A clean slate. A fresh start. Anything can happen and often does in a new year. Everything can be new if you want it to be. The air is scented with possibilities. Keep as much as you want but allow as many changes in as can add freshness and happiness. Remember to give thanks for all you have and will receive.
A happy and insightful new year to all.

Christmas is definitely the time of year that let's you know how normal you are. Everyone is supposed to be with their loving family receiving expensive gifts.
Don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't at times fight with family members and who even has the money or the time to buy these expected gifts. Mostly in reality people are on their own whether by choice or circumstance and feel depressed being locked out of all this joy and supposed happiness.
But no one is ever really alone. We are all linked to each other and the all.
Hullo from the other side.

Are gifts rapidly becoming increasingly meaningless?
Small thoughts as gifts mean the recipient is in your heart. The well wish does not increase with more money spent on the gift. In fact the more you feel you have to spend means how little you know about that person. Spending more money to compensate for some deficiency on your part ends up meaning money is everything.
Happiness and love mean more and they don't have anything to do with money.

We're all looking for meaning in our lives. Often that meaning can come from the smallest action and you won't even know it's happened.
Standing in a check out line at a supermarket, as I had a lot of shopping I allowed a young Arabic man to go first. He only had two packets of noodle soup to last him for the whole week. Such a small gesture to him became a great kindness and I knew this had changed the way he viewed Western people. One small act had stopped one man at least becoming radicalised.
Practice random acts of kindness as your purpose in life.

Very few people stand out or indeed want to. How much easier is it if we all just lead a life in the shadows and go unnoticed?
So how refreshing is it to see a push bike going past carrying a brightly clad person in five inch heels with ribbons as hair. Brief shorts reveal muscular legs and a beard appears below the ribbons. Someone definitely not afraid of standing out. Happy to be you.

Just walking home I saw a body lying on the grass outside a house. She looked very peaceful and rested. A young body in pink pyjamas. Of course in this age of fear that terrorists want us to live in I had to ask, "Is she dead?" She was young so unlikely to have died of a heart attack but anything within the fear scenario is possible.
Then she woke up, smiled and moved inside for a cup of coffee.

On this most spiritual of days let's reflect on why we love killing each other so much. It's so easy to justify on a small scale, " They got in my way."
On a large scale,"They're non-believers and scum. They need to be exterminated."
"A few deaths now will lead to a better life for all eventually."
When we all lose our individuality and become just faces in a crowd how easy it becomes. Pull of your mask and reach out. Hallelujah

Mostly life just trudges on. We become little better than zombies. Just putting one foot in front of the other. Just doing what we have to do. We think of the past, the future and forget to live now.
"Live now, now. Wake up," I scream at myself.
Em who just died, was a person of total light. At her funeral the sun shone brightly and then the sky broke and washed the slate of life clean.
I'll miss you but will imitate your life by choosing to live in the light.
Live in the light now.

Life grips us. Sometimes in a fragile moment it seems very easy to let go. After all we're only held here by a thin thread aren't we?
You know that isn't true when even though someone is near death it takes a long time to die. We are tied here by a thick rope. Our energy centre burns bright even when our body is weak. We are beings of limitless light and potential. We are here to live up to that potential and make a difference for both ourselves and others. Let you light shine and make that difference.

Sometimes in life everything changes. You move house, a great friend dies, you move cities or countries and suddenly you realise that your choice to be happy lies ultimately with you. You thought it was dependent on having children around you or seeing your friends. That's all been left behind. So what is there left?
Just you. But you have the secret to life. Your dying friend has told you that life doesn't end here. She is being shown this. From here there's nothing more to fear. She holds my hand and whispers, "Have  a happy life."  I will.

We're all looking for a meaning to life. How can we leave a mark in this world so we're not immediately forgotten? Who will remember us? How do we give ourselves a purpose?
The only answer to that in this increasingly meaningless and disconnected world is to have children.
If you're in your fifties, bored and alone have IVF to boost your life,
You're a male on his own why not adopt an orphan refugee child? It will give you someone to love who loves you back and add to your life direction.
Even though there will soon be nearly nine billion people on earth most people have lost their way to such an extent that children have become the new world religion. I worship at the altar of baby.

Cancer. Everyone is terrified of it as it could mean the D word. And this often comes with a long and lingering demise. We let ourselves be hacked at by doctors -the only thing that can't be cut off is your head. Our whole body is filled with poison to kill the cancer cells. We'll look back in 100 years and think how primitive and barbaric we were. Just as we do now with veneral disease. Before antibiotics the cure was mercury. "Wow mercury is a deadly poison", we say. I suppose much like chemotherapy. In other words we kill ourselves to kill the disease. Death is the worse thing that can ever happen?

Morality especially that of the church seems to boil down to one word - acceptance of suffering and even using suffering to make you stronger in life. That seems to be the justification against people being able to choose what they want to happen in their life. People must suffer if they are ill and not be able to choose to leave this life behind. Their families want them here and the system could be abused if we open the floodgates to allow mercy killing.

