Vibing on the mystic trees,
their upside is downside, their downside is upside
selves telling me:
You’ve got to cut through the attachments.
Then, not a new, but old made new again, insight
confirms, clarifies, brings details to,
shines a light on the specifics:
Stop desiring what you already have.
By the River’s Light
I’ll Live My Life
out of sight of Babylon
A Note From Me: I can’t tell you who wrote these words. Maybe I did; maybe it’s a song lyric; or maybe it’s a quote from someone famous. Whatever the case, a half hour internet search failed to come up with anything even close. So, The best I can do is thank whoever did bring these beautiful words into the world. I hope you are pleased with how I’ve made use of them.
Namaste friends
Welcome again to my blog. It’s always a good feeling when I sit at the keyboard to begin a new post to you.
And for this post,I have some news: this hermit is back on the road again. But, I hear you asking: aren’t you as a pilgrim always on the road, on the move? Yes all true; a pilgrimage like mine (life) is never-ending, permanent. Just a state of being you could say.
So, after a few months in the desert hermitage, we felt lead to move to Sydney, to another cave; another safe haven by the side of road.
This move has felt right and gone smoothly from the first thought, the initial feeling, to the actual trip here, right down to the comfort and contentment we feel in this new hermitage (in reality a small apartment beneath a house with a lovely garden, in a quiet street).
My second piece of news is that I have made another blog, one just for my pictures. Of course my posts here are always illustrated with my photos, but after deleting all my social media accounts (another bit of news I suppose) I felt the need for an alternate place to share my art. It’s on a different platform and it would be terrific if you could follow me there.
The blog is called Pictures from the Heart of a Pilgrim, and you are invited to visit, to follow, to comment. to connect. Just click on the link here.
There are only a handful of pictures on that site so far, but I’m working on expanding it, so please make sure you visit more than once. Better still, subscribe so you can be notified whenever I post.
I think that’s it. Maybe I will post about deleting social media accounts. But, somehow I don’t think I will: they’ve gone and I’m happy about that. I’m not alone I know in making that decision.
So, till next post, thank you for your support.
Love and Peace
Paul
Strangely for one who lives a life that at least aspires to be outside the mainstream of our culture and society, I have a lot of rules to follow.
What I mean to say, is that, while for the most part I disdain the ‘rules and customs’, and the ‘demands and obligations’ of the dominent culture and our materialistic society, I seem to be quite capable of making up all kinds of rules for myself. I’m then more than able to put the exact same pressures on myself to obey, to comply and to conform.
One of those ‘rules’ is to try not to repeat topics of posts. Obviously there are posts that fall through the cracks of such strictness, but on the whole I like to keep coming up with new things to share with you.
But it’s been occuring to me lately that musings and contemplations don’t work that way. The mind, the heart, know no such rules as ‘no repittion’. (Actually, now I think about it, there are some things the mind likes to repeat all the time that I could do very well without thank you very much)
Sometime, not too long ago I think, I wrote about the beautiful George Harrison song, Just for today. I wrote about how I have a slightly paraphrased few lines from that song written in my Bhagavat Gita, and I read those lines every day:
I know I am not alone in my desire to not be constantly trying to sort out all life’s problems; I know many of us would just like a little peace, a little pause in the ongoing rush of life. Just for today, or even just for a minute.
What George is making a plea for here has resonated with me since I first heard this song so many years ago I can’t remember.
Anyway, this was supposed to lead up to the real topic of today’s post which was going to be about my decision last night to spend the next few days in a kind of retreat. Instead it’s turned into a bit of a rave about breaking self-imposed rules.
Actually though, one of the primary motivations for my decision was the very notion of presence, of being still for ‘this day only’. You know the idea: leave all life’s worries and issues, and worldly concerns out of mind, just for a bit.
In other words, in this case I don’t think I mind repeating myself, breaking my own (really rather silly if you ask me) rule. The retreat is timely, and it’s a good thing to be reminded that it really is about presence.
