“It is No Measure of Health to Be Well Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society” KrishnamurtiI think one of the biggest problems is that people are using the supposed normalcy of society as a a yard stick to impose judgement upon those who are struggling to find their way, their place, their footing in this world. Why is it so hard to see the inherent normalcy in the struggle? The fact that stability isn’t always preferable to truth, when you feel like the living dead? The obviousness of wanting to escape from feeling stuck between a wall and hard place? The painful injustice that festers in ones heart when they realise that the people who told them what was what growing up had vested interests in controlling them. Why is it so unreasonable to understand the individual who supposedly has it all, who can turn around and say “fuck it” to the world, whilst wandering into the unknown because thats the only way that they can feel alive before they actually die. Why is it so hard to realise the rationality behind the words of the person who is in pain day in and day out, deciding that they would rather end their life than continue to live like that? Why don’t we question the one’s who made us assume that this was wrong in the first place?
Or is it simply that these years of humanity, are truly our first opportunity to break it all down and start thinking for ourselves? As the generations roll on faster and faster, there’s no stopping the extent of our ability to question status quo and what has been assumed of us. We are all part of a big story, cogs in a machine that are creating something far from what we ever had a chance to choose. In one way or another, we have all been manipulated for reasons beyond us, because well, we were born into a world where the powers vested in whoever the fuck they are supposedly vested in are calling shitty shots for humanity. For sure comfort and security play a huge part in our wilful submission to be moulded and even our conscious effort to conform - and no doubt there are so many of us that agree with the need for law and order, that believe that democracy i.e. the will of the majority, is obviously a great thing! There are endless discussions about whether that is indeed the best we can hope to achieve for our sapien selves, knowing very well that the majority is more than often fearful if not ‘wicked’ and oh so easily manipulated. Combine the illusion of free will with the rhetoric of democracy and you get a game that is playing us as the empowered when really we are still just pawns in a much bigger, much greasier, gassed up oily machine that is chugging away at the earth’s resources. Today, there are a growing number of us that feel not only do we have nothing to lose by speaking up, that the very essence of our soul depends upon our courage to say STOP. NO. WHAT THE FUCK. THAT’S WRONG. I’LL DECIDE FOR MYSELF. I have personally spent my whole life being like that, it came completely naturally to me and I had no inkling that there was something unusual about it - much to the dismay of most of the world around me, and most definitely much to my discomfort. When I was 10 I decided to take the negative position on the primary school debating team that argued the phrase “Dont upset the apple cart’ and had a deep affinity with all the amazing beings like Gallileo, Socrates and Rosa Parks. I knew which side I was on from then on. I was a dissenter and proud of it! What I didn’t realise, as a young outspoken-come-angry little girl, was how my rage was being experienced through the lens of society. That despite the somewhat changing way’s of our world, I was essentially compromising my femininity and simultaneously challenging the authority of masculinity - and that this was quite possibly one of the greatest causes for ostracism that had ever existed. So much so, that completely different communities, who don’t necessarily agree on anything at all and have even fought and killed each other for eons. can bond over women’s oppression and subsequent ostracism. Women have been the bottom of the human chain for a long long time, and being born into a supposedly FREE world has often left us bewildered and confused as to our identities. The foundations that built us, though covered with the waters of Western uprising, are still the pillars of our society, the underpinnings of our assumptions, judgements and experiences. Until we recognise where we have come from, we have no ability to see ourselves for what we have become. Take the Hasidic community for example. It never existed in this way before World War II. It is one of the tightest, most exclusive, righteous and ostracising communities in the world, that defends its ways through the armour of protecting that which was almost destroyed in WWII. Ironically I see this way of behaving as a key factor in perpetuating the unfortunate cycle of anti semitic persecution, and without a doubt, as another institutionalised justification for the systematic oppression of women. Where have our beliefs lead us and what does it take to wake up and chose for ourselves? For some people, choosing to explore life in order to be able to make educated decisions is simply not possible. Many of us have been robbed of time, money and independence and to take a leap of faith out of our communities is just another way of committing suicide. So many poor parents being sold on shelter and food in exchange for the souls of their young