Thought...

Just because I've been wronged by one's close to my heart in the past,
does not mean, the person now will do the same - I have to forget and
let go of what was, so I can be open to accept what is now, and is
being offered to me with love.

... Its amazing how dialogue in movies can trigger our nerves and
stike our inner, tender cords.

A Controversial Issue, Close to My Heart - My Personal Comment...

(29 December 2007)


Some consideration through a comparison of extracts taken from different literature sources that I’ve been reading during my Christmas vacation, where they make reference (advertently or inadvertently) to different cultures, that seem to highlight the comment of the author’s theme of the text ...... that perhaps the forgetting of the importance of the women species on this planet is a reflection of man, man’s religions, rules and cultures, man’s politics, having forgotten the feminine force of the Divinity as standing side by side, in equality and respect with, and in the same light of honour as the masculine force of the Divine. Man has forgotten that he too carries the face and essence of womanliness in him, just as woman carries the essence and face of manliness in her. But where she embraces him in her, he scorns her presence in him, unable to accept and embrace her. Why? I wonder. From the texts I have read below the conclusion I keep coming to time and again is pride, ego. Where the strength of woman lies in her will and strength, her ability to feel and empathise, and so have compassion for humanity, her challenge lies in accepting her lesser physical strength, and rather allowing her physical lesser weakness to act as assistant to her more superior strength in will and wisdom – hence the physical strain of having to give birth to a child at first, only to then make use of her inherent intuitive and instinctual nature / knowledge to rare this child into an individual conscious existence of its own. (Strange how, biblically, wisdom is referred to as “she”? Wasn’t that a great act of humility and liberty, or was it sympathy, on the part of the patriarchal “publishers” of the time?.... excuse my hint of sarcasm...it creeps in every so often, and no it is not justified – not in light of my purpose of this article, my asking for the other to consider a new way of being. Please then, allow me just this one textual slip of venting, as I find the irony of this sardoncially humorous.) On the side of the man, it is his will and heart that lack in strength, and his physical constitution that harbours this place of superiority, hence the ability to act quickly and focused, but not intuitively, compassionately, empathically. Only, where woman does not take out her possible feelings of inferiority out on her partner sex, he has, and does. And still he does not appear to be mastering his will, his heart, his soul.

What does this say to me? I am not one that wants to give up on the male spirit and a man’s capacity to be all he can and all he wants to be, please NO! I want to learn my weaknesses through the mirror of a man’s presence in my life, but then I need him to be living his life as consciously of the other, as aware of his choices and their impact on the world around him, as I am trying to. I also realise the incredible challenge of having to stand against centuries worth of indoctrination, dogma, cultural traditions, religious orders. Does a man have the strength of will to start a journey to the heart of himself and discover what HE thinks and believes from within, and not what has been handed to him from without? Man has lived in a world, and continues to do so where it is comfortable and easy for him, where his mistakes are overlooked and the woman gets to play scapegoat on his behalf, where he makes decisions that mortally make his life easier and his positioning socially more superior so that he need not take responsibility for his actions, his thoughts, his decisions, the colour of his heart, because he chooses to continue to allow himself to do this – but does not admit that it is he making his own decisions, that it is he perpetuating the state of human existence to be and continue as it is now and has been for too long. To see myself in the man I see around me in my day to day life is an insult, because it undermines who I am for myself in my life now and what it is I stand for. But worse, I cannot find a role model, a wise man, to guide the daughters of the world. And that saddens me.....deeply. It is mostly for this reason that I write this now. It must be said, and I have a duty to say it, as woman. For if this is not expressed from one of the young woman generation of now, then how can woman (and that includes me) complain about their position of perpetual inferiority in this world. I have a responsibility, and I embrace it, and I own it..... For me, a man, would be considered a true man, who accepts the Divine as both feminine and masculine in presence and nature, both forces equally and complementary constituting the nature of the Divine). A man would find a way to stand against his space of comfort he has created along with his fellow man, to stand against what he has done and chosen, have the humility to face his old ways and start a journey to discover a new way of choosing, acting, being. It would mean facing his culture, his religion, the symbol for which his gender has come to stand for, and renounce all of it, in the process seeking out the unwritten times of the ancients where man and woman stood side by side, both in awe and honour of the other..... Is it wrong for a man to know the patterns, cycles, ways and thoughts of a woman? Is it wrong for a woman to get to know and come to understand the same of a man? And so I ask: As a man, how strong are you? Where does your strength lie? ..... I leave the extracts to follow....


The Swallows of Kabul
By Yasmina Khadra (nom de plume of the Algerian army officer, Mohammed Moulessehoul.)

‘......”God alone has power over life and death. You were wounded while fighting for His glory. Since He couldn’t send Gabriel, He put this woman in your way. She took care of you by the will of God. She did nothing but submit to His will. What you did for her was a hundred more time more valuable: You married her. What more could she hope for? She was three years older than you, already an old maid, with no vitality and no appeal. Can there be any greater generosity to a woman than to offer her a roof, protection, honour, and a name? You don’t owe her anything. She’s the one who should bow down before you, Atiq, and kiss the toes of your feet, one by one, every time you take off your shoes. She has little significance outside of what you represent for her. She’s only a subordinate. Furthermore, it’s an error to believe that any man owes anything at all to a woman. The misfortune of the world comes from this misperception.” Mirza suddenly frowns. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re crazy enough to love her?” ....... “It’s not a question of love.” “In that case, what are you waiting for? Kick her out. Divorce her and get yourself a strong, healthy virgin who knows how to shut up and serve her master without making any noise.” ....’