I’ve been getting too caught up in ‘what’s next?’ kind of questions. As well as the usual and very tedious existential angst over life, the universe, and everything past, present, and still yet to be!
So, at the risk of creating a classic oxymoron, it’s now the time to head off to find a little presence, and a little stillness.
Just for today.
Yesterday found me (for a couple of hours anyway) out on the suburban streets close to the hermitage. Camera in hand and trying to cultivate an attitude of Contemplation. Working for the moment my heart, my head, and my mind all came together to help my camera make a photograph.
Well, in terms of contemplative photography, the outing was a bit of a struggle: getting into the Zen Zone isn’t always easy. And come to think of it, it’s not always part of the plan is it?
I don’t mean the little plans and intentions the ego comes up with about how things are going to turn out. I’m talking here about The Plan: what the Divine has in the works for us.
Anyway back to my walk. I kept walking, sometimes making photos. As I said, it wasn’t easy getting in the zone. Suddenly my eyes were drawn to a particular house. As I looked through the viewfinder I noticed a butterfly on the wall. On the window actually.
Not a living, flying, being as you can see. More of a kind of garden ornament attached to the front of the house. It struck me as I continued looking, that I’d already seen – and photographed – several ‘butterflies’ so far in that walk.
Four actually. In the space of an hour, and within a couple of streets of home. I’d seen them on walls, windows, and on doors.
Through time and in many places around the world, various cultures have looked at butterflies as symbols of transformation, for change, and renewal.
And, it seems to me, that butterflies can appear to us almost lighter than air. They kind of float on the air currents. They’re also known for their darting way of flying in what might seem to us one random direction then another.
So, butterflies have also been seen as symbolic of the human mind with its tendency to dart all over the place from one thought to another. They are said to remind us that we can in fact control and direct the mind.
In that case then, were these repeated encounters with butterflies – albeit of the ornamental variety – some sort of message for me? Perhaps I was to slow down, stop taking myself so seriously and to make changes? And of course remembering that I’m perfectly able to deal with consequences of any changes I make.
Well, here’s the funny thing. Literally not until I sat down to draft this blog did it occur to me that I have in the last couple of days made what for me seem monumental changes. Or to be more exact, I have put into motion changes that are yet to reveal what if any transformations they might lead to.
You see, over the last few days I have been systematically deleting all my social media accounts (with the exception of a messenger app to speak to my son). I’ve had most of these accounts for up to 15 years or more. So, while I’m absolutely certain that this act of detachment from some of the things in the world that don’t sit well with my nature, I’m still feeling a bit lost, a little empty.
Okay, the butterflies: what have they to do with any of this? Transformation? Change? Lightness? And the ability to float through changes in life? Yes all of these. And we all know very well that butterflies undergo some pretty tough transformations as they evolve into what they are to become.
Something I read once said that if you see a butterfly you should look at what you’re thinking; ask yourself what’s next for me? What changes are in store? Although all those butterflies of yesterday were ornaments on walls and so on, I have actually at other times been privileged to photograph living and flying ones.
In fact just the day before yesterday I met a small white butterfly flitting from one white flower to flower. In the space of a very short time, this beautiful creature gifted me with a very small moment’s stillness, and it gave me a photograph. Here i share that one with you.
Early Christians associated the butterfly with the soul. So, yes, you could say that my meeting with that particular butterfly was a meeting of souls.
But what of the garden ornament, inanimate butterflies met yesterday?
Well, everything’s got soul don’t you think?
Peace and love
Welcome to another musing from the hermits’ cave. It’s been a while hasn’t it?
Mind you, I’ve been busy: settling into the new hermitage here in the desert. Actually, it’s been cloudy since we arrived, and raining sometimes. It’s as if the Subtropics have followed us here, except that it’s been freezing.
And I’ve been busy colouring in as well. Not as in filling in a picture book designed for colouring, but in making my own patterns and shapes with the one aspiration of making colour happen.
