To my friends

This has been a very good year. It's been a year of really discovering myself - letting go of the past, and in a way, letting go of the future - embracing the Now - the only moment there is.
I have read some really interesting and challenging books that have stretched me and made me think, but the thing that stands out to me this year is a group of really good friends. My wife, my family, and a group of people that I have connected with over the year who have given me the grace to be myself. People who have asked me questions, who have challenged me, who have just listened. Friends who have pushed me beyond myself and have let me share their lives. To all of you that I have spent time with this year, in person or in cyberspace - I want to say a really deep thankyou!

Do you believe in magic?

Magic has been a part of my life since I was a kid. I remember watching David Copperfield on television and really believing in what he did. It was never about how he did it. It was about the experience of mystery. In a sense he gave me hope that there was more to life than the mundane. I must have been around 10 years old if I remember correctly. Now I'm 26 years older and I still seek out that experience of mystery. I enjoy watching people's faces as I perform and get a glimpse of that feeling - the shock to your system when you see the impossible.

So it's all an illusion? Perhaps, but a good performance usually points to something deeper. The illusions, or whatever you would like to call them, are just tools that allow real magic to happen. Real magic changes people. Real magic is about being able to see with different eyes, into a realm that is always there, but is easily forgotten. What we call 'reality' is the real illusion..

Think about this time of year, when we all spend money we don't have to get stuff we don't really need, singing songs we don't really understand. In the case of where I live, we sing about sleigh-bells in the snow in the middle of summer.
But behind all of that, the moon still shines and the world still turns. The trees still breath and nature is still and Present, while we try and find parking in a crazy shopping mall.

I have searched all my life to find real magic - to be able to connect with that constantly ellusive mystery. I'm starting to realise that it can be found by learning to be, that it's to be found by not listening to all the noise, but to tune in to the heartbeat and the rhythm of the Universe. To discover that I'm not other, but I am - connected and part of all that I percieve as around me.
The illusion is to see all of that as the mundane - when it is the real magic - and the very meaning of life.

Book knowlege vs. really knowing

I have a rather large collection of books. I love reading. I'm constantly on the lookout for that one book that will say all I need to know, the book that will resonate with me and give me the answers I need. Of course I know that such a book doesn't exist, although someof the books I've read come close.

Books are miraculous. The ability for me to connect with the thoughts, beliefs and experiences of someone else by picking up a book never ceases to amaze me. But...that's the thing. Reading a book is always about someone else's life, experience, belief or view of the world. While connecting with that is important, it can never replace the act of living life and experiencing it for yourself.

I recently experienced something that I had read about for over a year. It was an experience that I had heard about from a few people and so a whole lot of research on the subject - so much so, that I felt i really didn't need to experience it because I already knew so much about it. I was wrong. I was very wrong. Nothing I read could have prepared me for what I experienced. Everything I had read really only scratched the surface. In fact, much of what I had read only made sense once I had experienced it for myself. This has been an important lesson. Books can only really be signposts, pointing one to an experience of living. They can never be the experience itself.

This past week I went camping with my family. Whenever we go away I usually take a few books with. This time I took a notebook and pen. I decided it was more important to record my experience than to read about others'. I never wrote much. I was too busy having long chats with my wife, playing with my kids, and having a really great time. I did, however, write the introduction to a book I would like to write. Perhaps this will be the book that I've been looking for :)

Time and Rhythm

What is time? We wake up at a certain time in the morning, we get dressed, go to work and need to be there at a certain time. We're expected to put in a certain amount of hours to get paid our salary. We get given a certain amount of time to rest, to eat and for some of us time is directly proportional to money. I can't help thinking that we are slaves to this thing called time, this clock that we have created to keep the machine moving.

The problem with time is that it is uniform and it is one measure applied to all people. Nature doesn't have time. Nature has rhythm. There is a difference. Nature is full of rhythm, different rhythms that move in and out of one another. The moon revolves around the earth, the earth around the sun. The tide comes in and it goes out. It's predictable, but not slave to one beat, second after second, minute after minute.

As human beings we try to live outside of nature. We have our houses that protect us from the wind and rain. We have shoes on our feet that protect our feet from the earth. When we sit down we very rarely sit in the sand or on the grass. We nearly always put something between us and the earth.

But our rhythm betrays us. The rhythm we naturally experience reminds us that we are children of the earth. Our heart doesn't beat in time with the clock that we have created. Our breath has it's own rhythm - and responds to our needs, which also vary according to the rhythm of our body.