The Swallows of Kabul
By Yasmina Khadra

“Though scandalized, Mirza restrains himself and tries to go easy on his misguided friend of his childhood. “My poor Atiq, I live with four women. I married the first one twenty-five years ago, and the last one nine months ago. I feel nothing but suspicion for the lot of them, because I have never for a single moment had the impression that I understood anything at all about the way things work in their heads. I’m convinced that I’ll never fully grasp how women think. It’s as thought their thought processes move counterclockwise. Whether you live one year or a century with a concubine, a mother, or your own daughter, you’ll always feel that there’s a gap somewhere, like an insidious ditch gradually cutting you off in order to expose you better to the hazards of your inattention. These creatures are intrinsically hypocritical and fundamentally unpredictable, and the more you think you’re going to tame them, the less chance you have of breaking their evil spell. You can warm a viper in your bosom, but that won’t make you immune to its poison. As to the number of years, however high, it can bring no peace to a household where the love of woman betrays the weakness of man.”


The Swallows of Kabul
By Yasmina Khadra

“[Mohsen] ‘This isn’t our home Zunaira. Our house, the place where we created our own world is gone. A shell blew it away. What we have is just a refuge. I don’t want it to become our tomb. We’ve lost our fortunes; let’s not lose our way of life altogether... We can’t accept being treated like cattle.’
‘Isn’t that what we’ve become?’
‘I’m not sure the Taliban have taken advantage of a period of uncertainty. They’ve dealt a terrible blow to people who were already defeated. But they haven’t finished us off, not yet. Our duty is to convince ourselves of that fact.’
‘How?’
‘By thumbing our noses at their decrees. We’re going out. You and me. Sure, we’re not going to hold hands, but there’s nothing to prevent us walking side by side.’
Zunaira shakes her head. ‘I don’t feel like coming home heartsick, Mohsen. The things that go on in the streets will just ruin my day, to no purpose. I can’t come face-to-face with horrors and just keep on walking s if nothing’s happened. Furthermore, I refuse to wear a burqa. Of all the burden’s they’ve put on us, that’s the most degrading. The Shirt of Nessus wouldn’t do as much damage to my dignity as that wretched getup. It cancels my face and takes away my identity and turns me into an object. Here, at least, I’m me, Zunaira, Mohsen Ramat’s wife, age thirty-two, former magistrate, dismissed by obscurantists without a hearing and without compensation but with enough self-respect left to brush hair everyday and pay attention to my clothes. If I put that damned veil on, I’m neither e human being nor an animal, I’m just an affront, a disgrace, a blemish that has to be hidden. That’s too hard to deal with. Especially for someone who was a lawyer, who worked for women’s rights. Please, I don’t want you to think for a minute that I’m putting on some sort of act. I’d like to, you know, but unfortunately my heart’s not in it anymore. Don’t ask me to give up my name, my features, the colour of my eyes, and the shape of my lips so I can take a walk through squalor and desolation. Don’t ask me to become something less than a shadow, an anonymous thing rustling around in a hostile place. You know how thin-skinned I am, Mohsen. I’d be angry at myself for being angry at you when you were only trying to please me.”


The Zahir
By Paulo Coehlo

‘....”Later on, we’ll talk a bit about Tengri, the culture of the steppes,” Dos went on. “But now that you’re seeing this, let me just explain something very important. Here, in this land, the woman is in charge. She comes first. In the event of a divorce, she receives half the dowry back even if she’s the one who wants the divorce. Whenever a man sees a woman wearing a white turban, that means she’s a mother, and we, as men, must place our hand on our heart and bow our head as a sign of respect.” ..... “The second question will seem even more idiotic: is the village at the foot of the mountains where my wife is living?” Dos nodded. “If we’re only two hours away, why don’t we sleep there? It’ll be a while yet before it gets dark.” “You’re right, we are only two hours away, and there are two reasons why we’re stopping here for the night. First, even if Nina hadn’t come out here, someone would already have seen us and would have gone to tell Esther that we were coming. This way, she can decide whether or not she wants to see us, or if she would prefer to go to another village for a few days. If she did that, we wouldn’t follow her.” My heart contracted. “Even after all I’ve been through to get here?” “If that’s how you feel, then you have understood nothing. What makes you think that your efforts should be rewarded with the submission, gratitude, and recognition of the person you love? You came here because this is the word you must follow, not in order to buy your wife’s love.”
....“It’s only a two-hour ride to the village. We’ll be there before the sun is at its highest point.” “I need a bath. I need to change my clothes.” “That’s impossible. You’re in the middle of the steppes. Put the oil in the pan, but first offer it up to the Lady....”........
“What is Tengri?” “The word means ‘sky worship’; it’s kind of religion without religion. Everyone has passed through here – Buddhists, Hindus, Catholics, Muslims, different sects with their beliefs and superstitions. The nomads became converts to avoid being killed, but they continued and continue to profess the idea that the Divinity everywhere all the time. You can’t take the Divinity out of nature and put it in a book or between four walls....”