Japanese calligraphy masters will tell you that God is in the ink, or in my case in the pigment of the colour pencils I use. I draw designs, sometimes complex, sometimes simple, then fill the spaces with colour. Sometimes just one or two, sometimes multiple colours.
Why? Well, the simple answer is because I like doing it. I like to see colour covering the page, seeing it slowly fill that empty space. I’m not good at ‘drawing’ and painting in the traditional sense, but one thing I can do is make colour. So I do.
And it’s a sacred act: God is in the ink remember? It’s the making of beauty. And that is a holy act. There’s that aphorism isn’t there? It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness?
Or, I could say that it’s better to make colour and patterns than it is to be swamped by the darkness.
There’s a Bhagavad Gita verse I like that I came across again the other day:
If one’s thoughts are fully absorbed in the Absolute all his [sic] spiritual offerings also become a part of that same Absolute
Bhagavad Gita 4:24
In other words, all our actions – and we never cease from activity while we dwell in a material body – are not only prayers or offerings to that Absolute (or you can say to God, to beauty, to art, to love, to the universe, to life. Or you don’t have to name it at all. None of the names and forms are relevant) but in fact become that Absolute.
I am a hermit pilgrim, living a contemplative life devoted to the Absolute we just talked about. I have little to offer, but I offer all that I am. And with my photographs, and with my ‘colouring in’, I try to create a little bit of the sacred, a lit bit of colour and beauty to keep us all away from the darkness.
Peace and love
Greetings and Welcome after what feels like a gap of forever since my last post.
Two weeks today since I moved into a rented house way out here Outback in the mining town of Broken Hill, on the traditional lands of the Wilyakali people whose ongoing presence on this country I acknowledge and give thanks for.
And now, it is the location of my hermitage, my safe haven and refuge. But, no, therein lies the conundrum: I love it here; I know I’ve come to the right place to which I’ve been called. But after two weeks, I’m still not feeling grounded; I’m not really here yet.
Culture shock, fatigue, new environment, excitement; call it what you will; something has me not yet settled and in place. Yesterday a small poem came to me that I think expresses exactly the problem.
And now I’m sharing it with you as a way of explaining why the gap, why the block.
Peace and love from me to you.
The call to the desert
has been answered.
And now, I am here.
No, to tell the truth, I’m not actually. Here I mean.
So, where am I?
Not there, back there
where I came from.
Not even sure if ‘there’ really exists,
if you know what I mean.
Mind you, when I said ‘here now”
I meant it’s been a short now:
Now that I’m here. Just.
A short stretch – so far.
Here; there; now; so far;
it’s all too much.
And you know what?
It’s all in my head.
In my mind I mean.
A wise teacher once taught:
First thought, best thought.
But for here and now?
As in being here now?
No thought, more like,
is best thought.
Eventually.
Greetings friends. I welcome you from my new hermitage in desert country.
You know, it’s an old idea, a cliché even, to say that we, all of us, are on a pilgrimage called life, a Hero’s Journey as it’s called by the Mythologists. And, on any such journey there is what those same scholars call a Call to Adventure.
They are the times when we are challenged by life to commit to an action that will stretch us somehow, take us out of our comfort zone, change our life; to make a move; take a risk; embark on a journey either internally or out in the physical world.
So, when I tell you I got a call to come out here to the desert, and that I answered it, why the necessity to add ‘eventually’? What happened to delay that journey? Well, that’s what our Mythologist friends call The Refusal of the Call.
They’re the times when, once we’ve heard the call, and when we’ve felt its rightness, we still say no. Not now. And we come up with all kinds of perfectly reasonable explanations for our refusal.
In my case, I said, hey, it’s fine here; I’m near the beach; I really have no reason to move; there are plenty of ‘other places’ to check out first. The excuses went on and on.
