Footprint - haiku

footprints in the woods
getting fewer and fewer
as species vanish

~~~

footprints on my mind
some I keep some I wipe off
memory spring clean

~~~

footprints on the grass
flowers smiling up at me
even after death

Haiku Heights / September Heights / Day27 / Footprint

Paper boat - haiku

little chubby hands
set boats sailing on puddle
joy dancing on face

~~~

kites, blue, red, yellow
like sky-sailing paper boats
kissing bashful clouds

~~~

I wish my thoughts could
paper boat across the world
dropping peace parcels

~~~

 

(image : internet)

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day26 / Paper boat

Sleep - haiku

the summer paints dreams
on eyelids shut to the world
sun-baked somnolence

~~~

sleep-walking through life
we arrive at death’s doorstep
begging one more chance
 

~~~

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day25 / Sleep

Paradox - haiku

sorrow with joy walks
relentless we pursue joy
sorrow dogs our steps

~~~

soft eloquent eyes
tender hearted Collosus
a gentle giant

(this refers to Michael Clarke Duncan)

~~~

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day24 / Paradox

Hummingbird - haiku

busy blur of blue
nature’s little acrobat
held aloft by air

~~~

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day 23 / Hummingbird

Creation - haiku

can you hear that voice
that says ‘create’ ‘create’
heed divine command

~~~

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day15 / Creation

The dirty secret truth about talent

A behind the scene look at talent and how to master anything...

Read Justine Musk's masterful article here

The pebble

I stand at the window
the trees unmoving
the clouds still
only a gull flies
cutting through the sunlight
in white-arched flight.

I wonder
about that pebble
lying in the sun.

Does it long to skim
across surfaces of lakes
and then, not landing,
take off, like that gull
piercing through
that blue curtain of the sky
sail through the heavens
like it once had.

Or is it content
to just lie there
kissing the earth
caressed by the rain
nurturing crawly things
under its stony presence
like fatherhood.

On bright nights
when the stars beckon
with their glittering light
does it turn instead
its gaze inward
to the dance of its atoms
the galaxies of molecules
the songs of the seasons
ringing in its silent being.

Smiling
knowing
that flight is possible
even when still.

~~~

The Story of India

A fascinating series by BBC -

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6 is missing

Part 7

Infancy and childhood

by Jean Houston

I am beginning to write a new online course on the recovery of the capacities that we lose at each stage of our development. Here is what I have to say about infancy and childhood:

We are given as our birthright a Stradivarius, and we come to play it like a plastic fiddle. Consider the Stradivarius. Consider the child—the star brighter than any star man's mind can create conception of, this Godstuff rendered freely as spillover of an abundance of which we are largely unaware. This nuclear divinity, which radiates an unnameable glory when it comes, is in fact a creation of such inestimable worth that, were a cosmic scales to be employed, the infant child placed on one tray and all the precious jewels on the other, there would be no possibility of outweighing the child.

Talents to last a million years are the mother lode of its molecules. Its body is celled of mysteries that are incomprehensible, yet existent and responsive to all that is, and therefore is the container and active channeler of all that is. There is no need here to speak of Evolution to come. All the future tunings and turnings are already here, latent givens in the once and future child.

Its arms and legs enter into conversation with the bright of mornings. In perfect diaphany it knows the shapes of nature for its own. Sunbeams shaping grasses, trees parting skies, waters rushing over rock, these are the mirrors and progenitors of all its movings, the visible likeness of its earth-partnered life.

Comes then society's teaching time. The child is ushered into the presence of the Guidepost to the relevant life. And this post, assigned the teaching task, begins the process of informing the child of its smallness in relation to the far larger, its ignorance measured against great intelligences, its ineptitudes contrasted to vast skills, its lacks opposed to fullnesses, its basic inconsequentiality within the context of "things that matter."

Knowledge of its own divine origins begins to be quite systematically removed from its consciousness. First, the fullness of nature is removed. The trees are taken out of its arms, the rushing waters out of its blood. Body and brain are hunched; gates are built in its muscles; its brain becomes a fortress against all vastness, guarding against the remembrance of who it is and where it came from. This done, the child is deemed acceptable.

But it is not yet over. The internal world must be put to rout. At one point, a serious point, the child will be taught that what is imagined is unreal, and an arterial siphon will draw from near its heart that much strength of impulse which was necessary to keep up its commitment to the inner realms. What is imagined, what has a reality of ponderables that simply doesn't lend itself to physically calibrated scales, this is said to be not real, and the child is halved, so to speak.

If the heart siphon is not wholly effective, another siphon is put into the veins of the inner elbow and all that society thinks impractical is drawn from the elbow's crook. Put the various other siphons into alcoved places, the armpits, the groin, the bend of the knee, the arched chamber of the eye-socket.