Sometimes we can be so caught up in the ticking of the clock and the mechanisation of our daily lives that we forget how to see and feel who we really are. We think that our day-to-day life by the clock is real, but it is just an illusion, something we created to help us, but by which we are now enslaved.

Perhaps part of letting go is letting go of time, and finding the rhythm of the earth once again. Dying to that which is already dead and opening our eyes to who we really are.

Letting Go

A big part of drumming 'in the groove' is about letting go. If you try and control the rhythm you slip out of it or the rhythm never seems to have the same life that it has when you let go and allow the rhythm be what it is. Then it has a life of its own.
Humans beings are not very good at letting go. Life is full of things we want to cling to. They may be good experiences that we wish would last forever, or friendships and relationships that we fear will disappear if we let go. So we try to own and control these things. When we do that we restrict them from being driven by the rhythm of life as we try to make them conform to what we imagine them to be.

But it's not only the good experiences we cling to. How many times do we make a mistake, or do something we think is stupid and play it over and over in our heads, trying to re-live it so that somehow we can fix it, but then we find that we can't go back in time and fix it. So we need to learn to let go of these things.

And then there are the things that get done to us. Things that hurt or injure us affect how we see ourselves. And so we hold on to this image of who we are and build a shield around that part of us so that we can't be hurt again. These things are very hard to let go and sometimes you need someone to help you to do that.

What prevents us from letting go? Perhaps it's because we're afraid that if we let go of all these things then nothing will be left behind. It's a fear of losing ourselves - the fear of dying. But as we learn to let go we slowly discover that we haven't lost ourselves. Without all the illusions we cling on to, we find who we really are.

"Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will find it. "

Buried Treasure

I've been thinking a lot about the Treasure in "The Alchemist". I do think it's about the journey, but it's also about the treasure. It's about the fact that the treasure has been there all along - in a place you are so familiar with.
The treasure for me has been about finding myself. Everything I was looking for has been here all the time. The journey has been about searching for that Treasure, buried beneath all of the layers of how I've seen myself. And I guess that's the process of Alchemy - purification, not so much in the sense of seperating good from bad, but taking away the illusion until all that is left is Gold. Going deeper and deeper until you find the whole Universe inside. This is eternal life!

The Heroe's Journey

The following quote by Joseph Campbell is quite easy to find on the net, but I've recently a really profound experience that made it really come alive for me. So I thought I'd share it and save you the trouble looking for it ;)

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us - the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
(Joseph Campbell. The Hero With a Thousand Faces)

Breathing

As human beings we feel the need to cling to every good thing that comes our way. We cling to things, to money, to experiences. We feel we need to possess all that is good because we fear that if we don't we will be left empty. But when we hold on to something good we find it doesn't do what we expect it to do - to fill that hole, to make us whole again, and so we are disappointed and collect more stuff. We eat more food, we drink more wine and collect more and more things. And we worry that we don't have enough and no matter how much we collect, it's never enough.

But when we breath, we don't hold on to the breath. We breath in, the breath does it's work, and we let it go again. And yet there's another breath, and another. When we let go the universe provides what we need. Everything in the universe is constantly moving and changing, as if the whole universe is breathing in and breathing out. Connecting with that rhythm is one of the hardest things to do, because it means dying - letting go of everything, letting go even of that which we call "me". And as each layer is stripped away we discover that we haven't lost anything at all, but we find who we really are. And we discover that the universe hasn't got it in for us and that we aren't so seperate and alien afterall.

So breath in, breath out and find the rhythm of the breath and let it permeate you life. Take what you need and then let go again.

The meaning of Myth

I found the following quote a few years ago. It's probably this quote that started me thinking a bit differently about the word "myth". This led to the study of Jung and the concept of symbols and archetypes, Joseph Campbell's awesome understanding of myth and a few other things. It comes from a book I bought for R5 at a second hand theological bookstore. The title is "The Primal Vision". by John V. Taylor. It's a stunning book and in a chapter on "The Language of Myth" he quotes someone by the name of Nicolas Berdyaev:

Myth is a reality immeasurably greater than concept. It is high time that we stopped identifying myth with invention, with the illusions of primitive mentality, and with anything, in fact, which is essentially opposed to reality... The creation of myths among peoples denotes a real spiritual life, more real indeed than that of abstract concepts and rational thought.
Myth is always concrete and expresses life better than abstract thought can do; its nature is bound up with that of symbol. Myth is the concrete recital of events and original phenomena of the spiritual life symbolized in the natural world, which has engraved itself on the language memory and creative energy of the people...; it brings two worlds together symbolically. (Nicolas Berdyaev, Freedom and Spirit)

