Fourth Form of Madness

My nanna was a woman of god, a true devotee. She didn’t swear, instead she used words like “pussycat” or “jumper” when something made her cross, which was usually when she dropped a stitch in her knitting. I loved being babysat by her and Poppa, they used to surprise my brother and I with new Abba records and Nanna used to play the piano whilst we would try to warble along the best way we could, killing every note with little mercy. At night, tucked up alongside her, Nanna used to sneakily trick me into falling asleep by playing her “Who can be quietest for the longest” game. I fell for it every time, and was soon slumbering in peace as I’m guessing so was she. Most of all I remember her stories she would tell me, now I recognise them as always having moral substance, a code to live by, but at the time I just loved listening to her voice and the tales.

My Nanna suffered greatly though out her life with mental afflictions that although labelled many names were never cured. These bouts of illness would last many years at a time, with long stays in institutions, many bouts of shock treatment and copious amounts of medications. Without being to Pollyanna about it, these were dark times full of suffering, but they were also times filled with something else. Being a young girl and then woman watching her beloved Nanna endure this suffering was difficult but it also at the same time filled me with so much respect and awe for this gentle and kind lady who had the resilience, strength and courage to come back time and time again from the brink of desolation always with her love of god intact.

One such time occurred when I was in my late twenties, Nanna had been in a catatonic state in an institution for over six months. I would visit with my mother and watch as my mother lovingly spooned food into her mother-in-law’s mouth that more often than not dribbled out. This feeding ritual during this phase taught me so much about the beauty of duty, much more than Kant could ever dream of portraying in his words. Truly this time it seemed the Nanna we knew was lost to us and we were being advised that this might very well be the case. Fast forward two weeks and I am taking Poppa to visit Nanna, My Poppa was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s at this point so his conversation could be a bit random which made for many an interesting moment. I had spent the journey trying to in still in Poppa not to expect to much from Nanna and that she wouldn’t actually be talking to us today. You should never make predictions about life. There we were walking to the visiting room, when I realised that the very talkative women I was staring at being wheeled down the hallway towards me was none other than my Nanna . Admittedly she did think Poppa was her brother and she kept calling me Lorraine but on the other hand Poppa kept calling me Denise and thought we were still in war times just before he left for it. As I sat there mulling over the flimsiness of identity and reality, and marvelling at my Nanna’s ability to bounce back from oblivion, Nanna started asking about church timetables and I knew she was truly back!

In the later years of my Nanna’s life she required constant care in a nursing home. Years on assorted medications had affected her kidneys so all medications had to be stopped. For most of the last five years of her life, she slept, waking occasionally throughout the week to take minimum food and liquids. Nanna was around 40kgs and suffering. When I visited most often than not she was asleep but always crying out in her slumber so I was concerned with what mental state and mental trials she might be enduring. On the occasions I visited and she was awake, she was always in a state of anxiety and confusion, which I soon learnt could be settled by reading to her from the Bible. I read, she would become subdued and contemplative and usually say something reflective about the passage. There were times I tried to sneak in Buddhist readings and other spiritual texts, at which she would listen politely and then say “Could you read to me from the Bible dear”, I guess Nan had her favourites. On one visit where she was asleep one of the carers told me that Nanna would often awake from days on end of being asleep to say to whoever was in the room “Do you know God?” with so much authority that people were afraid to say if they were atheists. This kept me chuckling for quite some time on the journey home.

I was asked to give a eulogy at my Nan’s funeral. I tried to portray what a remarkable woman of god and all the things she taught me through the living of her life but at the end of the day, words are words – it is through the living of all experiences that understanding comes. I don’t think I have known anyone, in the flesh, with more resilience than her, more acceptance of the way life is. But I guess above all, I look at my Nanna as an incredible story of love. After all she endured, and it was vast and horrific, she loved god/ life, just the way it was, over and over again.

