Amnesia

There's an old film - "Random Harvest" - about a husband suffering from amnesia and how his wife tries to return him to his memories. The final scene, when he remembers her is so beautiful!

Imagine if, for a moment, we forgot everything we ever were told. Imagine if, for one single second, all we could remember were the kindnesses shown to us and the people we love. All the rest of our memories vanished - no appalling news stories, no bloody history, no slights or affronts - all we remembered was our love for others and our response to love in others. Every day we would awaken with a sense of awe and 'newness'; we would feel such wonder at seeing the sunrise or the moon, the changing seasons and the myriad of colours even in the dark seasons! Every moment would be a blessing and, like babies and small children, we would be able to gaze in fascination at a truck or a flower, a weed or a puddle, and see everything as wondrous!

I guess, as so many wise spiritual teachers say, there really is no moment except this one and in this moment everything that went before is gone like a mirage. There are no grudges or axes to grind and if ever we learn anything from our memories it is surely that, at the end of the day, all we have to do is let it go and know we don't need to make the same mistakes tomorrow, and can simply be in this moment. There are always unresolved issues that need to be laid to rest - the memories of people who were wronged in the past, whose stories need to be re-written to come closer to the truth - but, even more importantly, when we learn from those people we can let the past go and, regathering power of the present moment, know that we need no more tyrants or people to govern us.

We don't need some EU president, unelected prime minister or any governing body to tell us how to live. We don't need some manipulated bank crisis or economic decline to close us down and tell us we are dependent on the state. When we learn to live within ourselves, forgetting the fears that have been instilled into us, enjoying the amnesia that releases us from the bizarre notions that people just like us want to hurt us, we can simply remember that we are much bigger than all of that nonsense because we are created solely out of love. All the rest will pass away but, at risk of sounding trite, Love is the only thing that is eternal...and Love, to my mind, simply means that every single being, all people, all animals, all plants are born with the ability to grow and be themselves.

Freedom and Learning from History

In the ancient days of 'O' levels, it was necessary to learn dates and names - The Treaty of Vienna, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Treaty of Versailles; Hastings, Agincourt, Edgehill, The Somme...So much of it was made up of battles - who won, who lost, how the boundaries of countries were redrawn.
Behind the dates and facts were outcomes and it was very much like the old cliché of 'history is one damned thing after another.'
Eventually, social history was introduced. Out went the battles, the treaties and the maps, and in came what was basically a history of 'the poor'. In came factories, children at work, inventions, railways, unions, schools: a kind of history of 'the people.'
It is my firm belief that the only way to learn from history is to understand the individuals - not 'children at work' not kings and rulers or politicians, but individuals: their motivations and psychology because the more we looks at these things, the more we seem them played out time after time.
How many insane rulers have dominated societies? And, more the point, how many millions of people have listened to those rulers, believing themselves powerless until it came to a point where they could stand it no more and the outcome was either a bloody revolution or a war? It seems that throughout history 98% of people have wanted to be led. They did not want to look into psychology or motivation - their own or anyone else's - to see beyond the appearance of things and so sleepwalked into their own abyss. They did not ask, "Why does this man want to rule us? Why do we need to be ruled?" Instead they said, "He is the king/president/Fuhrer/Caesar and he will change everything and make everything wonderful for us!" Perhaps he is a wise king and does his best. Perhaps he is an avaricious power-seeking person. Perhaps he is completely insane ..It doesn't matter what he is - what matters is that people have forgotten that they have the ability to choose their own course, make their own decisions and have entrusted their lives to him.
The bad news is (to my mind) that person can never deliver the expectations.
When they wake up to this fact, the response is anger and a sense of betrayal. If the ruler is a good man, wanting the best for his people - like Tsar Nicholas - they destroy him. If he is a power-seeking individual, like Stalin or Lenin, he destroys them.
The good news is (to my mind) we can learn from history and the biggest lesson is to realize that no one is going to change our world and make it great and make everything right. Only we, as individuals, can change our own lives. There isn't anyone to do this for us. I would venture so far as to say - from a religious perspective - Jesus and all the great spiritual leaders, handed power back to people and what did they do? They ran after him saying, "Saviour! Saviour! Save us!"
King, Tsar, President, Fuhrer, Comrade, Saviour....They never deliver and we kill them are allow them to crush us. Our choice is to wake up and say, "We no longer need to look outside ourselves to someone else to give us freedom or prosperity or hope. It is all within us and there is no one to blame, no one to depend on and no one to deceive us." Freedom comes when we stop expecting it to come from someone else.

The Message of a Beautiful Prince

Once upon a time a beautiful prince, called Albert, who had spent his whole life in service to his country, his family and his people, had a beautiful dream of peace throughout the world. A wise and brilliant man, born into a position of some authority, then married into a position of great power, he was determined to use his gifts for the good of all. Whatever the cost to his health or his own comfort, he dedicated himself to duty so wholeheartedly that eventually it cost him his life. The tragedy was that his beautiful dream turned into a nightmare on the battlefields of WWI. His children and grandchildren found themselves on opposing sides. They became enemies and their positions of authority crumbled away as monarchies were overthrown.

Now, here's the rub. If this beautiful man had forgotten the world, forgotten his responsibility and duty, and had simply cared for his family, wouldn't they have been better off? Wouldn't he have been better off? He did it because he felt it was his duty and he cared for the people. The people were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves but, as always, people look to a figure of authority for guidance, and cast their own problems onto that figure, projecting every difficulty onto someone else - a figure of authority. The appalling part is that, as we 'came of age', instead of taking back responsibility, we (people) let ourselves be led by someone who claimed to speak for us: a Hitler, a Stalin, a dictator in any guise. These Hitlers, Stalins (who still appear) did not have the beautiful prince's love for their people, they saw only his power and they wanted it for themselves...

