Long over-due tribute to the magical country of Japan

This is a long over-due tribute to a country and a city which quickly became a favourite for me last autumn. 

~

After my first day in Tokyo, which was a blur of confusion, getting lost on the streets, armies of suits walking by and through me in a never-ending procession, seemingly faceless masks of hurried professionalism, amidst blinding lights and sharp music, not understanding a single street-sign or shop title, getting lost in the super-market, just once breathing out in a wonderful wooden bath in my ryokan, only to get lost on the streets once again- in fact by the end of my first day feeling so lost, alone, confused and in an alien world that for the first time in my life (no- I lie- my first day in India might have been similar) was wondering if this time I tried to bite off more than I can chew- I have escaped to my true destination and am in the cultural centre of Japan- Kyoto. Big cities were never my thing. Not that Kyoto is a small city mind you, but it has the instant warm welcoming air of one nevertheless. Wheew! 

I am in Kyoto. And I am in love. 

I am in love with the pleasant sunny glow of autumn which stirs and awakes on the warm colours of the trees as I take my daily morning walks by the canal. People crossing my path seem to be in no hurry, they amble slowly watching the wonder of autumn, or whirl by on bicycles. An instant feeling of peace, what a nice way to start the day.

The Japanese are devout worshippers of nature. In fact it was nearly impossible to find accommodation at this time of year, cause people travel from all over the country to observe the wonder of the colours of the autumn foliage in this city so beloved for its gardens around the temples.

Oh- how in love I am with the thousands of temples (a staggering 1600 Buddhist temples in fact) that surround this town and keep breathing life into it. 

Suddenly a passionate temple-walker, from first light into husky darkness which is especially eerie in a bamboo grove up the hills, there never seems to be enough day-light to See and Be in this haven of mystery and magic.

I am totally transfixed by the art-form that is the Japanese garden. No a gust of artificiality anywhere, every circle on sand drawn with some kind of superhuman power of focus and love, yet at the same time not a shade of an accident even in the location of the fallen leaves, nowhere an imperfection. Texture within layer within colour within texture, my eyes sink and sink into this marvel, into each such Temple for Nature. I take photos like I’m mad, surrounded by people taking photo after photo, it is a feast, it is some sort of ancient shamanistic ritual I have “accidentally” fallen into, I am feeling very Alice-like indeed. And when I go to sleep I dream of colours, of textures, of leaves, of circles on sands.

I am in love with the Japanese people. Shy at first, but with a deep kindness emerging soon after, almost relentless in politeness and manners, you would be wise to leave them the last word in thanking you, because they will always top your last thank you with an even more polite version and an even deeper bow. I learn to think twice before asking for directions, because even if they do not understand me or don’t know the place I search, people go so much out of their way to help me that no words like- thank you very much, don’t worry, I will find it, seem to release them from your small request for guidance. (Besides getting lost in this city is nothing if not wonderful). Always bowing and apologizing before taking the seat next to you on the tube. Mysterious, deep people with so much poise and such gentle being. I love the way they joyously shout welcome in a chorus when I enter a restaurant and the way my wonderful little inn-keeper tries to give me a present for the second time, merely because I have yet again extended my stay.

I am in love with the country-side of colour-bursting hills and little villages. 

Hiking up and down the river with countless of elderly locals, I am in awe of how fit they are and how much spring their steps hold, in fact from what I see I have a strange vision in my mind that these people will probably die perfectly healthy, in a middle of a hike, out of choice and nothing else. Everybody greeting me as if I was a dear acquaintance. I breathe in the fresh air, the chorus of Konnichiwaaaaaa (hello), and the infectious smiles.

I am in love with the meandering streets of the old Geisha district in the evening-time, spotless alleys with beautiful wooden houses, silent lantern-adorned alleys with only an occasional shadow disappearing around a corner or into some house, the whole feeling to it as if there is still a great secret in this place. Indeed the curtains to these seemingly quiet houses tremble occasionally, here is a whiff of a freshly cooked ramen, there is a chuckle of laughter and a rogue flicker of light from within. I am mesmerized and drawn like a moth to these streets and their secrets but only once catch a sight of a hurried perfectly clad geisha walking in her fast-paced small steps in front of me.

I am in love with the tea.

And of course the food.

I am in love with the way the high-tech and high-fashion city centre poses no apparent clash to the wealth of nature, culture, history and tradition that surrounds this city. It is not old vs. new, materialistic vs. spiritual- perhaps it is nature and love of nature here that blends in these opposites to a whole, the old embracing the new in loving arms through the wisdom of the seasons of nature.

