The Time Is Now

To act, or not to act?  That is really the question that Shakespeare should have asked.  Whether it is more noble to act in a positive manner and to contribute to society, or to do nothing, and complain and moan about the state of everything?  I will always chose positive action over negativity and lethargy any day.  Yesterday, I witnessed an incident that reinforced my thoughts about our societies and made me wonder when are people going to wake up to the fact that they are the society in which they live?

As I walked the pavements of London, I saw a woman cycling her bicycle alongside a stream of cars, all making their way home from work.  Almost at the instant that I saw this cyclist, her shopping bag gave way, spilling several apples, that rolled on to road, until they came to a stop right in the middle of the road.  Too far away to lend assistance, I watched as the woman fought to balance her bicycle and at the same time, to pick up the apples.  Some people walked past on the pavement, the cars continued on.  Not one person stopped to give assistance.  Not one car paused to allow the woman more room.  In this one moment was a clear demonstration of everything that I believe to be wrong in our modern societies.

How would you have acted?  Would you have run to give aid and help.  Perhaps you would, but ask yourself truthfully, would you really?  It is all too easy to say to yourself that it is not my problem, that she will be okay, that someone else will stop, that I would like to stop but I really have to get to that appointment, to get home to put on the dinner, to go to the gym, to walk the dog, to pick up the kids.  The excuses go on and on.  Our modern and sophisticated society seems to always tell us that it is some else's responsibility, to provide an excuse for not acting, and for not being held accountable for your actions.

Here's another situation you will find yourself in.  You walk along the street and you see some litter laying on the pavement.  What do you do?  Do you stop, pick it up and carry it to the nearest rubbish bin?  Or do you mutter to yourself about the state of people these days and complain about where your tax payments have gone and leave the litter exactly where it is?  It's not your job to clean up after someone else is it?  That is the job of the local council, that is what unemployed people should do to earn their welfare, that is what criminals should do to help make amends for their wrong doings.  Why should you do it?  After all, you did not put it there.

As far as I can see, the trend in our society is to become annoyed, to complain about how things are, to accept them, to turn a blind eye, and to pass on the responsibility.  This is wrong.  Some people will say that capitalism is to blame because it breeds a culture of selfishness and greed.  It does not.  That is just another excuse that you give yourself for your lack of action.  We are all part of our society and as such, we each have a direct responsibility to make the society in which we wish to live.  We are all accountable for the state of things.  It is not the fault of the government, our economic system, materialism, the local council, immigrants, nor the youth.  It is your fault.

In the Bible, Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan.  The Samaritan was the person who took pity on the man at the side of the road who was in great need of help.  This only occurred after other respected persons (a priest, a levite) in the society at the time had passed him by and done nothing.  This is exactly the same as now.  People are walking past, turning away, and doing nothing.  It is not a question of religion.  Neither is it a question of race, gender, or age.  It is for each of us to do something to turn this around and to change it.

I was in New Zealand recently, at Lake Taupo.  As I walked from my motel into the town one morning, I saw on a picnic table discarded fast food wrappers and cartons.  It made a horrible mess.  No more than 5 metres (15 feet) away was a rubbish bin.  At first, I muttered to myself about the laziness of people and I walked past the table.  But I could only walk a few more paces before I was forced to turn around.  I walked purposely back to the table, picked up all of the litter and put it into the rubbish bin.  A woman passed me by as I did this and gave me a big smile.  This was my reward for my unselfish action.  Later that morning, I thought some more about what had happened.  By clearing the table, I made a woman happy.  I also made sure that from that moment on, no one else would see it, no one else would have cause to complain and to have negative thoughts which could spoil their morning.  I made sure that the picnic table could be used again.  It meant that the local council workers could focus on more important matters.  I did something positive.  The ripples of my action spread wider than I had first realised.  Indirectly, I had touched the lives of others in a positive way.  I had contributed to the society in which I found myself in a positive way and for that, I felt good inside.  I took that situation and made it into a positive experience.

I am no saint.  I am not perfect by any means.  What I do want to do though, is to make a difference.  I want to know that I tried, that I did not sit idly, that I did not just complain and moan about the state of the world and society.  I want to know that I helped people, that I reached out through my actions to enrich those around me.  I have a strong belief that if others started to act in a positive way, to begin to take care of those around them and the societies in which they lived, others would begin to do the same.  Once a cause gathers momentum, it quickly experiences a snowball effect.  The minority becomes the norm.

We each have the power to make society in the form that we wish to see and experience it.  Each of us is responsible.  Most of us are luck enough to live in a free society, we enjoy freedoms of choice.  This is your choice.  Do or not do.  You have the power to change.  It only takes one spark to light a fire.  Take your energy and do something good.  Quit complaining, stop saying it is someone else's fault, and start doing something positive about it.  Each of us can make the difference.  Many ripples that join in harmony become a wave.  Let's create waves and make the change.  The time is now.

