Last week I attended a Buddhist Teachings and Meditation class, just because. The teachings and practises of Buddhism are actually quite beautiful. We started off with a meditation and then the Gen started the teachings.

After trying to incorporate what I learned about love, consideration and patience - being the ultimate way to lasting happiness and peace of mind in Buddhism, I found I am in dire need of some serious re-evaluation of myself.

Love = love others and yourself
Consideration = the desire to not want to harm or cause harm to others
Patience = accepting pain and negative emotions but being able to separate your emotions from the situation to better deal with it.

Trust me. They're harder to live than you think. Especially when your life is becoming a soap opera and you have no idea who the writer is.

A couple of things really stood out to me that the Gen said that I remember every now and then:

1. There is no point in being unhappy, it achieves nothing.
2. You have no right to take others "chocolate covered strawberries".. meaning don't shoot someone down if something is making them happy.

Honestly, inspiration coming out of your ears. And a strange new belief in yourself.

Rules.

I know I've said I refuse to have resolutions this year because if I don't have resolutions I can't fail BUT I will make a few rules for 2012:

1. Do seemingly pointless things if it makes you happy.

2. Always accept first, reject after consideration.

3. Stop rushing. Just shutup and listen to the silence.

4. When it get's too complicated ask a child for advice - "out of the mouths of babes"

5. Prove you’re alive. Dance in the supermarket, scream ‘Toad’ during a moment of silence. Remind the world you are still here.

6. Remember everything will be fine. If you worry about acne, you will get a bloody pimple.

7. Be crazy. All the best people are.

8. Just love.


The glass isn't half full or half empty.. it's just half a glass. Cheers.

What makes smart people stupid.

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It’s amazing how many emotions you can feel at once. Things happen and somehow you have this never ending capacity to feel things.  And sometimes, relative to the situation, you just want to turn them all off.

It’s so easy to get immersed in one thing and lose grip of a part of yourself, to get attached to someone if you give it a chance. You get used to an idea and then when it doesn’t work out, you can feel it. There’s a part missing... it’s not that it was always missing and temporarily got filled it’s that that idea made space for itself within you and you got used to it. But when it’s gone, you’ve got this space that shouldn’t be there, that wasn’t naturally there. You didn’t ask for it, or plan it, it happened, and it was beautiful while it lasted.

But this isn’t unique, it’s typical. Cliche.

And you can feel every emotion under the sun and go through the motions, like sitting in a dark room watching your fingers type feelings you theoretically know you shouldn’t broadcast, but it’s just like every other story. 

The worst part is not knowing which emotion you should let take over... sadness is pretty naturally prevalent, anger is more bearable, but for some reason you know it’s not fair to be mad or bitter or distrustful because there’s still love.
But I guess you realise, at the end of it all, you’ve learned a whole lot about yourself and you can decide there and then whether you want to re-create parts of yourself...

Think less, live more.

Been feeling pretty low and cluttered as of late so on Sunday I shut my phone off and deactivated my Facebook... my poor family have to email me to get in contact... But sometimes there's just so much going on and so many distractions that you lose yourself and then when you realise that you've neglected your happiness worrying about others you just have to step back and slow everything down and fix what's within my control. That's how I feel anyway. And I have to say, blocking myself from the external world has sort of given me a release, like, I feel free.. I realise it's a little inconvenient for those trying to contact me but right now I have to re-focus.. do things I've loved but haven't done for a while, be really present in each moment and just remember the sort of person I am...

Today has been good. I woke up and decided I was going to control how my day goes and I've been pretty good at keeping myself within stable parameters... At the train station this morning, a big freight train went past and instead of shutting it out and retreating into my thoughts, I listened. All the clinks and the rhythm changes, the grinding of metal on metal and the different sounds it made.. it was oddly refreshing... and as it completely past what was left was the sweet twittering and singing of the birds.. all different sorts of birds, different sounds..

So here I sit at my desk, cluttered with different coloured paper cranes, in my pantyhose and open toe shoes like a nanna, excited to be about to truly live in each moment, ready to change, and turn that frown upside down :) xx

Meditation Tip of the Day

There are two ways of looking at your life:
either as a business or as an adventure.
As a business, you try to evaluate
and master everything.
As an adventure, you follow
the path of your heart,
a path that goes beyond reason.
Hervé Lepêtre

Once upon a time..

To "celebrate" (I'm holding in my tears and suppressing my longing) my one year anniversary since my Europe trip I decided to depress myself with pictures.

Unknown

"Feeling is the nominalization of "to feel". "

Well thanks for nothing Wikipedia.

Don't you wish sometimes that you could Google someone's feelings? Or even Google an explanation of your own feelings? It would be so easy. No attachments, no misinterpretations, no mind games, not having to "read between the lines"... facts. This is my call to science, stop avoiding it, help a sister out. Technologise the human out of that. Google needs to know e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.

*Feelings are bothersome*

Cannibal love.

Find more artists like White Sea at Myspace Music 

I'm all over this in so many ways.

Jasmine.

