Withdrawing Into Sanity

This is likely to be my most unpopular post for I don’t support Trump. I don’t support Biden. I don’t support vaccine promoters. I don’t support pro-health people. I don’t support those for lockdowns … or those against them. I don’t support left, right, communists, capitalists or any in between.

I just support you. And I support me, which is the same thing.

See, we’re all looking for a saviour, someone out there who will make our insane world sane – someone else who will give comfort, certainty and caring.

In our desperate need for this other, this hallowed and perfect human, we’ll latch on to any passing story that gives us the three Cs.

There’s horror stories about what Biden will do. There’s glorious stories about what Biden will do. There’s stories that the political war with Trump is not over and that he will rise again, like another saviour, after days and nights of darkness, on 22^nd of March.

Of course, any and all of these stories might come about. Or they might not … a definite maybe!

However, right now, they’re no more than stories and our tragic need for someone else to save us has turned the stories into reality, so much so that people are taking to the streets and taking up arms as if they were real.

They are just stories, fables and fairy tales, right now, people!

And, if it wasn’t the Trump/Biden divide, it would be the Catholic/Protestant, male/female, black/white/yellow or some other divide.

We’re all trying to make sense of an insane world and we’re all trying to turn insanity into sanity. We will never succeed. This world has always been insane and it always will be. No amount of shifting in our seats will make this chair more comfortable. The world will never become comfortable. It’s not built for comfort and it’s not changing.

No one else can make it comfortable or sane for us. The only saviour out there is in here – in our comfortable, certain and caring heart. That, my friend, is the only saviour you have and the only saviour you need. There is no other choice, no matter how much we would wish otherwise.

The other non-choice is that there is no future. There’s no he’s going to do this or she’s going to do that or this will happen or I’ll end up doing that. Stories of the future are simply stories … until they happen.

The only Truth is this precious moment, seen through the caring eyes of your own heart. That is the only lens to peace and sanity – YOU in this NOW. That is all you know and it’s all I know.

As I step back from stories of past and future horrors and sink into the kindness of my heart’s knowing, I feel nothing but peace. And peace is the only sanity.

This is not withdrawal from the insane world. It is withdrawal from predicted horrors that won’t happen. This is not a denial of what is. It is acceptance of what is, HERE and NOW. Not over there. Not some other time. Here. Now. This tiny space and time. The smaller space and time we choose, the more peace and sanity will descend.

I know that desperate, flailing people want me to support their side, their story, their philosophy. However, I cannot … well, I could if I wanted to but I have tasted too much of peace to choose anything but that.

All I can do is support your heart’s view and my heart’s view, knowing they both see the same sweet peace and sanity.

How could we support anything else?

Kissing Goodbye To Sympathy

In the event of a nuclear war, we’re told to bend over and kiss our bums goodbye. That could be a helpful technique when blaming others for our misfortunes.

Yes, the world’s an uncaring place, a spiteful place and a dangerous place. Everywhere we look there is mayhem, suffering and uncertainty. There’s a thousand and one injustices and a thousand and one causes to “right” those injustices.

We fix one hole in the system and another opens before us. We divorce our bullying spouse and find our son’s bullied at school. We lend a friend money, to stave off bankruptcy, and then our business fails. We take pills for heart disease and find they give us gout.

Czechoslovakia finally ousted the oppressive and fraudulent communists, only to discover their own leaders were more fraudulent.

The French ousted the ruling aristocracy during the French Revolution and then found they were stuck with hundreds of grand palaces and mansions and no money. So, to finance their cause, they sold those properties back to the ruling aristocracy and, in the end, nothing much changed.

At every level – personal, family, community, national – the potholes are filled in and more appear. The road of life is always under repair … just like the roads to your home!

Like your local council, we’re constantly trying to repair our road oft-travelled.

We go to doctors, therapists, healers, coaches, psychics, seminars, workshops and AA meetings and have to acknowledge that we are never cured of our addictions to gambling, alcohol, family dramas, financial woes, anger, depression, neediness, bodily failures … whatever addiction we’ve chosen in this lifetime.

Oops, sorry, this is becoming depressing, isn’t it? I really hoped to uplift you, today, but I’ve just rubbed your nose in the apparent reality of this flaccid, pointless life.

So, brace yourself – here comes the positive bit!

THE world is insane but YOURS need not be.

See, there’s 40 billion perspectives and, though we all inhabit the same spinning rock, we each live in different worlds.

The world the media and your friends want you to live in is theirs – you can choose theirs or your own world.

You might see bombing in Syria but you haven’t been bombed. You might hear of a traffic accident but you haven’t been in one. You might hear of drug addicts but you’ve never been one.