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The End Is Only The Beginning

The end is really only the beginning.  That's certainly one way to look at it.  As one moment ends, we find ourselves already in the midst of another.  Countless millions of moments that together make up a life story.  One moment is all it takes to change the world, to alter the path of destiny.  One moment, one opportunity, one life.  It always comes down to that one single moment, a point at which your future is being decided, even if you are not aware of the consequences that surround you, of the swirling mass of possibilities that are lining up, taking order, falling into place.  And on we go, oblivious, until with hindsight, we look back down the road, and there, basking in all its glory, finally revealed to even the most blinkered of eyes, is that one pivotal moment that shook your world, that altered the course of your destiny and that brought you to the point at which you are now.  Sitting in a cafe in a seaside town in England, on a cold, wet, and dreary December day, staring out of the window at all of the activity in the street outside.

My time in Costa Rica has ended.  In fact, it was over on 5 December, as the plane hurtled down the runway of San Jose airport, as the wings lifted with the air velocity and pressure differential, and the wheels touched Costa Rican tarmac for the last time that day.  Airborne and with it, my future changed, it shifted.  Plans that had been made started to become a reality, thoughts, electronic pulses stored in my brain, turned into tangible occurrences.  This journey across the Caribbean and Atlantic oceans represented both an ending and a beginning.  This is life.

In death comes life.  Perhaps, with it being the day before Christmas, my thoughts turn to Jesus, which makes me think of the Resurrection.  "In death, I become life." (I just Googled that phrase in the belief that someone must have said it before, but my search brings forth no such findings.  So, I am taking it as my own creation.)  In other words, I must die before life comes again.  That is the way of our dreams.  We realise one dream and that dream must end before another can come to fruition. 

I have died many times in my life, I have experienced many endings.  With each cycle, I have changed, perhaps imperceptibly so, but I know that the person who began this odyssey into the unknown is not the same person who sits here in this cafe today.  How could I be?  I have seen and experienced too much.  I have opened myself up, I have given myself over to life, to the possibilities of something more, I have witnessed miracles, known people and cultures, suffered, cried, loved, and laughed.  Every thing and every person I have ever had contact with is some how now inside of me.  Maybe this is how we grow as people?  We internalise everything with which we come into contact and every emotion with which we experience.  We take a part of it all, a part of life and we bring that within.  At the same time, we are imparting something of ourselves to each person, to each experience.  Our soul is nourished and in turn nourishes those who we meet.  With each experience, we leave behind a trace of our soul, a signature that lasts an eternity, intrinsically linked to the time, to the place and to the participants.

Maybe what I am talking about today is the soul of life.  What if all of life shared a single soul?  One elemental force that linked every thing to every thing else.  People, animals, birds, fish, trees, shrubs, grasses, oceans, rivers, rocks, mountains, sand, clouds, rain, sun, moon, stars, air, Earth.  It's all of life in perfect balance, the soul is one, it is whole.  It leads me to something I have written before, "I am in everything and everything is in me."  I am in no doubt that when Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), what he was referring to was that every single one of us has the power within us.  In the heart lies the truth.  In the heart lies the way.  In the heart lies the life.  It is in our hearts that the power to become all that we were born to be is to be found.

Well, as always, I begin to write, unsure of where I will go and something always comes.  The flow of the mind is often a surprise to me and that is why I love to sit in a cafe and write.  This will probably be my last post of 2013 and I look forward to continuing the journey in 2014.  I hope that you will stay with me as we each travel down our own unique path.  It all begins again on 1 January. A turning of the page. A new chapter to be written.  An ending and a beginning.

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to you all.

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Accepting The Hardest Truth

I don't know why that title came to me. It just did, literally a moment ago and I was compelled to write.  In our lives we are constantly challenged, we have to think, to try comprehend and to understand.  We encounter many different people, many different emotions, some of which create conflict in our souls.  We are taught that acceptance is a good, a trait that makes us more human, that allows our compassion to grow.  We accept those who are different from ourselves, we accept that there is inequality, we accept unfairness, we accept humiliation and bullying, we accept cruelty, we accept humanities rapid and systematic raping and destruction of this planet's ecosystem.  We accept so many things.  To not accept them, is a life of hardship, of rebellion, of standing out, and so it seems that if we wish to get on, we really don't have a choice.  We go quietly in our acceptance and marvel at those who take a stand.  I believe that there is one thing more than any other that we all have difficulty in accepting, which is simply this: I am perfect.

From the moment that we begin to understand our environment, to become cognitive to our surroundings and ourselves, we find that we are showered with love and attention.  It comes from many different sources: our parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, their friends, their colleagues, strangers on the street that stop to coo.  We learn from the outset that we are loved, that we are special.  As time passes, this concept is challenged.  As we grow older, the attention that we receive reduces as our importance in the every day lives of those around us also reduces.  It is inevitable, it has to be.  Parents need to return to work; perhaps another sibling comes along who demands our parents attention; as we grow, we become more secure and more able to fend for ourselves; life's priorities change.  There is just one problem in all of this, no one tells us this is going to happen.