Maybe a year or two ago late one Saturday evening on SBS they showed a very moving documentary about Chiune Sugihara. At the time, I had no idea who he was, and as I sat there half dozing and trying to make my mind up whether I should go to bed or not, a most amazing story began to unfold. Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who had worked in the Vice-Consulte office for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania during World War II. He was a regular kind of guy, not an extraordinary scholar or talented athlete or displaying any superstar qualities. It was Sugihara’s actions, his courage even in the face of real danger and adversity, that shone a light on his inner talents.

Whilst working at his post in Lithuania between 18 July to 28 August 1940, Sugihara came into contact with thousands of Jewish refugees all wanting to find a way out of the country. He realised that these applicants were in real danger if they were unable to leave Lithuania. Sugihara’s orders were to only grant Japanese visa’s to individuals who had gone through the proper immigration channels, had enough funds to pay for the visas and had a visa to another destination following Japan. Criteria which could not be met by many of the Jewish refugees. Sugihara could not deny the suffering being experienced by the Jewish people and even though he was going in direct violation of his orders, started issue Japanese 10 day transit visas to as many Jewish refugees as he could, often spending 18 to 20 hours a day on this task and often issuing up to a month’s worth of visas in a day. On the last night at his post, there are reports that he stayed up all night with his wife writing out visas and that that he kept writing them right up until the time he was put on a train and threw them out the window to the Jewish refugees all the while asking for forgiveness for not being able to do more. It is estimated that through his courageous actions he saved approximately 6,000 lives, more if you then count the future generations that were able to be born from these saved lives.

There were consequences for Sugihara and his family for his actions. Sugihara was asked to resign from his job at the Japanese foreign office in 1947 under the guise of “downsizing” but Sugihara’s wife insists it was really due to the incident in Lithuania. To make ends meet, Sugihara did a series of menial jobs and then a 16 year stint in the Soviet Union away from his family. Sixteen years of not being involved in the day to day life of your family must indeed be a hard thing to do.

In 1968 a Jewish beneficiary of Sugihara working at the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo finally located SuGgihara and he went to Israel and met with the Israeli government. In 1985 he was granted the honour of Righteous among the Nations and he was given, along with all his descendants, perpetual Israeli citizenship. As Sugihara was to ill to travel to Israel at that time, his wife went in his place to accept the honour. As part of the ceremony, the descendants of those that Sugihara had saved were allowed to express their thanks to Mrs Sugihara. There she sat in a chair in a big room as hundreds of Jewish people one by one emotionally thanked her for her husband’s bravery and courage. It was one of the most moving pieces of television I had ever watched and one of the most powerful.

So why did Sugihara do it? What made him risk hardship and persecution not only for him but his family to save others? What made him go against his specific orders? When asked this question Sugihara replied something along the lines of “…because it was the right thing to do…….it is never a bad thing to save people’s lives”. I agree. But the interesting point here is at the time, it was common society practice to ignore the suffering of the Jewish people and not to help them but Sugihara went against this at his own personal risk and to me, this makes him a hero.

If we look around at the people that have become heroes today we do see an over representation of movie stars, singers and sports people being idolised by press and people. These are talented people, no argument there but often they are not the people that one wants to be modelling their moral code on. Imagine asking for guidance on moral courage from Arnold Schwarzenegger or ethical advice from Donald Trump. These people appeal to the aesthetics and this is important. Those people that appeal to our sense of the ethical are also important but those people that are able to go beyond both and take a leap for something that lies outside what the status quo is saying, appeal to something higher and eternal that exists in all of us. These type of rule breakers, in my way of thinking, are the real heroes that show all of us the way.

Recently as I was flicking through newsfeed on Facebook I saw a posting by one of my friends, Buddhist Boot Camp, that really caught my attention. The entry said “May we close the gap between what we believe and how we act in the world”. Simple yet so effective if put into practice. So for the last few weeks I’ve been trying to at least notice the gap between my beliefs and how I act in the world and boy sometimes that gap is wider than the Grand Canyon!

