Updating our Psyche

I've written before about how unique this generation is, in terms of being the first ever to be able to participate in evolution consciously...and each time I think about it, it still thrills me!! However, on the weekend I was reading a great book by Thomas Berry and Brian Schwimme, where another angle of this was highlighted.

Throughout history right up to industrial times, cultures acorss the world have had a view of life which has appreciated the significance of the repetitional seasonal cycles of life. This has an obvious outplay and signficance in the seasons, both with reference to the practicalities of farming and fishing, and also with a ceremonial appreciation of the vibrancy of the re-appearance of spring (eg May Day Celebrations) or the fruiting of the harvest in Autumn ( eg Harvest Thanksgiving Festivals) This offered a powerful rhythm and stability to life.

However, with the new understandings about evolution and history, we now know that not only does life progress through the seasons, but that there are also times when humanity goes through radical leaps of update and progress....where old is left behind and new enters the arena of life on earth.

I wonder what effect that has on our psyche?

Neanderthal Woman Mock Up

Scanning through some articles on evolution and how previous species of humans may have looked, I came across this photo on the front of an old National Geographic. It was so unusual to find a computer mock up of a woman that I couldn't resist posting it on the blog...!!!

This has been recreated from cannibalised genetic material found about 43,000 years ago...and yes, they think some at least of the neanderthals had red hair!!!

Disturbing Fact

I just got an email in this morning from 'Food Matters' ....a fascinating organization in the US who research the connection between diet and mental health.

They mention that 10% of the population of the US are on Anti Depressants of some sort ....isn't that an astonishing percentage ? The kind of issue one would imagine would be top of any political agenda in one of the world's wealthiest countries to understand and address? They also mention that with all the health warnings about skin damage from the sun, perhaps 3 out of 4 people in the US are not getting enough Vit D.

What a crazy sort of world we live in ? Seems so vitally important to re-address the values and importances which have lead to this state of affairs.

The freedom of being in one's own element

Up, Up and Away!

I work on the ground floor of an old mansion house. This morning, when going upstairs to the kitchen to make some coffee, I heard some flapping sounds in one of the rooms, which is currently disused whilst repairs are going on in the ceiling

Somehow, a swallow had got into the room, and fallen into a large box and was flapping around. Covering the box over, I carried the whole thing to an open window, and tipped it on its side into the open air.

Thankfully, the bird was unharmed and swooped off into the air, displaying its marvellous acrobatic abilities!

It just struck me how important it is for any of us to 'fly' we really need to be in the 'element' or ecology that supports our excellence....and definitely need to get out of whatever box crimps our freedom !!

Who we are and have done..what we are and might still become ....

Well, more from the mid-summer mountain contemplation !

One of the uplifting thoughts from this morning was about the importance of dwelling sometimes ..not so much on who we are and what we have done ( both individually and collectively as a human race |) but on WHAT we are and what we might still become.

Watching the sun appear up over the horizon, the spreading light, the rising warmth and witnessing the sheer awesome beauty of it all, was fantastic. The intensity of the colours as the sun lit them up ( the blue of the sky was unbelievably, breathtakingly, beautiful and so vibrantly alive!) the range of sounds which carried across the valley from the sheep, to birds....even, surprisingly, to my neighbour's noisy pack of Jack Russells miles away ....was stunning.

As the sun first appeared through light cloud on the horizon , it looked so tiny and yet in truth we know it is so huge, compared to the tiny blue orb where we live. In thinking of the perspective of the largess of the sun upon our small fragile planet, it made me feel how tiny I myself am in relation to all that.

BUT, what an incredible gift we, as people, can bring to this amazing table of nature's plenty, because we have the innate ability to see the beauty of it all, to feel the energy , to perceive the constancy and amazing engineering of the spinning spheres of our solar system....we, who are so minuscule....yet have this huge wonderful ability to bring it all together in our minds..to be the ones who see, who feel, who compare...who can give a response which is more than reactive to our survival and continuance, who can perceive the history of the universe and make forecast of its future. Sure, that choice and creativity means we can mess things up ( and we do) but it also means we have the capacity to learn from our mistakes, to take a new position and consciously build a brighter future.

Wow, must get up and watch the sunrise more often!!

Mid Summer Musings

Mid summer today and what a gorgeous morning ! A friend and I got up at 3.15am and headed off to a nearby mountain moorland where we had a great view of the sunrise ..... very moving and much food for the soul!