All along though, there was this place, this country, calling. Of course ‘the desert’ isn’t always or for everybody the literal sand covered land, that gets very hot, and is generally thought of as barren and even hostile. It can also be a metaphor for any place – or no place in particular – that is a place of retreat, a quiet place, a place for living apart from the mainstream of human life.
For some people inclined to a life of contemplation and solitude, this place might be a small hut in a forest or a wood, or a camp on a remote beach on an even more remote island. Then there are others who are called to an actual cave high in the mountains, or on the banks of some sacred river somewhere.
And, equally, the desert, the place of retreat, quiet, solitude, and living apart, may well be an apartment or house in a suburb, or even in the centre, of a big city.
Then there’s me: called to this desert town of Broken Hill, almost but not quite in the centre of the continent of Australia. It is deep in the arid zone: it’s very far out back here in the Outback, 1500 kilometres inland from the east coast to be precise.
Yes, well this is all well and good, but shouldn’t I be answering my own question: why eventually? Well, we’ve covered the excuses, but really isn’t that just plain old procrastination? Yes indeed. If we get back to our Mythologist friends once more, we learn there is a stage in this Hero’s Journey that follows on from the Refusal: The Supernatural Act.
These are the times when things happen that seem to come at us out of the blue, from no rational, logical, or explainable source. Something that we might find hard to beleive at first because it’s way out there; supernatural like it says.
But that supernatural bit doesn’t have to take a spooky form, it might be that the ‘supernatural act’ is an internal insight or realisation triggered by a perfectly natural occurance. That’s what happened for me. What was this non-spooky, natural event that prompted such internal insights and realisations in me and got me moving?
Rain. Yes, rain. It rained almost every day for over six months. I am very very blessed that I wasn’t affected by flooding as so many in nearby area were, and I am thankful for that. But it’s safe to say that rain, mud, no sun, and limited or no access to the outside for days or weeks at a time, soured my romance with the coastal lifestyle.
You could say that through the sound of rain on the roof, I could still hear the call of the desert. In fact it got so loud that, eventually, I could no longer ignore it.
So, eventually, I answered the call, and here I am. Here is a small miner’s cottage and my new hermitage, my new safe haven by the side of the road. The cottage is situated in a mining town that sprung up in the 1880s. So this cottage has been home to miners and their families for generations, including the current owners.
In a sense it’s quite likely that I am the first occupant who hasn’t been or isn’t a miner. Though you might say that my excavations, rather than being in the dark underworld beneath the surface of Mother Earth, are taking place in the equally dark, hidden interior places of Self. A mining of another sort you might say.
Before flying out here, I was thinking about what was actually calling me to the desert (putting aside the rain for a moment). After all, I lived in a small cabin in a park like setting literally five minutes walk to a pristine Pacific Coast beach; I had trees and forest like spaces all round, as well as a small river two minutes walk. And that’s not even thinking about the abundance of wildlife.
And it occured to me that it is the stillness of the desert that was calling to me. This town of Broken Hill is a mid size town (actually a small city with about 15000 people), with the usual shops, cars, people, and the rest.
Yet there is a stillness. No longer can I hear the constant sound of seawaves crashing. No longer can I sense the never stopping coming in and going out of sea tides. And out here, it seems like even the people are moving quite a bit slower too. I’ve yet to see a single person rushing about. And they seem to smile a lot as well.
The street I live on is extremely quiet, and even on the so-called ‘busy streets’ there isn’t the mad acceleration and braking we’d see everywhere on the coast. Of course there is the odd driver who thinks every car is a racecar, but where don’t you get that?
But, actually it’s more than this. There is, beyond the actual literal quietness, a silence that seems to exist as an entity or state of being in its own right.
A stillness that is a solid thing, just as on the coast there was (is I suppose) a constant frenetic atmosphere that seemed to overlay everything. People rushing – on foot or in cars – even when there seems to be no reason for hurry (though of course you can never tell can you?). And not so many smiles either.
