Wake up and live!!

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.” ― Jim Morrison

Don’t be so fucking scared.  Feel what you need to feel.  Do what you need to do.  Is it comfortable?  No.  But what is the point of a life lived in fear.  Never allowing yourself to break through the barriers of your own confinement.  What is life if you don’t live it.  If you don’t take a chance, if you don’t love, if you don’t dance in the rain, if you cocoon yourself in a shell out of fear of being hurt, of failing, of trying.  Be alive in your living.  Allow yourself to live.

Wake up.  Live!

Boxed. Labeled. Nah!

Sometimes I feel like that person standing in front of the dam (damn) wall and just as I’ve plugged the one leak another one starts.  I was going to do this whole long post about what’s currently going on in my head, you know, because getting stuff out always helps.  I’m feeling terribly insecure at the moment, and you know what, I must just put my big girl panties on and deal with it.  Things change.  I know this.  So I’m not going to post about all that is going on in my head.  I’m just going to deal.  A good religious experience might sort me out!

Yesterday I came across this quote from Anais Nin.  Gosh I love her writing, what an amazing woman she was.  It said:

“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you’re not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn’t a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.” ~ Anais Nin

Apart from the millions of other things.  This has been on my mind lately.  And I have to say that I completely agree with Anais here.  In my book, every experience you have, you learn something.  And it doesn’t matter what the circumstances of that experience is.  Once we can recognize that, that it’s a gift and we learn something, life becomes a tad more comfortable and we stop beating ourselves up so much over perceived ‘mistakes’.  Nobody is perfect.  But your attitude is what determines the quality of your experiences.

There are so many things I am interested in and are good at.  Maybe it’s a good thing that I never had the opportunity to go to varsity.  I would either have become a student for life or would have been miserable doing the one job I studied for.  Who and what is to say that we should only have one job.  I guess it makes it easier for the proverbial them, because then we can all be neatly boxed and labeled.  But me, I shudder at the thought of being labeled because of the job I do.  What I do to get paid doesn’t define me.  I can’t get my head around doing the same job for the rest of my life.  Not when there is so much to learn and experience out there.  That’s the great thing about us humans, we are diverse in our talents.  Now sure there are certain disadvantages not being qualified in one specific thing.  And if I could decide exactly what it is I wanted to go study I would probably go do it.  But I just can’t decide on one thing and as we all know it’s really expensive to study.  A good investment yes, but not something that you can waste money on.

I wonder how many of us are frustrated in what we do for a living because it doesn’t fulfill us.  Because we have been brainwashed into believing, thou shalt only have one profession.  I am working towards making money from ALL the things that interest me.  I figure that would sort me out on the job satisfaction front.  I have no desire to ‘fit in’.  I want to live an extraordinary life.  Time is a ticking and there’s no time for wasting.

Weekend Roundup

I had a relatively chilled weekend.  Made some decisions that made me feel happy and content, wrote a bit, watched a movie (at home) which I don’t often do, made my famous veggie soup and baked biscuits with the kids.  The kids seemed to have been possessed by demons this weekend.  So it was challenging, but we had a good time.  Plus my friend C is back from 7 weeks in Afganistan so a whole bunch of us had lunch at the Fat Olive yesterday.  Hmm I just love their mash!

I also spent a lot of time online exploring Ireland, isn’t google maps amazing?!  I’m getting really excited for our trip now!  It’s going to be so awesome!  Apart from that life is cruising along at the moment.  As it inevitably does.  I went through an emotionally tumultuous time and I have sorted through that and as always am a bit wiser, stronger, shinier and happier for it.

What I did NOT do this weekend is start my exercise routine.  Yes I know!  I couldn’t find anything to make my pole work, so I will have to go buy something.  I WILL start with ball and mat exercises though.  Running weekends.  I will.  Must.  I really am craving to do a bit of poling though.

Apart from that I don’t have much else to share.  I had one of those dreams on Friday night where you wake up sobbing, such a weird experience.  It wasn’t a nice dream.  Was very sad.  Anyhoo!  Have a happy Monday everybody.  It’s a short week yay!  Looking forward to the weekend.

There where the magic happens

I finally finished reading “The Empty Boat” by Osho.  What a profound book.  Really.  Everyone that is serious about expanding and opening their consciousness should read this book.  You may or may not have read this post, where I asked some really deep existential questions.  I had a conversation with a friend yesterday on the topic, where I spoke about all the questions that I’m raising at the moment, all the stuff that is coming up for me.  I see it as an awesome opportunity for growth, and she agrees.  It’s not often we can move into situations and afforded the opportunity to consciously and with awareness work on issues that come up for us and not project those onto others.  It’s not a comfortable space to be in always but it still is awesome.  One of the questions that I asked was “Why do we even have relationships” and last night as I read the the last chapter of “The Empty Boat” I read this:

‎”But life is movement and life is trust. Love happens – one has to move into it. Where it leads is not the point. The goal is not the point. The very movement of your consciousness in love is a revelation. The other is not the point; the beloved or the lover is not the point. The point is that you can love, that it could happen to you; that your being opens in trust, without any doubt, without any questioning. This very opening is a fulfillment.

