A Thousand Breaths...

What if no life was longer than a thousand breaths...

Our society defines and measures life in terms of bodies. A birth marks the beginning. A death marks the ending. And everything in between is called life. In many ways, this is a flawed mode of perception, a bit like defining what you are, from the perspective of your shoes or your coat, if you ask me.

Consider the following paradox. The aforementioned physical body does not always cease to be immediately in the moment that life does. Instead, it slowly stops working and runs down, but, as science has proven, machines can take over the functions of that physical being, such as breathing and heartbeat. While we call the inflation and deflation of lungs the prolonging of 'life', it is not really enough by anyone's definition. The running down/decaying process too can be halted by artificial means. But, although that spark of life does occasionally and miraculously return, it remains the wildcard of the arrangement. It cannot always be dictated to. What life really is, remains invisible. It is the symptoms of life that we mistake for life itself.

Which brings me to the next thought. Physicality is a side effect of life. It's not the other way around, even though everything in our society and around us tries to shove it down our throats. Life comes (invisibly) before bodies. Life continues (invisibly) after bodies. Perhaps in many of its purer expressions, life exists entirely independently of bodies. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you are flying, as far and as fast as you want to. Now, open your eyes and behold the dense imprisonment surrounding your body with limitations. My point? Why bodies? Or rather, why bodies with such limited features?

So, let's throw away the concept of bodies as yardstick and begin again...

Years ago, when a friend of mine was going through his divorce, I made the statement that perhaps, within a "lifetime" we go through thousands of lives and deaths, as we constantly change who and what we are. In his response, he compared those past "lives" to snake skins, still retaining our shape, but no longer filled with our essence. Like beads, we string along millions of lives held together by the frail, false continuity of our physical identity. And when that physical identity ceases? Do we run out of beads, just because we run out of string?

Like I said before, what if no life was more than a thousand breaths.... but at the same time we had access to an infinite number (and "infinite number" is in itself a paradox and a contradiction) of lives.

An infinite number of new beginnings...

A thousand breaths...

Dog park reverie

Joined my sister for a walk in the park with her dog Anabel and some of our visiting Dutch relatives. We sat at one of the tables for cool drinks and sandwiches, when I noticed that we had a furry observer. He sat a little way off, trying not to be too obvious about the fact that he was intently focused on our sandwiches.

My sister and I immediately saved some pieces for him. He growled at Anabel, when my sister also gave Anabel a piece of hers.

Our one relative (my mom's cousin's husband) observed that the dog belonged to no one. That his coat lacked shine and seemed neglected. And that he was ignored by the other dogs. None of them engaged him in playing or chasing games.

The dog was not thin. But he was on his guard. He had no "protector", obviously. This sad dog had the freedom of the park. But it wasn't the magical place of fun and excitement for him.

I thought how this park - it's a fairly big park, and like I said, very popular with dog owners - could be such a special place for all the happy dogs playing and cavorting with each other (Anabel included) and here was one for whom it was something else. This was a little like the paradox of the starving wolf that is free and the chained dog, who is well-fed - and the myriad of character compromises that lurks within the shiny coat of that chained dog.

After we gave him our tidbits, and my sister went off to play with Anabel, I blew some luck on him. I asked if I could touch him (I wasn't sure because he had growled at Anabel.) He let me stroke his head. Another tidbit of mental nourishment? Then he got up and somewhat stiffly walked off, not minding all the frivolous pouches cavorting about.

(The pics in this post are not of the sad old dog - by the time it occurred to me to take one of him, he had already gone off)

The moment you try to define infinity you lose it in essence

This morning I came across a scrap piece of paper on which I had written We somehow come to believe that we will understand the infinite by expanding the finite. Instead, expanding the finite adds more filters.

So. You are warned. We are back to that one topic which can only be answered with a question.

On the same piece of paper, I had also written There is no easy way to talk about personal mystical experiences. It's not (just) that people question them or go sceptical on them. It goes beyond (that, in that) language (itself) is the language of the sceptic.

Infinity. When I was a kid, when I was taught to count, the impression was left that infinity is somehow just 1 digit beyond the last number known to man. But, it's not that at all. If you write down LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN PLUS ONE, you are still firmly in the realm of the finite and you can continue to push back the boundary with LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN PLUS TWO and so on, all the way to LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN PLUS LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN and so on .... Infinity only happens when you finally get tired and stop the count ....

Oops... did you see that happening? I've just sneaked in a definition of the infinite, which is, sigh, as helpful as it is problematic.

