Aroha and the Making of All Things

At the very beginning of all things, at the making, there was a word, and that word was the making.  It has echoed through eternity, across the vast reaches of space and time, and it will echo ever more, until the end of all things and the making renewed.  It will outlast us all, for it is us, and we are it, yet it will endure and we shall not.  This is its story.

On the morning, as the sun rose for the very first, it warmed the ground and the air began to move.  The air, that had until this time been still, felt the life within and it smiled to know that it could now move.  So it did.  It travelled across the land, rushing through the tree tops, moving bough, branch, and leaf, it raced across the plains of grass and of sand, it rose up and up over the mighty peaks of mountains, and it plunged down into valleys.  Joyous was the air that was now the wind, and it exalted in its new found freedom.  As it raced across the oceans, ripples become waves that became great swells and they heard the wind cry out to them, "Aroha!"

At the edge of the shore, where land and sea meet in their eternal duel, the swell washed and became waves that plundered the beaches, and smashed themselves hard against the rocks.  Great plumes of spray flew up high, catching the rays of sun, turning into droplets of gold, only to fall like rain, and to begin the cycle over again.  The water that had been flat and calm until the wind had begun to blow now rejoiced in its new found excitement and it raged on, pounding and throwing itself against the land.  "Aroha!" it cried, "Aroha!" it roared, for aroha it was.

The mighty eagles rose up high on the currents of air that now flowed where before there had been none.  Wings spread wide, they soared and glided, they gained height so that the trees of the forests below were nothing except a small green patch and soon faded from sight, so high that the peaks of the tallest mountains, coated in the glistening white that sparkled and dazzled like millions of tiny diamonds, were far below the reach of their powerful talons.  As they soared on the air, stretching and arcing their wings, twisting, rising, and falling at will, the noise of the wind could be heard to whisper, "Ar-oh-a", and in response the eagles cried out "Aroha!  Aroha!"

In the forests down below, the wind rushed and the trees swayed.  "We are flexible", they said, "you cannot break us, you shall never break us", and they stood in defiance of the air that had become the wind.  The wind only laughed for it knew that its power was unlimited, that one day it would have to blow harder and bring change, but until then, it was content to blow as it did that first day.  The leaves of the branches rustled with the breeze as they swayed and moved, and danced this way and that.  "Aroha, aroha, aroha!" the trees too were alive.

Under the dense green canopy of the trees, in those places where light found a way to break through, the deer sprang forth, the squirrels scampered up the trunks of the trees, and the wolves ran in mighty packs, barking and yelping in the fun of the day.  In the fragile leap of the deer jumping clear across a stream, in the scurry of the squirrel along the branch of the tree, in the playful rough and tumble of the wolves, there could be heard the same words over and over and over.  "Aroha!  We are alive."

Under the surface of the ocean, giant schools of fish formed and moved in a swirling, colossal, dark mass as one.  Dolphins exploded into the air, twisting and turning, squealing and whistling with the delight and the play, and to tell each other what they must.  With power and grace came the sharks to watch the commotion, to beat their mighty fins, and slid through the water with grace and poise and all that saw them revelled in their beauty.  From the depths of the oceans, huge beasts rose and broke the surface, rising clear, to suck in new air and life, to slap a fin and splash back down.  The ocean was a heaving frenzy of life and in every slap, squeal and whistle, and movement of fin, the same word could be heard.  "Aroha."

Sitting on a rock on the beach, a pair of eyes looked upon all that was good that day.  With each beat of his heart, the boy heard the same word over and again, as he would for ever more, "Aroha", it said.  The wind too heard the beating of that heart, so strong and true, and came to see for itself the boy on the rock to whom it belonged.  The wind, that had now travelled around the world brought with it a scent from far off places, and it blew the scent over the boy.  The boy looked up and smiled, he did not need to hear the words that the wind spoke to him, because his heart had already told him the story of how it was, how it is, and how it would be.  The boy rose to his feet and took one last look out across the ocean.  "Aroha.  I am coming.  Wait for me."  He knew that she would always be waiting, like he, for the right time, the right place, and for the right moment in which they would again find the other.  And when they did, the making would start anew, for the making would always begin and end with aroha, because that is all there has ever been and all there ever will be.  It was true then, it is true now, and it will be true for ever more.  Love.

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The Māori were the first people of New Zealand and aroha is their word for love.  If you sit quietly, you can hear it whispered to you on the breeze, calling to your heart, telling you of your dreams, and of the path that is your own to walk.

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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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A Poem Called Me

This morning, words came to me in a fast flow that, from one single broken sentence, quickly evolved itself into a poem.  I called it simply, Me.  These words flowed straight from my heart and fell from my fingertips in a cascade of droplets.  Perhaps here, I am, revealed on this page, my simpleness thrown wide open to all.  I hope you will like it.

Me

I am

Truly

An enigma

All things

Are found in me

And at the heart

There I lie

The real me

The true me

One heart

One soul

One life

One path

One love

One

Like all things

The beginning

The end

Complete and whole

Me.

