Sharing Yoga Inspiration

Hello,

I wanted to start sharing ideas with yoga students and teachers and opening up a discussion with you about different topics.

The idea started in conversation with two other yoga teachers and one asked 'how do you keep the classes fresh?' and 'how can you keep the student's engaged?'

I had a moment when I thought, but you're a teacher, you know. And then I realised what an assumption that was. Many teacher's teach what they have been taught, but when that has dried up your own interest, and you feel like you need inspiration, other people's perspective can help a lot.

So, here I am, offering my years of experience in teaching yoga, meditation and public speaking. Please feel free to comment, engage in conversation, ask questions.

The Day My Buddha Burned - Part Two

Here I am holding my big sisters' hands in the early 70's.

This is part of a novella. Here is the first exert of The Day My Buddha Burned 

Ideas like Building Blocks

We are like small children with coloured building blocks.  We sit there totally absorbed in placing one block on top of another and either because we haven’t placed our blocks well, or because we get fed up, the blocks fall and quite happily, and without questioning what we are doing at all, we rebuild. We often rebuild without seeming to learn anything from the last structure we built. We build without any view to an end point. We build until it collapses.

And then we start again.

The coloured building blocks are ideas and belief systems we individually construct within the walls of our minds.

We are all born with the building blocks before us. Some of the ideas we build are based on the blueprints handed down to us by our family, friends, society, culture and country, and others are drawn up in direct consequence of what we have perceived as positive/protective responses to life’s events.

Deconstruction and re-planning occur in the teenage years when our hormones coupled with an expansion of perception create some of the biggest conscious changes we have thus far been aware of. Many people don’t change their mental landscape again until their retirement.

However, for others, we have been forced by personality or circumstance, to abandon ideas housed within our minds and perhaps to put up temporary structures to aid us in different moments in life. Perhaps some of us can even be called nomads, resting in easily constructed rooms for comfort and being able to adapt according to the changing seasons.

I’ve written down some of the changes to my thinking in the past 40 years.

After Acceptance Comes the Plan to Regain Health

I've been writing about my failings as a fitness professional and my weight gain and feelings of depression. And that is all part of it, but it's not the only part.

Since the middle of December 2015 I've been taking vitamin d, vitamin b, iron Floridix, spray magnesium and white Kwao Krua.  

I've been sleeping better thanks to my daughter Lydia sleeping better.

I've increased my exercise time. Weight bearing exercises at least three times a week and play ground fun with Lydia a minimum of three times a week too. Plus what ever else I can fit in.

I've dropped the amount of bread and pastries I'm eating and although I'm still sneaking in a few, I go for the small bite and make sure I have a hearty healthy snack for the 6pm rage of hunger that overcomes me. I have also started planning our meals again, and increased fruit in the mornings and vegetables all day.

I started drinking coffee again.

I've started to limit my internet, especially in the evening and the mornings.

I've replaced normal hair dye with henna! This I'm so happy for.

I've begun to feel a lot better over all. I'm feeling good, energetic, started to get my apartment in order. Started my old Flylady routines. Overall, I'm feeling great.

I don't seem to be losing weight, but I'm ok with that for the moment. All I care about is feeling better, more energetic.

Over the next few weeks I'll write in detail about some of the changes I've incorporated and see if it's something you'd like to do too.

Thanks for your support.

30 Day Blogging Challenge - #Trust30

So yesterday I signed up for the 30 day challenge.

I initially started writing in my Catalonia Blogspot, but have just shifted over to this blog. I've reposted the first post from yesterday and am eagerly awaiting the second writing prompt.

Hope you enjoy the thirty days of writing. 

Facebook - Patheya

This is a link to the Patheya facebook  page.  

Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes | Video on TED.com

Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes | Video on TED.com

The Body Knows Better than the Mind?

SBS news: article on experiments on touch typists.

Sometimes the Simple Blogs in Life Are Often the Best

Dear Friends,

Every now and then, after reading up on a blog that I subscribe to or follow, I then click the ‘next blog’ option on Blogger.

Its amazing the amount of information available on the internet! The personal stories, the complaints, the inspiration, the criticism, the beauty and the transformational.

I found a relatively new blog and was touched by her story. I left a comment and I heard from the author just the other day. She wrote -

I guess I would have to simply say is that my blog is about finding who I am, after being a mother for the past 20 years and having my children leaving the house I have been faced with trying to find my passion. I am journaling my new found photography and art to keep track of how my journey begins and seeing if this is in fact who I really am. I am just a simple person finding her way to her own truth, because I believe when truth is found, calmness surrounds us. This is the reason why my blog was formed.