But the mind will say, “Wait, let me think and decide; one should not take any step in haste.” Then you can wait and wait. That’s how you have been missing life.  Every moment life knocks at your door, but you are thinking.  You say to life, “Wait, I will open the door, but let me first decide.”  It never happens.  Your whole life will come and go, and you will be simply dragging, neither alive nor dead, and both are good because death has a life of its own.”

When I read that, the lightbulb went on for me.  The point is that you CAN love, the point is opening your being in trust, and that is the important thing.  Conscious vulnerability.  Being open and trusting in life, in love, allowing yourself to love and to receive love.  But we let our minds interfere and then it just becomes white noise and the beauty of it is lost.  When you love someone (in whatever capacity) the point is not what the point is of the relationship.  It doesn’t matter if it’s going to last for a day or for 20 years.  It doesn’t matter that you might get hurt or not.  The point is being present, moving through it, and learning as much as you can from it.   Expanding and opening your consciousness.

We allow our minds to dictate our lives, always questioning, always waiting, always cautious.  Instead of just trusting the process, going with the flow and moving along with it, being open to it.  Life is simple, our minds complicate it.  We are indeed our own worst enemies.  I decided that I was going to live my life like that, open, conscious, vulnerable, trusting.  I thought that I had veered off the path a bit, but I don’t think I have, even though my mind tries to interfere, even though I have ample amounts of kopraas.  I can see past that to the truth of the matter and I allow myself to be in that uncomfortable space out of my comfort zone, that space where the magic happens…

Exercise, climate change and Sixteen Saltines

OK so I’ve fallen off the exercise wagon a bit since December.  So needless to say things aren’t so perky and tight as what they should be.  Going from exercising 5 days a week to zero, not good.  I’m finding myself craving some form of exercise.  I’m going to see if I can make a plan with my pole, with the spinning mechanism I’m short a couple of centimeters to make it fit, but I also have my mat and ball that I can use.  So I’ve decided that I will do ball and mat exercises during the week and run on weekends for cardio.  I get home just too late to go for a run in the afternoons and when I get up in the mornings it’s pitch black dark night.  Once I get going I’m fine it’s just to get myself motivated to start.  So I’m psyching myself up – I have to do this shizz.  Need to put all those sagging places back in the right spaces lol.

I swopped weekends with the kids father because I have something on next weekend.  It’s ok, I’ll just get wine.  We will be fine.  All the endorphins from all the exercise I’m going to do will also help.  I also have some work to do this weekend.  NO MORE PROCRASTINATING!!  I started a writing exercise which I need to get stuck into properly.  It’s completely private which is great, because some things are just not suitable to share on public forum.  An idea for a book is starting to form in my head, but I’m still playing around with it.  Today I’m also fetching my travel documents for Ireland!  Yay!  Trip is just around the corner and I’m starting to get excited.  We have planned our route and looked up some places we want to visit.

Inbetween all of this I still need to find some tenants for the cottage, organize the market which is also just around the corner and make sure my little business is running proper and complete my “Science of Climate Change” course that I won from Green College Online.  I haven’t even told you guys about it!  It’s really cool.  It totally excites me “this course explains the natural and man-made scientific factors that drive changes in our climate; the historical events that have led to rapidly increasing carbon dioxide levels; and how climate change impacts us environmentally, socially, and financially.  The Science of Climate Change is the first of six professional courses that make up The Carbon Footprint Analyst Professional Certification.”  Cool huh!  I’m über informed and clever now.  And I’d love to do the entire course.  But we will have to see.

So that’s it from me peeps.  Y’all have yourselves a fabulous weekend now!  I’m baking/buying banana bread.  Here is some Jack White awesomeness to kick off your weekend.

Teardrop

Sadness enfolds her
a soft downy feathery nest
warmth in it’s familiarity
She snuggles in closer
and breathes in it’s scent
it permeates every pore
And as she lies there
safely ensconced
it bleeds from her
filling the very air she breathes
with it’s melancholy cords
And she turns into a teardrop
absorbed into feathers

© N Kruger – April 2012

Existential questions abound

So I’ve been thinking a lot about self worth, love and relationships a lot lately.  I have a question.  What is it within yourself that makes you go “yes, I am enough, I love and accept myself completely”.  That I think, would be the ideal for everyone, complete self love and acceptance.  Not many of us have that, some more than others.  I have come a long way in terms of that but not quite there yet.  All of us do that, we seek some validation externally, someone to tell us that they love us, that we are awesome, that we are enough.  My thinking is, that when we completely love and accept ourselves we won’t need that external validation.  And when we get it, it will be the extra sprinkles on the cupcake.

