Healing Heart

Just when the

caterpillar

thought the

world was over,

it became

a butterfly.

Both Sides Now

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way

But now its just another show
You leave em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's loves illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well somethings lost, but somethings gained
In living every day

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

- Joni Mitchell -

Head Heart Hand

It was reassuring to listen to Professor Alastair McIntosh this week. We perceive the world in similar ways. In response to issues like climate change he says 'hold the vision and don't dislocate yourself from the society you are trying to effect change'. He didn't think dropping out to some far off place was the solution, instead he suggested there was a need to take up the challenge and find holistic ways to integrate head, heart and hand and to engage people around you.

There are different ways of understanding head, heart, hand. Some see it as knowledge and the reasoning of the head, such as science, technology, economics, politics; combined with courage of the heart, sometimes known as the psyche, as in psychological to mean spirit; allied to the activism of the hand. The head, heart, hand motto came from the Arts and Crafts movement; 'Head' for creativity and imagination, 'Hand' for skill and craft, 'Heart' for honesty and for love.

Alastair's presentation was about climate change, his argument being that politics, technology and economics represented by the head, cannot solve the problem we face on its own. We also need to engage the heart and the hand. By doing this we will build relationships with empathy that feel good. By tackling climate change in this way, joining politics with spirit and action we make it personal and we journey within. If we stay at the level of the head we will keep consuming and remain apathetic to the world around us and the emptiness this creates will never be removed.

This thesis echoes that of reconnecting mythos and logos. Logos represents facts, reason and science. Mythos represents the deeper structure of reality and holds this deep reality of the universe together. By reconnecting with the mystical each person can connect themselves at the soul level to all that is around them. We then understand that the harm or exploitation we do to others we are ultimately doing to ourselves. And in there lies the key to a new reality, to the building of new relationships with the other and to change.

Beannacht

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the curach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may they come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so a slow
wind works these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

by

John O'Donohue

Right up to the moon - and back

If I lay here, if I just lay here,
Would you lay with me?
And just forget the world.






Those three words are said too much,
They're not enough.
All that I am,
All that I ever was,
Is here in your perfect eyes.

Questioning Days ...

We cannot let fear of making mistakes keep us from finding what we can do.

Only those who do nothing can avoid making a mistake - and even then, idleness is a mistake.

The first step is hardest.

But with every effort, the potential increases and confidence gathers.

When we waver, it is natural instinct questioning if we are on safe ground - and whether we should go on.

It is at our point of greatest questioning we should go on.

It is at our point of greatest questioning that we should gather our faith and force and move into new higher levels of self-confidence.

Nothing can stop us when we know we have what it takes.

Our reward is not just winning alone, but the new reservoir of strength and spirit that is our resolve to do better and better.

-Cherokee-

Star, Star, Shining Bright

All the stars are coming out tonight
They’re lighting up the sky tonight
For you

For You

You light the skies up above me
A star so bright you blind me
Don’t close your eyes

Don’t fade away

Don't fade away

Beirut

Beirut

Awesome Band

Amazing Sound

www.beirutband.com

www.myspace.com/beruit

Listen to the track "Nantes"

Self and Other

We all have a personal decision to make;
To reclaim compassion or not.
You can make feeling with the other personal.
Listen to the other.
Feel their emotions be it joy, love, fear or pain.
The other should not and cannot be ignored forever.
Listen carefully.
If you were in their place you may feel the same.
From there you can build a relationship and seek understanding.
From the point of compassion reconciliation and peace can begin.

This Year

One day we're talking

The next it stops

Our connection parted

Clouds drifting

Memories racing unbound

No propitious explanation

To sooth a restless soul

All's lost in this place

Until on high a rainbow

Appears smiling in the sky

Shining down a sign

On both sides now

Lifting the veil to reveal

A momentary state of grace

A new reality

Love expands

Leaving a space

In my heart

For you

Who is standing in the way of the life-sustaining society?

Businessman and corporate consultant Robert Greenleaf has a sobering answer;

"Not evil people. Not stupid people. Not apathetic people. Not the 'system'. Not the ... reactionaries. The better society will come, if it comes, with plenty of evil, stupid, apathetic people around and with an imperfect, ponderous and inefficient 'system' as the vehicle for change. Liquidate the offending people, radically alter or destroy the system and in less than a generation they will all be back.
The real enemy is fuzzy thinking on the part of good, intelligent and vital people and their failure to lead. Too many of us settle for being critics and experts. There is too much intellectual wheel spinning, too much retreating into research, too little preparation for and willingness to undertake the hard and high risk tasks of building better institutions in an imperfect world, too little to see the problem as residing 'in here' and not 'out there'. In short the enemy is good people who have the potential to lead but do not lead. They suffer, society suffers."


Quoted in 'Developing Ecological Consciousness' by Christopher Uhl (p.348)

We were made for these times ...

Extracts from an article by Tanna Jakubowicz-Mount in The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 2005, Volume 24 p.90-91.

http://www.transpersonalstudies.org/volume_24_2005.html

Czech president Vaclav Havel, speaking at Harvard University, said, “I am persuaded again and again that, lying dormant in the deepest roots of most, if not all, cultures there is an essential similarity, something that could be made—if the will to do so existed— a genuinely unifying starting point for that new code of human coexistence that would be firmly anchored in the great diversity of human traditions” (1995).

A saying attributed to the Hopi Indians says, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

How can we respond to this situation?

1. Promoting the renaissance of holistic culture, drawing from old spiritual traditions, cultivating the real nature of man as a manifestation of the true nature of all creation, reclaiming the sacredness of life and death;

2. Enhancing the evolution of humankind from homo tribus to homo holos. The tribal human is preoccupied mostly with the tribal drives of the first three chakras—basically having to do with territory and survival. The holistic human is able to raise awareness to the heart and the crown chakra level, and embrace the entire Earth community;

3. Inspiring new women’s movements to reclaim feminine power and wisdom, and to bring in more love and respect for the Earth and all living beings;

4. Developing the politics of awareness, fostering a new sense of planetary consciousness that is interfaith and multicultural;

5. Supporting culture and communication without violence; and

6. Co-creating a new code of co-existence based on the values that underlie the great spiritual traditions.

The Story of Our Times

"The universe is a commune of subjects, not a collection of objects."

Thomas Berry

We live inside a story and that is the story of the universe. It is as much a part of us as we are a part of it. There is no separation, therefore, what we do to another we do to ourselves. If we are sacred, all is sacred. Our thoughts and actions should begin with communion and reverence. Listen to what the trees are telling you, what the birds are singing, the sights and sounds of all that is around. Reconnect with that that is in us all and that we share with all that is part of our universe. We are all one and the same only manifest in different forms. In that sense there are no beginnings or endings, simply remanifestations.