False Cares
The first half of any human life is about `setting up shop´ in this material world of ours. In my case this consisted of finding and defending my place in the hierarchy of a large extended family, doing my best to `earn´ the physical and emotional attention that young children need as much as they need oxygen, in order to survive…
My Tribe
And the man told how he had been ailing so long and was still waiting to get into the bath first, upon the waters being moved, in order to be healed; but for these thirty-eight years he had been unable to get in first, others always getting into the bath before him. And Jesus saw that he was old and said to him: `Do you wish to get well?´ He said: `I wish to, but I have no one to carry me into the water on time. Some one will always get into the water before me.´ And Jesus said to him: `Awake, take up your bed and walk´. And the sick man took up his bed and walked…
Dance
The ancient Irish had a saying: ‚You don’t give a man a weapon until you’ve taught him how to dance.‘ In other words, a different kind of learning is required before someone can be truly trusted with social power and potent things like weapons. If a man does not know the wounds of his own soul, he can deny not just his own pain, but also be unmoved by the suffering of other people. More than that, he will tend to put his wound onto others. He may only be able to see the wound that secretly troubles him when he forcefully projects it into someone else, in forms of abuse or violence…
Family
One aspect of Jung’s pioneering work, backed up by the most recent discoveries in neurology, could now be described using a modern analogy; our `minds´ are not only stored in our physical brains, but are also encompassed in the `cloud´ of the sum of collective consciousness which has been forming since the dawn of time. This could explain such phenomena as déjà vu, synchronicity, and telepathy…
High & Dry?
My Victim Saboteur seizes its opportunity, first thing in the morning, when I wake up. `So this is it, this is how you will begin the rest of your days, alone and not mattering´, it whispers into my ear. The ability to identify and intercept that voice, accept, indeed embrace its existence, and recognise it for what it is, namely a phantom with a comprehensible nascency, is key to a sober start to the day…
AMDG
The smell of freshly waxed parquet floors intermingling with the culinary fragrances from the kitchens in the subterranean levels impressed etched itself on my memory, when I had occasion to visit the Jesuits’ offices and rooms on the far side of the incorporated church which divided school classrooms from living quarters…
Non-Violence
Thich Nhat Hanh hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that: `Peace is an inside job´. It all begins with me. If we pause and observe for a moment how our thoughts bombard us incessantly, how the `inner critic´ judges our selves, others, and our circumstances, we cannot deny that most of us live in a state of all-out war, the battlefield situated between our ears. The good news is that this is where the leverage for world peace is to be found…
Appreciation
There can be no transformation without gratitude. For gratitude leads to appreciation, taking us from hubris to humility, and enabling us to move out of our heads into the present moment. The intent of the addictive practice in the first place was as an avoidance strategy to protect us from the present moment of the three or five-year-old, which would otherwise have been unbearable…
Acceptance
I railed against the system, not yet realising that the only person I could change was me. Brutal youth tells us that we can change the world by changing others, by simply applying enough pressure. It took a while for the reality to sink in, a reality so eloquently expressed by Gandhi when he said: `Be the change you want to see in the world.´
Mystery
Then there was the experience of mystery, especially in the realm of nature. The hatching of a butterfly from its pupae at this time of year, the slow transformation of tadpoles, losing their tails and gaining the legs of young frogs, the musical flow of a river as interpreted and conveyed to me by my father, a man very attuned to the effervescence of nature. These, and more, caught my attention and even enchanted me. I felt part of the mystery itself…
