Tempting Fate

We all know when we push our luck a little too far.  And we all know about the idea of tempting fate.  Yet we don’t do anything about it.  I’ve had a number of things happen in the last few months where I had the chance to change the outcome.  I could have made a different decision, and prevented a number of things happening.  But I didn’t.  Instead,  I put it off, told myself that ‘eventually’ I would get round to it.  You know the drill.

Then Fate gets involved.  And all of a sudden, you realise that it would have been sooo much easier to make the change.  Instead, you have to suffer with the consequences.  So right now, I’m looking at everything in my life, with a  fine tooth comb.  What is there that could go differently to how I would like?  What could go ‘wrong’ if I don’t do something about it first?

You do get some chances to make the changes you need to.  But eventually, it might be taken out of your hands.  Are you ready for that?

 

Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Cleaning to be done …

I love spring cleaning, when the sun has finally started shining and the air is clear and fresh.  It simply feels wrong to hold onto old and unnecessary stuff from the winter.  I love purging my house and my life of things that are no longer useful or no longer helping me – in many cases, its the things we hold onto that hinder us the most.

But this cleansing of our lives should not be restricted just to the new year.  All through the year, there are opportunities that come along to recheck your life and home and see if everything is serving its purpose.  I try to do mine fairly regularly, so that I have the space to allow better stuff to come into my life.  But even going through the process every few months, there are still things that I hold onto and I can’t really tell you why … it just feels wrong to let them go.  One day, I will get rid of them, and one day the reason for keeping them will seem silly or insignificant … one day …

Where Do Fears Come From?

Have you got something that you are scared of?  Something that makes no sense, because you can’t think of why you should be so scared of it?  I have a few things, some could be seen as pretty normal, some not so.  I was scared of spiders – I mean petrified. I’m not so now because I understand them a bit better, but when I was younger just knowing one might be in the house would have me sitting up in bed all night.  Wasps and bees too.  Long before I actually got stung, I remember being so frightened of them that if I heard one outside my window I would be screaming.  My husband bless him also knows how scared I am of them, having been woken up very early  on many mornings to get a wasp out of the bedroom after it had flown in at dawn.

They are a bit normal, I would say.  You can see the danger inherent in wasps and bees and spiders – well, lots of people don’t like spiders. But I also have a fear of water – in particular, having my head submerged by water.  Now, this makes no sense, as I have had this fear for as long as I can possibly remember.  And its not the thought of getting my face wet, either.  It is a truly terrifying notion that my face under water for any length of time will kill me – in fact, it feels like at some point I have been killed by it.

And that’s my point today.  I think there are fears that we have dragged through from previous lives that affect how we are in the lifetime.  Whatever happened to me before, I think I have brought through that fear, as it is so totally out of keeping with my life now.  I have absolutely no reason to fear the feeling of being submerged as much as I do.  When I took swimming lessons (and I still do swim) I was fine until they asked me to put my head under the water.  At which point I fainted – not great timing, but there you go.  All I remember is the terror that i felt and the sense of memories coming rushing back into my mind.

So what are you scared of?  Do you know where it comes from?  if not, maybe it didn’t start in this lifetime.

 

Inspiring Stuff …

Who inspires you?  I’ve been thinking about this recently, as I’ve heard recently so many things or people being classed as inspirational.  And to be inspirational is something that many people aspire to be.  They want to inspire others, to make a difference to humanity.  Some choose to do it one person at a time; the care-worker who looks after just one or two elderly people, can make such a huge difference to that person that the fact that they can only affect one or two means nothing to the person who has been helped.  THEIR life is better for having them in it.  Then you have the other end of the scale; people with global aspirations, of reaching as many people as possible.  As a coach I worked and kept up with a number of such people – and I have to say, some were more successful than others at getting the global acknowledgement that they were after.

My opinion is that to inspire many people, you start one person at a time.  How you deal with the paper boy, or your local traffic warden, will affect your ability to connect with thousands if not millions of people.  It’s not important how quickly you can reach the masses.  It matters the message you are giving and whether people believe it to be honest, a raw affirmation of your own belief system.  You can have the purest, most significant message of them all, but if it is carried within insincerity, or with an agenda tacked to the end of it, then people stop listening.

I write this blog for two reasons; I write it as my own personal thoughts and ramblings about my journey through the Qaballah, in the hope that some may read something that see it as relevant for themselves.  I also write it because I do feel that I have a message that I am supposed to communicate out to as many people as I can.  I don’t think that I’m supposed to be inspiring – just the message that I have. Who I am is insignificant; I don’t want to be recognised or acknowledged.  But what I have to say is hugely significant and important.  So I guess my real question is – can I inspire without having to be inspiring myself?

