I can't see with the light on

In the past month, I have had "light bulbs" on my shopping list for four consecutive visits into town. And do you think I have come home with a single light bulb? Not a chance. This is so utterly confounding to me for the simple fact that I am meticulous with my shopping lists. I write everything I need down, and then rewrite the whole list into separate categories and then when I shop, I have my pen in hand to tick off and cross out each item as I gather it. Its the same way I complete Word Search puzzles. That way, its easy to see what is still missing and also provides me with a sense of accomplishment when I tick off my whole list.

For those four visits however, I somehow missed "light bulbs" on my list, even though the word was glaring off the list at me when I returned home and realised I was still in the dark. So then I wrote "BULB" on my hand... and believe it or not, I missed that too. Three additional times. So, it was now seven consecutive visits to town that I have come home bulbless and the last time, it went from being funny to being just plain annoying and I found myself exasperatedly asking "What are you trying to tell me!??!" And, as always happens when I ask a question to the heavens, I got my answer.

I was driving Grace (my 3-yr-old) home from Sydney last week and she kept playing with the light inside the car. And you know how its really hard to see a pitch black road when you have the interior car light on? I would reach back and turn it off and she would giggle, and turn it back on again. I would reach back and turn it off, and she would turn it on. And so and so forth as is what happens with toddlers at play. Finally, I pulled over on the side of the road, turned to her, and quietly but firmly said, "Grace, I can't see with the light on".

I can't see with the light on.

I laughed out loud. I knew that was my answer but I didn't know exactly what it meant (although I had some idea). This morning, I have found further translation but first lets pause this for a moment as I tell you a brief back-story to put this all in context.


For years, I have struggled with a sense of purpose and now, more than anything else, I just want to be of service. I want to serve life itself and to contribute in whatever way I am guided to do so. I want so very much to make a difference in this world, to not have lived in vain. The question that relentlessly and furiously plagues me is HOW? HOW DO I DO THIS? How can I make a difference when I feel so ill-equipped and under-skilled and ultimately... unworthy. I have sat on a rock in Bouddhi National Park that overlooks the beach and the ocean and asked this question to God over and over again. I have looked for signs in the trees and taken the whisper of leaves as a confirmation that someone, somewhere, is listening. I just don't speak their language yet so I haven't understood the answer.

Last week, I spent the weekend in a course called "Life Quality and Design" that was essentially about us defining our values, vision and purpose while illuminating what might be holding us back. During that course, the teacher, Donna Manning (one of the most soulful people I have ever met), posed the question to us about balancing our own individual purpose with the world at large. In other words, how can we talk about our own life purpose without taking into consideration what is happening to the world around us. Our planet is dying. Are we going to turn a blind eye and pretend we live in a silo?

This week, I started reading a book called 'The Hope - A Guide to Sacred Activism' by Andrew Harvey. The book is described as "not only a guide to discovering your divine purpose but also the blueprint for a better world". In it, Harvey references the bible quite a bit. While I have read the Bible, I have largely dismissed it as a series of stories but this morning, in Harvey's context, I see a different offering. He refers to a revelation given to us by Jesus in the Gospel of St Thomas (a chapter I seem to have forgotten):

"The seeker should not stop until he finds. When he does find, he will be disturbed. After having been disturbed, he will be astonished. The he will reign over everything".

Harvey's translation here is that "the path of transcendence - through which the transcendent powers of love and wisdom are embodied in the core of human life - is at once the most difficult of all, because it involves a grueling and dangerous descent into the personal and collective shadow, and the most empowering, because if it is taken far and deep, it births a new kind of human being: one whose mind is illumined by gnosis, whose heart is aflame with a sacred passion of compassion, and whose body becomes, over time, the conscious receptacle of divine energy".

By the way, in case you are wondering about the word "gnosis", as I was, it means "an intuitive knowledge of spiritual truths".

So this is it. For those of us who want to take the journey to truly serve humanity, we must do so by descending deep into our own shadow, our own darkness, and to reclaim the parts of ourselves that we have disowned or disassociated from, but that are reflected back to us in the world at large. The plight of our planet is our own individual suffering as well. There can be no separation. And no light until we see ourselves, and own that, in the collective darkness. And yet, the light is there for us - as Harvey says, "if we make a conscious connection with the Divine Light and its grace, we will not only help preserve ourselves and nature, but also transform into spiritually conscious, humble co-creators of a just and peaceful world

Whew... that's a lot of wisdom from a forgotten lightbulb. The teachings, you see, are everywhere. I delight to think of what's coming next! In the meantime, I have been reminded of the importance of ceasing to look for meaning in form and content and of seeking external validation to confirm my purpose. Instead, I am reminded to go within - to close my eyes and drop into the 'darkness', the stillness, of my heart, where the whole universe awaits, the light and dark.