muslim children’s Jihad education has already lead us into territory that is more dangerous than we can even imagine. There are so many people out there who simply cannot speak up, cannot choose another way, cannot say STOP. We must first acknowledge the inherent struggle that exists inside humanity to think for ourselves, in order to realise what we are - players in a game full of rules that we didn’t make up. Through each and every generation there have been people who have broken the rules, who have spoken up, who have risked their lives, compelled by some strange unafraid force, to stay integral and true. Today there are more of us than ever before and this includes the ones who are still unable to find their voice but know that if they could just do it, if they could just speak up, they would tear the fucking place down. Pain has a voice. Suffering has a voice. Oppression has a voice. Ordinary fucking depression has a voice. These are the voices that make up the song of change, the most empowered beautiful song that this world has ever heard, and its time for this chorus to find its way to the airwaves.. and bring the house down. Its time to break down the walls they built around us and build ourselves a huge open air amphitheatre! I often wonder what I’m here for. What’s the cause that calls me, there are so many.. do I have to choose? What’s my purpose, why am I here? Sometimes I get flashes of possibilities - like now. Decidedly, I’m here to hold space for the masses to speak up. I am here to say that YES, we can go out on a limb by ourselves and survive, we can educate ourselves beyond our schools and universities. We can explore life outside the bubble of our communities, outside the safety of our homelands, outside the comfort of our personal beliefs. Im here to say that at some point we must risk our very selves to speak up today before the window of opportunity is gone. We go on assuming that change is slow and freedom is forever… but we have no reason to think this way. Everything can and will change. Nothing is a given! This is it, we are on schedule and maybe just in time… Born with voices to booooooom - not a second too late.
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Worlds within worlds! Flowing in every which direction with no idea of where we are going. Our path a myriad of happenings, layers of interactions and intersections. Our direction dependant on the exact tilt of the flipped cup that makes us US, all before we reach the age of 7, the foundations of our being already set in motion before we are even 4 years old, at the first moments of amnesia, when we have forgotten why we chose the colours we chose to manifest as we have.... when we are at the start of a new flow of being formed. A puff of air, breath of the wind, creating spaces in between the masses of colour that becomes our 'pattern', our personality, our. way of being in the world... At times our eyes focus on a particular space, a corner of our being, and cease to see the incredulous possibility that exists in the full picture. Fractals of cells, joining and separating, becoming whole as they split apart, blissful moments when we fail to distinguish our bodies from another, we are one when we are all that is, in time and space.. until the paint starts to dry and we solidify our perspectives of our lives, when the stories inside our patterns reveal air bubbles and stray drips, when we have forgotten that all it takes to recreate ourselves is another full cup of paint, filled to the brim with whatever colours we choose to spill, for us to begin another chapter of our lives, another masterpiece just waiting to happen, unknown, mysterious, divine and infinitely perfect every time. Is to be caught between a rock and many hard placesThis essay is depicting an experience of being a woman like ME which is almost entirely personal but to which I have asserted particular generalisations. I would like to note that these generalisations are not meant to be depictive of ALL woman’s experiences. I acknowledge that not all women ache to procreate and that this does not make them any less woman than another. To be a woman is to be creation itself in all its infinite forms. Enjoy. Perched at the precipice of an era, a first in human experience; to be an educated free woman, is both liberating and like being caught between a rock and many hard unyielding places. On the one hand, we have the ability to seek greater expansive perspectives of the world, enabling us to see patterns of life, from where we have come from to where we are going. At the outset this is an amazing opportunity fo us to develop knowledge and perhaps even wisdom. However, upon this deep inspection the discover more and more about about the big picture, which has this inevitable effect of leaving us feeling hopeless, wretched, full of with self loathing and doubt about our future. With an educated eye it is easy to see, that humanity, aka ‘US’, have created a situation of carnage and consumption. On the way towards this almighty sapien hold up of the world, humans have become dependant upon a certain way of life that feeds the beast. One of the most obvious and powerful components of being a woman is that of being able to bring the new life into the world. This usually exciting prospect, today, is understandably fraught with anxiety for those of us who know and who dare to think about the state of the world and the future of humanity. To bring new life