us how to organise ourselves, to the church to tell us what faith we should have…all this coincidentally is collapsing…and meanwhile we are all beginning to slowly take on more responsibility for our lives, deciding for ourselves what is the right course of action.  This increased freedom requires us to be wiser, more responsible, more evolved. It is where we are heading. Just simply right now, the growing pains can get on top of us, as what was collapses and was will be isn´t as yet secure.

Apparently our brains cannot get any bigger or smarter according to through the worm hole (the oxygen needed would be massive and the amount of energy would be detrimental for the rest of our body) however there is the ever growing capacity for us to create a super human, a superior state of being, between us, connecting our individual minds into something of far greater value…but to get there we must first rid ourselves of our fear of sharing, of our fear of being us, of fear of what others think of us, so that when we share, we share all of ourselves into this new world of ever increasing harmony and cooperation.

As we realise the power of our intention, as we discover our innate ability to hold and contain greater amounts of love, that which we all desire, love has the side effect that it magnetically removes all that is not love. As the space junk is being cleaned up, perhaps so is our own. The quantum future is wrapping its angel wings around us as the old world crumbles into the ashes of the Phoenix, ready to reform itself just as soon as we are ready.

The Biophotonic Quantum Holographic Matrix represented by Alex Gray.

The Magic Trick to Happiness Now.

Metta.

May all beings be happy.  

May all beings be peaceful. 

May all beings be liberated.

The last blog talked about having the confidence to realise that we are fine as we are and we should express it.  It talked about Lefteris and his voice, saying that he is fine as he is, that he doesn´t need to get anywhere, that just as he is, he is a wonderful singer, and as soon as he lets it sink like dew into his heart he will be what he wants to be, because, he already is it.

And that is the trick! The magic that arises as we open the door to loosing control of who we would like to be, and allow ourselves to be, now, here. Changing second by second. You are fine as you are, you are unique, there is no-one like you, so stop trying to be you (or like others), just be.

No one can have the internal landscape that you have. My psyche is brushing upon but isn´t by a long stretch, musical. I dabble, but I don´t hear music in my head.  I know it exists cos I´ve heard it and was amazed.  For a breathtaking few seconds I heard music that I haven´t heard before, with the full orchestral richness of sound, with no instruments around due to the fact I had a rubber hat on in the middle of a swimming pool. 

What causes real amazement is realising that there must be people who LIVE like this, with this music playing autonomously in their head. This is how they think. As one tries to reduce mental noise, for example, trying to silence ideas, feelings, images, to come back into one´s body, other people have other clouds of mental activity in their minds. Colours, sounds, images, logic, feelings, smells, construction blue prints, tastes, photographic memories, etc…and then combine that with how we feel about being alive…really it is impossible that anyone on this planet experiences life as you do. Every single one of us has a completely different perspective on a reality that the others may not even be aware of.

We are all so unique, worlds unto ourselves and as Albert Einstein said “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live all its life believing that it is stupid!”

And wonderfully at the same time we are all children of the Cosmos. We are all made up of astral material.  We are all made of a slightly different configuration of the same, with whole areas richly connected with details and possibilities and others that we don´t dominate very well, and with a majority of material we are absolutely blind to.   

But there is a place where we unite. As we move away from that place where we are totally alone, that battle ground of the instinctual dragon within, and move through the learnings as we experience the feelings and thoughts of our individual psyches, we near the centre of our hearts, and move into comprehension. This is where we connect to ourselves, to others and to the Universe.  This is where we truly become who we are: Peace, Joy, Love, Truth, Power. This is our inheritance. It is who we are, but our “I” is not. As we go through the membrane of Beauty without being dazzled to what is behind, we find a whole universe of no-thing. The void at the centre, the emptiness, the absolute nothingness.  Our “I”s are afraid of it, because they have to become invisible for us to connect, they have to die to be reborn.

If we can act inspired from this place of within, our whole world changes, opens, softens.  We become ourselves. 

We spend our whole time searching desperately for what we want to be. Trying hard to feel good, to find love in our lives, growing as well as we can, attempting with every breath to evolve.  And it is all upside down wrong. 