YOUR life, YOUR world, in this very moment, is what YOUR life is. You can choose to be there, in that tiny blessed moment, or you can choose to be in someone else’s moment, far away from you.

Now, two words – sympathy and empathy.

Sympathy is when you get upset, angry or depressed because a friend is. In sympathy, you give up your strength. You give up yourself. You give up on yourself. You become someone else and are weakened … no, it’s worse than that … you weaken yourself AND you weaken them by adding your angst, grief and pain to theirs. That’s sympathy.

By staying in empathy, however, you stay in yourself. You stay in your strength. You hold the Truth of who you are while being with your friend and sharing your power. You lend them strength, not weakness. You are fully with their pain or confusion but you’re there from your position of strength.

When we move from sympathy to empathy in every moment of our lives – watching TV, being with friends, helping in accidents – we take nothing from ourselves and give from strength, power and Truth.

And, magically, that shift in attitude, that shift in perception, fixes so many perceived potholes in our oft-travelled road. Somehow, that shift in beingness removes blame and removes victimhood. They quietly slink away into the limpid shadows they crept out from.

So, in every moment, there’s a choice:

We can bend over, give up and kiss our bums goodbye. Or we can bend over and kiss the earth for the blessings it bestows.

A simple, everyday choice.

Defenceless and Strong Against the Enemy

When the enemy’s army marches over the hill, bearing down on us, it’s not a time to panic. It’s simply a time of change and breathing is good. Centreing is good. Returning our mind to Source is good.

Remembering who we are is good and, as we do, we’ll remember that the approaching enemy is more frightened than we are. They have forgotten who they are for, if they remembered, they’d feel no need to attack.

When we forget ourselves – our connection with Source – we immediately feel the separation and guilt that accompanies it. That guilt and sense of separation never leave us, through we try to blot them out with addictions and senseless activity.

Yoga is Sanskrit for union or connection and is both a state of connection and a series of activities that allow us to connect to anything. When we feel that union with Source, with Self, peace ascends and there is no other.

However, when we step away from that connection, the separation and guilt kick in and don’t leave. Suddenly there is other – other religions, other nationalities, other languages, other people, other beliefs, other opinions, other creatures, other, other, other.

Along with others, comes the irrepressible sense of competition. That is when judgement raises its petulant sabre – I’m better than that, I’m less than this, I’m righter than him, I’m wronger than her, I’m, I’m, I’m. It’s always about us against the world or us compared to the rest of the world. There is no stopping this childish and persistent comparing and the mature being will recognise it, observe it and not act on it. That compassionate being will allow judgement to scream into the void while they listen to that quieter voice for peace; the voice that is always there beneath the shriek of comparison.

We have all been that immature being, goaded into action by judgement’s (the ego’s) frantic clamour for what it can never have. We’ve all needed to be right and to prove it. We’ve all needed others to be wrong and for them to admit it. We’ve all badgered our patient friends about what’s wrong with this and that, while they smile indulgently.

We’ve all demanded justice for some cause or other; for some situation or another; for some person or another; for some group or another. And then we find reason to let these grievances go and realise there is no other … that any injustice is that which we’re inflicting on ourselves.

Before this moment of maturity, we imagined that others were harming us, that others were belittling us, that others were disparaging of us. Then, in our need to be right, we childishly retaliated with thoughts, looks, fists or weapons. We turned on other, whether we knew them or not, and eked out what we thought was revenge or rightness … righteousness.

We attacked in the bedroom, kitchen, streets, schools, parliaments, battlefields and every other place … including in our minds. We fought with thoughts, words and deeds and the injustices grew faster than our pummelling fists. The fight was never won. The war was never over … yes, did I say the ego flayed about demanding what it could never have? I think so. Then, in a moment of exasperation – or was it a moment of clarity – we realised injustice was a bottomless pit we could never fill with our righteousness. The wrongs ran ahead of us, taunting us in our headlights and we never quite ran them down.

So, that moment of exasperation/clarity arrived. We gave up. We gave in. We cried in frustration and/or sighed with relief. We no longer had the energy for battle and lay back in the blood-stained grass while swords clashed and guns boomed around and over us. In our withdrawal from the battle we had imagined that our defencelessness would be our undoing. But, no, it became our strength. Though the battle of others raged around us, we were untouched and birthed anew. As our exhausted panting subsided, an energy arose in us; a clean, clear uprising of peace that cleansed every cell and thought. Peace, Oneness and Okayness shivered through every fibre of our being and it eventually dawned that the battle had moved away. The grass was cleansed of blood and the earth spoke through us in tones of remembrance … a remembering of who we really are – one with the earth, one with all, one with Source.

