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Archive for the ‘from the living room’ Category

The Great Turning

Posted in from the living room, life on February 20, 2012| 2 Comments »

Excellent post on the School of Life site about the three stories circulating at present – the first one is “business as usual” ie no need to change what we do or how we live; the second one is “the great unraveling” – it’s all falling to pieces. And the third?

The third story is held and embodied by those who know the first story is leading us to catastrophe and who refuse to let the second story have the last word. Involving the emergence of new and creative human responses, it is about the epochal transition from an industrial society committed to economic growth to a life-sustaining society committed to the healing and recovery of our world. We call this story the Great Turning. There is no point in arguing about which of these stories is “right.” All three are happening. The question is which one we want to put our energy behind.

I’m putting my energy behind The Great Turning – how about you?

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Friendship based money sharing

Posted in from the living room, tagged on February 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Here’s an interesting idea from Okinawa. Apparently the people who live in Okinawa don’t trust banks (are you surprised?). However, in Okinawa, they have an interesting way of sharing money. It’s called a “tasukeai moai”.

Here’s an example. A group of 10 friends form one of these groups and they agree the following –

  1. To meet once a month for ten months.
  2. To each commit to put 50,000 yen (that’s around £400; or 500 dollars/euros) into the pot every month.
  3. Each month one person can opt to take the whole pot.
  4. Once 500,000 is taken, that person has to pay 2000 yen in “interest” each of the remaining months in addition to their monthly 50,000 contribution.
  5. The pot therefore rises by the amount of the addition payments each month (the 2000 yen from each “borrower” in addition to everyone’s monthly contribution), so the later you opt for the pot, the greater the amount you receive, and the earlier you take it, the greater the amount of interest you pay.
  6. If two or more people want the pot in any particular month, they draw lots.
  7. After the tenth month the club closes and a new club can commence. (you’ll have figured out that the group lasts for as many months as it has members….)

The group therefore support each other’s needs in a kind of informal savings and loan club. In addition to this support they are friends and increase their friendship through their commitment and sharing. These groups work on trust, friendship and everyone in the club knowing each other.

Different, huh?

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Tell someone you love them

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography on February 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

cafe love

Yes, its Valentine’s Day, so a day for telling a romantic partner that you love them, but why not take today as an inspiration?
February is the month of love – not just romantic love – who do you feel love for? When did you last tell them?
Tell them today.

Oh, before I go……here’s a rose for YOU

passionate red

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Positive emotions

Posted in from the living room, health, life, personal growth, psychology on February 12, 2012| 4 Comments »

I’ve been collecting positive emotions recently. The Heartmath technique involves re-creating the heart felt, positive feelings you experienced in your life. So what are these heart felt, positive emotions? I’ve read a number of authors who write about positive emotions – from the perspectives of positive psychology, Heartmath itself, neurobiologists, mindfulness practitioners and so on.

What’s emerged is a short consensus list. Ten of these twelve feelings are mentioned by all the authors I read, all were mentioned by more than one author.

Contentment – pretty self-explanatory

Gratitude – it’s easy to establish a gratitude practice….worth doing at least once a day. What do I feel grateful for?

Hope – no life worth living without it?

Interest – I am insatiably curious. I’m never far away from interest!

Love – unconditional preferably

Pride – not what comes before a fall, but those moments when you know you’ve done well, when you are pleased with what you’ve achieved

Amusement – laughter is the best medicine

Compassion – it builds bonds

Sexual desire – again, pretty self-explanatory

Joy – just sheer pleasure and delight

Inspiration – those moments when you feel just, well, inspired!

Awe – or, as I prefer in French, émerveillment

What I really recommend is creating your own personal resource book of these feelings. Jot down in a few words, and/or gather photos, which capture your own personal experiences of these emotions. You can then draw on these feelings as you need them.

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What lies beneath?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, personal growth, photography, psychology, tagged , on January 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The buildings opposite me fell down in the storms recently. At the weekend, I looked out of my window at the site which is now being cleared and saw this…..looks like the top of a tree breaking through the puddle and the ice!

 

DSC_0229

Just the way my mind works, I guess, but I’ve been re-studying Jung recently, and been musing a lot about the significance of the discovery of the unconscious. How strange to become aware that most of what goes on in my head remains below the level of conscious thought…..what exactly is this “me” that contains so much I’ll never be able to consciously consider…? And how strange to think about a “collective unconscious” out of which our psyches grow…..

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Far away up close

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, photography on January 26, 2012| 4 Comments »

camphor trees

300 year old camphor trees

Recently I had the amazing experience of visiting Vergelegen (which translates approximately as “far away place”). It’s a beautiful wine estate, but what I really loved were the 300 year old Camphor trees. Look at the size of them! They are immense!

Have you ever touched a 300 year old living organism? I don’t think I ever have before. It’s really something to be in the presence of a creature (yes, it IS a creature) which has not only been alive for 300 years, but is flourishing. Yikes! Our human lives seem so short in comparison!

How wonderful that these ancient trees which were planted in such a far away time have grown so great in a far away place…….and how especially wonderful to get up close!