Zen: Zest, Zip, Zang and Zing
By Osho

“That’s the trouble: if they are well-cultured, that means they are well-repressed! What is culture? – a device of repression. If they had been a little less cultured they would have been more innocent. If they had been a little less cultured they would have seen things more clearly. The cultured person cannot see things as they are; he has his ideas of how things should be, and if they do not go according to his ideas then they are wrong.
And you say they are well-behaved. They must be being forced to be well-behaved. And my own experience is that the well-behaved children, the obedient children, are not really alive people.
The alive children are bound to be rebellious, they will be disobedient. Out of disobedience, intelligence becomes sharper. Out of disobedience one starts being an individual. One has to learn to say no, only then does saying yes have any meaning. The yes of the person who cannot say no and says yes is impotent. Well-behaved people are impotent as far as intelligence is concerned, well-cultured people are phony, pseudo; they are not authentic.”

“Religions are always postponing life: they are giving you beautiful illusions about life somewhere in the future, far away, beyond death. That is a strategy to divert and distract you from the realities of life. That is pure cowardice. It is also a rationalisation so that you can be consoled: ‘if life is miserable today there is nothing to be worried about, tomorrow everything is going to be well. In fact, to suffer life today is a preparation for enjoying life tomorrow, so the more you suffer the better. There is no reason to complain, no reason to rebel, no reason to revolt against all those things which are causing misery.’
Religion protects the establishment and the vested interests. It is a very subtle strategy – so subtle that for thousands of years man has lived under its weight without ever becoming aware of what is being done to him. Karl Marx is almost right: that religion is nothing but opium for the people. It keeps you drugged, it keeps you hoping, waiting – and the tomorrow never comes. Desiring, fantasizing about life after death is a shere waste of time, energy, and also it keeps you stupid. Life is herenow – there is no other life. Life knows no past, no future, it knows only the present.”



..... this leads into my next excerpt, or rather set of extracts, where Osho takes his comments further by defining the difference between intelligence and intellect - and education.

"Being Nobody" (27 December 2007)

“Being Nobody”


I read the last lines of the story (The Zahir) and my heart sinks when he finds out that she is pregnant. My ego steps in and I feel the sense of devastation that he must be feeling. How can he possibly feel safe? And some how he manages to step past this and see that her love has not changed, it was a decision that she made in her life that he had/has no control over, just as she had/has no control over his decisions, just as we, each of us, has no control over the decisions of Love, and yet we try to control the decisions of one another, and of Love, and we cannot. And why do we do this? Because we’re scared.

So what do we control, nothing, but ourselves, and how we choose to Love ourselves, and let Love love us in its own way…..

We have to surrender and be nobody in the world, and everybody to ourself with the guidance of the Divine force. We have to surrender our ego, the part of us that lives in the world of the material, and move beyond into the world of the unseen, into the realm in which our soul, our spirit dwells in order to be free.

We have to let go of the rules of man, the rules of the religions that were created in and the rules for living, all made within holy walls, and live instead by the laws that govern the natural world, and the human spirit. We must surrender the belief that the Divine can only be found in written words and the voice of a holy one, that the Divine can only be felt and worshipped behind those walls, for they do not dwell there, they were brought there from another place, the world of the natural.

For the first time the story of Adam and Eve made sense to me…..it is the story of Creation, yes, but not as it has been read and entrenched into the minds of the young, while their minds are still moulding and shaping themselves. No, how it makes sense to me now, is in how the Divine chose to express its essence through splitting itself into the two components that make It up – the Masculine and the Feminine. Woman and Man are both an expression of the different and complementary – yet equal – sides of the Divine. Neither is better, or stronger or more important, for they are both One and the Same. The Divine is both equally feminine and masculine. And Love is the life force that breathes through the Divine. The energy that gives It Life. The Trinity is borne – Feminine, Masculine, Love….. and somehow the truth of this was lost, tainted and manipulated into man’s need to control out of fear. Women were made lesser, out of man’s fear because of misunderstanding, and children were made even lesser because of their understanding of the truth of where we all come and their ability to see and know this. Somehow, I look at the world around me and what I see from this new perspective is how man is the furthest from God, women a little closer, and the children the closest. Suddenly it makes sense that our world has become patriarchal out of men realizing this truth and their irrational conclusion that they are even more damned than women and children – how to cure this, in their opinion? Take control, through brute force. Show them whose boss, and in doing this, they’re not really getting back at women and children, but getting back at the Divine. For feeling the most forsaken – for how could the Divine have allowed men to wander further away than the women and the children of the world? And men will be damned if they should find their way back by acknowledging that the path is only through the Feminine. And yet, what if it is? I think of what I was told recently and what has not yet left my mind but has stayed patiently waiting for me to find a place of sense for it. I think of how when the foetus takes on gender, it first becomes female, before moving onto male….why is man so scared of the wisdom of the feminine, the existence of woman? There is no threat, if anything there is a desperate need from the woman to be reunited with her man counterpart, and if man cannot see this, then there is a great gap of knowledge lacking in mans understanding in the nature of the Divine. And this saddens me, for we then still have a very long way to go.