I am also aware that I'm seeing everything in the superlative, yet isn't that the inescapable effect of being in love?

How quiet is my mind after 10 short days and mostly- full of awe, every step is accompanied by my spirit saying Wow! 

It is not difficult to see why Zen is rooted here. 

~

It was more than difficult to see Japan in disaster and mourning. My continuous heart-felt blessings to this wonderful country! 

    

My video tribute to Rabindranath Tagore

Excerpts from Gitanjali.

Music- Vision by Hildegard von Bingen, Richard Souther

Photos from Wikimedia Commons

Full-screen for better viewing quality.

A song of despair- Pablo Neruda

My first attempt at making a video had one clear result- a new-found appreciation for all that we watch on youtube. Very frustrating experience indeed, and will probably want to tweak it, but at least there is some version available until someone posts a better one! :) Can't wait for that!

Self-sabotage

Today I've been thinking about self-sabotage, the age-old enemy that many people see as their monster in the cupboard. Or is it?

I myself can identify with most of the common ways said to imply self-sabotage- procastrination, feeling stuck or without a purpose, driving away relationships etc. Check the article about this here- The top 7 Signs Of Self-sabotaging behaviour

So what can we do about this? Often I find that as soon as I realize I am self-sabotaging once again, my behaviour changes, self-awareness as always seems to be the key. Our reasons for self-sabotage are all a little different- working through your past to understand ourselves and getting down to the nitty gritty with our deepest fears... Whenever I find myself testing a relationship and pushing the boundaries, I try to remind myself that I am once again presented with an opportunity to heal the deepest issues from childhood, viewing the whole situation not as an obstacle but as a blessing. A healthier attitude is also shown in this

following article by C. Devin Hastings, I have yet to form an opinion about NLP but we can all take the first step by simply re-evaluating this concept a little.

"Have you ever said or felt that one of the following statements is true about you?

 

“How come I can’t lose weight” (control my temper/get up on time/or whatever).

 

“What’s wrong with me?  I know I shouldn’t do that.”

 

“I must be sabotaging myself (again).”

 

When I ask students in my classes if and of the above is true for them, I usually get a large variety of similar self-talk patterns. 

 

What is striking in every class I have taught around the U.S. and overseas, is that every person raises their hand when I next ask them if they have ever, at least once, engaged in self-sabotage. 

 

Self-sabotage (dark, deep inner forces over which we have no control) is a concept that was created by Sigmund Freud, the ‘Father Of Modern Mental Health’.  Just for the record, Freud snorted a lot of cocaine and really didn’t like women so, I find his ‘mental health’ theories just a tad suspect. 

 

The point here is that a frightening number of people subscribe to the belief that they were created with an inner terrorist that forces them to ‘self-sabotage’.  What a terrible way to live.

 

Think about it: If a person truly believes in self-sabotage, then what chance do they really have to change and be happy?  This ‘SS’ force (self-sabotage force) has all the characteristics of something that one really can’t control.  And, this uncontrollable force doesn’t even like the person in which it resides!

 

Here’s the truth about self-sabotage: It does not exist.  There simply is no such thing as self-sabotage. 

 

Now, when I say this in my classes, there is always a “lively” debate that ensues.  It seems that some people are hell bent are keeping their limitations and as some wag once said: “If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them.”

 

However, for those people who are open-minded, their brains fall out.  Ha ha.  Just kidding.  I wanted to see if you were really reading this.

 

Seriously though, for those of you who are curious about challenging and changing a harmful, long held belief, then the following idea may be valuable to you: Self-sabotage does not exist because in reality, it is just a terrible and incorrect name for “inner miscommunication”.  

 

You see, self-sabotage is a ‘label’ for essential, unchangeable unworthiness.  And we all live up, or down to, labels we have about ourselves.

 

Speaking of harmful and inaccurate labels, do you think that you (or someone you know) have flaws? 

 

Most people answer, “Sure.  We’re only human so it’s normal to have flaws.”

 

Here’s the flaw with having flaws: Thinking they are real is very damaging because doing so is the emotional equivalent of staring at the sun in that it blinds a person to change. 

 

Thinking that you have flaws reinforces the idea of a deep unworthiness because a flaw is intrinsic and hence, very tough if not impossible, to change.

 

The point is this: Thinking that one has flaws is emotionally crippling because it perpetuates the whole self-sabotage belief pattern.

 

What if, instead, you (or someone you know) had ‘growth opportunities’?  Doesn’t that feel better?  Can you see how that label makes much more sense? 

 

Many people feel this new definition click into place because they deeply sense (in spite of an inner critical voice) that “growth opportunities” is a true description of reality.

