free thinking

I met an interesting man tonight. He was in a racing boat accident when he was younger. His companion was decapitated by the cable that rose above sea level when the dredging boat moved as they were shooting past. He was severely injured. He lost an eye, was in a coma for 14 months, was compos mentos after 3 years, and spent 12 years in hospital. He has lost 15 years of memory, has had 42 major operations of which 14 were brain operations. He has had 28 hip replacements, and they are starting to fail. From knees to ribs basically his whole skeleton is replaced with steel.

And he is very good natured and congenial. He was sent to Tibet to be healed, and ended up training at a monastery there and now has a good knowledge of the human nervous system and does healing work amongst people. He is no miracle worker or saint, but what really impressed me is the way that he accepted what happened to him, and resolved to make the most of his life with what he had life. He helps people, and enjoys it, and leads a full life.

I had been thinking this week, how people who suffer physical losses and continue, should be a real source of inspiration to us. I am filled with admiration for the man I saw today at the traffic department, whose right hand was stunted and twisted from childhood polio, and he treated everyone as if they were as special as they really are. Scarred burn victims, those who have lost limbs, those blinded by childhood sicknesses. What has impressed me whenever I speak to such people, is their steely resolve and their refusal to feel sorrow for themselves. They are committed to make the best of their lives, even when it means hitchhiking 100kms to the blind school in Cape Town on a Saturday to attend the computer classes.

We all have troubles in our lives, and for us they are very real and important. But we must remember that God never gives us more to deal with than what we are capable of dealing with, and when it seems as if we are being stretched to our limit, we are. Our life is what we need to challenge us, develop us, help us to grow stronger and with a deeper understanding of life.

Fortunately, we do not have to do it ourselves. There is an endless source of energy for us to tap into. It is the same source that created us.

I have a question.

Let us assume the premise that we are of Divine origin, and therefore have a Spiritual nature. Let us assume further that the primary goal of this life, is the unfoldment of our spiritual nature. Then my question is:

Why do we waste our time with anything else? When I meet people (such as the Buddhist monks below in Thailand) who have devoted their lives to spiritual development and are distant from the rat race, they are filled with simple peace and happiness that seems very appealing.

Living in a monastery, they are free from many of the demands of modern life; the effects of being in a physical realm are minimized. Their daily routines are purposefully very routine, to fill their lives with the least clutter possible.

But I have to wonder, do they have enough fun? And isn’t fun also a very important part of life?

I also recall meeting people in Brazil and the rest of South America, who were certainly not monks, but led a simple, unpretentious lifestyle. They wore the same carefree grins of the monks. They might not have owned a suit, but there were certainly no worries keeping them awake at night.

I think that the crux of the matter is, that we must live our life in the environment we find ourselves, but making sure that we don’t become too entangled in all the daily problems and issues to forget what life is really about. In the end, whether an order does not get filled or sales are down or a spreadsheet doesn’t balance, is not as important as whether you get out of bed with a smile. When we look back at our lives, what are we going to see?

Spring is in the air………

Still damned cold in the mornings though! Managed to wake up early this morning to go to gym, but it was just too cold to leave the building. So I dozed a few minutes and then did yoga instead.

It is time for some warmth again. This picture was taken last spring, at Hermanus, a little seaside village close to Cape Town where we have a holiday apartment. I feel a great need to be in that kind of position again, standing by the sea with the sun on my face. Rejuvenates body and mind…

I was walking through some meadows this weekend and the flowers were bursting through the grass, their colours dancing over the green of the grass. It reminded me of the endless energy that Life has. There is an unending stream of Life, pulsing through Nature, never weakening. The Source is infinite, and so are the manifestations of it.

After winter, the flowers come out and the animals that hibernated shake themselves off and commence with their lives. After a catastrophe, some life forms survive and adapt, and new life forms appear that are suited to living in the new surroundings. There is an endless drive to push, to be, to be an expression of Life.

And this endless power that is within Nature, is within us as well. We are the highest form of development on this small planet, all the power within it, is within us as well. We need to open up to this source, be fuelled by it, and the limitations on our lives fall away…