Life is funny that way...

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It is funny how life can have a tendency to throw things together every once in a while ~ and just as easily pul them apart again...

Sometimes things happen effortlessly, putting you in the right place in the right time. Traffic lights turn green the moment you drive up to them; the lines in front of the register are all gone when you are ready to pay, and the sun comes out just as you are leaving for a walk.
And then you notice what is happening...

For me the next thought is usually: “I must be doing something right!”

It seems that as soon as that has come to my mind I can’t help to start wondering what it is exactly that is causing this effortless flow of events. What direction am I going exactly that is so well supported for me at this point in time? And the next thing I know is that everything is off...

The bus is leaving right as I walk up to the bus stop, it starts raining before I have made it back home ~ in other words; the tide turns.
Oh well...

And yet, just as quickly as I got ‘out of sync’, I can find myself being back in that flow that makes everything move forward in that simple, straightforward manner once again.

What makes this interesting to me is that figuring out which direction is best supported for me is way less complicated when it is something I need to do some research on ~ more often than not online. When you keep googling and nothing comes up, chances are there is a better solution for the situation I am trying to solve ~ or in the very least that there is a better, more productive use of my time at that very instant.
That one I get!

However, it does make me wonder at times if the reverse is true as well ~ if a lot of similar information is coming my way unbidden; does that mean that there is something I need to do with it? Is that information pertinent to my life? And if so, in what way? How can it help me?

So far I at least am not getting any closer to a real understanding of this pattern. The only thing that is happening for me is that I at some point notice it. Then I start observing it. Next I begin to try and work with it ~ which seems to make it fall apart. And then, just as I am taking a deep breath, being sorry that this elusive flow of things has eluded me once again ~ it is back!

Life is funny that way!
And I have decided that I will start enjoying the ride, every time I happen to get in sync with its rhythm!
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Responsibilities

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There are a number of ways in which we can look at responsibilities...
There are the responsibilities to ourselves, the responsibility for our actions, and responsibilities to others. Responsibilities we take on because of obligations ~ that may be work, family or even be culturally oriented.

We can take responsibility, claim responsibility, or shun responsibility...
And finally we can be made responsible or even be held responsible.

Often we tend to give responsibilities we take for others, be it work, family, or social responsibilities a lot more weight than the responsibility we have for ourselves.
The world outside of us, the people around us and their wants and desires seem way more important to us that we ourselves are. On top of that those around us can be quick to point out that when we are spending more time and energy on our own needs and desires ~ in other words, when we are taking responsibility for ourselves ~ we are acting egotistically.

But is that really the case?

From a spiritual perspective we are here in order to walk our personal, spiritual paths. And while we are walking that very individual path, we learn from our experiences. Experiences that include the people we meet, the situations we encounter, and yes, family ~ be it our ‘kin’ or our spiritual family.

When we look at it this way, then by far the most important responsibility we have while walking our path is the responsibility for ourselves. For our wellbeing. The responsibility to fill our own needs and desires. The responsibility to express our fullest, greatest potential. The responsibility to be the best person we can possibly be within the limits set by the world we live in.
If there is one responsibility we really should claim ~ this is it!

Of course we are also responsible for our actions ~ so it is a good idea to ‘own’ whatever has happened as a result of our actions. Whether that is something good, something bad, or something we have manifested into our lives.

Compared to those responsibilities, the responsibilities for others seem far less important. In all reality, we cannot be responsible for the choices and decisions of another person. Just as we have our life to live, they are living their own life...

And in the unfortunate case when we are made responsible, or even held responsible for something that we have had no choice in, something that we were unable to influence ~ may not have anything to do with responsibility whatsoever!
Something like that is usually happening because someone is looking for someone to point their finger to, for someone ‘who’s fault it is’ ~ in short, looking for a scape-goat.
And when that is happening, it is time to step back from the situation, to observe it, and to decide for yourself to what extend ~ if at all ~ you were responsible...

The answer may surprise you!
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Following Our Ideals

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It seems that in this day and age more and more people make it their mission to follow their ideals. For some that means that they make choices according to their ideals ~ for instance becoming a vegetarian, not for health reasons but because one is against animal cruelty. Or buying exclusively local produce. Wearing ‘bio-cotton’. Things like that.

For others, following their ideals goes much further than that as they are willing to give up a lot of things ~ like creature comforts, but also social contacts, privacy, and even their private lives ~ if that enables them to bring their ideals into this world.
In a sense they are willing to place themselves outside of society to make their ideals happen.

