Some Times

 
 

Some times...

Sometimes things look backward to us when we are not far enough away from something…

 

Last but not least, a real Grandfather.

 
 

More Fall...

 
 

Fallllllll

 
 

So. Here's three offspring and partners, one a husband that day...

 
 

Now

Well, long time no write - dunno how to be right in what I write :)

Will post a picture on Friday instead - it may say at least five hundred words, right?

Spaciness

Spaciness heretoday. It beats depression (!) I just wrote a 'spacey' comment to Richard Lawrence Cohen...


"Here's one former British student of yours reading your blog from a time in the spaciness of his lunch hour. He's reading these pixels which pass for ink marks while waiting for his next psychotherapy client to arrive after his lunch.

The depression (this guy I'll call me) can sometimes experience is slightly less today. Last week at a shamanic dreaming workshop we saw this-elf (for just a short refreshing while...) to be Celestial Dragon Circling, flying serenely 'above', grounded down to a Bearbeing(!) If the 'imp'-ortant elf that passes for my SUPER ego were to query the self writing back to Richardhere, then Celestial Dragon can now reply: "How am I Really? Floating along through skyground keyboard, thanks... aware of walking through Gaiamud, yet feeling mysky now."

I think I prefer to be out of that former depressing school I thought you wanted me in.

The 'English CLASS thing' your Progenitors 'raised' me in was just too Muddy - what's more it had no Sky or class...

Thank you and Bless you Richard,

Barry"

number two...

Two reflections.

The fuzziness of minute life is a trip.

An enigmatic element of life...

So Folks... Will we ever see this kind of beach day again? The sky in this shot - rounded by the semi fisheye lens - always strikes me as giving the same emotional experience as if the sky goes on forever... which it does.

and more.

more

The urban view can be colourful, scant, enigmatic or dreary: here's hoping we find a way over time to make it more joyful...

These images were some of how my intervening time has been spent...

LLLLllllllong time no post

This ain't black and white... Interesting - because even in my most depressed times this intensity of colour photograph will still make it part way through my depression - in other words, 'in spite' of the part of me that 'wants' to turn such a vibrancy into blacknwhite...

Given what I just wrote, I HAD to repost this.

A friend of mine struggles with depression - the way I see so many people doing - the same way I do it myself :>( ... We FOCUS on what is seemingly Right in Front of US. In the case of this picture of our 'outside dining table' ( ! ) this means focusing on black and white options for putting self/Self in This Box or That Box. To quote my friend:
"The self limitations of emotions, be it anger / depression /guilt / anxiety or fear can be as debilitating as any addiction or life threatening disease. Feelings of being a complete failure can lead to and result in a powerful journey to self destruction."

He then admitted to: "struggling now on how to continue with this discussion, battling with screams on how it must be done perfectly. I am allowing a reprieve, to attempt to shift to a part of me that is content with muddling along this journey..." To me, that "muddling along" he's speaking of [trying not to be judging himself about] is actually the "Pearl of Great Price" - i.e. that is exactly the way it feels - 'muddling through' the battlefield of giving oneself permission not to be just looking at the immediate blacknwhite non-choices in front of us - but giving myself permission to look up into the greenery of the trees or the blue of the sky above or the warmth of a Spring Sun - which, I stilllll predict - will get to us sometime about now... Blessing All Our Connections, Barry

So this is how I wish it looked here now. I dunno about anyone else but I think I'm just about done with winter. This path in the woods behind where I used to work was a major source of replenishment/rejeuvenation during the warm months. Going out there during my lunch break was consistently healing, even if the sun was not shining as in this shot... but the sun did and will make a big difference - it does even while we still have all this snow. More scheduled for the next couple of days too... :<(
The depressingness of the winter Will Pass, folks, I Declare it so...

Since you asked Mike... Here is Obie in all his RELAXED Glory! This may look like a funny position for a cat but I can tell you he also sleeps with his head literally upside down sometimes...

This is my best friend, sexy partner and wife. I love the brightly coloured red and blue energy coming up out of the back of her head!

This seemed a good companion photo to the piece below. It's of the abandoned house behind our laneway...

