Tricking the mind out of the negative

What I´m beginning to learn is this simple: 

It´s a matter of putting your head in the right place.

Feel good, think good, remember good memories, dream of bright futures.  As simple as that…keeping your head up.

Ahh, the trees are such a wonderful green, light seems to emanate from all that is living, friends call to say wonderful things, you can´t help but give compliments to people and really mean it because you feel you just can´t resist because it is so pleasurable to make people happy and its so wonderful to find someone who is willing to spend a little time to laugh together…it flows so far that you even love the feeling of water running over your fingers and washing up becomes a joy - bliss. 

And so we feel ourselves forever changed, closer to who we always wanted to be: a steady balance of peace, love, joy … and then without warning we are thrown amidst a day dream of how factories are burning black smoke, or the mother-in-law getting right on your…, or suddenly having no money and having to live on the streets and beg to aloof passersby...or worse still having a mortgage. 

And so we come to a Y, we can either roll up our sleeves and get right to it, wallowing in our difficulties, moaning about how everything is so unfair (because it is, it REALLY is) or we go walk the other walk and stay happy, even though all around are not, even as you go out on a leg, feeling a traitor to others´ delicate feelings, and find a route back into a positive feeling of knowing the universe showers us with blessings, providing all that we need, feeling all is in perfect harmony (because it is, it REALLY is).

And there you have it: The Big Y. Choosing to live well. Keeping our heads in a nice place, where we feel loved and secure and loving and comforting, and/or confident and sparkly and supported and lit up, and/or feeling at one with the world in quiet harmony, breathing in the beauty, feeling as strong as a light house as the world rocks around us constantly connecting with this inner peace and security. 

It is SO SO SO easy to fall from there.  Being in that loving-kindness attitude, it feels so easy to be there, as if mere child's play to balance on top of that dome of ice, so sure this state of peace and harmony will last forever.

Gradually, creeping up the back of the garden path, I sense I am being attacked (like really attacked) by thoughts that are destructive. Old familiar wounds, old familiar gripes, comfortable, thought through, homelike mind-patterns.  Maybe at first I am strong enough to ignore these my 'old friends', these destructive negatives, or to reason with them, but after a time, sometimes hours, sometimes days of them telling me repetitive negative things like a radio station in my mind and cunningly weaving them into my love creating thoughts, I begin to listen to them more, god only knows why, and I start to get right inside them, and feel how cruel it is, all of this.  Positive people are so naïve, I grumble, so out of touch with reality.  Everything suddenly reminds me of injustices, desperate futures, personal inadequacy and impotence, and I fall, fall crazily or seepingly into that vertigo that Milan Kundera describes as “the fear of not being able to stop oneself jumping off.” We fall, lovingly addicted to the exhilaration of it as much as we fear the end: the crash with the sensational earth.

Ohh and days and years I have spent in there…wallowing in it, finding myself as the centre of the world and doomed for every ill there could be. I get so ego-centric I begin to have a it-is-raining-just-to-ruin-my-day sort of attitude, and at the same time feeling so insignificant, so detached…

Which is a big difference actually - when we ponder - to feeling wonderfully on top of the world, connected to a unifying consciousness and able to send out love to all beings…really very quite different indeed.

The Letter Y was a sign of discernment and choice for the Pythagorians

And so, my friends, how can we face this dilemma, to stop us yearning and collapsing into the exhilaration of jumping off?

If it´s of any use I´m learning, like a toddler, to walk in the light of happiness and as I feel the first sensations of negative attack, I am trying (sometimes successfully) to trick my mind…by snapping it out of a worn-in habit.  For example, if I am walking then suddenly I walk sideways, or with my arms ridiculously high, or if I am anywhere I try to make my eyes look up higher than they have ever looked up or make a clockwise clock, or try to make them dance to music, exterior or interior.  Or I concentrate on difficult sums like 6x7 (can you do that or is it just me being slow?) or I find ways to interlock my fingers that is not painful, or is. 

As I finish all of this (ridiculous) movement into the unknown, into seeing myself in a new light, and having quite got into skipping, or breathing funnily or balancing a pen on my nose, doing a tennis lession, forcing myself out for a run, I suddenly realise that I am quite a lot further away from those dark thoughts, or, in a particularly successful pranking about, I have found that the dark thoughts have no real influence at all on me right now.

A friend told us the other day that what she does to trick the mind out of miserable thoughts is think of wonderful things that are about to happen to her, like a yoghurt with honey and nuts and her favourite fruit waiting for her in the fridge. Food is so pleasurable it really can help us out of the negativity as our wise friend proves.

(Or sex. Or treating ourselves. Or shopping. Or playing music. Or playing sport.)

