We Know Not

What we do is 99% resistance.
We run out of patience at the very thought of having to sit up in bed and sip broth while the shrimps are sizzling on the barbie and the surf is up.

While We Wait

for the limbic system to evolve and become invulnerable to Oppositional Intent (an unwillingness to learn or a passion for self-glorification, or whatever DSM will label our plethora of psychiatric disorders), we might as well be patient.
This is to sit.

Do as your sister says:

just sit.

Or at least, practice it by taking a walk and finding a wall with a view of whatever to become whatever it needs to become.

Or by setting the table and having a meal you can call a feast that moves you. Prepare it to mobilise your heart, and by this I do not necessarily mean a candle-lit dinner for two, but it works well to light a candle for the grace good food brings into that midst made by all the others seated around your table, or present in spirit otherwise.

Pepping and Popping

Or sit and read A Moveable Feast to be inspired by another kind of nourishment.
As vitamins and minerals are to the flesh, works of art are to the mind.

You don't have to like them, you only need to assure yourself as best you can that they are worth taking in, and of sound absorbable quality, even if at first they make you break out or even more irritable while you restore, recover, rebuild, revitalise, reinvigorate. Hemmingway (author of aforementioned work) may not be the shining example of a well-balanced sage of a man, but his lust for life is a nice one to take and recraft in the mind's eye in accord with one's own understanding of the purpose of life's bounty curbed by the suffering life causes.

Above All

to create a bottom line be open and soft. Therein one finds strength and free will: and that is all one ever needs. Especially men and women in masculine postitions should give it a go and experience the benefits of concentrated effortlessness and objective trust. All it takes is a sensitive touch, which is trained by brushing up against the more delicate or thorny sides of life and lightly tracing that which only just is manifest in that zone that lies between light and darkness.

The rest is conditioning or second hand news. Stuff that is handy for rehashing, like some leftovers need to be. This also feeds your life. It just isn't very fresh and as such not very high on life-force.

^{freshly shelled capuciner beans [my photo]}

We Are Free

To do as we will.

But see, how, too often, we simply don't want to will enough of anything. We lack the enthusiasm to optimise our talent for warming things up willingly and selflessly. We remain too much in our reptile brain.

To want warmth to rule instead of resentment.

It would begin by being kind and leaving free without any commentary on they who do not know how to be kind. Let they who ambition whatever success they ambition, ambition this false prophecy of success; why not? and love it for them! You don't have to make love with them, but you can love how they are showing themselves up to themselves: it will all come to pass and it will all be processed somehow.

You might like to cry from time to time, instead.

Also fine. The processing (of "bad karma") comes at a cost that pollutes the air we all breathe (the kama loca, or Purgatory Place is turning into a shanty town at the bottom of a mega processing plant run on cokes). That is a pity to be pitied and grieve for.

Just bear in mind: less is more and a little goes a long way. In affirming the spiritual being you are you become a positive influence on the life of another. Even in mundane parlance, we know, seldom will it proove your task to rescue anyone from themselves; so why not concentrate on affirming your own path of deliverance instead? You will find it does more to help others save themselves than pointing out their errors. By the same token let any and all association with those in error mirror your own....

Lamentably, the advice to be a spiritual person is an overrated platitude,

because it fails to say much of anything to anyone really. It means to love, which means to be alive in conscious awareness that one is a spiritual being. And this sounds "loopy" to most. Then I must hold up my hands, shrug my shoulders and accept your negative conclusion (namely: I cannot see myself as a spiritual being, let alone act in accord with her will). May the gods still walk with you anyway and may you enjoy their silence.

Sealing the Deal

May I leave you with a most precious find. Perhaps, because it smocked several strings for me together (not new material for me as such), but I hope you can be inspired by it, too.

Learning about seagrapes, over breakfast, thanks to having it with someone who has spent much time on the white sandy beaches of the western hemisphere, I am told their taste can be likened to (North African) berberis berries (what I was serving in the muesli that morning): (seemingly) a rather random observation, I noted, for the plants are found oceans apart in entirely different environments. Subsequently, I discovered a beautiful wood in the Coccoluba Uvifera (Seagrape).

At that point a confluence of significances occurred. For me it is already very significant that this tree, otherwise entirely unfamiliar to me, is from the "buckwheat" family. The flowers, and even the leaves do not belie this (see photo: right is the buckwheat proper plant). I simply had never included trees in the buckwheat family (Polygonacae); which doesn't matter to the muesli in front of you (just like every muesli is a selection of ingredients, you can't know everything), but it goes to show how important it still is to notice the details of whatever is brought to the table.

^{left: seagrape flower; left: grow buckwheat youself!}

Where are you at?

I shall leave to one side how I know an inspiring woman with the surname Sarrasin (French for buckwheat), and refer to the fairytale/morality tale on humbleness featuring buckwheat by Hans Christian Andersen instead. May it suffice to remind us at this point in time it matters not how much you collect or even maybe when you start, but it is critical to form a Gesamt Image of your life, as if it is trackable in and of itself, to reveal where it is: THAT you ARE.

When I looked up the seagrape to discover it was a tree, surprised it was a tree, because for me, in my neck of the seas those whose toes are tickled by salty water grow low like samphire, seakale, - radish and -aster. One of the photos that came up for me furthemore arrested my attention; not only for its lovely toffee colour, but more so to question what force might have controlled the shape of its trunk. It instantly resembled to me a planetary gesture as represented in the seven seals Rudolf Steiner produced as living imaginations for the planetary forces which rule our formative forces.

To get what I mean, possibly, I will refer you to a 10 minute overview of the function and quality of these "Seals" (formerly used as decoratively-inspirational carvings on the pillars of the First Goetheanum to set the mood for a place of congregation or theatre mainly in which Steiner had aspired to bring karma work alive by means of his plays).
Please find here a short introduction by Brian Gray. If you can take away with you the marvel of how the forces that bring into being can be perceived in such a fashion, you will have understood much about the value of taking a spiritual stance in this material world.

Know the little you can know

That you are an ever becoming-being thanks to the same forces that evolve everthing in the universe. They enabled the very conception of you and are compacted into the very kernel of you from which you may expand your human nature. Manifest as such and rejoice!

Further reading on a more practical postitive-affirmative note here.

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Christmas Gift Idea

A Galloway Wild Foods Gift Voucher

For a concise guide - and rambling-course - on what wild plants to pick for consumption (incl. on the salty water margin) go here

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Photo of surfer was taken by Mohamed Nohassi
Photo of stacked stones was taken by denfran