Take for example my belief that alcohol is detrimental to your wellbeing. I truly believe this, however, give me just a whiff of of a cocktail and it’s goodbye beliefs and hello hangover more times than I care to remember. I’ve realised that my belief that you should cause no harm to any being could also do with a little bit of a workout particularly when I am at work. Let’s face it, work is often frustrating and usually a hotpot of simmering egos but that is no reason to voice your negative opinion about someone’s capabilities no matter how rude or clueless they appear to be. Best to take a breath, delete the career limiting email you are about to send them and go raid the lolly drawer. Okay scrap the last step but the last two suggestions remain solid.

Then there is my belief that relationships are the most important thing in life, the relationship you have with yourself and with others. Truly this has been my favourite mantra since I was about five. Lovely, I should get it on a t-shirt but first perhaps I should start acting like I mean it. There have been times in my life that I have focussed on everything else other than the state of my relationships, particularly the one with myself. This was definitely to my detriment. Even now I catch myself texting when I am talking to people on the phone vaguely managing to say “arh ha” at approximately the right interval without really having a clue what they are talking about (of course any friends or family reading this, I never have done this to “you” – hee hee). In the past, I’ve forgotten birthdays, promises and key events. These have all been because I just genuinely didn’t pay enough attention or care to the people that meant the most to me. And for each and every one of these oversights I sincerely apologise.

Luckily a major step in all behaviour change is awareness, so becoming aware of the gap between your beliefs and your behaviour in the world puts you one step closer to closing the gap. Why bother? What could be better than living authentically! Living your truth via the use of right thought, right words, right action. That is your thoughts, match your words which match your action. Oh the bliss of equilibrium. Look at nature or even your own bodies, everything is seeking a state of equilibrium. Why shouldn’t the natural state, the optimal state, of your beliefs and actions, not be a state of equilibrium?

Anyway that’s some food for thought. May you all enjoy your weeks and remember to “Mind the Gap” 🙂

I have always been a bit of a loner. I guess I have always loved my own space and my own quiet. Then I started yoga and started to really like practicing in a group, a community. To be part of something collectively, even if you don’t know the person next to you or behind you, expands your experience as a being and like any ritual, heightens your consciousnesses. To me, yoga is ritualistic and the world certainly needs a good ritual to link us all with what is important. Just like a call to pray, saying hail mary’s or chanting mantra, yoga focuses our mind, lifts us up out of the mundane (mindlessness) and gently places us at the feet of the sublime. In class you get to go there together, lifting each other up in a supportive network of devotion (and admittedly a little sweat :-)).

When I was practicing ashtanga, I fell head over heels in love with the silence of the practice. There you were surrounded by others a hands reach away as you flowed through your silent practice. There was always the gentle sounds of collective ujjayi breathing, which always lulled me into a state of absolute calm. A whoosh and the occasional swoosh is all that you heard of your fellow yogis as they moved their bodies into the shapes encouraged by an asana. When my shoulder first started hurting, I still attended morning practice for a while and did restorative up the back. One day I was practicing pranayama I just stopped and looked at all the beautiful shapes that were being formed around me by people’s bodies. As I watched it was like the bodies were writing a beautiful poem all around the room and I felt lucky to be living in world that had such beautiful poetry close at hand.

Another group practice that still remains close to my heart I experienced when doing a land crossing between Tibet and Nepal. Now crossing Tibet had been quite the adventure. We had unfortunately or fortunately chosen to travel with two of the angriest tourists ever travelling, not good when you are going to be in a 4wd drive together for 10 days. Anyone that thinks it is okay to spit on, physically fight with and throw money in the face of a Tibetan needs to be doing some serious work on themselves. The whole trip crescendoed with them trying to get our driver sacked because basically they didn’t like him because he wouldn’t do their unreasonable requests. This resulted in him trying to drive off to the border without the two of them in the car. My hubby and I did not speak Tibetan but we did our best to talk him down even though an insy winsy little bit of us kind of wanted him to keep going. In the end, he stopped the car, let the other two back in begrudging and we made our way to the Nepalese border on a wave of high drama.