Suddenly the world seems to make far more sense, and perhaps I can breathe a little more easily. It is not fair, but it is up to each of us to make our decisions, and to find our own way back to loving ourselves, with the aid of Love. Therein lies the happiness and the freedom we so long for. An acceptance that both the masculine and the feminine make up the force that breathes our existence into being, that lives through and around us each day, and that both are needed by the other. And that perhaps, it is a blessing to be able to show the other a different face, a different quality of the nature of the Divine. We are all important, we are all godly, but we have to be nobody in this world, to be able to see how we integrate as part of the Divine, in order to find our way back to ourselves – back to the Divine and Its Love.

Comment: A Test of Self (26 December 2007)

" We must not be distracted by even those closest to us, often as close as family, who think they have the authority to pass judgement, and reach conclusions for the various aspects of our life....Our courage to persevere and not be swayed by them only tests and mirrors their insecurity to live their own truth that much more stongly for them - part of which is the courage to face one's fears and flaws before being able to see one's self illumined.......stay strong, and keep true to your self, your dream. Keep moving ever closer to your own realisation of your essential self."

Quote.....

THE ZAHIR
Paulo Coehlo


"Is Esther still important? I think so, for it was her love that changed my life once and which is transforming me now. My history had grown old and was becoming ever heavier to carry, and far too serious for me ever to take risks like walking on ice, making a wager with God, forcing a sign to appear. I had forgotten that one has to continue walking the road to Santiago, to discard any unnecessary baggage, to keep only what you need in order to live each day, and to allow the energy of love to flow freely, from the outside in and from the inside out."

Everyday I Think of Him..... (23 December 2007)

Every day I think of him. I think of us. I feel sad and I miss him….and then I search through words, and thoughts, more insights into what happened, and did not happen, and why…..I try and listen to the quiet within and take in the guidance given. And mostly I feel peace, and at times I feel anxious again as I try to re-piece the aspects of who we were in the company of the other, and I ask if things could have been different. And then I read some more….

Today, I seem to have more clarity. As I read of another’s perspective of love I give each new perspective time to sink in, to see if it sits comfortably within, to see if I am open to accepting it (discarding it if I don’t, my instinct is strong, but so is my prejudice, hence needing to take time to digest.) And this is what I see now. As much as the moments of sadness come each day, the moments of longing and wondering how he is, and where he is, I sense something else much greater, seated much deeper within me. The sadness and the longing are feelings of the ego, but then there is this incredible love, a sense of peace, and I need to look deeper to see it. I have spent so much time chastising myself for not having loved him enough, that my idea of how to love another is wrong, and it has left me doubting my self – not a good space to leave one’s self in, especially when one is already in a vulnerable space. No, I see now that I love him more than ever and did not want either of us to be in a complacent kind of relationship. Both of us have a nature of deep enquiry, searching to understand life better, and so ourselves. Just like me, he has not yet reached the space of absolute peace within, I always knew this, this is what attracted me to him, his unquenchable thirst to learn more about the unexplainable. What I want for him is what I want for myself, and that is why I had to walk away. I could not allow that either of us be the way we were being, when I know we can and WANT to be so much better, for ourselves. He has such dreams that I want him to see through, he has confrontations within himself that I want him to face, to challenge, and conquer so that he may love who he is so much more deeply. And I know that this is all that I want for myself too.

I am not a person who stays in spaces of degradation and decay. The moment that I see that happening I leave, in search of life. I had to leave so that I could love him truly with all my heart, so that I could love and respect him as I do myself. To stay would have been to do and be the complete opposite of who I am.

I am still restless inside, I have many questions and I sense the Universe is not yet ready to give me answers. I can only trust that I am on the right path. The biggest question is still Love? What is it have Unconditional Love? Was it present in my leaving him? I hope so. I hope that the true cause and instigator of my choice was because of a deep wish for us both to be free to discover ourselves, and to find a deep sense of happiness, and I knew it wasn’t going to happen in the space we were in.

I love him dearly, I think of him everyday, I wonder what he’s doing and thinking, and sometimes I hear him say the quirky things he did. I get tearful and it reminds me that I still feel there. And that is good. It hasn’t been easy letting go into this new space, I have fought it with my pride. But I am better for having surrendered.
Surrendering. Trust. Apparently we don’t guide Love, it is Love that guides us.

Learning Love

THE ZAHIR
Paulo Coehlo

" 'Do you believe that your past loves have taught you to love better?'

'They've taught me what I want.'

'I didn't ask that. Have your past loves taught you to love your
husband better?'

'No, on the contrary. In order to surrender myself to him, I had to
forget all the scars left by other men. Is that what you mean?' "

Prayer of the Visionary

THE ZAHIR
paulo coehlo

" - that if just one person changes, the whole human race is changed."

A Confession of the Heart .... ( the morning of 20 December 2007)

A Dainty First Awakening


….. I’m in a school uniform and as I look around me I see that there are others dressed the same. I must be at a school, but from the impression I get it is a high school, so I am in my teenage years. At one point the girls have been playing a sport (perhaps hockey) and we’re t the change rooms, about to leave, when someone’s bag gets swiped out of her hands. The thief runs very fast and we don’t see which direction he/she has gone in. My friend and I run, catching a glimpse of the thief in the distance. The thief doesn’t see us, thinking that we’ve given up, and so slows down to walking pace, chatting to some other pedestrians traveling in the same direction. We sprint to catch up, but unfortunately get seen before we can get close enough and the chase resumes once again. The thief is heading for the busstop, an area that we are not familiar with. I get the sense that we’re not going to make it in time…..

