So right now i write this sitting on the couch thoroughly and utterly exhausted. No, i didn't just do a big run... No i didn't do any weights at the gym... In fact the physical activity in which i participated in today could be actually placed in the "Lazy" category... No.. I have just finished a grueling three days of spiritual activity!!!
So when i signed up for this holistic counselling course, and signed up for one of the subjects as a three day "intensive" class to save time on a week to week basis... I guess i wasn't really anticipating the INTENSIVE part (One thing that i will be careful not to do in future!!).
The subject was called "Introduction to life care". Even the title of this class sounds lovely doesn't it?? Life care?? What could that mean?? The care of your life?? The care of life in general?? Whatever it was, i was looking forward to a nice peaceful class on this "life care", in which i would sit with other people and talk about life and care, and drink hot chocolate and stroll home where i would go about my regular late night activities of watching television and web surfing... Then retire to the realm of sleep, and be energised for another hot chocolate conversation session the next morning... Oh how naive i was!!
Little did i know that this little subject was going to emotionally drain me like i have never been drained before... Take me where i have never been before, and give me a whole new appreciation for not only my life, but the life on and of the entire planet!!
Firstly, after meeting the lovely teacher, who is a Buddhist counsellor, and introducing ourselves and sharing what our passion is, (Apparently my 'passion' is my work... how sad is that???!!!!) we were asked to grab the crayons and a piece of paper, and were asked to draw our "souls". Now this is not as easy as it may seem. How does one draw their soul?? Give it a go, seriously, its not easy. And funny enough, right there in the first hour was where the first issue of mine came to the surface... Why was i having such trouble putting crayon to paper? Why was everyone else going for it, while i was there crayon in hand ready to go but coming up with nothing..
I realised that i didn't want to draw because i think i am crap at it. I have no hesitation in admitting this, i cant draw for shit. Never have been able to. But why did i think that?? Is this something that i have always thought? I mean sure, i think i have always realised that i was no Picasso (and i have been to the museum in Barcelona, he is not THAT good...), but why did i believe that i was so horribly terrible at drawing or being artistic that if anyone saw it they would laugh loudly at me and my attempt and i would rip up the paper and storm out of the room...? Later on after a deep conversation with a fellow 'life carer', i realised it was because of an old art teacher i had.
Sure, i was never really good, but what do you do with a kid who has no artistic skill, but is forced to do art??? Well this teacher would say to me "Melissa, you are really not very good at this are you..." She used to get frustrated with me if i couldn't draw the things that she wanted, or if i got the dimensions wrong. So how does a young girl react to that kind of criticism?? Well obviously she shuts down all her artistic urges and never puts crayon to paper again!!
So that's what i did... and i have never drawn anything since then. 13 years it has been since i have ever drawn ANYTHING!!! How amazing is that!! That one thing that one person says can completely distort your view on the world and take away something wonderful. Or should i say, it was my REACTION to what she said. Nobody can make you do or think something negative about yourself unless you allow that on some level.
So that was my crash start to 'life care'. And boy, did the issues keep coming... I wont go into many more here, there were some big some smaller, some stupid, some very very deep.
One thing i do want to touch on though, is the planet...
No please don't fret! I have not become some crazy greenie (not that there is anything wrong with that...) I have not bought some paint to climb up a large building to write a protest...But i have come to a few little inner realisations... One of the things that this life care class was emphasising was the importance and beauty of "Mother Earth". Now i am not quite evolved enough in my thinking to call her "mother earth" without inverted commas... But it is not the label that is important. Its the planet. The place that we live...
We saw a video on the earth called the global brain, and although i realise that it is just one person's opinion and it was slightly biased, it really hit some home truths. The biggest realisation i came to, is that we, as a species are really ruining the planet that we live on!
