I knew this sounded familiar, and of course it is straight out of ‘trainspotting’.  It came to me as I was meandering my way to Frank’s this evening, dwelling occasionally on the last post (acceptance = action not apathy) and I thought that the saying would perhaps be more accurate as re-choose life. After all to choose life in a conscious way we must be alive first, don’t we? So by the time we can actually consciously chose life, we are already well and truly alive!

 

We choose life, this life, right here, right now, right back at the beginning. Day one. Take responsibility. The spark that is us, the you and the me, call it our ’soul’ or ‘consciousness’ or whatever, it chose this life; this life, this body, these parents, these circumstances, all this, right here and right now. This life.

 

I chose this

I chose life

You chose life

 

I did. You did. We did. And accepting THAT is one of the first things we can do to start really enjoying it.  Because that is what we can do – we can really ENJOY it. Whether it involves a job, a family, luggage and a three piece suite or heroin, violence and criminal activity. This is it! Don’t waste time looking around for someone or something to blame – take responsibility – we chose this – accept it and start enjoying it. And of course if we’re not happy in it, then we can change it!

 

And to change it, we need to accept it – as it is. And before we can change our experience of it into the most glorious and wonderful and joyous and precious thing there is , there is something else we need to accept. Something that once we accept it, once we accept that we chose it, WE ARE FREE. 

 

by choosing life we also chose death

 

Everything that lives dies. And when we chose life we chose death. Accept it.  And as I wrote in the last post, through acceptance comes action. Genuine acceptance of things the way they are allows to us to see clearly, without anger, without pain, without affront. And when we do this we can act without fear. We can act without attachment, with no desire to achieve any result or outcome. The action in itself is enough.

 

The action is enough. And when we accept death then the action is life.

 

Enjoy it. May you always be happy.

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

 

 

 

 

 

I was all ready to dive face first into a blue funk today. Did the groundwork last night; angry, sullen, silent, evasive. I made sure Cari knew. Not nice at all.

 

And now today – it’s 1.30 in the afternoon and I’m in bed. Haven’t got up, except to have a cigarette, haven’t washed, haven’t eaten, except to gnaw at a fingernail.

 

I was all ready to just lie around and wallow in my ever-so-justified anger, resentment and self-pity. To feel just so hard done by. Same old stuff. About the inheritance and who my brother is. Same old stuff that I have struggled with for the last 7 years or so.

 

It was starting to feel quite comfortable methinks …

 

I really thought I deserved to be able to vent some anger and feel sorry for myself. I was suffering after all. I was being victimised. I was hurting.

 

Maybe I was …

 

And …

 

This time …

 

I made it work for me. Sure I stayed in bed, sure I had a cigarette. Sure I got angry and hurt Cari (sorry my darling – and thank you so much for being there with your magic wand). And hopefully next time, as with this time, there’ll be less anger and hurt.

 

This time I turned lead into gold.  I stayed in bed for 5 hours and instead of sulking I made this, from scratch. I’m really pleased with it.

 

 

Ok, the golden nature of my creation may not be readily apparent right now. It was I discovered after I published it a VERY limited edition. Only a very select group of people witnessed it – and I didn’t do much of the selecting either. I am hoping the lead will again be transmogrified into gold with the help of my good friend, fellow alchemist and general all-round good ole honest cowpoke, Buck. To learn (a little) more about all this, click here ©

 

So thank you Steve. I know a lot of you out there have been waiting for me to see the light and speak the truth. Thank you all. Thank you Steve for being who you are. As much as mum, as much as Toby, as much as Max, you have played a huge part in my transformation over the last 5 years.

 

And what a transformation it has been. There have been times, more than once, when I have felt the philosopher’s stone in my hand, in my heart, in my mind. There is no better feeling – when all the world is warm and golden.