As long as we look to be something, we tell ourselves that we are not that now. As long as we search we will never find. Yea, yea, yea I said years ago when my shrink told me that…yeah yeah yeah.

So, a little story: a friend of mine was terribly shy at school. His elder bro is autistic with Asperger’s and having an elder bro who was a weirdo (a person with totally unique mental world) was not easy. He chose to stay out the attention of others and so became shy and retiring.  He is a super clever dude too and got into Oxford, which was a big feat for a Northerner in those days. He decided, the day before going to University, where he knew no one, that the only way to have confidence, was, erm, to have confidence. 

And he did it! 

He managed to make the flip. He went confidently and was confident.  He didn´t become confident, he didn’t work on it, wasn´t searching for it, he just decided to be it. 

“To be or not to be” - Hamlet´s decision to become a murderer or not - but it can be used in the same way to decide to be happy or not…to be alive or not…to be confident or not…to be love or not.

Instead of looking for it, decide to be it. Be love. Now. Express it in your own unique way.  Or if you decide to be peace, be peace.  Right now.  Through our hearts the Now contains all that we are. At the end of the day, we can think about how to be in the now, or we can just be in it.  We can think about love, or be it, we can dream about peace or be peaceful. We can not be or we can be.

When we start to breath properly and realise that we are OK just as we are, right now, and start to have a relationship with who we truly are and get used to being who we really are - love and joy, peace, truth, and power - then our actions are creative.  We create.  From our heart outwards. It is the bottom line of being an artist: a life artist.  When we stop relying on changing circumstances for our happiness, and instead just decide to be who we truly are, right now, right here, it creates a peace that allows union with all of life.

It is not a matter of sitting around being love and peace, we all have to eat and provide for ourselves and others, but if we connect with our inner self all our actions will be inspired by that essence from inside out. When we love ourselves and are full of love for ourselves, then we can share it with those in our lives creatively.  Lets forget about lack, about having to get from outside to fill within.  Lets give who we are, for they say you have to give it away to keep it - and so we step into abundance. We attract what we are.  We create with what is universal in our own unique way, and it attracts others, for they recognise the source.

With life within, we create outwards into the unique present, by accepting it and not wanting to be or to have anything more or less than is in this here-now. Each moment contains all that it needs to exist. Peace comes with knowing that what we are doing now, is valid right now.  We are in the right place at the right time. We do not need to get anywhere, we do not need to be better, we do not need to have this information, or that feeling, go on that course, read this book, travel somewhere, have that experience…right now, here, as you are reading this, you´re fine as you are. Wonderfully you expressing your uniqueness. 

We are the King or Queen of our inner experiences. We chose how we feel. It is only us who chose if we want to love or not, to be or not. As we chose happiness, for example, we see that all beings want to be happy, and that this impulse unites us. When we decide to truly love ourselves, we want to take care of others, because that is what is most enriching, or nourishing, for us.

Even the dark difficult times are not “bad” unless we decide to label it so. We can choose to love ourselves and our lives even with the bits we don´t like.  Pain, is a wake up call to relax into the now. Anger is a wake up call to remember love. If we recognise our anger, our fears and accept them, then they will not have to fight so hard to be heard and will snore off to sleep. If we are alive and present, aware in the moment, perhaps we will learn the real reason why we are angry and get to the centre of the matter.  If we plant seeds we get the trees of the seeds we planted, and so often we are planting, without knowing it, seeds that we really don´t want to have to harvest. Being fully alive and alert in the present helps us to see what we are doing behind our own backs!

If we create with the situation, we´ll find, perhaps, that being pushed in on all sides, being pressured, compressed, squoshed and squeezed, is just how we create essence. Flower essence is created by concentrating thousands of petals.  A tight situation can help us connect to our essence. Pain and difficulty keeps us awake, to be in the here-now and if we are aware we can see it as a gift to remember to stay in the now, as a possibility of relaxing into it and transcending the pain into a state of greater peace. If we can remain within our truth when all is going helter-skelter around us, even when we are pressurized into a tiny microscopic eye in a torment of a storm, we have a better opportunity to experience our essence. As like attracts like, from that infinitely small point of compressed being, with grace, we can expand out into the Universal, since it is of the same essence!!! It is creation.

