Ok, right turn, straight down, left turn….then what?
Just remember these simple directions:
“The descent to Hades is the same from every place.”
– Anaxagoras (Greek philosopher)
No believer in a physical hell, but metaphysically, yeah, and we can all find it alright.
If you feel yourself going down, grip tight the proverbial handrail, or latch onto any inspiration that will make you realise that stairs work in two directions…
“Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we come from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging nettles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.”
– John Muir (Scottish-American naturalist and writer)
Nowadays , when we are encouraged to find our “wild side”, we don’t really mean anything that would instill fear in us, or cause us pain.
It’s more like an extravagant extra, something different that takes us out of our humdrum existence.
A bungy jump; a raging party; acquiring some “edgy” art or clothes ; or a trip to somewhere off the usual “tourist trail”. Preferably something that can be posted on social media after the event…
But definitely not something we have to endure, or survive.
My own experience with hellish life events outside my control that took me to dark and wild places (nowhere I would choose), was exactly those two things. You too may have gone unwillingly into your own wild woods…
The words of Muir resonate with me as I think about those times: I knew with absolute certainty that everything could hurt me, anything could have my number.
The feeling of being utterly lost, blocked at every turn, and with each moment fraught with pain and danger, will stay with me always. It has changed my outlook on life, changed me.
The true wild transforms you.
If you survive it that is…
Even if windless and still, this tree is awhirl; perpetual motion.
A ball of relentless , spiky energy suspended in space.
I have moments, days even, when I am like that.
Then I know I need to slow the f**k down…
Shot of a freighter approaching port, laden with containers of anticipated goodies.
Often we are the person on the dock, waiting for our ship to come in.
Some great upturn in our fortunes, the perfect significant other, a better job or perhaps winning the lottery!
Waiting, waiting…
You know what? That ship may be on the horizon, but the beautiful, ever changing sea is right before you, and breaking on your shore.
You don’t even need to wait.
Your future is with you, now.
“The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognising abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin… or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out”
-Eckhart Tolle, from “A New Earth”
Following on from my previous post The Real You, and the quote from Don Miguel Ruiz contained in it, this photo taken yesterday shows the beauty of the west coast of New Zealand.
The quote likened the wind and ocean as signifiers of our true essence.
Fresh (like the wind you can’t see here ,but believe me, it was, erm, invigorating, to say the least!).
Wild.
Unspoiled.
Not yet tamed.
That is the real you.
Take a trip out to your proverbial coastline and find, or re-find, it!
“Just imagine becoming the way you used to be when you were a child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun.”
– Don Miguel Ruiz (Mexican author and philosopher)
–
“The last thing a fish would notice would be water.”
– Ralph Linton
Great quote from the anthropologist Linton!
What is your fish view blindside?
That thing so obvious but essential, it doesn’t even factor into your thinking.
The thing that you may also forget to be grateful about…
Please have a peek at my last post Making Humiliation An Artform ! if you haven’t already.
There,the great British poet Auden postulated out that art is born of humiliation.
I guess we want to believe that art comes from some more pleasant emotional or spiritual experience ,but he had a point.
We all suffer crashing humiliation at some point -god knows I have – when we find out in no uncertain terms that we are not as good, morally upright, desirable, intelligent or indispensable or whatever we thought we were before the axe fell ,leaving us split into bits of the real truth ,laid bare for the world to see.
Art might come from there, or the resolve not to ever have that thing happen again,or maybe the urge to be “better”.
So, humiliation can be a catalyst for change.
But it is not the same as humility.
Humiliation might give us humility ,but equally might cause self-loathing or resentment.
You can’t sustain humiliation as a force for change in your life or to create something new and different, it is just a starting point.
Humility, however ,can give us those things. It is hard ,because subjugating our ego-driven selves to the uncontrollable is something we naturally are threatened by, and fight.
And the sharp blade of humiliation need not necessarily have to dissect us in order to find humility.
Getting back to art, and using the beautiful and shining copper sculpture in the above photo to illustrate – copper is a soft metal and can be beaten (humiliating moments again!) and shaped into almost anything. Infinitely malleable.
We have to be that way too – responsive,shaped and trained into transcendent form by outside forces.
The world will remember that self we became, long after our moments of personal disaster are forgotten.
Something wild, and wise:
“Be crumbled.
So wild flowers will come up where you are.
You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender.”
– Rumi
Fighting life continuously can leave one a little bashed up.
Or even totally.
At that point maybe it is time for a different approach…
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
– Rumi, excerpt from ‘Moving Water’
Faded grandeur on Auckland’s Dominion Road.