Once at the border both hubby and I were too frazzled to walk the however many miles it was through the no-man’s land to Nepal, so we decided to catch a ride with the locals in the back of a big bouncy truck with hardly any barrier keeping us in. It was packed with people and I managed to sit fairly close to the edge of the truck. I was a little afraid I was going to bounce right out of the truck but then this amazing thing happened. All the people surrounding me all laid a hand on me and held onto me so I wouldn’t fall out of the truck. I felt their warmth, I felt their support and I felt that I had never been more close to life than at that moment. We rode like that for about 30 minutes, laughing and trying to understand each other with what ever common words we could find. One lady took the opportunity to read my future from my body and told me “You are very, very, very, very, very lucky”!!! More people promptly put their hands on me and started rubbing me for luck. I felt like I had come from such a harsh and argumentative 4wd drive environment to one full of love and support and full of gracious people and at that time it was exactly what I needed. I ended that journey feeling very nurtured and cherished and blessed to have fallen into the hands of such giving and beautiful people.

It’s great to know loneliness and to make it a friend but equally great is being part of a group a community that works towards creating something collectively. The group where each individual is equal and travelling on their own journey yet acknowledges that their journey is for everyone, reaches it pinnacle of existence. This group has the ability to place a hand on each individual and hold them in the truck on the bouncy, unpredictable ride of life. In this balanced state, life is bliss!

Sometimes life seems to be full of questions? From the moment we are born we are set on a path of deciding what to study, what religion to follow, what career to pursue and on and on ad nauseum. Now I am no great scholar but what I have noticed through all the philosophy text I have read, whether it be eastern or western, is that there seems to be a few big questions that are always getting asked and examined. They are essentially;

What am I?
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What’s the bigger picture all about?

Essentially these four questions (albeit slightly differing versions) have been asked for over thousands of years and I believe will continue to get contemplated well into the future as whilst each of us may reach answers to these questions for ourselves, there never will be any confirmation as to whether you are absolutely right (although there will be thousands of people that try and convince you otherwise). It is our birth right to ask these questions and all of us in our own way steps up and accepts this birth right.

I am particularly indebted to questions of this nature because for me they were my safety net when thinks got particularly dark a few years back. For me when I started my yoga journey I immediately fell in love with the Oneness theory. Loved it, embraced it but struggled to really feel it for my fellow beings. As I have learnt on this journey, you can’t force these things, they will come of their own accord every single time. It was through contemplation of these questions that I began to see the true common thread of humanity emerge – we all have these questions to answer, we all have these questions as a common thread running through us and our contemplation and experience of trying to search for the answer to these pivotal questions are what join us. Through this commonality a great compassion can be born and nurtured for all.

So why the most often socially asked questions might be “What do you do for a living?” and “where do you live?”, these will not be the questions that are remembered of you or are important about you. For the important questions are the ones you ask inside yourself and of yourself, even if you never find out if you were right!

My favourite kind of learning (aka unlearning) is the type that happens when you not even thinking of it or focusing on it, not asking for it so to speak. When I first started hot yoga I wasn’t a great big fan. I don’t really like the heat, which is not good when you live in one of the hottest parts of the world, but I endured it. To be honest that is what I felt I did for a long time with hot yoga, I endured it but it was quite the mental exercise. As I sat and watched all these negative thoughts parade around my existence, I suddenly kind of got it! I began to see that this is what I have been doing with life in some way, enduring it, bearing it whilst all the while carrying around all these negative beliefs. When people are asked how they want to live their life you don’t hear them usually respond “I want to endure it’. So why was I?

This was the tricky part, why was I doing this? Hot yoga helped me out again with a bit of a visual aid, my legs in shorts of all things. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with weight issues. When I was growing up, I was always the kid that got called “fatso” or “blubber ball”. I thought I was beautiful but then I was a kid what would I know :-). I was put on diets and encouraged to be like everyone else. Fast forward a few years to sweet sixteen and it turns out to be not so sweet with one of my nannas dying of cancer, my aunty dying of breast cancer and my other nanna suffering a major bout of mental illness. I spiralled into an out of control eating disorder, which ironically at the time, I think I started to actually feel like I could gain some control over my life. There are many rabbit holes we can all fall into as we navigate mind, this is a particularly deep and unpleasant hole. I spent many years of living the mental agony that is anorexia, and it was during this period I taught myself, and unfortunately I’m a good learner, that life was to be endured.

