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.

Inspiration

Love is the single most difficult part of life because it is the source of all that is good and all that is painful and cruel. When on the receiving end of the harsher aspects of love, life is at its most challenging, difficult and transformative. From darkness can come light, hope and the eventual fulfilment of our dreams. Of all the painful and cruel happenings hold onto the sense of light and love that are surrounding and within, and you will shine in new ways beyond your imagination.

Excerpt from Mental Flight by Ben Okri

You can't remake the world

Without remaking yourself.

Each new era begins within.

It is an inward event,

With unsuspected possibilities

For inner liberation.

We could use it to turn on

Our inward lights.

We could use it to use even the dark

And negative things positively.

We could use the new era

To clean our eyes,

To see the world differently,

To see ourselves more clearly.

Only free people can make a free world.

Infect the world with your light.

Help fulfill the golden prophecies.

Press forward the human genius.

Our future is greater than our past.

And because we have too much information,
And no clear direction;
Too many facts,
Too much confusion,
And crave clear vision;
Too many fears,
And not enough light –
I whisper to myself modest maxims
As thought friends for a new age.
See clearly, think clearly.
Face pleasant and unpleasant truths;
Face reality.
Free the past.
Catch up with ourselves.
Never cease from upward striving.
We are better than we think.
Don’t be afraid to love, or be loved.
As within, so without.
We owe life abundant happiness.

According to Nalungiaq, an Inuit woman

In the very earliest time
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if s/he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen-
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That's the way it was.

in, David Abram 'The Spell of the Sensuous', 1996, Vintage Books, p.87

Autumn Walk

Cocooned in wool

One step follows another.
Down dale, over stile
Soothing water below.
Burnt orange, mustard yellow
Glint in the eye,
Wrapped in the song
Of the Robin.
Tinged by smoke of logs
The village fades.
Spring-backed gates
Reveal lush green fields.
There spy wary Hardwicks
And nonchalent Frescians,
I cocooned in wool
Follow one step to another.

Where is the love?

"What's wrong with the world, mama. People livin' like they ain't got no mamas. I think the whole world addicted to the drama. Only attracted to things that'll bring you trauma. Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism, but we still got terrorists here livin'. In the USA, the big CIA, the Bloods and the Crips and the KKK, but if you only have love for your own race, then you only leave space to discriminate, and to discriminate only generates hate, and when you hate then you're bound to get irate, yeah. Madness is what you demonstrate, and that's exactly how anger works and operates. Man, you gotta have love just to set it straight. Take control of your mind and meditate. Let your soul gravitate to the love, y'all. People killin', people dyin' children hurt and you hear them cryin'. Can you practice what you preach? And would you turn the other cheek? Father, Father, Father help us. Send some guidance from above. Cause people got me, got me questionin' 'Where is the love?' It just ain't the same, always unchanged. New days are strange, is the world insane? If love and peace is so strong why are there pieces of love that don't belong? Nations droppin' bombs. Chemical gasses fillin' lungs of little ones with ongoin' sufferin' as the youth die young. So ask yourself is the lovin' really gone? So I could ask myself really what is goin' wrong? In this world that we livin' in people keep on givin'in. Makin' wrong decisions, only visions of them dividends. Not respectin' each other, deny thy brother. A war is goin' on but the reason's undercover. The truth is kept secret, it's swept under the rug. If you never know truth then you never know love. Where's the love, y'all, come on (I don't know). I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder. As I'm gettin' older, y'all, people gets colder. Most of us only care about money makin'. Selfishness got us followin' our wrong direction. Wrong information always shown by the media. Negative images is the main criteria. Infecting the young minds faster than bacteria. Kids wanna act like what they see in the cinema. Yo', whatever happened to the values of humanity? Whatever happened to the fairness in equality? Instead of spreading love we're spreading animosity. Lack of understanding, leading lives away from unity. That's the reason why sometimes I'm feelin' under. That's the reason why sometimes I'm feelin' down. There's no wonder why sometimes I'm feelin' under. Gotta keep my faith alive till love is found. Now ask yourself, where is the love? One world, we only got one world, one world, that's all we got. The Black Eyes Peas.

Listen to the Trees

Do you know that trees talk?

Well they do.

They talk to each other,

and they'll talk to you if you listen.

Trouble is white people don't listen.

They never learned to listen to the Indians,

so I don't suppose they'll listen to other voices in nature.

But I have learned a lot from trees:

sometimes about the weather,

sometimes about animals,

sometimes about the Great Spirit.

- Walking Buffalo (1871-1967), Stoney-

I am!

I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am - I live - though I am tossed

Into nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that's dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange - nay, they are stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod -
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept -
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So, let me lie -
The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.

John Clare (1793-1864)

Undiscovered

I look at you, you bite your tongue
You don't know why or where I'm coming from

But in my head I'm close to you

We're in the rain still searching for the sun.

