Archive for the ‘Cultural and Spiritual Wellbeing’ Category

in the begining…

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

Well.. it’s been a long time coming but finally I have put together the first of the nusstacasts… The name will change… and so will everything else…

This is a rave between me and my friend Ben on things ranging from sustainability to memory and the nature of time…

Hope you enjoy this podcast from a bunch of aussie guys…comment me on this site….

more slack!!!

-schnarple-

processing

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

Wow!!! It’s been an interesting week!

What is my truth hey? It is surprising that the act of going through the process of preparing and then presenting a piece (we shall now call this the four pees!) has left me rolling in the wake of transformation. It feels like the very ‘pppp’ didn’t stop with the end of my presentation. It has rolled through me and out of me for the last 7 days and is still vibrating and bouncing off the walls of my ideas of what I am. I got bitten by a dog on Thursday and a member of the community got angry with me, a friend slapped me in the face, started to move into a new house for a couple of months, swam in the creek at 3.30am, moved my study space to a new location and I am wrestling a hang over from a big night of various reds! Meanwhile, while all this was happening I was feeling as if I had ripped open a vile of sacred elixir and just skulled it down without regard for the consequences that it might have. The consequences obviously have not heeded the boundary of my body.

‘7 days was all she wrote….
a kind of ultimatum note….
she gave to me….
she gave to me….’

I wonder what will happen on the eighth day?

ps. Did I mention that the snake is back in my house? mmmmm could be just because it is winter hey? or could it be that it is winter because the snake is in my house? or could it be that the snake is here because it is the time to go inside and transform now and it is winter and cold outside so we don’t get distracted with things ‘out there’?

games….

Friday, May 11th, 2007

During the course of an evening on the weekend I noticed that I was observing a theatre of sorts in my social interactions. People where acting! There seemed to be this play that was going on in front of me and the people who were ‘acting’ seemed to be oblivious to the fat that they were acting. I seemed to be outside of this play in a way, just an observer but I knew at the time that there is no such thing as a passive observer. As soon as we observe we inter-act! I sat on the couch of observance for a while until my observing became the ‘act’ that I was playing! I noticed that the games/acts that were going on, were noticed by another in the social group, as this particular person started to actually ‘play’ with the ‘play’. It seemed as if we sometimes know that we are acting and sometimes we forget that we are actually acting.

This is a bit of a dichotomy for me at present because I am wrestling with causality. Do we actually have a say in what our life is actually becoming or are we just following along the merry path laid out for us by fate? Is there nothing at all or are we making our life up for ourselves by our decisions we make? I sort of agree with both of these things. I resonate with the idea of ‘Fate’ at some level…she guides my every move through my life…always drawing me to the places she has set aside for me from the beginning of time to the end of days…Then again she can go get fucked! I make my life! I am in control! I command the world that I experience! Arrrrrhhhhh ego ego ego….

It’s funny because there is a new age type belief in the possibility that we all create our worlds from our experiences and biological restrictions. To me there is some sort of this aspect to life but then again…. I still feel that there is a ‘fate’ aspect to my life. I can’t justify it but that seems ok to me at present. Everything is changing all the time and I am not really ready to pick up my sword of truth and slay people with it. I do enjoy a good play though!

sensations that I can’t explain…

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

I have been reading some web sites lately and it has reminded me of some of the strange sensations that I experience when reading. Not just web sites but books as well. I start to feel as if I am lifting off the chair and rotating forward towards what ever I am reading. Physically I am in exactly the same place but sensationally I feel this rotation all the way to the point where I feel as if I am starting to turn upside down. My head is moving forwards; my body is following in the same posture as in sitting. It is a very interesting feeling. I am not sure what to make of it. Come to think of it the reason I am writing this now is because I can feel this sensation starting to happen. I think there is a correlation between me feeling this way and the type of information I am reading. It never happens when I am reading things that are just practical or humdrum such as a newspaper article, a permacultue book or computer information. It only seems to happen when I am reading about spiritual topics and things that I have been interested in since the age of 9 or 10. The things of the ‘other’. Stuff that seems like this culture does not want me know.

Stuart Wilde talks of different sensations that he and others have experience when in contact with a dimension of reality that he calls ‘the Morph’. I have written a piece to my blog along time ago entitled “Maybe the Morph?” This was a piece that described a sensation and experience I had a few years ago in the middle of the night. It was really difficult at the time as I was very emotionally unbalanced because I was fighting with my then girlfriend.