Now i know we hear this all the time, from the matrix to documentaries by ex vice presidents, the message has been around for a very long time. But for some reason, it may have been the energy of the class in general, with all the other people there too, but somewhere within the depths of me started stirring... I'm not just talking about the whole greenhouse effect thing. Which is huge in itself! (if you believe it all), but the whole fact that we are (and i don't mean to be too negative here, but i do think it will come out like this...) literally a cancer on this planet. If you believe that the earth is a living thing, we are the cells that have mutated, multiplied by tremendous proportions, and produce so much waste that the planet is having trouble keeping up with us. We are destroying the planet! And we talk about this, and we watch our documentaries, but how much is that actually having an effect on anything...??
I realise that all life does this to some extent. Even if human beings were not on this planet, the other animals still produce waste, but it is in much more of a balance. And when you look up to the stars and the universe, i cant help but wonder if "life" as we know it here on earth, is not a 'devine plan', but nothing more than a freak accident. I am sure that we are not the only living beings in the universe, when you look at all the billions of stars in our galaxy, and look at the other BILLIONS of galaxies out there with their TRILLIONS of stars, it is mathematically impossible for us to be the only life... But still, to see the other planets in our solar system with their baron landscapes, intolerable temperatures and gases that are incompatible with life, it makes me feel that we are nothing but a lucky mistake of atoms. Does this ever make you feel insignificant??
I went away up north a few months ago and was away from the city, i LOVED being able to look up at the stars, you can barely see them in Sydney... So when i literally lay down on the beach and looked up at the beautiful magnificence of the galaxy that we live in, i tried to explain this to my friend. She told me that the way i was describing this made her feel very insignificant. That there was no point to existence at all, that we are nothing but a speck of sand on the beach that i was lying on. I could understand her reasoning, but at the same time, the same facts actually made me feel quite secure. Looking up at the vastness, i couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of belonging*... That i was part of something magnificent and wonderful. It put all my petty little life problems into perspective. And to think that one day i will be nothing more than a different part of the whole, not in the physical realm, gave me a few blissful moments where my mortality did not scare me, my mind wasn't in the way, and i was nothing more than a beautiful part of a beautiful universe. Now that i look back though, these are the moments that i strive for. But i find it hard to strive for that peace and serenity that i know is already there somewhere, if i cant see the stars....
Our planet is a beautiful and wondrous place. And if we are polluting ourselves to extinction, i cant help but think that we deserve it, and the only thing that reassures me, is that we will still in some way, be part of the greater whole, and that hopefully our planet will be able to heal.
So anyway, to cut a very long essay short, the weekend class has changed my inner feeling on topics that i have already pondered mentally, and hopefully this is a change for the long term!
I hope that you enjoyed this first "blog", i have really enjoyed and felt inspired writing it, please feel free to let anyone read it who wants to. I don't care how many people think i am a loon!! I AM a loon!!
Thanks for listening to my ramblings!!
Mel
* Funny note here, notice how the way that someone looks at something COMPLETELY can change their whole outlook. The same facts to two completely different people can cause such a dramatically different effect on their emotional system!! My friends insignificance to my magnificent wonder!!!
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Beautiful blog Mel, I'm enjoying reading it (finally!). I have such a connection with your outlook :)
ReplyDeleteThinking on your comments about human beings as a cancer on the planet, I thought you might like this quote from 'The Earth Path' by Starhawk, writing on "The view that human beings are somehow worse than nature, that we are a blight on the planet and she'd be better off without us.":
"Now I admit that a case can be made for this view--nevertheless I think that in its own way it is just as damaging as the worldview of the active despoilers. For if we believe that we are in essence bad for nature, we are profoundly separated from the natural world. We are also subtly relieved of responsibility for listening to the great conversation, for learning to observe and interact and play an active role in nature's healing.
The human-as-blight vision also is self-defeating in organizing around environmental issues. It's hard to get people enthused about a movement that even unconsciously envisions their extinction as a good. As long as we see humans as separate from nature, whether we place ourselves above or below, we will inevitably create false dichotomies and set up human/nature oppositions in which everyone loses.
A corrective view might arise from the understanding that we are not separate from nature but in fact are nature ... from believing that we must work with nature, to seeing us as working within nature, to understanding that we are nature working."
She then goes on to list many examples of this, including indigenous peoples who helped the land flourish and grow.
(I thoroughly recommend this book btw).