Then today in hot yoga, I found myself in down dog looking at my bare legs as I was wearing shorts. Hot yoga has brought me to shorts due to the heat. Now I try never to wear shorts in public, even in my uber skinny mysore days, I rarely wore shorts as I have loads of dimples and lumps and bumps for going from a larger size down to a littler size all to quickly. My thinking was along the lines “I can’t wear shorts, I’m not skinny enough, I have lumps and bumps”. But here I was staring at the two most gorgeous dimply, lumpy, bumpy legs in creation and I felt so in love with myself that I was starting to wonder if I had hung upside down for far too long. However, back in an upright position, settling in for a nice, still meditation helped along by staring out of the window at nature, one of my favourite friends, I suddenly get as my mantra “Let yourself be magnificent”. Well this is new. I never have used a mantra like this before. So I give it a go and it suits me really well. I feel so at ease there in my shorts and my dimples and I start to feel that at any point in the past I could have felt this way, it is just that I have chosen now.

Afterwards, as I am reflecting on the class and this new found love for my legs (and the rest of me and life) I realised that for a long time I had held the belief that life must be perfect, that nothing bad or more aptly put, life-like, must be happening to you in order to be able to love your life, to love yourself and to quite literally shine. Clearly this belief was wrong and as I relish in my new magnificence, I send a pray of gratitude for this wonderful lesson of unlearning and to my teacher, that through her wisdom, brought us the hot yoga experience.

I worked late this week and decided to treat myself to a taxi instead of the bus on the last 15 mins of the journey. I love taxi rides. When I was working in the stockbroking industry I got to take a lot of them and got to meet some really cool people with wonderful life stories to tell. I can honestly say some of the best advice I have received has been from taxi drivers. I have been told “to hold my truth in life even when it is no-one else’s” by one powerful yet gentle woman driver and that the one thing you can guarantee in life “is the vast space” from one very mystic driver that seemed to know a good deal about yoga and could stop your heart with his intense stare not to mention his laugh.

However, my personal favourite will always be a very well dressed Indian mini cab driver who literally appeared out of no-where when I was 21 and down and out in London. There I was lamenting in my head about all the woes in my life in the back seat of a brand new Mercedes (yes I know I had never been in a mini cab that was so plush, usually they were all ready for the pits). He proceeded to chat about the beauty of life and his many daughters and in between all this told me “to know your own power that is all that is asked of any of us”. Somewhere in the rapture of his words, I remembered I needed to go to the cash teller (this was the days before Visa and eftpos in taxis). Upon hearing I didn’t have enough money to get me to my house he answered “Don’t worry, I will always get you home when you come with me, you don’t need money”. His words seemed to hang in the air and have always stayed with me. When he dropped me at my flat I remember standing in the middle of the road for about 5 minutes just watching the taxi drive out of view and feeling like something really important had just happened although I wasn’t really sure what it was.