You think that I want to run and hide

That I keep it all locked up inside

But I just want you to find me.

I'm not lost; not lost, just UNDISCOVERED

And when we're alone

We are all the same as each other.

You see the look that's on my face

You might think that I'm out of place

I'm not lost no, no, just UNDISCOVERED.

Well the time it takes to know someone

It all can change before you know it's gone

So close your eyes and feel the way

I'm going with you now

Believe there's nothing wrong.

I'm not running.

I'm not hiding,

But if you dig a little deeper,

You will find me.

-James Morrison-

Strange

"Webs of events that grew together to become a net in life. Life was a thing that grew wild. She supposed there was an overall pattern, a design to it.

She'd never found one.

She thought of the tools she had gathered together, and painstakingly learned to use. Futureprobes, Tarot and I Ching and the wise wispfingers from the stars ... all these to scry and ferret and vex the smokethink future. A broad general knowledge, encompassing bits of history, psychology, ethology, religious theory and practices of many kinds. Her charts of self-knowledge. Her library. The inner thirst for information about everything that had lived or lives on Earth that she'd kept alive long after childhood had ended.

None of them helped make sense of living.

She watched the sealight grow."

Keri Hulme, The Bone People, p.111

Authentic Power

"It's hard to know what authentic power is; we've had so few examples of it. For so long power has been a matter of control and dominion, the thing that keeps people up and others down, the blood that feeds the hierarchy.

The kind of power women need is not ruthless, controlling, self-serving, dominion-seeking power - power without benefit of love. It is not staying up by keeping others down. What we need is a potent, forceful power, yes, but one that is also compassionate, that enables others as well.

'The true representation of power is not a big man beating a small man or woman,' Carolyn Heilbrun writes. Nor is it a woman beating up on a man or finding a place in the hierarchy and mimicking the old patriarchal ways on entitlement, control, and command. Rather, Heilbrun says, power is 'the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter'."

Sue Monk Kidd (2002) The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Harper, San Francisco, p.199

Maya Angelou tells it like it is ...

No matter what has been done to the oppressed, no matter how long we have been on our knees, no matter the injustice, no matter, for in the end we will find away and we will rise. BE ASSURED WE ... WILL ... RISE ...

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Travelling

Travelling …

On your journey
You have choices, responsibilities
There right in front of you
Everyday, never going away

Foot-steps you take maybe a mistake
Or maybe they’re where you’re meant to be
Right here, right now
Sit for awhile, take in the view and smile

Moving on the search or discovery
Night and day, summer or spring
Chances pass by to be taken, or not
Hear the song

Jump into the future, grab change
Accentuate the infinite possible thought
All the way until its gone, gone, gone
Travelling …

Abbot Dr. Burkhard Ellegast, OSB

"We tend to want to capture things because we usually see freedom as something that has no borders or responsibilities. And because of this we also end up trying to enslave all that we love – as if egoism were the only way to keep our world well balanced. Love does not limit, it broadens our horizons, we can see clearly what lies outside and we can see even more clearly the dark places in our heart."

I am the Song of Amergin

I am the wind which breaths upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rock,
i am a beam of the sun,
I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance in battle,
I am the God who creates in the head the fire.
Who is it who throws the light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon?
Who teaches the place where crouches the sun?

Bring on the revolution ...

... it's all about the love.

"Paulo Freire says, 'I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love'. He goes onto quote the enigmatic Che Guevara, who wrote in Venceremos: 'Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality'. Freire then states a truth that is the utmost importance and, for the campaigning activist, the greatest challenge. He says:

This then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.

'All life entails violence', says Gandhi. We cannot walk across a field of grass without causing hurt to the creatures that live there. However, he concludes, our duty is to minimise the violence we personally exert. And to forgive and ask forgiveness: for as William Blake says, 'The cut worm forgives the plough.' Mutual continual forgiveness liberates the ongoing expression of life.

Hearing truth spoken inevitably troubles the chrome-plated peace of the oppressor. Stirring things up like this, however, is a duty, even an act of love. If done right, which is so hard to acheive as to be rare, it will speak to the oppressor's own deep self as well as on behalf of those who they oppress. A social activist cannot expect to be loved by the ego of the oppressor. But if they fail to speak to and remember the soul, then that activist will fail in the greater work that liberation is about."

Alistair McIntosh, Soil and Soul, Autum Press, 2002, p.277

What matters?

In the 'Secret Life of Bees' Sue Monk Kidd writes, "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the colour of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart - now, that matters. The whole problem with people is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."

"You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside."

"When you're unsure of yourself, when you start pulling back into doubt and small living, she's the one inside saying, 'Get up from there and live like the glorious girl you are.' She's the power inside of you. And whatever it is that keeps widening your heart, that's her too, not only the power inside you but the love. And when you get down to it, Lily, that's the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love - but to persist in love."

