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Intercourse with Life

intercourse-with-life-cover

A crucial message to some burning questions in a short ebook.

Isn’t there something I can do or someone I can believe, to get my life off the rocks?

You’ve wondered why progress in your life has crunched to a halt.
You ponder why you are here? What is the purpose?

You have found nothing, you are clueless and you are lost.

You need intercourse with Life urgently!
Yeah, you read correctly.
Otherwise, your ability to succeed is given to chance.

And, be ready, because Life’s responsiveness exceeds an accelerator pedal of a Porsche, – or, the questions keep on mounting.

You teeter on despair and depression. Neglect and decline are in tow.
You have followed some ideas and you are still here, – looking.
Hope was a disappointing experience.
You have relied on yourself and when that didn’t produce the desired results, relied on others.
By now you excel in blaming anything.
Radical changes have made no difference.

You are stuck.
Slipping, falling, crashing, hurting, crying, bending, breaking.

It all sounds so familiar.

Despite whatever we do, one phenomenon is always present.
Life.
Yes, Life!
I am not talking about God, angels, spirits etc.
Life with a capital ‘L.’
A constant companion and the only trustworthy guidance system that is free and ready for our use.
Noninvasive. Unpretentious. Supra knowledgeable. Ready for intercourse with you in a flash.

Life says, your shadow might be invincible, but you can move with the light.

A call to act.
Have intercourse with Life!
A companion that you never knew existed alongside.
Life needs Life.

You are here. Nobody to ask. You want to be there. Nothing changes. Why?
Well, – no intercourse with Life!
Life, a phenomenon that is always ready and with us.
The oracle we have been searching for. It knows all the answers. Ask it.

Life, what do you suggest now? …and watch your life unfold.

You can read more about ‘Intercourse with Life,’ for a nominal amount, on Amazon.

 

 

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the Zen of cleaning blinds

img_2500
I don’t live in Japan.

I have Venetian blinds on a few windows.
They are large windows.
I have shown disdain at my blinds’ deteriorating looks and I let them deteriorate further.
My resistance to cleaning Venetian blinds has been solid throughout history.

But I like their look. There is something about the scattered picture through a white blind that I find comfortable and appeasing. In a Zen way. Whatever that is.

The blinds are complex in that there are twenty-five horizontal slats to cover one window. Each horizontal slat is divided into seven portions, but it’s not literally cut up into individual hanging portions, just logically divided, to make it more manageable and balanced and to make the tilt and rollup function possible.

Cleaning Venetian blinds should become the standard dissertation for any aspiring master.

Threads running through each slat make the functionality possible.
They are white threads. They demand extra caution increasing the intensity of the cleaning task.

Each window thus has 200 white slats. My field of vision was filled with slats.

The message this morning was unambiguous.

An attitude was required. The right one for the task.
I pulled my stomach in and tensed up the abdominal muscles to center myself. Then I tensed every other muscle in my body in a call to mobilize. I slightly bowed my head and like a body-builder flexed those butterflies, pecs and biceps in a ‘bring it on I can handle it’ grimace.
A statue of chiseled determination and resolve emerged in front of its nemesis.

A Venetian blind had hijacked my morning. I was urged to practice focus and patience and to stop questioning. The cleaning had to be done today, now, after years of disregard.

Once I had sunk into the ‘Aum’ moment, purging all thoughts of frustration toward this exercise, it gave way to an acceptance of the reality. I allowed the notion that the activity of blind-cleaning might harbor a pertinent message and reveal itself in the meditative-mechanical motion I was performing.
I wipe the first layer of the dust-crust careful not to exert undue forces on the Venetian blinds. There are two hundred slats to clean. It takes fifteen seconds to clean a slat properly. The math is challenging, the answer is grueling, the required effort enormous, the result brilliant.

The process requires at least three passes with separate wet cloths. The cloth must always present a clean surface to the slat. Three cloths can provide a fair amount of uninterrupted cleaning activity and the duration of the task allows a range of activities from daydreaming to gardening. You question gardening in this context? Simple. You get distracted and leave the task.