into this world, we accept the fact that we are essentially condemning the greatest loves of our lives to finding their way through this maze of escalating chaos. And yet on the other hand, the ancient biology of a a woman’s body still yearns to to do what it has been literally bleeding to do since the tender age of 11 years… As with all great dilemmas there are many sides the story. One may easily claim that having a child with the intention of bringing up an educated moral and ethical being is exactly what this world needs! Some may go so far as asserting that one would be selfish not to follow this path. But of course, we only have so much say on how a child will grow into an adult, and there is no guarantee that the little person will want to become an environmental earth warrior, activist or conscientious objector. On top of that, unless strong measures are taken, the sad reality is that our children may be swept up in the roaring frenzy of technological uprising and capitalistic normalcy and join the unconscious masses. And then what? Just another mouth to feed? Am I to sacrifice myself for the possibility that my child will outlive me and go on to serve humanity? And what’s with consciously choosing to bring a new life into in a world that I have endless issues with… environmentally, politically, emotionally….?! A world where the state’s imposition of authority over our autonomy has become acceptable and normal, where the general flow of society is to follow the orders imposed upon them. Where our freedom is conditional upon us being owned in some way shape or form and where war is the way of the future… why would I choose to do that? I have looked after zillions of children and am aunty to so many. I wonder what part of me is grieving to not have them myself, and whether this feeling is more about me fulfilling a role I was supposedly made to fill, as a woman. Where is the ‘right’ choice inside all of this? The answers to this heart wrenching dilemma, are truly no where to be found. Choice is in constant flux with the waxing and waning between knowledge and biological callings. It seems we can either accept ourselves as part of a human species, and multiply forth as we have done since the beginning of time, or we can put a stop to this incessant consumption of the earth, by taking a stand in not having a baby and use every second of our own lives to stand up for change on this planet. Birthing new life has become (or perhaps always was) a double edged sword. On the one hand, modern technology is destroying the next generation’s interpersonal skills and on the other hand, technology allows me the freedom as a single woman, to choose to have a child without a man. But, to devote every waking hour to childcare and financial accumulation for the purposes of maintaining the care of the child, and potentially compromise aspects of my own life, at least to the extent of what I can do with it, seems like a crazy choice down a difficult road without a solid reason - and yet, to argue with the wanting, wishing and resounding will of the womb is based on rationality and doesn’t stand a chance against emotionality of a hormonally charged woman. The truth is there really is no right answer; and this is only the beginning of what it means to be caught between a rock and many hard places! The issue of being a woman today, and dealing with the above predicament, is steeped in many hundreds of thousands of years of social history, and yet essentially, we have all been learning from the generation directly before us about what is right wrong standard and acceptable. For this reason, unless we are educated, we have very little context to understanding why we think the way we do. For example, born in the 80’s, sex was already an everyday word, and by the 90’s the issue of contraception bombarded our lives from a very young age. Pregnancy was ultimately to be avoided at all costs. We didn’t really ask why, or even when might be a reasonably time for the motherhood ban to be lifted… We ate the daily contraceptive pills we were given and were left to fend for ourselves as we tended to our own sex education. In other words, completely and utterly blind and alone. It came naturally to think that being able to have sex whenever we wanted with whoever we wanted equated ‘sexual liberation’. It so a particular undertone followed, that a woman’s right to be promiscuous was in fact her instating her power over being controlled. And though this might all make some sense, there were other consequences of meeting sexual suppression with the same aggression that man had imposed on women for so many years. Young sexual women suddenly ripe to explore, who had not been taught the sanctity of our bodies or the importance of sensing and knowing our boundaries, collided with a social assertion that being sexually active was analogous to being empowered. And away we went, raring to learn about men, sex, ourselves and life, the hard way. As can be imagined, this combination equated nothing short of disaster for many women. During this time, the internet came to life. Porn became a key player in our education of what was sexy and what was expected of us. We were taught to perform in certain ways instead of listen to the feelings inside our bodies. As a young woman, expectations were imbued with servitude and surrender, whilst men were taught to take without asking, pound without concern for whether the woman being pummelled was actually