Winnie-the-Pooh I Love You

Us Two

Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,

There's always Pooh and Me.

Whatever I do, he wants to do,

"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:

"Well that's very odd 'cos I was too.

"Let's go together," says Pooh, says he.

"Let's go together," says Pooh.

'What's twice eleven?' I said to Pooh,

('Twice what?' said Pooh to Me)'

I think it ought to be twenty-two.

''Just what I think my self,' said Pooh.

'It wasn't an easy sum to do,

But that's what it is,' said Pooh, said he.

'That's what it is,' said Pooh.

'Let's look for dragons,' I said to Pooh.

'Yes, let's,' said Pooh to Me.

We crossed the river and found a few--

'Yes, these are dragons all right,' said Pooh.

'As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.

That's what they are,' said Pooh, said he.

'That's what they are,' said Pooh.

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,

There's always Pooh and Me.

'What would I do?' I said to Pooh,

'If it wasn't for you,' and Pooh said:

'True,it isn't much fun for One, but Two

Can stick together,' says Pooh, says he.

'That's how it is,' says Pooh.

- A A Milne -

Trees Need Hugs Too!

The Wishing Tree
by Kathleen Jamie

I stand neither in the wilderness
nor fairyland

but in the fold
of a green hill

the tilt from one parrish
into another.

To look at me
through a smirr of rain

is to taste the iron
in your own blood

because I hoard
the common currency

of longing: each wish
each secret assignation.

My limbs lift, scabbed
with greenish coins

I draw into my slow wood
fleur-de-lys, the enthroned Britannia.

Behind me, the land
reaches towards the Atlantic.

And though I'm poisoned
choking on the small change

of human hope,
daily beaten into me

look: I'm still alive -
in fact, in bud.

Trust In The Process

Brian Keenan met a women whilst travelling in Alaska, "she spoke of worlds that are hidden from the eye. Such worlds are often difficult to reveal, and many a life is lived in the shadows from a lack of such validation, but when we live close to our intutitions and emotions we can if we wish find companions in the strangest places" (Four Quarters of Light, p.112).

Ask yourself this ...

Where has all the wisdom gone?

Huston Smith said 'we have never been so informed and never more confused about what is important'. In the modern world we have technology, such as the Internet, which maybe an excellent tool, a vehicle for transporting data, information and ideas, but it is nothing without content and even less without a filter or screen to devine the knowledge and wisdom that will point us to what is important. The more content, the more information we have the more we become overloaded, lost, ignorant and confused.

You can go all the way back to 1934 and the words of T S Eliot in the poem 'The Rock' to hear more or less the same message;

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

Risky Business

... you wanna know something?

Every now and then say,"What the fuck."

"What the fuck" gives you freedom.

Freedom brings opportunity.

Opportunity makes your future.

Beloved Sisters

Sisters are such special people. They can out think, out do and love us better than anyone in the world. They stand with us in difficult times, and talk to us with loving words to lift us up. The Cherokee call these special people - beloved sisters. Sisters never complain when we get lost in time and space; never forget to welcome us home. Sisters don't have to be blood kin; for what does that matter when the relationship is stronger than ancestry. Love transcends so many dry places and makes us family by choice. What could be better than to be a beloved sister?

- Sent to me by my beloved sister Hayley and now passed on to you -

Have you ever had that thought that whatever you do it won't turn out right or it won't be as you expected? Never fear failure or be defeated by its possibility. It is from our mistakes and the things that go wrong in life that some of our greatest lessons and opportunities emerge. Samuel Beckett writing in Westward Ho (1983) summed it up perfectly: "All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

The Purpose of Myths

... is to tell us to follow our bliss, to adventure forth, take the challenge and to find one's Essence. To remind us that life is to be experienced. It's a journey; a transformative journey. As the Sufi philospoher A H Almaas says, "This level of experience is so deep and profound, so full and packed with a live significance, so moving and so powerful that it is not possible to communicate it in words. Words can describe some aspects of the experience, but they fail actually to deliver the whole impact. Words can communicate the experience to somebody who already has had it or is right on the verge of it. But not to somebody who does not know" (Quoted in Houston, J. A Mystic Life, p.123).

We are in need of new myths to help us understand the coming planetary civilisation, women in full partnership with men, the world connected through media, the new understanding of human capacities like our ability to play God with biological and ecological systems. Without a planetary mythology we fall further into chaos and violence until finally we will self-destruct out of a sense of meaninglessness. Who brings this new myth? Those who are awakened to the imagination, to the invisible - the artists and poets and the dancers. The way of the artist is to join their craft to their imagination in order to speak to the world they live in and the conditions of that world. Campbell argues, we no longer live in societies within a bounded field of geography or culture. Today there are no boundaries. The only mythology that is valid today is the mythology of the planet - and we don't have such a mythology (Campbell, J. The Power of Myth).