Contemplative people, those seeking solitude, and peace and quiet in which to pray, to live slowily, and to explore the divine, have been drawn or called to deserts (in all its forms) for thousands of years or longer. And I am fortunate enough to have finally (eventually) heeded the call myself.
Here, away from the incessant acceleration and braking (I do like this expresion), and in that stillness that envelops this land, perhaps I can dig a little deeper, uncover a bit of quiet, and discover a piece of solitude.
Out here, in the Outback, life can be harsh for all living beings, often dangerous in its aridity and isolation. It’s a long way from major cities, food and supply chains are extended to extreme limits, and the human hold on the land is precarious at best.
Yet, the paradox exists: out here far from the fertile coasts, the soft sandy beaches, the major urban centres where the mainstream of (human) life goes on, there is a quiet, a peace, a stillness that seems to pervade the very air one breathes.
A wise person wrote something short and sweet that sums all this up for me:
There is a stillness in the wildness.
One week today and I will be there. In other words, this time next week at this time I will have arrived in the desert city of Broken Hill. Almost in the heart of the continent and right in the middle of the Outback. In fact they call that whole area The Big Red after the colour of its tens of thousands of square kilometres of desert sands.
It’s about 1500 kilometres from the Pacific Coast where I am right now. I’d like to write about the ‘call’ to the desert, which I am finally answering, but maybe I’ll get to that in another post.
Right now I only want to say how excited I am to be going. A bit anxious too (I’ve been there before, but still …), and plain and simple looking forward to getting there.
Acturally, to be perfectly clear about it: I can’t wait to be there. But, you see, herein lies the problem: I am so keen to get there that I’m feeling as if I am no longer here. I am not present; I am not living in the moment and in the place I’m in (which I love by the way, the place I mean).
I don’t mean to say that I am some sort of Buddha who is usually fully present in each moment; or who is serene and calm when he knows change is coming. Any reader of this blog will tell you that presence isn’t necessarily my greatest strength.
But, I must say that lately I have improved (slightly) my living in the moment, being here and now, way of living. It’s just that I’ve been longing for this particular change (and all that I anticipate will come with it) so much that I just can’t help myself.
Did I mention already that this is a problem for me? Well, yes, I did, and it is. I prefer very much to be where I am and when I am and fully in the flow of the ongoing present.
Of course there is nothing wrong with wanting something to happen. The problem arises when one is so anxious for whatever it is to happen, that what’s happening here and now ceases to be where one is at—in other words: the trouble is that I stop being in the present.
Buddha taught what are called The Four Noble Truths. (which pretty much form the core of Buddhist teachings) The second of these Truths says that attachment is the cause of suffering. Suffering here means anxiety, worry, regret, fear; all those kinds of things. Whenever we say something like, ‘I can’t wait to…’, then it is a sure sign we are attached to that want or desire.
By the way, the First Noble Truth is: Life is suffering. Suffering, The Buddha taught, is simply the price of being alive. We get hungry, we are conscious of pain (in all its guises), we grieve; we grow old; we get sick; and we die.
But, right now, I want to talk more about Noble Truths three and four. Number three says that suffering can be overcome. Nice clean, clear, and not to mention, succinct little statement. Of course, it’s easy for him to say isn’t it? He is Buddha after all.
Perfectly reasonable reaction from us suffering humans. But there is hope and we will find that in Noble Truth number four which gives us the how to overcome suffering. There are quite a few ways to put this Truth into words, but the one I like best says:
The way to overcome suffering is to sit.
What? Sit? Yes, sit. Be still; stop moving. Of course if we relate this Truth to my little dilemma for wanting to so badly to be somewhere else that I’m not able to be where I am now, we can expand this Truth to something like this:
Focus your full attention on what you are doing now, and where you are now as well. As much as you can, be open to change, but be less attached to the nature or timing of that change. After all, you can make all the plans you like, but who knows what’s really going to happen—you won’t know that till it actually happens.
