Author Archives: C.J. Birch

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About C.J. Birch

I was born on Thursday 13th July 1972 in Harare, Zimbabwe, to an English father and a South African mother. I was christened Catherine Jane Birch and - from the outset - I've been inquisitive about most of life's elemental questions; its myriad paradoxes and unpredictable anomalies, their sources, solutions and their propensity for unmitigated change. From a very young age I was captured by the enigmatic life process, the challenge of living and what it 'means' to be alive. I spent countless invaluable hours in nature, watching the world at its work. I had a fascination for everything around me, curious about what things were, how and why they worked, what they represented in relation to one another. I began writing at the age of 5. Journals, stories and poetry, illustrations, have been a constantly evolving source of quiet self-reflection, expansive expression throughout my life. I'm fortunate to have travelled many miles, to have visited a variety of differing destinations and though I've learned a lot about life in the last 50 years, my questions about its complexities are neverending. I currently live in the south-east of England, having returned to the United Kingdom after a particularly harrowing period of 7 allegedly 'invisible' or 'non-existent' years of absolute hell in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa. I've decided to erase those memories, altogether. My 15-year-old son lives in Switzerland, with his father.
17 Jun 2013 · 08:51

Hate vs Love – Blog No. 48

love_and_hate_by_baro24Imagine these two entities – hate and love – crashing into each other.  In this world, which would wield greater power?  Considering that hate vibes are resonating out there in the astonishing numbers that they are, I think love would take quite a hit should they converge.  Like a kick in the solar plexus.  I choose to believe that there is more love in our world than hate.  I think the love will overwhelm the hate in due course and equilibrium will be restored.  Before that happens, there is a lot of work to do.  There is a lot of giving to do.  Start giving to the world today if you do not already contribute to its wellbeing.  It is easy.  Tidy your thoughts.  Clean up your mind, get the hate you have simmering inside of you OUT.  The way to do that is to purge yourself of its negative energy.  Pull it into view and look at it, assess the energy you allocate to hating.  Would that energy not be better spent elsewhere?  You have to ask yourself why you want to hate.  Why do you choose to be negative when positive is a choice you can make?

Hating circumstance is not the end of the world, hating a certain food is not a problem.  Hating people is a problem.  People-hating people are a problem.  It is sometimes hard not to hate.  I hate idiots.  It has to be said.  But each time I encounter an idiot I try to remind myself that they are probably ignorant and/or emotionally immature.  That does not make me much more tolerant of them, but it does stop me from wasting too much thought-time on their stupidity.  Hating personally is a dangerous game to play.  When you will assassinate another’s character you need to take yourself in hand.  What do you achieve when you spend time judging other people for the way they choose to live their lives?  Their lives are nothing to do with you.  When this world conquers its tendency to try and manage others’ affairs through manipulation or criticism we will all be better off.  Since when was it your business to make another’s life a misery by imposing your judgement on their days?  Observe what is going on in your environment instead of judging it.  Do not attach values to happenings.  Allow happenings to happen and allow people to be.  A lot of people are doing the best they can.  Watch people and try to understand what motivates them.  With some people it is easy – nothing motivates them.  Do not waste your time on these people.  Spend your time on and with people who are motivated for change.  Those who do not want to hear of change – of improvement – will be left behind in the rush to the future.  Should you wish to be left behind then you know exactly what you must do.

Love always wins.  You can take comfort in that thought if you have no other thoughts in which to take comfort.  If you have only got negative thoughts you need to change your life by changing the way you think about things.  Instead of thinking about what you hate in someone, think about how it must be for them to live with themselves.  When you are a shitty person your life is not easy.  Keep your bad vibes to yourself where possible.  Nobody else wants them and just keep in mind that when you send them out, they return to slap you on the back of the head.  Guaranteed.  So.  Don’t act like an idiot.  Don’t think like an idiot.  Leave people to their stories.  We all have them.