And it seems that the more the ideals have to do with helping people, healing people, healing the earth, spreading Light ~ the more there is a tendency to step away from the world as it exists around us and into a space that facilitates that kind of work.
With everything that is going on in the world today ~ a choice that is easy to understand.

Yet it makes me wonder...
Isn’t it so that the healing, the Light, are to be spread in the world in order to result in the desired changes ~ to make this world a better, Lighter, more peaceful place to live. If it is all about the world we live in, then why step back from it; why place yourself outside of it?

I realize my words sound critical to those whose path is guiding them into that direction, however they are written more from my own perspective on my personal ideals than anything else...

The path I am walking is guiding me to bring healing and Light and peace into this world while being a well-grounded part of this world. I enjoy working with light, and peaceful energies ~ and I seek to combine them with simple, practical actions anyone can take in order to make their own lives a little lighter and brighter, and more peaceful.
So rather than stepping away from the world, my ideal is to meet the world at the energy level it has at that very instant, in that specific place ~ to observe it, and then work with the person or people, with the situation at hand to bring more Light, more healing, and ultimately more peace.

The thing is, whichever path you choose ~ and whatever the ideals you want to bring into the world are ~ first and foremost we need to take care of ourselves, our wellbeing, our needs and desires.
This means that in the long run giving up our ‘creature comforts’ ~ or even our private lives ~ because we feel we have to in order to walk this spiritual path rather than because we want to ~ because it truly makes us feel better and is adding to our lives ~ may not work quite as well as we would have thought...
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Light and Darkness

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For me, the first thing that comes to mind thinking about light and darkness is the cycle of day and night ~ and all that this cycle implies like sun and moon, waking and sleeping, activity and rest... In a sense they are also polarities. And one could argue that we would not be able to recognize one without another. Not knowing what is day, unless we could experience night.

The same would be true for light and darkness. Not knowing darkness we probably would fail to truly appreciate light ~ and vice versa.
It is this concept that is depicted in the yin/yang figure, the two teardrop forms within a circle; one white with a black dot in its center, the other black with a white dot in the center.

Light and darkness are polarities. Being polarities ~ one needs the other to create balance. Or maybe even to recognize each other...

There are many things in life that work this way ~ where we need to experience, or at least observe its polarity in order to become aware of what it is all about. To not take it for granted. To truly appreciate it.

It is also through polarities that we learn our life lessons...

If we come into this world with a desire to learn all there is to learn about self assurance, self esteem and self worth ~ chances are that we wouldn’t learn anything about these things if we just grew up to be self assured, worthy people who hold themselves in high esteem... We tend to learn far more about them if we have to struggle with these things, if we are uncertain, unsure of ourselves, unaware of how worthy we really are. Then, when we finally gain that awareness, when we empower ourselves and become the self assured people we were meant to be all along ~ not only do we learn about self assurance, self esteem and self worth; having come from there polarities, from a dark place in a sense,  we have learned infinitely more than that! We have learned to see the light!

As we are striving for enlightenment ~ walking our individual, spiritual paths away from the darkness in whichever shape or form that comes in each of our personal lives ~ we may begin to realize that independent from the shade of light we are living in, we have the ability to let more light in. To let the Light flow into ourselves. And to let that Light from our source radiate from us...

When we do this we can become that pinpoint of light in the life of someone who is going through a dark patch in his or her life ~ providing them with an image of the polarity of that darkness.
Perhaps even become a beacon showing the path toward the Light...
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Rabbits

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The university campus in Utrecht, the Netherlands, is a modern one. Manicured lawns with carefully, sometimes I even think strategically placed trees and shrubs around buildings that radiate a sense of modern architecture ~ intersected by busy roads and well-travelled bicycle paths.
Even on a sunny day one would be hard-pressed to find signs of a natural landscape ~ of nature ~ in this area of town...

When I had the opportunity to make my way through this campus around 1 AM I was surprised to discover the different picture it presented. Everywhere I was looking there were rabbits! Big ones, small ones ~ all very busy to keep the the grass on the already manicured lawns even shorter. As I drove by a number of them sat up on their hind legs ~ looking at the headlights of my car with an indignant  stare. “What are you doing here? This is our territory!”

Needless to say that rabbits are among those animals that go wherever there are food and safety to be found. Safety from their natural dangers that is, as traffic obviously presents a whole different challenge to their safety. Yet it seems that ‘owning’ the university campus at night was an opportunity they couldn’t resist.