What a universal theme – expressed so simply.

I don’t know how her life was before she started the blog, but since she’s started journaling and embarking on this beautiful and challenging process of self knowledge – quite a number of amazing things are happening to her. One of them, not the least, was spotting FOUR bears on the side of the road – with photos to prove it.

Open up to the World, and look what She does. Dancing in the Moonlight. Leaping across Fields. Swimming in the Ocean. Twirling Around cause it feels Good. Live Life Love.

Thank you Vivian.

The Economic Crisis and Inner Withdrawal

Coming back to Europe, we hear on the television and amongst people we speak with stories about how the economic crisis has affected them.

We were in Australia when the crash announced itself, and have been travelling in South East Asia for the last four months. People there say that there are less tourists than last year.

There has been a slight increase in break ins and robberies around here (Granollers, Spain), and I expect that it’s a common effect of harder economic times across the world.

During this time, there is fear in the air. The media and the people you know are filled with the hardships approaching. It tends to create a reaction of withdrawal from activities within the community and especially from foreigners.

In times of hardship, it’s a time to pool together, not prise ourselves further apart. It’s a time to give, because there is obvious need under our own eyes. What ever we have, let’s forge strong links and share it. By sharing it, it increases. By holding on tight, we concentrate on our lack and our fears and create our own misery.

If we have a view of each other as brothers and sisters, we will help each other.

Somebody stole a mobile phone and a camera and fell to their death as a result while trying to escape.

How many of us have a spare mobile at home? How many of us have a camera, or two, that are not used? Would it make a difference to the people with less, if the richer gave a bit more. Perhaps its even worth giving, to help elevate your own fears of being robbed or discriminated against because you have more than enough.

Sharing increases your wealth. It spreads good will and peace, not just at Christmas, but all through the year.

Holding onto your fears, worrying and playing it ‘safe’ leads to withdrawal and increase in negativity. Let’s not invite more trouble than we already have.

My Possible Avatar

I loved this one too! :)

Happiness - the destroyer of creativity?

Its occurred to me that when I’m at my happiest, I feel the least need to express how I feel.
Is this universal?

Is all the writing, art and expression of the world just some clawing and screaming from the sad and sorry lot of us who are dissatisfied?

If Buddha was born Buddha, then he wouldn’t have gone searching for something else.. He would have just sat and smiled and that would have been that.

If Hitler was happy, he’d have just stayed home…

If I was already a tolerant and loving and happy person, I wouldn’t have studied and searched out yoga and meditation and Taoism and philosophy and ‘god’. I would have already been happy with what I was doing, and left it all alone for someone else.

Are there examples of happy people, who are not reformed unhappy people, expressing themselves?

The self help books – they are all like reformed smokers books… Reformed smokers are the biggest enemies of smokers. They HATE other smokers… especially in those early months of giving up… And they will tell everyone the pitfalls of smoking… and all of these people (including me) write and write and write and have a lot to say.

So the self help books, and people in the early days of their reformed characters, are the loudest and most annoying and insisting of speakers on how to be ‘helped’. But are they happy, actually?

When I’m my most calm. When I’m my most happy. When I’m my most ‘at one’ with myself and the world – then… there is just that. And I don’t want to say anything.

The Cache Syndrome

The Cache Syndrome

Humans suffer from what I would term the ‘cache syndrome’.

In effect, it means that ideas that have been formed in the past become lodged in the mind. These ideas seem to be coming from an indisputable main memory. However, the ideas are only coming from the cache. A temporary location to store ideas that have happened in the past that will help us to live in the future.

The problem arises when we forget to occasionally clear the cache and we accept the formed ideas as concrete reality.

An example of the Cache Syndrome
When Lisa was a little girl, her mother told her that short hair suited her best. (The mother said this because she had four daughters and she didn’t want to have the trouble of maintaining four manes of hair every morning and night, not to mention her own)
Lisa grew up with the idea that short hair suited her best. This idea went into her cache. And there it stayed, without review, until she was 35 years old. A friend of Lisa commented that she’d never seen her with long hair. As Lisa began to say ‘but I look so much better with short hair’ it occurred to her that she, in fact, didn’t know how she looked with long hair, so she wasn’t sure.
This was the beginning of Lisa emptying the cache of information tagged ‘Lisa looks better with short hair’.

