Can You Sleep When the Wind Blows?

Years ago, a farmer owned land along the Atlantic seacoast of North America. He constantly advertised for hired hands. Most people were reluctant to work on farms along the Atlantic . They dreaded the awful storms that raged across the Atlantic, wreaking havoc on the buildings and crops. As the farmer interviewed applicants for the job, he received a steady stream of refusals.

Finally, a short, thin man, well past middle age, approached the farmer. 'Are you a good farm hand?' the farmer asked him. 'Well, I can sleep when the wind blows,' answered the little man.

Although puzzled by this answer, the farmer, desperate for help, hired him. The little man worked well around the farm, busy from dawn to dusk, and the farmer felt satisfied with the man's work. Then one night the wind howled loudly in from offshore. Jumping out of bed, the farmer grabbed a lantern and rushed next door to the hired hand's sleeping quarters. He shook the little man and yelled, 'Get up! A storm is coming! Tie things down before they blow away!' The little man rolled over in bed and said firmly, 'No sir. I told you, I can sleep when the wind blows.'

Enraged by the response, the farmer was tempted to fire him on the spot. Instead, he hurried outside to prepare for the storm. To his amazement, he discovered that all of the haystacks had been covered with tarpaulins. The cows were in the barn, the chickens were in the coops, and the doors were barred. The shutters were tightly secured. Everything was tied down. Nothing could blow away. The farmer then understood what his hired hand meant, so he returned to his bed to also sleep while the wind blew.

When you're prepared, spiritually, mentally, and physically, you have nothing to fear. Can you sleep when the wind blows through your life? The hired hand in the story was able to sleep because he had secured the farm against the storm. We can secure ourselves against the storms of life by 'going within' and grounding ourselves in the certainty of the power of the Spirit. We don't need to understand, we just need to hold God’s hand to have peace in the middle of storms.

Someone dear to me sent this to me today and I enjoyed it so much, that I wanted to send it to you. I hope you enjoy your day and you sleep well. May God bless you!

Our World

It seems to me there are two ways to look at our world.
1) What a wonderful place and what a marvellous, miraculous adventure life is.
2) Life is so unfair. Why do I have so many problems?

It is a similar situation to the two men in the story who looked out from behind prison bars. One saw mud and the other saw stars. It all depends upon the way you look at things, literally your point of view! Do you look up at the heavens or do you look down at the ground?

How we choose to approach our life on earth is just that – a matter of choice. Many think their lives are determined by circumstance and heredity. Although both factors influence us, it is a matter of personal choice whether we allow them to dominate. Everyone suffers from adversity, even though many of us think our particular adversity is the worst, it is frequently not so. What differentiates people is our individual reaction to adversity.

Do we see it as a challenge and an opportunity, something to battle against and overcome, whilst learning valuable lessons in the process? Or do we give up? It is a great temptation to wallow in self-pity when things go wrong in our lives. Whilst it is perfectly natural to be discouraged by adversity initially, to continue to feel sorry for one’s self is to waste the opportunity adversity presents us with. There is another aspect to self-pity too. Give in to it and we find everything begins to go wrong, even our friends eventually become tired of it and no longer seek our company. Nothing goes right; it is as though the world is against us. The world of course is not against us, we have turned against ourselves.

Those self-same friends, who become tired of our self-pity and come to see us less often, can be a wonderful support and encouragement if we look at the positive aspects of the problem. “Into every life a little rain must fall,” is an old adage but nonetheless true because of that. Problems are God’s way of challenging us to look at our lives afresh. Look around you with the clear eyes of reason and you will see that change and conflict of one kind or another are the norm. That it is so illustrates the great wisdom inherent in the design of all creation. Let me tell you a story:

