Kashmir's Shak

Ebb Back To The Sea

I spent most of the day working through the process writing and preparing to publish 3 books. I met two colleagues in the morning to plan out the work. Then in a karmic moment, I bumped into a dear friend with whom I have been talking about publishing for over a year.

As I slugged my way back home through the hot but measured traffic, I had a lot of time to reflect on this why I am pouring so much energy into writing. Why am I writing three books? Is a form of therapy or merely the craving for attention? The need to be important?

The need to be needed and praised has become an accepted condition in modern society. But is it really that important? Is it a human need or something we have constructed and convinced ourselves as being important? Whether it is a new dress, a car, a blog, getting paid, a party, an award ceremony or the publishing of a book, the need to be important and noticed has a sense of ‘normality’ about it, but is it just another social myth? A myth that consumes us so much that we fail to see ourselves residing within it?

We are reminded at every turn, that fame and reputation are an indispensable part of the human condition. Being famous and talking about famous people has become a major industry in it’s own right. We even have a name for it – entertainment – it is classed as a leisure pursuit, that means it is something that ‘do’ when we are not ‘working’. It does not require us to work, only our obedience.

The addict does not understand questions about the ‘necessity’ of their habit, especially in the midst of the high the craving creates. There may be brief glimpses of reality, and during these the addict may realize the impact of their disease on their own emotional and physical health and/or their relationships, but this is not long lived, otherwise they would break out of their pattern of dependence.

Famous people become the subject of other people’s opinions or the projection of their fantasies. This may appear to be cool, but it is only cool if they don’t want it, they don’t need it to do what they do. Celebrities who are grounded and not affected by their fame, have another form of allure, we call it ‘cool’ – but it is rare, it takes a special kind of person to not care for the trappings of fame, to negate the infamy that comes with the work they do.

If notoriety becomes an end in itself, then this “needed to be needed” is an addiction. Being and being desired are contradictions. But, today, in our days of wisdom and the doors to all truths and knowledge are open to us - being desired remains the ultimate desire.

If I am writing to get famous or be admired, then I am in deep trouble and need to cease and desist. That is because when this drug I am mixing up is pulled away, the withdrawal symptoms will to painful for words. This need will come at the expense of my health and the most important relationships in my life. A price that is not worth paying, period. 

So, there I was, wrestling with these thoughts, tugging through the traffic, asking myself, why, why, oh why am I writing these books?

Is publishing these books going to deepen my experience of life and contribute to the well being of people around me or is it just another form of vanity, or perhaps is it even the combination of all the above?

I did not arrive at an answer, that is because it is too easy to be glib and say that publishing is to nurture my soul and for the service of humanity.

The reason I did not answer this question, is that regardless of the answer - today, I must never cease asking this very important question. Addiction is a slippery slope, when it needles into my vanity and spreads through my self justification. I will not know what I do not know, worse still I will no longer possess the courage to face the truth. Game over.

I will not be a victim of my own creation. It is too much work. I do not have enough time to loiter without intent in this  brief life. Game on!

"I will stoop and humble my intents 
To your well-practis’d wise directions. 
And, princes all, believe me, I beseech you;
My father is gone wild into his grave, 
For in his tomb lie my affections; 
And with his spirit sadly I survive, 
To mock the expectation of the world,
To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out 
Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down 
After my seeming. The tide of blood in me 
Hath proudly flow’d in vanity till now:
Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea, 
Where it shall mingle with the state of floods 
And flow henceforth in formal majesty"
Henry IV, Part II (Act V, Scene ii)

Their True Descent

"Look, and thou shalt see...
Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,   
Till we can clear these ambiguities,   
And know their spring, their head, their true descent;   
And then will I be general of your woes,
And lead you even to death: meantime forbear,   
And let mischance be slave to patience.   
Bring forth the parties of suspicion"
Romeo and Juliet (Act V, Scene iii)

Tolerance for ambiguity hardly a new subject, each passing year there is an increased focus on its implications and importance in our modern world.

Ambiguity is a good word for an age when an uninvited microbe that knows no borders or security patrol is more likely to paralyze and destroy us than the massive hoards of invisible terrorists that grace our news reports every night.

