Swaying in the wind,
The blackbird still sings.

Birds don’t wait for the perfect conditions to go about their business. They don’t wait for life to become stable. If the wind blows, and there’s singing to be done, then singing is what they’ll do. We would do well to follow their example.

How many times have you put off doing something, waiting for everything to be just so, a perfect situation? Withholding our gifts and our efforts only postpones our chances for happiness. Why wait for some illusory time - a time that might never come - before we begin a project, or take the next step in a plan that we might have? We can talk about things all we want, but there comes a point where action and experience is the only way we can proceed. Don’t wait for things to be perfect before acting. There is only one perfect moment, and that is the only moment, and that moment is now.

I thought it might be good if people could get a quick overview of what I’ve said over the years on this site. Obviously, the site has changed over time, as have my beliefs and opinions, but who knows what nuggets are hidden in the past waiting to be found again? If you’re new to the site and haven’t been following it from the beginning, then even better, it’ll all be new to you.

To that end, I’ve set up a nice Archive section, so that you can see the list of all of the posts/artcles I’ve written here, sorted by month and year. You can find it in the quicknav bar at the top-right of the screen, or click the word Archives on the list at the side. A thank you to Justin Blanton’s Smart Archives plug-in for doing all the hard work for me.

“We don’t always need new lessons, sometimes we just need to understand the old ones.”

Two birds atop a tree;
First fighting,
Then singing.

Arguments exist in life. People clash. Animals clash. Plants do battle above and below the soil. Waves crash against chalky cliffs. The very surface of the earth clashes together, causing earthquakes and creating mountains. There is nothing wrong with conflict. It is part of the dynamics of life.

We learn a great deal from our conflicts. The clashes of ego and opinion that we have with each other, if we remain aware, can lead to much learning. Disagreements challenge our thoughts, beliefs and behaviour like peace never could.

But just as a life of never being challenged is imbalanced, so too is being in constant conflict. After conflict, peace must be restored. Swans and ducks may squabble from time to time, but as soon as it is over they flap their wings, clear away the tension, and then glide along in the water once more, the epitome of peace. This is the way it is with all animals, and also certain native peoples. They may fight, but when it is over, they return again to peace. They live now, and know how to let go.

This same principle is important in our everyday lives. Any movement we make requires tension, but once the movement is over, we can relax again once more. The better able we are to do this, the greater the sense of balance and overall joy we will feel. Athletes push their bodies hard, but when it is over most of them stretch and relax, lest they carry that tension into the rest of their day and don’t give themselves chance to recover and repair their muscles. Similarly, when we argue with one another, and do so openly and honestly, as soon as the argument is over we can take a long breath out, let go of our tension and return again to peace. If we dwell upon it, keep resentments, or continue to bring it up every time we interact, then we will be sapped of our joy and our relationships will lose the possibility of intimacy that can only come from dealing with people as they are now and not as a stale image of the past.

Argue, disagree by all means, but don’t hold a grudge. Forgive, and move on. We are all much so more than a careless word or deed, it only takes looking in the openness of now to see it.

Paulo has shown real skill and employed a great sense of simplicity by writing his own blogging software to run his website. What better thing than to have an engine that you understand and does what you want it to do because you made it yourself? He’ll be releasing it as open source (that means it’s free to look at the programming code that makes it, and tinker with and edit it as you choose, for those not in the know). When it’s ready I’ll give you the heads-up. And who knows, abarefootman.co.uk could someday be running PBS: Paulo’s Blogging System! Now there’s something to think about.

Often people talk about the will, or will-power, as part of the struggle to be a certain way, to overcome flaws or things that we view as negative and wish to change. You decide that smoking tabacco is bad for you, so you say to yourself “I quit,” and then the battle ensues, your will-power over the addiction and habit of smoking. Or you say you’ll get fit this year, stick to your exercise program, and call upon your will to keep to it, to go for that run or go to the gym even if you don’t feel much like it.

The strength of your will is given much focus here. The stronger your will, the better. If you can overcome habits and tendencies to be one way in favour of another, then that’s got to be a good thing, right? If you can control yourself to such a degree, then naturally you’ll live a happier and better life, because what is better than control?

In the battles that go on inside us, between what we are and what we should be, we use our will-power to struggle, to fight the “good fight”.

But let’s take a closer look at the will. Firstly, will your arm to raise. Really call upon all your strength of will-power! How did that feel? Did anything happen? Was the movement graceful or jerky, relaxed or tense? There you can see your will-power conquering your body, what a feat!

Now, just do this:

Raise your arm.

How was that? Compare that action with the one of using your will to control your body. Repeat the process a few times until you get a feel for each one.

It may be clear now that using the will is a case of strength vs strength, with the stronger prevailing. If you have a strong habit or resistance, then you have to make your will stronger to overcome it. You have to struggle that much more, use that much more tension and effort. You get the feeling of holding your breath.

The difference here was one of separation. In the first exercise, your will conquered your body, as if “you” and “your body” were separate. In the second exercise, there was just the body and raising the arm, “you” and the action were one, if indeed there was a “you” at all.

Not everyone talks about will-power as separation and struggle, however. The true power of the will is this: Just do it. That’s all there is to it. It is not about becoming so strong that you overcome all obstacles, it is largely that you learn to see the obstacles for what they are, which naturally weakens the resistance they cause. Instead of acting within the scope of judgement, saying “this is bad and this is good and I must force myself to do good”, there is a gentler way of letting change happen naturally through our own awareness. Using force instead of awareness, we are blind to the why of it, and sooner or later a part of us will rebel against that control.

The effectiveness of the will is not through strength to overcome, but through clarity of purpose.

What would you say if I told you that the goal of music is to reach the end of the song? You’d laugh at me I’m sure.

Yet this is the way most of us live our lives, doing our tasks with the goal of reaching the end of them. We have little interest in the process. Yet, with music, the process is what we are there for. We sit and listen, we enjoy each moment, each word, each note, and witness the melodies unfolding.

The next time you’re stuck in a task that you just want to be over, think of what I’ve said here, and let your task be like music to your ears.

In this hectic world of trying and controlling, hard work and effort, it’s worth remembering the words of one of my favourite poems, taken from a collection of zen poems and writings called the Zenrin Kushu:

Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Try all you like, but you cannot make anything grow. All we can really do is create the circumstances for growth and then let the growth happen of its own accord. This is obvious with plant life, we can weed to keep the plants we wish to grow from having to compete too much for nutrients, we can add natural fertilizers like horse manure to improve the quality of the soil, we can water the plants when they need it, and we can create shade if those plants need shielding from the hottest rays of the sun. We can aerate the soil, we can make and spread compost and we can attract the bugs that will eat up any insects that might harm our plants.

We can do all this, but we cannot make the plants to grow, we do not have that power. We can only tend to our garden, and ensure that soil is fertile for what we want to grow. This is the same with our lives and our minds. We cannot force ourselves to be a certain way, we can only tend to our soil and create the conditions for what we want to happen.