Why is it that everyone of us is so blindfolded? Why are our eyes closed on the inside? We see, but we don't see, or we see what we selectively are open to seeing.
Why do we listen, but are unable to hear? It is as though we have only tuned in to one frequency and have the rest firmly shut. We hear but a few preselected channels. We hear what we want to hear.
Why when God gave us such beautiful hearts to feel with and love, have we hardened them and desensitised them to the point that we have grown cold and heartless?
Close your eyes, humanity, so that you can see.
Stop scanning your periphery with your external eyes and ears and turn inwards to your heart. Your heart will not lie.
Close your eyes and with your eyes firmly shut, breathe. Breathe in life through your nostrils. With each breath, breathe in gratitude and humility and grace. In this space of no distraction feel the essence of who you are. Observe the sensations in your physical body. Notice the sounds around you and how much more acute they sound.
In the stillness, with your eyes on the inside, can you feel the essence of who you are? Do you feel like you're home? Do you feel the sweet presence of self, of soul?
With your eyes still closed, can you identify your sex or the colour of your skin? Can you possibly know how old you are or what nationality, what profession you have, whether you're rich, successful or popular? Without peripheral eyes, can you imagine what your physical body looks like?
Our only truth is that we are spirit, a divine portion of God essence, pure and beautiful and peaceful. Can you feel your spirit essence, the real you on the inside? This is your higher self, your parent self, the wise one that stays at home, whilst your child self is occupied with the worldly stuff of making and breaking friendships, choosing loyalties, building empires, amassing wealth and waging wars.
There is no greater truth than this: We are Spirit. Spirit is energy and can therefore never be destroyed. Spirit can be transferred into another form but is nevertheless eternal and ageless.
Open your eyes again and allow your senses to be entertained with the explosion of colour and the intrigue of your surroundings. Can you still feel the connect to your parent you, the real essence of who you are in the background of all the distraction around you? Can you feel the spectator you, the consciousness behind the facade?
Now I ask, with this knowledge of your innate spirit self : "Why do we humans choose to wage war with ourselves and with the rest of humanity? Why do we obsess about our outer beauty which is transient? Why do we alienate ourselves from our families, our fellow citizens of earth, ourselves? Why do we stress about possessions and amassing wealth, worry about not having enough and defending and protecting what we have?"
On the inside none of this matters. On the inside we are love, there is no lack, no fear. On the inside we are complete. On the inside we are one and the same.
How easily we become distracted. How desensitised we are to the needs of those around us. We see the world we have created through our eyes and opinions, through our self righteousness.
We make one set of rules that serve us and an entirely different set of rules for others. But we don't see that. We seek to satisfy our greed and justify our ways. How sad that we create division amongst our families, by favouring ours and disowning theirs. We visit our parents, but disown our in-laws. We insist on our independence, but deny our partners theirs. We see the flaws in others, but are blind to our own.
Let's wake up from our deep deception, our biased perceptions and justifications.
Let's close our eyes to see, to hear and to feel. Let's reach out and touch each other with our souls.
I send you love from my soul
Have a beautiful week
Nicolette
Monday 25 June 2012
Monday 18 June 2012
Let's Play
Did you know that "play is a basic human need. It is the basis of discovery of self and life; it is the bridge that connects mere thought with experience, that integrates new experiences with old, that opens up new possibilities and new ways of being, and that enables us to transfer learnt skills or ideas into new concepts."?
This is an excerpt from Nikki Bush's and Graeme Codrington's book 'Future Proof your Child'.
Wow! I just spent the most part of my day trying to learn new skills on my new smart phone with the help of my youngest son, Dylan.
I can't believe the amount of tension, stress and lack of comfort I felt just trying to learn something so simple, especially in light of the fact that a design team spent hours perfecting the user friendly ability of the phone for simple people just like me. It is always at times like these that I feel like the worst type of hypocrite. I know that to worry is of no value except to hamper the process and yet I feel my neck and shoulders tense up. I become aware of an almost tangible wall of fear that I need to conquer.
It seems that once the fear has been tackled and I'm in full swing with the process, in the moment of the experience the fear is forgotten and then it becomes a game. The experience takes over and the process of learning new skills becomes rapturous fun.