Where the battle had departed, withdrawal now enlivened us. Peace and forgiveness were no longer weak; they were our strength, we realised.

As we gave up the frantic pursuit of that illusory justice, we realised it was within – it was just-is. As we chose to accept what is, what just-is, peace overwhelmed us with its glistening tears of relief.

From the strength of our returning to peace and forgiveness came a clarity and a power that sang that ancient song of remembrance.

That simple power and clarity returned whenever we chose, for we did forget from time to time, after that. And, when we forgot, we were reminded by defencelessness and we then allowed just-is to sweep back in.

It was not always easy to return to defencelessness and peace for the world’s insanity appeared overwhelming at times. The more we practised the return to peace and sanity, however, the easier it became.

But now that it’s a daily practice, the marauding hordes that crest the hill before us, their vicious dust of vengeance rising in the dawning sunlight, daunt us no more. We return to peace and, magically, the dust is stilled and the hill recedes.

We know of attack’s impotence and slip into the strength and serenity of defencelessness, knowing a time will come for their moment of exhaustion and clarity, as it did for us.

We pray for their peace, knowing there is no other and our prayer is answered as Source and Oneness become us again … and sweet tears of relief fall again.

And we smile.

If God Was a Giraffe

If God was a giraffe, he’d stand out. But he doesn’t so he can’t be. In fact, he can’t be any creature we know, not even ourselves, though we assert that we’re made in his image.

So the mystery remains as to the nature of God, though many say they have broken the code. The problem is they’re all breaking different codes and coming up with different shapes and sizes. He’s a man. She’s a woman. It’s without gender. He’s kind. She’s spiteful. It’s loving. He’s spitting fire and brimstone. She’s no more than a disembodied voice. It’s not even a voice; it’s a thought. He made everything here in seven days and on it goes.

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) tells us that God didn’t make anything here on earth. We did it all. That silent, still, ever-creating God created nothing here at all. And, despite his voicelessness, there is a Voice for God that guides our every move, if we listen. The Voice for God, however, is not heard with our ears. It’s a knowing. A certainty.

ACIM tells us that when trying to make a decision, when deciding among possible alternatives, the choice that brings peace is always the right choice. In a way, the feeling of peace is the Voice for God.

That Voice for God, that feeling of peace, is something no one can deny. It takes no decoding or theological explanation. It comes from the direct experience we’ve all had.

James Caan, the British millionaire, used to go for the buzz, the high. The excitement of taking financial risks helped him make his millions. However, as he now says, excitement never lasts so he now goes for contentment. Contentment might be his word for peace and that lasts while the buzz and the high leave quickly, demanding that we find more and more buzzes and highs … and so the path of addiction.

Or, as ACIM explains, the ego is always searching for what it cannot have. I want excitement! I want happiness! I want fame! I want wealth! I want beauty! I want acceptance! I want adulation!

Of course, we can have all of these things but:

1. We cannot have them without a fight. We cannot have them without effort, and
2. They come from outside us and so we make ourselves slaves to others.

Peace and contentment, though, come from within. We don’t fight for them. We don’t strain. In fact, we do very little. We give up and give in to that kind, inner voice that speaks last and quietly.

When the noise and demands of the world are exhausted, there is a voice that remains – the still, quiet Voice for God – and, like peace and contentment, it remains. They never leave us for that is what we are.

Battered about by the noise of the world, of its demands and oughtism[1], it is easy to forget that silent, still peace from which we were created.

It takes persistent practice to let the noisy babble of the world go but, boy, is it worth it!

When we do return to the peace that we are, there’re is a clarity that ascends, along with a certainty of choices … and an ease about making decisions for there’s no analysis or judgement. There’s just the feeling of peace or the feeling of no-peace.

Simples!

So, if our essence is peace and we are made in the image of God – or he/she/it is made in ours! – perhaps that’s all God is … peace.

But, no, that can’t be right; that’s much too simple …

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[1] Oughtism = doing what we think we ought to do.

We are the Age of Aquarius

If you don’t like the Christmas Grinch, you’d better stop reading for I might spoil your ascension party.

There is a difference, though: the Grinch is a grumpy old man and I’m not grumpy – I am peaceful. Also, he hated Christmas and I love the future.

See, there’s a lot of excitement about this new age that’s coming – the Age of Aquarius and all that.

So many people are pinning their hopes on the likes of Donald Trump and many others who are bringing evil into the light, those who are telling the “real truth” and those making a stand against the evils like COVID rules, vaccinations, sovereignty violations and so on.

