On my walk today I took loads of photos of this lake – but I can’t decide which is the best one. The one with the bird flying is great, but I think the other is more peaceful. What do you think? These are in the a Photo Gallery, so you can click on them to see them in full size.
Today, following on from Beltane last night, I found myself embracing nature, mother earth and love. I had a lovely walk on Arthur’s Seat with Honey the Dog. The sun was shining and clear blues skies. The whole world felt like it was alive with energy and love.
I took a lovely video of half the moon in the sky, against a nearly pure blue sky. Check in out below – I start and finish on the moon, although quite hard to see.
The whole experience really opened my heart and I felt connected with love (it always happens at this time of year, round Beltane!).
But it reminded me of Ram Dass lecture on Facing Death. You may remember that in the blog ‘Day 34 – Reflections on Lock-Down‘, I introduced you to Ram Dass’s lecture called ‘Facing Death’ (https://www.ramdass.org/ram-dass-on-facing-death).
As I explained in that blog, after hearing the lecture for the first time back in the late 1990s, I tried to do work on living more in ‘Channel 3’. I spent about 3 years, doing daily meditation and practising opening and living in my heart.
The next part of the lecture, explains a bit more about this and types of love.
This part is at Counter – 34:36 – 39:32
He is explaining about love.
First of all, most of our images of love in our society have to do with romantic love…they are poetic love…they are interpersonal love. I love you, you love me, we love each other.
We all give lip service to, but hardly ever really acknowledge there is another kind of love. That is not interpersonal. We can call is conscious love or Christ’s love or God’s love.
And the image I have, is to, is that when you grow up in society of conditional love, which most of us have grown up in. Because of the way in which we are socialised. We end up very needful for love. And that’s why a lot of the literature is about love and affection.
It’s as if there is something in us that is very hungry. We are on a deprivation diet. And so when we meet somebody that has the key to unlock something in us, we experience that we are in love. And we say “I am in love with you”.
What we are really saying, another way of saying it, in a kind of instinct literature is “you are the key stimulus that is releasing the mechanism in me, that allows me to be in love. You are my connection”.
And as my connection, I want to possess you. Because I’m hungry to be in this state – in my being.
I have come into the place of love in my being. And everything is beautiful, suddenly. But it only happens when you are around. So where will you be Thursday? And where will you be Friday? And where will you be for the rest of my life?”.
And the tendency is to want to possess the beloved. Which you and I both know, is one of the quickest ways to destroy the experience.
And that love in itself, has fear, because somebody is going to die. Or go away. Or find another lover, or something. That’s interpersonal romantic love. And that is why there is so much poetry about it, because it has the fear and the joy and all of the stuff in it.
But now take that image, that the key stimulus is something that opens you in the place in yourself, where you are love.
And through the spiritual practices and through the understanding of the metaphysics. And through opening yourself. You find yourself, whether you call it, awareness, where you draw your awareness back from thought. Or however, you get in there through meditation, through devotion, through study, whatever your practices are.
You find yourself, starting to rest in the place or presence in your being which has the quality of that openness, that boundary-less, that heart, that intuitive heart space, where you experience that you are in love.
But now, you are no longer dependant on an external thing to awaken you to it, you are beginning to rest in it.
You are beginning to be love.
Now the social problems that raises is very interesting, because what happens is. Now everyone you look at you are in love with. And you don’t know quite what to do, because, if you have been working on an old deprivation model, you want to collect them all.
So you get one and you say “lets nest”. And you go back and you get twigs and grapes and you know, make a nest. And then after sometime you say “I’m going to the supermarket to get some, tofu and beer”. And at the checkout counter, you look at the person at the checkout counter and it happens again. Because the eyes are the windows to the soul. And the soul, rests in love. The soul is a being within the place of love.
So you look and there is your beloved. Now what are you going to do? You’ve got one at home.
So you say “have you considered a mange-a-tout?”.
But what are you going to do then? Are you not going to walk down the street and look at anybody, because it is going to keep happening.
And you realise, that you are going to have to give up your deprivation model. Because there is an abundance of love. You are going to have to stop collecting it.
And you are just going to start to go that you just pass your beloved on the street and you don’t even wink.
So you go through stages of it. At first you just can’t believe it, you see.