Distractions happen frequently.
I hear the birds in the garden through the open windows. Incessant chatter, rasping, tweeting and calling. I stretch my neck to see them. An airplane passes overhead. I watch it through binoculars. Bees abound. I need to harvest the honey. It is a hot and sunny day. I want to be outside. A car tire squeals and the Yorkie barks. I perform a quick security check around the house and garden. I get distracted even more in the garden ending up with a clipper and a spade in the bushes.
The monotony of cleaning blinds is in stark contrast to life unfolding this day.

Focus. Stay focused.

A Whatsapp announces itself. The phone is next door.
Not now!

‘Aum’

One hundred and twenty-five slats to go.
Focus. I absorb myself into the task.

Seventy-five to go.

Amusing thoughts loiter in my mind.
I see my reflection like a silhouette in the glass behind the slats.
Bad guy looks without the bad guy, and handsome perhaps.
Should I start a blinds-cleaning-service, – by a Zen master.

‘Aum’

I am the task. I am the slat. I am the cloth. I am all of it.
There is no show of emotion. I am the person designated to do the task. I am not a mercenary in thoughtless-program-mode although it looks like it.
Nothing is by force. It is my free choice to clean or to neglect.

There is no problem.

When you become the task, resistance disappears.

The task is done.

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Limiting circle ever expanding

Horizoning at Mabibi

Horizoning at Mabibi

If we were meant to be stuck with one horizon the universe surely would have put a wall around us?
A wall billions of impenetrable lightyears thick.

But the horizon is not a wall.
It is only a perceived boundary of a limiting circle. As we move, it moves too. If we stay put it remains the same.

Everything we have achieved was once on the horizon.
There are countless horizons behind us and infinite horizons ahead of us.

My present state defines the limit of my horizon.

At any time I can hike to a new horizon, literally and figuratively. I personally can’t wait to see what will reveal itself when I arrive there.

What can I do to change my horizon?
I can dream across horizons, jump the limiting circle and think non-imprisoning thoughts.
I can imagine what isn’t, to be.
I can believe that my life can be different.
I can visualize often what I want to see.
Then I can move away from where I am to where I want to be.

On the way other horizons reveal themselves. Beautiful ones and others. That is the incredible journey of life. This is the safari of life. Always in motion, unless we halt it. I can pitch camp anywhere for a while and enjoy where I am or I can run on and on.

I have decided to horizon on. Horizoning has become my new occupation. I have become a horizoner.

Expand your horizon, I was told when I was young and in difficult circumstances.
As I got older the meaning of those words took on an ever deeper sense. They whispered that if I wanted to change my horizon I had to accept change. Most importantly the returning echo of my expanding horizon never failed to nudge me on with rewards. It is such a very personal endeavor. Expanding my horizon is my own thing. Only I can do it.

There is the horizon we see when we cast our eyes and we have come to accept every day to the point where we forget it exists. This external horizon tempted and inspired me all my life. I longed to see what was behind the next mountain or the next curve on the track in the wilderness. A horizon was something that was out there to be explored and conquered.
In the same way, the horizon inside my inner being can be expanded too. I realised mine hadn’t moved in ages. My thoughts were set, my ways were stuck. Suddenly I knew that I had to expand my horizon in every conceivable way.

Horizon on!

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The devil, me and I and you 

I couldn’t sleep for thoughts of you
Morning, feelings, cold and dew 
Everything was just so fine
Clueless, lost that was my crime

Nothing in my dark lit up
Thoughts of you kept coming but
the loneliness kept holding tight
This opponent was my lifelong fight

Seldom happiness would have a say
All the vivid colors turned to gray
Forsaken in my ice age day by day

A cul-de-sac, a dead end stop
I would rant and rave until I dropped
Nothing changed, it wasn’t meant to be
Even my dreams and wishes couldn’t set me free

Some force was negating, maliciously intent
a life of accomplishment and content
I bargained till my beard turned white
the other one just laughed at this my plight

You could have cashed your soul for fun
and lived a life of sin and some
he even mentioned that my soul was worth a bit
he’d talk to Karma even Hades could be skipped

Then he left for he had other things to do
I should call him if I'd feel I’m through
In between he came around
telling me I wasn’t sound

I should think about a deal
Rap it up and put a seal
What’s the point when nothing works
and your days are filled with hurt

