How is it possible I ask you that if there is a choice of organic produce one would choose not to buy it? Considering it was my money spent on these erroneous items my irritation turned into anger (ok sitting in a car for that long didn’t help). And then I thought of a recent and very unpleasant realization I had recently; people simply don’t care.

Being in the industry of changing worlds it goes without saying that I am knowledgeable about a lot of things that effect our body and our environment. But still… surely this understanding is more logic based? Surely people with any modicum of education would know the benefits of eating organic food rather than that which is filled with chemicals? The same chemicals that have been proven to cause Cancer, Parkinsons and other modern diseases?

In my down moments I feel a total hopelessness; I watch people throw rubbish out their cars, speak about others in total ignorance, speak about world affairs in total ignorance, fill their trolleys to the brim and then request the same amount of plastic bags to carry their unnecessaries. I used to think it was a matter of education, surely if people knew of a different way their choices would be different?

Sadly I am beginning to think that it is pure laziness. Pollution, radiation, poisoning and everything else is obvious you don’t need to be taught. People would rather just carry on doing what they always have before.

So how do we shift from past destructive practices into the totally logical place of health for self and planet? I’ll have to come back to you on that one… perhaps it is the starfish way… one at a time.

What was the world population again?

Tweet This Post

And this year has provided ample amounts of drama. Everything seems to be leaving; money, order, relationships, businesses, ethics. That’s the global meltdown for you, but it has only come to pass because individually we’re all having our own private (and sometimes not) little meltdowns.

We are stuck on roller-coasters with no seatbelts and no emergency stops. As we scream on the downhill we look at our fellow passengers screaming along with us but we’re holding on so tight we can’t reach out. Then we have a short breather as we make our inexorable way back up the hill BUT we can’t really enjoy it because we know it’s just the build up to the next gut-wrenching plummet.

Thank god I have a sense of humor; I have no direction, no sense of truth, no idea really… but a horrible little inner voice that comments constantly in the background of my mind. Mostly I find it quite amusing but right now if I could find the little bugger I would ring its neck. Some things just shouldn’t be laughed at and I classify this year as one of them.

And there goes my happy-self whispering again… wait… no I lost it.

Shit I hope I didn’t hurt it’s feelings, come back positive thinking. Come back ability to delude myself. Hello…? Bugger

… and to think I used to enjoy ridding those damn things with my hands in the air… tch tch

Tweet This Post

It means that intrinsically we trust women more than men.

Which is a strange set of circumstances considering that 99% of our cultures treat women as if they cannot be trusted. Women are not trusted to run businesses, warrant an equal salary and many other items including driving a car and being alone with a man. Of course in different cultures these degrees differ but as a whole this is the sad truth.

And yet women birth men, they raise them, teach them, nurture them. They keep families together and therefore are an integral part of a healthy society. By default women have to be trusted.

The question should then be asked who it is that cannot be trusted – those that cannot trust or those that aren’t trusted? What has happened to our most basic animalistic balance of masculine and feminine that exists throughout the natural world? How did this drastic imbalance come to be and how is it to be reversed?

Because it is a matter of reversal rather than evolution. There was a time when man and woman held equal respect within the family and within the community. Where responsibilities where clearly understood and the word ‘trust’ had not yet been invented as there was no inkling that it could be any other way. The vast problems that our world faces today must find its solution within the core:

Balance. Respect. Trust. Empathy. Harmony

Tweet This Post

I will write about how short our memories are. It is only in hardships that we stop and reassess our priorities and values. We make a firm commitment to ‘do things differently’ and ‘never take xyz for granted’. And then a few days or weeks go by and we happily forget our earlier rude awakening and slip back into frivolity.

Perhaps if I write down my convictions I will have a better chance of sticking to them. Here goes:

• I promise to never to take my health for granted again
• I promise to never complain about the little things because the bigger picture is so much more important
• I promise to be grateful for all the resources I have in my life and not moan about what I don’t have
• I promise… to remember to live today and not in a distant future when something different has happened

As I write this I am filled with love, ha ha that sounds funny but it is true. When we pause for just a moment we can glimpse for an instant how seriously cool this world is and how seriously cool we all are. If only we could remember this simple and singular truth.

But we aren’t meant to. We are meant to be faced with challenges and sadness and loss – how else would our indomitable spirits rise to create the wonders that we have? I think human progress would have been halted in its tracks many centuries ago if we weren’t so complex. In trying to figure out reality we have ended up shaping it.

But then again… sometimes shit just happens and this too we must accept.

Tweet This Post

I must say that the trailer for GI.Joe promises wonder. I’ve always had a deep love for anything magical or superhuman and when they get the CGI right heaven itself cannot compare. But still – why are we so entertained with epic battles and horrifying deaths? Every single part of our lives are governed by conflict. We battle our minds, our hearts and our souls. We battle in our relationships. We battle in our jobs. Lately we battle aging.