I was reading an article on Bs... It attempted to 'academically' address the issue of our current 'culture's' use of 'bullshit' i.e. not the term but the actuality...
My problem with this is that just about anywhere and everywhere I look I see what I would call anything from mild to 'supersized' ( ! ) bullshit. How can I address an issue that I think is crucial to overcome for the continuance of our very existence as a species when the stench of it fills my nostrils and my standing in it makes me feel that I can only be inherently dirty?
My only starting place for typing of this can be in putting out my version of what I figure is it's opposite: QUALITY.
Now the Quality that I refer to is, I think, the same referenced by Robert Pirsig in Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In that sense, I choose to believe that there is somewhere in each of us a Knower of Truth. The quality vs. bullshit differences we can note in people are explainable by a combination of how much conscious access as well as how much unconscious access they choose to have to that Knower of Truth.
But what about the free-ranging bullshit in all of our institutions, social and individual frameworks, in our ethnic and national mythologies? Those multilayerings of bullshit do not often seem to be doing what the original stinky stuff is 'supposed' to do - become fertilizer for food or flowers...
Maybe I don't have a sufficiently long telephoto 'lens' on my viewpoint - maybe in 100 more years it'll be clear we were on the verge of a breakthrough in early 2005. News corporations are definitely threatened by the questioning of net writers. Those emperors may yet be seen 'sans frocks'... Blogs do feel like a revolutionary medium - my writing has no-one but me - at least at the moment (!) it has to account to. To touch my sense of the possiblity of a Quality Self (in this brief note here) has helped challenge my belief that bullshit is pandemic. And maybe it works for you too.

Here's one from England in August of 2003 - neat because the land and houses in the background give you some perspective on the size. This one was only of moderate size: some have been intricate designs of say 900 feet...

Boy, I must have a big need for colour and spring these days! Find myself choosing shots from the last couple of years that yell Vibrancy - as there is not much of it around... Next I'll post a crop circle - that'll Do It more...

These are a type of marvellous flower which would be about one inch worth for what you see here. This is the top of a flower stalk out in a conservation area behind the hospital where I've worked for 19 years as a psychotherapist. That conservation area was part of what kept me sane during many depressed times while I worked there. Now my clinic has moved off site and this summer I will have other areas to visit and photograph. Mmmmm, actually the photo of striking blue coloured berries earlier down the blog that have the bright burgundy leaves is from behind my new work location.

Couldn't resist one more. What's neat about this is that you cannot possibly know for sure what season this is from :-] The bird is a hint, though...

Then again, can't you just wait for the return of these guys, and the days when we get to share an outside cafe table with them?

A Puzzle Process: Where in Ontario is there this Egyptian staring at a snowstorm? Big Kudos for whoever can figure it out. Dan has an advantage, Jess and Amanda disadvantages... The Orb flying by would know too.

So Saturday was my 57th birthday and this weekend has been one of consequent ongoing change. Just heard from my eldest daughter that her doctoral thesis is off for reading by her committee and she’s hoping to defend it by April/May… Knowing her thoroughness, it’ll probably happen. She’ll get her doctorate and what it did for me was spur me to read back through my own doctoral thesis: which I never followed through to the finishing of the degree. It was good – although clearly not academic enough: but then, I’d rather be a thinking outside the box person – it’s part of being an Aquarian: I’m allowed!

Who do we love?

An advantage of being able to go back through electronic/ computer file diaries: I found this quote this morning from just about ten years ago – and I’m still doing well at getting this ‘more’ - - -
From February 19, 1995 – “I guess the dilemma has always been the paradox of feeling I have to "constrain" myself within the seeming Limitedness of this world. This occurs in everthing from relationships, WHO I AM, how I can act on this world, the use of money, to the boredom (and paradox) of Time. Underneath, however, I've always sensed pervasively and inherently my UNLIMITEDNESS..... What it feels like I need to do is to establish new relationships between myself and all these different elements in my life.
What is really significant is the FEELING, the feeling of peacefulness that I don't have to give myself up to the subtle sense of Pressure. Somehow the Inner Trant just got a little less powerful ! ! ! Instead, I can let in the underlying most important Feeling, and that is Loving Myself, Loving my Life, Loving Wherever and However and Whoever I WANT to LOVE.”

:>}One corner of a house's response to the previous post...