The cache syndrome effects all of us on some level or another. Sometimes for quite insignificant ideas, and sometimes for ones that can hurt us for a life time.

Cache’s worth clearing
Any part of your life that brings you unhappiness, disappointment, frustration or anger – its worth taking a look at the ideas surrounding your hurt.

What do you expect from your relationships? – do you still believe what you believed before? Has your ideas changed? And why?
What does it mean to be successful?
How much do you need to ‘own’ before you are ‘happy’?
When is ‘family’ time?
Children need indulgence, not independence. What’s your ideas? Where do they come from? Has life changed you since you were a teenager, or do you still hold the same beliefs your parents gave you? Is it time to review them?

Good luck in your discovery.

My relationship the symbol of ANZAC

“My relationship to the ANZAC” in response to the question ‘what is the meaning of ANZAC to you personally?’

Its not so simple. Its all tied up to a certain ‘coming of age’ experience I’ve been avoiding for most of my life.

For more details of what happened, you can read it here – http://dragonflies-draw-flame.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-i-lost-my-innocence.html

Basically, after running for 35 years of my life, I discovered another shade to the meaning of responsibility.

I wanted to engage in an aware, responsible, adult relationship with my country. I wanted to become a contributing member of our society. Someone who put their action where there bad tempered mumbling once was.

Though, when it came to the idea of ANZAC, I had to revise what I had previously thought.

I remember marching when I was under 6, drumming in the early morning parade for the local RSL. You had to be quiet for a whole minute. And stock still. While the drum sticks wanted to keep drumming.

I recoiled from ANZAC day parades as I grew older, seeing them as a celebration and reminder of aspects of white Australia that I didn’t like.

Racism, aggression, short sightedness, ignorance, blindly being pawns of political power, mindless Aussie cheering, arrogance united with stupidity.

Here I am, on my rediscovery of Australia, ready to reveal a new meaning for ANZAC day.

I don’t want to take away from the past. I want to try to understand, in the context of the times, the motivation, the patriotism, and the feelings of sacrifice associated with war. I don’t want to judge people for what has happened. I just want to say I remember, I’m sorry for it, it’s a SHARED history and it has made our present. We need to learn from the past and forge a new path to move into the future.

We were in the Cloncurry Library when I picked up a book entitled The Last ANZAC’s. Lest we forget, written and photographed by Tony Stephens and Steven Stewert. In it, I read words that gave me hope and inspired me to write positively of my new understanding of ANZAC day.

The Last ANZAC’s.

Doug Dibley ‘It does deem to be to be a peculiar world in which we live when we can not think of any other way of settling disputes, without murdering one another.’

Tom Epps ‘The are not days about the glory of war or about Nationalism, but a lesson in the futility of war. I was brainless, but I’m not sorry I went. It taught me how stupid the politicians and military can be. They were boneheads. The 1914-18 war was a mass murder. 99% of war is stupid.’

‘If there is no other way of settling arguments, the human race should be exterminated.’

Roy Kyle ‘Empires come and go. Enemies become friends, friends become enemies. Everything changes. Little lasts.’

Roy Longmore ‘They’re no good, these wars. A lot of lives lost, no use at all. There’s got to be another way of fixing up these rows without killing each other.’

Ted Mathews (famously) ‘Some people call us ‘five-bob-a-day’ murderers, but the politicians were the murderers. Politicians make up the wars. They don’t go to them.’

Jack Buntime – His ‘early life taught him the value of the family’.

Alec Campbell – He ‘insisted that all his children receive good educations and grow up to think for them selves’.

Just as a child grows, so does a country. Just as we mimic our elders, so does the country look to older models as a guide on how to be a nation. And just as the child grows into adult hood and develops the need to express itself in its own way, so does the people of each country. And we have the voice. We have the freedom, if we choose it, to learn from the mistakes of the past, and to create a new way of ‘settling arguments’, ‘fixing up rows’, ‘settling disputes’.

We can learn. We can shake our head to our parents and say, no, I don’t want to follow your footsteps any more. Our parents might threaten us, they might bully us, they might take away our privileges, but it’s the right of a growing nation to take the blows happily, knowing that every step it takes in a new direction, on its own, it gains freedom and learning and respect.