“A young man was told by his father that he was grown enough now to begin climbing the local mountains. He was taken to the foot of one of them and his father said, “Off you go then, I’ll meet you at the top.” “Aren’t you coming with me?” “No, this you must do on your own but don’t worry, I will be waiting for you.”
The young man began climbing and soon his legs were aching, occasionally he would lose his footing and cut himself on a sharp rock. His progress was slow and by nightfall he was still only halfway up the mountain. He managed to find a ledge on which to shelter for the night, although he didn’t sleep much because he was so cold and miserable. Next day he forced himself to climb again because he knew his father would be waiting for him. His legs ached terribly, he was cut in several places and under his breath he was cursing his father for forcing him to do this. Gradually he got closer to the summit and eventually, tired almost to the point of exhaustion, he reached it. His father was there and said “Well done my boy but it took you a long time.” “It was so steep and hard to climb Dad, that’s why I took so long. I thought my legs would give out several times.” “You have done well and tomorrow it’s time to tackle that next mountain over there,” he said, pointing at an even steeper mountain.
“But Dad, I need to rest, I can’t climb anymore.” His father would not relent and forced the boy to climb again. It was the same story as yesterday, if anything he fell and cut himself even more this time, but he was determined to show his father that he wasn’t weak. He forced his aching muscles to climb and he reached the summit this time before nightfall. Again his father was waiting and congratulated him on climbing this one quicker. “Can I go home and rest now Dad?” “Not yet son: See that other mountain over there? That is your next challenge.” “But Dad I’m so tired, even by tomorrow morning I’ll still be exhausted, please let me rest longer.” “No son, sleep in the cave at the foot of this mountain, then in the morning off you go again. I’ll be waiting.”
The young man found that this mountain was not as steep as the others and he progressed quickly, didn’t stumble once and was even able to admire the view as he climbed. It was early afternoon when he reached the summit and when his father appeared he thanked him for taking pity on him and choosing an easier mountain for him to climb this time.
“No son, this mountain was even harder to climb than the others. The reason it felt easier was that you had grown stronger in climbing the other two.”

All the challenges we face, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, strengthen us and enable us to meet the next challenge and overcome it more easily. If we can retain a positive attitude, they won’t even seem like challenges, they will appear as they really are; part and parcel of this marvellous, miraculous life we are privileged to live, on this beautiful Earth.

Imagination

The great physicist, Albert Einstein once said, Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

“Oh it’s just his imagination,” is a dismissive line often used by those with little or no imagination themselves. Using our imagination is, in my opinion, the only way to expand our own and in many cases other people’s understanding. It is one of the greatest gifts we possess and although some will insist it is mere escapism from life’s difficulties, it is in fact one sure way to solve them. All of us when we were children had very active imaginations, imaginations that enabled us to transform our in many cases, humdrum surroundings, into a world of magic and wonder. Adults humoured us but also made it quite clear we would be expected to “grow out of it” as we grew older.

There are exceptions. When we are very young children, we are keenly aware of the presence of people from the spiritual world. I doubt there is a person living who did not have ‘imaginary’ playmates when a child. Instead of encouraging this awareness, what the majority of adults do is to scoff at the idea these playmates may be real children from the spiritual realms and by first patronising and later ridiculing, they persuade the youngsters it is best not to mention their friends anymore. This demonstrates just how little we have bothered to understand our true, inner selves. These childhood experiences are wrongly attributed to imagination but are nothing of the sort. We have become infected with the compulsion to weigh everything using those five poor scales, called the senses.

There are serious consequences for humanity in this attitude. By confusing awareness of the spiritual world with imagination and at the same time feeling guilty about our imagination, we develop an inbuilt reluctance to let it be known that we are using our imagination. As adults, while we read stories of fiction and fantasy with great pleasure, we retain a sneaking suspicion that this is all very childish and we should be feeling guilty about such self indulgence. Most people do not read poetry, listen to ‘good’ music or look at great paintings for the same reason. They do not see that such works of art are not only works of the imagination but they are great because they trigger the imagination in the reader, listener or beholder. Or perhaps they do and their materialistically trained minds rebel at such levity!

The imagination is what makes us truly human. It is the mechanism whereby our soul is freed for a while from its earthly constraints and can exercise its ability to ‘fly’ but it should not be confused with awareness of the spiritual world. Our spirit, soul and mind are not part of our physical bodies, although they are linked to it in such a way that all we experience as physical beings can be converted into growth material for our soul. The same is true of our imagination. Without it we are poor creatures indeed and all the progress humanity has made over millennia has happened due to people using it. It beggars belief that despite all the evidence to the contrary, many still regard imagination as something infantile and not worth taking seriously.