Life’s too short to live in pain
All agree that is a shame
and there’s no one here to blame

But who was he who tempted so 
What energy did make him grow 
I made him up that much I know
therefore why can’t I let him go 

Worry, fear, and disillusionment
helped in his establishment
Sunshine, love, and laughter
will destroy his term as master

To beat him at his game 
and bring happiness again
my entire life I searched for you
questioning exhausted if you could be true
often clueless, lost, I lived through years of rue
and spent much time talking to the stars with tears
hoping that someone might open up their ears

My angels came a running, just before it was too late
They called the wind to blow a storm and change my fate
You greeted me and we knew before a word was spoken
that we had scars from many places we were broken

Even now I do recall the times alone
when my thoughts run away from home
and I dig in places dark and drown
forgetting all the joy you've brought
and everything I ever sought

There was no crime
and no disorder
Clueless, lost, I crossed the border
Deep I sank into some feelings
fleeing from my heart and being
till you came along
and stroked me with your song
Finally, my life is mine to shine
There never was a crime.
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When that happens?

A ginger cat called Flash slinks through my garden regularly ignoring me as if I am vapour.
It’s four in the morning and I sit at my desk and thinks.
The streetlamp across the road is in a forty-five second on/off cycle.
Suddenly, poof, I have found an answer.

The answer is the SUN.

However, all the other questions I have, sadly, remain stubbornly unanswered. Two things generally happen to me: Either I am flooded with opinions or drowned in silence.
Instead, I really want to be surrounded by clarity and then engage with resolve.
I think that if I separate myself into an infinite number of parts it should be easier to become part of the whole, go with the flow and emerge with the answers.
To do that I cease thinking. Now I am not. The ‘I’ becomes an ‘It’ without an ego attached or a particular outcome expected.
I realise quickly that if this was the way it should be I would be a brainless grain of sand on a beach or a rock. After all, I am only one in a few billion not a googol gazillion. I’m special. Although…from a uni/multiversal point of view I’m so small making out I’m such a big deal, and in competition to the dumb universe, that my brain blows a fuse every time I try comprehending just a bit of this magnitude.

I start thinking again and I decide to ignore stuff like the Brexit.
I always wanted to live on an island and I trusted the wisdom of age to make visionary decisions and not create a dystopia. I just revised that.
Some things are so stupid they stick out like a grumbly square wheel with a puncture.
Democracy: a 49% – 51% guillotine; a really worn out flat tire and no wizzkid, political scientist or other boff rewriting that dusty, outdated bible. Ouch!

I still want to live on an island, but not that one.

I wonder what the sun thinks every day?
Just warm them up and give them life, they’ll come right some time.
Clearly, when you come from a sunny (dis)position, you can make better decisions. You gotta blame it on the weather. It would drive anyone bonkers and vote ‘Exit.’
And, in hindsight, to decide matters of such profound importance and far-reaching consequences during or after a full moon, when the sun is past the solstice and in pouring rain, shows a disconnectedness and ignorance, dare I say arrogance, towards all of nature’s powerful forces.

Chuckle.

Now what? Another illusion? More reality?
Nothing, clueless, lost?
Hop on board.

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Longshadow serenade

Long shadow

Longshadow

You’re never alone. Not in the winter season. There’s always a shadow around.
Sunrise is two hours later and sunset is two hours earlier. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s four hours less sunshine a day or four hours more no-sunshine. Whichever way you prefer.

Far more obvious to me though is the path of the sun through the sky, and you can call me a liar, but I’m not far off when I say that it sets in the north and not in the west.
It rises dead-on in the east, shines into my kitchen, skips the centre of the zenith above entirely, and heads straight for the north. In that process the shadows get no break, being stretched to the limit from dawn to dusk, and then they work overtime deep into the night because the lights are switched on early.

For me, there is something incredibly magical about winter here in South Africa. I mean hey, you can run around barefoot, in shorts and t-shirt most of the time and get a tan and hardly work up a sweat. You can make a lunch time braai and relax because the next thunderstorm is still three months away. And no, a braai is not a barbeque! That is some American grill-thingy using gas, burgers, and sausages. We use wood from our gardens to make a fire and then braai on the coals and the carnivores here eat real meat like beef and not that refined supermarket mash of dubious origin.