But then what happens when we overuse the pleasurable?  Instead of being a way to brighten the spirit, we have all the danger of becoming addicted to it, so that the merest sense of not-being-miserable can only come from the overly-pleasured object. I mean if we were to eat all that we always wanted we would be a life threatening danger to ourselves! Just take a look at Elvis. Do you get me? Or like smoking stresses us so much (more than a non smoker) that we only get relief by smoking (as its absence stresses us out even more)….ohhh wow so we have to trick the mind again, and trick the mind out of being addicted to whatever it has attached its desire to: we can do fasts or can fool ourselves saying we have already smoked, or when the bud of a negative idea pops into our heads we do a new finger movement, or a new way to sit down, a nanu-nanu greeting, or we can right look right into the eyes of the person in the mirror and say truthfully for once, “I love you” or pick up someone else´s toilet paper off the public loo´s floor, or something just to change the neural network, to change the way our minds flow.  To flow into a nicer place.

So we can flow into good. Feeling good, doing good, having a good day.

Easier said than done of course.

Filakia (kisses)

L Driver in tricking the mind.

Girolamo di Benvenuto, “Hércules en la encrucijada”, c. 1500.

Upon reaching adolescence, Hercules went away to a quiet place because he had doubts about the way forward. Then, he came upon two magnificent women. The two women were goddesses.  Vice talks first to Hercules and tries to persuade the boy to accompany her on the 'most enjoyable and easy path'.  It is to the left or sinister. Then the other woman, Virtue, proposes to convert the young man into an excellent artist of fine and venerable work.  The path is to right or the right way. It sparks an argument between the two women. Virtue accuses her rival of falsehood, showing the humiliating setback of where her path inevitably leads. On the right path which is certainly "long and difficult" it leads us to where we "have the highest happiness." (Hans van Kasteel)

Opening

There was a village that was surrounded by a big thick defensive wall. All felt safe within and they lived a village life that was lulling and comforting. The baker baked, the cobbler cobbled, and the children played. All was well with the world, all were happy and in peace, until one day a small child realised that he couldn’t go out and play in the woods outside. A shoemaker told him to get the key, but he couldn’t find it anywhere. His wife, wiping her hands on her apron, came out of the kitchen to help the boy find the key. It was nowhere to be found! Panic spread amongst the villagers like fire… “The key, the Key, the KEY!!” they all cried...all stopped what they were doing in a frantic search for the object that could open the big heavy wooden door to the outside world that suddenly seem so very locked shut.

The big old door to the village

For a long time normal village life stopped as each person looked under crook and cranny, under stones, in sewing baskets, in tool boxes, in the toy corners, in the stables…but alas it was not to be found!

Then one day, they heard a small voice quiver over the wall “I have the key!” and clamouring up the wall to see the source of the good news, griping on for dear life, they spotted a small boy. He said “I shall throw you the key” and lo and behold his aim was perfect! The key sailed over the top of the wall and fell into the hands of the villagers. The small boy, excited, waited outside at the door for it to open. He waited and waited and waited. Where were they? What were they doing? What had gone wrong? He waited until sundown, until he realised that the villagers had forgotten about him, and with a heavy heart, head down, went home.

Time passed and the little boy wondered about the villagers: why hadn’t they opened the door? He decided to return to the village. The door was still locked, cobwebs covered it the same as before. So he scaled heroically over the walls to discover what had happened. There in the centre of the village, in a big beautiful temple with gold ornaments to decorate and flowers to scent, they had placed the key on an altar and were bowing to it, chanting to it, praying to it to intercede on their behalf.

They had never used the key.

_______________________

So, could it be that this is how we all are?  Bowing down to our keys, forgetting to use them? We have the tools to go into the unknown, to come out of our safety zones, to go into the woods of our unconscious…but we don’t. Why not? What tools do we have that we don’t use? What do we venerate which becomes our prison? Why are we afraid to walk through the door?

It’s funny because sometimes something does help, but we make it into such a dogma that it hinders us. Such as smoking, we smoke to relax, and eventually find we cannot relax without smoking. We have placed the packet of cigarettes on the altar and we are bowing down towards it. We have allowed energy to control us, rather than us controlling the energy.

And so, I would like to share with you all my lovely news! I have been given a key, and have had the support and confidence¹ to walk through a doorway in my life.

At one point I felt as if I were walking through a door into absolute darkness and became somewhat terrified. My mum bought me a book once called “Feel The Fear But Do It Anyway”…you get the drift: my chest was tight, and though I felt love and happiness I was scared. Until I realised a very simple thing: the sun shines every morning! There is not an eternal blanket of darkness, in the same way there is not an eternal night.  Every day follows night, every night follows day. We may choose to join up the gaps of dark, or join up the gaps of light, and those who are well travelled on their path may even be able to integrate the days and the nights into a beautiful whole.