Tell the little child that the world out there is only this, or only that, or perhaps phrase it merely, make less than worthy the notice of it. Only a tree, and all the trees are cut down; merely a small lake, and the deeps have lost their mystery; only this and merely that, and the magnificences of nature are made into shoddy stage sets. The siphon has drawn nerves of vision from under the roofed brain, taken the full life of seeing from the eyes.

Belittle another human being, categorize him with a label having to do with his color, his race, his lack or surfeit of academic training, his societal affiliations, pin him like a butterfly specimen for the child to inspect minus all his full lifeness, his essential human-divineness, his proper dimensionality; and you've siphoned out generative power that reaches deep into the groin that could have meant the reseeding of the world.

~~~ taken from her FB page

How not to be a 'legitimate' rape victim

How not to be a 'legitimate' rape victim

The last shot

On a bare mattress he lay
blood splattered half naked
Colonel Gaddafi
of Libya quite dead

the photo barked at me
wrenched me in the gut
an unspectacular end
to a pompous life

made me wonder
at the one chance he had
the one shot at life
to uplift to create

these holders of power
yet niggardly of spirit
the beggars of light
who not finding any

proceed to escape
the approaching darkness
by snuffing out the light
in other people’s lives

~~~

The hiatus of evening

hanging between wakefulness
and sleep
is a hiatus

like the golden hour

when the day pauses
looking over her shoulder
reluctant to leave
at the night at her heels

the tender moment
of their meeting
so full of mystery
and magic

that birds fall silent
leaves rustle in whispers
shadows settle soft-footed
into everything

and you slide
into the awaiting darkness
of oblivion

and the stars come out
as dreams

~~~

A race of hands

scramble sprint run
it’s always a race
to keep ahead of time

I know from the start
I have no chance of winning
yet my hands propel me forward

as if it is a race of hands
mine against the clock’s
it always wins hands down

yet tomorrow I know
I shall try again
using the tricks I learnt today

I imagine someday lying cold
and timeless in my grave
I would have won the race

but no, I only pass the baton
to another pair of hands
running a futile race

6 things you need to know about your inner creative badass

A simply, clearly and wonderfully written post about our inner creative genius.

Read the post here

Time to get connected folks and listen up :)

Slow cooker

Many years ago, when I was haunted by the pain of childlessness, I had gone to visit a psychic with one burning question, ‘Will I ever be a mother?” And she had said, “No, in this life you have chosen a different path, you have decided that it will be about yourself, about finding who you are, and evolving to your highest potential”. It had sounded grand at that time and even lofty but I had still wanted a child and had come away disappointed.

Now, all these years later, with the pain gone and having eased into the situation, I can look back and see that she was right. I can see that not only about that situation but all the situations, circumstances, events, people who have entered my life and left or stayed behind, were all pushing, forcing, cajoling me to turn away from the world and look within to find answers to all my quests. To put away acquired knowledge and rely on my own inner knowing, that timeless wisdom we are all born with.

I doubt if this would have happened if I was busy raising a family with nary a moment to spare to spend in contemplation. All the dark nights of the soul that ended in clarity on glorious mornings, all the veering into despair that made me push away from darkness into the light, all the hours spent in raging questioning, in quiet introspection, in the letting go of resistance to circumstances have slowly allowed clarity to emerge from the murky depths of confusion.

I can now see that each experience, no matter how unpleasant it had seemed at that time, had contributed, like a piece of a puzzle, to making my life whole. To helping me evolve. To making me go towards my inner self. I can now see that life is a slow cooker, ingredients are getting added to the broth all the time as and when needed, some bitter, some tangy, some sweet but all necessary and nutritious and are all going towards the making of a whole and tasty me :)

The New Colossus

by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she

With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'

This sonnet was written in 1883 and, in 1903, was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the lower level of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

5 most common regrets of the dying

------- excerpted from the http://www.highexistence.com --------


Bronnie Ware spent her life working with elderly people who were close to death. In this thought-provoking piece, she pieces together the most common regrets of the hundreds of people she stayed with until the end. The implications of these insights are incredibly vast and sobering.

---

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Read the original article here

The egg

an afternoon snapshot

the birds are still

the trees are still

the air rests among

the blades of grass

only the clock pours out

in staccato spurts

a litany of tick-tocks

a river of time segments

in which I’m halfway drowned

sometimes just swept away

bullied and cornered by

an illusion called time

the air and grass don’t care

the birds they don’t know this

certainly not the trees

therefore they are in bliss

~~~

To An Early Primrose

 by H. Kirke White

Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire!

Whose modest form, so delicately fine,

                  Was nursed in whirling storms

                  And cradled in the winds.