As the attention becomes less, you try to figure out why?  Did you do something wrong, something that has upset your parents?  You begin to fight for attention.  You make more noise, you throw tantrums, you cry, you begin to do crazy things, you act up.  This only results in punishment and it becomes clear this was the wrong strategy.  Then, you might try some different tactics.  You begin to over eat, hoping that someone will notice that something is wrong with you, that they will turn to you and give you back the missing attention and love.  Perhaps you begin to take out your frustrations on the perceived cause of your problem and you become cruel towards your younger sibling.  These also prove futile, so what can you do next?  If all of the external factors fail, what is left?  There is you.

Logic leads you to start to believe that you must have done something that has caused this loss of love and attention.  This is not a sudden epiphany moment.  It takes time to fully take hold, like some evil darkness that takes root in your heart, and slowly, imperceptibly, spreads its tendrils around your heart, until it has you.  You begin to perceive that you have done something wrong, that some action that you took was the cause of your downfall, that something about you is the reason.  If we are born as perfect, here then is the moment when we cease to be anything but perfect.  Our illusions are shattered and from this moment on, we begin to find fault with ourselves, we begin to see ourselves differently.

At the same time these thoughts are occurring to us, so too are we learning.  We begin to understand the concepts of tall, short, fat, thin.  We go to school, we are surrounded by many other children, none of whom wish to be seen as any different, none of whom wish to stand out from the crowd, popularity is everything.  An animal instinct rears its head, it is the most primeval of all, survival.  Evolutionary theory is based upon survival of the fittest, and it is no different in this situation.  The strong prey on the weak.  Anything that is different is ceased upon, name calling occurs, and simple teasing often leads to bullying.  For both the bully and the bullied, the concept of different, of imperfection, is reinforced through the act.  The perpetrator would not act, if imperfection did not already exist in their own heart.  Again, we are having the idea that we are less than perfect enforced upon us.

In the New Testament, we are taught that Jesus came to the material Earth to free humanity from sin.  This teaches us that we are born as sinners, that even before we are able to think for ourselves and to form any kind of conscious thoughts of our own, we have sinned.  I personally reject this notion, but it is there, in the Bible, nonetheless.  Once more, we are taught that we are less than perfect, that we have wronged and that is some way, we need to atone for this error -an error that we did not even commit.

We begin to look in the mirror and to see in our reflection the faults and the flaws in ourselves.  This is a process that continues throughout our lives.  Even now, I catch myself doing it.  I look at the white that now grows on my chin if I allow my stubble to grow for a week or more; I see the grey hairs on my head, hiding amongst my blonde; I see a line of hair that slowly recedes, revealing a forehead too large; I see eyebrows that are too bushy, too black; I see frown lines; I see a ear with a squared off top; I wish I were taller; I wish my back didn't arch as much; I see an eyelid that wants to drop when I begin to get tired; I see myself as overweight.  I see so many faults in myself, it is all too easy to do so. 

Every day, I know that I fight against the over whelming urge to think of myself as wrong, ugly, and no good.  Everything points to these things.  I've written before about my adolescent years, I written before of my time being single and my struggles to find love.  There is a large body of evidence that can be brought forth if needed, to prove everything that I believe about myself.  This belief that I formed from a very early age and that I have reinforced, time and time again, by every negative experience and by each time I have failed.  I add to the growing case file with every rejection, with each new failing of my attempts at finding love.  I am the one at fault, it is some flaw in the way I look, some problem with my personality, it is me.  Conclusion: I am unlovable. 

But there is one huge flaw in the case against myself - I made it.  In fact, there is no fact, I made it all up.  It is a set of beliefs and nothing more.  Beliefs can be challenged and beliefs can be changed.  There was a time when people believed that the Earth was flat, that it was at the centre of the universe, that walking on the moon was impossible.  These beliefs were challenged and thinking was altered.  So too, can I do the same with the thoughts that I have of myself.  So too can you.  There is something that is very difficult for people to accept.  We learn to accept so many things in life, but this one, I believe, is the hardest of them all:  I am perfect.

You are perfect.  That is your starting point.  That is where the journey must begin.  Inside of you is a heart that beats to the rhythm of life.  Life is the living, breathing, material form of love.  Your heart is love, pure love.  You have to begin to love yourself and in so doing to accept the truth, that actually, when you strip away everything, to reveal your bare soul, there you will see perfection.  You are a miracle.  You are the result of evolution's greatest creation.  The work of millions of years, the culmination of billions of years that stretch all the way back to the very dawning of creation itself.  Your journey did not start the moment in which you were born, nor the moment in which you were conceived.  It was in the moment of the Creation, when the spark of love ignited the big bang, that your journey began.  Love was the beginning and love will be the end.  You are love and so you need to manifest that in all that you do.  Become love, become your true self, and accept the truth, that you have always been and will always be perfect.  Just be you.

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