I have to laugh at how serious I become, how easily fearful and how rigid. When I reflect on how easily our children take to the water with new technology, I am inspired to breathe in new youthful vigour, new energy and playfulness.
After all, I am a firm believer in "if they can do it, so can I". I also believe that the future generation are our best teachers and that we need to pay attention and follow their lead.
I think I have forgotten how to play. Life has become far too serious. I think that if I could approach my work as a child approaches play, with the abandonment of fear and without expectations, with an openness to experiencing the new and exciting, with nothing more than the expectation of the thrill of the ride, rather than the expectation of success and accomplishment, life would shift into a different gear.
How insurmountable change sometimes feels. How staid and stagnant we become in our ways, in our 'stuckness'. I am only half a century old. I still have plenty of living and learning to do. Well, that's how I perceive it.
The Butterfly of Freedom
"Why do you fly outside the box?'
"I fly outside the box because I can."
"But we know the box. We are safe inside the box."
"That, my friend, is why I leave it. For you it may be safe, but I am free."
Edward Monkton in Happiness
Oh, I am newly inspired to play and have fun and seek more ways to learn creatively, to approach learning with curiosity rather than resistance, to learn fearlessly with the abandonment of a child.
I have so much more playing to do.
Thanks Nikki for this wonderful new awareness with which you have gifted us.
Have an awesome fun week!
love
Nicolette
This is an excerpt from Nikki Bush's and Graeme Codrington's book 'Future Proof your Child'.
Wow! I just spent the most part of my day trying to learn new skills on my new smart phone with the help of my youngest son, Dylan.
I can't believe the amount of tension, stress and lack of comfort I felt just trying to learn something so simple, especially in light of the fact that a design team spent hours perfecting the user friendly ability of the phone for simple people just like me. It is always at times like these that I feel like the worst type of hypocrite. I know that to worry is of no value except to hamper the process and yet I feel my neck and shoulders tense up. I become aware of an almost tangible wall of fear that I need to conquer.
It seems that once the fear has been tackled and I'm in full swing with the process, in the moment of the experience the fear is forgotten and then it becomes a game. The experience takes over and the process of learning new skills becomes rapturous fun.
I have to laugh at how serious I become, how easily fearful and how rigid. When I reflect on how easily our children take to the water with new technology, I am inspired to breathe in new youthful vigour, new energy and playfulness.
After all, I am a firm believer in "if they can do it, so can I". I also believe that the future generation are our best teachers and that we need to pay attention and follow their lead.
I think I have forgotten how to play. Life has become far too serious. I think that if I could approach my work as a child approaches play, with the abandonment of fear and without expectations, with an openness to experiencing the new and exciting, with nothing more than the expectation of the thrill of the ride, rather than the expectation of success and accomplishment, life would shift into a different gear.
How insurmountable change sometimes feels. How staid and stagnant we become in our ways, in our 'stuckness'. I am only half a century old. I still have plenty of living and learning to do. Well, that's how I perceive it.
The Butterfly of Freedom
"Why do you fly outside the box?'
"I fly outside the box because I can."
"But we know the box. We are safe inside the box."
"That, my friend, is why I leave it. For you it may be safe, but I am free."
Edward Monkton in Happiness
Oh, I am newly inspired to play and have fun and seek more ways to learn creatively, to approach learning with curiosity rather than resistance, to learn fearlessly with the abandonment of a child.
I have so much more playing to do.
Thanks Nikki for this wonderful new awareness with which you have gifted us.
Have an awesome fun week!
love
Nicolette
Monday 11 June 2012
Because
"I am what I am BECAUSE of who we all are". What a beautiful reminder of this simple truth from our African humanist philosophy of 'Ubuntu'.
I attended the musical 'Cabaret' at Montecasino on Saturday night. Set in a seedy night club in pre-Second World War Berlin, the story reveals the rather tragic lives of all the individual players to the overtures of pre-Nazi rule.
The musical is colourful and vibrant with lots of fun and laughter, But running just beneath the almost too perfect exterior, lies the deep tragedy of each of the player's lives. On the surface "Life is a cabaret" or just one big party, but scratch a hair's breadth below the surface, and there is so much tragedy and fear and sadness. It's kind of a comedy of opposites perhaps like real life.
