I came to know this most wonderful man while I was studying to become a ESOL teacher (and no, I’m not referring to myself -  although my study has led me to know myself a quite a bit better). This guy’s name is Scott and he is one of those genuine people who seem to exude only love, compassion and goodwill. What a pleasure, what a gift it is for me to have met Scott. He lifts me up every time I am with him.  Every time we meet I am astounded all over again by his way of being.

 

We all had to give a couple of  ’micro-teach’ lessons (this is a 15 minute teaching activity that we present to our classmates) during the course. During Scott’s last microteach he chose to facilitate a discussion about ‘chance’, about how our lives are very much determined by chance, or what seems like chance. Things like taking the earlier bus and just happening to come across an old friend who we haven’t seen for years when we disembark. An old friend who just happens to mention in passing that he has been reading a book that we then see in a second-hand bookstore the following day. When we buy the book we discover unexpectedly that it has the very information in it we have been seeking for the essay we are writing, due the next day.  That sort of thing -  chance…

 

…or not. Scott’s teaching got me thinking about synchronicity – something I have written about before (see sweet caroline… ). 

 

And it reminded me of a presentation I gave to my classmates a few months ago now – a presentation which started with a piece of graffiti that read ‘your life is chance not choice’ and ended with that graffiti rewritten as ‘your life is choice not chance’. Well it’s both, and that’s where synchronicity comes in.

 

Synchronicity is a big word for the collision of chance and choice. It is a collision we all create simply by being here. We exist in a world of randomness, a world of chance. And thoughout our lives we make choices about which bits of this randomness we will collide with. Often, particularly as we age, we come to understand many of these collisions as being caused by the conscious decisions we make. And we tend to relegate all others, those that seem to us to be not of our doing, as coincidence, chance, luck.

 

Yet perhaps this is a false dichotomy. Perhaps we are present in all the collisions of our live, whether we are conscious of it or not. And the sooner we realise this, and the sooner we take responsibilty for this, the sooner we can have our strawberry ice-cream.

 

 

 

So thanks Scott. Thanks for being who you are. Thanks for being in my life right now – I appreciate it, I appreciate you immensely.

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

 

 

I’ve had this draft around for quite a while now, and I want to let it go, so here it is. Not too sure now what motivated me to start writing it, although I guess it is, or at least has the appearance of being, one of the perennial philosophical questions.  For me it all seems like a storm in a teacup, a bit of a rational academic distraction.

 

 

In ‘make it easy why don’t you’  I wrote of being free and determined at the same time. This is usually conceived as a duality, a dichotomy, two sides of an ‘either/or’ divide, heads or tails.  I am, you are, we are either free to act, do as we please, create our unique futures or we are determined, by an omniscient god, by nature, by some pre-arranged plan, by something.

 

EITHER/OR

 

Well I find it is ALWAYS worthwhile when confronted with an ‘either/or’ type proposition to let go, just for a moment, of the sides of the proposition itself and rephrase ‘either/or’ into ‘both/and’, like so…

 

I am, you are, we are both free to act, do as we please, create our own uniques futures and we are determined, by an omniscient god, by nature, by some pre-arranged plan, by something.

 

How to make sense of this? Easy really, the masterplan whatever it is, however it was conceived, is SO vast, so complex, so utterly huge, infinite and multiple that within it there are more than enough options every moment of our lives to be construed by us as ‘choice’.

 

We choose from a number of different options every moment of our lives – our minds are hardly ever , if ever, shut off, shut down, and while they are on, within minutes we have made choices that have taken us in directions infinitely different and varied from others we could have followed.  Through this leaping and bounding of our minds, we are choosing, creating, moving ourselves in various directions and through various emotions and states of being.  We are exercising FREEWILL, whether we are that aware of it or not!

 

 

 

  

The thing is I guess that quite often, perhaps more often than not, we as human beings are unaware at a conscious level of what our minds are doing, where we are taking ourselves as our minds hop around like crazy monkeys , the choices we are making.