Some are pinning their hopes on those beyond this planet – UFOs, the Galactic Federation, the White Brotherhood and so on.

We’re also putting a lot of faith in ancient writings, prophesies and channelled messages from everyone from Jesus to Michael Jackson.

And where does the Grinch come in? I don’t hate it but I’m not excited by it.

See, I’ve seen all of this before. All of it, over the last 30 years. Many times. None of this is new. None. Of. It.

I heard about the Galactic Federation, spaceships and the White Brotherhood all coming down to save us all … along with the prophesies of the White Buffalo, Nostradamus, White Cloud and a crowd of other wise ones, over 30 years ago. The stage show, Hair (1968-72), was all about the new Age of Aquarius that was coming to save ourselves from ourselves. The hippies of the 1960s-1970s were all about that.

I’ve heard it all before – many, many times – and the first few times I believed it.

The reason I believed it was because I didn’t believe in myself.

When we are out of hope, when all is dark despair and gloom, we’ll clutch on to anything floating by.

Adolf Hitler was adored as the saviour of Germany till he destroyed it, along with much of Europe. The same with Thatcher in Britain, Marcos in Philippines, Stalin in Russia and many current politicians. Our celebrities inevitably fall from grace and our parents, spouses and children fall off their pedestals from time to time.

Whenever we lean on someone or something else for our salvation, they will eventually crumble to dust, leaving us with more anger and confusion than we started with.

Now, don’t get me wrong – if this promised Age of Aquarius, in all its beautiful glory, does come about, I’ll be overjoyed. But don’t hold your breath for it.

What cannot fall from a pedestal is peace for peace is the pedestal; it is our base, our essence.

A Course in Miracles tells us that the world has always been insane and will always be insane. We might “fix” one tiny corner of that massive insanity but another insanity will pop up.

The supermarkets might use less plastic for your grocery bags but they’re now using more plastic to wrap individual bananas, kiwifruit and lettuces. Like a balloon, we push in one part and another pops out.

That’s the bad news – the insanity will change from one to another but it will still be there. Insanity will remain in THE world.

What doesn’t have to remain is insanity in YOUR world.

You see, there’s a difference between THE world and YOUR world … and MY world.

 The pain and misery seen on TV is not yours – it’s someone else’s. It only becomes yours if you invite it in. You can leap into the screen and become involved in the mayhem, angry at the injustices and sad for the misfortunes you see paraded before you.

Or you can watch without involvement.

Or you can turn it off.

Like the TV screen, you can treat the rest of life like that – involvement, silent witness or turning into your own world.

None of us can change the world. I cannot affect Donald Trump’s actions and you cannot stop the vaccine program in another country.

There are so many issues and few, if any, do we have any control over.

However, what we DO have control over is OUR world or, more specifically, our minds.

What I have discovered – as have millions of others – is that MY world is a perfect reflection of my mind. If I am angry, angry scenarios will come at me. If I’m sad, sad scenarios will come at me. If I am peaceful, peace will come at me.

In essence, then, the Age of Aquarius is with us now, if we choose, and it has always been with us. We do not have to rely on the Galactic Federation, disembodied beings or foreign presidents. We are the answer. We are what we have to lean on. We are the answer to the insanity for, while all the other “saviours” will come and go, like women’s fashions, we never leave us.

Each of us are our own answer and our own future. We are the Age of Aquarius. Live it now!

Fight for Right, not for Light

There’s been a lot of fighting lately, hasn’t there? Actually, there’s always been a lot of fighting – not sure if you’ve noticed … world wars, civil wars, domestic wars, religious wars, political wars, personal wars against God and/or life, wars, wars, wars … yes, they go on.

Actually, you would have thought that, with all this fighting, everything would have been resolved for that’s what fighting is for, isn’t it … to resolve things?

If not to resolve things, then why do we fight? Don’t we fight to fix things? We’ve tried all other avenues – discussion, pleading, mediation, sulking, denial of privileges, persuasion, embargoes, bargaining, bribery, denial – and, when we’ve exhausted those, we go to war. Okay, okay, that’s not the process for everyone, is it? Some pass by all reasonable steps and go straight to fighting when they don’t get their way! Constructive souls!

However we try to meet our expectations, fighting is the last resort. There is nothing else you can do except return to peace.

Fighting is the clear intention to hurt someone – emotionally, financially, physically or mortally. It is the decision to put yourself up and above others and to put them down. It is the sodden belief that it’s okay to hurt another and that their pain is worth you having your needs met. Your needs are worth someone else’s life, health, family, family, community, sanity or finances. You have become that important.

