Déjà Vu Sensations

There are many theories as to what causes déjà vu.

One holds that our "spirit" can actually travel faster in time than our earthbound bodies so it charges off into the future from time to time for reasons we can't explain.

Another claims that it's because we are reincarnated and old memories from past lives are seeping through into our current consciousness.

And then there's the parallel Universe theory that suggests our lives are always splitting off into different directions whenever we make big decisions and that at the point of experiencing déjà vu we are connecting with these parallel worlds.

All of which rather ignores the actual sensation of déjà vu that is simply joyous and mesmerising regardless of what it actually is.

Déjà vu experiences stay with us too, logging themselves into our memory banks where they can be withdrawn whenever those "déjà vu" conversations occur, usually over a few glasses of wine late at night!


"There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar."
~~ Chuck Palahniuk


Top photo is a sketch penned by my friend Dianne in 2004 after she has suffered a stroke in 1999. She said it described how she felt when everything was muddled in her brain.

When Annemarie and I were in Norway in July 2010 and we stopped at this place for a short while, an eeriness came over me as I photographed this scene. I wanted to hop in that boat and paddle into the mist.

OLW 2016 - LISTEN

Each January I choose a word to focus on for the year. For 2016 my word is LISTEN.

Relating to my word, I came across this beautiful story narrated by the prominent Buddhist teacher and Psychologist Jack Kornfield. It touched my soul and I felt I needed to share it with my blogging friends.

"In Africa. There is a story that illustrates the quality of listening that can come through meditation.

In a particular East African tribe or village when a child is born they don't count the birthday of that child from the day the child comes from its mother’s body or even the day it is conceived as in certain other cultures, but rather from when that child was first a thought in its mothers mind, that is the real birthday.

And as soon as the mother realizes that she would like to have a child with this particular partner, she will go off and sit out in a field under a tree, and listen, and wait until she can hear the song of the child that wants to be born in her heart that will come from the wedding or the coming together with this particular man.

And when she hears this song, she sings it to herself, and then returns back to the village and teaches it to her partner so that when they make love together, joined together in love, they sing this song and invite this child to be born.

And later as she is pregnant. She sings the song to the child in the womb and teachers it to midwives so that when the child is born the first song or sound that it hears is those gathered around singing its own unique song.

And as the child grows the people of the village learn the song of this person so that when he falls or she falls and hurts herself someone picks her up and sings her song to her, or in the rites of passage or rituals of the village the song is sung, the wedding ceremony where both songs are sung until finally even at the end of life, the song of this child now as an old man or women is sung for the last time, and say their last words...

When I first heard the story in it touched in me a longing to live in a place where we heard one anothers songs, where we were so in tune with ourselves and with one another that we could greet each other in that way, to meditate allows us to hear the song within ourselves and to be respectful and hear the song of those around us."
~~ Jack Kornfield

Do you know your song? Can you hear the song of others?

Take the time to listen.

"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created."
~~ Brenda Ueland

This gorgeous pig and I became friends when I visited the Philippines in October 2015, we talked and listened to each other every day.