And so, as I walk through a new gateway, I have faith in the sun, and look forward to the velvety night of unknowing, for it is only the same material as the day without being able to see it, without wisdom¹ (as yet - I hope). Nothing is so scary if we remember to step into darkness with confidence² of the light we all carry within.

So, yes, I have fallen in love!! I choose to leave Barcelona to move to the Island of Paros in Greece. I went there for a fortnight and came back three fortnights later. It is a wonderful place, and I have been so welcomed into a centre called Taos. It feels like home, and those of you (which are most of you!) who are interested in self development and connecting more to our truer selves, to our light and to our darkness, I invite you to check out the work study programme, or to just come for a short break.

Let us celebrate Life! May we all recognise³ our keys/tools/gifts and have the wisdom¹ to use them when the time is right, to move with the flow, to surrender⁴ to a loving, caring power and to have the peace and joy of resting on our laurels in the beauty of everyday living!



Relaxing in the Restaurant of the Taos Centre

This story has been ripped off (I admit it!!) from Uyallah’s Zen Ring Meditation. I thank her for allowing me to share it.

(1) wisdom: wise "to see," hence "to know" but I prefer the Spanish Sabiduria, which comes from being able to saber: to know and to savour.

(2) confidence: with-faith

(3) recognise: to go through our cognition again (as if we were remembering after having gone through Plato’s River Lethe (Oblivion or Forgetting of Being))

(4) surrender: "give up, deliver over". But sur is under and render: "to repeat," "give back, present, yield," could it be that surrender means a form of giving of ourselves that permits our ego to become invisible and therefore leave our present cycle of Samsara? ...just a thought.





Taos Centre





The Manual of Ourself.

One of the concepts C G Jung wrote about was the path of individuation.  The idea is, I believe, that with time, we peel off the layers of the onion skinned protection from around our soul, to find out what it is we like, what it is we naturally do, and who we really are deep down there.   

I guess a first step on the path could run around the question:  Do we enjoy life?  Are we darting around here and there, completing obligations that we don´t really want to do so that people will not reject us; compared to, possibly doing the same things, but putting our heart into it, because we like putting our heart into it, because it is what makes us feel alive, while hoping others will also be benefited.  In the latter it is when we feel realised.  We feel real.  "Doing" transforms into "becoming"; and somewhere near to the end of the path we experience our pure being.  As we step along our individual life we become more conscious of choosing to do this or that, because it is what we do, we have discovered (etymology: to free from under cover) our own personal gifts. And when we share them and we find peace and joy and more life.  For what is a performer without an audience?

Now, since this talk is of the union spirit and soul, and hearing talk of graceful loving and peaceful enjoyment of life, many I presume, like me, rush blindly ahead crashing into an imagine of ourselves levitating in the Himalayas; realise this may not happen; become aware of the massive gap between the Buddha image and our own present self image as we rush off to the next appointment, behind time, not bloody omm-ing but swearing under our breath.

But this is an error.  For Buddha was Buddha, and that is just right for him.  But not necessarily for you or for me.  The idea of the path of individuation is that we find our own one and stop doing stuff that is not on our path that we do because we think we should.  Of course we all have obligations that we have to do on our paths: paying the rent, caring for children, or standing in line to get some bloody paperwork stamped.  The question is where is it leading us?  If we are honest with ourselves we may find quite a lot of stuff is unnecessary in our lives leading us in fashionable circles; and vice versa: stuff we don´t do, for fear of being a weirdo.   

It is easy to see those who "do" because they love, compared those who "do" out of obligation: a restuarant regardless of food or price makes you feel good or not, a person regardless of the amount of trendy self development workshops every weekend makes us feel one way or the other.  I believe this attitude is one of the factors that marks the difference between a feel good to self/others/exterior and an uncomfortable empty feel.  

Becoming ourselves is the awakening of the soul, the awakening of sleeping beauty who discovers her own gifts that the fairies have given her.  What do we enjoy doing that makes our sensation of time disappear?  What gives us satisfaction?  How can we feel open enough, secure enough, to let ourselves simply go with the flow?  How do we feel our heart beating with love of being?  Where do we enjoy (being) ourselves? 

Ohh!!  It´s a biggie…we all want to know, now now, NOW!!!…we want a tarot card to tell us, a horoscope, or a stray gypsy…but we all know where the answer lies.  There are no free tickets along the path.  The thing is I wonder if sometimes, we confuse our ideal image with the image of having to be super brilliant - nothing short of a genius - that we set our sights on BIG things, where people will have to notice and applaud us (as we silently pretend humility) instead of recognising the little things that give us and our lives more worth (etymology: come to be, become, take place).  

