Living, Loving: Woody-style...

Haven't disappeared off the face of the earth in the past three weeks or so...

Just a HUGE unfolding going on internally and am feeling/seeing how to express that in the outside world... 

Almost ready to talk/write about it...

In the meantime... here's Woody...

I sometimes feel like an alien creature

for which there is no earthly explanation
Sure I have human form
walking erect and opposing digits,
but my mind is upside down.
I feel like a run-on sentence
in a punctuation crazy world.
and I see the world around me
like a mad collective dream.

An endless stream of people
move like ants from the freeway
cell phones, pc’s, and digital displays
“In Money We Trust,”
we’ll find happiness
the prevailing attitude;
like a genetically modified irradiated Big Mac
is somehow symbolic of food.

Morality is legislated
prisons over-populated
religion is incorporated
the profit-motive has permeated all activity
we pay our government to let us park on the street
And war is the biggest money-maker of all
we all know missile envy only comes from being small.

Politicians and prostitutes
are comfortable together
I wonder if they talk about the strange change in the weather.
This government was founded by, of, and for the people
but everybody feels it
like a giant open sore
they don’t represent us anymore
And blaming the President for the country’s woes
is like yelling at a puppet
for the way it sings
Who’s the man behind the curtain pulling the strings?

A billion people sitting watching their TV
in the room that they call living
but as for me
I see living as loving
and since there is no loving room
I sit on the grass under a tree
dreaming of the way things used to be
Pre-Industrial Revolution
which of course is before the rivers and oceans, and skies were polluted
before Parkinson’s, and mad cows
and all the convoluted cacophony of bad ideas
like skyscrapers, and tree paper, and earth rapers
like Monsanto and Dupont had their way
as they continue to today.

This was Pre-us
back when the buffalo roamed
and the Indian’s home
was the forest, and God was nature
and heaven was here and now
Can you imagine clean water, food, and air
living in community with animals and people who care?

Do you dare to feel responsible for every dollar you lay down
are you going to make the rich man richer
or are you going to stand your ground
You say you want a revolution
a communal evolution
to be a part of the solution
maybe I’ll be seeing you around

When The Chickens Come Home To Roost...

I'm experimenting with the concepts of "rules are for fools, guidelines are for the wise"...and "cause and effect"...

I initiated a 'cause' a while back and am now seeing how the possible 'effects' might play out... and the stakes are higher than at any other time in my life...

A case of personal will and personal responsibility in action...

Daring to walk the talk... and living the outcomes!

Well, to be more accurate, quite a long time ago, I chose a particular way to respond to someone else's decision/action/cause...

Morally I still feel OK about that decision, though at the time I didn't envisage that my choice would bring this degree of risk and potential loss...

And I guess that person's decision/action/cause was triggered by a combination of his/her beliefs, things I had done previously and the other circumstances in his/her life... 

Can you see the chain of cause and effect in your own life - how everything is connected, nothing happens in isolation... not in our lives and not in the larger world either?... 

The world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows just where it ends... and because of that, none of us can claim to be victims... we make choices which ripple out to touch other beings and impact other situations and then we must live with/through the consequences...

Burt Bacharach:

 

LYRICS:
The world is a circle without a beginning,
And nobody knows where it really ends.
Everything depends on where you
Are in the cirle that never begins.
Nobody knows where the circle ends.

La la la,
La la la la la la.

And just because you think you're small,
That doesn't mean that you're small at all.
And just the way a tiny branch is like a tree to a twig,
To someone else you are big.

The world is a circle without a beginning,
And nobody knows where it really ends.
Woooa!
Everything depends on where you
Are in the cirle that's spinning around.
Half of the time we are upside down.

La la, etc.

And just because they say you're weak,
That doesn't mean you've a weak physique.
And even if they're partly right,
At least they're partially wrong.
To someone else you are strong.

La, la, etc

And just because they say you're slow,
That doesn't mean that you're slow, you know.
And even if you're never first,
Compared to someone who's last,
They're sure to think you are fast.

The world is a circle without a beginning,
And nobody knows where it really ends.
Woooa!
Everything depends on where you
Are in the cirle that never begins.
Nobody knows where the circle ends.

La la, etc.

The world is a circle that never begins.
Nobody knows where the circle ends. 

 

 

Recurring Patterns...

One of the things I do is help people uncover and then step out of recurring patterns of choice and behaviour that are not helpful to living a loving, abundant life...

We all have one or two main patterns of which most of us are unaware.

These patterns come from core beliefs we have, beliefs we've picked up over the years about who we are and how life is.   

Usually these beliefs and patterns are so ingrained we're not even consciously aware of them.

