for those left standing.

A clarity that it is not our plans for life which are taken from us,

but we who are taken from our plans.

Taken from Life.

A clarity that each moment matters.

A clarity that it is only ever for us to choose

whether or not to embrace fully

each day and each moment.

For this is it. This is all there is.

And we shall not pass this way again.

“About me”.

The first thing to point out is that what you are about to read is only what you can know “about” me. To truly KNOW me, the true me, the light behind the eyes, you must first know yourself. Only by knowing yourself, and your true essence, can you know the true essence of any one or any thing else. Beyond that lie only the stories, which we call facts, percieved by our highly creative minds. None of which can be proven.

So, “about me”.

I have been a sailor, an adventurer, a wilderness survival instructor and a telephone engineer. I have been a child, a son, a brother, a lover, a stepfather and a nuisance totally oblivious of my own inappropriate behaviour. I have been a Warrior, a philosopher, a sharp perciever of the truth. I have been a Sword of Justice and I have been a liar.

I am a living Being made up of almost entirely nothing.

And when I stop to consider just how amazing it is that I exist, time stands still.

When I stop to consider just how amazing it is that I exist, I begin to percieve through un-named senses, the Oneness of all things. My connectedness to all things. I am expanded, and I know peace. I know one thing which the mind can never know. One thing which can never be proven to exist. One thing which can only be experienced.

Through the pages of this blog I hope to share with you my perceptions and truths that I have learned and observed. And your perceptions and observations. That we may all, as One, come closer to Knowing our common, true essence and the nature of Being.

Namaste, Ian

~Henry David Thoreau

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.

(Chinese proverb)

I could die tomorrow.

I will certainly die one day. And perhaps it will be tomorrow. Or later on today. Or 50 years from now.

As Morrie Schwartz says in Tuesdays with Morrie, “Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it”. Well, I certainly know it, but do I believe it? I think I do, and I am definitely trying to. One thing I do know and believe is that in at least trying to believe that I will die one day, it leads me to live differently.

With the realization that the world would get along quite nicely without me, comes the realization that the world will get along quite nicely without me. This is very humbling.

Knowing that the sun will one day expand to the point where it will engulf the Earth, tends to put my life, and my death, in perspective. Getting upset about whether to buy chocolate or not seems somehow less important next to the eventual vapourisation of the entire planet. Thinking about the past helps too. According to paleoanthropological theory, people have been around for maybe 150,000 years in their present form, give or take the odd brow ridge or two. This in itself also puts a single human lifespan into perspective, but when you start to consider the dinosaurs, well the years just boggle the mind. They supposedly became extinct around 60 million years ago (some of them are actually still with us!!). But the dinosaurs roamed the Earth for even longer than that. Try 300 million years.

So this I find all very humbling and it helps me to accept that the apparent finality of my death is in fact just a change in circumstances. A small shift in energy and matter. But though the shift may be small, it is also infinitely important in the unfolding process of the universe. For if I were to vanish into thin air upon my death, if the matter and energy which currently make up the living Being that I seem to be, simply ceased to exist, then the universe would certainly notice. Something would definitely be missing.

But that’s not how it will be. There are more than a few theories on where the energy would go, but as for the matter, well my body would decompose and be returned to the Earth, or in other circumstances might be converted into the flesh and faeces of the predator which ate me. In some different form, “I” would go on. The energy and matter that make up the living Being which I seem to be, would go on. And this gives me comfort.

So how do I live my life differently, knowing that I will one day die, and trying as hard as I can to believe it too?

Morrie Schwartz insisted on the importance of having loved ones around you. Family. But I think he had a different experience of friends and family to me. One thing we would have agreed on though is that knowledge of your unavoidable death gives you an enhanced clarity of perception of Nature. I find it a lot easier to be Present amidst the beauty, the grandeur and intricacy of Nature. To simply be and observe, before the moment is lost. With sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, from the tiny detail of an insect nest-building, to the most magnificent sunset or moonlit cloudscape, these are the things that make Life worth living. And here’s the irony: these details, whether they be tiny, or grand and majestic, are equally as important in the unfolding process of the universe as my own life. Or my own death. And so, though I am humbled by the immeasurable vastness of time and space, in the appreciation of these day to day natural miracles, I can see the importance of my own existence as part of the same unfolding process of the greater universe around me, and of which I am part. I am part of that miracle.

Believing that I will die.

And what if I was given a sorry diagnosis by a doctor that I only had 2 months to live. What would I do? What could I do really? If I was already living the life I would want to live, then what would there be to change? And in any case, what could a doctor really know about how long I have left to live? How does a doctor know that I’m not going to leave the surgery and, in a stunned vagueness, walk straight in front of a passing bus. So, even after a doctor gives me 2 months to live, I might still only get another 5 minutes. And this is true at any given moment.

Anyway, as Eckhart Tolle says, “Death is not the opposite of Life, it’s the opposite of Birth”.