Have you never experienced the almost mystical thrill that comes it seems from nowhere, as you walk or sit in beautiful surroundings, listening to the sounds of nature all around? Have you never felt yourself soaring and ‘walking on air’ when you first realise you are in love? Have you never been so moved by a particular piece of music that you seem to escape from your body? All these wonderful experiences come through the operation of our imagination. Unfortunately so many of us have been so conditioned we have become stunted and find it almost impossible to give free rein to our imagination. We wrap ourselves in concerns – concerns about the past, about the present, about the future; all of which creates fear. Fear is the enemy of the spirit and by inference, of the imagination. If we could only allow ourselves to relax, to be our true selves and give our imagination permission to uplift us, our lives could be transformed and all our fears would retreat for as a rule, they have little basis in fact

Everything that exists has positive and negative aspects and I suppose one could say fear is the negative side of imagination. We ‘see’ problems that we think are bound to arise because of these circumstances or that action and because the imagination is so powerful, we create the very problem that we ‘see’ in our mind’s eye. The imagination is a key part of our mind and the product of the mind is thought. If we allow our imagination to run along positive lines then positive thought results in positive action and of course the reverse is true too - the thought is always the father of the deed. Our starting point is to acknowledge that imagination can be used for positive or negative ends.

Imagination is there to make us happy, not to make us miserable, so let us all try harder to be positive. Accept the wonderful gift of your imagination and use it. Do not discourage the use of imagination by your children and never be afraid to think the absurd. I began with a quotation by Albert Einstein and I shall end with one.

“If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”

Independence

Today, our friends in the United States celebrate the anniversary of their independence from British colonial rule and it got me to thinking about independence and freedom, two much abused words these days.

Like almost all human conditions, freedom and independence are relative terms. To the person incarcerated in total darkness, or a blind person, freedom would be to be the ablity to see the light, even for a little while. For the person suffering under the oppressive yoke of a totalitarian state, freedom would be, not needing to worry that the next knock on his door might be the secret police. For the slave, freedom would be to, just once, have the ability to make up his own mind what to do and where and when to do it.

The American declaration of Independence states that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Much lip service is paid to these excellent sentiments and it would be difficult to find anyone who openly rejects them, but in many human societies, lip service is all it is. In my experience, the more a state trumpets its commitment to freedom, the more likely it is to be repressive. Look at all the totalitarian communist states that call themselves “The People’s Democratic Republic” of this or that. The last thing these states are or where, is democratic, nor are they “the people’s” either.

Even in The United States itself, the application of this section of the Declaration of Independence is varied, to say the least. Look at Guantanamo Bay for instance where, in the interests of ‘national security’, people have been held for years without trial: Look at the Mc Carthy era and the attitude to those suspected of being communists. Look at the origins of prohibition. I am sure you can think of other examples and yet in many ways, the United States is a country whose citizens enjoy a great deal more freedom than most; More freedom for instance than women in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime or the current opposition in Iran.

Individual human life cannot exist in a vacuum; we all are dependent upon one another in some way. It follows therefore that one cannot talk in terms of absolutes which is why compromise is usually the order of the day and why our friends in spirit tell us that we as human beings are not yet ready to use fully the blue light, the ray of truth. They ask us to imagine going through even one day telling the absolute truth. It is virtually impossible not to dilute the truth in some way, either to spare some one else’s feelings or our own. It is why, spirit tells us, we find blue a relatively cold colour, and will continue to do so until we are able to accept absolute truth in all we do.

We have to be careful, because we are so interdependent, to ensure that our individual freedom does not mean another person’s slavery. This means always exercising freedom with responsibility. Freedom without responsibility becomes licence. We must also do our very best to ensure that any freedom we demand for ourselves, we offer equally to all others. We must also accept that if we wish to be critical of another’s way of doing things, we afford the same facility to them in relation to us. It was Voltaire who is reputed to have said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Who can quarrel with this attitude towards tolerance and freedom of speech? Many do quarrel with it in practice however and it is a measure of a person’s or a society’s maturity that they are able to accept criticism without resorting to repression.

When we are each one able to apply the principles of America’s Declaration of Independence freely to all, both as individuals and as societies, then will we have moved a long way from the level of our animal ancestry towards our angelic potential. The altruism that went into the writing of the Declaration of Independence, gives us a glimpse of our spiritual inheritance but we have a great deal of work to do before we can achieve this dream of a relative heaven upon earth. However, the fact that human beings were able to create such a dream of equality and freedom, demonstrates it is far from impossible to achieve it. Yesterday’s dream is tomorrow’s reality if we have trust in the spirit that is the basis of all life.