So you go down the street and you meet one and you say “lets have coffee together”. Or “give me your phone number” – in case I run out of the others later, because I want to know that this one is so beautiful.
And then after a while, you just keep letting go and letting go and letting go. Until you realise, that this is just living in the presence of love.
Because the thing that has closed you down is the fear of the other person’s pain and suffering.
And once you have that spiritual perspective, that allows you to keep you heart open in the hell. And the pain and the grief and the stuff. Then you are start to be in love with another human being, without feeling the possessive quality about it.
This evening as I write this blog, I am listening to the World premier DJ set by Nelly Cook – also known as Fat Girl Slim. With a little help from her dad Fatboy Slim. This was produced Easter Weekend in lock-down. I’ve listened to it before, but it popped up again on my Facebook feed – and actually the tunes are awesome. Perfect to listen to on a Friday night!
The Facebook post has 140,000 likes and 14,000 comments!
Fatboy Slim writes:
Introducing… Fat Girl Slim
Part of the Camp Bestival Stay At Home, Easter Sleepover.
#CBSleepover #StayHome
Nelly has watched me DJ for all of her 10 years on the planet and one day thought, “How hard can this be?
Sadly, it won’t let me embed it into this blog – so here is the link here – https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=210000270446574
Readers Corner
Brian
This is Brian’s first appearance in the new style Readers Corner, with his ‘photo’.
Earlier today, Brian shared this post on Facebook. It’s a great watch and with Bloopers at the end.
However, it wouldn’t embed. I contacted the folk who made it (The Gilbert’s) and now have the YouTube Link. Check it out below:
He later shared a couple of photos for me. Which he took this evening. These are in a Photo Gallery, so you can click on them to see them full size.
Fi
Fi writes the following from the Isle of Canna:
“Battery maintenance today. We are very lucky to have our own energy supply, but with great (renewable) power, comes great responsibility! See what I did there 
So we have a wee maintenance team who take it week about to keep an eye on the whole system. Today was monthly battery maintenance. Electrolyte level check and topped up where 
necessary, voltage checks and measuring specific gravities. There are 144 individual 12v batteries so it takes a bit of time!”
Photo below of the batteries.
She then included a photo of a cow, writing:
“Then I got to spend a bit of time with this guy. He’s my fav 
“
I asked her what his name was. She replied:
“I call him buddy“.
I replied “Buddy the Bull ?”
But she replied with:
“Buddy the Baby Bull!”
I was a bit confused by the second photo, looking at the photo (small scale) on my phone, it looked like Fi’s arm was Buddy’s tongue! I then asked why Buddy had a bracelet on his tongue? She then sent the 3rd photo, which showed my mistake 🙂
These photos are in a Photo Gallery – click on them to see them full-size.
Honey the Dog
This is Honey’s first appearance in Readers Corner!
Today Honey posted on her Instagram Post (https://www.instagram.com/honeythedog_lab).
She wrote:
“Today on my daily walk, I bumped into my favourite boat lady @dennyhelen
To be honest it was nice to see someone different, I’ve been spending a lot of time with @jimthemagician recently! They did this weird picture thing at a distance and tried to get me to sit still but I didn’t really see the point”.
There has been one comment to the post by @julie_ellam
“You’re looking good, Honey, and your human friends are kinda gorg too. Who’s your other canine friend?”
Honey replied:
“that ‘canine’ was trying to steal my biscuits. I ate them super quick and turned my back to show her I wasn’t impressed”.
So as I come to the end of today’s blog, I feel quite grounded and in my heart. In fact, a perfect ending to this blog, is the last song on the the DJ Set of Fat Girl Slim, which I am still listening to, is Love in the Air by John Paul Young!! This is totally how I am feeling 🙂
I actually have forgotten that I am living in lock-down. This way of being has become “normal”. It is the just the way life is.
How weird is that!
I wonder, whether this is the same with you?
I am looking forward to more walks over the weekend and the meditation on Sunday from 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Sorry I haven’t set up a Zoom link for that. It you are interested in coming along to this, get in touch and when I create the link tomorrow afternoon and I can send it to you.
Hope you all have had a great week.
Stay Safe.
Love to you all.
Jim xxx