image: hackdaddy
Polonius:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!
Laertes:
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
image: lightchaser
Think a thought that’s never been thought before.
Have you got it? If it’s the kind of psychedelic thing like an umbrella that sings nursery rhymes while turning into a bicycle then forget it. That’s not new, that’s just jumbling abstract thoughts together.
No, this is the stuff of true genius. This is Euripides writ large, this is Leonardo inventing the parachute before anyone could fly, Newton understanding gravity. The unique thought, the new idea is the pivot upon which the whole of the human race could balance, the right one could be the key to unlocking remarkable things.
Whatever you do in your life, remember that true genius is the art of revealing the new. A Mozart does not write music, they capture the Universe through the medium of music and expose it for the rest of us to see. They share their insight, their inspiration and offer it as their gift to the rest of us. Ask yourself, what is my gift, what have I or will I share with the rest of the human race.
Catch this dragon by the tail and you are on the ride of a lifetime. Chase ‘Eureka!’ moments, have a desire, a purpose, a dream, no matter how bizarre it seems to others, if it fires your cylinders up and gets your mechanism whirring then good, providing your intention is clean and your aim is true the Universe will surrender its secrets to you. Whether through the medium of music, art, language, oratory, leadership, mentorship, whatever discipline you place yourself in you may articulate extraordinary perception through it.
We are a family, and the success of one is the heritage of us all. Earn the right to be human, being born here is simply touching base, magnify your existence with purposeful endeavour and then you may claim to have lived a life rather than just having been here.
Intend to strike such a blow upon the anvil of life as to resonate through the various dominions that make themselves known to human life. Be inspired, be exalted, walk with magnificent things and allow them to express themselves through your actions. Ordinary may get you through the day but extraordinary will carry you to greatness.
The choice is yours.
image: azli jamal
IF…
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust youself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk to crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!
This writing by Rudyard Kipling never fails to strike a chord with me. There’s something in my assembly about dignity, propriety and demeanour that it resonates with. I used to carry a handwritten copy of it in my wallet in the smallest, finest copperplate script I could muster. I believe that we all have something for each other, that our lives can be likened to a jigsaw puzzle and we each are the custodians of vital pieces to the emerging picture that we will all eventually become.
image: legacy recordings
Be honest, don’t you wish you’d lived through the sixties in Swinging London or shooting the breeze up at Haight Ashbury? What would it have been like to be there when Elvis first gyrated and sent a tsunami of shock through the sensibilities of upstanding folk throughout the world?
Karl Marx, think of the effect he had on the twentieth century, worked away quietly and unnoticed in the reading room of the British Museum coming up with a thesis that would radically change our world.
Think of the great happenings in world history and how it would have been to be in the wash of them. Whatever for you are the high points of the human narrative thus far, would you have recognised them if you’d been there?
How many people actually recognised the uniqueness of Elvis, Karl Marx, or swung in the sixties? How many people would have stood shoulder to shoulder with Galileo as the Inquisition turned its gaze upon him and forced him to renounce what he knew to be the case?
Listen my friends, the only truth you have access to is now. I read that we are living in an age without ideas, without thinking and perhaps this is so, certainly the writer thought so but then they had copy to shift.
What chills me is the thought of being alive in an age whose only contribution to the human story was to exacerbate its difficulties with an age of unparallelled hedonism. What radical steps forward have we taken in your lifetime? Oh sure, they’re there, but mostly they exist as avant garde or underground movements.
What ideas do you think are going to come from our age that will alter the human story in a positive way?
It’s one thing to be a pundit or a commentator, it’s something quite different to actually contribute and try to create something new and fresh. Anyone can shoot the piano player or be a gilt edged critic, to bring something different to the table is quite different and requires courage, chutzpah, desire and to be driven in ways that don’t require a hedonistic prize at the end.
Life is such an indescribable gift in itself that it is the prize already before time. The greatest gift surely is to be able to add to the consciousness of the Universe. That is all of us who are sentient in whatever form we may manifest and wherever we appear.
image: ricardo sr.
What makes you feel good?
Go for, if you have the option, simple things. Simple things have a cleaner feel to them. Try, if possible, to feel good about things from the natural worlds. Why? Simple, the natural worlds do not recognise credit crunches, our egos, personality or any of the other paraphernalia that constitutes our world.
If it had a title, like a painting or a sculpture, we’d have to call it: The World What We Made. How many of us would actually be proud of it? I suppose it’s like the curate’s egg, good in parts.
There are fantastic things, there are things that aren’t so good and there are things that are horrendous. Terrorists, female circumcision - more properly called female genital mutilation, bureaucracy or red tape or even both are all things that can’t send out a wake up call through the sentient beings of the Universe with the shout ‘Good things happening here’.
The fantastic things make it worth while. What are they? They are those small packages of inspiration and magic, the light falling on places that have been in the dark, the symphony of causes that lead to profound moments you can’t quite put your finger on but know have happened.
Moments of genius, rarefied and complete and passing as distant glimpses of perfection. Being closer to the substance of life itself, touching precious things and feeling their texture with all your senses and knowing that you are mixed up in something beyond special.