Ambiguity is the essence of the the first half decade of this daring new century,. This is what we inherit from all those hopeful new millenium celebrations five years ago.

I had my own run in with ambiguity today. I was leading a meeting with a group of colleagues. As the meeting progressed, a distrubing pattern emerged, everyone in the room save one person was open to exploring new avenues of thinking. The one person who was hiding inside their certainty was the one I least expected to explore the possibilities hidden in the unknown (future)

My friend smiled and participated, happily (on the surface), but gradually, as the dialogue dug below the daily grind, as we surfaced fresh skin in the game, she refused to play. She clung on tight to the things that worked for her in the past. Every question or issue had to be linked to the path she had taken in the past. Every question was answered with "well, this is how i do it".

Even when I pointed out that we needed to play, escape the 'reality' that we were tied to, she could not let go even when she had become aware of her own behaviour. Fear had gripped her but fear is a symptom, the root cause here was identity, certainty, anti-ambiguity.

Outwardly she was smilin and laughing, Was the optimism, confidence and merely a show of bravado to fulfil the demands of her social persona?

Then I began to examine my own judgements. Could I be open to accept the new person in this new light?  How willing was I to reconstruct my own hardened opinion of this situation>

I left the meeting wondering about my ability to suspend my own assumptions. To be emotionally neutral. To surface my own assumptions. Was my judgement of her defensiveness itself a way of creating certainty? Was i doing the very thing I was accusing her of? Why was I so eager to 'explain' why this fellow human being was doing what she was doing? Was this my sanctuary from the reality that we cannot ever possibly know or feel the need to know what others are thinking and feeling.

I took my own medicine today and woke up, the work I did on me today will serve me many months or years to come, if I remember to treat ambiguity as my friend, not a tool to fix other people's issues, but a wake up call to attend to my own.

Fearing to Attempt

"Our doubts are traitors,   
And make us lose the good
we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt"
Measure for Measure (Act I, Scene iv)

My greatest moments of truth, growth or awakening have always follow a painful and prolonged bout of confusion.

Sometimes the toughest thing we need to do is let go of a past that did not exist and a future that will never be. It is actually quite a challenge to connect fully and unashamedly with everything in the present moment.

This is the "fourth way" the blank space beyond the first way (thinking), the second way (feeling) and the third way (doing). These individual pieces don't make a whole. It is the relationship between these parts that makes us tick.

Perhaps it is not a question of whether the glass is half empty or half fool, but that the glass is dirty and the water has microbes in it that will spill into our stomachs and spell the end of us. Or, as my friend Robert Paterson said today, it is not the thing in front of us that will kill us but the thing we cannot see or expect.

Being positive for the sake of positivity is a delusion. The game of life is played in the space between the known and the absurd.

The challenge is not to be positive or negative but to go beyond this shallow frame and discover the gray's in between. For example, think about someone you absoutley detest, this person makes your skin crawl whenever you are in their presence. Did you konw that there are people who adore and love this person? Now think of someone you absolutely adore, what are the chances that there is someone out there who fears or perhaps even hates this individual.

Beyond these certainties and doubts is the space where we can learn about the people we fear and adorn with love. Attempting to go beyond the boundary of our doubts and certainty is the fourth way. If you don't think you have the time to invest in such an exploration, then try this - let go of what has occured (or not as the case may be) in the past, set yourself free of memory and then abandon any mapping or vain attempt to control a future that does not exist.

Sink into this moment, reach beyond your fear and attempt to connect to something you do not believe exists. This is the fourth way, the door is there if you ever want to open it.

Superfluous Folly

"But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy   
Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here?
One that goes with him: I love him for his sake;   
And yet I know him a notorious liar,   
Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;   
Yet these fix’d evils sit so fit in him,
That they take place, when virtue’s steely bones   
Look bleak in the cold wind: withal, full oft we see   
Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly"
All’s Well that Ends Well (Act I, Scene i)

Why do we exaggerate? When we were children it was almost to be expected. It is fun to watch a small child exaggerate to get their own sweet way. "Mummy, I am going to die if I don't get this..."  Exaggeration culminates to a fever pitch by the time we reach puberty. As teenagers we are permitted to go the whole hog, everthing is larger than life when those hormones are running into overtime.