Before you ask, I have no idea right now what the message is – every now and then I get a glimmer, a ray of something glint through the fog that is my usual ramblings.  But I honestly don’t know what I have to say yet.  My main worry is that when the time comes and I do know what I need to tell people, that I won’t have the ability to do so.

A Poetic Interlude

before I found the Qaballah and I was trying to make sense of Life all by myself, I used to do a lot of poetry.   I always enjoy writing (hence the reason for writing this blog and my book) but I always found writing poetry very therapeutic.  I never really knew what I was going to write about – I just let the thoughts come up and if they rhymed, we had a result.  I thought that it would be a good idea to maybe share some of it with you as well.  Who knows, some of it may resonate with you too; or it might just get you inspired enough to start writing your own.  It doesn’t matter if its any good – it just matters that it is what you want to say.  Hope you enjoy:

I rush up, a million bubbles lighting my way
As I go closer and closer to the brightness.
The lightness in my heart helps me go faster,
Lifting me like a balloon towards the morning sky.
The darkness surrounding me clears,
The coldness of the water feels lukewarm, then hot
As I get lifted up and away.

I’ve spent too long in the water;
The darkness is a friend; the sunshine a mortal enemy.
Yet I see it now as a saviour, something to strive towards,
The rewards for reaching it far outweighing the fear I felt
When I first went under.
Holding my breath in case I gushed out and polluted the crystal clear waters
Spoiling it for all.

Down I went, the clear waters darkening, polluting my mind,
I felt myself sinking farther and farther and in the end
I stopped resisting the drop, giving in to the sensation
Of being dragged from where I was, down and down again.
Knowing I should begin to struggle;
Knowing that I couldn’t fight that which made me feel better,
The water reflecting what was going on inside.

I reached the bottom of the water, a bump on my feet assuring me I could go no further.
I didn’t know what was next, where to go, what to do.
Was the bottom of the water all there was? What now?
Looking around I saw debris of lives since passed, small traces of humanity
Decaying on the bed, waiting until all traces were gone.
My own wasted body would join this
If I stayed and waited for the inevitable.

But I wasn’t born to die this way;
Life can offer me more than the water ever could.
But life was up there, where pain existed and fears would not stop.
Yet what are we if we cannot fear and fight on regardless? Pain gives way to pleasure
If we let it; being scared of pain is as clear as the water that entranced me,
Being scared of what pleasure might bring is as murky as the water surrounding me now
But I have to stay here to find out.

So I began my ascent, the lifting of my body like the lifting of my soul,
Giving myself permission to feel the pressure of the water.
Revelling in it as the pressure weakens, as the hold of the dark gave way to the light
And I start to go faster and faster till I am where I am now;
About to break the surface and breathe for the first time.
A rebirth of my spirit following the labour of my despair.
The sun will warm my face, heating up my soul and energising me to carry on.

 

 

 

 

What Fate has In Store For Us

Fate intervenes in my life a lot. It does in everyone’s – the trick is whether we notice.

If you are doing something, and you’re finding it really difficult and you can’t understand why, it may never occur to you to stop for a second and make sure that you are supposed to be doing it in the first place. That is what I believe Fate is. It is the thing that gets in the way if we are going in the wrong direction; the pointer that can show us the right way – if we choose to look.

Say you are climbing a mountain (no, I wouldn’t either, but it an image). It looks like a pretty tough climb, but you have been told that the view from the top is stunningly beautiful. You have nothing better to do that day, so you decide to climb up. A quarter of the way up, you are tired, your legs hurt and it is getting cold. Do you stop? Or are you still so convinced that the view is worth it that you carry on?

Half of the way up now, you trip over a rock you didn’t see, and gash your leg pretty badly. You are now really cold and you can feel the cut with every step. Is the view still worth it? Are you still convinced that what you will see at the top will make this effort worthwhile? Can any view be worth what you are going through right now?

You’re a stubborn so and so, so you decide that, having come this far, you will keep going. It’s become a matter of pride, of belief that you can make it to the top in the first place. The view is secondary to knowing you can beat this. So, gashed leg and all, you go on.