This is to feel good, to feel the prana, chi, life-force flow through you and radiate out from your fingertips. To be vital, to be in the flow of something close to sacred, to sculpt force, to project an energy from oneself that is contagious. All of these things are confirmation that you live, you are alive and the proposition of your life is not done yet.
image: cesareal
Summertime and the living is easy. It appears that the fish are jumping and the cotton is high.
The song Summertime, paraphrased above, has the duality contained within so many of the genuine or faux spirituals. The element of an earthly travail alleviated only by the promise of a heavenly release. One of the classics of the genre being Swing Low Sweet Chariot wherein the lyric urges the singer’s companions that they’ll be coming soon, to the promised land. The idea is that death is the ultimate freeing of the individual from the burdens and troubles of the world and this is undestandable given the origin of the song.
The idea of a chosen people, a contract with God, a covenant is compelling. The concept that the world is a place of struggle, hardship and suffering from which the only respite is the certain knowledge of another dimension where these things are as shadows that dance upon a wall in the firelight.
This is the sanctuary of certain peoples whose life is affirmed by a transcendent state of spiritual ecstasy that promises and offers release from the constraints of the physical world.
It is unequivocally the case that within each of us there is a certain quality, a matter that is difficult to define because of its transcendent nature. It is the vital essence of life itself, that thing which initially gives animation and potentially offers illumination. To be at the core of a carousel of happenings whose occurrence constitutes your life is like being at the helm of a great craft. Your ability to surrender to the influence of these things will determine how your life unfolds.
Presumably you are not a slave. At least not in the classic sense as we in the west would understand it. So this means you are unlikely to be battling against physical hardship ad privations that render the self electing life an impossibility. Your liberation is in transcendence of the mundane. Your freedom is in escaping the cycle of repetition that becomes your habitual way of being and, in a sense, an enslavement.
Aspire to greatness. Approach your life as a one shot deal. Make it count.
image: retro nerd
About happiness, it’s a state of mind. A self fulfilling prophecy that has little or no bearing upon external factors. It’s a strange, subjective place. The kind of place that summons images of Ingmar Bergman films and madmen laughing in the snow.
They do that because their own state is quite at odds with their situation. The art of living a fulfilled life is to marry the two states, internal and external, as closely as possible. The word is congruence, to have congruency in one’s life is a worthy and noble objective.
A wise man once said to me that true intelligence is knowing one’s situation at any given time. It is not about academia or even the school of hard knocks, it is the clear and certain knowledge of one’s situation. I know that I am a fool, lost in a structure of huge and awesome complexity. I also know that my life is sustained, supported and augmented by extraordinary grace and richness.
Awareness of it is like synergy. A man can lift, say, 100 lbs. His friend can lift 100lbs also. Yet together they are capable of lifting 300lbs. There is a third and empowering force created by their co-operation, their working together. I believe that the Universe is like this. I do not want to get lost in the detail but suffice it to say that a human being who is aware of their situation and is open to the influence of the Universe becomes enhanced thereby.
They are capable of a far greater range than if they perceive themselves as being isolated and cut off from that which sustains and empowers them. The devil, as the saying goes, is in the detail. When we become enmeshed in the minutiae of our own situation it becomes like a fog that traces our very being, a haze and a confusion. Did you ever see Enter the Dragon? Bruce Lee breaks off from his meeting with Mr Braithwaite to attend his student, Lao. The index finger is respectfully but firmly raised and the explanation ‘It is Lao’s time’ is given.
Bruce Lee points and asks Lao if he sees it. Lao, playing the stool pigeon, dumbly asks about the finger whereupon Lee slaps him on the head with the admonishment, ‘Focus on the finger and you will miss out on all that heavenly glory.’ And this is profound, this is esoteric in the movie; in the world this was Bruce Lee hinting at the keys to the kingdom. Indeed certain sources have suggested that Bruce Lee was killed for pulling the curtain too far back, but that’s not for here, that’s a conspiracy theory for another place.
This is our situation. Focus upon the detail, miss out upon the bigger picture. You are familiar with the saying, ‘ X couldn’t see the wood for the trees’. The Universe is our home, it is the place we were built to handle, to deal with, yet so often the wit and faculties of an individual are poured into bouts of profligate navel gazing. Surrender to the synergistic dialogue between ourselves and the Universe, draw strength, energy and inspiration from the certain knowledge that there is something greater between ourselves and the ultimate answer than we are yet capable of perceiving.
Because we do not see it does not mean that it does not exist. Love the mystery, love the enigma, it cherishes us and welcomes us as children of its purpose. If you are not inspired by this, you may be lost already.
image: jwhiting99
Pursue a worthy objective.
Set yourself a task that you can never accomplish.
Follow a path that has no end.
Spend your time wisely, it is the only true currency.
Love what you do and do what you love.
Surround yourself with people who support your objectives.
Give of yourself, sometimes, without counting the cost.
Everything returns to the source of its arising, what do you issue into the world?
All progress is tapered, don’t expect the impossible but demand the best of yourself.