Thee, when young Spring first questioned Winter’s way,

And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight,

                  Thee on this bank he threw

                  To mark his victory.

In this low vale, the promise of the year,

Serene, thou openest to the nipping gale,

                  Unnoticed and alone,

                  Thy tender elegance.

So virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms

Of chill adversity; in some lone walk

                  Of life she rears her head,

                  Obscure and unobserved;

While every bleaching breeze that on her blows,

Chastens her spotless purity of breast,

                  And hardens her to bear

                  Serene the ills of life.

 ~ H. Kirke White

A place I call home

Among the folds of the hills nestled
on the valley floor spread
a sparkling jewel, a gleaming gem
is a place I lovingly call home

‘Where is Middle Hutt’ I was once asked
‘this is Middle Earth’ I had said
should have said ‘A slice of heaven
about which stories are written’

Where my spirit sings to the drumbeat of rain
on the roof, and stands in awe to the sound
of the wind wailing against the walls.
and laughs as the Hutt river does

as it skips through meadow, hill
and vale singing a silver-tongued melody,
of mad longing to merge with the sea.
Where my spirit soars to the twinkling stars

And the moon rises laughing behind the hills.
Where my spirit rests in the hollow of the valley
Nestling among verdant hills lit up with the laughter
Of a hundred, babbling, sparkling brooks.

~~~

Today was National Poetry Day, so the local library had organised a poetry reading session, where poetry based on our city or location was read out. So I had my first public poetry reading with the above poem :)

 

May

The calendar 

I find today

sits on May when

it’s almost August

maybe it’s telling me

through all the days of

May and non-May

that I May let myself

take the lid off

my box of dreams

and believe in

their coming true

ease into life

let go of fear

trust my wisdom

go with the flow

unravel unspool

bring down walls

love like crazy

find myself again

~~~

The dance of housework

household chores to
music performed
becomes a dance

so play that CD
or befriend the
radio and

sweep away
cobwebs to
the sweep of song

stir in stirring
symphonies into
sumptuous lunches

trap-zap that dust
to the hip-swing
of rock-n-roll

let the lilt of
low litanies
lighten your load

let the rhythm
sweep and dissolve
the drudgery

let the music
your pulse enter
let the fun flow

~~~

Love After Love

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott

What to remember when waking

A mind-blowing poem by David Whyte

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?  What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

~ David Whyte ~
(The House of Belonging)

Rainmaker

I love this for reasons I cannot even begin to explain!

Brings on tears everytime ....

The poetry that lies in fingertips

you face, your face

it’s always your face

I fingertip touch

in poetic trails

of heartbreaking joy

tearful tenderness

that trembles where

skin meets with skin

singing pulsating

symphonies of love

laughing exulting

rivulets of joy

that must be when

soul flows into soul

dissolves into God

surrenders in bliss

~~~

The world

The world is our escape
our chosen opium
we slide behind shape
hide behind form

We abandon luminosity
for mere glitter
forsake audacity
embrace cowardice

We give up our knowingness
in exchange for knowledge

We have traded our kingdom
for a few pieces of shininess
sold our soul
in exchange for the world

But at times the world slips
the curtain parts
and we are given glimpses
of eternity

We are never ever
the same again

We realise the void
we are trying to fill
cannot be filled
with the things of the world

Sweet is the bliss
of the awakening soul
the angels rejoice
at the homecoming

~~~

Follow your bliss

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.”

 – Joseph Campbell

Words

“Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being, between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.” 

~ Thomas Merton 

The dam

An avalanche waits
gathering fury
within heart walls

It’s only fear
that holds it in
of destruction

The dam bursts
debris washed away
new beginnings

Unripe

a blank page waits

words like seeds packed

the pod not ready to burst

It is strange

It is strange how
some people can talk and talk
and still not say anything
as if the words were
mere empty husks
falling to the ground
seedless, impotent
incapable of growth

It is strange how
some people can be silent
and you understand everything
as if the very silence
spoke in tongues
scattered seeds
that fell into your heart
and blossomed

~~~
 

The meeting

it must have been the rain

falling soft-petalled on the roof

the clouds in flower festivity

raining down their laughter

or the solitary bird

singing a single note after note

pulling in the reluctant evening

like a relentless oarsman

that my clouds of thoughts parted

and memories flooded in

and there you were

sandal-scented and smiling

your voice as you said my name

husky with tenderness

and I had simply melted

dissolved into pure joy

the world had ceased to be

time was irrelevant

there was no you or even I

just the lightness of being

One step to bliss

I surrender

in Your arms.

I cease to be.