Three-quarters of the way up the weather has turned really nasty and you are turning blue. The pain from your leg is excruciating; you are hopping more than walking now. Everything in you is telling you to turn around, to give up. You’ve only heard from others that the view is amazing and that you will be rewarded for your effort. But you don’t remember any of them telling you it would be this hard. In fact, you are pretty sure that at least a couple told you they did it in one afternoon and jogged all the way up. How could they? Your path is treacherous to say the least – the loose rocks under your feet could make you slip over the edge at any time. Your brain hurts from having to concentrate so much on putting one foot in front of the other.

Do you keep going?

Is it still worth it?

What were you doing this for again?

The answer of whether to go on is so personal to each individual that I can’t tell you how this little imagery ends. Some will see that Fate is putting obstacles in their way to challenge them, to make sure they keep the faith and belief in what they are doing. The bumps in the road are what make the journey worth it. Others will see it as crazy, that Fate is putting these obstacles in their way to stop them, make them turn around, make them see that they are following the wrong path. This mountain was built for others to enjoy and overcome – not you. Your mountain is over the other side of the valley, where YOUR view is waiting for you and it is just as beautiful as this one – but its all yours. And you will find the path there much much easier.

Which one are you? Which Fate do you listen to? And are you listening to Fate at all – or the personality traits in you that lead you away from what you are supposed to be doing?

Perfect Moments …

When was your last perfect moment?  Most of the time our answer would be time with our children, our loved one.  Maybe a holiday, our wedding, or birth of our children.

These are all indeed perfect moments.  But what about those just for you, where no-one else is affected, but you have a moment  of complete and utter joy, or even peace.

I don’t get a lot of peace in my life.  I’m a busy person and am on the go from the time I get up to the time I go to bed.  I’m used to it, so I don’t really know anything different.  Yet, one of my own perfect moments was just that – a moment of utter peace.

I’ve not been well recently and the main symptom has been poor sleep (or to put it another way, really bad sleep).  I have gone to bed feeling awful and woke up feeling drained.  So, there I was, in bed, watching some TV programme, expecting to have trouble sleeping again.  And instead I felt my eyelids close, and in the second before I fell to sleep, there was a split second of perfect, clear and blissful peace.  I wasn’t quite asleep to not be aware of it, and I wasn’t quite awake.  And as I drifted off, I felt more relaxed than I had felt in a long long time.

When I woke up, again, in the moment between being fully asleep and fully awake, I felt yet again that instance of peace, no thoughts, no aggravation, no irritations. I was just … me.  And I felt still.

Now, to some of you, you might be thinking that I’m making a lot out of falling asleep and waking up, but check it out yourself – how many times do you fall asleep worrying about the day, or wake up worrying about the day that hasn’t even happened yet?  How often do you genuinely fall asleep in total peace?

Don’t Be Too Clever …

Straight to the point this time.  I think I know where we have got lost in our journey back to Source.  I think we have become so used to using our intellect that we have forgotten to pay attention to our intuition.  When you look at the way science approaches problems, it has a clear motive – to find an explanation of how something happens.  I know they might say it is the why, but it is isn’t really – they don’t care why something does what it does – only how it does.  To find the how, you have to stay logical, analytical, rational.  If the evidence proves that only one explanation is possible, then that has to be accurate.  Thankfully Einstein didn’t work along these lines, otherwise he may never have made the critical jumps in thinking that allowed him to look at the world in a different way.  And if Galileo had seen the evidence as everyone else had, we would never have the (accurate) view of the solar system that we have today.  But that is before, when there were still so many questions.  We are going into a time now where there is a growing belief that we have asked and answered almost all the relevant questions.  As we get closer to that point, there is a growing realisation that, with all the questions answered, we can rely on those answers to give us our view of the world, and not listen to anything else.

But our intuition can’t be ignored, as it is this part that separates us out as individuals.  It allows me to think differently to other people.  It allows me to respond in a way that fits into my life without having to fit into other people’s.

The risk of using intellect only to answer life’s many questions is that the answer might not fit well with you and what is right for you.   It is someone else telling you what to do.  And that to me is so dangerous.  Our intuition leads us on our path, giving us direction that is specifically designed for us.  Analysing and rationalising takes us away from our individual path and onto someone else’s.

I’m not saying don’t think – I would be lost without my ability to think things through, as would most people.  But don’t allow it to become the only tool in your toolbox, as your bigger ally is listening to your heart.

 

What Hurts More – Pain or Pleasure?

You may think you already know the answer to this question, but I think it’s worth just checking that you are actually right.

Pain hurts – obviously.  Wounds, whether inside or outside, can take your breath away and you can struggle for balance.  Because it hurts, our natural response is to avoid it, to run away from it as fast as possible – right?

