Be Warned – It’s Contagious! Gratitude!

God’s beautiful, pure and clean flowing waters are falling from the skies today.

Crystal beads sit like polka dots on my windows as I gaze beyond them to a magnificent huge sky of variegated shades of grey and white.  I love the way these shades and shapes are shifting and gliding along, bringing what others may call a dreary sky, to life.

Small wisps of grey “cottonwool” become tiny dancing figures, a horse’s proud silhouette, a beautiful woman’s profile, and then the shape of a court jester.

I then gaze down at the greenness below. Tiny points stretch like eager children raising their arms above their heads, receiving life giving water and showing gratitude with vivid verdancy.

This sight fills me with love.  You may ask, what do you love about this sight?”

Let me explain.  The kind of love I feel is a warm, happy, mellow, peaceful, forgiving, almost singing in my head, kind of feeling. It is not specifically aimed towards a particular person or thing, but seems to radiate from my warm breath as I inhale and exhale slowly.

It seems to me that it is coming from a part of me that is so innermost that even my heart cannot fully contain this wonderful sensation.  My heart and soul combine with such primal force that I, as a mere human being, sit in silence and awe of this encompassing feeling.  That is, Gratitude.

To be grateful means thankful. Thankful for something and thankful to someone.

It is easy to be thankful for a gift.  However there are many people in the world who have never experienced this.

There are also some who cannot or do not know that feeling of gratitude even then.

Words of thanks come from the inner pure self, and yet they can be locked away or tainted with impurities as they reach the mouth.

It is not my purpose here to explain such things of the world.  I am writing here of my experiences in the hope that my darling little ones, and in fact all my readers (for which I am very grateful), may glean some kind of positive notion of the wonderful word which is not used very often by the world at large.

To look upwards and be mentally and spiritually lost in an endlessly glorious blue sky with warm glowing sunshine, to hear and see nature all around, one might say it is easy to feel gratitude.  For me it is, anyway. I am saddened to say that in reality, it’s my opinion that the world (generally speaking) does not even raise their collective heads to see that blue vastness, let along feel gratitude for its beauty.

Before I start sounding insensitive to the many people who suffer in extreme poverty and horrific conditions, I offer my prayers to the One Power, who I believe loves us all and has a place of comfort for all of us after earthly constraints are transcended.

I am grateful every day for my fortunate life, where true struggle is a stranger to me. As I ponder my new life unfolding, I also look back on what has happened beforehand and notice my memories of so-called struggling. Emotional struggling and fear were my burdens.

My newfound daily ritual of welcoming the day is to listen silently or sometimes allow the words to float out as I exhale, with that which comes from my heart and soul.  Gratitude.

Daily life in general does not lend itself easily to idyllic leisure where sky gazing and gratitude can be given their utmost attention time-wise.  Yet I find even on work days and chore days I can feel gratitude for having my needs met with money to feed myself and a roof over my head.

I you think hard enough, you can always find something for which to be grateful. A cliché, but true.

I now feel gratitude for those struggles that led me to this point in my life. To have everything perfect and easy does not bring forth those     soul- deep emotions of non-ego driven gratitude, I believe.

So, as I go back to my Sunday sky pondering and notice my window now entirely covered in those clear polka dots, I leave you with the reason and purpose behind all my gratitude.

Positive Happiness!  We all want to be happy.  My happiness, I have discovered, comes from the day starting with gratitude.  Simple.  I leave home with a smile and therefore I receive a smile, a nod or a greeting in return.  Imagine a world where everyone did that! My gratitude seems to build through the day, as I say Thankyou (to that great Power of the Universe) for that nod, smile and greeting, or whatever it may be.

Be warned though –  Gratitude brings happiness that is contagious.

Solitude is my Solitaire

I have had an epiphany. My new life has been leading up to this, but I have been putting up mental barriers against the very idea. The thought has been uncomfortable for me!

Aloneness. Quietness. Non-busy-ness. Peaceful solitude. That precious gem whose value I have only just realised, that I place above all else in my new life.

I may sound as if I am like Greta Garbo. I would never announce to the world that I want to be alone. So at this point , before I expound the blissful virtues of solitude, I stress that having an overabundance of gems diminishes their very value. One needs balance in life. A diamond solitaire, to me, is a great deal more special than a treasure chest (try and imagine) full of diamonds that blind your vision and overwhelm your senses.

I would find it difficult to open my heart to love that treasure chest so wastefully overflowing with diamonds. I mean love as in its purest, most innocent, unconditional sense.

A single precious diamond, however, can be gazed into, and each facet appreciated with its unique reflections of light and colour.

Gazing into that diamond, solitude and I become one. My stillness becomes the essence of me, and love fills my soul. This openness and clarity of mind for me, is still a little difficult to grasp. I need to “work” for it. I must find that exact balance between setting my scene and mentally focussing. Then just as that beautiful combination connects, my trick is to unfocus. I put my mind into that blissful “staring into a pattern” mode, where peripheral thoughts and ideas are welcomed with love.

