Back from the Living Dead....

(Humility, Moderation and Synchronicity)

It seems apparent that I am indeed a very slow learner.

The Universe, Life, The Prime Mind, my Super Ego or whatever you prefer calling It has been trying to teach me the same few essential and fundamental lessons of existence my entire life; and yet still I forget them when I need to remember!

I wonder how many more knocks my ego will have to suffer before it gets the message.

I have been accused many times, and often rightly so, of being somewhat aloof and arrogant. It really is a kind of defensive force field I create around me that will only let certain “types” of people through (although I have learnt to my own and others detriment before now not to place too much faith in your own magical barriers, as there is always someone or something out there (or inside here) who will simply walk through them). It is fair to say that this is quite selfish behaviour though. I do it mainly, even when unaware I am doing it, to filter out folk who have nothing immediately or obviously of interest or use to me at that time. However, everyone has something of interest or use to either share or teach us all and I am a cruel and impulsive fool to behave this way, but then I am an impulsive fool who can be very cruel and I never said otherwise.

So yes humility is a lesson I urgently need to learn, but then what is humility?

Well, I can say with certainty what it isn’t, and work from there.

Humility is not timidity, or cowardice, or naiveté.  Humility is not weakness. Humility is not arrogance or hubris (qualities I certainly manifest on many occasions).

Humility is definitely not perceived as “cool” or “fashionable”.

For that matter I feel humility tends not to be overly concerned with how it is perceived at all.

I think that for me the lesson I need to get from humility is that of quiet confidence.

In other words; I really do need to learn to occasionally just be quiet and be sure of myself!

*****

I went to a party the other week where I met some beautiful and fascinating people and had a really great time. I had to leave early though as I fell off my wagon and had a couple of drinks.

If I had stayed any longer I most certainly would have gone on to drink more than I really wanted to and would probably have ended up smashing the wagon, along with my self-respect, into lots of tiny itsy pieces!

I pondered for a while afterwards if I had let myself down in any way and I realised that no, I hadn’t. I had exercised self awareness and self control. I had learnt once again the truth of the cliché that you must never say “never again”, something I really rather thought I had learnt already, but clearly not.  (Thanks go to my online friend who reminded me of myself with regard to this. You know who you are.)

I was also reminded at the aforementioned party, and since then, of just how much I love meeting new people in such social situations, not to mention how much I love Essex girls! 

(Oi you! I said not to mention that!)

I also learnt that moderation and self control are the keys to me having a good time in any situation, without any regrets afterwards. Balancing the good it will do you and those around you against the harm it may do either, or both. Finding that point where the former still outweighs the latter and learning not to step beyond it. No matter how much your ego, your emotions or your body crave you to do otherwise!

Moderation is a concept that does not come naturally to me in any context. I tend to be a man of extremes; very hot or very cold, very loving and affectionate or very detached and aloof, very gregarious and sociable or very withdrawn and reclusive, very certain of my own correctness or very much uncertain of anything. The list goes on and with me the list of applications for this concept is likewise a long one. I am, as some of you already know, attempting to take more control over my diet in general and adopting a more vegetarian lifestyle. That said when I looked in the cupboard the other day and really couldn’t face cooking yet another bowl of rice with tomatoes and garlic, and saw sat there, winking at me like a sleazy crack dealer at a 13 year old schoolgirl, a tin of my old favourite chicken soup; I succumbed! I warmed and enjoyed the soup (although not before giving thanks to the animals that suffered and died to provide it).

Does it mean I am a hypocrite when I do these things? Almost certainly!

Does it mean I should give up trying to improve myself; give up aspiring towards a more compassionate, healthier, more self aware me? Of course it doesn't.

It means the opposite in fact.

Why? Well it is like this; I am starting to understand what all this desire and need for intoxication, sensation, gratification and attention is all about....

...as with humility, moderation is teaching me that I lack genuine confidence, and I seem to believe on some level that these things will make up for such an inadequacy. They do so, for a while anyways; but the confidence they give me is not in me, rather it is confidence in the magical properties of whatever it is I am reaching for at the time.

