Life Trove

July 23, 2015

Amble round Balls Head with Ben

A fun "walk and shoot" with Ben, a lovely guy I met through Meet Up Photography.

July 21, 2015

Reflection on the movie "Amy"

Why did it effect me so much?

I resonated… with her pain. With her being driven to create through the pain. Also the amazing “art” that her life story creates. No less beautiful and precious because of its sadness. The director created a beautiful piece of art out of her life. So you could with all our lives. Perhaps that’s what consciousness is all about. An artist creating art out of life stories.

Maybe when we die, we will get to watch a highlights reel of our life: our moments of grace and transcendence. What art! A cinematic masterpiece. Comedy. Tragedy. Triumph. Drama. Beautiful. Ugly. Light and dark. Brush strokes. Off screen, there is nothing but love. All well.

Each of us is a brushstroke in a vastly epic masterpiece created by Consciousness. Life is Consciousness’s epic masterpiece of art, each of us a brushstroke.

The way the press created a caricature of Amy. Merciless. Mocking her. Making fun of her tragedy. Using it to sell newspapers. Making the shallower songs into the wildly popular ones and making her sing them when she no longer resonated with them.

I have a huge ocean of pain. Vast. So did she. She called it “The Black.” The source of her creative genius and her depth. “My life and I are falling apart but these lyrics are still flowing through me."

The way she used her pain to create. Only thing that made her feel better. She used her most painful experiences as a catalyst to sublime songs (e.g. Fade to Black.)

I felt like an outsider looking in. Then I realised her life was not her experience - it’s Our experience. She experienced what she did for us.

The devastation of her deeply needy love affair with Blake. How they dragged each other down, so mutually destructive. Him using her to keep drugs coming. Trying to use each other to fill the hole using form. You cannot fill the hole inside you with any form. Only by going within and being that hole, filling it with Consciousness.

She was totally authentic emotionally. Herself. Open. No airs or graces. Humility. Never thought of herself as famous.

The huge effect of dad leaving, spent rest of life craving for strong, protective male character. Her inherited script.

Blake, who played the villain. She loved him so much. He treated her so badly at times. Dad also villain.

When she won the Grammy. Told friends: "It’s boring without drugs."

Tony Bennett said "It's different every time with you when you sing, each song sung feels unique." She so felt her songs. Sang with such emotional intensity. Her way of pure feeling.

Having to sing old stuff when no longer relevant. Trot out stuff that had become meaningless

The shackles of success. The opposite of freedom. Enslavement. Obligations. Vested interest. Others on your gravy train., pressurising you to fill obligations that they can get rich on.

Clarity just weeks before she died. Sorry to friends. Time at wedding.

Refusing to sing in front of thousands. I saw it as a kind of triumph. Fuck you to expectations of others. Didn't want to sing old stuff. They saw it as letting down her friends in the music industry. No!!

I don't want to be famous. Just create peacefully. No pressure or expectations. Quietly contribute to raising in Consciousness. Be a space. Relish in my connection with Consciousness. Enough abundance to do this and be fully alive.

July 20, 2015

Mystical experience: Awakening on the balcony

I lie on a deckchair on my balcony under a vast sky swirling with cloud. My eyes look up into the heavens in a profound sense of thanks to God. Wonder arises. Wonder for the pure beauty of it all. Love arises. Love for God. Love for everyone and everything. Love so strong, it feels like it will surely tear me apart. Love so strong surely it can only be divine.

And that is when the deepest realisation arises; the deepest knowing I have ever experienced. It is Consciousness itself that is looking up through my eyes. It is Consciousness itself that is delighting in the sight of the sky above. There is no separate me here on this balcony. There is only God here.

God I am. God I am sensing the breeze through human skin. God I am hearing birds sing through human ears. God I am feeling love and wonder through a human heart. God I am having a human experience. God I am experiencing a world of form through this living form. God I am, experiencing this world of form.

I lie on a deckchair under a vast sky swirling with cloud.

I let all things be, all things go, all things flow.

I disentangle from the attic of my mind and awaken to a wondrous world of senses.

There is the sight of clouds passing overhead. The sensation of the breeze on my skin. The sound of birds twittering. A sense of how wondrous it all is. A feeling of of aliveness and sacredness in all I perceive.

There is a surrendering to a deeper and deeper sense of being the aware space in which these experiences are arising and subsiding.

I realise I am that space...
… an infinite, formless, timeless space in which all things arise and subside.
… an all perceiving space.
... an all experiencing space.

I realise I am not what arises in awareness, but the awareness itself.

I realise I am not what I perceive, but that which perceives; that which itself cannot be perceived.
I realise I am not my experiences, but that which experiences them; that which makes experience possible

I realise that Pure Conscious Awareness I Am.

I realise that the all perceiving Perceiver I Am

I realise that the eternal Subject of all experiences I Am

I realise that God I am ...
... God I Am, looking out from human eyes ...
... God I Am feeling the breeze through human skin ...
... God I am hearing birds sing through human ears ...
... God I am feeling love and wonder through a human heart ...
... God I am, experiencing through the sensory portal of a human form

God I am …
… appearing as form
… experiencing through form
... expressing through form

I experienced a revelation below in an extraordinary burst of joy, looking out into a world of swirling clouds from my deck chair, listening to sublime music. I laughed with pure joy, couldn’t stop laughing. And cried and cried. I felt like I woke up for a while, that for a moment I truly knew and experienced who I was.

I am Consciousness.
 
I am on a journey of awakening to myself through form.
 
I experience this world of form (a vast, extraordinary, wondrous, sublime, infinitely vast work of art) through the portal of this form and all other living forms.
 
This form called "Graeme" (its body and mind patterns) is simply a kind of sensory lens for experiencing the world of form. It actually doesn’t even exist, mostly space with the illusion of form. Just a temporary "sensory portal".
 
Mind patterns seem almost like characters. Mr “I’m not enough". Mr Spiritual Hero. Mr “I Need Control” Mr "Driven to Succeed". I get sucked up (hypnotised) by these characters and imagine myself to be them, my attention consumed by them.
 
When I become purely aware, free of the mind patterns, the lens becomes totally clear and I really see. That’s when the love and wonder and peace and joy flows. And inspiration and creativity.
 
When I become sucked up into the characters, my pure flow is stemmed. Insight and love are blocked by the illusion of anger, jealousy, shame, pride, guilt, fear etc.
 
I lie behind it all, behind the eyes of each and every living form, looking out into the world of form, sensing and experiencing it. When I look out of the eyes of this form into the eyes of another form, in a state of pure awareness, free of mind patterns, I recognise myself and pure love flows.
 
What an extraordinary creation this world of form is!!! What a wondrous thing to experience in so many different ways, through so many different lenses and sensory portals. What an adventure! What insights! Waking up to myself through so many forms in so many different ways.
 
Right now, I’m looking out of the eyes of this form called Graeme, typing into a computer. I’m going to enjoy experiencing the world of form through this form. Exploring through this form. Creating through this form. Helping myself to awaken through other forms.
 
I don’t just experience this world of form through human forms. But also through animals and birds and trees and flowers and fish and insects. When I look into a dogs eyes, I can see myself too!!

"Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web." Marcus Aurelius

July 19, 2015

Walking across The Harbour Bridge with the Photography Meet Up

I did this a few months back. It was an amazing day. I really, really felt it - the extraordinary beauty of everything, especially in the littlest things, like rust patterns and little plants growing through the concrete.