This picture is a good snap shot of my happy place, living where the land meets the sea, I find so much peace in the ocean, but mostly it reminds me that the world is a mystical place.  It also reminds me that I need balance. I took this picture on Thursday evening last week, its been a busy couple weeks at work and the end of the year is fast approaching. Kim and i sat quietly on the beach listening to the sea and breathing fresh ocean air, it was a good time to reflect on things, be appreciative for what i have. it got me thinking about the pace of life and how we go through it with comfort blinkers on.

We all cling to things that comfort us, things that we can bury our faces into when the world scares us…. for some of us its religion, for others its material objects to distract and play with, maybe its a person, who makes you feel safe, or the ocean . Some of us fill our lives up with so much drama and gossip that we never need to stand still, quiet our mind and stare out into the night wondering why all of this … is.

I have made a conscious decision to explore myself, my mind, what makes me tick and what the hell are we doing here.

What I have started unravelling is fascinating. I have so much to say, so much running through my head I can’t write fast enough to get it all out. Like water falling from a huge waterfall landing on my head, every drop is a new thought, idea, energy pounding through me, its relentless and intense. It’s the most exciting feeling to have this unlocked this part of myself. I feel like im an explorer who has landed on a new mystical shore in another galaxy and anything is possible.

So I’m searching, looking at myself from so many angles, my life, the world, the universe, whats is really happening right now and I’m fascinated by us, and the bizarre and complex life form we have become.

Death has brought this curiosity to me, and the first anomaly that I have come across is my life… have you ever wondered where you were before this? the observable universe (what we are able to see so far) is 13 billion years old …well that’s as far as we can tell for now…. that is a long time…. if you had to scale that period of time into one year, the human race only showed up in the last few seconds of the last-minute of Dec 31st…. and the longest surviving human life is not even a millisecond on that scale… in the scale of time and space, our life time almost doesn’t exist it is so small. for some strange reason I find this fact comforting? I don’t know why it just seems today we all take ourselves so seriously but we are really small and insignificant as individual beings…

So where has your life force been before this?  You are not afraid of where you came from, why should you be any more afraid of where you are going after you die? You had no say in coming into this world, yet you did, you are here, conscious, thinking, powerful human being that has the incredible power to imagine, think and most exciting of all… choose. You call the shots. If you want to do something you have the ability through the left hand side of your brain to turn that thought or idea from your right brain into a reality… that is just fascinating.

We have crawled out of the sea, and climbed into spaceships and stood on the moon, in the shortest conceivable time we have begun looking back to where we came from, and started figuring out our place in this universe. but fear holds us back, fear of the unknown, fear of the black space we float in, fear of our temporary consciousness… we find ways to make ourselves feel safe, things to cling to, things to distract us…

My facination is as much about what we don’t know as what we do,  there is so much we have yet to understand about our potential. Much of these questions stem from the last few weeks of my late wife’s life, her brain tumour had taken ownership of the left-hand side of her brain, and left her unable to communicate with us. It was a very scary thing to watch the person I love go through, but that fearful experience left me with so many questions, I needed to know what she was going through… one afternoon we were sitting at the little table in her ward, I was helping her eat some lunch, and I asked her ( almost as a rhetorical question, because she very seldom spoke more than a yes or a no at this point)… “what is going on in that head of yours Jess?” I asked…she looked at me, peaceful as anything, and said…”I’m trying to get to you but im stuck up in the ceiling over there…” it was the strangest thing sitting there with her, knowing that she was experiencing a completely different reality to mine.

Then I came across this incredible story… a neuroscientist who had a stroke and lived to tell the tale, she describes in detail the experience of losing the left hand side of her brains functionality, her version of events is as specific as you could ever hope to hear. Then another video on a similar life changing near death experience, then I recalled the near death experience of a friend which I witnessed first hand, I helped him pulled from the ocean with no pulse, and watched as he was slowly brought back to life over 15 minutes of resuscitation. a few weeks later after he described to me a similar experience to this woman, all random, all very similar experiences and all have different beliefs. Now im not searching for answers to the afterlife, in my opinion that is a waste of precious time, we all get to find out one day, I am more interested in the seemingly common thread of clues that suggest a higher realm of consciousness, we can understand our place here, and how we all are connected. It’s pushed me to a place where I need to ask questions, I’m not satisfied with my contribution to the world so far, I think I’m better than this… I think we all are.