News item: An Indiana farm wife called the local phone company to report that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called - and that on the few occasions when it did ring, her pet dog always moaned right before the phone rang. The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic dog or senile elderly lady.
He climbed a nearby telephone pole, hooked in his test set, and dialed the subscriber's house. The phone didn't ring right away, but then the dog moaned loudly and the telephone began to ring. Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman found:
1. The dog was tied to the telephone system's ground wire via a steel chain and collar.
2. The wire connection to the ground rod was loose.
3. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signaling current when the phone number was called.
4. After a couple of such jolts, the dog would start moaning and then urinate on himself and the ground.
5. The wet ground would complete the circuit, thus causing the phone to ring.

Which demonstrates that some problems CAN be fixed by pissing and moaning....

Or... how about a shot of the beach? I can still Feel the Sky from that day

So we're back to winter in Ontario... This shot from last year is to perk up my or anyone else's day. That little taste of a sense of spring we had for a few days last week is Gone - and the letdown was painful. Maybe there is also more solar radiation coming, or the pace of galactic influx of energy for change is heightened - or maybe I just got caught in a time at work where I have many silly 'noting processes' I'm supposed to do and my resistance comes up as depression... Then again, maybe it's alllll of the above... Blessing This Connection, Barry

Tight view from my desk of the sky... with intervening Diefenbachia leaf and dried tall grasses!

Meditating a life into Immediacy

So yesterday I had been a definitely passionate morning... meeting with people whose stories both moved me as well as gave me chances to offer perspectives and thoughts/feelings that were apparently helpful to them - but which were also deeply edifying to me in my own relationships with myself, my life and my 'loves' - be they my wife, our cat , my 'kids', my colleagues or all the 'others' I feel linked to across the world. I believe this process is the way psychotherapists are best able to assist - by walking meditatively beside others (and the Other, maybe?)

'Sinteresting: I get to this place of Passion for life and a sense of immediacy in these moments and weeks that I can never articulate fully, and it's because the words are so small. I watch us bloggers (if I can be so seemingly grandiose as to call myself that) 'shifting' our worlds through the meditative process that this is - that http://trueancestor.typepad.com/true_ancestor/ so articulately references...



Blessing All Our Connections,



Barry

This was our 2004 Version of Christmas Tree - with Oberon - Maine Coon Cat (usually called Obie...) sitting contemplating life beside it before we took it down last week

Well simple movie posting didn't work!

Tried to post a short movie but it didn't work the way I tried it. Have to find out how to do that... Had a good weekend and not much time dedicated to noting here. Seems like lots of people start enthusiastically then tend to peter down in number of postings. One wonders/reflects: why am I doing this thing of noting to myself on the w w web?
I know part of my motivation is having found some peoples reflections on their blogs really helpful because I was able to deeply identify - or because I got something fresh from their reflections - and I'd like to offer something that others would find helpful I guess...
But I don't think that would be enough - unless one was to stay (or become!) narcissistically fixated... For me I know I'm also looking to find some thread of dialogue with the Whole - with whoever it is that one talks to in the night - or the early morning as this is for me.
Wrote a long missive to my wife's uncle in england last night clarifying the lousy information that yes his sister (my wife's mother) really does have Alzheimer's and some of what that means. These two - brother in England and sister here in Canada have been chatting by phone every week for decades - and he now is facing how to handle losing his sister in this slow withdrawal of awareness way. My heart goes out to him.
Also wrote a long note to my brother in Edmonton. (Hope you understand what I was meaning Don...)
MMMmmm, I guess that's part of where (in those two letters) that I've put my writing energies this weekend.
It's my 57th birthday this Saturday. I still feel like an 18 year old inside - just far more willing to be patient with myself and the world now... also happily married which is probably why I'm so relatively calm now in comparison to how I was before.... :>)

Just read the world petition for peace and justice at:
http://www.zmag.org/wspj/index.cfm

Verrrry worthwhile.

Even more colourful... The combination of colour tones in this has impacted me each time I see it.

Thought I'd add a reminder of SPRING to come!

'Sbin a few days since I posted. Had time to STOP and think about a lot of things, not all to be shared here... but I do find at the moment that I am listening more intently to myself in the middle of some of my conversations recently. I have yet to discern if it's from having started this blog or whether it's the other way round: this evolving shift in consciousnes also led to starting the blog (!) The photo: I don't know about anyone else but I find this shot very evocative - even meditative in a mandala like manner. It's intersting too, for me, as it may be for you - - to know that the name of this type of SUV is a PILOT... quite symbolic I thought! Soyanara, Blessing All our Connections, Barry 

So where is the Truth in Media?

