my new canvas

Autobiography of a Yogi - Chapter 5 - A "perfume saint" displays his wonders

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:00:15 +0000

… the great Persian teacher gave his views on the religious life thus: “To lay aside what you have in your head (selfish desires and ambitions); to freely bestow what you have in your hand; and never to flinch from the blows of adversity!”

"… It wasn’t always the people I liked who had the information I needed"

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:09:51 +0000

“… It wasn’t always the people I liked who had the information I needed”

- anon

mum’s mug (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 12:47:50 +0000

mum’s mug (Taken with instagram)

dad in garage (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:47:22 +0000

dad in garage (Taken with instagram)

Huts at Eastney (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 15:57:19 +0000

Huts at Eastney (Taken with instagram)

Holstee

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:49:04 +0000

Holstee

Back blows (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:04:35 +0000

Back blows (Taken with instagram)

my new key holder

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:22:42 +0100

my new key holder

"There is no greater weakness than stubbornness. If you cannot yield, if you cannot learn that there..."

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:07:55 +0100

“There is no greater weakness than stubbornness. If you cannot yield, if you cannot learn that there must be compromise in life - you lose. ”

- Maxwell Maltz

"… in most organisations, the higher you go.. the thinner the air. and the thinner the air the..."

Sun, 01 May 2011 22:31:00 +0100

“… in most organisations, the higher you go.. the thinner the air.
and the thinner the air the more difficult it is to support intelligent life.”

- Guy Kawasaki: Creating Enchantment

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2597

Thought for the Day, 17 December 2010

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 01:01:02 +0000

Rt Rev. Lord Richard Harries

The question of whether or not drugs should be decriminalised, which was raised yesterday, is one of the key issues of our time. But there is another question which we think about less often, and that is: why do people get into drugs in the first place? I don’t mean just the social reasons, peer pressure, dysfunctional families, long term unemployment and so on, but the personal ones. Two words come to mind.

First, oblivion, the desire to block everything out: not just the ordinary difficulties and worries of life, though of course they can make things much worse, but the perplexity, the anxiety, of existence as a feeling, thinking being rooted in a body that is limited, finite and mortal. Other animals don’t have this angst, nor do angels, but we are conscious animals; as Disraeli said, half ape, half angel.

The other word that comes to mind is the word ecstasy, which unsurprisingly, is the word given to one particular drug. Both oblivion and the experience of ecstasy enable us to escape from ourselves, the one by blocking everything out, the other through taking us out of ourselves into something else, often a combination of music and dance.

“Human kind cannot bear very much reality”, wrote T.S.Eliot, but for him this phrase did not in the first place refer to the hardness of life, or even what I have just been suggesting. It appears towards the beginning of “Burnt Norton”, part of his great poem The Four Quartets. Here he is remembering an experience near an empty swimming pool when he is aware of what he describes as “The heart of light”. This is turn reflects a mystical experience he had as a young man in America, before he became a Christian. The reality he is referring to, which is present in every single moment„ which is at once stillness and ecstasy, is something he suggests and hints at all through this long poem. That, for him, is the reality which human kind cannot bear. Yet for him, and many other religious believers in the ordinary experience of prayer, they know, however faintly and fitfully, a reality in which we are indeed taken up into something other than ourselves; but one in which we do not so much escape from ourselves as find our true selves.

People who try to blot life out or get taken out of themselves through drugs, take a path that is both tragic and wrong; and we need to make that clear especially to young people. Yet paradoxically, I sometimes think they may have stumbled closer to the edge of a hard and troubling truth than those who skim along on the surface of life because they don’t want to feel the real dilemma and anguish of being human.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/documents/t20101217.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/

RIP Uncle Ram - died 21 Nov 2010. Funeral was today.

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 23:17:29 +0000

RIP Uncle Ram - died 21 Nov 2010. Funeral was today.

…

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:00:02 +0100

…

"Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking."

Sun, 09 May 2010 23:06:00 +0100

“Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.”

- Buckminster Fuller, quoted by John Lloyd - http://bit.ly/9Mpj1o

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

Sun, 09 May 2010 22:53:37 +0100

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

- Plato

"i think there should be a word for this Matthew. It should be called ‘Overcumption’,..."

Sun, 09 May 2010 22:48:00 +0100

“i think there should be a word for this Matthew. It should be called ‘Overcumption’, okay. It’s the ability to overcome adverse circumstances.. and this man did that in spades.”

- John Lloyd talking about the American architect, Richard Buckminster Fuller -

http://bit.ly/9Mpj1o

tantrum

Sun, 02 May 2010 23:12:33 +0100

I played Frisbee
with your mother’s china
But instead of with the dog
It was with the concrete driveway
And when the plates hit the ground
I screamed ecstatically
Like Theresa possessed by Dionysus
As the Noritake shattered
And when I’d decimated the 8 piece plate setting
I peeled out of the driveway
to the liquor store
knowing that when I returned
you’d have cleaned up my mess.

my friend Courtney wrote this. i thought it was brilliant - hence why i wanted to post it here

"… it’s the deep and simple mystery of the faith that the more we give beyond..."

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:54:39 +0100

“… it’s the deep and simple mystery of the faith
that the more we give beyond ourselves
the more we become our true selves
and the more we lose ourselves
the more we find our true identity”

- Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4 - Friday 2nd April 2009

I’m not at all religious but when i heard this it struck a chord with me and i wanted to share it.

i really like this picture. it was taken on my mum’s 63rd...

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:38:06 +0000

i really like this picture.

it was taken on my mum’s 63rd birthday which she spent in hospital.

it’s one of the last pictures I have of her before she started to lose her hair

anyway i uploaded some more pictures to my flickr

my beautiful mum passed away on Wednesday 2nd December at...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:31:48 +0000

my beautiful mum

passed away on Wednesday 2nd December at 1720

her funeral was today

i miss you mum

rest in peace