enjoying it at all. Sadly, he was given very little to no guidance as to women’s sexual nature, and often had absolutely no regard for whether she had reached climax or even been enjoying herself at all. Standard. What? a woman enjoys sex - wait, she can also reach climax?! For many boys and men, this was and still is a) unknown, b) a trivial possibility and c) not entirely relevant or his problem. As young developing adults, we continued to deny the significance of having been taken without asked, whilst we were drunk, asleep or simply too shy to speak up. Trauma built up over time, until we began to understand what had happened to us. Until our bodies started to react in ways we suddenly needed to listen to. And only then, did we start to question the system that lead us down the illusory plank of ‘sexual empowerment’. Surely feeding ourselves to the wolves was not the most empowering way of owning our sexuality, but the path that IS a woman’s empowerment is long and bumpy. It is within her willingness to walk the path at all, that the requirement for empowerment is met; to meet oneself every step of the way, this is what it means to be empowered. To explore, to discover, to learn, to grow and to teach. Contextually, my generation had very little idea of the history of women; that women have never been allowed to speak up before, let alone vote or be educated. We were effectively the first generation to take these rights for granted, and therefore, have been unable to sense or feel that this deep historical oppression still lies underneath our progressive story of empowerment. Fast forward, I, alike many of other intelligent, beautiful and independent 30 something year old women, have not met my match yet, or become pregnant along the way. In fact, by this stage of life, its feels as if the generic relationship between man and woman has almost reached a climax of collision. Women finally finding their voice, and their freedom to speak up and out for the first time, and men completely unequipped to deal with the emotional entourage they have been fuelling for the last hundreds of thousands of years. Additionally, once we reach our 30’s most of us have loved and lost. And it fucking hurt. We gave our innocent selves away and got whipped in the process. Now, whilst women hear the tick tock of their womb clock and see the looming end of the line, men start to realise that they have much more time then they had initially given themselves space for and get married to the ultimate non-committal social movement: Polyamory! Its like a tug of love; she pulls too hard and he lets go altogether. She goes flying into a pile of other fed up women and he goes off to fuck the younger ones on their polyglamorous path to empowerment! The dirty 30’s are so much dirtier than we ever imagined them to be. Meanwhile, I return to the central question and find myself faced with the urgency of whether I am going to choose to make a family, On My Own. To choose to go out on a limb and become a single mum, like so many of my friends have ended up. I was never 100% sure or determined to be anything in particular… but there was one thing I thought I “knew” for sure, and this was that I would be a mother one day. Today, as a single woman, I am forced to think hard about whether making a baby by myself is the most integral choice for me my life and the journey of humanity at large - and what life could be like if I decided to choose otherwise. That I could choose a childless path despite the the agony I have gone through every month for the last 24 years, despite the fact that body is literally bleeding to reproduce and that my breasts were definitely designed for suckling… and that perhaps choosing NOT to have a baby, is what it means to be empowered as a woman in my position today. Such interrogations of the issue lead me to recognise and acknowledge that myself and other women like me, are indeed mothers of humanity, regardless of whether our body produces babies or not and that no matter what happens, we are the results of hundreds of thousands of years of formation, of giving ourselves and our lives to the big picture of life. The only difference is that NOW, we have a voice and are ready to use it - we are in the labour of a story that has been in the gestation of humanities womb for a long, long time and like all births, this one is messy, painful, complicated and bound to be astonishingly beautiful. Every woman has her own story to tell about the ebbs and flows of her menstrual cycle. Some suffer less, some suffer more than words could propose to express. For me well, i fall into the latter as many people in my life will already know. I’m going to try to describe what it feels like…There is an edge to everything. Soft sounds can ring harsh and easy tasks exasperate me. I misjudge corners and stub my toes. My mind becomes foggy and frazzled. I sound hostile. Patience levels start to plummet, eventually falling to somewhere below the zero line. I was never particularly patient with men, but the week before my period, if he interrupts me whilst I’m speaking, I will tell him how I am feeling very clearly. If he argues, clear becomes more assertive and if he gets defensive, well, he has just asked for the full expression of telling-it-like-it-is. Thats just the way it goes. I have tried to contain myself at these awkward moments, to avoid the ignorant male who cant see past his own reflection, but when a surging of fury