Sadly, to me, the days of the beautiful prince have gone. The sadness I feel about that, is only the sadness that we all go through when we pass out of childhood. The scary thing - far more scary that anything in the past - is the way that we go on following figures who come as wolves in sheep's clothing, promising change or a better world, or promising a great future. No one can do it for us; we can only do it for ourselves by taking back the power that is our birthright, and realizing from the mistakes of the beautiful prince and his beautiful family, that we'd all be better staying at home - not Empire-building, not seizing power, just living without having to rely on someone else to make our decisions for us.

If there were a choice between corrupt bankers and politicians or people like the beautiful prince, I would go for the latter. If there were a better choice between being ruled or simply living and minding our own business, I would go for the latter again. If we learn anything from history, it is surely that we need neither rule nor be ruled. Let's live according to our lights and grow up.

There Is So Much More....

Perhaps it is dangerous to say that, amid the chaos of economies crashing and banks and bail outs and everything else in the news, I believe that what is now being reported so widely, is not so great a catastrophe as the loss of individual self-expression and the deep appreciation of beauty and freedom. What is happening, to my mind, is the natural outcome of a world where we have lost our way as far as individual freedom and the recognition of beauty goes. If we hang our hopes on economics, and let art be defined by unmade beds, piles of bricks, lights turned on and off, thrown-together things by those who are afraid to say, "The King is in the altogether," what can we expect? A throw-away society, depending on nothing of substance is bound to end up with nothing.

Happily, in spite of what they would have us believe, all is not lost.

That which is truly beautiful always prevails in the long run. That which is truly beautiful is always individual, original and free of the constraints of trying to be fashionable or living up to anyone else's standards or the general consensus of 'it must be this way...it must be that way...'

Isn't it fascination (aside from the power of individual thought and the circumstances we create for ourselves) that so many artists who were not recognised in their lifetime, now have their paintings stored in safes and selling for millions? It was ever thus, I think. The vast majority of us, most of the time, are asleep and want to be told what to do, what to think, what is good, what is bad. Whether these instructions come from governments, churches or are the acting-out of our childhood, we feel safe that way, because, when it all goes wrong, we have someone to blame. Hence, the individuals who couldn't fit into that - like Van Gogh or John Claire - ended up in 'asylums,' and then, when their art is recognised, along come those trying to emulate that 'madness' by trying to shock. It's so passé and unoriginal!

Looking for true beauty, it is so wonderful to come across truly original eyes - the kind of work that makes you stand back and think, "Yes!!! There are people who don't give a damn for what is said to be the norm because they are real artists and truly have an eye for the real!" There are several websites that seem to me to speak this way. I love this page filled with Heinrich Heine quotations and beautiful pictures and messages:

http://ravengrrl.blogspot.com/2007/04/wandering-meditation-on-life-art-trees.html

I love all the loveliness in this site, by Tom:

http://www.tkinter.smig.net/

And I truly love the beauty of the brilliant photography of André Hilliard, whose orchids photograph appears above:

http://www.andrehilliard.com/

So, we think the collapse of banks is so important? Maybe it is on one level. At the same time, there is more to life, and when we stop listening to the fluster and control-stuff, and think for ourselves, we can see that there are brilliant people all around us and there is far more to life than what goes on in 'The City'. We don't have to live in boxes. We don't have to be protected or told what is beautiful. We need only open our eyes and see that there are geniuses everywhere, and I, for one, am honoured to have seen some of their work.

True Beauty

The most striking aspect of Grand Duchess Elizabeth has always been for me, her natural inclination to create beauty in everything. Renowned as 'the most beautiful princess in Europe', far from being possessive about that gift, she used it to the full both for herself and for others. When young, she paid great attention to her appearance; as time passed, that beauty went deeper and deeper and culminated in bringing beauty into the most 'ugly' places - into slums and hovels, into lives devoid of dignity, and into a world thrown into confusion by murder and war.

Now, more than at any other time in history, I believe that message is vital. We have made such advances in technology and science - wonderful advances, bringing people together - but I cannot help but feel sometimes that, along the way, we have forgotten the true meaning of beauty. One only need browse the shelves of video shops to see how many films are made about destruction and violence - 'action films' they are called. One only need glance at billboards or watch a couple of adverts to see how beauty is narrowed down to some designers' ideas of how we should all look, what we should wear....what beauty means.

I live near a wood filled with ancient trees, beside which is a new wood planted for the millennium. To see the young trees growing so quickly is amazing! To see the ancient trees with their gnarled roots, their twisted and heavily-laded branches, the marks in the bark, the intertwining of their limbs is truly breath-taking. Not one tree quite resembles another. Yet, there they all stand having absorbed centuries of wisdom and their beauty is ineffable. They don't fit a pattern. They don't do anything in the way of 'action'. But, strong and solid, they sometimes seem to me to have watched and listened and absorbed centuries of thoughts of passers-by, like me, and they are truly uplifting.

There is, I think, a beauty that doesn't ever try to be anything other than itself at its very best. I think Ella knew that so deeply and, unlike Rasputin, who felt a need to debase people in order to destroy their pride, she simply drew that loveliness from others.

In the midst of financial crises, toppling of governments and ending of empires; in the midst of turmoil in politics and the power-seeking scare-mongering of some politicians, true beauty cannot be destroyed. It is. And, like the ancient trees growing happily beside the newer woods, it simply continues because it is real. And reality is eternal.