There's something to be said for Kitchen Table Wisdom - you know, like in the old days when people sat around the kitchen table after a meal and talked about life, the universe and the meaning of it all - as well as the gossip doing the rounds in town...

Well, that's what this place is - a place to share common wisdom, thoughts and feelings about things important and unimportant, that bring us joy, laughter and happiness and that trouble, sadden, confuse and anger us ...

What I write here is what's 'real' for me. It won't always be PC or 'nice'. We're missing out on true connection and chances to grow and change because there's too little authenticity, too little honesty, too much holding back what we really feel and mean.

Welcome to my world...

I used to have a copyright claim here, but I've removed it...

Ideas don't belong to anyone -

they come to those who are receptive and are to be used for the well being of all...

I find images and movies and music all over the web

and I use them to accent/expand on my thoughts and understandings...


If you feel you have experienced or received something of value in reading my posts,

please consider either:

Giving a Koha/Love Offering Here - Donate with WePay

or paying it forward to those who need

material and emotional/spiritual sustenance in this world...


Thank You


As You Think, So It Is - Your Beliefs Create Your Reality

If your Reality isn't Working for You, Create a New One!

Life Unlimited!


Namaste

(the Divine in me, recognises and honours the Divine in you)

Sahila




Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Explanation Unnecessary...



... this is our reality...



I want something else for my children and the planet...





What Do You Want?




The Oppression Of Children...


Via my friend Conny Jensen:

 
"..they cannot survive without you. It is a question of life and death!.. Instead of making them more alert, more aware, more alive, more reflective, instead of making them more mirror-like, pure, you make them full of ideas...layers and layers of dust.  And then it becomes impossible for them to see that which is.  They start seeing that which is not and they stop seeing that which is."


This is bondage. But everybody is living in bondage, because everybody who brought you up wanted to have power over you, to enjoy the mastery over you.
 
And children are the most helpless people in the world, the most exploited class.
 
It is not the proletariat who are the most exploited class, it is not women who are the most exploited class.  It is the children who are the most exploited class -- and so helpless. 
 
The proletariat can revolt -- they have revolted in Russia, in China and in other communist countries. The women all over the world are making efforts to revolt, but it is impossible to imagine how children will revolt.

They are so helplessly dependent on their parents, they cannot think of any revolt. And unless revolution happens in them all other revolutions are going to be superficial.  The basic conditioning, the basic imprisonment is created in childhood when the child is so helpless that he has to accept whatsoever conditions you put upon him just to survive." 
~Osho
 
 
Wow... extra WOW as I consider which of the two temporary housing options I should take up - have to decide THIS MORNING...
 
One keeps the boy more in his already fragile comfort zone, the other opens new doors for us both...
 
I am veering towards the second...



Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Look How Far We've (Not) Come...


 

 
Lyrics:
In the year twentyfive twentyfive
if man is still alive
if woman can survive they may find
in the year thirtyfive thirtyfive
ain't gonna need to tell the truth
tell no lies
ev'rything you think, do and say
is in the pill you took today.
 
In the year fortyfive fortyfive
you ain't gonna need your teeth
won't need your eyes
you won't find a thing to chew
nobody's gonna look at you.
 
In the year fiftyfive fiftyfive
your arms hangin' limp at your sides,
your legs got nothin' to do,
some machine's doin' that for you.
 
In the year sixtyfive sixtyfive
you won't need no husband,
won't need no wife,
you'll pick your son,
pick your daughter too,
from the bottom of a long glass tube.
 
In the year seventyfive ten
if God's acomin'
he oughta' make it by then.
Maybe he'll look around himself and say,
"Guess it's time for the Judgement Day."
 
In the year eightyfive ten
God is gonna shake his mighty head,
he'll either say,
"I'm pleased where man has been."
Or tear it down, and start again.
 
In the year ninetyfive ninetyfive
i'm kind a wonderin'
if man is gonna be alive.
He's taken ev'rything
this old earth can give,
and he ain't put back nothin'.
 
Now it's been ten thousand years,
man has cried a billion tears,
for what he never knew,
now man's reign is through,
but through eternal night,
the twinkling of starlight
so very far away
maybe it's only yesterday
 
In the year twentyfive twentyfive
if man is still alive
if woman can survive they may find...








Men - Move Over...



I know this is going to sound very sexist, but even the indigenous elders and the Dalai Lama have said this...

Real change is going to come at the hands of women...

Men - you've pretty much had the run of the planet for several thousand years, and you've pretty much stuffed it up... 
 
