Archive for year: 2018

The 13^th November was national kindness day. While I completely agree with they need for us all to be kinder to each other I am always surprised that we might need an annual day to remind us to do it. Surely in a well balanced society we would do this as naturally as breathing. It probably has to do with the lack of wellbeing in my own childhood but I have seen much of life’s work as promoting how we can best serve each other. Along with all the other sayings that I find myself repeating is…

…if we all look after each other we all be okay…

I know that, in life, difficult things happen. However, if we all pull together and look after each other the negative effects can be minimised and the healing maximised. When there are floods, famines, droughts and disasters we can all help in our own way, however small we can, collectively, have a positive effect. The world may not be perfect but we could create heaven on Earth. To do this requires an amount of awareness and mindfulness and a sense of personal responsibility.

We can’t just leave it to ‘them’

There is no ‘them’ – ‘they wouldn’t let that happen would they?’ ‘they will make it alright won’t they?’ It is only when we realise that there is no ‘them’ there is only ‘us’ that the world will begin to change. We have to stop expecting the local council or the government to clean up the streets. We need to start picking up the litter ourselves or maybe not drop it in the first place.

We are all ‘us’.

We are all one race, the Human Race. Strangers are just family that we have yet to get to know. Because there is only one race, only one creation, when we cause harm to anyone or anything we are really just causing harm to ourself.

Charity begins at home

Because this is always true, we only harm ourself, it really helps if we can treat ourselves well with self-compassion and self love. It is then that we develop the inner resources to treat others with compassion and love as well.

Charity may begin at home but it does not have to end there. When we can see all of creation as ourself we might just begin to treat creation with the respect that it deserves.

Take care and be kind and happy

Sean x

Frugality can often be associated with meanness, which may be true in some cases, but I am left wondering about the state of the planet and our general lack of frugality. If we look at what we have done to planet Earth and to the lives of all the other nonhuman inhabitants we might consider that our greed is to blame.

While the Western drive for more, more, more, sweeps to engulf the East it would appear that Mother Earth is running out of resources and is now gradually warming. I read some research this morning that told that my diesel car, that I bought because I was told that it would be better for the environment, is now partly the cause of obese children.

Tonight in the UK is Bonfire night and that means that collectively we will throw tons of CO2 and other particulates and pollutants into the atmosphere. I am left wondering where frugality meets mindfulness and where meanness meets the act of Dharma or ‘right living’?

If we get away from the concept of frugality as meanness, that does not imply that people cannot be mean, but, if we consider frugality mindfully and environmentally we might just find a case for promoting frugality as a sustainable way of living. People who are frugal or who live frugally consume less. They eat much less, waste much less and perhaps spend less money on themselves. We could say that they have a smaller carbon footprint.

Frugality may mean spend less. Eating less food and meals cooked at home can save money energy and is actually healthier than take away, restaurant and ‘ding’ meals. The simple things such as re-using plastic bags by simply washing them out, taking those items that we no longer want to the charity shop or donation station. And, my favourite bug bear is that we throw thirty five percent of the food that we buy in the bin. Learning on how we can use and eat leftovers makes a phenomenal difference to our environment.

Suzi Lee – Bare bones traveller

Well worth a read Suzi explains in her blog how she travels around the world on very little and often nothing at all. She is a bare-bones budget traveler, getting around by hitch-hiking, taking local chicken buses and sleeping in cheap hostels or occasionally on the floor of kind locals.

Just looking at the current state of the weather should be enough to make us think again. We were promised that with global warming we would have cool dry summers and warm wet winters. There was also the suggestion that there would be an increase in wind movements and storms. Well, hey. It all seems to be happening right now.

We could take the view that the planted is here to be used and just say ‘Sod it’ and use the whole thing up – goodbye human being. Or we might consider our responsibility to those who have yet to come and to those non-human Earthlings that we share this planet with. We could all do so much more in every sphere of our lives if we choose to.

I guess the choice is the mindless walk into oblivion or the mindful walk into survival. If each person is a small drop in the ocean of universal consciousness then collectively we have an impact. If we see ourselves as a meaningless drop in the ocean of life then it is oblivion here we come.

For those Astrologically minded the Piscean age was about gurus and teachers and people needing to be told what to do. The Aquarian age marks a shift in which each individual becomes self determining and individually collectively responsible for what happens next. There is no long a ‘them’ out there who will make the decisions for us and make it alright. Try to be a drop in the ocean!

Take care, be happy and be frugal

Sean x

Winter hit in hard this week. On Monday it got to minus one and I was scraping the ice from the car windscreen. This winter feeling and the cold got me thinking about the coming ‘All Hallows’ eve or what we now term Halloween. For something to be Hallowed it was made sacred though also has the tinge of respect and reverence.

Halloween originates from Druidic Celtic pagan festival that was, at that time, the New Year. So, October 31^st was New Years Eve and November 1^st New Years Day. It was the end of the summer and the beginning of winter. The harvest had been gathered in and, hopefully, the barns were full. It was the end of the year, a time to look back at all that had been and then embrace the new year and what was to come.

The belief was that at this time between the year ending and the new year beginning the veil between the two worlds of the living and the dead became very thin. At this time the spirits of the dead could pass over back into the physical world.

This was both good and bad as it became a time to remember those that had died enabling them to live on in the hearts of the living. The sense of ancestor worship and belonging to ancient lineage came to the for. People visited the hallowed places to welcome those that had gone before. The festival that took people to visit the hallowed places became Halloween and eventually All Hallows Day.

It was also believed that evil or mischievous spirits could also pass into our world of the living. To keep the evils spirits at bay people would light wills, or bundles of reeds, to use as torches to lighten the darkness. The wills dancing over the fields and marshes became known as ‘Willo the wisp’. This was often seen as a negative symbol because wherever and whenever the wills were seen in the darkness evil must be present. Later Willo the wisps was thought to be evil spirits attempting to trick people into fall into bogs and rivers.

Another form of Will was the Jack o Lantern, were turnips that had been hollowed out and lit. The Irish Celts took this idea to the USA where the Turnip was swapped for a pumpkin which, in turn came back over the UK and Ireland.

The origins of giving gifts, as in Trick or Treat, in the form of foods or sweets, was to pacify the spirits and avoid any harm that they might do.

This Pagan festival was hijacked by the Christian church and the Hallows festival became All Saints Day and All Souls’ Day. This was to honour or Hallow, all those people gone before who were saintly and also all those who had died fully baptised and shriven.

In some traditions it also became a time when prays were offered for those who had died unbaptised and not shriven to give them a chance to rest at peace.

In the Pagan system the proceedings would have been overseen by a witch. In Old English the word ‘Witch’ simply meant ‘wise woman’. Many of these wise women where the healers, doctors and midwives of their time. It was the Christian church that turned the herb law of Witches into an evil and demonic thing. In pagan times wise women where revered and hallowed. In Christian times they were burned at the stake. I notice that even J. K. Rowling referred the ‘Deathly Hallows’ in the Harry Potter Series.

So, how about in the midst of this festival of Hallows we all take some time to stop for a minute and acknowledge our loved ones who have died. So that between the drinks, snacks, tricks and treats we connect once again with the original idea around Halloween. 

Take care

Sean x