I’m walking down some stairs, painfully self-conscious of having to walk past all these people, others scholars, like myself, but they are from older grades. I hate feeling like this, I want to disappear every time I have to walk past them, particularly past him. (I remember him, even though here, in this place and time, we’ve not yet met, but I know him, and I feel him staring at me, aware of my movements all the time.) I had to fetch something though, and had no choice but to use those stairs to get there. I make my way back down to the very bottom of the cement grand-stand, and take my seat in the front row, alongside my newly acquired boyfriend, Gert. (Pause. BOYFRIEND? HIM? I never would have dated him in my wildest years! He was the joker of the class! He was my friend, but never anything more than that!?! Resume.) I slip my hand into his and it seems we’re very close. Both hands are clasped round the others. It seems there is a comfortable sense of being able to be intimately close – strange for this age and all the self-consciousness that goes with it, as well as the fact that it appears we’ve only just started dating…. We’re lying on a couch and he starts to kiss me. I am taken aback for only a moment (Pause. He is KISSING me! Uuuggh!...Hold on, he’s not bad at this, he’s actually darn good. Resume) before I allow myself to swept up by the tingling sensations starting to course through my body. He is a very talented kisser, especially for his age. I tease him back. A playful exchange of gently intimate tongue-wrestling ensues. I look him in the eyes to see what his intentions may be and I find a sense of peace there, I am safe……

I wake up. That was weird. Why would I be dreaming of Gert? I take a breath and allow myself to allow the dreaming mists to go I their own time. It’s always best to do it this way, especially when wanting to remember and better understand a dream. I have to remember this one, it seems significant somehow. I get up, rinse my eyes, make a cup of coffee, and mention to my mother in passing that I have started dreaming again, and am having the nicest yet weirdest dreams. She says it’s probably my medication starting to work, a good thing. I haven’t been remembering having dreamt for months now – the depression was probably too severe and I was not sleeping properly. I take my coffee back upstairs, excitedly anticipating the warmth of my feather duvet around me. The weather is cloudy and it’s the perfect atmosphere to stay in bed (but I will have to get up to finish my last-minute-rush Christmas shopping.) I take a few sips, savouring the flavour – I am a coffee connoisseur, and an addict (something I have only openly admitted to of late.) And now the wandering starts. Why the dream? A week or so ago I remember dreaming of my ex-boyfriend that I started dating after I left this particular high school. I knew when I woke up that I was subconciously resolving unresolved issues. We had been discussing this particular character in my teenage life in my session with the psychologist. So it made sense that a few days, or nights, later my mind would start re-filing. But there seemed to be nothing that may have triggered off this most recent re-filing escapade. Or was there?

I think for a moment, and the pieces suddenly illuminate and fall into place. I have been trying to work through a very recent and tumultuous break-up. Part of which is the letting go of the person and all the feelings that go with that person – being angry at him, missing him, reminiscing about how he was, and even who he was (although this last part always seems to be the most biased, and I’m afraid to say is not as accurate as we seem to think, our imaginations have a way of creeping in and changing all the hues somehow.) I can feel a resistance inside, there something I’m not admitting to myself. I think of Owain, of how we broke up in high school. I really liked him a lot, but why does he still flit through my mind at the most unlikely moments? After all these years. I am now twenty-seven. I was thirteen when we met, and he was three years older than me. Again, I think of the break-up, I resolved myself to the fact that it was peer-pressure, as I never did get a straight answer from him, actually, we never spoke about it – hang on, we did. It was via a telephone call I made to him during the holidays. I asked him what was going on, and he couldn’t really tell me. It seemed strange that having only been away for a week to veldschool he could have lost his caring feelings toward me. The conclusion I came to was that his friends whispered words into his ear, they got the better of him, I wasn’t cool enough and wasn’t prepared to go far enough sexually with him. He allowed himself a moment of weakness, and let others opinions matter more. I needed to have a reason and this was the only reasonable and logical one I could think of.

He had pursued me so determinedly, for so long, anything else just didn’t make sense…..what grounded this more, was the how aware he was of me the following year. I could sense he had never forgotten me, his heart was still very much mine, but he didn’t have the courage to face himself. Instead he found himself another girlfriend with blonde hair and blues eyes, who, like me, did well academically. (This is not the first time this has happened, and so I am acutely aware of human nature and its manner of trying to resolve yet deny the unspoken of the heart.) …. I don’t think about these last parts, however, they’ve only just come up now as I’m typing. What I flash back to how he sought me out after school whilst I was rehearsing for our school operetta. Or he’d be lurking round the boarding school gates and if I had the courage to venture outside (remember I was painfully self-conscious and didn’t ever feel popular) I’d always find him somewhere, dawdling around, having some excuse to still be at school, or I’d find him at athletics practice, he was a long-distance runner – a potential professional.

I flash back to how he asked my friend if he should ask me to be his girlfriend, and when it happened he had a flower to hand me. I remember the stairs we sat on when he did this, and I remember how I didn’t have a cooking-clue how to deal with this kind of situation! But I said yes, a definite yes, no matter how shy I was. I really like him….and suddenly the penny drops, he was my high school sweetheart, and I loved him dearly. I loved him, and he broke my heart. I have never admitted to myself the depths to which he had crept into my heart, as young and naïve as I was. He meant something to me, more than all the others, and I was devastated. But the biggest realization that I’ve had this morning, and what my dream was trying to tell me, is that he was the love of my life. And perhaps, I have spent all these years searching for him in others, I don’t know. But that bit about his “being the love of my life” released a gasp and a sigh all at once right through me. I had no idea. And I think in some strange way I have really missed him for all these years….