Which brings me back to a question I raised a while ago.  Why do we have relationships?  What is it within us that crave/want/need a someone in our lives.  Is it to get a steady stream of that external validation?  Or is it just the way we were created.  Male/Female energies complimenting each other, the yin and the yang.  Can we achieve more, become better humans, does it aid our personal growth when we pair up with that person that compliments us?    Or are all those things perfectly achievable doing it on our own.

Love is a concept that has been scewed, misused and misrepresented.  I believe that love will save the world.  Love always wins.  But we can’t give something we don’t have, so it all starts with loving the Self and then you can extend love to the world and others around you.  When we can love and accept ourselves completely then we also love and accept others in the same way.  Otherwise it’s all just smoke and mirrors, a projection, and sooner or later the mirage shatters.

These things are all milling through my mind at the moment.  Maybe I’m over thinking, but for me it’s important to figure out some of the answers to these questions.  It’s my responsibility to be the best I can be.  I know that all the answers of all the questions I will ever ask is already within, it’s up to me to find them.  It’s up to me to work really hard to love and accept myself completely so that whoever crosses my path, walks away feeling better and not worse.  I need to figure out what I want so that I don’t seek externally for something that I can give myself.  So that I don’t feel sad or bad when I’m not getting it, so that I feel secure enough in the knowledge in myself that I am enough.  So that I will have healthy, mutually beneficial relationships* and not unsustainable ones based on need.

*Relationships include any relationship, friends, romantic, family

My egg on the rhino issue

OK I just need to lay my egg on the Rhino issue.  7 year old Afeefah Patel wrote our President a letter, a plea asking him to take care of our rhino’s, the president replied promptly to little Afeefah’s plea saying ”I want you to know that our government has been as highly concerned at the staggering numbers of rhinos that have been killed in just this year alone. I am told that the total number is over 103 rhinos.”   Excellent.  Now.  We all have something we feel passionate about and clearly Makgwathane Mothapo feels passionate over the plight of miners as can be seen in his article in response to the president’s reply.  And yes I agree that there are a lot of other pressing issues that the president doesn’t seem to be addressing as he did to this letter from this child.

Now before I continue let me just state for the record.  I am very sympathetic to humans and children and rhinos and all of that.  There are a lot of issues in our country that need to be addressed urgently.  There are people living in awful conditions with no running water or proper sanitation, poverty is a big issue.  BUT.  Yes here it comes…

I’m more of a big picture thinker.  I look at the situation holistically.  I feel that everything starts with looking after our natural resources, preserving our forests, animals, eco systems.  So the earth in general.  If we destroy the earth, wipe out eco systems (including animals) and we turn the earth into a wasteland.  Then we all have a problem.  There is no planet B.  Then we are all fighting for survival or we die.  As unsympathetic as this may sound, we can always make more humans.  That has never been a problem.  But we can not make more rhino’s, when we have cut down all the trees it takes years if not centuries to re-grow rain forests.  If we deplete all our natural resources it takes the earth centuries to regenerate them.  While these issues might not seem pressing to some, if you look at the big picture they are very important.  I think we all can agree it’s rather important to breathe, where do you think oxygen comes from?  Yes, trees.  Everything you use, eat, wear in some way, shape or form comes from the earth.

We are living beyond our means at the moment and it’s not sustainable.  So yes.  While it’s important to address poverty and the plight of miners and all the other issues out there.  It’s equally, if not more important to make sure the rhinos aren’t wiped out.  That we preserve our natural resources and save our environment.

Forever is a long time

I spoke to a friend yesterday going through a bit of a tough time, her marriage is over.  Going through a divorce is probably one of the hardest things I have ever done.  Rewarding but hard.  Even when you want it, it’s still a very tough thing to do.  For me, it caused me to re-look my entire belief system, not just mine in fact, but what we as a society base our beliefs on.  And the realization that I am alone, there is never anyone that is going to be there “forever”.  It gave me the opportunity to figure out what it is that I want, not what society wants me to want, or centuries of genetic programming requires of me.  But what do I want, what makes me tick.  What do I feel comfortable with.  Marriage was never something that suited me, I always felt a bit uncomfortable, but at the time I put it down to other things.  I don’t like to, nor do I and my beliefs fit into any kind of norm, never have, never will.  I still don’t know exactly what it is that I want.  I certainly have not yet come across many other humans that believe quite the same way I do.  I do know that any relationship that I engage in or will engage in will not fit the “normal” perception of what it should be, because clearly that doesn’t work for me.

