Shame

Can i see the beauty in shame? Can i appreciate the completeness with which i’ve been caught, the depth to which i’ve been plunged in my own unconsciousness? Even now i can feel it’s crippling touch on my fingers as i type, a sinking feeling deep within of defeat before the struggle has even begun.

I see now that i put shame on with my clothes in the morning (or is it even earlier than that, waiting eagerly to be with me as my eyes first flicker open?), and have lived with it every waking moment as long as i can remember. I see now that i’ve lived much of the last month crushed under shames thumb, even when i’ve been in states of ecstatic bliss shame has held the door open for me to leave it’s domain, and then closed it securely behind as i return safely to the comfort of it’s shackles.

Shame is such a subtle labyrinth, fractal like in it’s depth, unafraid of my growing wisdom (with it’s whispers so often helping my understanding) because it knows the very depths of me in a way i do not. It understands my own weaknesses, strengths and desires with an intimacy no other has.

And even in writing this i abstract it, i struggle to own my shame, that shame is not out there but in here, that i own it, that it is part of me. Perhaps i fear i am my shame, that if all was stripped back that would be all that is left. It is a poison that has seeped so deeply within the idea of life without it seems a strange and unfathomable thing.

This creature with which i live knows me with an intimacy i do not, it has been walking the hidden paths of my mind and emotions and it knows it can lay me low with a single blow. It seeks to perpetuate itself, and i feel like the more i grow, the higher in my consciousness i think i’m getting, the greater it’s eventual harvest.

My shame is truly magnificent in it’s subtlety and tenacity, in the intimacy with which it knows me, in the ease with which it controls me to create more of itself. If i wasn’t so ashamed, i’d call it beautiful.

Fire

The beauty of fire.

The ritual of lighting the fire, tearing paper out of the old phone book, scrunching it up, placing a pyramid of sticks and applying a match to it. The fire in it’s infancy, delicate and fickle, quickly firing into a bright flame, then abating as it slowly takes hold, embers gently glowing. That moment where it could go either way. Bigger kindling goes on as you trust the heat; they catch; and the fire powers into action, consuming ravenously, giving out nurturing life giving warmth.

Stone

Sitting in a library, slowly acclimatising to working on a local government project again. Next to me is a solid stone wall, all lumps and ripples and slapped together cement. There is a solidity, a reassurance inherent in stone. It’s always just there being solid, like the earth but a bit more visible because we’ve sliced it out and put it somewhere we can easily see.

There is a violence to it’s rectangular form, it has been fashioned, beaten into shape to serve a purpose. Yet it speaks also of beauty, a beauty beyond a function (although there is a beauty in that); there is something in it that speaks to me obliquely, something it holds while my mind melts into new shapes and i look deeply into that dark pit of transformation. When i return, the stone will still be there, holding a steadfast solidity for me, being stone.

Beauty

I’ve been struggling to think what to write in this blog for a while. Wondering what the point of it is, what it gives me aside from some random ramblings. I’ve been working on setting up a blog particularly for my spiritual musings, which will get there when i’m ready.

But today i had an idea about this blog, and it’s an idea that can be quite useful to me. The basic enquiry for the blog (for the time being anyway) is to enquire into beauty. It’s about me noticing the beauty around me, appreciating what is no matter how dark the road may be at that time. Even the darkness is beautiful.

And so today, a day of darkness, of exploring some of my deepest hurts and disabling emotions, i noticed how beautiful the blossoms were in the driveway of my home. My heart eased.



It aroused the memory of seeing these blossums last year, and that i’ve been here for more than the turn of a year. In amongst the harsh cold of winter, such delicate and beautiful flowers call our attention to the glorious flow of life. And a ray of sunshine emerges through the clouds.

Cleanse

My body feels a bit like it’s tripping. Not my mind, but my body. Between the salt water cleanse (another dose tomorrow), my Chinese herbs to clear my liver and spleen and the oxygen water supplement, my body has gone into melt down a bit. I’ve gone into melt down a bit. I’m feeling not dissimilar to what i would if i had a cold or something, yet i’m also feeling really clear and energised at the same time. A very strange experience all up, but one i’m going to keep pursuing.

Salt Water Experiment

This morning i embarked on a long awaited experiment, which was to do a salt water cleanse. It involves drinking one litre of salt water (1 litre of warm water with one tablespoon of salt in it) before i’d consumed anything for the day, ie first thing in the morning. One hour later, you really want to be sitting on the toilet as it comes shooting straight back out the other end with the contents of your intestines mixed in.