The Journey

Paulo Coelho's book "The Alchemist" has to be one of my favourite books. I was chatting with some intersting people this morning and the book came up. As we were talking one of the people mentioned that the treasure at the end of the book is a bit disappointing. I thought about that for a while and to be honest, I couldn't really remember what the treasure was, but I remembered, in detail, the rest of the story. I guess the treasure at the end wasn't as important to me as the journey itself. While the treasure seemed to be the driving force behind the journey, the book without the journey would have been, well, pointless. And maybe that's the point. It's not so much the destination that's important, but the journey we take to get there.

Polyrythms and Ideas

One of the things you need to learn as a drummer is to play different things with each of your limbs. This is known as independance. I can play one pattern on the kick drum, another of the hi-hat or ride, another on the snare, and perhaps my left foot is playing another pattern with the hi-hat foot pedal. To someone starting out, this is usually quite difficult and you often find one limb trying to follow the other. A little way down the line this becomes quite easy and natural, and it's one of the things that can make a great rhythm.
The next challenge is polyrhythms. This is similar to what I've just spoken about except your playing two or more rhythms at the same time. For instance, you may be counting 1-2-3 on the base drum, but at the same you'll play 1-2-3-4 on the ride cymbal - on top of the first rhythm, or even 5 and 4 and so on. Played correctly, you get a really interesting and sometimes hypnotic rhythm.

What does this have to do with my point of view?
Well, some people act as if there is only one way of thinking. They acknowlege that there are other ways of looking at things, but they feel their way is perhaps better than other ways of looking at things. This is usually quite evident in a debate between science and religion, or in understanding concepts like energy, spirit, soul etc.
But, is it not possible to have different points of view at the same time - views that seem to contradict each other?
I have found that it can be quite helpful to entertain that possibility, and quite often there is something else that emerges when you do that. Something emerges that, I find, is more true to me and my experience of life.
I think that it goes back to the concept that theories and ideas can never fully map out the true experience of living. Real life is messy and there are always grey areas - areas of mystery that no theory will ever quite cover. Holding two conflicting ideas at the same time can push you into exploring these grey areas with more honesty.

Truth is often found in the balance between two opposites.

talking about God

How do I experience God? God is like the air all around me and in me. I breath it in and breath it out. Without it I would die. I know it is there, but it's only when I'm really still, or desperate for breath, that I seem to notice it at all.

We want to think about God. God is a thought; God is an idea. But its reference is to something that transcends all thinking. He's beyond Being, He’s beyond the category of being and non-being. Every religion is true in this sense: it is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery. He who thinks he knows doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows.
(Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth)

Honesty and spirituality

I love bookshops. The way a book is able to speak in silence gives me a sense of peace. And that moment of opening a new book, connecting with someone else's mind for me is real magic. The fact that I can write these words and somehow convey to you my thoughts is nothing less than miraculous, something we take so for granted.

But it's also possible to hide behind these words. If I'm careful and clever I can make it sound as if I have all the answers. Well perhaps I can't, but many of the authors I read get it right. I read these books and I must admit that I feel quite small. I can never seem to 'get it right' in those 10 steps that the author guarantees. Maybe it's because some books belong to the world of ideas and ideals, where the raw reality of living seems quite distant.

Every now and again I find a book where the author has dared to let me in on their real life. One of the chapters I read last night was honest enought to speak about the dark side that exists in all of us. Another book I'm reading is about sex and deals with stuff that most of us think, but would rather not admit.

Sometimes I ask myself if I hide behind all the books that are stacked beside my bed, as if by reading them I can escape for a while. Escape from what? I think it's the escape from being alone with myself, or the fear that I am nothing extraordinary..

And I think that perhaps this is why the spritual path is often one of stillness - because in stillness I need to be honest and face my doubts, my fears and my demons. I say 'my' because they are part of who I am. And strangely enough, by embracing these things , I find stillness and peace and relax into the knowlege that I am here and I am living, and I share this life and these feelings with other real human beings - and I don't feel so alone with myself anymore.

