Clarity

When your mind is clear, the very word clarity is like a snow flake on a hot stove.

Sigh!

Life getting you down?

Feeling depressed?

Just wish it was over?

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Hmmm.

If a cow and a half and a calf and a half can eat a bale and a half of hay in a day and half, how many waffles does it take to shingle a dog house?

I have realized that the past and the future are real illusions, that they exist only in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

Alan Watts

A Zen master's life is one continuous mistake.

DOGEN

I took a few minutes ...

Just by chance; on the first day of the New Year I was walking outside at sunrise, just as the birds began to stir. There was a stiff wind blowing at the time, which caused some interesting challenges to the birds attempting flight.

First I noticed the crows as their wings flapped at a frantic rate to make any headway against the wind. For a brief moment of time one crow was motionless, hanging in the air in front of me, his flight speed matching the wind speed so he neither moved forward nor backward but just hung in place. As the wind began to push him and other crows backwards they peeled to the side, much like Second World War fighters in the movies, diving for a place to land. Following one pair as they sought to land drew my eyes to a flight of starlings.

The starlings presented a quite different picture. They were much higher in the air and attempting to fly in the V formation we associate with migrating ducks. At the moment they caught my eye they were grouped into a large V and a smaller V. Not for long. Picture a length of rope with one end loose and the other end in your hand. When you flick the rope a hump forms and flows along the rope to the end. That was what the starling flight looked like, a line undulating across the sky. When it reached the end of the line of birds a few would appear to have been flicked away, peeling off from the formation a away as the wind pushed them. I stood there just watching this flight of birds just weave its’ way across the sky.

It was not long ago I would merely have glanced at the first birds, then hurried on my way with my mind worrying over all kinds of different things, whether I could control these things or not. So it seems a good way to start the New Year – standing there totally relaxed, completely in the moment, having let everything else go and totally enjoying a sight as simple as birds flying into a stiff wind.

Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the roses.

How could the drops of a river know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.

Antoine De Saint-Expurey

a Problem with success...

As the year turned I have found good mental health can have unexpected consequences. I have been working on my mental health this year with some noticeable success. I love to read and this has resulted in a love of ideas, words and language. While in my heart of hearts I always wanted to write, FEAR (of failure) always prevented me from taking a chance and sharing a part of myself, exposed through the written word. Increasing self-esteem, awareness of my fears and tools for dealing with the negative voices in my head have meant I could now share my thoughts via the written word.

First came a letter to the editor. For years I had read things in the papers and said to myself “I should write” – but never could/did. This past year when I thought “I should write” – I did sitting right down, writing the letter and sending it off. It was published in the paper and that was quite a rush.
After that I found I needed other outlets to speak out or write on. Behold – the Internet was there to provide me a forum. What was going to be a single, simple blog … the movie “The Blob” with its ever growing monster suite both my love of science fiction and the multiplying blogs that followed. I started with a book site for reviews…which added recommendations… then books I was looking forward to the publication of… and thoughts from a Readers viewpoint. As my mental outlook/health improved other site/blogs came into being to reflect different aspects of Self.

It occurred to me last week that I may have been too successful at becoming comfortable in my own skin. When I was afraid/unable to expose any of myself, I was always able to deal with ideas and thoughts that wanted loose through the fact there was no outlet for my words/thoughts. These ideas would bounce around for a few minutes then be forgotten or at least relegated to the back of my mind. Now I have several places to publish different thoughts to the World Wide Web and share my thoughts/words/ideas with others. I also know others are reading my words and finding them of interest thru feedback I receive. My thoughts are no longer confined to my own head.

Ideas now demand that I write them down, expand on them if needed, polish them and then publish them. This process often gives rise to other ideas that demand expression. Refusing to be relegated to the back of my mind the ideas crowd my mind, crowding out other concerns, even actions, until they are expressed on the page (paper or web – although at some point those on paper demand to be published to the web).

I had never before understood the talk of a ‘Muse’. Now there are times my muse is so insistent that everything else must wait until the words are down on the page. It does not matter what – food, shelter, sleep – all other parts of my life await getting the words down. But when my muse is riding me this hard – it feels great. The words flow; thoughts and ideas jostle to be noticed and expressed and time ceases to exist. The pen touches paper and suddenly it is hours latter when finished, I lift the pen.