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And maybe in this state of non-awareness it is easy to feel just a little bit trapped, just a little bit like we don’t have any choices, that our lives are determined by circumstances, situations, outside our control.

 

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And our lives are. We do live in a bubble, within which all things are known and all things are related. We live in a world, a universe that does operate to a masterplan. There is cause and effect. There are consequences. Our futures are determined by our pasts, and both are understood and experienced right here in the present.

 

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Yet as long as there are incidents, moments, happenings that we understand as ‘chance’, ‘coincidence’, ‘random’ , as ‘luck’ or perhaps even as ’synchronicity’, then we are free. We are free to choose. We are free to make our lives.

 

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The very fact that such random, coincidental moments do appear to us within the ordered chaos of our world means we all have a chance. We all have a chance because we continue to fail to understand the way in which the world is ordered , we do not fathom the masterplan- and this is of course exactly as it should be, this is of course exactly as it is.

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And maybe this is in part what the whole thing is all about. Life that is. And may explain why the notion of freewill is a perennial philosophical question. Because life is about not-knowing, and maybe life is about accepting that we will never know……that there will always BE

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mystery, magic, the unknown, the GAP, the ambiguity, the uncertainty.

 

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IF NOT FOR THIS, FROM WHENCE DOES TRUST GROW

  

 

 

 

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

 

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Coming to know Simon has been a real blessing to many people and I am happy to be one of them.  I remember well the time when I felt ‘woe is me’.  I was beginning to believe that there was someone somewhere who had it in for me.  I turned to religion thinking I could make friends with God and he may take pity on me and give me a break.  I’m wondering if I should say why I felt like I did as I am certainly not looking for sympathy.. far from it. On the other hand, there could be someone who reads this and thinks the same of their life, thinks it is one bad deal after another..  so I will put it out there. 

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My childhood was haunted by sexual abuse.  I say haunted because the abuse was like some ghost in the night that scares little children, makes them hide under the bed or hopes that their parents will come home soon and frighten the ghost away… and then there is the guilt of doing something that you know is wrong and the fear that if you tell you will get into trouble, get sent away to a home for naughty children.  The abuse led to a rebellious child who climbed drain pipes and trees and just about anything else..  from here.. I had a car accident at 12 which left my face badly scared; I was pregnant and married at 17 to a violent drunk, we had a son called Daniel who died when he was 3 1/2; one month to the day before our daughter was born.  My second husband was controlling, his words hurt more than any fist.  It was at this point in my life that I began to think my life was destined to be deprived of happiness and the ‘woe is me’ kicked in.  I went to see a counsellor in the hope that I could find the rotten seed and rid myself of it. 

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I’m not sure if that one positive step was what set the universe in motion but from then on I have been blessed with synchronicity as Simon would call it.  I discovered my brother was a Buddhist when he sent me a DVD in the post – it was a talk on happiness. I started to talk with Simon on a web site, I employed a receptionist at work who turned out to be a Buddhist and my best friend had met someone who was very spiritual.  I guess the universe was not leaving anything to chance. 

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There is a saying ‘different strokes for different folks’ so what worked for me may not work for all.. During our many emails and msn chats, there were a few things Simon said that I allowed myself to dwell on.. ‘all these ‘things’ that have happened to you have made you who you are’; ‘it’s ok to be sad, just let yourself be in it’.  I discovered he was right;  The next time I was sad, I didn’t fight it but allowed it to be.  I didn’t think about why I was sad but allowed myself to feel and cry. Taking the stress and the tension away from it takes away more than half the pain.  I looked at myself and realised that Simon was right, everything that I felt was bad in my life had made me who I am today and that person is better because of it.  I started to practice meditation and being mindful.  I read a few books that have helped me on my journey, one of them is called “Geoff the Buddha and Me” from that book I began to think about karma and what it meant.  We need to take responsibility for our actions, good actions – good karma.   And it is a journey and I still have a way to go BUT! I have never been happier in my life, I’m learning so much about myself, learning to trust, to be honest and open amongst many other things.  There is a message in Simon’s web site – Life really can be good and you can be happy.. as God intended.