The Greatest Thing ...

Nature Boy

There was a boy

A very strange, enchanted boy

They say he wandered very far

Very far, over land and sea

A little shy and sad of eye

But very wise was he
And then one day,

One magic day he passed my way

While we spoke of many things

Fools and Kings

This he said to me
The greatest thing you'll ever learn

Is just to love and be loved in return.

- Eden Ahbez - 1948 -

Desperately Seeking Someone

Do you know what it is like to be alone
By Yourself
No one home
Going insane
Racking your brain
No boyfriend
No child
Don't care for the wild
But you know in a while you'll become like a child
Sucking your thumb
No one will come
To save you from the sadness
Madness
Loneliness
They won't help you up or fill up your cup
So you do it yourself
Don't trust no one else
Keeping it real but your soul won't heal
So you do it to them
Till they know how you feel

by Tweezer

Pub in: Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew by Bernard Hare, p.161

DRINK YOUR TEA

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,

as if it is the axis

on which the world earth revolves

- slowly, evenly,

without rushing toward the future;

Live the actual moment.

Only this moment is life.

- Thich Nhat Hahn -

Mythos and Logos

"We are myth making creatures and, during the twentieth century, we saw some very destructive modern myths, which have ended in massacre and genocide. These myths have failed ... They have not been infused with the spirit of compassion, respect for the sacredness of all life, or with what Confucius called 'leaning'. These destructive mythologies have been narrowly racial, ethnic, denominational and egotistic, an attempt to exalt the self by demonising others. Any such myth has failed modernity, which has created a global village in which all human beings now find themselves in the same predicament. We cannot counter these bad myths with reason alone, because undiluted logos cannot deal with such deep-rooted, unexorcised fears, desires and neuroses. That is the role of an ethically and spiritually informed mythology.

• We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national and ideological tribe.
• We need myths that help us to realise the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive of efficient in our pragmatic, rational world.
• We need myths that help us to create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness.
• We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a 'resource'.

This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet."

Karen Armstrong (2005) A Short History of Myth, Canongate, Edinburgh, p.142-143.

The Other Side of You

"It is hard to account for the common human resistance to happiness, unless it is that we would rather be crippled by what we lack than risk the pain that is one potential consequence of placing our secret selves in other's hands. The desire to be loved is as basic a need as the desire for food or drink. But to take delight in being loved requires nerve. For where life is most ardently awakened it can be most excruciatingly extinguished and the fear of that possibility can tragically become the wet blanket which smothers the sacred flame."

- Salley Vickers -

Stress Response

Researchers have developed a new model to expand our understanding of how people respond to stress. The 'fight or flight' theory has been the domiant model for explaining stress responses was derived from research based on the reactions of men only. When women were added to the research sample a new reaction was discovered. The first new model to describe people's stress response patterns in more than 60 years is called "tend-and-befriend". It proposes that women generally respond to stressful situations by protecting themselves and their young through nurturing behaviors--the "tend" part of the model--and forming alliances with a larger social group, particularly among women--the "befriend" part of the model. In contrast, the researchers suggest, men generally stick more to the fight-or-flight response. As we all have male and female aspects to our psyche there will be times when we want to fight or flee and there will be times when we prefer to tend or mend relationships.

Azar, B. (2000) 'A new stress paradigm for women', Monitor, vol.31 no.7 http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug00/stress.html

Dream On ...

"The decline of proletarian humanism is not a crucial experience which invalidates the whole of Marxism. It is still valid as a critique of the present world and alternative humanisms. In this respect, at least, it can not be surpassed. Even if it is incapable of shaping world history, it remains powerful enough to discredit other solutions. On close consideration, Marxism is not just any hypothesis that might be replaced tomorrow by some other. It is the simple statement of those conditions without which there would be neither any humanism, in the sense of a mutual relation between men, nor any rationality in history. In this sense Marxism is not a philosophy of history; it is the philosophy of history and to renounce it is to dig the grave of Reason in history. After that there can be no more dreams or adventures."

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1980) Humanism and Terror, Greenwood Press, Westport, p.153. First published in 1947.

REMEMBER

Now and again

Stop the clock

Ditch the mobile

Switch off the TV

Grab your friends

The ones you love

Open your door

Dodge the traffic

AND

Take to the open-road

Follow a rainbow

Head for the hills

Go far until you

See the colours

Feel the breeze

Say hello to a sheep

Hug a tree

Spy a kestrel

Jump a stream

Russell the leaves

THEN

Find a clearing

Light a fire

Heat the beans

Sup a cuppa

Toast marshmallows

Sit awhile

Tell a story

Sing a song

FEEL

The tension ease

Smile

Be

YOU ARE BACK TO NATURE