 

To all my friends, thanks. To those of you in the vid, don’t worry you look wonderful! To those of you not in the vid, that is only because I could not find your pic today. Send me a new one, or better yet lets get together and we’ll take a pic of us together, with huge smiles on our faces. I love you all xx

 

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

 

 

 

 

thanks to lardfork for the pic (hope you don't mind...)

check out the site - it's well cool

well of course it is, you can tell by the pic above

 

Seeing as how delicious ambiguity has been all over the place lately, in words (mine, others, blogs, letters), in thoughts and in actions, well Schrödinger’s cat has got out of her box and is purring away and rubbing herself all over me. I first noticed her soon after I started reading a book about a month ago called ‘Schrödinger’s Baby’ about a group of students in the UK who get up to a bit of mischief.  However now I think about it she was there when I first picked the book of the shelf at the Charity Shop. Ever since she has been more here than not, sharing in the delicious ambiguity. Then there was this other book…

 

                 … I sold through the One Dharma Happiness Books bookshop called ‘In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat’ (by John Gribben). Great book, I read it about 15 years ago, soon after Heather and I got together and learning about Schrödinger’s cat was part of that heady rush, that loosened the logocentric shackles that bound my mind, or set it free. Hmmm I digress.

 

So I had this book in my shop, and ‘magicclaudia’ bought it and paid for it, and I wrapped it up in tissue and brown paper and sent it off as I do. As I have done with all of the 100+ books I have sold over here. And… he doesn’t receive it. This is the first time a book has gone missing. I posted it and he didn’t receive it, well he hasn’t as yet anyway. It remains in limbo…in the post. In the process of posting and delivering somewhere. Hmmmm well I couldn’t help but see the irony in all this.

 

For anyone, and I am sure there are some, who have, once again, no idea what I am talking about, let me explain (as only I can do – hahahaha).  In a very small nutshell, and in my very own words, Schrödinger’s cat was put into this box and the lid was shut tight. In the box along with the cat was a flask containing a poison and a geiger counter.  If the geiger counter detects radiation then the flask is shattered, releasing the poison which kills the cat. We on the outside of the box do not know it any radiation has been detected. After a while therefore we are unsure as to whether the cat is dead or alive, so seeing as we don’t know, then the cat is for all intents and purpose simultaneously alive and dead. It’s state is ambiguous.  Yet, when we look in the box, we collapse this ambiguity and we see the cat either alive or dead, not a mixture of alive and dead.

 

There you go. If that aint as clear as mud, then click on the club - it may help ♣

 

So not only does a book about all this disappear uncharacteristically into thin air – and the state of that book remains ambigious, it may still turn up, or it may have gone forever, but Mort decides to play as well.

 

Mort is a beautiful black cat that has lived with my sons for many years (along with Levi, the strawberry killer). Mort disappears some two weeks ago. Tobe is naturally upset by this. Not knowing where Mort is. Then a woman calls, from some way away, and says she thinks she has Mort. That Mort has turned up at her house and has made wonderful friends with her young daughter. Tobe isn’t buying it, it seems too far away for Mort to have travelled all that way.

 

So a picture of Mort is posted on the internet. The woman makes contact again. She is quite adamant that the cat snuggled up with her daughter is Mort. Tobe becomes less skeptical. It may be Mort. Maybe he hopped a free ride somehow in a car or something.

 

Now here is the other key part to this whole thing. When we OPEN THE BOX we then collapse the ambiguity. And we determine whether Schrödinger’s cat is dead or alive.  We create the reality by taking action. We take responsibility.

 

And being responsible mean recognising that that determination, that reality, be it a dead cat or an alive cat, is NOT made in isolation from us. We are wholehearedly a part of it.  We are as much a cause as anything else.  Not just due to our actions, also due to our thoughts, all the way down to our very being. We are responsible.

 

So Tobe could leave the cat with the little girl. The woman was happy for the cat to stay. Tobe could choose to know that that cat was alive and well and very happy and very loved. Tobe could choose to know that that cat was Mort.

 

Or Tobe could go to the house and open the box.

 

What would you do?

 

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

 

 

Toby and I were talking a little while ago about ’Spore’ the game. I’ve seen it advertised and haven’t given it much thought. That’d be because I’m kind of selective about what I am mindful about, about what I retain in my consciousness. Well we all are aren’t we?

