A vision of students today

For me the most striking part of this video reveals:
‘I will read 8 books in one year. 2300 web pages. 1281 Facebook profiles.’

What an opportunity we have to learn, share and re-define through the Internet and Facebook, eh?

What a great tool for the potential for peace, growth and collaboration.

The beauty of being. The majesty of evolving.

I have a confession to make. I will be 25 years young on the 11th of March and although in real terms it’s a number, a reference point to a system of measurement we work to… it’s also a form, and we have certain ideas about, and play games with forms such as these. One quarter, one quarter of a century. This is the time my little feet and even smaller body have paced this earth. So what is my confession? As part of various self-development projects I have been living as of late, I have considered how I would thank my Facebook friends for their kind wishes of a ‘happy birthday’… or if they are Greek they will tell me to ‘live long and may anything that I wish happen to me.’ My friend Christoforos added with a knowing smile, ‘live well.’ So I’ve been thinking of what I’d say… and I could mention the following easily, and say confidently that they expressed themselves through the pits of my body, expressed as joy and peace. I would say that this is the best time of my adult life, I feel so lucky, so privileged… and like a wedge, eager to open the gap to a new space… I feel like my life is expanding, that old definitions that were born of fear are fading, while new ones are being revealed to me, in a softer and kinder way… with a recipient who is eager to explore their messages and heed their calls – when ultimately they beckon me to my own growth and evolution.

So how does the above paragraph sit with the two videos I’m about to share? (Thank you Alice, you always share brilliant things with me!) I have noticed recently, well, in the past year more than any time… a massive explosion in the amount of joy I experience in life, in terms of the frequency of times I experience joy, the intensity, and the ease of access I have to this ‘mode of being,’ if you will. So I pick out the word being which, I suppose I use in a ‘spiritual’ context. Ever since reading ‘The Power of Now’ and ‘A New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle, I feel that many things I felt, experienced, played with, said but wasn’t so sure of… came together to form a beautiful symphony that, although still plays in a playful avant garde way… I feel that inside of me things are being felt more intensely, and truth illuminates itself, reveals itself to me more clearly. Here’s an example to illustrate being merging with joy, which by the way, go hand in hand. When you can walk down a street, notice the rhythm of your breath, of the movements of your body, of the blood, of the energy that flows within your body. When you notice the flavour of the air and how it changes in taste and temperature as you cross the road, walking by a tree… when you can notice the amazing collection of material that creates the stones you are walking on, and you observe the colour and sparkles that make up that ground that generously supports you… when you stop thinking about what’s for tea and stop making yourself be right for something someone did to you yesterday… when you stop layering and layering the world you experience before you… when you stop labelling and pretending you understand the entirety of the world you’re immersed in and are of wholly…

…a door opens.

If you open this door, the universe will shake your tree. Many leaves will fall. You will take your roots out of the ground and place them where they need to be. You will heed the seasons, the times and rhythms of life and more intensely use the resources provided for you.

You will give thanksgiving for a breath, for the remote control sat next to you. You will pick up the remote control, touch it, notice how cold or warm it is. Notice how that sensation shoots up your arm and into your chest. You will notice the contours and buttons and look at the remote control as the strangest and most peculiar contraption ever made, even though you will have used it every day for the past ten years.

You will be offered countless opportunities to become like a waterfall, ever flowing, ever regenerating, gracefully heeding the flow and merging with the flow. In this place, you might think you will be scared, that you will die, that people will judge you, or worse, you will judge yourself.

But you won’t. You will come alive. You will regain your childhood. You will mend your heart where your mind has convinced you for a lifetime you can never change. You will become a compassionate friend to the person you despise. And you will forgive yourself for saying things and believing great things, and cowering, and stumbling on the arduous journey you will need to take to align yourself to your evolution, to the infinite you that has been waiting for you in love for all of your life.

And so I say thank you once again to Alice for sharing these videos… I enjoyed the light show in the sky, as the universe dances around our earth. I enjoy the beauty of clouds of white exploding.

Have a lovely weekend all, I hope you live it to the full!

Namaste.

The magic and wonder of stories

Bringing more magic to storytelling; technology, nature, and the social world woven together more closely:

I would like to share two extracts from books, from Paulo Coelho’s blog:

Manuel Bandeira and the River:
Be like the river that overflowed
Silent in the night
Do not fear the darkness of night
If there are stars in the sky, reflect on them
And if the heavens are full of clouds
It is as the river, the clouds are water
I thought of them too without sorrow
And felt the depths of calm.

 

Khalil Gibran and the Art of Giving:
You say, “I give, but only to those who deserve it.” “Trees do not say that, nor do the flocks. They give so they can continue living; to retain is to die. He who is worthy to win God’s day and night is also worthy of getting everything he needs. He who deserves to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his bowl from the little stream…
Why demand that a man expose his heart and reveal his pride, so that you can decide whether he deserves help? Seek, rather, see if you deserve to. And you, who receives these things, do not assume any debt of gratitude, lest they create a loop domain with their benefactors. If we become too concerned with these debts, we will end up doubting the end of the generosity of the earth and the Father — and that was really where these donations came from.”

The beautiful ocean and a man

‘When I start diving, just being surrounded by the liquid, by the water… I really feel that the only way to be completely relaxed, it’s trying to be in harmony… in the same spirit as the water… so I have to become like water when I’m inside. To be in harmony, harmony with the ocean, it’s the only way to succeed.’

Elena: once under water one can hardly forget that feeling of weightlessness, of flying and levitation…you merely get addicted to this and there is no way back…this is really unforgettable..this is where true harmony can be experienced, I believe..

The Dawn of Time

The dawn of time

by Paulo Coelho on January 31, 2012

Looking back toward the dawn of civilisation: we could not survive alone. So we were obliged to come together. We lived in a symbolic world in the classic (holistic) sense. Not because it was politically correct or because it was imposed by society or because it was good for our health – rather, it was because we had no wall separating the magic from what we call ‘reality’.

So in the very beginning, when you heard thunder – it was God speaking. You looked to the mountain – it was God who lived there. You looked to the fire – a God was also there.
So compared to the beginning, we were what we still are now – but which we no longer recognise — we were ONE. Full of imagination and creativity.
Human beings were like cells from the same body, and these cells interacted with one another, for better or for worse.
But then we lost this “oneness” as society became more schizophrenic.

We were individuals, but at the same time we were the tribe – society. There are some studies showing that at the very beginning we were monotheists as we could not put god everywhere.
But then polytheism gradually emerged. We started naming places and giving gods and goddesses specific tasks.

Embedded in our genes is this sense of oneness which does not imply sacrificing our individuality. We had this connection with nature because we could not remain in the same place for long. We had to stretch and go beyond our limits because the basics – food, water, shelter – were elsewhere, so we had to move. This meant that we did not get attached to any one place, which also affected our values because we were constantly going beyond our comfort zone – we were forced to go to the second, third, fourth, etc. mountain – but then eventually, everything changed.
Moving from hunters to dwellers – we settled down, we stopped moving.

Time to be ready to new adventures!

Thanks Elena Karageorgiy