It’s the best time of year to see the animals in the bush because the grass has stopped growing and the foliage thins out and everyone enjoys the sunshine.
It’s the safari season.

Far away

Far away

Dormant 4×4 vehicles of all shapes, sizes and descriptions rumble into action, get all packed up and disappear for weeks into the African yonder, somewhere far out. In distant places we sit around campfires sipping Shiraz and Famous Grouse while listening to lions roar, hyenas laugh, elephant trumpet, hippo’s snort, leopards bark and baboon’s wa-hu.
Shiraz and Famous Grouse

Shiraz and Famous Grouse

Idol of any cat

Idol of any cat

We heard him roar all night and finally tracked him down early in the morning. He had killed a baby elephant at night.

The ancient dust of Africa is like an aphrodisiac to the soul and winter is the druggiest time. The mornings might touch freezing and early afternoons can reach +30C (+86F). Such are the extremes that await and bewitch the courageous adventurer.

Another log on the smoldering coals, an old kettle boiling the coffee and puffing away, woodsmoke, and coffee smell, you’ve come to the right address.

Old kettle, fresh coffee

Old kettle, fresh coffee

Unbelievably so the Lion’s Tail or Wild Dagga as it is also called here, Dagga being the local name for Marijuana, is a huge attraction for the most magnificent, colorful Sunbirds.

Amethyst-sunbird

Amethyst-sunbird

Greater-Double-collared-Sunbird

Greater-Double-collared-Sunbird

Obviously, the flowers are intoxicating because the Sunbirds will visit every day and don’t mind that I sit a mere two meters away and watch and wonder if there is more than just a sugar attraction. But the Wild Dagga has very little if any THC and therefore is legal in most countries.
Leonotis leonurus

Sunbird’s heaven, Leonotis leonurus

Winter in these parts of Africa is just summer in another way. It is a Longshadow serenade. Even some of the roses bloom and bees buzz around. While some deciduous trees leaf and the grass might go brown in patches from the morning frost, the sky is a bright, light blue and the clear nights bring infinity onto my doorstep. Did I hear paradise? At least until the next cold front.

South Africa what a beautiful home!

Amethyst-sunbird http://www.wildlife-pictures-online.com
Greater Double-collared Sunbird http://www.theflacks.co.za

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In or out of the box?

Should I think in or out of the box?

The box is really all that, which, if we could wrap it all up and throw it in a trunk, constitutes our life.
A trunk the size of a few furniture removal vans you say?
Exactly! However, …
What we have to do is to compress everything into thoughts. Yes, the Ford Mustang and the mansion and the aircraft and all our issues, alles, and pack them away into a trunk. And, while we are setting things up lets give this trunk an appealing name. I love the French language for its wonderful sounding words. I will put everything into a coffret. Bugger the trunk and the box.

So what is left? Me of course, but without all that ballast weighing me down. I have suddenly become liberated to soar detached as an observer and thinker.
Quickly, while soaring and thinking, I realise humanities’ emphasis and reliance on communication and knowledge.
Rapidly I see more stuff appearing in my mind eye. I see a more purpose built, indexed web emerging that enables me to extract required, relevant information in seconds.
I see people communicating without the need of a clunky, – albeit highly evolved since the Motorola brick of the nineties, – mobile device and that doesn’t require any hands. And no, definitely no, I do not see anybody walking around with a thing called an Apple Watch. Hell no. (I am fearful that Apple has lost their vision.)

The humanity I observe has snuffed that watch idea long ago, along with all these other obscure practices of scrolling, swiping, tapping, pinching, texting, and replaced it simply with voice control and looking. It even works while you are sitting in a movie theatre next to hundreds of other voice controlled devices or while you are driving a Harley Davidson through a park with a rock concert on the one side and Victoria Falls on the other. Activated by a mere whisper, – even if you feel you need to shout at it like most mobile users have the habit of punishing their loved piece of hardware, – and coded with your own special bio-chemical key, all you need do is talk, – and, look.
On the subject of looking, that’s where it all happens for most of us. What do you look at and what do you use to look?
Here’s what I see with all my ‘stuff’ packed in the coffret.