The difficulty of communicating experience

I have been tempted to delete the last two posts in this blog because when I read them, they just seem so inarticulate and don't really get across what I've been trying to say. I realise now, though, that this is the whole point. It's a paradox to be writing about how experience is beyond words, when the very thing I'm trying to do is to put into words my experience. Perhaps It's better for me to leave the last two posts and call them poetic licence or something, because they are, in effect, communicating the point I was trying to make.

It's interesting how the Universe speaks to us...
I was thinking about this topic and how to communicate it and I happened to pick up a book I am reading. It's by Joseph Campbell, called "Myths to live by". The chapter I was busy with was on Zen. It just seem to jump out of the page as if the author had been reading my mind. This is what it had to say:

"..it is actually impossible to communicate through speech any experience whatsoever, unless to someone who has himself enjoyed an equivalent experience of his own..

..Life defined is bound to the past, no longer pouring forward into the future......anyone continually knitting his life into contexts of intention, import, and clarifications of meaning will in the end find that he has lost the sense of experiencing life..

..(Zen) holds to the realization that life and the sense of life are antecedent to meaning; the idea being to let life come and not name it. It will then push you right back to where you live - where you are, and not where you are named. "

Spirituality from the ground up

In my last post I spoke about words and ideas and how they point to the experience of life, rather than being the thing itself. I hope to expand on that, but I would like to first try and explain the way I approach these things.

Wearing different hats

Edward de Bono has a book entitled "Six Thinking Hats". The idea is that you put a different thinking hat on, and approach things in different ways. I find it really helpful not to commit myself to looking at things only one way, but try a number of approaches - looking at the same thing or subject matter from different angles. We can be so dogmatic about some things, and often all it takes is to look at it from a different angle and then we see it differently.

The thing to learn is that we don't need to commit ourselves to viewing things one way. For instance, in my last post I argued against a sort of platonic way of approaching various subjects. That doesn't mean that I need to identify myself with that argument, it is simply another way of looking at things that allows me to see the bigger picture better. It also gives me more freedom in writing my thoughts. I don't need to hold myself only to that which I've written and I have the freedom to contradict myself.

Starting with experience

Much of what we call 'beliefs' has a top down approach. What I mean by this is that we're taught something, or read something about God, or about life and we start with that idea. Ideas like fate, destiny, reincarnation, heaven, hell, spirit, angels, ghosts, demons, etc.
We then assimilate that idea into our belief system, and then, when challenged, we argue for its existence. We possibly then see that what we understood the idea to mean doesn't fit into our experience of living and so we reject the idea.

I came to a point in my life where I wasn't sure if I really believed all the stuff I claimed to believe. So, I made the decision to start from scratch and get rid of all my ideas and look at what I experience in life without being influenced by what I'm supposed to believe. (Now I know this is practically impossible - we always carry some beliefs with us, but I find that the exercise is very useful).
What I discovered doing this, was that there are experiences that do fit into some of the ideas and beliefs that I once held, but that the words used to describe the experience was never quite enough. It's the same as if we had to try and explain experiences like bungee jumping or making love to someone who hadn't had the experience. Words never fully capture the experience. To fully understand it, you need to experience it.

So - to summarize:

Spirituality, for me, is about living - experiencing life, and then finding ways to share that with others, as well as trying to understand what it is that others experience.

In the next few weeks I would like to look at a few of the things that didn't initially make sense to me from an idea point of view, but when I looked at them from an experience point of view I was able to make space for them in my mind.

Please feel free to comment ;)

Fate, destiny and the journey of life

Some words seem so final. Words like fate, words like destiny. And so we are often left with a decision as to whether we believe in these words, to believe in fate or destiny.

Most people I speak to like the idea of having free choice and so choose to reject the concept of fate or destiny. Perhaps it would be a good idea to define what we mean by the terms, but I don't think that solves the problem. The problem I'm talking about is the fact that we have words like fate, destiny, spirit, God or any of those words which it has become almost fashionable not to believe in. Where do they come from? Do we need to treat them as if the word itself contained an idea, and that idea was some kind of law, or reality that one can accept or reject?

Perhaps another way to look it is that words are signposts, pointing to what we experience in life. Sometimes it seems as if my life is being directed by an outside force. The word I could use to describe that experience could be the word 'fate'. Or sometimes it seems like everything fits together, so many meaningful coincidences it's like there's some providential hand guiding me and helping me along. Have you ever had the experience of doing something and your whole being resonates with what you're doing and you know intuitively that this is what you were made for - this is your destiny? And so once again a word fulfils the need for expression, the need to communicate the journey to others.