Ego

Ego is the absence of true knowledge of who we really are, together with its result: a doomed clutching on, at all costs, to a cobbled together and makeshift image of ourselves, an inevitably chameleon charlatan self that keeps changing, and has to, to keep alive the fiction of its existence.

In Tibetan, ego is called dakdzin , which means “grasping to a self.”

Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of “I” and “mine,” self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activities that will sustain that false construction.

Such grasping is futile from the start and condemned to frustration, for there is no basis or truth in it, and what we are grasping at is by its very nature ungraspable.
The fact that we need to grasp at all and to go on grasping shows that in the depths of our being we know that the self doesn’t inherently exist.
From this secret, unnerving knowledge spring all our fundamental insecurities and fears.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche, from Glimpse of the day

Bird watching

Sitting on the fence, back to me,
it doesn’t know I am watching
as it watches the yard next door.

Yellow beaked, black bodied,
head bobbing, eyes darting,
the blackbird looks for food.

Then, it sits still for a long time,
head held high, like a falcon,
as if sunning its beak.

I wonder if birds meditate,
or plan their day, maybe
stake out hunting grounds.

Or are they totally unaware
of the past, escaping fast
and the future, madly onrushing.

Living in the timeless Now,
unconcerned, about
an illusion called time.

Heeding only the voice
of instinct, as it surely guides
them from birth to death.

When I turn away,
it’s still there, unmoving,
as if frozen in time.

Home

The wind rages
like a crazed animal,
snarling up trees,
curling around houses,
scowling, howling.
In stark contrast,
the voices in my head
slowly stop clamouring,
stop rippling and fade.
I settle into stillness.

There is a place within us
that the winds of turbulence
cannot reach, the fire of
crises cannot scorch.
The floods of despair
cannot dampen. Here,
the soul resides.
And presides. Here,
boundaries vanish,
distinctions dissolve.