What I so love about art and theatre is that it projects for us what is going on in society. It does so in a humorous and subtle way so that we don't even detect that we're being admonished and caused to take a look at ourselves.
The tone of the time is one of promiscuity. Life and values are cheap. Everyone will do anything for a buck. But sitting just above the surface we watch as the various players judge one another, pointing the finger away from themselves. The owner of a seedy apartment is judging one of her tenants for the constant flow of sailors to and from her room, whist she herself is sneaking her gentleman admirer into her room at night. Then when she announces her engagement to her fiance who turns out to be Jewish, she is in fear of what will become of her when the Nazis come to power. She is so afraid that she terminates her engagement and any chance of happiness.
We witness how one minute a person is respected and a split second later, because of revealed identity and the collective ego they are discarded as easily as a chocolate wrapper. Those with money rank higher on the scales of respect and dignity.
The resounding feeling I have come away with is one of heightened awareness toward the immense control of the collective ego. By this I mean the dominant beliefs and conditioning of the majority.
It is no longer o.k. to hide behind the facade of 'separate little me' who lives in a 'separate little world' BECAUSE our society is a representation of each and everyone of us. If our society is not what we want it to be, then we need to look at ourselves. It is not o.k. to blame our governments for all the most heinous atrocities whilst we sit in our armchairs complacently sipping our self righteous tea. We need to take a look at the big picture and see how we too represent the collective.
If we ooh... and aah.... at all the politicians who are corrupt and stealing and taking bribes, then we need to look at ourselves when we dig into our pockets to buy off the traffic officer who's about to issue us with a speeding fine. We need to admonish ourselves for stealing some of the boss' time or petrol. We need to check ourselves when we get a chance to make a buck on the side.
We are living in corrupt and promiscuous times, but we are not separate and above it all. We all play our parts and we are all who we are BECAUSE of the collective. We are it. Let's take a look at ourselves in that proverbial mirror and see exactly who we are without watering down any of the truths. Let's catch ourselves when we next cut off another driver in the traffic and caution ourselves when we're on the verge of badmouthing another driver for doing the same to us.
This bumper sticker says it all: "Don't judge my sin BECAUSE I sin differently to you".
It's time we stop putting the blame at someone else's door and stand up and admit that we are all racists, murderers, thieves and rapists. We need to confess it to ourselves and we need to say we're sorry.
The politicians won't make it right for us. We each need to do it individually and then our governments will start to reflect what we each have in our hearts. Our governments will be a true representation of the collective.
I hope your week renders you much true reflection.
I have spoken
love
Nicolette
I attended the musical 'Cabaret' at Montecasino on Saturday night. Set in a seedy night club in pre-Second World War Berlin, the story reveals the rather tragic lives of all the individual players to the overtures of pre-Nazi rule.
The musical is colourful and vibrant with lots of fun and laughter, But running just beneath the almost too perfect exterior, lies the deep tragedy of each of the player's lives. On the surface "Life is a cabaret" or just one big party, but scratch a hair's breadth below the surface, and there is so much tragedy and fear and sadness. It's kind of a comedy of opposites perhaps like real life.
What I so love about art and theatre is that it projects for us what is going on in society. It does so in a humorous and subtle way so that we don't even detect that we're being admonished and caused to take a look at ourselves.
The tone of the time is one of promiscuity. Life and values are cheap. Everyone will do anything for a buck. But sitting just above the surface we watch as the various players judge one another, pointing the finger away from themselves. The owner of a seedy apartment is judging one of her tenants for the constant flow of sailors to and from her room, whist she herself is sneaking her gentleman admirer into her room at night. Then when she announces her engagement to her fiance who turns out to be Jewish, she is in fear of what will become of her when the Nazis come to power. She is so afraid that she terminates her engagement and any chance of happiness.
We witness how one minute a person is respected and a split second later, because of revealed identity and the collective ego they are discarded as easily as a chocolate wrapper. Those with money rank higher on the scales of respect and dignity.
The resounding feeling I have come away with is one of heightened awareness toward the immense control of the collective ego. By this I mean the dominant beliefs and conditioning of the majority.