Eckhart Tolle says “You are not separate from the whole. You are one with the sun, the earth, the air. You don't have a life. You are life.”

Any words on top of this connection with essence distract from who we truly are.  But when we step out of heaven, out of that place of stillness, of joy, of loving everything around us, including ourselves, when we get into that addiction of thinking that we are not good enough, our self value drops into fears and we put on a defence mechanism, pull out a complex, or just scream. We move away from being who we really are, instead of creation we buy into reaction. 

Creation. Reaction. The same letters configured differently.  And we can choose…REALLY HONESTLY…we can chose to which side we want to be on. We can choose to come out of the mind into the heart and simply be, or we can choose to identify with our mental thoughts and feelings. With our hearts we are able see the truth of who we are, what we are and accept it as the gift it is.

The truth of who we are, it would seem, is in the silence between the words.

Break out of the box and claim your space!

 

The other day I found myself in a Greek Operetta concert quite by accident. As I went to the little bar at the back I met a friend of mine and found out he was singing. He was excited to be a guest singer, because the other artists had come from the staggering heights of Athens and were professional Greek Operetta singers. I know Lefteris, I’ve been in his rehearsals a couple of times and I’ve heard him singing on stage and I know he’s a good singer. Meanwhile he is telling me how honoured he is to be singing with these people because he says “…they are a really high level.”

So the concert starts only half an hour on time (only the English would call it late) and Lefteris presents from the podium the professionals from Athens, who it has to be said, were touching on the slightly ridiculous, in the crumbling building of Paros' little municipal hall, with their stances as if they were in a huge international opera hall. They had their artist outfits on, ever so slightly toned down for the occasion with the noticeable absence of dickie bows, but sporting butterfly shirt collars for the men and the lady wore a romantic red ball gown. They certainly looked the part. They had reasonably good voices for professionals, though in my opinion somewhat dulled, held back somehow, as if the volume was just a little lower than necessary. All except the bass, who stood on stage as if he were a Male Madonna, nose held high, staring to the skies in whimsical anticipation…and he sang with wonderful deep timber tones that vibrated through bodies into those places where the emotions lie hidden.

All was fine and dandy and very professional given where and who we were. It has to be said Paros is not short of talent since its energy and landscape attracts all sorts of highly cultured artists especially musicians and painters, and these singers were no different. They fitted in perfectly with their class performance of Greek Operetta.

And then the moment came, when Lefteris announced the Fairy song and I knew from our little talk at the bar, that it was his big moment: his chance to sing with the big boys.  On came the bass with the big nose pointing to the imaginary stars, poetically leaning on the piano ready to be painted by El Greco, with his impeccable dress smelling of roses. Meanwhile my friend was on the other side of the stage, with wrinkles in his clothes as if he had been scrunched up long hours at a computer, and his chosen stage stance was: shoulders slightly hunched. He looked as if having knocked on the wrong door he had suddenly been exposed to the limelight when he had been expecting to go home for a fish and chip dinner, or rather, lets say a mousaka.  

The nose sang first, his deep timbres resounding around the music hut, sorry hall, and sang with such passion that it would be difficult to accompany, but my friend, Lefteris, did just that. He was transformed.  He opened his mouth and allowed his sweet strength of fragility to vibrate in waves of sounds which seemed over-brimming with that tingling sensation of love. He has such a special voice, so fresh to be almost virginal, so filled with emotion that his voice flowed in and out beautifully with the bass.

Later Lefteris had another duet, which was similar to the first in the fact that he looked like a drowned rat who suddenly shook himself off and sang like a prince.  In my untrained opinion his voice was at least equal to the two elder singers, who to my taste were coming to the other end of their career, with big nose leading the ceremony with his dandy ways.

Then there was a finale of four songs in which they all sang together, and again I noticed that they all had their studied stance, except our good old Lefteris. He somehow got himself jammed up between the piano and the spatial needs of the red ball gown’s expressional arm flapping and body swivelling as if there were no-one else on stage but herself, or at least she was the only one everyone was looking at. I wondered at one point whether he would duck and squat beneath the black grand piano and sing in a press-up. 

