A really heavy use of other people’s opinions is when you need(?)/want to do something or say something that you know is bang out of order and will hurt somebody badly.

Not an original idea. Remember a story you were told many years ago?

Adam said “Eve told me it was okay to eat it.”

Eve said “The snake told me it would be alright to eat it’

All the blame fell on the snake and he had to live the rest of his life doing what he did anyway. I never got the punishment of the snake. 

I noted how Adan got off scot-free. Well, almost the lazy plonker had to work for his living instead of having everything he needed just given to him.

Eve? Well bless her she developed a taste for very expensive underwear and that led to all sorts of other difficulties.

Oh Well! Now you know.

My advice ignore the opinions of others completely. It might take a bit longer, and you might end up doing something that costs rather than benefits you. BUT hey ho, it will be a good thing that you do.

Be the very best version of you that you can be.

I am not going to write too much about this Meme. There are two or three widely held opinions expressed on this one.  Sydney Banks spoke a lot about having a neutral state of mind. Did he mean “I do not care one way or the other” or did he mean that you feel strongly for and against something depending on the context etc. So before proceeding try to put aside both sets of arguments and be a fence sitter. OR did he mean that on a particular point you were indifferent?

I have a problem with that word. Indifferent.

Pastor Humphrey Vellacott told me it seems centuries ago that Indifference was the opposite of Love. Also, that indifference was the opposite of Hate. Love and Hate, he argued, were two sides of the same coin. To hate someone or something you have to feel something for them. To Love someone or something you have to care a smidgen or two. Indifference (if it is genuine) then is the worst thing that you can feel for any human being. There are only two people that I feel indifferent about, and they are both members of my own family. Isn’t that awful? Worse I have told them to their face that is how things are. Does that make me a monster of some kind? I believe that it does. It has taken years for me to forgive myself. I said I would not write much about this meme… I lied 🙂 

This is a truism. Art is not about how proficient the painter is at painting. Not about the quality of the frame, lighting or presentation. It is all about “Does this piece of art make you feel something.” 

A lot of us live very humdrum lives and are ‘comfortably numb’ at least sixteen hours of every twenty-four.

Nothing seems to move us. The first time I saw Schindler’s List I cried. The second time was the same. The third was the same. I vowed I would never watch it again because it upset me so much. I watched it after a gap of about ten years and I had changed (the film certainly hadn’t) I understood the calamity and enormity of the narrative and vowed to do my tiny little bit it life so this (or something like it) could never happen in any world that I was part of.

When you look at so-called art in the future ask yourself does this work shift my thinking? Does it disturb me in some way? Does it make me feel better about the things that I complain about? Does it resonate with me?

The text tells all. Do not take anything or anybody for granted.

There is no YOU or ME. We are all connected to each other and we experience this thing we call life. Nothing is tedious or boring or a waste of time. There are no consequences for just being you. 

You are perfect.

You are whole.

You are not broken.

There is nothing to improve, add, or fix.

Life is Good. (even the bad bits)

Remember to hold this close to your heart at all times. “Love your creator with all your mind, with all your heart, and with all your strength. Honour his greatest work (which is YOU) PLUS Love your neighbour as you love yourself.  

The Three Principles leads you to a place where you decide which path in life you are destined to take. Every one of us has a ‘calling’ of some description. It need not be a path to fame or riches or glory. It may be a purpose that only benefits others. Have a mental recap of the film “It’s a Wonderful Life” Where the very unwholesome POTTER would have created a town full of people all in debt and beholden to him. One man’s existence changed all that but he could not see it. Not until the Angel Clarence showed it all to him. George Bailey had a calling that. he would of abandoned until he saw the consequences of having done so.

 

Your life is very important to someone. You may not realise that is so. You may feel despondent and useless and feel life holds no promise for you. You are so wrong!

 

Why you haven’t made a start on life yet!

In Life, you are looking for a miracle. Something that you do not believe can happen BUT the miracle will make it happen.

Will It? I can assure you without any fear of any contradiction that miracles happen every day.

The sceptical shout “Define Miracle!”

My answer will always be the same. “Something that has happened despite the fact that I do not believe that it is possible!”