Or is it?  How much of your life is played around situations where you end up getting hurt?  Relationships that never work out the way you want them, yet you go back for more?  Maybe the drink or drugs that you consume end up wracking your body with the pain of withdrawal – yet you reach for it once more.  However much we like to think that we try to avoid pain, it can seem that sometimes it is safer to feel that, than nothing at all.

So what about pleasure?  Can pleasure hurt?  Well, before you all think I’ve gone mad, think about it.  When you are happy, happier than you have ever been in your life, riding the crest of a wave, listening to your favourite band live, looking at your children’s faces, looking at your partner down the wedding aisle – whatever your pleasure is.  It feels amazing, great, fantastic – but it can also feel a bit too much to take.  Pure happiness is so big and large and immense, that it can feel like it is just too much for our bodies and minds to take.  We also know that those moments of pure joy do not last forever.  We eventually climb down from there, as we return to our normal routine of life.  And sometimes the sadness of leaving such an experience behind can be just as painful as having a devastatingly painful one.  Is it any wonder then that, just as much as we try to avoid pain, we can also get caught up in avoiding pleasure, pure pleasure?  We never know how great that feeling is, but we also never experience the pain of it leaving us, we never have to deal with the fear that we will lose it and for some, this leads to a life in the middle lane, chugging along, never feeling too much pain but not allowing themselves to experience pleasure either.

So look at where you are right now – and see which one is hurting you most?

Knowing Myself …

When I started this blog, it was my intention to share everything with it; good times, bad times, interesting times and sometimes the downright boring.  Many of you would say I have succeeded on all accounts.  But I wanted it to be honest.  I wanted to show you that, on every journey of self awareness, whether that is spiritual, practical, religious or scientific, you have moments when you have to reassess, redetermine your path and question your decision to continue on.  It would be great if we could keep on feeling positive and motivational at all times, and the endless happiness that we felt on the path would lead us to some kind of euphoria.  And I, after a lot of soul searching,  do still think that this is the ultimate destination for these type of experiences.  What I suppose I wasn’t expecting was the stuff I would have to deal with on the way.

I suppose it is like anything; if you start cleaning something up, sooner or later you look back at the water you have used and it is now dirty, brown, and smells slightly stagnant.  You have to get rid of that and fill a new bucket of water and soap, ready to begin cleaning again.  I guess that is what I have been doing.  Through my work in the Qaballah, I have been rinsing off a lot of stuff around me, and recently I’ve realised my water is too dirty to be effective anymore.  Physically, I have been having problems and I am now involved in  the cacophony of tests and examinations that seem to be kicked off any time you go near a doctors surgery.  They are necessary; I know my body this time can’t fix itself without a little help or guidance; but I have been feeling a bit of a failure.  That my spiritual work should have set me up to deal with the dirty water on my own.  This has been eating away at me, and has begun my questioning everything – whether what I am doing makes any sense to me any more.  I started this to know myself and I feel more connected to the world around me than ever before.  Yet, this awareness somehow missed out my body.  Or did it?  Did I simply think that if I looked after my spirit, my body would keep up?

The fact is, the body we have during this lifetime is the only one we have got. if we are going to look inside for spiritual growth, we have to remember to maintain our bodies as well; otherwise there is no container for what we learn.  By not acknowledging this, my dirty bucket of water has hung around too long and maybe this is my body telling me that it has had enough.

I know that I will continue on this journey, and that I am going to have more beauty and love in my life because of it.  I know I’m going to be stronger and more aware than I could possibly be on my own.  But I only now appreciate that the body HAS to come with me on that path; it’s the only vehicle I’ve got to get me there.

 

Take good care of yourself; the more you know yourself, the easier it is to take it for granted.

 

It’s Up To Me …

I’ve had a funny few weeks.  I’ve been feeling very low, anxious, tired, edgy … I thought it was possibly too much caffeine and too many late nights.  but I think it was more to do with feeling out of control of my life – work was really busy, home was manic as Christmas got closer and closer, the weather was awful so hampered a lot of our plans, – you know the score.  I felt like most of my life was being determined by someone or something else.  This naturally started to translate into feeling that my mind had gone the same way, that my moods and emotions were heading the same way.

I’m still in the joy that is Netzach, so I expected to be feeling a lot more challenged on how I feel bout things, about how my triggers are set off.  What I didn’t really expect was that it was all happen at once!