And talking of geniuses, such as Jung, hats off to them for finding what they are brilliant at.  It would seem that they could have stridden some distance along that spiny, difficult, narrow path of finding and becoming oneself: but surely it doesn´t automatically mean to say they have.  Not those geniuses who shout at least.  Being brilliant at something outside doesn´t necessarily make you more you inside.  Could it be that a good indicator is the ability to connect with love?  (Especially if we are to believe we are essentially an expression of love.)  The answer to where each is at on their path, is within. We will never know reading Jung where he was with respect to his individuation.  We can only try to know about ourselves.

So, I dedicate this blog to Adrian Crescini´s Uncle.  When I was in Mendoza he was our mechanic.  You could tell he loved being in his workshop.  If you had seen the cars that we were driving, it´s a good indicator to how often I was there: a lot.  He never charged us as much as he should, in fact he seemed happy to see the cars again, pleased to be able to tinker with them, as if he had a personal relationship with each car that came into his engine nest.  

This was the street where we lived, when I arrived it was dirt, but they surfaced it.  It is a complimentary photo of all three - me, Adrián and the Chevi.  The back was a bit more battered up.

I would go to his workshop, and we´d eat snails that he had fed himself for days on some special food so they would taste special.  He cooked them there on a mechanic´s sort of gas burner: they were de-li-cious!!! – they tasted of his enjoyment of them.  He would do little tricks that I loved and made me laugh.  We would share maté together and try and catch each other out pretending to drop the maté gourd as we passed it to one another.   

And at the end of the day, he´d shut up shop and go home.  

He wasn´t addicted to being there, he didn´t need to be there for his self esteem, he just liked it.  He wasn´t always happy, lets not get back into the levitating image again - he had bad days - but most days he was a high energy repeater station of peaceful happiness, sat on the driveway in his deckchair, or coming out from under some old banger on a slidey back rest, with a beamer of a smile, teeth all the more white for the black oil on his cheek.  He treated me like a human being instead of gringa-got-lost and was one of the few who make the effort to hear through my impossibly thick accent.  I was almost glad when my dear little dark blue Fiat 600 broke down, because I had an excuse to go and see him.  I would come out with not only the car fixed, but me fixed.

 And that, I think, is the path of individuation.  Finding what makes us tick.  But don´t go thinking of setting up your own little mechanic workshop in Mendoza where the wine grapes grow plump.  I, for one, would go crazy in his shoes.  I don´t like getting my hands dirty.

I loved my Fiat 600 so much I painted it.

We all must find what we like, and move towards it with grace.  It is not easy.  Discovering our talents is impossible to do without discovering those things about ourselves that we would prefer to stay ignorant of.  Digging into us, brings out fear, guilt, and all sorts of complexes about being free, about being our true selves.  We must be brave enough to accept both sides of the story.

My mate Anna said to me, “If I played the trumpet, I would go down to the sea and play it there on the end of a pier, looking out over the sea.”  Crikey! I suddenly realised how uncreative I was being playing into my open wardrobe to amortize the sound…and maybe, if I have a good day, I may get up the courage to do it: just for me, because I want to, because it makes me feel realised, real.  Alive.   

For I believe we can all find, in our own individual manner, our wonderful ways to drink from the source, creating a connection with that energy giving substance that we call life.

Proof.

  I don’t know why I was still sat crosslegged on the mud floor of the Nepalese orphanage´s dining room when I had long finished the dahl baht. Maybe I had free time with no duties; maybe I was sat in Mandukasana – the Frog pose – to help digestion; maybe I was just being plain lazy. What I do know is that I was sat quietly, motionless, gazing through the door and marvelling to myself how the corn seed, that had been planted around the time of my arrival, had grown to be a couple of meters tall, how the heads were beginning to look like something I could imagine eating, with butter.  
 

Dhananjay, Sumitra and Namita in the Ashram´s Dining Room.
Curiously they are sitting exactly where I was in this story.
The door is to their 2 o´clock (right)



Rishi had come to the ashram a month before. He had travelled a brave, difficult path, for after marriage, he had felt the need to embark on a spiritual life, which his wife was unprepared to follow. It had lead to their physical separation which, presumably especially in Nepalese culture, was an extremely delicate situation. We spoke about it a little, about his hurt, how it laced into his joy of finding this spiritual path.

 

Rishi, I and a few others, did yoga in the morning together under the we-would-like-to-say “expertise” eye of Doctor Gopal at 6 am: which in Nepal is late. The children, my little children as I mother-duckingly felt towards the end, were up at 5am with their yoga. I was so proud of them! I was only just able to crawl out of bed with Gopal knocking at my door at 5.45 am for communal tea and biscuits in my bedroom. That is when I realised that: 1) privacy is something that is within us, not without; and 2) always wear pyjamas. Anyway, Rishi and I were co-walkers for a while along the same path.

The children in the yoga hall, 5am.