So here I was 2 days ago flopping into a taxi after a long day at work. A storm was brewing and there was that amazing energy you feel in the air before the lightening starts cracking. I turn to my taxi driver and am struck with what a kind and joyous face he has, clearly this man loves life. Then he starts talking in his eastern european accent and randomly smiling at me from the corner of his mouth, I am already in love with his spirit. Life has been tough for him over the last few years as he struggled to keep his taxi business afloat. The only reason he has done it is to ensure that his son would have a job but now all the taxi driver’s money was gone and he couldn’t keep going this way. This man I guessed was about 60, as I listened I felt my stomach register fear, fear for him and fear of that situation. I needed hadn’t bothered. In the next breath he is talking me through how one day he thought “I can’t continue this path for much longer, I need to create an alternative for myself”. So he did, he had for the last few years being studying various safety courses. He walked me through his 5 year plan and how he anticipated, that after getting a job in the safety industry, would study part time at uni to get a degree qualification. I didn’t doubt a word of it. I couldn’t help admiring how throughout his whole story this man was smiling and joyous and excited about life. I just beamed at him with awe and sent a silent thank you out to the universe that I should be so lucky to spent some time with such a beautiful and powerful being. And he was powerful, as I listened I heard a person that did not rely on the outside to tell him what he could and couldn’t do but trusted his own self and instinct to create his life and his experience of it. Talk about knowing your power, this gentle man reminded me how powerful creativity is and how it opens up a person and their life. I can’t wait until my next taxi journey!

My husband is a bit of a fitness freak! Love him dearly but sometimes even I shake my head and wonder what planet he came from. Like the times when he decides to cycle 20kms to bjj training, do not one but two sessions, and then cycle 20kms home, all on days that would be best spent in the pool with with a cocktail in hand. However, this week I have been very grateful for his fitness expertise as I have commenced, under his very mindful and slightly amused eye, a morning kettle bell routine.

Now it doesn’t look hard and only involves a smallish looking 8 kg kettle bell but oh my what a workout! A day before the official start hubby and I assembled in the makeshift gym in our house otherwise known as the lounge room. He proceeds to give me a demonstration of the 4 exercises I will be doing in my 4 minute (yes you read right 4 minutes but trust me people it feels like 30 mins). I proceed to break out into girly laughter as I realise how hot my husband is when he is in his earnest instructor mood whilst at the same time making a mental note to check out how many girls attend his fitness classes he sometimes gives at bjj. After establishing that I am “such a child”, hubby advises me it is my turn. I pick up the kettle bell, apparently totally incorrectly, and after ripping half my lower back, proceed to rip the remaining half as I kettle swing away.

Surviving that experience, it was on to exercise number two – one handed kettle swings. From the onset I didn’t feel confident about this one but not wanting to disappoint, I bent properly this time and picked the little bugger up (my affectionate name for the kettle bell) with my left hand. I gave it the best swing I could give but things did not feel well in my elbow and I was a little bit afraid I might let go of the thing mid swing and end up with a nice new window into our garage. We decided that this exercise clearly was not in my reach at this moment. As it turned out neither was the third. What hubby had made look so easier actually turned out to be incredibly hard.

This left me with deep squats, yay cause I really can’t get enough of those things particularly when I am holding an 8kg kettle bell and having to put my elbows inside my knees. Who thinks up these exercises, I would like to meet them and give them a big dose of Prozac because clearly they are suffering from severe depression to want the body to go through so much pain. Anyway dramatics aside, I am proud to say that 3 times this week (hubby thought it was best to start at 3 sessions a week until I am conditioned, but secretly I think it is until he is conditioned to my moaning and protesting) I have ploughed through my routine. Come the 3rd one I felt like Rocky Balboa and was looking for stairs to run up and down whilst humming the Rocky theme, until I caught sight of myself in my shortie pjs and dishevelled hair and thought it best for the world if I just hit the showers.

So onwards and upwards with week two looming…….who knows I might even built a few muscles and actually be able to do the other two exercises….anything is possible I guess with such a hot instructor to impress!

You could really bend yourself out of shape with trying to work out what is beauty. Seriously give it a go. Are we talking about physical beauty, or spiritual beauty? Is beauty universal or do we trust the saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder?”. Is it all about aesthetic beauty or is there something deeper. I like to work with these starting thoughts sometime. I can not say I know for sure what beauty is by definition but I certainly know when I am in its presence.

It may be different for everybody but to me the most beautiful thing in the world is kindness. My definition of kindness may be a little different from others or it may be the same. I find the kindness that reduces me to a humble piece of jelly is usually always linked with courage. The two seem to hang out together often and I think as kindness is a choice, and choices so often require courage, they thrive in each others company. I have a friend that cries if she sees anything sad about dogs, in fact, I have, in the past, read books before her so I could tell her that nothing bad happened to the dog and it is safe to read. I know how she feels. If I am in the presence of true kindness I am always reduced to a quivering crying mess not worthy of a beauty so great.