born from multitudes of generations of silenced women comes beaming forth at the speed of light… I seem to be at the mercy of raging hormones. Sadly, obviously, and at no fault of their own, most men (though I have never had a man turn to me with compassion and say, sorry for interrupting, I can see you are suffering right now maybe you are at that shitty stage of your cycle) have no conception of what it means to be a women. Hey, us women weren’t even taught about our cycles, and neither are the little girls being educated TODAY. There is zero education about The 4 Stage Cycle running through her body every single month, until menopause when the entire hormonal story changes into another extreme hormonal reality altogether. Needless to say, it is a hormonally hardcore situation to be a woman. My question is, why is it so easy to see, that nothing is for free in business, in life generally, but when it comes to gestating and rearing a human civilisation, this is supposedly a one sided offering? No guys, its not. It takes a lot of inner workings, chemical reactions and hormones to do this magical creation thing, and it costs us our sanity at times, can be agonisingly painful, and emotionally exhausting. On top of that, women are still expected to do everything men do to take care of ourselves and our lives and of course, the babies and children we have pushed out of our vaginas. We have 24hours of child care giving ON TOP of the bleeding, the shitty moods and it’s hard for most men to understand why a woman who gets frustrated, angry or assertive sometimes. What are we going to do about this? Feels like we really need to rethink education. Firstly, I, as a woman, was never taught about my 4 stages in my cycle. When i started to bleed it was not really an event that we celebrated… it was hushed to save me from embarrassment as far as I can remember. Today I think that’s a bit sad and wish we had had a party.... I think boys should be taken aside at school when they are very young and taught exactly what's what, including the fact that women are super special because of all the hard work their bodies, mind and spirit does for this species, i.e. creating us from the inside out! That the most basic law of nature is that boys and men must respect them as if they are gods because that IS basically what they are. For the last forever-as-we-know-it, women have been dealing with servitude, oppression, persecution, tyranny, endless abuse, imbalance of power, exploitation, subjugation, repression, suppression, enslavement, rape and murder the list goes on and this is the first time in history that we have the ability to actually BE ANGRY OUT LOUD. Halefuckingluja. Surprise! No, dont be surprised if we express ourselves loudly at times, because Its about time. To the men who still interrupt when she is expressing how she feels - please, Listen. There is so much to learn from women, and not only do we deserve your respect, but you owe it to the divine who is gracing you with expression of how she feels, for what you could never ever fully understand but only imagine, to hold your tongue and hold space. I know this all comes as a shock and feels like a knock to your 'masculinity' but there has been some confusion. Listening and holding space for a woman IS your masculinity in action. Dont even do it for yourself, do it for humanity. We have a long way to go to bridge this gap between men and women. Yesterday I listened to a podcast about the times not so long ago when Dr’s aka men were trying to discover what the strange little knob above the vagina hole was, they where so confused as it clearly had nothing to do with making babies so why was it there? At one point they decided that the clitoris was an abnormal growth and some women where made to have it cut off! Then they started to explore why women would get so upset at time... Angry upset women were labelled as ‘hysterical’ and treatments where usually a ‘pelvic massage’ that resulted in an orgasm. No doubt this helped somewhat, but at no point in this exploration is there a record of men asking women how they where feeling... having so many demands placed on them and not being able to say how they felt... How did it get the the stage that men thought of women as unintelligent and incapable? After many years of thought, I have come to propose a theory that the general case of men hold an inherent insecurity that lies at the core of their oppressive behaviour - And how did that happen? There are very few things that are cross culturally relevant - and there are also a lot of layers of cellular memory and societal teachings to take into consideration - but most essentially, the thing that binds us all together in common, is that all women make the babies and bring them up as young children. This is a universal thing about humanity. And therefore, one specific thing has occurred for all men and it is this: at the point at which a baby boy realises it is separate from its mother, it is not simply another being like a baby girl is, who is a continuation of her mother who will (typically) automatically become a woman when she starts to bleed. For a boy, at the same time he realises he is seperate, he also realises that he is a completely different thing to his mother. The depth of his ‘what am i?” is mostly unconscious and results in the little boy needing much more guidance as to his role and place in the world. Traditionally this was always the way things played out