   

So, I´m sat there on the mud floor looking at the green corn, and suddenly -¡click! - it is as if my vision has changed from an old grainy fuzzy film to a modern crystal clear format…the colours jump out, saturated in a greener than green, in a brilliantly dazzling green, and I don´t know if before there had been a slight breeze but I suddenly notice it, and see how the corn, so vibrant, seems to come alive and dance in that breeze, how different greens weave a pattern of sensual art, of pleasure, of being, and I am filled with joy, and want to sing the song the breeze is making. And there, in the dining room, I find that I have suddenly burst into song…I feel so connected with everything, with the corn outside shining into the shadowy room, as if live itself were right there at the doorway…and I look around, most of the children had finished eating their rice with a splattering of vegetables, and have gone to do their chores. There must have been maybe four children still - and Rishi. I look at him. He is sat with his direction towards me. I can´t remember if he has his eyes closed or not, but then we make eye contact, and I beam at him, he beams back, as if we have shared an intimate moment…and hesitatingly I say (and it is the first and last time I have ever said this to anyone):

“Have you been sending me energy?” And he replies in his Nepali accent, a little embarrassed,

“Yes, I have been sending you Reiki.” Suddenly it all makes sense!...the dancing green, the livid breeze, the burst into song. “I must apologise, you really must never send Reiki until you have sought permission. You must always ask before doing so.” He says awkwardly.

“Ohh Rishi, it was wonderful. Thank you.”

How could I have been anything other than thankful to him? And later I realise just how fortunate it was that he hadn´t asked me for the said permission - for otherwise I would have thought it was my head playing tricks again. I would never have had the opportunity to experience, innocently, those moments and the effects of someone sending me “energy”. It is an Aloe-vera soothing relief when, on that high vertigo verge of serious doubting, of wondering if this time if I really am going mad – the image of that doorway, with the corn outside, most needingly flashes back from memory in the knick of time. I can only be eternally grateful to Rishi, wherever he is, whatever he is doing, for giving me this heart-warming, sanity-saving proof. I don´t know what to call it - energy, libido (the energy of life, not just the sexual), Eros, Caritas, Spirit – who knows? But whatever it was, I know it does, it really does, exist.



Prem and Jivan collecting
cow food from the next field to the corn.

The Eternal Return

My little christmas tree to you.        

So I´m a little late…I got caught up in rushing around before Christmas…but I´m in time to wish you a Happy New Year!

I had an unusual Christmas this year.  It was very nice, with excellent foods, and good company but it wasn´t Christmassy... There was no going down the pub to see faces you haven´t seen for a minimum of a year or decade, and in Catalunya cranberry sauce is unheard of. No mistletoe, no sitting around with the ceremony of who opens which present when, and shockingly not even a hint of drunkenness…I did slurr my words, but it was more due to the eternal struggle with foreign languages.

Mircea Eliade writes that all cultures have ceremonies that allow the individual to leave his daily life, if only momentarily, to enter into “that world” where all is exactly the same as the last time, where time stops ticking, all becomes eternal. It is an ethereal, sacred place where the spirit is renewed, the old is thrown out, and the experience gives a sort of reset. Like taking the battery out of the back of your Blackberry.

It is the same place maybe that Henri Corbin talks about, where the material is spiritualised and the spirit is materialised.

I am sure that we have all felt this, when a certain date of the year we do exactly the same as the last time, as the time before that, since we can remember. When we forget ourselves and in so doing re-find ourselves. For, why else would Catalans get so excited about eating a soup for their Xmas meal? And how come stuffing takes you back to when you were a child and Uncle Maurice said that if you imagine strong enough, stuffing tastes of whatever you want it to? And it did. And it does. It tastes of Christmas, it tastes of a connection with my ageless self that I renew through stuffing ceremonies every year.

And this year I didn´t get it through food. I didn´t manage to get into that agelessness on Xmas day where all is the same, where the brain gives way to the heart. Xmas day isn´t a day I expect to do a bit of graffiti with Enric´s grandchildren. But I did (and I loved it...).

But do not fret, I did get that feeling, I was transported back to being my ageless musical self, playing carols with Dan the Man. It is something that as a child and teenager I have done every year, and since have listened to nearly every year. And god-damn, though they are not exactly top of the pops, I love ‘em! They give me the same emotions as when I was me before. They take me half way to that place.

On Xmas day I listened to a TV programme talking about the symbology of Father Christmas. I found it super interesting and want to share it.

Papa Noel was originally dressed in green, because he represented being connected with the earth, with nature, with trees. He is helped by little elves, or tree dwellers, who if you are worthy, if you have worked on yourself, give gifts. The programme talked of gifts as in talents, such as the gift of creativity. If you passed through the material darkness with dignity, with connection to the light of being, then you were given more gifts-talents.