When I started dating the much older guy after Owain, it was a way to boost my ego, I see that now. It was possibly one of the worst decisions I have ever made, but I made it none the less and have had to deal with the horrendous emotional consequences. Having dreamed of this older guy a week or so back, was a blessing, my mind’s way of filtering back to this moment, with Owain. It had to sift through all the trash to uncover the treasure. Amazing how after a meaningful moment, followed by intense hurt, we cover it up with as much meaningless stuff as we can – the image I have is of a trash can, where the meaningful treasure lies at the very bottom, and all the vegetable peels, bits of soggy paper, and empty cans and cartons fill it to the top – its no wonder it takes so much time to sift through back to the bottom. After time the trash starts to stick together and mutate into other ghastly things. Alright, enough of that gruesome picture. How intelligent our minds are, to know that part of our healing is having to retrace our steps back to the beginning – the point of deep feelings of love and rejection. I felt terribly rejected when he came back from veldschool and tried t hide away from me. I suppose he couldn’t face me out of guilt, shame.

When I left the school a year later, I wrote him a letter. He had plucked up the courage to speak to me once during the year, catching me completely by surprise. He had moved into boarding school by then and for some reason had managed to seat himself in the dining hall facing me from an angle, just enough for either of us to make eye contact, or surreptitiously observe the other with longing feelings. I sensed him staring at me all the time, and would verify this with my friends. I wondered why he didn’t have the courage to be open about it. But he didn’t. I had started receiving letter from the older still-to-become boyfriend, as he was living in another town, and whenever Owain was near, I’d make a very loud hoo-ha about them. In retrospect this was terribly childish and I’m sure did not ease his feelings, if anything it’s probably the reason why he never made another attempt to ask me out again. (I didn’t think of that. That was really stupid of me, wasn’t it? Gosh, I’m such an idiot – or rather, was an idiot.) I left the school at the end of the second year of being there, and before I left I knew I needed to make some attempt at closure. I wrote him a letter, and told him that despite what had happened, it had been an honour to have him in my life, if just for a small while. Now that I think of it, I held back a lot and probably should have said that I had never stopped thinking of him. Then again, it was still a big thing to do as I had done it. He answered back with a letter. I knew he still thought of me. From a very young age I have been very aware of people’s behaviour with an ability to see past the pretenses of actions, through to the truth inside. (Of course, this doesn’t always work for the observed, especially when it’s a young child making the observations and uncovering what’s really going on.) It doesn’t make it any easier however, especially when I was (and apparently still am) trying to make sense of myself…..I sense I am losing the plot of this story. Need to re-focus. What I’d like to say in ending, and what I will need to take in gently through the day, is the re-surfacing of a love that still yields great tenderness. And an opportunity for me to accept with honesty, feelings that I threw away and covered up so quickly, that weren’t ready to be discarded. Lastly, a chance to be okay with myself and what I felt, that I was not a fool, as I was left thinking. I was anything but. I was brave. I faced his popularity with courage, I faced his delinquent friends too. I never stooped to their ways of doing things and I never got caught up in his celebrity-like status. I stayed as me. Shy, self-conscious, heart-of-strength, truthful me. I had the courage to offer my kind of love to him, it was undecorated and dainty, and it was enough that I gave it that way.

I think, now, I can finally find peace with myself and move on. Assured in the knowledge that what I offered was of the most precious kind. I see now that for years I have questioned the validity of my love, when it should never have been questioned. After that relationship I tried to “fix” my loving manner, and in the process went against my nature, my self-worth, and my values. The parts of me that I had held firm to my heart, and really stood my ground for up until then, throughout my young life. All of my mistakes in relationships and the kinds of relationships I got into thereafter, I see now, stemmed from there. I left that moment believing that my love was inadequate, and if my love was inadequate then I was inadequate. I have, as a result, spent years trying to cover this up, conceal it from the rest of the world, especially my lovers. How terrible, if anyone knew the truth, that my love carried no worth. But Life has given me a chance - I have been or have taken myself back to the point where I questioned myself, and my love.

Goodness, I’m getting tears in my eyes, It was just last night in a moment of self-doubt that I asked my mother if perhaps I had missed something in my giving, in this last relationship I’ve just recently left. If perhaps there was something wrong in my loving. If perhaps I was blinded to a flaw in how I love another. I went to bed desperately asking my Beloved Lady these same questions, begging Her for answers ….. and this morning, what I have written above, is the answer. Moments like this move me so very deeply. My search back to that tender and innocent part of me, where I know myself to be young and in awe of the mystery of life, excited by the prospects of discovering it through adventures, I think I’ve touched on it again. Or at least have recognized it in the distance, after all this time, and I am excited, because it’s Christmas, and inside, it’s the Christmas of my Soul.

(20 December 2007)

( I must just say that whilst writing all of the above, it unfolded for me just as it unfolds for a reader. I had no idea where I was going this morning w hen I started typing, all I knew was that there was an intense feeling of needing to get something down, and that my dream was where to start. And perhaps, it also concludes my questions below in some way…. Cathartic moments like these are powerful and mystical – they bring me closer to myself – and that is pure magic.)

