Its all ok, everything is good even when it feels like we’ve come full circle and are back exactly where we were 4, 5 or however many years ago. We all go round in circles – life is not  a linear process, we don’t just start out being born, learn our lessons from every single experience and progressively follow this straight path to death. We go round in circles, revisiting moments in our lives that we have a need to revisit.  Sometimes it takes us more that one go at a certain life experience to fully learn and grow from it. So, thankfully we come round again.

Some of us don’t even recognise these cycles at all, most of us only see it every now and again. However if we don’t recognise this pattern and if we don’t choose to pay attention and take action then we just keep going round and round, ultimately wondering why we don’t seem to be ‘getting anywhere’ in our lives.

Yet we all know when we’ve come round again - we know it deep inside. We sense a familiar feeling inside and there are familiar signs outside. We know that we’ve had these feelings before and the external signs and symbols remind us of a similar time in our lives not so long ago. Not so long ago that we have no recollection; we know where we are. We know we are here again. The question is do we now pay heed to this knowing, or do we ignore it, dismiss it, resist it?

There are of course a multitude of reasons why we may choose to ignore, dismiss or resist what we know.  And quite often this is exactly what we do. We do this however at our peril. There is no escaping these cycles of life. We are back here again for a reason, and if we choose to ignore, dimiss or resist how we feel and what we recognise around us, then we are simply delaying the inevitable. And what today is just an uncomfortable sense of self doubt will become if we delay long enough a life-threatening situation.

There is one predominant reason we have come back round again. There is one main reason we find ourselves in this situation again. That is to give ourselves an opportunity. We are here again so that we can choose to do things differently We can choose to be different.  And ain’t that the most amazing thing? Ain’t that the most fantastic opportunity?

Usually this most wonderful opportunity is also a most demanding challenge. We are here again because there is another way to respond to this set of circumstances; there is another way to feel and act in this moment. There is another way to be in this moment. Often this other path  is one we do not feel that comfortable taking, probably why we didn’t take it last time around (ha). Yet the bigger our fear the greater the opportunity for us to change our lives. It is our fear that holds us back, by being here again we are presented with the challenge and the opportunity to face that fear and set ourselves free.

So my friends whenever you find yourselves in that place that seems so familiar, pay attention. Be in it, feel it, remember it. Remember how you felt, who you were the last time you were here. Who are you now? What do you want to be different, and what do you have to do make it so?

Take responsibility for being here, again. Take responsibility for being here before. Know that you are here because you chose/choose to be here. You are here for a reason and trust that you know exactly what that reason is. Try to let go of your frustration, your disappointment, your anger. Try to just simply and gently be in this place and get to know the landscape a little better.

Be grateful. Thank the lord, or the universe, or fate, or whatever it is you believe in for allowing you, and assisting you, in being here again. Appreciate the wonderful opportunity you have been given; the challenge you have created for yourself to liberate yourself in this moment.

Kia kaha, kia toa, kia manawanui. Be strong, be brave, be steadfast my friends. Know that I love you all. Know that this moment, like all moments will not last. Know that you have within you the courage and the strength to change who you are and what your future is.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

New Year Resolutions #1:

1. open up my eyes
2. look up
3. know everything is going to be all right
4. reach out
5. know God shines his light on me
6. LIVE THE LIFE I LOVE
7. use that higher power

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Some days are easier than others. Like today, today I don’t have cancer, I haven’t driven my car into a tree and I haven’t been shot in the head by a band of teenage girls. Today is an easy day.

Then there’s those other days, not just easy days but bloody great inspirational days, days when …

….. all the parts of the puzzle look like they fit . These days, those days, thank god there’s days like this.