The closer we are to someone, the harder it is to hate them. So, an act of war – in the bedroom, classroom, courtroom, bar room or battlefield – is to:

1. Step back and deliberately create separation,
2. Choose to see that person as no longer human but, in some way, evil, and
3. Devalue whatever humanity we might see, so that it falls below the value of our own needs, of our own rightness.

These three actions happen in a split second and, usually, beyond our conscious decisions … or so we like to think … I’m not responsible for my actions or feelings and all that deceit.

But it is a conscious decision to strip them of any value, giving ourselves permission to stomp over them, in any way we chose. By sucking out any value we see in them, there is no need for justification for the pain we inflict – the pain is now inflicted on a valueless nothing so nothing needs to be justified.

We pretend it’s a subconscious decision so we can bury the guilt where we think the decision came from – in a hidden corner of our mind, somewhere. However, when we bury anything in our psyche, it’s like a McDonalds burger – it never decomposes. No, it’s worse than that for, while we separate the guilt from our conscious presence, it quietly grows to infect our life and actions and we don’t notice it happening … at first! That rotten little guilt might be unseen but, like rust under your car, it etches its rottenness into our self-perception and our self-value. Then, as our (self-perceived) value drops, we’re able to commit greater and greater atrocities for there is nothing (you) committing them.

This is why paedophiles, murderers and soldiers can up their game, becoming more and more brazen and unconscionable in their atrocities.

This is why, for example, PTSD, can take so long to heal. Soldiers have had to bury their guilt and shame for so long, it has taken larger and larger pieces from their soul, psyche and self-worth. It can take a long time to rebuild that.

So, in the end, the victor becomes the victim, the winner becomes the loser and everyone becomes a loser.

This I know only too well.

Five of us fought to get fluoride out of the water in Tauranga, New Zealand. We won, in the end. But I didn’t. I still harboured a grievance against anyone poisoning people with fluoride and with the substance itself. The poisoning continues throughout the world and it continued in my own mind as well. Only when I offered forgiveness to the poison and the poisoners was I free of it. They weren’t changed but I was. I finally won by releasing the grievance.

My real, lasting win came with the realisation that the poisoning – 1080, vaccines, fluoride, chemtrails, 5G, propaganda from authorities, untruths from the media – will continue because it has always been.

A Course in Miracles tells us that the world is insane and it will never be brought to sanity. That’s just how it is. Like squeezing a balloon in one place, only to have it pop out in some other place, there will always be another insanity, another abuse, another grievance, another war.

When I realised fighting devalued and dehumanised me, I got the Wisdom of the Sages – in fighting, one can only lose. There is no other way.

Whatever we give to another, we give to ourselves, because there is no other. There is only One.

Only forgiveness and acceptance can welcome the return of our value and humanity. Forgiveness does not change another for there is no other. It simply releases us from guilt and shame and, in that, we are free, whole and so much lighter … and that is not worth fighting over!

The One Truth – TOT

Do you ever feel like you don’t fit any of the boxes they made for you? That you slip between the keys of the Piano of Life? That the stupid stork delivered you to the wrong parents, community … wrong planet, even!

Well, I’ve just found another box you might not fit into. There was a Facebook post with three types of people. I couldn’t find it again so some of the words will be different but, in essence, it said there were three types of people:

1. Those who are awake enough to know The One Truth (TOT) and are standing up for it, against all the lies and conspiracies,
2. Those who know TOT but refuse to stand for it, and
3. Those sleeping humans who believe the lies and follow, like lemmings, to their own demise.

There were two clear implications and the first was that the first group is the superior (and minority) one – people who are intelligent, diligent and fighting for TOT. The second group are intelligent but lazy and are just as useless as the third group who are simply stupid.

The second implication is that there is TOT and that those who know it are superior.

I don’t fit any of those three groups (boxes) and maybe you don’t, either.

From my box, strange and distorted little thing that it is, I see quite a different world.

Firstly, I don’t see The Truth. There is just my truth, your truth and The Truth. I can’t see your truth, you can’t see mine and neither of us can see TOT. No one owns The Truth and sad is he who imagines he does for, soon, his illusion will be shattered.

Those who think they own TOT are, in fact, owned by their truth. That is not a kind master.

Maybe it’s an age thing and, in my many years, I have witnessed many truths come and go:

1. Asbestos was sold as a soda and touted as a health drink,
2. Smoking tobacco was promoted by doctors to help with anxiety,
3. Fluoride was promoted as good for teeth,
4. Fat was blamed for the rise in obesity,
5. Obesity was blamed on cholesterol,
6. Capitalism was touted as the vaccination against Socialism and the panacea for all our economic ills,
7. It was scientifically proven that humans could not run fast enough to complete the mile in under four minutes … till Roger Bannister did it,
8. AIDS was fatal and there was no cure,
9. Women were incapable of running businesses and having responsible, stressful jobs and
10. Men did not cry.