So we are, in effect, living on "auto pilot", living by a set of rules and strategies that keep us locked in the past, that stop us from living in the now, from living authentically...

I too, have a couple of patterns in which I occasionally get stuck ... and I keep uncovering unhelpful beliefs about myself and life that sabotage my efforts to live free.

One of my patterns is to get carried away by the "potential" of a person or relationship or situation...

To be so enthused by that glowing 'potential' I can sense, that I'm blinded to what will likely be the reality of that person, relationship or situation...

I've had this pattern since I was young and I'm still doing it -  I'm currently dealing with the consequences of living from that pattern in my housing situation... Damn!

But the benefit of knowing what are my patterns and beliefs, comes in being able to step out of the pattern, stop it much earlier in the process.

Each pattern has choice points, and I can make different (better?) choices earlier in the pattern - in fact as soon as I realise I'm doing the pattern again...

I no longer have to play it out right to the end...

And practice makes perfect...

If you want help uncovering your core beliefs and breaking out of  your patterns so that you're making authentic choices, contact me either through the comments section or via email at sahila@metamind-spirit.com

which path will you take?

Namaste...

See more of what I do at:  metamind-spirit

I'm As Mad As Hell & I'm Not Going To Take This Anymore...

Flash Mobs - Having Fun & Making Political Points

Breaking social taboos, cutting through invisible boundaries that isolate us from each other, and/or making political statements at the same time...

Gorgeous Man, Gorgeous Name, Gorgeous Voice...

 

 

What's In A Name?

Shakespeare once said that a rose by any other name is still a rose...

 

What's in a name, really?

Well, I think names carry energy and qualities and what is your name impacts your life...

Indigenous people do too - they are very careful about naming their children and sometimes names are changed at different stages of life to mark events or personal and spiritual milestones...

Now, I was born and given the names Marianne Geertruide...   

I don't know where the Marianne part came from in our family history.   Name source books say it's a joining of the names Mary the mother of Jesus, and Anne, her mother.

But the Geertruide was after my paternal grandmother, who by my memory and other accounts, was a complete bitch...

My mother told me my grandmother was seriously pissed off that I was not given that name as my first name... I, growing up, was grateful every day!

My sister, who was born one day before my second birthday, was cursed with being given my name reversed.   

She got to be Anne-Marie Albertina - the Albertina after our father, who also was often a nasty person...

When I got married for the first time, I was happy to trade my last name Meijerink (which no one could pronounce) for Pember - which means "small mound"...

So I was Marianne Geertruide Pember for 20 years or so...  

No one could pronounce the Dutch name Marianne, so I used to get called Mary Anne (which I loathed - think Hoosier Hotshots singing "All night, all day, Mary Anne, down by the seaside sifting sand..."), or sometimes Gertie - which I hated even more...

Then I got divorced and after a couple of years decided it was time to lose the married name...

But I didn't want to revert to my maiden name - too many unpleasant associations.

And besides, the feminist in me realised that women keeping their own names when they got married had forgotten that they weren't honouring the female bloodline, but were still carrying the male line, because their maiden names were their fathers' last names!

And I had also learned that Marianne means "sea of bitter tears"... which really meant that both names had to go...

So I said my version of prayers to my version of god, and one morning, in the shower, the word CHANGEBRINGER came through, loud and clear...

I was completely gobsmacked... crazy word, arrogant, horrible, too "new agey", too way out, won't get any respect, hard sounding, weird...

But it wouldn't go away and nothing else came... I mean, seriously, what was I going to change my name to - Jane Smith, or Anne Jones or Susan Robinson???

And then I started thinking - names used to be about what people did or where they came from... and I did bring change, in my own life and to others... my whole life had been about that, whether I was conscious of it or not...

And so I gave in and said to the universe - well, OK then, but you'd better bring me a new first name too because it's weird to call across the room: "hey ChangeBringer - do you want a cup of coffee?"...

And then the word "Sahila" jumped out of a book I was given by a shaman friend... 

A Sahila is a chief amongst the Kuna Indians of Panama and one of his functions is to be "the go-between, between the people and the gods"... 

Which is exactly what I was doing in Australia - speaking and channelling at churches and spiritual centres, giving people clairvoyance and healing privately.   

And as I was (then) far enough away from Panama to escape the wrath of those who thought I was taking a title I hadn't earned, and the word sounded strong and feminine, I went with it.