We’re about to see the next edition of Google Glass and maybe it might even be unveiled at Google I/O 18th May 2016. Sure, the first batch of Glass was a bit like the Motorola brick in a more subtle way, but it broke the news and the barrier of acceptance and laid a foundation towards a totally new concept, – a wearable computer with a heads-up display and voice activation bringing everything you have on a smartphone in front of your eyes. Tony Fadell is working on it. What was Sir Jonathan Ive working on again at Apple? Hopefully not another watch thingy.

I can actually unpack my coffret for now again. No need to soar and cogitate any further. The next life-changing device is so close you can even buy an older version of it on Amazon already. But, hold back for a while. There are some challenges. Nothing, I believe, that could not be solved in a fraction of time when I look at the last ten years of innovative technological thrust and the brains that are engaged to start that next almighty explosion of ‘omg i must have this thing or I’ll be such a loser.’

Battery life, what else? yawn, to this day remains the accompanying Comrade Nemesis. I am also so tired of hearing about it and the perpetual 30% improvement from release to release. How many percent was there in hundred again? Just flipping get it sorted out now! We’ve been hankering around that since forever. Give me something that runs out when I don’t need it and stays charged when I do. If I wear it it can charge by gyroscope or gravity or my pulse or light or something, cause I am alive and I move you know, so make use of it. Eye movement detection can be my enter key if I don’t want to talk all the time and like that I could scroll too and navigate for instance. I personally think glasses are cool, be it sexy shades or academic looking spectacles, whatever, and hooking up with fashion designers of eyewear is the way to go. If you run out of ideas or your development gets stuck put a project on Freelancer or Fiverr and pay a few well spent bucks for some out of the box, err coffret, ideas. There is a world of millions listening and it’s so simple to access and it’s bustling with ideas, it just needs to be tapped. Hello Google, Apple, …, there is your market research.

So after all that, is it in or out of the b.., ahm, coffret thinking that is required?
I think for us to make progress in leaps and bounds we need to understand the inside of the box and occasionally leave it behind.
It’s wonderful to dream up science fiction and gravity propulsion at +lightyear speeds but closer to the ground an inside understanding with an occasional outside view probably enables the best results.

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Honey time is yummie time

honey final
The hive consisted of ten frames. They were overflowing and dripping with the most delicious, pure, raw honey.
A blessing. A miracle from the bees.
I took out four frames of honeycombs and left the rest for the bees. Then I put a Super extension onto the brood box adding another ten frames.

Dripping with honey

After I had squeezed the honeycombs and gave the wax back to the bees I had three and a half litres of sweet, liquid gold to see me through winter.

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the ‘waiting’ in between

By that I mean the time ‘in between’ that it takes before I get what I want.
What if that waiting is actually just in my mind?
From the moment I want something until I have it, the clock ticks. But, should I really be a waiting?

You see I have this thing about time. It’s a dimension humans have created to dissect the present and in the process forgetting the whole.
Time is an industry that thrives on measurement and disruption. Time is fashion and villain. It’s impersonal and a pain, and it’s relative. Of course time is also a foundation block of my current reality.

Anyway, I like to simplify stuff. Therefore I like to remove one component from my universe: time.
No other living creature lives by a tik-tok. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
From very young I have heard it said: “This (or that) will take a long time?”
I’m not a physicist but after many decades of living by the rules of time I still have a problem being able to tell (the) time.
So to hell with time. Actually forget about speed and distance too. Drop the human constructs and just live without having to define everything for a moment.

I can see space clearly. It’s the transparent nothingness between objects. Some refer to it as the void, but this nothing is something.
Space is everywhere; it’s also between where we are and what we want. If we can make that space ‘work’ for us instead of seeing it as a hurdle multiplied by time, then we are onto a good thing.
In my book Austrafica I went into some detail what I perceive this nothingness, which I called ‘Invisibles,’ to be. Here is what I thought up.