When we are an adult, we are at least taught to be less tolerate about people who exaggerate to get their way. We are told that an exaggeration is a sign of immaturity, or worse an exaggeration is a lie, albeit a simple or perhaps even innocent one, but still a lie.

So why do we do it? To get our sweet way? Is it for the sake of attention? We live in a society where exaggeration is admired. Shock jocks and political junkies hack away at our senses.

The term exaggeration comes from the Latin "exaggeratus" which means to pile up or accumulate. Perhaps we exaggerate because we enjoy piling ideas and stories up high. The drama is entertaining. Perhaps this is why sensationalism in current affairs and news is now becoming the accepted norm not the lunatic fringe.

Exaggeration is everywhere. Our politician's begging for our precious vote, sales people laying out the latest get rich quick, something for nothing dream scheme, our preachers who need heads to bow so their donations can rise, every great poet, actor, director, stripper, decorator, writer or doctor or needs to grab our attention in the noise polluted world we inhabit.

We are surrounded by, confounded by and eventually buried in too much "too much" (exaggeration). We know this is all "idolatrous fancy" but we continue to play with it until we are folly itself. We entertain the exaggerations until we are consumed by them, we are them, we rely on them to keep us entertained.

Eventually we do not know whether we are the source of the exaggeration or its victim. Cold wisdom is sitting on the shoulders of such foolishness. Why freeze our butt off when a dramatic episode of excess emotion warms the cockles of our child like heart?

Speechless Song

We all have a tune, it is called many things, habit, routine, personality, style, driver, life style, practice, trait, custom, behaviour, culture, belief, persona, values… etc... Let us put all these jangling words in a single bucket and label that bucket “our tune”.  Each of us have a tune that carries our voice and even the way we sit, walk and dance. This tune is embedded in everthing that we say, sing, play and do.

We each have out own harmony and rythmn. How easy or difficult is it for us to change our tune? Is it really possible to alter the rhythms and patterns of our motives, thinking and action?

Can we change our tune? Can we alter the way we listen, how we hold conversations, process information and make our most critical decisions? Would we even recognize our own theme tune if it was played back to us?

In the 60’s they called this my ‘groove’ – but what if my groove has bitten so deep it has become a rut, a channel or trench of convenience, inside which I am able to do nothing but follow orders from people who don't know who I am, what I stand for, what i bring or what I am capable of?

How easy is it to climb out of this rut and compose a new life, with new conversations and relationships? The noise of the advertisers, politicians and media mongrols is junk food for the minds eye. All this noise tangles up my strings and wraps up my voice in it's neediness.

First I must conceive and then compose my tune, I am not alone in this process, I do it in harmony with the ones I love. If I listen deeply to the tunes of those around me, I am ready to play a new tune, to play jazz, to lift up and out of the rut of monotony into a joyous sound that knows no bounds!

Connecting our truth with all the others takes us to another level, allows us to harmonize and resonates deep through other people's experiences, and we all the richer for it.

Being played like a flute, by the senseless wind of mass media is not how we were designed to be. We slip into that subdued hole because all the bellowing signs point that way. The song may be happy or sad, but it at least will be our own, not an excuse for selling or being sold.

All we need to do is take one breath. We only need to give ourselves permission to breath and before we know it, we will be ready to play jazz. That is the moment, when we will experience what it means to be alive, in our bones.

MUSIC to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?   
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:   
Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,   
Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?   
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,   
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds   
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.   
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,   
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,   
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:   
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,   
Sings this to thee: ‘Thou single wilt prove none.’
SONNET VIII (8)

Tremble At Patience

"Innocence shall make
false accusation blush,
and tyranny tremble at patience"
The Winters Tale (Act III, Scene ii)

It does not matter what I am. What counts is what I am going to do with it right now. Everything else is just so much noise.

A tree is rooted in the earth, but it does not stand still, it is always growing and/or dying.