What I realised was that, actually, very little had changed … all that had really happened was that I had let my mind drift – and when you do that it does become disconnected from how I want to feel. It goes instead into the randomness of everything else, where you are bit happy, a bit sad, a bit disjointed.  I am used to picking up the emotions of those around me when I am in a crowd – but I had never before experienced what it was like to take those feelings home with me, and let them become my own.  Now I had – I hated it.  I realise now that I need to constantly watch just what I am thinking and feeling – and whose feelings they are.  I have had to toughen up my mind – to be able to tell the difference between me and the rest of the stuff that is wandering about – and I see now why that is so necessary.  To be experiencing things that are not yours make you feel useless, as you struggle to cope.  But with your mind focussed on what you are and what you need and want, it is lot easier to distinguish yourself from the crowd.

My Heart Hurts …

My little girl is a constant source of wonder to me.  She is a big soul in a little body and always makes me think about how I view the world compared to her.  She seems so stable compared to me – sometimes I wonder who the mother is and who the child is.

One day, she was being a bit of a monkey, and challenging those boundaries that parents put up for our own sanity.   She was supposed to be tidying her room, and seemed instead to think banging her door would make more sense.  To me, with a headache and not the greatest patience in the world, decided enough was enough and put her in the naughty corner (I should point out, the corner is very rarely used; ever since the day she started putting herself in there). I explained that I was disappointed that she had been naughty and that I was going to give her some time to think about it.  Now the books say you then have to walk away until the allotted time, so I did just that.

A short while later, I heard her crying.  A small sob that seemed more for herself than to grab attention.  She sounded so miserable, the books went out of my head and I went back to the corner early.  When I asked her what was wrong, she looked up at me and said’ “my hearts hurts.”  I thought she might have tummy ache, indigestion … maybe that was why she had been naughty in the first place.  When I asked her to explain what she meant, she said “I’ve been naughty and you are cross with me, and I don’t like you being cross with me.  I’m so sad that I was naughty that my heart hurts when I think about it”.  Needless to say she came straight out of the corner into a very long cuddle.

I have difficulty expressing my feelings sometimes – it feels cumbersome and tricky, uncomfortable.  Yet in one sentence, she had explained to me exactly how it feels when you disappoint someone, and you realise you have hurt someone.

That’s not a psychological analysis of what hurt or pain is – but I think it is the most effective statement of owning your feelings I have ever heard.

What Slows You Down?

We have snow in the UK. It comes as a surprise every year – there is irony there somewhere.
One of the main responses to it is the belief that things have to stop when it arrives – no cars, no trains, no schools, no work – so for many it is seen as a bit of a blessing. But this got me thinking – really there is no excuse for letting it stop us. Let’s face it, if we were doing something that we had really looked forward to, would we manage to pick on our wellies and dive inot the snow? Of course. Yet we are prepared to let it stop us getting on with life in the usual way. Probably because our usual life seems neverending, an endless to do list for many people and no space on it for me-time; that time when you just let yourself be who you are.

Things like weather can only really stop if we don’t mind being stopped – but how can we not do this ourselves?  Why do we feel that we have to keep going, only stopping if physically we cannot continue?

I am known for being a bit too busy for most of the time.  Several friends have suggested that I work too hard, do too much and really need to slow down and relax a bit.  And to be honest, I agree with them.  I need to recharge my batteries as much as anyone, ready to be of more use later on.  But there’s no time, I have so much to do, to achieve.  I am so focussed on what I can do that I forget to look at what I should be doing.

I have also found that, when I really should be stopping myself, that something comes along and does it for me – whether that is the weather, or an illness, or the car not starting.  Something will stop you if you really need it to.  And, so that it doesn’t happen at an inopportune moment, it would be a lot better to pre-empt it and stop yourself.

Dear Daughter

Every December, I write a letter to my Daughter. I got the idea from one of the Chicken Soup for The Soul books (an excellent way to restore your faith in human nature)
The idea is that, every year since she was born, I have written her a letter describing the year that has passed, how she has grown, what she has done and how I feel about it. When she is 18, I will give her all 18 letters, and I hope that she will understand what a gift that kind of insight to her life means to her and to me.

Why did I start this?  Because I realised that the time of a child growing up goes so fast – before you now it they are moaning about you nicking their make up and crying into their tea about the latest dating disaster.  Every parent who I spoke to when I was pregnant said the same thing “it’ll be over way too fast and too soon”.  The minute I saw my little girl for the first time, I felt this panic that I would blink and miss something.  So I committed right then to do this and to try and remember for us both what each year was like.