Its ok to admit we were wrong. Its ok to start again, to try again, and make it better this time.

But learn from the past we must. Don’t let their lives be a waste. Learn from what they have said. Find new ways to talk about our differences.

And it starts with you. And with me. Violence in the home, in the school yard, in the work place, in the pubs. Commit to ‘another way’ to settle arguments. Explore channels of communication. What works? What doesn’t? How many people have to die because they should learn their lesson?

Their history is our history, weather we take heed of it or not. I just want to say I acknowledge what went on, and I’m sorry for it. Our combined understanding and voice can make a difference.

The above was written as a response to a personal query I received. I have used edited material from a previous post http://journals.worldnomads.com/allwelcome/post/18563.aspx I wrote earlier this year.

Passion and Ration

Some guidelines for dealing with the passion with a dash of ration.

“The unfortunate thing about passionate subjects such as patriotism is that some people can tend to become defensive if they perceive their values are being attacked.” *

Let’s admit it. We want everyone to agree with us and to believe what we say without criticism.

Then we get a little more experience, and discover that the ideals and the beliefs we held so dear when we were teenagers, have, thankfully, been toned down with experience and a better understanding of the complexities of life.

Age is a high price to pay for maturity.

Some points to consider before engaging in discussion

1) Are you offering your opinions so that other people can discuss them?

2) Do you just want to have your say?

3) Will you be offended if someone disagrees with you, or offers another opinion?

4) Why are you on a group called ‘debate’, if you just want to shout from a megaphone?

5) ? I’m sure there are lots of other points and you are welcome to point them out.


What are values?

Values are the things we hold dear to us. They are valuable. They are the words we say when we see our friends and family in dire straights, when we see injustice on the TV and we suffer over because often, they don’t really mirror the reality of the world we live in.

Values undergo change, depending on how much money we have, depending on how much we want it, depending on what our friends think, depending on what era we are born in, depending on, well, many things.

If values can change so much, where is the inherent truth in them, and why do we give them so much importance?

If we can perceive our values are attacked, we become defensive. Its true, isn’t it? So, if we know, that our values have changed in our own life time, and would have changed depending on if we were born a Turk, or born a German Jew in 1925, if you were born in any one else’s shoes other than your own, then… we can see that there are many things that can attack our value system, and no wonder we feel so defensive all of the time. Because everything is challenging us all of the time. Isn’t it?

So, how can we win?

By being aware. By being tolerant, and realizing that not everything can be won by screaming. Screaming it louder than anyone else doesn’t make it right. It just makes it annoying.

Discussion, where there is a civil volley of response, is ideal. Sometimes I serve, some times you serve. Sometimes you floor me with an ace, and sometimes I bamboozle you with technique. Its all ok. Its just words.

Remember, you can’t shake hands with a clenched fist.

Comments welcome.

* Written to me in private correspondance

How I lost my innocence

For some reason, I knew that traveling around Australia was going to be the breaking point for me. Perhaps that’s why I left 12 years ago – to avoid the mantle of responsibility.

I’ve traveled around little pockets of the world, but I didn’t see how its existence was my concern. It existed before me. It was doing its thing without any interference from me. I was just taking a look.

I’ve heard the stereotypes about Australia. The legend of Steve Irwin. The horror of our creepy crawlies. The wonder of Kylie. Aussie girls rule. Oh, and aren’t we a racist lot?

I keep trying to pin point the exact moment everything fell apart. The sudden jolt of awareness that shifted my perspective and destroyed my unadulterated joy in shopping, in music, in eating, in driving in a car, in relationships, in the meaning of life and the purpose of my existence.

Of course, there is not just one point… the more I look at it, I can see the seed being sown some 20 years before. The seed has just outgrown its case and needed a different nutrient for its growth.

About two months ago, I read an essay written by Edmund Burke. In it, I read these words

‘society is indeed a contract …. It is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all art; a partnership in all virtue, and in all perfection..... each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world…..’

I threw the book down. I felt my head burning. I turned to my partner and started yelling obscenities because I felt abused, robbed, shocked and outraged.

I was reading Burke because C.W. Parkin wrote ‘Burke … believes that the world is a unity, that society, for all its complexity, its heights and depths, forms part of a harmony of nature.’

I’m researching members of the different educational disciplines who view our world through the perspective of unity.