So why did i do this? Curiosity, and that i’ve had a flatulence problem for a while now and also that my belly just felt a bit clogged. I felt unclear in this area of my body, and i’m wanting a lot of clarity at the moment. It did take me a while to get a tablespoon measurement (i’m one for doing this properly if they need to be done)

Although diarrhoea is usually associated with a high degree of discomfort, there was nothing discomforting about it, it was a relief to get it out. And how do i feel now?

My head feels clearer, which is great considering i didn’t get a good nights sleep, my guts are a bit rumbly and feels like there’s a bit of stuff moving around in there. Definately worth doing a few more times.

Chickens!

The fun of chickens, strange little creatures, highly sociable and very curious. They've been bringing Isiah a lot of joy lately: you give them food, they give you eggs.









-- Post From My iPhone

Kids are love

Time with Raven has been an amazing thing, life is so immediate with children, the ups and the downs can be intense, there is a sense of the fierceness of the universe that i guess we learn to temper as we grow older and our consciousness becomes more adapted to this place.
And there is a sense of entitlement to being entertained, to having your attention, of being on the journey with them. They’re so much less mediated that we are.
Ed and family have gone for a few days... i’ll miss them, but i’ll also get a bit more done.

...and so i wonder...

The end of a new day, and another new one tomorrow like drips from a tap, or the birth of the sun, or the crescent of the moon. I hear of angels singing, and yet the hum of electronics fills my ears, and so i wonder if it's the same or if my ears have too much wax in them; i hear of love and yet my heart feels closed when it seems it should be most open, and so i wonder if it's the same, and perhaps i'm just looking at in the wrong way; i hear of the earth and yet all i experience is the falling of the leaves in autumn and the dripping of the rain, and so i wonder if it's the same or if perhaps i need wings to fly.

Love

I have some amazing people in my life. It's so good to see Ed again, and his family is as awesome as he is.


Raven in particular is outrageously cute. My heart feels more open for having spent time with them.

-- Post From My iPhone

Fun

Life surges amoungst the chaos of love. Music wine dance bonfires friends and all round goodness.


-- Post From My iPhone

Memory, lead, gold, Wolfgangs

I make the dash out of everyday reality, away from home.



A trip out of town and a whirl of traffic and frantic activity to reach escape velocity. But now I'm down at Wolfgangs palace with the sound of flutes and voices in the dark, the smell of cow dung and damp earth and the bright sky of a full moon.

I do love this place. It has an enchantment about it that makes time swirl in curious paths. Much like the buildings. And the people. There are few straight lines here, and those that do exist serve to support those lines that are not.

Many strange and wonderful and occasionally painful memories lay scattered about, letting them flow through and letting them go is a part of the adventure though. It's part of my work of now transforming small scattered hidden emotions and memories from lead into gold.

-- Post From My iPhone

I really do love Cats

I really do love cats.

Tilly and Kimba have been getting cuter and cuter. They’re currently snuggled up on my bed together. They’re strange companions, they really don’t have a lot to do with each other most of the time except they like snuggling up together when it’s cold (and sometimes just for fun) and occasionally Kimba likes chasing and swiping at Tilly - which Tilly doesn’t really seem to understand.



Today Tilly really wanted food, but i told she couldn’t have it till Kimba came too. Curiously, she went and got Kimba up (not straight away, there was quite a bit of frantic meowing before she resorted to getting him up).

They really do understand quite a bit.

Exploring MacJournal

I’m undertaking a highly enjoyable and entertaining experiment at the moment. I’m trialling the MacJournal software by Mariner Software. It’s promise is to bring together my diary/jounral, blogging, ideas sketches, story outlines and book summaries into the one place, fully searchable and accessible through pleasing nested menus. Previously it’s been scattered throughout numerous word processor files (across google, microsoft word and open office formats) and paper journals and i rarely access my past journeys which is a fair inhibition to someone who’s emerging desire is to be an incredibly successful writer.

And this post is an experiment to see how it goes uploading to my blog, which is one of it’s many fine features. One limitation i’ve just found is that i cannot seem to word wrap around an image. Well we’ll see what it looks like on upload. The set-up for connecting to blogger was a very easy process, if i was still using a PC i’d be thinking something had gone wrong!

The interface is very Mac, clean and logical. I can add nearly and media to it which is cool, and can even record voice and export entries to all sorts of formats. I’m excited by it, and i’m interested to see how it effects my enjoyment of journaling - which has been an on and off affair so far this life.

OK, here goes!

disfunction

Sometimes things just seem so hard and far away for no clearly explainable reason. Time to go to bed and hope my world has righted itself when i get up.