On days like this life seems to have a capital ‘L’. In fact all of it is in CAPITALS. LIFE IS GREAT. We live for days like this. Wait, slow down …. read that again …. we LIVE for days like this – and on days like this we REALISE that. We know why we are alive, we know why we are here, we know the purpose and the meaning of life – or …

                                                          ….we don’t know it and we just don’t care, because simply being here is more than enough. Days like this. Ah yes, glorious, god given, beautiful and bedazzling, uplifting and enlivening days like this. I love em. In fact I don’t even need a whole day, just a moment – a moment like this. One of those is enough to spark me up for a while.

Like yesterday I found myself standing in the kitchen at the residential home for the mentally unwell where I just happened to be working yakking away to this Jamaican Brit about New Zealand and Brixton, sons and daughters, girlfriends and the importance of having a smile on your face. A moment like this, so full of energy, full of goodwill, full of connection, communion and synergy is for me what it’s all about.

Just thought I’d share that with you … and may yours days always be days like this. May you feel the wonder, joy and synergy of life in every moment. May you feel the swell of gratitude and the beat of belonging in your heart. May you always share in my dharma.

 x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

I woke in the night and looked across at Cari asleep beside me. Reached down and touched her hand. Closed my eyes and listened to her breath. I awoke early this morning knowing I am where I am meant to be. I do not feel different, I am different. I am relaxed and reassured.

I am close to a source of happiness and trust. I lie next to a spring from which as I inhale I drink long and deep. Within only days of returning here I feel that calming and rejuvinating elixir coursing through my being.

How to explain it? Love obviously. This modest and humble woman wraps herself around me, envelopes me in a shawl of light and love, and sets me free from all my fears. She is the word. She is all that I believe in, all I aspire to, all I want for myself and all those I love.

She makes it real, makes it safe.

Safe to be myself – all that I am and all that I believe I am not.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Each day begins with a slight headache and a dawning doubt.  I don’t know where my confidence and optimism have gone?  Every time I wake a bubble bursts and there is a mental grinding of the teeth as I prepare to engage with the day. 

Yet this morning my clenched and strained stance softened within the hour. On turning on my laptop I find a pleasant and promising message from a language school in the UK.

Such a glimmer of hope is all it takes. The slightest of smiles can produce the smallest chink in the armour and a single ray of sunlight slips through – my cloudy day is diluted and once again I am standing in the faintest of lights from above. The shadows slink slowly, resentfully backwards and in their absence I remember my initial half-baked plan. My plan for my three months down under:

• to visit with my sons
• to spent time on retreat
• to complete a TEFL course

And after all that is done and dusted, my plan to return to Caroline, to the UK. 

Now here I am only days away from completing my plan! It seems to have all fallen into place, it seems to have worked out. In 3 days I will have done all that I wanted to do. I have succeeded, I am reassured, in a few days I will be qualified to teach. It has all worked out… hasn’t it?.  Has it all worked out?  …. and if it has what I am doing feeling so bad? What am I worried about? Why do I doubt?

Is this whole drama that I am feeling, this pain and agony once again simply an unnecessary act of  despair? Is this just another completely pointless self indulgent exercise in doubt and worry? Have a fooled myself once again? Fooled myself into thinking that life sucks?

To discover this is the case would be the greatest of lessons.

To find out that this moment of overwhelming doubt was simply once again a trick of my mind would be  a most wonderful lesson. It would be, once again, a most powerful reminder that WORRY IS POINTLESS. That …

…things ALWAYS work out…

ALWAYS

ALWAYS

ALWAYS

work out

… and the best way through all of it is to simply know this truth. The best way through life, through all we experience is to simply hold on to this truth and let everything else go.

everything always works out

there is ABSOLUTELY nothing to worry about

The light from above grows stronger. I become stronger, more aware once again of the perfection of this human existence.

This morning I completed my final assignment and in doing so I realised another significant difference in emphasis between CELTA and TESOL.  In TESOL there is an emphasis on differentiation and following that on preparing extension tasks within lesson plans. This is hardly stressed at all within CELTA where the emphasis is on the fundamentals of eliciting and reacting.  I am lucky to have experienced both courses – to be learnt from both.

I am lucky – ha. Life is good!!

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x