Some say that the realm of words and ideas is the true reality in that it is more perfect than the day-to-day, messy business of living. They say that the material world is the shadow of this archetypal realm. But I think that it's the words we use that are imperfect. The fact that we can communicate at all is miraculous in itself, but it is still only an imperfect representation of the journey of life, the experience of living.

The problem with religion is that it relies on words and ideas first, instead of recognising the context that formed the words and ideas, and so the words and ideas become law, seperated from the life that they were supposed to reflect.

I am, however, grateful for words, no matter how limiting they can sometimes be, because it is through words and ideas that I can communicate my journey, and connect with and learn from others, even if they lived two thousand years ago.

The lesson of the coin

A magician plays with a coin in his hand. It rolls over his fingers, and then flies into the air. He catches it again and holds it up to your eyes. As your eyes focus, you realise that there is no coin. And yet you are so sure that the coin was there only a second ago, and he smiles and says that there was no coin, it was only in your mind. And you wonder if he meant that there never was any coin at all, or if he's only talking about the coin that you thought he held before your eyes. But it doesn't matter, since you suddenly realise that reality isn't all it's made out to be, and that the reason things are as they are is because you see them that way....

My favourite times of day

Dawn and dusk are my favourite parts of the day. Just before the sun goes to sleep, or as the world is about to wake up. Whenever I've gone for a walk early in the morning, there is something about the freshness of the new day that makes me feel alone, but not a lonely kind of alone, but a peaceful aloneness. The air is fresh and loaded with potential and I feel alert and awake and aware that I'm part of something much bigger than myself, that I'm connected to this world that is waking up. I know that in an hour or two the world will be full of chaos again, the noise of traffic with everyone hypnotically following the beat of business. But for a while I'm at the place where the world was created and everything is new.

Dusk is my other favourite. That time between night and day, darkness and light and I feel like I can stretch out and touch another realm, the place where magic is alive. Between waking and dreaming, concious and unconcious, between matter and spirit, that which is thought to be real and that which is imagined. This is when I like to sit in my garden and half close my eyes, but not all the way. And as my eyes adjust I see the energy that is given off by the plants and trees, and I look down at my hands and I too am surrounded in moving waves of energy. Of course there's the skeptic in me saying that this is only because I'm squinting my eyes slightly, and it's probably true, but I choose to ignore it and enjoy the experience, and my imagination and the real world dance together.

The meaning of - well anything really..

I often hear people saying "it's just psychological" or "but that can be explained", almost as if something can be explained then it no longer has any deeper meaning.

Things have different meanings depending on your attachment to them. To a logger, a forest is there to be cut down, the wood is there to make money. To an inhabitant of that forest, it is home. To a builder, a house is brick and cement; to an architect it's a design and to the people living there, a shelter and a home - full of memories and meaning.

An email between two people is, on one hand, 'just' data. To the people communicating, however, it is something rich with meaning - these electronic impulses that move at the speed of light have meaning. What I'm writing will be stored as "just data" somewhere. I have no idea where, but as you read it, it comes to life. Perhaps it will mean something different to you than it does to me, and even if no-one reads it, it is meaningful for me to write - to try and put in words some of the things inside my head.

So - the next time you hear someone say "it's just... whatever" - perhaps think about the idea that meaning goes beyond just one way of looking at something.

Aeroplane food and the meaning of life..

Last night my wife and I were having a great conversation and it somehow went on to the topic of space travel. I mentioned something about the fact that one day we won't need to go to space, we would probably be able to buy the experience. Ok I'm all into sci-fi and everything, but it goes beyond that. Since all of our experience of things like is as a result of sensory input, I don't see why we won't get to a level of virtual reality one day where we actually experience these things - touch, see, smell etc. - without actually going there. Her reply was that it would never be the same because we would make it too perfect and that part of travel is the uncomfortability - if that's a word. The smell of an aeroplane cabin, having to wait for your luggage etc.
I realised that what she was saying is so true of life. While we long for the ideal - that perfect thing that will make us happy, it will always be incomplete without us being able to appreciate the mundane. The meaning of life is all about living - every experience - good and bad.