The Game

In the crack between dawn and daylight, idea and action there is a whole avalanche of thoughts, of processes, of beliefs and control signals that come cascading in. I begin to see them, i begin to see the buttons they press playing me like a finely tuned instrument they slip underneath my attention like a magician waving his hand and in the moment of distraction the deed is done. Like a magic trick, the trick being to disable magic, disable my choice of reality. I can see it, am i fast enough to catch it, or is that too a game?

wheels and gears

It's way too late and the wheels and gears inside are still whirring away furiously, spinning faster and faster towards their doom...

Sometimes

Sometimes at the days end all i wish for is a new day. Sometimes it helps.

Falling like water

Some days fall like water, they just flow over you and the best thing to do is to let go and allow them to happen.

Some days are like a sheer rock face clear and solid and powerful and things just happen.

Today was more like water.


-- Post From My iPhone

Home again

One of those nights where I thought the evening was going to be topped of by a cranking little party and instead it was topped off by a chill little party where we didn't really know anyone and the friends who had told is about it we couldn't get in contact with.

Hard not to be a little disappointed.

But at least there is home and a neat kitchen but I do feel like I've been spending too much time chilling here after unsatisfactory outings.

Ah well lucky I'm having fun on the inside.

-- Post From My iPhone

Little bits

Little bits of me everywhere falling into themselves
A weight of creaky old selves bickering over the feast
Tired, impatient, numb, fearful, bewildered
The reflections move whenever i try to see behind them
A cold wind blows as Winter stretches his bones
A warm bed and a purring cat.

Varanasi

My brother is going to Varanasi. It brings back a flood of memories of a city of magic, madness, beauty and filth, it's the city on the edge of the world, or perhaps right in the middle of them, a bridge between the worlds. I'm really excited for him, but also really wanting to be there to experience it again and make sure my brother is all right. It feels a bit like an opportunity lost, but i'm clear to that to be there would feel like an opportunity lost here. Win win lose lose, life is sometimes like that.

The intensity of memory, it so makes me want to be back there.

Shame

Shame rears it's head, it's at the very core of me, facing me, a shambling monster hiding behind the mirror i see myself in... or is it just a crappy piece of glass... a city of gold built on a fetid swamp... into the gaping maw once more i go, boots strapped tight, the sword of clarity slung across my back and faint beacon deep inside my heart calling me home and guding the way.

Good

Tired and frazzled, but juiced up with goodness, man time and magic.

Flowers

It's interesting isn't it how we quite happily hold the genitalia of plants up to our noses and savour the beauty of their scent, how we, even in churches, prize the sexual organs of plants and put them in special places of note to be appreciated and admired by all.

And yet we repress our own genitals so heartily. When was the last time you put your nose to the genitals of a friend and inhaled deeply to see what this beautiful person smelt like? When was the last time you saw an artistic arrangement of human genitals on an altar at a wedding?

Curious questions indeed...

Fire

We drove through the back of Kinglake the other day, on our way up to Yoga Camp in northern Victoria. It was a shock to see how intensely charred the landscape was. And made me appreciate really deeply the grace that allows me to be living without the brutal caress of the flames in my own home.

The black ribbon of bitumen wound its way through a silent landscape, the very earth itself blackened, the only other colour a dusty brown - the brown that exists when plant tissue has no water left in it. The shiny silver railing along the road highlighted the charcoal colours like a well chosen frame.

It makes me wonder how long the part of earth called Australia will tolerate us living here. She could starve us out all too easily. Burn us out all too easily. Or maybe she will wash us away just when we think we can adjust to living in a desert. The ferocity of the flames brought an awareness that maybe not even our comforting blanket of asphalt and concrete is enough to protect the heart of the city.

Slowly softening

Another day, a grey one at that. The earth is slowly softening, there is a mist today lying across the valley which echoes the recent rain. There is a slight flush of green in the crisp brown grass. It's strange to see green in the fields nearby: even stranger how quickly we become used to something being dead. And disturbing how quickly the agapanthas have sprung back: they were just starting to look sick.

It will take a while to get used to this dry being normal, it will be fascinating to see how the plants and animals adapt and survive. Maybe that's why blackberries and agapanthas are here, they could be all that's left if this keeps up.

Camping again

Off i go to camping again, the mad rush of getting everything together and inevitably leaving late.

Message from a Master

Kimba the cat is sitting on my arms so one hand can only get to the bottom rhs of the key board. Not sure if i can actually reach the letter next to w. This was after nibblng on my fingers.