My friend hit the nail square on the head when she said “in order to grow, you have to change all the time…. while monogamy and procreation require stability and sameness”.  In order for relationships to last do we not sacrifice our own growth as humans, isn’t that too high a price to pay?  Unless you are with someone that thinks about it the same way as you do and you allow each other the freedom to grow and change without judgment or resentment and total acceptance at some point you grow apart, you change and things are not the same.  But we have been programmed to believe, to want a single person to “belong” to us for the rest of our lives.  We buy into the white picket fence theory.  Marriage is a man made institution in my opinion.  The expectation and iron cast commitment that comes with that is a heavy burden to carry.  It doesn’t leave room for growth, for change, for any kind of personal freedom.  It requires a conformity, sacrifice and a long life walked on a rigidly straight line.

I think my Mom still has the best theory on relationships.  Be in a relationship, but live your life, one doesn’t have to do everything together or even sleep together.  Live in the same house with communal spaces and when you want to be together, be together, but retreat to your side of the house when the need arises.  Co-exist.   I think when we can understand that to be in a relationship we can make our own rules based on what feels comfortable to both parties.  When we can maintain our sense of individuality and be accepted as a person in our own right, with our own needs, priorities, beliefs and ways of doing things.  Allowed to grow and change with no judgement, just be allowed to live with no merging or trying to force two people to merge all their interests.  That is more sustainable than what the normal perception of a marriage is.   And when/if things change and you grow apart and it’s time to move on, accept that too, without resentment, in the end we are all alone, we enter this world alone and we will leave it alone.  It’s not really fair to place an expectation of forever on another.

Weekend roundup

OK so I must be honest.  I had an emotionally intense weekend.  But let me start with the fun stuff first.  I got to go home earlier on Friday which was great, fetched the kids from their father who got a new kitten so there was much excitement.  Saturday I met my friend Laura for her birthday at a little place in 61 Rivonia Road called The Oak Leaf.  What an awesome venue!  The food is delectable and very reasonably priced.  The setting is really pretty.  They have an amazing space for the kids and the owner is really nice and involved.  I even got the most beautiful red velvet cupcake because I waited a bit long for my food (which didn’t stress me out at all).  It was a great day and it was good to see everyone and chat and just have some fun.  Sunday I procrastinated the whole day and worked myself into a right tizz.  Actually the tizz started on Saturday morning already so the party was a welcome distraction.

I experience life very intensely.  And for the most part I do really well processing and dealing with it all.  But lately I’ve been struggling a bit.  I know exactly why this is.  And I do welcome the opportunity to work through all the stuff that is coming up for me.  It doesn’t make it easier, but it helps.  For the longest time I went for months without getting too flustered, but the past while I find myself crashing more frequently.  It’s all good though because I’m learning a lot and working through a lot and dealing with deeply ingrained patterns and outdated beliefs.  But it’s intense.  And uncomfortable.  The times when I do go through these patches I do always question my sanity a bit and wonder if I shouldn’t be on some kind of medication lol.  But no, I am perfectly sane and I don’t want to sedate myself with medication or alcohol or any kind of distractions.  The best way to deal with it is to embrace it, be present with it and just feel it.  And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I did something completely out of character though.  I spoke to someone about the crazy that is going on in my head this weekend.  Which is something that I never do.  Especially when I’m not in a space yet where I have made some kind of sense of it or worked through it a bit.  For some reason though, I felt safe to share it with this person and they listened and they understood some of it.  This was a big thing for me, a scary thing.  This person is special to me and it took a lot of guts to reveal this less than pretty part of me to them.  This dark place where I sometimes find myself in.  I never even shared this stuff with the kids father or any of my friends really for that matter.  This weekend I admitted some things to myself and asked myself some hard questions.  I’m not sure of the answers yet.  My forever optimistic nature doesn’t want to believe yet what the realist in me is saying.  So the debate continues.

For now I am content in my discontent.  Those areas of my life that I can’t change without sacrificing and compromising too much.  This is my life.  I chose it.  And it’s my duty, my responsibility to live it fully.  To wring every last drop of ecstasy from it.  Afterall, life is what we make of it.  With our thoughts we create our own reality and we can choose to make ourselves miserable or to find joy in all that we have.  I choose to live consciously, in gratitude and in joy.  I am the creator of my perception.  I am exactly where I’m meant to be.

Have a super Monday people.  Smile at a stranger.  Be nice.

♥