The Nature of Unconditional Love? (19 December 2007)

In response to THE ZAHIR ( by Paulo Coehlo)


(entry written last night just before falling asleep...)

To be free, is to know the borders that define the space within which to be free. Yes, it is for safety, but I think more importantly, it roots us. Children push an adults boundaries out of duty, they need to know how strong the limits are - its to determine how safe the environment is that their parents / adults have created for them to be in (and then parents wonder why their children behave as they do, with exasperation I might add - they have no boundaries of their own! But this is another topic altogether.)

The more firmly rooted the tree (the image of course if from Paulo's quote of the Arabic proverb), the more freedom and give the branches have to blow in different kinds of wind.

Decisions define the nature of our roots. Committing to our decisions, roots us more clearly - providing us also with clearer navigational directions. It defines us with more clarity out into the external world, so that others may also truely know who we are.

If our decisions and choices stem from our roots, there can be no contradiction or discrepancy, for the tap-root feeds the body, and the heart. I think of this becasue as I read further, I am amazed at the nature of Esther and the writer's relationship and its "freedom" round infidelity. I think of my own experiences of this and I am challenged...... It challenges me because the thought of infidelity, and especially in a space of this kind where they both KNOW about it, scares me. Is this the kind of relationship I have to be in to be able to live fully all I am? Oh dear.

And then I think that perhaps it is possible to have the kind of ebb-and-flow relationship AND a committment to fidelity. Its the terms of the nature of the relationship that provide clarity and a sense of security. The stronger the roots, the freedom to be. This is still sinking in, there are some walls I'm needing to confront and demolish, as I try and wrap my mind around a very foreign idea. And yet, perhaps I need to challenge this manner of relationship as well.

Despite this confrontation, I continue to read. For I find each word saturated with meaning. I have to savour each individual succulent morsel, swallow, digest and absorb the full extent of its content before moving onto the next bite...... Lets see how I go.

WITH LOVE THERE ARE NO RULES....

“BY THE RIVER PIEDRA I SAT DOWN AND WEPT”
By Paulo Coelho


"Some may try to control their emotions & develop strategies for their behavior; others may turn to reading books of advice from “experts” on relationships – but this is all folly. The heart decides, and what it decides is all that really matters.

All of us have had this experience. At some point, we have each said through our tears, “I’m suffering for a love that’s not worth it.” We suffer because we feel we are giving more than we receive. We suffer because we are unable to impose our own rules.But ultimately there is no good reason for our suffering, for in every love lies the seed of our growth.

The more we love, the closer we come to spiritual experience. Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all of the inhibitions & preconceptions of their era. They have been joyful- because those who love conquer the world & have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender."



(.... I feel I still have so much to learn, may time be kind, and fate gentle ....)

The Mystery Always Knows Best .....

THE ZAHIR
Paulo Coehlo


"...what we need to learn is always there before us, we just have to look around us with respect and attention in order to discover where God is leading us and which step we should take next. I also learned a respect for mystery: as Einstein said, God does not play dice with the Universe; everything is interconnected and has a meaning. That meaning may remain hidden all the time, but we always know we are close to our true mission on earth when what we are doing is touched with the energy of enthusiasm.

If it is, then all is well. If not, then we had better change direction."

?

THE RED THREAD
by Nicholas Jose

'Old Weng smiled, looking at Shen with the vital gloss of young
manhood still on his skin. 'It is a love story,' he said
good-humouredly.
Shen exhaled deeply. Love? He did not know if he had ever experienced
it. Beauty, yes, the intense beauty of perfectiy created objects - but
that, he suspected, was not love.'

Words that Soothe and Encourage...

THE ZAHIR
Paulo Coehlo

'No, I can't think like that. If I behave in the way people expect me
to behave, I will become their slave. It requires enormous
self-control not to succumb, because our natural tendency is to want
to please, even if the person to be pleased is us. If I do that, I
will lose not only Esther, but Marie, my work, my future, as well as
any respect I have for myself and for what I have said and written.'

Oh dear Beloved, give me strength for this is where I am.

Where Angels Tread .....

Where angels tread
is where i long to be
with each step i see
that each is labeled into the stone
the names of the virtues
i learn to carry in my bones

With each step
i hear a sigh
Of relief?
almost as if each stair
lets go for me -
or their own Release -
and perhaps
Instead…

…It is i
Who exhales that breath
of unburdening
Feeling lighter with each step
that takes me higher
to where
The angels tread

(04 December 2007)

Pubescent Moments ..... (poem - 18 December 2007)

I’m
Writing on a virtual wall
Vomitting up my days events
Smearing my most scandalous secrets
Across this silent, glass screen
Hoping you can see me from therein

I’m retreating into a world alone
The one I’d left long ago
A time of confusion,
no confidence,
of an unquenchable thirst for affection,
and love,
and recognition by the same kind.

I’m
Re-pubescent in this mood
I’m re-living moments of years
that were lost
in the responsibilities
placed heavy on those
small shoulders
of mine.

So now I try and go back
To that time of innocent giggles
And fluttering flies
In the stomach
As I learn the newness of love
Not yet understanding its depths
Obsessed with knowing it
more.