It is no longer o.k. to hide behind the facade of 'separate little me' who lives in a 'separate little world' BECAUSE our society is a representation of each and everyone of us. If our society is not what we want it to be, then we need to look at ourselves. It is not o.k. to blame our governments for all the most heinous atrocities whilst we sit in our armchairs complacently sipping our self righteous tea. We need to take a look at the big picture and see how we too represent the collective.
If we ooh... and aah.... at all the politicians who are corrupt and stealing and taking bribes, then we need to look at ourselves when we dig into our pockets to buy off the traffic officer who's about to issue us with a speeding fine. We need to admonish ourselves for stealing some of the boss' time or petrol. We need to check ourselves when we get a chance to make a buck on the side.
We are living in corrupt and promiscuous times, but we are not separate and above it all. We all play our parts and we are all who we are BECAUSE of the collective. We are it. Let's take a look at ourselves in that proverbial mirror and see exactly who we are without watering down any of the truths. Let's catch ourselves when we next cut off another driver in the traffic and caution ourselves when we're on the verge of badmouthing another driver for doing the same to us.
This bumper sticker says it all: "Don't judge my sin BECAUSE I sin differently to you".
It's time we stop putting the blame at someone else's door and stand up and admit that we are all racists, murderers, thieves and rapists. We need to confess it to ourselves and we need to say we're sorry.
The politicians won't make it right for us. We each need to do it individually and then our governments will start to reflect what we each have in our hearts. Our governments will be a true representation of the collective.
I hope your week renders you much true reflection.
I have spoken
love
Nicolette
Monday 4 June 2012
Land Mines and Rat Traps
Are you a relationship sabotager? Do you place land mines and rat traps all over the place to continually corrode your relationships?
Here's the thing I just observed.
We often manipulate and create war zones just because we feel like experiencing some pain or challenge. We have an itch that needs to be scratched. We feel the need to rock the boat. Why lie back, enjoying the peace of floating on still waters when we can stir things up a little and create a storm.
I don't know about you, but I have started to notice how Chris and I, when we are communicating, drop traps all over the place to trip each other up, and I'll qualify this in just a moment.
We'll be discussing or debating something and it's always from our personal point of view. Let's face it, everything we experience in this current life is controlled by our accumulated experiences thus far. Perhaps we are only open to seeing things from the perspective and life experiences we hold. It is rather challenging to try and imagine an experience we haven't yet lived through, isn't it? We seem to base all our future learning on what we have already learnt. So I ask you: "What new things will we ever experience if every new experience has to be referenced to something in our pasts?" "For something to be understood, does it have to have been processed before?"
We really are a strange and predictable bunch of beings, so encased in our specific self created realities. It is no wonder that we need divine intervention to stir things up for us from time to time, to throw our lives around a little, causing us to be thrown outside our comfortable little boxes. It is only when we get to see all of our stuff strewn about on the pavement that we really get to observe what we're all about. It is at these priceless moments that we get to choose whether we want to cram all the padding and stuffing back into the box with ourselves and continue on just as we were before the life changing event, or whether we choose to pick up some new pearls of wisdom and package those in with ourselves.
I have started noticing that when we speak to one another, we are often programmed to hear the answers that we have formulated for ourselves, the ones that match our reality. I'll give you some examples.
Chris might ask me to do something that he perceives is going to meet with resistance. So already his resistance is starting to build in anticipation. The question may go as as follows: "Nicolette, I know your answer is going to be no, but do you think...." or "We've been invited to ......,but I know you don't like xyz..." You see these are rat traps. They are not questions. They are statements that cause the other to go for the bait. They don't even justify an answer, because we've just been told what our answer is. We haven't been asked for our two cents worth. It's basically a red flag.
It's as though we are having the conversation in our own heads. The only difference is that we are speaking our thoughts and intentions out aloud to an audience. Now unless you're completely conscious and free of ego, you will most likely find yourself going for the bait and jumping in to defend yourself and getting rather messy in the ensuing battle of wills. The resultant battle will go something like "you're always so negative", "No, I'm not", "But, I never said that" "You didn't have to. I know you. You're always..."