The list could go on …

See, there is a group of Tibetan monks who do not eat but, once a year, come down from the mountains and gorge themselves on food for 24 hours, without putting on any weight, demonstrating that food or no-food has no effect on them.

I, and many others, have walked barefoot on coals that burn trees and coal but not our feet.

I spoke at an international AIDS conference in South Africa and one of the speakers had been gang-raped by five men and contracted AIDS. Six years later, at the conference, she told us she was in a sexually unprotected relationship with a partner who had HIV … and the CDC counts for both of them were coming down each month … they were curing themselves of AIDS/HIV.

None of these three things are miracles. They are simply truths that I have witnessed. Other people do not believe that so they’re not truths for them.

We choose our truths and our untruths. We choose what owns us and what doesn’t.

Through the kind Hand of God, I have been guided to witness so many of my untruths being revealed as truths and I know that more will continue to be unfolded.

Realising that I know nothing and that I don’t need to be right, I happily occupy the void and bathe in the mystery, knowing I own no truths and none own me. The unexpected happens on a daily basis and I enjoy and accept it, not needing to explain anything.

So, Donald Trump is both good and bad – both truths exist.

Vaccines are both good and bad – both truths exist.

Lock-downs, masks and virus checking are both good and bad – both truths exist.

A world run by a controlling elite is both true and untrue, depending on who is looking.

There are a multitude of truths out there and I have a choice: to sit on the park bench, watching truths all parading by, or I can leap up and pursue every truth that appeals to me, exhausting me in a contest I will never win.

There are those who think my bench-sitting is that of a useless, pointless man … but so is chasing shadows I can never catch.

My decision is not to be lazy.

My decision is not to be ignorant.

My decision is to live in My Truth of peace; finding peace and joy in every moment knowing all the while that my peace touches and uplifts others.

I know some will argue that we must fight the “evils” they see but, on this rock I stand, fighting only guarantees loss of everything, including peace.

My distorted little box may not have space for many people but all who join me experience the Truth of Peace, while we quietly await the arrival of TOT.

And peace, my friends – isn’t that what we all want? I’m sure that’s true!

Pam finds Pamela

Pam wished she could lose mental weight and fit her birth name – Pamela. But, somehow, the bigger name needed a slimmer woman and so she was always Pam – the slam, bang, stumbling Pam and not the slick, quick gliding chick she dreamed to be. She knew she should wear her blonde hair longer but shorter was more practical and she always meant to buy some makeup but groceries, school fees and mortgage got in first every time.

Dick, her mechanic husband who never seemed to tire of his overalls, or the oil under his fingernails, called her Pamo, as if that was more affectionate. Yeah, right! He always said he liked his ample (his word) wife but she never really believed him.

She watched the other mothers through the grimy windscreen of their rusting station wagon, outside the primary school, and wondered how they did it – sparkling clean urban tanks, spike-heeled shoes, hair predictably in perfect shape and obedient, hygienic children. Meanwhile, she slapped James for biting Sarah, Sarah screamed, James howled and she told Matt to go – she wasn’t getting out for anyone else to see her.

She wished they could afford pre-school for the younger two to have an hour or two to herself. God, just half an hour to sit, stare at the sky and dream of … well, dream of anything or nothing. Heaven! But the only change she could think of, in the moment, was to take a different route to the supermarket.

Feeling a frission … frission, what a juicy word, she thought, remembering how she’d loved English at school and those long-forgotten conversations about the meaning of words, life and other ponderables that Dick couldn’t get his tongue or mind around … so, a frission of a dare and drive a different way. She let the twins squabble in the back and imagined she was on some exotic, romantic, trysting holiday; maybe a swarthy gondolier singing Nessum Dorma as he rowed her and her clean-fingered beau round the ancient canals and not in the clapped-out dunger with fractious toddlers screaming in her ear.

She blinked and realized her body had already started the car on its new route while her mind plaintively wandered. She smiled stupidly at her fanciful imagining and was quickly dumped to earth. Here she was, she realized, passing Dick’s workshop, the dusty town’s industrial area, and there was her adoring, oil-smelling man at a nearby café, sitting across the outside table, staring into the eyes of that bloody minx, Deirdre, his receptionist, their hands clasped round cups of coffee … coffee that he swore that he never drank so they never went to cafes. Her guts flipped and her foot lashed out at the brake. Her heap of a car would have slammed to a halt if the brakes were better.

