Archive for the ‘Spirtural’ Category

The Simple Things….

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Here is one man's view of how the simple, not necessarily the easy, can make you happy.   Though written from the sense of the simple home in the Brazilian favelas compared to the high life in the USA, it is the emphasis on simplicity, difficulty and community that the sense ...

Stocktake Time Again – Big Changes on the Horizon

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

In exactly one month’s time, I will change my status once again from employed to self employed.  Since it has been a long time since I have took stock of where I am, now would seem to be an appropriate time to do so.  This is where I think I ...

Your Environment Does Affect You.

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Dr Martin Luther King once said “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilisation, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil ...

Unexplained Dreams

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

‘I am going to be a star’. Many young people dream this at some point in their lives.  Sometimes we try and discourage them and in other cases we encourage them. Sometimes, reality sets in and they settle for what’s on the plate. Sometimes, as seen on such TV shows as ...

The World Conspires With You

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

If you regularly read my blog, you will know that I tend to take anything sold by the ‘quote a minute’ self help American gurus with a large pinch of salt.  One of the central planks of the success brigade is that if you decide where you are going, the ...

Love Being Alone

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

“If you cannot be by yourself for an hour, or for a day, or for a week then you don’t like yourself” so rants ‘Payroll da Pimp’ in his ‘Rebirth’ audio book.  [WARNING :  Do not look this book up if you are easily offended – whilst the book is ...

I’m Not Waiting for God.

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

You see them after travelling peak hours in the UK, every weekday, shuffling on the buses with their free passes, in some places trying to get on the bus before off peak time.  You see them once or twice a week queued up outside post offices and if you happen ...

The Haunting Of My Heart

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

"As you move into your forties and fifties, the recognition of your own mortality becomes more and more a part of decision-making. You realize that you're not going to be around forever. Your choices become a lot more precious. The gap between your dreams and what you're actually doing narrows, ...

Your Place In The Sun

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

'Place in the sun' - a place/environment that promotes a sense of success, happiness, or prosperity. I have a friend who likes to go to Thailand.  For the past few years, he has visited at least once a year and in some years twice.  He has been to other parts of ...

Altruism, is it always selfless?

Monday, March 8th, 2010

A news story this morning caught my attention.  It was about the fact that bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, prefer to share their food rather than eat alone. "Dr Hare said it could be purely altruistic, or more selfish motives could drive this behaviour because sharing could be exchanged ...

Lie Down and Die.

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

It struck me very strongly this week that in the week that Auschwitz survivors mark Holocaust Memorial Day (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8482760.stm), I happen to be reading Viktor E Frankel's "Man's Search for Meaning", Dr. Frankel was an Auschwitz survivor.  In the same week, news coming out of the disaster in Haiti cumulated ...

In the autumn of our lives

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

After a 12 day break from walking in the morning, I returned to experience the full colours of Autumn in the trees and on the grounds.  I may not like the cold and wet but I do find the colours so much richer and I love it. With my foot feeling ...

Trying to balance

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

'No-one, even those closest to me, knows what I have had to go through to get to where I am now.  Why then do you resent what I have?' A few weeks before my identity theft saga started (see http://notthenews.net) , I told my mother that I could not find it ...

The meaning of karma

Friday, May 1st, 2009

I tend to use the word karma to describe the calm, peaceful balance.  Something that disturbs this state is said to be upsetting my karma.  I recently decided to look it up the proper meaning of the word and am horrified to discover that it doesn't mean anything like that ...

Spirituality and being an atheist.

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

"Spirituality, in a narrow sense, concerns itself with matters of the spirit, a concept closely tied to religious belief and faith, a transcendent reality, or one or more deities.  Spiritual matters are thus those matters regarding humankind's ultimate nature and meaning, not only as material biological organisms, but as beings ...