A great part of life consists in contemplating what we cannot
cure. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Burke’s words horrified me. To my way of thinking, it was inferring that the unwritten contract, that I was even unaware of, existed between me and the society I was, errr, mostly a bored, and at most, a disdainful observer and occasional mumble-complainer.

Me? In a contract with society? A relationship existed between us? An unwritten contract? Something that was just a given? Passed on from generation to generation? Why didn’t somebody spell this out to me? I spoke to my mother, and do you know what she said?

‘I don’t understand what you mean. If its not a written contract, its not worth the paper its written on. You can’t even tear it up. You’re talking tommy rot and you’ve been taken for a ride.’

But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. ~Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum


I look at her with a feeling of doom, I take a breath, and I explain the idea of an unwritten contract in words I hope she will understand. The ‘taking for granted’ of certain things in personal relationships. The unspoken rules in relationships governing mother and child, father and son, mate and mate’s girlfriend. Maybe we don’t speak about so often, and usually its not written down, but the ‘rules’ exist. The contract between you and your spouse, or you and your parents exist weather its written or not.

And the idea of validating an unwritten contract between myself and society just hadn’t occurred to me before.

It knocked my socks off.

If your eyes are open, and you suddenly see what you couldn’t before, do you just ignore it and keep doing what you were doing before, or do you throw in the towel and stand up to the line?

Throw in the towel of ignorance is what.

Stand up to the line of responsibility is what.

It reminded me of the moment I knew, for sure, that I was pregnant. I’d never liked children and thought of them as repulsive little snot filled terrorists. But when the double stroke glowed that vomit inducing pale pink, there wasn’t, for me, a moment to contemplate ‘ignoring it’. I couldn’t. My life changed for ever. My attitude changed for ever. I could no longer be as selfish as I was. It was a foul swing at my short sighted selfishness and cured me of some stupidity. But it was tough at the time. I felt I’d ridden up against a brick wall.

Now it seems I’m ready to go the next step into the wider world. Me and society.

Stepping up to the line. Accepting responsibility for my half of the contract.

I’m still pulling at the bit. I’m still trying to find the balance between my sense of duty to what I feel I have discovered and just wanting to toss it all aside and live in Thailand somewhere getting massages and swimming in pristine waters… What am I doing? Why do I care?
And this brings us back to the first seed, and the beginning of everything.

I was 14 when I was left with my grandparents for a holiday. Two weeks later, my step mother calls me and tells me over the phone that now I’m living with my grandparents.

The grand illusion of childhood is that your parents, no matter what they do, are right and good and, this is important, know what they are doing. That is, that they are conscious of what they are doing.

We all know that we don’t know what we are doing, but a child probably feels safer if they believe we are some sort of semi-god.

All of us suffer disillusionment in stages we’re not conscious of, or in one giant dive.

I couldn’t maintain the illusion any more. I lay in my fold up bed in the lounge of my grandparent’s house and bit by bit, all of the repressed information I had about my parents burst upon me in a flood.

The one thing I judged them on, and am still their greatest critic, is their lack of responsibility. So, of course, if I judge another for not being responsible, how, if I am faced with information that increases my responsibility to the world, can I ignore it?

For me, its impossible.

So here I am. Signing, in my own way, my side of the unwritten contract between me and society.

I wonder if society knows what it has unleashed?

I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, but if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer.... I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me. ~Richard Phillips Feynman

Why do we lie to our children?

.

Story telling and its original purpose


Mum said ‘When did your parents tell you that? Were you at a young age, were you putting things into your ears?’

Albert had just retold a story about a relative finding a bead inside of his ear, after suffering weeks of pain.

My mother’s obvious conclusion was that Albert’s parents were trying to teach Albert a lesson about not putting things into his ears. In other words, she thought that his parents told Albert an untrue story that would help him to live a life free of ear pain induced by putting random objects into his ear.

Today, we don’t really tell our children these kind of stories. We are more likely to tell them ‘facts’, like eating too many sweets will produce plaque and thus more visits to the dentist and subsequently more pain.

It doesn’t seem to be having much impact on their sweet intake, but it makes us feel like we are not lying to our children, that we are being informative and educational, not like our superstitious parents forcing us not to walk under ladders and something about throwing salt over the left shoulder.

But what was the original meaning behind the stories we once told?

I was recently traveling around outback Australia, and I came across informative centers where I read many stories where animals spoke and lessons were learnt about how to take care of the land, and how to share water and the consequences of not heeding the lesson of the stories.