So - this morning I was up early to go of to JHB. After a good meeting in the land of thunderstorms I was dropped off at the airport again. When I reached into my briefcase I realised my wallet was gone. Now everything that I needed was in my wallet - my ID to be able to catch the flight, my credit card to buy lunch, the ticket for parkade so I could bail my car out.. you get the picture. Fortunately it was left in the car and will be returned to me tomorrow - but I was still stuck with having to get home somehow. So I decided to just go with it. I managed to convince them that it was me so they let me on the plane. Perhaps it's my honest face, or that I'm skilled in the art of Jedi mind tricks (I wish) - but I got the boarding pass. The next thing I found out is that the ticket wasn't on the el-cheapo-buy-your-own-food-airline but with another airline who actually gives you food onboard - so I didn't need to buy lunch. And when I arrived back in CPT the guys at the parkade let me out - with no charge. Now I'd been there the whole day - so that should've cost me around R100 - but they let me out for free. So - losing my wallet saved me around R200 - since I didn't buy lunch either. I find it really cool that when you go with the rhythm of life instead of fighting against it how these things seem to often just work out :)

Jamming in the groove

There's a place in rhythm called 'the groove'. In the groove you no longer have to think about what you do - it just happens, like your body is overtaken by the rhythm and you move with it - the drummer and the rhythm become one, the dancer becomes the dance and the dance lives through the dancer. In the groove there is no past or future, it's only the moment, the NOW, and you're fully awake and dreaming all at the same time. At the core of your being is a sense of joy and peace and the knowlege that this is right and your mind is clear of all of the things that usually weigh you down.

In the groove you're totally committed - like the adrenaline rush of running down a mountain where you know that if you make one mistake you'll be seriously injured, but at the same time you inuitively know that the secret isn't to hold back because of fear - you need to give your all and let go. Hold back and the groove disappears as if you've awoken from a beautiful dream and you try and go back to sleep to re-enter the dream, but the moment is gone.

Spaces

Rhythm always has spaces. A drummer who plays without any spaces will struggle to find the rhythm. Without spaces there is no rhythm, just noise.

Life has spaces. The space between when I'm at home and when I'm at work, when I'm with my family and when I'm not. There are also spaces in between the highs and the lows, between the happiness and sorrow. Spaces between being busy and waiting, between being on top of the world, and the effort of climbing to get there.
Without spaces there wouldn't be rhythm.

Relationships need spaces too. Too much crowding messes up the rhythm. "But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you...” (The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran )

Sometimes we forget about the rhythm. The rhythm that connects us to all around us, the breathing in and breathing out of the universe. So caught up in the noise of life that we forget we need the space to find our rhythm again.

Rhythm

Night - day, sleeping - waking, breathing in and breathing out, the beating of the heart and the spaces in between, going out, and coming back home. Constantly repeating - everything that has life has rhythm.

Breaking the rules

"But why?"- and the typical answer - "Because I said so!"
Children can be frustrating - like explaining to your 4yr old that she can't wear ballet leotard to school - it's just not practical. It's actually refreshing, though - now that I think about it removed from the war of trying to get kids to school on time. Children don't always think or behave like they're supposed to. They seem to know what it is to fully experience being alive. As we get older we learn to conform, to think in certain ways, to behave 'correctly'. Sometimes we're so busy doing the right thing that we forget how to really live.

I watched "As it is in heaven" Last night. This is a translation of Gabriella's song I found here:

It is now that my life is mine
I’ve got this short time on earth
And my longing has brought me here
All I lacked and all I gained
And yet it’s the way that I chose
My trust was far beyond words
That has shown me a little bit
Of the heaven I’ve never found
I want to feel I’m alive

All my living days I will live as I desire
I want to feel I’m alive
Knowing I was good enough
I have never lost who I was I have only left it sleeping
Maybe I never had a choice
Just the will to stay alive

All I want is to be happy
Being who I am
To be strong and to be free
To see day arise from night
I am here and my life is only mine
And the heaven I thought was there
I’ll discover it here somewhere

I want to feel that I’ve lived my life


That reminds me of something Joseph Campbell said:

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive..

The red balloon

My kids fascinate me..
We went to the local Spur tonight. Michelle, my wife, is away at the Kruger National Park and I'm looking after the kids. Seeing as I really suck at cooking I took them out. In the course of the evening my 4 year old, Isabelle, was introduced to a red ballon. In no time at all she formed this realtionship with it and it bacame part of who she was - well that's how it seemd - especially when it blew away in the parking lot an hour later...