with boys being guided and initiated into manhood via very specific rights of passage. Today, and historically in the west, this guidance and initiation into manhood has almost all but been eroded into the everyday plight of making money to buy things to live. Yes there are bar mitzvahs, but I would argue that the teachings of becoming a man are grossly lacking in reference to the necessary reverence for woman that is required to wholeheartedly realise that the mother EARTH and all the women on her is the ultimate gift he has been given to take care of. (Which means listening and learning from her wisdom!). I can see that such a deep rooted insecurity has both intensified and become hidden over the years, to the point where men today (not all but generally), have no idea why they are the way that they are. Threatened by the creator, the mother, because they are entirely confused about who they are and what their purpose is in this world. The more they oppress her the more confused they have become, and they have forgotten the reason behind this confusion: which is ultimately fear of the power of pure creation itself. When a woman expresses herself, when she roars, when she is angry, when she says, writes, or yells how she is feeling - this is the power of pure creation itself, and apparently its the most threatening thing in the world. Just as Llith was when she said “No, I will not lie beneath you” and was consequently banished from the garden of Eden - * Alphabet of ben Sirach (c. 700–1000 CE) In my wildest imagination, an appropriate and effective ceremony for boys when they have come of age would be to be guided into a large multi layered circle of women from the community, to stand in a small circle mapped out for him in the very centre of all the layers of women, young old and in between, as they slowly walk in a circle, allowing him to see all of their faces and feel all of their strong sacred energy. No smiles of comfort given, no looks of judgement. Only pure love from their hearts met with what I can only imagine would be pure fear of a young boy, would be the magic of this initiation. A lesson of reverence, about what it means to be with the grace of a woman, to know how powerful women are is what it takes for a man to truly know what he IS as a man. A sacred protector in reverent service. For if he knows this in every cell of his body, over time, I think that the rage would begin to quell, and the healing would be profound. Truthfully, If I could do exactly what is best for me the week before my period, (yes - The whole fucking week). I would stock up on food, lock myself up in my house (or a red tent), turn off my phone, cut the internet connection, and paint, write, do yoga and meditate all day every day. This would be best for me and quite possibly the whole world. Inshallah that is exactly what I am creating... in the meantime I apologise to anyone who has found themselves in the line of fire this week! PMS and grief is a deadly combo...! Forgiving myself, and getting ready for my monthly ritual of shedding releasing and surrendering to the flow of pain and pleasure and all that IS.
Blessings x There comes a time in life where we realise that This Is It. Such a thought comes in waves… at times a gentle caressing reminder, and at others, a total ass whipping. This is it. And though it may be that we are born again and again and again, from a deathbed to delivery bed, out one story and into another, the fact of the matter is, we still only ever have this moment to experience ourselves as a living breathing self conscious human. ‘This is it’ is a NOW thing. An absolute all encompassing realisation that what has been and what will be has absolutely nothing to do with anything anymore because life is swooping by and our momentum to realise what we are is but a crawl… Time, whatever that actually is, isn’t waiting for us to figure this out. Instead of grabbing our own shoulders and shaking the shit out of our fearful bewildered bodily beings, we find ourselves seized by paralysis , making a million reasons why life didn’t go the way it should have. The way we wanted it to. We pick up yet another self help book that declares the ways to grow and conquer - we read half of it, feel demeaned by the authors seeming greatness, skip to a TEDx talk on how to get on with life, get distracted by an ad that reminds us of something else we need in order to be whole - and then feel hungry again. Hungry for another fix, to ease the pain of not being able to feel ourselves, our bodies, our lives, right now in the here and now. A cigarette will do - Or maybe a meditation. We all have our own ways of escaping. We are all holding on in our own ways, to our stories, our sadness, our rightness, our methods.. Those of us without children desperately trying to find meaning for our existence before we die. Demanding a legacy of ourselves so that we can feel we contributed to humanity somehow, because, wasn’t that the point? Or is it simply our ego challenging us to be still? As we spend our lives trying to be remembered after we die, we simultaneously ignore the reality of our mortality as we meander down the path of life’s everydayness. Trivial worries and concerns guide us down the path yesterdays tomorrow - leading us nowhere but closer to the inevitable moment of loss - when we least expect it, the people we love most in the world, will die, and we will be faced with a whole new entourage of This. Is. It.