Faux castle battlements above the proud name,’Cheapside’.
Peeling grey paint.
A bit down at the heel maybe.
Probably not the future imagined at the laying of its foundations.
But still standing,useful and with purpose after the best part of a century.
Some of us are like this battling building, battered but not broken(alliteration alert!).
And still dreaming of being castles…
“I get these fleeting, beautiful moments of inner peace and stillness – and then the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day, I’m a human trying to make it through in this world”
– Ellen DeGeneres
Everybody wants to be happy, right? But you cannot be happy all the time.
Serenity is probably a more desirable and realistic place to inhabit as much as you can.
It connotes calmness and acceptance. Happiness may stem from serenity, but not necessarily.
I am drawn to water lilies as a symbol of serenity.
It’s probably why my first ever post, Water Lilies I ,had that subject. To be honest, I just dipped into my photo stash to find something to put up and figure out how to work this WordPress blog gig. But it was the thing that initially came to me, for whatever reason.
Here is another post of the circular, floating marvels: Water Lilies II
I love the way they sit over a fluid, shifting surface. Transcending their environs.
And not just floating, but flowering sometimes.
Beautiful flowers.
Serenity.
Pictured is the impressive visible roots system of a Moreton Bay Fig. Massive, sculptural things – and that’s only what you can see.
By way of contrast, a recent storm pulled up a shallow – rooted olive tree in my backyard and deposited it over the clothes line.
It takes a storm to finds out what your foundation is like.
Like a tree, if we are not deeply rooted we are deeply rooted (that is not a circular nonsense, as I mean the second “rooted” in the Australian / NZ vernacular meaning, “screwed”or “f**ked”).
That means knowing what your mainly silent, often invisible core really is all about and where you have come from.
I hope that you are totally rooted in the more positive sense of the word…
I don’t mind, actually.
No, not the sort of gap pictured – that could end a little messily at the wrong time.
I mean the hiatus; the space in between; the fallow period – call it what you will.
Elsewhere on this site I have explored whether being in that place ,willingly or not, is such a bad thing. See Hiatus (Never Mind The Gap!) and In Transition ,for example.
In the not too distant past, I found myself in a major life hiatus. At first I resented being in nowhere land(or at least that was how I saw it to be ). There were none of the usual markers and signifiers that routine and being busy, busy offered.
What I slowly grasped was that there I did not need to prove anything to anyone, did not to need to analyse the situation, or agonise over what was next .In fact I just had to – be. That was uncomfortable for me but massively liberating in the end.
New things and miracles happened without me chasing them. This blogsite is not named accidentally.
It’s often said that we learn most from adversity or our mistakes,and that may be often true. However I think that the real progress is made in the “after space” of those things .
Self-realisation and change occur in that gap in events where motion stops, and we have time and permission to rest with our being and the universe.
You just can’t squeeze that shit in walking to the shops or in a coffee break between jobs….
A beautiful scene on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
But fraught with obstacles – countless rocks, the incessant surf ,tidal rips and undulating topography.
Were you to venture to the headland in the distance, that would pretty much be your lot the entire way.
Challenging, yes?
Consider this,from American inventor Joy Mangano:
“Overcome obstacles one at a time. Sometimes the end goal becomes too daunting, so take things one step at a time and overcome each one as you get to it.”
I recently watched the 2015 movie ‘Joy’,loosely based on her life, as the protagonist battled continual setbacks and frustrations to market( of all freaking things) a revolutionary mop to the masses.
Certainly an eye opener on how to tackle obstacles. I winced every time things went pear-shaped, but she got what she wanted eventually.
Most worthwhile journeys we would probably never embark on if we could see at the outset all the barriers and pitfalls that we would encounter .
Joy’s simple mantra is the only realistic way to reach our dream destination.
For you – when words fail and the world prevails , stuck in your own weird tales – only you know the intracacies, the silken finesse of your web and, having built it,only you can find your way through it all.
For more arachno-themed posts, check out:
I am not generally an advocate for the straight and narrow in everything, because it can be boring as f**k, but there are those times in life when sticking to that path is a necessity to avoid sinking into, or further down, into the surrounding mire.
The tricky bit ,I suppose,is working out when you are in that place.
If you are,accept the strictures of the boardwalk over the mud and tide for awhile. Safety is, trust me,way better than self-destruction .
And if you have been on that path the whole time, maybe you need to jump off and get a little soaked and dirty…
” In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should be thankful for those people who rekindle our inner spirit”
-Albert Schweitzer
ebb then flood 