“Fuck! Bloody hell! Shit!” she swore to herself and then realized she’d said it aloud.

“Mum!” came a duet from behind her. “You’re swearing!” Then they giggled.

Embarrassment enveloped her and she stomped on the right pedal and took off, hoping she wasn’t noticed from the sidewalk café, and a rage arose as the car accelerated.

Bugger it! She should stop, back up and confront him. But, no, not in front of the children. It’s not their battle.

She drove in circles for a few minutes, trying to quell her rage and to orientate herself. She wiped her eyes and was grateful for no mascara, for a change. What a mess that would have made!

The twins went strangely quiet and so did her mind. Then she suddenly screeched to a halt, realizing it was a red light.

“MUM!” came a chorus from the back and she apologized rather than shouted back, as she normally did, and, heart still in mouth, she breathed deeply and tried to focus.

The light went green and she took off, only to realise it was just a green arrow!

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” her mouth uttered, without asking her brain. Stop. Reverse. Look around in shame and wonder what else could go wrong.

‘Right, Pam … no, Pamela, you’re a grown, gorgeous woman. You’re okay,’ she told herself. The light went green so she took off … backwards! She was still in reverse!

And that’s when she collapsed. Her hands dropped, her head went down and she whimpered like an injured dog.

“Mum? Mum?” came whispers from the back seat but her body couldn’t move. Her brain couldn’t move. She was beyond embarrassment, caring and any other rational, human thought or action.

Somewhere, in some distant galaxy, there were honking horns and yelling creatures but she stayed curled up. Then a clean, white shirt front appeared at her window. Then long, clean fingers appeared and gestured to her. She obeyed and wound down her window, sat back and waited for the abuse.

“Stai bene, signora? Are you okay?” asked a foreign voice from a kinder galaxy.

“Aah, yes, what?” she said as she forced herself through the fog of her brain. “Actually, no, I’m not bloody bene! Sto passando una brutta giornata … aah, hell,” she said, sensing her brain had clicked into a language she’d used long ago.

“Mia Dio! You speak Italian?” the man asked, standing back, his white teeth and swarthy face like fairy lights across a summer’s evening. “Oh, Dio … you are … no, never! You are … umm, Pamela, no?” He shook his head as if he’d been infected by her brain fog.

“Oh, Jesus!” she said as a memory from a distant land came into view. “It can’t be … surely. Roberto?”

His slender fingers caressed her door frame and they smiled stupidly at each other, remembering the year-long stay with him and his family on the student exchange program … what, twenty years ago?

“Hey, look,” he said, shaking his head as if trying to rattle some logic back into it. “Is okay. Is rental, see.”

Twenty minutes later, they sat across a café table, their fingers not quite touching, while the twins licked ice creams, eyes closed in bliss.

Her eyes were open in bliss as she saw herself in his eyes – not Pam or Pamo but Pamela – a fulsome signora with the fire of love and life in her … a fire that would never go out.

[Sto passando una brutta giornata is Italian for I am having a bad day.]

Painless Freedom

It was the end of days and the start of time. The separation was over, though many knew this not. Days were not separated by days, people were not separated by people and knowing came upon the masses like an old tap left dripping in the dust, invisible for so long.

They all awakened to that eerie feeling that they knew what the day was to bring or what someone was about to say. And the day did bring and the people did say what that odd feeling suggested. Of course, they’d dismiss it as coincidence, not trusting their inner promptings.

Then they’d have a premonition about some political drama or world event and, lo and behold, it would play itself out. They’d shake their heads, thinking they were going mad, and return to trusting the world constructed by humans.

Then they’d have a dream or desire and, in the most synchronistic and bizarre way possible, their dream would be delivered.

Again, just a coincidence … but was it really? The increasing frequency of these unlikely events was unnerving. They could be ignored and brushed away like daily grit but, eventually, the wind blows the grit in too thick and fast to be waved away.

Bigger machinery is needed. This bigger machinery is acceptance which didn’t come easily for most.

Most were puzzled, some were worried and a few were terrified … work of the devil and all that.

Those who believed in the miracles of Jesus would not accept their own miracles. They were surely going to hell or the asylum – bad or mad – and the beneficence of the universe they turned against themselves. It was not their time to embrace a oneness of thought, a oneness of being, and so they died separate, alone and afraid.

Those who did not know of religious indoctrination – or had believed and then rejected it – were of a softer, more pliable clay.

A further mystery, beyond the predicted and created happenings, was a sense of peace that descended when acceptance was allowed in.