It made me think about the unique energy rabbits bring into this world.
Surprisingly enough they are not the ‘scarety-cats’ most people make them out to be. They have an energy that calmly, opportunistically ~ and in a sense courageously ~ goes about its business. An energy that once it has taken hold is not easy to send off again...
That is because rabbits need a real, true reason to do as we might ask. When interacting with rabbit energy, pretty much any question you may ask them is met with a simple counter-question: “Why?”
And unless you have a good reason to get your questions answered by them, they won’t really bother to interact any further than that.

On top of that ~ and this maybe this is the most important quality ~ rabbit energy keeps secrets...
Rabbits see, look, stare, and observe ~ but will not easily talk about the things they have learned. And that means that whatever you tell rabbit, will be kept a secret.

Driving the empty roads of the university campus, it made me wonder what secrets these rabbits were keeping... Personal secrets... Research secrets... Secret failures or victories... Hardships, but also relief and release... And perhaps also the magical world they are part of...

In the daytime hours that magic is nowhere to be found ~ and neither are the rabbits. They have secreted themselves away ~ retreated down their rabbit-holes; waiting for sundown when their magic is set free in the world of this university campus again...
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Routines

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In our day-to-day lives, rather than to discover new ways to do the same old tasks every time we perform those tasks we seem to choose to slip into a routine. A route, or pattern that allows us to get these things done, almost without having to think about them.
And for many of the things we do during the day this turns out to be an efficient way to go about them ~ whether it is doing the dishes or filling up the dishwasher; more often than not following the routine we have set up for ourselves will prove to be fast, and will prevent us from forgetting steps in that process.

In some sense, even our every-day lives seem routine-like every once in a while ~ between work, home, kids, pets, sports, and social events we set a pattern that pretty soon becomes a routine. And this routine may not be quite the same from day to day ~ it can turn out to be a weekly, or even bi-weekly routine.

As life goes by, following the same routine over and again, there comes a point at which we may wake up and realize that things like excitement, enthusiasm, and adventure have disappeared from our lives altogether... We may find ourselves being bored with the way life is. And desperate to bring some ‘life’ back into our lives, we may change jobs, change partners, move to a new area, only to find that after a while we settle back into a (new) routine.

And while routines can be helpful to us in our lives ~ they can also stand in our way...

And then things can happen in our lives that shake us up so badly that we cannot do anything but to reinvent ourselves, reinvent our lives, and start living our lives with a much greater sense of presence. Being more present and aware. Living in the present...

Events so powerful that we go through these tremendous changes are different for each and every person ~ the way we react to those events are unique and individual.
For some and event like this may have to do with an health issue. For others it may be something like witnessing a traumatic happening like an accident. ‘Disasters’ brought about by our changing earth certainly qualify. The immediate effects may be financial or emotional.
And yet they have one thing in common ~ they shake us out of the routines of our day-to-day lives.

Having lost our boring yet safe and secure routines, the first thing we may experience is a sense of having no control ~ a kind of floating feeling without focus or direction. Then, as we create a new foundation for ourselves, and start looking around where we ‘have landed’ ~ we may see everything around us from a new perspective; see it with ‘new eyes’. And finally, as our lives take shape and form again ~ we live our lives with a new awareness. A new presence.
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Courteous Interaction

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When I grew up I was taught that interaction with others should be courteous, or at the very least polite. A concept that came with a handful of guidelines like looking the other person in the eye when you are engaged in a conversation, and saying ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ at the appropriate times. In other words; be pleasant, respectful, and considerate ~ to the other person.
And the best way in which you can be respectful and considerate to someone else is to be respectful and considerate to yourself as well.

Courteous interaction is a two-way-street.

Yet it goes further than that ~ it turns out that when you truly aim at being courteous in your interaction with others it pretty soon becomes a ‘code of conduct’. A way of behavior not just in face-to-face interaction, but in a much wider range of circumstances.

It involves simple things like answering letters written to you ~ whether through email or through snail-mail ~ in a timely manner. It also involves being considerate to the needs of others. Finding ways to express yourself, to state your (personal) truth in such a manner that it is not an affront to the other person.

This of course doesn’t mean that you have to give up your own boundaries. It doesn’t mean that you have to help all people around you without ever receiving anything in return. And it most certainly doesn’t mean that the ‘cost’ of being courteous to others is to stop respecting yourself...

As it turns out, the more clear your own boundaries are, the easier it is to reach out to others. The more aware you can become of your environment ~ and those that are in it. And the more aware you become, the greater the strides you can take on your personal, spiritual path...

Having said that I find that when I am looking around me, seeing how people are interacting with each other ~ being courteous all too often is being considered old-fashioned. Being considerate to others as something that is taking away from oneself.
Interaction seems to be driven by one question and one question only: “What will I get out of it?”