This new love of mine, aloneness, has a purpose behind it – writing.

My first 50 chapters of life were full of day to day “busyness”. I raised 3 beautiful children, of whom I am so proud. Each of them is gifted and successful in their individual ways. They are young adults with attributes that fill me with deep admiration and love. I did enjoy that part of life. There were always so many activities to attend with children’s school, sport and social lives, as well as my own work, sport and social life. I flourished with non-stop socialising, dining out, partying, laughter with the girls, and quite a few nasty hangovers. Oh well, when you are young, you bounce back fairly quickly.

I was busy, but there were a few wafty, vague niggles in the back of my mind. In those days I did not know what those niggles were. When my children were young, I was still young. Youth was all about packing in as much as possible. In fact, I needed to, because apart from all those heady experiences and excitement, I needed to also establish myself in the adult world of planning for the future.
These are the very experiences that start layering one upon the other in the human core.

No experience is forgotten or left out of this core. Our minds may forget, but our soul never does. No interaction is ever wasted, either. There is no refuse. All are compacted into one’s inner self, some layers being thicker and stronger than others. Some layers are squashed down so thinly that they almost don’t exist.

The magic that happens within produces the truly unique, flawed yet perfect human soul.

My quest is that of an explorer, or miner. My layers are still growing steadily with different materials. I think I am now ready to bury that pick into my soul and gently crack the surface.

Sitting in silence, using my formula of focussing/non-fucussing, I begin to find the rough edges of that diamond just becoming visible.

Solitude is my solitaire.

Gems do not however, just appear in their full glorious final shape while buried deep within.

This is my learning. The epiphany of sudden awareness of the existence of that which is beautiful and precious without and within.

I create 2 concentric circles – peaceful quietness without and lovingly searching into the layers for my hidden treasure within.

Let it flow

So now I have your attention. World, Emily, William and those innocent little souls yet to arrive and choose me as Nanny, I acknowledge a great responsibility before me. Random thoughts and learnings now need to be carefully collected, filed in some kind of order and documented with an open heart and truth. My truth.

My learnings will not be in chronological order. They will be posted as my stream of conscious thought flows and travels down to the page.

Today I am surrounded by peace, serenity and a view of a rice paddy beside a Balinese compound complete with thatch topped carved structures to hold daily offerings to their Hindu gods.

I have left the constant buzzing and daily grind of Sydney, my home, and travelled to a place where I am learning to write. Having worked for too many years with nothing but numbers and dollar signs, I am learning to channel an untapped well of language into something that has meaning, I hope.

My life as a writer is now officially 1 day old, and already I can feel the difference in my heart and mind. My darlings, I hope and pray that you are able to feel my love through these writings. I still feel a little like a child at school who has come back to the classroom after being out in the playground. A little unsettled, with nervous energy fluttering around me. I have tried to prepare my mind to be fluid by floating effortlessly around the swimming pool in my villa. I have emptied the buzz of trivial clutter of the morning so that I am in a semi meditative state of being.

Let it flow – is my mantra.

What’s that? The squeal of a child in a neighbouring house. Oh yes, Balinese children are now home from school as the morning becomes afternoon. School children are the same loveable, playful, smiling little bodies the world over. They share that hunger for learning new and exciting things. Words rhyming, numbers adding together to become a new bigger number, and that happy feeling in your heart when you connect with a new friend.

My granddaughter is now 5 and her new chapter of life at school fills me with excitement also. Everyday a new friend is found and some new words have been wrangled from the wilderness and are now firmly sitting in her mental spelling list. The added skill of then recording these words onto a page through specific hand movements is just the icing on the cupcake!

I am watching a man lifting and stacking bricks in another field of overgrown grass nearby, under the hot afternoon sun. Just as my grandson William, 2, learns to stack his toy bricks carefully, precisely to make ever growing “buildings”. Tiny fingers turning toy nuts and bolts. I am thinking of you right now as you proudly show me your construction and announce “Ta – dah Nanny”.

Today I learnt about a little gem (so to speak, for we writers)! It is called a 6 Word Story. Telling a story in 6 words feels so powerful. Who knew?
Imagination runs in many different tangents when presented with 6 words.
“For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.” is a famous one, written by Ernest Hemingway.

To speculate with my words and flesh out some bones of ideas to create an actual story, are in my future lessons. One baby step at a time.

My Bali time is important to me. This is my 6th trip here here, and my best. My personal goal now that I have decided to start my life over again is to try something new that is physically adventurous and to nurture my soul.
In my 2012 visit to Bali, I felt that awesome tingle of nerves mixed with a feeling of oneness, when I rode an elephant. Pa had gone to Heaven a month earlier, yet I knew his spirit was beside me on that ride.
In 2013 I climbed Mt Batur, an active volcano, to watch the sunrise. The climb was exhausting, slippery with loose gravel, and steep. My heart was pounding out of my chest. Then ahhh! God’s glory was certainly there for all of us to see as we stood above the clouds and watched pink clouds become gold and the fiery ball peek out and then rise magnificently.
This year my adventure took the form of a 35 km bicycle ride down a mountain on a narrow, gravelly, broken up and sometimes scarily steep road and through rice paddies to our destination. Precision of guiding the bike on the safest part of the surface and staying steady on paddy walls with sunken drains and fields on either side was the name of the game.