And finally, guess what? As I was driving home last night, I stopped at the store and bought my light bulbs.

the Holy Grail of friendship

A friend of mine who I loved very dearly died on Monday night. Her name was Sarah Thomas and she was 38 years old. I have been crying and screaming and then feeling totally calm about it but what is ripping my heart apart is the thought that her daughter, 2 year-old Maggie, will never know what it feels like to be enfolded in the gentle bosom of love that her mother was; she will never know the blanket that was her mother's warmth and empathy; she will never be able to see the pure kindness and compassion that shone from her mothers eyes or hear her mellifluous laughter, sometimes seasoned with a cheeky lilt, that would engage anyone within earshot. She wasn't just a dollop of cream on a fluffy scone, or the jam in between - she was all of those but she was also zesty and tangy, cinnamon and spice - funny, pragmatic, sharp as a tack, opinionated, strong, decisive and a great conversationalist. She was someone you wanted in your midst.

I met Sarah four years ago at "Girls Lunch", a quarterly lunch that was originally set up as a social/networking opportunity but quickly morphed into an eagerly awaited date between eight or so women who fused over good food, great wine and spectacularly entertaining stories from the frontline of our respective industries. At "Girls Lunch", lunch starts at 1pm and ends in the reciprocal a.m. Our lunches are hard to leave because the company is difficult to part with.

Sarah was the Holy Grail in this circle of friends, a symbol of God's grace and the chalice from which we all shared our friendship. How fitting that it was always she who supplied the wine! Her cup runneth over in generosity of spirit and genuine care and concern for others.

I was one of the last to join this small group of wondrous women and Sarah always made sure I was included and up to speed with the latest plans. In a society where we are all self-consumed by the business, chaos, pace, demands and responsibilties of our self-imposed TO DO lists, Sarah was one of the rare few that took the time and made the effort to pick up the phone just to check in, to see how you were travelling. That was so like her - even at the lunches themselves she would make sure everyone's glass was at least half-full (literally) and having a good time. She just wanted so much for us all to enjoy the day. That was all. There was never any personal agenda with her - it was always outward, always about the group and never about her. Not in any way.

Sarah died of a massive heart attack in her sleep, without any history or candidacy for heart failure. She had one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know - pure gold - and it somehow seems not a coincidence that the very thing that gave our "girls lunch" gals the life and vitality we had as a group is the same thing that killed her. I can't go any further with that thought right now. It is too painful and it just doesn't compute. I feel a huge loss of hope in this.

I just briefly closed my eyes to check in with my heart. The image I saw was a full moon rising over the ocean. That was Sarah. That was her radiance, her brilliance, her shine. The next Full Moon is this Monday, July 26. So when you look up in that sky, and you see that smiling face within the moon, that is Sarah's light shining down on you.

Thank you Sarah, for your loving kindness, compassion, warmth, wit and humour. You will be forever loved and missed.

Spiritual Bumper Sticker

Last year the key learning for me was all about self-reliance, standing on my own two feet and trusting my intuition, while I religiously attended weekly sessions with my various teachers, mentors and healers who continued to teach me that the essence of their teachings was about me learning to seek the wisdom and extract the truth from within myself. I listened and nodded enthusiastically and continued to return to their classrooms week after week after week for further 'enlightenment'.

Six weeks ago, I moved from the convenience store of Sydney to MacMasters Beach where I am now immersed in nature and wake up with the kookaburras instead of the A380s, where I am the sole wanderer on the beach at sunrise and where the vast space of Bouddhi National Park (which means 'heart') feels like something out of 'Jurassic Park' or 'Land of the Lost'. I could wander off the beaten track and not see another soul for days.

The side effect of this yummy soul-nourishing space is limited accessibility to my various teachers, coaches, healers, mentors etc.

Now, something odd has been happening since I moved up here. Well no. Not odd. Not odd now that I see it for the offering it was but let me tell you and you can decide for yourself.

Firstly, the lady that resides within my GPS has been a little misdirected in her road guidance. First, she told me to go straight at a T-intersection, then she told me to "make a u-turn, please" in the middle of a tunnel and finally she told me to go straight ahead... into a large lake. Luckily, I kind of already knew where I was going and have just enough common sense to realise that I was not in a Harry Potter movie so if I drove straight ahead into a cement wall at a T intersection, it was unlikely I would end up at Hogwarts.

Next, I started missing exits. I missed an exit out of the tunnel so crossed a whole body of water before I could turn around; I went over the wrong bridge and ended up in a mountain instead of on the coast and then I went straight past my home exit on the freeway and didn't realise what I had done until I saw the turn off for 'The Entrance', about 25kms past where I needed to be.

Punctuality has not historically been one of my greatest assets. By the time I actually get in the car to go somewhere, I don't normally allow a lot of room for traffic, detours or directionless GPS women. And so, each time I experienced one of these diversions, I was immediately embroiled in a repetitive and very anxious internal discussion that went something like this: "Oh god. Oh no. I can't be here. I need to be at xyz (insert destination) by such and such a time. Shit shit shit." And so on and so forth and it quickly escalated from there until I was completely frenzied, agitated and of course, late.

The last time this happened, I was sharply interrupted by a very pronounced but calm thought:

YOU DON'T NEED TO BE WHERE YOU ARE GOING.