Worrying about the past is like rummaging through old garbage and celebrating the past is like holding a rose. Whatever we touch becomes part of us. We carry the perfume of our perceptions wherever we go.

Some people are ashamed of innocene, afraid of hope, discovery, dreaming and daring to be beautiful. They draw comfort from 'keeping it real' which often means that they can vent about something that they don't like about themselves or people around them.

There is no shame in having a positive outlook into the future. Shame is attached to telling lies and disrespecting others.

Running around in a major panic is often confused for being important.

People who have no time, too busy to sit still for a moment to listen to themselves or anyone else around them are the time poverty striken. They are so buried in their self importance that music concerts and charity events could not save them.

The patient eye of someone who cares to take notice of what is really going on puts the tyranny of busy-ness to shame.

Take a peek through that patient eye and pay some regard to the people who fill your life with love. Think for a moment about all the people in your community who wake up everyday and night to serve you, ensure you have shoes on your feet, deliver the milk, put safety notices in the cars you drive, keep the lights on or just work day in day out in a hospital so that someone is there to serve you when you need them most.

You are there for them and they for you. What else matters?

Frailer Spies

How many people do you know are fully and freely self aware?

In his recent book "Blink" Malcolm Gladwell  describes they way we determine our view of other people as 'thin slices' - he provides evidence that we are blessed with a the ability to sense the truth. It is called intuition. We can trust our intuition if we trust ourselves, because it is the deepest part our sensory system.

Intuition should not be confused with impulse. Intuition is hearing the tiny truthful voice inside us, it is the sum of all our experiences and some believe include every memory we inherit from our ancestors. Impulse is a mindless physical response to our environment.

We see the reflection of what we are in the the relationships we form and the things we do everyday.

Our so called "self" has no physical properties, we cannot touch, see or smell our 'self'. The self is also not static, it is evolving, growing, regressing and emerging all the time.

We contain all the shit and serenity of the human condition, we are capable of both greatness and grotesqeness. We have the capacity for good and evil. We cannot be defined by compliments or complaints. We are bigger than the opinions (good or ill) that others hold of us. We do not need to be hostage to anothers flawed impressions.

If we are at peace with our complexity and do not feel we have to be a cartoon, then we can at least allow others the same privliege.

"'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deem'd
Not by our feeling but by others' seeing:
For why should others false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad, and in their badness reign"
SONNET CXXI (121)

Ornament of Life

Would'st thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would"
Like the poor cat i'th' adage?

Macbeth (Act 1 Scene VII)

A moment of truth occurs when we let go of something that has been propping us up, when we expose a deficiency that we were compensating for or knowledge we were avoiding.

When we have been leaning on a wall of safe assumptions, opinions about ourselves and others around us, old experiences and comfortable habits, and that wall suddenly collapses, we are momentarily unbalanced.

It is in this period, whilst we are trying to retrieve our balance that we feel unsupported, uncertain and vulnerable. This is when we face our truth, this is the moment we have to make a choice, do we hide our heads in old assumptions or be open to the bounty that is just beyond our reach?

It is in this moment of truth that we are born or die.

It is in this moment of truth, that we have to remind ourselves is that being vulnerable is being alive. Vulnerability is an authentic state. Vulnerability is not a boundary; it is an energy that propels us forward. We must learn to tap into it, embrace it, not bury it in convenience, procrastination, excuses or blame.

Being vulnerable is our greatest asset. Being vulnerable means opening our core to newness. When we listen deeply, we are open to new wounds, we also open up the possibility of new discoveries.

Being vulnerable is an authentic state because we cannot pretend to be vulnerable, it is not something we can mask or deny. The birth of anything, be it a human being, a personal experience, an idea or even a business strategy is cloaked in the joyous and terrifying experience of vulnerability.

Whilst we are open and vulnerable, our stomach may tremble, we may shake in our boots, but these are the moments of truth when we are alive.

The process or journey of moving through uncertainty has a name, the word we use to describe this experience is courage. If we are open to this process, it will change our life and everyone else who is touched by these changes, be they lovers, neighbours, colleagues or our bitterest enemies.

Ultimately, that is what this ilife s about. Everything else is just so much deathly noise.