Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘from the living room’ Category

Has 2013 really gone?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on January 4, 2014| 3 Comments »

Where did 2013 go?
Where does the past go?
Does it go anywhere?
Is time like this long road?

DSC_0167.JPG

Was 2013 like a car, making its way along time’s highway? And disappearing into the far distance as we look?

That’s one way to look at it, but then look at this tree….

DSC_0062

The very shape of the tree tells a story, contains a history, reveals its past. Doesn’t it?

So what if time isn’t like a straight line, with the future speeding towards us, and the past soon behind us and out of sight?

What if time is cumulative? What if the past doesn’t go away anywhere, but instead continues to exist underneath the present?

Doesn’t the present emerge from an ongoing interaction between what’s possible, what’s happened already, and what else is happening now?

Think of 2013 as still here, underneath today, and out of which 2014 will grow. After all, if 2013 wasn’t still here, then what would 2014 emerge from? Nothingness?

Read Full Post »

January – the month of Janus, God of gateways and doorways

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on January 3, 2014| 2 Comments »

Japanese Garden

January is named after Janus – who looks both forwards and backwards. Janus is often represented over a gateway or doorway, and it strikes me that January is a kind of doorway. We say goodbye to the previous year, looking back, reflecting, remembering, and using that recall to inform our hopes, ideas, and even plans for the coming year.
I don’t think this is something to do just on the 1st, or even in the first few days (by the way, I read a study today which said 26% of men give up diets after ONE DAY!), but that we could take a theme for this month – make this the theme of gateways, of doorways, a moment to pause, reflect and dream – both of those entwined, letting reflections stimulate dreams, and dreams stimulate reflections.
This is different from making resolutions (even sustainable ones!).
Why not get yourself a notebook, or create a new document on your computer or tablet, and allow yourself to record your daily reflections and dreams for the month? See what emerges…..

Read Full Post »

Sustainable resolutions

Posted in from the living room, life, personal growth on January 2, 2014| 5 Comments »

through the round window

I don’t know if you’ll be making any resolutions in the next few days, but I know a lot of people do.

One of my problems with resolutions is that they are often either so vague that they quickly dissipate, or so reduced (eg to lose x pounds), that once they are achieved, the old patterns and habits and quickly re-emerge (eg regains x pounds!)

What I’ve been thinking about these last few days is “sustainable resolutions”.

I started with thinking that a sustainable resolution is one you keep – and what that really means is creating new habits or patterns of living – but whilst that might be a useful thing to consider, I’ve gone on to thinking about “sustainable resolutions” as ones which contribute to sustainability more broadly.

What I mean is that is seems clear we (the human race) are not on a sustainable path. It’s just not possible to continuously increase the number of people in the world consuming more and more of the finite resources of the planet. It’s just not possible to continuously increase the number of people in the world consuming more and more drugs every year. It’s just not possible to continuously increase the “growth” of the economies of every country in the world every year if “growth” is shorthand for growing consumption or growing material wealth.

Marc Halévy’s writings have made that ever so clear to me over the course of last year. In one of his books, “Prospective 2015 – 2025” he asks us to think about the work we do, or the activities we carry out, and to ask ourselves three questions. I’ve adapted them slightly to produce “sustainable resolutions”

Will this activity/work/habit

  1. be excellent for my personal health – physically, mentally and spiritually?
  2. add to the wellbeing and quality of life of other human beings?
  3. be excellent for Nature, Life and the Earth?

Only if the answer to ALL three of those questions is positive, is the resolution likely to be a “sustainable resolution” – one which contributes to a better quality of daily life for the individual, whilst also contributing to a better daily life now and into the future for Life on Earth.

Read Full Post »

Happy New Year (what do you mean by that?)

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on January 1, 2014| 3 Comments »

Fushimi Inari Shrine Torii Gates

 

Every New Year near Kyoto, there is a tradition to climb the hill to the shrine at Fushimi Inari. It’s a spectacular trip at any time of year, but the main reason people go there at the start of the year is for luck and prosperity.

This is the time of year when you meet people and say “Happy New Year”…….what are you wishing for them? Is it happiness? Luck? Prosperity?

