I haven't written in about a year now. I told myself that I just ran out of words but that's not quite true. It's more a case of words giving the illusion of order, some sort of concrete-ness to it all. But the deeper I go the more slippery and fuzzy it all seems. The world we build with words is only one small element to it all. Silence is more true, but it also doesn't say very much.

And so here I am writing again, not too sure I am making any sense, but perhaps that's the whole point. It really doesn't matter. Life doesn't make sense, music doesn't have to make sense, beauty doesn't make sense, love usually doesn't make sense. I don't think its about having answers because everything is  always moving and changing. If it wasn't then we'd always be stuck in a single moment. Life is too curious to allow that to happen..

The paradox of humanity is that we're all the same, and yet we're all so different.
Each of us is a unique universe - different histories, memories, combinations of tastes, smells, feelings, experiences. One of the things I used to often think about as a kid is whether or not the green I see is the green you see, or whether it's really just the word we agree on.

And then universes cross paths and a miracle happens. We call it communication. We have developed really powerful technology around this, namely language - a set of sounds, used together in different combinations to convey information, but this is only the surface level of how we communicate. There are many ways of exchanging information...
So - we use it to get what we want, we use it to hide things in plain site, we use it to keep things in order and so on. But the deepest and most useful is when we share our universe, when we exchange how we see things with someone else.

A true sharing of this nature is extremely rare - when two or more universes seem to vibrate at the same frequency and there's this resonance. Some call it love, some call it chemistry, but it really is a special kind of magic. It's like the planets all line up and there is an energy that connects us to the deeper truth, the other side of the paradox - the fact that we are not seperate at all, that we are all windows looking in on the same Universe.

And then there are times when this connection gets 'fuzzy'. It's the nature of things that everything changes and so the planets get un-aligned from time to time. Lovers quarrel and friends fight - most often because we forget that this communication is really a miracle in the first place. So sometimes it means to keep on trying until the information is understood, sometimes it means patiently listening and hoping that silence will speak.

But through all of this there is the deeper truth, that reality is one big mirror, and that all we perceive is ultimately a reflection of ourselves....

I had dinner last night with an old friend. We have a lot in common and though our journeys have been different, we've arrived at similar places. So after a few glasses of red wine the conversation started flowing and I just found myself rambling on about all the things I had discovered, and learnt and so on.

I say 'rambling' because all of that stuff is really the scenery along the way, pointing in the direction of home.

But when it really comes down to it, the truth is far simpler, and in the past years of searching for answers and meaning there's a realization that it's not about answers or meaning, but it's about the Life that is already in us. As Joseph Campbell says - we're not searching for the meaning of life, but an experience of being truly alive. It's all here - at our fingertips, inside us. It is us. So the journey is really all about discovering that which we already know, and already are, but we fell asleep somewhere along the way. 

“We have always been enlightened. Our confusion is merely our fear of that fact.

There is nothing more or less to what we are than that which is immediately apparent; but we seem unable to see it. Enlightenment is ours to see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and ideate – but all we seem to sense, is the shifting surface of that vastness. We see reflections, but are blind to the nature of the mirror. We see waves, but fail to experience the ocean. We see clouds, but cannot conceive of the sky.”  Ngak’chang Rinpoche

‎"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." 

 Joseph Campbell

I'm sure we've all heard that saying by John Lennon - "life is what happens when we're making other plans".

And life is what happens even when we're not.

Most of us had no idea that we were building this body that we now call 'me'. We have no idea how it all works. Our hearts beat all by themselves, and we've never even seen most of what happens in order for us to read this. I don't even know how I type. I know I think a word, and I sort of make my fingers press these keys, but the mechanics of it, and all that happens to make it happen - no idea.

I look out the window, and the mountains - which have always just been there, are full of life - just happening. Trees, grass - all growing by themselves, in automatic.

The whole of the Universe, the whole orchestra of everything, all just happening.