So I have become consumed by self discovery, by exploring myself and educating my kids in way that will help them understand themselves and the effect they have on others, I have promised myself I will not let life get in the way of this most important journey. I am aware that we have a fantastic amount of potential and live in a world with such incredible possibilities, but we allow ourselves to be ensnared in the belief that we need to go to wake up, work, make money, watch tv, go to bed and repeat, day after day. I’m not saying we should quit our jobs, there is virtue in an honest day of work, and our modern world is governed by the monetary system we have created, stepping away from that will make life very difficult, what I’m going after is how you balance that work, how do you spend your down time, what are we leaving behind for the next generation. That’s where I want to be different, that’s where I need to change.

So the December holidays are here, and its the best time of year to get a little personal with ourselves? But it’s so easy for that time to come and go in the blink of an eye, happens to me so often, I’ll get a break from the kids and ill have 5 things im so excited to do, by the time the kids come back I have only managed 1 or none! So I have become good at planning my time off, i try to understand what exactly it is that I want achieve and then structuring my precious time in a way that sees me get the job done. Here is such a good TED talk about such an experiment, if you are looking for a good idea on how to balance your inspiration time and work (okay, it’s an extreme example but very cool nonetheless) . The point is, there are some very clever people in this world and they are doing some amazing things if we just take the time to look up from our daily grind, we can participate.

I think that as a human race, we have the responsibility to figure out how to exist on this planet without killing it and each other, we are all connected and responsible for finding a way. I’m not sure the majority of us are doing our part at the moment.

This December, I’m going to start a new project. I’m going to plan my children’s education, I’m not talking about schooling, I’m talking about the lessons I want my kids to learn, the virtues and knowledge I want to expose them to by the time they walk out my door to a home of their own. I figure I have about 13 years until Joel is 18, and about 10 years until my Anna (who just turned 3) starts telling me how things happen around here, so I better get cracking while they still listen. I want to show them this planet, I want to take the time to explain the different races, religions,  cultures and let them make up their own minds what feels right and wrong, not because I say so, but because they have seen it with their own eyes. So I will start with a list of virtues, subjects, and break it down from there, into travel locations, books, movies and experiences that will help them attain the greatest objectivity I can give them. It will be a big list, but once I know what the lessons are, it will be that much easier to get there, because I will know where we are going.

I know this is all very idealistic, and I’m pretty sure I sound like I’m having a sort of mid-life crisis, but the thing is I feel more alive than ever, I feel like I have the clearest understanding of the value of time, and I want to use it in a way that makes my kids into the people who can change the world we live in.

Here are some links to that have been inspiring me lately:

A rad website  with all kinds of inspirational forward thinking stuff about the universe and reality as we know it:

http://www.lucidtree.com  (lots of conspiracy theory stuff in here too.. I stay clear cause all it really does is bring me down)

A movie on quantum physics ( done in a way that makes sense to dummies like me 😉 )

A collection of 20 min talks from the greatest minds our world has, an absolute favourite of mine.. TED Talks.

http://www.ted.com

The neuro scientist woman who had a stroke and lived to tell the tale…

A great visual perspective of the observable universe:

My mate Craig shared this awesome site, where you can learn just about any new and creative skill you can think of, through video tutorial :

http://www.skillshare.com

Since I’m fast approaching some very touchy subjects that throw humans into a complete frenzy at the best of times… i thought the following disclaimer would be a wise addition for any newcomers…

Disclaimer: This blog is therapy for me, and record of my thoughts for my kids. I don’t pretend to have all the answers and I sure as heck wont ever tell anybody that my way is the highway. I am always prepared to admit I might be wrong , so long as you are too:) If you disagree, please don’t hesitate to comment, but remember that I am merely sharing my personal journey, not asking you to alter yours.  Let’s keep it constructive!  Hambe Kahle (go well).