This last couple of months and the personal transformation I have been experiencing demonstrates to me very clearly how easy it is for me to become a moral fascist on my journey to selflessness, and that in most cases a little bit of what you like, now and then, is good for you. It is when you allow the little bit to become too much, or the now and then to become too often that the things we love and enjoy in life transform into the things we hate, and the things that we consume end up consuming us.

 How much is too much? How often is too often? I cannot answer that for you as it really is down to you to work it out for yourself, as it is down to me to do the same for myself. However, I am beginning to understand, finally, that anything, however good a thing it may be in and of itself, will always become a bad thing if indulged in overly much; even abstinence!

******

Do you believe in coincidence?

I only ask because it should by now be very clear that I don’t.

However, how is it that no matter how many times and in how many bizarre and remarkable ways the Universe arranges synchronistic events to unfold before me, I will always listen more immediately to my ordinary mind, my conditioned ways of thinking and reacting, rather than pay any real attention to the important stuff?

It is the important stuff the Universe keeps trying to spell out for me.

It is the important stuff I keep missing the point of over and over again.

Like I said earlier I am clearly a slow learner!

Take last week for example. There is a conservation volunteer group I have wanted to get involved with for a while but have never quite managed to establish any contact with them for one reason or another. Earlier this afternoon I went for a walk down Aylestone Meadows just to clear my head, get some fresh air, and hopefully a touch of inspiration for this post. It all being  covered in snow the last thing I expected to see was a bus load of volunteers out clearing litter, but there they were. I guess I am learning to pay attention these days to synchronistic events because this time I went over to speak to them and got the information I needed to get involved. I say “this time” because I realised when I saw them that this was the third time this had happened with me and these people in as many weeks! Why didn’t I notice before? I did. It was just that I had other things on my mind then that seemed more important and certainly had more firm a hold on my attention and my will at that time.

Then there are the myriad of meetings with folk, in the virtual world as well as the “real” one, that seem coincidental or random on the face of things but which clearly are not when you factor in all I know about my place on my journey along with all that I go on to learn about where they are on theirs!

As S Jason Black said in his work with Christopher Hyatt “Pacts With The Devil” pp93; “...when I put my car key in the ignition the hundredth time and it starts the hundredth time, coincidence is not relevant.” (emphasis mine)

It seems to me of late that the frequency and significance of these synchronistic events, meetings, realisations and re-unions have been increasing in intensity. However I think it is fairly safe for me to assume, given all the facts of my past, that in “reality” (oh how I am coming to loathe that word) I just wasn’t paying any significant attention before now.

Synchronicity has always been happening around me, trying to tell me something important every time. I have just been too deluded, too smashed out of my tiny brain, too preoccupied with illusionary needs and desires or just too damnably lazy or apathetic to either notice or give a tug on a dead dog’s dick either way!

Not so any more.

I am finally learning to pay attention, to watch, observe, notice and most of all (and for me certainly the hardest of the bunch) to (shut up and) listen!

So no, I do not subscribe to the concept of random. We may not always be able to see the fractal nature of existence, but it would be arrogant and indulgent of us to then simply assume that it doesn’t manifest on a level beyond our perception when it so clearly does on the levels we are cognizant of.

I find such assumptions perplexing myself, along the same lines as the assumption that we flawed and self destructive chattering apes are the pinnacle of evolution.

I have a bit more faith in Evolution than that! J

*******

Having said all that, and read it over to myself just now, I see that I have come full circle and again am expressing the kind of arrogance and self indulgence that synchronicity keeps trying to educate me out of!

I guess as the saying goes: “When the student is ready the teacher will appear” and I suspect there may be a whole load of synchronistic events yet to come before I learn my lessons fully.

After all, I am a VERY slow learner and therefore require a VERY patient teacher indeed.

Good thing for me that the Prime Mind (or whatever you want to call It) has got enough time and enough resources to compensate for my inadequacies....

....or am I simply reaching out for another source of illusionary, magical assistance?

*******

Love, Courage and Strength to you all,

A