We get to meet the wizened (probably 35) village sahila, who arrives Panama-hatted, bare-chested and wearing orange plastic flip-flops. He plops himself in a net hammock. Somehow we expected ermine robes and a throne, with maybe a bugle accompaniment...The sahila may look like a combination of beachcomber and bum, but he is an important hombre. He presides over the congreso, or counsel, a daily event attended by the entire village. There individuals have their say, tribal problems get ironed out and the sahila pronounces, explains, adjudicates and may even hand down wisdom gleaned from dreams.  Some villages have more than one sahila. We don’t ask who then presides; they seem to have worked all this out peaceably, without Donald Rumsfeld. -  http://aboardlulu.com/lulu20090317.htm

(There's also a quite extraordinary synchronicity between acquiring this new first name and meeting the father of my youngest son - but that's a story for another day...)

Now all official documents except my birth certificate are in these two names...

But I still carry the energies of the names Marianne Geertruide and call on them in ceremony, as well as the energy of medicine names I have been gifted.

I keep using the energy of Marianne Geertruide because I discovered (after the name change!) that Marianne is the name of the feminine symbol of the French Revolution (my mother's family was French).

 

Geertruide is a Germanic name meaning Spear Woman, and I have been a warrior, fighting for personal and social justice, all my life...

And St Gertrude was a German nun, who was a mystic... I know it's hard to believe, but for about two years in my early teens, I thought I would like to be a nun... a Carmelite (like Teresa), who doesn't speak!

But, four children and many words and metaphysical/spiritual experiences later, it all kinda fits with who I am and what I do as I express myself in this world...

So, what's in your name?

Living My Life To My Own Rhythm

It's been a long time coming, but over the past three years, I have decided that I (and my young son) will live our lives to our own rhythm...

We wake when we wake, we eat when we are hungry, I don't make early morning appointments, I work when I feel the internal drive, we get to school when we get to school... 

There is no past and no future - there is only the NOW and I have consciously decided I/we will "spend" or use the now in a manner that is meaningful to me/us...

Part of that outlook comes from my very strong dislike of being "controlled".   

Part of it comes from the realisation that most of us live like mice on the wheel, with the content and quality of our lives dictated by the needs to work for our 'living', by what we have to do in selling our labour or thinking skills to "earn", to prove we deserve, the necessities of life... 

We have agreed to give away our sovereignty to the system.   Our daily lives are dictated by the needs of our employers - managers and businesses.   Our kids are programmed in factory-model schools to comply with and conform to the demands of the workforce, so they'll willingly shape their lives to the requirements of the workplace...

I used to work all hours of the day and night for various jobs. As a radio journalist/news editor I had shifts starting at 4.00am and others finishing at 2.00am... And I'd get home not remembering the route I had driven - had I stopped for that red light?   How did I get around that roundabout?   Freaky, scary to find yourself having travelled 10 miles with no memory of the journey...

I did my whole first marriage and the raising of my first family on "auto-pilot"... head down, bum up... get up at 6am, fed and clothe the kids, get them to school, work, pick them up from school,  take them to music or swimming or art classes,  feed them dinner, bath time, bed time, fold washing, go to bed and get up next morning and do it all over again... work, housework, childcare, kids' activities, social life, volunteering, birthdays, christmas, haircuts, doctors' and dentists' appointments, illnesses, family crises, build houses, renovate houses, move all over the country... don't stop to think, don't stop to feel, don't stop to question, don't stop to breathe, just do what needs to be done...

I watched my second husband (a very brief marriage!), a man of 50 at the time, completely freak out at the possibility of being late, even by a few minutes, for his factory-floor job.   He was reduced to the emotional state of a panic-stricken child if anything came up that might make him late - like a child scared of getting a 'tardy slip' at school and being hauled in front of the principal, or being expelled.   It was horrible to watch - humiliating and dehumanising... 

And lastly, I watched my mother work hard at multiple jobs all her life, only to suffer a stroke at 32, and to drop dead at the age of 60 - still working to pay a mortgage and having never had the time to enjoy the fruits of her labours...

Is that why we are each born?   Is that what life as a fully evolved, fully realised human BEING (rather than a human DOING) looks like?   I say no...

The sky won't fall and the earth won't stop spinning on its axis if we stay home because it's been snowing overnight and the roads are icy.   Winter and its weather are nature's way of saying to all living things - time to slow down, time to go within... 

Most other living things on the planet live in that natural rhythm, natural cycle - they hunker down when the weather becomes inhospitable...

But do we humans?   Oh no - not us, all powerful, all arrogant, lords and masters of all we survey...

We're above having to live by nature's dictates - we try to control nature and when we can't, we simply ignore her and bulldoze our way through, regardless of the consequences.

And what does that bring us?   Nothing really - except more demands from our bosses and society that we operate like robots, like machines and not like living, breathing, conscious flesh and blood.