It also lets me talk to her like an adult, as I know that she will read it when she is 18.  I can try to explain things that happened when she was younger, while it is still fresh in my mind, but giving the explanation to a young woman who stands a better chance of understanding it.  And, because i know she will be reading it later, I do double check everything I do right now, because i don’t want to have to explain to her later on.

I think we can all benefit from stopping once in a while and reflecting on the time that has passed.  When doing this in relation to a particular person in your life, it can add more importance to those thoughts and help you keep on track with where you want your life to lead, and what you want to be doing – and not what we fall into out of habit.  It would have been very easy for me to get so engrossed in the practicalities of being a mum that I stopped looking at the wonder of bringing a life into the world.  This keeps me honest; it keeps me focussed on what is truly important – that a little girl becomes as great as she can, with only love and support from her family.

What’s Important?

We all have a list of priorities – of things that we consider to be important enough to be worthy of our attention and time. We don’t all agree on what should or shouldn’t be important, which is usually where it looks like others might just be being a bit lazy, or selfish, or rude, or absorbed … however you roll.

Out of the important things, we each then have to prioritise those, so that the most important of the important gets done before everything else.  This can cause some problems.  For example, my important things are:

- daughter

- husband

- work

- family

- house

- blog

- gadgets (just love my iPad)

At any one time they go up and down in list of priorities.  Right now, my daughter is not well, so she is right up the top.  But work is really busy as well, so although she is top, the work is hovering just below it.  Husband – well, he’ll understand won’t he?  And family and house – they get on fine without me thinking of them … maybe just until christmas …

It’s so easy to get distracted by one thing and lose focus on the others.  But all still remain important to me and I would be distraught if I ignored any one of them.  So who do we do it?  How do we make sure all these things gets dealt with?

With my coaching head on, I used to say make lists, prioritise, eat that frog and so on (yes, I really did say eat that frog – google it)  But even when you know what you have to do and in what order, most of the things in this list can’t be ‘finished’, ready to start the next one.  They are ongoing relationships, and as such I can’t just pick one up, play with it for a while and then drop it and pick up the next one.  Like plates spinning we have to keep the energy on all constant – otherwise they fall.  And we all know the feeling of our plates falling – that gut wrenching guilt we feel when we see the effect our lack of attention has caused.

But similarly, we can’t always be watching every plate – otherwise we can never really appreciate each one individually.  You know that feeling – being with your family but feeling guilty for not spending time at work; being at work feeling guilty that you aren’t with your family, laying with your child while your partner watches TV on their own – again.  The consequences of any one of those is guilt that can be disabling.  There is no point living in such a guilt trip  all of your life.

So, what do I think?  I think that if you’re going to do something, do it whole heartedly.  Yes it means that for a while you forget about all your other priorities.  But in the end, you will get far more out of each activity.  Recognising that each one is a constant and each one will have to have some time, some priority over the others, is a good start.  Launching yourself 100% into each one at the time you have put aside for it makes sure that the people affected don’t feel shortchanged.  And eventually, you gain so much more by doing each bit for a bit than worrying about all of it all the time.

Video Killed Our Senses

How much time do you spend on the internet these days? Or at a computer? I spend a lot of my time on here – it’s my day job and where I can reach out to so many of you during my time off. My Christmas shopping has indeed been done almost entirely online and I would be lost without my iPad.
It was my shopping that made me think about the impact this has had on us as human beings. I wanted to buy some perfume. This was actually for myself, a sort of christmas present for being so organised. I don’t wear a lot of fragrance, so I wanted to find one that would be light enough that I wouldn’t choke, but strong enough that it would at least linger through the day. Now, no matter how good advertising is these days on perfumes, it is categorically impossible for them to let you experience the fragrance itself. So, I may really like an advert for a fragrance, but if I smell awful with it on, then the advertising has achieved pretty much nothing.
I am ashamed to say, though, that didn’t stop me opening up Google and trying to think of a search string to find a perfume that would suit me. I found lots of pages that described various smells, and gave me an idea of what each would be like, but there was always a caveat advising that each person is so different that what smells nice on one person may smell like cow dung on someone else.
With a heavy heart, I realised that I would actually have to go out to the shops and go to a counter and try to smell as many as I can. At this point I stopped myself. I was actually quite annoyed at the fact that the world wide web had such a limitation. But after my self-absorbed moaning, I stopped and thought about the bigger impact of this thinking.
What does the internet actually work for? It works for those things that you can see and hear. That’s only two of our senses. Yet we spend almost all of our time spent on computers, believing we are experiencing life. There are the three other main senses that it is simply impossible to use via the online world. Do we miss these?  Or do we consider the other two so important that we will sacrifice the others?
To feel alive, I believe we have to be able to experience everything that life has to offer and use all our sense to do it. We have to be able to see and hear things, of course – they are our main tools for connecting with others. But we also need to touch, to feel the texture and warmth of things around us.  We have to taste new foods, new combinations of the everyday things we eat to keep discovering.  We have to smell the world around us (who doesn’t have a smell that instantly takes you back to childhood or a favourite time?)

