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Archive for April, 2015

Place

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on April 18, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Where we live is important in understanding who we are.

I don’t just mean the environment or the climate, although those things are certainly important. I mean more that aspect we think of as culture.

Not culture in the sense of theatre, opera and so on. But culture in terms of an approach to life, a focus on certain activities, a set of values and priorities which all influence design and choices.

The interaction between ourselves and the environments and cultures in which we live is a constant two way feedback loop. We are influenced by what is around us, and that influences our choices. Our choices then change the environment around us and fashion a culture. And then back around again..being further influenced by what is around us.

I think this photo I took the other day captures something of the culture of France. Or at least of the part of France where I am living now.

It says something about priorities. It says something about a connection to Nature and seasons. It says something about a kind of economic activity. It says something about aesthetics and design.

It’s hard to define the culture we co-create, but living it is clear.

Living it is a different kind of knowing from defining, labelling and categorising.

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The engaged life

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on April 17, 2015| Leave a Comment »

To be fully alive is to be engaged with the rhythms and patterns of the natural world, but to be fully human is to reflect upon and celebrate this relationship – David Fideler


There is a tendency to reduce thinking to rational thought. But thinking is not only about logic.

Thinking involves contemplation, reflection and the experience of sensations and emotions.

It does seem to me, however, that one way to move from zombie to hero mode, is to think – in the fullest meaning of thinking – to become aware and then to make conscious choices

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That intricate web of reality

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on April 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

wired

“Always think of the universe as one living organism, with a single substance and a single soul; and observe how all things are submitted to the single perceptivity of this one whole, all are moved by its single impulse, and all play their part in the causation of every event that happens. Remark the intricacy of skein, the complexity of the web.” Marcus Aurelius

For many years the dominant model of reality has been one of discrete parts. Now we are beginning to understand that everything is connected, that nothing can be fully understood if it is cut out of reality and considered as a separate part. This shift in world view moves us away from the machine model with its command and control management systems, to the life model of the organism, always changing, never fixed or permanent, vibrant, dynamic and flexible. Life can’t be controlled like a machine, but it can be enjoyed as a flow….beautiful, good and emergent. Becoming not being.

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Where I live now

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, personal growth, philosophy, photography on April 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »

spring home

Here’s where I live now. With a cherry tree just coming into blossom.

The cherry blossom’s transience is a powerful reminder of the impermanence and constantly changing nature of all life.

I like how that dominates this photo.

This is where I live now. It’s not where I lived last year, and maybe it won’t be where I’ll be living next year. But that makes it all the more special for me.

Every day can be approached this way – every day is unique and has never been experienced by us before. Nor will it ever be experienced by us again.

First and last. The idea of living in the present moment.

But it’s difficult to really live in the present moment if that means only being aware of what exists in the here and now. How would we tie our experience of life together if we only had a focus on what was right here now? Well, we do something pretty amazing and unique to weave these moments together – we tell stories.

It’s through story that we experience the present moment not as something separate and detached from the rest of our lives, but as something created by our past experiences and memories, informed by our values and desires, and fashioned by our hopes and expectations.

That’s what story does – weaves the past, the present and the future into a seamless whole.

So, “where I live now” can’t be understood only from one image. It can only be understood as an integral part of the story of “me”.

The story of “me’, with me as the main protagonist, or “hero”, and me as the author, or “creator”. A story which is constantly becoming, continuously emerging, in amazing, and unpredicted ways.

Your story has the same characteristics. But it’s your story. Distinctly yours. Nobody else’s. Weaving your story today out of the threads of the past, the present and the future – that’s how you become the unique and amazing hero and creator that you are.

 

 

 

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A flower is an event

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on April 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The living world is a realm of dynamic processes. A flower is not a thing, but an event, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. But with the word, we take a living event and freeze it forever into a useful but stable category. As Goethe wrote, “How difficult it is, though, to refrain from replacing the thing with its sign, to keep the object alive before us instead of killing it with a word.”

  • David Fideler, in “Restoring the Soul of the World”

When you see a tulip opening in the warmth and light of the sun, you know in your heart this is not a thing, but an event.

Iain McGilchrist says, in “The Master and His Emissary”, that we use our left hemisphere to label and categorise. In so doing, we take the actions, the verbs of the real world and re-present them to ourselves as nouns, or as objects. If we stop there, we mis-understand the world. But if we re-present them to our other hemisphere then we can see the links, the connections, the what he calls “the between-ness” of the re-contextualised representations.

How much more wonderful the world seems to me when I see dynamic processes and connections all around me, rather than a collection of separate and separated “objects”.

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Épanouissement

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on April 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Wingspan

One of the great things about learning a second language is how you keep stumbling across words which are difficult to translate exactly into your first language. I find that doesn’t just expand my vocabulary, but it increases the ways I have to think about, and express, my experiences.

So, here’s a new word for me, and, if you don’t speak French, it’ll be a new word for you too – épanouissement.

I have a Larousse English-French dictionary app on my iPhone – here’s what it says about this word – “blooming”, “opening up”, “lighting up”, “fulfilment”, “self-fulfilment”.

Doesn’t that give you a nice, rich and deep range of ideas and concepts all at once? I love that.

When I took this photo yesterday, I was lucky to catch the bird stretching out its wings and then when I looked at the image on my computer I thought that the combination of the bird stretching out and the tree blossoming really conveyed one underlying phenomenon.

Isn’t this what Life does in the Universe?