The other day someone even told me that I had to consider that I was looking at a different generation of children. It was how the age-old generation gap was used as an excuse to not having to consider other people’s needs ~ to not having to be courteous, or respectful even...

Somehow this seems just plain wrong to me.

I understand that there are differences between the generations; as there are between cultures. However, I fail to understand how that makes it okay to not be considerate or respectful to others.

It makes me wonder if that apparent lack of consideration and respect is just for the ‘outside world’ or if it in reality is a reflection of the lack of consideration and respect given to oneself...
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Re~invention

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As both the world and the earth are going through major changes, there are many ways in which we can re-invent things. Not only can we re-invent ourselves, we can also re-invent our relationships, our environment, and even the world ~ the way we perceive the world as well as the state the world is in.

The thing we cannot re-invent is the earth; nature. It re-invents itself continuously, at its own pace with perfect accuracy as to where changes are needed. The earth doesn’t have any resistance to the re-invention of itself ~ to the earth it is a natural course of events...

Not so much for us humans!
We tend to keep things just as they are; feeling comfortable in the familiar surroundings we have set up for ourselves. Continuing to think familiar thoughts, viewing our environments and the world from familiar perspectives.
Consequently, we feel anything that may upset our known, familiar, comfortable space as a negative. A negative that we want to avoid, almost at all cost ~ sometimes desperately hanging on to ‘the way things were’ even when we are faced with changes that are going on around us...

We seem to have a hard time realizing that we are, just like the earth is, always changing no matter what! Re-inventing ourselves is something we look forward to throughout our lives...
We have re-invented ourselves, leaving behind the child we were in order to become the adolescent. We re-invented ourselves again to become the adult. Again to gain our chosen career. And again as we may have started a family... Every time we have re-evaluated and re-invented ourselves.

Yet, when we are settled in our everyday lives, we are less apt to search for new aspects of ourselves, for ways to let new potentials be used. Contented with ‘the way things are’ we fail to see how much more we can be. If only we would be willing to re-invent ourselves!

As the world we live in is going through tremendous changes; as the earth itself is effecting enormous changes in its own right; as the very energies around us are changing, increasing in vibration to frequencies we as humanity haven’t experienced before ~ it seems obvious each of us has to change as well. If only just to keep up with everything that is going on around us.

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to move house, change jobs or relationships right this instant. It does mean that now is a good time to re-evaluate our lives. To honestly look at our lives to see if there may be aspects that may benefit from re-invention. To see if the manner in which we perceive things in the world is beneficial to us and to our personal, spiritual paths.
And to re-invent ourselves where we can, if only to keep up with with a changing earth...
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Forgetful. Huh?

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We are living in a world that is bringing us new stories, new things almost every minute of the day, even those among us with the best memories may find themselves being more forgetful than they would like to be...

As it turns out, the better we are able to ‘keep up’, the smaller the world seems to us. And as the world gets to be smaller and smaller, we tend to look around for more things to do, more things to hear and to see... Fast-paced, always on-the-move, yesterday’s stories are old news. And who wants to remember that?
An argument can be made that we feel more and more that we are citizens of the world, rather than citizens of any one specific Country. We seem to be geared towards a global community...
And in this fast-paced, global community forgetfulness has become one of the mechanisms through which we cope.

Yet, the more we focus on the global aspects of our lives, the more we may forget about the actual community we live in. We may have a tendency to worry more about the effects an oil spill or nuclear disaster will have on our lives, than about recycling the things we discard in our day-to-day lives.
Always looking forward, we have no desire to look back.

And in this duality, forgetfulness as a coping mechanism can turn against us...

As long as we are happily focusing on the global society, we may forget the things that are ‘yesterday’s news’. In essence we have taught ourselves to do so in order to be able to handle the new information we have to deal with on a daily basis.
Then when we feel we want to step out of the race that gets you noticed on the global platform, may get us into a place that we had forgotten about. A smaller place. A community of friends and neighbors. In this community there may be ‘small’ stories ~ stories about what is happening with the kids and the grandkids. We may sell the big house in favor of an apartment. And bit by bit our world is getting smaller; something that may bring back memories from when we grew up. Memories of a different time and place ~ memories of a certain innocence...

In order to cope with these changes, we may use that same coping mechanism that has served us so well in the past ~ we may become forgetful...

Yes, I do realize that there often is a medical reason for the ‘forgetfulness’ that some people start suffering from as the years go by.
Still, it makes me wonder; if we were to create a greater balance between global and community perspectives; if we were to live life at that pace that is uniquely ours, rather than adapting to the pace at which global information comes our way every day ~ would we be as apt to be forgetful?
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