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14 Jun 2013 · 12:46

Sex – Blog No. 47

male-female-mobileSex is not a word that should make you shy or fearful in this day and age.  If it makes you fearful, then you have issues that need dealing with professionally.  If your sex is damaged in any way you need to address the subject with a person who is trained to tell you how to deal with the trauma and help you assimilate your experience(s).  If you are an adult shy around sex it means that you are immature in your understanding of its power.  If it makes you giggle and blush then you are probably Catholic.  Catholics and sex have a long history of conflict.  Puritans, too.  These religious institutions understand the power of sex and as such, will try to control it.  Theirs’ is a delusion.  The church cannot control the sex of a population.  That part of them belongs firmly to Nature.  How you choose to express your sexuality is your business.  There should not be anyone overly interested in your sexual persuasion unless you are a paedophile or a rapist, in which case you should be named, shamed, and then castrated.  A paedophile should not be allowed anywhere near children.  If you make the mistake of abusing a child even once – you should never be given a person’s faith again.  Ever.  For the rest – the normal human beings out there – you are what you are, and you are who you are.  No matter who or what you are, understand that sex is a sacred act.  It should be.  Who you choose as a partner is of consequence and what you do to and with their body is of consequence.

Sex is both give and take.  It is a learning.  It is not something you are born good at, it is something you get good at.  If you can be bothered.  In our contemporary society there is so much taking going on that the scales are seriously off balance.  People do not take time enough to learn each other well.  Men take sex from a lot of women – who offer it willingly to just about anyone who will show them attention.  This coupling is neither romantic, nor does it have anything to do with love.  It is an exchange of fluids and a flood of oxytocin.  Oxytocin is a very powerful hormone.  A lot of people are addicted to its effect.  This means a lot of people neither care nor worry about where they pull a partner from.  A lot of women are looking for princes and a lot of men know how easy it is to flatter the pants off a wannabe princess.  Wannabe princesses abound in our society.  I hope the men of the future are equipped to deal with the fall-out.

Excellent sex is about love.  Love is about soul.  It is about a true connection.  Pornography is not helpful as a starting block – there are too many people in our world with bent expectations of sex.  Hard-core porn and child-porn are particularly problematic – the trade in transgression is out of control.  It is not easy to correct a mindset aligned with transgression.  How do you stop a world, literally, from screwing itself up further?  You remind the people that sex is personal expression.  Be careful who you show what.  Have some respect.  Your demonstration speaks for you in more ways than one.  Should you wish to waste your sex on random strangers then know that you are damaging yourself.  Worse – you are using people.  If you use people you will be used.  Your sex will become empty and you will not be fulfilled.  To be unfulfilled is not something to aspire to.  Too many people use sex as a pain-killer in this fractured society.  This is wrong sex.  Right sex is a sharing.  And do not ever confuse physical intimacy with love.  They are not the same thing.  If you allow someone to take your body and use it for their own gratification – no matter what fairytales are singing in your ears – you are responsible for the damage done to your psyche.  You cannot escape your psyche – ever.  Keep it clean.

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10 Jun 2013 · 09:20

Let’s fly – Blog No. 46

Favim.com-19967There are conditions for flight.  That is the first thing to understand. Before you fly, you need to know where you are going.  Up – or down – is not enough information.  Should you imagine for one moment that flight is not what you are made for then please correct that bit of misinformation for yourself.  You are made to fly.  How you manage that feat is up to you.  Train your mind.  Train your body.  Free your heart.  Open your consciousness out, lay your thinking bare and find what parts of it are worth keeping and which parts are worth losing.  To fly – you must travel light.  If you have too much baggage on your mind, you cannot find lift.  That is how it is.

