Level playing field

I saw a documentary about Yusuf Islam / Cat Stevens today - very interesting: his humility, creativity and peacefulness. All that and a big beard as well.

His journey is an interesting one - finding his metier in music, then moving on another step and giving up music for many years, then having found what he was after in Islam, rediscovering his music because his son had brought a guitar back into the house and it was lying around.

I take several things from this:
The journey is the destination.
The 'universe' has a sense of simple humour.
All we do is continually return to the simple truth that was there in us all along but that we thought was "so simple it couldn't be that". But each time we return, we get there with more richness and bring a newer, deeper, more peaceful level of commitment.

I also take a personal sadness that at the moment I don't see what course of action or endeavour my purpose takes me to.

Is that my purpose, or just words that cropped up in a goldfish bowl in Spain?
What if there is no purpose and the question is all there is?
What if all meaning falls away?
All I am left with are the simple acts of living and the birds in the garden.
And sometimes I think that is more than enough.

Occasionally, wisdom is found in very odd places.

Think I'll go listen to Peacetrain.

Love
MD

Somethings are falling into place

We get so attached to thinking we need to know what's coming next in order to cope with it, that we miss the the blindingly obvious things that are here, tap-dancing on the table in front of us, right now. And then, no sooner do we notice that we missed those things, than the thing that was coming next has flown gracefully way past our head and landed in our soup. In the surprise of that moment we lurch about, kicking over the table and making a terrible mess of the restaurant.

Humans, pah, we're all the same.

That's the bubble - it's all about me, my survival and my soup - and guess what - it just doesn't work. Even trying to understand what's outside the bubble, when we're in the bubble, doesn't work. What we get is the distorted image of something bubble-coloured flying towards our soup.
And in our wisdom, when we realise this, we might just think about that some more, work on why the bubble is there, deepen our understanding of the bubble, contemplate the inside of the bubble, polish it up a little more, add a few more layers of thought to the inside of it and then have a tentative prod at breaking through it. And when that goes strangely not-quite-right, we then return to the bubble, think about it some more and so on into Arcus waypastitsbedtimus.

Nope, the more you pay attention to the bubble, the stronger and more bubbly it becomes. It's like trying to break out of being judgmental by deciding that it is bad, wrong, evil and smelly.

So. Here is the thing that makes my bubble disappear, the line - 'it's really not about me any more'. That line is a recognition that there is something far more compelling and much greater than each of us out there. That there is something that doesn't politely cough and request we pay attention, but that stamps it's feet and demands our presence and effort. Not because that bubble we are in is wrong, but because in the face of all this realisation, it is an utter irrelevance.

And when, finally, we let go of the struggling, of the endless torturing ourself to find meaning and understanding in our bubble, there is a moment of such startling clarity and peace as we've never experienced before.
In those moments, wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we are changing the world.

And guess what, that thing flying into your soup was crouton all the time. See, nice place to be, the Universe.

I was born at this moment in history to have people realise the utterly captivating absurdity of our worlds and so realise a deeper truth - the absolute and unquestionable perfection of the human spirit.

Oh dear God has it come to this

"Do not try to bend the spoon, that is impossible, instead, simply try to see that there is no spoon"