The Mouse and Crow Dance

A quiet brown mouse leaves her home. She’s on the way to the market. She wants the rich, creamy cheese. The one with the deep holes, they sell it in the stall next to the peanuts.

On her way she meets her friend the crow. They have an odd friendship, the mouse and the crow. Deep yet distant. They cannot play together too well for the crow doesn’t like being on the ground for long, and the mouse cannot fly in the sky.

When they meet they do a little dance. One foot forward, one foot back, turn in a circle and bump hips. It’s a short, silly looking ritual but it makes them feel a deep joy. A feeling of release and happiness. They can really appreciate each other in this moment. They feel like they are not just connecting with each other as friends – crow and mouse but as fellow animals, as fellow souls.

This connection boosts them. They feel community, they feel universe and they feel love. This all happens in less than a second, they feel inexplicably happy. Promptly they nod their heads and on they are with their day. The mouse off to the market for the cheese, the crow high in the sky. But they both have a renewed happiness, an internal smile and a face of laughter.

That Beautiful Addiction

Gratitude.

It’s addictive I swear. I’m addicted to the high of life. The beautiful moments that exist daily. Once you start appreciating, you can’t stop. You can start with being grateful by saying thank you for the obvious. Thank you for my family, thank you for my house, thank you for my job.

But what about going further? Thank you for the daily blessing of life. Thank you that I’m surrounded by my creation, my manifestation. Thank you that I’ve been given this enormous chance to paint my life. Thank you for allowing me to be part of this unknown force that is the universe.

This act of gratefulness is healing and life changing. While I’m practicing gratitude I am truly free. I’m free because I’m not depending on anything. And freedom can’t be dependant, or it isn’t freedom.

I take a moment to remember that we are energy, interacting with energy. That love, anger and sadness are just emotions caused by environmental conditioning.

I’ve changed from focusing on the ‘don’t haves’ to focusing on the ‘haves’. Fostering the ability to be grateful for tiny pleasures I used to so often bypass as rights.

Thank you for the food I can eat, thank you for the roof over my head, thank you for the peace in my life.

And who am I even thanking? My partner for shopping for the food? Who am I kidding? I’m obviously single and thanking myself for shopping is weird and shallow.

The shop for stocking it? Really? That capitalist enterprise?

The farmer for growing it? Closer… The earth for birthing it? Even closer…

I am thanking the universe. I am thanking the universe for making each of these happiness’s reality.

Being grateful becomes an act of being present. Being focussed on what you have in this moment. Not what you wish you had. Bringing yourself to your right now happiness, not depending your happiness on a future want. This is it. This is your moment to be happy. Why wouldn’t you take it?

Moments of Realisation

I am guilty of referring to ‘realisations’ as moments of discovery. Telling myself that a realisation is one light bulb shift that changes my actions, causes a decision to be made and shifts my way of thinking. You know the felling. You think you are so correct in your ways. You think your actions, thoughts, plans and decisions are your path to happiness. And you may even trick yourself into happiness along the way. Then something happens, like a snap, and you realise you are way off track. You realise you have come so far from what your happiness is, what your own personal religion tells you and what you want from your life.

But I wonder, how many small realisations lead to this moment. And how many of these realisations are conscious and how many are unconscious. And how do we tune in so we notice those small realisations and make them part of our conscious decision making? So that every moment in our lives really counts towards our next moment. And every moment actually becomes a small realisation. After all, every decision we make must be based on every moment of our lives up to the moment of said decision. In considering this, it therefore seems imperative that by making this moment count, we need to be there for this moment. Totally, completely be there. With our mind, body and soul. This allows us to tune in to everything around us and then to ourselves. We can approach every small decision with the confidence that we have been truly present at all times and there is no way that we could sway from what will lead us to true happiness.

Or, on the other hand, perhaps sometimes we need these periods of ‘sleep’ followed by a larger, shock awakening. Perhaps the realisation is then so confronting and uncomfortable that our true purpose becomes stronger. We realise how easy it is to derail and how much that can hurt. Perhaps this realisation is so emotional that it’s what we need to remember what our truth is.

I believe that throughout our lives we will swing between the two. Going from conscious, small decisions coming easily and naturally, to bigger realisations which although confronting and often emotional lead back to stronger purpose, truth and reality.

Millions of True Perceptions

Do you ever wonder what someone else experiences in a moment they share with you? Can we even consider it be ‘sharing a moment’? Or perhaps we are not sharing this moment at all. The other person or people are actually having their own moment because their perception of the experience is completely different to mine. We are bringing our own experiences and judgements to the situation and therefore our perception of what is happening will be completely different.

Physically, we will have been exposed to the same set of events but mentally we have noticed, reacted and taken in completely different aspects of the moment. We will also leave the experience with different lessons and different approaches to new situations.

Realising this, I now understand how many versions of the truth exist. How easy it is to think that your version is correct and to dismiss all others. But there isn’t a right and a wrong. There is just different versions of right.

If someone experiences a moment with you and truly believes that they had a different a experience to you, perhaps they did. How can either of you be more right? It’s simply your perception of the event. Two equally truthful versions of the truth.

I now realise how unique we are as humans. I try to really appreciate everyone’s point of view on a situation. It’s a mind opening practice. A challenge to appreciate and try to understand another’s needs and opinions.

