Category Archives: Life

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Facing disasters

We all face challenges at some stage that seems to like disasters, as a matter of fact some are indeed disasters that will lead to a loss of some kind for us in life. This is part of normal life. Stoic philosophy says it is external and and externals should not determine our level of happiness. It is our perception on these externals that will change how we experience these significant life events.

I am currently experiencing it on both a macro and micro level. The micro level relates to my own finances where I am struggling to make ends meet while succeeding in my duty to assist my children with their studies. The macro level relates to me living in a metropolitan city that is preparing to run out of water. Both are equally eminent and will bring a level of discomfort and challenge along with it. In magnitude of course the macro issue is far greater since it will affect many people and can lead to the actual death of many people. Without water there is no life.

Within these periods of times I reallise more than ever the value of philosophy. To have an approach that you can follow with confidence. I cannot avoid the problems or issues but I do have a choice how to deal with the situation. It calls for courage, integrity and creativity. These types of unavoidable disasters challenge our core philosophical concepts and drives us to work from divine creative inspiration.  We need to find new solutions and make fundamental shifts in our way of life.

Contemplating this situation it reminds me of the image of the Tower card in the Tarot. Sometimes the breakdown of our existing way of living, as painful as it is, will lead to new life and living patternd. For the mystic it is never to get dismayed but to keep living with hope to keep contemplating on solutions. The Stoic on the other hand accepts fate even if it threaten to shorten life. For the Stoic the aim remain ever to live with virtuous integrity remaining in tact.

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Relativist and constructivist paradims

I am contemplating what it means to be of service to humanity. Am I really making an optimal contribution? Maybe leaving a legacy is not as important as to actually having the energy and consistency in producing some value. In order to make such a contribution it is essential that I have confidence in myself and in my work. What I can do is to better engage with other people and work more with the assistance of other people. I think generally that I am not as aware as I should be aware of other people. What has put me in this frame of mind is my time in the celestial sanctum and the yearning it creates within to be a true illuminatus and somebody that is an unconditional servant of humanity. Saying it is unconditional is truly a high and noble ideal that is not as easy to put into practice. In practice, we are lazy, we want to enjoy life, and if we can, we will do it without putting in effort.

Most of us are working just so that we can survive and others to continue to feed their hunger for power, fame or wealth. As a true Stoic; the three hungers are irrelevant since the Stoic endeavours to achieve an internal goal that is a goal of being inwardly the best human being possible. A human being that exceeds in every aspect in the qualities that makes a human being human. The fact is that from a mystical perspective we are even more than what are generally considered being human. In general, Stoics define our humanity in terms of the ability to reason, the social nature of humans and the ability to be self-aware and creative. Other creatures in our world does not seem to have these qualities.

Yet the mystic believes that there is the divine spark within that of which all these qualities, that we attribute to being human, are just a shadow. From a mystical point of view, more will be realised in this world when we truly understand this “sage within”. I prefer this term over “Master within” because the term master has so many negative connotations within the South African context with its history of one group being dominated by another. Indeed, I am beginning to realise more and more that what we consider as legacy will differ from society to society and from generation to generation.

This I am saying from the perspective of being both a constructivist and relativist. True these positions are not perfect and not the answer to all but I do think that they offer the best of values in our world. However, it requires an agreement on these base assumptions for it to be effective. When you have intellectual arrogance as oppose to intellectual humility then a relativist will have to continually fight a dominant or unmovable opposing position for incorporating it blindly into one’s own world will violate that very premise of relativism and even in terms of a constructivist view it is becoming something that has the wrong baseline. In terms of this, the relativist and constructivist must find ways and means to neutralise strong opinions and bring them to equality with other ideas before there is an evaluative phase that allow the strongest ideas to come forward. Indeed the question is how we evaluate different ideas when we are in the fluid world of a relativist or constructivist paradigm.

The moment we make a value judgment, we are in a position where we are moving out of the fluid paradigm into a structured paradigm. Maybe this illustrates once again the polar nature of our thinking. We cannot just be constructivist and relativist all the time. We have to be able to discern when to be in this free flow paradigm and then when to start to crystallise solutions and conclude our theories. Even the relativist needs some fixed points of reference.

Here we have some lessons to learn from the astrologer, who aligns his actions with the celestial bodies. The time of Saturn is always such a time where firmness replaces flow and Yang must flow from Yin. We can see Saturn time in a negative light but it is opposite to that of Venus time when we have to be open to society and fluid in our thinking. Projecting this onto my thinking about the tree of life then Yesod is the flowing paradigm and Malkuth the crystalline paradigm. In the first, we have some flexibility that allows different things to manifest but it can come only in existence in the latter.

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Setting intent for performance

I am sitting in a meeting talking about performance management or performance reporting. Performance have therefore been very much in my mind and several diverse ideas are at the moment finding convergence in my mind.  This blog might be jumping around but it reflects how many disjunct thoughts form a backdrop for new thought and progress.