Santa Claus, being attached-connected in this way to the heavens by a very fine golden thread (in Norse mythology), descends from the heavens down through the chimney, which the programme mentioned is related with the spinal cord, with the chakras. He tumbles down to the root chakra and if you have been good, he leaves gifts under the tree.

Here the tree is a symbol of life. We humans are suspended between the roots that go into the lower worlds and the branches that reach up to the higher worlds. The lower world is represented by black, the chaos of material, the instinctual world, and we grow organically up towards the white of the heavens, where there is the possibility of reaching an entelechial connection with the stars (with the star or angel, who sits at the top of the tree smiling angelically, even though the tree has been rammed up her flowing robes).

The tree is decorated, and in the past with candles, which I would like to think are the little lights of consciousness that help us along our individual paths to the final goal - but begs the question of how did the tree not burn down…?

If you are unworthy here in Spain, if you are a naughty and have been acting up, you receive a piece of coal, which is black and represents a regression to the world of material chaos. The smiling white angel has to wait.

But if we´ve been worthy, can the experience of connecting with the angel, be the same that Mircea Eliade and Henri Corbin speak of? Where, as Hermes Trismegistus said, chiselling in the Emerald Tablet: "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing"?

So, you see I was very happy eating my dinner on my lap, in the privacy of our home, listening to the idea that Papa Noel too represents, in this time of the Winter Solstice, the idea of going into the dark depths with the light of our souls, to come out of the dark chaos with grace, having learnt more about ourselves, enabling us to receive gifts that allow us to live a little wiser, somewhat more universal, with more pleasing order. With each cycle let´s hope we are a little more in unison with our true selves.

Have a Great New Year.

Alchemy and Mysticism from The Hermetic Museum
Author: Heinrich Khunrath
Work: Amhitheatrum sapientae aeternae
Date: 1606

Happy doing the things you do.

So recently Enric sent me this video ...

It made me think...and of course being someone to jump into the shoes, or shoe in this case, of another....I imagined myself the man with the one leg...and contemplated how would I feel at the end of the performance, seeing that I had moved an audience to tears. 

I did a theatre course a couple of years ago with our beloved teacher Jose Vásquez, titled, "Contact with the Shadow"....the idea was to go into ourselves...and through a particular difficult exercise, I realised that no matter what happens to us, even if we have all of the physical problems in the world imaginable, we are still, believe it or not, us. 

Some days I wish I could just have a rest.  But alas! I must always be with me.  No escape.  So, after the video I imagined myself, in the position of the man with one leg, and imagined how I would react (all half unconsciously - you know that internet half-in-half-out approach...) and came quickly to the conclusion that I would probably react like this:

"What the f am I doing here?....making audiences cry just cos I´m dancing with one leg....What am I here on this planet for?....What is my existence worth?....Why should I not just kill myself?..." and on and on....

The sensitive reader will discern that I had, emotionally wise, a rather difficult November.  Again.

But at that moment of hundimiento....of falling in on myself....into and far away from my imagined one legged body....a little voice came into my head.... not strong but small and gently wise....and said "You are right.  It´s no good dancing just to make an audience look at you admiringly be moved to tears"  It continued "....you would only get the satisfaction, the fulfilment you are looking for, if you danced because it is what most you wanted to do in that moment, because it is what you LOVE to do."

And I would say, humbly, that that little wise voice inside of me is actually quite wise....

I Ching says: 

• When a man is dissatisfied with modest circumstances, he is restless and ambitious and tries to advance, not for the sake of accomplishing anything worth while, but merely in order to escape from lowliness and poverty by dint of his conduct. Once his purpose is achieved, he is certain to become arrogant and luxury-loving. Therefore blame attaches to his progress. On the other hand, a man who is good at his work is content to behave simply. He wishes to make progress in order to accomplish something. When he attains his goal, he does something worth while, and all is well. (Hexagram 10, 9 at the beginning)

Maybe this is all so simple and obvious to others, but to me it was a sort of breakthrough.  So I apologise if this would seem ridiculously simple, but I realised how important it is to listen to your heart, and do what makes you enjoy life, what makes you happy just to be.  If people see you doing it, and themselves are moved to do what their heart whispers to them, (which also makes them happy doing something, with a love of the action-result to want to show others too), well, that is just beautiful...and if no one sees, or they do but don´t applaud, well, just by having done the action itself brings the feeling of it being totally worthwhile.  Personal fulfilment is gained by simply living with a balance between the desire of our heart and the possibilities of our mind.

I would hazard a guess that what we are innately trying to acheive is Beauty.  It is what fills us with fulment.  Beauty, according to François Cheng is what manifests between yin and yang, between the femininine (in all of us) and the masculine (in all of us), between the right and left brains, between performer and audience.  Between the polarities of life manifests Beauty like an end of a rainbow.  We cannot create it....we can only do our bestest in expressing our part, in the way in which we feel most purity, most harmony with who we are, in the hope that Beauty manifests. 