The moment you try to define infinity, is the moment where you lose it in essence.

"I cannot eat your fire, I can only eat your flesh"

This is an encounter that takes place in the realm of the subjective. My imaginary friend (IF) and I were visited by a large brown bear. It was very amiable, but when the bear licked my face, I flinched, thinking This is a wild creature, it could eat my flesh. The bear was surprised by my reaction and IF pointed out that this should not be a problem in a supernatural realm. We experimented. I let the bear eat my hand and grew a new one. But I discovered that it was harder to let it eat my face. I seem to indentify stronger with the brain and the face as "me" than with the hand. We tested this, by giving the bear my brain as a meal. IF said that, if the astral body left the physical body, I would still be intact and the bear would have a meal. The real me, it seems, is the energy of the astral body. At this point, the bear said. "I cannot eat your fire, I can only eat your flesh." Those were his exact words.

The above incident "took place" about a month and a half ago and I am writing it pretty much as I experienced it, but I've been paging through old journal entries of lake and discovered something equally dark. This was something IF said early in the year, "If the mouse connects to the snake, it's never a happy ending." He was reminding me that there is a darker side to the universe.

One such story can be found at this link.

Interestingly, though, the universe did kick up one exception to the rule.



The video clip is about seven years old and the best I could track about what happened afterwards it seems that the snake and the hamster were later separated and the facility where they were housed later went out of business.

Perspective...

What you need to remember about perspective is this. It works differently for everyone.

The Art of Understanding

Some time ago, I wrote a somewhat wry blog post on the joys of being misunderstood, which can be found here. Soon after I realized that I would inevitably end up writing about understanding as well, or rather, the art of understanding, because to me, that is what it has become. An art form, like music or painting or story-telling, rather than an absolute.

One way of explaining what I mean by that, would be to tell you about Table Mountain. This mountain dominates the scenery of Cape Town and has a very distinctive outline, from the city side, but there are many other faces and perspectives to it. From Kirstenbosch Garden it presents a completely different face and again, from the Atlantic seaboard side. You really wouldn't say it is the same mountain at all. To borrow an analogy from Robert Heinlein, how do you know the WHOLE house is painted white, if you've only seen one of its walls?

In the same way, the process of attempting to understand something, keeps shifting, showing new vantage points to the reality you are trying to grasp. Understanding, in its true form, is an active, ever-changing song, that keeps playing different phrases to your consciousness. It keeps refining itself... finding new pathways to the same destination. It is not frozen within a single moment. Understanding does not stop unfolding. You are never, ever finished ... in fact if you are done understanding, it probably means that, really, you are done with the process of understanding... you have thrown in the towel, or perhaps, you arrived at a certain spot, grown attached to that particular viewpoint, and now you do not want to move on anymore... It means, "I've made up my mind; stop adding things to it. I don't want to know any more. I'm closing the door and switching off my brain now."

Being understood, often hurts.

Understanding hurts doubly so.

Understanding is like an alchemy of ideas that briefly blends to a particular compound. But, tomorrow, life will add something... perhaps time, perhaps another element or thought to consider and then the compound is transformed into something completely new... the only constant being the ability to continue changing...

A personal koan...

If you have been painted into a corner, how do you escape before the paint dries? There are at least two solutions to this one...

(definition of a koan: 'A paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.')

You're the most misunderstood person on the planet? And this is a problem?

... this train of thought began months ago, when some metal musician (I think it was Mike Portnoy, ex of Dream Theatre) called himself the most misunderstood person on the planet... and my first knee-jerk response was: And this is a problem how?

Having spent 40 plus years on the planet, I can safely say I've probably had a fair amount of experience being understood and being misunderstood and when the dust clears and the smoke and mirrors road show that is the human ego goes silent, I'll say this... being understood can be a heck of a lot MORE uncomfortable than being misunderstood...

Being misunderstood, on the other hand, can be one of the greatest opportunities for entertainment and inspiration. Being misunderstood has given me some of the best laughs of my life... and an untold wealth in song and story ideas. In my opinion, every creative person should relish and embrace being misunderstood. Sure, the ego wants people to get how clever he/she is, but let me tell you a little secret, the ego is neither the artist nor the genius, so screw his/her precious little feelings...

Life is a game, and words can be the game pieces or the boxes you hide in... if you truly want to play, hold your secrets close and stay just beyond the edge of shadow and mystery... because, if you want to have fun, then being misunderstood is definitely the longer game...

