This week

You don’t have to keep doing the same old same old.
Move towards more of what you love.
Move towards more of what you want.
You only have to agree to change.
Everything around you will then start to shift.
Profound change is ultimately incremental and process orientated.
Radical change happens when incremental change stops working.
Expect radical change.
The more you live in your authentic soul’s life, in your heart’s desire,
The better it is for everyone.
Action taken under stress relieves stress.
Stand in a loving place and speak your truth.
Speak of your hopes.
Speak of your fears.
Love yourself.
And be kind to others in your story.
Get ready to clear out what is not needed.
Carry your hopes and your dreams.
Action taken under stress relieves stress.
We are each responsible for our own lives and outcomes.
Our souls are aching for us to be true.
True to our dreams, our visions, our hopes.
What is your soul aching for?
Take a tiny step towards it.
Let go of the things in the past you no longer need,
And go for your dreams.
Talk to the souls of other people.
Talk to your own soul.
The mess is causing the fears.
It is the mess we are afraid of.
Start to take steps to clear the mess.
You needs aren’t many.
You are not asking for the world.
You need to take care of yourself.
You need to help your soul get to where it wants to go.
Action taken under stress relieves stress.
Take a stand for yourself.
Take action to move towards the change you want.
It doesn’t have to be a big change.
It does mean you have to stand in your truth.
Yes it’s that easy.
If you continue to stand in your truth,
You will continue to change the world.
You have to take action to move past the wound.
Don’t be afraid.
Take action.
There before you is a fork in the road.
You are going to have to choose whether
You evolve, stay the same or devolve.
Stand in a quiet place where you can hear you soul’s whispers.
Say yes to give yourself permission to move towards your dream.

Thirty Three Tiger Facts

1. Tigers are the largest of the big cats.
2. Wild tigers are at the very top of the food chain.
3. There were originally eight subspecies of tiger, the Javan, the Bali, the Caspian, the Indochinese, the Sumatran, the Bengal, the Siberian, and the South China tiger.
4. Unbelievably three of the eight subspecies are now extinct. The Bali tiger met its demise in the 1940's, the Caspian in the 1970's and the Javan in the 1980's. (Yes you read that right--the 1980's!)
5. The tiger is the most endangered species of big cats.
6. Tigers are an umbrella species, which means to save the wild tiger we must also commit to saving its habitat and prey.

7. It is impossible to count how many tigers are left in the wild but experts estimate there to be less than 6000.
8. The tigers saliva is antiseptic and comes in handy for cleaning their wounds.
9. An adult wild tiger is a solitary animal and will establish its own territory, which can cover over 100 square miles.
10. A tiger will circumnavigate its territory every few days.

11. Tiger stripes are individually as unique as the human finger print.
12. The tigers most developed sense is its hearing.
13. A tiger can spend up to eighteen hours sleeping.
14. Tigers can swim and like to cool down by sitting neck deep in water holes.
15. Tiger cubs are blind at birth.
16. Tiger cubs can stay with their mother for up to 2-3 years.
17. Tigers do not purr.
18. Like the domestic cat the tigers claws are retractable.
19. A tiger's night vision is six times greater than a humans.
20. Most tigers are orange with black stripes and a white underbelly and jowl.

21. The tiger is revered in Chinese mythology and is said to have magical powers.
22. Yin and Yang is sometimes represented by a Yin tigress and a Yang dragon.
23. It is believed that when a tiger dies its spirit enters the ground and becomes amber.
24. It is also believed in Chinese mythology that the tiger can take human form.
25. Tiger populations are being cut off as their territories shrink and the corridors which join them together are being destroyed.
26. The demise of the tiger is due to loss of habitat and the use of tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicines.
27. Tiger parts are also used as trophies, trinkets and aids to ward off evil spirits.
28. The main users of illegal animal derivatives are, China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.
29. Tiger powders and potions can be bought all over the USA, Europe and the UK.

30. There are now more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild.
31. The tiger has only one predator...MAN!
32. A group of tigers is called a Streak.
33. Tigers will occasionally eat vegetation for dietary fibre, the fruit of the Slow Match Tree being favoured.

A message from an indigenous Elder

"If you're coming to help us,
don't waste your time.
But if you're coming because your
liberation is bound up with ours,
then let us work together."

Could this message apply to any collaboration
between any forms of living matter?
What would happen it we all could find
a point of co-existence, whatever that maybe.

As Satish Kumar says, "You are therefore I am".
Without you what am I?
I need you as much as you need me.

What is your view on education?

"I think the great thing is to awaken the child, the mind of the child, the imagination of the child, to give it a light, to respect, not spoil, its own identity, and it will soon finds its way, because life itself is a process of educating the universe. Well, that is not the modern trend, it's all to rational now, and of course this is not education, it is blinding, this hubris of the mind, of the rational. It is a kind of not loving, of not caring. When the human being loses interest in the child, s/he is in great peril because more and more children are being thrown into schools, into the hands of professionals. People give them money and material things instead of giving them what they want - our love and imagination. That is, awakening their imaginations to the experience of love. Once you've done that you can leave it, it will take care of itself. The education of the parents is really the education of the child: children tend to live what is unlived in the parents, so it is vital that parents should be aware of their inferior, their dark side and should press on getting to know themselves. To the extent to which they emancipate their shadows, they set their children free to be themselves. So in this sense, it is the education or re-education of the parents which should be our main concern."

- Laurens van der Post - A Walk with a White Bushman - 1986 penguin Books, p.49 -

Finding our destiny, as explained by Paulo Coelho

OK, let me state upfront, generally I enjoy reading Paulo Coelho, however, the other day I get a Warrior of the Light email written by Paulo on the subject of having patience and courage to wait for your life's purpose, your destiny to be revealed. This I am ok with, but his story to support his claim I am less easy with. Apparently "our destiny is manifesting itself in a way we are not able to fully comprehend. Jorge Luís Borges wrote a masterly short story about this issue. He describes the birth of a tiger that spends a great part of its life in the African wildness but ends up being captured and taken to a zoo in Italy. From then on, the animal thinks his life has lost sense and there is nothing left to do but wait for the day he dies. One fine day, poet Dante Alighieri passes by this zoo, looks at the tiger, and the animal inspires a verse – in the midst of thousands of verses – of "The Divine Comedy." "The entire battle for survival that tiger went through was only so that it could be at the zoo on that morning and inspire an immortal verse,” says Borges."

Someone please explain to me why a tiger should lead a life so far removed from its innate nature and might I humbly add its purpose (destiny) so that one human being, even if they happen to be a person of huge poetic presence, can wander by and be inspired to write a verse on purgatory or hell for the benefit of other human beings. How anthropocentric is that???? First why can't Dante use his vast imagination or might I add his or someone else's life experience to inspire his poetry? Two, if you asked a tiger what they would chose; death or a zoo? - hum, I'll leave you decide on that one. Three, the tiger's battle for survival, for what, to be the walking dead for another day in a zoo - am I missing something here? I can't see how any form of cruelty or incarceration of an animal for human entertainment or even for the purpose of transcendent poetry is valid. The tiger has a far greater intrinsic right to be left alone to be a tiger, whatever that might be, than to serve some human benefit (in my opinion).

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

- Alfred Tennyson -
First Published 1842