Now I've done the heroic running after the balloon thing before, but the wind was just too wild tonight and I just knew i'd end up looking like an idiot chasing after the air - because that's really what a balloon is.
"It's a just piece of rubber stretched around air", I told her - but she didn't buy that. So I tried the whole " now your balloon is free to fly - blah blah". She let me know in no uncertain terms that this really wasn't going to do it for her. Ok, how about something a little less logical - "your balloon is free and you're four". 3 and 4 for those of you who don't get it - although she did. She sort of laughed so I thought I was on to something. "And Jess has one too - so we have one two free four". ..Damn - when will I learn to quite while I'm ahead? I've just reminded her that Jess has one and she doesn't and that's all it takes to turn on the taps again.
So we're stuck with a crying kid until we get home where Jess (the little angel) says Belle can have her balloon and at last - the crying stops.

So - what's the moral of the story? Well there really isn't one - but I'm so glad that we grow out of these things, and that grown ups don't make such a fuss about running after a sort-of-round ball-like object filled with air...

More thoughts on belief

It's interesting that when I use the word 'belief', my immediate thought is about religious beliefs. While the whole idea of imagining I believe something different applies to religion, it also applies to other kinds of beliefs, for instance, what I believe about myself and what I believe I am able to do. I may believe that I'll never be a good writer. Now this may or may not be true, but unless I overcome that belief, I'll never know. So - how do I change that belief? One of the ways is to imagine that I can and then do what a good writer would do - namely write.
(This is one of the reasons I started doing this blogging thing)

Now there will always be some smart ass saying that if I pretend to believe I can fly and jump off a building - well you know how it goes.. hmm, but then again I will be in the air for the rest of my life..

Jokes aside, there are many beliefs I know I have that prevent me from 'reaching my full potential' (I hate that cliche, but i can't think of anything else right now). There are many patterns that have developed over the years, things that people that I respected have said, and the results that seem to prove these beliefs. While what I believe will most of the time be true for me, it doesn't mean it needs to be true. I can change.

That, by the way, is the lesson that bending a fork teaches me. Some things seem solid and unchangable. But if you look at it differently, they can be quite malleable and can quite easily change shape...

May the fork be with you ;)

Some thoughts on faith and belief

Belief is something that is arrived at - not something that is 'confessed' or ascribed to.That's been a statement I've held to for the last few years and it has, in many ways, been the filter through which I've viewed my sprituality.

For instance, I believe the chair I'm sitting in will hold me, most of the time, and so my actions display that. I can sit down without really trying to think about whether it will or not. It could be said that I have faith in this chair.

I have tried to approach much of my thinking from the ground up, ie. focusing on what I experience as a human being and trying to make sense of it, rather than some or other belief system that is taught or revealed through a book. This has been a process of trying to be really honest with myself - do I really believe what I believe?

But - what then of 'blind' faith? If I only base my spirituality on what I experience, I limit myself to only that which I experience and see. How could it be possible to experience other realities if my beliefs are only defined by my present reality?

So - sometimes I play games - and imagine I'm living in a world where certain things are true. I guess you could call it a spritual excercise. Just like an actor would live themselves into a role, I try and play out certain belief systems. Take them on and wear them for a while - and see how they fit into my experience of life.Belief then could be about pretending - 'living as if'.

Hmm - isn't that what ritual is all about, or statements of faith - not quite believing, but living like you do, and if the belief is true then it will perhaps resonate and become real belief - something you arrive at?

"I believe, but please help my unbelief..."

The great Oracle of the Internet

Here's a game I like to play:

I go to Google and ask a question, then hit "I'm feeling lucky". Whatever comes back I try and find meaning in it - an act of imagination - imagining that the internet is this great mind that I am a part of and can somehow help me answer some of the questions I have. It's just a game I play so I don't need to take it seriously, but while I'm 'playing the game' I do.

Today I typed "what must i do with my life". This is the link it returned: Rainer Rilke - What Must I Do With My Life?.
The answer - I need to figure it out for myself by searching my soul for what I'm really passionate about, and then design my life around that as if I was an artist painting a picture. I like that answer :)

So - go ahead - how about you try it and see what happens ;)

I know more than I know I know

I had a discussion recently that went something along the line of "I know a lot more than I know I know". What I mean is that I have limited knowledge - understanding stuff, but my body has an immense amount of knowledge. Thousands of years of evolution has taught this body of mine how to heal itself, how to think, how to transform light into meaning. While I ('me' - the Ego?) have only had 36 years to accumulate 'knowledge' - my body (which is me actually) is the accumulation of thousands of years of knowledge. If I cut myself - I essentially know how to heal myself. While I have very little idea of how it actually works - I know how to do it because a few days later I look and the cut is gone.

