Absolute Truth

As I struggled to come to terms with the illusions I had taken to be the truth, I slowly found hope after years of feeling hopeless.

Absolute Truth?

What do you know to be true – absolutely, incontrovertibly true?
That right is right and wrong is wrong?
That there is good and evil?

Well, for me, for over 40 years I though I knew that I am inherently bad so I tried hard to be good.

I spent my whole life judging others by my strict standards and making them right or wrong, good or bad, better or worse than me. When I found someone I thought was better than me I would look hard for proof that there was something wrong with them. I would burrow away till I found something, something that would set my mind at rest and prove I was better after all. In the meantime, I was riddled with jealousy at their apparent superiority to me.

Liberation finally came when I realised that my “truth” was a barefaced lie. The supposed truth of my innate badness, an insecurity for which I had amassed evidence over many decades, was nothing more than a story I made up as a child when I gave myself the label “bad”.

But we are not defined by labels and yet we allow ourselves to be defined, to be limited in what we can be. I am defined if I state I am a gay man, a lawyer, a middle class Englishman, a brother, etc. I am all these things and so much more. In fact, I am anything I say I am, so I declare to you that I am a poet, an inspirational writer, and therefore I am. Whether you like my writing is irrelevant. Whether I am good, bad or indifferent is irrelevant. I just am.

In fact, if anything is true, it is just that we are vessels empty of anything except love; the supposedly incontrovertible truths are just silly notions that rule our lives and kill our love.

Demons

As I struggled to come to terms with the collapse of my business and with attempts to resurrect it, I had good days and bad. No journey can be perfection and though doubt and fear can eventually be eradicated, it takes a great deal of personal commitment and patience! This piece was written relatively early on in the journey of self discovery and self actualisation!

Demons

What is it that transforms me from an inspiring, visionary team builder into a doubt-ridden, fearful wreck on a Monday morning, that has me feel sick in the pit of my stomach and has my heart miss beats at the very prospect of the challenges of the week ahead and the unreasonable goals I have set for myself in life, that hijacks that quiet confidence, that inner knowing that I derive from being true to my purpose?
 
Why, it's my demons, of course: those inner voices gnawing at my skull, silently but surreptitiously sucking me dry, throwing evidence at me from over 40 years experience that I am utterly worthless, a failure, not good enough, a fraud, rubbish, stupid and the myriad epithets with which they harangue me.
 
Quite why they reign supreme on Monday mornings, I am not sure: my demons can strike at any time without warning, undermining all the heroic progress made in the face of sometimes extreme adversity and blindly ignoring a massive body of contrary evidence, that I can be whatever I choose to be provided I surrender myself to it and trust myself.
 
I choose to love my demons that are there to protect me from the pain of failure, disappointment and rejection and that would have my dreams remain a thought or yearning: I thank them for their caring counsel and then courageously ignore them as I take the next step in my journey to fulfilment of my potential.

All My Worldly Goods

Taking myself on allowed me to strip away so much and to let go of the fearful attachment to "things". In fact, later on I gave away enormous amounts of belongings - probably about 98% of everything I had left after my business collapsed. It was so incredibly liberating, even beyond this entry made in 2005, the most recent acceleration of which "letting go" took place only three months before launching this blog. In a quest for happiness and freedom, this detachment from material possessions was very important for me.

All My Worldly Goods

I laughed at myself out loud today as I sat in quiet contemplation, planning my forthcoming move, the third in three years. I realised I need more boxes to carry things in and thought about the self-storage depot not 5 minutes walk away. Then it hit me: in many thousands of years of mankind, we have managed without self-storage, yet the proliferation of such facilities in recent years is plain for all to see in every town and city in the country. I put it down to an ever-increasing materialism and attachment to our vast array of often useless objects that, having invested in, we cannot bring ourselves to part with.

Having sold, given to charity and friends and even thrown away some 60-80% of my possessions, including all my furniture, in my last move, I felt free for once; free of the burden of “things” that reinforce the version of “me” that I created before I took myself on in order to fulfil the promise I made to myself to have a great life. Those “things” were reflections of my choices in life, my “image”, if you like. They both reflected it and reinforced it, like a vicious circle. That would have been fine if I was happy with that image, but actually I wasn’t. Life until 5 years ago was a struggle to prove to the world (and myself) that I was “successful” or had value. When I woke up to this charade and found that what really counts for me is love and friendship, the detritus of the now redundant image needed to fall away to free myself of this false prison and be my true self.

Since then I have bought things that please me that reinforce another image, for none of it is real, but at least it is in alignment with who I choose to be and is a happy choice. Also, these new “things” are not important to me and I could easily jettison almost anything at anytime. My most treasured possessions are photographs of family and friends and tokens of love and friendship. The rest I can do without, hence why I no longer insure the contents of my home. There is no point.

Please don’t get me wrong; I love “nice things”. If I am blessed with money to allow it, I will happily buy beautiful things to adorn me, my home and those whom I adore. I see nothing wrong with “nice things”, but they are simply not important to me anymore and so I no longer moan when I cannot have things and delight in what I can have.

For me this is freedom: may it live in me forevermore.

Love in Abundance

Another note in verse format illustrating my fresh take on life after realising I had been viewing the world through tinted spectacles that distorted reality. In the journey of self discovery that I had embarked on a relatively short time before writing this, such realisations are essential if one it to attain freedom, inner peace and happiness.

Love in Abundance

I see love everywhere,
Where before I saw so many things;
Anything but love
In everything in life.

Before I would walk down the street,
Worrying how I looked,
Thinking how much better I was than others
(or how much worse).

Before I would see hard work
Obligation and burden,
I saw works of art
And pleasant but pointless endeavour.

Before there was strength in independence
Weakness in reliance;
Goodness in giving and
Selfishness and badness in taking.

Now I see a wondrous new world
And everyone is part of a picture,
United by the source of life
The source of all things: love.

Our work, our creations and
Everyone we know or don’t know
Are an expression of love,
A magnificent omnipresence.

How grateful I am to have found
Inner peace in my humanity
With time still to take part
In this amazing game called life.