Hello Debs, thanks for posting those beautiful words, thanks for having the courage and the conviction, and THANKS for everything!! I have been meaning to post something for the longest time, expressing my gratitude to you for all that you are and for all that you have given me.

 

Thanks for the MOST wonderful wonderful time while I was in Barnstaple – there was so much to the time I spent with you and Hope. You just made me feel so welcome, so much a part of your family, your life. That is a gift you have – the ability to open yourself up – to make others feel so relaxed, so wanted. Thanks so much for that.

 

I remember that I had only been there a moment, a couple of hours perhaps – and it was the first time we all had met, and Hope asked if I could come and watch the Sports Day at her school the following day. You couldn’t make it, and I was asked to substitute. Wow, what a gift – thank you. I’d love too – and I so enjoyed it. Just being asked was magic – it made me feel so special!!

 

It was real life… a local school sports day, children excited, teachers on display, proud parents making the noises parents do on the sidelines. And after what I had written in Exeter (see post – y’orright) here I was again, in a very real way feeling in no small measure like an imposter – and no more so when I had to sign the register (cause I was taking photos) declaring which child I was with. I have some pics of that day which I will get to you once I have broadband up and running again!!

 

Oh before I forget, my days in and around Barnstaple were also embued with a sense of ’seeing myself’ in others. Hope who bites her fingernails; the brash young man who sat on two seats on the bus, taking up so much room in his attempt to be noticed, biting his fingernails, just like me, afraid, just like me….of being left out. And the couple on the train back to London – as I dozed and drifted in and out of wakefulness, in and out of dream state- who told me of the world and the way it is, and she, so keen, so willing, and him….unsure, hesitant, lacking confidence in what he knew to be true…that’s me right there, and I was almost tempted to step in, make my presence felt…

 

                                                     …and yet I remained. An observer / a participant / and imposter.

 

And I have not even mentioned OceanFest and the drive along the coast, and the beaches and and and…. so thanks my friend, thanks for all of it, thanks for being you. Thanks for being with me before I came here and being with me now I am here. I love you heaps – you are an inspiration – oh and one last rememberance – of us laughing and laughing about it all, about all the pain, all the suffering - as we walked along the windswept coastal path above Croyde. I will always remember that – in that moment you showed me how it is possible to let go. To free ourselves from the ‘drama and trauma’ of the past – free to be free, free to laugh, free to fly and soar and make magic.

 

thanks my friend
may you always share in my dharma

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

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Been wanting to add something on this site for a while now , but have been a little perplexed as to what to say. Apart from all the usual stuff of how uplifting real and at times funny I find this site, it is really getting the message out there, as to us learning accepting and being the best that we can be in this moment. We spend so much time worrying about the past and fretting over the future .

.

I found these words on the secret website and feel that they also share a place here. So here goes:

 

 

To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.

To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.

To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

 

Just reading these words every morning brings so much inspiration into my life right here right now.

 

 

 

wishing everyone love and blessings Debbie xx

 

 

 

…y’orright?

 

C’mon – I want to see a tad more participation in this site – most of you have the POWER to post, yep that’s right, and I am saying, as the great sage Nike said, ‘just do it’ .  If you can’t find your way through the technology, just do your best and get in touch with me. I KNOW you all have stories to tell, and as my  great master always said ‘ story is story”, so go hard, be brave, REVEAL yourself ….. ha

 

Anyway, I’m back….and it is great to be back! I may have been in exile, but that don’t mean I been bone idle. The opposite in fact, so there will be a slight flurry of activity over the next week as I load up the site with new, exciting and thought-inspiring things; videos, posts, pages, pictures, ideas etc that have come to me while I’ve been away. Stuff to inspire you, fire you, help you cry, disturb you, perturb you, make you sigh, acknowledge you, deny you, let you die….
                                                                     …just a little

 

 So perhaps there will be a noticeable change in content – I’m hoping as more participate, more change, more osmosis, more growth….

 

Anyway, at a very real level I’ve been to Devon. Love it. Love the people, love the place, love the language (hence the title – y’orright  – like ‘gidday’  back in Aotearoa). I spent four days in Barnstaple with my wonderful friend, Debs. And on three of those days was out at OceanFest at Croyde (pics and words in a post to follow). Thanks Debs for caring for me so so well, for getting me to OceanFest, for giving me a place to stay, for showing me Devon, for loving me and sharing your life, and for sharing Hope with me. Thanks for all the talk, all the words, all the listening. Thanks for the stories!! Thanks for being such a wonderful person, and thanks for being in my life.

 

And THANKS for providing the opportunity for me to step up and GO CRAZY!!!!

 

So start at the start – I had a little difficulty getting sorted with my travel arrangements from London (couldn’t quite understand it, so just lived with it)  and as always it worked out and I took the train via Exeter to Barnstaple. I love train journey’s, and caught up on some reading – got stuck into this great book ‘Rational Mysticism’, which I will write some more about elsewhere. I disembarked in Exeter St Davids to stretch my legs, and decided to stretch my right arm as well. It was a beautiful day, and a great pub just across the road from the station -

 

       

 

so I ended up sitting in the sun, supping a lager and wrote this….

 

I have the feeling of being an observer, of being in this place, yet not really here. Not known, not recognised by others in this same reality. Not recognising in some known way, my surroundings. An interloper, and eavesdropper – a moment passing though a larger moment. I watched “Waking Life” and read this book “Rational Mysticism” and now find myself increasingly conscious of these moments of ‘weirdness’, of separateness.

Hearing snippets of conversation, seeing/glimpsing moments of interaction.

I am here, yet I am not here.  I want to nurture this feeling.  I feel as if I have found a direction. Now. A path. A way forward.

A commitment

After nearly three months, while on the brink of finding employment, I have found the trail.

Mysticism, lucid dreaming. Drug induced spirituality. Dancing. Revelling.

Interesting that at this time, right now, I shout down / shut off from the website. It is a time to stop and think, reflect. And I am finding meditation elusive, yet I do not miss it much. It seems forced -  as if I am trying to reproduce something that is already happening…

And in all this, I feel my ego.

And I feel, perhaps more than ever, yet never before so painlessly, alone. Completely alone.

In my completeness I am alone.  In my particularity, in my discursive self, I am, more than ever before, loved, known, cared for, understood perhaps.

Is that what I search for? Someone who completely understands me – who knows me – who understands what these words are, what they mean?

Am I searching for myself?

And if I am, for what reason? What’s the point?

To be known? To be free ? To be able to be completely silent, still, not here and not there, and simultaneously…..
….. to be completely…….alive…. in the presence of another/my self.

Is that possible?

So that’s the way my journey to Barnstaple started, and I hadn’t even got there yet, it seemed that this could well be a few days of mystic, mind-bending, self discovery… and so it was…

 

to be continued….

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x