The text on the meme is a bit tricky BUT you cannot witness a miracle if you are not looking at all towards the place where it is happening. Remember the advert that mentions “NOSE BLIND”. Well, same but you are Miracle Blind. Your disbelief prevents you from even glimpsing the wondrous thing that just happened. Why? Because you need everything to have a logical easy-to-explain process that you understand.  The miracle is that ANYTHING ever surprises you. You do not have a concept of magic, divinity, or anything that is beyond your experience.

We read in Genesis God said “Let there be light!” and there was and it was good. If you cannot believe there is no wonder in this for you.

IMAGINE; NO LOGIC, NO EFFORT, JUST A COMMAND. almost like ABRACADABRA isn’t it

Think is there any magic for you;

  • at Christmas
  • at Easter
  • at weddings
  • at funerals
  • at christenings
  • at talking to strangers
  • at being just PRESENT (more about this later)

On Social Media, you will hear a lot about Karma.

It’s another of those Bible stories “You reap what you sow” (or is it sew?) Surprise if you plant tomatoes guess what comes up? Potatoes?  Onions? Yep, you got the idea. If you are always moaning carping and complaining guess what your psychological response is?

My son had a nervous breakdown and everyone could see it coming except him. If you just let someone else rule the roost, make you do and say things that you do not want to. Make judgment calls that make you shudder and you say nothing and lots of people get hurt as a result. All of this are like chickens that inevitably come home to roost. All that stacked up bad just flattens you.

Life lesson! It is so much easier and requires a lot less effort in planning and scheming to be nice to people. Being nice is easy and being nasty is hard work. Have an easy life and feel good about yourself, do a good deed every single day of your existence. Guess what comes up as a return for your nice investment. YES! More ‘NICE’ than you thought you could possibly handle!

cropped-Consciousness-GENERAL.png

PRESENT and correct sir!

My dad used to say to me “Wake up boy! You are like a tit in a trance!” I did not know quite what that meant. I do now though.

 

It is when… (to be continued)

A lot of people talk about people being authentic. What they mean is here is a person who projects his real self onto the world. You may have heard people say, “I don’t like Jack. He is too blunt!” to which someone else will say, “Oh, I like Jack. He is a case of what you see is what you get.

Smileys??

“You’re an arse hole, aren’t you, Jack 🙂 “

“You make me laugh; you do, you pratt!  :-)”

“Piss Off!!”  🙂

Now Punk, are you feeling lucky? Do they mean actually that you are an arse hole pratt, and you should piss off? OR are they just having a laugh with you? 

You can never be sure, can you?

I like people who say what they mean and mean what they say. Even when I don’t like what they say or mean. At least you know where you stand with such people. 

Everybody has some internal dialogue going on at some time or the other. There is a saying, “Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.” The truth is that an unconscious dialogue is going on most of the time whilst your mind tries to make sense of everything that it comes across. When it cannot quite reconcile what it knows to its version of reality, that is when people end up having a chat with themselves. You are not going mad. It is a very normal thing for us humans to do .

AND YET! This scares people a great deal. They cannot seem to cope with any internal conflict at all. I know what I know, and what I know is right seems to be their watchwords. They actually fear being wrong! They also fear that a long-held belief might be undermined by this new upstart.

Being open-minded is a great healthy thing. Admitting errors and working on fixing them is a great thing also.

I am a big fan of Dirty Harry, as played by Clint Eastwood. Some of his phrases contain such huge wisdom. His best probably is  “A man has to know his limitations.”

Know yours. You ain’t always right!

Talking of Rowdy Yates. WHO. US TV Series called Rawhide that I absolutely loved as a kid. 1960’s, I think, and the first major role that Eastwood ever played. He is 93 years young. He is very lucky. He did his own stunts in a lot of his pictures.

What’s all this got to do with mental health, The Three Principles, or anything?

I do not believe when Clint Eastwood went for his first audition for Raw Hide that, he would become one of the most enduring actors that Hollywood ever reproduced. Life just happened for him, and in all that experience, he had some sort of plan, but basically, he just let it happen.