A Beggar's Existence

As I improved at weeding out hidden meanings I had given to past events that were dictating my reaction to things decades later (as humans do!), I became gradually freer and happier, almost by the day. Sure, there were and still are occasional set backs but usually it just keeps getting better, each set back offering yet another chance to get closer to the truth and strip away the lies from the past. Ever-increasing self awareness was bringing me inner peace, freedom and joy.

A Beggar's Existence
 
As I walked past a man selling a magazine to support the homeless, I noticed how his tone of voice was plaintiff, almost begging for people to buy the magazine out of pity rather than for its inherent value. How interesting, I thought. What can I learn from this about what I am looking at in my life; my willingness (or otherwise) to receive love and money.
 
As I thought it through, seeing that this man's mindset was of an unworthy beggar, he behaved consistent with it, whereas if he believed in his value and the value of what he was selling, his entire demeanour would have been different: upbeat, confident. My first thought therefore was that I too am reinforcing negative thought patterns derived from things that happened in my childhood. But in a flash I then saw that the lesson from this subtle message from the Universe is more literal even than that; that I beg for snippets of love and money everywhere in life, my hidden fear being that I am not really worthy of love or money, so of course I have to beg for it!
 
As I reflected on what must seem ridiculous to those who know me, the recognition of my deeply buried emotions brings tears to my eyes, freeing my burdened heart of this debilitating self doubt and allowing myself to receive love and money in abundance.
 
Since this gift of self awareness was opened by me with obvious relish, still another message was given to me through someone to whom I read a love poem: he said I should send it to my beloved who is still not speaking to me and my response confirmed the healing my heart had undergone "I will not beg for love from anyone" and in an instant I saw this was a test for this new-found awakening within my heart.
 
Thank you, God, thank you!

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.

All There Is To Do

My work on personal development started with my losing everything in 2003 and facing my worst demons as a result. I subsequently made a commitment to have the best life possible and could already see that in order to do so I would have to strip away all the self limiting beliefs that had created my life as it was at that time. The resultant liberation allowed many benefits including the ability to write from my heart and describe my pain and also see life with new eyes, optimistic ones, hopeful ones, ones where whatever the circumstances would allow me to see the benefit even in the most sad events. In this case, I tried to see the positive aspects of struggling to cope with and rationalise my mother's suffering with Alzheimer's disease.

All There Is To Do

As her illness prevents much further participation in life, I realise my mother has done all she came here to do; nothing more; nothing less. For me, the expectation of this or that fulfilment leaves me empty, looking for what shouldn’t be and ignoring all that is and was; failing to acknowledge the contribution she has been to me and so many others.

Seeing that all there is to do in life is what we do in life and that there is peace without expectation gives us the freedom to get on with life with a sense of urgency and not to take for granted that there’ll be another tomorrow.

There will always be things that we do not have time to do and we can either fight it or accept it. Then all there is to do is to be unreasonable and not put off till tomorrow what we can do today: how exciting and dynamic: even if tomorrow doesn’t come, we know we savoured every moment of life and squeezed every last drop there was to get. And then there is peace.

Who Am I?

I wrote this piece a short while after doing some personal development work in the UK that was based on the thinking behind Zen Buddhism and focuses on what actually happened in our past contrasted with what we made it mean about us and now take as "true". It is very liberating to find we are not the things we thing we are: the ego is built up of many such decisions - they are the young mind's attempt to work out who we are by looking at how people treat and react to us. Not only has it nothing to do with us therefore, but worse still, we usually get it wrong because we don't usually know what other people are really thinking and so we make it all up! So it is that in stripping such things away, we find freedom, inner peace and happiness like never before.

The piece in verse format reads:

Who Am I?

Who am I?
All my life I have been who you say I am;
Or rather, who I believe you say I am.

Like the weeds at the bottom of the river
Pulled to and fro by changing currents,
Thrown against the rocks
And choked by silt and pollution.
As I grew older, the “me” that I was bent this way and that
But never stood firm and confident.
The “who I am” started as a blank canvas
That in time was filled with soft oils that set hard.

But now restored to my former potential,
Who am I in my midlife years?
I am who and what ever I say I am,
Whatever I commit to being, I am
And suddenly I am unbounded;
No longer anchored to the river bed
But flowing free in whatever direction I choose.

The canvas is now a mass of vivid colours
And yet there is space for still more of me
As one area fills, another becomes blank
And who I am now is glorious,
A celebration of life and freedom;
An inspiration to the weeds that still cling fiercely to the rocks;
A powerful presence that provides firm guidance
And offers hope for peace and harmony where before there was conflict.
And that is who I am.