And then there are all of those things that we try to hide behind the pretense of culture, or 'morality'......that which starts it all in the first place.... sex, and all that cums with it :

The naked attraction, that drive that makes us ache inside, and then the passionate, wild, letting go - taking us to that realization that..

".. this is the nature of the universe. We struggle against it. We fight to deny it, but it is of course pretense. It is a lie. Beneath our poised appearance, the truth is we are completely... out of control." (Merovingian)

Today is one of those days where it feels like I didn't get enough sleep. I could quite easily curl up in bed for another few hours. At first I had this conversation with myself - like I should get it together, put on a smile and all that pop-psychology crap you find under the 'mind and spirit' section of the bookshop.

So what about God? 

"God is a ridiculously small human concept compared to the coherent intelligence of universe. Everything doesn't need to have a primate Alpha male in charge to be an intelligent system." (Robert Anton Wilson)

When I was a kid there were all these people older and wiser than me who knew it all. My parents, my teachers, the leaders at the church I used to go to. And then as I got older I started to see the cracks. First were the teachers. There were one or two who I respected, but the rest... well we soon figured out their weaknesses and learnt how to push their buttons. Then came my parents. We all know how that story goes..

the wild wind spoke to me the other night

the same breath that we breath that gives us life

and makes the trees dance and sing their wild, reckless song

the same wind that causes my wind-chime to resonate with my soul

the same breath that breaths the music that flows from my flute

And so the wind was wondering why we hide inside

And it was wild and strong and powerful, yet sad

sad that we feel we don't fit

sad that we feel everything is moving so fast

and that everything is so out of control

And it told me we need to breath more

and remember that the air we breath is part of us

just like the sounds we hear, the light we see, the food we taste and smell

the cold and the heat that we feel

a combination of Earth, Water, Fire

and Wind

And then I realized I was talking to myself

but so was the wind..

Sometimes I just let my thoughts flow, without trying too hard to contain them - just go with it and see what happens. Like this:

My youngest daughter can't entirely read yet. So she has this oral she needs to do at school, but obviously can't just use crib notes. The solution: I drew some little pictures - icons - for her to remember the various sections of her talk. Bushbabies live in trees - so I drew a tree with a house on it. Bushbabies are bluish grey but the South African version is slightly yellow - I drew my version of a bushbaby eating custard. Isabelle loves custard - so despite the picture looking more like a stick man, with a tail, holding a square over a circle (instant custard being poured into a bowl) she remembered it. And for the bluish grey - I drew a cloud. Within a few minutes we had memorized the whole thing and she got it right first time.

This got me thinking about language - and hieroglyphics and other symbol based systems of writing. We tend to see writing as a contained unit. I give you a book and that's pretty much it - you read it and you're expected to get it all from the words used. Or like reading what I'm writing here. I sort-of expect you to understand what I'm getting at without having too much context.

But perhaps it all started differently. What if writing wasn't so much to contain a message, but the symbols were used to remind the 'reader' of a story they already had heard. That the symbols and the culture went together - like maps to a 'file' that contained that knowledge.

But I guess that's what words do as well, or names of people, animals, things. Each word, each phrase triggering a memory.

So I did some research to find out the origin of language - and got everything from theories about the tower of Babel and language supposedly being proof of a higher power, to whole lot of other stuff that you only find on the www. But the one thing that triggered a thought, as words tend to do, was the recursive nature of language, which led me to think about the word 'word'. We have a word for 'word', a word used to describe itself, which reminded me of an old friend who used to say 'Words don't have meaning, meaning has words'.

But there's another lesson in here - that the mind is full of words that take up so much space and time, full of meanings and memories and perhaps all this stuff is there because if it wasn't, then maybe there wouldn't be any meaning at all. And perhaps this is the truth of truths - that, as a very wise man once said, what we need isn't meaning, but an experience of being truly alive. And if, every now and again, we don't allow all these words to get in the way, that might just happen. So now is a good time to stop this flow of words and go and enjoy the weekend....