 

Isn’t it true that flaws are limiting?  However, ‘growth opportunities’ nicely invite a person to accept that their current behaviour is what it is and that it does not have to be permanent.  The great thing about this more accurate perception of reality is that it gives a person a real opportunity to grow and change.

 

Now, let’s get back to self-sabotage.  As I said, it is a state of inner miscommunication based on an inaccurate message of worthiness that originated from some time in our past.  In other words, we have learned to incorrectly talk to ourselves about our-Self. 

 

And keep this important fact in mind:  As children, we are born with the tendency to like ourselves.  However, “as the twig is bent, so grows the tree” and most of us learn to talk to ourselves in ways that do not affirm our self-worth. 

 

In fact, some of us learned at a very young age that we, for some inexplicable reason, are born with terrible flaws and hence are unworthy.  (Womb experiences are very important but beyond the scope of this article.)

 

However, the truth is that children are created liking themselves.  As far as they are concerned, there is nothing wrong with them and they naturally give and expect healthy love because that is how they are made. 

 

Only some time later do many of us stop expecting healthy love and/or we develop odd ideas about what giving love is (to ourselves as well as others).  It is at this point when damaging inner miscommunication becomes entrenched."

Source article HERE, also with NLP techniques to eliminate self-sabotage.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock- T.S.Eliot

What a wonderful reading and a short version of this full poem here-

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in 
upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No!I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. 

Total recall by indigo child Matias de Stefano

I have understood for a long time that I am an indigo child but couldn't really see the whole picture with that. Bless other indigos like Matias de Stefano born with an ability to remember, and to help understand. This video contains an excellent wealth of info from the structure and workings of the universe, the unrecorded history of humankind, indigos to 2012 and what the future has in store for us. 

As for me this video and other info that I have come to contact with today in the usual way of synchronicity have helped me understand everything I have struggled with...

How many of us have always felt like aliens on this planet? I do believe that some of us are souls that have entered this planet for the first time from other systems and dimensions, and the others "are earth natives who have matured spiritually to the point of awakening to their metaphysical identity, thereby making the worldly identity less real, and creating the sense of being a stranger in a strange land." (src article- are you a wanderer)

Anyway I was suffering a lot for this reason- since I can remember as a child I was always very upset to be here, until I remembered that this was my choice. I used to long for "home" all the time, most of my youth was spent on watching the stars and wanting to go home. 

Always feeling as if out of my natural environment, at the height of my spiritual crises I literally had panic attacks constantly, physically developing an inability to breathe in a seemingly foreign air, breathing was a huge mile-stone for me, but suicidal tendencies followed me for several years in this time and I can honestly say- this planet is an extremely difficult place to adapt to.

The other thing I have always felt was a reverse growing process, this is how I see it in any case. My higher chakras were always open and I have always lived through mainly my crown, giving me great ease with dealing with spiritual experiences and growing tools like meditation and connection to the universe but on the downside with my lower chakras that give grounding, not developed, especially the root chakra, (this must be the main problem of integration for all indigos,) always left me un-rooted, disconnected, struggling with alienation. I was literally a tree that had to grow from the tops of the branches down to the roots, and I am still not sure I'll ever grow those roots. I don't think that integration for me is a goal though and it was not my intention. As de Stefano says in the video, "When people start to see that any type of teaching system they try is going to fail somehow, because the indigo have not come to stay on the planet, the indigo vibration changes the context for what's going to stay after."

I have understood why I and other indigos find it scarring to go through formal education and impossible to go for higher education. In my case I have looked at every single field of study and seen the futility and the nonsensical qualities in it with the thought in mind that we are going through a shift and the paradigm is going to change completely soon. There is no use in old educational system, as I have always felt about every single system operating right now, in power right now- it is all corrupt, it is all futile and it doesn't serve the humanity anymore.

So I have found a sort of peace through all of the understandings through this video and I hope others are too. The thing to do now is mostly nothing, though I agree with the speaker when he says, "This color [indigo] is transmutation, and the Souls have come to create in the way that adapts best to each of them. If their context is aggressive or very passive, they will create changes through aggressiveness and by breaking ideas in the family level. They will do it through sexuality, politics, vandalism, art, indifference and tribalism, even through pure and possessive love." I know something of some of these different ways but in short- all that matters at this time to me now is not participating in the system in any way that will feed it further.

I have no doubt in my mind that we have all decided to incarnate at this particular, very interesting, though very difficult time. The only thing we really "must" do in this time, is to be open to it. Be open to ourselves, learn to know who we are, and always keep a positive vision of the world we want to create before our eyes. Love, learn and help learn.

Blessings to you all my fellow travelers!