As long as we are approaching every situation with clarity, presence, open hearts and open minds we are all doing the best we can to see the truth and live the truth.

Streamlining Life

The concept of streamlining has been a recent, exciting discovery of mine. Streamlining of careers, relationships and overall self. But what does this mean and how is it actually achieved?

For me streamlining is all about cutting out the unnecessary in life. It’s about focusing on what makes you happy. Not what you rely on externally but what really makes you feel an overwhelming love for yourself, the world and living. It’s cutting out damaging commotion and becoming nonreactive to negativity.

Streamlining requires you to drop the drama, and to stop attracting the drama. It’s a lifestyle of karma. A significant practice of attracting what you radiate.

Streamlining my life has involved steering away from the materialistic. To stop placing importance on money and power. Money is now simply a tool not a goal. And the only thing I want power over is my own thoughts and actions. I’ve transferred importance onto what intuitively makes me happy within. What drives me while also giving me peace and internal happiness.

Dropping all that bullshit means that others see that you’re not interested in being caught in their power game and when they see that you’re not being caught they have no choice but to take their game somewhere else. You haven’t taken on their negative energy so they will need to take it back with them. You’ve already streamlined yourself by stepping back.

This doesn’t mean that I’ve become unavailable to other people’s needs for assistance but it’s an ability to separate giving help from taking on an issue and radiating its negativity. It’s the realisation that radiating any negativity leads to more negativity.

Streamlining has required me to step away from relationships which have caused me to be unhealthy. Not only in actions towards myself, but also in actions towards the individual. Unhealthy to the individual because ultimately I was feeding their drama. I was contributing to it by buying into it and justifying it by becoming involved. Instead, by stepping back you are helping them to face themselves. You are stopping the multiplication of negativity.

Being more and more streamlined has allowed me to be so internally clear. To really focus on what is important. What makes me happy and what encourages others to be happy.

unSMART goals

I remember from school and university how to set goals. Make them SMART – Specific Measurable Realistic and Timely. I have put that concept on the backseat for a minute to think about why my goals don’t need to be SMART.

SMART goals are like a science project. We form a hypothesis of our life and make a plan accordingly. But life is so random, it is impossible to predict and plan for all the fabulous and not so fabulous events that will no doubt occur. We all know this and it’s damn scary, so we create these rigid plans to comfort ourselves. We give ourselves something measurable to work towards, something scientific in our world of unpredictable chaos. But where is our faith in our intuition? The trust in ourselves to manage the chaos? The trust in ourselves to enjoy the chaos? We rely so much on our goals being achieved to reach our feelings of happiness and success that we forget all about the wonderful journey along the way!

Sure, naturally you will have goals in your life, a direction you know you want to follow. But there can be tendency to be fixated on the outcome, blocking out other possibilities and opportunities along the way.

Buddhists believes that goals keep us closed off from these natural opportunities. They keep us bound to a specific outcome in a set time. Of course, Buddhism also encourages a constant life of wandering and floating – a state which is not completely realistic in our worlds of careers, relationships and family. But I do think we could all inject a little of this non-attachment philosophy into our lives.

When we realise that our happiness is from within us the idea of rigid goals becomes less attractive. We feel our intuition guiding us, we are open and available to new possibilities. Our goals become our goals because we are enjoying each moment of getting closer to them. We are not taken away from the presence by having our mind in the future. We adjust according to new opportunities, ideas and interests.

Next time you get into your ‘goal mind’ remember this openness, remember to trust your intuition and be available to opportunities. You will find you will lead yourself into amazing achievements that genuinely make you happy and fulfilled.

What is SELF LOVE?

 

Sharing my practice of love. Appreciation, gratitude and intuition.

 

1. An appreciation for your uniqueness

Practicing SELF LOVE is almost impossible if you can’t appreciate your own wonderful quirks and amazing talents, the stuff that make you ‘you’. You love your partner, family and friends because of their exclusive traits, opinions, abilities and actions. So why not apply this to yourself? Be yourself and own it! Don’t get caught up in any identity, category or box. If another person wants to put you in a category, let it be their problem, it only becomes your problem when you take it on. Do your thing without the fear of being judged and criticised. You’ll be surprised how liberating it is to adopt this rule in your life, almost immediately you will feel your confidence build and your SELF LOVE grow.

2. Gratitude for your place in life

SELF LOVE and happiness cannot exist without each other. They are feelings that rely on one another. SELF LOVE is to be happy in the NOW to appreciate your place in the world in this moment and all the wonderful things happening in your life now. We tend to become so focused on ‘what’s next’ that we often forget how awesome our life is right now. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t have goals. Goals are a driver, desires that we work towards to manifest. It’s the way we get lost in these goals, placing so much importance on the future that we can’t be happy in the now. We can’t feel beautiful SELF LOVE now if we are telling ourselves that we need to achieve a marriage/pregnancy/promotion to be happy. Take a few minutes every day to really appreciate what you are grateful for in your life right now. You’ll be surprised how much you love your life and how much happiness you release.

3. Listening to your inner voice

Listening to your inner voice and trusting your own guidance is a direct way to practice your SELF LOVE. In relationships you participate in a cycle of trust and respect leading to a strong and positive alliance. When you trust and respect your inner voice you are directly honouring and respecting your relationship with yourself. You are empowering yourself to make decisions for you and putting trust into your SELF LOVE.