All it takes is a stepping away,
a conscious shift,
a delving into the silence
beneath all sound,
into the space in which
everything arises.
It is there, always,
ready, waiting.
For us to disengage,
to come home.

~~~

The chase

Something niggles,

like an itch in a corner

just out of reach.

The day was a pleasant enough,

helping a friend serve the monks

at the Buddhist monastery.

Steeped in tranquility,

lulled by birdsong,

sang to by streams.

But a haze came creeping around the corners.

Like a nebulous shadow

cast by a rain cloud

lurking just beyond the horizon.

I try to pin it down,

out-stare it in a staring contest,

but it shifts shape,

defies definition,

steals away.

Maybe the boil will burst in my sleep.

Maybe in my dreams

it will show its face.

For now, I chase

the shifting shadows.

Why our brains are large

In today's excerpt - Martin Seligman, the University of Pennsylvania professor whose research has led to the development of the field of positive psychology, comments on the purpose of our large brains and speaks to the importance of relationships with others as one of the keys to our well-being:

"Other people are the best antidote to the downs of life and the sin­gle most reliable up. ... My friend Stephen Post, professor of Medical Human­ities at Stony Brook, tells a story about his mother. When he was a young boy, and his mother saw that he was in a bad mood, she would say, 'Stephen, you are looking piqued. Why don't you go out and help someone?' Empirically, Ma Post's maxim has been put to rigorous test, and we scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested. ...  

  

"Is there someone in your life whom you would feel comfortable phoning at four in the morning to tell your troubles to? If your answer is yes, you will likely live longer than someone whose answer is no. For George Vaillant, the Harvard psychiatrist who discovered this fact, the master strength is the capacity to be loved. Conversely, as the social neuroscientist John Cacioppo has argued, loneliness is such a disabling condition that it compels the belief that the pursuit of relationships is a rock-bottom fundamental to human well-being. ...

  

"Two recent streams of argument about human evolution both point to the importance of positive relationships in their own right and for their own sake. What is the big human brain for? About five hundred thousand years ago, the cranial capacity of our hominid ancestors' skulls dou­bled in size from 600 cubic centimeters to its present 1,200 cubic centi­meters. The fashionable explanation for all this extra brain is to enable us to make tools and weapons; you have to be really smart to deal instrumentally with the physical world. The British theoretical psy­chologist Nick Humphrey has presented an alternative: the big brain is a social problem solver, not a physical problem solver. As I converse with my students, how do I solve the problem of saying something that Marge will think is funny, that won't offend Tom, and that will per­suade Derek that he is wrong without rubbing his nose in it? These are extremely complicated problems -- problems that computers, which can design weapons and tools in a trice, cannot solve. But humans can and do solve social problems, every hour of the day. The massive pre­frontal cortex that we have is continually using its billions of connec­tions to simulate social possibilities and then to choose the optimal course of action. So the big brain is a relationship simulation machine, and it has been selected by evolution for exactly the function of design­ing and carrying out harmonious but effective human relationships.

"The other evolutionary argument that meshes with the big brain as social simulator is group selection. The eminent British biologist and polemicist Richard Dawkins has popularized a selfish-gene the­ory which argues that the individual is the sole unit of natural selec­tion. Two of the world's most prominent biologists, unrelated but both named Wilson (Edmund O. and David Sloan), have recently amassed evidence that the group is a primary unit of natural selection. Their argument starts with the social insects: wasps, bees, termites, and ants, all of which have factories, fortresses, and systems of communication and dominate the insect world just as humans dominate the vertebrate world. Being social is the most successful form of higher adaptation known. I would guess that it is even more adaptive than having eyes, and the most plausible mathematization of social insect selection is that selection is done by groups and not by individuals.

"The intuition for group selection is simple. Consider two primate groups, each made up of genetically diverse individuals. Imagine that the 'social' group has the emotional brain structures that subserve love, compassion, kindness, teamwork, and self-sacrifice -- the 'hive emotions' -- and cognitive brain structures, such as mirror neurons, which reflect other minds. The 'nonsocial' group, equally intelligent about the physical world and equally strong, does not have these hive emotions. These two groups are now put into a deadly competition that can have only one winner, such as war or starvation. The social group will win, being able to cooperate, hunt in groups, and create agricul­ture."

Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being

by Martin E. P. Seligman by Free Press

 

------------- excerpt for the delanceyplace newsletter -----------------

 

 

Looking inward

We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely.We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do, we will be in danger of madness.

This is one of the last and most resourceful ploys of ego to prevent us from discovering our real nature. So we make our lives so hectic that we eliminate the slightest risk of looking into ourselves.

Even the idea of meditation can scare people. When they hear the words egoless or emptiness, they think that experiencing those states will be like being thrown out the door of a spaceship to float forever in a dark, chilling void. Nothing could be further from the truth. But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise and frantic busyness.

Looking into the nature of our mind is the last thing we would dare to do."

~ Sogyal Rinpoche, from Glimpse of the Day

Just the medicine I needed today

And I am drinking in large spoonfuls :)

Four simple ways to create more and worry less

Reminder

NZ photographs

Quite by chance, I can across a blog on WordPress which showcased photographs taken in NZ and since both are close to my heart, I just had to share.

NZ Photos

:)

The other side

It takes only a small mis-step,
a tiny, wandering thought,
to derail my train of happiness.
The flooding of pain
is sudden and unwelcome,
like a dark thunderstorm
it blots out the light.

I apply the usual balms -
music, dance, books.
It retreats and bides it time,
and just as surely,
when the beats stop,
the book is closed,
it is there, waiting,
like a faithful lover.

I marvel at its insidiousness,
its tenacity.

Maybe I should give it its due,
pay the blood-price.
Maybe pain is the other side of joy.
Why should I expect
to enjoy the charms of daylight
without enduring the night?

The night is going to be a long one.
Perhaps, joy waits on the other side.

Woman and man

"A woman's highest calling is to lead a man to his soul, so as to unite him with Source. Her lowest calling is to seduce, separating man from his soul and leave him aimlessly wandering.

A man's highest calling is to protect woman, so she is free to walk the earth unharmed. Man's lowest calling is to ambush and force his way into the life of a woman."

- Cherokee Proverb

Conversations

Oftentimes it has so happens that a conversation with someone or some people leaves me drained and exhausted. I have wondered why that is the case and some deeper reflection has revealed the following. Conversations (even with yourself) are like meals. They are meant to nourish and sustain you, and promote growth. What your eat the tongue should find savoury, that is the first milestone. But more importantly, it should enter your stomach, be easily digested and absorbed and turn into muscle, bone and blood.

