Can You Stop Your Mind For 2 Minutes?

What do I think about stuff ‘n things right now? What do I think?! People ask me what I think about the nature of reality and its spiritual dimension all the time and to be honest… the more I look inside peoples minds and the more I read and study what other people think as well… the more I realize we don’t really know anything at all?!

I think our sub conscious mind wants us to expand our view points to take on more perspectives than the one we have as our own so we get a better idea of the workings of the psyche… in this way we can better distinguish the different levels of operation and possibility within us. We are potentially multi faceted, multi dimensional beings and everything we think and remember is a mixture of fact and fiction… and apparently nothing is real anyway?! (I love that in the Matrix where the kid goes “Remember, the spoon is not real”).

Life is a paradox. I know that brick wall in front of me isn’t real. But I also know that I can’t go driving my car into it and expect to just carry on straight through it unaltered in some way. Just as I think we’re all One, yet I can’t nourish MY body by how YOU eat.

It’s always very interesting to me how people are bought up – especially when religion comes into it. And another conundrum comes up with this one too – we still haven’t really decided if the Universe is a happening of random events or a finely tuned operation where everything is in some kind of Divine and Perfect Order… or perhaps it just IS that it IS?! But I think that religion is a huge teacher – regardless of whether or not we were bought up suffocated by it or void of it… either way… we come to realize there is some driving force within us… that some choose to ignore, or don’t even recognize is there… and others turn their existence into a lifetime of spiritual quest to find the “why for” of it all. Either way the contrast and comparison provides a beautiful point of learning and growth that combines chaos and order as our teacher – but this teacher should only appear should we choose to open that door and see what might lie beyond it. And just knocking on that door and being open to receive what ever we may find beyond it opens us to the Spiritual, but not necesarily Religious, paradigm of our current era.

We are alive in unprecedented times where we have available to us all the teachings of all the lineages of all the cultures on our planet. We can make up our own minds and find what works for us based upon where we are in our growth and development and then we are free to change our minds, evolve our perspectives and develop our attitudes as we will. And further, not only does everything have some validity and fit in to the web of life on some level somewhere, but our societies are more open minded than they have ever been – which is saying something?!

It seems that hierarchy is the name of the game… and a lot of us don’t like that… but it also seems inescapable. Just as atoms lead to molecules which lead to cells… a cell cannot be a cell without its molecules and atoms, just as letters make up words which make up sentences which make up paragraphs… a paragraph can not be what it is without its counterparts comprising its wholeness. So it seems that as we evolve and grow, so too does our consciousness and growth and that we are on an ascending kind of wagon where the randomness and chaos occurs at the different levels of the hierarchical order.

I query as to the notion that “what goes up must come down”… so how long do we continue to ascend before we learn how to bring that energy back down effectively, or is it a continual process of going up, bringing energy down and going back up even further to bring down an even higher level? I’m still pondering that one too….

Our minds are so well un-controlled!! We either let them be controlled by religions and other people and institutions, or we let them just run rampant and control us anyway?! Just try sit still for 2 minutes and see how quite you can keep your mind for a full, whole 120 seconds. Unless you are an experienced meditator, even two minutes of concentrated nothingness will be challenging…. And that is a mind controlling YOU…. It needs to be the other way round for us ALL!!!

I’ve come to the point now… where I just want to get my own mind into a place of balanced and continual peace and acceptance of what is, and from there do the best I can to change what I can change and accept what I can’t change without getting too ruffled with the process.

So perhaps anything we make up that helps us grow to another level is perfect – so long as we “transcend it and include it”… or move through and beyond it, yet take the experience as valid for what it was – experience in the Now at the time. Nothing and no one is 100% wrong, there is always some validity in every perspective but hanging on to old thoughts, places, people, ways and things is something that prevents us from living in the Now.

We need to be at peace in the life that we are living now… for only if we are each working on our own inner peace and spreading that inner light and love around in all that we do… only then, I believe, do we have a shot at World Peace while we are in the skin encapsulated ego we find ourselves in today.

Beliefs are just thoughts we keep having… so if what you believe in constricts you or holds you back or confines you in anyway… then you need to change what you are thinking. It would appear that we are an evolutionary species and that we are evolving whether we like it or not… so it is only as we become conscious of our evolutionary growth and become aware that we are consciousness becoming aware of the evolution of our self that we get to consciously create the unfolding of that.

So what do I think about Stuff ‘n things? I think that it is time to check in with what we think and see if it is creating a peaceful inner environment or an unpeaceful inner environment…. and if it is the latter…. then its time to CHANGE IT NOW!

What Does Namaste Mean? and Sorry for all the Questions!

An intelligent and outgoing, questioning 17 year old has been asking me a bunch of questions about how I made my career choices, and how to make decisions now, for the rest of his life.