So I thought perhaps I need to refine my definition of knowledge - this is what I was told by the great oracle known as wikipedia:

"There is however no single agreed definition of knowledge presently, nor any prospect of one, and there remain numerous competing theories."

hmm - so no-one really knows..

Perhaps the key then is to not rely so much on what 'I' know and try and uncover what I really do know - I just don't know it

the little things..

I spent yesterday at Brandvliet prison..
Hmm - actually - my daughter was involved in a triathlon and that's where it was held. It's not a bad place. The weather was foul but Jess did brilliantly. Unfortunately - somewhere along the line I lost my phone. The good news is that someone found it and had the sense to phone two of my friends, who both contacted me (through facebook and email), and whoever found then left it at the venue. So now all I need to do is go back and fetch my phone.
It's really cool when something like this happens - not losing my phone, but when someone takes the trouble to do the right thing. I guess one can philosophize about life and perception and the meaning of words and all that - but when it comes down to it, it's the little things - the practical things that really make a difference in life.

On another note - I'm busy reading "The archaic revival" by Terence McKenna. It's been described as "A cyclone of unorthodox ideas capable of lifting almost any brain out of its cognitive Kansas.." - my kind of book ;)
I'll try give the book a bit of a review once I'm a bit further into it, but I'm really enjoying the style of writing and some of the things that are said. It's the right book for me to be reading at right now.

Later P-)

Keeping an open mind

If I look at a object, for instance a coin, I can only see one side, unless I turn it over. Then I can see the other side. If it was impossible for me to turn the coin over , and the only way I could see the other side was by talking to someone else who could - my knowledge of the coin would only grow by listening to the other person - by trying to "see it" through their eyes.

I think life is like this. It is impossible for one person to know everything because we can really only see and experience life through our eyes, and our body. To grow, then, I need to listen to others and open my mind to their point of view. The more different their point of view is to mine - the more it will stretch me. I don't need to agree with them - just try and see what they see and experience what they do. Truth is often found in the middle of two opposite points of view.

Some more thoughts on words and communication

I'm not sure who originally said it - but I love the statement "words don't have meaning, meaning has words".I find this is so true in communication, especially when one moves into the realm of beliefs.
Someone asked me the other day what I believe in. I asked them what they meant by belief - it's a very loaded word. From their answer I learnt more about them. They asked me if I believed in a higher power. Now what does one mean by "higher" and "power"?
I think that when you move away from the "correct" answer to these questions and start looking deeper - honestly, you find "something" that is beyond words. The challenge is then to put "that" in words so that "it" can be communicated. But can it really be communicated, other than encouraging others to do the same, and to figure it out for themselves?

The language without words

My day seems so full of words - words that have meaning, words that get misinterpreted, words that disappear into thin air, words in my mind - a constant stream of noise. Today I am going to try and keep silent. I'm going to try and listen with not just my ears, but with my sense of smell, sense of taste and try and listen beyond words. I want to try and speak with my eyes and my actions - learn to speak the language without words. But to start I need to stop typing these words and be silent...

Finally online

Finally managed to set up ADSL at home - so this is my first post from home in my study.

Technology

Tried to install ADSL at home last night. I needed to connect a telephone wire from the kitchen to the study. Sounds easy - but it took me about an hour to get it connected because I kept on breaking the wires when i tried to strip them. I eventually set everything up and went through the installation process only to find I needed an 'order number' and I had no idea where to fine it. So - a whole evening wasted.
Got to work this morning and I couldn't log in because something had changed. I felt powerless not having my pc. It's wierd that everything I do sees to be so dependant on technology and being 'linked in' to this bigger something - the internet.
So now I'm waiting for my settings to be backed up and thought I'd try this blogging thing again. It's cool - kind of like a silent psychologist listening to whatever it is I want to say. I wonder if anyone will read this stuff - but I guess it doesn't really matter. It's a way of recording some of myself without having to attempt writing a book, although that is also something I'd like to do.
Ok - enough rambling for now..

Starting Out

I don't know how many times I've tried to start blogging. There's just something about putting my thoughts on the www for all to see that makes me type, and then delete - almost if I want to reserve the right to change my mind. Anyhow - here goes...No doubt I'll get into it and my blogs will contain a bit more information about my thoughts, beliefs and the way i experience life. We'll see :)