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Endings and New Beginnings

Last night, I finished reading A Memory Of Light, the final installment in the Wheel Of Time series by Robert Jordan.  I began reading this fourteen book series way back in 1993, and for the last twenty years, it has been part of my life, accompanying me on my journey, through the changes I made in my life, and as I took a chance and discovered my true path.  As I approached the final few chapters of the final climatic volume, I was filled with a mix of emotions. I was happy that finally, I was going to discover how the story would end, and at the same time, I had another deeper feeling, one that came as a surprise. 

It began as I passed the half way point of the book.  There were now more pages that I had read, than there were remaining, and I knew that the end was approaching.  At this pivotal moment, a feeling began to grow within me.  At first it was easy to ignore, but with each proceeding evening, as I lay in bed reading, it grew stronger.  Eventually, as I faced the final few chapters, I had an overwhelming feeling that I did not want to actually finish the book.  Why was that?  Surely, I wished to know how everything worked out at the end?  Didn't I want to have the ending revealed and to know how each of the vast array of characters, and each of the many different story threads, would resolve themselves?  Yes I did, but at the same time, I did not.  This contradiction may seem like an odd set of emotions to occur, but actually, despite the absurdity of it, it made perfect sense to me.

You see, reading that last sentence and closing the book would finally end something that had been part of my life for so many years.  I had grown comfortable and familiar with having these books to read, with always waiting for the next installment to be published (time between each successive publication grew), with re-immersing myself into an alternative world that I had grown to know and love, with its myriad of characters that had personalities and behaviours that were so familiar to me, these people that seemed like old friends, and I never quite knew if the series would reach its conclusion, since Robert Jordan unfortunately died in 2007 before he had completed writing the final books.  To turn the final page would mean an end to all of this for me.  It would be a bitter sweet moment.  One that would bring me great joy and satisfaction and at the same time, it would bring with it a sadness and loss.  So, I began to think about endings and what they mean.

The end.  It's over.  Finished.  No more.  One moment you have it, you are immersed in it, your senses and emotions are connected to it, you're holding on to it, it's part of you, you are part of it.  And then suddenly you're not.  It's gone.  Blank.  Darkness.  Emptiness.  Sadness and loss.  Wishing you could go back again, to relive some of those times when you held it, when it held you.  But you cannot.  It feels as though a part of you is gone and only a hole remains.  You feel incomplete, no longer whole, as a piece of you is now missing.  And you fear what comes next, because it is unknown, it is going to be different.

Often, an ending seems negative.  That is because of the sense of loss that we feel and the feeling of emptiness that remains.  The endings that are particularly difficult are those that are forced upon us and those that involve the end of something that we have grown accustomed to having in our life.  Graduating from college, leaving home for the first time, leaving a long-term employment, the break up of a relationship, the death of a loved one.  Each of these marks a significant life event.  Each one represents an ending.  Equally as important though, is that each one represents something else.  A beginning.

An end is an important step along the path.  Each of us must face and deal with many endings on our journey, if we are to continue to seek out the light and obtain our dreams.  Without an ending, there can be no new beginnings.  With no end, there can be no new opportunity to learn and to grow, to discover new emotions, new places, new people, new experiences, and there can be no opportunity to evolve our soul.  Endings are a necessary part of the journey.

It is natural not to want an ending to something that you enjoy and love.  With the end, comes the unknown and with the unknown, comes fear.  Many people resist change simply because they are afraid of the unknown.  They prefer to stay in situations that they understand and can deal with, even though those situations maybe harmful, hurtful, negative and detrimental to their life.  Fear is a deeply paralysing emotion.   Through fear of the unknown comes a resistance to end, and because there is no ending for this person, there can be nothing new, there can be no evolution of the soul.

I see the end as simply the beginning.  It is the cycle of life in which we all exist.  Many beginnings, many endings.  Many endings, many beginnings.  It is how it has always been and it is how it always will be.  There is a saying that as one door closes, so another door opens.  The meaning is clear, an end is necessary in order to create some space in your life for something new.  Each time an end occurs, so too does a new beginning.  Each ending brings you a new opportunity.  It is actually a positive occurrence in life.  Even if at the time you cannot view it as such because the pain, resentment and bitterness of your loss is hard to bear, eventually, with hindsight, it will be possible to view it as such.

We need endings in our lives.  In life, everything eventually ends, so I guess we should get used to that notion.  Don't fear the end, instead, look forward to a new beginning, to a new opportunity that can be taken, to evolving your soul through growth.  Each new beginning leads you further along your path, brings you closer to the discovery of your dream.  I finished reading my book and as I closed it, I thanked Robert Jordan for keeping me company over all of these years, and I knew that now, I had created a little space for something new to come into my life.       

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This post is dedicated to the memory of Marge.  It was Marge who lent me her copy of The Wheel Of Time all those years ago and started me on that particular journey.  It was Marge who saw within me a caring heart and who was the first person to acknowledge that to me.  Thank you for the beginning, and thank you for the end.  I'll see you again one day my friend.