Some Australian Indigenous groups are amongst the oldest surviving nomadic peoples in the world. They had a relatively untouched (by outside influences) culture until only 200 years ago, perhaps leading us to a broader understanding of how societies emerged and evolved over time.

I saw on the TV an indigenous program where an older male was repeating stories to a child (of about 2 years old) about someone needing help, and the elder repeated ‘give away your things’, while simultaneously wiping the child’s palm away from the body.

I don’t have a lot of research about this topic, but even if we look back to our own childhoods, some of the stories had a moral purpose, like ‘The boy who cried wolf’ and 'King Midas'. They were not true stories, they are what we term fables or fairytales, and they were told with the preposition that what we tell children should help equip them for an adult life where one’s behavior will have consequences – don’t tell lies or people won’t believe you anymore. If you only chase after gold, in the end you’ll end up only with material goods and nothing else.

Today we don’t have a lot of time for stories. Today we tell facts. We tell facts about tooth decay and eating to much will make you fat and if you don’t study you won’t get a good job and we dress our children in designer wear so that they’ll fit in to a social group and we indulge there need for brand sneakers (because we understand) and we leave them in front of the television for the stories we used to tell.

Imagine. Sitting around a fireside, listening to the deep voice of your grandfather while you are gently held by your older sister, or your mother. You hear a story about helping each other in times of need. The story has drama and passion and everyone’s face is lit up with the light of the flames from the centre of your family and friends.

Imagine. Sitting around a television, listening to canned laughter and the nasal intonation of a smart mouthed teenager girl dressed in the best designer jeans you’ve seen. You’re alone because everyone else is watching their own TV in their own room. You hear a story about a boyfriend sleeping with a best friend and how a gun man terrorized a school in a state in North America you didn’t know existed and still can’t remember what state it was. The story has drama and a certain irony because you knew that the boy wasn’t to be trusted and the gunman was probably being ignored at a girl at his school and there is no one beside you on the lounge.

The television is telling the moral stories our children are listening to.

How many times have you though ‘I wonder where he/she gets that from?’

You know where. The TV is teaching our children the values of our society.

Its teaching the glory of the United States of America. The glory of the mighty dollar. That status is in brand names. That self value is dictated by how pretty, thin, and rich you are. Its teaching the value of short term pleasure over long term happiness.

We used to lie to our children to encourage them to be safe, to help them in social interaction, to enhance their wellbeing.

We lie to our children now that we don’t have time for them. But we have 30 minutes to browse on the internet. We have 30 minutes to indulge in our favorite magazine. We have 30 minutes for our selves. Then we let the TV do the rest of the talking.

My secret

I have a plan.

A plan to shock and shift the values in our society.

I am researching the commons in our unity. The fabrications, the illusions, the positives, the negatives.

When I have a handful of strings from the diversity of thought from systems like politics, economics, psychologists, scientists, I will draw them together and weave a strong rope.

These strings will represent the strong undercurrent of sweeping social change I can feel emerging with every beat of my heart.

We will focus our energies on the things we have in common.

- Our belief in making decisions based on our long term happiness over short term pleasure

- Our commitment to understanding our responsibility in our position of affluence

- Our belief in living our ‘ideals’ – authenticity

- Our commitment to humanities future through caring for and forging stronger, supportive relationships to our children

- Our understanding of the environmental crisis we are facing with countries such as India and China desiring to consume as much as we do, and understanding our entire system needs overhauling if we are to survive

Take a look at www.wellbeingmanifesto.net for more ideas.

Why?

Because we are ugly. We are superficial. We are disillusioned. We are depressed. We are alcoholics. We are drug addicts. We don’t care. We try retail therapy. We try binge drinking. We try buying more. We numb our brain with TV, computers, sex, romance, music and more shopping. We try screaming. We try not giving a damn. We try to blind ourselves with the flag. We try to drink more. We are angry. We are sad. We can’t believe it . We hate life. We are hurt. We can’t go on. We go missing. We want to escape. We are chained. We are hypnotized by the TV telling us that we must be young, pretty/handsome, rich. People disappoint us. Politicians disappoint us. We laugh so as not to cry. That we must buy this car, this mobile, this hairstyle, this magazine. We try divorce, we try to be single, we try to suicide. We hate our friends and our families. We think the world sucks.

And it does. It really does.

The only way to stop it, is for you to stop it. The only way.