One of the sensations that Stuart talks about is a fluttering or twitch in the eye. I started to experience this sensation about one week ago (22/04/2007) and it lasted for a few days. There are tingling sensations of the same thing in my eye at present. There is also a very interesting experience that happens to me randomly. It is also to do with the eyes. All of a sudden one of my eyes seems to have a form of water or liquid on a small part of it. The small distortion or blur makes my vision seem to be as if I am looking through a puddle or electric/water/oil-film of sorts. I cannot see through the distortion. This distortion grows in size in an arbitrary way until it is almost covering my entire eye. Only one is affected usually. I have to move my head to be able to see all things and it is a bit dangerous to be doing anything that requires precise hand eye coordination. This sensation lasts for about half and hour usually. I can also feel this sensation in my left eye at present as if it is waiting for some trigger to set it off.

I have not been able to gather whether it is linked to the other sensation before. This is the first time that I have been able to document all theses things and maybe see some sort of correlation to them. The connection that I see at the present moment is through a piece of media that I have been listening to from Stuart Wilde again. His latest CD series ‘The Journey Beyond Enlightenment’ outlines his views of the change in consciousness and the current state of human development in the physical and spiritual worlds. He talks about this dimension or reality ‘the morph’ through this series and outlines that when he and people who he knows have experienced the morph, they have a set of experiences or sensations before or leading up to perception of the morph. I am a bit scared of what he is talking about but also quite excited. But I am also very sceptical of my own perception and whether I am just hoping to be one of the spiritual ‘in crowd’.

life as prayer…..

Monday, March 19th, 2007

all actions, situations and events are sacred. Acknowledgement of life as such in the form of affirmations of thanks, gratefullness and respect for the things, experiences and sharing we have in our life.

back, back, come come back, back ….

Monday, March 12th, 2007

The other days awakening to my cultural training and brainwashing has made me ponder the past in relation to my descisions and actions.

I seem to be dealing with my past descision at present. It feel quite good to go through the things that I may have been involved in and not sorted through or processed to a satisfactory level of completion. The main issues that I feel are present in my mind are in the doamins of finance. These seem the easiest to picture probably because they deal with the material world and that seems to be very present in my cosmology.

The act a paying back the financial debts that I have is a profound change of attitude for me. It brings with it the recognition that I have made descisions that were not really useful for my well being and that I have made a choice to deal with my descision.

Choice: mmmmm….. Always choice…. sometime I choose well, sometimes I choose not so well. Choice: I choose to be grateful for my life.

Yesterday I was walking up the hill to my house pondering how I am touched by the spirit of the land, just asking myself am I touched by it? I sometimes feel as if I am not sure of my relationship with the spiritual side of life. Sometimes for some reason I feel that I am not in touch with my spiritual side at all. This feeling usually goes hand in hand with the fact that my ideas and concepts of spirituality are hard for me to articulate. For some reason I feel that my idea of spirituality is not valid or acceptable to my friends and peers.

Descisions…..simplify….I am doing what I am doing and it is ok for me to be doing what I am doing.

Cultural and Spiritual Well-being

Thursday, March 8th, 2007

Cultural and Spiritual Well-Being is one of the units I am taking in my Batchelor of Arts degree that I have started this year. The Indigenous College of Southern Cross University in Lismore offers this unit. As an assessment requirement for this unit I have to keep a journal of my feelings and reactions/responses to the experiences of this course.

Wow…..I said “he” in reference to god. mmmmm this hit me the night after our tutorial and made me really recognise my cultural programming and how deep it actually runs through me. Sometimes I feel as if the fact that I was brought up roman catholic is something that I shouldn’t let people know about me. It is interesting the backlash against religion, especially roman catholic, that I find when I mention that I was brought up roman catholic. In both the lecture and the tutorial there were opinions expressed which denigrated religion. I felt in agreement with some of these opinions but something that I seem to be able to realise is that there is a religion and also with that religion there is a church, the institution that dolls out the supposed teaching of the religion. I seem to be able to see the spiritual teaching of a religion as separate to the church.

Ok…. here’s a reaction to the lecture. It’s a body/sense reaction but during the lecture, towards the end, I started to see energy fields (fields as in something that I don’t have a better word for) rising off the top of the speakers and the lecturers’ head. I have seen these things before and I can recognise the feeling inside me when it happens. It is very subtle. I like the feeling. I don’t suppose what this is.

Synchronicity and cross subject similarities are showing themselves to me at present. The definitions of religion and spirituality connected to definitions in another unit that I am studying at the moment. “The map is not the territory” concept as applied to the definition of religion by Martin Buber as “Religion masks the face of God.”.