 
I don't know what happens to you sometime between adolescence and adulthood that makes you hate us and the planet so much, but you're not the boys we raised...

If this is how you project your primal womb envy and your fear of emasculation, ENOUGH - STOP IT...

Move over and let us women and our children have a go... 

Before you take us all down with you... 

Seriously...

Monday, November 28, 2011

Of Spinning & Weaving...

 
Words that speak what I feel in my heart from Sarah Alexander, via my Facebook friend Meryl Steinberg:
 
"We are being called to raise our consciousness, to each take our place at the table around which we convene to sustain our precious life on the planet...
 
And each person in my life, coming or going, each experience we bring into each other's lives, glorious or painfully challenging, is designed to hone us to the grindstone, clear us of anything that will not serve the higher good of all.
 
We are being fashioned as homemade gifts by a knowing hand, knitted, spun, thrown on the potter's wheel, carved - we are all both Created and Creator.
 

 

 
 
Nothing less is called for at this urgent time of transformation.
 
Peace On Earth starts here, in my heart, in my willingness to be fashioned and assigned my place in the reclamation and reformation of all I cherish and call Home. 
 
The greatest gift we have to give is ourselves - our true selves, our highest potential.
 
This is humility, this is love, this is grace."
 
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I too have been feeling this, as I have been walking my particular path...
 
And with the duality that is being human, I have welcomed it and railed against it - sometimes simultaneously, sometimes alternately!!!
 
 
 
 


Sunday, November 27, 2011

Am I...


... a naive visionary, idealist, dreamer unable to accept "reality" and navigate/manage worldly affairs?


 ... a fanatical revolutionary living/dying for the cause?


... a truth-teller, having to live with the consequences of seeing/speaking clearly and directly?


... a writer, driven by an inner compulsion, reduced to starving in the attic for my art?


... a loving, conscientious parent, preparing my child for the changing, new world he will inhabit?


... an irresponsible parent, dragging my child into my illusory world and teaching him my crackpot beliefs?


... a lazy bludger/moocher, full of a sense of entitlement and afraid of hard work?

... a seriously crazy person, living/acting out an elaborate mass hallucination?

... a combination of all of the above?

... none of the above?

Does it matter?


LYRICS:
here's a song from deep in the hole
here's a song from deep in the hole
la la la la la la la la la
something for free something for you
something for me from out of the blue
something is wrong something is right
something has called from out of the night
what does it mean? why do you need to know?
here's a song from deep in the hole
here's a song from deep in the hole
la la la la la la la la la
sick from the sea sick from the air
sick from the view ain't nobody there
just want a taste to feel like i did
the night that you came to the hole where i hid
when they let you down it's all you need to know
here's a song from deep in the hole
here's a song from deep in the hole
la la la la la la la la la



Life Is Full...

... of such delicious ironies...
Was told a few hours ago, in no uncertain terms, to leave as soon as possible from where we are staying because our presence is causing friction between the husband and wife in this 4,200sq ft house... 
9 days we have been here...
They took us in (had offered any help we needed a few months ago) after we were evicted from a week-to-week place...
But they have relationship issues - serious ones - and we appear to be the trigger for them boiling to the surface... 
The wife acknowledges that's what's going on, but still needs us out... not that we want to stay under this hostility...
And - 4,200sq ft they have here, with just themselves, their daughter, two cats and a puppy...
And the irony part???
Husband, wife and their child (and my boy) RIGHT NOW are putting up Christmas decorations INCLUDING the piece de resistance - a humble wooden nativity scene... you know - the hut/stable where Jesus was born/laid in a manger because there was no room in the inn?

The extent of the unconscious hypocrisy is hysterically hilarious...

"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think..."
~ La Bruyere


Postscript (added 1 December 2011):
Well we are now staying with a social activist friend and her family  on Vashon Island...

Gorgeous views - quiet, the water and the green close by, just as I asked for...

One cat here; the other playing hard to get, hiding in the ceiling of the house we had been staying at... expect to retrieve him tomorrow...

"Man of the House" packed us up yesterday afternoon (while we were out!), and helped move our gear across to the island...

Saying goodbye, he apologised for being an "arsehole", as he put it... said he didn't really know why he behaved as he did and then came up with a whole bunch of 'reasons'...

Meanwhile, earlier in the day, myself and the "woman of the house" had had this email exchange:

"As I told P this morning, we are moving on today...

We are going to stay with an activist colleague on Vashon until the Dec 16 court hearing which will determine if I can go back to Australia WITH C...