Fear plays a big role.  Imagine letting go, letting yourself free to think and be and trust and love and live and learn and understand.  That is all in your power.  When you want to understand the power that you can unleash as a human being you must immerse yourself in your emotions.  You will be astounded by their strength.  Look at what you feel most strongly about in your life.  There will be something.  If what you feel strongly about is negative then you are doing yourself a disservice.  You are taking your psyche down without supervising its transition and that is not responsible.  Be responsible with your thinking, your thoughts.  You cannot allow negatives to dwell in you.  You decide what – and who – affects your life.  Know that you are not on this planet to avoid your feelings.  You are human.  Your privilege is to feel – do not disrespect Nature by ignoring your own say-so.  You must face your feelings if you are going to fly.  It is up to you when you are ready for that adventure, it is up to you when you take flight.  It is something you will know inside of you.  You will know when it is time to let go of the branch to which you cling.  There is no point holding on too tightly to the first branch you find yourself on.   There is another branch with a better view.  You have to trust your ability.  For some people, the likes of meditation is flight.  The stilling of the mind means the spirit can be free to feel how it feels to be.  When you can invite yourself into a state of being that allows you to feel what it is to be human, then you can understand yourself, your purpose.  You have to focus on freeing your thoughts.  You should not cling on tightly to them, either.  There is a way of having thoughts and letting them slide by without fixating on any single one of them.  Observe what you think and consider the quality of your thoughts.  Your thoughts are energy.  When your mind thinks freely, creatively, it flies.  You just have to hope that it is a homing pigeon.  The adventure to be had out there in the wilds of the mind is not for the faint-hearted, nor is it likely that your mind will wish to return to the mundane reality of daily existence in this dog-eat-dog world.   The wilds of the mind are unlike anything you will learn on earth.

Flight must be kept in context.  Should you wish your mind and soul to fly, do not think of flight as in fleeing – you look at flight as in freedom.  Freedom of spirit.  Flight as in fleeing is something for animals that are going to be eaten.  As humans, we should not feel the need to flee from one another.  It is wrong that there are aggressors in this world.  Who does each one think he is?   That there are people loose in our world who will extort and kill or maim other people or animals is hard to understand.  These people should be put in cages or put down.  You have to wonder what you are if you will deliberately hurt another person, another creature.  And we all know what deliberate means.  Who does a man think he is when he murders someone?  You cannot just decide another’s life belongs to you.  If you decide that, you must know you are trading with your soul.  Know that your soul will be haunted forever by the spirits of those/that made dead by your hand.  You cannot escape the fact that you will atone – big time – for taking a life.  That is why it is not easy to be trained as a soldier.  To know that you might have to shoot someone to save yourself, your country, is not a knowing that will sit easy with any sane man.

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07 Jun 2013 · 10:35

Passion – Blog No. 45

live-with-passionIn this life it is vital to have a passion.  At least one.  It can be anything.  A person, a project, your life.  If your life is your passion then you will have spent a lot of time contemplating it.  It is through contemplation that we can come to conclusions.  We must always follow through to conclusion, there is no point half-doing something or leaving loose ends.  Loose ends are always going to drag on your consciousness – to save yourself the waste of energy carrying that excess weight make sure you are disciplined enough to finish what you start.  Passion is flow.  When you experience flow, you are immersed in your reality to the extent that you are operating at optimum levels and your mind and body are aligned, you are focussed.  People who have an attention deficit disorder – and I think a great many people have an attention deficit disorder – find it difficult to feel flow.  Flow is a feeling.  You know you are part of something far greater than the reality in which you are currently confined.  Each life-time is a life-sentence, think about it.  You cannot escape from the learning that this world will give you.  Even if you kill yourself,  you will still return to learning – it is simply that your life-sentence has been cut short.  There is no shortage of new ones.  In this world we are sure of that.

Trust your passion.  You will know when you have a passion.  It consumes you.  It is an emotional workout, having a passion.  A tsunami of feeling.  You find yourself sinking under, fighting to the surface only to sink again into its depths.  You find your secrets in the depths, it becomes a place you do not want to leave when you find it.  The thing to know is that you can breathe underwater.  It is something you discover when you are sinking.  Your mind is alive, creative and alert – the world around you is filled with possibility and wonder.  A passion makes you believe in yourself, in the framework of this universe.  A passion should feel good.  If it does not feel good then it is possibly an obsession rather than a passion.  Be aware of the difference between the two.  An obsession can be confusing.  A passion is not confusing – it makes every bit of sense when you understand what wonders it does for your being.  A lot of people with a passion for something can make a big difference in this world.  All you have to do is find what you feel strongly about.  Find the feelings that provoke you to thought and underneath those feelings you will find some of your beliefs.  Keep them in perspective, as you do with your convictions.  Both can brain-wash you.  Behind your beliefs you will find some lone convictions – which are hard to shake, but shake them up – and then you will be where you want to be:  in passion.  It is a state of being.  It is fuelled by hope – which lies deep inside Pandora’s Box, underneath her chaos and disorder.  We all have a Pandora’s Box.  Some of us are just more familiar with its darkness, its lessons that will get us to the light.  It takes courage to open your particular Pandora’s Box.  Once you open it, it is not easy to close again.  There is a fascination with what we store away in our secret places.  Dreams, hopes, fears.  We need to find the fears and address them.  Fears cannot be allowed to dominate you when it comes to analysing yourself.  Fears are a contaminant.  It is a good idea to look yourself square in the eye and see who it is that you truly are.  When you recognise your truth you will be clear what passion means in your life.   An addiction to passion is not much of a problem.  It is still an addiction – and the thing about addictions is that they demonstrate that something in you is out of balance.  So keep addictions where you can see them at all times, they are crafty manipulators.

I have a passion for learning.  I find life interesting and I have a passion for thinking.  I am determined to show a way to fix this world.  I know it can be done.  People need to get over their skin-colour first of all.  Realise that each person you deal with – each one – can contribute something to your life.  You just need to ask the right questions.  You have to see value in exchange, sharing.  How can you not see value in sharing?  People need to compromise.  The women who are trying to be men in a man’s world should not wear themselves out.  Their battle is pointless.  What are they doing comparing themselves to men in the first place?  Men are men.  That will never change.  We have babies – they don’t.  We are different creatures.  Why is that overlooked so often?  A man has a penis.  A woman does not.  It is clear to see who is who and what is what if you look in the right places.  Let men be men – they are good at it.  Fighting about not being treated like a man is not productive.  Fight for being an independent woman.  That kind of fighting energy is helpful.  Did you know that men are more highly evolved than women?  Sorry if that offends a few people – and it probably will – but it is true.  They are all female until 12 weeks  – and then they change into men.  Men are more specific than women are – they are woman first, then man.  How much of a difference this makes to their ability to understand the peculiar ways of women I don’t know, but I imagine even having been female for 12 weeks does not guarantee that a man will understand a woman.  It depends on what, exactly, comes together in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.  I think that most women confound most men.  Women are a strange breed, it has to be said.  I think women can be magical creatures but they can be a nightmare.   The problem is that women trust less than men, there is an imbalance there.  It is a pity we must exist in a world where women feel they cannot trust men.  The men should be better behaved.  I am speaking to those who behave badly, and we have all behaved badly in our time.  We have all caused pain to another person, so do not put yourself anywhere near a pedestal no matter who you are.  Know that this world will recycle pain until the humans stop causing it – to themselves.

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03 Jun 2013 · 08:40

Motivation vs Intention – Blog No. 44

10-motivational-quotes-kick-start-large-msg-134307587259Please understand the difference between motivation and (best) intentions.  You want to be working with your motivation rather than your intentions.  Intentions are sweet.  They mean well.  But it is too easy to shrug off responsibility by saying, ‘… sorry, but I meant well.  It didn’t happen, but I hoped it would.’  Meaning well is not good enough.  It is like making a promise that you have no intention of keeping.  It is admirable, because you are thinking with your heart, but it is simply not good enough.  You have to understand the why of doing something.  Then you will know your motivation.  When you know your motivation you can decide straight away if it is pure, or not.  Your motivation needs to be pure.  Whatever it is that you are doing.  Pure motivation makes magic, miracles happen.

When you operate from a place of openness, of trust, you will see that your world becomes lighter and easier to manage.  Things begin to happen the way you need them to happen.  When you trust the universe, Nature, Karma, The Spirits, The Dead, Providence, God, the gods, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, yourself, your mind, your soul or Allah, whomever, whatever – you will find that your purpose on this planet becomes clearer to you.  It is through trusting that you learn to let go.  Letting go shows you a clearer picture of who it is that you are, it is a process that defines you.  There is a part of yourself that you must let go of each time you share of yourself, each time you tell another person your secrets.  And we all have secrets – do not pretend for one minute that there is not something in your life you would rather no-one knew.  Secrets are fine – if you feel safer keeping them – just do not lie to yourself about who you truly are.  Trust that your heart knows only pure motivation.  You have to act with pure motivation when you have opened your life to another.  That is best for both of you.  You have to be aware of the world around you flooding into that opening, when you open up.  When you choose to open your heart you will be physically affected.  The body responds in kind.  It is most important to evaluate your whys when you do what you do.  When you understand your whys you will feel empowered to act for the right reasons and be brave enough to follow your heart without fearing or feeling vulnerable.  Know there is no point in acting for a bad reason – karma will kick you for that.

Motivation is a driving force that affects every single one of us, every single day.  You will either be bothered, or you won’t.  If you won’t be bothered about anything:  about life, about people, about animals, about the environment, about your state of mind – then you need to change your life.  There is no question.  You have to find something to be bothered about.  Even if it is just staying alive.  A lot of people have that bother.  Life does not inspire in them much enthusiasm for living.  A lot of people exist in this limbo-land between living and not-living.  There is a fine line between alive and dead, and a fine line between genius and madness.  A very fine line.  I think the world needs to wake up to the reality that schizophrenics on this planet are not called ‘revolving doors’ for nothing.  In and out, in and out.  Their consciousness.  They are not in control of their aspects, at all.  Their minds are bent by hallucination, their realities warped by the projections of their minds.  They believe everything their minds tell them, which is a worry.  Like those who drink to blackout.  Where is your consciousness during that time and what is driving you – purely your subconscious?  It is interesting.  People are interesting when they substance-abuse.  I think this world needs to wake up to the fact that there are a lot of young people – in fact, a lot of people – escaping this reality because they find it intolerable.  Would the governments not be serving us better if they tidied up the reality?  The reality we find ourselves faced with is flawed.  Flawed is not a train-smash.  It can be fixed.  We just have to be bothered to fix it.

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31 May 2013 · 11:04

Nature – Blog No. 43

naturePlease take time to appreciate your world.  Pick flowers.  Stand in the rain, sniffing the wet.  Notice creatures, don’t kill them.  Don’t step on a caterpillar because you are too lazy to adjust your stride.  Be aware of your big feet.  You are accountable for each thing you kill on this planet.  More to the point – have some respect for Nature.  She is what gave you life, gives you life.

If you are going to hunt something, you must eat it.  Hunting is acceptable when it is for survival.  Culling.  I find culling slightly objectionable.  Man decides that the animals are too many for their environment and so he kills them off to tidy up that anomaly.  What if the gods suddenly decided that us humans were too many for our environment and tidied up our numbers by shooting millions of us?  I think we’d object.  Is that what genocide is?  Disease?  Murder?  I do not see this subject as God’s argument.  I see that it is Nature restoring equilibrium.  You can count on some major ‘culling’ being done on a daily basis in this world.  A lot of people die every day.  This is how it is, we cannot be sentimental about dropping numbers.  We need to be realistic, accept Nature’s give and take.  The way a lot of people die is not great.  That is a problem.  Can you imagine the luxury of dying in your sleep with a full stomach when you are facing an AK 47?  Starving?  Being bombed?  I think death needs to be more humane in a lot of places.  Africa is not a good place for death.  The way you can die in Africa is wild, cruel, vicious.  She is not a continent for tip-toing around the taking of a life.  Perhaps the world needs to look at death differently.  A lot of people are living a lot longer than they did before, so when you die in the first world of a stress disease (there are many) or old age or of natural causes then there is really no reason to complain.  Your death is part of your life.  It is a continuation.  You are in charge of the amount of stress you let into your life, so if you contract a stress disease you need to accept that your path brings you what it brings you.  You should not cry when death comes in a good way, you can consider yourself, your family, blessed.  I have said it before – we can all aspire to dying in our sleep.  It is something to think about if you want to start visualising your future.  When you concentrate your energies on what you want to happen in your life you will find that often, it does.

We are Nature.  We have a human nature.  Our natures are not the same.  I do believe we are born with either a good nature or an evil nature.  Fortunately there are a lot more people with good natures than there are evil.  Nature is inherently good, though she has a temper.  We have her traits.  We are human in that we can speak.  More than anything else, this makes us human.  The words we use carry energy.  It is important to think before you speak when such is possible.  Words out, are words down.  You must realise how powerful what you say out loud is.  Your ears are tuned naturally to hear your voice, your tone.  When you fight or when you insult somebody, understand that the negative sentiment is ricocheting straight back at you.  You bitch at someone, you are being that bitch to yourself.  It is interesting to hear from yourself what you will say of others, to others.  Be careful what you choose to show the world with your speech, your vocal expression tells the truth about the state of your interior.  If you are being a shitty person because your insides are a mess – stop it.  The world does not need people like you any longer.

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27 May 2013 · 08:20

Awareness – Blog No. 42

Johari-Window-Model_JK-Web_RevisedStart by asking yourself how much you know about this planet you inhabit.  Its people.  Its animals.  Its problems.  How much do you know about yourself?  It is easy to assume that you know everything there is to know about who you are, since you are the one who has lived with you since birth, but in each of us there remains the unknown.  There are aspects of ourselves that lie dormant, waiting patiently for the push it will take to wake them up.  That push comes from facing adversity.  From loving with everything you have.  From procreating.  From creating.  We are all creators.  Take pleasure – and pride – in your creation:  your life.  If you cannot feel pride about your life then you understand you are on the wrong path, wasting your potential.  If you cannot feel positive about your days and the place you find yourself in them, then you realise you need to adjust your thinking.  You cannot avoid having to modify your thoughts when you want to take yourself out of a mediocre situation.  There is not one of us who should accept mediocrity.  If your life is mediocre, fix it.  It has the potential for excellence.  You should want to find the best in yourself.  If you do not feel that need, you should perhaps question your purpose on this planet.  If you cannot define your purpose, you need to find one.  You cannot go from dawn until dusk each day without true purpose.

Others are helpful when it comes to making us aware.  Be willing to take another’s opinion on board, sometimes it will be your saving grace.  If a person is brave enough to tell you what you don’t want to hear, respect their courage and do your best to impact the assessment.  If you do not trust the person who is giving you their opinion, then do not bother taking their words to heart.  Use them as exercise, emotional exercise.  It is easy.  You will know if someone is criticising you, or giving you feedback.  You cannot mistake the feeling of being criticised.  Be grateful for feedback when it is objective, honest.  Do not accept insults, accept the truth.

In your awareness, make space for further awareness.  Expand your capacity.  Know that your mind is eager to stretch itself to accommodate the new.  Be curious about who you are in relation to other people.  We are not all the same, but we are a collective.  Your differences are your distinction.  Similarities are sweet, comfortable, routine.  They make us feel safe.  A difference makes a difference.  Find your best in your distinction.  You will not find your best when you sit in the ditch with the rest of humanity whining about the world owing you a living.  The world owes you nothing.  You owe you.  It is important to realise that giving in this world is what is required right now.  Giving is vital for a person’s well-being.  Until every single person on this planet is in a position to give (something back), we have a problem – an imbalance.  When you give nothing, you get nothing.  When you have nothing, you cannot give.  It’s a vicious circle.