Invisibles are not spiritual, religious, metaphysical or ghosty stuff. They are not a ‘them,’ ‘they’ or ‘it’ either. There are also so many Invisibles that if we would count them we would be countlessly counting.
Invisibles are never-ever visible to us, at all. If we can imagine them existing then we should visualize them as being entirely different to anything we know, which might be inherently difficult for various reasons, because they aren’t measureable in any way. They are not even noticeable to us and the closest thing is ‘no-thing,’ but even that means the opposite, the negation of a thing, which they definitely aren’t. Transparent dust maybe gives an idea, but don’t dwell on it because Invisibles are really indefinable. One can say that they are all the invisible stuff in-between all the visible stuff. They are not of matter and as soon as we think of them being something they disappear, and when they disappear chaos appears and the ‘waiting’ is back. So what are they? Because to the fleeting observer and thinker they aren’t, but we are trying to say they are, the best description is ‘Invisibles.’ You could imagine them as being connectors. The less definition we give them the more they exist, and the more we accept them, – kind of like allowing, – the more our life will run smooth.
Odd! I know.
By acknowledging ‘them’ we are at least not in ignorance or in denial of them and that is the important crux. Although we can never see them they are everywhere even where we think they aren’t. Because of that they have been given the name of ‘fillers,’ and the attribute of ‘smoothers.’ Without them there would really be nothing or in other words everything would be so dense that nothing could exist except maybe matter of the densest kind and chaos of course. Some might say chaos is the natural state, well, maybe here we are about to redefine its meaning. Regardless and nevertheless Invisibles are so important and yet so invisible that we tend to forget they exist. That is a problem we should seek to remedy.

The moment we acknowledge that the space ‘in between’ is filled with Invisibles, chaos ceases and smoothness takes over. Once there is smoothness all the invisible parts around us connect right to the end point of that which we want/think about and, that could be in another room, country, galaxy or universe. The unconnected pictures suddenly flow into one big ‘present’ for us.
So next time you stare at nothing acknowledge the Invisibles and imagine how it connects you smoothly to that which you want, without, aah, a second of waiting.

Acknowledging the Invisibles is the only practice required, others talk about subatomic sized energy particles and of consciousness and being aware.

“There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.”
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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get back inside

It’s the kind of words you could hear someone yell from the porch on a rainy day.
It could be the name of a bistro.
It’s a vociferous frustration when you opened something up you should not have touched.
It implies that whatever it is, whoever it is, it or they came from the inside.
Get back means to return, to the inside in this case.

Right now however, ‘it’ must be on the outside, because why else would I be reprimanded to get back inside?
The ‘it’ is actually a facet of me.

I was sitting inside the lounge on a chair. But I heard it clearly said, “get back inside.”
The time was just after 5am. Where is inside at that time of the morning? Cosy-snugly bed, no?

Admittedly the meditation was a bit, ‘all over the place.’

In my supposed mode of passive observation I had to rope-in my freely wandering thoughts time and again.
If it would have been a dream it would be called lucid dreaming, because you know what you are doing and you maintain some form of control.
I clearly was two things at once: observer and practitioner, and, I have on occasion caught myself being even more than two things at once.

During writing of my first book I have occasionally practiced spawning numerous thought streams at once and then sitting back to observe: i.e. traveling on the Orient express, flying an aircraft, having dinner and conversation and leaning a fast motorbike through the curves in Mpumalanga with Beethoven’s 6th (Pastorale) in the background.
Indeed I thought I was successful at it. I just worked up a voracious appetite for chocolate afterwards.

Multi-tasking, multi-processing, time-slicing, – fascinating ideas, computer jargon I know, but if a robot can do it surely I can too. Brilliant creation our brain is!
In short most of us will concur that I have probably never reached my destination on the Orient express, crashed the aircraft, was absent minded at dinner and an irresponsible danger on the motorbike. Yes you are right. I never completed any one of them except the Symphony, and why should I? There were another thousand other things to do and I was only interested in the highlights.
Such is the power of our beautiful mind.

Well, this morning an inner voice decided it was appropriate to remind me to ‘get back inside.’
Inside is where I truly am. The outside is a distraction and probably an illusion, – or all is an illusion.
While I am deeply anchored inside I can become a better observer and conductor.
I think what ‘it’ was trying to tell me was, “go outside by all means but stay connected to your true guiding self.”
I’m safely back inside now, peeping out occasionally till next time.

To Beethoven, to Me, to everything at once inside.

Get back inside now!