And yet, again, you could hear the sweet tones of his voice merging in and out with the others in wonderful harmony, and I realised that the only thing that separated our hero, the amateur, from the professionals was not his voice, or his ability; but his attitude. He simply wasn’t taking up the space he deserved. He was not allowing his voice free bodily expression, he was not showing himself, he had not developed a mask strong enough to take the burning attention of an audience.  He wasn’t passionately swinging around with confidence with aeroplane arms like the others or taking the lady’s hand in an act of stage love, nor staring to the stars or staring straight into the audience longingly (which are all actually very effective) but instead darting about with his eyes, stood still afraid that someone might notice he had sneaked on stage beside these divos and diva.

And there you have it: Attitude.  And I wonder if that is what many of us trip up over - not having the attitude in accord with our skills, with our performance.  Now I am not saying to go into public doing something that you have no idea about with an attitude of being professional, for that is simply a short cut to looking like a prize Charlie. But once having found a talent within, have the confidence to develop it, practise it over and over so that you are confident, until you know you can, and then when the opportunity arises ¡man! just go for it full on until everyone looks at you like you really are a pro, until that spark moment when you actually believe it yourself. Then you’ve done it! It’s a matter of having the balls to pretend til it's real.

I don’t want to sound all holy-moly, but Jesus said in the Gnostic Gospels:

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

And here are others who have had the confidence to express themselves in all their glory so that the world has actually listened to them, and what’s more quotes them:

To fully be a human being is to take full responsibility for one’s part in the co-creation of the world.
Joel Federman

Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.
Winifred Holtby

We are, each of us, our own prisoner. We are locked up in our own story.
Maxine Kumin

I want to sing like birds sing, not worrying who listens or what they think
Rumi

So, lets break out of our boxes a little, and swing those arms, express ourselves freely taking up the space in our lives that we deserve. Faith in ourselves to practise, faith in ourselves to allow us to continue to our goals, and socking it a big one when the curtain goes up.

We can do it. It is us, and though never perfect enough often, it is good enough. As we put the emphasis on our duty to express who we are, suddenly it is not so important if we are recognised, even if there is no audience, we have the simple satisfaction and overwhelming joy of having done it.

Let our creative expression out!  Our uniqueness needs to be born into this world, what ever it is. It is time that we took the space that we deserve in this world!  If you are a writer, claim your shelf space, if you are a dancer, dance your space, if you are a techno-whizz, cyberspace it up, and if you are an organiser, organise…and then even if our voice isn’t exactly up to scratch, having the right attitude and going for it whenever we can gives us space to move towards those steely heights rather than staying at home with our crumpled clothes on.

Opening up to the new

White

It´s a funny thing feeling so very alone with nothing to grasp onto.  Frightening.  And yet at the same time full of potential.  It is such an unnatural state for me that surely it cannot last even though it feels so permanent.

I once went to have a fresh fruit smoothie in my favourite cafe in Barcelona, where you could sit and write and feel other creative spirits around you.  At the back was a small art gallery which normally had contemporary art on the walls and which fascinated me because it was…blank.  There was nothing there.  Not even the shades of old picture frames.  I asked the waiter “What´s going on with the art?” she replied “There is no-one”.  End of story.  My first reaction was to think that they should have left the old stuff on, whatever was going on before.  But the more time I was near those white walls, the more I started to think about how to get art to them, to find people who would be desperately happy to exhibit their fine work…and then I had this inspiration: if the walls were filled with the old stuff, then there would be no space for the new.  There would be no message to call in the new possibilities, it would just be an old, stale, fill the gap cover-over to avoid embarrassment, to try and appear something that isn´t any more.  

And so I continue with my scary blankness, wondering, wondering. 

A poem

Ben Rose: Love endures all things

We try to twist truth

into a reasonable reality
projecting our beliefs
onto what we think
we should see.
Reason unable to reason
with the eternal 

that emanates
Peace

Joy 

Love
waiting

for us to simply stop 
and become it.