Look at the path in the photo above. See how it winds around the corner……we can’t quite see where it is leading, can we?

That’s where we are, unable to see what lies ahead, but we can certainly choose which direction we want to go, and how we want to walk today……and isn’t that how we find happiness, luck and prosperity?

By choosing the direction we want to go, and by living today the way we really want to live.

Happy New Year. I hope its a year of growing, of flourishing, of becoming more fully you.

Read Full Post »

What does spirituality mean to you?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on December 30, 2013| 1 Comment »

Rays of light

In the fields of holistic and integrative medicine people often talk about taking a body/mind/spirit approach. The body and the mind aspects are pretty uncontentious. But what about “spirit”?

For many people the word spirit conjures up either organised religion, or non-denominational ideas like spirit beings, beliefs about life after death, or reincarnation, and so on. But is there a spirituality which isn’t supernatural?

Think of the idea of the “thin spaces” for example, where you feel connected to something greater than yourself.

In fact, I do think this is a key to the concept of spirituality – connection – connection to something greater than yourself. There’s a great pdf about integrative medicine (download here) across on the humanmedia.org site which includes a page on spirituality. They say it is

a means of connection and/or self-reflection through which one finds comfort, purpose and inner peace.

Not a bad definition, and it highlights both the key ideas of connection and of purpose. We are meaning seeking, meaning creating, beings. We do that through stories, through seeking patterns, by joining things up……and that gives us our myths, our beliefs and a sense of purpose. It’s pretty hard to live a life with no sense of purpose.

The Humankind document goes on to say that spirituality includes the qualities of

compassion, humility, generosity and simplicity

I wonder if thinking about qualities such as these helps us to see spirituality as something essentially integrative – in the sense of it being that which connects and pulls the body and the mind together……

Back to the idea of spirituality including a sense of being connected to that which is greater than yourself – remember this little RSA Animate video of Jeremy Rifkin’s fabulous talk on “empathic civilisation”? No? Click through and watch it now.

What does spirituality mean to you? What part does it play in your life?

Read Full Post »

what’s next?

Posted in books, from the living room, from the reading room, personal growth, psychology on December 29, 2013| 1 Comment »

James Hollis, in “The Middle Passage”, says

The invitation is to shift gears for the next part of the journey, to move from outer acquisition to inner development

and

…it is this emphasis on inner, rather than outer truth, that distinguishes the second adulthood from the first.

Whilst I think these developmental shifts are a perpetual presence in our lives, there is no doubt that we are more aware of the transition phases at some times than we are at others, and this is where I am now, at the end of 2013, in one of those transitions. So, I’m enjoying shifting gears, and throwing myself more fully into the process of becoming.

Are you ready to accept the invitation to change gears? I wonder what inner truths we’ll discover?

 

Read Full Post »

Finding your own path between actuality and imagination

Posted in books, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, perception, philosophy, photography, psychology on December 27, 2013| Leave a Comment »

fractal cloud

 

Ursula Le Guin, in the introduction to her selected short stories, “Where on Earth”, says

I had been writing realistic stories (bourgeois-USA-1948) because realism was what a serious writer was supposed to write under the rule of modernism, which had decreed that non-realistic fiction, if not mere kiddilit, was trash. I was a very serious young writer. I never had anything against realistic novels, and loved many of them. I am not theory-minded, and did not yet try to question or argue with this arbitrary impoverishment of literature. But I was soon aware that the ground it offered my particular talent was small and stony. I had to find my own way elsewhere. Orsinia was the way, lying between actuality, which was supposed to be the sole subject of fiction, and the limitless realms of the imagination.

How liberating! How inspiring! Of course, all fiction is a work of the imagination, whether you call it “realism” or not, and, actually, isn’t Life, which can only be lived from the perspective of the subject, also a work of imagination? Or at least, it’s a work of finding that path between “actuality” (the objective Real), and the “limitless realms of the imagination” (how we subjectively interpret and experience that Real)?

I also love her phrase “arbitrary impoverishment of literature”. Why indeed should we limit ourselves to “realism”, especially if that same realism ignores, or worse, denies, the inclusion of the imagination?

