It's Not Funny

Sarcasm is not funny. I don't care what anyone says. Sarcasm is a form of bullying and needs to be labelled as such. Notice who is laughing when someone makes a snide remark. It is not the person at whom the remark was aimed.

I have been patiently trying to instil in my teenage son that sarcasm is not a form of humour. Dylan would have me believe that this kind of insensitive behaviour is fashionable. He informs me that I am one of the only people he knows who doesn't listen to a popular radio station every morning in which the DJ phones random people and pulls pranks on them.

In a motherly attempt to experience the world through his eyes I decided to listen in to the said radio station one morning. The DJ was pulling a prank on a jealous girlfriend whilst her boyfriend was at the gym. The boyfriend was in on the act as was another woman who was set up to hit on him whilst he was on the phone to his girlfriend.

I found the experience rather like having a dental procedure. It was laborious and excruciating. In fact I didn't laugh once and the reason why?

The girlfriend was stressing and I felt for her as she was humiliated in front of thousands of listeners. Here were a bunch of people who had deliberately and meticulously staged an event that would reduce this poor girl to anger, worry and panic, whilst the rest of the population at large had a laugh at her expense. By listening to the show I felt I had incriminated myself by being a voyeur. I was one of the bullies and it didn't feel nice.

That form of entertainment, if you can call it that, is no less brutal than the kid in the school playground who is taunting a classmate by throwing his lunch box around, cheered on by his mates.

I can't believe that adults would choose to numb their senses and reinvent bullying in their adult playgrounds. Seriously! So the kids grew up but the games just reinvented themselves. It's now OK because it is a form of National entertainment. We rebuke that little bully who belittled our precious child in front of his peers, but we laugh on a larger scale at someone being decimated at a National level.

It's time to wake up and call things what they are. It is not OK to justify bullying as a form of entertainment. If the person being laughed at is not laughing too, then someone is suffering and I don't want to be laughing at their tears.

Apparently if you place a frog in a pond of water and you gradually raise the temperature of the water, the frog will never discern the need to jump out. It will remain in the water until it is cooked to death. Now, likewise, if humanity doesn't question the way things are, we are likely to land up like cooked frogs.

We need to question how we have become conditioned to doing things. We need to question what we accept and we need to dare to speak up when we don't agree. We need to dare to be different. We need to find our voices and speak up for the weak, the humble and the victims.

Let's take a stand against bullying in all its forms. Let's laugh with people and not at them.

Have a great week

love
Nicolette

You and Me

This piece is inspired by watching my son's rugby semi-final on Saturday. I was watching young men falling and being doctored by the paramedics and being patched up or carried off the field on a stretcher. Each time another boy was hurt my heart poured out compassion because he was my son. And then my son did hurt himself and I ached for him just as I ached for all the others who were hurt. It didn't matter which team any of them were playing for. They were all my sons.

I hope this article from my heart inspires you

You and I are the same.
No we're not, you say. We have different colour hair and skin, different nationalities. You're a man and I'm a woman.
We're the same, I insist
How can we be the same when I have children and you don't. You are a career person and I just stay at home?
We are the same. The same universal blood flows through our veins.
We are not related. We have different blood types and we were born in different countries.
We have the same origin of LOVE. We all come from love and will return to love. You and I are each a dollop of love essence from the self-same love pool. It is as if we are both droplets of water from the massive oceans that cover planet earth. Just because you call yourself another name and have gathered a bunch of other droplets to yourself in your click doesn't mean that you and I aren't still water droplets. Just because you entertain certain beliefs about yourself or have experienced life differently to me doesn't change anything. We're the same.

Don't hide behind your excuses and care more for those you have included in your fold. Open your heart. There is space for much, much more love than you ever deemed possible. Love extends past the barriers we build with family, religion, class, social network, sexuality, hobbies and so on. We both want to be loved and appreciated, understood and not suffer. We are the same.

Open your heart with the eyes of your soul and acknowledge that we're just one big family. What happens to one, or another or someone else's loved one happens to us, you and me.

Don't sit by when someone experiences loss and suffering and hide behind your veneer of otherness and gloat in your separateness. It is just the way your ego tricks you into escaping from the truth that one of us is hurt. That someone else, whom you haven't yet had the opportunity of befriending, is the same as your own son or daughter. Don't sigh a huge sigh of relief that it is not you personally who is suffering and send a mental sympathy note of condolence. Dare to feel some emotion because they are you and me. Use your empathy and imagine the suffering of another, don't just stand to a side and numb your feelings towards them with pity as your ego creates a nice big protective divide between you and them.

We are the same. My son, your mother, our neighbour, their gardener. We are all beautiful refractions of Divine light. Don't let us ever forget that. Let us embrace our compassionate hearts and wish for each other blessings of love, health and happiness. Let's use our thoughts which are creation to create a world of caring, a world of unity and togetherness. We are one interconnected Spiritual body.

You and I are the same. I love you and I love me. There is no difference. We exist because of each other.

Have a beautiful week embracing all the beautiful aspects of us.

love
Nicolette

Are your beliefs toxic?

What do you believe?  Where do your beliefs come from? Are your beliefs cast in stone? What makes you believe that your beliefs are the only reality?

It is my perception that beliefs come from conditioning and reinforcement of other's beliefs.

If what we know is formulated out of what we have experienced thus far then we are limiting ourselves and our futures to a regurgitation of all our previous experiences. We are not open to seeing the expansiveness of the larger picture. We are closed, fearful and guarded. Nothing new can evolve from a rigid belief system.