A neighbour now has lung cancer. She has had the operation where the doctors cut out half your lung. From being contained cancer within one lung it seems to go into hyperdrive to become lung cancer in both lungs and bone cancer in the rest of your body. You end up on morphine of course which means you're totally constipated and without any appetite. The morphine of course has to be controlled so it doesn't kill you right away and you're left to suffer while you contemplate death. A pleasant ending according to society

Death. The most interesting topic in this life to contemplate and live your life around. We only have a limited time which we all know but don't ever accept or contemplate. If we do we are considered morbid and depressives,
I don't agree. In fact acceptance of death makes you a much more balanced and consequently a far happier individual. Avoiding the topic fuels fear and adds to problems and life dramas. You'll be too scared to travel, too scared to start a relationship, unable to contemplate a new career. In fact most life problems boil down to non-acceptance of death in some form,
It fascinates me that even people with advanced cancer or old age all hope to be given just that little extra time. To do what exactly?

Time what an important thing to think about. This century is the first in history to have swollowed up time completely. Before even during wars when the soldiers were waiting for the action to start there was some free time. Now there is none unless you deliberately make some. Every minute there's something to watch, to reply to, to be involved with. There often isn't even enough time to talk or socialise as to do's build up and have to be responded to immediately otherwise people feel neglected,

People imagine there will be a time after school, uni, work, family when there will be a bit of breathing space. But we have crammed our lives so full is that ever going to happen? And why is there no time? Is it deliberate or circumstantial?

I'll leave you to contemplate that one. How closely examined do you want your life to be?

 Our are was closed today due to a bomb scare. Someone had rung the policed and claimed they had left a ticking bomb in a nearby flat. The area was cordoned off and nobody was allowed to go home.. Police guarded call entrances in and out of the station and surrounding streets.
What was I to do? Runaway and hide terrified that the bomb would explode or continue to live my life normally?
We live in a world where terrorism is a real threat and of course have to be careful. But after visiting countries where people still live who have endured wars where virtually nothing was left of the original city you realise hoe easy and basically safe is our world. Of course there are bomb scares and violence but how lucky we are. What a world of peace we have inherited,

Gdansk Poland. Still living in the shadow of WW11. So many ruined buildings still from that time.
The Germans walked into Poland on 31 October 1939. Was that a coincidence? The most powerful day on the calendar no. Halloween but also it is a day of total power. Some days on the calendar are the days for momentous events. Those events can create light or darkness. Poland still live in darkness now from this chain of dark times. First the Germans then the Russians.
This day can be used for light events as well.  Use this power well to add to this wonderful world

We all live with death but brush it from our minds.
"I'm not even old yet I just want to live and not dwell on the gloom."
Rita Ora is so scared of death she has to have constant therapy even thinking of it.
Many choose a wild path in life just to add spice. Without that hint of death life would be boring. We constantly diet, starving our bodies of all the nutrients they need to be healthy. That's the story of many women who end up dying early. To them being attractive means being skinny. Men don't like fat women.
With men it's a different story. Speed is often the drug of choice. Speed on a motorbike or car with additives of choice.
Just saw a bike rider hit a car at full speed. It was a three lane highway but he was weaving for the thrill. He flipped off the bike over our heads and landed crash on the sidewalk. I expected body splatter everywhere but he landed on his feet. He started walking toward his bike and dialling his phone. We all stared goggle~eyed at this little guy who had just evaded death. He was a hair-breath away.

Just been to Poland and Russia. If the world in which you live allows you to have a clear free mind how much can you expand your thoughts and feel the joy. You can connect to others thru that feeling and they can pass it on. If your world is limited by government control in all areas for generations how does that affect the individual? After bleakness and grey for years it has to soak into the personality.
Few people smiled or were interested in strangers. In fact it was the reverse. Someone different was regarded with superstition. People kept to themselves and went about their business with their heads down. They tried to help you in shops but only if you followed the rules. No laughter was heard.
After losing all connection to life is it possible to regain it?
We saw a group of women in a church with their heads covered, kissing the bones of a saint to try and retrieve some hope. But the real truth is your hope is within you and you just have to look within to retrieve it. You don't need to stand in line behind thousands to try to rekindle a small ember. You possess the fire. Let yourself glow.

The Bigger Picture Life

I always knew life was going to be an interesting journey from the start. From the age of two a man in a black overcoat, wearing a hat and smoking heavily used to sit next to my toy box. He was always there as the light began to fade just sitting quietly on the box puffing away. I never even thought of asking who he was as I just accepted the company of an adult when I was playing.
I'd chat away to him but he just smoked. We enjoyed each other's company and would spend hours playing together. He was always there about dusk and we both looked forward to our playtime.
This went on for a few months and then I looked for him when I went tot the toy box but he was gone. I thought about him at first and then forgot that he was even there.
Years later when I remembered this time I did ask myself who this man was. I thought he was one of my father's friends but I was told he wasn't.
My father thought about it for a long time and questioned me about what this man looked like.
"He always wore a black overcoat with a hat and constantly smoked," I said.
"That's your grandfather. It couldn't be anyone else. He died when you were born."

My father understood this gift very well as he had it too. He had spent his life trying to ignore it and not stand out from the crowd. Most people live in fear of being different in any way, we spent our lives as ants doing our work and never questioning anything in life. Go to school then work, have children, die and that's it for most of us, no insights, no questions, just follow the crowd. No wonder we're all scared to appear different.
Don't look at anyone on the train, look down as you walk so you don't have to make eye contact, get home to your comfort zone as quickly as possible. We 're rapidly losing the art of happiness just because we're too frightened to reach out to anyone because we might be taken the wrong way or terror of terrors rejected.
No wonder that anyone who as a gift tries to hide it.