Finally, I like that phrase “the ground if offered my particular talent was small and stony”. Isn’t it true that for each of us, our particular talents flourish in quite different environments, or on quite different paths?

Read Full Post »

thin to the divine

Posted in books, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on December 26, 2013| 2 Comments »

Atlantic

Kenneth Steven, in his poem of imagined fragments, “A Song Among The Stones”, describes what the journey might have been like for the Celtic Christian monks who are believed to have travelled from Iona to Iceland.
On the first page, these two lines grabbed me

yet this is the place they came to find
an island thin to the divine

That’s a wonderful phrase, “thin to the divine”. I can think of many places where it feels as if the land is thin to the divine, those special places which move and stir your spirit. Off the West coast of Scotland is definitely one of those places for me.

Where are yours?

Read Full Post »

Christmas Day

Posted in from the living room, life on December 25, 2013| 1 Comment »

Xmas

cuddles, laughs, grazing and nibbling, sipping and drinking, listening to a Christmas playlist on Spotify, playing with tractors and racing penguins, wearing party hats, google-eyed glasses, wearing socks with robins on, sharing time and space and Life……

Read Full Post »

more, more, more…..more what?

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on December 23, 2013| 1 Comment »

As we come towards the end of another year, there are many articles and programmes looking back over 2013, and looking forward into 2014. In the socio-economic world what we hear about most is “growth”. Concern about whether or not there has been “enough”, and how we can all strive to produce more. Every single country in the world is measured in terms of the “growth” of its economy. Very little growth, bad marks. Increasingly more growth, good marks!

But growth of what? And for what?

Growth of consumption. That seems to be one marker. Consumption of what? Doesn’t matter. Stuff. Just, the more consumption, the better. Growth of “activity”. That’s another. But what kind of activity? Just activity. Busy turning financial derivatives into even more complex products to sell others. Busy making stuff. Busy moving stuff. Just activity.

Why? Why is more consumption and more activity good no matter what is being consumed, no matter what activities are being carried out?

Is it to produce more and more wealth for less and less people? Because that’s the sure and certain trend we are seeing.

Meantime we are seeing two other forms of growth. Growth of the number of people alive on the planet. Growth of the amount of finite resources we are taking out of the planet. Growth of the number of drugs people take every day. Growth in long term diseases and cancer.

Something isn’t going right, don’t you think?

Marc Halévy, in his “Prospective 2015 – 2025”, [ISBN 270331017X] takes this whole issue by the scruff of the neck and points out with stark clarity that we are just not on a sustainable path. More than that, we seem to be caught in a communal delusion, that this current path of ever more consumption by ever more people is a good thing – in fact THE good thing – THE criterion on which to judge the health of any economy.

This is just crazy. It makes no sense.

Marc suggests an alternative and he captures it in a simple French phrase – “la jouissance de la frugalité”.

These aren’t the easiest words to translate into English (help me out here if you are good at translating!) – but you get a bit of the sense of “jouissance” from the french phrase “joie de vivre” (which, interestingly, is one of those phrases we English speakers use directly as it is). It’s something to do with pleasure, joy, delight, satisfaction, something life enhancing. It’s, fundamentally, about quality. And “frugalité” isn’t exactly “frugality” as we would say in English. In fact, frugality isn’t a word which is used much by English speakers any more, but Benjamin Franklin had it as one of the most important of his virtues. It doesn’t mean something inadequate, or poor. It isn’t about poverty. But it is about “less”…..a kind of making the most of whatever it is you have…..

We can find this suggestion in the “sweetness of life”, and in the “slow movement“.

It’s about more quality for less consumption. It’s about living in the present, savouring, enjoying, mindfully experiencing every single moment.

Once you apply that personal principle to the universal, then you stop to ask yourself at each level. Does this enhance my life? Does it enhance the life of the human species? Does it enhance Life on Earth? Does it enhance the Universe?

Enhance might not be the best word, but I hope you get the idea. We need to shift our focus from more, more, more numbers and stuff, to deeper, greater, more impactful quality of living.

We need more of “la jouissance de la frugalité”

fishermen Lake of Menteith

 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »