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.
02 Apr 2013 · 09:31

The Church – Blog No. 28

2013-03-30T022503Z_3_CBRE92S1PDG00_RTROPTP_2_POPEIt has to be said, I am not a happy-clapper.  I am called ‘Catholic’, though I have not had my first holy communion nor have I been confirmed.  I have never sat in a confessional and told on myself.  I have never eaten the bread of Christ or drunk his blood.  I am skeptical about the religion Catholicism.  I am skeptical about the efficacy of the pope.  How can a man of his stature in this day and age be that against gay marriage?  Because it says so in the bible.  The bible is old news.  It adheres only to itself and in our globalising world that is dangerous, and irresponsible.  The bible says if you dare to be gay that you will suffer eternal damnation.  That is why these leaders must spout their nonsense about hell and gaydom.  Who of these leaders has been to the other side?  I would like to ask them that question.  How many gays have they seen burning in hell for their particular practice of passion?  I suspect not one, not really.  That they are condemned is a man-made thing.  The reality is that gays burn on earth.  Still.  And it’s not right.  That those who are gay suffer the prejudice they do bothers me.  Why exactly should you care who somebody else finds appealing?  Male, female – we all search to find that someone with whom we can ultimately be ourselves.  Our best mirror.  This search is constant.  Why should you be minding the business of a woman who chooses to be with another woman because the fit suits her needs better?  All her needs.  Why should it make your blood boil to think of two men in bed?  You should not be bothering so much about thinking of those things.  Let people be.  You do not have to condone every kind of behaviour.  Your personal rules will dictate to you what is not for you.  Let that realisation be enough.  If it is not for you, it is not for you.  It might be everything for someone else.  Be curious about gayness, if you must be something.  Do not be rude.  Who are you in the life of another to tell them where their heart may or may not fall?  The heart is notorious for making its own choices.  Trust your heart’s intelligence.  It fell where it did for a perfect reason.  It falls again, when it is ready.  Let it.

My concern is that the Catholic church is as rich as it is.  Do you have any idea what their property portfolio is like?  It’s obscene.  Do you have any idea the nett worth of the church?  Again, it’s obscene.  I would suggest to them that if they are as samaritan as they like to tell us they are, then they should donate nearly every cent of their revenue to the poor.  It’s about time they gave back.  They need to scale down their opulence; auction the treasures in their troves and sell a handful of their properties – and give the money away.  The church should never run at a profit and more importantly, it should grow itself up and stop trading on fear.  A god who keeps his people in line by threatening their existence is a childish god.  His notion of leading the Jesus-believers is out-dated.  You cannot hold a people in a cage forever on an empty promise.  Whoever believes that the church (and by this I suppose I mean all the churches under the Christian umbrella) is purely a charitable institution is deluded or misinformed.  The church has probably done as much harm as it has good, I think it is important to remember this.  How many honest worlds have the missionaries destroyed with their over-zealous preaching?  A lot.  How many very sick paedophiles did we find hiding under the Catholic shroud?  Too many.  How many Catholic orphanages were run by depraved abusers who acted with impunity?  Too many.  Did we hear from the church a clear condemnation of these people?  No – we heard a watered-down apology for ‘misconduct’ time and again.  In fact I think the Catholic church is one of the best at evading taking responsibility for itself.  Perhaps it needs help.  Perhaps it has never been able to ask for help?  It thinks too much of itself, Christianity.  That is not wise.  But the church is not wise.  It is self-indulgent, inflexible, and it is flawed.  I would like it to see itself for what it is.  I would like it to realise sometime soon that in this world, people go to jail for fraud.

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29 Mar 2013 · 11:13

Life/Death – Blog No. 27

Mother_Nature_by_pincel3dConsider that when your energy moves from this incarnation into another one, your journey continues.  Your starting point is where you left off.  You do not escape your fate.  Each time we leave we take with us our learning and when we return to adopt a new embodiment we face upon our paths further trials that will teach us to respect the mistakes we have made during the cycle of our lifetimes.  Understand that should you be bound back to earth, or choose to return time and again, each time you come back to take human form you commit to a life of learning.  This is no small undertaking.  The only way to extract yourself from this natural cycle is to kill yourself, and the flow of life does not look favourably on those who patently refuse to learn.  Life is not precious about who it teaches, what.  It has plenty to show us, so much to share with us.  You need to connect with your life, open to it, in order to receive its gifts.  If you are closed, you receive nothing.  You receive nothing because you are giving nothing.  Life is an energy, a living force, a history in motion.  We are the sum of our histories, the picture of our pasts.  You are not a snapshot, happening.  You are in continuum.  It is important to remember that life happens for us, not to us.  We should appreciate its show.  Also, know that life is not personal and therefore it should not be taken personally.  Death is not personal, either.  It just is.  When your due day is approaching, you may know about it, you may not.  You should not know exactly your last moment.  That is not for you to know.  Think – if you know about it you are taking big risks.  You are throwing down a gauntlet.  When you take your own life you are stealing breath from Nature’s lungs.  Nature does not like thieves.  She does not understand how a human being cannot honour living by showing trust – no matter how drastic a depression or challenging one’s circumstance.  Hers is the life-force and it does not know how to stop striving to keep us all alive.  Should you cut short her transfusion to you, you will suffer the outcome of that severence.  That outcome is a lonely place to be.  Nature moves on with her business.  She does not loiter in the shadows, begging for alms, pleading her case or yours.  She takes stock and she moves on towards equilibrium.  We should realise that we are all on her path to equilibrium.  Each of us.  We should sit back and happen, watch ourselves act, trust in her guidance, because it is what will get us to the other side.  The other side is where we exist, at perfection.  Each of us.  That place perfection is real.  There are those who have achieved perfection with their lives.  Not many, but there are those.   Utopia does exist.  Living and dying are equally likely to find you a place there.  It just depends how you live, and how you die.  You must be sure when you die that you have all your ducks in a row.  You cannot die with business unfinished.  When you take your life you are taking yourself out of the equation and leaving unfinished business.  Nature does not like unfinished business.  She will insist that you return to pick up your own mess.  No one is in charge of your life, but you.  Nature was in charge of your birth.  She  is in charge of your death. Trust that she knows best your moment to go.  Take that privilege from her and you will find yourself lost on the other side without a ready guide.  That is Nature’s way.   Should you wish to take her on, you will see that she will simply transform you.  She transforms herself, all the time.  To transform us is her job.  She doesn’t take lightly to having her job dictated by humans.  She will collect you when she is ready, not before.

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25 Mar 2013 · 10:00

Say what you mean – Blog No. 26

speak_your_mind_bigThere isn’t time to be misunderstood in this world.  There really isn’t.  Given that time is at a premium for most people it would make sense that when you do communicate you are direct and clear.  That way, when people lend you their ears they will be pleasantly surprised to find that what you have to say is relevant.  Do not speak for the sake of speaking.  There is no greater noise on this planet than senseless words.  Speak because you have something to share, something to ask, or something constructive to say.  It is easier said than done, but keep your empty words to yourself.  Your voice – particularly when it is whining about life – does not reach the ears of the gods.  They hear a different tone.  If the gods do not wish to hear your whining, then it is safe to say that no human being wishes to hear your whining, either.  It is hard some days not to whine.  Understandably.  But your words are so tiring when you drag that feeling of defeat into your every conversation.

Take control of what you tell people.  Moderate your own comments before you make them.  People do not need to know your every negative thought, know that.  There are too many people talking noisily about nothing in this world.  There are too many people following roads that go nowhere, giving a running commentary on their travelling experience.  The true journey only begins when your feet find the right road.  That is when you touch base with something sacred and your commentary becomes relevant.  You will hear yourself clearly when your say-so is from your heart.  Others will hear you clearly, too.  Understand that until the moment – the psychological moment – that your commentary becomes relevant to you, you are confined to the corners of your life.  Speaking from your own periphery is pointless.  Speak directly to – and from – your core.  Realise that sometimes you may surprise yourself with the things you say.  Get used to being forthright, but practice not speaking your every thought.  You are asking someone else to listen when you open your mouth.  That is the way of humans.  Make sure when you ask someone to listen to you, you have something to contribute to their day.  That is the first thing.  Out of respect, do not waste another’s time by whining in their ears.  That makes two of you tired and contributes nothing to either of your lives.  Speak to be understood.  To do that – understand yourself.  Observe yourself without judging your behaviours.  That will bring you a new understanding and a new wisdom that you will find it relevant to share.  Watch yourself change, evolve.  Give yourself permission to grow.  You will find that you do.

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22 Mar 2013 · 12:03

The Wonder of Love – Blog No. 25

love-is-lightChildren must be taught so that they learn to understand love.  This is possibly the single most important task of every adult on this planet.  Love is an art worth studying, and sharing.  It is worth finding and having in your life.  It does not come without compromise and it has numerous side-effects.  Should there be any doubt, know that the side-effects are worth it.  Love is extraordinarily powerful.  It cannot be consumed.  It is ever-present and ongoing.  It is like a phoenix, rising each time from the ashes.  We can love over and over.  We can love everybody in our lives differently.  I do not believe that we love the same each time.  Our love is shaped by the individual we find ourselves connected with.  It is moulded by the children to whom we give life and learning.  The love generated in the 1960’s and 1970’s is still circumnavigating this globe, its waves are still felt in our hemispheres.  That kind of resonance never dies.  We all have a lot to thank free love for.  There was a lot of oxytocin-induced euphoria happening.  Perhaps the permissiveness of that time did not do society’s moral code any good, and that permissiveness bred a contempt – or lack of respect – for one another that it was not possible at the time to express, but that period is punctuated by a big love and for a while that feeling made a real difference in the world.  I believe it changed the arc of man’s path, there were that many believers.  When you have a large sector of the population feeling optimistic and in love with life, life thrives.

Then people became disillusioned, and people are still disillusioned.  That in itself could open an interesting line of enquiry – whether or not it is advisable in the here and now to realise that everything is an illusion?  Perhaps it is wise to accept that we live our illusions.  Must we consider that we became disillusioned because our leaders made too many empty promises, too often?  When mouths and minds speak of nothing then we eventually hear nothing.  That is the way with ears, tongues.  Perhaps we are disillusioned because the scaffolding of this world is taking major strain where its religions are concerned.  We feel like we are living a giant lie since no one – no two parties can agree – what God even is.  If it can be said that we all base our lives on our belief systems then it can be said that what we believe is very relevant.  Each of us.  If we can find common ground with our vision for the future then we can make positive changes happen and relieve some of the strain on the infrastructure, which is ultimately source.  Raw energy.  Most of us take our source for granted and we fail to appreciate that although it does not have a beginning or an end it has limits.  We must respect these limits.  We must put back into the system what is given, always.  It is time.  We must all bend our heads towards mending the planet, the force of collective thought can change this world’s destiny.

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18 Mar 2013 · 08:45

Appreciation – Blog No. 24

untitledAppreciation is different to gratitude.  It’s warmer, deeper.  And it’s more than just a feeling – it’s real goodwill at work.  Gratitude is necessary for your spirit, your soul.  You need to resonate with gratitude for your life because you have given it to yourself.  Respect that.  Keep in mind that no matter how untidy your life has been – and we have all had untidy patches – you have made your way to where you are successfully.  Perhaps not unscathed, or intact, but successfully.  Some of us take the long road, some of us take short-cuts.  Whichever way you choose to live your life remember that you did not undertake its challenges lightly.

When faced with the choice of returning to meet your karma sooner or rather later – for we must all return at some point – you must know what you will decide to do.  That is one question that will be asked of you when you end your days.  Are you the fool – leaping immediately off every precipice into the unknown, or are you the more cautious sort, creeping along in life at a slow, steady never?  Decide.  Hare or the tortoise?  Some of us are adrenalin junkies when it comes to living, we need to take it at pace and move, fluid, with it.  Others will revisit their roles and stay fixed in situ.  Which is better?  Those that stay in their comfort zone will not reach their full potential.  It is that simple.  Respect yourself for putting yourself through what you have.  There is a reason for it.

Life is your teacher.  Your guru.  Love is your guide.  Your compass.  Trust that.  Know that you have a list of experiences written into your script that you must have, and will have.  How you choose to execute these experiences is up to you.  You can immerse yourself in the drama of each one, or you can detach yourself from the tangle.  Both methods work.  You will face the same obstacles time and again – they will just dress differently to keep you on your toes – until you review yourself differently.  That is in your power.  Practice it.  You will do the same things, but with practice you will look at them from a different perspective each time.  That way, you will find solution.  Finding solution – creative solution – is a part of your life’s purpose.

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15 Mar 2013 · 12:03

Inspiration/Expiration – Blog No. 23

inspiration_signInspiration is powerful.  It motivates you to act.  Feeling inspired does not mean sitting dreaming about possibilities.  It means sitting and dreaming, of course, but it means more than that.  It means doing something with the energy generated by your ideas.  Good ideas create good vibes.  Bad ideas do not.  Bad ideas sometimes supercede good ideas.  It happens.  That is because a bad idea is usually disguised as a good idea in the head of the thinker.   It is astounding what you can convince yourself of if you are determined.  Use your inspiration to inspire others.  What greater gift can you give the world?  Inspire your colleagues by being the positive guy.  Inspire your family by being real.  Watching somebody be real is a privilege.  It is a pity we do not do it more often.  It is a good way to show respect for ourselves and regard for another person.

46234_expired_timeExpiration is equally powerful.  It is the opposite of inspiration but it does not feel like it is.  It does not feel like demotivation and it does not feel too much like breathing, either.  To me, it feels like death.  We expire, eventually.  When we have done what we were sent to do on this planet, we die.  Try not to be sentimental about death.  It happens all the time.  There is no point in fearing it.  It is a freedom.  It is a state we should learn to understand better, not dread.  We have become a little too precious about death in the 21st century, despite our being bombarded with terminal facts and figures that defy reason and belief.  Death is in our faces every day.  What we learn is that we are alive, then we are not.  Death is life.  We should not hang on too tightly to the departed – as hard as that can be – we must let them move on without us because our possessiveness hinders their ability to leave this material plane.  Do not cause your loved ones to have to wait forever for you to be over them, because they will wait for as long as you need them.  Let them go forwards.  They have a path that needs travelling, they have their own footprints to find.  They have their own karmas to meet.  Remember that when you are dead you do not feel sad for the living.  You do not feel.  Those of us left behind, feel.  That is life.  If we can realise that being dead is not a punishment, we can evolve.  Dead is simply where you end up after being alive.  How you die is what is important.  We should all aspire to dying in our sleep – that is a treasure unlike any other.

We keep a spirit alive by letting it breathe through us.  Do not be selfish with your breathing.  When you speak of the dead, try to speak of them with love.  It is a good thing for you and it is a good thing for them.  The dead are best pleased to hear words of love.  They are no different to the living.

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11 Mar 2013 · 10:35

Acceptance – Blog No. 22

quote1The wise thing to do when faced with adversity is to accept it.  That is the first thing to do.  After you have accepted it, you can decide how to proceed through it.  Adversity is not averse to confrontation.  Learn to hit back at it.  I think resistance is the most common reaction when it comes to adversity.  Accept that you will resist it.  It’s natural.  Then watch it for a while, work out how best to penetrate its shell.  Adversity always carries heavy armour.  If you can see at the outset how to get beneath this armour then you will save yourself time and you will save yourself pain.  You will expose at its core its purpose – to challenge, strengthen you.  To bring you to a new understanding.  Adversity is a worthy adversary.  If you understand its lesson before it turns your life inside out then you can transcend its negativity.  It’s possible to rise above your trials while they’re happening.  This is a skill you can cultivate and you can put it to good use in your everyday.

Do you tend to your troubles with a dedicated mind or a mind distracted by every other thing?  The problem is when you are distracted by every other thing.  Troubles, when they come, like undivided attention.  It is important, however, that you do not give them undivided attention for too long.  Then they become bigger than they were when they arrived.  The challenge is to keep them from growing and escalating.  It takes mind control and a deep faith in the power you hold over yourself to receive adversity in good faith and prevent it from swallowing you whole.  Do not allow your mind to wander down dark alleyways all day, unsupervised.  Be aware of what you are thinking, when you are thinking it.   Keep the negatives in perspective.  They are a part of your day, that is all.  Do not allow them to be more than a part of your day.

Your mind is particularly helpful when it comes to mapping your actions, if you bother to ask it why it makes you do what you do.  I do believe in mind over matter.  I think the power of the mind should never be underestimated.  Not in adults, and most certainly not in our today-children.  Are you aware how fast their synapses are firing?  Their little brains are eager, ready for their world.  We need to trust that they have evolved, ready.  We need to defer sometimes to their judgement.  This world is theirs to inherit.

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08 Mar 2013 · 10:04

DNA – Blog No. 21

30DNA Studies should be included in primary school curricula.  Imagine the suspense, waiting for the results of who you are to arrive in class.  Every child should contribute a sample of their own DNA and then study his or her heritage.  Each child must learn just how important what makes us up, is.  When you demonstrate to a child who it really is you will see prejudice disappear like magic.  How can you possibly be racist when you discover that in your life chain you have links made of every texture and colour?  I look at black people and wonder how much black is in me.  I wonder how much white is in them.  Coming from Zimbabwe, I have an inherent blackness, my heart belongs at home in Africa.  But I am white.  I have learned that this happens, and it doesn’t matter.  It is how you feel inside that is of consequence.  Until we appreciate properly the resonance of association with others, it seems we will not be able to see beyond the pale.

I think DNA should be on everyone’s minds.  Yours, that of your friends, your family.  For even you and your brother, your sister, are not the same though you share the same DNA.  Its existence is miraculous.  DNA tells our life stories.  All of them.  It tells us of the lives of those that came before we did.  It is a living history.  A certain truth.  I think we learn experience before we live it.  I think it is through watching our parents tackle life that we understand how to be.  This is both a good thing, and a bad thing.  It depends on your role model.  Being that we all play roles in this life, it is vital to realise that you may be someone’s role model.  If you have or had no parents to watch, I think you will adopt the ways of those role models most invasively in your space.  If you feel a love as a child, that is invasive.  If you feel a hatred as a child, that is invasive.  Do not make the mistake of thinking that invasive applies only to a violence.  A child’s space is invaded by many things, much of the time, until it is six.  A child’s retention – its ability to learn – during this time is mind-blowing.  I don’t think respect is a given when it comes to modelling yourself on another.  We emulate others because we respect them, of course.  We also emulate others because they seem to have a power that perhaps we feel we do not have.  We copy what works for them in the hopes that it will work for us, too.  This mimicking is not often a waste of energy, but it is not overly productive.  When something is done 33 times, it becomes a habit.  The same act must be not done 33 times in order to turn this habit around.  Be yourself for 33 days in a row.  No holds barred.  It’s a real challenge.  Imagine spending the next month being completely honest and speaking your mind.  What a relief?  You might be surprised.  Truth is one of those things that a lot of people are not bothering to hear.  They are not deaf, these people, they have just mastered the art of selective hearing.  To penetrate their particular stony silence we need to have something very relevant to say.  Ignorance understands relevance, if nothing else.  I think in a world as self-obsessed as this one we need to prove to people that they are relevant.  We can start by showing them who they are.

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04 Mar 2013 · 09:36

Love/Hate – Blog No. 20

tumblrkwxd3rlAI51qa9utro1500largeFor there to be equilibrium on a universal scale, we need to balance the scales of love and hate.  There is a lot of hate circumnavigating this globe of ours.  There is too much war.  Too many old wars.  I am not speaking about the peace-making efforts of international forces, either.  Their’s is a job and they do it with our welfare in mind.  I don’t think it is easy to be trained to kill another man.  It goes against our very grain.  Ours is the will to live.  Where there is man pitted against man because belief-systems differ, there is war.  War of heart, war of mind.  When you explain to a boy that he will hate another man because of what he stands for, you are taking away his freedom.  When you tell a boy that he has enemies before he has had a chance to explore a life without strife, you are forcing your prejudice down a virgin throat.  It’s abusive.  Why can these violent nations not see what damage they are doing to their own children?  They are systematically crippling generation after generation of boys, men.  The hatred that is cultivated in dark man-corners and passed on proudly from father to son is thwarting the evolution of a lot of males on this planet.  In order to progress, you have to change your thinking.  You cannot escape this reality.  I, for one, am tired of hearing Israel and Palestine bleating about the same grievances they’ve been bleating about for decades.  Their voices are noise, their words, empty.  The fact of the matter is they do not want to find solution – that is the point that should be made.  Why does everyone skirt around this issue?  There is too much deliberate ‘not-offending’ going on in our first-world societies.  Too much lip-service and arse-kissing.  How far do we go with covering up how flawed a lot of belief-systems are?  The men who perpetuate war are behaving like children.  They will all have the last word and they will all have their way in a world that must accommodate everyone.  Did you not hear that we are all entitled to an opinion, as long as we don’t think it’s the only one?  When did anyone on this planet get anywhere worthwhile without compromise?  When you are dealing with real people, you must employ diplomacy and you must be prepared to adjust your opinions.  Compromise means you look at a situation from other sides.  You appreciate that there are people whose ideas are bigger, better, than your own.  You do not hold on to an old rage.  What is the point of that?  The horrors happened, people died.  The point is to prevent the situation from escalating further and the only way to do that is to get these old schools of thought to modify their thinking.