How much are we missing out on if we ignore anything we can’t find a hyperlink to?

Something’s In The Air …

It’s definitely the change of the season right now.  The air has a chilly bite to it that was missing just days ago, and the blue sky now looks cold rather than the warm balmy days of summer.

Seasons are funny things.  Each one has its own unique feeling, and we as humans have learned the good and bad aspects of each.  We regret the passing of the old season for what it gave us, but look forward to the new one, as a sign of the continual cycle we find ourselves in on this planet.  We might not always be happy about what is coming (if you don’t particularly like the extremes of hot or cold, Winter and Summer can be both a blessing and a curse) but we see it as inevitable.

I feel that another change, just as inevitable as the seasons, is coming about as well.  For several years now, I have seen a change in the way people coexist with our world and each other.  More and more people, while not turning to more organised religions, are feeling that their spirituality is something to be explored, as if the time is right.  There are more people questioning the fact-based world of science, recognising that it only answers the How not the Why of life.  And I konw personally that I feel that there is a clock ticking somewhere which will at some point chime and things are going to be different to how they are now.

I’m not talking about an Apocalypse – no Armageddon going on for me.  I don’t think it is going to be particularly dramatic or spectacular, but I do think it is going to create a significant shift in the way human beings relate to each other and to the world.  The work I do and the messages I have been passed would suggest to me that it is time to prepare, to get ready – but for what?  I’m not sure.  And I’m not going to sit here like a modern day sooth sayer and predict the coming of anything or the collapse of life as we know it.  But I feel that I am being prepared to be of use and I know that I am not the only one.

When Autumn turns to Winter, we prepare for the long haul through the cold nights and look forward to first signs that Spring is here and the earth is slowly coming back to life.  What I feel in the air is not so dissimilar to that.  Energy is being stored and conserved for when it is needed.  I wonder how many of you resonate with that feeling?

 

I Forgot How to Love …

I have been looking at feelings recently, mostly as part of my trip into Netzach on the tree.  I find that when I explore one of the areas on the tree, many things start happening around me that ‘help’ me explore and find out more.  But I have to admit, I was reluctant about doing this with Netzach.  Feelings is not something I am particularly comfortable with.  Feelings can be messy, difficult, painful.  This was my perspective on them anyway, so I worked out ways to crush them down until I could simply ignore them. They were inconvenient, always coming up when I had things to do, stuff to do.  Eventually I guess I got so good at suppressing them that I almost convinced myself that I had cracked it – that I had mastered them

Then Netzach arrived.  I realised then that I had been soooo wrong about al of this.  I got bombarded with feelings, situations came up that forced me to confront the feelings that I had thought I had under control.  I didn’t not at all.  I ignored them – that’s no so easy when it is brought into sharp focus.  I had situations both at work and at home that brought up all the feelings that I had hidden – fear, anger, pain, disappointment, anxiety.  I am not ashamed to say that I really struggled, and there were many times when I was at work that a simple scenario had me blinking back tears, much to the worry of my boss.  I still fought them at this point, but when I got home, I brought those feelings back again, examined them, really took time to understand what it was all about.

More importantly for me, as I did this, I came to the realisation that they were not the only feelings I had been suppressing.  My ability to love and to show love had been seriously impacted, as well as my ability to feel happiness.  I was treated for depression a few years ago, and at the time was put on antidepressants to stabilise me.  My overwhelming memory of that time was feeling absolutely nothing.  I couldn’t cry any more, but nor could I laugh, or sing, or feel anything.   When I examined the past few years, I realised that, though I had given the tablets up long long ago, I was so scared of returning to that dark place that I had learnt how to turn the feelings off all by myself. And, just like being on the pills, that was non-discrimantory.  I had not had any feelings of pain or hurt, but neither had I really allowed myself to love unconditionally.  It was only when I opened the floodgates and let the bad stuff through as well, did I recognise just how much I loved those around me.  And I also felt free to show them that love.  I wasn’t worried about being pushed back, or rejected – it never crossed my mind.  I guess that is because it didn’t really matter to me.  What mattered was that I loved them, not whether it was returned.  But, obviously I guess, the love I showed was returned by some very surprised people who wondered what had suddenly got into me.  I was hugging those around me, and kissing them, and really telling them how I felt.  And it made me feel … alive.