The thing to know is that the world does not pick up man’s mess.  The world moves along at a pace unchanged.  Time ticks as fast as it always did, we only have twenty-four hours in each day.  Make sure you use your hours for the betterment of yourself, of others.  Be aware of your wants, your needs.  Be aware of what you say, to whom.  What you have to say for yourself, tells.

 

 

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24 May 2013 · 11:01

Ambition – Blog No. 41

Intelligence-wihout-ambition-is-a-bird-without-wings-2048x1536Do you know that children learn ambition from their fathers?  Perhaps it is because the father role is traditionally one of working parent.  Bread-winner.  The need to be the provider is inherent in many men.  It drives them to do extraordinary things.  It makes a difference if a father is absent from a family.  It just does.  A single mother can try as hard as she likes, she cannot role-model as dad and mom.  For one thing, she is not a man.  There are a lot of children without fathers.  There are a lot of children whose mothers lie to them about their parentage.  This is a sad state of affairs.  Each child deserves to know who its mother is and who its father is.  How else will they ever establish a concrete sense of identity?  We are of our forebears.  You cannot escape that reality.

There are a lot of children being bred that will not stand out as remarkable because they have not been taught about competition, ambition.  If you do not stand out as remarkable in this world you will find that your career options are few.  There are too many of us on this planet.  Competition is fierce.  Ambition is important.  So is competition.  Both will take you far on the path towards realising your full potential.  If you are not striving for something, you are not going to learn just how magical you are as a human being.  You need to push yourself to get the best from yourself.  There are too many people sitting down wondering what is going wrong in this world.  It is time people stood up and gave the best of themselves to benefit the rest of humankind.  By giving your best to the world – in your unique way – you are nurturing yourself and growing your soul.  That is the best news about giving of yourself.  It is an investment in your future.  To do that, though, you need first to find the best in yourself.  That is not a one-minute job.  You will spend your entire life finding your best if you are bothered to look properly.

It is irresponsible to cultivate children who do not understand competitive sports, for example.  It is short-sighted to ask children to learn that it’s okay to be part of the majority.  If they blend in with the rest of their peers then who is going to be doing the independent thinking for these children?  Competition stimulates children.  It encourages them to achieve.  To feel pride.  It is the mismanagement of pride that serves as a problem in so many lives.  If you take pride in context – and have the understanding that it is a formidable part of the ego – it is useful.  Just take pride in the right things.  You know what the right things are.

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20 May 2013 · 11:45

Will – Blog No. 40

i canIf you do not have it, you must cultivate the will to face all things.  That means facing your fears.  Fears are deceptive.  Realise that before you realise anything else.  They give the impression that they are material because they feel as real as any feeling you may have.  Fear – as a feeling – is a powerful motivator.  There is a lot of news about giving your feelings a miss, that they are not to be allowed to dominate your everyday.  I put it to you that you are a human being.  How can you not be dominated by your feelings?  Even serial killers are under the control of their feelings.  It is the rush of death that keeps them doing what they do.  That rush is within.  A feeling.  The same rush you or I might feel when we succeed at something that is important to us.  To complement will, you need courage.  Fortitude.  Courage comes in many shapes and sizes.  Feelings, too.

You cultivate will through pointing out to yourself the positives in any given situation.  The positives engender hope, and we all work well when we allow ourselves to hope.  We can find the will to strive towards something that is better than where we find ourselves now.  Hoping for the best outcome for yourself in whatever predicament you might find yourself is one of the simplest things you can do to change your patterns of thinking.  Instead of dreading an impending disaster (even if there is one coming), or imagining the worst possible scenario that could present itself – try imagining for once that things are going to work out the way you need them to.  I am talking about the big picture.  You need to practice focussing on the big(ger) picture.  The realities you are a part of are stepping stones across a wide, strong river.  You can choose to see this and use the stones to cross over or you can stay back on the riverbank for eternity.  I would suggest that you do not stay on the bank.  Take a step into the river and stand for a moment, feel the movement around you.  That is who you are in this world.