I think the bible is questionable as a life-manual.  It is an interesting metaphor, a vivid story – and the ten commandments are good – but as a work of fact (dare I say truth?)  it fails dismally.  I think too many people take its lessons too literally and this raises questionable expectations of a god, his son, his spirit.

I think the Koran speaks a great truth.  Allah cannot have as many followers as he does without having something truly inspiring to say.  Perhaps their ‘religion’ is timeless, the Muslims.  Their language is fluid, it is evolving and spinning and whirling like a dervish, and their faith is very strong, a feature of their society.  Perhaps we could all learn something from a people who understand devotion.  Do you know how powerful the reach of devotion?

I think it’s time we asked one another what it is that we can do to make amends in this fractured world.  We cannot ignore that we have issues, complex issues of hatred to try and overcome.  I believe they can be overcome.  I believe the amount of hatred directed at the Germans – purely because of the Holocaust – has done a lot of damage to their existing psyches.  It is a form of oppression – the with-holding of love from a people – and a lot of love has been with-held from Germany because of their past.  It is time to move on from their dent in the past.  Rwanda has moved on.  That was a genocide on some scale.  Can you imagine being hacked to death with a machete?  Bodies lining the streets for weeks – piled so high cars had to drive over them to get by?  That kind of horror is as bad – if not worse – than anything done to the Jews during the war.  Can we not accept that there were two bloody great wars and get beyond their reach?  For gods’ sake.  I think god waits for the alarm of peace to sound.   We would all do well to work towards that silence.

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01 Mar 2013 · 12:20

Role-playing – Blog No. 19

Dice and Poker Chips on Game TableConsider yourself a player.   A life-player.  You are one.  You cannot think that life is not a game.  It is an elaborate game of chance.  How exciting is the notion that you can change totally the direction of your everyday by doing one small thing differently?  That is some clout.  Like touching the steering wheel at 220km/h on the autobahn.  The smallest nudge has big implications.  How comfortable are we accepting that we are all role-players?  I think a great many people are either in denial, or are unable to reconcile their own manipulation with themselves.  We are all manipulators.  Every single one of us.  How skilled we are at manipulating is testimony to the teachers we had as children.  We learned from watching our parents manipulate each other.  We learned from being manipulated.  Even as a child you know when you are being manipulated.  It is impossible not to feel coercion.  You can hide from it, or hide it from yourself, but in every exchange you have with another there is some form of manipulation underway.  It’s about wants and needs.  We all want our needs met.  How closely do we pay attention to the needs of others?  Perhaps not closely enough.  But we are all built from the same basic stuff.  In that way we start life equal.  We are all of an egg, a sperm.  But we are equal only at the point before fertilization.  After fertilization it becomes clear how successful our genetic coding is – because we are not genetically equal by any stretch of the imagination.  It depends how far our parents’ bodies had evolved by the time we were conceived.  It depends how good the best of each parent actually was at the time of conception.  We have unique patterns of personality, as individual as our experience of the world.  We are not the same, but we are one.  We are part of the diversity, our thoughts are part of the far-reaching collective unconscious to which we all have access.  We are alone in our perception of the world and alone in our expression thereof, but in each of us is the same driving nature, we all face the same need to self-actualise.  How much time do you spend ruminating on life with the great masters?  You should meet them in your head.  One by one.  They all live there.  You have to learn how to speak each one’s language.  In fact you cannot appreciate your own mother-tongue until you learn another language.  Each language houses a different reality.  We need to share our learning and celebrate our diversity.  We need to take on the roles we create for ourselves and play them to the best of our ability.  There is no coincidence in your being where you find yourself.  You have carved for yourself the niche in which you find yourself confined.  If you are confined, you need to free yourself.  Or you need to be free of yourself.  The self is a great oppressor.  It, too, is an efficient manipulator.  But celebrate that.  It is your choice to benefit from your own experience.  It is your choice to learn who you are and to make yourself stand out by virtue of your understanding of life’s lessons.  You were made to do something.  Find out what it is by seeing where you have sent yourself.

You will find that some of you are more refined than others.  Some of you understand life better.  It depends how emotionally intelligent you are.  You need to foster emotional intelligence.  You bring it up in you, like a child.  You cannot play the life game until you tend to your inner child.  It holds the dice.  You know how powerful the drive of the subconscious when the inner child is in control?  It is something to behold.  That is always something to think about before you switch to auto-pilot.  Let your subconscious speak, but perhaps do not let it act for you.  You can never guarantee the way an encounter with the ego will go.

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