Maybe the truth is only really here in individual people's blogs... Just read George Monbiot's most recent article. His articles are just about always spot on and it reads like a blog with references. If there's anyone who's articulate in the way of a balanced viewpoint on our crazy world it's him. This is his take on how the media is in the States:
"http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/01/18/media-fairyland-/"

Here's the result of the photoshopping (!)

A Pergrine Falcon that sat for about an hour and a half by my office building yesterday. Unfortunately the only angle I could catch a photo of him/her from was through the branches of this tree. This shot would be at about 1000 mm telephoto (in 35 mm camera equivalent). An update added February 1, 2005 at 12:30 p.m. - Just heard last night that this was actually some form of hawk "either a rough-legged hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk" according to my son-in-law to be... Aerron: I wouldn't have been perturbed if you'd corrected me here (!) Thanks for the information actually. To clarify a bit more though, this hawk wasn't so forward as to be right outside my office window - he/she was really about several hundred yards away which is why the photo is a bit grainy - it's a blow up of a blow up!

Does anyone else spend time wondering what to do next? There must be others. These times for me are when it seems like I can feel 'options', 'feelings' floating around me in the 'moment' - just out of perceivable range - and they're tempting because their flavour is wafting over to me through the fog...
This evening the version of this I'm having is because I have a known (to me!) desire to read one of my current books (Wynn Free's book on David Wilcock as the reincarnation of Edgar Cayce) but I also feel inclined to do some photoshop stuff or to play with copying audiobooks or to do some writing... you can see which is winning at the moment! Anyway, all the while I have that known set of possible activities, my mind is circling around the other recent discussions with my wife - like a semi big issue of looking at going on vacation somewhere - Mexico was being discussed - but also we were discussing the option of Adopting A Child - - - a slightly (!) larger issue...
So. Mmmmmm, the whirling fog of topics/thoughts/feelings & possible activities to do this evening that are almost there but not totally Clear Cut are probably happening in the context of That: the Revolutionary Idea of Adoption! and it would easily seem, now that I think about it, that that would be a pretty big consideration to be cooking in the background... Not much more to say about it yet, though.
But at least I finished the kitchen counter repairs today!

Some comments on Autopilot processes...

A section from a book I wrote back a few years ago and have yet to publish... It still feels at times too simple, the language part of me judges it as imperfect, but the Intent was heartfelt when I wrote it, as it still is now: I want us all to Wake Up...

All

Your / my long list of known addictions (alcohol, food, lotteries, exercise, sex, drugs, rescuing etc.) as well as any of our potentially habit ruled “doings” (reading, thinking, relating, Web browsing, acting, driving, et. al.) are all compulsive, autopilot attempts to shift into the Grace of the playful divine Self. Sometimes they may help you connect consciously with that Joy we are,often they probably don’t...

The

Autopilot’s rationalizing, constricting voices / sub-personalities (“one more cookie won’t hurt...” etc.), those automated “doings” of your usual attending processes (which sound like paternal scoldings or indulgences!), are the sources of each addictive, compulsive search. “They” make you desperate for any possible return to Grace you can manage. These conditioned elements of self that you’ve come to think and believe yourself to “be” are actually: The Problem. Hence the classic, inaccurately understood religious instruction to“deny yourself”, “kill” the ego, “transcend” self...

More

Accurately, you need to shift your identification with the Autopilot world view, that usual sense of “numbed, boring normalcy”. Your Autopilot was shaped (by well meaning others) to believe / feel that all of who you are exists inside a rationalistic, randomly objective universe which has no intimate or permanent connection to your daily life. Based in that nightmare, your potentially expansive knowing is truncated into visions of futility. Without the fluidity of Who You really Are, you’ve felt your whole range of intimate sensings of life are destined to end in Death...

As one neat blog I was on today summed it up differently: there was or is a purpose to You Being on This Page if it's touching you... :>)

In contrast... here's one of my first attempts from a couple of years ago to present/combine/express transformative images. I look at it now and I see how simplistically I did it - as well as what way I'd like to redo it. But not tonight I think. The door's images do look inviting...