But that's just me...

Fishing

A little bit more than three years ago, I told someone an admittedly strange story and was promised 'There will be an answer'. I waited for a while, but then things started to happen around me and the patterns that formed, told far more than any words could.

There is a saying that people sometimes use to patronize the poor in Africa that goes Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; show him how to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

Well, the absence of a verbal answer taught me to fish in the greatest reservoir of them all - the universe itself. Try it sometime. It's lots of fun and the results may surprise you.

Unlocking the alphabet matrix...

You learn the alphabet in a certain sequence, but in order to use it for any sensible type of writing, you will need to break that abc sequence and leave behind the rules you were taught. Mix the letters up and employ them in a way that goes against the grain of your learning... only then will they begin to hold any true meaning...

In the same way, to do anything useful with your universe, you need to take it apart... (t.y.m.)

Tumba Rumba...

Tumba Rumba
Tumba Rumba
to the bottom
of the hill
Making scars
and seeing stars
I am crying
but I'm flying
still...

(just because... life is precious..)

One leap, one fall, one catch

The problem with a leap of faith is that you never ever know exactly where you will land. You don't know if the ground will hold you, or crumble under the force of your sudden arrival. Only fools rush in, when it comes to faith, but it is everyone's perogative to be a fool at least once in their lives, even if it ruins them forever (my leap of faith: late September/early October 1986).

A fall is a teacher and an education. A fall hurts but it helps. A fall leaves you broken, but stronger. The sad thing is that most people see only the broken part. A fall is a landing that comes too quickly. A fall is a change of direction, sending you on a path you would not have taken otherwise. And that is always a necessary path. A fall is a future 'save' because, a time will always come for you to use that which you have learnt when you fell. (My fall: 17 June 2012)

A catch is perhaps the rarest bird of them all. You see something hurtling towards you, and some instinct that you didn't know you had, makes you put out your hand. A real catch will always knock you completely out of orbit. You stagger under the impact of something you were ill prepared for. And yet, you realize at the same time, that on a subconscious level you have been rehearsed for this all your life. That is its mystery and its paradox. The catch is the Black Swan Event that comes but once in a life time, and you are never the same afterwards.(My catch: 12 July 2009)

Islands in the stream of consciousness

One of the mixed blessings of social networks such as Facebook is the way it includes you in the random stream of consciousness of persons you have not really spent time with for years, maybe for the better part of a decade. It can be a more satisfying form of conversation than the old fashioned face to face method. Be honest. How many times have you rehearsed a conversation in your mind ad nauseum, only to have all your careful strategies dismantling with the other person's first response, and you leave, after half an hour, feeling vaguely cheated, feeling your mind is still unspoken. Well, no more. Most of us have fiercely embraced the practice of thought broadcasting, probably with a secret so-there-now-they-know warming our hearts.

Earlier this week, a woman whom I've seen only once briefly in the past ten years, asked in her status line: does love have an expiry date? And that got me thinking...

I once read about a British couple who kept a 29-year old meat pie in the back of their freezer... because they bought it from the place they met just before it closed down... obviously the meat pie had long ago ceased becoming useful as food, but it had transcended into something completely different for them. Just like society institutionalized the messy madness of spirituality and mysticism and called it religion, it claimed the insane chaos of love and called it marriage...

In our ever-changing universe, everything changes our world and by extention, us, because we are ourselves the change flowing through our universe.

The Dance

Picture an enormous hall or valley, where a massive consciousness festival is taking place. Many dances are happening at once in a thousand different styles. You are dancing, dear reader, and so am I. Some are caught up in the thick of the movement. Some are watching our dance, while others remain engrossed in other performances. Some stay only briefly, before moving on, and even we are watching other dancers from the corners of our eyes. As we perform, as we become our different and very individual perfomances, but are we really separate from other styles, other movements. Someone watching from above would see the various styles interacting with each other, creating a pattern together that is not visible to individual performers. It's all related.. it happens on large scale and small scale, what you see is what happens where-ever you choose to look.

This is life, my friend, the beautiful, terrifyingly magical game of life...

The enigma of togetherness:

Together we have something that is not at first apparent. How do you explain connection to a loner? Someone who has never witnessed the process of a jigsaw puzzle being completed, would never know or understand the function or purpose of one single puzzle piece, if he saw it on its own, out of context. He might look at the fragment of the picture and wonder about the oddly irregular shape of its edges and never guess the mystery of what it truly is. (t.y.m.)