We'll be moving late afternoon/early evening as my colleague is a teacher and has a meeting after school; she would prefer that we go across to Vashon together since I have not met her family...

She anticipates being in West Seattle around 5.15pm...

I dont know if P still wants to help move our stuff, seeing the location will be Vashon...
 
I can take us, our clothes and the cats today, plus some items can go in my friend's car; if it is possible to put the rest of our gear in your garage, I can come across tomorrow (Thursday) and pick them up...

Thanks for giving us a roof to shelter under for the past week and a half...

I am sorry for the inconvenience and conflict our presence exacerbated - if I had known you and P had these issues and that our presence would further fuel them, I would not have said "yes" to staying here...

Sahila"


"Great Sahila, I’m glad you have what sounds like a nice place until mid-December.   P would be glad to help load up for the ferry trip and then unload at the other end.  I told him the timeframe, so he may stay at work a little later, and show up around 2:30.

No apologies necessary or warranted.   My situation with P was the same before and will remain after.   No big.   He is rather brittle.   At times generous to a fault, then overreacts the other direction whereas I am quite resolute.   Privacy is obviously something we value greatly, and you can see how busy our schedules are.

I will probably see you around 4 today.
 
C..."

So, we're all happy(?) and I guess that's the end of that...






Saturday, November 26, 2011

Divesting Myself Of My Investments...


OK... living in this huge, lavish house for a week has finally cemented the realisation that our "stuff" really is a millstone around our necks in our current circumstances... 
It's costing us our mobility and flexibility, it's costing us money, sitting in storage, and it's costing our friends' energy, taking up space in their homes...
All "stuff" is energy, and while we're holding onto all this stuff, that's energy not available to us to live fully...
And it's creating an energetic block via the conflict between my mixed emotional needs - the need to live very simply and the need to have an outward manifestation of who I am, a reassurance that I exist, and an (illusory) sense of security...
So - I'm selling all the furniture now, except the boy's bed (he isn't ready for that, even though he hasn't slept in it for more than a year now!)... 
If you're in or near Seattle and you want to exchange cash for beautiful things for your space - furniture, rugs, lamps - then let me know; I've posted photos below, of what we have as it was set up in our last home...
I have to do this if we are going to go back to Australia anyway... might as well start now...
And some of you might have thought this was an obvious solution to my lack of cashflow, BUT, it's not so easy to give up what had meant "home" in one sense... besides, I'm a crab, astrologically - I hold on and I go at things sideways!...
I remember my parents coming with me and my sister from Holland to New Zealand, with all of their lives contained in four wooden tea-chests... and how they worked hard and played by the rules to make a home for us all - and what a toll that took on an already dysfunctional relationship (as it's doing in this family we are staying with)... and how each of them died "owning" a modest amount of "stuff", still paying mortgages, sick and lonely and unhappy...
And I remember 20 years' as a military wife, moving every 9-24 months, just when I had gotten our houses - both rental and owned - looking/feeling like a home...
And I remember coming to the US with the boy, with 46 years' of my life, and 8 months' of his, all contained in 24 boxes...
And I remember creating the home you see here in these photos for me and the boy - the only home we have had in the past 10 years...
And some might think that this is the last of the slide into the gutter, and marks us out as failures in life...
But why shouldn't this be happening to us?   What makes us so special?
People all over this planet have been having to make this choice over the past several millenia.. 
More and more people are facing this reality daily in the "west", and even in these circumstances, we have much more than billions of others on the planet...
And I look at how people in this house are doing life - despite the fact that both adults are working and making good money, they're only holding onto all their beautiful stuff by the skin of their teeth, and I know that we're all going to have to go there, in one form or another, because this way of living on this planet cannot go on... 
And a Facebook friend commented that nomadic life may be the way of the future as we try to avoid flood and storms and drought.   If we work on it now, we may be able to do it well.
As I tell the boy, just as always in my life, we're living ahead of the curve, riding the front edge of the wave...






 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 



 

Friday, November 25, 2011

What Am I Teaching My Child?



If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.



If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.


 
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.


If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.
~ Dorothy Law Nolte 








"If we are to teach real peace in this world,
and if we are to carry on a real war against war,
we shall have to begin with the children."
~ Gandhi

LYRICS
You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.
And so become yourself because the past is just a good bye.
Teach your children well, their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams, the one they fix, the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of the tender years can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth, they seek the truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well, their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams, the one they fix,the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.