Stop the lies, the deceit, the hurt in your own soul. Turn off the TV. Use your internet time with thought instead of feeling ‘trapped’ by it. Its all up to you.

And I believe in the power of you. I believe it, because the alternative is too terrible for me contemplate. I am blind. Blinded by my faith in humanity. In its ability to grow and develop and learn from its mistakes.

And all it takes, is for you to believe too. And then, I am a we. And we, together, can make a difference.

Are Australians destined to be the world's next great thinkers?

The last few books I’ve picked up have been written by Australians. Although I might not agree with everything they say, I am impressed with the confidence/audacity of the way they present their ideas.

Then I read a book by Seth Godwin, and I thought, yes, but North Americans could also fit the profile I had begun to make of these independent thinkers.

Peter Singer, Morris West, Jeremy Griffeth and Seth Godin……

Just to name a few of these ‘thinkers’ who have impressed me lately.

They are what I have heard termed ‘ballsy’ and can be confrontational. They introduce topics that are thought provoking and marketable.

Why does their nationality have anything to do with their ideas?

Just speaking from an Australian point of view – and I will leave the North American’s out of my final thought – though you can feel free to add to my ideas in the comments – we are not tied up with traditions in the same way other cultures are.

We have a sense of new beginning and new ways of approaching problems. We are not hung up on traditions because many of us feel we don’t have a link to any history that means something to us. We are non-conformist and delight in shocking. I’m not saying this produces good ideas in itself, but it does provide a different breeding ground for ideas, doesn’t it?

We see things differently. We’re down under, so our vision is often skew if. We live life a bit rougher, a bit more outdoorsy and more down to earth than many other cultures. We don’t like to be tricked and we will stand up and fight about it. Now again, this doesn’t make a great thinker, but again, it does set up a new breeding ground for ideas.

In a previous post, I wrote about utilizing and training ‘broken’ teens to the positive for our society. I used the argument that they see things differently than others, so with some help and training, they can help us see things from a different point of view.

Its what we need. A new point of view. A new vision so we can make a real plan for the future of our planet. We’ve been following the ideas of progression and machinery and the mighty dollar and we don’t seem to be doing a great job.

Perhaps its time to start to look else where for our answers?

Just a thought.

The Gyre

The ever widening circle of your life

I have always made myself lists. I’m a list maker and list ticker offerer, and a list throw awayer. Sometimes they work, and some time they don’t, depending, funnily enough, on if I honestly believe in the list.

I think I’ve found a way to increase my belief in my list making. And here it is – the gyre.

I also think it will be helpful in introducing social awareness and our interconnectedness to our world at large.

A gyre is a circle, a vortex, expanding or contracting and descriptive model for its current purposes.

I don’t have the soft ware to present it to you as I would like, but here is the gist of the thing.

In the centre, as we all know, is ME.

For the purpose of the display, and not to be egotistical in any way shape or form, I will use my own name as the first example.

From now on, it will be known as ‘Tiffany’s Gyre’.


Tiffany’s Gyre

As stated, the centre of the vortex is me.

Tiffany
Around the immediate centre, is the things I believe to make up me. These include my physical self, my mental self and my spiritual self.

Now, each one of these selves can be looked at more deeply. For example, Tiffany’s physical self and her relationship/responsibility to it. So, I write down that I like to practice yoga daily and qigong when I have the time.

I may like to include, on further reflection, that I like to have massage, indulge in toe cleaning at regular intervals, and tooth brushing. So on and so forth. You can see how each list can expand with refection. Some of these things we do without giving thought or time to (toothbrushing) and others, we need to find time during our day for (yoga).

So we make a choice with the limited time that we have.

By writing down and becoming aware of each need and demand of the body, we can start to make effective choices about what we spend our time on. We get to know ourselves a little better with every stroke of the pen.

It may seem rather obvious at this level, but as we move further outwards into our gyre, you will see the benefits of awareness and subsequent increased choice.

The second circle, I have titled Immediate Circle of Responsibility. You may call yours what seems more appropriate for your lifestlye. For me, this includes the house I am living in and the people I am living with. The duties/responsibilities to each entity needs to be looked at and clearly understood, if we are not to be a victim of letting time pass us by and not saying and doing the things we ought to have done.

Increased consciousness of our selves and our relationships enhance our life quality. This is a fact.