PAIN, of course, stands for Persisting Against Inner kNowings and that arose as people resisted these novel feats of mind. Remedies were sought from doctors, therapists, addictions, evasion, confrontation and stammering bewilderment. None helped the pain. In fact, the more pills, healings, workshops and advice one sought, the greater the pain.

It came to people one by one, day by day, like lost sheep finding their way home, that there was nothing outside themselves to dissolve the pain.

Some went willingly inside and others reluctantly. The pain, discomfort and disorientation grew so much that many just gave in. They had spent their money and their fears on others’ promises and their finances and/or minds were exhausted.

They gave up in exasperation, their minds desolate and out of answers. And that, my friends, is what they should have done at the start. Their pain came in many guises – divorces, family feuds, job losses, business collapses, health breakdowns, property loss and mental upheaval. All of these could have been avoided had acceptance come earlier.

Those for whom acceptance did come earlier were prone to listen to their body talk, their inner feelings of peace or fear, and to take themselves inward in some meditative way.

Eventually, we all came to the citadel gates – happily, angrily, depressively, calmly, willingly or resistantly – and none of us knew what was through the gates. However, there was a sense of a whole better way of being, through those daunting gates.

See, people had talked of this oneness for aeons and, to us, with a love for drama and conflict, eternal peace sounded sonorously boring. We shied from it, time after time, to feed our appetite for judgement and comparison.

But, now, we no longer had the choice and the citadel gates waited no longer – they came for us in their gentle, comforting way. When they loved us through the portal we found that still, ever-creative peace is far from boring. In fact, as we discovered, it is so unimaginably sweet and buoyant we wondered why we resisted for so long.

It is impossible to explain to an unborn child what adulthood is like. Similarly, it was impossible for those of us in separation to know what oneness was like.

And, for those of you still hesitating at the gates, we ask that you accept that your birth hour is nigh, relax and give in to your passage into a new world of light and connection.

Enjoy! And accept … then you will enjoy!

The Blood-Red River Of Peace

Between the bones of angels and the skin of this year, runs a river, a river of red. No, it’s not of blood … or like any other river you’ve ever known.

This river flows quietly aglow through the cracks and fissures from yesteryear. It is not stopped by any mountain range between years – there is none.

This river has flowed since the opening of eyes, since the river that bled us to birth and it’s that self-same river that carries you on through this day and the next days.

It flows through your night, carrying dreams and want-to-bes. On its liquid promise does it deliver you days of hope and knowing.

Your everlasting bones of angels give strength and shape to the skin of each year, of each adventure, of each life.

The thunder yells and the lightening screams. The wild wind howls and the rain drenches to the skin … but only to the skin. Not through it.

You are inside that skin, borne along by a river that’s louder than thunder, sharper than lightening, wilder than wind and deeper-soaking than floods … and more ancient than them all.

These booms and strikes come and go while you remain. They may raise your feet a pin-width but the river calms you back home. The prophets of doom, the prophets of boom, raise their shaking voices to an insolent sky and all below are quelled to silence; quelled to belief for a moment … till the moment you return to bathe in your blood-red river and seek solace in its warm liquid of peace.

The striking armies of this world may stab your kin-folk but you are safe if you remember … if you remember you are cobbled from angels, from the out-breath of God and from that blood-red wisdom of a thousand, thousand sages. You are not wrought from the passing parade of jesters and promisers, scientists and proclaimers, who die open-mouthed with the slime-green mud of their prophesies choking their throats.

They are not you. They are outside and beyond your skin. They cannot touch you from inside that skin of years if you so choose. Let them clamour, preen and scare and never know the idiocy of their dreams.

You, Knowing One, will still your voice and sink into that warm, ceaseless river of creative stillness. In that stillness does all peace arise, like the sigh of a quietening ocean and the joyful chirrup of a thousand sparrows.

You need not leave your skin, as most beseech you to. You need not believe and join those salivating for rebellion or revenge. When you sink beneath your skin, to the safety of angels at your core, you will know there is no enemy and nought to rebel against.

You will know that war is lost – as are all wars – the moment it is declared. Fighting, your torrent of red will tell you, guarantees loss. That is the way of loss.

You do not judge those caught in the siren-call of the beleaguered and infirm, those stranded outside their skins. You cannot judge, full stop, from afloat your river of intelligence.

You silently offer them peace and a path back inside their own skins, to their own deep rivers.

They may seem to withdraw from you as they take heed of your quiet words. But, no, they’re withdrawing into their own skins, to the bones of every angel and to their blood-red river … which is our blood-red river, the One Wisdom that flows through us all.

The skin of this year will protect you if you seek its shelter and, in that shelter, will another year of peace be born … and another year … and another year.