Had a death in the family?   Three days is plenty of time to deal with the logistics of the funeral and the wake... What, two weeks later and you're still not functioning fully?   Grow a backbone, stop being such a wimp, get over it...

 

 

Indigenous people have a very different concept of time - they live life to a different rhythm...

In many cultures, there is only the eternal NOW... there is no future, so planning for the future is an entirely alien concept...

"In Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, a Quechua Indian told me that everything one does in life involves looking forward while going backward simultaneously. This I didn’t understand. I said, ‘What do you mean, going backward?’ And he said,’Well, it’s very simple. For us, for the Quechua, the past is in front of us. It’s in front of us because we know the past and we can look at it. And the future is behind because we don’t know what it brings so we move into the future, but we move backwards.’ The expression is ñawpaman puni. This idea of moving into the future while looking clearly into the past is something that is lacking in all these considerations about development and alternatives to development, and about what is going to happen and from where we can create an alternative to development. This lack of historical depth is what is going to prevent us from thinking of real alternatives to development. (David Tuchsneider 1992:63-64)"

From: Sense of Place and Indigenous People’s Conservation A Brief Political Ecology of the Seed and Place. From Modernization to Globalization from Above and from Below. Towards the strengthening & re-indigenization of local epistemologies, ontologies and cosmovisions: Tirso Gonzales. UC-Berkeley 04/30/04

In the video below, Professor Philip Zimbardo describes how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.

One of the people who influenced my social activist thinking was Robert Theobald, for whom I helped to create a public forum in Brisbane, Australia in 1999 (The Great Australian Chin Wag).

Robert was an economist and futurist, with a global or planetary perspective. He wrote books, prepared and appeared on broadcasts and lectured around the world to governments, businesses and organizations.

 

Robert questioned and criticized conventional confidence in economic growth, in technology, and in the culture of materialism - all of which he considered to be damaging to the environment while failing to provide opportunity and income for many of the world's people.   He warned against trying to maintain, and to spread or mimic worldwide, the American standard of living of the late 20th century.

Despite his criticism of some aspects and effects of technology, Robert saw tremendous potential in communications technology like on-line, personal computers (which in the 1980s he termed "micro-computers"), seeing these as tools for pooling the thoughts and opinions of very large numbers of individuals spread widely, geographically.   He was an expositor and populariser of such now-accepted concepts as "networking," "win/win," "systemic thinking," and "communications era."

Amongst the things he said was:

"What's startling to me is that when I started talking about ideas like these 30 years ago, they were so new and strange that people looked at me as if I had two heads. In retrospect, I think I was looked on as something of a cultural clown - a "crazy" who was fun to listen to. The reaction I get now worries me a lot more, because what most people say is "Bob, today you're right, but we're not going to do anything about it."'

"My goal is to create a situation of full unemployment--a world in which people do not have to hold a job. And I believe that this kind of world can actually be achieved."

 -Robert Theobald

Think about it - how do you want to spend the TIME OF YOUR LIFE?

 

Sand Dancer

There's something about Kiwis and how we do life...

Wake Up & Take A Ride On A Big Jet Plane

Angus and Julia Stone - "Big Jet Plane" 

Tilting At Windmills - Someone's Got To Do It... Will You?

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

Pale Blue Dot - No More Turning Away

First, Do No Harm....

My spiritual practice is based on the tenet: First,  Do No Harm and John Wesley said:
 

"Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can."

~John Wesley (1703 –1791) Church of England cleric & theologian, Methodist movement founder
 

Does education, and education "deform", first "do no harm"?

I have been thinking about that more and more, since I wrote the letter to my child's teacher, principal and school community, withdrawing him from standardised testing and relieving them of any responsibility and liability for his academic achievement.

As the weeks have gone by, and I've processed the 100% positive feedback I have received on the stand I am taking, and I look at my son as we go to school everyday, I wonder - withdrawing him from testing - is that enough?

There are so many ways in which we don't honour our children as free human beings, and it seems to me the worst is yet to come - in some respects we are going back in time to much darker, almost feudal days...

Merit Pay Turns Children Into Workers

In many ways, I share some of Alfie Kohn's thoughts on education. 

Learning is a lifelong activity – it doesn’t just happen in the time period between 5 – 17 years of age, within the confines of school walls.   I don’t think the purpose of educating for life is to learn academics...  I think the purpose is to turn out a well rounded, balanced, confident, happy, fulfilled individual - physically, intellectually, socially, emotionally, spiritually and to develop all the talents you were born with, not just the intellect, so that you can contribute the best of yourself to your community...

But School = Prison for many kids, something they have to do, that they don’t have a say in...

