If it be your will

As most of you know, Leonard Cohen has been an inspiration, comfort and joy to me most of my life. I have had this beautiful song of his in my mind the last couple of days and would like to share it with you. I am permeated with a deep gratitude for all the miracles and love in my life and the music is so much part of it. Deep bow to Leonard. My mantra today is: Beauty beauty beauty!
What is yours?

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

Night swimming

 The temperature here is Muscat has hit mid-forties Celsius but the humidity is still bearable and the die-hards( including me of course!) at the university are still having lunch outside. I came home from my German class tonight, and sat outside having a glass of bubbly and pondering the last few days. The rose moon of June is magnificent and I look forward to doing some nightswimming with the loved one under the full moon tomorrow. How romantic can one get :)

The sea is just amazing at the moment. On both the evenings of the weekend, we went down at sunset time and just luxuriated in the water. It is the perfect temperature.
 There were some families on the beach and also a couple of little pockets of children in the water, who soon disappeared at the call to prayer and the promise of food. After that it was just us, the shadows of the fishing boats on the sand, the watchful moon and the winking street lamps coming on, casting their rippling lights over the gently moving water. Oh, I mustn't forget the surprise of  little schools of fish jumping, and the odd turtle bobbing up for air.

There is a time when the sky and the sea are both almost white and ethereal, and we feel like the only people in the world.

As I lay drifting in the water losing myself in the sky, I remembered the story of Jesus healing the lame man at the pool of Bethesda.
It was the sermon preached on the day I described in my entry, 'a trick of light'. I have been thinking of it a lot since then. That paralysed man had been unable to walk for 38 years, and anyone would have thought it was obvious that he would want to get better; yet Jesus asks him,' Do you want to be well?'

Why does Jesus ask him this? This is how I see it. Because for anyone of us to change, heal and move towards our highest and best selves, we have to be seriously willing. Or as my healer mother used to say,'Willing and desperate!'. Many of us are addicted to our own destructive ways, negative though patterns, the thinking  that lead us to fall into the same hole again and again eventhough we know better. We don't want to let go of the physical ailments that earn us sympathy and time and care from our colleagues, friends and family.

We have to give ourselves permission to evolve and let go and break the moulds we have set through years of habit and conditioning. I often ask myself why we hold onto these things that do not serve us. Fear of the unknown I guess, just part of our challenge of being human.

I lay floating in the sea, which held me like a safe hammock, and whispered to the sky, yes, yes, yes. I want to be well. I want all to be well. And I realised that in saying those words, it was already a reality.

Unzipping my skinsuit

I have been enjoying experiencing my body getting stronger little by little, step by step. I have only rarely experienced myself acutely as a physical being before, and these yoga classes are working very powerfully for me. I keep making progress, recently managing to do my first proper press-up!
 It is a great special thing to share with my loved one, and I love watching the transformation in him too.

After my experiences in Beirut, I have really been thinking a lot of the challenges of being on the earth. Out of the blue, as we were taking a long walk along the corniche the other day- admiring the azure sky and sea-the loved one commented that one of his favourite quotes was that we are not physical beings that have souls, but spiritual beings that have bodies.
As spiritual beings, time and space do not exist for us. It is a mighty challenge to be confined to this earthly existence. I love jumping out of my body now and then, shooting straight up above the clouds and floating there. As a good friend says, 'unzipping my skinsuit'. Sometimes at night before I fall asleep, I imagine myself drifting up above the earth's atmosphere and playing there, tumbling and turning and somersaulting free.

Tonight after the exercises, we were resting in the dark quiet on our mats, Shilpa led us through a short meditation, asking us to choose a point on our bodies and imagine the breath radiating from there like a pebble thrown into a still lake. I became aware of the steady pulse of my heart and felt a lemony light radiating softly out of me, through every cell of my dearest on my left, filling the class and the house and the street and the neighbourhood and the city, and finding all of you and sweeping over and into you like a kind of gentle tsunami of joy.