24/1/05 4:56 pm (i.e. a late note from that depressed time yesterday)
Monday... Monday
Does it 'just work out that way'? (Mamas&Papas...) Is it not possible to escape the blues I feel here/now again? On handheld here, so there'll be a gap again before I 'put this up' on the blog... It sometimes feels So intimate when I'm typing straight to it - This set of moments, on the other hand feels much more detached. I identified with 'notsoclairvoyant' in her switching back and forth... Here I am in the dumpster area of self... interesting - maybe the metaphor holds more truth than one would think, as the dumpsters these days have hydraulic Compressing Of Contents type ways they pack their trash. And I KNOW I'm trash in some determined to hold onto pain part of me right now - in spite of having felt blessed/energetic during that chat with John just a short while ago.

This was the spectacular scene out my office window this morning. (It was early!)

Visiting of others blogs

Random visiting of blogs led me to thistlegirl and

http://thistlegirl.blogspot.com/2005/01/bass-rock.html

Can we change this world around by linking with each other? I sure hope so.

 

untitled

So is pain the only way to grow? I guess by contrast, if I let my reflections evaporate into misty uneasy feelings of wishing vaguely for feeling better - probably the pain that comes next is to try and shove me back to reflectiveness (* !*) But given that that energy is coming from an out of balance place, it shoves rather than invites.....

Now - given that it's later in the day - I feel more calm and also able to get to more of that reflectiveness - as probably evident in the tone of this note. Today was difficult earlier though and I want to address that a bit further.

To me, it comes back to the boundaries of the Pushiness Issue/Element. In that vague (at that time) pain, my depressiveness was kept at bay by my 'stiff upper lip' British upbringing which requires that I not break down into self pity... The problem with that paradigm, however, is that the Self Pity flowers even more, I think, with being suppressed.

Interesting here: me the psychotherapist in public therapy with myself ::>)

But I have a sense that that's what one layer of what these blogs provides - a chance to dialogue with self in ways that inherently allow for being at least partly outside the box - precisely because I know (as deeply as I let myself feel it...) that _any_ person on the planet can listen in - including all the many different types and orientations of people whose judgement I could deeply fear the most. So to go ahead and actually blog it to the web is also to give myself a chance to accept all these apparent failings.

MMMMMmmmm, think I'll recommend this to clients as a great form of self therapy. And it's free!

Hasta la vista.

 

Seeing ourselves when we haven't been looking...

Just watched a colleague playing with/looking at the clouds picture as below. Fascinating. He saw what I had never seen in quite a few 'lookings' at that shot... He saw himself growing. Me, I often seem to first feel myself shifting through watching that part of my mind where I conceive that I'm not supposed to go (kind of like backing up into my own growth!) - so it comes as a surprise to me when I can get straight to it. I guess the bottom duck shot did do it for me, though. The waves are there as indications that we matter outside ourselves...

 

Blessing All These Connections.   Barry

 

From 'work': Brand new building last year and now it's freezing

I'm sure it's not just me - you, whoever you are reading this - probably feel it too: We're a species in decline somehow... We do All This Stuff... yet at the same time we think we're doing so well we miss the quality issue... We put up these New Buildings, these New This, New That - and so many are flawed - like this new building with freezing temperatures this morning.

 

On the other hand, maybe I just need some more tea and to arrive completely   :>>)

 

Blessing All Our Connections, (even this chilly one...)  Barry

A further view of that barn from my brother Don. It looks cold and grey there whenever these were taken. In contrast, here in London today while it was freezing cold 'technically', the really brilliant sunshine made it feel quite an okay kind of day. Next time I'll take a shot and include it here. (Next time meaning ,really, when I get around to it if I'm honest... :>>) Thanks Don. TTFN. Blessing All Our Connections

Immeasurables - hopefully they aren't copyrighted (!) These are Aim Points...

Well, if nothing else this process of publishing thoughts and images (that no-one may ever read or comment on!) may inspire me to do more drawings... I like the look of the ones I've put up here so far. Both the most recent (Titled Entwined!) and the previous enmeshed birds pictures have started on my handheld as well. The handheld is a nudge process to cohere 'this' into more congruency.

Our Sleeping Side is Up and We Think We're Awake.

A Glastonbury Tor peek from beyond the moon looking towards the Earth...