This morning I tweeted a quote from Michal Meier which says: “Ingenuity will do nothing without Labour, and vica versa” and “He that hath not erred hath not begun”.  Performance is not possible without effort. We can not just do the “Work smarter not harder” thing but need to put some effort behind our desire to achieve.  The other important concept highlighted is that true performance require also risk and actual failure. If we have not made mistakes we probably have not really started to get to the core issue, we have not pushed the limits and we have not left our comfort zone. These are all important factors, but it takes courage to put it into practice.

The two quotes above sparked my meditation today and especially the importance of having intent and to put action behind our intent and then evaluating the impact of our actions.  I discovered that the same principle applies to to Feng Shui. The rearrangement of your physical environment accounts for only 20% to 30% of the Feng Shui theory. The more important parts is putting the intent out of what you want to achieve before starting to rearrange the environment and the evaluation and effort you make into realising your intent after you have done the arrangements.  Making a change that is lasting requires both intent and the required labour.

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The pursuit of knowledge.

Not only in the Picatrics, does India being acknowledge for its knowledge but also in the fragments of the Masters. They are given credit for knowing how to use breath and mantra’s.  I have recenly started to read about swara yoga that specialises in breathing and can also concur that there is definite value in mantra’s well chosen. Hinduism, today, have their own way of acknowledging the trinity through Brahman (creator), Vishnu (sustainer) and Shiva (destroyer) which are all aspects of the Divine Source. So many Western people are oblivious to the depth of knowledge that is maintained within the sacred lore of India. Like Tai Chi and the Tao te Ching from China this is an inexhaustable system of insight that will take on its own a life time , or more, to fully master.

The Picatrix says that the sage keeps on with a relentless pursuit for knowledge and learning.  Even a superficial overview of all the systems of thought in the world currenlty and in its history shows an incredible wealth of knowledge that needs to be mastered. One can easily get overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the task to gain an insight into all available knowledge. It is no wonder that we have lost touch with many noble pursuits into the psyche of mankind. We can only but try to bring all this strands together into some coherent form for us in a single life…. even disgarding something that is of value because we simply do not have the time to go into depth on the multitude paradigms possible. We can highlight and summarise but few can break it down to a usable amount that can be learned in a life time and also used during that life time for full benefit and effect.

Our pursuit for knowledge is unending. As a philosopher I am constantly adding knowledge, putting it in practice and rejecting that which does not work for me at the time. As our external appearance changes with time the way we encounter and process and knowledge also changes. My own mystical path with a proper teaching curiculum has proven extremely valuable to have a core philsophy, that is robust yet open, that can serve as a backbone for all the other pursuits of knowledge.

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Starting the week.

I am standing at the beginning of a new week. The time has come to wrestle with my own thoughts and take on the challenges that will be placed before me like a boquet of flowers.  I do not take on those challenges impulsively but need to do so consciously, following a simple procedure of drawing up a list organising that list in what needs to be done today. For now writing this blog is a priority on that list. I need to tell the story about my life that might never be read nor told and yet the story is important. The story I tell myself about my life will eventually frame the rest of my life….even a future set of lives. In this story I can wither be the victim of the hero…it depends on how the story is told.

Off course this story is not just fictional and requires the exploration of truth within my life. But truth has many perspective and although we cannot change truth we can choose the lense through which we look when we put truth under the micrscope of our consciousness.  By facing truth in all its facets I get deeper underneath the veil of self-knowledge.  I pick up the inconsistencies and incoherencies and allow the full picture of the puzzle emerge slowly to form a picture of the “I am” that is me. 

Besides making my priorities clear, I walk into my office, I look at the energy and I use my first moments to change or improve the energy flow within my office. It might be a simple moving of an object or a decluttering of an area. This brings me into contact with my environment and the conscious design behind the space where I will spend in the next eight hours. So many people goes to work with a negative attitude, unaware of the potential your desk space of office space might have. I change the energy where I move…it is a silent service we can offer the world while we are alking about. I see myself as an energy sculptor and I am continually in a process of sculpting the energy patterns around me. Within a confined space like my office I use my Feng Shui knowledge to create a consistency in flow between wind and water.

But outside it might be through a smile, my body positioning or by simply removing clutter elsewhere. I find that my perspective change about the world and how I interact with it when I realise that at every moment in time I am playing an influential role. I am touching people through my attitude but also through my realisation of the importance of space and how space and placement is influencing behaviours. These are subtle awarenesses one needs to build up over time. I cannot claim to be an empath but I can choose to be aware of the people around me and how I relate with them. I can choose to be a constructive rather than a destructive force in the community around me. A compliment a slight shift in presence can make a huge difference in how life is being viewed. We are energetically connected and part of being illuminated is to see those connections and to recognise them. 

I have access to an abundance of energy if I simply takes the opportunity to see those hidden patterns. We can read about mindfulness and Feng Shui but until we put into practice energy shifts, to shift the situation, it becomes meaningless. However I have realised that I cannot just shift energy to suit my own selfish purpose but I must look for energy that is constructive, complementary and ever edifying. Those are the shifts that we need to work at with constant focus and effort. for then it does not just influence but it also becomes a source for personal growth.