The unexpected can weaken our will.  When we are faced with surprises in life we tend towards a brief panic and then a desperate clinging to anything in the vicinity that is familiar.  We cling to our conditioning, to our behaviours, to our beliefs.  To other people.  We must learn not to cling to other people.  That is like a drowning man drowning his rescuer.  We need to learn that life surprises (of the startling variety) all contain learning.  Step back when they happen and see where your instincts take you.  We are forced to use our initiative when dealing with the new.  Initiative is valuable, nurture your nature.

Remember, too, that our will needs to get us through adversity.  It needs to take us through our worst, when it comes.  And it always comes.  The thing to remember is that it always goes.  That come and go, ebb and flow, is life living for you.  Appreciate its miracle.  Appreciate that your worst is only ever as bad as your good is good.  The higher your highs, the lower your lows.  That is equilibrium.

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17 May 2013 · 09:26

Change – Blog No. 39

changeSome of us are bred to embrace change.  Others are afraid.  Change is a remarkable leveller and it should be employed by all of us to prevent our getting complacent.  Complacency is not something to aspire to.  There is a point at which change becomes destructive, however, and so we need to know how to manage its happening.  Try not to make dramatic changes too often.  Rather go at the process slowly, taking time to adjust to whatever it is that is new to you before you take on another set of circumstances.  The same applies to your thinking.  In order to change your thinking – and this is advisable for 2013, the year of new beginnings – you need to go at it slowly.  Expect resistance from your old ideals and thought processes.  Getting your mind to tidy itself up is a challenging task, but one that is worth doing.  If you have help in the shape of a good listener who can assist you with the exorcism of bad memories, make use of their facility.  Open your heart for a moment to someone you can trust with its vulnerabilities.  Bad memories take up a lot of mind space.  They waste a lot of mind space.  Take them out and look at them, then decide how best to dispose of them.  You will never be rid of them entirely, but you can put them into storage once you have worked out their pain.  Do not be afraid to change your mind.  Never be afraid to change your mind.  If it is acceptable for women to be changeable, then it is acceptable for men to be changeable.  This is a world in which we work towards the ideal of equality, is it not?

Imagine changing from a backward-thinker to a forward-planner.  Stranger things have happened.  They say the future belongs to the dreamers.  They are not far wrong.  The dreamers each have a guarantee.  Their futures will happen as they imagine them.  It is the easiest concept to grasp.  Where you put your headspace is where you will find yourself.  You are what you think.  And since you are always becoming – you are always changing.  You cannot escape it.

Let life change you.  The safest way to go forwards (and forwards is a good way to be going) is to be adaptable.  When you can watch life unfolding in front of your eyes and negotiate its rapids as smoothly as you can manage its meanderings, then you know you are being adaptable.  Adaptable is flexible.  When you resist change you block your feng shui.  Any blockage in Nature is a problem.  You must not restrict your own flow.  Let life come to you and take its deliveries with grace, humility.  Then let them go.  Nothing is yours to hold on to.  Feel that you are a part of the flow and know then that you have surrendered to the way of things.  Surrender is good when it lessens stress.  It is not defeat.  Be sure that what you surrender to – if you are able to give yourself up – is worthy of your burdens.  I think Jesus is tired of carrying the load and besides, I do not see that piling your sins on the shoulders of a dead man is in any way helpful to you in the long run.  All the Jesus-believers need to give the guy a break and take accountability for themselves.  That will be hard at first, when you are used to delegating responsibility for your behaviour to God or Jesus.  I wonder what will happen when the bottom falls out of the church?  It will fall.  It is just a matter of time.  I wonder then whether the myriad believers will turn on their priests the way the Jews turned on Jesus?  I think there will be too many questions without answers.  That is the church’s problem now – they have a book of songs to explain life to their children.  How helpful is it in this day and age to be taught from the bible?  It is not helpful.  There are many more reliable sources to use when training the minds of our today-children.

 

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