I was filled with such a sense of celebration when I left that place. I got into the car and we spoke about food and contracts and Excel sheets and mundane normal topics. However, they all seemed so unusually beautiful.

Dear friend, may the everyday routine things in your world have the ability to remind you that you are liberated child of the stars.

On the joy of mixed spice and mist lifting

A good happy busy day. The semester is winding down and one of my classes finishes at the end of the week. I have been teaching most of these fourteen students since last September, and I feel like a mother bird who know her chicks are ready to fly and who needs to throw them out of the nest. This afternoon my last class ended at 5.15pm and I decided to go the supermarket before my German class, instead of rushing home. I usually run in and out of the shop, and it was fun having time to browse through the aisles for a change just looking at all the different things on the shelves.

The loved one and I are lusting after a decent fruit cake, and are determined to bake one. I recently posted on FB asking for good recipes with ingredients that would be available in Muscat. Well, I found THREE essential ingredients this evening that I have never seen before. I honestly can't believe my luck, and that finding 3 small things on the supermarket shelf could give me so much pleasure. Mixed spice, glace cherries and candied peel! It felt as though they had been there all along, just as though a kind of mist has lifted. Sometimes life feels like that, just open your eyes and you'll see that what you wanted was right there in front of you all along.

The cake is one large step on its way to fruition. Yeeah!

I was carrying with me today a little image from my trip to Lebanon I wanted to tell you about. As you drive from Beirut down ( or is it up?) to Byblos, there is the deep blue Mediterranean on the left and the green lush mountain on the right. It is pretty built up all the way, but as you look up at one point there is an imposing dove-white figure of the Virgin Mary benevolently gazing out over the city. This is Our Lady of Lebanon at Harissa. I was very happy on my last day to visit there with Junaline and Lara. There is a little peaceful altar to light blessing candles and a sweet chapel with bright stained glass angels, beautiful trees and also many interesting people to see. We were peckish and ordered fresh thin based pizza bread with zatar ( thyme and sesame) and I had a nourishing beautifully colored orange and carrot juice.

As we were waiting, there was the gentlest of tugs on my shirt. It was a little boy, no older than five,with black curly hair and huge brown eyes looking up at me. He enquired politely in Arabic about the wherabouts of the bathroom, and I instintively put my hand on his shoulder and we walked together there.

This interaction was no more that a few seconds, but it left an impression on me. This child so innocently being drawn to me, asking for help and trusting me to lead him to the right place. Is this not how we should be with God? Laying our needs and concerns before him, asking Him to take care of us and trusting that he will lay his hand on our shoulder and gently steer us to where we need to be?
Again, a mist evaporated before me.
It dawned on me that it  really is that simple.

The mirror

I felt rather creaky after my yoga class tonight and have just got out of a lovely warm bath laced with rosemary oil. I am snuggled in the centre of my universe, my black four-poster bed, full of comfy purple pillows, covered in a white mosquito net moving gently in the breeze of the fan. I am thinking about how comfy my world is at the moment, and how I love feeling so content and the centre of everything.
My life is shiny and flowing and I am asking myself about what the cause is. My life has not changed: same house, same housemate, same kitties, same job, same dreamy loved one :) As you all know, my sunglasses are pretty darn rose-colored to start with.

I am reminded of a story which Roberto Moussi told on the theta-healing course I attended in Beirut last week. Roberto is the insightful husband of my soulsister Junaline, who encouraged me to start writing this blog in the first place. At second thoughs,"attend" is really not the right word to use for that course. I breathed it in like the sweet air of my native country's Karoo, I assimilated it into my system like the purest honey sucked from the comb, I drank it down like a delicate pink sparkling wine with the finest of bubblies tickling my nose. A culmination of the last 25 years' of life experience, like a bouquet of beautiful flowers elegantly arranged together in 3 days, with the addition of the fabulous sweet Gardinias of Beirut!