Life emerges, expands, grows, matures, expresses itself.

Don’t each of us, as living beings, express ourselves to our fullness? And doesn’t a tree do that, a bird do that, just as you and I do that?

I wouldn’t claim to know what life is all about, but it seems to me that this Universe manifests itself through “épanouissement” – it opens up, it blooms, and it lights up the cosmos with a constant process of self-fulfilment.

Daily I become the most “me” I can become.

Daily the bird in the tree becomes the fullest expression of its unique life. Daily the tree grows from one form to another through the seasons, expressing the uniqueness of its own particular life.

I hope you enjoy both your own personal “épanouissement” today, as well as having the opportunity to enjoy that of some of the other lives around you.

 

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Nourishing – what nourishes your heart, feeds your soul?

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on April 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The “N” in my A to Z of Becoming, can stand for “nourish”, so here’s my focus for this week – what nourishes my heart, feeds my soul?

Looking back over the series on re-enchanting life which I posted over the last couple of weeks (scroll down to read them, if you haven’t seen them already), I realise that everything which I find enchanting, stirs my blood, sets my heart beating stronger or faster, and touches me right down to the core of my soul.

Beauty is one of the common factors. Difficult to define but don’t we sure know it when we see it, hear it, touch it?

Love is one of the common factors. Wherever love stirs, the heart leaps and the soul expands.

You’ll have some of your own, I’m sure, but here’s just a few photographs I’ve taken recently which nourish me –

…the first “gariguettes” of the season – wow! what a taste!

The love locks in Paris – it’s as if they exude love into the air, surrounding you, filling you, gladening your heart.

Relaxing by a pool at lunch time, seeing the simple pleasures of sharing a bite to eat, of chatting with friends, of reading, sailing a boat, or simply snoozing..

Cheers! Here’s to whatever nourishes your heart, your soul, your body and your mind. May you taste it, feel it, hear it, see it, know it, be amazed by it, every single day.

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The shortest distance

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography on April 11, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Over the course of my career as a doctor patients would frequently ask me about diet. I’m a great believer in the uniqueness of every individual human being and I’ve no doubt that just as we all have our own taste preferences, so we each have certain foodstuffs, or whole food groups, which suit us best (or certainly which disagree with us the most).

I’m not that keen on the word “diet” because it seems to be used most frequently for a pattern of eating which the person really doesn’t want to follow for the rest of their lives. Isn’t it much better to find a way to eat well for you? Not just for a week, a month, or even a year, but all the time?

The most important practice to follow is the combination of awareness and reflection. Then you can make your choices. Notice what you eat, when you eat and how you eat. Notice how you feel before, during and after eating certain foods. What are your real preferences? Which foods seem to give you a boost, or make you feel well? Which foods upset your system, make you tired, or unwell?

Not only are you likely to find that you are not the same as other people, but you are likely to find that you will change over time. When you are a child you may well handle food differently from when you are an adult in your 30s, 40s, or older. However, by practising awareness and reflection, you can alter your choices if need be.

I do think there are other basic principles however. I’m quite a fan of Michael Pollan’s “Food Rules” – “Eat food. Mainly plants. Not too much.” And time and time again the “Mediterranean diet” is found to be associated with good health. But if there is one single principle I would highlight it is about quality of food, and it seems to me that the shorter the distance from land to table the better.

That applies not just physically, as with this photo of a selection of what is growing in our garden just now on its way to our lunch table. But it also applies to the number of stages of preparation.

The more processed and transported a food, the more I prefer to avoid it.

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Shiny new leaves

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on April 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Shiny new leaves

Oh, wow! Look at the new leaves coming out on the vine at the end of my garden!

Look how shiny they are! Brand new and glistening!

I love to stumble across these moments of emergence, seeing the Life Force surging through the bare stalks and bursting into colour and shape like this.

It reminded me – there is no such thing as a fixed object in this universe. You can see that easily when you encounter the leading edge of life, but if you think anything you see is a fixed object, then you are either just not paying close enough attention, or you aren’t looking for long enough.

Becoming not being, that’s the way of the universe.

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Re-enchanting life – the importance of Nature

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography, psychology on April 9, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Vineyard early April

I’ve been away from home for about three weeks, and when I returned I noticed that the vineyards are starting to blossom with wild flowers.

As I look out from my house or from my garden I see vineyards in every direction. I see trees, flowers, bushes, birds, butterflies and blossoms. I hear beautiful birdsongs both during the day, and at night. I look up into the clear night sky as I did last night and the more I look the more stars I can see.

So, today, I am reminded about the importance of our natural environment in deepening my experience of life. In Japan there is something called “forest bathing”, which is just about spending time amongst trees. It seems that not only do we gain a psychological boost from being in the forest but the trees produce anti-inflammatory substances which we breathe in.

Richard Louv wrote a book about the importance of Nature for our health – he coined the idea of “vitamin N” (N for Nature) and he postulated that many of us are suffering from a disease – “Nature Deficit Disorder” – for which the cure is, of course, enough doses of Nature!

I know we are not separate from Nature, but rather that we emerge from within it and never exist outwith it on this Earth, but it is all too easy in our increasingly urbanised societies to become cut off from the healing influence of Nature.

Wherever you live, I expect that within half an hour or so of travel, you can find a park, a wood, a beach, a riverside walk, a lake or some other abundant area of plants and animals. Pop along now again. I bet you’ll feel the better for it.

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