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Simon, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.  Thank you for your patience (in abundance).  Thank you for being my friend, my partner, my lover.  Most of all, thank  you for being you

 

Cari

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The other day as I was out walking I realised that I have been pretty much ‘in the zone’ (as I call it – borrowed perhaps from Oprah?) – since my mum died on January 7. What I mean by that is that I have been living a life very much in the moment – I have had minimal thoughts, let alone concerns, about the future, and few contemplations of the past. For the past 4+ months have been ones in which I have largely known what it is I want to do and be and I have simply done and been it. I have been filled a lot of the time with a love and trust that has given me courage – and through which I have been rewarded by the love and trust of others around me – both those I know and those I do not.

 

And this love and trust, and gratitude have been rewarded and returned not just be people, but often by events, by occurrances, by happenings. The universe/god/the oneness/the power – whatever it is called – has rewarded me. For there is an order in the crazy dance of life – the exact details of how it works I don’t know for it is unknowable in any rational way – it simply is.  It is here/there  everywhere – we see it as simply some untamed, uncertain and uncontrollable reality that lies under the roads and signs and maps and structure and order we have placed upon it.  And for most of us we are afraid of it, simply because it appears chaotic, unordered and it is completely and utterly unknowable.

 

Yet it is. It exists. And it displays its existence and its connectivity to us through those things we call chance and coincidence and luck. Those are the words we have given its appearance. There is another word for these moments. These moments that often seem quite magical – for that is what they are – we are experiencing the magic of the universe, the mystery of god. The word for it is ‘synchronicity’.

 

And in this extended moment of love and trust and incidents of magic and synchronicity there is one person who has been central.  Has been at the centre of my world, at the centre of the love and trust I experience, and which sustains me – which keeps me ‘in the zone’.  Thanks Caroline. 

 

 

  Thanks for loving me so deeply, so fully that your love sustains me – it is your love that is predominant, so ever and often present in my life right now. It is your love that lets me know that I am worthy, that I am loveable.  It is your love that exists in your breath and your body that is real.  You are home.  You have and continue to give me so much in so many ways.  Thank you.

 

So, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time’ .  This is what happened – and this, is a true story.  About 2 weeks ago I was getting close to finishing a book I was reading – can’t remember which one that was now, and mentioned to Cari that I had seen this book,  ’The Curious Incident….’ in a shop and had heard it was worth reading. She said it was, and that she had it. However when she looked for it on her shelves it was nowhere to be found. She figured she must have lent it to someone and it hadn’t come back. Nevermind I would look for it in the charity shops that I frequent.  About 2 or 3 days later I finished my book, and having not found ‘The Curious Incident…’ I headed off walking to Oxford (which took me 5 days). On the first day out, keen to have something to read,  I visited Slough, and in a charity shop there while looking for ‘The Curious Incident…’ I found an alternative book to read. I took this with me to Oxford.

 

Cari joined me for the weekend in Oxford. On Saturday whilst browsing through Oxford, I found ‘The Curious Incident…’ in an Oxfam shop. However for some reason, perhaps because I still had  a few pages to go in my current book, I did not buy it.

 

We returned to London. About 4 days later I was very close to finishing my book, I still had not found ‘The Curious Incident…’.  I guess it was about near to 3 weeks since I had first thought about looking for it.

 

Then a package arrived from New Zealand, from my dear friend Kate. It was unexpected and unsolicited. Inside the package was a card and a book.  The book was ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time’.  In the card Kate told how the book had been recommended to her some time ago – by a number of people, but especially by a mutual friend who had since died of cancer. She had finally got round to reading it, had finished it and having enjoyed it so much, thought of me – and posted it to me.

 

Kate had no idea (rationally) that I was looking for this book.  I had no idea she knew about the book, let alone was actually reading it on the other side of the world.

 

Yet I was looking for it.  Or rather I was waiting for it.  And it arrived. All the way from the other side of the world.

 

Luck, chance, coincidence? All those, and synchronicity and magic and mystery. I just LOVE it.

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x