Some conversations on the surface look like fun - chirpy, frothy, gossipy. They are like junk food, good to see, smell divine, even the taste-buds go into salivary overdrive, but they full of empty calories with very little goodness. They enter the system and lie heavy on the digestion and possibly lead to ill-health. As much as I can, I try to avoid these junk-food, small-talk conversations, that make me feel later that I have lost a part of myself.

I wait for those rare, scintillating, exquisite ones, in which the words flow with ease, in a space of mutual trust and understanding. Where neither party is trying to show off their knowledge, or prove the other wrong, or just wants to skim the surface with words. Where listening is practised as an art and not extended as a favour. Where one listens with one’s whole being, not with just the ears or the brain. Where personalities are set aside, and the illusion of separateness dims and there is not only the meeting of minds but also of the essences. No one mentions, or maybe even notices it, but love sits there quietly holding everyone’s hand. And long after the conversation is over, its light lingers and transforms us ever so subtly, and we find that we have grown and taken a step towards our Higher Self.

Nature loves courage

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed. 

Source : Internet

 

The teacher

A teacher cannot give you the truth
The truth is already in you
You only need to open yourself –
body, mind and heart,
so that his or her teachings
will penetrate your own seeds
of understanding and enlightenment
If you let the words enter you,
the soil and the seeds
will do the rest of the work.

Source : Internet

My adventures with fire

A couple of incidents set me on a train of thought.

One : I was taking something out of the over the other night, and in a definitely ‘duh’ moment had not put on my oven gloves. Focussed on the cooking item I did not realise till too late that my hand had made contact with the red hot oven coil. There was a sizzle and a bit of smoke as I pulled by hand out and a very strange smell hit my nostrils. It took me a moment to realise it was the smell of burning skin as it was the very first time my brain had encountered this smell. I stood there for a few moments, transfixed, processing this new bit of information, ‘this is how burnt human flesh smells like’ before dunking my hand into cold water.

Two : Today is a windy day. The wind has been blowing like a demented animal, curling around the house trying to blow it down and the house has been creaking in complaint. It got so cold that I decided to light the fire. The operative word here is ‘I’ because the official fire lighter has always been my husband. So I thought, ‘how hard can it be?’ After all humans have been lighting fires since, well, fire was discovered and that was a long, long time ago. Fire-lighting skills should be in my genes by now. Little did I know that my fire-lighting skill gene had been mutated by the convenience of modern living.

I had the vague notion that a fire of sorts should be started using paper and kindling before the logs are introduced so that is what I set about doing. I know your are not going to believe this but let me tell you that setting fire to paper is easy but keeping it alight is close to impossible and it is even harder with kindling. The fire kept dying out and I kept adding more paper and more kindling and there was a time, I must confess, when I was tempted to ask Uncle Google. Such abomination! I’m sure my Stone Age ancestress would have turned in her fossil and gone up in smoke in shame. Finally, half and hour and reams of newspaper later, I managed to put the logs in and get the fire going. After which I sat back and toasted myself :)

Gazing into the fire brought back the memory of the smell of burnt flesh and I began to wonder. How is it that when it took me, admittedly a novice, half an hour to start a fire with dry combustible materials, do people, also novices, burn live human beings in a jiffy? True, a bride being burnt for dowry usually has kerosene poured over her and that speeds it up. Also true, that in a riot when people try to kill humans that belong to the other caste / religion / tribe, they use petrol and the clothes that people wear are combustible. Which then brought me to the deeper question, to what extent does greed or hatred eat away at a human being that he/she can set fire to another human being and bear the acrid smell of burning flesh, and watch that person writhing in agony. The shock of the smell of the slight singeing of my hand still reverberates painfully in my head, how can anyone bear to watch another human being be burnt alive?

A recent Delanceyplace article I read titled ‘soldiers are reluctant to kill’, says “It is the simple and demonstrable fact that there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it.” It goes on to give evidence that “The weak link between the killing potential and the killing capability of units was the soldier. The simple fact is that when faced with a living, breathing opponent instead of a target, a significant majority of the soldiers revert to a posturing mode in which they fire over their enemy's heads."

If such is the case, then how do some people overcome that resistance to kill, especially if the other has done them no harm and their lives are not being threatened in any way? How and why are we able to overcome our innate goodness, bypass the ‘survival of the species’ instincts that Nature has hard-wired into us and turn ourselves into killing monsters? What is it that pushes us over the edge into murderous madness? Is there, like Freud suggested, a basement in our psyches where we tend to keep our socially-disapproved emotions suppressed but which occasionally thunder up through the trapdoor and overcome us?

No answers, just questions. And the final one - am I capable of this act of killing? What would it take me to tip over the edge? Would I be able to stop it?

Nary a discontented tree

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

~John Muir

Paraprosdokians

Paraprosdokians are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected ~ frequently humorous.

1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left..

7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

8. They begin the evening news with 'Good Evening,' then proceed to tell you why it isn't.

9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

10. Buses stop in bus stations. Trains stop in train stations. On my desk is a work station.

11. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.

12. In filling out an application, where it says, 'In case of emergency, notify:' I put 'DOCTOR.'

13. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

14. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

15. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.

16. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.

17. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

18. There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.

19. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.

20. You're never too old to learn something stupid.

21. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

22. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

23. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

Source : Email forward :)

Yes, when? And why?

"In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?"

—Gabrielle Roth, dancer, musician and author

Child sexual abuse

Second episode of Satyamev Jayate

Watch video here

Silence

Fusion music

Loved this ...

Return to sender

"As a breeze carries the Ocean inside it,
so underneath every sentence is:
‘Come back to the Source´."

~ Rumi

Why we do what we do

and how we can do it better.

A fascinating TED Talk by Tony Robbins.

Watch the video here

 

Alchemy

It so happens -
when I sit and watch
the fire eating up the logs,
licking at them, fiery tongued,
exultant, ebullient,
in a mad dance of destruction,
I find I have to make dinner.

It is a different kind of alchemy,
this bringing together of things.
Peeling and paring.
cutting and chopping
and preparing a meal,
with the application of heat.
A grand symphony of creation.

Yet, I linger, mesmerised,
ignoring that for this,
as wood crumbles
and ash glows
and light dances
and curves and flows
until I am all lit up from within.