Lessons from Nature (2)

I was looking at a picture of a rose just now and yesterday I was watering the Orchids in my garden and thinking how wonderful they are going to look in a month from now and I got to thinking. Why can’t we humans accept ourselves as we are? Why do we put ourselves through agonies of envy because we would prefer to have the gifts of another rather than those we have been given. Why are we so concerned about the opinions of others that we try to change ourselves to be what we think others expect us to be?

If only we could accept ourselves as we are and realise that the object of life is to do the best we can with what we have and not make ourselves miserable because it seems the contributions made by others appear so much better and more important than ours. When it comes to balancing the account of our lives, there is no absolute measure. All is comparative. The greater the gifts you have been given, the more privileged the life you have been born into, the more you will be expected to contribute. However, in the final analysis, it is not what each of us has done, or the contribution we have made that has been recognised as great in the way the world sees greatness, that is important. It is that each should give according to his ability, no more, no less.

The difference our presence has made in the life of others is the true measure of our lives, I believe. The grand gesture is all very well but it is the hard and dedicated work behind the scenes, out of the public eye that really matters. Look back on the effect certain people have had on your own life. Is it not true that those who made the greatest impact were those who were totally their own person? People who were happy with themselves, how they were and where they were; people unconcerned about making a huge impact upon the world at large; people who wished to be remembered for their role in their own small corner of the world. Good mothers do not put on airs and graces in front of their children. Good teachers are not concerned with impressing their pupils with their intellect or superior knowledge; rather they want to encourage the pupils to make the most of themselves.

What do the rose and the orchid tell us? They demonstrate to us that allowing their light to shine before all is their true destiny. So it should be for us. Their scent is not reserved for those the flowers consider worthy; it is available to all, without exception. There is no judgement and there is no trace of envy. The rose does not envy the orchid or the orchid wish it could grow in cooler climes. The rose does not wish for the kiss of the humming bird when it grows where there are none. The rose is content to be a rose. It gives its all to bring delight to everyone, with its beauty and its scent. So too do the humble forget-me-not and the meadow daisy.

“Be content”, as Alexander Pope said, “To be as blessed as thou canst bear…All are but parts of one stupendous whole… As full, as perfect, in a hair, as heart; As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns, As in the rapt seraph that adores and burns.” I mentioned in a post the other day how important it is to do the best we can but each of us has our limits. The limit for one is much different from that for another because of our circumstances. “Who does the best his circumstance allows, does well, acts nobly; Angels could do no more.”
So remember always, as you stop to smell the rose, or admire the shape, texture and colour of the orchid that they are giving, giving, giving, and they ask nothing in return. They care not for anything except their need to do their best, whether they are a wild dog rose or a cultivated hybrid tea. Their râison d’etre is much closer to, “Ours is not to reason why…,” than it is to “Look at me, aren’t I the best?”

Lack of self confidence and low self esteem are twin causes of vast unhappiness in our world. They are both rooted in a failure to understand the simple truth that each one of us is exactly what we are supposed to be, in the place we are supposed to be and able to contribute to life in our own special and individual way. Dare to be a rose and focus only on the beauty of your petals and the sweetness of your scent. Make them the best that is within your power. Do not waste your energy bemoaning the fact that the colour of this or that flower is more attractive to more people or their scent stronger than yours. So long as you are sure you have done your best, you have no need for reproach or to lower your self-esteem. Your contribution is no less important in the scheme of things for without it, the whole is diminished.

Lessons from Nature

It is surprising the kind of things we can learn from watching the natural world closely. It underlines the fact, I think, that everything that exists is linked in some way and each part of creation can always learn from another part.

I was driving along in my car this morning and at a part of the road that skirts the ocean, I noticed the sea was particularly rough, even though it was a lovely sunny day. At that point, the coastline is very rugged with steep cliffs dropping vertically into the sea. The surf was pounding into the cliffs and surging back out again in a swirl of white foam. It set me thinking.

I wondered what I would have seen at that point had I been privileged to be in the same position two or three hundred years earlier. Would the cliffs have been the same as they are now? Would the fissures and indents in them have been as deep? Almost certainly there would have been marked differences, for the erosive action of the waves, though seeming to have little or no effect in the short term, over many years change the shape of the coastline all over the world.