Do any of us think abut how we would feel if someone came up to us and said:

“For the next 13 years or so, you will do this for five days of the week, whether you like it or not... You don’t get any say in how you spend the day or who you spend it with... 

You will stand when we say so, sit when we say so, talk when we say so, write when we say so, read when we say so, eat when we say so, exercise when we say so, do art (if you're lucky) when we say so... 

You will spend at least five hours of your day in this fashion and you may - if we choose - have up to one hour to be somewhat free and unrestrained - but even then, if you don’t obey us and do exactly as we instruct, in the manner we instruct, you will have that free time rescinded...”

And kids are supposed to believe this is all in their best interests, that the pay-off  (good job, a safe place in society, relationships, happiness, a house - and a mortgage to go with your student debt - and a generous retirement  before slipping into the night-time of death) is worth it and there is something wrong with them if they can’t or won’t conform, or enjoy it, or do their best …

I see the current model as a confining, controlling one of indoctrination into/moulding for the system and it physically hurts me inside (a twisting of the gut) to see my son being changed/restricted every day... 

So, each day I am dithering about his continued participation in formal schooling....

I want freedom for him - freedom for us all... But is that my projection, coming from deep within, my own rejection of, revolt against the dynamic of power and control...   

And am I gambling with his future if I take him out and let him 'educate', ‘unschool’ himself in something like a Sudbury model school, or even at home... (Or am I just preparing him for a different world, one that will come when this system finally collapses, as it surely will?)...

And I wonder, if that is how it is for me, how must it be for teachers who are being forced by their masters to put children through what most of them must know is not real 'education'?   I wonder how they stand there day after day jumping through the hoops a sick society is putting in front of them?

And that is not a criticism - truly... I know that place; I have been in a place where I was asked/expected to do things that I knew intellectually, morally, spiritually were not "for the highest good".   I couldn’t justify it, couldn’t find a good enough reason worth the pay-off and I had to lay it all on the line to stay in personal integrity... 

I am guessing many teachers face that dilemma daily...

My son's teacher is a fine teacher, who is used to mustering and employing all her talents (artistic, dramatic, musical) in the business of teaching her class whether that be in math, language arts, whatever...

But she is being compelled by her principal and the district to teach to the test, in content and form - worksheets, worksheets and more worksheets, formatted exactly as kids will find them on the tests including multiple choice answers with bubbles to fill in...  

It's killing her - the internal conflict and stress is literally making her sick... 

And it's killing me to see my son struggle with boredom in that...

It’s turning him off - now he says “school is boring, math is boring, too much sitting, too much writing, it’s too hard, I don’t get enough time to just read (currently his completely favourite activity), there’s not enough time to eat lunch, recess is too short”...

My son is not unique - this is happening to hundreds of thousands of kids - we are killing their spirit/creativity/curiosity/enthusiasm... I think that's a crime - which is why I do what I do against education deform...

But stopping education deform is not enough;   what was happening in classrooms before education deform wasn’t good either.   

If I know the system is broken and I don’t agree with the values of the system, and the system won't let me change it (but will let others with money change it as they see fit, in ways that I think will harm all children), what do I, as a parent, do?   

What does a teacher do?

I want to know what we as a people do, when the system is so broken it can’t be fixed?  

How do we get our world to a place where we really nurture/educate our children in a holistic way…

Do you do the best you can within the bad system, or create something outside the system?

The System - Servant or Master?

I feel sad/mad/disappointed/frustrated that so many people forget that a system - any system - only exists because people support/enable/buy into it... You take away your support and participation, and the system crumbles.... 

And yes, that's not as easy as it sounds - there's a lot at stake for most people.   But surely the day comes when one has to make a choice, if one wants to stay in personal integrity?

That's why I do what I do - the system has ceased to be a servant of the people; on the contrary, its our master and we are now its slaves... 

That's inhuman and inhumane and I don't want that kind of future for our children...   Do you?

Depeche Mode had this to say about the Master-Servant relationship:

LYRICS:

It's a lot
It's a lot
Like life

There's a new game
We like to play you see
A game with added reality
You treat me like a dog
Get me down on my knees

We call it master and servant
We call it master and servant

It's a lot like life
This play between the sheets
With you on top and me underneath
Forget all about equality

Let's play master and servant
Let's play master and servant

It's a lot like life
And thats what's appealing
If you despise that throwaway feeling
From disposable fun
Then this is the one

Domination's the name of the game
In bed or in life
They're both just the same
Except in one you're fulfilled
At the end of the day

Let's play master and servant
Let's play master and servant

Let's play master and servant
Come on master and servant