~~~

Points to ponder

What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter. 



~ Albert Einstein


"What use is so much knowledge to you, Arjuna?
I stand sustaining this entire world
with a fragment of my being."



~ Bhagvad Gita


The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

~ Oscar Wilde

A late night movie

A niggling something
burrows relentless
through the blanket of sleep
wakes me up

I search the crevices of my mind
for clues
for thoughts, put aside,
feelings, unfelt, unexplored

They flicker and crackle
like a B-grade movie
with disjointed parts
and a bad ending

I toss and tumble
through the unexpected twists
until sleep rescues me
from the debris of my past

I know they wait
for an encore
weaving another movie
for another night

Time trickles

Time trickles through my fingers
in bits and pieces
a moment here, a moment there
leaking away in spurts
like through a punctured artery

I watch in mild trepidation
resolving to staunch the flow
of moments gone
beyond reach, recall
or even redemption

Fire and smoke

Have you noticed
the burning of a thing,
the destruction of it,
how it produces beauty?

Tongues of fire, luminous,
crackling, cackling, gleeful,
turning into shapeless ash
a thing with shape and form.

And smoke, its soul,
flowing out, spiralling up,
scattering its fragrance,
its every single memory.

Fire and smoke,
dance of the elements.
Ashes, the last remains.
Then, life begins anew.

The power of presence

When you have all the time in the world and no fixed agenda then the tendency is to while away the time. But then I realise that this thought is coming from a pre-conceived notion that time should be well spent. And I also can see that the satisfaction that comes from doing something also arises in the mind. It is the mind that says, ‘I must do something’, ‘this or that is the right thing to do’ and it is the mind that says ‘well done’ or ‘you have wasted your time’. When the mind is still, I find that the urgency to do anything does not arise, there is no desire for movement, no desire to fill the moment with accomplishment. Things arise naturally and get done naturally. Because there is no agenda, there is no disappointment. There is no feeling of achievement either because I had not set out to do anything. There is however a feeling of fullness. Whether anything is done or not, whether anything is accomplished or not. I realise, the fullness comes from being present, present in the moment. Because presence fills you up. You are already full of it. You become aware of  your own fullness. Which is quite different from the flush of achievement that the mind conjures up, which lasts for a while and then disappears. Which then prompts the mind to find another goal, another milestone to cross, so that it may revel in its own importance.

The sun plays hide and seek from behind the clouds. A bird calls out. Its call, crystal clear and sonorous falls on my ears. For a brief moment we connect. But then, are we really separate? The collection of atoms that I call my body and which I perceive to be different and separate from the collection of atoms that is the bird gives the impression of separateness. But this perception is being projected by the mind. When the mind is still we do not perceive ourselves to be a collection of atoms with sense faculties. There is a presence which has no physical boundaries and may yet be one with the bird, with all of everything. To think of ourselves as just a physical entity with sense faculties and a mind-created self-image, concepts and belief structures seems very limiting. And a travesty. So then what is the truth about ourselves? The mind cannot conceive it, nor grasp it, let alone explain it. It can only be reached in stillness, when the mind is put away. Then silence yields the truth.

The elephant whisperer

The remarkable story of how a herd of wild elephants came to grieve and pay tribute to their friend, the elephant whisperer. And the remarkable story of a remarkable man.

Read story here

Fear

Fear arises through identification with form, whether it is a material possession, physical body, social role, self image, thought or an emotion. You are trapped in object consciousness unaware of the dimensions of inner space which alone is the true freedom.

- Eckhart Tolle

Love all of Creation

Love all of Creation
The whole of it and every grain of sand
Love every leaf
Every ray of God’s light
Love the animals
Love the plants
Love everything
If you love everything
You will perceive
The divine mystery in things
And once you have perceived it
You will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly
More and more everyday
And you will at last come to love the whole world
With an abiding universal love.