What have I learnt so far from Netzach?  That feelings come in all shapes and sizes and you have to be able to take the rough to be able to feel the smooth.  I may find it tough to handle the negative feelings I have, but the more I am able to feel love, compassion, warmth and happiness, somehow the others just don’t feel as powerful any more.

 

Press Any Key for Help

I get dragged into practically everything on the context that I can help.  I’ve been brought up to believe that if you are able to help another in distress, then you should – it is your moral and ethical duty.  I’m no good samaritan, but I do try and hold onto that wherever possible.

It’s not really that sort of help that I’m talking about.  I’m talking about offering my assistance to people who actually haven’t asked for it.  The thick end of that particular wedge would be sticking your nose in and becoming a complete control freak.  I’m not going to go into how often I do that, although I will admit I have my moments.  No, I’m focussing today on the thin end, the bit where we hear of someone in trouble and we immediately run to their aid.  ”I need a pound for the parking meter” – ” I’ll help”.  ”I’ve got to stay in and wait for the delivery to come”  - “I’ll stay in for you”.  ”I’m travelling to Scotland and back and I don’t know the way” – “I’ll drive you”.  Recognise any of these?  Trust me, I’ve done things that even as I’m saying it I think “what am I talking about?”  I had the perfect nonsensical reaction today but thankfully, I stopped myself before it got silly.  We were out at a local park and they had a bird of prey display going on.  Absolutely beautiful birds that I will speak about in a subsequent post more – they were astonishing to watch.  Anyway, on the wall was a sign that advised that the performances weren’t happening as often any more as the guy who run the centre had fallen ill and had been told to take it easy.  It explained that he ran the centre on his own and there was no-one who could take it over from him, but his health was deteriorating and he had been warned about doing too much.  Now, other people walked past that sign.  They noted it as in “oh, there aren’t any displays on Monday” – and moved on.  Me?  I stood there thinking, poor thing, maybe I could help him.  I like the birds and they are gorgeous, I’m sure I could help him ….  WHAT?!?!??!  I know nothing about looking after birds, let alone birds with big claws and beaks.  Regardless, I live twenty miles from the place and couldn’t get there every week, let alone every day.
Thankfully the guy was not around or who knows what would have happened.  But it did demonstrate to me that I need to be wary of who I assist and how.   It’s not that I think I can do it better.  It’s simple that I think I can take the strain, carry the weight – make it easier for them.  What this fails to do is help me see that I need to be taken care of too.  In my past, I have run myself ragged helping out people who, bless them, really didn’t ask me to.  But like anyone, if you are offered a simpler option, you take it, don’t you?  I was offering my all and they appreciated the help – but I don’t think any really appreciated the cost to me.

I have to be able to use what I have, whether that is money, time, energy or love – in the most effective way possible.  This might sometimes mean letting others struggle more so than if I took the load.  But by shifting the weight of responsibility onto myself, I’m actually helping no-one.

My Response to Science

Stephen Hawking has no decided that things can spontaneously happen – there needs to be no cause or reason – stuff happens, right? Take away the need for God and Science’s domination over human opinion is complete? I think not.

I am a Qabalist, and as such I have found there to be no conflict at all between Science and religion. Everything that Science finds out about the world is exactly what we are supposed to be finding out. At the point at which science believes it has answered all of the riddles and questions around our existence, it will follow that there is the ultimate question that sciecnce steers away from all of the time – WHY? Are scientists of the belief that all this amazing marvels happens – just because? I wouldn’t give that answer to my five year old, let alone a population who depend on science to provide the ‘truth’.
What astounds me the most, is that scientists and those who believe that science is capable of answering everything, defend such beliefs as strongly (in some cases even more so) than those a religious persuasion. to the point I believe where science itself has become a religion. If science cannot find an explanation for something, it merely says ‘we don’t know yet but we will find out at some point’ and the believers accept this. I cannot see how this is different from religious beliefs – apart from the amazing irony!
The Qabalah goes beyond religion – I don’t believe in religion as the be all and end all, as my belief is that we are supposed to embrace all religious teachings that allow us to see the whole picture and not just a segment of it. Only when we look at all faiths together do we get the full picture and full answer to the WHY question we avoid.
In short, science and religion are exactly the same – it is merely the viewpoints that make them think they are in conflict.