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Playing with the elements

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, photography on January 23, 2012| 1 Comment »

Walking along Melkbosstrand beach near Capetown recently I came across LOTS of people kite-surfing. Have you ever seen this?

kite surfing Melkbosstrand

Kite surfing Melkbosstrand

kite surfing Melkbosstrand

There’s something lovely about flying a kite, but this flying WITH a kite is something else!

It struck me there’s a lot of this kind of activity in South Africa. It’s not that people try to conquer Nature, it’s that they challenge themselves in their interaction with Nature. You see it in their mountain climbing, their long distance cycling, their expeditions into the Bush, but most impressively, you see it in this kite-surfing.

I love how a kite surfer interacts with both the wind and the sea at the same time – what a great example of FLOW!

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Sunset or Earthrise?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, philosophy, photography on January 20, 2012| 6 Comments »

sunset

In Ian McCallum’s “Ecological Intelligence” he mentions how Copernicus brought about one of the great revolutions in human thought by convincing us that the Earth moved around the Sun, not the other way around. However, centuries later, we haven’t really managed to take this radical shift on board. We still tend to think of ourselves as being the centre of everything. We betray our perspective through the language we use.

We talk about sunset and sunrise. But the sun doesn’t set, it stays where it is. And the sun doesn’t rise, it’s the Earth which turns.

He postulates shouldn’t we be thinking instead of talking about the Earth rising into the night, and dipping into the day?

Stop and think about it for a moment. What does it feel like to think of the Earth rising into the night instead of the Sun setting?

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Part of Nature, not outside it

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, philosophy, photography, science on January 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

Is Nature “out there”?
Are we, as human beings, separate from Nature? Is Nature there for us to exploit? To have dominion over? To control? To dominate?
Much human activity seems based on this set of beliefs, but it is a delusion.
There is no separate “Nature” from “us”. Every creature, every life form, every natural force, energy and phenomenon is interconnected.
This idea that we are separate from Nature is deeply to connected to a way of thinking which separates the “subjective” from the “objective”.
The idea of “objective” contains a tendency to turn experiences, phenomena, even other people into “things”.
It’s a stance which dehumanises, and denatures.

Look at this fence –

the living fence

I love how this fence instantly challenges the view that it is a “thing” – you can see it’s a living organism.

Whilst on holiday recently, I stumbled across a book by a South African author, Ian McCallum. Ecological Intelligence. [978-1555916879]

He argues that we need to reconnect to other animals and to Nature, and interestingly writes a lot about the concept of the “field”.
I find that concept so useful.
In my Be The Flow, I muse about the relationship between a wave and the sea. In this analogy, the sea is the “field” and the wave is a person. We emerge out of the field assuming distinct, identifiable, unique form. But we don’t leave the field. The wave is at no point separate from the sea. The wave constantly changes throughout its life. It is transient, dynamic, and, soon, its gone. Where does it go? It returns to the sea which in fact, it never left. It “disappears” into the field.

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Births, deaths and marriages

Posted in from the living room on December 31, 2011| 1 Comment »

Newspapers used to have a section entitled “Births Deaths and Marriages”. My granny used to read it first. I don’t remember ever reading it. I’m not sure if any newspapers still have such a section. Yes, they have “Obituaries”, usually of famous, or “important” people, but that’s not the same. What about the people we know? The people whose lives are close to ours?  

When I had a holiday in Antigua a few years ago I stumbled upon a local  radio station which every morning had a section where the presenter shared who, in the community, had died, and who was experiencing bereavement. These were astonishingly moving short stories. Little obituaries of individual lives which then spilled outwards into a naming of the relatives who might be listening, or might be known by the listeners. More than a listing of names, there were small, interlaced stories of significance related about the place of the deceased in the lives of the bereaved. I’d never heard anything like this before, and haven’t since. It was rich, multifaceted and multilayered. It was deeply human.
Maybe the births and marriages were similarly announced at other times of the day. I’d like to think so.
But where do we share the births, deaths and marriages now?
Why am I thinking of this, on this last day of 2011?
Well, I found myself reflecting on the year, and reflecting from a perspective of gratitude (December is the month of gratitude in my “months of meaning”). 
My first thought was the birth of my grandson, Charlie. He’s one of those happy babies who smiles widely, chuckles loudly and seems to spend much of his life so far in quiet contentment. How wonderful! What a gift! And what a lesson. He reminds me to smile, to laugh and to relish quiet contentment.
Then I thought of deaths I’ve encountered this year. Not just the deaths of friends and colleagues, but the deaths of friends and loved ones of my own friends and loved ones, the ripples and effects of which have deeply touched me too. These losses, these new, intense absences, make me more aware of the gratitude I have for their having been in  my life, and I reflect on what unique gifts each and every one of them brought. These deaths, and reports of deaths remind me how much we enrich each other.
So that led me on to marriages. Well, rather than marriages, I’d like to expand this section to a consideration of relationships – relatives, friends and colleagues. There have been challenges, trials, opportunities, illnesses and changes for many people I know this year, and I find, that in all of these circumstances these difficulties and changes heighten the importance of the individuals to me. I am touched ever more deeply by the lives of others it seems, and this, in turn, intensifies, broadens and deepens the love I experience in my life.
So, how about your own section on “Births, Deaths and Relationships”? 
Which would you like to record? Which would you like to reflect on? And what have they brought into your life, viewed from the perspective of gratitude?

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