~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Perspective is everything

A fascinating TED talk about how our happiness depends on our perception or rather how perspective is really all there is to everything :)

View the talk here

The fear of the second

THE LINE ENTITLED ABOVE OCCURS in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and refers to the unitary experience—the supreme spiritual unity of everything. This unity is in our true Self; its nature is pure Consciousness. This unitary knowledge is the goal of our spiritual search. When the spiritual seeker thinks of this goal, any idea of duality becomes an obstruction and a matter of fear. The seeker's constant effort is to merge all objective experience into his or her own infinite Self—the source and support of everything. Therefore, the grand maxim of our spiritual struggle is: "There is fear from the second."

We have an innate urge for unity. If there is discord around us we cannot really function effectively even in daily life. There must be a sense of unison, a harmonious cooperation, among the different elements of our lives. Take the case of the body. When the body is healthy we feel it as a unity. There is no disharmony among the different functions. If, however, there is some trouble in some part of the body—the head, or the foot, or the stomach—that balance is lost. We feel that an intruder has crept in—a "second" has entered the scene and disturbed the unitary experience of our bodily well-being. If aliens ("seconds") in the form of aches, sores, and abnormal pressures assail the body, there is fear.

So also the case of a happy family. The roof of the house is not leaking; there is perfect understanding between the husband and the wife; the children are well behaved, and there is a decent income. What is the subjective feeling of the family members? A feeling of unity. You, the master of the house, feel as though you have extended yourself to the whole family—even to your house, the gardens, the furniture. There is nothing to disturb you; you are really peaceful. But, if some disturbance occurs in the family—for example, if one child becomes boisterous, refuses to go to school, and wants to be in bad company, then what happens? The peace of the entire household is disturbed. A "second" thing—namely, the disruptive behavior of the child—has intruded into your feeling of unity.

Source ~ internet

 

Daughters are precious

A shocking program about the female foeticide rampant in India...

Watch the video here

Outstanding

The outstanding ones have all the fun :D

Attention

There is a knock on the door
I do not answer

sales talk seems intrusive
in the silence

feeling open and expansive
I do have the heart to say ‘no’
 

But then I realise
by not responding
by turning away
from a possibility
my ‘no’ had been just as emphatic

A shimmering chance
had risen momentarily
and withered into oblivion
by my withheld attention

Life blooms where we direct our attention
life follows our intention
it has no other choice

It is strange

It is strange how
your mouth tries to form words
and only silence falls out
like ghosts of words
that never lived
and yet somehow died
and turned into ashes

It is strange how
the web of silence is stronger
than the words it snags
or that words are like smoke
mere spectres
that rise and dissolve
into nothingness

It is strange how
when you are utterly still you can see
the dance of the atoms
and beyond that
the symphonies of silence
and you realise
there isn’t anything else

The almost shot

This is today's daily poem which I almost forgot to post coz it also went with the daily photo.

The almost shot

Here I had stood

in the gathering dusk

pointing my camera

at a passing train

There you had been

looking up from the newspaper

out the train window

directly on to my lens

Our gazes had clashed

on the viewfinder

and I had stood dumbstruck

forgetting to click

The train had swiftly

whisked you away

and the moon had dropped

into waiting trees.

And I had walked on

train rumbling in the distance

trying to fill the emptiness

of a shot not quite caught

Riverdance

Riverdance the final performance

Simply awesome!

the sound of flight

heard a new sound today
or maybe I had heard it before
and hadn’t noticed

blown along by the wind
dead brown leaves
racing along the road

in gleeful laughter
they chased one another
in wild abandon

the sound of their feet
like fire crackling
or rain splattering

my heart started to sing
in tandem
in surprised recognition

their arabesques on my heart
echoes still
of such are riches

~~~

Gems of wisdom

We are built to travel the bandwidth of consciousness and to enlarge it when we wish to live in a larger universe. Better still, change perspective through meditation, reflection, or focus, and discover yourself to be the latest flower on the tree of the cosmos, ready to bloom. This requires the sun and rain of attention, a conscious dwelling in the midst of eternal fecundity. What had been there dimly as background awareness, then moves to the foreground. In this state anything that you concentrate on opens up—objects, ideas, relationships, business, governance, even grand designs. We awaken to the wealth of being and the A-HA experiences keep on coming.

~ Jean Houston



There are angels to your left and angels to your right; angels above you and angels below you; angels ahead of you and angels behind you. You are encapsulated in divine vibration, surrounded by love and eternally blessed. Go forth in confidence and go forth in peace...all is well.


~ Marianne Williamson


The practice of patience guards us against losing our presence of mind. It enables us to remain undisturbed, even when the situation is really difficult. It gives us a certain amount of inner peace, which allows us some self-control, so that we can choose to respond to situations in an appropriate and compassionate manner, rather than being driven by our disturbing emotions.

~ Dalai Lama