Anita Moorjani in 'Dying to be Me', says "If I can accept that my understanding is incomplete, and if I'm able to be comfortable with uncertainty, this opens me up to the realm of limitless possibilities." She goes on to say that in realising that we are one and the same as consciousness and by becoming aware of our limitlessness we enter the state where miracles occur.

Anita nearly died when her organs began to shut down after battling with cancer for four years. She had a near death experience where she entered a state of pure consciousness and realised that heaven isn't a place but rather a state. She decided to come back to her earth experience because she realised that heaven is achievable right here on earth.

She attributes her miraculous healing to an absence of belief. She says that our beliefs are the very reason we don't heal.

I find myself agreeing with her. How often have I obsessed about what I eat and how I cook. I stress about whether certain foods are good for me or toxic, whether I should drink out of plastic, sleep next to electrical power points, breathe the air, drink from the tap and so it goes on. How toxic are my thoughts? How toxic are my beliefs to my mind, emotions and physical well-being? Aren't my beliefs poisoning me?

Life is to be enjoyed and lived to the full. It is not necessary to suffer. Suffering is caused by our inability to see ourselves as infinite beings. When we see ourselves as less than we are, as incomplete and needing improvement, then we forget our Spiritual oneness and we suffer. Life becomes a chore because we are never good enough and we are always punishing ourselves and resisting the flow.  We are always apologising and carrying our tails between our legs. We create our own suffering out of the belief that we're not good enough exactly as we are.

Let me ask you? If you were created by the Divine in the Divine's image, then are you not Divine? Could you be anything less than Divine? Do you think that you have the capacity to make a better job of yourself, just by trying, than God made of you in the first place? Isn't it absurd to even entertain the idea of yourself being less than magnificent? If the Creator is Supreme then it goes without saying that you and I are extremely magnificent beings. We are perfect in every way. God doesn't make mistakes or mess-ups. We are absolutely fabulous and powerful and creative and all encompassing. We are walking miracles. When we realise our power in knowing who we are, there is nothing we need to do or achieve or be other than exactly what we are right now.

If my belief is that God is a larger version of me then I have just limited God, but if I believe that I am a diminutive version of God then I have brought awareness to my infinite potential. If I believe God keeps score of all my transgressions and intends to punish me accordingly, I have humanised and limited God into a five-sensory being like myself. The magnificent, amazing Power that created us all in Divine unconditional LOVE, is incapable of judgement and punishment. The very nature of unconditional love is non-judgemental. It loves without need, want or greed, without being asked. It loves without holding back or seeking payback.

We need to drop our false beliefs about ourselves and appreciate who and what we are with awe and gratitude. Expand your consciousness and allow yourself to believe in the unknowable, the unbelievable. Believe in what you haven't been able to imagine and perceive. Faith is the essence that our dreams need to bring them to fruition.

Don't let fear rob you of your vision of supreme capability and inhibit your ability to love without bounds. Fear separates you from your Source. Fear is what man does when he doubts the job God/Love did in creating him. Don't doubt your magnificence.

Close your eyes and connect with your Source and have the experience of supreme power and love and peace that you are. Believe in yourself!

Have a magnificent week

love
Nicolette

Life as it's Meant to Be

Today I am filled with an incredible peace. I am who and what I am. I am not questioning why. I have this absolute serenity that the circumstances of my life are exactly intentioned for reasons I am not in control of and don’t necessarily understand.

Today I feel power in finding no resistance to anything or anyone. Everyone who is in my life is perfectly orchestrated for my and their learning. There are no accidents. There are no chance encounters. Everyone whom I have met so far has had some influence on me and added their thread to the tapestry of my life. I am what I am because of the sum total of all my encounters thus far.

Today I find meaning in the simplest things. Nature just seems to sparkle with greater intensity. Perhaps it is because I am really seeing with all my awareness. It is as if I am seeing with my physical eyes for the very first time.

I feel as though this is the first day of the rest of my life. I feel such appreciation and excitement for living.

I sit alert, absorbing every detail. It is as if Life is pregnant with a great surprise. Life is a moment-by-moment unfolding of presence.

Today I am alive and it feels as though I am witness to creation as it occurs. I feel like I have a front row seat.

It is not always like this, because often times I find myself stressing and worrying about how things are going to play out. There are times that life is difficult and feels like hard labour, when everything “seems impossible until it’s done”, to quote Nelson Mandela. But not today. Today I am not considering the future. Today I just am. I am not trying, expecting, hoping, beseeching, wanting or rushing and I have never felt more exuberant or alive. All my energy is in my awareness rather than being drained out of me through fear.

This feeling is so intensely beautiful. I never want to lose it. I want to live each day going forward like today, without fearing the future or questioning the past. Because this is heaven. This is unquestionably and undeniably the life I am meant to live; and I wouldn’t trade places with anyone. This is exactly the life I want – the one I have.

As I close, I hear the words of Nianell’s song playing out: “Here’s to life as it’s meant to be. Here’s to love and to being free.” She sings of the inner fire of passion burning and her total acceptance in letting it play out as it is meant to. After all that’s it, that's the magic ingredient – acceptance. And when we surrender to our lives in faith that everything always works out for our greater good we access gratitude.

All we need do is drop into acceptance and surrender to being. Heaven is a state created by our choosing to live consciously and it is entirely possible to be in heaven right here, right now.

May I take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to you for being exactly who you are and for being in my life. You have made a difference to me. Thank you!

Have a magnificent week

love                                                                                                                                                                     Nicolette