Talking to the trees..

I was involved in some martial arts training in the outdoors recently. There was a young tree near to where I was standing and, without thinking about the feelings of this poor tree, I decided to practice my side thrust kick. Expecting to be able to break the tree without much effort I was amazed that my kick had no impact whatsoever. The tree simply bent over and then sprang right back to where it was before. So I tried again, and again, and the same thing happened. Being rooted firmly into the earth, but at the same time offering no resistance to the force applied to it, the tree was able to carry on living happily while I was wasting my energy trying to kick the thing.

I learnt a lot from this little tree. The first lesson is that kicking trees is generally not such a good idea. Perhaps I was fortunate that this particular tree didn't retaliate.
The other, more important, lesson was this:
Life is full of movement and change- full of stuff that happens that doesn't quite fit into what we think we need to make us happy. We can mutter and complain and resist the inevitable change, either with it breaking us, or generally making us miserable. Or, like the tree, being grounded in the earth and the knowledge that this is how life is, we can be flexible and move with it. Then life becomes less of a struggle for existence and more of a dance..

On Knowledge

One of the startling discoveries I have made recently is that I seem to know where I need to get to and where I'm going in life. Or perhaps I should say I have a sense of knowing. On one hand the past few years have seemed quite isolated (spiritually speaking) as well as being a random collection of various 'experiments' with different ways of thinking, philosophies, religions etc.
Looking back, though, I see a definite pattern. A journey that has been going in the right direction all along, somehow intuitively guided by a force I have come to know as being my Soul. I'm not saying that I'm perfect or have it all together. It's more of a realisation that there has been more happening than I was previously able to see.

I am busy reading Joan Halifax's stunning book "The Fruitful Darkness". In it she makes the following quote by Thich Nhat Hanh:
"Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with truth"
She then goes on to say:
"the information and inspiration in this book are rooted in my life. This is inevitable, for neither Bhuddism nor shamanism are 'revealed' teachings. Both emphasize direct experience and personal realization over doctrine"

Coming out of a religion of 'revealed' teachings, it's taken a while for me to get my bearings. I guess one could say I've been waiting for the next 'revealed' teaching to come along. Searching in what seemed to be the dark, though, I have somehow found my own way.

I've often reflected on the fact that we know more than we know we know (and it sounds really cool to say that). If I cut myself, I know how to heal myself. Perhaps not intellectually, but I do have that knowlege. I'm starting to think it's the same with spirituality. When we move beyond the illusions of intellectual knowlege and the belief that we are somehow superior in our knowlege to the deep and wild knowlege of the Earth, we start to see ourselves for who we really are - part of Nature and connected in an intimate way to this Ancient Knowlege.

Finding my own rhythm

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's;
I will not reason and compare: my business is to create (William Blake)

I remember around 20 years ago telling my drum teacher that someone had said that they could tell that he was my teacher. I remember his reply was that if anyone ever said I sounded like him I should take it as an insult - I needed to sound like me. At the time one of my biggest goals was to be able to play like him, so I didn't quite get it, but it obviously stuck because I remember it. I remember one of my students a few years later saying a similar thing - that someone recognised my style in him. I have to be honest and say that it was a bit of an ego boost - but I remembered what I was taught and passed on the wisdom.

A few years ago a famous percussionist was in South Africa. He gave a workshop on drumming and percussion that I was fortunate enough to attend. One of the comments he made really stood out for me. He said something to the tune of a drum being your instrument, and you need have the freedom to express yourself through it. If that means hitting it on the side or the rim to get the sound you want, then you need to have the freedom to do just that.

And so it is in life. For a time we follow a system handed to us by others, but we're eventually faced with a choice as to whether we continue following that system, or whether we take the journey of the Soul and create our own system, finding our own rhythm and the means of expressing that.

All a dream

I went for a walk earlier on today. I often do that during the day to give my mind a chance to breath. I find that I can sit in front of my pc for a certain length of time and be quite productive, but then my mind gets tired - or bored. When I find myself staring at the screen - present in body, but my mind is somewhere else, I know it's time to get up and take a walk around outside.

I usually go the same route - just around the block. While I'm walking I try and focus on the moment, NOW - the only moment there is. Today I found myself feeling like I'd done this all before. Well I had obviously done this all before - many times. Life is full of repetition - driving to work, saying hello to everyone, sitting down at the same place, answering the same questions, going for the same walk. It's like repeating the same dream every night where we know what's going to happen. In fact - it felt like just that - a dream.

So I walked back to the building and as I approached it I knew exactly what I would find - that the secretary would look up and say hello, that the tea lady would be sitting in the kitchen reading a newspaper, and all of my colleagues would have their noses to their screens. Perhaps someone would be talking in the corner. And that is how it was.

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 :)