Sometimes the urgency of this realisation lifts us up, and sometimes it breaks us down. Seeking the point only leads one down the rabbit hole, and living a life for no particular reason at all etches question marks upon all ‘worthy’ endeavours, despite the fact that the gift of life is already staring us down the barrel of existence. We are alive NOW. What to do? where to go? when to change it up, and what does it matter if everything will simply turn to dust? If it weren’t for the depth of lessons and bridges of being that lead our species on in the quest for meaning, we could pretty much skip life altogether - and yet here we are. Making our way through as we have for millions of years, trying to understand the rhyme and reason for our existence. Comparing grandiosity with presence, balancing survival with a life well lived. Women torn in two, whether giving birth, or childless; for the yearning of the body to give birth is met with a painful reality, a questioning of whether it is even the right thing to do to bring another human into this deeply fuct up world. Torn, when body meets mind and tries to make sense of it all - tries to understand what is the best, right, and true way to live this one and only life that we get to experience right now until we die. Hidden behind banners and mottos of positivity and power is a deep seated fear of life’s inevitable tragedy - presence disguised by pretty parades of people speaking up for their rights, the same people who so easily deny their authentic selves during the most intimate conversations with trusted companions - What is real in this game of life? Sometimes life sweeps you off your feet and it seems like all the decisions of what to do and where to go have been obvious, and sometimes we are left standing at the fork, fighting the indecision of which way to go and what to create. Sometimes we feel lucky and sometimes we feel cursed. Mostly it just depends on how we look at it . Always best to take responsibility for the weird and wacky random synchronicity of divine timing. In other words, it really doesn’t matter - seize the day and choose a way. OR, just take on the challenge and sit in stillness until the waters part and the path is revealed. When in doubt do nothing, close your eyes, sense the body that houses the answers, and wait… wait for the dust of millions of lives lived to settle upon the yellow brick road of destiny, let us be walked home to ourselves, to our lives right here right now. Back to the inevitable realisation that there is no where to go, nothing to be. Because This. Is. it. To BE the infinite expanse of time is to LIVE, because life ain't waiting for us to figure it out. Breath, Choose, release. Breath. Choose release. This is the game. There is no right. Just here and now, choices made and choices to make, this is a life lived. And then we fly on… every time. Death awaits us, in every friend that we meet, in every heart we hear beat and in every love shared - death beckons us to live in ways we never dreamt of. To live as if we are alive, for only a very short time. Because really - thats all there is. There comes a time in life when we hear the sound of our story being wound up inside our heart, like a music box, the handle starts to turn slower and we can hear each and every note.. and if we choose, we can hum along in our broken beautiful scratchy worn and weary voice. This is the moment when we hear the beat of our own heart, because we have finally realised that one day, this pumping organ will stop and we wont have ears to listen anymore. This is a game of forgetting who we are, to remember who we are. The game is on, and there are no winners. Death awaits us and THIS IS IT The rules to the game? Grab your shoulders like they are dice and throw yourself off the abyss of creation! let go, love and play with all your heart because there really is nothing to lose. Before we know it, this game is over and another round will be beginning, again as a tiny unknowing dependant baby screaming for that which has all but been forgotten.... |
Orly Faya17 years world traveller, internationally recognised award winning body painter with a background in Anthropology, Orly delves deep into the enquiry of what it means to be a human being and ceaselessly expresses her art whilst following her heart. , Specialising in mimitism (camouflage), Orly's current expressions are a moving living creative and expansive entity that represents her passion for re-merging humanity with the earth from which we came, sustainable conscious living, healing the sacred feminine as we learn to respect our mother earth and advocacy for balancing commercial gain with global and local contributions. Archives
May 2020
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