So what is your message o great Zen master? That it's ridiculous to be on the computer in bed at 7:30am on a Saturday when i've got a body to be present in and napping to do? Just possibly, it reminds me of another Zen master whose life deeply touched mine, Miso also had an issue with my love of the computer and would try to sit on my arms.

Perhaps i'd be more relaxed and chilled out if i could lick my own balls and anus. Entirely possible i'd spend more time in bed sleeping. Learning to be in my body when i'm on the computer is one of the challenges of the modern day conscious being.

Lessons past and present

My grandfather is dead, the very embodiment of my inner judge, a man i've learnt to love exactly because of his sharp edges. It's such a strange mixture of emotions that accompany this, mixed as it is with the most challenging time in my relationship. Such a sense of loss, and yet of liberation, of stepping into myself, but of loosing part of myself, of power and weakness.

If only letting go of how i devalue myself was easy as typing these words, but it is far more graceful and profound than any words can convey, even if one of my strongest desires is to just curl up in a ball and let the world wash over me while i watch and fantasise that the stream ripples not as it carresses my body.

But that's not the message the cats in my live give me, much as it might seem. It is to be deeply restful, and to know that i am the hunter as long as i know that i'm the hunter. One lesson from my grandfather was to be yourself even when your weakness is thrown in your face, even when what you face is seemingly more powerful and stronger than you are.

And my lesson from tonight from my lover is to be powerful enough to believe in the journey even when she sees it not, even when the darkness consumes those you love, for it's just possible they have for a moment stepped beyond practice and are doing it: living the warriors path deep in the belly of the beast.

Don't

I don't feel like writing today, but i'll drag my fingers along the keyboard and do it anyway just because i want to continue the practice of doing it.

Camping

Like the rabbit with the clock running late... it seems always to be so with getting away, and that's when i want to be like a puppy lying on the floor at home hiding...

Just words

Excitement as i'm off to Rainbow, tiredness as there has been so much to do. Some of which is still undone. Caught between wanting to hide under something and excitement about the possibilities of life and love.
Well, the picture function has just seized up. I guess it's time for bed.

100 Blogs

This is my one hundredth post. A milestone of sorts that takes me to reflecting on the blogging adventure. It's one of those activities that feels necessary almost now, even though i don't get to it everyday, i miss it when i don't.

The practice of just writing, of just getting something out, of letting words flow, sentences form and meaning emerge. It helps, particularly when my life involves so much writing. I still contemplate that gap in wanting to live even more by the word, and move each day closer to finding out what gifts are in it for me.

Summer

The flies buzz erratically as they slowly die in the windows, the wind stirs the trees but does little to ease the scorching heat, the cats lie as flat as possible and my sweat glands slowly seep precious fluid.

The dry grass bites bare feet and the asphalt is scorching, the reggae is sweet and the bubbling craziness of temple preparations keeps simmering away.

Summer is finally here.

Reality...?

Dreaming myself into a new reality where i'm on top of everything, drawing on an extraordinary reality where i feel totally loved, supported and met, and feeling reality start to bend within and around me to accommodate these new feelings... interesting the power we have within us.

Teaching Tantra

It's amazing the gifts the world brings you when you clearly ask, when you clearly intend. Increasingly over the last month or so i've had a growing clarity around teaching tantra: that i want to do it, that it's an important part of my life, and as such is an important part of my financial life.

And so i resolve, coming into the new year, that i'm really going to throw myself into it, really get this whole tantra business thing up on it's feet. And so i find myself at a conference that validates my capacity; i have a private coaching session that suddenly pops up; i find myself excited and interested and inspired. So much still to get in place, so much to get done in presenting the work, but it all suddenly feels very possible somehow.

Being here

Scattered mind and heart plaguing me today. Do i really want to be here? That's the question i've been contemplating today. Intellectually i do, but there is a part of my heart that doesn't, and it's that part that over which i stumble before the finish line, that shakes my resolve, that clouds my intent. I want to commit and say yes, but what needs fall for that to become real? I sense the fear, and need time to brace myself as if knee deep in freezing cold water contemplating that dive in...

Dust

I'm tired and washed. Washed for the first time in a week. My clothes and bedding lie close by, a pile on the floor, encrusted in dust. I'm not free of it yet. I feel like i've shed a skin over the last week, changes and transformations, surprises at how much i've grown, of how far i've still got to go. As the dust settles, i wonder if this is a year of consolidation, of closing lingering loose ends, of seeding a the new path that i've been dreaming of for so long. Gestation, foundations.