It's time ...

FREE NELSON MANDELA!

He has lived a life of service. It's time to let him go.

May your journey to the end, whenever it is, be soft and peaceful and may you be comforted by the memories of your purposeful life of a thousand hills, our precious Madiba.

Lifted

Life can slam you down into the darkest sinkhole and the narrowest creek, but it can also lift you high above waterfalls. And that flight—it’s giddy, y’know! Soaring down, down, and shuddering down, but then… and acrobatically then… up and up and still lifted higher.

Beautiful Meditation

When winter digs deep into bone, it’s time for a two minute summer meditation.

Check your posture. Are you curved around like a question mark? Straighten up into an exclamation point. Let your shoulders relax down, allow your spine to lengthen, and lift up through the crown of your head. Now, start to visualize the sun shining through your window, suffusing you in a soft halo of warm energy. After you've read this, close your eyes and bathe in the warmth of summer. As you enjoy the feeling of the warm sun, let your arms and legs become warm and heavy and let your breathing become deep and relaxed, like a baby sleeping.

And that’s it… enjoy your trip to summer.

Spring Fever

In South Africa the frogs at the Lily Pad Hotel are in full croak on this early autumn evening while half the world away in upstate New York beneath the crystal swathe, frozen ice-cubes flicker in their spring dream of awakening. As the darkness folds into the southern hemisphere and the icicles melt into green meadows in the north, we remind ourselves that the earth is a living, changing being made of many different parts evolving together. As gravity binds us together, so do the strings of volition vibrate within every organism like a song, giving us free will to choose our actions. Whenever we make a choice to act, there is a change; because of the change from the choice, life begins to evolve in a new form. This is how we achieve immortality. Our actions create the world for our descendents.

There's No Such Thing As Neutral

My father’s favourite story was about how he was captured by the Nazis in Holland during World War II and was put on a train to work as slave labour in Germany. He said the other prisoners were all talking about jumping off the train and what would happen to them if they didn’t. They’d have to bury bodies on the battlefields or work in German factories that were being bombed by their side, by the allies. My father didn’t talk about it – he kept quiet and paid attention. In Holland they say a cornered cat makes strange jumps. Papa was cornered, but he made a good choice to jump.

This story teaches there is no such thing as neutral. The Dutch said they were neutral when the Nazis were invading Poland and Czechoslovakia. They were neutral, so there was no reason for them to worry. While the Nazis were rounding up the Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe, they were concerned but they were neutral, “let’s just not get involved,” they thought. But then when the Nazis invaded Holland, the Dutch suddenly realized they weren’t neutral, they’d been on the side of the Nazis all along, but they just didn’t know it.

The things we don’t do – our non-actions – are as important as our actions, and if we don’t actively fight for our beliefs, we are actively fighting against them.

But how we fight is another story.