We were fairly quiet over our respective flasks of coffee and fennell, interspersed with personal silent musings..and then exchanging about some of our reflections.

She had recently returned from a healing retreat in Bali where she had met an NGO who had been working in the Congo and was feeling rather overwhelmed by the scale of atrocities that people can perpetrate on each other. Indeed she was having to give up the NGO work as it was more than she could bear. My friend pondered about how many people might be giving up on humanity ever being able to live as a considerate, responsible part of the planetary ecology.

Just then across the valley, I heard a cuckoo calling out three times ( almost biblical!!!) My mind was caught by the timing of her question and the call from the cuckoo. It made me ponder whether some 'cuckoo' gene had gotten into the human genetic pool ..something which stands out as being equally incongruous with the natural humanity that most of us would want as the base platform for our lives on earth.

Reality and Virtuality

I had a skype call yesterday with my two gorgeous grandsons in Australia. The youngest was delighted with a new little app on my son's I-phone and I have to say it was rather fun! He could press an egg on the screen and each time a different animal would appear. First a mouse, then a rabbit and next a fox and so on ....press, pop and another animal ..very more-ish for a three year old!!

However, at the same time, it gave me food for thought too ..each time he told me which animal it was, I had quite a different chain of connected images to go with the animal which related to events which had just happened in the last couple of day. The rabbit, for example reminded me of the one my cat had just brought in that very morning and was the first sight of my day, as I went downstairs and into the kitchen ....very real indeed!! The fox reminded me of a visit to a friend's place a couple of days earlier..he has two large ponds and the little strip between the stretches of water is a favourite run of a rather friendly fox..trouble is, it is also a nesting place for a family of what was a pair of ducks and seven ducklings..now sadly down to a pair of ducks and three ducklings thanks to the fox!

The ipod was giving instant thrilling instant images, whilst for me in the countryside, each animal was very much part of the chain of life and living with a very physical and inter-connected element to it.

I do wonder just what long term effects the instancy and dis-connected factor of virtual reality will have on the minds of the young? With the animal app, perhaps it was simply charming and educational, but what about some of the other more aggressive virtual games?

The soft and the harsh

Like so many people in the UK, I've been shocked this week by the amount of death and violence reported on the news. What makes people lose it and turn feral, or feel they have the political right to kill another ? It seems to be a modern day phenomena that violence erupts like a volcano and then subsides again.

Even the report of a fox attacking two children in their beds seemed strange and un-nerving. Although we were told in the report this is not unusual behaviour for foxes, those of us who live in the countryside are well used to fox attacks of chickens in hen runs or lambs in the fields, but I've never heard of a fox going indoors, walking upstairs into a bedroom and attacking sleeping children.


Somehow the highlighting of the harsh caused my mind to be drawn to the tender side of life...and to follow are two snapshots of the kind of thing I mean ...


On Friday I took my cat to the vet and whilst sitting in the waiting room an elderly lady came in. She looked like she had suffered a recent stroke as one side of her face was crooked and her left eye drooping, and carried with her a large cage with a chicken snuggled comfortably on a blanket....she was totally focussing on the hen to the exclusion of the rest of us in the room (unusual at a country vet's) ..and you could just feel her care & concern towards her small avine companion.

The following morning I was sitting in a cafe having some coffee .. looking out of the window, watching passers by. Another elderly lady came along, obviously very arthritic and assisting herself with the use of a stout walking stick. She was accompanied by her mongoloid looking son for whom she had obviously cared his whole life. The bond between them was tangible..but what was so moving was that he was taking care of her, with his hand placed carefully on her back and steadying her as they moved along in harmony.

Somehow it is this tender side to life that to me seems at the heart of the special contribution that humanity has to bring to the table of life and living. That ability to exercise choice and consciousness to make the world a softer kinder place....

Just Imagine ......

What sort of incredible intelligence could design the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly???



I started to write this article about the amazing story of imaginal cells .....and their role in the phoenixing of the caterpillar into a butterfly but somehow I felt myself being stopped short .....somehow the sheer fact of what is possible in nature moved me more than the science of it's process.

Change is such an intrinsic part of living and yet I know that there is a part of me ( perhaps in all of us?) that thinks things will stay more or less stay the same.

To quote a wise man of the 20th century, Leo Armin, "we live to change and change in order to continue to live"

And when I look at the butterfly, it reminds me that I probably cannot even begin to imagine what changes lie ahead .... but it encourages me to make space for the unthought,the unknown and the unimaginable ...and to welcome the idea of it.