Everything.

Everything.

Everything is alive,

Everything – is alive.

Forever evolving,

Born to be reborn.

A mountain boulder walks to its sandy grave in the waves,

Waves;

Marching from their stormy birth, to dissipate on some foreign shore,

And a flame’s desperate dance, as it devours its path to extinction.

Everything is alive.

Mapping scales of time and space twisted beyond our being,

Born only to die,

Carrying nothing,

But those priceless moments,

Of living.

We raise our bodies from primordial swamps,

Stretch our limbs to climb,

And pause in contemplation.

We are alive,

We are beautiful.

We are beautiful beyond our capacity of imagination.

No, it is not of our choosing,

Our first breath is a scream in the shadow of death,

Like the flight of a bird into glass:

Stunned, we are shaken awake.

Bearing scars of the relentless struggle,

We are delivered before our apparent junction,

To gaze hungrily at a featureless horizon.

Yes, it is not of our choosing,

But it is our choice.

We have a choice.

There is no judge, no better, no worse,

We have no obligation,

Not even to life itself.

We are free, as all before us,

To drift causally in the stream,

Buoyed merrily in the flow.

Heedless, as we tumble and reel,

Of our endlessly changing course.

The past decays in our wake,

As we arrive each moment to endure this insatiable procession.

No beginning,

No end,

No clever circles,

Only,

The journey.

But now, we have choice.

The choice to be aware.

The choice to be aware of this present moment.

This revered moment of stillness.

Sanctuary,

From our determined chains.

Liberated in the choice;

Of action, and not reaction.

As awareness is the seed that enables that choice.

It is our empowering hand on the sluice gate,

As it is our choice to flood the arid planes with compassion.

It is our choice,

We can change,

We can make change,

Evidence based change, for our perceived better.

We can choose to cultivate wisdom of our being,

And bloom in celebration of our connection.

We have been blessed with an artisan’s steady hand,

And with the edge of awareness,

We can polish that stony facade that is our heart,

To reveal the myriad of sparkling faces of a gem.

For once, in the life time of our Earth,

We have that rare sacred privilege,

Of freedom…

And it touches our hearts with the weight of the universe itself.

We can choose our destiny,

And perhaps, we may choose if we are to keep these sparks alive.

And why should we?

Because we are beautiful.

And that is enough.

Human life is so precious.

The World in a Packet of Crisps.

So what is in a packet of crisps?

For sure, some potatoes or corn, fried to the edge of recognition,

Some fat, salt, flavourings, additives, hmmm.

We do not eat these for our nutritional benefit.

And then there’s the packaging,

Made from our limited stock of fossil fuels,

To be discarded, at best, on the refuse pile.

But we do eat crisps, and many of them.

We like to eat them, we want to eat them.

Why?

They are a tantalisingly clever, subtly manipulative invention.

You want, you need, you feel insecure, a touch nervous,

Then, a simple action;

Grasping, pulling, opening, pop, a success,

The reward, the reassurance.

Flavours to match a million years of evolutionary craving,

As your finger tips return to the packet,

happy to repeat their menial task.

The silence of the mind is broken, lost to the flavours,

And to a sugar rush, as strong as that of pure glucose.

They are a drug. They are addictive.

Like a cigarette, they offer a moments escape,

Carrying the mind into a secure and familiar routine.

A little consumption, a little waste,

And we are a little sicker, both in mind and in body.

But why not have our escape, you may ask?

Our little pleasure, in a world so full of pain and suffering.

We are human, imperfect and tired.

OK, have your escape,

But have it in the knowledge that in every moment of our lives,

Our minds are trying to escape.

To escape from the reality of ourselves within,

right now, at the present moment.

To deny ourselves a moment of calmness,

When we can feel the forces which wrench within our hearts,

The forces which drive our every craving.

The forces, of which, if we are not aware,

we will not know our own hearts.

For this is what we are, as human beings.

And to understand ourselves, is to live with ourselves.

This is freedom, this is the path to happiness.

And it may be the hardest of paths,

But to not walk it, is to be trapped in endless cycles,

So boring, the same agonies, again and again.

Like the same packet, again and again.

Yet, it’s so easy to just not have another packet,

But so hard to spend that moment in silence, with yourself, alone.

Food is the bottom line of spirituality.

It is the sustenance for mind and body,

And the price it extracts from the planet should be respected.

Food is not a drug.

Food is the fuel for life itself.

But you want to eat crisps, you like to eat crisps,

And who am I to criticise, who am I to judge?

So I ask you, what sort of world would it be,

If we all did what we wanted, when we wanted?

There are no lines in a world of infinite shades.

It is up to each of us to define our own boundaries.

We must be our own judges.

And to do so, we must listen to our own hearts.

And to hear our hearts, we must first find that moment of silence.

That same moment from which we are continually trying to escape.

And why escape?

So we can relinquish responsibility for our actions,

And guiltlessly, without consideration or concern for others,

We can do just exactly what we want.

But next time I see you eating a packet of crisps,

I will say nothing.

You see, it’s just a symbol,

Although, perhaps, a flavoursome one.