I find the real kindness that levels me is the sort that is done without anything to be gained by the person doing the act. I remember one such act when I was 17 and had just finished my year 12 exams. One of my father’s good friends had just passed away suddenly due to a massive heart attack. His wife, who was a teacher, and who had been devastated by the loss, had happened to see my name in the newspaper regarding the exam results a week later. Even with all that she was enduring, she brought me a card and a congratulation gift and dropped it off at my home. When I got home later that day with my high school sweetheart in tow, I was blown away to find the gift and card waiting for me. As I read the card and her kind and supportive words of encouragement, my thoughts were with her loss and her pain. How had she managed to rise above all that to think of someone else, to offer such beautiful words about life? I couldn’t stop crying tears that seemed to come straight from my heart much to the astonishment of boyfriend and mother who kept saying “I thought you would be happy”.

Why indeed are some people so selflessly kind? Is it a strong sense of who they are? A strong sense of what is intrinsically the way to live? Is it a lack of ego? This question has intrigued me for a while and I have studied several public people as case studies, perhaps one of my favourites being Gandhi. By far the Gandhi story that touches me the most occurred well before he was the “Gandhi” we all know today. He was a lawyer living in South Africa and he had boarded a train to go to work and had taken a seat. This was the time of apartheid and only “white” skins were allowed to take seats. The train conductors advised him that he must move, Gandhi was astonished and remained seated. They repeated their commands to move. Something in Gandhi that day stayed grounded and refused to obey their authority. He realised that even though the whole train was staring at him and he was about to get beaten, he would not move, could not move as it was a matter of principle, of equality and not just his but for all South Africans, for all people that weren’t being treated equally. He did get beaten and humiliated and he did suffer injury to his body, but I am guessing that his soul was just fine and was just starting to find its true strength. That day Gandhi chose more than not moving for his own well being, he chose not to give up his seat as an act of kindness towards all those that were being denied one. Such acts of kindness don’t get more beautiful than that!

A few years back I became fascinated with instinct. I had watched a show on various insect instinct and had became intrigued with how, for example, a certain type of moth knew to automatically eat the egg it was hatching from the second it broke free. Science had found that if it didn’t do this, it would die minutes after birth, but science had not been able to find out how the moth knew to dine on this egg meal first and fore most without any instruction from any other being. Some people might easily dismiss this wonder of the world with the words “That’s just instinct, they know to do this”. Such wonderful tautological replies do much to kill the wonder of the natural world and little to expand our exploration of the unknown. Whilst we may never know the unknown we shouldn’t stop exploring it playground.

To let your mind go where it doesn’t ordinarily go in the course of a normal day (or at least my day :-)). To stop in-between remembering your shopping list, rehashing the argument with said loved one, wondering how you are going to get everything you need to get done completed, and to really notice something in your environment, anything, be it a flower, a crack in the pavement, the sky, the ocean. To just look and notice the absolute wonder it really is, just as it is. Even to contemplate the marvel of it’s beginnings, and how it came to be, even if you will never know. I believe this helps open us all up to all kinds of wonder. Allowing us the possibility of never having to give an answer, never having to get a tick in that box of understanding that the masses so often demand, is liberating and a kind of “final frontier” that the soul thirsts to explore.

Some time back, someone advised me that all the wonders of the world and ourselves are already ours, we don’t even need to ask for them. However, we do need to work for them, in an indirect way. There are many ways and many different kinds of work as there are people. What is right for one, might not be the way for another. The only guide is instinct, and it has to be your own, not projected onto you by others. We all have instinct, whether we have learnt to feel it and listen to it or not, it is there. This means everyone has a shot at the wonders of the world and knowing themselves. You can’t get a more built in equality than that! I believe in that kind of equality instinctively.