Countries stockpile weapons in case another country attacks, and then sign treaties to ensure no one actually ever does. I wonder if we would ever be able to live without conflict? And here is the mystery of humanity: we fight against the need to fight. Everyone (ok most everyone) wants peace between man and woman, between the races, between religions, between us and the Earth yet our entertainment has always been violent in nature.

From the gladiator arenas to modern day horror movies and terrorism our evolution has had violence holding our hand every step of the way.

I think perhaps we need to first decide if we actually want to stop fighting, and then maybe we will.

Tweet This Post

I think I may know a part of the answer. I think it is called purpose, or lack thereof. The human being is designed to have purpose, without which we stop functioning so well. Unfortunately there is not much more purpose to be had in our current lives.

We do not need to hunt, to find shelter, to develop tools that will enable us to do this better. In fact there is pretty much nothing else for us to strive for… unless we want to but that is a different thing. We have evolved past the base purpose of survival and now we are kind of just going through the motions. But that does not mean that our very beings are not still crying out to be on purpose.

Enter the terrorist, the extremist, the fanatical, the people with an unshakable purpose. The morals or reasoning behind that said purpose does not matter at all, the point is that they have one. They wake up in the morning and do not have to battle western worries or waste time on decision making. They have one purpose, one goal and their entire beings are tuned into acheiving it. Sorry to say it but that is pure human power at its best.

And what are we fighting them with? With a group of people who have no purpose, who spend time purchasing items that drain their spirit, identity and purse. A group of people who have no real purpose except following the tried and tested path of:

Study hard; find partner; get job; work hard; try for raise; start family; have a braai; buy new car; try hard not to focus on the emptiness inside; take a risk and change jobs; retire.

You know what it is like to look forward to an event, you are energised and can’t wait to wake up to get going and do it! Those are fleeting moments in our lives – but terrorists feel this a lot more often, of course they are successful.

If we want to change the world and stop this extreme violence we should not look to taking away their guns or putting them in jail, we should look to ourselves and how our societies can become on purpose again.

Tweet This Post

Which brings me to this; I am now looking at a future where for the next few (and looooonng) months I am effectively stopped in my tracks, no fun diversions, no exercise to rest my mind, no thoughtless skipping or spontaneous cartwheels (which I obviously do on a daily basis).

So instead of escaping I have to sit, quite literally, and just… be. I have made a living out of teaching people to do just that but now I must practice myself. How utterly irritating.  I am trying to think of the deeper reason why this has happened but honestly couldn’t be bothered.

Most of the western world is dedicated to escaping into busyness rather than just existing in nothingness. I believe it is a survival mechanism, a way to numb the pain. When we are born we are taught to swallow our feelings, do what we have to even if we don’t like it, get along with that person even though we don’t like the way they smell… and all the other conformities that we are moulded into.

And then amusingly enough we reach adulthood and then have to spend thousands on self-help books and programs so we can re-learn who we were when we were born. How odd.

What I also find frustrating is we convince ourselves that we know all there is to know about ‘me’ and all the other inner growth and what-not and then BLAM we skip begin, go straight to jail and don’t collect 200 buckaroos.

And so we do it all again…

It is a rainy evening, I’m trying to practice self-love to my naughty right leg and now I’m off to look at old photos where I was what I thought I was… or doing what made me happy… or something… have I lost my ‘ness’? Mmmmmmmm

Tweet This Post

As every manifest thing in our world is a product of our origin, it stands to reason that we will unconsciously (although this is scientifically and metaphysically the wrong word to use) replicate or mirror our original programming. And that programming or knowledge is that we are all one.

To wrap your head around that you could imagine a painting of a landscape; there are the pretty clouds, the swaying trees, the rolling hills – and it is all flat and connected. The colours and brush strokes may create the illusion of separate objects but you could run your hand from one side of the canvas to the other and see that it is one item.

Although we have different bodies with clearly defined boundaries that seperates us not only from one another but also from the chair we sit on, the car we drive and the food we eat – we are really one. Hard to fathom but important to grasp.

Anyway I’m trying to talk about advertising, one of my favourite industries that gives me endless amusement. You see when you begin to look at the world through different eyes, when you begin to look at all the creations we have come up with and see it not as another part of humdrum life, but rather as a manifest representation, life becomes a lot less harmful and a lot more enjoyable.

Advertising: you could see it as a multi-billion dollar industry, connecting people with the products, solutions, knowledge, clients, money, choices… that we all need to survive.

OR you could translate this great industry and look at it like it really is…

“Look at me! Wow what are you doing? That’s pretty cool but look what I’m doing now! Did you hear about what was happening over on that energy matrix? Look who I’m becoming! Oooooooo I like that expression how can I express that too?….

Newspapers, magazines, social networking, billboards, sales… it’s all a way of communicating all the trillions of different parts of the one energy to the other trillions of parts.

Pretty cool… at least I think so.

Tweet This Post

And every living thing whether tangible or not is both a product of and slave to these laws. Tangible things like falling cannon balls and intangible things like… love.