Respect

Imagine that in the 15 generations before us there are 16,384 direct ancestors within us (fathers of our fathers, mothers of our mothers) all with their own gene set, all with their own characters. Within that group we are going to have a right old party of nuns with criminals, geniuses with the mentally simple, rough farmers and soft sophisticated folk.  Within us are all sorts of varying qualities of genes. If we imagine that we can group these characters that make up our genes, it means that within us we all contain “levels” of being for example from being greedy and wanting more coupled with a killer instinct if it were necessary…."higher" levels where instead we all decide to split things equally in half to avoid disputes….and then there are the levels where we give in unconditional love just for the sake of unconditional love.

So how about this for an idea?  Respect is about what "level" you recognise in each person and yourself.

Following this idea a good relationship would see the real potential of the other and stay concentrated on that imagine so that the other can gain crystallisation of that optimal character.  And vice versa.  A "bad" relationship is the one that tries to bring the other down to their own level…for they are, lets say, vibrating at a lower down respect for themselves (even though the need to bring the other down to their own level is only because they want to be with the other and commune).

And then there is self respect.  It comes from within.  We have to decide who we are, which is not an easy choice given that we are changing all of the time…it is more difficult to stay nice when we are starving hungry, and coming out of a yoga session you feel divinely different to when you have come out of a horror movie…We have to decide who we are, what sort of person we are.  And here it comes, we can´t just think it and say to ourselves that we are the dogs bollocks at playing the guitar, when we can´t play any chords clearly.  

We have to ground our respect.  And how do we do that?  By bringing it into the reality, by being it. 

We have to practise it every moment that we can.  If we want to be loving, be loving, friendly then find every opportunity to be friendly, peaceful then find peace, because then you will have EVIDENCE that you REALLY ARE loving and friendly and peaceful…because you have repeatedly been it, you are it, and so you naturally have respect for yourself because when you say that you are peaceful you know you are saying the truth and you respect it as true, because it is.  Which is where that phrase of the Buddha comes in that I had never understood “If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.” Because as you are what you say you are, people give you the energy that you are it, and it sinks into your bones.  People respect you for your acts when they are in tune with who you really are.  Each time you do what you say you are you have more of a bank of this energy flowing from you and at the same time your acts (which you begin to respect as real) are mirrored and supported, confirmed by the respect of others coming back, until you can crystalise it into a stable structure of character.  You are making a deposit in humanity´s account.  You can be here longer, for longer periods of time, in fact you are this most of the time.  You are peaceful, happy, rich in spirit (or whatever you have decided you are).  Each time you give of your self, you feel happy, not really because you have given, but because you have had an opportunity to do something kind that makes you respect yourself and gain respect because you did it from your heart and you do it just because it is in you to do it, because it is you.  That feel good lasts making you feel good about yourself, happy, respectful to yourself and others.

But it´s not about just giving to feel good - no siree! Like the man who writes down every cent he gives to charity in pompous pride.  There is a greek joke about it. The guy is at the gates and Saint Peter relays to Christ the list of charity he´s given to the poor:

"25c to .....

30c to .....

15c to....." etc etc

Until Christ says "add ´em all up".  So Saint Peter gets out his calculator and says "535 euros"  and Christ responds "Give it back to him and send him off to Hell!" 

It´s a fine line.  We feel good being good, but we can´t be good to feel good.  Our intention has to be fine tuned.  There is a Greek phrase that sums it up nicely "Do good and cast it into the sea" which means let no one know that you have done good, be discreet, don´t expect reward, because the irony is that if we expect reward we´ll be given our dues and sent off to hell.

If we expect no rewards we are rewarded hansomly for we gain respect for ourselves, we see who we are, we crystalise into more peaceful, happier selves.

So, let us be what we want to be, and if it is kind be kind, if it is playing the guitar, play the guitar, if it is to be happy, be happy, peaceful, be peaceful, fair, be fair...for as we become our words about ourselves, we gain respect for our words and we gain respect for ourselves.

And so it goes on, in ever decreasing circles.  To our core.  To our essence.  To who we really are.  Grounded Gods.