I splash my confessions
Across this transparent paper
Publishing my thoughts to the world
In the click of a button
I girlishly decorate my entries
With the pens
of fonts and .coms

…a virtual diary
of a twenty-something
teenager.

(29 October – 18 December 2007)

A 3G Kinda Love .... (sms poems from an ex-lover)

“Deep is loves short distance.
Deep the circle about her.
You are my true surrounding,
my inside and my un-confounding.
Run from your circle’s core
and all I leave is my centre.
But you seem closer all the more.”


06 September 2007
(22H57)

"I'm Sorry" ......(poem)

I’m Sorry


I’m sorry that we couldn’t make it through
I’m sorry you felt abused by me
And me by you

I’m sorry
We have such different ways
That tore us apart
So we couldn’t stay
Couldn’t hear what the other had to say

I’m sorry
That I cannot share how deeply do I love and care
For you
You do not leave my mind
For a single moment

I’m sorry please just know I try and
try each day to understand
And to pretend the pain is going away
But then it creeps
Back from behind
And I am unprepared
Again

I’m sorry that I cannot
Speak to you
In person
I wish I could

I wish I could hold you
And you me
That we the best of friends could be
for each other
and all the other roles
that go in the space of intimacy
but it seems our phases of growing
got in the way
there’s a delay
in our becoming intertwined
in the verse-vines of Love


I wish us the best
For our future tests
For our choices still to come
For the separate paths
That we now walk

And I’m sorry.

(12 December 2007)

"Lament for the Convicted" - Poem (18 December 2007)

Lament for the convicted


I might be the scum of the earth
Might have committed the worst of deeds
I may have raped and murdered
Inflicted the most inhumane activities on the humane
But don’t forsake me
Don’t give up on my capacity to change
My ability to heal
My chance to be forgiven
And to learn to forgive myself

Look past my body of steel
The whispers of oncoming pain that ripple across
my muscles
My eyes of malice
The glint therein
That flickers echoes of my past

Look past the colour of my language
The obscenities I spew
In a rage of firing bullets
I’ve had to learn to use my rifle tongue
As a weapon of disguise
In order to survive

There is holiness in me
Its just been buried deep
Somewhere I chose
To live out my days
In this steel framed chamber
So that I could repent my ways
I may not be conscious
of my soul’s choices and contracts
yet I too spend time with my Maker
as we go over the journey’s I’ve taken

Remember my heart is human
Just like yours, is mine
Like you I birthed from a mother’s womb
Mine just may have not seen
My stages of development through
My childhood season may have
Harvested sooner
Than yours
My days of innocence shortened
My childhood memories few
yet still a child I was

Within me lie
Those holy words
That you speak out loud
That you’ve memorized by heart
Only for me
They lie quietly unspoken
Dormant
Remembered by my essence
my true nature
They lie
In my heart
Waiting patiently for me
To find my way back home



* COMMENT:
is it not the responibility of the community to find ways of initiating ways for the "misdeamonours" to find their back to honour? As much as we all have the responsibility of making choices in our life, for the direction of our life to take, and then carrying the responsibility of the consequences of these choices, do we not have some responsibility toward the our fellow human being - our community round us? A responsibility to contribute toward its progress? Obviously this is only possible when one has ventured into, shaped and layed a solid foundation wihin the self - an internal justice system - principles and values of the heart - universal in nature. From this space, however, I feel that I then have a responsibility to create POSSIBILITIES for those still searching - not DEFINITES, but POSSIBILITIES, where there is freedom in which to make their choices, through having been shown different paths available, no longer closed doors, barriered walls, and turned backs...Yes, I feel anger, I am angry at the wrongs that the convicted (and at times unconvicted) do. Their actions and even more so the impact that their actions have on others, riles me. Yet, I believe that I can be both angry, and make a decision to reach out and initiate change. It has to start somewhere. Why can it not start with me, if its change that I am wanting so badly? Why must it be another's responsibility to action tranformation, when I'm the one wanting it? A mindset like that, I believe, only perpetuates a state of victimhood, a state of mind and way of being that already engulfs the people of our society, and ultimately undermines the potential of our humanness, and spirit... We then, are just as guilty as those carried away and placed behind bars, guilty of all mumbling "good riddance" and then doing nothing. I believe that good people's impassivity is possibly worse than a guilty person's activeness - they had the courage to act. Please do not think me condoning wrongdoers actions, I'm saying that we can learn from their seeing an action through - only, now, we can see a action through that is contributing, nurturing, empowering.... We all have the right to redemption, but it is only ourselves that can redeem our self. An outstretched hand wanting to share a possibility of reaching this place of self-forgiving, is I think, something that is too lacking. Its too easy to say, its not my problem. How then can we possibly say we are honest good people, if one's way of being is not honourable in the name of the soul, of the spirit?

Blog: | Paulo Coelho's Blog

Source: Paulo Coelho's Blog

http://www.flux.com/04EFAFFFF00991CB2000800051D24/

An Opening Address: (16 December 2007)

The toad and the hot water

"Sometimes we behave like the boiled toads. We do not notice changes. We think that everything is fine and that anything bad in our lives will simply go away - that it’s just a matter of time. We are close to death, but still we sit, unchanging and apathetic, while the water around us gets hotter by the minute. We end up dying, fat and happy, without having noticed the changes going on around us."

(c) Paulo Coelho