In her wonderful talk Elizabeth Gilbert talks at one point about the Moors who invaded the south of Spain.  Their dancers would dance night after night, dancing, dancing....but once in a while a dancer would "click in", would tranform and in so doing would seem to float in the harmony of their movements, they would appear more than just human as if a light were shining through them...and the audience would shout "¡Olé! ¡Ole!" which was "Allah! Allah!"....the divine shining through.  And that, I guess, is Beauty.

But we cannot dance in life if we are not dancers, just to achieve what someone else really liked and got fulfilment from, and got audiences shouting "¡Olé" at them....for as Oscar Wilde put succintly "Be Yourself, everyone else is taken". 

And so I realise that I have been moved by the ballet of the two people in the video…moved to think about myself, to think about my actions, my motivations, to think about Beauty….I have been moved to write, to play with words….but I´m telling you, even with two legs, if I were to dance for you, you´d all fall about laughing.  

Joan Melé - Money and Consciousness

I have just watched a marvellous video of Joan Melé, the subdirector of Triodos Bank, an Ethical Bank (YES they exist!) talking in Castellaño about Money and Consciousness.

Joan Melé giving his talk "Dinero y Consciencia"

He begins by saying that it is impossible to come out of this present crisis if we are only going to think about coming out of the crisis. We need a change of paradigm, we need to see that the earth is not just in a crisis, such as climate change, but is in a far far worse state, the world is sick. And we, living together on it, are too.

Joan Melé explains the difference between mechanic and organic systems. He says mechanic systems are a sum of its parts. However organic systems, which we undoubtedly are, are a reflection of the whole. Each cell affects the whole and each cell needs the whole for its existence.

Cancer is a rapid growth of cells, explains Joan (on first name terms now), that have no concept of the whole, that grow at the expense of the other cells around them, and eventually kill the system itself. He then, cleverly, explains how money is working in a cancerous way as someone pays millions for a Picasso painting, with the plans to spend billions on the extension of Camp Nou or how millions are spent on a formula one car or thousands on a piece of jewellery...open the newspapers for more examples…my brain has gone dry.

And then listen to this loveliness! The heart governs the blood flow, that flows through every single cell in our bodies. It goes through a small conical pouch that projects from each atruim of the heart called an “auricle”.  The word stems from "auris", as in "ear"…the heart listens to the body, to the information coming back through the blood and redistributes the blood that goes through every single cell, and prioritises. If you are studying it goes to the head, which I hope is where your blood is now reading this, if you are eating it goes to the stomach, if you are running up the road mine attempts to get into my legs and sprints into to my face cheeks…The heart (with help from the brain) has the global vision of the body and distributes the oxygenated blood, which is life, in function of the necessities. It is not mechanical, pumping uniformly, but listens, responds, modifies.  Banks, in Joan´s idea, should have the mission of circulating the money, the economic blood of our communities, like a heart.  They should connect those who have ideas and are without money, to those with money and without ideas, sending life to where it is needed in each of the cells of the whole. It is the original idea of banking in his opinion. But we don’t seem to allow that. We go for making money from money. But I´m not going to get into that. We all have our opinions about speculating.

The world is sick. The world has cancer. We are all cells in the whole. Are we healthy cells? Erm…what an embarrassing question. But we must answer it.

My dense knowledge of Biology may be summed up in one word…none. But I am trying to think how a body naturally deals with cancer, and anyone who knows, please, I would appreciate, stroke need, your opinion. But logically, there must be an area where there are cells having a ball, multiplying like crazy, celebrating the cell stock market highs, frenzies of cocktail party growth, while around them there must be cells who are still healthy, who are so tempted to get into all that action and multiply, but don´t. Why? How? There must be a wall of healthy cells that are strong enough inside “themselves” to maintain their vision of the whole.

I know, I know, it is just not scientific at all, but how else can it be?

Joan says that we cannot let decisions be made any more by others. He cried a little on the inside with the election based on the hope that Obama is going to save us. We have to save ourselves. Kant said a similar thing, we have to take the responsibility off external authorities and internalise it. We have to raise our consciousness so that we can learn to make decisions.

Are we strong enough to stand up in a sick world, and maintain our principles? Can we be strong healthy cells besides those who are having a good time multiplying endlessly in self glory. Can we be healthy enough with the hope that the present craziness will not spread to every single cell? As we see our environment amusing itself to death, are we strong enough to act differently to our surroundings?  Can we maintain internal strength springing from the sense of life, without falling into the temptation of easy wins at the expense of someone else who we don’t even know (another cell)?  It is so easy just to buy the cheapest, to buy fruit out of season without thinking about the implications, to put our money into high interest rate accounts (did you know 95% of money´s movement (the blood) is pure speculation that doesn´t create wealth?). I guess it´s time that we begin to be aware of what we do everyday.