So if love is subject to the kindly law of duality then love itself cannot be love? Because the opposite expression of love is absence of love, apathy or at the very least dislike. That is duality.

We can see this concept play itself out… heartbreak, loneliness, sadness… all aspects lacking in love, or perhaps the other side of love. Because these emotions would not exist if first there was not love felt.

Is this the secret of our world calamities? That we are forever trapped within the seesaw of dual love? But that makes no sense; love is supposed to transcend universal law, love is supposed to be the very glue from which these laws were created.

World change has happened from great acts of love – think of Gandhi, Mother Theresa, forgiveness of great wrongs, a hand held out to help a helpless heart. Yes love can change the world. But what is the price?
To experience love and the (I hate to say it) heartbreaking beauty that it brings, must we too live with the other kind of heartbreak?

Our lives are based on love, our arts, our entertainment, our relaxation, our discovery of ourselves, our basic need to reproduce – it is all love. So is this same force our destroyer as well as our savior?

Tweet This Post

But how do you define evil? How do you define good? Is the man who has experienced no hardship and lives life with a sunny disposition and a willing hand labeled as ‘good’? And the man born on the streets, forced into survival from childhood and steals for a living ‘evil’?

At what point is a human being (to borrow from the bible) absolved for his behavior in relation to his history? When is the time allocated that society casts down judgment?

One can argue that certain acts are evil beyond debate: animal cruelty, child abuse, torture. Yes yes and yes I agree. But still… is anyone ever born with an inbuilt capacity to carry out these acts? That I cannot agree with.

What I think is closer to the truth is people are born into a world already rife with appalling situations and are not given the resources or opportunities to cope. They become trapped in a survival eat-or-be-eaten reality and so the cycle of ‘evil’ becomes a self-perpetuating system.

But did evil in an independent form ever exist? I do not believe so.  I believe that the horrors our world experiences are based from our inability to… well… be human. We have existed for thousands of years and still we don’t know who we are, why we are here and worst of all – how to actually be ourselves.

We are at constant war within ourselves; mind versus heart versus soul. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. We are at war within those parameters as well, plagued by thoughts that contradict, fears that overwhelm, decisions that are regretted.

The truth is that we have absolutely no idea what we are doing and it shows. Should we have pity for those who have become lost in this turmoil and react in terrible ways? Or do we condemn them for reflecting back to us our own pain that we diligently try to hide away.

Because if evil exists we must face that reality within our selves. There is nothing alive today that is not allowed, promoted or sanctioned by each and every one of us. How much easier to point the finger of retribution at those who live their confusion and pain on their sleeve, than to ask ourselves how we have not put in the effort to change a world that gives such pain.

Tweet This Post

I enjoyed this particular scam as this guy obviously did his homework. There are no spelling mistakes, the grammar is more than passable, and there is even a link to the real story on BBC. Clearly he has some intelligence. Oh! And his email address doesn’t have 20 nonsensical characters.

What strikes me as funny is that he would probably do well in a job, perhaps in the creative department of a marketing company, or better yet in a creative accounting position. So is it just laziness that has spawned this career choice? Although I am an upstanding citizen who pays tax, works beyond the required daily hours and slows down when I see speed cameras – there is a part of me who think these modern day con artists are pretty cool.

I chuckle to imagine them sitting behind their 1980 computers amidst half drunk beer bottles and moldy pizza boxes eagerly thinking up their next scam. What gets me laughing is the look on their face when they actually catch someone. That one moment of shock immediately replaced with glee must surely be enough to keep them hungry over the next few months whilst they try for the next ignorant.

The question of what one invention defined modern man? Fire, iron, sliced bread… nothing compares to the creation of Marketing. We live and breathe on what we are told will make us rich, pretty, powerful, fulfilled, wanted… and never once question the truth that we are all suckers waiting for the bait that will deposit us ungracefully back onto our behinds.

But then a new solution is presented to us on a glossy cover or sitting meekly in our inbox that promises instant relief of all our woes. What a truly accommodating world we live in.

Tweet This Post

What am I getting at? I genuinely believe that us humans are only able to conceptualize (and therefore empathize) with numbers that range under 20. Every single day thousands (probably closer to millions) suffer unbelievably. From rape to starvation to child labour to child abuse to murder to genocide. And the world does nothing.

And yet 5 people die in a freak flood, or 1 child is supported out of cancer, or 2 soldiers are killed – and the world wakes up and cries out in anguish or anger. My favourite comedian Eddie Izzard once said that it is ok for people to kill their own people and the world politely turns aside. But if a people start killing outside of their geographic boundaries or race – well then! That is just not ok and the world will respond with sanctions or war.

Do we box these figures to protect our own ability to cope? Or are our minds just not evolved enough to include such a big sphere into our personal environment? Does mob consciousness take over whereby the victims become one big nameless and faceless statistic that we cannot identify with?

I don’t know. But perhaps if we started lifting our eyes from the ground to really look at each face that resides behind the statistics our world would improve just a fraction more (by no more than 20 decimal points of course)

Tweet This Post