 I think it is absolutely crazy that kids have to make these kinds of decisions at the age of 17.  So here is my combined response to his emails:

Namaste is a Sanskrit term that means “the light in me goes out to the light in you”. 

 I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was your age… my only plan was to get my degree and jump on  a plane to the UK. It took me 12 years to come home and settle back in NZ – and by then my path had evolved so far that it was unrecognizable as the same path I had started on - but indeed it was.  And, in hindsight, it makes perfect sense for it is the foundation to my ability to handle my “today.” There is nothing like knowledge converted to wisdom through the path of life experience. You can’t learn it all in a text book, but you have to start somewhere, back it up somewhere else, and be prepared to evolve your conclusions. We must be open to new possibilities ALL THE TIME… because just when you think you know how it works, something will change again! 

I think the best thing you can do right now is keep your options, and your mind, open; and to continue to develop your ability to take on as many different perspectives as possible. The only certainty in life is that THINGS WILL CHANGE… I wouldn’t write anything off or set anything in concrete. You’re a new breed of kid today. You are super smart and have a whole new energy and intelligence about you that is driven – and lot of “grown-up’s” could learn a lot from that.

We are alive in very exciting times where nothing is as it has ever been before.  So the educational/psychological/economic/financial/ environmental structures all need to change now. Just keep asking questions to everyone and anyone and hopefully the institutions will start trying to figure out how to answer them…. and this, in turn, will help facilitate much needed growth and increased awareness of our Evolutionary process.

Don’t ever feel that because the “grown-up” dosn’t have an answer you’re question is wrong. Your questions are just new and they help facilitate research, change and growth. All your questions are an opportunity for learning and growth – for BOTH the one asking the question AND the one trying to answer it. Anyone that approaches the question as otherwise is trapped in Ego. 

You keep asking your questions. We need your questions so we can see where the change needs to occur and where the evolution is happening. Your questions guide our clarity, just as much as they do yours.

And just because your mum (a counsellor) says she’s not smart enough to be a psychologist, probably qualifies her to be exactly that?! I haven’t met a single psychologist yet (or anyone for that matter!) that knows exactly how it all works. The meaning of life and how to live it is a curious and beautiful mystery to us all! All we can do is put one foot in front of the other and go in the flow of what feels good to our integrity. Find your flow and BE YOU. Only You can express what you came here to express, and the world is a better place for your aspect of input – when it comes from a place of integrity; so nurture that.

Namaste.

An Ode to the 2,000 Year Old Puriri Tree

It’s been a busy week… not so much with clients, but with projects and planning and visualizing, keeping up with teachings, yoga and meditating, walking the dog, spending time with my honey, getting live food into the house and basically being in the flow of life. 

In the grand scheme of things its been a relatively uneventful week, but one event keeps being re-experienced and turned over from different perspectives in my mind and all it involved was a walk in the park. 

We live in a somewhat unusual and very beautiful town located right by the ocean with a huge volcanic mountain looming behind us (Mount Taranaki).

Mount Taranaki

The energy here is very strong and attracts a wide array of people with rather organic and natural, down to earth, open minded type of personalities. And I feel very at home here already, even though I’ve only been here 6 months.

It’s a town of about 45,000 people, so it’s not very large at all, but right in the middle of town is a 49 hectare park, called Pukekura Park, and it is the most beautiful, tranquil park I have ever been in. From lakes to Fernery, poets bridge to bandstand, drinking fountain to waterfall, pathed pathways to dirt tracks, tea house to native bush, it has a little bit of everything in it –  and I love going there. The oxygenated air from the plethora of trees is food for the Soul and brings joy to the heart and clarity to the mind.

Pukekura Park Lake

In there, in a very special place, is a very special 2,000 year old Puriri Tree. The energy this tree emanates is the wisdom of groundedness and BEINGness. And when ever I go to the park, I always go to the Puriri Tree, and I sit in the groove of her trunk, where the roots claim the earth as her heart, and I imagine I can merge with her, and learn from her how to just BE that GROUNDED, and that STILL, and that OK, no matter what the weather.

2,000 Year Old Puriri Tree

And she always gives me some simple snippet of WISDOM that comes in the form of a poignant thought strong enough to remind me again that all we have to do is ASK and we shall receive.

So the message today is simple, three-fold and old:

Ask and you shall receive;

Trees give us air to breathe, not only providing food for the lungs but nourishment too for the Heart and Soul;

BE, like the tree, and you can weather anything with a still sense of groundedness that is wise beyond years.

It’s only in recent years I’ve truely understood what one gets out of hugging tree’s – and now I hug trees and soak in their energy at every chance I can.

THANK YOU to the trees.

SORRY for the pain the human race is causing you. I know in the end, we are really just hurting ourselves. I hope we learn very quickly now.

Take some time to yourself to have a silent moment with a tree. You’ll help raise some appreciation and grattitude for all they provide for us that we so often take for granted.

Namaste.