It’s amazing isn’t it, that water, a normally soft substance can, by sheer persistence, wear away even granite, which apart from diamonds, is the hardest natural substance we know? True, the water needs to be whipped into a frenzy by winds and storms, or in the case of a waterfall, have its energy increased by dropping hundreds of feet but even the gentle drip, drip of water falling a few feet soon makes it’s mark on the ground beneath. There is a great lesson here for all of us.

Replace granite with hard, intransigent human attitudes, even violence and replace water with the action of love. What do we have? We have the perfect illustration in nature of the profound truth in the call by Jesus of Nazareth to “turn the other cheek.” Fighting violence with violence merely increases the level of violence and suffering for all concerned. Use the soft power of love, energised by the power of the spirit, which is what I believe Jesus intended, and although it may take a while, the violence subsides, being worn away by the gentle but persistent action of the waves of love.

The power of the spirit is accessible by each one of us because everyone is a spirit first and foremost. No matter how much we have hidden our spiritual essence by covering it with layers of thought and action dictated by our five senses only, the spirit remains undisturbed. Learn to ‘go within’ and it will not be long before you become aware just how potent is the force lying hidden inside you. It is a force that responds only to love, pure unconditional love and because love is the foundation on which the whole of creation is built, nothing is beyond its ability.

Happy Birthday!!

Today is my step-daughter’s birthday and it leads me to think about birthdays in general. Our birthday is something that is special and personal to us throughout our lives. It recognises the arrival to our parents of the answer to a dream.

The arrival of a baby and in most cases the safe recovery from her labours of our mother. Birth is something that is usually anticipated eagerly and impatiently for nine months. Nine months during which plans are made. Plans about names – should we call him/her after someone in the family? Should the child carry the same name as his or her father or mother? What about calling the baby after some famous person, or the doctor who attended the delivery? Then there is planning the bedroom and buying the furniture and furnishings, the baby clothes; the toys! These days of course most couples opt to learn the sex of their baby well before birth but in my day we had no idea and had to think of names for either sex and to play safe, the first baby clothes would be white.

What about us? We may be helpless little infants but we have arrived on this earth from elsewhere. As William Wordsworth puts it:-
“Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God which is our home.”

Where have we come from? Or do you believe we didn’t exist before the egg and the sperm came together in the womb? In my view, we came from a part of the spiritual world and we deliberately chose to be born to our parents, not to any old parents but to the very ones we have. The American poet Robert Frost said we chose “… for some good discerned.” What good many of us never discover in this life but I am in no doubt that choose we did.

If we came from somewhere else and we chose to come, what are we? We are spiritual beings – spirit is our natural environment. On earth we are as aliens, even though our physical bodies are perfectly adapted for life on earth, our spirit is not. In our early years we are still vividly aware of our former home and our loved ones there who tended and loved us. As we grow up, so those memories are blotted out by the growing influence of our five physical senses. That does not mean however, that we are any less spirit people than we were when we were born. Deep inside, we know that, but our conscious mind usually refuses to acknowledge it.

Our birthday therefore is a celebration of the day we finally made our transition from our old spiritual home to our new homes on Earth. We would have made our choice to come, perhaps long before the event and had been waiting until conditions were exactly right for the transition. Transition – that is a word one associates more with death than birth. Is there a difference? None! just similarities. We are moving from one state of existence to another, we are leaving behind many who love us dearly and most of us do not consciously know what awaits us. We have to face both transitions alone, although there are many there from spirit to help us on both occasions but they cannot interfere, they can just bring peace, contentment and acceptance. The struggle to free ourselves from our mother’s womb demands a great deal of effort on our part and it takes time and we most do the work ourselves. The same is true on death (again in most cases). Letting go of this physical frame is not always easy, even for the relative few who know life continues in the spiritual world.

Just as our birth here on earth is an occasion for celebration, so our rebirth into spirit on death is a cause for celebration there; although it is a cause of sadness and mourning here. Birth is an adventure, as are life and death and this is due to the eternal spirit which is the real you and the real me. We are therefore right and fully justified in setting aside the day of our birth for annual celebrations. Our “Happy Birthday’s” echo down the years and are heard in the spiritual world, where many remember well our being launched on our adventure into physical life and their sense of loss when we left.

If you share today with my step-daughter – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!