The questions Joan poses are:

How do we consume? What are the effects of our purchases? Who has made them, how have they been treated, how has the production affected the world?  Has transport and its pollution really been necessary?
Why do we consume? The psychological biggie which needs more than just a ten day silent retreat.
How do we save? And where is that saved money going to? Joan explains his experience of the irony of ironies: Often NGOs are fighting on one side for peace while putting their money in banks who invest in arms.  That more than $1.5 trillion spent on the military worldwide (according to SIPRI figures for 2009) is a very tempting market and has great interest.  And if not war, big companies often squash out the smaller in the "survival of the fittest".  Are your principles and your saving in harmony?
Joan remarks quite simply that money doesn’t just make money, as much as we may try to fool ourselves. Anyone who puts their mind to it will see it is impossible…someone, somewhere loses. Cancer´s temptation has spread.

He too is for the idea that we are human and beings. We have a higher and a lower self. Fear, not exactly of the present but of the present´s future, is making us behave like animals. And as much as we may be told we are animals (it is a great excuse for all kinds of behaviour) Joan persuades us we are not. An animal, such as a lion, is uniform. They all act the same way. Humans do not. But we are competing and living like animals in an absurd survival of the fittest, pissing on the less adapted to survive. Even the survivors aren´t happy. The education system is uniform, offices around the world are impossible to place outside ubiquitous land, we are bashing ourselves into uniformism, else people wouldn´t be so grossed out by my hairy legs. We are not promoting difference (please no-one else grow the hairs out for so long - it is a failed experiment).  We don´t allow ourselves liberty or creativity, which is what gives us our sense of being. We are selling cheap our sense of being a higher entity rather than a mere human animal, just for credit card points.



Ken Robinson on http://www.ted.com/ says Schools Kill Creativity



Ken Robinson, with his fine name, said in his TED talk that someone said: If all insects were to disappear from this planet, within 50 years all life on earth would end.  If human beings were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish. Are we really so cancerous?

With freedom and creativity comes responsibility. We are in a moment of time of the greatest richness in history, it is simply that our heart is not working correctly, we are not distributing the riches to all of the cells. We all know there are people starving while we tuck into our three meals a day.

But, I shout, what can I do? Well, we can stay healthy, and not fall into temptations of the easy something for nothing living. It is not easy to stand erect (so I´m told) when everyone around is laying in hammocks and saying what can I do?

Joan put a good spin on meditation…he says in modern life we are anorexic of internal life. That we need to create space in our lives for silence, to reconnect with ourselves and nature of life. He recaps each night the day he has led, and tries to think of all that he has done, both well and that which was a mistake. He´s not into flagellation, he isn´t out to judge, instead to become aware so that the next day he can try and be better, which he says we will almost certainly fail at! But Rome was not built in one day, a coach potato does not become a marathon runner in one day...

Being on our own in our own silence is not easy. It like being in a big sports hall alone with no where to run. It is a contact with nothingness as the rug is pulled from under our idea of our own existence…but it also starts to bring into focus an idea of the greater picture, of who we are, of where we are, of the importance our relationships with ourselves, with others, and that which what we jointly create (which we each call as we will).
We need to raise our consciousnesses of the whole, and really what a wonderful job. At first so scary, seeing our nothingness, our fragility, our shadows…but if we are strong enough to withstand the real image of ourselves, we can also begin to see beauty too. For there is no light without a shadow and vice versa.

We cannot change the world or politics and really we have absolutely no right to tell people to change, says Joan. We can only change ourselves, and this in itself influences others.  Can we be honest with ourselves and break through the fantasy mirror of our self image, to see how we act? To realise the consequences of our own actions?

Joan, having been a Director of a bank for 30 years, says that most people at the end of the month, now that money is electronic, have no idea how much they have spent nor what they have spent their money on. The credit card monthly slip is always a surprise. I unfortunately belong to this group. I have no idea.

As well as our money, we must be fairly oblivious to our actions and their consequences - they are even more invisible than our shopping…if only we would take some time each day to consider ourselves (latin: con sidus – to be with the constellations) to become aware of what we are doing, how we are acting and the consequences of us simply being. From realising the pollution going into buying a cherry out of season, to sensing the consequences of our words on others, understanding the impact of our work to comprehending our no action...we can become more aware.  We can make ourselves into healthy cells just by sitting down and considering ourselves, by taking responsibility for our actions, and not falling into the tempting trap of thinking that the more we have, and the easier it is, the happier we will be.

And that was based on the first 30 minutes, Joan spoke for an hour an a half.