YOU ONLY NEED TO BE WHERE YOU ARE.

And there it was, voila! My spiritual bumper sticker. The whole reason I moved out of Sydney was to escape the busy-ness I so furiously treaded in and be in a place where I could just descend into the moment but here I was, driving like I was on the Autobahn and freaking out about where I was, because it wasn't where I was meant to be.

The simple wisdom and the teaching of that moment was so profound for me and at the same time it was a big 'D'uh' as well. For me, living in the now is the only thing I need to remember - It's like the spiritual version of "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" but its a lesson I frequently forget.

As Eckhart Tolle says, "Since the now is all there ever is in your life, your entire life unfolds as the present moment. People don't realize it, but all they ever have is 'this'. This moment."

So now that I've decided to just be where I am, I am amazingly finding that I seem to know exactly where I'm going.

Random thoughts for a first post and Buddha is fat because he's enlightened

okay. This is it. Its 7.45am on a random Tuesday. Maybe not so random. It July 13, 2010 and this is my first blog ever, despite thinking about it for over a year. The fear of this being seen and not liked is bubbling up. The mild anxiety that someone might read this and think "what a load of rubbish" or "how utterly boring" is hanging out around my right ovaries. Just around the spleen - the sweetness of my life. Good morning, my Shadow.

Last year, when I was undergoing an intense 6-month transformational process, I had many thoughts about what we were then calling 'ascension', a rather spiritually arrogant label we were applying to the process of digging deep and unpeeling layers in the pursuit of 'awakening' and accessing higher and higher levels of consciousness. Along with an expanded sense of insight and understanding, came an expansion in my jeans, which my teacher assured me was normal - apparently the majority of people gain weight when they are accessing 'higher consciousness/intelligence (go figure). In response, below is the first 'blog' I wrote in May 2009, now finally being published on my own kNOw Red Herrings blog. It feels good!

SMOKIN' BUDDHA by Ashley Good I woke up in the middle of the night last night (as I always do, just after 3am) thinking "No wonder Buddha's fat". My teacher has told me that one of the side effects for some people when they open their throat (giving voice to their pure truth) and clear the blockages between the head and the heart is that all that dense energy that they have been carrying around in our heads for all this time descends down into their heart... and their butts and thighs and stomachs. My mind used to race at a million miles an hour and when I would sit down to meditate I would notice that my brain was like the California 405 freeway with thoughts, like cars, whizzing down and across and weaving in and out of lanes. Now I think that every one of those thoughts must have been about 10 calories and just as the soul apparently weighs 21 grams, the 'head-heart connection' weighs about 7 kilos, and there is not a damn thing you can do about it. How cruel that it shouldn't be the other way around - I wouldn't have minded gaining 21 grams but 7 kilos has translated as thigh chafe and muffin top and frankly, I'm not yet zen enough not to notice or detached enough not to care. The thought has occurred to me that had I known my ass would expand in proportion to my consciousness, I might have stayed on the "mediocrity is good enough" path, which is about as enlightened as the smoker who keeps fagging to stay thin. Clearly, Buddha never smoked. It seems the only alternative to my fat thighs and pudding stomach would have been to ignore the incessant soul-calling that had been buzzing within me for months before I finally made the leap into consciousness cartography... just as the smoker tries to ignore the persistent cough, the shortness of breath, the dull and lifeless complexion, I could have continued to ignore the warning signs that were telling me that there was more to my experience than I was letting in... Its true that ignorance is bliss because if you don't know - or can't even imagine - what you are missing than its easy to believe that a raspy throat, gotten through cigarettes or denial of true self expression, is 'just fine'. After all, you don't know what you don't know. In my case however, I was surrounded by a few very solid, very centred and rather happy people who had plunged into this work and who inspired me to say "I'd like some of what they have"" and after eventually realizing that I myself was not going to transform simply by being in the company of such good people, I put my money where my mouth was (and apparently some caloric-dense food as well) and invested in the belief that I could be exponentially brilliant, too. And here I am, six months later, feeling pretty excited and pretty inspired - like Kirsten Dunst in 'Interview with a Vampire' after her first taste from the chalice of life when she said "I want some more". But still... its about the fat thighs. Forget about pear-shaped - I am like an upside down hot air balloon - bloated, full of gas and a wide load. Sigh. I suppose however, that the upshot of the Hot Air Balloon is that I am now in Top Down mode, and hopefully starting to dispel all my hot air inwards and earthward instead of upwards and outwards. And I'm a little more colourful (I'd like to think) and perhaps now I can appreciate - even witness - the silent soaring journey over the landscape of my life and transcend all the tangles and brambles I've gotten so hung up on in the past. So yes, I suppose fat thighs and a clear voice are better than death by darkness and suffocation. And for now at least, enlightenment at Buddha's level is still a long way off so rumours of my obesity are premature.

For more reading about "ascension" and weight gain, check out one of my favorite spiritual nomads here:

http://home.tiscali.nl/gibbon/weight-changes.htm