The third circle is called the Second circle of responsibility. This circle includes, for me, friends. Of course, each subgroup can be further explored and taken into consideration. I will do an example of how to further explore a group at the end of the post.

The fourth circle is Society’s Circle, and includes my area Helensvale, the library and community centre.

The fifth group is the wider community circle – and includes the gold coast city council, my state, my country, my geographical position in the world and then, finally, my responsibility and relationship to the world.

Exploring a link.

Let’s take an easy example.

In my second circle Immediate Circle of Responsibility, I have my mother. I have to put the situation into context. I’m spending one year living very close to my mother, but usually we have half the world between us. To make the best use of the time, I need to be fully aware that at this time next year, I will not be seeing her. I have no plans to come back and see her in the foreseeable future.

So, when I think of my relationship towards my mother, I try to understand the things that I like and the things that I see as my duty, or my responsibility towards her.

Perhaps, even if I don’t have the time of the will, I will sit with her and discuss her boredom with life, or her lack of employment skills for her age, or her worries about her other children and grandchildren. At the same time, I encourage an opening of her mind to subjects I think she should consider, like fair trade coffee, and volunteering on the Gold Coast.

Perhaps I’ll offer to make dinner. Or help her in the garden. Small things that if I didn’t sit and write about and consider in a rational way, I would overlook.

Some other examples are easier to follow through.

My relationship to the world.

What is it? How do I feel about the world at large? Do I care about the entity of the world? Well, there are a lot of people who do, and I can, with the aid of the internet, become aware of their concerns and see if I also think similarly. Perhaps I’ll even be open minded enough to take on a new concern, if I am aware of issues at a world scale.

But, I wouldn’t know anything if I didn’t have my self in the centre, and an ever increasing circle of awareness developing around me.

Comments?

The Billowing Acrid Smoke of Worthless Chatter

In the Words of My Perfect Teacher, the author Patrul Rinpoche, writes that of the ten negative acts to be avoided, ‘worthless chatter’ is listed along sided sexual misconduct, stealing and killing.

When I first read it, I thought its place in the top ten was perhaps a bit of over kill.

But that was before I was subjected to my mother.

To contextualize.

I’ve been living abroad for 11 years. I’ve been deliberately cocooning my self in the way of life that I chose. My ideas, my philosophies, my eating habits, my life style choices. Admittedly, it was in direct negation of, or reaction to many of the experiences I had seen and/or endured while growing up.

I’ve moved back to Australia, and we’re staying with my mother on and off for one year. Then we’ll be moving back to Europe.

As Albert says when he thinks I’m being particularly trying ‘Paciència el Senyor!’

My mother is one of the most negative thinkers I have ever come across. Perhaps I should say, she’s the most vocal negative thinkers I have heard.

I was listening to her negative twist on recent events in her life (and honestly, the details are not important, if it wasn’t this, it would be that), and she then proceeded to call three more people to tell them her version of events, and then my step father came home, and she started to talk about it again. To her, she’s just talking. She has no idea how her words are rippling outwards and effecting more than just the moment.

I’ve heard it all day long. I don’t know how she can be happy thinking and talking like that. Of course, she’s not. She’s unhappy and often unwell. But that’s not for here. (IE I’ll write about it in another post)

It was painful for me. (And Albert, since he had to listen to me complain about her as well as listen to her… ) I saw her negative, thoughtless talk (because she is not consciously a vicious person, she’s just a victim of negative patterns and lack of awareness of the law of cause and effect) spread around her like pollution. And that’s when it hit me that the words of Patrul Rinpoche were more insightful than I first gave credit for.

Consider mind and body issues are my living. I’m suppose to help people like this. Usually I get paid for it, but in this case, my payment will be a peaceful household for the next 8 months. (Oh yeah, and good karma points.)

It made me start thinking about how a few negative words could have such a detrimental effect on the self and others. Its acts like a billowing black smoke on all who come in contact with it.

So I went back to the book, and had another look.


Speaking negatively has a lot of demerit points


- It inflicts negativity upon others


- It spreads hurt, anger, pain


- It disturbs them from their path


- Negative talk often springs from desire, bitterness, hatred, jealousy, or to throw it all together, bad feelings in general


- Negative words act like a bad apple in a barrel, the rot spreading



Its our duty, as responsible, conscious people, consider what we are saying. What is the motivation of our words?



Is it to bring love, happiness, joy, understanding to the world, or is it to spread hurt, pain, bitterness and the holding of grudges?