What will I do next time? I wonder.

Nurturing my spirit is a very special responsibility. In Bali one can find many ways to do this. I need to choose what is right for me.

The last 3 visits I have taken part in a very sacred and beautiful cleansing ceremony at a waterfall temple. The Balinese travel here for their 6 monthly holy cleansing and gratitude prayers.

The large throng of locals brought a huge tide of gratitude and fervent prayer, that was almost palpable. I felt this to my very core when immersing myself inside a raging torrent of water against the rocks. The feeling to me was like a multitude of powerful yet loving angel wings beating my body and soul. Yes, angels do exist, in many forms.

As my spirit has been nurtured, so has my heart and mind. I leave today’s post knowing my learning journey has well and truly begun. There is a knock on my door….must be my masseuse.

 

 

 

Today I Got the whole world in my hands

 

 

 

Today my world opened up to “the” world. Today I learned something. I though my Face Book presence was far-reaching, and was my key that opened a door to the world (my world nevertheless).

 

Today I got “the whole world”. Not just friends who lived in faraway countries, but people I don’t know but I will get to share my voice with. People who are interested in what my voice says, whose own voices might even match mine or support mine. People who may even enjoy and look forward to hearing (reading) mine.

 

It goes by the name of “blogging”. I’ve made it! I have my own website and I can write whatever I want and there will be “somebody” out there in the world who will read it.

 

But let me not get too much caught up in my own sense of importance and forget the very reason, the motivation that gave birth to my 2 year gestational period of growing ideas, thoughts, advice and little insights into my beliefs that I would like my grandchildren to glance at, be aware of, and even share an interest in.

 

I will get my background down first. This is essential for my first blog.

 

I was born in 1957, which puts me into the latter cusp of baby boomers. There is a lot written about demographics these days, and so that is where I sit. My family was nuclear. Two parents, and a twin sister. My upbringing was comfortable in the scheme of things. My parents were strict, and yet we seemed to get away with all sorts of fun, adventurous, naughty and downright dangerous activities,which were not as dangerous as they would be nowadays.

 

Yet there were still certain things one did not do. Live together being unmarried, openly talk about sex and most of all engage in intimate behaviour with boyfriends under my parents’ roof.

 

I married at the age of 21. I had my first child at 21. That was a scandal in itself but this “co-incidence” was not really discussed or brought up by family members.
My second child followed at 23. My third child followed at 33. I raised children from 1978 until 2013 when my youngest left home to cross the country to Perth, to take up post graduate employment.

 

Apart from doing this, what else did I do? Anything I could to help feed the family and supplement my husband’s teaching income. Picking and packing in a warehouse, data entry at night, clerical in a bank, accounting and bookkeeping. Writing? Travel? Tertiary studies?

 

N – O! What can I possibly offer the world of powerfully opinionated, learned, intelligent, talented females, that would be of any worth or interest?

 

Don’t get me wrong about powerful, talented, educated, opinionated females. I surround myself with them. I love them. In fact, these days I travel to meet these women. I Face Book friend them.
I am fascinated by them, and hope to become a sponge soaking up their wisdom and knowledge of the world.

 

However to write my own blog I cannot pretend I know what they know. I have to write about what I know and believe. I have to find my passion.

 

Ok, so far so good. Find my passion. Mmmm….. I like certain things, but I would not say they are my passion. That’s it! My grandchildren! They are my passion. My thoughts, love, generosity of giving my time, myself, and my unconditional love all point to this one passion.

 

There are so many amazing women whose passions I admire and am a little envious of their ability to hold a group of people spellbound by their words. I cannot do that (I think).

 

Then I realise that I do have something that is special. I have such a connection from my heart, mind and very soul straight to the hearts, minds and souls of my grandchildren. There are 2 so far. My granddaughter is 5 and my grandson is 2.

 

A good place to start, I think. I am in my 50’s and I feel young still, am fairly fit and through life’s little up and downs, find myself about to start a new beginning of my life, being single.

 

I am an adult, but like a child student, I am learning about who I am and learning to trust my instincts, and not to have the need to lean on another person to fulfil my needs. By the way, my needs have changed and become brand new much simpler needs.

 

My beliefs have become more aimed towards spirituality, and my world is full of wonder and childlike excitement with my new learnings.
I believe that the Power greater than humanity, God to me, has awakened some parts of me to have courage to go forth to scary places ( physically and emotionally) to point me towards wonderful learnings.

 

I hope the world enjoys my learnings, as much as I do.