Full Circle

After a long, long time, many years of soul searching, study and self-discovery I believe I have finally 'got it' and now understand the difference between the deepest agony and misery of the human condition and the greatest joy!

I 'know', from my own experience, that the difference is simply between feeling separate, isolated, lonely, lost.....and feeling 'at-one', whole, home.

I think many people live with a kind of homesickness; a sweet nostalgia which they can't quite put their finger on as if they were once in a place that they can't quite remember but desperately, somehow, want to get back to.

I believe that at our deepest level (our core, Being, essence, soul, DNA) we inherently know that we are one with each other and with all things.

The trouble is in our mental-minds. We have a deeply rooted idea that we are separate, a deeply engrained belief. This causes a split between what we think and what we intuitively know; a distance between our heads and our hearts.

From day to day we live from our heads, our thoughts.....and this causes all our problems, all our misery. We're going against our deepest instincts!

It is said that while in the womb (and also as very young children) we are in a natural state of one-ness, love, union, innocence, bliss. Then after a while, gradually as we grow up in the world, we begin to realise that "I am this and you are that", "I am here and you are there", "I am me and you are you". We start to feel separate, we become 'self-conscious', we become afraid.

We go on and on accumulating knowledge, identity, conditioning and this sense of 'Me' gets re-enforced over and over again. We develop an "Ego".

Psychologists reckon that this is essential for survival at this stage of our lives. However, although necessary, too much "ego" can eventually become a heavy burden.

As adults, we feel isolated, lonely, small, restricted and incomplete.
Trapped in this prison of a mind-made-ME, we long to expand, to grow, to melt, to merge with someone, something.....anything.

We ache to be back in that place that we once knew. This has all happened because we have forgotten Who We Truly Are. Our light has become hidden under the bushel of fear, a false self, a mask, a defence, and/or an idea.

THE CURE IS LOVE.

Love is the essence of who we are and it is our way out of this mess.

Love and fear are opposites. Fear was the problem, love is the solution. Fear means separation, love means union.

Love is freedom. Love heals us, makes us whole again.

So it seems that our lives are a journey from knowing, through forgetting, to (hopefully) remembering again. We start out open and free and end up open and free.

Somewhere in the middle we pass through a narrow tunnel. This tunnel is our identification with our small-self, "ME", a conditioned-ego, our cocoon.


"Life at any time can become difficult: life at any time can become easy. It all depends upon how one adjusts oneself to life."
~~ Morarji Desai


This sculpture called "Presence" was made by Steinunn Thorarinsdottir from Iceland for Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, November 2008. His statement about the piece was "Look and See"

Heart Hugs

It's really interesting, the power of hugs. I personally feel that in today's society a lot of us are stuck and locked in our own personal little bubbles.

We have almost forgotten that sense of "community" and interconnectedness with each other.

Hugging is an intimate and communal thing and it's something I believe should be brought back as a widely accepted greeting and behaviourism in societies. Not something that is shunned or feeling weird about when someone reaches out for one.

In the middle of January I visited my dear friend Stoneweaver in Christchurch, New Zealand and we held up "Free Hugs" signs with her sister and another friend in Cathedral Square. The energy we gave and received was incredible. The power of touch was quite addictive.

Stoneweaver came to Sydney last week and stayed with me for a week, one reason being to get away from the aftershocks of the earthquake.

I took her to Newtown, an inner city suburb, for some shopping and while there we popped into a shop called The Tree of Life. We got chatting to the owner of the shop and the subject of hugging was brought up.

To our surprise she asked us "Do you know how you hug matters"? She then proceeded to tell us that a left handed hug (left arm up, right arm down) forms a strong electrical current linking heart energy to heart energy.

We tried it, hugging the owner of the shop, whom we had just met and received a wonderful energy boost.

So as Kathleen Keating wrote "Give generously and watch yourself grow rich in what matters most".

"A hug is like a boomerang – you get it back right away." ~Bill Keane

Most of my hugs in New Zealand were right hand hugs! Looks like I will have to return and try out left handed ones.

Creative Realm

How does anyone - artist, writer, musician - get up in the morning and start creating?

Anyone have an answer???

I remember a story I heard about Picasso - how he worked in a studio at the top of a long staircase and he said that by far the most difficult part of the day was walking up those stairs! Once he was up there, all was fine. He had crossed the boundary somehow, from the ordinary world to the world of intense concentration, of unwavering attention, of laboriousness, of not knowing whether the day would be completely wasted or would end with some great discovery.

This is the only thing we know for certain about the creative process - that it's a mystery....Well, that's not completely true. There is one other thing we know: it's very, very hard work.

How do you cross into that creative realm?

"Another word for creativity is courage"
~~ George Prince


I soaked in a wonderful outdoor bath when we stayed at the Stony Bay Cottage in New Zealand during our trek in January 2011. We had to heat up the water by building a fire underneath the bath, which took over an hour, but it was worth the wait. The plank was in the bath so we wouldn't burn our derrieres!




The bath was hidden amongst the bushes so we enjoyed some privacy while we soaked in all our naked glory.