 

And this process of selectivity got me thinking of  ’self’ and ‘non-self’. The way I see it, I create, maintain and develop my self through that which I choose to be aware of. That which I choose to ignore (and by that I do not mean things I am aware of and disregard, but rather those things I am simply unaware of), these things DO NOT EXIST for me. These non-existent things make up my non-self.

 

Simple really.

 

These things that make up my non-self do not exist. They are nothing to me. Yet at anytime something can move from my non-self to my self, in fact things are constantly moving between the two.  When I was younger  stuff was mostly transferred from non-self to self.  My self grew and grew. And this did not cause any noticeable shrinking to my non-self - well it couldn’t could it, as I (my self) am totally unaware of what constitutes my non-self. Although I think of it as vast, infinite in it’s nothingness.  As I was growing I just kept drawing things from it (as we do).

 

And then a time came when I noticed I was giving stuff back. Stuff that had been part of me was jettisoning off. My self seemed to be shrinking. Things I could no longer remember, and things I simply chose to forget. There came a time when I consciously stopped growing, I had accumulated enough stuff, now it was time to let some go. And the edges between self and non-self became blurred. The border between what I was aware of and what I was unaware of swelled, like a limb asleep and numb. And it was this borderland between self and non-self that increasingly became my comfort zone. Albeit a very numb comfort zone!

 

And where does all this fit with Spore and the god delusion and genes? Hmmm who knows? Though I think it does some how, because it seems to me that Spore provides an opportunity for us all to play god, which of course we are. We are gods of our own universes. We are. We are the centre of our own universes. No one else is. No one else can be.  We see things, we create things as we want things to be seen and be created. Spore it seems to me just gives practical expression to this truth.

 

Spore lets us create our selves and create our non-selves, perhaps. Ha who knows, that’s the joy of it. So I hope someone is keeping track.  Because what we have here is one great social experiment. As far as I understand it, sometime in the not too distant future, we, us, you and me, are all going to take part in recreating the world. I mean, its not that far-fetched is it?

 

Some day soon a game will begin. There will be enough of us playing to make it meaningful, as meaningful as anything else.  And in this game we are god and do whatever we want, and as more and more people play, the characters they create, the traits they emphasise and de-emphasise will aggregate. And then a forgotten dream will come true.

 

There will come a time when the technology we have created will give all a voice. An identity free from judgement and discrimination. All will have the opportunity to be present. As individuals. As gods of their own worlds.

 

Represent

 

Righteous!

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

  

LIFE IS GOOD

…and if you read that and don’t simply fully agree with it – if you stop even ever so slightly and question it -if you do not accept it without question, then you, like me, need to PRACTICE.  Because life is good, in fact it is great, wonderful, marvellous, brilliant.

 

It is!

 

If you think it aint, or if you think you KNOW it aint, then that’s your CHOICE.

 

YOUR CHOICE

 

If you are now rebelling, resisting, scoffing, fighting in any way at all, against this idea. STOP. Right now

 

STOP RESISTING, and…

 

…just accept, just for this moment that you may be choosing to know that life is something other than fantastic. Just for this brief moment, for the time it takes you to read this post, accept the possibility that what you KNOW is simply what you are choosing to know. please…

 

 

 

…maybe, just maybe, life is bloody fantastic and you are missing out.  You are not seeing it, are not feeling it, are not experiening the absolute JOY and WONDER of life because…

 

 

YOU ARE CHOOSING NOT TO

 

 

Forget, for this moment, all the reasons, all the evidence, all the rationalisations that totally and utterly explain to you why life is less than wonderful.  These may be because you hurt, you suffer; they may be because others are hurting, suffering. Let go of all those now. Be free of them just for this tiniest moment.

 

let go of all the things you know

let go of any doubt

TRUST IT

 

shhhhhhhhhhhh

 

 

stop, don’t scroll down, stay here….briefly

 

 

 

 

 

                                                             there…

…there

                                          ….there

 

 

in that emptiness, in that stillness

 

 

 

is hope

 

 

 

 

 

 

thank you for practising with me

and the more we practice, the more we grow to know

that life is full

of WONDER and JOY

 

 

 

 

 

may you all share in my dharma

 

may you all be blessed

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x