Does it sound familiar?
Didn't we attract the fight by the thoughts and intentions we held before we opened our mouths to speak? Why do we place little landmines all over our conversations to trip up our partners and attract them to battle? Perhaps it is our way of exposing our negative feelings in an attempt to rid ourselves of them, hoping that they will be destroyed in the mighty explosion of our own creation. Maybe our inner sense of unease is just too terrible to live with, so we try and fob it off on those closest.
I was just wondering...Is it just me or is it a familiar role play for all of us?
For me, it is a reminder to continually die to my past every second and stop trying to second guess the future, rather allowing it to unfold as it is meant.
Let's believe in miracles. Let's believe in us, all of humanity, being able to experience life from outside our boxes, from another's point of view.
I wish you a week of awakened consciousness and avoidance of land mines and rat traps.
Ha, ha, ha....Laugh! It's great for you.
love
Nicolette
Here's the thing I just observed.
We often manipulate and create war zones just because we feel like experiencing some pain or challenge. We have an itch that needs to be scratched. We feel the need to rock the boat. Why lie back, enjoying the peace of floating on still waters when we can stir things up a little and create a storm.
I don't know about you, but I have started to notice how Chris and I, when we are communicating, drop traps all over the place to trip each other up, and I'll qualify this in just a moment.
We'll be discussing or debating something and it's always from our personal point of view. Let's face it, everything we experience in this current life is controlled by our accumulated experiences thus far. Perhaps we are only open to seeing things from the perspective and life experiences we hold. It is rather challenging to try and imagine an experience we haven't yet lived through, isn't it? We seem to base all our future learning on what we have already learnt. So I ask you: "What new things will we ever experience if every new experience has to be referenced to something in our pasts?" "For something to be understood, does it have to have been processed before?"
We really are a strange and predictable bunch of beings, so encased in our specific self created realities. It is no wonder that we need divine intervention to stir things up for us from time to time, to throw our lives around a little, causing us to be thrown outside our comfortable little boxes. It is only when we get to see all of our stuff strewn about on the pavement that we really get to observe what we're all about. It is at these priceless moments that we get to choose whether we want to cram all the padding and stuffing back into the box with ourselves and continue on just as we were before the life changing event, or whether we choose to pick up some new pearls of wisdom and package those in with ourselves.
I have started noticing that when we speak to one another, we are often programmed to hear the answers that we have formulated for ourselves, the ones that match our reality. I'll give you some examples.
Chris might ask me to do something that he perceives is going to meet with resistance. So already his resistance is starting to build in anticipation. The question may go as as follows: "Nicolette, I know your answer is going to be no, but do you think...." or "We've been invited to ......,but I know you don't like xyz..." You see these are rat traps. They are not questions. They are statements that cause the other to go for the bait. They don't even justify an answer, because we've just been told what our answer is. We haven't been asked for our two cents worth. It's basically a red flag.
It's as though we are having the conversation in our own heads. The only difference is that we are speaking our thoughts and intentions out aloud to an audience. Now unless you're completely conscious and free of ego, you will most likely find yourself going for the bait and jumping in to defend yourself and getting rather messy in the ensuing battle of wills. The resultant battle will go something like "you're always so negative", "No, I'm not", "But, I never said that" "You didn't have to. I know you. You're always..."
Does it sound familiar?
Didn't we attract the fight by the thoughts and intentions we held before we opened our mouths to speak? Why do we place little landmines all over our conversations to trip up our partners and attract them to battle? Perhaps it is our way of exposing our negative feelings in an attempt to rid ourselves of them, hoping that they will be destroyed in the mighty explosion of our own creation. Maybe our inner sense of unease is just too terrible to live with, so we try and fob it off on those closest.
I was just wondering...Is it just me or is it a familiar role play for all of us?
For me, it is a reminder to continually die to my past every second and stop trying to second guess the future, rather allowing it to unfold as it is meant.
Let's believe in miracles. Let's believe in us, all of humanity, being able to experience life from outside our boxes, from another's point of view.
I wish you a week of awakened consciousness and avoidance of land mines and rat traps.
Ha, ha, ha....Laugh! It's great for you.
love
Nicolette
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