I suspect you will hear many stories from there, but here is the first. It is attributed to Marci Shimoff.

A happy dog walks down the street, looking for a good place with friendly companions to stay. He is pointed to a house further down the street and when he pushes open the door, the house is filled with shiny-eyed dogs wagging their tails at him in welcome. The house's walls are covered in mirrors, and the dog is seeing himself. He thinks this is truly a very convivial place.
Now imagine a grumpy dog walking into the same abode, what happens? He finds a space filled with irritable growling dogs and experiences it a little hostile and not very welcoming at all.

Well, that is simply how the universe works. If we take care of our own well-being and joy, the world will be a good place to be in. If we are grumpy and moody and critical, there will be plenty of faults to find. As they say,'Two men behind prison bars, the one saw mud, the other stars'.
 It's the same world. What your perception of it is and the choices you make based on those perceptions, are up to you only.

Dear ones, I wish that today my love for my life may be contagious, and that you may all experience the world smiling back at you!

First thoughts in Beirut

The sky is pink and blue ice, the temperature perfect and I am sitting on the balcony of the Hayete guesthouse chilling out after a productive and thought-provoking day at the Theta-healing course I am attending here in Beirut.

Hayete means “My life” and it is great to have a few days off from My Muscat Life to regroup in a different space. This morning I got into the taxi down to the Monroe hotel and the taxi driver handed me a gardenia, which I have worn in my hair, the scent pervading my space all day.  This is a city of dichotomy, all windswept purple flowers on the pavements, and delicate jasmine and heady gardenia. But there is also dogshit from the shi-shi dogs being walked by the Filipino housemaids, as well as the pockmarks of war everywhere.

There are shiny glass buildings and old style Beiruti houses, like the one I am staying in. There are buildings that have been half- destroyed and have been left as is; and a lot of construction work everywhere too. On the busy corniche, there are ladies strolling in tailored cream shorts with stockings and pumps, and girls in tight skimpy dresses and women covered in black from head to foot. There are Porsches and ancient BMWs and also completely clapped out vehicles, seemingly missing essential parts, that look as though they should not be going anywhere.

There is a bustling vibrant energy and and I have found myself looking closely into the people’s faces. They tell completely different stories to those in the land where I live. As I rode down winding streets in that taxi this morning, we passed a large hand-pushed cart of gigantic fresh strawberries, the biggest I have ever seen. Yesterday, at sunset on the cornice, surrounded by the sweet smell of shisha, the people were buying sweet corn with lemon juice from vendors; those lemons also being the largest I have seen.

I am constantly surprised by the greenery everywhere, coming from Muscat this feeling is naturally pronounced.  I am also really happy about how grounded I feel here and how things have flowed since touchdown.

I had the perfect meal last night at Frida’s, the restaurant just below the guesthouse. It consisted of avocado salad with pomegranate, cucumber and teeny green leaves with lemony dressing. There were 5 types of crispy flatbread, my favourite was baked with sultanas and anise and served with slightly spicy olives and grated mature cheddar. I drank a litchi lemonade, freshly made there; the taste of which will stay with me for a long time.

My huge bed and pillow are super-comfy, and even though the resident bird woke me up at 5.30 this morning, I felt at peace with the world.

Now to read through my notes of the day to get up to speed for tomorrow and then I have a strong feeling I’ll be frequenting Frida’s again tonight.

The hundredth monkey

Dear friends, I remember a teacher telling uss this story in school in the 1980s, and I have discussed it with many people over the years. I thought you might like to hear it again. It is always thought-provoking. Wishing you interesting and stimulating thoughts and good sleep tonight.

“The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years.
In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.
An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.
Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes – the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let’s further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.

THEN IT HAPPENED!

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!
But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea…Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.
Thus, when a certain critical number achieves awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.
Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.
But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone.”

Perhaps that one extra person is you?

The above is just a short excerpt form the book The Hundredth Monkey by Ken Keyes Jr. The book was not copyrighted and may freely be reproduced.