Last night we talked. We walked and we talked about him, life, love and ourselves. But mainly we spoke about Jake and you opened up, how much you love him and need him. The things he would do for you and say to you. The texts he would send but get all shy when you asked him to say them to your face. We acknowledged that it's always easier writing your true feelings rather than saying them. The more raw your feelings, the harder it is to say them...

That's why I'm writing this post to you Jasmine. I'm pouring what's real and close to my heart onto the keyboard because it's easier saying it in my head than to your face. But if I've learnt anything this weekend and from this tragedy it's to let those dearest to you know how you feel about them. So this is it:

I believe wholeheartedly that you need Jake and that you want to be with him where he is but I need you. I need you to talk to, to cry with, I need you to egg me on when I'm being inappropriate, I need you to tease me when I do things out of character. I need you to throw my advice back at me. I need you to be the little sister that needs me. I need you to keep all my secrets, to listen to all my insecurities and not laugh at them, I need you to give me advice in the areas you know I have less experience with, matters of the heart.

I need you to give me some of your pain, to take my strength and use it to combat this heartache.

Jake hasn't left you, he's in your heart. But you're here with me, with your mother, your sister, your family and everyone else who loves you and needs you. And you're in our heart.

You are a devastatingly beautiful spirit and one of the core people in my life. I love you baby girl.

This is for Jake. RIP.

 

Keep me breathing..

“If we look at the world with a love of life, the world will reveal its beauty to us.” ~Daisaku Ikeda

I love the smell of freshly cut grass, purging to my senses as every single one of my thoughts disappear.

I love the feel of rain drops on my skin, cold, real.

I love the way flowers, even just one, can make a landscape of a pallet of greys and browns, prettier. I love the way they're perfect even in their imperfection.

I love the way one bird answers another, whistling, trilling melodically, a sweet language of notes.

I love the way the the sun and the clouds argue. Fluffy, bulbous, imperfect marshmellows covering the sun as it fights to shine through, finally, succeeding when the wind parts the clouds, blowing them out of the way as the sun caresses my face, warming me to my bones.

I love looking people in the eye and noticing the patterns and hues of their iris, textures of a crater, river or sparkle in their eye.

I love the flutter of butterfly wings.

I love the first kiss, the unsuredness, the quickened heartbeat, the first imprint of lips and electricity charge through the body.

I love old things, things with a history, a story behind them.

I love spring and all things yellow.

I love music and how it takes over my mind, every beat and melody and backing, working together to take care of my soul.

Perfect.

With the amount of chaos that's going on in my life right now the only thing keeping me slightly sane are moments by myself with the stars and music playing in my ears. Last night in an attempt to get my zen happening I wondered outside across the field and to the park, shoeless, earphones in.

Music, is God's second greatest gift in my opinion. Just before flowers.

I sat on the swing looking at the sky, feeling the cool metal against my skin, grass under my feet and the breeze against my face, just letting all verbal thoughts go. My mind was completely and utterly filled with sound. I didn't feel like I was listening to anything external, I felt like the music was inside me, inside my mind.

And when I listened to something acapella, through my earphones I could hear the crickets - and it was sacred.

Running through my head.

I don't even know where to begin.. my thoughts are all jumbled and I've got some serious thinking and intense research to do.. I just had lunch with a friend who had a "business proposition" for me which I'm completely considering but very very cautious and anxious/unsettled about.

My friend (let's call him Fred) has a neighbour, Vietnamese couple, "great people", who are having trouble conceiving. Because they don't know many people and are quite close with Fred and his family they asked him whether he knew anyone who would consider donating an egg to help them fall pregnant.. so he asked me.

After the initial processing took place (it took several moments and a few "wow's" "ummm's" and "gee's") about a gazillion questions popped up in my head:

Do I want to inadvertently have a child?
How does it work? Do they inject my egg into her? Does this sort of make me a surrogate mother?
Am I expected to be in the child's life?
Do I want to be in the child's life?
How do I feel about someone else claiming the child as their own?
What will I feel towards the child?
Are there risks?
Is the couple nice?? What if they're horrible?
What if, when the child grows up they want to meet me, what will it be like, what will I do? What if I find out they had a terrible childhood? I'll feel guilty.
What are the church's views on this? Will it affect my mission preparation?
How attached will I be to this baby?

The thing is, I think I want to do it but I'm so hesitant, this is a huuuuuuuuuge decision, one that can't be made because of money offerings. It's a big deal, emotion is involved. I want to help them. I just don't know how comfortable I am with it yet. I suppose a lot of comfort will come from further knowledge of the process and getting to know the couple.

I reeeeally want to help them but I can't rush into this.

Ready for take-off

12 days! Eeek! My excitement is just kinda overwhelming right now, finally, FINALLY I'm venturing overseas to places far more exciting than the occasional cruise across the trans Tasman.. something I've wanted to do for so long and now it's only twelve miraculous-but-still-annoyingly-just-out-of-my-reach days away. It goes: Barcelona, Paris, London!

I think I'll lose my soul somewhere along the way...