So, that’s what I am trying to do. Instead of saying stuff like ‘I wish I could go sooner’, or ‘it’s only x days till I go’ (yes I know, that’s what I said way up there at the top of the post), I am going to ask myself, ‘What am I doing now?’, and I plan to look around me, and engage more with the reality of this moment. And try hard to realise the ongoingness of that everlasting moment.
As Ram Dass said,
Be Here Now.
Hey, that’s a great mantra isn’t it? Chanting it whenever I start getting out of the here and now mode, might just put me back there again. I mean here—and now. You know what I mean!
Love and blessings from me to you
Paul
Hello friends and welcome
The last couple of posts have had me thinking about what I actually do to contribute to the world, to life, to making changes that could bring peace, a safe environment, and a better life for all.
I have to say my commitment to my life as a hermit, as a pilgrim aspiring to live a life apart from ‘the world’ all the while dedicating myself to what we might call Self or God Realisation, has been strengthened.
I have once again come to the conclusion that living a life focused on spiritual development, on art, on prayer, and on contemplation, is the most valuable way I personally can contribute to change, to love, to the good of all. My true nature, my inclinations, my faith, my life experience, all these equip me for this life that has chosen me.
And at the same time, these same factors have left me ill-equipped for life ‘in the world’
In those last two posts, I talked about how so few of us think we have anything to offer a world teetering on the edge. But of course, as I pointed out, the opposite is true. I think I made the point that there is some unique role for each and every one of us in the continued unfolding, upliftment, protection and prospering of all life in this world.
Having said all that, I have to say that for me it’s not always easy to actually realise this in my heart. Intellectually it’s an easy concept to explain (well sort of anyway), but on that deeper heart level, well it’s tricky. Guilt rears its ugly head: ‘It’s all falling apart; I have to do more; But what can I do? It’s useless. I’m useless’.
As I mentioned in one of those posts I think, people have turned away from the horror, injustice, cruelty, and murderous greed and lust for power, for as long as these things have existed – which is obviously for as long as our species has been around. At certain times in history this move away from ‘the world’ has accelerated and intensified. And we are living in one of those periods now.
In the last century so many people have taken up the contemplative life, and many have chosen to make that life one of complete or partial solitude in order that they may be free from distraction in their prayer, study, and contemplative life.
But, many will say, ‘You are in denial. Now is the time you are needed out there. The world and all of life is in danger. You can’t escape and hide in a cave’.(read here stop watching the news, ignore politics, stop spending, become a literal or metaphorical hermit, go traveling, shirk your responsibility to the rest of the world).
Again guilt trips us up and we just keep on trying to find ways to at least rid ourselves of the guilt over our perception that we can do nothing.
But many such people, and that includes me, rather than being in denial, rather than shirking responsibility, have looked at the material world with its horrors, and said, ‘This isn’t right’, and have started to look at other ways to live and, seeing that continuing to struggle against the weight of the world on the world’s terms is pointless, seek to find other ways they can contribute to change. Ways that don’t perpetuate the playing of the game.
And rather than escaping these people (including me, I say with humility) face the world head on, dedicating their lives to the world through creativity, through prayer and meditation, and through the expression of freedom in their choice of lifestyle. They are, as Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have said, being the change they want to see in the world.
While Gandhiji didn’t actually say those words, (Actually there’s a post coming in a couple of weeks in which I share the full text this quote is apparently derived from. Stay tuned for the link here), he certainly lived his life being the change he wanted to see.
But sadly, this ‘quote’ has come to be seen as a kind of feel good cliché, something the privileged are accused of mouthing while not actually even thinking about changing their lives. Just one more platitude you might say.
But for many, like me in my own way, it is much more: it is a call to action, a respectful and heartfelt request that I embark upon the quest for a more authentic way of living that has love, compassion, service, and truth at the centre of all I do.
Peace from me to you
Notes from the Hermit's Cave 